The Therigatha, “Songs of the Elder Nuns,” is the earliest collection of poetry which was written by women in India, and indeed is one of the earliest such anthologies in any language. The poems of the Therigatha date from between the sixth and third centuries BCE. Their language is Pali, a language closely related to Sanskrit. They are an integral part of the Theravada Buddhist canon.
The feminist content of these poems—strikingly evident on the sixth and eighth poems of this selection—has been overlooked by all translators to date, from the first English translation by Caroline Davids in 1909. Some of this book’s perspicacious and well qualified translators missed the feminism simply because they weren’t women, and could not recognize the experiences described. Others, who were women, were such good Buddhists that they unconsciously turned a deaf ear to poems critical of the Buddhist patriarchy.
3: 1
I was a nun for twenty-five years,
never finding out what it’s like to win
a truly tranquil mind—
I never managed that. My thoughts stayed uncontrolled—
then suddenly I felt almighty death-dread,
sensed the end, remembered
that what the Conqueror taught
was the only adequate answer to this—
I saw that there’s nothing that doesn’t bring suffering.
Excited by the insight, my cravings faded,
just as the Buddha taught they would.
It’s now the seventh night
since my thirst for existence was quenched.
3: 2
Four or five times I left the order.
I never achieved serenity, couldn’t control my thoughts.
I came to the conclusion that the religious life
just wasn’t for me.
Then I asked a nun I trusted for help.
She taught me Buddhist doctrine, systematically.
What were the components of a person’s being,
and how they interact with outside objects
to produce our experience of this apparent world.
I listened to her teaching, really heard what she was saying,
every day for seven days, sitting cross-legged at her feet,
ever more joyful and calm.
On the eighth day I stood up, stretched my legs,
and broke through the darkness, the thick mental fog
intrinsic to physical existence.
3: 3
The seven mental qualities
essential for gaining enlightenment—
carefulness, curiosity and diligence in Buddhist practice
and the resultant rapture, calm,
mental focus and equilibrium—
the real pathways to nirvana—all these I have attained.
What the Buddha enjoined, I performed.
I have now an easy awareness
of the essential emptiness, the quasi-reality,
of all things—I take them as they are,
as simple facts, for recognition not reaction.
The Buddha is now my real father
and I am his true and dutiful daughter.
Working on ceasing to exist is now my only delight.
I have control over all of my desires
for anything in heaven or earth.
For me, the cycle of rebirth,
that almighty wheel, has stopped turning.
When I leave this mode of being
I will not here recur.
3: 4
One day I set out for a stroll
from my nunnery near Vulture Peak;
I saw a bull elephant climb back onto the bank
after cooling himself with a plunge in the river.
A mahout with an elephant goad
gave the creature a gentle tap on the front leg,
commanded him to bend it back at the knee
so he could make its bent-back leg a step
to climb onto that gigantic animal’s back.
I saw how this powerful wild creature
had been tamed, submitted itself to human will,
and I reapplied myself to strengthening my power
to controlling my unruly thoughts.
That was, after all, why I’d left the world,
not to stroll about admiring elephants.
3: 5
“Ubbiri, you’re out here in at the edge of settlement
where the jungle starts, wailing,
a mother for her lost daughter,
calling her name, ‘Jeeva!’
—a name which, ironically, means ‘life.’
In this burning ground alone, eighty-four thousand
girls named Jeeva have had their corpses
reduced to ashes on the pyre.
For which, of all these Jeeva do you grieve?
For which of these numberless ‘lives’ do you cry?
Have you tears enough for all these Jeevas?
There is no life that will not die.”
These words pulled out the arrow
embedded in my heart, though sunk deep as grief—
by showing to grieving me
the very inadequacy of sadness,
the sharp spike of daughter-loss was drawn out.
Now I am only struck, not wounded by the truth.
This quenched my thirst for existence;
done with it, I come to the Buddha,
the Dharma and the Sangha;
I take refuge with the Sage.
3: 6
What’s with the men of Rajagaha?
They live in the capitol of Magadha,
the first kingdom to accept Buddhism,
yet they won’t listen to Sukka teaching Buddhist doctrine—
they sit there, stolid,
like folk who’ve made too free with the mead!
Her instruction is captivating,
distilled to essence, nourishing.
I think, if these men were wise, they’d drink it in
like a thirsty traveler who finds a new pool
of rainwater pure as the heavens it fell from.
That’s what they’d do if they were wise,
or if Sukka were a man.
“Sukka” means “pure,” and her teaching is as pure
as her life. She has no desires,
she’s centered. This is her last incarnation.
Her present physical body is the final one
she’ll have to bear and bear with.
She’s beaten the demon Mara and all his evil minions.
3: 7
“The world is always with us, we are of it.
Don’t think you can escape it by detachment
or seclusion. All that will get you is regret
for the sexual pleasure you missed out on.”
Desires and passions cut like swords,
pierce like spears: the physical body
is the chopping block on which they hack us.
What you call sex pleasures, I know to be horrors,
for I’ve seen what they lead to.
I’ve defeated every delight,
broken through the murk and inertia
of my physical existence, my mental clouds have cleared.
Evil one, you who tempt us to love an existence
we must pay for with death,
know now it’s you who’ve been slain!
3: 8
“The state attained only by sages,
and difficult even for these—
how could a woman ever grasp, much less possess it?
Like trying to hold fast to something
with a thumbless, two-fingered hand!”
One doesn’t think with one’s fingers,
and if you need them to count with,
that doesn’t say much for your math.
If someone deeply understands dharma;
if one has, and truly applies, intelligence—
how is her being female relevant?
When a woman defeats all delights,
breaks through the murk and inertia
of physical existence, clears away the mental clouds,
then the Evil one, who tempts us to love
an existence we must pay for with death,
should be aware that now he’s the one who’s been slain!
It is part of our project to create a library of the finest poetry by women from every time and land—a “great wall of girls” —a collection so imposing in scope that women’s genius will be visible even from outer space. Literary translation is the primary means for securing this end.
96th of October Editions has already published books by Anna Akhmatova, Marina Tsvetaeva (Russian); Mascha Kalèko (German); Renée Vivien (French); Anna Margolin (Yiddish) Rachel Blaustein (Hebrew); and Sappho (Greek). Ancient literature written by women, and attributed to men, will be found in O’Malley’s Woman in Chinese and Faintly’s Hebrew Hussies and Hellcats. Our fully annotated editions of books by Julia Vinograd and Emily Dickinson are important turrets on the “wall.” The Therigatha is a distinguished addition to this company.
We are actively interested in publishing new translations and original poetry that explores the vast and undiscovered countries of women’s experience, which art has only begun to map.
We accept as a fixed principle that politics have no place in the evaluation of literature: art cannot serve a political or other further purpose, for good art is itself already a purpose—and indeed all the purpose art can effectively accommodate.
Similarly, we resist and refute the assertion that political feminism can fairly be assigned any further purpose than securing the rights of women.
We propose, as a literary magazine, to do our part to render great women audible. This we view as a necessary corollary to political feminism, but neither identical nor subordinate to the latter—just as securing women’s rights is a necessary corollary to securing universal human rights, but neither identical nor subordinate to that latter aim.