16 BUDDHADHARMA: THE PRACTITIONER'S QUARTERLY
been engaged in translating lost or ignored passages of Buddhist
scripture that speak of women and women’s “place” and that
restore women’s lost voices.
There were laywomen and ordained nuns during the Bud-
dha’s time. The nuns especially excelled at meditation and teach-
ing; an illustrious group of these early nuns along with their
“songs of triumph” are recorded in the canonical text, the Theri-
gatha (selections from a new translation of this important text
appear in “So This Is What It Feels Like To Be Free”). These
verses show us women with agency in Buddhism, even in its for-
mative years.
Women teachers, practitioners, and scholars have been work-
ing steadily to highlight and expose the very real offerings, by
women, to the life and marrow of Buddhism, including women’s
previously hidden—or worse, ignored—history. Has it been of
benefit? You bet it has! Has it been nourishing? Yes, indeed!
Will its effects be lasting? That, we must wait to see.
We know we are not yet living in a post-patriarchy world.
Systems of patriarchy—like systems of racial discrimination—
are at base about power and who wields it. While strides have
been made in the past decades, there are still those Western
Buddhists who want us women to get over ourselves and see the
“ultimate truth”—those who wish us to skip over our relative
selves and go (like them?) straight for the prize of full buddha-
hood. Women cannot so easily do that. People of Color cannot
so easily do that. We exist and practice in this world in our rela-
tive bodies and must bring those bodies into the Buddhist world,
for if Buddhism is to become truly realized here, we must be
free to bring our whole selves to it. Far from limiting the scope
of Buddhist practice, doing so serves to enrich it, to make it
more fully itself. Let’s keep at it!