The poems of the first Buddhist women still delight, surprise, and teach. Even across expanses of space, time and translation, these “inspired utterances,” as the sixth-century Buddhist commentator Dhammapala called them, enable us to see things that we have not seen before, to imagine things that we have not dreamed before. They are literature in the way that Ezra Pound meant when he said, "Literature is news that STAYS news."
This six-week online program will be devoted to reading these poems, the Therigatha, as vehicles for reflection today. The women of these poems were theris, “senior ones,” among the earliest ordained Buddhist women, and they wrote these poems, “gatha,” as expressions of not only their own enlightenment, but their lives in the fullest sense. We will do close readings with a number of these poems, paying attention to their expressive, imaginative, and emotional content, as well as how they create space for personal reflection and integration. Ultimately, we will look to these women’s utterances as answers to the question: How do we become free?
