Occasional paper

REFLECTIONS ON BUDDHISM AND THE FEMININE

by Prasada Caroline Brazier

Originally published in Butterfly Magasine

Giving birth to my first child was perhaps the most profound spiritual experiences of my life so far. Reaching down and grasping in my hands that slippery, taut little form as it emerged between my legs, I made contact with life in a way I had never before. No one needed to tell me of immortality. Here was the miracle of life sucking at my breast. The link to past generations and to the future. Another small vessel in the process of unfolding evolution. No airy concept, this was the reality of life passing through my body, of my body and yet beyond my body, linking me into the greater, the process that has unfolded from time begun, and will unfold till time done.

We are not self. Not separate. We are of the stream of all things and all beings.

I sit in the wood. The greenery before me shatters the light of the sun into a thousand dancing shadows. An old tree trunk beside me decays into moss and toadstools, brown and beige-white. I breath in the smooth air, dank with the smell of fungus and old leaves.

Little green ferns grow in the shoulder of the oak tree above my head. A small bird hops through the branches. Next year I will sit here too, life willing. I will watch the new grown life. Perhaps there will be new fungi. The bird will still hop through the branches as it did last year and the year before. Not this bird surely? No. Birds come and go, but there will be a bird singing in the morning.

Just as the new fern springs from the decaying wood. Just as fledglings grow new feathers. One day another woman will sit in another wood. Just as I sat years ago. Another woman. Another child, growing within her belly, coming forth and flourishing. And still the sun will shine through fluttering leaves.

Life in constant flow, constant change.

My children are grown now. Young adults. Looking at them pride rises in my heart. No. Not pride. What, after all, have I contributed here? No. Joy. Joy at the perfection of life in all its forms. Joy at the witnessing of this unique process. I have lived long enough to know impermanence. Joy at their growing, changing, laughing lives. Joy that the process continues.

Last year I sat with my dying friend. She, who brought me to understand more than anyone the joy of the feminine way; to appreciate my heritage as a woman. In those bitter-sweet spring days when there were daffodils in her room and stray shafts of February sun slanted through her windows, we touched peace.

I don't know where I'm going, she said. It doesn't matter.

Touching the earth and of the earth. Life passes through and on.

Quan Yin on the tide of the sea, riding the waves of sorrow with peace and compassion. In your moon shone aspect, waxing and waning with the cycles of life. Now here. Now hidden. Always there. The flow of kindness unceasingly falling on the hungry earth.

And within my body the waxing and waning of change. The constant flow of life. That holy flame that is all our inheritance. We are not separate.

As those early sisters meditated on the elements. I am not earth. There is earth within my body and earth without my body. I am not water. There is water within my body and water without my body. I am not air. There is air within my body and there is air without my body. I am not fire. There is fire within my body, there is fire without my body.

Simply a transient container. A cork on the surface of the water. A leaf fallen in the stream. A bird on the branch of the old oak.

P.C.J. Brazier
2000