Gender and Virtue in Indian Buddhism

Abstract

Gender and Virtue in Indian Buddhism John Powers In Indian Buddhist texts, extant accounts of the Buddha’s life all date from at least several centuries after his passing, and so the physical reality of his body was no impediment to the construction of the details of the physique of the ultimate man, adorned with the physical characteristics of a great man. In this environment, in which beautiful bodies were associated with religious adepthood, the male form was valorized over the female, and in which social status and wealth were considered testaments of spiritual success, it is unsurprising that Indian Buddhist writers integrated these notions into their accounts of their founder’s life.1 Although many of the tropes are profoundly out of sync with contemporary notions of ideal bodies and gender roles, they are still of interest for contemporary scholars interested in histories of the body and current notions of physicality, sex, and gender because they highlight the historical contingency of a given culture’s assumptions about the body. As R.W. Connell has noted, “masculinities come into existence at particular times and places and are always subject to change. Masculinities are, in a word, historical.”2 In any given time, people who adopt their society’s gender roles generally do so unconsciously and assume that their experience of their bodies is an aspect of nature. As Foucault and others have shown, however, the body has a history, and people live their bodies very differently in different social contexts, while generally assuming that the historically contingent norms of their respective societies reflect the natural order. There is no indication in any Indian text from the medieval period that I have seen that the tropes discussed below were seriously questioned by their authors, and there is no sense of any crisis of masculinity of the sort often discussed in contemporary studies of gender roles. Rather, notions of ideal masculinity appear to be completely hegemonic, to such an extent that there are no apparent competing discourses. There is a tension between the ideal male types of religiously inclined brahmans and physically active, martial kṣatriyas but, as accounts of the Buddha’s life indicate, it was considered possible for extraordinary men to perform both roles at the same time and balance the demands of the religious life with those of a warrior’s. Accounts of the Buddha’s life emphasize that both groups regarded him as the ultimate exemplar of their respective paradigms, and his interactions with Indian gods show that it was also considered possible for the greatest human sages to surpass divinities. The Birth Stories and the other texts examined in this study were mainly written by monks for an audience of other monks, and the recurring tropes of sexual enticement, female seduction, and cautionary tales of monks who succumb and lapse back into the household life indicate that such temptations were a significant concern for the authors of these works and for their main audience. It seems that sexual desire was regarded as the most serious challenge for men attempting to pursue the monastic life, adhere to their vows, and engage in practices designed to lead to advanced meditative states and nirvana. For men pursuing the Buddhist path, stories of the Buddha’s perfect body held out the promise that if they followed his injunctions regarding monastic conduct and avoided the blandishments of women attempting to lure them away from higher religious goals to the degraded pleasures of the “low life” they could attain states of bliss in meditation that utterly surpass any ordinary sensual pleasures and might lead to nirvana, the ultimate state of peace. Before we turn to Buddha’s perfect physique, we need to ask what the role of women is in Buddhist texts. Women in Indian Buddhist Literature Women play an ambiguous role in Indian Buddhist texts. In the Verses of the Elder Nuns (Therīgāthā), there are a number of women who are recognized as arhatīs (adepts who have overcome mental afflictions and are destined for nirvana) who are lauded for their outstanding wisdom and meditative accomplishments. The Buddha’s mother Māyā is described as a paragon of virtue...