The Bodhisattva Ideal by Sangharakshita

Author:Sangharakshita
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Windhorse Publications Ltd

5

‘MASCULINITY’ AND ‘FEMININITY’ IN THE SPIRITUAL LIFE

TO REFER TO masculinity and femininity in any context these days is, of course, to tread on dangerous ground, and perhaps even using quotation marks will not be sufficient to guard against the everpresent possibility of being taken too literally. As we shall see, though, it is in fact quite appropriate to use these terms to characterize the third and fourth pāramitās to be practised by the Bodhisattva: kṣānti and vīrya.

Kṣānti – to be distinguished from śānti, which means peace – is one of the most beautiful words in the whole vocabulary of Buddhism. It links a number of associated meanings, so there is no one English word which can do it full justice. It literally means patience or forbearance, and it is the antidote to anger (as dāna is to craving). As well as the absence of anger, and the absence of the desire for revenge, kṣānti has overtones of love, compassion, tolerance, acceptance, and receptivity.

It also includes gentleness and docility. And there is even a suggestion in it of humility – though not in any artificial self-conscious sense. When Mahatma Gandhi founded one of his ashrams in India he apparently drew up a list of virtues to be practised by the ashramites. It was a long list, and at the top he put ‘humility’. But someone pointed out that if you practise humility deliberately, self-consciously, it becomes not humility but hypocrisy. So the Mahatma crossed out ‘humility’ and wrote at the bottom of the list, ‘All the virtues are to be practised in a spirit of humility’ – a rather different thing.

Here we will discuss three principal aspects of kṣānti: forbearance, tolerance, and spiritual receptivity. Each aspect will be introduced by a story, as a reminder that kṣānti is not something to be theorized or speculated about, but essentially something to be practised in our everyday life.

Kṣānti as forbearance is illustrated by a story from the life of the Buddha himself, a story found in the Sūtra of Forty-two Sections – which, incidentally, was the first Buddhist text to be translated into Chinese. The original version – we don’t know whether it was in Pāli or Sanskrit – no longer exists, but historically the sūtra is of considerable importance. Anyway, apparently the Buddha was walking along one day when he happened to encounter somebody – probably a Brahmin, but we don’t know – who for some reason wasn’t very pleased with the Buddha and immediately started to call him all sorts of names. This sort of thing often happens in the Pāli scriptures; the Buddha was by no means universally popular in his own day. Some people resented the fact that he seemed to be enticing people away from their families and encouraging them to think of nirvāṇa instead of thinking about making money.

So the man stood there for a while, abusing the Buddha with all the offensive words in his vocabulary. But the Buddha didn’t say anything. He just waited for the man to stop speaking.

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