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The Dalai Lama is a feminist

Jill

And that’s pretty great. I especially like the full quote:

“I call myself a feminist,” said the Dalai Lama. “Isn’t that what you call someone who fights for women’s rights?”

If only he hadn’t followed it up by going on to say that women are more compassionate and caring because we give birth.

27 thoughts on The Dalai Lama is a feminist

  1. Doesn’t the Dali Lama have a history of saying rather socially conservative things that, if they were said by a mainstream Western religious leader, would be condemned by the same people who idolize him?

  2. While I don’t claim to be an expert on Buddhist philosophy, I think I understand where he’s coming from with the whole “giving birth” makes women more “caring and compassionate.” From a Buddhist perspective (I think), those who willingly take on pain and suffering for the benefit of another are more caring and compassionate than those who don’t. Since childbirth is a pretty obvious, *physical* sign of taking on pain and suffering for the benefit of another, and only women can do that part of it (so far) as opposed to actual parenting after birth (which can be done by both men and women), I think he was trying to say that women have more opportunity to be caring and compassionate because we give birth, allowing a soul to take flesh so it can begin/continue its journey towards enlightenment.

    Yeesh, I’m starting to ramble.

    Of course, I could be full of it, too …

  3. Sure, I’ve spent most of my life working to reinstate a brutal theocracy with myself at the helm in Tibet, but I’m a feminist, really!

  4. I don’t like the Dalai Lama anymore than I like the Chinese government. While I don’t shun independence of the Tibetan state (especially as an anarchist…), I don’t believe the Dalai Lama should be permitted control over the region. China at least installed new schools and hospitals in the region, while Tenzin Gyatso, the current Dalai Lama accepted more than $1.5 million a year from the U.S. government in the 60s to continue resistance against the Chinese, in a cruel Cold-War tactic that resulted in thousands of deaths. Not to mention he condemns abortion and homosexuality, and the forming of “cults” in his Tibet. “Cults” in scare quotes because the one in question, Dorje Shugden, was formed during the 5th Dalai Lama’s reign (9 Dalai Lamas ago) and was allowed all the way up until the 1970s. It is a peaceful spiritual practice, NOT a cult. Dorje Pakmo also criticized the Dalai Lama, saying “the sins of the Dalai Lama and his followers seriously violate the basic teachings and precepts of Buddhism and seriously damage traditional Tibetan Buddhism’s normal order and good reputation. Old Tibet was dark and cruel, the serfs lived worse than horses and cattle.” I find it important to note she is considered the third most important person in Tibetan Buddhism, under the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama, and the highest ranking female in the Lamaist hierarchy.

    Of course, whose word will you take more seriously? A mysterious, old, wise sage from the East (as built up by the West – which I find to be slightly racist, but that’s another topic entirely) or a bunch of pinko punks?

    Oh well…

  7. The word he uses is prone, i.e. there’s a slightly stronger chance that women will develop and practice compassion because they are the ones that bear and raise children.

  8. From a Buddhist perspective (I think), those who willingly take on pain and suffering for the benefit of another

    (my bolding.) As noted above, the Dalai Lama doesn’t respect women’s reproductive rights, so “willingly” is not applicable.

    If that were not the case, it would still be ridiculous to argue that sexism with a Buddhist religious justification is more understandable than sexism with, for example, a Roman Catholic religious justification. We understand perfectly well where the Dalai Lama is “coming from.” I understand where the Pope is coming from, too.

  9. Sure, the Dalai Lama is a feminist…if you define feminism as equal opportunity for women. The Dalai Lama’s close advisors include men convicted of mass murder of both men and Women! Feminist indeed! More like a Nazi, than anything else. Check out the evidence in my website.

  10. Mhorag,

    “Since childbirth is a pretty obvious, *physical* sign of taking on pain and suffering for the benefit of another, and only women can do that part of it (so far)”

    You’re forgetting trans guys who have kids.

