“Thereupon the World-Honored One said to Gautami (a woman): ‘Why do you look at me so anxiously? You do not think that I assured you of your future attainment of Anuttara-samyak-sam-bodhi because I did not mention you by name, do you? Gautami! I have already said that I assured all the Sravakas of their future attainment of [Anuttara-samyak-sambodhi. Now you wish to know my assurance of your attainment [of Anuttara-samyak-sambodhi].'” Lotus Sutra Chapter XIII
To try to illustrate this I created a little watercolor painting. In it the group of Sravakas are seated on the right hand side. This group is all men. While I do not know exactly the seating arrangements I do highly suspect that the women sat seperately, and so I have painted them on the left.
Why would they have been seated seperately? The answer seems to me to be clear, because they were so specifically excluded. They had been told repeatedly that they were unable to become Buddhas, hence enlightened, because of Five Impurities. This is similar to attitudes that have prevailed across the globe in cultures ancient and modern. Women are simply put, according to many beliefs and practices, impure, they bleed, they tempt, they represent sexuallity, they are inferior, weaker, more suspetable to impure thoughts, and soforth.
Of course what is not mentioned are the weaknesses of males and their sins of abuse as it has occured in many forms. It is simply easier for men to lay their own faults at the feet of women rather than own them. Let me not diverge.
Women were considered less than men even in the Sangha. It was only in the Lotus Sutra that women were first granted admission into the Sangha in general, and I imagine it was a reluctant male group to welcome them, and even then as not quite equal. And so I imagine them relegated to the side, to sit in their own group, not intermingled with the greater Sangha. Thus it represents not one single Sangha, though we may wish it to have been, rather as two parts of one Sangha. This is how I have painted the image, the women on the left and the men on the right.
I painted the robes differently as well, as I can imagine the requirement, whether spoken or unspoken that women would dress differently.
So in the quote the Buddha says, what, didn’t you thin I included you in the Sravaka group when I spoke of their future enlightenment? But that wasn’t enough for Guatami, the Buddha’s aunt.
Whether the Buddha had second thoughts, or whehter he took time to ruminate the implications of their exclusion or inclusion we simply do not know. What we do know is that the Buddha did in fact give Guatami, and other women a very specific prediction, and later he did the same for the women Bodhisattva group.
So, I wonder if you were a women at that time, previously excluded, and now only reluctantly included by the group, and still required to remain seperate, would you feel that a general prediction would specifically address your unique situation? I do not believ that I would, and I base this upon some of my own experiences of being excluded in various ways in society.
Sometimes when a group has been so specifically excluded a special effort needs to be made to ensure the message of inclusion is fully delivered and acted upon.
Sometimes in our Sanghas we may experience people seeking refuge who have been so marginalized and excluded by society that our simple blanket statement of everyone is equal and everyone is enowed with equal potential to become Buddhas, they may not hear our message. They may not trust our message. It is possible that they may even see within our groups signs of inequality.
There are some groups even who practice the Lotus Stura under the name of Nichiren who expect men and women to sit seperately. What kind of message of equality does this communicate? There are many Buddhist groups that forbid the touching of women by priests, what is the message here? There are some even in Nichiren Shu who expect women to wear head scarves, and again does this communicate equality or otherwise? These are only a few examples, others might be who gets to lead services, who gets to speak, who gets put into positions of leadership, what does the membership of the Sangha represent, mostly women, or mostly men? There are many ways in which our Sanghas, which claim equality, simply do not look equally welcoming to many people in their manifest differences.
This is not an easy problem to solve. It is made more difficult if the questions are out right ignored or not considered. The first step to overcoming a problem is to identify it. Some things may not be easily or immediately overcome, yet continued awareness and examination of efforts and results I firmly believe will ultimately yeild greater results than simply letting the mater be ignored and hoping for the best.
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