Zen in Ten: Mahāpajāpatī Gotamī
The Bravery & Devotion of the First Buddhist Nun
{This morning, Wednesday, March 9th, at San Francisco Zen Center, we paid homage to the Venerable Mahāpajāpatī Gotamī. And since yesterday was International Womyn’s Day, I thought I’d offer some more info about this pioneering womyn.}
Pajāpatī was born into a noble clan near the foothills of the Himalayas. She was born about 15 or 20 years before Siddhartha, her nephew. Mahāpajāpatī died at the age of 120.
When Pajāpatī was born, there was a prophesy that she would lead a great assembly and mother a secular or religious leader. Her name means “leader of the great assembly.”1
Both Pajāpatī and her younger sister Maya were married to Suddhodana, the King of the Shakya Clan and the father of Siddhartha Gautama. When Maya died after giving birth to Siddhartha, her older sister raised the infant Siddhartha and her own infant son Nanda as brothers.2 Ananda would become Buddha’s devoted disciple and lifelong attendant.
After Siddhartha returned to his father’s palace as Shakyamuni (“Sage of the Shakyas”) Buddha, he found that both Pajāpatī and Yasodhara, the wife he had abandoned the night she gave birth to their son, wanted to leave their householder lives and ordain as bhikkhunis.
Three times Pajāpatī asked her adopted son to be ordained as a nun: “Blessed One, can women attain the fourth fruit of recluse-ship? For that reason, [can] women in this right teaching and discipline leave the household out of faith, becoming homeless to train in the path?”3
The Buddha refused his stepmother’s three requests to ordain and establish the first order of Buddhist nuns. Pajāpatī did not give up. She cut off her hair, put on the saffron robe worn by Buddha’s disciples, and walked barefoot for 150 miles with a group of female followers to the Buddha’s training monastery in Vesali.4
Buddha’s cousin Ānanda was so moved by Pajāpatī and her followers’ determination to take up the holy life. He interceded on his mother’s behalf, asking Buddha three times to admit his mother as a nun; the Buddha refused three times.5
So Ananda rephrased his request and respectfully asked the Buddha:
"Lord, are women capable of realising the various stages of sainthood as nuns?"
"They are, Ananda," said the Buddha.
"If that is so, Lord, then it would be good if women could be ordained as nuns," said Ananda, encouraged by the Buddha's reply.6
Before the Buddha allowed his adoptive mother and her followers to ordain, they had to agree to eight additional rules (The Eight Garudhammas) that only applied to nuns. These “weighty principles” subjugated nuns to their male counterparts and made them dependent on the monks for legitimacy and full ordination.7
Here’s Mahāpajāpatī’s awakening verse as translated by Susan Murcott:
Homage to you Buddha, best of all creatures, who set me and many other people from pain. . . . I have been mother, son, father, brother, grandmother; knowing nothing of the truth I journeyed on. . . .But I have seen the Blessed One; this is my last body, and I will not go from birth to birth again. . . Maya gave birth to Gautama for the sake of us all. She has driven back the pain of the sick and dying.8
Schireson, Grace. Zen Women: Beyond Tea Ladies, Iron Maidens, and Macho Masters. Somerville, MA, Wisdom Publications, 2009.
Weiss, Pam. A Bigger Sky: Awakening a Fierce Feminine Buddhism. Berkeley, CA, North Atlantic Books, 2020.
Ven. Anālayo. “Mahāpajāpatī’s Going Forth in the Madhyama-āgama.” Journal of Buddhist Ethics: http://blogs.dickinson.edu/buddhistethicVolume 18, 2011.
Schireson, Grace. Zen Women: Beyond Tea Ladies, Iron Maidens, and Macho Masters.
http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/buddhism/lifebuddha/2_23lbud.htm
Ibid.
Schireson, Grace. Zen Women: Beyond Tea Ladies, Iron Maidens, and Macho Masters.
Ibid.