TANTRIC BUDDHISM and SEXUALITY: a Conversation with two Feminists

What happens when an enlightened philosophy or religion must coexist within a far less enlightened culture? “With freedom and justice for all” could be characterized as the mantra of the American ideal but somewhere it degenerates into the common chant “I wanna piece-a-that,” and culture gives the lion’s share of the responsibility, respect, and rewards to the men. “Om mane padme hum” teaches a basic equality, the eternal balance of jewel and lotus, action and wisdom, man and woman, ignorance and the possibility of awakening. Buddhism is a philosophy of self realization, not social action, but can those on the road to realization ignore the fact that temporal aspects of our road are in such need of repair that we can no longer assume that they will change on their own without individual effort and social coercion? Feminist Buddhist scholars such as Anne Klein (Meeting the Great Bliss Queen, Beacon Press 1994) and Miranda Shaw (Passionate Enlightenment, Princeton University Press, 1994) have recently explored and detailed Buddhist texts and traditions which revere and celebrate female energy in all its forms.

Still, as the ideal attracts, reality bites. In her scathing contemporary review of life in a real Ladhaki Buddhist nunnery (Servants of the Buddha, Pilgrim Press, 1994) anthropologist Anne Grimshaw reveals a hard life of unceasing labor punctuated by constant demands from a privileged male hierarchy of a most unenlightened sort.

The search for community and equality has nurtured feminist activity among American Buddhists exemplified by the Tara Mandala retreat center in Pagosa Springs, Colorado.

In a striking example of another route, scholar and ecological planner Susan Murcott (The Earliest Buddhist Women, Parallax Press, 1992) lives a fulfilling life planning wetland water purification projects from her office, Room 108, at MIT. Don’t let the number mislead you. Dr. Murcott, cofounder of Hawaii’s well known Diamond Sangha and author of a book on early Buddhist bhikshunis, has left the sangha completely. “Buddhism will always be a vestigial group in America," she now says, and she’s out of it. Murcott typifies the strong woman who found the Buddhist structure too sexist and dogmatic and had to leave.

Cambridge is an unusual place. Our Zen Center is run by a Western woman “Abbot”, (though not “Abbess”), the Dzogchen Center by a male lama of Jewish descent, the New Kadampas are led by a mulatto British nun, while the Western Buddhist Order is represented by a white Englishman. These issues tugged at my mind as I accompanied two unusually skilled and articulate feminists to a fund-raising slide show in Cambridge for noted Buddhist author and feminist, Tsultrim Allione (Women of Wisdom, Arkana, 1984), to promote her Colorado retreat center.

Susan E. Keller, Professor of Law at Western States University in Fullerton, California is a legal scholar with a strong interest in feminism and gender related issues. She has published several pieces on related subjects, the most recent being a scholarly monograph in the Georgetown Law Review entitled “Viewing and Doing: Complicating Pornography’s Meaning”, an exploration of feminist issues of degradation in confrontation with cultural and personal guarantees of free expression. Irma E. Bickerstaff, also a Harvard graduate, earned her degree a course at a time as she held down a series of jobs, becoming eventually a real estate broker, a mother of two, and finally a single mother of two. A veteran of both Woodstocks, the second with both her children, Ms. Bickerstaff has been engaged in meditative practice since the 1970’s. After her introduction to Tibetan Buddhism and a series of higher initiations, including the Kalachackra with H.H. the Dalai Lama, she began a more thorough examination of tantric scholarship and practice. In 1994 she founded the American Academy of Tantric Studies to promote interest in the more serious aspects of practice now that the word “tantra” seemed to be used in any magazine to promote better sex through New Age mysteries.

After the presentation, I invited them to reminisce over some tea and delve a bit into the issues of women in America and women in Buddhism. As we poured the tea, the conversation began to center around the way that Western feminism and Buddhist feminism approach the concept of equality. Irma Bickerstaff had been living in Cambridge at the same time Susan Keller was at Harvard so they began to compare notes.

CyberSangha: Do you think projects, such as Tara Mandala, are going to have any effect on the practice for Buddhism in America, in terms of its effect on men?

