She slips in...

Maintaining that no recognition or acceptance would be given to a candidate chosen for political ends by anyone including China the Dalai Lama said reincarnation was a phenomenon which should take place either take place either through voluntary choice of the concerned person or at least on the strength of his or her karma, merit and prayers.

"The person who reincarnates has sole legitimate authority over where and how he or she takes rebirth and how that reincarnation is to be recognized." said the Dalai Lama

"When I am about 90, I will consult the high lamas of the Tibetan Buddhist traditions, the Tibetan public, and other people concerned who follow Tibetan Buddhism, and re-evaluate whether the institution of the Dalai Lama should continue or not,” says a statement issued by the Dalai Lama.

Dalai to decide at 90 on reincarnation, no to China

Gangraped Buddhist Nun Thrown Out of Order?

Gangraped Buddhist Nun Thrown Out of Order?

Raped Buddhist nun's lost virginity might mean she no longer can serve

Published: Tuesday, Aug. 9, 2011

KATHMANDU — A Buddhist nun raped by five men on a bus is facing ostracism from her religious life.
"The religious dictum requires a nun to be virgin. So, it will be difficult to take her back," the president of Nepal, Tamang Ghedung Kumar Yonjan, said in an article in the Nepal Republic Media. "But we will lobby for her reinstatement as it is a unique incident."
An article in GreaterKashmir.com explained that some "orthodox Buddhist organizations" condemned the attack, but said "she had lost her religion as she had lost her celibacy." This led to an outcry, the article continued, that included other Buddhists "citing incidents from the Buddhist scriptures to show how the Buddha absolved a nun of blame after she was drugged and raped by a monk."

However, Norbu Sherpa, an official of Nepal Buddhist Federation, told the Times of India, "Such a thing never happened in the Buddha's lifetime. … So he did not leave instructions about how to deal with the situation. Buddhists all over the world adhere to what he had laid down: that a person can no longer be considered ordained in case of having a physical relationship. It's applicable to both men and women."

When pressed by the Times of India, Sherpa expressed regret about the attack, but said, "A vessel that is damaged once can no longer be used to keep water. … Buddhism all over the world says this. Even the Dalai Lama says you can't be a monk or nun after marriage."
One of Nepal's most popular singers, a 40-year-old Buddist nun named Choying Drolma has come to the stigmatized nun's defense. The Times of India reported that Drolma "offered her a new home at Arya Tara, the school run by the Nuns' Welfare Foundation. Choying founded the non-profit organization with the money earned through her singing to provide education to Buddhist nuns — anis — who mostly remain neglected while monks have greater access to education."
"She is still a nun at heart and she didn't lose her virginity willingly," Drolma told the Nepal Republic Media. "I will consult our gurus and maybe she would be taken back after some sort of cleansing rituals."
"This could have happened to anybody," Drolma told The Independent. "Right now, the most important thing is to treat her like a human being and then later we can look into the matter of whether she is still a nun."
The involvement of Drolma will "help wash off the stigma attached to the poor nun," Nepal24Hours.com said.
The Times of India reported that Choying helped pay for medical expenses for the nun and is working to keep the five alleged attackers in jail until the trial.

Buddhist Nunsense: East vs. West over gang rape

Article by: SUSAN HOGAN , Star Tribune, August 9, 2011

We expect religious professionals – monks, nuns and clergy – to be more merciful than the rest of us. It’s what they devote their lives to embodying.

But there appears to be no mercy for a 29-year-old Buddhist nun from Nepal,who was allegedly raped by five men on a bus last month. After the attack, more than a dozen Buddhist organizations signed a statement that said she could no longer be a nun because she wasn’t a virgin.

That hardline stance has pitted Buddhists from the East against American Buddhists, who are rightly shocked by the archaic, sexist beliefs and the utter lack of mercy.

At its heart, Buddhism is supposed to be about compassion. On that note, the hardliners are failing miserably.

Imagine the horror of being raped – especially for a nun who has lived a celibate life. Then imagine the very people you need for support to get through this horrific event discarding you like trash.

In the long run, the nun is better off getting away from these heartless hypocrites, who don’t practice the mercy that they preach.

But in the short term, she’s being traumatized on far too many levels. And the trial is yet to come, when her attackers will no doubt say she that provoked the crime.

