Bodily Blunders: Male Projection and the Female Body in Buddhism
Abby Kulisz
Youngstown State University
1
Bodily Blunders: Male Projection and the Female Body in Buddhism
The Lotus Sutra, one of the most important scriptures in the Mahayana tradition,
describes the realization of buddhahood by an unusual aspirant. In chapter 12, the bodhisattva
Manjusri is asked if he knows anyone who is capable of reaching perfect enlightenment.
Manjusri responds that the eight-year-old daughter of Sagara the Naga king is the perfect match.
Sariputra, a favorite literary sap in Mahayana narratives, attempts to discredit the spiritual
abilities of Sagara’s daughter by pointing out that “the female body is polluted; it is not a fit
vessel for the Dharma.”1 However, Sariputra is immediately silenced when Sagara’s daughter
transforms herself into a male and gives up the jewel on her head (worn exclusively by female
Nagas) as a symbol of her commitment to the Buddha’s teachings. In her new masculine body
fully armed with a penis, she preaches the dharma to the world as a bodhisattva. While there are
various implications of this conclusion such as disproving Sariputra, the radical transformation
of Sagara's daughter reveals the impossibility of buddhahood for a woman. When Sagara’s
daughter surrenders her jewel, she simultaneously renounces her female body as an obstruction
to spiritual growth.
Far from a feminist narrative, this account flies in the face of the way Buddhism is
imagined in the West, namely, as a safe house for gender egalitarianism. Although it is the ideal
agent for attaining enlightenment, Buddhists view the human body as repulsive and foul; it is a
source of attachment, illicit pleasure, and binds human beings to samsara. Coupled with the
general Buddhist distrust of the body and the ubiquitous androcentrism inherent in every
religious tradition, the woman’s body is reviled on the deepest possible level. The projection of
male anxieties is the impetus for the Buddhist repudiation of the female body, which is
evidenced by Buddhist narratives that degrade female anatomy and sexual transformation stories.
2
Buddhist Conceptions of the Body
Rather than a static entity, the body is fluid and dynamic or as Caroline Walker Bynum
stated, “It is no topic or, perhaps, almost all topics.”2 In one sense, the body is a microcosm of a
society’s expectations and norms. British anthropologist Mary Douglas, in her pioneering work
Purity and Danger, suggests that the body is the “image of society”3; that is to say, the body
functions as a template “which the central rules, hierarchies, and even metaphysical
commitments of a culture are inscribed and thus reinforced.”4 The body, in short, encapsulates a
society’s weltanschauung or worldview. Thus, in order to locate a society’s values and anxieties,
it is integral to understand how its bodies are conceptualized. In many cases, religious scripture
and belief comprises society’s collective understanding of the body.
The body is a shared dilemma across religious traditions; its unpredictability stands at
odds with the formality of religious practice. The body is the main culprit for human beings’
embarrassing and uncontrollable functions: digestion, masturbation, menstruation, vomiting, and
all kinds of oozing. In contrast, ritual necessitates a transcendence of temporal existence;
ritualized actions demand order and rigidity, separating the sacred from the profane.
Consequently, religion often attempts to resolve this dichotomy by vilifying, mentally
suppressing, or ascetically taming bodily functions. This accounts for admonitions against
succumbing to the body’s ruses ingrained in the scriptures of numerous religious traditions.
Buddhist texts are rife with descriptions of the human body’s vileness and instability. In
several accounts, the Buddha is responsible for severe condemnations against the body. In “The
Longer Discourse to Saccaka,” found within the Sutta Pitaka of the Pali Canon, the Buddha
denounces the value of yogic practices, which were prevalent among Indian ascetics during the
Buddha’s lifetime. Aggivessana, an ascetic and practitioner of yoga, reprimands the Buddha and
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his disciples for their exclusive development of the mind at the expense of the body. In response,
the Buddha turns Aggivessana’s accusation on its head by pointing out his opponent’s distraught
physical state; the yogic practitioner devolves into a trembling wreck while the Buddha
maintains a calm composure.5 To the Buddha, meditation is an effective means to cultivate the
mind whereas physical activity is superfluous since the body is merely transitory.
