Venerable Patachara Bhikkhuni - at Anukampa Bhikkhuni Project Photo from Sutta Central.

Preface

Patachara and Chanda are two of the first female disciples of the Buddha, but they are also teacher and student. Patachara was the leader of a group of ordained bound together by the shared experience of losing children to death. Patachara, who had lost her own children, was able to dispel their grief through her teaching, just as the Buddha had done for her. Chanda’s poem about her life before and after she encountered Patachara is an eloquent testament to the significance of women living together in mutual care and intimacy.

Patachara’s tragic story is one of the most famous in the Theravada Buddhist world of Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. Her whole family–two children, husband, and parents—died quickly one after another in a sequence of unconnected disasters. Her grief brought her to madness. A seemingly random encounter with the Buddha punctured that madness of grief and restored Patachara to her senses. One day while washing herself up, she watched the water “run” over the dry sand, some being absorbed quickly while some going quite far. She reflected on how what happened with water was like what happened with the lives of her children, husband, and parents.

Furrowing fields with plows, sowing seeds in the ground,
Taking care of wives and children, young men find wealth.

So why have I not experienced freedom,
when I am virtuous and I do what the Teacher taught,
when I am not lazy and I am calm?

While washing my feet I made the water useful in another way,
by concentrating on it move from the higher ground down.

Then I held back my mind,
as one would do with a thoroughbred horse,
and I took a lamp and went into the hut.

First I looked at the bed, then I sat on the couch,
I used a needle to pull out the lamp’s wick.
Just as the lamp went out, my mind was free. 

Translated from Pali by Charles Hallisey.

Charles Hallisey, translator, Therigatha:The Poems of the First Buddhist Women (Murty Classical Library of India 3). Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015, pages 67 and 71.

In the past, I was poor, a widow, without children,
Without friends or relatives, I did not get food or clothing.

Taking a bowl and stick, I went begging from family,
I wandered for seven years, tormented by cold and heat.

Then I saw a nun as she was receiving food and drink.
Approaching her, I said, “Make me go forth to homelessness.”

And she was sympathetic to me and Patachara made me go forth,
She gave me advice and pointed me towards the highest goal.

I listened to her words and I put into action her advice.
That excellent woman’s advice was not empty,
I know the three things that most don’t know,
Nothing fouls my heart.

Translated from Pali by Charles Hallisey.

Charles Hallisey, translator, Therigatha:The Poems of the First Buddhist Women (Murty Classical Library of India 3). Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015, pages 67 and 71.

The poems were read by Janet Surrey.

Resources for
Reflection

There are many ways to read a text, just as there are many ways to spend time with a good friend. Included here are a variety of resources for reading and reflection. They are like conversation-starters meant to facilitate an encounter between a reader or readers and a text.

Each of the activities can be used to read any one of the stories. Additionally, the same activity can be used to read the same story on separate occasions. If you are reading alone, treat the prompts as opportunities for individual reflection, journaling, or meditation. If you are reading in community, use the prompts as jumping-off points for group discussion.

Feel free to modify any activity based on your own interests and accessibility needs, or to create your own! 

Read through the text, either silently or aloud. Then, turn your mind to the experience you just had. What is memorable for you? What was especially moving or touching? Was there anything that you found yourself resisting or something that was particularly challenging? Do you have any lingering questions? If you have a religious or spiritual practice, do you have a sense of how the text might be of benefit to that practice?

In his introduction to Stirring and Stilling: A Liturgy of Cambodian Dharma Songs, Trent Walker quotes the female Cambodian lay priest Koet Ran as saying, “Dharma songs stir us and still us if we have affinity for the Dharma” (2011, 6).

In Buddhist teaching, “stirring” (Pāli: saṃvega) refers to an unsettling experience caused by the shock of impermanence. “Stilling” (Pāli: pasāda) is a settling of the mind or heart, a feeling of resolution, joy or equanimity.

Read through the text. Then, reflect: What stirs you? What stills you?

Further reading: Walker, Trent. 2011. Stirring and Stilling: A Liturgy of Cambodian Dharma Songs, http://www.stirringandstilling.org. 

Read through the text, either silently or aloud. Then, imagine yourself into the world of the text and tell the story, or a particular moment in the story, from a different point of view. You might focus on the viewpoint of a certain character, explore something that is not explained in the text itself, or re-tell the story in your own way. This activity can be done in written form (prose, poetry, script, interview, etc.), as an embodied practice (a play, a dance), or through any other medium. Be creative!