As if to excuse the rotten behavior, an official of the Nepal Buddhist Federation, told the Times of India, “Such a thing never happened in the Buddha’s lifetime . . . So he did not leave instructions about how to deal with the situation.”

Isn’t that where common sense and compassion should kick in? How about seeking justice for a rape victim instead of re-victimizing her?

My guess is the Buddha wouldn’t embrace the message they're sending to rape victims or women.

The federation was forced to reconsider its stance after its hard-heartedness stirred an international outcry.

"[The federation] will do everything in its power to help restore the dignity of the nun and continue to fight for justice," said a statement on its website.

The victim was associated with the Karma Samtenling Nunnery at Pharping in Nepal. She was living in India to pursue studies.

Ani Choying Drolma, a popular Buddhist singer in Nepal, who’s also a nun, spoke out in the victim’s defense. She also  offered her a place to live and help with medical expenses.

Now that’s compassion.

“The most important thing is to treat her like a human being and then later we can look into the matter of whether she is still a nun," Drolma told news outlets.

Not still a nun? Seriously?

“She is still a nun at heart and she didn’t lose her virginity willingly,” Drolma said. Even so, Drolma believes a cleansing ritual may be in order.

Oh good grief. The nun is a gang rape victim, and she’s being treated as though she has a contagious disease and is somehow to blame. It’s atrocious.

To me, the victim’s heart is pure. It’s her fellow monks and nuns that need the cleansing.

Gangraped Nepal nun now faces expulsion from nunnery

Times of India, July 11
From one of the most disadvantaged Adivasi communities of Nepal, a 21-year-old Buddhist nun who was gang-raped by five men last month in a public bus, now faces the additional ordeal of being stripped of her religious habit and turned out of the nunnery where she had been apprenticed for almost 10 years.
The young woman's family told TNN that she was still in a state of shock after having wavered between life and death in a hospital in India's border town of Siliguri. But she could no longer be considered a bhikshuni (Buddhist nun) after the rape, Nepal's Buddhist organisations said.
While condemning the attack and deploring the communist government's ignorance of a "rarest of rare" crime in Nepal, the birthplace of the Buddha, 15 Buddhist organisations said that as a result, she had lost "her religion" and could be no longer regarded as fit to be a nun.
"Such a thing never happened in the Buddha's lifetime," said Norbu Sherpa, an official of Nepal Buddhist Federation. "So he did not leave instructions about how to deal with the situation. Buddhists all over the world adhere to what he had laid down: that a person can no longer be considered ordained in case of having a physical relationship. It's applicable to both men and women."
Now the victim, whose family is already reeling under the burden of paying the Indian hospital nearly Rs 3 lakh for her treatment, can no longer go back to the nunnery in Pharping, the little town in central Nepal with a concentration of Buddhist monasteries, where she had been admitted when she was about 12 years old.
Asked if it was not a gross injustice to the woman who was a victim, Sherpa was regretful but firm. "A vessel that is damaged once can no longer be used to keep water," he said. "Buddhism all over the world says this. Even the Dalai Lama says you can't be a monk or nun after marriage."
Regarded as one of the most progressive religions in the world, this is a little-known face of Buddhism that is more a matter of interpretation by the followers of the Buddha than probably the teachings of the compassionate one himself. Compared to the interpretation, the church, still vilified in Nepal despite the former Hindu kingdom becoming secular five years ago, supports its wronged nuns and monks with compassion.
Pastor Robin Rai of the Catholic church in Nepal said the church would not throw out a raped nun. "She is the victim," he told TNN. "To us, she is still a virgin. She remains a nun as long as she belongs to Christ."
The Nepal Tamang Lama Gedung added a sympathetic note, saying it would provide care for the victim.
The 21-year-old was raped on June 24 in a bus while travelling in eastern Nepal. Due to the rains, the bus arrived at the destination very late and she was forced to spend the night inside it. Her attackers are the driver of the bus, his two helpers, and the driver and helper of another bus. They also looted the money she was carrying with her.
The woman belongs to the Tamang community, one of the worst victims of human traffickers and suffering from a high degree of illiteracy and abject poverty.

