The following paper was presented at the 18th Sakyadhita International Conference in Seoul, South Korea, June 23-30, 2023 and has been published in their proceedings. All rights reserved by the author, Ven. Dr. Myodo Jabo.

Introduction: Personal Reflections on Gender[1]

 To study the Buddha way is to study the self.

To study the self is to forget the self.

To forget the self is to be enlightened by everything.

To be enlightened by everything is to free one’s body and mind, and those of others.

– Dogen Zenji (1200-1253), Shōbōgenzō

What makes a woman a woman? Is it her life-bearing capability of a womb? Is it the “crowning glory” of her hair? Is it her breasts? (Yes, men have breasts, too, but they are not typically seen as a secondary sexual characteristic like they are for women.)

I recall a woman discussing this in a small group setting. We were attending the Rains Retreat at Deer Park Monastery in Escondido, California. It was the spring of 2004, and I’d been calling myself a Buddhist for about eight months. The speaker was a breast cancer patient.

She had lost her breasts to surgery and her hair and menstrual cycle to chemotherapy. She was wondering if she was still a woman.

We had no answers for her. It was not that sort of session, anyway. It was simply a time for each person to share what was coming up in their hearts and minds during the hours of silent meditation. Answers were neither required nor expected.

I would remember her some eight years later when I received my own breast cancer diagnosis on my 48th birthday. In my first surgery, one breast was removed. A month later, with the first dose of chemo, my body went into what I call “thermonuclear” menopause. I stopped menstruating that day, mid-cycle, and never had another period. All my remaining eggs were killed by the chemo drugs. Even though I had never wanted children, I still briefly mourned the lost potential.

About 12 days after my first dose of chemo, my hair started falling out. To add insult to injury, it was a painful process. It turns out that hair follicles do not “go gentle into that good night,”[2] but rather die kicking and screaming. I knew the day was coming and had already had my hair cut short from my below-the-shoulders, pre-cancer style. Still, I mourned the loss of my hair, which I had always thought was one of my better features, as I had mourned the loss of my eggs.

And there I was. One breast, which was going to have to come off eventually, bald, and infertile. Was I still a woman? This time, I had answers.

My answer was and is, “Yes, I am woman, hear me roar.” Because I choose it. I choose to be a woman and therefore, I am.

It had nothing to do with my body or “form,” as we say in Buddhism. And it certainly had nothing to do with what was written on my birth certificate. It was simply how I felt – more feminine than masculine, although both are at play in all of us all the time. And both are societal constructs that have nothing to do with biology.

When I meet transpersons, I’m happy to treat them as whatever gender, including none, that they present as. If I can choose to be a woman when I had no breasts, eggs, or hair, then so can anyone else.

Kuan Yin’s Move from Male to Female in China Speaks to the Impermanence and Emptiness of Gender

Buddhism has adapted to whatever culture it has migrated to. In my own country, the United States, Buddhist groups gather to meet on Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings for no other reason than that is when Christian groups gather, and that is what people are accustomed to. In Japan, Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines occupy the same religious temple compounds. Tibetan Buddhism has assimilated many of the shamanic practices of the indigenous religion of that land, Bon.

Just as Buddhism as a whole has acculturated itself, so have the bodhisattvas, the holy men and women on the path. When Avalokiteśvara migrated from India to China, he was renamed Kuan Yin. Avalokiteśvara is commonly translated as “The Lord Who Looks Down (with Compassion).” Kuan Yin means “Cry-Regarder,” while the alternative, Kuan-shih-yin is “Regarder of the Cries of the World.”^[3]

Perhaps because Avalokiteśvara did not have a solid mythology at the time his cult arrived in China, it was relatively simple for the Chinese to create their own legends around this new being in their lands.^[4] Those legends reflected what the people needed at that point in time: a feminine construct of compassion.

Kuan Yin was venerated in China as early as the first century C.E.^[5] They were depicted in art largely as male through the 10th Century, although some popular manifestations of Kuan Yin were feminine as early as the 5th Century.^[6] Sometime around the 11th Century, their iconography began to shift to more feminine representations. Since the 15th Century, Kuan Yin has been seen as almost exclusively female.^[7]

There are several theories as to why the Chinese saw Kuan Yin as female. Perhaps they saw compassion as a more feminine characteristic than a masculine one. It could be that they perceived a female reference in Kuan Yin’s mantra. Or that the Chinese merged them with a pre-Buddhist goddess of seafarers.^[8]

Kuan Yin’s feminine transformation could also have been a reaction to the patriarchal governance of institutions of Buddhism and Neo-Confucianism. Had these two religions not lacked feminine icons, the transgendering of Kuan Yin may not have occurred.^[9]

Regardless of why the Chinese chose to change Kuan Yin’s gender – or alternatively, why the Bodhisattva themselves decided to change it – the fact is that gender representations of Kuan Yin are impermanent. Just as our physical forms change over time, so does the iconography of Buddhism, especially that of Kuan Yin.

