Contemporary Buddhism, Vol. 5, No. 1, 2004

The dharma of gender

Rita M. Gross*

A classic meditation practice in Vajrayana Buddhism, called the Mahamudra
Investigations, invites the meditator to search for the nature of unfettered mind
by exploring several pithy questions. Does the mind have a color? Does the
mind have a shape? Is the mind inside the body? Outside the body? The
meditator is instructed to search diligently, exhausting all possibilities, instead
of concluding on the basis of knowledge of Buddhist doctrine that unfettered
mind could not possibly be found in any of these places. These investigations
are more like Zen koans—baffling puzzles that have no unvaryingly correct
intellectual or conceptual answer.

Here, the English word ‘mind’, generally used to translate various Tibetan

terms used in this context, does not mean the brain or the sixth consciousness,
or even the eighth consciousness. As with the Zen phrase ‘dropping body and
mind’, language is being used to point to a state beyond language. Although
meditation instructions to explore whether one can find mind anywhere may
seem different from meditation instructions to drop body and mind, I suggest
that these are two ways of expressing the same insight about where meditation
practice leads.

One pithy question, however, is not part of these Mahamudra Investigations.

Does the mind have a gender? Furthermore, it seems that this question did not
appear to be relevant to those who formulated the Investigations. Two seem-
ingly opposite reasons might explain why this question does not occur. On the
one hand, it could be contended, and often has been contended in Buddhist
traditions, that gender is obviously not relevant to discussions of unfettered
mind, making it unnecessary to investigate whether mind can be found in
gender. If the question were to arise, some might claim that it has already been
included in the question of whether mind has a shape, thus finding another way
to avoid troublesome questions about gender.

But I think it is at least as likely that the question about mind having a gender

is unasked because it was simply assumed that the person doing the investiga-
tions would be a male, or at least not someone whose life was bound up in the
traditional female gender role. The extent to which the presumed subject of
Buddhist philosophy and meditation is a male is shocking to someone with
heightened awareness of how much difference gender makes in human affairs.
I think it is quite likely that the question about whether mind has a gender is
unasked not because gender has been transcended, but because its determinative
impact on peoples’ lives is being ignored. The assumption that only men would
take on certain roles such as public teaching, a widespread practice in Tibetan
Buddhism, suggests willful ignoring, rather than transcendence of the extent to
which people attribute absolute, not relative meaning, to gender. And there is

ISSN 1463-9947 print; 1476-7953 online/04/010003-11

© 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd

DOI: 10.1080/1463994042000249580

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R. M. Gross

a huge difference between ignoring and transcending, a difference that is of
utmost importance in Buddhism.

I will suggest that gender identity and concepts about what gender entails are

among the strongest hooks for ego-clinging in most people, which means that
they become one of the more enduring bonds to samsara. Gender identity, I
would claim, is more basic for most people than identification in terms of color,
shape, or even culture, and is far more addictive. In this regard, I have always
been struck by an argument used by some Roman Catholics against the
ordination of women to the priesthood. The priest must mirror Jesus, it is
claimed, and that means the priest must have a male body. I remember one
commentator who claimed that Jesus could have been a Chinese male rather
than a Jewish male, but as a male he would still have been essentially the same
person, whereas if he had been a (Jewish) woman, he would have been an
entirely different person. I wonder how many Buddhists feel the same way
about the Buddha? After all, it is noteworthy in his rebirth stories that his
female rebirths stopped before his animal rebirths.

Many who have become certain of the view that the self has no real or

inherent existence still talk and act as if that non-existent self harbors a truly
existing gender. Such people nurture and act on many pre-conceptual, uncon-
scious, and unexamined assumptions about gender and also expect others to
conform to those assumptions. To put my claim at its starkest—I will contend,
based on my many experiences of talking about gender and Buddhism, that,
while most Buddhists do not believe in the existence of a permanent, abiding
self, their attitudes and actions nevertheless indicate that they do believe in the
real existence of gender. In other words, the self that does not inherently exist
nevertheless possesses gender that is regarded and acted upon as if it truly
existed; or at least that is the way many Buddhists talk and act, despite their
beliefs about the centrality of egolessness to a Buddhist view and way of life.
Their slogan seems to be: ‘The self does not exist, but it has gender.’ But such
a view is illogical in the extreme; if the self lacks inherent existence, no
attribute of that self, such as gender, color, or shape, could be said to have
inherent existence.

