Anger is a (necessary) energy

Buddhists are supposed to be placid, right? In statues and paintings the Buddha is sitting implacably in deep meditation. Cartoons show wise gurus in caves dispensing pithy, if incomprehensible, advice. Popular Buddhist authors like Tara Brach and Pema Chodron and Shinzen Young talk about radical acceptance of things as they are right now, about witnessing the rise and fall of emotions as thoughts and bodily sensations and staying present with the experience.

Buddhists don't get angry, right? They may witness the arising of anger in themselves, but they don't bite that hook. Acting out of anger is unskillful. You can Google up a gaggle of articles to tell you that. It's an issue that's come up for me lately, in personal conversations and as I read about  the debate over whether nations should take action against Syria for its use of nerve gas.

That is, however, a limited and limiting view, which doesn't fit with a philosophical system that teaches that we are limitless, that our wisdom and compassion know no boundaries.

Tantric Buddhism teaches that -- as John Lydon sang -- anger is an energy. Specifically, it is the neurotic, or confused, aspect of the energy of the vajra family; the enlightened aspect is clarity, clear-seeing.

The Dalai Lama says in a recently translated interview that anger is essential to achieving social justice.

There are two types of anger. One type arises out of compassion; that kind of anger is useful. Anger that is motivated by compassion or a desire to correct social injustice, and does not seek to harm the other person, is a good anger that is worth having. For example, a good parent, out of concern for a child’s behavior, may use harsh words or even strike him. He may be angry, but there is no trace of any desire to hurt him.

...The question is a person’s state of mind or the motivation that causes the action. When we act, that act arises out of a cause that already exists in us. If we act when our inner motivation is hatred toward another person, then that hatred expressed as anger will lead to destructive action. This is negative action. But if we act out of consideration for the other person, if we are motivated by affection and sympathy, then we can act out of anger because we are concerned with that person’s well-being.

For example, he says, that if a child is playing with poison, a parent may shout or strike the child's hands to keep him from putting it in his mouth. That anger "was directed toward the child’s actions that could harm him, not toward the child himself. In such a case, it is right to take the necessary measures to stop the action, such as anger, shouting, or striking."


On a larger level, anger about social injustice is necessary, he says, but should be directed at the social injustice itself. "The anger should be maintained until the goal is achieved. It is necessary in order to stop social injustice and wrong destructive actions," he said.

What that means is that you need to keep going inside and re-examining your own motivation and intention. What situation does the anger point you to? Often we displace anger at one thing onto a more convenient target or we simply explode, shooting anger out in all directions, hitting the innocent and the obstructors. What is the wise or skillful way to act?

Rita Gross, a Buddhist teacher and former history of religion professor, spent most of her life bringing to light the ways that patriarchy has tainted Buddhism and hurt women. It wasn't an easy path, but she sees benefits for herself and others.

New Lotus, an online magazine, describes her as a faithful Tibetan Buddhist who has been "fearless in critiquing the human-made power structures of Buddhist institutions," it says, citing her "pugilistic" approach. "She can afford to be because she is acutely aware of the important difference she has made with her contributions to Buddhist-feminist scholarship."

Gross cites Buddhists teachings interpreted to mean that only males can be enlightened as at the core of the patriarchal institutions -- and her own path. “Female rebirth is necessary to have people in female bodies speak out against the injustice of patriarchy,” she insists, with an uninvested charm that only retired people can afford. “Had I not been born in a female body, I could not have likely walked the path I did, wrote the books I wrote, and made the difference that I made,” she says.

Anger isn't a problem, it's an energy. As with all emotions, it's what you do with that energy that matters.

This doesn't tell you whether Buddha would bomb Syria. He pretty much stayed away from those questions -- but he suggested that you look at your intentions, motivations, and the possible consequences and act with clarity.

 

You are not your pants

Gender is a dimension of ego, Lopon Rita Gross says, and the one we cling to most persistently. It's also one that we're least like to examine. It's not included in traditional Buddhist meditations designed to deconstruct identities and lead to insight on egolessness.

Buddhism both proclaims that enlightenment is without gender and places gender-based restrictions on practitioners, seen most clearly in the rules regarding Buddhist nuns and their status."They have not questioned why rules about gender are so important when nothing in the phenomenal world really exists," Gross said in her talk, "Clinging to Gender Subverts Enlightenment," which was a keynote address at the Gender Studies Symposium at Lewis & Clark College in Portland OR. (Divining Meaning: Meditations on Gender and Religion.)

"Gender may well be the last component of our composite ego to be surrendered," Gross said. "People rarely question gender's centrality. They don't see the contradiction."