If you are working in a group, make space for each person to share what they have created, if they wish.

Afterwards, reflect on the activity as a whole. Was it difficult or easy? Was it similar or different from ways that you usually read? Did you gain any insights? Do you have any lingering questions? 

Read through the text, either silently or aloud. Then, formulate a question about something that takes place within the world of the text. You might focus on a moment that surprised you or on something that the text does not explain fully. For this activity, the best questions are ones that do not have clear answers but have a variety of possible answers.

Brainstorm possible answers to your question, taking time to contemplate how any given answer might shift your understanding of the story. If you are working in a group, take turns sharing your questions and offering possible answers or interpretations. 

Buddhist texts come to us from times long ago, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be put in conversation with our world today. In this activity, read one of the Buddhist stories alongside a contemporary work that addresses the topic of gender.

After exploring the contemporary work, summarize or discuss key insights or impressions. Then, read the Buddhist text with attention to the ideas that you just explored. Does anything jump out to you now as you read, perhaps that you hadn’t noticed before? Do you have lingering questions about how gender appears in the text, or about how the contemporary work relates to the Buddhist text?

Some suggestions for contemporary sources on gender:

For this activity, it can be helpful to listen to the text rather than to read it. You might listen to the recording or, if you are working in a group, invite one person to read the text aloud.

As you listen to the text, close your eyes (if you feel comfortable doing so) and imagine yourself into its world. Perhaps you imagine yourself as a particular person in the story, named or unnamed, or simply as an observer.

As the story unfolds, pay attention to your sensory experiences. What do you hear? What do you smell? What do you see? What can you touch, or taste? What information about this world can you gather through your senses?

Afterwards, share your experience with your group, or use your experience as a prompt for individual reflection. Then, consider the activity as a whole. Was it difficult or easy? Was it similar or different from ways that you usually read? Did you gain any insights? Do you have any lingering questions? 

Print out the text onto a piece of paper. Then, use scissors to cut out the individual lines so that each sentence or phrase is on its own slip of paper (in the case of longer texts, choose a shorter section for this activity). Place the slips of paper on a surface with the words facing down so that you cannot see what is written on them.

If you are working alone, choose three slips of paper and place them one below the other in the order you pulled them. If you are working in a group, invite each person to choose a slip, and then place them one below the other in the order they were pulled. If your group is large, you may want to split up into groups of three to five people for this activity.

Read your new text aloud three times or invite each person in the group to read it aloud in turn. Then, reflect on the meaning of your “found poem.” What jumps out at you when you focus on these particular lines? Does the order in which they appear suggest any new meanings? Does the poem invoke new questions, surprises, or delights?

If you are working in a large group, come back together and share your “found poems” with each other. 

Read through the text, either silently or aloud. Then, take some time to reflect on what you have learned from a character in the text, named or unnamed, and to draft an expression of appreciation or gratitude for that person. You might write a letter, a poem, or choose any other medium. Feel free to be creative!

If some guidance is helpful, the following three-part blessing is a place to start:

  1. An expression of thanks (i.e., “Mahaprajapati, thank you for…”)

  2. An acknowledgement (i.e., “You have taught me…”)

  3. A wish for the future (i.e., “May the world know your teachings.”)

If you are working in a group, allow time for each person to share their expression of gratitude, if they wish. 

This activity is best done in a group.

Invite someone in your group to read the text aloud. Then, as a group, choose a particular person in the story whose perspective you will focus on for the duration of the activity. If the story is long, you may also want to choose a particular moment to explore from this person’s point of view.

As a group, brainstorm a list of emotions that you think capture something about the experience of this person (emotions are words like: joyful, awed, grieved, tired, calm, etc.). If you have a whiteboard or large piece of paper, it is helpful to write the list down or to ensure in some other way that everyone in the group has access to the list.

Break up into small groups of three or four people. In your small group, choose one word from the list and create a “body sculpture” that illustrates that emotion in some way. The sculpture should not act out the story itself; it should be a creative or associative interpretation of the word. For example, if your group chose “joyful,” you might depict a scene where a person is picking up a loved one from an airport. Make sure that everyone who wants to participate is included in the sculpture. Each body can represent a person, an object (i.e., a suitcase), an energetic force (i.e., wind), or anything else that occurs to you. Be creative! Be silly! Have fun!

