Question
Why do so many sutras seem opposed to rebirth as a woman?
This seems rather sexist. I know even the Buddha took time to allow women to join the sangha, but when the appropriate time came, he did allow them to join.
In recent weeks, I came across Amida’s thirty-fifth vow: “If… women [of the Buddha worlds], upon hearing my Name, do not then have faith and rejoice, if they awaken the bodhi mind and renounce their femininity, and if at rebirth they are born again in female form, may I not attain supreme enlightenment.”
And now I am reading the “Sutra of the Past Vows of the Earth Store Bodhisattva,” and it says: “If my mother never again enters the three evil paths, is never reborn in lower worlds, and is never a woman again, then here before the image of the Thus-Come One with Pure Lotus Eyes, from this day for millions of kalpas I vow to be responsive to all beings living in hells or on the three evil paths of any world, suffering for their offenses.” These do not seem to be the words of Buddha and bodhisattvas, but of ordinary people with rather “male” minds.
Please answer me. Thank you for your patience with this long question.
Anonymous
Answer from Master Kosen
No one wanted to incarnate as a woman because, in the social reality of the time, women were kept in a state of physical and moral slavery.
It is as if an Egyptian prince had said: In another existence, I hope to incarnate as a prince rather than a slave.
This is sexism connected to the social reality of the time, but it has nothing to do with the deeper teaching.
Kosen