The dharma of gender.pdf

Contemporary Buddhism, Vol. 5, No. 1, 2004

The dharma of gender

Rita M. Gross*

A classic meditation practice in Vajrayana Buddhism, called the Mahamudra

Investigations, invites the meditator to search for the nature of unfettered mind

by exploring several pithy questions. Does the mind have a color? Does the

mind have a shape? Is the mind inside the body? Outside the body? The

meditator is instructed to search diligently, exhausting all possibilities, instead

of concluding on the basis of knowledge of Buddhist doctrine that unfettered

mind could not possibly be found in any of these places. These investigations

are more like Zen koans—bafﬂing puzzles that have no unvaryingly correct

intellectual or conceptual answer.

Here, the English word ‘mind’, generally used to translate various Tibetan

terms used in this context, does not mean the brain or the sixth consciousness,

or even the eighth consciousness. As with the Zen phrase ‘dropping body and

mind’, language is being used to point to a state beyond language. Although

meditation instructions to explore whether one can ﬁnd mind anywhere may

seem different from meditation instructions to drop body and mind, I suggest

that these are two ways of expressing the same insight about where meditation

practice leads.

One pithy question, however, is not part of these Mahamudra Investigations.

Does the mind have a gender? Furthermore, it seems that this question did not

appear to be relevant to those who formulated the Investigations. Two seem-

ingly opposite reasons might explain why this question does not occur. On the

one hand, it could be contended, and often has been contended in Buddhist

traditions, that gender is obviously not relevant to discussions of unfettered

mind, making it unnecessary to investigate whether mind can be found in

gender. If the question were to arise, some might claim that it has already been

included in the question of whether mind has a shape, thus ﬁnding another way

to avoid troublesome questions about gender.

But I think it is at least as likely that the question about mind having a gender

is unasked because it was simply assumed that the person doing the investiga-

tions would be a male, or at least not someone whose life was bound up in the

traditional female gender role. The extent to which the presumed subject of

Buddhist philosophy and meditation is a male is shocking to someone with

heightened awareness of how much difference gender makes in human affairs.

I think it is quite likely that the question about whether mind has a gender is

unasked not because gender has been transcended, but because its determinative

impact on peoples’ lives is being ignored. The assumption that only men would

take on certain roles such as public teaching, a widespread practice in Tibetan

Buddhism, suggests willful ignoring, rather than transcendence of the extent to

which people attribute absolute, not relative meaning, to gender. And there is

DOI: 10.1080/1463994042000249580

4 R. M. Gross

a huge difference between ignoring and transcending, a difference that is of

utmost importance in Buddhism.

I will suggest that gender identity and concepts about what gender entails are

among the strongest hooks for ego-clinging in most people, which means that

they become one of the more enduring bonds to samsara . Gender identity, I

would claim, is more basic for most people than identiﬁcation in terms of color,

shape, or even culture, and is far more addictive. In this regard, I have always

been struck by an argument used by some Roman Catholics against the

ordination of women to the priesthood. The priest must mirror Jesus, it is

claimed, and that means the priest must have a male body. I remember one

commentator who claimed that Jesus could have been a Chinese male rather

than a Jewish male, but as a male he would still have been essentially the same

person, whereas if he had been a (Jewish) woman, he would have been an

entirely different person. I wonder how many Buddhists feel the same way

about the Buddha? After all, it is noteworthy in his rebirth stories that his

female rebirths stopped before his animal rebirths.

Many who have become certain of the view that the self has no real or

inherent existence still talk and act as if that non-existent self harbors a truly

existing gender. Such people nurture and act on many pre-conceptual, uncon-

scious, and unexamined assumptions about gender and also expect others to

conform to those assumptions. To put my claim at its starkest—I will contend,

based on my many experiences of talking about gender and Buddhism, that,

while most Buddhists do not believe in the existence of a permanent, abiding

self, their attitudes and actions nevertheless indicate that they do believe in the

real existence of gender. In other words, the self that does not inherently exist

nevertheless possesses gender that is regarded and acted upon as if it truly

existed; or at least that is the way many Buddhists talk and act, despite their

beliefs about the centrality of egolessness to a Buddhist view and way of life.

Their slogan seems to be: ‘The self does not exist, but it has gender.’ But such

a view is illogical in the extreme; if the self lacks inherent existence, no

attribute of that self, such as gender, color, or shape, could be said to have

inherent existence.