If this sounds confusing, it must be remembered that I am always using the

term ‘existence’ in its precise Buddhist meaning, which denotes not that
something appears, but that the appearing ‘something’ is unconditioned, un-
caused, and independent of its matrix; that it exists independently rather than
interdependently. The appearance of gendered individuals is not disputed; that
such appearances should be assigned automatic and invariant weight is dis-
puted. The matter is more serious because the meanings assigned to gender
almost always meant an automatic second-class existence for some people in
the worlds of practice and study. Other factors, such as intelligence and a desire
to practice dharma, were trumped by gender norms and made little difference.

Another way of talking about the same issue involves the dispute over gender

essentialism. Many systems of thought, including certain strands of feminism,
have claimed that there are invariant traits or behaviors essential to each gender.
Many traditional claims about what makes women inferior, such as their

The Dharma of Gender

5

purported emotionalism and lack of rationality, are based on such gender
essentialism. In the same way, some strands of feminism that are no longer in
favor posited a gender essentialism that elevated women above men. The claim
that women are more oriented to relationships and inherently less violent than
men was one common feminist essentialist claim. Notice that there are two
components to this way of thinking. There are invariant, essential traits for each
gender that are almost always seen as the opposites of each other. Furthermore,
most systems of gender essentialism also posit an ethical hierarchy between the
opposites, even though what traits are associated with men or women, and
which gender is viewed as ‘better’, varies from one cultural situation to another.
It is impossible to posit a gender essentialism that is not imprisoning, that does
not also involve imposing a prison of gender roles on people, which is why this
view is rejected by most feminists. This conclusion about the imprisoning
nature of gender roles would hold even in cases where it is maintained that the
different gender roles are ‘equally valued’. Traditional religions and cultures
often make this claim about gender complementarity, but usually it is just
another gloss on male dominance. Even if we could find a situation of genuine
complementarity, that would not undo the imprisoning quality gender role
assignment has on individuals.

One can easily find Buddhist texts espousing both essentialist and non-

essentialist views of gender, but that does not mean that both views are equally
cogent in expressing the fundamental Buddhist view. It only indicates how easy
it is to exempt gender from Buddhism’s usual reluctance to attribute inherent
existence to anything, how easy it is to regard gender alone among many
aspects of one’s phenomenal existence as ‘really real’. Attributing real existence
to gender is doubly problematic—on feminist grounds and on Buddhist
grounds.

The definitive Buddhist view of whether or not gender exists as anything

more than a conventional label is found in the famous ‘Goddess’ chapter of the
Vimalakirtinirdesha Sutra. In this episode, a woman—the so-called ‘God-
dess’—had been studying dharma in Vimalakirti’s palace for twelve years,
when she was challenged by Shariputra, a famous first-generation disciple of the
Buddha who is often portrayed in Mahayana scriptures as not understanding
things very well. Impressed by her level of understanding, he challenges her:
‘Why don’t you change your female sex?’ To understand his challenge in
context, it must be remembered that in many Mahayana texts, highly realized
women do change their sex to prove that mind has no gender. Skeptical male
Buddhists who had essentialized gender so much that they believed a female
body renders one incapable of realizing unfettered mind could respond to no
other demonstration of the fluidity and non-existence of gender. But the
Goddess does not buy into this logic. Instead, she says to Shariputra ‘I have
been here twelve years and have looked for the innate characteristics of the
female sex and have not been able to find them’ and challenges him about what
he could possibly mean by the innate traits of the female sex. Then she changes
Shariputra into a woman and herself into a man, whereupon she challenges him
(now her) to find her innate female traits. After she changes the befuddled

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R. M. Gross

Shariputra back into a man, he concedes that the female form does not possess
innate characteristics.

