21 Aug The Spread of Buddhism
I have been uncomfortable with the dominator-model of the takeover of the patriarchy because I don’t find men to have any more ill will or to be any more power-mad than women, and I don’t feel that an era where women were in charge would have worked any better than the current one. Something did happen, however, in Northern India and Tibet around the 5th century when the first tantras were written, and in China at the same time that Taoism changed significantly. When I studied the map (below) of the spread of Buddhism throughout the regions where these tantras were developed, what it may have been occurred to me — I believe that change was the arrival of Buddhism. It seems that all the confusion of these traditions as explained by different and conflicting authors is that the resulting tantras were the result of the spread of Buddhism meeting the goddess traditions.
The arrival of the philosophy of Buddhism into the world of the cult of the mother must have been shocking. Buddhism is the apogee of male, androcentric, detached, ascetic, celibate, hierarchical power over women and underlings, social stratification, the importance of lineage, and knowledge being secret and only shared with men who are obedient. Women are the cause of suffering, are lesser beings, and are identified with the earth and sexuality. The body is either illusory or disgusting or both. It also taught techniques to attain “higher consciousness” which took years of practice, so women and the working class would have had no time to devote to these pursuits. Spirituality was defined as interior, male, elitist, and a retraction from the senses and experience. In addition to this, patriarchal traditions repress sexuality as one of the most effective means of wielding power (Foucault, 1978).
© 2024 Catherine Auman
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