  11. Also forgetting people who don’t identify as women who have kids.

    and also, while I’m here… the “women are more compassionate because they can (or do) give birth’ from the Dalai Lama is a pretty sweeping statement. While taking pain for another may – show – compassion, it doesn’t beget much of it. It also doesn’t triumph other kinds of pain that show the same thing and the hit count of ways to show compassion through pain, struggle or strife is inumerable. I think it’s ‘more’ compassionate and caring to help a stranger, less chance of societal-induced obligation to care for relatives/friends banging on someone’s mind’s eye that way as they look on. I’d say the Dalai Lama’s comment was sexist that way.

  13. Frankly, I think that English being his second language, and an unwieldy one at that, probably spun his words somewhat.

    That said, I don’t know shit about him, I just admire Buddism. And am disinclined to be offended as (a) I know he would take all and any criticisms on board and (b) he lives in a patriarchal culture, like most, and so of course there are always going to be biases there. All he can do is work around them once he has seen them. He’s not a god, no one is all-seeing.

    I’m sure he has his own prejudices, but his life is dedicated to whittling them down one by one, so I’m not too hurt by it.

  14. This series of comments is very disjointed and depressing. I would like to make a suggestion. The next time there’s a post on Buddhism and feminism here, it would be nice to see a Buddhist woman expert on the subject writing that post.

    Just a few points:

    – the Dalai Lama does not represent all Buddhism. He does not even represent all Tibetan Buddhism. Often Buddhists outside of Tibetan Buddhism respect him, but thinking that the Dalai Lama is to Buddhism as the Pope is to Catholicism is absolutely false. Christianity is not the ultimate yardstick to measure all other religions.

    – the Dalai Lama advocates for Tibetan autonomy, not full independence. Tibetans do not want a return to theocracy and he’s pragmatic enough to know that. The return-to-theocracy argument is a strawman.

    – Chinese/Tibetan conflict is political more than it is religious. China is also an (informally) Buddhist nation.

    – Buddhism is not sexist in the same way as Christianity because Buddhism is not the same as Christianity. Buddhism isn’t free from sexism and it isn’t always sexist. It is a large, culturally diverse and very complicated religion.

    Unfortunately I think this thread is just going to ping back and forth between two extremes… “Buddhism is neat and cool” versus “Buddhism sucks because privileged white hippies think it’s neat and cool, and saying it sucks is going to make me look like I’m different from them”.

  15. Could a mod please delete my badly formatted reply above?

    Dana, you start off by saying I don’t know shit about him but then go on to assert that I know he would take all and any criticisms on board.

    So how do you know how the Dalai Lama, someone you yourself confess to knowing “shit” about, would react to criticisms? Because it’s been my experience that religious leaders don’t react well at all to challenges to their authority.

  16. atlasien:

    the Dalai Lama does not represent all Buddhism. He does not even represent all Tibetan Buddhism. Often Buddhists outside of Tibetan Buddhism respect him, but thinking that the Dalai Lama is to Buddhism as the Pope is to Catholicism is absolutely falbse. Christianity is not the ultimate yardstick to measure all other religions.

    A distinction without a difference. To the international community, (and all his affluent white liberal followers in the US) he is all things Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism. When you ask the typical college educated Westerner who Dorje Shugden is, you’re probably not gonna get many right answers.

    Chinese/Tibetan conflict is political more than it is religious. China is also an (informally) Buddhist nation.

    China has a different school of Buddhism, mixed with Confucianism and Taoism, and existing under a nominally Communist government in a country with rising nationalism. Its obviously an extremely complex issue.

    Buddhism is not sexist in the same way as Christianity because Buddhism is not the same as Christianity. Buddhism isn’t free from sexism and it isn’t always sexist. It is a large, culturally diverse and very complicated religion.

