WOMEN--III
'For women are very tender-hearted.'
_Wethandaya._
'You know, thakin,' said a man to me, 'that we say sometimes that women
cannot attain unto the great deliverance, that only men will come there.
We think that a woman must be born again as a man before she can enter
upon the way that leads to heaven.'
'Why should that be so?' I asked. 'I have looked at the life of the
Buddha, I have read the sacred books, and I can find nothing about it.
What makes you think that?'
He explained it in this way: 'Before a soul can attain deliverance it
must renounce the world, it must have purified itself by wisdom and
meditation from all the lust of the flesh. Only those who have done this
can enter into the Great Peace. Many men do this. The country is full of
monks, men who have left the world, and are trying to follow in the path
of the great teacher. Not all these will immediately attain to heaven,
for purification is a very long process; but they have entered into the
path, they have seen the light, if it be even a long way off yet. They
know whither they would go. But women, see how few become nuns! Only
those who have suffered such shipwreck in life that this world holds
nothing more for them worth having become nuns. And they are very few.
For a hundred monks there is not one nun. Women are too attached to
their home, to their fathers, their husbands, their children, to enter
into the holy life; and, therefore, how shall they come to heaven except
they return as men? Our teacher says nothing about it, but we have eyes,
and we can see.'
All this is true. Women have no desire for the holy life. They cannot
tear themselves away from their home-life. If their passions are less
than those of men, they have even less command over them than men have.
Only the profoundest despair will drive a woman to a renunciation of the
world. If on an average their lives are purer than those of men, they
cannot rise to the heights to which men can. How many monks there
are--how few nuns! Not one to a hundred.
Yet in some ways women are far more religious than men. If you go to the
golden pagoda on the hilltop and count the people kneeling there doing
honour to the teacher, you will find they are nearly all women. If you
go to the rest-houses by the monastery, where the monks recite the law
on Sundays, you will find that the congregations are nearly all women.
If you visit the monastery without the gate, you will see many visitors
bringing little presents, and they will be women.
'Thakin, many men do not care for religion at all, but when a man does
do so, he takes it very seriously. He follows it out to the end. He
becomes a monk, and surrenders the whole world. But with women it is
different. Many women, nearly all women, will like religion, and none
will take it seriously. We mix it up with our home-life, and our
affections, and our worldly doings; for we like a little of everything.'
So said a woman to me.
Is this always true? I do not know, but it is very true in Burma. Nearly
all the women are religious, they like to go to the monastery and hear
the law, they like to give presents to the monks, they like to visit the
pagoda and adore Gaudama the Buddha. I am sure that if it were not for
their influence the laws against taking life and against intoxicants
would not be observed as stringently as they are. So far they will go.
As far as they can use the precepts of religion and retain their
home-life they will do so; as it was with Yathodaya so long ago, so it
is now. But when religion calls them and says, 'Come away from the
world, leave all that you love, all that your heart holds good, for it
is naught; see the light, and prepare your soul for peace,' they hold
back. This they cannot do; it is far beyond them. 'Thakin, we _cannot do
so_. It would seem to us terrible,' that is what they say.
A man who renounces the world is called 'the great glory,' but not so a
woman.
I have said that the Buddhist religion holds men and women as equal. If
women can observe its laws as men do, it is surely their own fault if
they be held the less worthy.
Women themselves admit this. They honour a man greatly who becomes a
monk, not so a nun. Nuns have but little consideration. And why? Because
what is good for a man is not good for a woman; and if, indeed,
renunciation of the world be the only path to the Great Peace, then
surely it must be true that women must be born again.