Responses to Rita Gross

Abstract

RUETHER: SinceJohn Cobb responded to Rita Gross' first paper on the Three YanaJourney, I will concentrate more on another paper which she submitted as background: on the feminine principle in Vajrayana Buddhism. The paper deals with meditational practices in Vajrayana Buddhism and focuses on the feminine principles as a key part of the initiation. Gross raises questions about concepts of dividing masculine and feminine and suggests that this division is still rooted in gender stereotyping of male and female roles. She also discusses the visualization of feminine as divinity and the effect of that on the self within a tradition which has basically suppressed all female symbols of deity. She then examines what she calls the triple revolution in God language in the Western orthodox tradition: Jewish, Christian and Islam. The triple revolution is one of monotheism, transcendence of nature, and abolition of divine gender, which upholds the concept of the oneness of God-a oneness of God which is, in theory, beyond nature and gender. In actuality, this triple revolution does not really transcend gender, but in fact, it promotes the male gender as symbolic of unity and transcendence. It also suppresses female symbols. Female symbols have become symbolic of that which is non-divine or creaturely. Gross explores the more recent efforts to reclaim feminine symbols expressed in yin/yang psychological terms which refer to the androgyny of the self. In her view, the feminine is still symbolized in terms of the unconscious. If the feminine is the unconscious, therefore consciousness is masculine, and hierarchal symbolism still remains preserved. Gross then examines feminist spirituality as exemplified in Wicca movements, which she finds unsatisfactory because they tend toward a gynocentric reversal in which the feminine or the goddess becomes the dominant symbol, the symbol of wholeness. The male becomes either an auxiliary or an actual representation of the maimed or the defective-a reversal of Aristotelian anthropology in which the feminine is the defective. What Gross is obviously looking for in Vajrayana Buddhism is some kind of balanced symbolization of the masculine and feminine. She explores that