An Imperfect Alliance: Feminism and Contemporary Female Buddhist Monasticisms

Abstract

This essay lays the elaborate textile of feminist discourse alongside the equally rich fabric of contemporary female Buddhist monasticisms, taking note of places the latter has pulled threads from the former, but also pointing out the ways in which female monastics lead agentive, creative, and sometimes rebellious female lives that in subtle and not so subtle ways resist the label "feminist," or contribute a new motif or fiber to the feminist weave. Case study reports on two innovative Buddhist female communities in Malaysia and Nepal, chosen because they offer examples of innovations within the context of Buddhist female monasticism that are interestingly complex as examples of Buddhist feminist consciousness, will serve to make visible a few particular female Buddhist monastic perspectives. Respectfully called in as interlocutors and cotheorizers, the monastic persons described here offer religious perspectives on norm-following, agency, and coalition-building that expand the feminist frame.

Love as Enlightenment and Enlightenment as Love: Reading Feminist Hermeneutic of Reconstruction in Vanessa R Sasson’s Yasodhara and the Buddha

“…The third category does not assert such a correlation between Buddhism as a religion and its treatment of and perspectives on women. It focuses on taking a macro view of its institutions and presenting a far more complex picture (Blackburn, 2012; Langenberg, 2018). Alan Sponberg’s (1992) ‘Attitudes towards Women and the Feminine in Early Buddhism’ is representative of such an argument.…”

“…The two positions can coexist as a couple of theological feminist positions discussed above indicate and as the example of Yasodhara indicates. When Amy Paris Langenberg points out that female monastics she has worked with exhibit ‘a distinct feminist consciousness’ (Langenberg, 2018: 2) and ‘contribute a new motif or fiber to the feminist weave’ (1) while resisting the label feminist, it is the same idea and same mode of existence at work. We discover that both the manifestations of personhood (explicit spiritual as well as implicit feminist) meet in a specific kind of consciousness.…”

Buddhist Pro-Woman Attitudes Towards Full Ordination: Tibetan and Himalayan Monastics’ Views

“…As my interlocutors defined their terms for the valences of feminism, the common ground among these definitions is their pro-woman attitude, an inclusive notion for exploring how nuns and monks define Tibetan terms such as gender equality, women's rights, women's empowerment, and feminism. Drawing from Amy Langenberg's ethnographic work on the "imperfect alliances" between Buddhism and feminism in Nepal and Malaysia and Padma'tsho and Sarah Jacoby's examination of Buddhism and gender equality in Tibet, in my final analysis, I take up their terms pro-female and pro-woman (Langenberg 2018;Padma'tsho and Jacoby 2020).…”

“…Rather it reflects the necessary, and perhaps uncomfortable, negotiations and compromises nuns and monks make to sustain their celibate Buddhist monastic practices in their communities in India. In this way, I am not attempting to situate my interlocutors' attitudes as feminist, parafeminist, or anti-feminist, (Langenberg 2018) but emphasizing that their pro-woman attitudes reflect a positive, supportive orientation towards women monastics while accepting the limitations of the gendered binary and hierarchy within Buddhist institutional structures. In an adjacent manner with Padma'tsho and Jacoby's study of the terms for gender equality among nuns in Tibet, my interlocutors' own pro-woman attitude is an outgrowth of their Buddhist principles to protect their vows and benefit others (Padma'tsho PRICE-WALLACE | 15 and Jacoby 2020: 4).…”

La maternité dans le canon bouddhiste pāli : choix et chemins

“… 15. Langenberg (2018) remarque qu’au Népal de nombreuses jeunes femmes deviennent bhikkhunīs pour échapper au mariage et à la maternité obligatoires plus que par vocation religieuse, une remarque qui fait écho à d’autres (par exemple, Muldoon-Hules (2017), Lindberg Falk (2007)). Son étude de jeunes femmes à l’institut Peace Grove à Lumbini montre que, dans un contexte où le mariage et la maternité sont conçus comme la destinée inévitable des femmes, la question de choix est d’autant plus critique. …”