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Talk Notes
“Even as a mother at the risk of her life watches over and protect her only child so with a boundless mind should one cherish all living things.” Metta Sutta
5 years ago, Nomon Tim asked me to consider a woman ancestor for my Shuso studies. That felt out of range and not appropriate with my white, aged, male history, so instead I chose Song of Grass Roof Hermitage by Shi-Tou.
Comfortable, Chinese, male and venerable. I left the female ancestors aside, so many male counterparts to focus on. Then, this spring Nomon suggested we senior students investigate our female ancestor in our spring dharma talks. I re-opened some of the texts I had initially considered when first asked. Tonight I will briefly investigate Kisagotami, a first generation wandering, rough clothed nun and then delve more deeply into the life and practice of Patacara. She, with Upali, an early male monk, were recognized by Buddha as “proficient in practice” of the rules of monastic life (“Vinaya”). Her exemplary observation and recitation of practice set the stage for our practice today. I hear her harmony when we chant the Refuges as if we are with the Buddha and his students under a banyan tree in the Ganges floodplain forest.
My first exploration in this investigation was the Therigatha, Poems of the First Buddhist Women. These Pali texts were transcribed on palm leaves and collected about 350 years after Buddha’s passing. In our culture, it’s hard to think of a poem in our oraltradition (or lack thereof) surviving intact from about 1700. These and the Theragatha (early poems by male followers) are now considered “canonical’ or basic texts of the early phases of Buddhism. As I looked over the scholarly Harvard translations; Weingast’s The First Free Women: Poems of early Buddhist Nuns, and Songs of the Sons and Daughters of Buddha, contemporary translations by Anne Waldman and Andrew Scelling, I seemed drawn to the stories of Kisagotami and Patacara, stories and teachings that are both based on terrible losses and which, in the mysteries of how traditions and teachings come forward to us, curiously intertwine, diverge and form the basis of numerous commentaries and cultural variances from Tibet, China and regions of India. I claim no scholarly background or expertise in these things, so what I offer you tonight is a momentary scan of some available materials gleaned from the above sources, the internet and two primary texts: Wendy Garling’s Stars at Dawn, Forgotten Stories of Women in the Buddha’s Life; and Alice Collet’s deeply researched “Lives of Early Buddhist Nuns, Biographies as History.” Our practice spans four cultures and more than 2,500 years. It’s sometimes hard to recall how the women I will focus on tonight lived and practiced their newly found beliefs and the physical hardships they endured. India at the time of the Buddha was a fiercely patriarchal, hierarchical and relatively wealthy society (for the lucky ones) where a single women, not owned by or in a relationship with a man, or distinguished by some culturally regarded courtesan capacities, was considered equal to or less than a prostitute. Many of the Therigatha poems reflect both the disgust and despair women felt about their lives and their bodies and the utter fear they lived in because of their status. To be free was also to be vulnerable to rape, abuse or simply abandonment.
There were no temples, monasteries or shelters. Practice took place in the forest, under trees, in crude huts, in the companionship, if fortunate, with other followers of the buddha (or another of the multiple philosopher/ teachers of the time). From today’s perspectives, there was nothing romantic or enticing about walking away from your defined life and becoming a wandering monastic. But it also speaks to the deep power and attraction of a way of life no longer dependent on desire and material goods but focused on meditation and a fundamental recognition of the impermanence of all things, including the lives of our loved ones and family.
The familiar story of Kisagotami and the Mustard Seed, as related by Kanho Chris in her talk in February, has a number of fascinating complexities, among which are totally different stories. In one, she is a wealthy woman during Siddhartha’s time who stands on a high balcony and rejects 500 suitors, all dressed in their finest garments, in favor or plainly clothed future Buddha. In a version of this story, their child is Ananda, who becomes Buddha’s dependable scribe. This “Porch Story” is a favorite tale. In another twist, in some commentary versions to the Canon, she morphs into Patacara. (I will tell that story in a few moments). Both stories, as you will hear, speak to the mother’s intense love for her children, to the universality of grief and death, the undeniable reality of impermanence, and to the power of practice as revealed by the Buddha to each of these two afflicted women: that in this world of suffering, the world we live in through our human form, with all of its sorrows (and joys) there is a path that frees us from grieving, aging, suffering and illness.
So, let me begin with a contemporary translation of Kisa-Gotami’s story as reminder of this universal tale, evidently transformed into many other culture’s moral tales, and as a way to open up the complex story of Patacara.