Irma: I think it might get more women into it because we’re besieged by so many pressures all the time that it’s nice to get away and it would encourage the study of the Tibetan techniques. That would strengthen their minds, if you use it as a retreat, and not as a year round living situation, unless, of course, you’re running the place. It could be a good thing.

Susan: When you say that the Buddhist texts are sexist, what do you mean?

Irma: I mean that there are many passages about women and their duties and their roles. The vows for Buddhist nuns for example have about a hundred more rules than those for Buddhist monks.

CyberSangha: A lot of that, of course, comes from what the monks and religious writers felt was the domestic trap of the household. When you have to feed a growing family, there’s precious little time for religious activities.

Irma: Believe it. Try meditating with two kids. Brother, it’s murder sometimes.

CyberSangha: But is paying serious bucks to camp out in Colorado and calm the mind by gazing at beautiful scenery at a Tara theme-park a realistic alternative? Buddhism does suggest a break with society, however. Maybe you just have to get away sometimes.

Irma: That’s what I was saying, that we as women have to get out of the power structure to be able to use it. You see, as a single mother with a little brokerage, I can’t ask Big Daddy for anything because I’m working for myself. So I have more control over my situation, you see. But you have to be able to take the responsibility yourself to do that. If you have to ask for power you’ve already surrendered it.

Susan: I can see that.

Irma: And that’s the liberation. It bothers a lot of guys. They get really challenged by it because they realize that the macho things they do to attract women aren’t really going to work. There is a tradition in Tantric Buddhism, at least, which celebrates the “Vajra Yogini”. You should check out the book by Miranda Shaw. The Vajra Yogini is always outside the system. She chooses her path, she eats meat, she selects her own consorts, and its all from outside the system. She’s not a woman given power by men; she’s a woman with her own power. If you want to be modern about it, that’s the role I see for myself. I’m a Buddhist, I take care of my kids, I take care of my work, and I like my roast beef and gin. There isn’t a lama in town who has a complaint.

Susan: In Western feminism, there’s one strong strand that favors this sort of separatist ideology, maybe not as an ideology, perhaps sometimes as a strategy, and it seem that you’re almost talking about it in terms of a strategy.

Irma: It’s got to be a strategy because you can’t afford to support an ideology if you’re compromising it in your life.

Susan: One of the problems with that ideology, for me, is it suggests that a separatist ideology goes back to identities between male and female, and it suggests that men and women are completely different from one another. I’m not sure in my own mind how much a separatist ideology espoused by women differs from patriarchal texts that say women are X, Y, Or Z.

Irma: But it’s run by men, don’t you see? And if you’re a woman and you’re working in a monastery you’re not meditating, you’re not reading texts. Maybe in monasteries run by enlightened Western women, but even today women in real Asian monasteries have a hard time. It’s all male dominated. They’re cleaning pots and pans.

CyberSangha: Could you say that Buddhism in America, that is Buddhism as practiced by Americans of Western descent, has attracted more independent women perhaps than it has in other countries? Could it have an effect on women in the United States, or Buddhist women worldwide?

Susan: I have an analogy in law. Some people see law as a very male dominated field, and there are feminists that argue that the more women who become lawyers the more the law itself is going to change . That comes from a premise in keeping with some of the things you’ve spoken about in regards to Buddhism, that women have some intrinsic quality, according to these theories, that are different from the intrinsic qualities that men have. Therefore, even though the law is supposed to apply to both men and women equally, if it reflects a patriarchal or male dominate sensibility, the influx of more female lawyers is going to change that.

Other feminists disagree and say that men and women are not intrinsically different from one another but that lawyers are trained to be different from other people (much laughter) and that when women become lawyers, they become lawyers just like men unless they choose to be different. It’s not really a gender issue but a legal culture issue. I suppose the same sort of possibilities occur in Buddhism.

Irma: Yes.

Susan: And if more women like Tsultrim Allione get involved, because they are women they might change the base of Buddhism, but if they just become part of the Buddhist hierarchy, it may just be the same.

