Summary: Kate Wheeler's "Bowing, Not Scraping," in Buddhist Women on the Edge (Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 1996) 57-67.

Jessica Tipsord

Wheeler is angry about the sexist hierarchy in the Buddhist tradition and about the monks' lack of awareness of the problem. Even the Dalai Lama said "Some of these problems may be more imagined than real" when he heard Western women talk about sexism in Buddhism (58). Throughout the piece she raises many questions about why things are the way they are and whether they could be different. She makes a very good point that "if women must be excluded from purity and bliss, then the tradition betrays its own deepest truths of wisdom and compassion." (58)

Traditional Buddhism is "dominated by men in imagery, language, practices, hierarchical institutions, income, prestige, and perks" (58). The Buddha left his wife, named his infant "fetter," and didn't want to ordain women. After he was begged to ordain them he did, but he "explicitly subjugated" them to monks with additional precepts that they had to follow. He also commented that the Dharma would only last ? the time because women were ordained. Nuns are not allowed to criticize a monk and they always have to bow to a monk, even if the monk has only been ordained for a day. Why did the Buddha do that? Some say he was using skillful means, others say he couldn't treat nuns equally because laypeople would not gain faith in the Dharma, and others say that we should conclude from the records that the Buddha just didn't respect women.

The original nun's order (bhikkunis) vanished 1000 years ago everywhere except in China. Now some women travel to Taiwan to be trained and ordained. The majority of women take fewer vows, and wear robes "outside the 'real' transmission" where they are "not ordained nor ordinary" (60). They like the "freedom of indeterminacy" because it is hard to find monks and laypeople to provide the support they need to keep their vows (i.e., they cannot handle money or work). Why did the bhikkunis vanish? Perhaps, they disappeared because the laypeople and monks were tired of supporting them. Wheeler says that she heard a monk claim that it was better to donate to a male than a female.

Wheeler still respects the Buddhist ideas. She says "practice is my reason to be a Buddhist" (60). She also liked wearing the robes because she "felt freed from unwelcome male advances, curiously freer to be fully womanly" (61). When she was at the monastery she was called into her preceptor's cottage and asked to kneel before each monk and offer him his new robes. She felt a combination of tenderness and rage (nuns were not offered new robes). She also heard the translator monk make a nasty remark (i.e., 'she's nothing but a woman') about one of the sponsors of the retreat (62). So she asked "why do monks disparage women?" and the abbot replied that it did not occur because they perceive "no men and women, only impersonal body element" (62). He also said more females live in the divine realms because they are more ethical than men and they can meditate better because they are better at following instructions (62). So she asks why women are not teachers then and the abbot tells her that women are lazy, hate responsibility, and let men support them. This really makes Wheeler mad!

Wheeler fell in love with Tibetan Vajrayana teachings on the nature of the mind. She likes how the lamas moved and laughed a lot and how there are many female Buddhas and a tantric vow not to look down on women. She is working on a Ngondro which involves 100,000 prostrations and refuge prayers. She says she is "abasing myself physically in front of an odd Tibetan painting&emdash;of a man" (62-3) and thus, she mentally repaints it with women spiritual figures to console herself.

Wheeler points out that violence by an intimate male is the leading cause of death for young women, 25% are sexually abused as children, and society (e.g., advertising) encourage these crimes. She says the situation is changing, but "changing a tradition isn't easy" and even people who are well respected are criticized for giving women more rights (67). Her conclusion is that "In the case of women, the Buddha was wrong&emdash;and we have to have the courage to say so" (67).