Bodily Blunders: Male Projection and the Female Body in Buddhism

Abby Kulisz

Youngstown State University

The Lotus Sutra, one of the most important scriptures in the Mahayana tradition, describes the realization of buddhahood by an unusual aspirant. In chapter 12, the bodhisattva Manjusri is asked if he knows anyone who is capable of reaching perfect enlightenment. Manjusri responds that the eight-year-old daughter of Sagara the Naga king is the perfect match.Sariputra, a favorite literary sap in Mahayana narratives, attempts to discredit the spiritual abilities of Sagara’s daughter by pointing out that “the female body is polluted; it is not a fit vessel for the Dharma.”[1] However, Sariputra is immediately silenced when Sagara’s daughter transforms herself into a male and gives up the jewel on her head (worn exclusively by female Nagas) as a symbol of her commitment to the Buddha’s teachings. In her new masculine body fully armed with a penis, she preaches the dharma to the world as a bodhisattva. While there are various implications of this conclusion such as disproving Sariputra, the radical transformation of Sagara's daughter reveals the impossibility of buddhahood for a woman. When Sagara’s daughter surrenders her jewel, she simultaneously renounces her female body as an obstruction to spiritual growth.

Far from a feminist narrative, this account flies in the face of the way Buddhism is imagined in the West, namely, as a safe house for gender egalitarianism. Although it is the ideal agent for attaining enlightenment, Buddhists view the human body as repulsive and foul; it is a source of attachment, illicit pleasure, and binds human beings to samsara. Coupled with the general Buddhist distrust of the body and the ubiquitous androcentrism inherent in every religious tradition, the woman’s body is reviled on the deepest possible level. The projection of male anxietiesis the impetus for the Buddhist repudiation of the female body, which is evidenced by Buddhist narratives that degrade female anatomy and sexual transformation stories.

Buddhist Conceptions of the Body

Rather than a static entity, the body is fluid and dynamic or as Caroline Walker Bynum stated, “It is no topic or, perhaps, almost all topics.”[2] In one sense, the body is a microcosm of a society’s expectations and norms. British anthropologist Mary Douglas, in her pioneering work Purity and Danger, suggests that the body isthe “image of society”[3]; that is to say, the body functions as a template “which the central rules, hierarchies, and even metaphysical commitments of a culture are inscribed and thus reinforced.”[4] The body, in short, encapsulates a society’s weltanschauungor worldview. Thus, in order to locate a society’s values and anxieties, it is integral to understand how its bodies are conceptualized. In many cases, religious scripture and belief comprises society’s collective understanding of the body.

The body is a shared dilemma across religious traditions; its unpredictability stands at odds with the formality of religious practice. The body is the main culprit for human beings’ embarrassing and uncontrollable functions: digestion, masturbation, menstruation, vomiting, and all kinds of oozing. In contrast, ritual necessitates a transcendence of temporal existence; ritualized actions demand order and rigidity, separating the sacred from the profane. Consequently, religion often attempts to resolve this dichotomy by vilifying, mentally suppressing, or ascetically taming bodily functions. This accounts for admonitions against succumbing to the body’s ruses ingrained in the scriptures of numerous religious traditions.

Buddhist texts are rife with descriptions of the human body’s vileness and instability. In several accounts, the Buddha is responsible for severe condemnations against the body. In “The Longer Discourse to Saccaka,” found within the SuttaPitaka of the Pali Canon, the Buddha denounces the value of yogic practices, which were prevalent among Indian ascetics during the Buddha’s lifetime. Aggivessana, an ascetic and practitioner of yoga, reprimands the Buddha and his disciples for their exclusive development of the mind at the expense of the body. In response, the Buddha turns Aggivessana’s accusation on its head by pointing out his opponent’s distraught physical state; the yogic practitioner devolves into a trembling wreck while the Buddha maintains a calm composure.[5] To the Buddha, meditation is an effective means to cultivate the mind whereas physical activity is superfluous since the body is merely transitory.

In another revealing account, located in the MagandiyaSutta, the Buddha wages a verbal attack on the body in a discussion with the philosopher, Magandiya. He describes the trickery of the physical senses, which deceive one into believing that sensual pleasures are satisfying, but in reality they are “painful to the touch, very hot and scorching.”[6] The Buddha continues his denunciation against the physical by warning Magandiya that the body “is a disease, a cancer, an arrow, painful, an affliction.”[7] According to the Buddha, awakening is impossible without realizing the body’s inadequacies. While Buddhist texts scorn the body in general for its deceit and distorted perception of reality, sex in particular is one of the worst bodily functions, especially for monks.

