The Hidden Lamp: Stories from Twenty-Five Centuries of Awakened Women by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781614291336
Publisher: Wisdom Publications
Published: 2013-10-21T00:00:00+00:00

Is it necessary to leave home in search of the truth in order to learn that you don’t have to leave home to search for the truth? Can mother and son be reunited inside your own heart? Who is the mother in you and who is the son?

Tara’s Vow

TIBET, POSSIBLY SIXTEENTH CENTURY ....................................................

ONCE, LONG AGO, the woman who would become the goddess Tara was a princess whose name was Moon of Wisdom. She was wise, compassionate, and devoted to the Dharma. A monk approached her and said, “Because of your virtuous actions, you have been born in a human body, but unfortunately it is a female body. If you want to attain complete awakening, pray that you will be reborn in a male body.”

She replied, “In this life there is no such distinction between ‘male’ and ‘female,’ and therefore any attachment to ideas of ‘male’ and ‘female’ is a delusion. It is foolish to be caught by such a notion.”

Then she made the vow that would carry her through to awakening:

There are many who wish to gain enlightenment in a man’s form, and there are but few who wish to work for the welfare of living beings in a female form. Therefore may I, in a female body, work for the welfare of beings right until samsara has been emptied.

RITA M. GROSS’S REFLECTION

This story takes place in the context of Vajrayana Buddhism, which is quite different from the Chan/Zen context of most koans. It is no less pithy than a Zen koan, but understanding it requires a bit of contextualizing. Vajrayana Buddhists in Tibet believe in rebirth quite literally and most expect to be reborn many more times. They aspire always to be reborn as a bodhisattva, someone who works for the liberation of all beings, rather than for his or her own well-being alone. Most of them understand the bodhisattva vow to mean that because the full enlightenment of buddhahood is very difficult to attain, this vow requires many future rebirths to fulfill it.

Vajrayana Buddhists in Tibet also believe, in common with many Asian Buddhists, that it is impossible to attain full enlightenment in a woman’s body and that being born female is unfortunate. That tells us a lot about what women have had to go through! Most Buddhists, acknowledging the reality of male dominance, which they took to be inevitable, saw that women’s lives were much more difficult than men’s lives. Therefore, by conceding that the female gender role in patriarchal societies is quite unpleasant, traditional Buddhists are halfway to a feminist understanding of Buddhism without even knowing it.

Today, Tara is one of the most beloved of all Vajrayana deities, appearing in many forms and meditated upon virtually universally by Tibetans. In this story, Moon of Wisdom, who became the bodhisattva Tara in a later life, gave the monk a Dharma lesson he should have learned long ago in his studies on emptiness. Beings may appear to be male or female, but in reality, those are just words, just labels, just concepts possessing no underlying, inherent, essential reality.

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