manas wrote:I wonder what the official, traditional explanation is, as to why a human being with a female body, could not also discover the Four Noble Truths on their own after much striving over many lifetimes, as the Buddha did.
It’s part and parcel of the general doctrine that in their final life bodhisattas will be reborn in circumstances that permit them to have the optimal impact upon devas and men.[1] For example, it is said that they will be reborn in whatever happens to be reckoned as the highest social class at that time; the place of their birth will be a cultured and not a barbarous one; they will be physically attractive, possessed of a good voice, etc. etc.
The texts don’t spell out precisely why it would be better for them to be men rather than women, but it's not hard to guess. As far as we know, all human societies are patriarchal, always have been, and most probably always will be.[2] So, if you’re intent on making a really big splash in the world, other things being equal, possession of a male body will stand you in better stead than possession of a female one.
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Notes
[1] This point is very commonly misstated, with claims being made to the effect that a bodhisatta, in his penultimate life in the Tusita heaven, gets to choose the circumstances of his final birth. But this isn’t what the Suttas say. They say only that before passing away he
foresees what the circumstances of his final life will be, not that he
chooses them. As with any other saṃsāric being, the bodhisatta, after passing away from Tusita, fares according to his kamma. It just happens that by the time he is ripe for awakening, the power of his accumulations of paramī and his resolve for sammāsambodhi will be such as will lead to rebirth in optimal circumstances.
Pace the Tibetans, it doesn’t mean that he is in possession of the power to say: “Let my rebirth be such and such!”
[2] For any readers who've been taken in by the matriarchal myth-making peddled by loony feminists (i.e., supposedly matriarchal prehistoric societies, or presently existing ones among the Iroquois, or in the South Seas, etc.), I offer the following reading suggestions (especially Goldberg’s book, which in its most recent edition carries the new title,
Why Men Rule):
• Cynthia Eller,
The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory: Why an Invented Past Won't Give Women a Future (Boston, Beacon Press, 2001).
• Donald E. Brown,
Human Universals (Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 1991)
• Joan Bamberger,
The Myth of Matriarchy: Why Men Rule in Primitive Society, in M. Rosaldo and L. Lamphere,
Women, Culture, and Society, (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1974).
• Steven Goldberg,
The Inevitability of Patriarchy, (William Morrow & Company, 1973).