First Buddhist Women: Poems and Stories of Awakening

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Mahapajapati Gotami & Her Disciples

MAHAPAJAPATI G OTAMI , who was to become the founder of the first order of Buddhist nuns, was born into the Koliya clan in the town of Devadaha in northeastern India near the foothills of the Himalayas. At her birth, an astrologer foretold that she would be the leader of a large following, and she was named Pajapati, meaning leader of a great assembly. Maha, a prefix which means great, came to be used with her name. It was further prophesied of her, as it had been of her older sister Maya, that she would be the mother of a great secular or religious ruler.

Pajapati and her sister, Maya, grew up, were both married to a chief of the Sakya clan, Suddhodana, and lived with him in the capital town of Kapilavatthu. According to Buddhist legend, Suddhodana was a great king, and his son, Siddhartha, was his prince and heir. In fact, in the Sakyan clan, any male was eligible to be chief—it was a position elected by rotation. The only true king of that region was Pasenadi, King of Kosala, who was overlord of the states that included the Sakyan and Koliyan clans. Maya’s and Pajapati’s marriage was into a clan similar to their own. Both clans were small and did not observe caste distinctions. Clan members worked at agriculture, wielded arms when necessary, and traded in nearby provinces.

Maya was the first to become pregnant. As was customary, Maya wanted to give birth in her family home, so when her time was near, she undertook the journey to Devadaha. En route, she stopped in the Lumbini Garden to rest and admire the flowering trees. When she raised her arm to pick a blossoming branch of an asoka tree, she felt her initial labor pains and gave birth to a boy under the tree. (Over two centuries later, the Buddhist Emperor Asoka set up a pillar to mark that site. Since the pillar survives today, it is possible to identify the place exactly.)

When they heard the news back in Kapilavatthu, Suddhodana and everyone else were overjoyed at the birth of a son. The chief immediately called a famous seer, Asita, who declared that if the child remained at home, he would become a secular ruler; if he left home, he would become a great religious teacher, the Buddha. The newborn was named Siddhartha, which means he who accomplishes his aim.

But seven days after her delivery, Maya died. Neither history nor legend tells us why. Pajapati took Siddhartha and raised him as her own first child, and later bore two more children, a daughter named Sundari-Nanda and a son named Nanda.

Many years passed. At the age of twenty-nine, Siddhartha left home and did not return during the six years of his religious quest. His foster mother was in her fifties or early sixties when Siddhartha finally came back to Kapilavatthu. Upon his return, he was treated cooly. His wife, Yasodhara, did not embrace him but sent their son, Rahula, to meet him. The Sakyan clan, known for its pride and religious conservatism, was skeptical of the novel teachings of a once favorite son. Pajapati no doubt would have been sensitive to all the varying reactions. Her own response was to welcome him. Suddhodana did also, and when the Buddha preached to them, both were moved by his teachings and became converts.

By this time, Pajapati would not only have been eminent as the wife of the chieftain, but would also have been respected for her age. After she became a lay convert to her son’s new teachings, she may have been held in even greater esteem as a woman who had rare access to religious instruction and practice.

One by one or in groups, women sought Pajapati’s support, advice, and direction. These women appealed to her not merely because of her high status. She shared with them the particular anxiety of being a woman without any primary male relations. Following the Buddha’s return to Kapilavatthu, Pajapati’s son, Nanda, and her grandnephew, Rahula, had both become monks. Not long after this, Suddhodana died. This left Pajapati without the web of family connections that gave every woman in that society her identity and security. We find this supposition confirmed when we review the poems of this chapter. Though it is seldom mentioned, Gautama, besides leaving a wife and child, left a harem of women. The majority of the authors are women formerly of Siddhartha Gautama’s harem, women who lost their sense of identity when their primary patron set out on his spiritual journey.

Next, a significant event occurred which brought even more women to Pajapati’s door. An angry dispute had arisen between the Sakyans and their neighboring Koliyans over the right to draw water from the major river of that region. A battle ensued in which men were killed. Some women who lost their husbands came to Pajapati. Others went to the Buddha and urged him to try to settle the dispute. The Buddha, related not only to the Sakyans but also, through Maya and Pajapati, to the Koliyans, delivered an inspiring sermon. As a result, many of the men renounced fighting altogether and became Buddhist monks. But this left yet another group of Sakyan and Koli-yan women without husbands or other primary male relations.

Altogether, the number of women who had come to Pajapati by this time totaled five hundred, a number frequently used to mean a great many. No doubt some came simply for comfort and support, others came to resolve ultimate questions of birth, suffering, and death, yet others sought a new family with women they trusted and with whom they shared common experience. The longing of these women, whatever form it took, became their spiritual aspiration. All had personal stories, most of which are now lost, and a particular experience of what the Buddha called the First Noble Truth. This is what motivated them to join with Pajapati in the new and radical way she was about to suggest.