Nepal's 'singing nun' comes to gangraped nun's rescue

TNN Aug 3, 2011, 05.38pm IST

KATHMANDU: A 40-year-old Buddhist nun who began as a rebel and then transformed into one of Nepal's most popular singing stars, has now created another milestone in Nepal's religious as well as social history by offering sanctuary to a nun half her age, who became stigmatised after being gangraped last month.
Choying Drolma, the red-robed, tonsured Buddhist nun whose prayer chants have won her thousands of followers in Nepal, China and the West, has now also become the saviour of a 21-year-old nun who was thought to have lost her right to remain a nun after being raped by five men in a bus.
On Tuesday, after the dazed victim was discharged from hospital, Choying offered her a new home at Arya Tara, the school run by Nuns' Welfare Foundation.
Choying founded the non-profit organisation with the money earned through her singing to provide education to Buddhist nuns – anis – who mostly remain neglected while monks have greater access to education.

Once criticised by the Buddhist community for her global tours, big cars and unashamed fondness for Hindi films and songs, Choying has continued on her own way, heedless of critics. She has featured in magazines like Marie Claire and co-authored a biography, " Singing for Freedom", using the royalty from the book to start a diagnostic centre for treating kidney diseases.
When the raped nun's uncle came to her seeking help, Choying immediately put up NRS 30,000 for medical treatment, following it up with appeals to friends. Now they have opened an account in Kathmandu's Mega Bank in the name of the nun, raising over NRS 200,000 within a short while.
"This is for her financial security," Choying told TNN. "The law says the rapists will have to pay her compensation. But the way things work here, that will take a very long time. We have to find a way to protect her."
Choying has also been in touch with Kran Bajracharya, a police officer who, she said, helped immensely by taking up the rape with police in eastern Nepal to ensure that the five men arrested for the attack were not freed. However, she is now concerned that the worst is yet to come.
"When the trial starts, the attackers will get lawyers who will try to pin the blame on the victim," she said. "It will be an ugly thing and my primary concern is how she will deal with it emotionally."

ʎɐp ɐıpǝɯ |ɐıɔos ʎddɐɥ

facebook has been down or service disrupted for two days during launch of google+ its new rival.  my issue is not w social media which i do not use.. second life was enuf virtual connection for a lifetime..  as sartre observed "l'enfer c'est les autres." 
my issue is w google's black navigation bar and all the happy hype about it.

there is a method to google's madness.  they're calling it Elasticity:

Elasticity: In the early days, there was pretty much just one way to use Google: on a desktop computer with an average-sized monitor. Over a decade later, all it takes is a look around one’s home or office at the various mobile devices, tablets, high-resolution monitors and TVs to see a plethora of ways to access the web. The new design will soon allow you to seamlessly transition from one device to another and have a consistent visual experience. We aim to bring you this flexibility without sacrificing style or usefulness.

so the purpose to make the illegible black navigation bar at the top of google news, search et al is to make one's pc look more like a mobile device

Buddhist Women in Androcentric Society

The role of females in Buddhism

Merrick speaker describes "androcentric" society

By: Marissa Alfano, News Editor

Posted: 4/21/11

In the 122nd annual Merrick Lecture on April 13, Lori Meeks said the role of women in Buddhism is both complex and multi-dimensional.

Meeks is a professor of religion at the University of Southern California.

When talking about women in Buddhism, Meeks said she chooses her words carefully.

"I use the word androcentric [male centered] instead of misogynistic because Buddhism doesn't necessarily show a hatred of women; it is just centered on men," Meeks said.

She said there are three things scholars usually focus on when talking about women in Buddhism. They are: the five hindrances, the thrice following and Henjo nanshi.

The five hindrances is the idea that there are five ranks in the Buddhist cosmos that cannot be attained through the female body.

Buddhists believe they are continually reborn. Thus, they want to attain good karma to reach the status of Buddha. They believe the female body is incapable of this.

Thrice following or three obediences state women have to submit to and obey men all throughout their lives. There are three periods of obedience. A woman must obey her dad, husband and son. This idea is expressed in ancient texts.

Henjo nanshi is the transformation of female bodies into males. Since Buddha cannot be attained in the female body, women need to transform to the male body, through arduous efforts and male priest oversight, to become a Buddha.

