Known For: Aunt of Siddhartha Gautama, established first order Buddhist nuns
Dates: 6th-5th centuries B.C.E.
Faith: Buddhism
Country: India

About

Mahaprajapati, aunt of Siddhartha Gautama (c. 563-c. 483 B.C.E.), the founder of Buddhism, raised him with her other children because Siddharta’s mother died just a week after he was born. Utilizing this influence, she asked the Buddha to ordain a group of women on the Buddhist path, thus leading to the establishment of the very first order of Buddhist nuns. The start of female monastic life roused much contention over women’s role in Buddhism itself, which has never been completely resolved.

Residing in the northern Indian village of Kapilavastu, located in what is now Nepal, Siddhara and Mahaprajapati came from the Shakya clan, whose members belonged to the warrior caste (the second highest below the Brahmin caste).

As a young man Siddharta had married and started a family, living in the comfort of his wealthy status. When one day he ventured into the village and witnessed the realities of human pain and suffering, he left his family and clan to become an ascetic. The fair number of ascetics in India travelled throughout the country teaching spiritual insight, meditating in solitude, and begging for their provisions. Siddharta also practiced the art of yoga and abstained from sexual activity. He eventually formed a community of disciples, called the Sangha, who all aimed for escape from the endless cycle of human suffering through meditating to reach enlightenment or nirvana. As the Buddha (“one who has awakened”), Siddharta guided his followers in the dharma (truth) and the Middle Way, a path to balance worldly existence and extreme spirituality. The basic tenets of the Buddha’s teaching are the Four Noble Truths: 1. Life is inevitably filled with suffering, 2. Suffering is the result of one’s desire for pleasure, power, and continued existence 3. To stop suffering one must end one’s desires 4. To end desire one must follow the Eight-fold Path, which is comprised of: 1. right views, 2. right intentions, 3. right speech, 4. right action, 5. right livelihood, 6. right effort, 7. right awareness, 8. right concentration.

Mahaprajapati had embraced the Buddha’s teachings, and years after he had left his family she approached him to propose acceptance of female asceticism. With 500 of her followers she traveled to the Buddha’s temple at Kapilavastu, where the scriptures record her asking of Siddharta: “… if it is possible for your reverence to allow women to obtain the benefits of the mendicant life.” He is said to have answered his aunt by saying that only she should be permitted to shave her head and don the robes of the Sangha, and she disappointingly left the temple. One of the disciples, Ananda, found her crying outside and, after asking why, proceeded to speak to the Buddha himself and persuaded him to ordain the women.

Though the Buddha agreed, he did decree that female mendicants must follow eight rules that subordinated them to monks in many ways. He mentioned concerns about women’s reasons for becoming renunciant (such as a last resort after the death of her husband), and that family life would break down, and that women and their sexuality would be an incoming distraction from the outside world that the medicant community strove to keep out.

Once accepted, the Buddhist nuns cultivated an enthusiastic medicant community, creating worship music that became the Theri-gatha—The Songs of the Women Elders—part of the liturgical canon of Theraveda Buddhism.

Yet despite this energy, historians have concluded that some centuries after Buddha’s death, monks began to reject female mendicants, arguing that women were unable to achieve nirvana and so should not be included in the Sangha. Buddhism spread and evolved into different factions over time, with Theraveda Buddhism as the oldest but most conservative and most restricted for women, and Vajrayana or Tantric Buddhism being the newest and very inclusive of women. Mahaprajapati opened the door for the thousands of Buddhist women joining today’s Sangha.