Effects of Buddhism for Women in Medieval Period

A 420-character text composed in medieval China made its way into Japanese Buddhist scripture and established women as inherently damned because of their gender. As early as 1417, a cult began to arise in Japan surrounding a text known in Japan as the Ketsubonkyo, or the Blood Pool Hell Sutra (Williams, 2005, p. 50). As Williams (2005) explains:

The text makes clear that all women, regardless of their station in this world, inevitably fell into this gruesome hell because of the evil karma accrued from their menstrual blood, and that of childbirth, which was thought to soil sacred beings (nature . . . as well as Buddhas and monks) after seeping into the water supply (p. 51).

The Blood Pool Hell was reserved strictly for women, and they could only be redeemed from it by the earthly intervention of priests and relatives, who needed to perform specific rituals that petitioned for sacred help on their behalf.

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, a concept that "refers to the idea that women were subordinate to their fathers in the natal home, to their husbands in marriage, and to their children in old age" (Nagata, __, p. 279). These related concepts were used to define what became the predominant Buddhist attitude toward woman as subject to men and inferior in their place in the world. Barbara Ruch ( ) argues, "The obstructions/obligations motif [serves] as a reminder of the numerous obstructions that the preoccupations of male-centered histories of Buddhism have put in place and have come to seem inherent in the field" (p. liv). The exact wording involved is dependent on translations. Some scholars use "hindrances" instead of "obstructions," and Edward Kamens ( ) even quotes one translator as naming them "literally 'the five something-or-other, 'the five-what-you-may-call-its'" (p. 390). Whatever the precise words used, the idea at work is "that women are a threat to men because they may cause men to stray from their purposes" (Kamens, __, p. 392). This becomes an especially insidious concept, as it suggests that, if, men are unable to achieve a higher consciousness through rebirth, it is because inferior women have distracted them from focusing on what need
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Approximate Word count = 3294
Approximate Pages = 13 (250 words per page)