Most of the injunctions against sex are found in the VinayaPitaka; that is, one of the three collections of Buddhist scripture that comprise the Tipitakaor Pali Canon. The Tipitakais of central importance in Theravada Buddhism by forming the doctrinal underpinning of the tradition. It contains the rules and disciplinary codes that guide the sangha (monastic community). In the Suttavibhanga, the first book of the VinayaPitaka, sex is listed first before the three other parajikas or principal transgressions: theft, murder, and false claims of supernatural abilities.[8] It is likely that sex’s conspicuous placement before the other three transgressions makes it the most serious offense for a monk. Janet Gyatso, Buddhist scholar and specialist in South Asian culture, explains that “sex was considered the most difficult bodily transgression from which to refrain; for that very reason it was listed first, as the emblematic site of disciplinary regulation.”[9] While most people will not commit murder in their lifetime, they will probably have sex at some point. Thus, sex is dangerous because of its ubiquity; it is the most common embodiment of ignorant craving and a potent reminder of one’s vulnerable, fleshy body. Since, for a monk, sex would most likely occur with a woman, most of the derogatory references toward sex are directed at the female body.

The Female Body in Buddhist Texts

The Buddhist conception of female body is like that of the human body except worse; female body parts are defiled and a monk must avoid contact with them. Although the body is capable of many repulsive emissions, menstruation is the vilest. The fact that the most reviled bodily emission is female points to an intrinsic element of misogyny embedded in Buddhist tradition. Menstruation has puzzled men across time and culture; a woman’s mysterious ability to painlessly bleed for several days eluded male understanding and pandered to anxieties about the power of the female body. Beliefs about the negative effects menstruation, known as female pollution, pervaded South Asia prior to the advent of Buddhism and continue to persist in the present day.

Drawing upon these preexistent beliefs, Buddhists believe that a menstruating woman could pollute holy spaces and men with a mere touch. Also, women who experience childbirth are believed to be polluted by the resulting blood. Once a man is polluted by a woman, his spiritual abilities become obsolete. Serenity Young, researcher at the American Museum of Natural History, asserts that theories about female pollution “allowed men to claim purity for themselves.”[10] The contrast between male purity and female filth is further demonstrated by the elaborate purification process that polluted men went through vis-à-vis polluted women. To regain purity tainted from female pollution, Young explains that “men need to bathe while reciting mantras, put on fresh clothes, and ingest certain pure foods. Women need only to change their clothes and sprinkle water on their heads.”[11] Since the female body is inherently less pure than a man’s, the purification process involves fewer steps. In contrast, the natural pure state of the male body necessitates several steps to expurgate the taint from female pollution.

The Blood Bowl Sutra, a 13th century Chinese Buddhist text, depicts the putrid nature of the female body, drawing upon indigenous Chinese beliefs. Although it is often referred to as a monolithic text, there many deviations of the Blood Bowl Sutra including the influential 14th century Japanese version. Despite deviation between the different versions, the sutra describes Mokuren’s (Mulian in the Chinese variant) accidental visit to a large, menstrual blood filled pond in Hell where “in the middle women who were wearing handcuffs and ankle chains were undergoing hardships.”[12] The text attributes the pollution of the earth to the blood shed during menstruation and childbirth; it employs unsettling imagery by depicting devious women mixing menstrual blood into the tea of holy men. After witnessing the horrendous scene, Mokuren tells the Buddha what he saw. In response, the Buddha informs the monk that the polluted women could achieve salvation if they “respect the three treasures of filial piety, to call on Mokuren, to hold a Blood Bowl Liberation service, to hold a Blood Pool Feast, to read sutras, to have an esoteric ceremony, then to make a boat and float it off.”[13] Thus, female pollution could be expunged only through devotion tothe Buddha and monks.

Interestingly, the Blood Bowl Sutra had a large female audience within medieval cults. But why would women chant hymns that insulted their own bodies? In her lecture “Making Sense of the Blood Bowl Sutra,” Lori Meeks, scholar of Japanese Buddhism, argues that while this text represents a degradation of the female body, it simultaneously gave women the agency to participate in rituals. Women frequently used the sutra as an amulet to enter shrines that they would otherwise be excluded.[14] Although women’s use of the Blood Bowl Sutra represents an instance where androcentrism is subverted, the overall derogatory nature of the text is disturbing. Underneath these negative descriptions of the female body are deeply rooted male anxieties about the power of women. Belief in the female ability to render a man spiritually powerless and pollute his purity exposes the male fear of being controlled by women. However, men successfully projected their anxieties onto women and designated female “otherness” as vulgar and inept. Outside the realm of male understanding, menstruation is an ideal representation of female “otherness” and consequently resulted in fantasies and anxieties about the nature of this incomprehensible phenomena.

For all of the negativity that Buddhists harbor toward the female body, it is peculiar that their descriptions are often anatomically incorrect—and what is even more surprising is that they were written for monks who were supposed to be celibate. Buddhaghosa’s commentary on the VinayaPitaka, the Samantapasadika, contains multiple spurious claims about the female body. In one instance, Buddhaghosa argues that a woman can become pregnant from looking at, hearing, or smelling a man just as a cow could become pregnant from the breath of a bull or a bird from the sound of thunder.[15] Similarly, the Suttavibhanga contains noteworthy anatomical gaffes. In section 1.9.1, the text identifies sexual intercourse with a woman as a defeat, “For a monk who, having thought of cohabitation, lest his male organ enter a human woman…”[16]Isaline B. Horner, a prominent translator of Pali texts, deliberately omitted the “cruder Suttavibhangapassages”[17] in her translation of the VinayaPitaka to spare her audience from reading these graphic parts; however, she provided the curious reader with an appendix to identify the expunged words. In this instance, the crude word is passavamaggaor “path of urine,”[18] which is used to designate the vagina. This passage exposes a serious anatomical mistake—that is, a conflation between the vagina and urethra. The Buddhist belief that the female anatomy is “defiled” could be connected to the misunderstanding of the location of female parts. Overall, these glaring blunders reveal the Buddhist ignorance about sex and a lack of interest in empirically understanding the female body.