This story says it all. I know that I have a female body or shape, but that does

not really mean much. It does not mean that I must bear children, or even that
I can. It does not mean that I necessarily have a gentle, non-aggressive
demeanor, as opposed to a violent or nasty temperament. It does not even
guarantee my primary sexual orientation, which has been guessed wrong almost
as often as it has been guessed right by observers, both women and men. My
female sex is not a reliable guide to my interests and concerns. I care little for
many of the things that are supposed to interest women, but I also am interested
in some things that are generally thought to be of more interest to women than
to men. In short, although my sex may be the first fact about me that registers,
it tells people relatively little about me. Nevertheless, although my female body
does not translate into anything essential, a great deal has been projected onto
it by society, by religions, and by individuals who think that the shape of my
body reveals something intrinsically existing, something on which it is valid to
pin all sorts of meanings and limitations. Gender designations as conventional,
agreed-upon labels are harmless and somewhat useful. However, they are rarely
left as mere labels and instead become hooks upon which to attach a prison of
myriad expectations and demands.

Despite this definitive proclamation of the Goddess to Shariputra and its

irrefutably correct Buddhist logic, Buddhist texts, institutions, and individuals
are just as likely to believe in gender as a fixed, rigid, determinative, and
limiting trait as anyone else. Their allegiance to the view that there is no
permanent abiding self that is fixed, rigid, determinative, limiting, or inherently
existing in any other way does not protect them from believing and acting upon
an imputed real existence of gender. For this reason, I claim that, shocking as
it may be, Buddhist logic about egolessness or anatman, the third mark of
sentient existence according to the Buddha, has never been thoroughly and
consistently applied to gender. ‘There is no permanent abiding self, but it has
gender. Furthermore, gender has an invariant and valid hold on peoples’ lives.
It truly exists, whatever else may be said about the lack of a permanent abiding
self in doctrinal Buddhism.’ That seems to be the message and conclusion
rampant in much of the Buddhist world.

For example, the Mahayana philosopher Asanga explains why a ‘completely

perfected Buddha’ is not a woman: ‘All women are by nature full of defilement
and of weak intelligence. And not by one who is full of defilement and of weak
intelligence is completely perfected Buddhahood attained.’

1

The claim that

something has certain samsaric qualities ‘by nature’ seems very strange in a
Buddhist context, given that emptiness (Shunyata) and Buddha nature
(tathagatagarbha) are the only qualities posited as intrinsic to beings. Nor does
this statement seem to be a generalization to which there could be exceptions,
the kind of statement that might be offensive but does not totally go against the
usual Buddhist view that nothing phenomenal is self-existing. I suspect that
such claims that certain beings have specific samsaric qualities ‘by nature’
would not be made concerning anything other than gender, and also would only

The Dharma of Gender

7

be made about women, but not men. Such comments are made about individual
men, but never about all men, or about men as a class. However, it is not
difficult to find similar statements in other Buddhist texts. The sex segregation
and male dominance of traditional Buddhist institutions, which also encourage
belief in the reality of gender, are so well known that there is no necessity to
do more than remind ourselves of their existence.

As I go about my work in the Buddhist world, I cannot avoid the impression

that, while most Buddhists I encounter would not endorse Asanga’s misogynis-
tic statement, they also do not really believe the Goddess when she proves to
Shariputra that gender has no essence or nature that is self-existing. Even in the
context of discussing that very text, in the midst of making the point that
egolessness and gender essentialism are mutually incompatible, I find that
people want, desperately want, to believe that gender means something,
definitively determines something, is real in some way. They have intellectually
convinced themselves that there is no permanent abiding self, but they are
averse to applying the same logic to its gender.

Two tactics are especially common among people who want to retain some

belief in the enduring and definitive relevance of gender. The first is to appeal
to the gender symbolism so prominent in Tibetan Buddhism, or to talk about the
‘feminine principle’ as ways to avoid looking into whether a prison of gender
roles prevails in the midst of such positive female symbolism. The second is to
become angry with those who point out that Buddhism contradicts itself when
it essentializes gender in its institutions and practices, a response with which I
am all too familiar!