CyberSangha: That’s an interesting way to look at it, that humans of either sex can be either seduced by the power structure, which is inherently male, or can modify it by letting whatever difference there are between the sexes come through. In America we have a male dominated hierarchy, but we have more women seeking equality in Buddhist practice, more so than in other countries practicing a more traditional Buddhism. Does that mean a better world Buddhism, or a degenerate Western-style Buddhism where women assume more leadership roles? Is it a new beginning?

Irma: I think it’s got to be a new direction because I can’t stand all the laws they put down in the texts. They have rules about this, rules about that, about food, and when you should eat, and sleep, and so on.

Susan: So that it’s masculine because it seems to be so rule-oriented? Is that a male-female difference? Or is it an Eastern-Western difference? Or is it a little of both.

Irma: This returns to the point where Miranda Shaw says yoginis tended to be women of the lower classes where they didn’t have to behave in a certain way as they would if they were in positions in the male hierarchy. If you’re part of the dominant culture, it’s usually sexist and you’ve bought in. Because you were part of that scene. So that the only people who are free are at the top and the bottom.

CyberSangha: Middle class morality has always been sexist; the upper classes had a different ethic entirely. The Boston Brahmins used to quote Mrs. Campbell, “You can do anything you like as long as you don’t do it in the street and scare the horses.” Those yoginis (female practitioners, the equivalent of a yogi) could really get away with it because they were outside.

Irma: So, you see I’m a practitioner and I guess I really kind of fit that model because I’m not really keeping some of the standard precepts of Buddhism. That’s just what they say they are. Check out the book. They seem to break every rule of those things that a woman should do.

CyberSangha: There are yogas which are less extreme. Bhakti, for instance, or hatha yoga; the kria and carya yogas as well. Most yogic techniques are basic meditative exercises and practices, but higher levels of yoga tantra require sexual imagery and actual practice. The idea is to maintain a mind of compassion and clarity even while undergoing extremes of physical and mental stimulation which reduce most men and women to a more animalistic states.

Susan: It strikes me that a real important grounding is that there is an intrinsic difference between male and female. Is this true?

Irma: Yes

Susan: In comparing Buddhist philosophy with Western philosophy, one of the predominant Western versions of feminism, liberal feminism, the group that basically got most of the women’s rights court victories in legislation in the seventies, has a different viewpoint. It’s very much a philosophy of women as the same as men. And that to the extent that they’re different, it shouldn’t bother us.

Irma: I never bought into that.

Susan: But that was the philosophy put forward in the courts and it’s still the philosophy that’s held by many, although it’s created two kinds of backlash. One kind is a conservative backlash that says “That’s ridiculous! Women and men are different from one another and therefore we’re going to reject `equal rights.'" The other perspective, the more feminist perspective, says “No. Women are different from men but just as good in their differences. It’s just as important to give them equal rights. Sometimes you may have to give them something different or special like pregnancy benefits or something like that because women are different from men.”

CyberSangha: I think that sounds more like the different-but-equal ideals promulgated by the tantric teachings.

Susan: There’s a third perspective, which is more where I’m coming from, which tries to combine the virtues of the first two. The first is too broad, I think, and the second one strikes me as being too rigid. The first, that suggests there is so much similarity doesn’t seem quite right because I see differences all the time. The second, which suggests that there are rigid differences between men and women seems too restrictive to me because I can summon all these masculine aspects in myself while I can respond to feminine aspect in men that I know. I worry about laws, because that’s my job, that are too willing to rest on an assumption that men and women are different from each other. I don’t know how tantric philosophy or Buddhist philosophy addresses that level of concern.

Irma: In tantric philosophy you are both.

Susan: You mean each person is both?

Irma: Each person is both in that they have elements of the different types of male and female energies. The yoginis are a law unto themselves, liberated, because they’re not bound by the regular laws that govern the rest. They maintain the balance internally.

CyberSangha: Many yogis were exclusively with women who were, or were not, themselves practitioners. The intensity of higher tantric practice, and the way it tends to bond people sexually meant in most cases those who were practicing the sexual tantras were in fact married to each other. Even the famous tantric yoginis of yore often ended up with one guy; it wasn’t all that different except that the two understood the purpose of that balance. Tantric practice involves purifying actions which are seen as causes for downfall, mainly prohibitions of the Brahmanic society, such as eating meat or drinking alcohol.

