Sex-Changes Buddhist, Christian, and Egyptian

Sex-Changes

Buddhist, Christian, and Egyptian

Michael Lockwood

The foundation for this present paper was established by two pages (pp. 71-72) of my 2010 book, Buddhism’s Relation to Christianity, which are reproduced on the next two pages. 

The Lotus Sütra (Saddharma-Pu∫∂arïka-Sütra)[1]

Passages from a commentary on this work which are quoted below have been taken from an article by Alfred Bloom entitled, “The Lotus Sütra: Its Spiritual Significance”, appearing in the Hawaii Pacific Press, 15 Aug. 2007. These passages, especially the fifth paragraph, have been selected to further clarify the significance of what Jesus was saying in the ‘Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard’:

The Lotus Sütra itself has sometimes been called the “New Testament of Asia” and comparisons have been made with the Gospel of John focussing on the issues of the universality of salvation and the hope of eternal life. However, the Lotus Sütra is an expression of Mahäyäna Buddhism which evolved out of the long history of Buddhism and it has had influence in the lives of hosts of people in China, Tibet, Mongolia, Korea, Japan, [and] extending to the West where there are now several translations available.

The text began to take shape from about 100 BCE, and has been translated into many languages. In Buddhist devotions and rituals, it has been read faithfully for some 2,000 years. It is also a source of philosophy, as well as religious faith. Actually, it is a compilation of texts comprised of twenty eight chapters created by unknown authors. It offers many themes and parables which have contributed to its popularity.

A major reason for the popularity of the Sütra lies in its emphasis on lay people. They are described as the good men and good women or as bödhisattvas or Buddhas-to-be. Together with its missionary perspective, the Sütra declares the principles of universal salvation and eternal life.

The teaching on universal salvation has as its background various divisions of early Buddhism. According to the principle of universality, all beings ultimately and equally attain the enlightenment of Buddhahood, despite the fact that individuals may follow paths suited to their own character and spiritual need. It is a way of proclaiming the ultimate unity of all religion in the face of diversity. The Sütra relates that even Dëvadatta, who is something on the

order of Judas in the Christian tradition, as the symbol of a very evil person, will finally gain Buddhahood. According to the Sütra, Dëvadatta was a teacher of Åäkyamuni in past lives, but as the cousin of Gautama Buddha in his lifetime, he suffered from envy and conspired either to kill Buddha or take over the Order. There are many legends surrounding him. But the Sütra indicates that ultimately, as a result of his good karma from that distant past, even he will be enlightened, giving hope to even the most evil person.

Another interesting illustration of the universality of enlightenment is the account of the Buddhahood of the Näga or Dragon king’s daughter. On the occasion when Buddha taught at the home of her father, she instantly believed the Buddha’s message and was immediately transformed to a Buddha. Buddha’s disciples were amazed and questioned what happened on the ground that the instantaneous attainment of Buddhahood is impossible, seeing how long æons of time it had taken for

Åäkyamuni himself to attain it. They were also disturbed that a woman would be able to become Buddha, since in Indian and early Buddhist teachings, women were barred from enlightenment for many, many æons of time until they were reborn as men.[2] To attain enlightenment instantaneously was simply unbelievable for them. With these vivid stories and teachings the Lotus Sütra brought hope into the lives of countless numbers of people in Asia who were destined for occupations considered low, menial or impure. Women held particularly low status in patriarchal Asian cultures.

Not only does the Sütra teach the universality of enlightenment, but it also proclaims the principle of faith. In chapter two, enlightenment and Buddhahood are assured to all those who aspire for it whether they express it in establishing great stüpas, images or monasteries or even so much as scratching an image of Buddha on a wall or at play making a stüpa of sand. It teaches that it is one’s aspiration and intention that is primary and not the form which may vary by skill or wealth.

As a Mahäyäna sütra, the text constantly contrasts its ideal with the earlier Hïnayäna (smaller vehicle) followers who aspired merely for Nirvä∫a and a passionless life of salvation for oneself. The Mahäyäna (the larger vehicle) is always presented as the way of compassion by which bödhisattvas strive for the enlightenment of all others besides themselves.

Another prominent feature of the Sütra related to the principle of Universality of Salvation is its educational theory. Mahäyäna Buddhism was a great missionary religion. The principles we have outlined were intended to be shared. It is the bödhisattva’s task to bring joy and release into the lives of people by revealing their true destiny. They attempt to abolish fear and anxiety, by revealing the truth of reality. They tell us who we are when we are blind to our own potential. This teaching also appears in other Mahäyäna sütras. The principle is called hoben in Japanese or upäya in the Sanskrit. It is a truly compassionate view of human relations and guidance.