Some Modern Buddhist Leaders Still Reject Kuan Yin’s Gender Identification Change

Some members of the orthodox Buddhist clergy have refused to acknowledge Kuan Yin’s transformation to female, even when Kuan Yin was depicted as a woman in art and literature. Even today, there are Buddhist monasteries venerating images of Kuan Yin that follow the conventions of iconography from the T’ang dynasty of 618-907, showing them as male.^[10]

There are undoubtedly strong reasons for those in power, in this case men, not to want to give up having an extremely popular Bodhisattva identified as one of their group. In today’s world, when women and transpeople have finally found their voices, it is unfortunate that Kuan Yin’s shift in gender is not universally accepted.

A Bodhisattva Who is Unattached to Gender and Form Demonstrates Resilience

      When speaking of gender, it is important to note the distinction between relative and absolute. On the level of the relative, men and women are different. Men cannot bear children; women can. According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), “On average, women globally are paid about 20 percent less than men.”[11] Gender makes a difference.

On the level of the absolute, there is no gender. Just as there is no form at all, and gender is one aspect of form.

The reason that I find this distinction important is because of all the male teachers who have told me that gender is irrelevant. My own Zen teacher, who founded a Zen Order, said there should be no distinction between monks and nuns, and that all genders would be called monks. When I asked him why we could not refer to all of us as nuns, he seemed genuinely confused. Why is the default the masculine term, I wondered. I never received a satisfactory answer.

When Buddhist teachers who are part of a dominant group, be that by gender, race, or class, tell those who are in the minority or lacking power that these things do not matter, they are referring to the absolute. Western male teachers have been known to say things like, “(E)nlightened mind is beyond gender, neither male nor female.”^[12] That answer is fine as far as it goes. But it does not go very far towards equity in the relative world. On the relative level, gender matters.

And yet not to Kuan Yin. They chose to move from the dominant gender to the subjugated one. That is a powerful lesson in resilience.

According to the American Psychological Association, “Resilience is the process and outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences, especially through mental, emotional, and behavioral flexibility and adjustment to external and internal demands.”^[13]

The Bodhisattva Kuan Yin chose to adapt themselves to the needs of the world. Rather than running from the difficulties inherent in belonging to a member of a vulnerable group, they embraced the opportunity. Much like the Tibetan female Buddha Tara, Kuan Yin made the decision to be female.

Having been male, female, and androgynous, Kuan Yin demonstrates the ability to adjust to external demands. When China needed a female manifestation of compassion, Kuan Yin was not deterred by the limitations of the female form in the relative realm. They were not put off by difficulties or challenges. Rather, they overcame any potential negative repercussions and thrived in whatever form they chose to manifest.

While we can acknowledge the role of gender in the relative world, we can see Kuan Yin’s example to remind us that, ultimately, gender is as empty as any other phenomena. The Buddha advised us not to become attached. We can take that advice while continuing to strive for gender equality. Reminding ourselves that gender is strictly a relative concept may be a good start.

Lessons Modern Buddhists Can Learn about Gender Identity and Awakening from Kuan Yin

In the Lotus Sutra, there are a total of 33 manifestations of Avalokiteśvara, including female ones. The various forms are provided to suit the understanding of different readers.^[14]

His manifestations in many worlds are in forms which may include a Transformation-body Buddha, an Arhat, a Hindu god, a monk, nun, layman or laywoman. He even manifests himself in hell realms, and in the worlds of ghosts or animals. In one Chinese painting, he is shown appearing in the form of a bull, in order to convert a butcher from his wrong livelihood. His various manifestations may mysteriously disappear after they have appeared to help someone, or they may live out a full life, or even a series of them, as in the case of the Dalai Lamas of Tibet.^[15]

– Peter Harvey, An Introduction to Buddhism

Regardless of why the Chinese people decided to re-gender Kuan Yin, let us presume that Kuan Yin, themselves, was in agreement with this decision. If we accept Kuan Yin as an actual being, rather than a human-made construct, what can we learn from them?

