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Vanessa R. Sasson, "The Gathering: A Story of the First Buddhist Women" (Equinox, 2023)
00:53:53
An interview with Vanessa R. Sasson
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Marshall Po
Hello everybody, this is Marshall Po. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network. And if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcast podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form, and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.
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Interviewer (possibly Sharon)
Hello everyone, and welcome back to the New Books Network in Buddhist Studies, a podcast channel of the New Books Network. I'm Tori Montrose, one of the hosts of the channel. Today we'll be talking to Vanessa Sasson, professor of Religious Studies at Marianapolis College. I would wonder if you could Begin by telling us a little bit about your own personal and academic background before we get into the. The book.
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Vanessa Sasson
Yeah, sure. I did my PhD a long time ago, and it was in comparative religion. So I was. I did my PhD at McGill here in Montreal. And I studied early rabbinic texts, and I compared them with early poly and Sanskrit texts. It was a very strange thing to do, and I had to fight for it, but I insisted on doing it because I desperately wanted to study both. And so that's kind of my background. And then when I graduated, I realized there was probably a good reason why no one wanted me to do that, because it's really quite hard to actually keep up with that much literature and that much change in two different fields at the same time, plus to keep up with just comparative discourse and the theories coming out of that. So it was really actually quite hard. And I have been kind of sitting in my nook of Buddhist studies ever since. But the comparativist in me is still there. So I can't help but look from that wider angle all the time.
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Interviewer (possibly Sharon)
And what brought you to Buddhist texts in the first place? How did you first come across Buddhism?
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Vanessa Sasson
Oh, goodness, that's a question. I mean, truthfully, I got on a plane. I ended up in Nepal. I wasn't supposed to be there. And then I didn't want to get back on the plane. Basically, what happened? So I extended my stay. I was supposed to be in Nepal for three weeks. I was in my early 20s. I was naive, and I had no idea what I was doing. And I landed in Nepal and my world was blown open. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I couldn't. Everything fascinated me. Everything was different and alive and vibrant and shocking and upsetting. And it was so much emotion all wrapped up into one and so many colors and so many statues. I didn't understand that. I just. I was like, I just have to stay. And so I did, and I extended my visa as many times as I could legally. Then I extended it sort of illegally. I just kept going back to the office and begging for them to extend it again. And they thought I was funny because I did it in broken Nepali. And they're like, oh, here comes that weird white kid who's trying to get past us. And then eventually they were like, no, you have to go now. So I stayed for about a year, and then I kind of came home with my tail between my legs and thought, I don't know what to do now. And so I thought, well, I guess I'll Study. So that's what I did. And I enrolled in a master's program, not really knowing where this was going to lead me. I had no plans, really. I feel like my whole life has been kind of unplanned in that way, where I just bump into things and I go, okay, let's see what this turns out to be. So that was a little bit what happened, you know, to be honest. Yeah. And then my studies pursued after that. Yeah, it was very bad.
- [05:14]
Interviewer (possibly Sharon)
Yeah. So your book, the Gathering, A Story of the First Buddhist Women, it's a little bit different than your typical academic monograph. So I wonder if you could start by kind of just sharing briefly a little bit about what the book is, because this channel is a lot of academic monographs, and this book is a little different. So I would love you to just kind of briefly introduce what it is as a. As a book.
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Vanessa Sasson
Yeah, it's really different. It's similar to my last book. So this is my second book in this odd genre that I've kind of been fiddling around with that doesn't have a name. I keep getting asked if I could give this type of writing a name, and I don't know what name to give it. I gave. I called it hagiographical fiction in my previous book, in the book on Yashodara. And then I stepped away from it. Now, I think maybe that was actually a good term to use. The idea with these books was they're still academic books. I think of them as academic books, but maybe some of my colleagues won't agree at this point. But from my perspective, these are books that are deeply entrenched in research, but they're shaped very differently. And so the idea was that not to stand apart from these stories. I feel like I wanted to study these early stories of the Buddhist tradition, but I wanted to participate in them and not just stand far away from them. I wanted to become the storyteller. So it was a little bit like if you're studying performance arts all day long, but you never get up on the stage. Right. And so there's some kind of disconnect that I was always feeling that I was reading stories and reading storytellers and enjoying them, but there's a distance that you have to practice, a little bit of a clinical eye that you're always keeping as you stand a little bit apart to be able to assess what you're looking at. But I was quite convinced that if I jumped on the stage, I would see it in a completely new light. And I wanted to Know what that was? So on some levels, I abandoned my academic distance. I very much abandoned my academic distance. But it still felt like a profoundly intellectual project was to engage with the material by participating in it. And so telling the story instead of describing it, being the storyteller instead of being the audience member is what I've tried to do with these books. So I'm telling the story in Yashodra. I was her, and I took on her voice. In the gathering. I'm telling the story of the first Buddhist women and their request for ordination. But it's bracket by a short introduction and pretty extensive endnotes and a bibliography at the end so that you see the scaffolding of the research. But the actual presentation of the narrative really does stand almost like its own fiction or its own, you know, its own novel. So it's an unusual cross between academia and literature.
