Summarizing the Argument and Considering Areas for Further Research

Summarizing the Argument and Considering Areas for Further Research
Project description
the essay summarizing is only 3 pages. HOWEVER, the Identify and Label the Components of a Scholarly Argument is need to write separately on the book. please make a label for me.
here is the method to write.

Part I (40%) – Identify and Label the Components of a Scholarly Argument
Print/photocopy the entire source assigned by your professor; make sure that you copy it so that there are ample right and left margins. Annotate the article by writing labels and brief comments in the LEFT margin of each paragraph, noting how each paragraph contributes to the scholar’s argument. Comment on what each paragraph says about the topic and what each paragraph does to advance the overall argument (what is the purpose of each paragraph in the argument).

You should locate and label any or all of the following that apply.

Label Questions to consider . . .
1. Topic/Background – What is the topic of the article? On which event, issue, institution, phenomenon, and/or person does the author focus? In which time period did the subject of the essay exist or take place? In which geographical area? What background information did the author find it necessary to provide?
2. Problem – What problem does the author attempt to solve? How does this problem lead the author to ask the following question?
3. Research Question – What research question does the author pose?
4. Thesis – What is the answer to the author’s research question or the solution to the problem that s/he poses? Where does the author state/re-state the thesis?
5. Claims – What claims does the author develop and support in making his/her overall argument?
6. Evidence – What evidence is provided to support each claim? (In writing your summary, be specific when naming the evidence used by author.) Is this evidence: facts, examples, metaphors, case studies, statistics, testimonies? Something else?
7. Counter-evidence/ Counter-argument – Where does the author refer to points of view different from his/her own? Where does s/he address counter-evidence or counter-arguments? Label the evidence.
8. Rebuttal – Where does the author give reasons to explain the weakness of the counter-evidence/ counter-argument, or explain why his/her claims are stronger than others’ claims?
9. Significance/implications – Where does the author explain why his/her question or thesis is significant or suggest implications of his/her argument?

Part II (60%) – Summarizing the Argument and Considering Areas for Further Research
(3 pages)
Now that you have identified what the scholar is arguing and how the argument is constructed, you will write a summary of the argument in your own words. In three (3) pages you will:

Summarize the argument in your own words and your own writing. In prose, you will elaborate on your marginal notes. You will summarize the problem the scholar is dealing with, the question that s/he asks, the thesis s/he advances, and how s/he uses evidence to support the thesis. You should also pay attention to counter-arguments/evidence, how the scholar addresses the evidence supporting these alternative hypotheses, and how the scholar discusses the significance of the thesis and implications of it. You should not include any direct quotations in this summary. Where relevant, however, you should provide citations to direct the reader to specific parts of the source you are discussing. Remember, in this assignment you are not evaluating the scholar’s argument, you just summarizing it. You will evaluate it in the next assignment.

Images of Women in Early Buddhism and Christian Gnosticism Author(s): Karen Christina Lang Reviewed work(s): Source: Buddhist-Christian Studies, Vol. 2 (1982), pp. 94-105 Published by: University of Hawai’i Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1390077 . Accessed: 11/09/2012 16:20
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Andesite. From one of the Singhasaritemples, easternJava. Approx. 1300 PRAJNAPARAMITA. A.D. Height 126 cm. Rijksmuseumvoor Volkenkunde, Leyden. Prajfnparamita (“the perfection of wisdom”) is not only a spiritual ideal, but has been personified as “the mother of all Buddhas” and here is sculptured as a female form with her hands in a teaching gesture, sitting in meditation on a lotus, wearing the jewellery of a bodhisattva, having a copy of the PrajnOapramita Scripture resting on a lotus by her shoulder. From The Art of Buddhism by Dietrich Seckel. English translation copyright (c) 1964 by Holle Verlag GmbH, Germany. Used by permission of Crown Publishers, Inc.

