Expressing your Vision
Dharmacharini Vidyasri believes that Buddhist women must make more effort to communicate their spiritual experience.
How come there have been so few women writers/poets/artists, over the last 2000 years?
is a question that has often been asked. There have been some such women, no doubt, in most ages and most cultures, though perhaps little known to the majority of people. And there have always been those few who have stood out and have been known: women who have expressed their vision strongly, and clearly, and sometimes beautifully enough to reach out to the hearts and minds of men and women down through the ages.
A few immediately spring to mind: Sappho, back in Greece in the sixth century BCE, spoke out with beauty in her poems, which still sing from the pages of books today. Ono No Komachi and Izumi Shikibu excelled as poetesses in the ninth and tenth centuries respectively, in Japan. The abbess, Hildegarde of Bingen, put her remarkable lyrical poems to music, and wrote plays. St. Julian of Norwich recorded the depths and heights of her religious experiences and visions. The Bronte sisters, Christina Rossetti, Emily Dickinson, and others lived, and dreamt, and thought, and wrote, in the nineteenth century. In the first half of this century, Anna Akhmatova, the Russian poetess, comes to mind as having written some of the finest modern poetry.
However, it is probably true to say that there are relatively few women in the past who have expressed themselves in this way, and the same is true of female Buddhist practitioners. The reasons for this are complex — I do not propose to discuss them here! (Virginia Woolf has some thoughts on the matter in her book Three Guineas.)
But there are records of the lives and teachings of a few Enlightened women. In the Vajrayana tradition, teachers experience often had some women disciples whom we learn of. Perhaps most well known are the lives of Yeshe Tsogyal and Mandarava, two of Padmasambhava’s chief disciples. From the time of the Buddha, we have the beautiful Therigatha — the Songs/Psalms of the Sisters. This is a collection of gathas uttered by (supposedly) seventy-three different Elder Women, giving expression to their Enlightenment experience, and accompanied by explanations of episode and speaker by Dhammapala of Kancipura, in the fifth/sixth century CE.
Some of these little biographies and gathas are rather stereotyped and repetitive, giving the impression that they have fossilized over the centuries and lost touch with the inspiration of the particular human being who originally gave birth to the utterance. Others are very much alive and individual, giving expression, one feels, to the particular woman’s vision in terms of her life experience and personality. Even so, there are relatively few (71 of the Therigathas, as compared with 264 of the Theragathas, the Brethren’s songs), and although there is mention elsewhere in the Pali Canon of female disciples of the Buddha, far less is known about them and the lives of the bhikshunis than is known about the male disciples and the lives of the bhikkhus. For it is, as far as we know, the Bhikkhu Sangha who transmitted the Dharma, not the Bhikshuni Sangha.
On a womens ordination retreat in 1987 during a question and answer session with Sangharakshita, we touched on the question of the Buddha’s contact with the Bhikshuni Sangha, and why it should be that the bhikshunis themselves did not transmit a corpus of teaching. It seems very possible that the Buddha had more contact with them, in the latter part of his life, than many of them were obviously articulate and did travel around teaching much of their lives, as did the bhikkhus. Sangharakshita responded by making the point that, learning from this situation, we should ensure that such is not the case today. Committed women Buddhists today should make every effort to communicate and share their understandings of, and practice of, the Dharma — their vision. Otherwise history will repeat itself, and once again there will be very little Dharma transmitted by twentieth-century female Buddhists, and no doubt as little known about them.
Sangharakshita’s comments made me think. Is there a particular value in women expressing their vision? Very clearly, there is. Although the truths of Buddhism are universal, and therefore common to all human beings regardless of sex or race, each individual will express them in his or her own particular way, relating them to their particular life experiences and communicating them through their unique personality. So with the expression of womens vision, we get a fuller perspective of the breadth and richness of human experience, which is of value to both men and women. But obviously women in particular can relate to, learn from, and be inspired by another woman’s vision, since her life experience is likely to be closer to their own. Women need heroines — need role-models — to guide and inspire them, to give them confidence, just as men do.
In the FWBO, a wealth of experience of spiritual practice is developing among women in the movement and is finding expression in various ways. For over fifteen years Order members have led retreats and study groups, given Dharma talks, and taught meditation. We have a team of women running Taraloka, our womens women Mitras and Order members, working in and running team-based Right Livelihood projects; women inspired by the ideal of Right Livelihood, and dedicated, often over many years, to establishing and maintaining creatively run work situations for other women. Communities have been established. Women are training and working in the field of health-care — as doctors, acupuncturists, homeopaths, osteopaths, Alexander Technique teachers, Yoga teachers. Recently six women artists had a joint exhibition of their work in a London gallery. Poetry events have been held where women have read their poetry. And a book is on its way which will explore the influence of Christianity on the lives on some women Order members.
But still, this is only a beginning. The door is wide open for women to express themselves more fully, successfully, and creatively in almost every area of life, and especially in the area of verbal expression. As yet, very few women in the FWBO give expression to their vision through the medium of the written word, or through public talks. This is such an immensely valuable area, since through the written word in particular it is possible to reach out beyond the small personal sphere of influence that each of us lives and works in-to reach out, not only in space, but also in time.
Of course, many women in the world today are expressing themselves through the written word. Some of this material is of genuine value to mankind, enriching and stimulating our minds and hearts. Some of it is not. It is crucial that women who are contact with, and who are practising, the Dharma — the precious Dharma, which refreshes all creatures — give expression to their vision, imbued as it will be, to some extent, by the Dharma.
It is of value to others if we express our vision, but it is also of value to ourselves. Through attempting to give expression to our thoughts, feelings, ideas, and dreams, we are forced to clarify and often deepen them. Indeed it is often through the expression itself that we make them fully known and conscious to ourselves. It has certainly been a very important aspect of my development, learning to communicate myself — despite a certain shyness and lack of confidence. It has been immensely fulfilling to be able, at times, to share and communicate what is of deepest value to me. It is, as far as I can see, part of the very process of growth itself, that we give expression to, in one way or another, our own personal vision, ever attempting to communicate it more fully and truly, ever attempting to communicate it in ways that can be more fully understood by others.
It requires effort to attempt to give expression to yourself, to your vision. And it takes courage — to take the initiative, and dare to affect the world you live in. Some are not prepared to make this effort. Perhaps, if this applies to you, you could ask yourself — why not?
Reprinted from Golden Drum 15.