It never ceases to amaze me that people think one can answer questions about

how gender affects people—men and women—by appealing to ‘the feminine
principle’, which is positively evaluated and central to Tibetan Buddhism. But
the presence of a positively valued feminine principle tells us nothing about
how gendered people fare, nothing about whether they live in social systems of
gender equity and non-discrimination. People easily slip from talking about
themselves as men and women to talking about ‘feminine energy’ as if it is
something that pertains especially to women or the ‘masculine principle’ as if
it is the property of men. They seem not to realize that there is no necessary
correlation between men and the masculine principle or between women and the
feminine principle, either doctrinally or experientially. In Vajrayana Buddhism,
the symbolism associated with femininity and masculinity is fixed and precise;
it is also balanced and complementary. One simply could not say that one is
more elevated or important than the other and both are necessary to balanced,
full living. That is why it is so problematic to assume that the masculine
principle somehow pertains to men in ways that it does not pertain to women,
and vice versa. It turns liberating images of how to balance and blend our
human potentials into another version of the prison of gender roles.

It is equally problematic to presume that the presence of balanced, comple-

mentary gender symbolism means that human genderedness is dealt with
satisfactorily. Positive symbolism of femininity combined with difficult lives for
women is very common worldwide, but the fact that positive feminine symbol-

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ism does not necessarily translate into dignified lives of freedom for women
usually does not register. I remember a very early gathering at which Mary Daly
read one of her papers. This was even before she had abandoned Christianity.
Several Roman Catholic priests present asked her, with obvious frustration,
what Catholic women could possibly lack or want, given that Catholics revered
the Virgin Mary.

It is insufficient to revel in beautiful symbolism of the ‘feminine principle’

while not checking how women (or men) are faring. Are women even allowed
to emulate the strength and dignity of beings symbolizing the feminine prin-
ciple? I automatically distrust those who discuss symbolism of feminine and
masculine principles but do not make crystal clear their views on gender and
human beings. They are often oblivious to the prison of gender roles co-existing
with beautiful symbolism of the feminine.

For example, a recent book on the feminine principle in Tibetan Buddhism

claims: ‘By virtue of having a female body, a woman radiates the feminine
qualities more strongly, and it is natural for her to yearn for the masculine
qualities. Similarly, it is natural for a man to yearn for the feminine qualities.’

2

Because this kind of statement is repeated so frequently, it seems that the
statement is meant as a claim about women’s and men’s natures, not a
generalization to which there would many exceptions. Such a statement may
even be empirically true as a generalization that pertains to many people.
However, when it becomes a normative statement about how people should feel
or a metaphysical claim about some invariant ‘nature’ that is different in women
and men, it is no longer a harmless bit of folklore, but a dangerous ethical and
philosophical prison. Because talk of gender is so slippery, it is important
always to be clear on such matters. In this case, it is unclear whether
Simmer-Brown is speaking for herself or is representing the Tibetan lamas who
were her primary informants, but the absence of any critique of the gender
essentialism found in such comments is noticeable. We certainly have moved
far from the insight of the Goddess who told Shariputra that she had searched
unsuccessfully for her female nature for twelve years. Furthermore, I would
claim that appreciation of the form of emptiness, so characteristic of Vajrayana
Buddhism, is quite different from attributing inherent existence to those forms.
One cannot excuse such talk about men’s and women’s natures by appealing to
Third Turning teachings about the importance of seeing the form in emptiness.

However, programs on ‘the feminine principle’ are far more popular these

days than programs exploring Buddhism and human genderedness because they
put a spin on gender issues that is far more comforting and less stressful than
exploring gender itself. People are tired of talking about gender; it causes
discomfort, and audiences often avoid or turn on those who keep suggesting that
gender is still an issue. Direct and accurate discussion of gender leaves no hook
for ego to settle upon, whereas it is easy to feel better and more affirmed by
pleasant talk of feminine and masculine qualities. In the context of this rather
sharp critique of confusion between gender symbolism and gender as it pertains
to men and women, it must be understood that I have no quarrel with traditional
Tibetan gender symbolism and am not suggesting that we would be better off

The Dharma of Gender

9

without such symbolism. In fact, I think such symbolism is useful and inspiring.
Rather, I am objecting to the misuse of such symbolism to bolster vague beliefs
in qualities that are inherent to men or to women, and thus to reinforce rather
than undercut ego-clinging.