Meeks referred to a book called Hokke metsuzaije engi (Origin Story of the Lotus Temple for the Eradication of Sins). The book is about the Hokkeji Lotus Temple in Nara, Japan that was founded in the eighth century and revived in the 13th century.

She said the book doesn't focus on the main three concepts, but shows the nuns of Hokkeji's insights instead.

"The text offered an unexpected view between women and Buddhism in pre-modern Japan," Meeks said. "The story of Hokkeji nuns is how women found meaning in a culture full of androcentric doctrines that privileges men."

The nuns had a much greater impact in the Buddhism culture than people realize, according to Meeks.

"I'm trying to show that, through their work connections and organizational efforts, women had a large administration role in reviving this place," Meeks said. "They were autonomous and attracted their own patrons, not acting under male authority."

Meeks said Priest Eison (1201-1290) headed a movement to revive Vinaya (monastic law school of Japanese Buddhism that sought to revive monastic law).

The movement was popular among priests.

Japan was suffering war and natural disasters and Eison believed if Vinaya were practiced correctly, it would benefit Japan as a nation.

He and his disciples thought monastic order was not complete because there were no women.

According to Meeks, they had no choice but to begin ordaining women. Since women wanted to be ordained, these two interests converged.

Meeks said women were looked at in three ways: as temptresses, mothers and potential men.

Eison said that, of all the multitude of weaknesses a priest could encounter, weakness of women was most great. He was not trying to discourage women from the Buddhist path, but to keep his priests devout.

Women were also seen as compassionate mom figures. Eison said one of the roles of the priest was to aid in the salvation of mothers. Male priests are responsible for salvation of all women. Men are the saviors and women are to be taken care of.

Because the female was inferior to the male, women needed to overcome their "sins." Through faith and discipline, obstacles of the female body could be overcome to become a man. This was the view of women as latent men.

Meeks referred to key Japanese terms and primary texts from sermons throughout her lecture. A handout was given to everyone who attended the lecture to help him or her follow along.

In 1257, Eison's disciple Soji said being born a woman was bad karma and that all women needed to be transformed into men. Meeks said this was a common belief.

"The female state could be overcome through a nonphysical change in this lifetime," Meeks said. "Lesser beings [females], with the help of male priests, could be brought into the monastery as quasi men."

Meeks said the texts of the priests and the texts of the Vinaya nuns depict very different pictures. The women simply ignored the androcentric rhetoric.

The priests created a hierarchy where men were higher than women. Eventually, women were included in the ranks of Buddhist men, but not as equals.

Freshman Ellie Feely said she enjoyed the religion lecture by Meeks.

"I thought it was interesting after I got used to hearing all of the unfamiliar Japanese names," Feely said.

Freshman Jennifer Wallace said she also liked the lecture, even though she would have appreciated having more of a background in Japanese culture.

"I thought it was an interesting topic and I wish I had known more background information before I came because I did not know much about Buddhism," Wallace said.

This was the 122nd Merrick Lecture, making it the longest-running lecture series at OWU. Frederick Merrick, a former professor, founded it in 1889. Lectures about religion occur annually in his honor.

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© Copyright 2011 The Transcript

http://media.www.owutranscript.com/media/storage/paper1413/news/2011/04/21/News/The-Role.Of.Females.In.Buddhism-3995005.shtml