In another revealing account, located in the Magandiya Sutta, the Buddha wages a verbal
attack on the body in a discussion with the philosopher, Magandiya. He describes the trickery of
the physical senses, which deceive one into believing that sensual pleasures are satisfying, but in
reality they are “painful to the touch, very hot and scorching.”6 The Buddha continues his
denunciation against the physical by warning Magandiya that the body “is a disease, a cancer, an
arrow, painful, an affliction.”7 According to the Buddha, awakening is impossible without
realizing the body’s inadequacies. While Buddhist texts scorn the body in general for its deceit
and distorted perception of reality, sex in particular is one of the worst bodily functions,
especially for monks.
Most of the injunctions against sex are found in the Vinaya Pitaka; that is, one of the
three collections of Buddhist scripture that comprise the Tipitaka or Pali Canon. The Tipitaka is
of central importance in Theravada Buddhism by forming the doctrinal underpinning of the
tradition. It contains the rules and disciplinary codes that guide the sangha (monastic
community). In the Suttavibhanga, the first book of the Vinaya Pitaka, sex is listed first before
the three other parajikas or principal transgressions: theft, murder, and false claims of
supernatural abilities.8 It is likely that sex’s conspicuous placement before the other three
transgressions makes it the most serious offense for a monk. Janet Gyatso, Buddhist scholar and
specialist in South Asian culture, explains that “sex was considered the most difficult bodily
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transgression from which to refrain; for that very reason it was listed first, as the emblematic site
of disciplinary regulation.”9 While most people will not commit murder in their lifetime, they
will probably have sex at some point. Thus, sex is dangerous because of its ubiquity; it is the
most common embodiment of ignorant craving and a potent reminder of one’s vulnerable, fleshy
body. Since, for a monk, sex would most likely occur with a woman, most of the derogatory
references toward sex are directed at the female body.
The Female Body in Buddhist Texts
The Buddhist conception of female body is like that of the human body except worse;
female body parts are defiled and a monk must avoid contact with them. Although the body is
capable of many repulsive emissions, menstruation is the vilest. The fact that the most reviled
bodily emission is female points to an intrinsic element of misogyny embedded in Buddhist
tradition. Menstruation has puzzled men across time and culture; a woman’s mysterious ability to
painlessly bleed for several days eluded male understanding and pandered to anxieties about the
power of the female body. Beliefs about the negative effects menstruation, known as female
pollution, pervaded South Asia prior to the advent of Buddhism and continue to persist in the
present day.
Drawing upon these preexistent beliefs, Buddhists believe that a menstruating woman
could pollute holy spaces and men with a mere touch. Also, women who experience childbirth
are believed to be polluted by the resulting blood. Once a man is polluted by a woman, his
spiritual abilities become obsolete. Serenity Young, researcher at the American Museum of
Natural History, asserts that theories about female pollution “allowed men to claim purity for
themselves.”10 The contrast between male purity and female filth is further demonstrated by the
elaborate purification process that polluted men went through vis-à-vis polluted women. To
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regain purity tainted from female pollution, Young explains that “men need to bathe while
reciting mantras, put on fresh clothes, and ingest certain pure foods. Women need only to change
their clothes and sprinkle water on their heads.”11 Since the female body is inherently less pure
than a man’s, the purification process involves fewer steps. In contrast, the natural pure state of
the male body necessitates several steps to expurgate the taint from female pollution.