COMPARISONS

Imagesof Women in Early Buddhism and Christian Gnosticism
KarenChristinaLang Seattle, Washington

Though we tend to think of Easternand Western religions as separateand distinct traditions, their ancient scripturesexhibit some remarkablesimilarities. In particular, the authors of early Buddhist and Christian Gnostic scripturessaw human beings as trapped by their insatiable appetite for sensual pleasuresin a cycle of birth and death. As a way of escaping the bondage of the human condition, the scripturesof both traditions prescribedasceticpractices.This paper is concerned primarilywith the shared attitudes of these ascetic authors towards women. They perceivedwomen as less rationalthan men and more susceptible to the weaknessesof the flesh; their writings vilified women’s bodies as “impure” and “defective” by nature. These texts associatewomen with the body and all of its unpleasant functions. In contrastto men, women were symbols of sensual mentality. Liberation for women involved a transformation of the female body and a repudiation of their female nature. Why should these negative attitudes towardswomen persist when we know that women actively supported and participated in the religious life of both Buddhist and Gnostic communities? To answerthis question, we must first examine the context in which these apparent misogynist statements occur. The texts selected for analysis include material from the third century B.C.E. compilation of Buddhist monks’ and nuns’ verses, the Theragathdand the Therigatha,from some of the earliest Mahayanasutras and the treatisesof the philosophers Nagarjuna and Aryadeva, composed between the first and third centuries C.E., and material from the Nag Hammadi collection of Gnostic texts, written about the same time as the earlyMahayanaliterature. Two majorimages of women emerge from these Buddhist and Gnostic texts: (1) women as sensual, seductive, and capable of entrapping others in the cycle of birth and death; and (2) women as compassionate, wise, and capable of enlightening others and leading them towards the divine realm. The material I have chosen to examine falls into four categories: (1) Buddhist and Gnostic myths about the fall of humanity, (2) Buddhist and Gnostic attitudes towards

KARENCHRISTINALANG women’s bodies, (3) transformationof women’s bodies, and (4) the transformative power of feminine insight/wisdom.
BUDDHIST AND GNOSTIC MYTHS ABOUT THE FALL OF HUMANITY

Buddhist and Gnostic scripturesassume the existence of a state of perfection that is stable, incorporeal,luminous, and asexual.Yet the authorsof these texts are confrontedwith the imperfectworld of human beings, a realm in which impermanence, corporeality,darkness,and sexualityprevail. Consequently, elaborate myths were put forth to explain how the currentdegenerate state of humanity came about. Both sets of “literary myths” reveal similar patterns of binary opposition. Buddhist and Gnostic myths of the fall describe the development of dualistic distinctions: heaven/earth, light/darkness, life/death, rest/motion, incorporeality/corporeality, asexuality/sexuality, and male/ female. The fall of humanity signifies the completion of a change in status, a change from residence in heaven to residence on earth, from possession of luminous, incorporeal,and asexual natures to the possession of dark, corporeal, sexual natures. However, the aspectof these myths that most concernsus here is their tendency to associatethe fall with an awarenessof sexualityand the implication that the greatershareof the blame for the fall belongs to women (or the feminine). Accordingto an early Buddhist myth, the divine realm of self-luminous and incorporealbeings, who fed only on joy, after a long period of time, inevitably began to disintegrate. The earth formed a scum on the surfaceof the waters, and, when beings ate that earth, they lost their luminosity and acquired corporeal bodies. Soon after they ate this earthlyfood, sexual differencesappeared on their bodies, and following on these sexual differencescame lust and sexual intercourse.1In analyzing this myth, it is important to note that the word which this text uses to denote the earth is feminine in gender (pathavi). The well-known correlationbetween the fecundity of the earth and the fertility of women would suggest that this is no grammaticalaccident. These beings’ desire for earth and their enjoyment of her substancebrought about sexual differences. The desire and enjoyment that the awarenessof these sexual differences generated furtheracceleratedthe downfall. Tasting the earth, that is, the feminine, culminated in the fallen state of humanity. The Christianheresiologist Irenaeusin Adversus haerses attributes a similar myth to the Gnostics. This myth relates that Adam and Eve once had bodies that were luminous and incorporealand that the act of eating the forbidden fruit led to their loss of the luminous divine substance and to their expulsion from heaven. After the fall, their bodies became dark and material. They sated themselves with earthly food, sexual intercoursefollowed, and Cain was conceived.2 While none of the mythological accountsof the fall in the Nag Hammadi collection correspondsdirectly with the myth that Irenaeus recounts, a

