The Wife of the Buddha

When most people think of Buddhism, they do not think of the wife of the Buddha. Perhaps only a few people in the west even know her names. But in Thailand, Samaneri Dhammananda and other Thai women, look to the Buddha's wife as one of the forerunners of the feminist movement. In an article entitled "She Who Challenged the Buddha," Samaneri Dhammananda, formerly known as Chatsumarn Kabilsingh tells the story of his wife.

The wife of the Buddha was known by many names: Princess Bimba, Yasodhara, Gopa, Golden One. She was the young Siddhartha's cousin, born on the same day, at the same time and therefore of equal lineage with the young prince. When they married, one would assume that they obeyed the Hindu customs of their day, which, according to the Law Code of Manu, put the wife under the protection of the husband, transferred to him by her father. It was required of her that she would birth her husband a son who would perform the proper burial rituals for him at his death. According to the story, Gopa did just this. She birthed him a son whom he promptly named Rahula which means "fetter." According to the Pali canon of scripture, Prince Siddhartha left his young son and sleeping wife and went out into the forest to seek the answer to the source of suffering in the world. This, according to Chatsumarn, was her worst dread: that he would seek enlightenment through solitude. Thus, at the age of 27, she was left for seven years alone with her young son while he went on his quest.

According to Ajaan Chatsumarn, Princess Bimba was able to experience the same quest for enlightenment as did Siddhartha, but by staying at home. She experienced the immediate truth that life is suffering. She felt the pain of separation she was feeling from her beloved husband. Thus, she donned a white Sari, lived on one meal per day, and with disheveled hari became thin.

When Siddhartha became the awakened one, the Buddha, he returned home after seven years, but his wife did not go to greet him. She sent her son out to him. He took the refuges with his father and became ordained, thus adding more sorrow to her life through the loss of her oly son. She went to her husband and wiped his feet with her tears, then returned to the palace and practiced the dhamma she had been taught, through the nature of her suffering and the loss of her son and her husband.

Subsequently, the Buddha's father died and her mother-in-law Maha Prajapati shaver her head, donned yellow robes and approached the Buddha for ordination. At first he refused, saying that the life of the dhamma would be shortened by 500 years, but the Buddha became convinced that she had already been ordained anyway because of the "willingness and commitment of heart" she expressed. (Kabilsingh) Princess Bimba, at the age of 40, became ordained as well. She lived to the age of 78. She decided that the best way to honor the Buddha was to die before him. She went to tell him what she would do. He told her that people would not believe that she had the great powers she possessed so she should work some miracles before she died. Thus, she showed her previous lives in the sky, then she walked backwards, facing him, out of the door. She sat in her quarters in the meditation posture and died like a great Maha Thera (master teacher). She had become known for her meditation skills and a nunnery had been established in her name. It is prophesied in one sutra that she would become a Buddha in the next life with endless life.

From this story, one can surmise that there were actually two narratives of liberation going on in the Buddhist story: one for the Buddha, a heroic journey of separation and discovery and one for the Buddha's wife, a domestic tale of wisdom gained through the ordinary sufferings of a woman. Could it be that the original story was intended to contain both of these tales? Just a Jesus is quoted in the New Testament to have said that whenever we tell his story we should also tell the story of the woman who washed his feet with his tears, in memory of her, perhaps the Christian story was also intended to be told in a couplet: a story of male liberation and of female liberation as well. Buddhism, as in Christianity, has tended not to highlight this story of female devotion and sacrifice and the enlightenment that she achieved as a consequence. Could this story be seen as a kind of archetypal paradigm of women's liberation: how women gain their wisdom through staying, through the mundane tasks of every day life, while men gain their wisdom through transcendence, through leaving the world? Could his wife, like the woman in the gospel story of through the gauntlet before Jesus and demanded that he heal her daughter, despite her status as a gentile, be seen as one who challenges the Buddha to see another way of being holy, a way that does not require separation from the mundane tasks of the world but a way that gains enlightenment through the world?