Kisa gotami and the Mustard seed
Born into a poor family Kisa Gotami was named “lean Gotami” because of the frailness of her body. When she married they chided her as nobody's daughter. When she bore her son they finally paid her respect. But the boy died young. He'd just turned old enough to run and play and Kisha went insane with grief. A wild thought came to her. They will try to take my child and expose him so she lifted his corpse upon her hip and went from door to door begging. “give medicine for my child.” Medicine, crazy woman, what for? was the response. She was out of touch. Someone finally took pity and sent her to the Buddha. He glimpsed the promise in her and instructed “go, go enter the town and collect a little mustard seed from any house where no one has died.” She went from house to house but at each one someone had died. The truth dawned. This will be the situation in the whole town. She finally sought a charnel ground to place her dead child and spoke;
No village law
no city law merely
no law for this clan or that one alone
for the whole world for the gods even
ALL IS IMPERMANENT
this is the truth.
The Buddha sked: “Gotami, did you collect the mustard seed?”
She answered “this is the work of the little mustard seed” and requested ordination. She was proclaimed first among wearers of the rough raiment (“dust heap robes”)
Reflecting later she sang:
Excellent to have wise noble friends
One should know a few things
It helps your pain (dukkha)
But one should understand how pain arises
how it ceases
The eightfold path the four noble truths
Mark the sorrow mark how it comes
Being a woman is painful
Miserable sharing a home with hostile wives
miserable giving birth and bitter pain
Some cut their own throats
More squeamish women take poison
I saw it -- like others -- my husband die
two sons dead
and mother, father, brother
cremated on the funeral pyre
Miserable a whole family destroyed!
Tears shed for 1000 lifetimes
Watched my babes flesh devoured by dogs, jackals, and tigers
In the charnel ground.
But I survived
quenched desire
saw the teachings as a mirror
held up to show me my crazy mind
now healed
the poison darts extracted from my heart
all is done and done
by me
the theri Kisa Gotami
saw herself in the mirror
and witnessed these things.
So here, in these final stanzas, tales and scripture starts to interfold. Kisama Gotano’s story is classic: a mother loses her only child and suffers inconsolable grief and sorrow. Where then do these other relatives (brother, husband, father and mother) just referenced arise? This is the other story, the story of Patacara, a tale of loss and suffering so profound it is hard to imagine. While Kisa Gotami became a mendicant monk, Patacara becomes a paragon of practice. Here is her tale. Bear with me, this is hard to hear.
Roopwati was the most beautiful young woman in Saravatthi, the daughter of a wealthy merchant. When she was 16, her parents secured her on the top floor of a 7-story tower, surrounded by guards, to keep her from the many interested young men. In spite of this, she fell in love and seduced a family servant. When her parents arranged her marriage to a social equal, she and her lover eloped. With a few jewels, they went to a small village many miles away where they farmed and had a small grass hut.
She became pregnant and begged her husband to go visit her parents’ house. He kept putting off going because he knew they would torture or kill him. She then decided to go by herself but her husband found her gone and followed her. She wouldn't return with him. But before they arrived at her parents’ house she began to have birth pangs, so they went back to their hut in the village. She became pregnant again. Her husband again refused to take her to her parents’ home. She went off, again, carrying her older child, and her husband followed. Then an unseasonable thunderstorm struck with incessant rain. Her birth pangs began, so she asked her husband to find some shelter.
The husband chopped down saplings to make a crude shelter. As he labored, a cobra snake bit him and killed him, instantly. Through the stormy night she waited for his return, suffering birth pains and gave birth to their second son. Both new born and first born cried through the stormy night, protected by their mother. In the morning, she found her dead husband and blamed herself for his death. Distraught, she continued towards her parents’ home only to be confronted with the raging Aciravati River. Too weak to carry both children through the torrent, the carried the newborn across and went back for the elder child. While midstream, she saw an eagle swoop down and grab the newborn. The older child heard her cries and thought she was signaling him to come to her. He was immediately swept away by the current.
Wailing and lamenting, half crazed by the loss in a few hours of her husband and both sons, she continued down the road. Nearing Saravatthi, she met a traveler coming from the city. When she asked about her family, the traveler refused to answer but, pressed by Patacara, he told her the bad news. Her parents house had collapsed in the storm and even now, her mother, father and brother’s bodies were being cremated. The smoke was visible from the road.
With this last horrific news she lost her mind, her grief too much to bear. She tore off her clothes, wandered around weeping and wailing, not knowing what she was doing or where she was going. Everywhere people pelted her with stones and rubbish and chased her out of the way, a crazy, ostracized, naked woman running around Saravatthi. They called her Patacara or “cloth wanderer” for she wandered about without a cloth for protection.