Endnotes (ML’s)

[1]The Sanskrit word ‘sütra’ is only one meaning of the Päli word ‘sutta’, another of which could, alternately, have been translated by the ancients more meaningfully into Sanskrit as ‘sükta’ (‘good news’): The Good News (Sükta) of the Lotus-Like (Pu∫∂arïka) Righteous Path/Way (Sad-Dharma) – ‘Sad-Dharma-Pu∫∂arïka-Sükta’.

[2]Compare the reaction of the Buddha’s male disciples to the supreme enlightenment of the Näga king’s daughter, above, with that of Jesus’ disciple, Simon Peter, against Mary Magdalene, in the final entry of “The Gospel of Thomas”:

114 Simon Peter said to them [the disciples], “Make Mary [Magdalene] leave us, for females don’t deserve life.” 2 Jesus said, “Look, I will guide her to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. 3 For every female who makes herself male will enter the domain of Heaven.”

The translators give the following, not unreasonable explanation of this passage:

In v. 3 Jesus is not suggesting a sex-change operation, but is using “male” and “female” metaphorically to refer to the higher and lower aspects of human nature. Mary is thus to undergo a spiritual transformation from her earthly, material, passionate nature (which the evangelist equates with the female) to a heavenly, spiritual, intellectual nature (which the evangelist equates with the male).

[The quoted passages, above, are from The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus, translation and commentary by R.W. Funk, R.W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1997), p. 532.]

For scholars with a thorough knowledge of Buddhist literature, however, the ultimate source of this Gnostic gospel passage can be traced back to the Buddhist Lotus Sütra:

Then the venerable Åäriputra said to that daughter of Sägara, the Näga-king: “Thou hast conceived the idea of enlightenment, young lady of good family, without sliding back, and art gifted with immense wisdom, but supreme, perfect enlightenment is not easily won. It may happen, sister, that a woman displays an unflagging energy, performs good works for many thousands of Æons, and fulfils the six perfect virtues (Päramitäs), but as yet there is no example of her having reached Buddhaship, and that because a woman cannot occupy the five ranks, viz. [1] the rank of Brahmä; [2] the rank of Indra; [3] the rank of a chief guardian of the four quarters; [4] the rank of Chakravartin [a Universal Monarch]; [5] the rank of a Bödhisattva incapable of sliding back.”[a]

Now the daughter of Sägara, the Näga-king, had at that time a gem which in value outweighed the whole universe. That gem the daughter of Sägara, the Näga-king, presented to the Lord [[[Buddha]]], and the Lord graciously accepted it. Then the daughter of Sägara, the Näga-king, said to the Bödhisattva Prajñäkü†a, the senior monk Åäriputra: “Has the Lord readily accepted the gem I presented him or has he not?” The senior monk answered: “As soon as it was presented by thee, so soon it was accepted by the Lord.” The daughter of Sägara, the Näga-king, replied: “If I were endowed with magic power, brother Åäriputra, I should sooner have arrived at supreme, perfect enlightenment, and there would have been none to receive this gem.”

At the same instant, before the sight of the whole world and of the senior monk Åäriputra, the female sex of the daughter of Sägara, the Näga-king, disappeared; the male sex appeared[b] and she manifested herself as a [[[Wikipedia:male|male]]] Bödhisattva, who immediately went to the South to sit down at the root of a tree made of seven precious substances, in the world Vimala (i.e. spotless), where he showed himself enlightened and preaching the law, while filling all directions of space with the radiance of the thirty-two characteristic signs and all secondary marks.*

[a]All these beings are, in Sanskrit, of masculine gender; hence their rank cannot be taken by beings having feminine names. [b]In ancient times such a change of sex [in literature] is nothing strange. . . . [These footnotes are Kern’s. – ML]

• Quoted from Hendrik Kern’s translation of The Saddharma-Pu∫∂arïka, or, The Lotus of the True Law, in Vol. X of The Sacred Books of the East (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1901), pp. 252-53. Kern’s translation addresses Åäriputra as ‘senior priest’; I have replaced the word ‘priest’ with the more appropriate term ‘monk’ and have modernized the transliteration system. – ML

On page 2, above, passages are given from a major Mahäyäna Buddhist scripture, the Lotus Sütra, which illustrate the belief that women needed to undergo a sex-change from female to male before they could attain ‘Supreme Enlightenment’ and ‘Buddhahood’

On page 3, the final passage of the Gospel of Thomas has Jesus declaring, over the objection of Simon Peter, “Look, I will guide her to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every female who makes herself male will enter the domain of Heaven.” When I wrote about these passages, in 2010, I claimed: “For scholars with a thorough knowledge of Buddhist literature, . . . the ultimate source of this Gnostic gospel passage can be traced back to the Buddhist Lotus Sütra.”