Come back to the larger group and invite a small group to share their “body sculpture.” Treat this sculpture as its own sacred text. Reflect together: What do you notice? What sensations or emotions arise in you when you observe the sculpture? What insights, opportunities, surprises, or questions does it inspire? How might you incorporate these insights into your understanding of the written text?

Allow space for each group to share their “body sculpture,” if they so wish, and to reflect together on their insights and opportunities for interpretation.

Finally, reflect on the activity as a whole. Was it difficult or easy? Was it similar or different from ways that you usually read? Did you gain any insights? Do you have any lingering questions?

Further reading:

Boal, Augusto. 1992. Games for Actors and Non-Actors. Rranslated by Adrian Jackson. London: Routledge.

Rue, Victoria. 2005. Acting Religious: Theatre as Pedagogy in Religious Studies. Cleveland: The Pilgrim Press. 

This activity brings two texts in conversation with each other. You might choose texts that you have read on other occasions so that you already have some familiarity with the stories, or you could use completely new stories.

Read through each of the two texts, either silently or aloud. Then, investigate: How do these texts relate to one another? Do they offer different insights into a particular person? Does one pick up the story where the other leaves off? Does one text make you interpret the other differently? Are the moments where the texts use similar language? What insights, questions or delights arise from their juxtaposition? 

Background
Resources

  1. “just as the lamp went out,” the Pali for “went out,” here referring to the lamp, is nibbānaṃ, also the name of the ultimate goal of Buddhist life, Nirvana. Nirvana is the freedom from suffering and happiness attained by humans who learn to live as the Buddha taught.

  2. “the three things that most don’t know” (tevijjā), these are the ability to one’s past lives; the ability to know where and why other beings are reborn; and the ability to know one’s own moral corruptions. To know the three things that most don’t know is to know that one is enlightened and that one will not be reborn.

The poems of Patachara and Chanda are found in the Therīgāthā, an anthology of poems by and about the first Buddhist women. Dating the Therīgathā with any certainty is difficult, if not impossible. According to Buddhist tradition, they date to the time of the Buddha himself, but we only have evidence for their existence in the work of Dhammapala, the sixth-century Buddhist commentator on the Therīgāthā who lived in South India. Some modern scholarship dates the poems in Therīgāthā to before the third century B.C.E, but it is likely that individual poems were subject to revision and even translation (from local vernaculars in use the time) in the centuries before Dhammapala.

The Therīgāthā is included in the Pali canon of Theravada Buddhism, alongside its counterpart, the Theragāthā, an anthology of poems by the first Buddhist men. The poems of the Therīgāthā have not been found in the scriptural canons of other ancient Indian Buddhist schools, nor are translations of them found in the Buddhist literatures of pre-modern Tibet and East Asia.

All of the women who have poems in the Therīgāthā, including Patachara and Chanda, are therīs, “senior ones,” among ordained Buddhist women and they deserve to be called that because of their spiritual achievements. They are all enlightened women, and in their poems, we can catch glimpses of their experiences of awakening. 

There are quite a number of translations of the Therīgāthā, including:

Charles Hallisey, translator. Therigatha: The Poems of the First Buddhist Women (Murty Classical Library of India 3). Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015.

Bhikkhu Mahinda (Anagarika Mahendra), translator. Therīgāthāpāḷi: Book of Verses of Elder Bhikkhunis. Roslindale, MA: Dhamma Publishers, 2022.

Susan Murcott, translator. The First Buddhist Women. Berkeley: Parallax Press, 1991.

K.R. Norman, translator. The Elders’ Verses II Therīgāthā. London: Pali Text Society, 2007.

Caroline A.F. Rhys Davids, translator. Psalms of the Early Buddhists I. London: Pali Text Society, 1909.

Bhikkhuni Soma, translator. Verses of the Elder Bhikkhunis. Sutta Central, 2022.

Bhikkhu Sujato. Translator. Verses of the Senior Nuns: A friendly translation of the Therīgāthā. Suuta Central, 2019.

Thanissaro Bhikkhu, translator. Therigatha: Verses of the Elder Nuns. Access to Insight (Metta Monastery), 2005.

A translation of Dhammapala’s commentary on the Therīgāthā has also been published:

William Pruitt, translator. The Commentary on the Verses of the Therīs. Oxford: Pali Text Society, 1999.