Yet, when they're asked to give up gender-expressive traits, they resist, even Buddhists dedicated to achieving egolessess. Gross says male teachers in her sangha have resisted wearing robes because they uncomfortable not wearing pants.

"If you can't give up your pants, how are you ever going to give up your ego?" she asked.

Gross proposes adding contemplations about gender to the traditional mahamudra investigations, which look for evidence of the self.

What color is your gender?
What is its shape, its texture?
Where is it located -- is it internal or external?

She also suggest contemplating
-- how many of my habits are conditioned by gender norms and expectations?
-- how uncomfortable would it make me to do things differently?
-- when we meet someone, the first thing we note is their gender. what assumptions do we make based on that?
-- what if we interact with someone whose gender is unclear, in person or via email? How do we respond to being without the ground of gender?
--ask yourself - what makes you a man or woman. If someone guessed your gender incorrectly, how would you feel?
-- Try out the body language associated with the other gender.

It takes training to tease out gender-clinging, Gross said, and to realize that letting go of our attachment is necessary to enlightenment.

"The problem is rigidity and fixation when people cling to gender. If one does not make an ego out of gender, one would still know if one is a man or a woman," Gross said.

But, she added, we would wear our identities more lightly, being willing to grow and change.

Building a Patriarchy on the Fields of Alaya

Buddhism, at its base, is genderless. The Buddha taught to both men and women, and he taught them the same techniques to achieve liberation from suffering. Heck, many representations of the Buddha are androgynous and open to interpretation.

But since that time Buddhists have built a lot of male-dominated structures on that base.

…For too long in the West, and I am sure in the East, gross misogyny has existed in the Buddhist world, a misogyny so deep that it has allowed the disrespect and abuse of women and nuns in our own time, and not only throughout history, and not only in Asia. The misogynistic abuse is not only in terms of the usual gender issues related to who has responsibility and authority (women usually don’t have much, if any), but it is as well expressed through mistreatment of women, through sexual boundary violations of women, and the psychological abuse of women…Roshi Joan Halifax in an essay on sexual abuse by Zen teachers

Originally an oral tradition, Buddhism was filtered through hundreds of years of society before any of it was written down. So it's difficult even to determine what could be attributed to the historical figure and what was added by subsequent interpreters. The Vinaya, the rules that govern the conduct of monks and nuns, has 227 rules for monks and 311 for nuns in the Theravadan tradition.

Innovators can take a new idea only so far. The Buddha went against the stream by teaching to beings from all castes, men and women. He was radically egalitarian for his time. But a lot of Buddhist institutions stayed stuck in that time when it comes to gender roles.

Rita M. Gross says that "Buddhism is feminism" because both ask us to look closely at what we take for granted and determine whether it is valid. Buddhism offers innumerable (although someone probably has made a numbered list) ways to deconstruct thoughts about the self, about relationships, about the environment, about thoughts themselves with the aim of realizing their fluidity. If we do so, it's taught, we'll realize the truths of emptiness, impermanence, and non-self.

Likewise, feminism asks us to look at the ways that our ideas about gender limit us and the ways we see ourselves and our roles in the world. Does this job have to be done by a woman? Does writings presume male = normal?

Using either form of analysis, I believe, we'll arrive at a place where we are innately limitless and free. Our nature -- buddha or human -- is luminous and full of possibilities. Our concepts and society's norms are what hold us back.

Unfortunately, for 2,500 years, that has included sangha, the community of Buddhist practitioners, and the various institutions that kept Buddhism alive. Under the Eight Special Rules set down when the Buddha agreed to ordain women as nuns, the most senior nun ranks below the least-senior monk. Roshi Joan has said that the lineage in which she teaches stretches back through 82 lineage holders -- and she is the first woman since Prajnaparamita, the female deity at the top.

Halifax, Gross, Lama Tsultrim Allione, and others have written about the difficulties they've encountered in practicing as women. When she realized -- at a time that she needed to hear about examples of women practitioners -- that there was a dearth of stories, Allione went to Tibet to track them down and wrote a book, "Women of Wisdom." Allione, an emanation of Machig Labdron, teaches Labdron's chod practice and is creating a female lineage with practices she'd received from women or developed herself.

Stories are important because of what they communicate. When men are writing the stories and they write only the stories of men from a male-normative point of view (that assumes women's stories are included in those with male characters and pronouns), women become invisible. And when women are not seen or heard in a tradition that values lineage and history, women have to fight to be seen and heard in their own time. That's made more difficult in traditions where teachers are revered and what might be seen as inappropriate is transmuted to "teaching" or "crazy wisdom."