The Blood Bowl Sutra, a 13th century Chinese Buddhist text, depicts the putrid nature of
the female body, drawing upon indigenous Chinese beliefs. Although it is often referred to as a
monolithic text, there many deviations of the Blood Bowl Sutra including the influential 14th
century Japanese version. Despite deviation between the different versions, the sutra describes
Mokuren’s (Mulian in the Chinese variant) accidental visit to a large, menstrual blood filled
pond in Hell where “in the middle women who were wearing handcuffs and ankle chains were
undergoing hardships.”12 The text attributes the pollution of the earth to the blood shed during
menstruation and childbirth; it employs unsettling imagery by depicting devious women mixing
menstrual blood into the tea of holy men. After witnessing the horrendous scene, Mokuren tells
the Buddha what he saw. In response, the Buddha informs the monk that the polluted women
could achieve salvation if they “respect the three treasures of filial piety, to call on Mokuren, to
hold a Blood Bowl Liberation service, to hold a Blood Pool Feast, to read sutras, to have an
esoteric ceremony, then to make a boat and float it off.”13 Thus, female pollution could be
expunged only through devotion to the Buddha and monks.
Interestingly, the Blood Bowl Sutra had a large female audience within medieval cults.
But why would women chant hymns that insulted their own bodies? In her lecture “Making
Sense of the Blood Bowl Sutra,” Lori Meeks, scholar of Japanese Buddhism, argues that while
this text represents a degradation of the female body, it simultaneously gave women the agency
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to participate in rituals. Women frequently used the sutra as an amulet to enter shrines that they
would otherwise be excluded.14 Although women’s use of the Blood Bowl Sutra represents an
instance where androcentrism is subverted, the overall derogatory nature of the text is disturbing.
Underneath these negative descriptions of the female body are deeply rooted male anxieties
about the power of women. Belief in the female ability to render a man spiritually powerless and
pollute his purity exposes the male fear of being controlled by women. However, men
successfully projected their anxieties onto women and designated female “otherness” as vulgar
and inept. Outside the realm of male understanding, menstruation is an ideal representation of
female “otherness” and consequently resulted in fantasies and anxieties about the nature of this
incomprehensible phenomena.
For all of the negativity that Buddhists harbor toward the female body, it is peculiar that
their descriptions are often anatomically incorrect—and what is even more surprising is that they
were written for monks who were supposed to be celibate. Buddhaghosa’s commentary on the
Vinaya Pitaka, the Samantapasadika, contains multiple spurious claims about the female body.
In one instance, Buddhaghosa argues that a woman can become pregnant from looking at,
hearing, or smelling a man just as a cow could become pregnant from the breath of a bull or a
bird from the sound of thunder.15 Similarly, the Suttavibhanga contains noteworthy anatomical
gaffes. In section 1.9.1, the text identifies sexual intercourse with a woman as a defeat, “For a
monk who, having thought of cohabitation, lest his male organ enter a human woman…”16
Isaline B. Horner, a prominent translator of Pali texts, deliberately omitted the “cruder
Suttavibhanga passages”17 in her translation of the Vinaya Pitaka to spare her audience from
reading these graphic parts; however, she provided the curious reader with an appendix to
identify the expunged words. In this instance, the crude word is passavamagga or “path of
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urine,”18 which is used to designate the vagina. This passage exposes a serious anatomical
mistake—that is, a conflation between the vagina and urethra. The Buddhist belief that the
female anatomy is “defiled” could be connected to the misunderstanding of the location of
female parts. Overall, these glaring blunders reveal the Buddhist ignorance about sex and a lack
of interest in empirically understanding the female body.
Some of the most vivid reprimands against the female body are attributed to the Buddha
himself. In the Suttavibhanga, the Buddha chastises a monk who broke his celibacy vow by
denouncing him as “foolish man.”19 The Buddha proclaims to the gathered assembly of monks
that “it would be better that your penis be stuck into the mouth of a black viper than into a
woman's vagina. It would be better that your penis be stuck into a pit of burning embers, blazing
and glowing, than into a woman's vagina.”20 In a later commentary, Buddhaghosa expands on
this speech and explains that an injection with snake venom would be preferable to the torments
of hell that one would receive for having sex with a woman.21 Because this speech is located in
an authoritative text for regulating the conduct of the monks, Buddhism contains an inherent
strain of misogyny.