    Sure, but comparing Buddhism to Christianity is hardly the issue here. It doesn’t take a lot of effort to find…not so flattering quotes the Dalai Lama has made about issues that, were they spoken by a Roman Catholic, conservative American Protestant, etc ad nauseous, would bring down much wrath and indignation. The Dalai Lama should hardly be excused from any criticism. Criticizing him or Tibet has nothing to do with criticizing Buddhism as a whole, or drawing inappropriate parallels between religions.

  18. I’m a little surprised at the comments on this thread…why are some people saying “well what do you expect from a Buddhist”? I don’t understand the sentiment nor what it has to do with the Dalai Lama’s quotes. It simply comes off as insulting and ignorant.

    I am a Buddhist but I don’t know much about the Dalai Lama or his views; he says some very positive things at times and some very negative things at times. His viewpoint though, that women are more compassionate and caring than men, is also shared by some feminist women I’ve met. I don’t agree with it because it forces women into a predetermined gender role, but I find it interesting that some women who identify as feminist feel this way.

  19. Sure, but comparing Buddhism to Christianity is hardly the issue here. It doesn’t take a lot of effort to find…not so flattering quotes the Dalai Lama has made about issues that, were they spoken by a Roman Catholic, conservative American Protestant, etc ad nauseous, would bring down much wrath and indignation. The Dalai Lama should hardly be excused from any criticism. Criticizing him or Tibet has nothing to do with criticizing Buddhism as a whole, or drawing inappropriate parallels between religions.

    Does it have nothing to do with drawing parallels? Because in that particular quote that Jill cited, the problem doesn’t seem to me to be the actual content of the quote, but the baggage it carries with it. It could be a neutral sort of observation, that doing the bulk of childrearing makes women more empathetic on average than men are. Or that the constant risk of pregnancy, which makes women’s lives so much more precarious than the lives of men of the same class, inclines women to greater empathy with people outside their class. I think on average both those statements are probably true.

    But the problem with a Westerner saying “women are more compassionate because they give birth” would be the cultural baggage: we understand that someone who says that is not making a simple observation but usually making some kind of essentialist point about women’s roles, and that the “women are more compassionate” argument is used to shame women who are not “nice” and to render the social pressures to be nice invisible, and to normalize the effort women put into being caring because it’s just women’s nature, and to make any woman who makes the tiniest parenting mistake seem like a bad mother, and that the converse “men are not compassionate” is used to argue that any man who doesn’t beat his girlfriend is a prize and that any father who goes so far as to change a nappy is Father of the Year.

    So yeah, if a Western religious leader said that, damn right I’d just roll my eyes at them. Because I know enough about Christianity to know that they’re just using that line as a stick to beat women with. But I don’t know enough about Buddhism to know for sure that if the Dalai Lama says that line he means the same thing by it. Though I can believe he might.

    tl;dr: there’s no evidence that the quote carries the same kind of cultural baggage with it when said by the Dalai Lama as it would when said by the Pope. I wish someone who knows would weigh in!

  20. I’m not trying to excuse the Dalai Lama from criticism. I’m trying to steer the conversation away from ignorant and uninformed criticism that promotes ridiculous stereotypes about Buddhism.

    “To the international community, (and all his affluent white liberal followers in the US) he is all things Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism. ”

    Who is this “international community”? It obviously doesn’t include more than a billion Chinese. You seem to be conflating your image of white liberal USians with the world, which is really problematic. Then the term “Westerner” is widely used but also problematic. Does it include Asian-Americans? And did you know that the majority of Buddhists in the United States are not white?

    China does not have a different school of Buddhism… China has different schools (plural) of Buddhism. And there are culturally Chinese converts to Tibetan Buddhism in places like Taiwan and Singapore who support the Dalai Lama very strongly. It is definitely a very complicated situation.

    It’s these kind of inaccuracies and stereotypes that I see popping up on this thread. They would not be allowed to fly around in terms of other religions here, but because there’s so much secularized and/or orientalized “pop Buddhism” in this country, people think they have a right to throw in all manner of ill-informed and offensive opinions as if they were experts.

