WOMEN AND THE BUDDHIST CONCEPT OF NIRBANA—STUDY OF SELECT JATAKA STORIES

Kanak Kanti Bera

Abstract


The paper reviews critically the philosophy of ‘Nirbana’ in close connection with the womenfolk, as represented in the Buddhist Tales for Young and Old. On one hand, the Buddha himself was a product of patriarchic society that promotes misogyny. On the other hand, the fair sex in the Buddhist ideology has never been denied their right to ‘moksha’.  The select tales referred to in this article aptly present this dichotomy. If the ‘beauty’ of female body constitutes a foil to the integrity of holy monks, it represents as well the final acid test for them to overcome all their lustful desires and to re-affirm their sexual abstentions. In fact, the paper attempts to substantiate that, the female ‘body’ itself can never be taken as an ‘evil’ to frustrate or nullify the ascetic ambitions. Rather, its relative ‘evilness’ or ‘goodness’ is an ideological construct by the ascetic practitioners themselves.


Keywords


Buddhism, Jataka Tales, Misogyny, Female body, Sex and Lust, Nirbana.

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