You are a monk and your mother is an impure woman. Do you A) Reconsider this idea considering all humans come from women, even the mighty Budda himself? B) Do extra chores to make up for being born to a woman?
@@stansman5461 C, doing good things while repeating how terrible, impure your mother is; and if not for your greatness, she would have been reborn into the 8 hells instead of being just a dirty woman
By the buddhist definition, everyone, or every “being” rather, that is not enlightened is impure. This is also not a bad thing, it basically means we suffer, but the English language is narrow so these definitions are ambiguous as they have different meanings. Since the author does not understand the Buddhist conception of “impure”, nor acknowledges that the term “Buddhist” encompasses tens of thousands of sects and philosophies - hence the video suggests all Buddhist are sexist when most sects don’t adopt these views, how can one trust his authority on this subject? He clearly has no good understanding of Buddhism without grapple of these fundamental terms.
Fun fact: there was a german fairy tail about a tomboy who did not listen to their parants and when they woke up they where fully male, and sold as sailors. Edit: it's a german fairy tail, a tale why women must stay feminene
Fun Fact: There was this English fairy tale of naive parents sending their young boys to sing the hymns of God just to be used as a sex toys by evil priest.
Ironic how there were female Buddhist monks at the time that were just as enlightened and devoted as men but they still thought that women were inferior, you could be a literal goddess among men and still get disrespect in those times
One of the rules for buddhist nuns is that no matter how experienced and senior a nun is, she is still inferior to the most junior of monks, and she needs to treat him as superior...
People, keep in mind this is just a Japanese thing. In Tibetan Buddhism we have women teachers and legendary figures, like Tara, one of the great Buddhas. And there are women nuns going back to the time of Lord Buddha himself.
@@deadby15 The CCP is absurdly sexist. They chose a man who came from a family of collaborators and nobody excepts him as the Penchen Lama. But I'm Sakya, and their high lamas now all live outside of Tibet and away from CCP interference.
It reminds me of a medieval author Christine de Pizan who said that she couldn't read a single book from antiquity to... well "modern" time written by males where women were not randomly slandered.
I think she was litteraly one of the first women to 1) live off her writings at least in Europe 2) Trying to defend her gender Her life is really interesting. .
I don't know how they developed that thinking when Kannon is literally a bodhisattva and There has been many women who have become enlightened. Queen Yashodhara the Foster mother of Buddha and all her 100 nuns became enlightened So did Queen Khema. And in lotus sutra the daughter of dragon king is shown to become enlightened.
Because men. They'll always find a way to shit on us no matter what. Every major religion has extremely important female figures but that's not gonna stop them.
uddha said gross things about a woman to monks to reduce their lustful view of a woman and buddha also said gross things about the man to nuns to reduce their lustful view of a man.
In Jainism, the 19th Tirthankara (‘ford-maker’, enlightened teacher who brings the Jain religion into the current universal cycle) was a woman. The 24th Tirthankara (often considered the most important), Mahavira, very explicitly preached equality between men and women. Jainism may well be the oldest religion to have female renunciants, and such outnumber their male counterparts. This doesn’t stop the Dirgamber sect from arguing women are inherently incapable of achieving Moksha/enlightenment, and the best they can hope for is to be reborn as a male. Religion is ultimately intertwined with social power structures, and when patriarchy pulls the strings then evidence be damned, religious institutions will pick and choose to suit a misogynistic narrative. It’s much like how Christ very explicitly called for his followers to shelter refugees (Matthew 25: 34-40) and reject ethnic antagonisms (the parable of the Good Samaritan), but white supremacy has ensured many Christians balance their beliefs with vitriolic racism.
I think the daughter of the dragon king was known, even in Japan, but the story was that she used her great karma and dragon magic to turn into a man and becoming enlightened on the spot?
Actually there have been a lot of female Buddhas as well. In India, there are tons of Jataka tales of Buddha being a Brahmin widow, a courtesan, a Apsara ( celestial nymph) and even a eunuch.
It's less about the actual teachings of a religion and more about society using religion to justify certain practices. India itself had practices which blatantly went against the core teachings of the major religions here, but people still managed to twist it their way.