Susan: So part of the religious experience is to break the taboos?

CyberSangha: Absolutely!

Susan: Why how wonderful! I like that.

CyberSangha: You prove your spirituality, your motivation, is guiding your actions and therefore purifies them in practices that lead toward, not away, from enlightenment.

Susan: Oh how great! It’s like having a Jewish religious experience by going out and having a bacon cheeseburger.

CyberSangha: Exactly, because it bring the whole issue of what dietary laws are about, what being Jewish is, right in your face. What are we really doing?

Susan: I like this a lot, but I want to return to a point that Irma made that sounds like there is a philosophy of gender difference, but that gender is not necessarily tied to the anatomical sex of the individuals.

Irma: The duality of gender?

Susan: It not necessarily being hooked on to male or female.

Irma: It’s a metaphysical thing. There are two types of energy that we’re made up of, and we have to have half of each.

Susan: In some ways it seems that there is almost an androgynous, or hermaphroditic metaphoric quality to it.

Irma: Yes, but there’s a respect for the differences as well, understanding that the differences are different.

Susan: Yes, but cultural feminism tries to undo that by saying “Yes there are differences, but women are just as good, if not better” but it’s not the difference in the way that Irma’s describing it, that is ““women,” people with vaginas and breasts,” are, “X,” they’re more relationship oriented, they’re softer, this or that, and that’s a good thing, whereas “men,” people with penises, are more aggressive and individualistic. However, it seems that what Irma is saying is that both women, people with vaginas, and men, people with penises, both have aspects of male and female gender within them.

Irma: I’m saying that it’s an energy thing. We have to have half and half, it’s like a chromosome.

Susan: But a woman would have both male and female energy?

Irma: Yes, yes, but the forms are different. Body-wise we’re different too.

Susan: But that is philosophically different both from cultural feminism and from patriarchy.

CyberSangha: Female energy is generally associated with wisdom, male with action.

Susan: But is it women, meaning people with vaginas, or is it associated with “femaleness”?

CyberSangha: Very specifically men and women, the union of wisdom with action that makes either one meaningful. It’s really quite clever philosophically.

Irma: It’s got to be equal. It isn’t something you can do to someone, it something you do with someone. In unison, with your visualizations and so on, so the power issue is absolutely equal, at least at that one point in time, for at least two people in the universe.

Susan: And that’s another important point because it strikes me that Buddhism, at least tantric Buddhism, seems to have a strong theory of sexual equality.

Irma: Yes, but the Buddhist “church”, if you want to call it a church, is hierarchical. It’s male-dominated and it’s (whispering) misogynist.

Susan: Don’t whisper. Say it louder. (Laughter).

Irma: It’s MISOGYNIST! (Laughter). But the Catholic Church was terrible with women too.

Susan: Clearly, sexuality in Western culture is such an incredibly difficult issue, I mean one of the ethics about sexuality in Western culture is “Don’t talk about it at all, it doesn’t exist”. Another is “Missionary position, get it over with quick, and make babies.”

Irma: How about the dangerous female? I spend a lot of time listening to music. There are plenty of women taking a lot of roles, especially in male fantasies.

Susan: Feminism is a million different things, but one strand of Western feminism has a very unhappy view of sexuality at least as it applies to women. It’s the feminism that motivates the antipornography ordinances, that suggests that it is within sexuality that women are hurt, particularly heterosexuality, and that heterosexuality is intrinsically a situation of unequal power in which men have more power.

Irma: Yes.

Susan: It almost suggest that there is nothing within heterosexual sexuality in which women can have equal power, and it strikes me that your description of sexuality within the Buddhist tradition has a much, a much...

Irma: Friendlier?

Susan: Friendlier, that’s a good word.

Irma: A friendlier approach, yes.

Susan: And a vision, at least, whether it’s practiced in reality or not, at least a theory by which a woman can have equal power in a heterosexual scenario.