IMAGESOF WOMAN similar myth in the Apocryphon ofJohn speaks of the perfect, divine realm from which a seriesof luminous beings emanate. Accordingto this text, the fall occurs when the female power Sophia (“Wisdom”) chooses to create a being on her own. This created being, in possession of a portion of his mother’s light and power, creates the archons, who assist him in the creation of man. These jealous archons conspire to make man’s body material, and from his material body they create woman.3 The woman, Eve, accordingto another text entitled On the Orzgin of the World, succumbs to temptation and tempts Adam as well, with the result that “they saw that they were naked and they became enamored of one another.’ 4 Other tractates, The Book of Thomas the Contender and The Gospel of Philip, associatethe act of eating from the tree of knowledge with the bestial transformationof the body and with the procreationof beasts by sexual intercourse.5Tasting the forbidden fruit, an act initiated by the woman Eve, resulted in the fall; and, as in the Buddhist myth of humanity’s fall, knowledge of sexual differences, sexual desire, and sexual intercourseall are associatedwith humanity’s present degeneratecondition. Both the Buddhist and Gnostic accountsof the fall have in common the following sequence of events: a deliberate act of eating brings about the transformation of originally luminous, incorporeal,and asexualnature into one that is now dark, material, and sexual. This transformation,in turn, brings about an awakening of sexual desire and the subsequent satisfaction of this desire through sexual intercourse.These scripturesimply that, since sexuality was involved in the fall, abstention from sexual pleasures will weaken the ties that bind humanity to the lower material world and thus enable seekers after enlightenment to ascend to the luminous state of perfection forfeited by their ancestors.
BUDDHIST AND GNOSTIC ATTITUDES TOWARDS WOMEN’S BODIES

The theme of liberation from the bondage of desire dominated the works of many Buddhist monks. Their use of women’s bodies as metaphors for desire derivesfrom the example set by the legendaryaccountsof the Buddha’s life. In these legends, the event that decisively turns the young prince Siddhartha’s thoughts awayfrom sensual pleasuresand towardsthe religious life is the sight of the sleeping, slobbering and snoring female musicians and dancers, provided for his amusement by his doting father. Voluptuous women again confront him years later on the eve of his enlightenment. Delight, Discontent, and Mara(“Death”), also fail Desire, the daughtersof the Buddha’s evil adversary, to distracthim from his quest for enlightenment. These tales of nocturnal temptation, which have their parallels in Christian ascetic writings also, in St. Antony’s demons, for instance, inspired much of the Buddhist misogynist statements. The monk Nagasamala describesa danc-

KARENCHRISTINALANG ing girl as being “like a snare of death spread out.”6 Nor is this negative appraisalof the charmsof women’s bodies confined to monks, for the nun Vimala says: I adorned this body, painted well, Accostingfools, I stood at the brothel’s door, Likea hunter, after laying out the snare.7 According to tradition, this particularnun had tried to ensnarethe elder Moggallana. His censureof her led to her repentence and eventual entranceinto the orderof nuns. These intemperate attackson the impurity of women’s bodies and sexual intercoursecontinue in the worksof Mahayanamonks. “Just as a fool lusts for an ornamented pot of filth,” Nagarjunasays, “so foolish, deluded people lust for women.”8 His disciple Aryadevaconcurs,reviling men who lust afterwomen as being no better than dogs. Drawing upon the analogy between eating earth and enjoying sexual pleasures,developed in the myth of the fall cited above, he comparesmen who delight in sexualpleasuresto wormswhich feed on filth.9 The point of view presented in these worksperceiveswomen as bound by sexual intercourseand its result, the birth of children. “Women die insatiableand indefatigable in respect to two things, O monks,” the venerableKaccanasays. “Which two? Sexual intercourseand giving birth.”‘0 Sexual intercourseand the birth of children were condemned as impediments to full participationin the religious life for both men and women. EarlyBuddhist scripturesrecommended celibacy and the renunciation of family life for both sexes, based on the example set by the Buddha himself when he left behind his wife and son Rahula(“Impediment”) to take up the homeless life. Negative attitudes towardssexual intercourseand childbearing occur also in the Christian Gnostic scriptures.It is these activities of sexual intercourseand procreationthat Elaine Pagels suggestsJesus had in mind when he urged his disciples, including MaryMagdalene, to “destroy the worksof femaleness” in The Dialogue of the Savior.”1The Paraphraseof Shem stresses the bestial nature of both sexual intercourseand childbirth: “For in the place where their darkness and their fire mixed with each other beasts were brought forth.’12 This tractate and others refer to sexual intercourse as “impure” and as “unclean rubbing.”13 Moreover, the Gnostics, like the Buddhists, repudiate sexual intercoursenot only because the act defiles the body but because of its association with suffering. “As long as the soul keeps running about everywhere copulating with whomevershe meets and defiling herself,” The Exegesis on the Soul reports, “she exists suffering, her just deserts.”14 Buddhist and Gnostics alike share the notion that defilement and suffering ensue from passionate involvement with the material world. Both Buddhist and Gnostic asceticscondemn sexual intercoursefor two reasons. First, any sex-