While surfing the internet today, I came across an online article, written by Franz Lidz, published Dec. 30, 2019, in The New York Times, which forces me to reconsider my claim that the Lotus Sütra was the “ultimate source” of the concluding oracle (116) of the Gospel of Thomas. The title of Lidz’s article is: “An Afterlife So Perilous, You Need a Guidebook”. His opening paragraphs are these: When it comes to difficult travel, no journey outside New York City’s subway system rivals the ones described in “The Book of Two Ways,” a mystical road map to the ancient Egyptian afterlife.

This users’ guide, a precursor to the corpus of Egyptian funerary texts known as “The Book of the Dead,” depicted two zigzagging paths by which, scholars long ago concluded, the soul, having left the body of the departed, could navigate the spiritual obstacle course of the Underworld and reach Rostau – the realm of Osiris, the god of death [...]. If you were lucky enough to get the go-ahead from Osiris’ divine tribunal, you would become an immortal god. [[[Red]] color added – ML]

“The ancient Egyptians were obsessed with life in all its forms,” Rita Lucarelli, an Egyptology curator at the University of California, Berkeley, said. “Death for them was a new life.”

Towards the end of his article, Lidz springs a surprise:

Since some of the planks were etched with [a provincial governor’s] name Djehutynakht, Dr. [Harco] Willems [directing archæologist] at first assumed the coffin had contained that governor’s body. But closer inspection revealed that its occupant was actually a woman named Ankh, [...] who appeared to have been related to an elite provincial official. Indeed, the jumble of bones found in the shaft may be hers, even though the Book refers to Ankh as “he.” “To me, what’s funny is the idea that how you survive in the netherworld is expressed in male terms,” Dr. Willems said. [...] In the engraving, “the pronoun ‘he’ was essential even for female deceased people because they needed to be like Osiris.”

Suddenly I became aware that it was this very ancient type of Egyptian “Book” (ca. 2000 BCE!) – a “Guidebook” for the dead in negotiating the dangers faced by them in their “afterlife”-adventures and struggles to eventually gain immortality, becoming one with the god Osiris – which provides the real “ultimate source” of meaning for both of the sex-changes in much, much later scriptures:

1) Buddhist (ca. first century CE) – the actual sex-change, in the Lotus Sütra, of the Näga king’s daughter, into a male Bodhisattva, she having achieved Buddhahood and Supreme Enlightenment!

2) Christian (ca. second century CE) – the guidance proffered, in the Gospel of Thomas, by Jesus to Mary Magdalene in order to “make her male, so that she too may . . . enter the domain of Heaven”. What can we make of all this information? Three of my books provide a background for seeking answers:

1) Buddhism’s Relation to Christianity (2010);

2) Mythicism: A Seven-Fold Revelation of the Buddhist ‘Branch’ Grafted onto Jesse’s ‘Lineage Tree’ (2013); 3) The Unknown Buddha of Christianity (2019). In these three books, I have striven to establish certain relevant facts:

• The central location for the intellectual interaction among Greek, Egyptian, Jewish, Indian,and other scholars, which gave birth to world’s first true university, was the Egyptian city of Alexandria. And the institution in Alexandria which was central to the many realms of such all-encompassing intellectual ferment was its Royal Library, founded there in the late fourth century BCE, and developed by Egypt’s Macedonian rulers, who followed the grand plans of

Alexander the Great. For Alexander, this library would have been absolutely central to the intelligent ruling of his far flung empire, with its multitude of different ethnic groups, languages, cultures, and literatures. Ptolemy-I (r.y. 305-282 BCE) and his son, Ptolemy-II (r.y. 283-246 BCE), carried out Alexander’s plans by vigorously obtaining, from around the world, copies of written works in every known language, which would then be translated into Greek, thus making all the knowledge within these ‘foreign’ works available to the Greeks. These vigorous efforts were made by the Ptolemaic rulers, as their capital city, Alexandria, was the foremost intellectual center of the world. It is important for my arguments to take note of the fact that the first five Ptolemaic pharaohs (I-V) ruled Palestine from ca. 323 to 198 BCE – for some 125 years!

