116 BUDDHADHARMA: THE PRACTITIONER’S QUARTERLY
How are we to understand ideas like
“feminism,” “personhood,” or “equality”
in contexts where a vocabulary for such
notions might not even exist? Furthermore,
what does such an understanding accom-
plish for us? Building on a long career of
advocacy for women and gender equality
in Buddhism, Karma Lekshe Tsomo seeks
to bring together scholars into conversa-
tion and present a critical, fresh reflection
on the indigenous and localized forms of
feminism and femininity in Buddhist com-
munities around the world. Collectively,
these scholars attempt to construct a global
vocabulary for talking about Buddhist
women and their experiences. The merit
of such endeavor lies in its potential to
transform the investigator—to change her
or his views, actions, or ways of thinking.
Combining historical, textual, ethno-
graphical, and linguistic approaches, the
authors of this collection explore and prob-
lematize what it means to be a woman in
Buddhist contexts. One particularly thorny
issue in a discussion of Buddhist feminism
is women’s spiritual potential for, and
access to, enlightenment. When Mahap-
rajapati, the Buddha’s foster mother,
requested to be ordained and become a
nun, the Buddha is said to have denied
her request three times. In some sources,
when the Buddha eventually concedes—
after Ananda’s intervention—he stipulates
extra rules for nuns to follow and laments
that the demise of his teaching will come
sooner now that he has allowed women
into the sangha. Male disciples of the Bud-
dha are warned of the danger of women
and instructed to meditate on the foulness
of the female body, while female disciples
are encouraged to contemplate their own
mortality. And although enlightenment is
said to be devoid of all characteristics anddistinctions, gender included, Mahayana
sutras commonly depict aspiring female
bodhisattvas transforming into a male
body before reaching full enlightenment.
In the Sutra of the Perfection of Wisdom
in Eight Thousand Verses, for example, the
Buddha praises the goddess of Ganges for
her virtues and achievements, then makes
the prophecy that when she dies, she will
be reborn as a man, traveling from one
buddha-land to another until she reaches
perfect enlightenment.
However, Buddhist Feminisms and
Femininities makes clear that these largely
androcentric, occasionally misogynist dis-
courses do not represent the whole picture.
Both Karen Lang and Lisa J. Battaglia look
to Indian Buddhism to reconstruct the usu-
ally underrepresented female past; in their
respective articles, they provide new com-
mentaries on the “active, fulfilling, and
independent” lives led by Buddhist women
and offer new perspectives on the relation-
ship between female beauty and merit in the
Indian context. Ching-ning Wang’s study
on Taiwanese nuns’ nondual interpretation
of historically androcentric terms such as
da zhangfu, or “great man,” challenges
gender essentialism in the everyday use
of language—for these nuns, a great man
signifies not gendered characteristics but
the androgynous or genderless fulfillment
of one’s potential. Michelle J. Sorenson
shows us that Tibetan women, by visual-
izing their female embodiment as a site of
offering that benefits all beings, overturn
the traditional view that women possess an
inferior body. And Holly Gayley, examin-
ing the many hagiographies of Khandro
Tare Lhamo, reminds us of the many ways
in which female leadership and religiosity
can be seen through the eyes of male hagi-
ographers, and also how geography may