The First Buddhist Nun

by Rev. Sarika Dharma
Dharma talk given on March 19, 1995

Last month was Black history month and this month is women's history month. Why do we need all these months, when we have our history and we're all connected? We know that most of the people involved with writing and publishing history books have been men, so it's not surprising that some of the history of women has been overlooked. It's important for women to hear this history because it gives us models, examples of what we can accomplish. I think it's equally important for men to hear because it's part of the total picture, and we need to see it all. Yesterday, we had a one-day women's retreat dedicated to the first Buddhist nun, Pajapati. She was a very important figure in Buddhist history; the first woman disciple of the Buddha and the founder of the order of nuns. She also happened to be the Buddha's stepmother. Pajapati's name means "leader of a great assembly." As this name was given to her at birth, there was obviously some foreseeing that the events in her life would be extraordinary.
What was the world like for women 2,500 years ago? Well, it wasn't that terrible in India at that time. It was before some of the customs like purdah, the practice of secluding women, and suttee, the practice of sacrificing a widow on her husband's funeral pyre. They didn't have so many child marriages. Things weren't too bad.
However, a woman was defined by her family connections. If she had a husband, she had status. If she had a son, she had some status. If she didn't have those relationships and had no money, she didn't have much status. Because there weren't many jobs for women in those days, a woman's life was almost completely defined by her connections to men.
Into this world, Pajapati and her sister Maya were born into the Koliyan clan, whose territory bordered on that of the Sakya's. The Buddha's father, King Suddhodana, was chief of the Sakya clan, and when he was looking for a wife, he went to the Koliyan clan and found these two sisters. He married both of them and took them back to his palace. It wasn't unusual at that time for powerful men to have more than one wife or even a harem.
Maya became pregnant, and as was the custom, she returned to her family home to give birth. On her way, she stopped in the garden at Lumbini to see the beautiful flowers there. She reached up her arm to pick a blossoming branch of the ashok tree when she felt her initial labor pains and then, right there in the garden, gave birth to a boy. Regrettably, Maya died seven days after her son, Siddhartha Gautama, was born. Her sister Pajapati became the stepmother of this child.
Siddhartha grew up and left home at the age of 29. He wandered, studied, and finally attained enlightenment six years later. Pajapati was already in her late 50's or early 60's when he returned home. At that time, the Sakya clan was estranged from the Buddha, but Pajapati and her husband Suddhodana welcomed him back. They took the teachings from him and were converted to his path.
Soon after the Buddha began teaching, many men began to follow him to hear his discourses. Many became monks. Wives and mothers lost their status because their husbands and sons left home. Prostitutes' livelihoods were threatened because many men became celibate. In many ways, women's lives were turned upside-down because so many men began to follow this great religious leader.
At the same time, it didn't seem likely that women would be allowed to follow a spiritual path and make the same journey. It just wasn't done. Women in those days didn't have the freedom to become homeless, to renounce the world, to go out and study and meditate. It wasn't heard of. And the Buddha himself was not a social reformer. He wasn't trying to change the world in the sense of recreating the social structure. He was trying to help people change their own worlds.
As the wife of a chief and an elder in the clan, Pajapati was highly respected, and her eminence increased because she had access to the Buddha's teachings. After her husband Suddhodana died, many women came to Pajapati for advice, for guidance, and for teachings, and Pajapati soon had 500 woman followers. It probably wasn't exactly 500; the Buddhist scriptures tend to use these numbers to mean "a whole lot." Many of these women were from the Sakya clan, and a lot of them were from Siddhartha's harem. (There's a legend that as a young man Siddhartha performed so impressively in a sporting exhibition that every Sakyan man sent a woman from his family to be part of Siddhartha's harem; the number given was 40,000! Now, I doubt that, but it was a great many.)
So, during this time many men were leaving home. Pajapati's son Nanda went to follow the Buddha. Her nephew Rahula, that is, the Buddha's son, went to follow the Buddha.
Furthermore, an incident occured that resulted in even more men leaving society. The Koliyans and the Sakyans became involved in a dispute over the right to draw water from a river in the area. There was a big battle and a lot of men were killed. Some of the women went to the Buddha and asked him to intercede. He came and spoke to the men, and as a result many of them decided to give up fighting totally and follow the Buddha.
The women turned to Pajapati. They turned to her for comfort and support and they turned to her to resolve the ultimate questions of birth and suffering and death. And they turned to her to find a new family with the other women who were left without a social identity. They trusted her because she had the same experience, because she was also alone. And they trusted her because of her position and her wisdom; I'm sure this must have been what came from within her.