• Indian scholars were invited to travel from India to Egypt and learn the Greek language(reading and writing). This is important because, in their own languages, they had no writing at all. All educated Indians were illiterate in the Indian languages of their learning! This may sound unbelievable, but it is true. (See pp. 90-102 of The Unknown Buddha of Christianity [UBC] for the evidence supporting this statement.) Buddhist monastic scholars were, therefore, for the very first time in any language, writing down their formerly only meticulously memorized scriptures, now in Greek translation.

• Buddhism was the first worldwide missionary-driven religion, and it openly propagatedabroad its principles of leading a righteous life (‘Dharma’) in all directions: to Sri Lanka, in the South; to the many Asian countries, on the East, including China; and to the west, Afghanistan. However, in moving westward beyond Afghanistan, Buddhism went “underground”, in the third century BCE. The Buddhist scholars who had been invited to Alexandria became good friends with the Jewish scholars who were working there, compiling, composing, and, then, translating their sacred book, the Pentateuch, at the Library, In fact, these Buddhist scholars became “Semi-Converts” to Judaism – Judaism’s very first ‘God-fearers’! (See my short “Interlude” [pp. 147-175 of UBC], for the evidence of this astonishing possibility.)

The scholarly world is unaware that the so-called ‘God-fearers’ of Judaism (and of Christianity) very likely emerged first in the Royal Library of Alexandria, and had the “blessings” of the Ptolemaic king, making possible this otherwise unimaginable condition of ‘SEMI-CONVERSION’ for Jews! Think about it.

Realization of these facts leads to the following revelation: the so-called Essenes / Jessæans of Egypt (the Therapeutæ) and of Palestine (the Qumranites and their followers) were precisely these ‘God-fearers’ (‘Semi-Converts’) of the historical records. But after being violently disbanded by Roman military might – suffering ‘collateral damage’, so to say – as Rome crushed Jewish rebellions, the Therapeutæ transformed themselves into the very first Christians, and, amazingly, eventually persuaded their highly Judaized colleagues, the former “Qumranites”, to join with them as the so-called “Christians” of the New Testament. The ultimate revelation, therefore, is the realization that the Therapeutæ and Qumranites became the earliest Christians, by being forced to disassociate themselves from their former supporters, who were now decimated and stigmatized by the Romans.

Richard S. Rosenthal, The Meisterschaft System (Boston: The Meisterschaft Publishing Co., 1894), p. 68, fn. 1:

The Germans are very polite and place the word ‘Herr’ before all titles. To a doctor they say: ‘Herr Doctor’; to a professor, ‘Herr Professor’; to a general, ‘Herr General’ (‘ghay-nay-râhl’). But this is not all; they transfer even the husband’s title to his wife and say to a doctor’s wife, ‘Frau Doctor’; to a professor’s wife, ‘Frau Professor’; to a general’s, ‘Frau General’. Uneducated Germans always say: ‘Frau Doctorin’; ‘Frau Professorin’; ‘Frau Generalin’, thus making the title feminine.

Comment by ML:

As my wife is Swedish, I learned in the 1960s about her country’s version of the above, German formal etiquette: For Swedes, the antiquated form used for addressing a doctor’s wife was the honorific ‘Doktorinna’; for a professor’s wife, ‘Professorska’; and for a general’s wife, ‘Generalska’. These Swedish honorifics are grammatically feminine.

METRO, UK

What is the husband of a Dame called? Comment by Jessica Lindsay December 29, 2018

Will Twiggy’s husband Leigh Lawson be given a new, fancy title?

Unfortunately for the husbands (or wives) of Dames, there is no shared title. According to the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, no courtesy title is offered to a Dame’s hubby. So: ‘A dame and her husband would jointly be addressed as:

• Dame Joan and Mr John Grant, or

• Mr John and Dame Joan Grant.’

On the contrary, the wife of a Knight can use the courtesy title of Lady. Bit unfair, no?

She does have to use her husband’s surname to do this, and must not use her first name in correspondence with the title. For example, she must call herself Lady Smith rather than Lady Mary Smith, to show her title is through marriage rather than in her own right. Either way, it doesn’t seem correct that the husbands of fantastic women like Judi Dench and Maggie Smith don’t get to bask in their wives’ glory. The take-away of all this? Real understanding of all three examples of sex-changes will come with the realization that all three scriptures are metaphorical, allegorical representation of Panentheism.