@@randomplebian461 The reason is that all the different schools of what orientalists called ' Hinduism', were rivals at a time. They had different political positions and patronage of different dyansties. There were times when theologians were less interested in philosophy and metaphysics, & became more involved in creating more appealable fanfictions of their rivals' scriptures to assimilate their rivals' followers & also started creating real-life fanfictions to appease ruling class people of society who could in return grant them patronage. That's why when orientalists and Hindu revivalists of modern age tried to compile all the Hindu scriptures, they got baffled by the humongous contradictions and staunch differences even in the versions of the same scripture. Most of the regressive & unscientific verses of Dharmic scriptures were used by atheists to criticize Hinduism and most of the outrageously progressive verses were used by reformist Hindus to challenge the social evils present in Hindu society of that time such as mistreatment of widows, untouchability etc. That's why in that era, both atheistic and reformist movements started in full force among Hindu community. Hindu orthodoxy that was already competing with Islamist apologists and Christian missionaries, were now challenged by these ideologies as well. So, one faction of Hindu orthodoxy started creating pseudo-scientific arguments to trick their challengers and another faction of Hindu orthodoxy started using communal hysteria of Indian politics to smash down their challengers by either accusing them to be " Radical Communists" or "Crypto Islamist/Christian colonialist". It's so much similar to how many Hindu scholars of ancient India accused the reformist philosopher of that time, Adi Shankaracharya as " Pracchna Baudha'( Crypto Buddhist) and many North Indian sects demonized the followers of South Indian vaishanav scholar, Ramanujacharya called Chakrakritas in their texts such as Vishnu Smriti.
@@shalinitiwariscorner5210 Excellent analysis. I didn't know about Pracchna Baudha, will surely read more about it. Despite the fanfictions (lol), I would say freedom of expression is very precious in Hinduism. But I do agree that the absurd number of contradictions in our basic philosophy has made it not only difficult to reform our religion today, but also made it near impossible to define Hinduism itself. Plus, most people still do not know that Hinduism encompasses schools of philosophies that dabbled in hedonism, scepticism etc. and wasn't just about praying to 1 trillion Gods & Goddesses. Vedic messages on our alleged social evils like Sati and casteism were surprisingly rational and progressive. Yet they eventually got buried. Hinduism's core message of letting each person choose their own spiritual path is both a boon and a curse, especially in this age.
Sadly, that’s still the world we live in today. People born thinking the self is always better than the other, but reality hits when the other sometimes do things better than the self. Not sure how anyone can walk around the world conveniently dividing the Entire world into two homogeneous groups of people, then hating the Entire other group. Or any sizable group for that matter. An undeveloped mind that lacks much sense and empathy, perhaps.
@@nellyfabulous I think a lot of people just don't question things. When we're raise with certain beliefs and grow up within a particular system/social order, it can be hard to recognize that there even are alternatives. This is doubly true when the systems in place benefit you.
@@VineFynn Not necessarily. Conservative and progressive are both relative terms for sure, but they are still useful, both for comparing historical ideas to modern ones, and contextualizing how an idea may have been viewed by people at the time. Having said that, I only meant that the idea was surprisingly similar to modern ones which are considered progressive at time of writing. I wasn't trying to be academically rigorous with my language in a youtube comment.
The nature of this world is cyclical. We don't magically invent brand new stuff as we move forward, but rather "recycle" them from previous ideas, either through learning them directly or through the process of convergent evolution.
As Buddhism started to ripen with time, useless rules were grasping the teachings. In the story of Buddha, there were great nuns who were much intellectual and wiser than men/monks. In one case, was the nun named Khema, a former queen who was so proud of her beauty but later discovers it to be impermanent and gets ordained as a nun. She realised Bodhi much quicker, and was said to have realised it before she became a nun. And, we have Tara Bodhisattva, in her former she was asked by people to have male body to attain bodhi, and preach but she denied stating that she would reach perfect bodhi without a male body and she really did it. She became one of the famous bodhisattva who is a lady.❤️Sadhu!