Eventually, Pajapati decided that women should have the same opportunity that men had. She went to the Buddha, who was in Kapilavatthu at the time, and said to him "It would be great, Lord, if women were allowed to renounce their homes and enter into the homeless state under the dharma and the discipline of the Tathagata." She continued, "We want to renounce too, we want to follow the path as well. Will you allow it?"
And the Buddha's reply was, "Don't set your heart on women being able to do this."
She asked two more times. And two more times the Buddha refused. Pajapati bowed respectfully and left in tears. But that wasn't the end of it.
The women decided to take things into their own hands. They shaved their heads and put on saffron colored robes like the monks wore. They followed Pajapati barefoot for a long distance to see the Buddha.
Now this must have been quite a sight! All these women, 500 of them, walking down the road, doing something no woman had ever done before in terms of becoming a renunciate. They traveled to where the Buddha was at the time and stood outside his quarters. Their feet were injured and swollen and they were covered with dust.
They stood outside, and Ananda, the Buddha's main assistant and head disciple, came out and asked what was wrong. Pajapati replied, "Because the blessed one does not permit women to renounce their homes and enter into the homeless state under the dharma and the discipline proclaimed by the Tathagata, we are unhappy."
Ananda decided to intercede. He went to the Buddha and said, "Look and see what you've got out here. A whole bunch of women. They want to be ordained, they want to become renunciants."
And the Buddha said "Don't set your heart on women being able to do this."
And Ananda asked him two more times, and two more times the Buddha refused.
Ananda asked him "Lord, is it because women don't have the capacity to become enlightened? Is that why you won't ordain them?"
The Buddha replied, "No, women are perfectly capable of becoming enlightened. If they entered this study they could become just as fully attained."
Ananda continued: "If women are able to realize perfection, and since Pajapati was of great service to you as your aunt, nurse and foster mother--she even suckled you at her own breast after your mother died--it would be good if women were allowed to enter into homelessness. Especially if you look out here and see their sincerity and determination."
I think at that point the Buddha probably felt that resisting them wasn't going to help, because these women were quite determined. He agreed to ordain the women as nuns under the condition that they accept eight special rules. He also predicted that the lifespan of the Buddhist teachings would be reduced by half, from 1,000 to 500 years, as a consequence of allowing women to ordain. Of course, here we are 2,500 years later and the dharma's still with us so that prediction wasn't borne out.
Today, research suggests that the eight special rules were probably not given by the Buddha, but added later. I like to think that. The first of these rules said that an ordained woman, even if she'd been ordained for one hundred years, still must bow down to a monk who had been ordained for only one day. Another prohibited nuns from reproving monks in any way, but monks were allowed to reprove nuns. Now this was only a problem because it prevented women from teaching monks, because if they couldn't tell them when they were wrong there was no way to do the teaching. But monks were expected to teach the nuns. There were six other rules, but the general idea was that the nuns would not have as much freedom. They also had to take more precepts than the monks did.
Pajapati accepted the deal. But as she thought about it later, she decided to talk to the Buddha again. She said, "Maybe it would be better if these rules about salutations, standing up in the presence of another, paying reverence, and the proper performance of duties were taken by both Bhikkus and Bhikkunis, monks and nuns, according to seniority rather than according to gender."
The Buddha supposedly said this wasn't possible and wouldn't agree to it. He said "Even those teachers of false dharma don't permit such conduct in relation to women. How much less can the Tathagata allow?"
Again...I wasn't there, but that's what has come down in legend.
On ordination, Pajapati received a subject of meditation and through it was able to realize perfection. She wrote: "I have reached the state where everything stops. The extinction of senses, feeling, consciousness. This achievement is synonymous with Nirvana, the highest attainment." There's no doubt that Pajapati was an enlightened person.
When she was 120 years old and felt herself near death, she sent for her son, the Buddha. Despite the fact that there were monastic rules prohibiting monks from visiting sick nuns, the Buddha came. When she died, miracles occurred, both then and at her cremation, which later were said to be equaled only by those that took place at the death of the Buddha.
Pajapati was held in very high esteem during the time she was alive, in her own culture. The book that tells us about Pajapati, the Therigatha, is part of the Pali canon. It's a collection of poems written by the first nuns and is considered to be perhaps the oldest work ever written by women.
I'd like to share a couple of these poems that were written by Pajapati's disciples. They give a better picture of what it was like for the women of that era to be able to have the freedom and opportunity to follow a spiritual path, to have support for it, and to be able to attain their own awakening. The first poem is actually one by Pajapati. She says:

Homage to you Buddha
best of all creatures
who set me and many
others free from pain.
All pain is understood
The cause, the craving
is dried up.
The Noble eight-fold way unfolds.
I have reached the state where everything stops.
I have been mother, son, father, brother, grandmother,
knowing nothing of the truth
I journeyed on.
But I have seen the Blessed one.
This is my last body and I will not go from birth to birth again.
Look at the disciples all together.
Their energy, their sincere effort
this is homage to Buddhas.
Maya gave birth to Gautama for the sake of us all.
She has driven back the pain of the sick and dying.Another disciple of Pajapati was her daughter Sundari-Nanda. Sundari in Pali means "beautiful." She was considered to be the most beautiful woman in her country. She was the daughter of Suddhodana and Pajapati and therefore a half-sister of the Buddha. She was not as interested in the fact that she was beautiful as she was in becoming awakened. She was known to have a natural ability in religious practice, and was declared by the Buddha to be foremost among the nuns in meditative power. This is her poem, and it begins:

The Buddha says:
Nanda look at the body diseased, impure, rotten.
Focus the mind on all this foulness.
Then the Buddha made an image of a lovely woman
and it aged before Nanda's eyes.
He went on:
Your body is like this, and this is like your body.
It stinks of decay, only a fool would love it.
Nanda replied:
So day and night without letting up I looked at it this way.
And by my own wisdom I perceived it fully.
I saw. Watching carefully I plumbed to the very origin
and saw this body as it really is, inside and out.
Deep inside myself, I have lost interest in passion.
I am carefree, quenched, calm and free. Here's a poem by Pajapati's nurse, who was one of her disciples. This woman had been her nurse since she was a child. She also followed Pajapati and became a nun. She says:

It was 25 years since I left home
And I haven't had a moment's peace
Uneasy at heart
steeped in a longing for pleasure
I held out my arms and cried out
as I entered the monastery.
I went up to a nun I thought I could trust
She taught me the dharma
the elements of body and mind
the nature of perception and earth water fire and wind.
I heard her words and sat down beside her
Now I've entered the six realms of sacred knowledge.
I know I have lived before
the eye of heaven is pure
and I know the minds of others.
I have great magic powers and have annihilated
all the obsessions of the mind.
The Buddha's teaching has been done. The details aren't so important as the fact that all of these women are saying "Now I've had the chance to find this within myself." They were given this opportunity because of the strength of those 500 women, and especially Pajapati. The way we can look at it today, when not everyone who wants to follow a spiritual path is going to renounce the world--where many Buddhists practitioners are leading family lives--is simply the fact that there are equal chances. There's nothing to say that a woman is less capable than a man. Except our cultures.
When I was returning from Sri Lanka on Singapore Airlines, I was wearing robes. The flight attendant asked me where I'd been. I told her I'd been to a conference on women in Buddhism where we talked about women becoming enlightened. And she said to me, "Oh, women can't become enlightened, can they?" That is a problem, when a mistaken idea stands in the way of our own ability to search.
And regrettably, even in some current literature you see things like this entry in the Shambhala Dictionary, which I generally feel is a good source of information. This is what it says about Bhikkunis, or nuns: "The order of nuns has never played an important role in the Buddhist Sangha. The number of nuns compared to that of monks is extremely small." This is not true. Certainly not in the Mahayana tradition. I believe in Taiwan you will find more nuns than monks.
So it goes; we need to continue to work on correcting the history. Another book, "In The Buddhist Religion: A Historical Introduction" by Robinson and Johnson, says: "As the order of nuns is said to have been instituted by the Buddha at Ananda's repeated plea, Gautama's foster mother Pajapati and her attendants became its first members. Queen Khema Theri, wife of King Bimbisara, was converted and became a prominent nun. Despite the example of such wise and saintly women, the female order never became nearly so important as the male one. It is perhaps not surprising that an order founded so reluctantly should not have flourished. After the first generation, few distinguished nuns are mentioned."
But that's not all the literature out there, and here is a bibliography of texts on women in Buddhism that you might be interested in looking at. Although many of the books are histories of women in Buddhism, we needn't only look back in time for role models. One book, "Meetings With Remarkable Women," by Lenore Friedman, includes a profile of our Abbess, Ven. Karuna Dharma. "Turning the Wheel," by Sandy Boucher is one of my favorites because it describes how American women have contributed to and transformed Buddhism in the West.
Ultimately, we connect with our True Selves and there are no categories, and that includes gender categories. But as we travel along the path, we can benefit from hearing how practitioners from both the past and present have faced the challenges in life that uniquely confront women. And we, in turn, can share our understanding with others.

http://dharma.fourwhitefeet.com/paja.html

It had to be done...