Can old-fashioned virtues take on new meanings for our times?

Loving kindness. Old-fashioned words. Old world virtue. The Odes of Solomon implore the Son of God “to deal with us according to thy loving kindness”. Medieval monks chanted of loving kindness as they cared for the sick and ministered to the poor. Islam believes that “All creatures are God’s children and those dearest to God are those who treat His children kindly”. Jainism is founded on ahimsa, non-violence, stemming from compassion towards all life forms. The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad sums up the essence of dharma as it enjoins humankind to be generous and charitable.

We know that loving kindness is central to Buddhism. The Buddha epitomizes this virtue in endless tales. And, in the Karaniya Metta Sutta, he makes it an injunction: “Even as a mother protects her child with her own life, so should we with a boundless heart, cherish all living beings, radiating kindness across the universe.”

I ask: What exactly do these ideals mean in a patriarchal world? We know that Prince Siddhartha saw an old man, a sick man, a corpse, finally a renunciate and took a unilateral decision to abandon his sleeping wife and infant son, to seek his goal of Buddhahood. I wonder: as the Enlightened Buddha, when the World Teacher used this tender image of motherhood in his sermon, what loving kindness did he spare for his anguished wife Yashodhara, who was raising their only son alone?

Wade through centuries of Buddhist lore and you will find little about this abandoned wife, crushed by sorrow. The stunning fresco in Ajanta shows the Buddha in saffron radiance towering above his dwarfed wife and son as they look up at him with awe and wonder. When at last, he returns to his hometown Kapilavastu, some accounts have Yashodhara identifying the father to his son with rapturous reverence. (Don’t forget that this son is named Rahul, which means “fetter”, the chain to be broken for the father to find liberation). It is recorded that ultimately, mother and son joined the monastic order. The question is, did they have a choice? Was the Buddha as much a fetter to his son and his wife?

In her brilliant book First Buddhist Women, author Susan Murcott brings hard-hitting poems and heartbreaking stories of the earliest Buddhist nuns from the Therigatha cycle. The first is Mahapajapati Gotami, Buddha’s foster mother who raised him, her sister Maya’s child, along with her own son and daughter. When Siddhartha returned as the Buddha, she embraced his teaching with absolute conviction. It was she who wrested permission from a reluctant Buddha to admit women into the fold as nuns. At first, she gets a flat no. “Enough Gotami! Don’t set your heart on women being allowed to do this.” Finally, the Buddha agrees, stipulating eight special rules for women, thus ensuring their secondary status and subservience to men.

Murcott explains why Gotami had to achieve this goal, shaming as it might have been to accept inferiority. While women of the Buddhist community could remarry and own property, unmarried women and widows had little security and less respect. Queen mother Gotami had 500 displaced women to provide for — war widows, and wives of those who became monks in the sangha, including the women of the Buddha’s own harem. Gotami, now herself a widow, had to find a way to give these homeless women a home.

In a world where a husband could take many wives, or simply leave his wife for any reason valid or whimsical, wives too had little security. A nun pours out her heart, “And though I was devoted to him/ a humble and affectionate servant…/my husband felt nothing for me. He told his mother and father/ I am leaving/”. Another rejoices in her freedom from pestle and cooking pot and a husband who “disgusts me”. Gotami seems to have felt that friendship was vital for a woman’s survival in a world of incertitude. In her poem, she says, “Look at the disciples all together,/their energy,/their sincere effort.”

Friendship becomes crucial to these women, many with a tragic background. A bhikkhuni records with deep feeling, “With good friends/even a fool can be wise/Keep good company/ and wisdom grows/ Those who keep good company/can be freed from suffering.”

The same friendship and loving kindness take on new meanings in the minefield we call our global village, where progress is often regress in disguise. As we struggle with hostile forces to ensure justice for the marginalized, the victimized, the lost and the forgotten, loving kindness could simply mean the recognition that everyone has equal rights, and friendship our common pledge to ensure that all of us retain those rights.

The author is a playwright, theatre director, musician & journalist. Views are personal.