Love Dharma. Geri Larkin

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СКАЧАТЬ and after hearing him teach, many of his relatives wanted to become disciples. His father and his six siblings and cousins, all male, were the first group to insist that they be allowed to study with him. Pajapati wanted in as well, but was held back by familial obligations. Then, when Buddha’s father, Suddhodana, died in 524 b.c., she finally had the freedom to become a mendicant follower. Determined to become one, and knowing that Buddha had refused all female disciples to date, Pajapati cautiously asked Buddha for permission to become his student. Now elderly, she sought him out in the Nigrodha Grove, just outside Buddha’s hometown. “It would be good, she said, if women too could go forth into homelessness in the Dharma proclaimed by you.” 2

      Buddha flat-out refused. “Do not be eager to obtain the going forth of women from home to homelessness in the Dhamma and Discipline proclaimed by the Tathagata.” 3 His stepmother was crushed. Pajapati talked with female friends and relatives about her yearning only to discover a groundswell of shared feelings. Many women wanted to be nuns, wanted to follow Buddha. Not easily dissuaded, the women began to organize.

      The women decided to approach Buddha as a group and formally ask his permission to follow him as traveling mendicants. Three times he rejected their appeal. After the third refusal he and the monks left for Vesali, about a hundred miles away. To demonstrate their spunk and determination, Pajapati and a handful of women followed him anyway. They wanted to prove that they could survive as wanderers as well as the monks could. They cut off their hair and put on the yellow robes of a disciple to show the sincerity of their hope to become disciples.

      The group made it to Vesali. When Buddha spotted them, feet swollen, filthy, and crying from exhaustion, he was not happy. Ananda, on the other hand, couldn’t bear to see Pajapati treated the way Buddha was treating her. He decided to intercede on behalf of the women. Buddha also said no to him. Three times. “Do not be eager, Ananda, to obtain the going forth of women from home into homelessness in the Dhamma and Discipline proclaimed by the Tathagata.” 4

      Ananda refused to take no for an answer. Trying a different tack, he asked Buddha the core question of the time for all women: “Is a woman able to gain the fruit of stream-entry [the experience of no-self ] or of once returning [ having one more life to go through before enlightenment], or of non-returning [ living the last life before enlightenment], or of arahantship [ living without desire and hatred and worthy of being worshipped], if she leaves the household life and enters into homelessness in the Dhamma and Discipline of the Tathagata?” 5

      “Yes.”

      “If a woman is able to do this, Lord—and moreover Mahaprajapati Gotami has rendered great service to the Blessed One: she is his aunt, his governess, and nurse, nourished him with her own milk after his mother died—therefore it would be good if the Blessed One would allow women to leave home for the homeless life in the Dhamma . . .” 6

      Our hero. He got Buddha to admit that women are capable of enlightenment—out loud. Plus, these were the women who had nurtured and cared for the monks so that the men could do their spiritual work. Surely they deserved the same exposure to the teachings.

      With trepidation Buddha allowed the women to become followers, opening a whole new vista to them: Constant spiritual practice. Teachings unlike any they had heard before. Different interpretations of their lives. Different priorities to their days. Whole new outlooks on relationships. Different takes on love.

      As soon as Pajapati was ordained as a nun she saluted Buddha and stood to one side while he began to teach. Standing there, Pajapati experienced a deep awakening. So profound was her experience that she later let loose with a long prose poem describing the profound change in her life that had already come from studying with Buddha:

      Buddha the waken, the hero, hail!

      Supreme o’er every being that hath life,

      Who from all ill and sorrow hast released

      Me and so many, many stricken folk.

      Now I have understood how I doth come.

      Craving, the cause, in me is dried up.

      Have I not trod, have I not touched the end

      Of ill—The Eightfold Path?

      Oh! But tis long I’ve wandered down all time.

      Living as mother, father, brother, son,

      And as grandparent in the ages past—

      Not knowing how and what things really are.

      And never finding what I needed.

      But now mine eyes have seen the Exalted One;

      And now I know this living frame’s the last,

      And shattered is th’ unending round of births.

      No more Pajapati shall come to be! 7

      It was a new ball game for women.

      Thousands followed Buddha during his lifetime. They came from all walks of life and from all classes. Some were royalty, others servants. Many were the mothers or sisters of the monks; a few were abandoned wives. Prostitutes studied beside harem women who studied beside grandmothers. Together, they demonstrated a determination to let go of the junk of their lives, to get past soured relationships, to burrow through the mountains of resentment and negative emotions accumulated over lifetimes. In their wake came fresh views on love and relationships, crazy wisdom for a new millennium, and not a moment too soon.

      THE WOMEN

      While the women who stumbled into enlightenment weren’t as closely related to Buddha as Pajapati, each of the women introduced here, all members of the initial group of followers, has left behind wisdom on how to live happily in a world of relationship samsara (the painful cycle of birth, death, and rebirth).

      Known her entire life as one of the most breathtaking beauties in five kingdoms, Ambapali was so astonishingly beautiful that princes fought over her. Their battles finally ended when she was officially appointed chief courtesan of the city of Vesali. In those days, the role of courtesan was considered to be a positive thing. It gave women an inordinate amount of independence relative to wives or other single women. In Ambapali’s case, she evolved into a very wealthy businesswoman. She also bore a son to Buddha’s buddy King Bimbisara and was responsible for building a hermitage where Buddha and his monks spent many of their retreats. Over time, Ambapali watched her livelihood and all of her social support erode as age inevitably robbed her of her identity, not to mention the relationships that had physically and financially supported her for years. She teaches us about impermanence, appreciation, and the fine art of being content.

      Capa was the daughter of a trapper who was known for his generous provision of food for many young monks. Capa fell in love with one of them; they married and had a child, but the monk abandoned her to go back to the life of an ascetic. Capa defined love in a whole new way. Out of her deep love for her husband she was able to help him leave her!

      Born to a well-to-do family, Citta followed Buddha’s teachings for something like fifty years before she finally had her first experience of enlightenment as an old, old woman. Citta teaches us about caring for ourselves first and foremost. Doing no harm starts with the body-mind that has our name on it.

      Isadasi was a woman who desperately tried to be the perfect wife, following all the complicated cultural rules of the day— acting toward her husband as a mother, a servant. Despite all her efforts, СКАЧАТЬ