@@deadly_creature i can relate to this. i think its because the buddhism taught in south asian countries and east asian countries are somewhat different from each other-
Honestly same, at first when these Buddhism videos were starting to pop up, I almost thought they were made up, trying to make Buddhism look bad, as I’ve never heard of any of these stories in my entire life. But when I realized it the video was about Buddhism in Japan, I remembered that sexism in Japan is- well, definitely not so good
An interesting twist is that Kannon, the most important Buddhist female saint/goddess/Bodhisatva, is thought to have started out as a representation of a male Buddha. On the way across Asia from India, Kannon turned into a woman.
Is thought? Nah, it's well established that Kannon was the male Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara, who then became the Guanyin/Kuanyin Bodhisattva in China, who then became Kannon in Japan.
I like the Disgaea explanation better. If, while serving penance for his sins, a guy annoys a demoness with his chauvinism she kicks him so hard that part of him falls off and he in re-incarnated as women in his next life.
@@idontrlyhaveanamebutihavec9918the concept of gender you're referring to comes from the 70s. Also, many trans are simply misogynistic men. Simple as that.
genders relationship with religion is so interesting to me. throughout history i could’ve been seen as so many different things, often just by going from country to country
The one constant, regardless of time, place, or culture, is that you would have the capacity for child birth, and no man ever has had that power. Women are superheros and their power is birth and the infinitely diverse and valuable capacities for nurturing life.
@@eccehomonohomo thats the extent of a woman? birthing... as it hasnt been used enough by all religions to reduce women to vessels and not full human beings on their own
@@FehrGormenghastTodd No, I do not think giving birth is the extent of women. Wouldn't women be more full human beings than males because they have the capacity to create humans? Kinda like gods.
In my culture (pre-spaniards) women are seen as powerful and could connect to spirits and could heal people, some men will harness this womanly powers by dressing up as a woman but still they were men and not fully women.
The ancient Buddhist suttas mention a woman Gopika who "rejected the status of being a woman and developed the thought of becoming a man. ... [After death] she went to a happy destination." (DN 21.1.11) So this is not merely a Japanese practice, but has roots in the first centuries of Buddhism.
@@youngcompetitive7457 no one cares about your soft weak dick The uncomfy topic is how such mundane irrelevant temporary issues of mortals leak into even spiritual matters. No one should have the power to start religions
You didn’t mention (the parable of) the Dragon King’s daughter…the Buddha proclaimed her to be an example that women do have the ability to achieve enlightenment.
I honestly think it's ridiculous to consider 'bodily constraints' when you are speaking about spiritual growth and/or enlightenment. Sadly, this remains very much a thing.
@@toetoe8469 Yuuup and the prevailing view in the modern day is that both the idea of being a man and the idea of being a woman are just aspects of self-identity, IE: The thing that the Buddha says is an illusion and that clinging to can cause intense suffering from.
@@ScarletGalerne wanting your body to reflect your Identity is desire,well dysphoria in that case and....But that makes it a desire that causes pain just like hunger
Its very interesting. I would like to you speak about the changes that Pure Land, Zen and Nichiren made in this views and worries of the past, they were all persecuted by their reformations on Buddhism way of treating women, low cast people and rules of monasticism.
I really want to sit down and drink and discuss this with you! What a perfect introduction to "how Patriarchy stole the world." Always a pleasure watching your gems, Lin ❤
@@rifasclub I like to get drunk alone in my apartment that I have a job to pay for. Occasionally, I will be bored enough to scroll through comments posted _about_ my comment and find these amusing, rhetorical posts. Contestants need only to add some dumb piece and you're in consideration for the Great Award. You've been chosen as this month's winner! Congratulations, and keep up the great, fascinating work you do. Let's hear it for the Basement Dwellers, everyone!!! 🤣
It’s funny how Linfamy can say “pp” so many times with his deadpan voice lol. I believe in at least one sect of Hinduism it was the opposite; the women could achieve a higher plane of existence but men couldn’t, and there was a story where Arjuna, a Hindu legendary hero, changed into a woman to experience this higher plane of existence. But this was because women are compliant and obedient. So yeah, even with the reverse it’s still misogyny sadly.