Pajapati recognized the powerful conjunction of events and people. An old and influential woman without further worldly obligations, she was surrounded by displaced wives, widows, consorts, dancers, and musicians. Lacking other kin, these women were turning to her and to one another. Having fully grasped this situation, Pajapati decided to take the following course, recounted in the Cullavagga:

Now at one time the Buddha was staying among the Sakyans at Kapila-vatthu in the Banyan Monastery. Mahapajapati Gotami went to the place where the Buddha was, approached and greeted him, and, standing at a respectful distance, spoke to him: It would be good, Lord, if women could be allowed to renounce their homes and enter into the homeless state under the Dharma and discipline of the Tathagata.

Enough, Gotami. Don’t set your heart on women being allowed to do this.

A second and a third time Pajapati made the same request in the same words and received the same reply. And thinking that the Blessed One would not allow women to enter into homelessness, she bowed to him, and keeping her right side towards him, departed in tears.

Then the Blessed One set out for Vesali. Pajapati cut off her hair, put on saffron-colored robes, and headed for Vesali with a number of Sakyan women. She arrived at Kutagara Hall in the Great Grove with swollen feet and covered with dust. Weeping, she stood there outside the Hall.

Seeing her standing there, the venerable Ananda asked, Why are you crying?

Because, Ananda, the Blessed One does not permit women to renounce their homes and enter into the homeless state under the Dharma and discipline proclaimed by the Tathagata.

Then the Venerable Ananda went to the Buddha, bowed before him, and took his seat to one side. He said, Pajapati is standing outside under the entrance porch with swollen feet, covered with dust, and crying because you do not permit women to renounce their homes and enter into the homeless state. It would be good, Lord, if women were to have permission to do this.

Enough, Ananda. Don’t set your heart on women being allowed to do this.

A second and a third time Ananda made the same request in the same words and received the same reply.

Then Ananda thought: The Blessed One does not give his permission. Let me try asking on other grounds.

Are women able, Lord, when they have entered into homelessness to realize the fruits of stream-entry, once-returning, non-returning, and arhatship?

Yes, Ananda, they are able.

If women then are able to realize perfection, and since Pajapati was of great service to you—she was your aunt, nurse, foster mother; when your mother died, she even suckled you at her own breast—it would be good if women could be allowed to enter into homelessness.

If then, Ananda, Pajapati accepts the Eight Special Rules, let that be reckoned as her ordination.¹

It must have been evident to the Buddha that Pajapati and the group of women with her, who had walked one hundred fifty miles barefoot, with heads shaved and the saffron-colored robes of the already ordained, would not accept no for an answer. The sight of these women and their unshakable sincerity must have made a vivid impression, and not only on the sympathetic Ananda. Their resolve was audacious in a culture where humility and obedience were desirable traits in women. Perhaps the Eight Special Rules, the acceptance of which was a prerequisite to women’s ordination, were a bulwark against any possible future boldness. Though the Eight Special Rules clearly relegated women to a secondary status, Pajapati accepted them in order to achieve her primary goal of establishing an order of nuns.

Later, in a story less frequently told, Pajapati returned with a further request. The implementation of her request would annul the first Special Rule, which required that the most senior nun bow down to even the most novice monk, and thereby would undercut the other seven rules as well:

I would ask one thing of the Blessed One, Ananda. It would be good if the Blessed One would allow making salutations, standing up in the presence of another, paying reverence, and the proper performance of duties, to take place equally between both bhikkhus and bhikkhunis according to seniority.

And the venerable Ananda went to the Blessed One and repeated her words to him.

This is impossible, Ananda, and I cannot allow it. Even those teachers of false Dharma don’t permit such conduct in relation to women; how much less can the Tathagata allow it?²

In Pajapati’s attempt to change the first and most blatantly sexist rule, we can understand that she was not in sympathy with the discrimination the rules reflected. Her request also indicates a radical democractic orientation. It comes at a time when even the ancient Greeks, who have been credited with founding democratic rule, only allowed free (i.e., non-slave) males the privilege of citizenship.

Unfortunately, that is all we hear of the politics of the early order of nuns. But we do know a little more about Pajapati. Upon ordination, she received a subject of meditation and through it was able to realize perfection. She writes, I have reached the state where everything stops, that is nirodha, the extinction of senses, feeling, consciousness. This achievement is synonymous with nirvana, the highest attainment.

At the ripe old age of one hundred twenty, Pajapati knew that her time of death was near. Though it was against monastic regulations that a sick nun be visited by any monk, Pajapati requested that her foster son come to her, and by going, the Buddha in effect changed the rule. When she died, miracles occurred both then and at her cremation, miracles which later were said to have been equalled only by those which took place at the Buddha’s death.³ Clearly, the early sangha judged Pajapati as a remarkable