Reactions to those who promote awareness of gender are also telling.

Somehow, we become the culprits, the villains, rather than those who do not
question conventional gender arrangements. I could tell many stories by now,
of course, but I will focus on two. In one case, I gave a talk that, among other
things, pointed out that the consistent use of ‘he’ in common (Shambhala)
Buddhist liturgies was part of a much larger pattern of leaving women out. One
listener was amazed that she had never noticed the clear implications of this
language before, but she also was upset. ‘You spoiled it for me’, she said. In
the other case, I was seated at a table at Karme Choling during a large gathering
of senior students, talking with a man who claimed he had been eager to meet
me and said that I was not anything like he had expected. (That comment
always makes me suspicious.) Suddenly he was standing, leaning over me,
saying he had written to the Shambhala Sun, complaining that they had
published my work. He claimed it should not be published because ‘you always
reference the dharma with gender. Why do you do that!’ Clearly, he was quite
angry. Spontaneously, I did something I would never do in my own persona. I
tilted my head back, batted my eyelashes, and said in a throaty whisper,
‘Somebody’s got to do it’. The question is: who is referencing the dharma with
gender? If the dharma had not already been referenced by gender throughout
Buddhist history and in all traditional forms of Buddhism, there would be
nothing for me and other feminist critics to point out. Why do we get maligned
for shining a light on what has always been there, especially given that
traditional gender practices are highly questionable if the Buddhist view is taken
seriously?

I have often been told that I should be beyond gender, by which my critics

mean that I should look past the gender norms so evident in Buddhist thought
and institutions because they really do not mean anything anyway. But what
about the reverse? Should not people who are uncomfortable with having basic
facts and information pointed out also be challenged to go beyond gender? Even
if truly going beyond gender entails dismantling many traditional forms? It is
so illogical that those who notice facts about how gender operates in the
Buddhist context are accused of fixating on gender while those who con-
veniently ignore the same information want to be thought of as beyond gender
and unmoved by it. If they were truly beyond gender, challenges to current male
dominant gender practices would not bother them. At least they would be able
to discuss the issues without becoming defensive and needing to claim that
whatever Buddhism has done or the Buddha is purported to have said must be
good and true. Ignorance, and most especially willful ignoring, which is far
more pernicious in Buddhist terms, has nothing in common with transcendence
and equanimity. Yet it is very easy to confuse ignoring and transcending,
especially because it is comforting to one’s conventional ego to claim transcen-
dence while actually practicing ignoring. Those who insist upon and are

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R. M. Gross

attached to living their lives in accord with conventional practices regarding
gender need to examine carefully whether these habitual patterns have anything
to do with Buddhism and the life of Buddhist practice.

Furthermore, I would claim that, by and large, those who endorse gender

essentialism and thus endorse a form of ego-clinging fare much better in the
Buddhist world, including the world of Western Buddhism, than those who defy
all the institutions and generalizations dependent on gender essentialism. In this
one case, ignorance seems to be preferred over insight. Many with the power
to determine Buddhism’s future are extremely defensive on the topic of gender,
being unwilling even to discuss it, let alone concede that some common
Buddhist practices concerning gender may reinforce rather than undercut
ego-clinging.

But what about commonsense relative truth, some may be screaming by now.

Surely gender matters a lot. Surely some generalizations about women and men
make sense. Indeed, I sometimes indulge in such generalizations myself in
conversation, but I never take them too seriously or expect them to hold in all
cases. There is a huge difference between a lightly held generalization, which
may be useful for negotiating the phenomenal world, and a rigidly held doctrine
about differences between women and men that must be enforced at any cost,
even deforming individuals emotionally to make them fit gender expectations
that have been laid out for them. The issue is not whether there are such
generalizations but the rigidity and fixation with which they are held. Strong,
rigidly held opinions and a stubborn fixed mind indicate immaturity of practice
and should be tolerated at best, rather than cultivated. Why would any Buddhist
want to hang on to generalizations and traditional practices surrounding gender,
or be uncomfortable when they prove to be inaccurate or in need of change?