Pretty interesting! "Storied," a channel by PBS, just did a short video on "third" genders, non-binary and trans persons in world mythologies, but I don't recall them mentioning Buddhist tradition. There seems to have been a practice in Ancient Egypt where a priest would "transform" a deceased woman into a man briefly in order to perform the burial rites upon her and purity her for the after life. Interestingly similar to the idea of female impurity in Buddhism discussed in this video.
Great vid. Interesting you mentioned Kannon here because of all the Bodhisattvah Kannon was mostly likely to appear as a woman. In japan this is accredited to a statue commissioned and modeled after Empress Komyo after a male version of Kannon helped her through pregnancy. In china she was given an origin story as a mortal girl. Even in the sutras Kannon is stated to take on forms of different genders all the time, showing that it really didn't matter to the enlightened person. Gender does not exist.
Buddhism is an enormous world. Theravada sects and Pure land sects look like completely different religions. One of the Buddhas students, a nun, was confronted by Mara, the Buddhist devil, in the Tripitika. He said nuns can't become Arahants. She said when you are in Samadhi, there is no such thing as gender. And for people that think of "male and female", those are the people fit for the devil (mara) to address. The Vajrayogini, one of the female Buddhas in Vajrayana, also said in one of the Tantric texts some of the Buddhas students were "sexist" because they needed those teachings for their undeveloped minds. This was already addressed in the scriptures 1,500 years ago. But Japan doesn't follow these scriptures. Because again, the Buddhist world is huge. You are giving people a very narrow view of Buddhism. And chasing away possible converts that don't know anything about the religion. There are hundreds of Buddhist teachings that contradict other Buddhist teachings. Because different people need different teachings. Nothing in Buddhism is "absolute" except your eternal, indestructible Buddha nature, outside of your mind and body. Which is the only point of Buddhism. It's not about gender, moral teachings, politics, philosophy, it's all just a skillful means to point people to their eternal, indestructible, Buddha nature, which is never born, and never dies. When you see it, the world outside the prison of your mind, nothing can hurt you anymore. Because all of the suffering is just in the mind/body/five senses. But when you see the world outside the five senses/mind, everything that happens inside the mind becomes a joke. You are free. All of this talk of gender is talk inside the mind. Any talk inside the mind is outside of the goal of Buddhism. Because the goal is outside the mind.
TLDR; Buddhists have denominations/sects that disagree on almost everything just like most big religions and these guys don't speak for everyone, even in their own time period.
You can’t profess these things as if the existence of Buddhism is in a vacuum? Its teachings, in totality, and in specifications, have had massive real world effects on history, politics and culture. You can't pretend as if the peddlers of Enlightenment didn't knowingly stampede on women's back for their peddling then proceed to drape themselves back with Nirguna cape?
It's not religion. It's men. Men hate women, they wouldn't have used religion as a tool to control women otherwise. Open your eyes, misogyny is in ever part of the world.
@@azucenam.178 Same. Religion is the devil to me, they manipulate the word to their own hyprocritcal agendas too often. Act very similar to what they say satan does.
In Chinese tradition Buddhism we call nuns shifu '師父' (literally translate to master-FATHER) viewing them as a men who shoulder the duty of carry Buddhas' teaching
from your standard modern capitalist liberal perspective, literally anything that deviates from really a very narrow range of views os 'sexist'. So yes they're 'sexist' by your definition, but really because your definition is extremely broad as it's constructed around a very narrow range of views (that's what it really 'defines')
In India during the pre mauryan period there used to be a courtesan named Amrapali who was at Buddha's time and tried to seduce a monk but he didn't react at all so she went to Buddha and was magdamudh*meaning: a feeling of arising devotion and the feeling to leave all the worldly attachments for some divine being that arises by feeling their aura* by his presence , she told him about her struggles as a courtesan for the men of the kingdom and how she wanted to feel free .....Buddha took her as a disciple to help her reach moksha/Nirvana and she became one of the most famous women in Indian history ever. Buddhism is different in Japan then of India,Nepal,Tibet,Sri Lanka and also Indonesia where it first began spreading. In Japan it's much recent and have their culture. Here's a link to a clip of the movie based on Amrapali ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-JpvH0S_FJow.html
@@codesalty9659 Maybe on some parts, but for Buddhism it does not make sense beyond the claim that perhaps women, while equal, cannot truly achieve enlightenment, so they have to be reborn as men to do that. The view about "evil wyminz" is a heretical bs spread by ancient 4chinners because they never felt the touch of a woman.
