proceeds in tension with several challenges. First, in
much of Buddhist literature, female characters tend to
function symbolically; their relationship to Buddhist
women, by no means transparent, is contested within
both academic and Buddhist communities. Secondly,
the primacy of men in most historical Buddhist com-
munities corresponds to a relative dearth of historical
sources regarding the lives of women. Thirdly, women
have been defined quite differently and have occupied
quite distinct roles in different Buddhist cultures; the
blanket term womencan obscure this diversity. Finally,
contemporary perspectives and controversies funda-
mentally shape our approach to this topic. With these
caveats, however, a great deal can still be said.
Women and normative constructions of the fe-
male: Mothers, wives, objects of desire
Throughout the history of Buddhist communities, im-
ages of the feminine have played a central role in Bud-
dhist thought and practice, and surely such images had
a significant impact upon the lives of Buddhist women.
It must be kept in mind, however, that these images
were, for the most part, constructed by and for men.
Still, conceptions of the female shaped and were
shaped by the experiences of actual women in Bud-
dhist communities, and thus represent an important,
if problematic, resource for understanding the role of
women in Buddhism.
Almost universally in premodern Buddhist com-
munities, to be born a woman was considered a sign
of unfavorable karmic propensities from past lives,
and many texts portray REBIRTHas a man as a laud-
able soteriological goal, as, for instance, in the
“Bhaisajyaraja” (Medicine King) chapter of the LOTUS
SUTRA(SADDHARMAPUNDARIKA-SUTRA). According to
most normative texts, one of the eight conditions for
receiving a prediction to buddhahood is a male body,
and although women were often portrayed as capable
of attaining BODHI (AWAKENING), many Buddhist
sources suggest that final release requires rebirth in
male form. Arguably, the female body’s connection to
birth (and thus to SAMSARAitself) and its often noted
capacity to arouse desire in men render it unfit for the
highest soteriological attainments.
The death of the Buddha’s own mother one week
after his birth might be taken to signify not only the
samsaric taint of giving birth, but also the great power
of the bond between mother and child, one that had
to be broken if the Buddha was to be able to renounce
all worldly attachments. Pali and MAHAYANAsources
often mention the infinite debt to one’s mother and
father; even if one were to carry one’s parents on one’s
back for one hundred years, the Kattaññu-suttaof the
An.guttaranikaya asserts, one could never repay the
debt. Mothers, too, frequently figure in narrative lit-
erature as ultimate embodiments of attachment and
the grief it brings (see, for instance, the chapter on “The
Tigress” in the SUVARNAPRABHASOTTAMA-SUTRA). In
such tales, the position of the mother remains am-
biguous: The mother’s experience of terrible grief be-
cause of her attachment to her children is presented
very sympathetically, even as the goal of nonattach-
ment is praised; sometimes the pain of motherhood
itself becomes the basis for the realization of imper-
manence. Such sentiments are echoed in the colophons
of manuscripts from DUNHUANGthat were commis-
sioned by mothers and wives to ensure the good re-
birth of their deceased children and husbands.The depth of a mother’s love for her children is also
the basis for the use of the figure of the mother as the
paradigm of selfless compassion embodied in (usually
male) BODHISATTVASand BUDDHAS. In the bodhisattva
vows of the MAHAYANA, for instance, the bodhisattva
is exhorted to be like a mother to all beings, and the
Buddha himself is not infrequently described in moth-
erly terms. The notion of the compassionate, loving
mother is surely also at work in the characterization
of certain prominent female bodhisattvas, such as
Prajñaparamita (the “mother of all buddhas”) and
Tara(embodiment of compassionate action) in Indo-
Tibetan Buddhism, and female representations of
Avalokites ́vara bodhisattva (Guanyin) in China. The
latter bodhisattva appears in the form of “the giver of
sons,” and is propitiated to this day for assistance in
obtaining (usually male) children.Perhaps one of the most powerful normative im-
ages is that of the female as the primary object of male
desire, and thus as the symbol of desire par excellence.
Numerous passages in Buddhist canonical literature of
all regions and schools warn monastic men against the
dangers of sexual desire (almost always assumed to be
heterosexual); a few virulently misogynistic passages
attribute male desire to the degeneracy of women
(Sponberg, pp. 18–23). Consideration of female sexual
desire or its effect upon women, by contrast, is gener-
ally limited to the characterization of women as un-
controllable sexual beings that threaten male celibacy.
Women are objects, not subjects, in many normative
Buddhist constructions of desire; they are the lesser
(and dangerous) “other” in relation to the male sub-
ject position, as discussed in further detail below.WOMEN