IMAGESOF WOMAN ual contact with a woman’s body defiles a man. Second, sexual intercoursecan result in the birth of a child, further strengthening the ties to this imperfect world.
TRANSFORMATION OF WOMEN’S BODIES

Defilement, suffering, and incessant motion characterizethe inferior realm of sexual desire, the lowest of all the multiple levels of existence, accordingto the Buddhist and Gnostic cosmologies. The higher levels of existence, in which material form and sexual desire are absent, are pure, blissful, and at rest. Ascension to these pure realms is possible only after the rejection of sexual desire in favorof sexual abstinence, and a shift in attention from the stimuli given in sensory experience towards the noetic experience of meditative trance. Both Buddhist and Gnostic writersconsiderthis shift in attention as a transitionfrom “female” thought processes, that is, those associated with sexual desires, to “male” ones, that is, those associatedwith meditative trance. The example of Gopika illustrates the early Buddhist belief that a woman must cultivate a “male” mind prior to entering heaven. “She abandoned a woman’s mentality and cultivated a man’s mentality,” the Discourse on Sakka’s Questions (Sakkapatnasuttanta)relates, “and after her death and the breakingapartof her body, she was reborninto heaven, Sakka’sworld, into fellowship with the thirty-threegods, into sonship with us.”‘5 This passage and later ones in the early Mahayanaliterature claim that a woman’s rebirth as a male is a prerequisitefor entranceinto heaven, the pure lands, or for becoming a Buddha. In the satra, Perfection of Insight in Eight ThousandLines (Astathe Buddha predicts that a goddess of the Ganges sahasrikaprajnaparamita), will be reborn eventually as the Tathagata SuvargapuSpa (“Golden Flower”). But first she must undergo a change of sex. The Buddha tells his favoritedisciple Ananda: “This goddess of the Ganges will change her female nature and acquirea male nature; afterher death, she will be rebornin the Buddha field of the Tathagata, Arhat, Fully-Enlightened Buddha AkSobhya,in the world system called ‘Delight’.”16 In another Mahayanasatra, the princess Visuddhisraddha(“Pure Faith”) asks the Buddha what a woman must do to transformher female body. The Buddha replies that a woman must avoid envy, stinginess, flattery, anger, be truthful, slander no one, abandon desire and wrong views, reverethe Buddha and his Teaching, make offerings to monks and brahmins, give up attachment to home and family, accept the precepts, have no evil thoughts, be indifferent to her female body, persist in the intention to seek enlightenment and the qualities of the Great Man, and regardworldly life as being like an illusion or a dream. She agrees to these conditions and the Buddha then predicts that Visuddhisraddhaand her companions will be reborn in the Tusita heaven as men and attain Buddhahood.17

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KARENCHRISTINALANG Other Mahayana sutrasassociatethe transformationof the female body with an act of truth. In The Questions Concerningthe Daughter Sumati (Sumatithe precociouseight yearold daughter of a layman and the Boddarikaprccha), hisattva ManjusrIdiscuss the emptiness of all things. When he asks, “Why haven’t you changed your female body?” she retortsthat the femaleness of her body is untenable, for things are neither male nor female. She then performs an act of truth: If it is true that I will become a Buddha, then may I now change into a man. In confirmationof the truth of her declaration,the requested transformation takes place.18In this passage, the sexual transformationunderscores the awarenessthat the terms “male” and “female” attach to forms, conventionally held to be male or female, but which ultimately have no real immutable natureof their own. ChristianGnostic scripturesalso indicate that entrance into heaven requires the transformationof females into males. In The Gospel of ThomasJesus says of Mary: I myself shall lead her in orderto make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit, resemblingyou males. Foreverywoman who will make herself male will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.19 Maryherself tells the disciples in The Gospel of Marythat instead of weeping for the Saviorthey ought to “praise his greatness, for he has preparedus and made us into men.”20 This preparation, as the tractate Zostrianos suggests, consists of strengthening the intellectual part of the soul as it ascends to the of the text that bearshis name, recounts higher realms. Zostrianos,the narrator how he was brought to “the first-appearing,great, male, perfect Mind.”21 He urges all people to “flee from the madness and bondage of femininity and choose for yourselvesthe salvationof masculinity.’ 22This tractateand others in the Nag Hammadi collection suggest that leaving behind the female nature entails a rejectionof the passions, that is, anger, envy, jealousy, desire, and greed. The adoption of the masculine nature signifies an orientation towardsthe passionless state of perfection. Yet entranceinto the Kingdom of Heaven, according to The Gospel of Thomas, comes “when you make the male and the female one and the same, so that the male be not male nor the female female. “23Ultimately, the distinctions “male” and “female” do not apply. Given the tendency in these Buddhist and Gnostic scripturesto associate women with imperfection, the scripturesthen decreed that women must become men. In many instances, this transformationinvolved a transition in mental attitude from a preoccupationwith sexualityto a concernwith spirituality, and hence a figurative ratherthan a literal transformation.However, even though ascetic practices do not literally make women into men, asceticism seems rooted in fear and disgust for women’s bodily functions. Fastingwill stop a woman’s menstrual flow; sexual abstinence will prevent her from bearing