Indeed, why the need for gender as an immediate, easily assignable reference

point? Rather than being uncomfortable when I cannot immediately assign
gender to someone whom I see or with whom I am corresponding, I now delight
in the spaciousness and freedom of such moments. Even in the majority of cases
in which the grasping mind immediately labels a person by gender, I cultivate
the flavor of going beyond the label. Such open-ended non-grasping awareness
is much more in accord with Buddhist sensibilities and teachings than con-
stantly pigeon-holing people by their gender and then presuming a great deal
about them. Even if we are not well enough trained to hold such open
awareness, as Buddhists, we should train in that openness rather than solidifying
our reference points.

The advantages of not relying so much on gender as a reference point were

forcefully brought home to me recently while sitting in a meeting concerned
with promoting proper sensitivity to gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, and trans-
gendered people. I became somewhat impatient as I realized that if we were not
so used to seeing people first and foremost in terms of their gender and then
assuming certain behaviors on that basis, sexual orientation would not even be
an issue. Things could be so much simpler. I have also been corresponding
repeatedly with people who do not use titles and whose names do not indicate
their gender to me. It is an instructive exercise in how little we actual need to

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11

know a person’s gender in order to interact with them. It occurred to me that
the only occasion on which gender might be absolutely relevant is when
someone who is not bisexual is seeking a sexual encounter.

Instead, we live in a situation in which we are constantly bombarded with

information highlighting peoples’ genders, and, in the case of women, also
sexualizing them to an extreme degree. It is ironic that at the same time as
women’s work lives are less dictated by conventional gender roles, they are
dressed at work in ways that show off their sexual wares to an extreme that men
would never tolerate for themselves. Short, tight-fitting outfits seem almost as
essential to the successful woman as her skills, especially as she is portrayed by
the media. It does not seem appropriate for men to be able to wear non-sexually
revealing formal attire to play in a symphony orchestra, for example, while the
women playing violins next to them have their upper bodies on display. The
same is true of business meetings or proceedings in a court of law. Such attire
is problematic not only because it blatantly advertises one’s gender, but even
more so because of the extreme degree to which it sexualizes women. We
simply do not need that much information about each other’s gender and
sexuality to live successfully in the relative world. Constantly being bombarded
with extraneous information about gender and with sexually provocative attire
also make it far more difficult to remember that unfettered mind is beyond
gender.

But if mind is truly beyond gender, why make such a fuss about gender? That

is an argument I have often heard, usually from those who do not favor changes
in liturgies or institutions that would make them more gender-inclusive, gender-
free and gender-neutral. The issue of gender is rather like the issue of self or
ego in Buddhism. We are in the paradoxical situation of being burdened by our
attachment to self at the same time as we know that the burdensome self has
no inherent existence of its own. But how do we dismantle that self? Not by
ignoring it and pretending it does not exist, but by studying it very carefully.
Very few people would figure out that cherishing the non-existent self is the
cause of all suffering without being instructed in that knowledge, without
studying the Buddhist view that makes such a conclusion inevitable and without
significant practice of meditation and contemplation. To be able to forget the
self, it is first necessary to study the self, as Dogen said: ‘To study the Buddha
way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self.’

3

But what good

does it do to try to forget the self if one is always remembering gender? Indeed,
I would claim it is impossible truly to forget the self unless one also truly
forgets gender. Unfortunately, gender seems to be more remembered than
forgotten in much Buddhist practice. So what does that say about truly
forgetting the self?

Truly forgetting gender requires studying gender intensely rather than will-

fully ignoring existent gender practices that cause suffering while claiming that
gender does not matter. Because gender discriminations can and have caused so
much suffering, we must study very carefully whether we are still caught up in
fixed or rigid beliefs about gender despite our Buddhist outlook. As we have
inherited ego clinging by virtue of our karma of ceaseless habitual patterns, so

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we have inherited strong attachment to notions of gender. As we need to
overcome our attachment to ego, so we need to overcome our attachment to
gender. We should not fall prey to the common practice of proclaiming, by
actions or words, that there is no permanent abiding self, but it has gender. And
we do that every time discriminations based on gender in any way harm or limit
any being.