The large amount of discussion, both within communities and in the larger world, about sex scandals in which male teachers had widely acknowledged, decades-long histories of poor behavior (much of which qualifies as criminal) with female students has brought needed attention to the larger issue of gender inclusiveness in Buddhism. Or it can do that, if we act responsibly and look not just at the actor and the acted-upon but at the environment in which the actions took place and the complicity of others in ignoring what they saw or dismissing women's complaints.

Danny Fisher writes on Patheos:

Every time one of these scandals breaks, we talk about the power differential, appropriate relationships between teachers and students, and everything else but misogyny. We don’t want to believe that it has crept into Buddhism and our individual communities, I think. We want to believe we’re better than that.  

And we are.

But we are part of a tradition that has built a patriarchy on the fields of Alaya, the fundamental openness and pure awareness that is our natural state. We're also part of a tradition that recognizes emptiness and impermanence, that was intended to be fluid and adaptive. Halifax notes that more women are being given transmission and empowered (by male teachers) to teach. The situation is changing.

Although it has not been typical for women to have positions of authority within traditional Buddhism, in our time, we are seeing a dramatic and positive change for women in all Buddhist orders. For example, I believe there are more women roshis (Zen masters) in the United States than there are in Japan. In the United States, more and more women find themselves head of monasteries and Buddhist institutions. And women are setting policies in place that guarantee practitioners ethical treatment, honor families, insure democratic processes in their organizations, and are dedicated to environmental justice and social engagement.

That women are receiving transmission in our era is an extraordinary shift away from a patriarchal religion toward a religion that honors gender parity, and practices what it preaches about inclusivity. This bodes well for Buddhism and all religions, as women have much to contribute to the psycho-social body of religion, as well as the philosophy, ethics, and practices that ground religious institutions.

 While we celebrate those advancements, it would be wrong to take them as a sign that all is well and we can go from here. We need to look at ourselves and our organizations, with clarity and compassion, and examine what constructs or thoughts we may hold that place limits based on gender. And work to liberate them so that we may free others.

May all beings dwell in equanimity, free from attachment and aversion.

Humble need not mean downtrodden

There's always a fine line in a tradition that teaches you to work with your own perceptions and to welcome difficulty as fodder for practice between self-effacing and self-erasing, between sering others and failing to care for yourself.

I admire Buddhist nuns, who cheerfully sit at the back of the room and stand at the end of the food line, for their deep sense that they are serving all beings by serving the male monks. Yet, as they in a culture and institutions shaped by patriarchy, I wonder if others care for them in the same way. (OK, mostly I don't wonder; I see that they don't.)

Karma Lekshe Tsomo is the president of Sakyadhita ("Daughters of the Buddha"), the most important international association of Buddhist women, and of Jamyang Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to the education of Himalayan women. She was the first person, in the late 1970s, to advocate for education and better conditions for Buddhist nuns. 

"They're telling the nuns, 'Oh, you're so humble, you're not interested in gaining prestige and power like these Westerners,'" Lekshe says with a calm voice but a quizzical look. "Well, I just wonder why they are not telling the monks that. If women are perpetually disadvantaged, this is what you end up with. Surveys show that the nuns' health is by far the worst of any group. Their educational standards are by far the worst too. There is a lot of work to be done, and awareness raising, especially among women."

Michaela Hass, who's written a forthcoming book on women in Buddhism, talked to Lekshe in this article for the Huffington Post called "The F Word in Buddhism: 'Daughters of the Buddha' Discuss How Buddhist Women Can Achieve Equality."

What is holding women back? Hass writes:

"Sexism," Lekshe candidly sums it up. She is not afraid to use the F-word. "Feminism," she says, delivering the punch line with a coy smile, "has been called the radical theory that women are completely human." The gender imbalance affects Buddhist women worldwide. "We are talking about more than 300 million women dedicated to peace, honesty, loving-kindness and compassion. Certainly we would want to optimize the talents and potential of these wonderful women." In the West, more and more teachers recognize this potential, but "women have almost no voice in Asian Buddhist institutions. For women to move into positions of leadership, they need to be fully educated and trained."

I'm currently reading "Buddhism After Patriarchy" by Rita Gross. The Buddha was radical for his time and place because he taught the same things to women and men. Gender-based discrimination seems largely to have been added by subsequent patriarchal cultures. It's time to care for -- and listen to -- the  nuns.

The Mandala Dance of the 21 Praises of Tara at the Sakyadhita conference