If this sounds confusing, it must be remembered that I am always using the

term ‘existence’ in its precise Buddhist meaning, which denotes not that

something appears, but that the appearing ‘something’ is unconditioned, un-

caused, and independent of its matrix; that it exists independently rather than

interdependently. The appearance of gendered individuals is not disputed; that

such appearances should be assigned automatic and invariant weight is dis-

puted. The matter is more serious because the meanings assigned to gender

almost always meant an automatic second-class existence for some people in

the worlds of practice and study. Other factors, such as intelligence and a desire

to practice dharma , were trumped by gender norms and made little difference.

Another way of talking about the same issue involves the dispute over gender

essentialism. Many systems of thought, including certain strands of feminism,

have claimed that there are invariant traits or behaviors essential to each gender.

Many traditional claims about what makes women inferior, such as their

The Dharma of Gender 5

purported emotionalism and lack of rationality, are based on such gender

essentialism. In the same way, some strands of feminism that are no longer in

favor posited a gender essentialism that elevated women above men. The claim

that women are more oriented to relationships and inherently less violent than

men was one common feminist essentialist claim. Notice that there are two

components to this way of thinking. There are invariant, essential traits for each

gender that are almost always seen as the opposites of each other. Furthermore,

most systems of gender essentialism also posit an ethical hierarchy between the

opposites, even though what traits are associated with men or women, and

which gender is viewed as ‘better’, varies from one cultural situation to another.

It is impossible to posit a gender essentialism that is not imprisoning, that does

not also involve imposing a prison of gender roles on people, which is why this

view is rejected by most feminists. This conclusion about the imprisoning

nature of gender roles would hold even in cases where it is maintained that the

different gender roles are ‘equally valued’. Traditional religions and cultures

often make this claim about gender complementarity, but usually it is just

another gloss on male dominance. Even if we could ﬁnd a situation of genuine

complementarity, that would not undo the imprisoning quality gender role

assignment has on individuals.

One can easily ﬁnd Buddhist texts espousing both essentialist and non-

essentialist views of gender, but that does not mean that both views are equally

cogent in expressing the fundamental Buddhist view. It only indicates how easy

it is to exempt gender from Buddhism’s usual reluctance to attribute inherent

existence to anything, how easy it is to regard gender alone among many

aspects of one’s phenomenal existence as ‘really real’. Attributing real existence

to gender is doubly problematic—on feminist grounds and on Buddhist

grounds.

The deﬁnitive Buddhist view of whether or not gender exists as anything

more than a conventional label is found in the famous ‘Goddess’ chapter of the

Vimalakirtinirdesha Sutra . In this episode, a woman—the so-called ‘God-

dess’—had been studying dharma in Vimalakirti’s palace for twelve years,

when she was challenged by Shariputra, a famous ﬁrst-generation disciple of the

Buddha who is often portrayed in Mahayana scriptures as not understanding

things very well. Impressed by her level of understanding, he challenges her:

‘Why don’t you change your female sex?’ To understand his challenge in

context, it must be remembered that in many Mahayana texts, highly realized

women do change their sex to prove that mind has no gender. Skeptical male

Buddhists who had essentialized gender so much that they believed a female

body renders one incapable of realizing unfettered mind could respond to no

other demonstration of the ﬂuidity and non-existence of gender. But the

Goddess does not buy into this logic. Instead, she says to Shariputra ‘I have

been here twelve years and have looked for the innate characteristics of the

female sex and have not been able to ﬁnd them’ and challenges him about what

he could possibly mean by the innate traits of the female sex. Then she changes

Shariputra into a woman and herself into a man, whereupon she challenges him

(now her) to ﬁnd her innate female traits. After she changes the befuddled

6 R. M. Gross

Shariputra back into a man, he concedes that the female form does not possess

innate characteristics.

This story says it all. I know that I have a female body or shape, but that does

not really mean much. It does not mean that I must bear children, or even that

I can. It does not mean that I necessarily have a gentle, non-aggressive

demeanor, as opposed to a violent or nasty temperament. It does not even

guarantee my primary sexual orientation, which has been guessed wrong almost

as often as it has been guessed right by observers, both women and men. My

female sex is not a reliable guide to my interests and concerns. I care little for

many of the things that are supposed to interest women, but I also am interested

in some things that are generally thought to be of more interest to women than

to men. In short, although my sex may be the ﬁrst fact about me that registers,

it tells people relatively little about me. Nevertheless, although my female body

does not translate into anything essential, a great deal has been projected onto

it by society, by religions, and by individuals who think that the shape of my

body reveals something intrinsically existing, something on which it is valid to

pin all sorts of meanings and limitations. Gender designations as conventional,

agreed-upon labels are harmless and somewhat useful. However, they are rarely

left as mere labels and instead become hooks upon which to attach a prison of

myriad expectations and demands.