Descriptions of masturbation in the Suttavibhanga reveal an explicit abhorrence of the
female anatomy. While masturbation with the hand is considered an offense, it is not equivalent
to the severity of masturbating with the mouth.22 On the surface, there appears to be no plausible
explanation for this distinction except the “taboo” nature of the latter. However, Gyatso avers
that as the “gold standard” for sex, the female is “the most likely partner for a monk, and the one
with whom the monk’s behavior is most closely regulated.”23 Thereby, the mouth is an internal
orifice like the vagina, and this resemblance is a likely explanation for the strict prohibition
against masturbation with the mouth. The Buddhist aversion for the female body runs so deeply
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that the permissibility of masturbation techniques is dictated by the horrific possibility of
replicating sex with a woman.
As evidenced by multiple passages in the Vinaya Pitaka, the vagina represents a
significant monastic concern. For Buddhist monks, the practical dimension of a woman’s body
has horrific consequences: it could produce a child and tie one down to the householder’s life. In
the Suttavibhanga, after the Buddha declares that a vagina is worse than a viper’s mouth, he tells
the monk that his broken celibacy vow had demoted him to “what is not verily dharma, upon
village dharma, upon a low dharma, upon wickedness, upon final ablution, upon secrecy.”24 The
woman’s body has enormous, terrifying power for a monk. It represents more than just a mere
threat; the “village dharma” is the antithesis to monastic life. Thus, negative representations of
women in Buddhist texts signify the projection of male anxieties onto the female body—the
originator of samsara. Buddhist male projection resonates with Douglas’s concept of the body as
the “image of society.” In the Buddhist context, the power to dismantle the monastic community
was encoded onto the female body. While these anxieties are present in monastic texts, they also
permeate into other forms of Buddhist literature.
Sexual Transformation Stories
Similar to the monastic texts, sexual transformation stories contain negativity toward the
female body and reflect male insecurities in various dimensions. These accounts appear in sutras
of the Mahayana tradition, The Great Vehicle, which developed in the first century CE.
Bodhisattvas are significant figures in Mahayana and central characters in these stories; they are
compassionate beings who embody the model state of Buddhist doctrine and vow to help others
reach awakening. Belief in the merciful nature of the bodhisattva, who cares about the well-being
of humanity, contributed to the popularity of Mahayana among the laity.
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Sexual transformation stories center on a woman renowned for her superior spiritual
abilities, and debate ensures about whether or not she is capable of buddhahood. As shown
earlier in the account of the Naga princess within the Lotus Sutra, most of these stories involve a
sexual transformation in which the protagonist swaps her female body for a male one in order to
become a bodhisattva. Because of the necessity of this transformation, bodhisattvahood—the
spiritual ideal in Mahayana—is prohibited for a woman. The sexual transformation signals a
change from the imperfect, degenerate female body to the perfect, ideal male body.
Similar to the narrative of the Naga princess, The Sutra of the Dialogue of the Girl
Candrottara depicts a female who sexually transforms into a male. In the story, an affluent man
named Vimalakirti (a notable figure in Buddhist philosophy) and his wife Vimala have a
daughter, named Candrottara, whose exceptional abilities are apparent from birth. Soon after she
is born, flowers descend from the sky, perfume scents the air, the earth shakes, and everything
she touches radiates light. Candrottara becomes interested in learning the teachings of the
Buddha so she flies through the air to meet him. When she arrives, the Buddha and several
bodhisattvas are present. After debate with the men, she preaches about the attributes of the
dharma and the futility of sexual transformation. When the Buddha predicts Candrottara’s
imminent buddhahood, she jumps into the air and transforms herself into a male without
hesitation.25 Like the Naga princess’ transformation, this pivotal moment represents the
abandonment of the female identity and proves that the male body is a requirement for the
attainment of buddahood. Other similar stories of sexual transformation, where the female
character abandons her body, occur in The Collection of Jewels and The Sutra of the Perfection
of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Verses. Similarly, in this narratives, the female body is considered
an impediment to spiritual growth.