Irma: Oh yes. There is a lot of the man serving the woman instead of the other way around which is the reality all the rest of the time.

Susan: The philosophy of heterosexuality that you describe is really a feminist one, and it’s very optimistic because it’s suggests that sexuality, that is heterosexuality, is an arena in which women can assume equal power.

Irma: If you can’t have it equally, it’s not good for anyone. And you know, they just don’t get it, that they don’t have to use the games and these power plays to rule you when I think probably the biggest thing for women is tenderness, and if they can show this female-type emotion it's just, good, it’s very good. Why can’t these guys just let go?

Susan: I mean, is this possibility fulfilled or is it just theoretical? Those who practice. Do they live up to the theory?

Irma: People are people, they’re all going to quarrel, bumble, have falling outs. It takes work. But if you’ve taken these vows, and practice, you have to consider them.

Susan: It strikes me that especially if you’re an American Buddhist you have the Buddhist philosophy, but you’ve also got American culture, both affecting you.

Irma: If you quarrel, you can say, oh-oh, we’ve done a root downfall, we must purify ourselves. That can help get people back on track, really, you know, it’s a commitment to the practice too, so even if they’re feeling lousy, they can feel better about each other. It sort of reconciles differences, the old kiss and make up. It works for everyone. But I guess you know the only way that a woman can be equal is to assume it from the inside, to just take it. You will never be given equality if you just ask. If you do, you’ve given away your power already.

Susan: I think that’s absolutely right. One thing I don’t like about the philosophy that suggests that sexuality is an arena of inherent inequality for women is that it paints women too much as victims that have no cause for redress. The feminism that I prefer suggests that women can always find an opportunity to seek equality, not to minimize the many situations in which men really do have power over women, but I want a philosophy, as a woman, the suggests that I can make concrete changes in my circumstance, that suggests that I can change my situation by changing the relationship I’m in, by taking steps myself, that inequality is not only something that’s being done “to” me, because if it’s being done ”to” me I have to wait for the person who’s doing it to un-do it. If I’m part of it, at least I can undo it partially myself. That seems in line with what you’re saying as well.

CyberSangha:. In the Western attempts to equalize a cultural power imbalance, feminism seeks to use the male concept of action, and uses the law to win by legislation rights which have been culturally denied. Buddhism, systematic as ever, has no power-versus-power, more of that “parasamgate” of the Heart Sutra where in getting outside your frame of reference, you can get the entire thing into proper perspective and see your place in it.

Susan: This is closer to my "Goldilocks” presentation in which I say, “Well, this chair is too hard,” or “This chair is too soft,” but “This chair is just right.” And so my “Just Right” position is not as hard as the first one, or as soft as the second one. It’s more in-between. It takes the virtues of the first, suggesting that in many respects men and women are very much like each other, that there are many ways in which they have identical traits, but there are some ways, whether cultural or biological, in fact many ways, in which there are differences between men and women. Those have to be acknowledged, so we may have to develop a philosophy that recognizes both the existence of gender difference as a cultural phenomena, whether we like it or not, and the fact that these gender roles, these gender differences are not necessarily tied to sexual anatomy. So my goal is not to undermine gender difference, but to dis-anchor gender difference from gender anatomy. If each person is acknowledged to have both sorts of energy, tantric Buddhism may be addressing this in a different and interesting way.

CyberSangha: We all have to get the laundry done. In the Buddhist or the Eastern perspective you have to know which you are to begin with, and wisdom comes with finding just how well you can do the fit. Equality is the result of understanding, of waking up, budh in the West, there remains a sense of an appeal to a hierarchical God, whether personified as the legal system or in the form of an actual lawgiver, with the power required to offset power acquired and held illegitimately by one sex due to outdated cultural habits. I’m glad we’ve got some women working on both sides of this one.

Irma: Bodhi, svaha!

Susan: What’s that?

Irma: It means “Wake up and rejoice!”

Susan: Lets hope they do. Men need a wake up call, but I never heard it in Sanskrit before.

CyberSangha: That’s a genetic idiosyncrasy of Asian philosophy. More tea?