IMAGESOF WOMAN children. Shaving off a woman’s hair and enjoining her to wear shapeless garments, identical to those worn by monks, also contribute to the impressionthat women were expected to transformtheir female nature, physically as well as mentally.
THE TRANSFORMATIVE POWER OF FEMININE INSIGHT/WISDOM

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The acquisition of insight (panna, prajan), a term grammaticallyfeminine, makes possible the transformationof women into men. The early Buddhist scripturesdescribe insight as an understanding that searchesout and discerns the truth about the nature of things. Her light casts out darkness;and, as a sword, she cuts through lust, hatred, and delusion, the defilements that bind beings to the cycle of birth and death. Just as the Buddha drew out the arrowof intelligence and so defeated Maraand his armies, the nun Soma takes aim at Mara,who had attempted to disrupt her meditative concentration. In reply to his taunt that a woman has just enough intelligence to test if rice is cooked by rolling it between her two fingers, she says: What could a woman’s nature do to us, When mind is well-concentrated, When knowledge remains In someone who has thorough insight Into the Teaching? Everywhere pleasureis destroyed, The mass of darknesspierced through Thus know, 0 Evil One, you are defeated, Death.24 Insight here is the power that effects the transformationof mentality bound up with sensual desires and leaves in its place a mentality focused on spiritual attainment. The change of sex depicted in the early Mahayana literature also occurs because of insight. Insight into the truth that all things ultimately are the same, resemble magical illusions, and are thus empty of a true, nontransformable nature of their own, renders possible the transformationof women into men and men into women, as in the passagefrom The Teachingsof Vimalakirti when the goddess uses her magical power to transformthe (Vimalakirtinirdefa) monk Sariputra so that he appearsin her form and she in his.25 The Mahayanaperfection of insight literatureextolls the virtue of perfecting this insight. This literature personifies the perfection of insight as female, as being the “mother of all the Buddhas.” The Perfection of Insight in Eight Thousand Lines emphasizes her creative powers as a mother: “She is the mother, the creatorof Tathagatas, Arhats, Fully Enlightened Buddhas, the revealerof omniscience, the one who makes the world visible.’26 She is described

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KARENCHRISTINALANG also as a sourceof light, driving out the darknessbrought on by defilement and erroneousopinions.27The protective support of perfect insight is compared in this text to a plank from a ship, wrecked in the middle of the ocean, which enables the personwho holds fast to it to crosssafely over to the other shore.28 The ChristianGnostic scripturesalso personify wisdom as female, reflecting the fact that the Greek term for wisdom (sophia) also is feminine in gender. The Gnostic texts attribute creative power to wisdom; she is refereed to as “mother of the living.” Her creative power and light pass on in diminished quantities to her offspring. When he arrogantlyproclaimshimself “God” and says:If anything else exists before me let it appear, she immediately “stretched forth her finger, and introduced light into matter, and she followed it down into the region of chaos. “29

