Women and Buddhism in China (Not Necessarily at the Same Time)

I’m briefly finishing this ‘ancient China’ series now with a note on what happened to women in all of this and the issue of Buddhism. As it happens, the two issues can be combined somewhat. The collections of early Zhou songs and odes that Confucius is said to have collected mentioned women but even up until after the Three Kingdoms period they seem to then have disappeared from Chinese history (as women per se – they may be parents who die leading to filial grieving but not really women qua women). What happened to them? It appears to be another case of history.

Virtually the next time they appear in primary sources is as pious Buddhist children and nuns.

Buddhism itself is now seen as at least as Chinese as it is Indian (as Christianity is now seen as at least as Western as it is Middle Eastern). There are three proposed and feasible routes for such successful infiltration of Buddhism into China: pretending to be a version of Daoism, compromising with Confucianism and being itself.

Buddhism began in China as a showy religion of merchants. We first hear of it in Central China and find that it early on came to the attention of princes and at least one Emperor. In the 3^rd Century CE, China still had only a few Buddhist scriptures but the ones that had arrived readily entered into the debates within the neo-Daoism of the Three Kingdoms period because they discussed similar issues. Non-being was the message of most of them and the alleged glory of non-being (無 - Wu) was already a central issue in this era in neo-Daoism in North China (along with the mysteriousness of being – You (有)). So in a sense they pretended to be Daoist because technical Buddhist terms had to be translated using words that would be understood in China and only Daoism in the North had the words in anything like the technical sense intended by Buddhism.

Buddhists readily attracted Confucian adherents with the proposal that it ought to be a filial duty to protect one’s parents from going to Buddhist hells and rebirths by becoming Buddhists. Even today filial sons are supposed to drink red wine to symbolically stop the bleeding of their parents in hell. This was more a threat but it could be called coming to terms with Confucianism.

Being itself was what attracted well-educated people in China – it encouraged transcendence in a way that Daoism and Confucianism hadn’t managed to do and transcendence seemed like something fun to aim for that the earlier religions had somehow missed out on. Wu could be strived for and achieved and wasn’t a mere Daoist ideal state of nature.