    If anyone is coming to the conversation from the viewpoint of a cultural Christian who really doesn’t know jack about either Buddhism or real Buddhist peoples, they should say so first.

  21. Pingback: Dalai Lama: “I Call Myself A Feminist” « Feminist Looking Glass

  22. Can this thread not be moderated a bit more?? I can’t believe

    ”Well, he’s just a buddist. So don’t expect too much”

    is acceptable!

  23. Actually, the “BUDDHISM SUCKS he he he” Beavis and Butthead chorus comments don’t bother me. I’m just irritated that what could have been an interesting discussion about feminism and Buddhist ethics was basically doomed before it even started.

  24. Interesting responses in this thread. Basically the same apologia you find in just about any defense of religion.

    1. Not a True Buddhist(TM)
    2. He was misunderstood.
    3. What he really means is…
    4. But if we ignore that side, he’s done so much good over there.

    From a guy who opposes abortion in all cases, believes homosexuality is bad, believes sex is bad, especially anal and oral sex, and so on. The guy’s views are not particularly different from the Roman Catholic church’s even in things like denial of flesh, opposition to war and all that. So why do so many western liberals cream their pants and panties over his words?

  25. Actually the ‘Not a True Buddhist’ option should actually be ‘Not a representative of Buddhism as I practice it.’ which means we’re not ‘creaming’ anything over him. That’s our point. He doesn’t have much to do with our idea of Buddhism. Please stop trying to foist him on us to boost your own ego.

    To put it in terms you may be more comfortable with, I wouldn’t try to criticise all feminists by continually pointing at offensive things Germaine Greer (for example)may have said and asking ‘why so many western liberals cream their pants and panties over her words.’

  26. “From a guy who opposes abortion in all cases, believes homosexuality is bad, believes sex is bad, especially anal and oral sex, and so on.”

    Except for the fact that none of those things are true. The Dalai Lama has never said that sex of any variety is “bad”. Not to my knowledge anyway. The Dalai Lama is actually a Tantric. Tantra is a practice which honors sex as one of the ways of connecting with the divine and achieving enlightenment. As for abortion, he has stated that he feels the act is a -negative- action since he believes that it involves an act of killing. But his stance is that it is acceptable on a case by case basis. Not exactly a wonderful stance on abortion, but far from being the stance that you are claiming.

    If you are going to attack someone, it would be helpful if they were actually guilty of what you are accusing them of being guilty of.

    A collection of quotes from HHDL on tantric sex:

    http://sacred-sex.org/buddhism/14th-dalai-lama-and-sex

    “”For Buddhists, sexual intercourse can be used in the spiritual path because it causes a strong focusing on consciousness if the practitioner has firm compassion and wisdom. Its purpose is to manifest and prolong deeper levels of mind (described earlier with respect to the process of dying), in order to put their power to use in strengthening the realization of the emptiness. Otherwise, mere intercourse has nothing to do with spiritual cultivation. When a person has achieved a high level of practice in motivation and wisdom, then even the joining of the two sex organs or so-called intercourse, does not detract from the maintenance of that person’s pure behavior…”

    “Through special techniques of concentration during sex, competent practitioners can prolong very deep, subtle, and powerful states and put them to use to realize emptiness. However, if you engage in sexual intercourse within an ordinary mental context, there is no benefit.” – How to Practice, Way to a Meaningful Life, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Translated by Jeffrey Hopkins

  27. Feminist or not, the Dalai Lama doesn’t seem to impress President Obama, who has chosen not to meet with him. This is the first time in 18 years there won’t be a meeting between the President and the Dalai Lama.

    I really can’t decide how I feel about this, as there may be objections to the Dalai Lama himself, but the Tibetan people are having there culture destroyed by immigration from China.

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