10
An important aspect of both transformation stories is the type of female bodies involved.
In the Lotus Sutra, the “girl” is an eight-year-old naga or snake-woman, not a human woman.
Bernard Faure, in The Power of Denial: Buddhism, Purity, and Gender, mentions that the
inclusion of the naga-girl may be an attempt at literary acrobatics to avoid confronting serious
gender issues, “The naga-girl takes impressive shortcuts in her spiritual quest, becoming very
rapidly (and temporarily) a man before moving on to buddhahood—the supreme manhood. She
never really had time to really become a woman, to fully experience the female predicament.”26
By using a naga-girl instead of a human girl, the author shrewdly pivots around the gender
debate by avoiding human femininity altogether; the male is the only human gender represented
in this narrative. Also, the naga-girl’s age is peculiar. At only eight years old, she is too young to
have reached puberty. Therefore, she lacks the taint of female pollution and the ability to
produce a child, resulting in the shackling “village dharma.” Comparatively, in the story of
Candrottara, she is depicted as realizing buddhahood at very young age and possesses
supernatural powers, which imply that she is beyond an ordinary human being. In both accounts,
the girls’ ages and unhuman characteristics provide them with the ability to cross the threshold
into buddhahood without the defect of a polluted, worldly woman’s body.
Proponents of a favorable interpretation of sexual transformation stories point towards
the few narratives that depict a woman’s refusal to change her body as evidence of Buddhist
dissidence to patriarchal views. The most notable story is in the Vimalakirti Sutra, a popular
Mahayana text written in the first or second century CE, wherein a goddess interrupts a
conversation between Sariputra and Manjusri about the illusory nature of beings. Flowers begin
to fall from the sky and stick to those who are still in illusion including Sariputra, who challenges
the goddess to change her sex. The goddess cleverly answers her detractor’s request by changing
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herself into a male and changing Sariputra into a female. After she swaps herself and angry
Sariputra back into their original bodies, Vimalakirti announces that the goddess will become a
bodhisattva.27
At a glance, this narrative appears to put forth a challenge to Buddhist androcentrism.
However, unlike most transformation accounts, this particular sutra is didactic. Throughout the
story, the goddess proselytizes the Mahayana doctrine of Emptiness, and Sariputra is used as a
literary device to illustrate that all beings lack an innate nature:
Sariputra: Why don't you change your female sex?
Goddess: I have been here twelve years and have looked for the innate characteristics of
the female sex and haven’t been able to find them. How can I change them? Just as a
magician creates an illusion of a woman, if someone asks why don’t you change your
female sex, what is he asking?28
Although this sutra reveals an interesting gender dynamic, it does not equate to an account of
gender egalitarianism. The goddess is unnamed, which implies that her identity as a woman is
irrelevant. Like the other stories of sexual transformation, she is not regarded as a human woman
but a goddess. Her female identity and body are not the focal point of this narrative. If this story
was a sincere challenge to Buddhist misogyny then the goddess’ femininity would be included;
instead, the goddess and Sariputra are one-dimensional literary tools used to propagate
Mahayana teachings.
Sexual transformation stories reflect deeply rooted male anxieties about women in power.
In these narratives, the “woman” remains calm and composed while the men are frantically
trying to convince her to change her sex. Similar to the male fear of female pollution, the
terrifying possibility of a woman attaining enlightenment—being in an authoritative position—
causes male anxiety. Also, transformation stories reflect male insecurities about becoming a
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woman. In the Buddhist schema, sexuality is a fluid phenomenon; one’s body could transform in
this lifetime or the following one. A man could lose his merit if he acts or dresses like a woman,
which equates to an abandonment of masculinity. 29 Thus, masculinity is a fragile conception;
taboos and indigenous legends in the Indian subcontinent about the vagina dentata, “toothedvagina,” reflect a literal fear of castration by a woman.30 Buddhist sexual transformation stories
reinforce the belief of the male body as normative. At the same time, they call for the exclusion
of women from buddhahood and fortify masculinity from threats of women aspirants and their
putrefying, bloody bodies.