According to many Gnostic tractates, particles or seeds of light trapped within material bodies derive from the light of Wisdom which filtered down in the process of creation. Wisdom’s light illumines beings and makes possible their grasp of the truth. A vision in the form of a woman appeared to Marcus and told him: “I wish to show you truth herself; for I have brought her down from above so that you may see her without a veil.”30 Irenaeusrelates that the followers of Marcusand Valentinus prayed to the divine mother as “mystical, eternal Silence,” “she who was before all things,” “grace,” and “incorruptible wisdom.” Other Gnostics, accordingto his account, say that Wisdom felt compassionfor Adam and Eve and transmittedto them a portion of her light so that “they recognized that they were naked and knew the material nature of the body, and they knew that they bore the burden of death; but they were patient, recognizing that the body contained them only for awhile.”31 The mother saved what was her own: the particlesof light. Both Buddhist and Gnostic scripturesspeak of the power of insight/wisdom to transformmaterial bondage into spiritual freedom. She illumines the truth so that beings may ascend to the perfect luminous realm, and thereby escape death and reincarnation.And both traditionsdescribeinsight/wisdom in feminine terms as a creative,nurturingmother.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

The early Buddhist and Christian Gnostic assumption that beings once were luminous, incorporeal,and asexual, and that this state of perfection can be regained, motivates their quest for enlightenment. The association,developed in their myths of humanity’s fall, of earthly food and sexual intercoursewith the appearanceof a dark, materialbody led both traditionsto advocateasceticpractices. Fasting and abstinence from sexual intercoursedemonstrated their contempt for the body and its appetites. The practice of meditation, which the asceticwritersrecommend, disassociatedthe mind (that is, the masculine)from the body (that is, the feminine) and hence from darkness, corporeality, and

IMAGESOF WOMAN sexual desire. The mind’s ascension to meditative trance states brought it into contact with the luminous, stable, incorporeal,and asexualstate of perfection. Figure 1 illustratesthe structuralpatternsthat recurin Buddhist and Gnostic scriptures. The descent of a guide, Christ in the Christian Gnostic scriptures and the variousBuddhas and Bodhisattvasin the Buddhist scriptures,in both traditions aided by feminine insight/wisdom, bridges the first set of dualistic distinctions. The ascetic practicesthat these spiritual guides advocate, in order to awakenthis insight/wisdom, mediate the second set.
THEOTHER WORLD DIVINITY LIGHT LIFE INCORPOREALITY SILENCE REST PURITY
SPIRITUALITY

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MEDIATORS descent CHRIST BUDDHAS BODHISATTVAS ASCETICISM
ascent

THISWORLD HUMANITY DARKNESS DEATH CORPOREALITY SPEECH MOTION IMPURITY
SEXUALITY

male mentality inward
turning —

female mentality outward
turning

Why should women be linked with sexuality and the other categoriesof this world? In part, the answerlies in the Buddhist and Gnostic myths of humanity’s fall from perfection. These myths show traces of the ancient observation that women’s fertility parallels the fruitfulness of the earth, for they associate the enjoyment of a woman’s sexuality with tasting the earth, or its fruits. The associationof earth with darkness,corporeality,and impurity led to these same qualities being applied analogously to women. And taking their cues from these mythic associations,Buddhist and Gnostic writersutilized women as apt metaphorsfor the defects of this world. Although the asceticwritersof both traditionssymbolized the imperfections of this world by their descriptions of the impurities and defects of women’s bodies, they intended their condemnation to apply to all human bodies as being essentially “bags of dung.” Nagarjuna, for instance, reminds his male audience that “your own body is just as impure as the body of a woman.”32None of these writers believed that women had minds incapable of spiritual attainment. The Buddhist scriptures contain many examples of the spiritual attainments of lay women and nuns. The worksof the orthodox Christianwriters Tertullian and Irenaeus similarly indicate (although with disapproval) that women held important positions in the Gnostic community. Consequently, despite the apparentmisogynist statements in some early Buddhist and Christian Gnostic scriptures,the egalitarianmessage of Buddha and Christ contained in these scripturesthat did not deny to women participationin the religious life attractedmany women to Buddhist and Gnostic communities, where they had the opportunity to study and to teach.