She wandered this way naked and mad for many days until she encountered the Buddha’s gathering at the Jeta Grove. The Dhammapada commentary credits the Buddha’s omniscience, revealing that in her past live, during the time of Padumuttata Buddha, she had resolved to become a nun, well versed in the Law. The Buddha’s disciples tried to protect him from this mad woman but, instead, he welcomes her.
Different accounts have him offering various counsel:
“Sister, regain your senses,” at which point she regains her senses, becomes aware of her nudity, and is clothed by a bystander. In another version (from the Apadana), the Buddha says, “Daughter, do not mourn: be confident, seek yourself. Why do you grieve uselessly? Neither children nor a father nor any relative are a shelter. Relatives are no protection for one who is affected by death.” The commentaries add a second verse: “Knowing this matter, a wise person, restrained by morality, would quickly purify the path leading to nirvana.”
With these words of comfort and wisdom, Patacara requested ordination as an entering “stream seeker” or sotapanna. Her practice advanced to bhikkuni or nun, and finally to arhat, one who has achieved salvation from all defilements. (This takes place many generations before Mahayana Buddhism’s bodhisattva concept emerges.)
There's a poem in the Terigatha about Patacara's becoming an arhat and then her designation as “master of the Basket of Discipline.” Here’s the story, followed by a contemporary poem based on the canonical text.
One day, while washing her feet, Patacara poured water out of her pot. The water went a little way and stopped. She poured it a second time and it went a little further. The third time it went a little further again. In this meditation, she realized the three ages of life. Like the first pouring of the water, some of these beings die in the first stage of life; those who go further than that, like the second pouring of the water die in middle age; and those who go farther than that, like the third time I poured out the water, surely die in the last age of life.
The Buddha sitting radiant in the perfume cottage appeared and spoke: “Better than not seeing the rise and fall of the five constituents of mind and body while living for 100 years is seeing the rise and fall for even a day or even a moment.” He then he spoke this verse:
And should one live one hundred years
Not seeing “the rise and demise”
Better still is one day
Of seeing “the rise and demise.
And here’s the poem (Therigatha 112-116):
Young brahmans plow fields
sow seeds,
nourish their wives and children get wealthy
why can't I find peace?
I'm virtuous
comply with the teacher
not lazy or puffed up
One day washing my feet
I watched the water as it
trickled down the slope
I fixed my mind
the way you'd
train a thoroughbred horse
Later, taking my lamp
I entered my cell
set on my bed and
watch the flame
I extinguish the Wick
with a needle
the release of my mind
is like the quenching of the lamp
Oh the Nirvana of the little lamp!
It is said her interest in the Rules of Conduct was attributed to her reflections on being a woman who refused to abide by the rules of society to one who later became the most diligent in Discipline. Later, while sitting on Jeta Wood, in placing the nuns successively in their respective positions, the Buddha placed Patacara in the foremost position of those who bore the Dicipline in mind. Over time, Patacara developed a huge following of over 500 disciples, some of whose texts are also included the Therigatha.
So, our story begins with a beautiful, rich woman who had everything except her personal freedom, which she pursues with her servant lover, contrary to her caste and all social norms. And then, horribly, suffers the loss of all she loves, including her own mental stability. The Buddha listens to her story with understanding of her karmic past and of her current profound depression and madness. He is there to listen and accept, to respond, in that moment, with the appropriate “expedient means.” In this case, a few guiding words. The Buddha listened. And he responded, probably with a few more words than are carried forward in tradition. Most importantly, he listened, he heard, and he spoke a truth that penetrated Patacara’s darkness and opened the path to light and peace.
If we step back from this extreme drama, we can ask ourselves, how do we listen to the pain and suffering of others, in and of the world we encounter, each moment? How and when do we respond? How do we understand the situation right before our eyes? How do we accept the impermanence of our lives, of all life? And embrace its continuity, transformation and joy? How do we accept and embrace the inevitable reality of death in this ever-transforming body?
One consequence of facing death is a release from petty concerns and frivolities. What is truly important? The reality of this moment, its profundity and transience, is a continuing wake up call to see the rise and fall of each moment without holding on, without attachment. To take the next breath and to keep our hearts open and joyful.
Let me close with a commentary on verse 288 and 289 of the Dhammapada, Buddha's words to Patacara about death and Nirvana:
“All beings die. Life ends in death. Beings fare according to their deeds, experiencing the results of their meritorious and sinful deeds. Those who do sinful deeds go to the woeful states and those who do meritorious deeds attain blissful states. Therefore, let one always do good deeds, which serve as a store for life elsewhere. Meritorious deeds are a great support to beings in the future world.”
So, let us go forward with Kisa Gotami and Patacara's open hearts and minds, filled with devotion and gratitude as we cherish all living things.
Thank you for your attention.