Despite this deﬁnitive proclamation of the Goddess to Shariputra and its

irrefutably correct Buddhist logic, Buddhist texts, institutions, and individuals

are just as likely to believe in gender as a ﬁxed, rigid, determinative, and

limiting trait as anyone else. Their allegiance to the view that there is no

permanent abiding self that is ﬁxed, rigid, determinative, limiting, or inherently

existing in any other way does not protect them from believing and acting upon

an imputed real existence of gender. For this reason, I claim that, shocking as

it may be, Buddhist logic about egolessness or anatman , the third mark of

sentient existence according to the Buddha, has never been thoroughly and

consistently applied to gender. ‘There is no permanent abiding self, but it has

gender. Furthermore, gender has an invariant and valid hold on peoples’ lives.

It truly exists, whatever else may be said about the lack of a permanent abiding

self in doctrinal Buddhism.’ That seems to be the message and conclusion

rampant in much of the Buddhist world.

For example, the Mahayana philosopher Asanga explains why a ‘completely

perfected Buddha’ is not a woman: ‘All women are by nature full of deﬁlement

and of weak intelligence. And not by one who is full of deﬁlement and of weak

intelligence is completely perfected Buddhahood attained.’ 1 The claim that

something has certain samsaric qualities ‘by nature’ seems very strange in a

Buddhist context, given that emptiness ( Shunyata ) and Buddha nature

( tathagatagarbha ) are the only qualities posited as intrinsic to beings. Nor does

this statement seem to be a generalization to which there could be exceptions,

the kind of statement that might be offensive but does not totally go against the

usual Buddhist view that nothing phenomenal is self-existing. I suspect that

such claims that certain beings have speciﬁc samsaric qualities ‘by nature’

would not be made concerning anything other than gender, and also would only

The Dharma of Gender 7

be made about women, but not men. Such comments are made about individual

men, but never about all men, or about men as a class. However, it is not

difﬁcult to ﬁnd similar statements in other Buddhist texts. The sex segregation

and male dominance of traditional Buddhist institutions, which also encourage

belief in the reality of gender, are so well known that there is no necessity to

do more than remind ourselves of their existence.

As I go about my work in the Buddhist world, I cannot avoid the impression

that, while most Buddhists I encounter would not endorse Asanga’s misogynis-

tic statement, they also do not really believe the Goddess when she proves to

Shariputra that gender has no essence or nature that is self-existing. Even in the

context of discussing that very text, in the midst of making the point that

egolessness and gender essentialism are mutually incompatible, I ﬁnd that

people want , desperately want, to believe that gender means something,

deﬁnitively determines something, is real in some way. They have intellectually

convinced themselves that there is no permanent abiding self, but they are

averse to applying the same logic to its gender.

Two tactics are especially common among people who want to retain some

belief in the enduring and deﬁnitive relevance of gender. The ﬁrst is to appeal

to the gender symbolism so prominent in Tibetan Buddhism, or to talk about the

‘feminine principle’ as ways to avoid looking into whether a prison of gender

roles prevails in the midst of such positive female symbolism. The second is to

become angry with those who point out that Buddhism contradicts itself when

it essentializes gender in its institutions and practices, a response with which I

am all too familiar!

It never ceases to amaze me that people think one can answer questions about

how gender affects people —men and women—by appealing to ‘the feminine

principle’, which is positively evaluated and central to Tibetan Buddhism. But

the presence of a positively valued feminine principle tells us nothing about

how gendered people fare, nothing about whether they live in social systems of

gender equity and non-discrimination. People easily slip from talking about

themselves as men and women to talking about ‘feminine energy’ as if it is

something that pertains especially to women or the ‘masculine principle’ as if

it is the property of men. They seem not to realize that there is no necessary

correlation between men and the masculine principle or between women and the

feminine principle, either doctrinally or experientially. In Vajrayana Buddhism,

the symbolism associated with femininity and masculinity is ﬁxed and precise;

it is also balanced and complementary. One simply could not say that one is

more elevated or important than the other and both are necessary to balanced,

full living. That is why it is so problematic to assume that the masculine

principle somehow pertains to men in ways that it does not pertain to women,

and vice versa. It turns liberating images of how to balance and blend our

human potentials into another version of the prison of gender roles.

It is equally problematic to presume that the presence of balanced, comple-

mentary gender symbolism means that human genderedness is dealt with

satisfactorily. Positive symbolism of femininity combined with difﬁcult lives for

women is very common worldwide, but the fact that positive feminine symbol-

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