Is this only the case in Japanese Buddhism or does this appear in other forms of Buddhism as well (i.e. Han Buddhism, Thai Buddhism, Chan Buddhism, Modern Buddhism, etc.)?
It is not any buddhism's believe it is just a case created by leaders at that time who are men. In real books that recorded buddha's journey,there is no such things like women bodies are impure. It is just that women can't be buddha because men always tried to rule with their gender and if someone who is a female become buddha,it will be harder to get their respects then a male buddha
And also women can be nun without transforming to men according to buddha's speech when his step mother who took care of him as her own child when his mother died after gave birth to him ask about can she become a nun
It's mostly a thing in east-asian buddhism. Tibetans, for example, have female holy figures, and have no such views. This is mostly a result of confucion influence on east-asian buddhist practice
@@mcfarofinha134 Also, Tibetan Buddhism took in a lot of influence from Shaktism, the Goddess-centric school of Hinduism, so women play a vital role therein. In Tibetan Buddhism, women represents the dynamic aspect of existence, by which it transforms, the Wisdom counterpart to Compassion (male).
Then there is that tale in the Lotus Sutra where the Dragon King’s daughter gained such understanding that she turned into a man right before achieving nirvana (or something like that).
I wish I could instantly transfer my knowladge in Buddhism to all of you. So all of you could see that "gender" issue in Buddhism are completely different than gander issues in other religions.. In Buddhism, this gender issue is come up(usually) in the context of "no self" & "non dual" teaching.. any monk who has reach higher state or understanding or realization will know that all things are nor male nor female, all things are equal, and empty. The problem is reaching that higher understanding is not easy, you know how hard it is to propagate equality right.. 😮💨😮💨
So the thing about the bad karma of women actually has less to do with being born the gender itself, and more to do with the **circumstances** of what life was like for women back then. Life, in general, was more limited for women, and there were more obstacles and hardships for women than there were for men. But it's important to remember, that from a Buddhist standpoint, people are born as men, and women both, back and forth throughout their rebirths. Someone who is a woman in this life, was likely a man in a previous life, and vice-versa. But because a woman's life had far more restrictions on it back in the day, being born into a more unfortunate circumstance is considered due to having more obstacle creating karma. And this is true for men too, and animals: men who are born into unfortunate circumstances are viewed as the having similar obstacles. Copying sutras, is not because "words are magical", but because the teachings themselves are helpful, and copying them over and over again is a form of meditation, and meditation purifies obstacle energy (primarily negative thoughts and negative emotions). This is actually, true, this actually works. Which is why people who've done tens of thousands of hours of meditation have been shown on brain scans to have very different brains than average people, and can do things like generate joy on command.
@@bananaana1860 yeah I've noticed Linfamy tends to make these videos that are like, "Oooh look at the superstitious things early people did, haha isn't that funny?" But in actual fact, there's more depth to these things than a lot of these videos let on. These videos tend to stay at the level of surface shock value, and not go into the deeper meaning. (Sorry Linfamy, it's kinda true tho). It's kind of "making fun of" these things rather than truly educating people about the real meaning of them.
That's kind of an interesting outlook. It makes Buddhism sound very passive toward social change. For a religion so focused on the spiritual self there appears to be a lot of cues taken from the physical and social environment as absolute and meaningful fact.