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NOTES

KARENCHRISTINALANG

1. See the Agatia suttanta in Digha, III, ed.,J. E. Carpenter(London: Pali Text Society, 1910), p. 85ff. Diana Paul compares this myth with the Biblical account of the fall in Women in Buddhism (Berkeley:Asian Humanities Press, 1979) p. 4. 2. See the translation of Adversus haereses Robert M. Grant, ed., Gnosticism (New York: Harper& Brothers, 1961) p. 61. 3. The ApocryphonofJohn 9.25-23.4 in The Nag HammadiLibrary (New York: Harper& Row, 1977), pp. 103-111. HereafterabbreviatedNHL. 4. On the Origin of the World 119.15-16, NHL, p. 174. 5. The Book of Thomasthe Contender 139.1-11, NHL, p. 189; The Gospel ofPhilip 71.23-27, NHL, p. 143. 6. Thera-Therigdtha, ed. Hermann Oldenberg and RichardPischel, (London: Pali Text Society, va odWitam.’ 1966) p. 33: “maccupdsam 7. Ibid., p. 131: vibhusetvaimam kayamsucittam baldlapannam vesidvdramhi luddo pdsam iv ‘oddiya// atthasimt 8. Ratndvali\I.51, ed. L. P. Lhalungpa,dBu ma rgs tshogs drug (Delhi: n.p., 1970) p. 70: mi shes ‘ga’ zhzg migtsang ba’il l bum pa rgyanla chagspa Itar/ jig rten mi shes rmongs payis// bud med rnamsla de bzhin no// III.2 and 4, dBhu ma tsha f.4a-b. 9. Catuhsataka 10. Anguttara, I, ed. R. Morris (London: Pali Text Society, 1885), p. 78: divannambhikkhavedhammanamatitto appativdnomdtugdmokdlarakaroti/ ca viydyanassa ca. katamesamdivannam methunasamdpattiyd 11. Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Random House, 1979), pp. 66-67. 12. The Paraphrase ofShem 27.32-33, NHL, p. 320. 13. Ibid., 22.1-10, NHL, p. 318. 14. The Exegesison the Soul 131.14-16, NHL, p. 183. 15. The Sakkapannasuttanta in Digha, II, ed. T. W. Rhys-Davids and J. E. Carpenter(London: Pali Text Society, 1893) p. 271: sd itthicittarp virdjetvd sugatim saggam purisacittam bhavetvd kdyassabhedd param mara.dn lokam uppannddevdnamtdvatimsdnam sahavyatamamhakamputattam ajjhuppagata. ed. P. L. Vaidya(Darbhanga:The MithilaInstitute, 1960), p. 16. Astasdhasrikdprajnapdramitd, 181: pratilabhya itas cyutvd purusabhdvarm seyam dnandagangadevd bhagini strtbhavamvivartya aksobhyasya tathagatasyarhatab samyaksamtbuddhasyabuddhaksetre abhiratydm7lokadhdtdv upapatsyate/ Diana Paul translatesthe entire episode in Women in Buddhism, pp. 182-184. 17. See Nancy Schuster, “Changing the Female Body: Wise Women and the BodhisattvaCareer ” The in Some Mahdratnakatsasatras, Journal of the InternationalAssociation of Buddhist Studies 4, no. 1(1981), pp. 36-37 for a summaryof this text. 18. See Paul, Women in Buddhism, pp. 201-211 for a translationof this story. Cf. Schuster, “Changing the Female Body,” pp. 29-31. 19. The Gospelof Thomas51.20-25, NHL, p. 130. 20. The Gospel ofMary 9.19-20, NHL, p. 472. 21. Zostrianos129.5, NHL, p. 392. 22. Ibid., 131.5-8, NHL p. 393. 23. The Gospel of Thomas37.29-31, NHL, p. 121. 24. Thera-Theringtha, pp. 129-130: itthibhdvo no kim kayiracittamhi susamahite/ sammddhammam vipassato/ ndnamhi vattamdnamhi sabbatthavihata nandi tamokkhandopaddlito/ eva jndahipdpima nihato tvam asi antaka/ / 25. See Paul, Women in Buddhism, pp. 224-232. 26. Astasdhasrikdprajadparamita, p. 125:

IMAGESOF WOMAN
eSahi matajanayitritathagatanamarhatamsamyaksambuddhanam/ asydbsarvajnataya darsayitri lokasyaca sardarsayitri/ See alsoJoanna Rogers Macy, “Perfection of Wisdom: Mother of all Buddhas” in Beyond Androcentrism,ed. Rita M. Gross(Missoula:ScholarsPress, 1977), pp. 315-333. 27. Aftasahasrikdprajnaparamita, p. 68. 28. Ibid., p. 143. 29. Hypostasisofthe Archons 94.29-32, NHL, p. 158. 30. See Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels, pp. 20, 50. 31. Grant, Gnosticism, p. 56. 32. RatnavalII.65ab: ji Itarbud medgzugs mi gtsang / / khyodkyi ranglus de dang ‘dra//

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