Conclusion
The Buddhist belief in the inadequacy and foulness of the female body is evidenced by a
thread of misogyny woven through the religious tradition. It is embedded into their conceptions
of the female anatomy and reveals male anxieties about the power of female bodily functions and
their own ignorance about the female anatomy. In nearly every culture, the body functions as a
blank slate to project fears and ignorance. Buddhism is no exception; the female body became a
religiously sanctioned canvas for men to project their own insecurities onto.
1
Tsugunari Kubo and Akira Yuyama, trans., The Lotus Sutra (Berkeley: Numata Center for Buddhist Translation
and Research, 2007), 193.
2
Caroline Walker Bynum, “Why All the Fuss about the Body? A Medievalist’s Perspective,” Critical Inquiry
(1995), 22.
3
Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo, (London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul, 1966), 165.
4
Ibid.
5
Thanissaro Bhikkhu, trans., “Maha-Saccaka Sutta: The Longer Discourse to Saccaka,” Access to Insight (2008),
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.036.than.html.
Thanissaro Bhikkhu, trans., “Magandiya Sutta: To Magandiya,” Access to Insight (1998),
www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.075x.than.html.
7
Ibid.
8
I.B. Horner trans., The Book of the Discipline (Vinaya-Pitaka), Vol. 1 (Suttavibhanga), (1938; reprint, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1992).
9
Janet Gyatso, “Sex,” in Critical Terms for the Study of Buddhism, ed. Donald Lopez (Chicago & London: The
University of Chicago Press, 2005), 280.
6
13
10
Serenity Young, Courtesans and Tantric Consorts: Sexualities in Buddhist Narrative, Iconography, and Ritual
(New York: Routledge Press, 2004) 179-180.
11
Ibid.
12
Takemi Momoko, trans., “Bussetsu Mokuren shokyo ketsubon kyo,” in “Menstraution Sutra Belief in Japan,”
Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 10, no. 2/3 (1983) 230.
13
Ibid.
14
Lori Meeks, “Making Sense of the Blood Bowl Sutra: Gender, Pollution, and Salvation in Buddhist Sermons from
Early Modern Japan,” Institute of Buddhist Studies, Berkeley California, April 22, 2011.
15
John Powers, A Bull of a Man: Images of Masculinity, Sex, and the Body in Buddhism, (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2009), 130-131.
16
Horner, The Book of the Discipline, 48.
17
Ibid., xxxvii.
18
Translated by Janet Gyatso in “One Plus One Makes Three: Buddhist Gender, Monasticism, and the Law of the
Non-Excluded Middle,” History of Religions 43, no. 2 (2003), 109.
19
Horner, The Book of the Discipline, 36.
20
Ibid.
21
Powers, A Bull of a Man, 72.
22
Horner, The Book of the Discipline, 55.
23
Gyatso, “Sex,” 280.
24
Horner, The Book of the Discipline, 36-37.
25
Paul, Women in Buddhism, 190-191.
26
Bernard Faure, The Power of Denial: Buddhism, Purity, and Gender, (Princeton: University of Princeton Press,
2003), 95.
27
Robert A.F. Thurman, trans., Virmalakirti Nirdesa Sutra, (The Pennsylvania State University, 1976),
www2.kenyon.edu/Depts/Religion/Fac/Adler/Reln260/Vimalakirti.htm.
28
Ibid.
29
Young, Courtesans and Consorts, 191-192.
30
Serenity Young, “Female Mutability and Male Anxiety in an Early Buddhist Legend,” Journal of the History of
Sexuality 16, no. 1 (2007), 32: http:www.jstor.org/stable/30114200.
14
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