First, that gender is simply another aspect of form. And form is emptiness, at least according to the Mahayana schools of Buddhism. Form is emptiness, emptiness is form. Gender is emptiness, emptiness is gender. In other words, gender has no independent arising. Rather, it arises from causes and conditions which are certainly influenced by karma.

I have always enjoyed movies where the male lead is a personification of a horrible misogynist in his life and is forced to come back – already as an adult, because it’s a Hollywood movie – as a woman. One has to wonder how frequently this occurs to various beings due to the negative karma around women.

One of the teachings inherent in Kuan Yin’s gender transformation is that gender is not important. To put it another way, a specific gender is not needed for awakening. Although there are teachers alive today who believe that only men can become enlightened, the Buddha told Ananda that women could awaken just as men could. That reasoning, in fact, is why the Buddha changed his mind and decided that women could ordain as nuns.

However, the Buddha noted that the ordained path would be more difficult for women than for men. Let us look at some of the reasons why that may be true. First, most women are not as physically strong as most men. This is a generalization, of course, but it is still accurate for most people. The arduous walking lifestyle that the Buddha embraced could prove difficult for some women.

Second, because most women are shorter than most men, their legs are not as long and their strides are shorter. This means that nuns would have to take more steps each day just to keep up with the monks.

Then there is the matter of menstruation in ancient times, before modern hygiene. Clearly this was something that women dealt with, but that does not mean it was not a challenge. Since women were accustomed to dealing with menses, perhaps the Buddha’s concern was for the reaction of the monks.

These are just a few of the more obvious, physical examples of why a life of renunciation might have been more difficult for women than for men. Yet Kuan Yin, who began life as a man, chose to change into a woman, embracing these challenges fully.

Kuan Yin is not attached to their gender. Whether they present as male, female, or androgynous, Kuan Yin is “The one who hears the cries of the world.” Compassion knows no gender. Neither does awakening.

Gender is perhaps the single aspect of form with which most people identify most strongly. As Rita M. Gross writes, “Many people, both women and men, simply cannot imagine who they might be without their specific gender markers and traits.”^[16] Gender is marked on our birth certificates and becomes, in most countries, legally enforceable. Therefore, if we can relax our grip on our sense of self regarding gender, we can let go of similar attachments to race, eye color, and so on. We can learn that the other aspects of form are equally insignificant.

Moving from form, we can then begin to release our clinging to the other aggregates (Sanskrit: skandhas) that define us, namely feelings, perceptions, impulses, and consciousness. Suddenly or gradually, all of the things that we believe make us “us” begin to lose importance. And thus, our dissatisfaction with life, our suffering (Sanskrit: duhkha), diminishes.

Is that not the entire point of Buddhism? To reduce our suffering, and that of others, by releasing our grasping minds. The primary thing that we grasp upon is our sense of self. Within that sense of self, the primary thing most people identify with is gender.

Kuan Yin does not have a personal sense of self. They are the very embodiment of compassion. They are content to appear as we need to see them: male, female, or somewhere in between. Kuan Yin has released the small “I” in favor of the big “I.”

So can we.

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[1] A note on pronouns:  I have chosen to refer to Kuan Yin using gender neutral pronouns. The exception is when referring to a specific manifestation (such as Avalokiteśvara) who was only known as one gender or the other.

[2] In reference to the poem, Do not go gentle into that good night, by the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas (1914-1953).

[3] Harvey, Peter. An Introduction to Buddhism: Teachings, History and Practices, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1990, 131.

[4] Yü, Chün-fang. Kuan-yin, Columbia University Press, Kindle Edition, 15.

[5] Guan Yin, Guan Yim, Kuan Yim, Kuan Yin.https://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/Chinese_Customs/Guan_Yin.htm.

[6] Harvey, 183.

[7] Yü, 6.

[8] Yü, 21.

[9] Yü, 21.

[10] Yü, 6.

[11] International Labour Organization (ILO). https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/09/1126901#:~:text=On%20average%2C%20women%20globally%20are,Sunday%2C%20International%20Equal%20Pay%20Day.

[12] Gross, Rita M. Buddhism Beyond Gender, Shambhala, Bolder, 2018, 8.

[13] American Psychological Association. https://www.apa.org/topics/resilience.

[14] Koh Kok Kiang, Guan Yin: Goddess of Compassion, 2004, 10.

[15] Harvey, 131.

[16] Gross, 5.