Some of the most vivid reprimands against the female body are attributed to the Buddha himself. In the Suttavibhanga, the Buddha chastises a monk who broke his celibacy vow by denouncing him as “foolish man.”[19] The Buddha proclaims to the gathered assembly of monks that “it would be better that your penis be stuck into the mouth of a black viper than into a woman's vagina. It would be better that your penis be stuck into a pit of burning embers, blazing and glowing, than into a woman's vagina.”[20] In a later commentary, Buddhaghosa expands on this speech and explains that an injection with snake venom would be preferable to the torments of hell that one would receive for having sex with a woman.[21] Because this speech is located in an authoritative text for regulating the conduct of the monks, Buddhism contains an inherent strain of misogyny.

Descriptions of masturbation in the Suttavibhanga reveal an explicit abhorrence of the female anatomy. While masturbation with the hand is considered an offense, it is not equivalent to the severity of masturbating with the mouth.[22] On the surface, there appears to be no plausible explanation for this distinction except the “taboo” nature of the latter. However, Gyatso avers that as the “gold standard” for sex, the female is “the most likely partner for a monk, and the one with whom the monk’s behavior is most closely regulated.”[23] Thereby, the mouth is an internal orifice like the vagina, and this resemblance is a likely explanation for the strict prohibition against masturbation with the mouth. The Buddhist aversion for the female body runs so deeply that the permissibility of masturbation techniques is dictated by the horrific possibility of replicating sex with a woman.

As evidenced by multiple passages in the VinayaPitaka, the vagina represents a significant monastic concern. For Buddhist monks, the practical dimension of a woman’s body has horrific consequences: it could produce a child and tie one down to the householder’s life. In the Suttavibhanga, after the Buddha declares that a vagina is worse than a viper’s mouth, he tells the monk that his broken celibacy vow had demoted him to “what is not verily dharma, upon village dharma, upon a low dharma, upon wickedness, upon final ablution, upon secrecy.”[24] The woman’s body has enormous, terrifying power for a monk. It represents more than just a mere threat; the “village dharma” is the antithesis to monastic life. Thus, negative representations of women in Buddhist texts signify the projection of male anxieties onto the female body—the originator of samsara.Buddhist male projection resonates with Douglas’s concept of the body as the “image of society.” In the Buddhist context, the power to dismantle the monastic community was encoded onto the female body. While these anxieties are present in monastic texts, they also permeate into other forms of Buddhist literature.

Sexual Transformation Stories

Similar to the monastic texts, sexual transformation stories contain negativity toward the female body and reflect male insecurities in various dimensions. These accounts appear in sutras of the Mahayana tradition, The Great Vehicle, which developed in the first century CE. Bodhisattvas are significant figures in Mahayana and central characters in these stories; they are compassionate beings who embody the model state of Buddhist doctrine and vow to help others reach awakening. Belief in the merciful nature of the bodhisattva, who cares about the well-being of humanity, contributed to the popularity of Mahayana among the laity.

Sexual transformation stories center on a woman renowned for her superior spiritual abilities, and debate ensures about whether or not she is capable of buddhahood. As shown earlier in the account of the Naga princess within the Lotus Sutra, most of these stories involve a sexual transformation in which the protagonist swaps her female body for a male one in order to become a bodhisattva. Because of the necessity of this transformation, bodhisattvahood—the spiritual ideal in Mahayana—is prohibited for a woman. The sexual transformation signals a change from the imperfect, degenerate female body to the perfect, ideal male body.

Similar to the narrative of the Naga princess, The Sutra of the Dialogue of the Girl Candrottaradepicts a female who sexually transforms into a male. In the story, an affluent man named Vimalakirti (a notable figure in Buddhist philosophy) and his wife Vimala have a daughter, named Candrottara, whose exceptional abilities are apparent from birth. Soon after she is born, flowers descend from the sky, perfume scents the air, the earth shakes, and everything she touches radiates light. Candrottara becomes interested in learning the teachings of the Buddha so she flies through the air to meet him. When she arrives, the Buddha and several bodhisattvas are present. After debate with the men, she preaches about the attributes of the dharma and the futility of sexual transformation. When the Buddha predicts Candrottara’s imminent buddhahood, she jumps into the air and transforms herself into a male without hesitation.[25] Like the Naga princess’ transformation, this pivotal moment represents the abandonment of the female identity and proves that the male body is a requirement for the attainment of buddahood. Other similar stories of sexual transformation, where the female character abandons her body, occur in The Collection of Jewels and The Sutra of the Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Verses. Similarly, in this narratives, the female body is considered an impediment to spiritual growth.