Did you ever think a woman was of a different species than a man? How old is this question?

Tags

American feminism, Chenresig, fasting, Female Buddhists, novice nuns, Nyunge Ne, Tibetan patriarchy

I want to thank my old dancing sister, Pat Tuzer, for finding this great piece of scholarship on the Tibetan Buddhist perspective of women. The piece is long, highly-footnoted, and does not contain the phonetic spelling of many women . . . such as Machig Labdron or Yeshe Tsogyal (see her autobiography by Keith Dowling(?); not to mention my namesake, Gelongma (nun) Pamo, a leprous woman who lived in isolation hundreds of years ago, lost her hands, yet practiced meditation and prayers to Chenrezig, the Buddha of Compassion . . . and hence healed herself. Here is an image of her:

 

She developed a 3-day fasting practice still used today, after hundreds of years, called Nyunge Ne.

If we are inferior as women, are we human beings? This is a long article worth engaging to only the most extreme of scholarophiles (like me). 

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