The Agency of Buddhist Nuns

BSRV 27.1 (2010) 41–60 Buddhist Studies Review ISSN (print) 0256-2897 doi: 10.1558/bsrv.v27i1.41 Buddhist Studies Review ISSN (online) 1747-9681 The Agency of Buddhist Nuns CAROL S. ANDER S ON KALAMAZOO COLLEGE [email protected] ABSTR A CT This article examines how Buddhist literatures construct the agency of Buddhist nuns. The first section explores the Vinaya collections of different schools, and examines the differences between the Bhikkhunī- vibhaṅga and the Bhikkhu-vibhaṅga on how nuns are expected to act. The second section explores material on the faculties (indriyas) in the Pāli Abhidhamma-piṭaka and its commentaries so as to better understand how the abhidhamma analyses of ‘women’s nature’ and ‘men’s nature’ in- formed conceptions of agency. This article suggests that even though the abhidhamma literature uses such terms as ‘women’s nature’, there is little basis for concluding, as some scholars have done, that Buddhist literature reflects an essentialist view of gender. The fact that theabhidhamma analyses of gender distinguish between ‘male faculties’ and ‘female faculties’ does not appear to make a difference in the agency accorded to nuns: nuns, like monks, are expected to behave in certain ways independent of the fact that they have ‘female faculties’ and thus are inclined toward certain kinds of stereotypically female behaviour. Keywords: Agency, Nuns, Monks, Essentialism Introduction This article examines questions about a topic that is central to our understand- ing of nuns and women in early Indian Buddhist traditions. In this literature, nuns are represented as responsible for their actions in much the same way as monks are cast as responsible for their actions. However, throughout the Vinaya- piṭaka there are many more regulations that nuns are enjoined to follow than for monks. Depending on the Buddhist school, there are 348 rules for nuns to follow and 250 for monks in the Vinaya of the Dharmaguptaka, 366 for nuns and 258 for monks in the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya, and 311 for nuns and 227 for monks in the © Equinox Publishing Ltd 2010, 1 Chelsea Manor Studios, Flood Street, London SW3 5SR 42 The Agency of Buddhist Nuns Theravāda Vinaya (Kabilsingh 1998, 12). This disparity between the additional and different rules for nuns has given rise to many questions regarding misogyny and the ‘equality’ of monks and nuns in this strata of Buddhist literature. 1 While questions about sexism in early Buddhist traditions are hardly new, evidence used in contemporary arguments have opened up a new range of answers. For example, Bhikkhunī Juo-Hsüeh Shih, in Controversies over Buddhist Nuns, has provided translations of key points in the Pāli Bhikkhunī-vibhaṅga and Buddhaghosa’s commentaries, with comparisons at the relevant points to other Bhikkhunī-vibhaṅgas of other Buddhist schools (Juo-Hsüeh 2000, 25). Juo-Hsüeh articulates her questions about how nuns were treated in the Vinaya: A subsidiary theme is the discrimination that Vinaya shows against women[;] discrimination in the sense of differentiating, and to the disadvantage of the women. Thus I shall discuss cases where commission of the same offence by a monk and a nun brought down a severer penalty on the nun. Much of the material presented below will suggest that nuns came to be treated more harshly as time went on; for example, the commentary tends to take a stricter line with them than does the canonical text (Juo-Hsüeh 2000, 14–15). Juo-Hsüeh is certainly not alone in posing this issue. Gregory Schopen makes a similar observation: The compilers of the various Buddhist monastic codes that we have appear to have been very anxious men …. They appear, moreover, to have been par- ticularly anxious about nuns, about containing, restraining, and controlling them. At every opportunity they seem to have promulgated rules toward these ends. (Schopen 2004, 329) Schopen also suggests that, in contrast to the widespread assumptions that the order of nuns was strictly subordinate to the order of monks, the bhikkhunīs were in fact much stronger and more powerful than heretofore imagined. In asking the question about how agency was constructed for Buddhist nuns, it is possible to explore the territory covered by these scholars with a more pointed examina- tion of the ways in which the compilers of the Buddhist monastic codes sought to restrict the scope of nuns’ ability to act. This article examines three different assumptions that lie behind the ways in which nuns’ lives were controlled. The first question examined here involves how theVinaya collections laid out the rules that put limits on nuns’ ability to legitimately act in the world. Were nuns considered to be as capable of controlling their behaviour as were monks? The answer we find to this question will be in the affirmative: agency is represented in the same way for nuns as it is for monks, but with more constraints on the different kinds of behaviours considered appropriate and suitable for nuns, as Juo-Hsüeh and Schopen argue. The second question examines abhidhamma arguments (in the canonical Abhidhamma and its commentaries) about the nature of ‘men’ and ‘women’ and the gender of ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’. Here, I explore the points at which Buddhist literature understands nuns to be women, according to classical abhidhamma analyses of what it means to be a woman or a man. The third and final question returns to the starting point: do theVinaya texts presume 1. The literature on whether or not nuns were treated equally to monks is extensive. Janet Gyatso (2003, 89 n. 1) has compiled a list of the classic studies that explore androcentrism in her article on paṇḍakas. Juo-Hsüeh has also compiled a useful list of those works devoted exclusively to Buddhist nuns (Juo-Hsüeh 2000, 4 n. 16). © Equinox Publishing Ltd 2010 Carol S. Anderson 43 that, because nuns are women, they have a different ability to act in the world when compared to monks? Michael Sweet and Leonard Zwilling have suggested that early Buddhist literatures have an essentialist framework for biologically sexed bodies and gender (Sweet and Zwilling 1993, 604). This article concludes with a reassessment of that claim. To frame this argument in Buddhist terms, the firstpārājika rule in the Bhikkhu- vibhaṅga is the injunction against sexual intercourse. Canonical and commentarial Pāli sources go to great lengths to specify just how monks and nuns should avoid violating this rule. The Vinaya goes into what many have called excessive detail about how penetration might occur, and reflects a quintessentially Buddhist eye for the minutiae of sexual intercourse (Faure 1998, 65–72). The analysis of the first pārājika — and throughout the entire Vinaya — is concerned with restraining male and female sexual behaviour. From the point of view of abhidhamma analysis, however, everything in the canonical and early commentarial traditions associated with what we would understand, in contemporary use, to be sexuality or gender is under the influence of the male or female faculties indriya( s). With regard to the faculties, however, there is no faculty (indriya) that refers to an overarching category of ‘sexuality’ or ‘gender’ in the abhidhamma texts; when the topic of classically gendered behaviours is discussed, indriya always refers to ‘male faculty’ or ‘female faculty’, and is never an overall category that could encompass ‘sexuality’ or ‘gender’. So, too, each time the term ‘bhāva’ (nature) appears in the literature discussed below — in the context of gender — it is modified with the adjective ‘male’ or ‘female’. That said, while ‘male’ and ‘female’ are the stand- ard, normative sexes, two more are recognized: hermaphrodite (both sexes) and paṇḍaka (neither). Other words that we might expect to be able to consistently translate as ‘sexuality’ or ‘gender’, such as liṅga or vyañjana, are used in multiple ways to refer to both the physical markers of biological sex and the sexed characteristics that are constructed with a dimorphic system of gender for Buddhist texts. Liṅga, vyañjana, upastha, and nimitta can all refer to sex-specific genitals. Liṅga, vyañjana and nimitta also refer to the features, marks, or characteristics of men and women that we would refer to with the word ‘gender’.2 The blurring of these terms has led some to wrongly argue that this literature is rooted in an essentialist framework that recognizes only two fixed genders that are indistinguishable from the biologically sexed bodies of male humans and female humans. Zwilling and Sweet write: Discussions in the Buddhist commentarial literature indicate the belief in an inherent gender ‘power’ (indriya) that determines masculine and feminine pri- mary and secondary sexual characteristics, as well as gender-role behaviour, which is expressed by girls playing with dolls and boys with toy vehicles and farm tools, differences in male and female gait, and the like. These conceptions are very much in accordance with an essentialist viewpoint. (Sweet and Zwilling 1993, 604) 2. On nimitta-, Kieffer-Pülz suggests that ‘Nimitta-, “sign, characteristic” is used euphemisti- cally for the male and female organs. It seems that the word nimitta- is used in definitions (Vin III,28,11), or where the sexual organ of an inanimate object, be it a figure, a doll, or a dead body, is spoken of (Vin III,36,10 and 13; III,37,17)’ (Kieffer-Pülz 2001, 68 n. 24). Zwilling and Sweet explain the term liṅga: ‘The original sense of liṅga is “characteristic mark or sign” (Nirukta 1.17); later on it comes to mean “sexual characteristic” in general and “penis” in particular’ (Zwilling and Sweet 1996, 365 n. 26). © Equinox Publishing Ltd 2010 44 The Agency of Buddhist Nuns If Sweet and Zwilling are right about the early Buddhist traditions having an essentialist conception of sex and gender, then what is the relationship between biological sex, gender, and action? These authors do not pursue this question; their arguments are made in support of a theory that medicalized views of homo- sexuality are not exclusive to the West (Sweet and Zwilling 1993, 607).

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