{"id":1951,"date":"2022-07-31T22:47:22","date_gmt":"2022-07-31T22:47:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/prajnaquest.fr\/blog\/?p=1951"},"modified":"2022-07-31T22:47:23","modified_gmt":"2022-07-31T22:47:23","slug":"the-separation-of-the-sexes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/prajnaquest.fr\/blog\/the-separation-of-the-sexes\/","title":{"rendered":"The Separation of the Sexes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

            The separation of the sexes is a distinctive teaching of the Book of Dzyan on anthropogenesis. It is said to have occurred millions of years ago, in the third root-race. Stanza 7, verse 22, as given in The Secret Doctrine<\/em>, says: \u201c. . . First male-female, then man and woman.\u201d Stanza 8, verse 31: \u201cThe animals separated the first. They began to breed. The two-fold man separated also. He said: \u2018Let us as they; let us unite and make creatures.\u2019 They did.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Such an idea is completely foreign to modern thought, whether scientific, historical, or anthropological. It is also completely foreign to Christian religious thought. However, it is fully orthodox in Buddhist religious thought. Buddhism has not much concerned itself with cosmogony and anthropogony, so there are comparatively few Buddhist texts on these subjects. The ones we have, fortunately, are consistent with each other on these teachings. These teachings were given by the Buddha himself, not by some later Buddhist teacher, so they are authoritative for all schools of Buddhism. The texts quoted below come from several different schools of Buddhism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The Buddhist texts say that humanity descended from higher realms, from various \u201cheavens,\u201d rather than evolved from apes as modern anthropology posits. So humans were more ethereal then, and slowly became more dense as they started to eat, and what they ate also became more and more dense. At one stage of this process of densification the separation of the sexes occurred.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Thus the P\u0101li Agga\u00f1\u00f1a-sutta<\/em> from the Therav\u0101da school of Buddhism, called by its first translators the Buddhist book of Genesis, says (translated by Maurice Walshe):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd these beings set to and fed on this rice, and this lasted for a very long time. And as they did so, their bodies became coarser still, and the difference in their looks became even greater. And the females developed female sex-organs, and the males developed male organs.\u201d1<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The Sanskrit *Loka-praj\u00f1apti-s\u016btra<\/em> from the Dharmaguptaka school of Buddhism, found in the D\u012brgh\u0101gama collection as preserved in its Chinese translation, says (translated by Shohei Ichimura):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo the sentient beings began to harvest the new form of rice and subsist on it. Then their physical forms became coarse and crude, with the advent of male and female sexual organs.\u201d2<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The Mah\u0101-vastu<\/em> from the Lokottarav\u0101din branch of the Mah\u0101s\u0101\u1e45ghika school of Buddhism, found in their Vinaya collection, says (translated by J. J. Jones):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Then, monks, after the disappearance of the creeping-plant, those beings lived on a very long time feeding on the rice which was without powder or husk, but was just fragrant grain. And from the time that they did so, the distinguishing characteristics of female and male appeared among them.”3<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The three preceding sources are traditionally regarded as giving the words of the Buddha. The following three sources give this teaching as presented by later Buddhist writers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The Abhidharma-ko\u015ba-bh\u0101\u1e63ya<\/em>, giving the teachings of the Sarv\u0101stiv\u0101da school of Buddhism as summarized by Vasubandhu, says (translated by Louis de La Vallee Poussin and Lodr\u00f6 Sangpo):4<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThese creepers disappeared and then fields of huskless rice [\u015b\u0101li <\/em>] grew, uncultivated and unplanted: this rice, a coarse sustenance, produced waste: sentient beings then developed organs of excretion and sexual organs; they then took different forms.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The Yog\u0101c\u0101ra-bh\u016bmi<\/em>, giving the teachings of the Yog\u0101c\u0101ra school of Buddhism compiled by Maitreya (so Chinese tradition) or Asa\u1e45ga (so Tibetan tradition), says (translated by Y\u016bichi Kajiyama):5<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThen, they gaze at each other eye to eye, and they become enamored. Then, because of their karma conducive to either femaleness or maleness, some of them acquire female organs and others male organs, and they transgress by means of copulation (dvaya-dvaya-sam\u0101patti<\/em>).\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The Mah\u0101-sa\u1e43vartan\u012b-kath\u0101<\/em>, giving the teachings of the S\u0101\u1e43mat\u012bya school of Buddhism as put into verse form by Sarva-rak\u1e63ita, says (summarized by its editor, Kiyoshi Okano):6<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c3.1.8 As people continuously ate rice, the male organ and female organ appeared in their bodies. The difference between men and women arose for the first time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            There are a number of other Buddhist texts that give this teaching, but these should suffice to show that it is a standard and fully orthodox Buddhist teaching found throughout Buddhism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Notes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. The Long Discourses of the Buddha<\/em>, p. 411. Boston: Wisdom Publications,1987. Maurice Walshe adds a note after the phrase \u201cthe females developed female sex-organs\u201d: \u201cAs noted above, these beings were previously sexless. DA says ‘those who were women in a previous life.’\u201d DA stands for the D\u012bgha Nik\u0101ya commentary by Buddhaghosa. The Agga\u00f1\u00f1a-sutta<\/em> is found in the D\u012bgha Nik\u0101ya, Pali Text Society edition, Vol. III, this passage on p. 88. The first translators of this text were T. W. and C. A. F. Rhys Davids, in Dialogues of the Buddha<\/em>, Part III, 1921, this passage on p. 85.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. The Canonical Book of the Buddha\u2019s Lengthy Discourses<\/em>, Volume III, p. 297. BDK America, 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. The Mah\u0101vastu<\/em>, Volume I, p. 288. London: Luzac & Company, 1949.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Abhidharmako\u015ba-Bh\u0101\u1e63ya of Vasubandhu<\/em>, Volume II, p. 1106. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2012. The 1988 translation by Poussin and Leo M. Pruden reads (Volume II, p. 488): \u201cThis creeper disappeared and then rice grew, unworked and unseeded: this rice, a coarse food, gave forth waste: beings then developed organs of excretion and sexual organs; they then took different forms.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. \u201cBuddhist Cosmology as Presented in the Yog\u0101c\u0101rabh\u016bmi<\/em>,\u201d in Wisdom, Compassion, and the Search for Understanding<\/em>, ed. Jonathan A. Silk, p. 196. Honolulu: University of Hawai\u2018i Press, 2000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

6. \u201cA Summary of the Mah\u0101sa\u1e43vartan\u012bkath\u0101<\/em>,\u201d in P\u0101s\u0101dikad\u0101na\u1e41: Festschrift f\u00fcr Bhikkhu P\u0101s\u0101dika<\/em>, ed. Martin Straube, et al., p. 329. Marburg: Indica et Tibetica Verlag, 2009.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

            The separation of the sexes is a distinctive teaching of the Book of Dzyan on anthropogenesis. It is said to have occurred millions of years ago, in the third root-race. Stanza 7, verse 22, as given in The Secret Doctrine, says: \u201c. . . First male-female, then man and woman.\u201d Stanza 8, verse 31: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/prajnaquest.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/prajnaquest.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/prajnaquest.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prajnaquest.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prajnaquest.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1951"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/prajnaquest.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1951\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1953,"href":"http:\/\/prajnaquest.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1951\/revisions\/1953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/prajnaquest.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prajnaquest.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prajnaquest.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}