To study gender involves looking at all our Buddhist practices to see if they

might in fact attribute inherent existence to gender and then finding ways to
correct that attribution. Sometimes we may need to remove gendered language,
but in other cases it might be helpful to retain or add specific references to
gender.

As an example of removing gendered language, I will recount the turmoil

surrounding the translation and retranslation of a specific text. In Shambhala
Buddhism, important terma

4

texts composed in Tibetan by Chogyam Trungpa

have been used for many years in some of the meditation programs important
to that lineage. They were first translated into English in the late 1970s, before
the paradigm shift regarding the use of generic masculine pronouns had fully
transpired. Verse after verse of this much-loved and much-used text talked
about the practitioner as ‘he’. Gender stuck out like a sore thumb all over the
text; it was genuinely impossible to avoid thinking of gender when contemplat-
ing the text.

Those of us who objected to the translation were told, predictably, that we,

not the translators, were the ones with the problem, that we were being overly
sensitive and should not notice trivial things like pronouns. Theoretically,
gender was being ignored because of its irrelevance, but in actuality it loomed
large, causing suffering and alienation until it was extensively studied. Many
years and many frustrated practitioners later, it was finally conceded that the
intent of the text was not to alienate and exclude half of those who tried to take
the text to heart, and that if such alienation and grief were occurring regularly
it would be better to retranslate the text to be more in accord with its basic
intent. The new translation, which uses the plural to replace the generic pronoun
‘he’, reads beautifully. Gender truly can be forgotten when reading this text
now. It simply does not occur to anyone to wonder about gender, to wonder
whether they are truly included in the message of the text, whereas the earlier
translation required the exhausting mental gymnastics of trying to forget about
gender when it was glaringly present. Why it took so much effort to make such
a simple and obvious change is something I will never understand. That the
changes were made is evidence that if gender is studied honestly and thor-
oughly, then, eventually, it can be forgotten.

In this case, one could truly forget gender by taking out gender-specific

language and replacing it with gender-inclusive language. But one does not
need always to remove all references to gender. Gender references can also be
used to include and comfort. I am thinking of a practice common in Tibetan
Vajrayana liturgies in which certain beings, such as bodhisattvas or yidams, are
explicitly listed as ‘male and female bodhisattvas’, and so on. They could just
be listed without the adjectives ‘male’ and ‘female’ but rather unusually I find

The Dharma of Gender

13

this practice quite comforting. In a world that has often left me out because of
my gender, it is as if those who write liturgies want to make it crystal clear that
I am not being left out. That too is a way of studying gender so as to be able
to forget it.

But short cuts, like trying to ignore the presence of gender or claiming that

ignoring is the method for going beyond gender, only make things worse. It is
like trying to forget the self while constantly feeding it. First we must study
gender very carefully so that we can figure out how to forget it rather
strengthening it further. We must always be alert that we are not attempting to
forget the self while at the same time we are strengthening the hold that gender
has on us, for if we do that we will never forget the self either. I fear that it
is rather easy to practice the slogan ‘the self does not exist but it has gender’
and that it is done far more frequently than we would like to know.

Notes

1

Quoted in Rita M. Gross. 1993. Buddhism after Patriarchy: A Feminist History,
Analysis and Reconstruction of Buddhism, Albany, NY: State University of New
York Press, p. 61.

2

Simmer-Brown, Judith. 2001. Dakini’s Warm Breath: The Feminine Principle in
Tibetan Buddhism, Boston and London: Shambhala, p. 216.

3

Tanahashi, Kazuaki. 1985. Moon in a Dewdrop: Writings of Zen Master Dogen, San
Francisco: North Point Press, p. 70.

4

‘Terma’ is the term applied to certain texts that are said to have been hidden by great
teachers of the past to be discovered in the future at the point in time when they
would be needed. The practice of ‘discovering’ terma is relatively common in
Tibetan Buddhism.

*

Correspondence address: Rita M. Gross, 126 Gilbert Avenue, Eau Claire, WI 54701,
USA.