The Vimalakirtinirdesha Sutra
tells the tale of the great layman Vimalakirti who lives in a home that
offers shelter to a seemingly endless parade of beings. One of the
beings who has taken up residence in his home is a goddess. One day, the
Buddha’s great disciple, Shariputra, comes to call on Vimalakirti and
encounters the goddess. Not one to mince words, or perhaps shocked to
see a female in the great Vimalakirti’s home, Shariputra asks the
goddess, “Why don’t you change your female sex?”
The goddess answers, “I have been living here twelve years looking
for the innate characteristics of the female sex and haven’t been able
to find any, so how can I change what I can’t find? If someone asks,
‘Why don’t you change your female sex?’ what is he really asking?”
The goddess then uses her supernatural power to change Shariputra
into a likeness of herself and change herself into a likeness of
Shariputra, saying, “All things are without any determinate, innate
characteristics, so how can you ask, ‘Why don’t you change your female
sex?’ Why don’t YOU now change your female sex?”
Shariputra, in the form of a goddess, answers, “I do not know how I
changed into a female form so how can I change back to a male form?”
The goddess responds, “Shariputra, just as you are not really a
woman but appear to be female in form, all women also only appear to be
female in form but are not really women. That is why the Buddha said
that we are not really men or women.”
Then the goddess, using her supernatural power, changed Shariputra back into his own form.
In contrast to this teaching on non-duality given by Vimalakirti’s
goddess, the home I grew up in harbored a clear distinction between
feminine and masculine. I stayed in the kitchen and washed the dishes
with my mom while my brothers went up on the roof to make repairs with
my dad. I took ballet lessons but my brother was forbidden to dance; he
took piano lessons and I, being female, learned violin. My brother was
expected to do something great in the world, I was expected to marry
someone who did something great in the world. When my father died the
family inheritance went to the favored son. This sort of traditional
perspective on male and female roles permeates cultures throughout the
world. It is the insistence that women wear burkas in the Middle East,
it is the baby daughters left to die in China, it is the young girls
married off in India, it is the single mothers who can’t make enough
money to feed their hungry children in America.
Like many other westerners I came to Buddhism out of some mysterious
calling and to ease deep psychic pain. Buddhism was foreign and exotic.
The faces of the Buddha statues looked so calm, in contrast to the faces
I saw all around me, and there were beautiful words like
jasmine and
divine abode and
kusala.
So I projected onto Buddhism everything I wanted to see in a religion.
On retreat, and in the midst of daily practice, this vision sprung to
life. A nameless world between thoughts where no duality existed
appeared. Off the cushion, since a good portion of my psychic pain
seemed to stem from being born a woman, I explored the female aspect of
being a Buddhist. Much to my chagrin I discovered that in Buddhism being
born a woman carried the same onus I was trying to escape.
At first I was shocked and outraged. I fought with my pen, demanding
equality for female practitioners. After awhile, growing weary of the
fight, I sank into what felt like a bottomless sorrow. Was Buddhism to
become yet another home where the fullness of who I am was not welcome?
Still, I continued to meditate and began koan inquiry. The closer I came
to the vastness during meditation and inquiry the less important the
distinction between “feminine” and “masculine” became. There, in the
silence, was my true original nature, an unbounded nature that was
neither feminine nor masculine. I was beginning to experience what I now
believe the Buddha was really pointing to.
Still, there is something about feminine and masculine that needs to be
observed, honored and worked with in this human realm. Ultimately there
is no masculine and feminine, only the undivided, luminescent,
unconditional love that is the texture of the vastness. But to get to
the place of awakening to this reality we travel through a world filled
with apparent dualities. Finding balance between perceived opposites
seems to be one of the essential aspects of the path.
There is no duality in the ultimate vastness, in what Bankei called the
“Unborn Buddha Mind.” Yet, to authentically inhabit our original
non-dual nature we walk the road of kindness by respecting all apparent
dualities as different but equal. Then, while on our travels if we
stumble upon the home where Vimalakirti, the goddess and Shariputra
reside, we can move into our true home with one foot on the Earth.
This article originally appeared on Buddhist Door International on March 15, 2013.
-rachel carson