@@WolframiteWraith Buddhism views rebirth and reincarnation as a main part of our worldview. From a Buddhist perspective, the circumstances of our birth is determined by choices we make while in the bardo after dying in the previous life. And those choices are influenced by the emotional and mental state of mind that we carry with us when we die. When we get close to birth, we see images of couples copulating and we choose the one that most resonates with the emotional end mental energies we have that are still unresolved. And thus end up being born in a circumstance according to how we've judged ourselves. That's a big part of how karma works: it's self judgement based on our own negative thoughts and emotions. However, Buddhists are certainly NOT passive to social change. Some Hindu sects view karma as being a kind of "destiny" that can only be delt with by living out life in that circumstance, but Buddhism views this very differently, and through the lens of compassion. Buddhism very much says that one should do all one can to help others, and improve their circumstances. This is because all beings deserve kindness, and because part of learning to deal with our negative thoughts and emotions is learning that it's okay to be kind to ourselves and others. That all beings deserve compassion.
Its a self fulfilling prophecy then , life sucks for woman so they must deserve it . It's very much something that is "done" and excused by religion rather then merely a reality explained
2:48 they even had one about making the idol and image of Buddha. Reincarnation says that the best human life is to be some lord with a comfortable life. Thus, a male lord with a comfortable life is the highest reincarnation point in the past.
The Buddha actually said that women have a very easy way to enlightenment and therefore should not compete with monks nor come near them because they have very „distracting powers“ just by their nature and he is not wrong. Well he’s the fully awakened one. Everything he says is true. But yeah he didn’t say what these monks said. Also yeah he didn’t even want nuns at first but that’s also because he didn’t feel the need to do something like that…
@@calm1tbh Thanks, I’m sure they’ll enjoy being forced into an extremely restrictive dress code that takes away their individuality, having their testimony only count half that of a male and being one of up to four replaceable wives to a man who they are not allowed to divorce yet who can throw them out like garbage by just yelling a word three times. Also said man is literally allowed to beat the crap out of them for not obeying his every whim according to Quran which is the word of Allah himself and therefore not allowed to be interpreted any other way. I cannot fathom how that could possibly be just as bad if not worse than every other misogynistic religious cesspool that considers women being mere accessories to adorn and serve men the highest honor they could ever deserve.
Yup and the prevailing view is that both the idea of being a man and the idea of being a woman are just aspects of Samsara and a false view of self in the modern day, too, so the misogyny has mostly gone down while preserving the understanding of gender :)
Buddhists from literally everywhere else reacting to Japan: "If we weren't so pacifistic, and if we knew back then whatever was happening in Japan... We would've wiped y'all out."
@@muayboran6111 im glad you didnt hear those... i had to grow up with so much guilt thinking i'd never be able to measure up to my mother, cause she had passed and apparently reincarnated into my baby boy cousin, and this was only in the 2010s, i was 12
So in other words because a man had genitals that look like female genitals instead of assuming that females were already enlightened and Buddha was trying to make his genitals look more like ours they decided we had to make our genitals look like what he doesn’t want his genitals to look like? That was a lot to say. Also I’m going to point out that no in fact women are not lustful. That’s men blaming us for them wanting us. Men blaming women for their lust. Instinctively women want the best man that they can get and that’s all they want. So this idea that women are lustful, no. We’re just attractive.
What about the story of the Dragon King's daughter? A Nichiren Buddhist story- The Dragon King's daughter was neither human or male, but achieved enlightenment anyway without becoming either male or human. The point was that all could become Buddhas
Yet another way that Nichiren bucked the system, stating that women could indeed become enlightened and had agency. That`s another reason NIchiren was so persecuted, he espoused egalitarianism, and those in power didn't like that. Seems like nothing has changed since the 1300s *cough* today`s GQP*cough*
Buddha said gross things about a woman to monks to reduce their lustful view of a woman and buddha also said gross things about the man to nuns to reduce their lustful view of a man. It's misunderstood.
i'm pretty sure Buddha himself would not have fully agreed with this practice... but then again, what was he gonna do about it? just sitting there smiling with his eyes closed?
Just I remember some women Bothisatvas in the Journey to the West? One Bothisatva was appearing different gender with, through the different events of the novel, if I recall correctly. Have Wu Cheng'en made a big misstake there? Aren't this level of Divine being are free from the regular asets of human ... ahmm ... parts, causing their gender in appearence to be indifferent? Their soulder touching ears and chuby body was only matter, wasn't it?
