What is the Buddhist attitude to women?
First and foremost, women are viewed as human beings subject to birth, old age, sickness and death: beings prone to suffering and with the ability and opportunity to transcend it. The Buddha made it very clear that the capacity for enlightenment is not gender-based. It is present by virtue of a human birth and women are viewed as having the same spiritual potential as men.
In light of this view of their spiritual capacity, the Buddha gave women who wished to devote themselves wholeheartedly to his training the opportunity to become monastics. He spent a great deal of time teaching women, both monastic and lay, and did not keep back any teachings from them on the grounds of their sex.
But the Buddha’s assertion of women’s spiritual equality did not lead him to advocate radical changes in the male-dominated social order. He reserved his social criticism for what seemed to him its most pernicious feature: the caste system. Interestingly, in the Sangha, the area in which the Buddha have the power to establish conventions governing relationships between men and women, he did not opt for equality. The Buddha established relations between the two monastic orders such that the nuns order, establishes after that of the monks, was considered its younger sibling. The Buddha judged that this kind of mild hierarchy, guarded against abuse by the built-in checks and balances of the Vinaya disciple, was the best way to govern renunciant communities, and the one most acceptable to society at large.
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Source:
- Without and Within – Ajahn Jayasaro
Ryokan Says
The Buddha made a few advices towards the relation of laywoman and laymen (of that time), has seen in the Sigalovada Sutta:
30. “In five ways should a wife as the western direction be respected by a husband: by honoring, not disrespecting, being faithful, sharing authority, and by giving gifts.
“And, the wife so respected reciprocates with compassion in five ways: by being well-organized, being kindly disposed to the in-laws and household workers, being faithful, looking after the household goods, and being skillful and diligent in all duties. – Sigalovada Sutta
Additionally, there it is a few accounts about the genderless aspect of enlightenment. In the Soma Sutta, Mara wants to disturb bkikkhuni Soma enlightenment by trying to create doubt, saying that woman enlightenment is not possible; Soma realize this and reply with these words:
What does womanhood matter at all
When the mind is concentrated well,
When knowledge flows on steadily
As one sees correctly into Dhamma.
One to whom it might occur,
‘I’m a woman’ or ‘I’m a man’
Or ‘I’m anything at all’ —
Is fit for Mara to address. – Soma Sutta
No difference should be made about the potential capacity to enlightenment of men and woman.
~Ryokan