- [08:12]
Interviewer (possibly Sharon)
Yeah, I think that's a fascinating way to think about it. Certainly for. For non academics, it could be a novel. Right. And they don't have to engage with, you know, the academic sides of it. But then for scholars, I think it's also, you know, it's a useful resource to be able to see your thinking and your decision making in the notes. I found it very helpful and also entertaining to see sort of, you know, how your mind was working on making these decisions. So it's wonderful to have. To have.
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Vanessa Sasson
It wasn't just like that. I wanted to jump on the stage. But what I realized also was that by participating in the storytelling, I realized all kinds of things about the story that I was missing when I was standing far apart from it. So it became a really interesting, a pedagogical adventure almost of what will I see if I'm inside the story and I'm not outside of it all the time? I always felt like I was standing outside of it, which has its own benefits. But here I wanted to turn the story around. Okay, if I'm inside it, what does it look like? What's missing, what's not there? What is there that I've looked past 50 times because I didn't know to look at it because I was standing further away. So it became a really interesting opportunity to see the literature differently. And I also came to start appreciating the storytellers I was reading. The one of the storytellers that I fell in love with was Buddha Chart. The was Ashvagosha's Buddha Charta. Right. I come. But it wasn't just the text, it was him. I started imagining Ashwaghosha I never imagined Ashvagosha before, but all of a sudden I thought, oh, what did he feel like when he was writing? And what resources did he have at his disposal? And how did he decide this versus that? And why did he tell the story the way he did? They were very different questions from what I was used to asking. So I felt like there was something to be gained from jumping in there and learning it differently, if that helps.
- [10:10]
Interviewer (possibly Sharon)
Yeah, absolutely. So, clearly you did it the first time with Yashodara, and, you know, it was, I'm sure, an experiment on your own part, right, To. To figure out whether or not, you know, how you would do this. And. And then you decided to do it again. So what was your thinking about, you know, picking that. That second project of the. Of the first Buddhist women? And. And could you say more about why, you know, why this made the best, you know, your first. Your second project?
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Vanessa Sasson
Well, it was almost like I. I had no choice. When I wrote the book of Yashodara, it ended with her basically ready to walk away. And so the whole story kind of gears up to the moment when Yashodra and Mahapajapati, and according to the early sources that we have these 500 shakin ladies, which I kind of played around with this concept, but that the story is that these women, it doesn't end with the Buddha leaving the household. Right? That's part. That's one story of the tradition, but there's more to the story. And so I ended it with he leaves, and they have to kind of figure out how to pull the pieces together. But then eventually they have this question of what is it that he did and can I do it too? Which is the question in this early literature is, can others do it too? Right? That's basically what all Buddhism is about. And so Yashoda ends with them standing at the gate, you know, looking outwards, going, are we going to do this? And so I had no choice, but then to answer the question, yeah, they're going to do it. So it seemed inevitable that I would have to tackle that story. But I was actually really quite intimidated about trying to narrate this story, because this story is very alive in different political ways for a lot of Buddhist women. And so I knew I wasn't. I mean, none of these stories are neutral. These are stories that are sacred narratives, and they mean a lot to a lot of communities in different ways. And tackling this really complicated story of women asking the Buddha for ordination, I was nervous, but I felt like I had no choice. I Felt like I had to keep. I feel like the story wasn't done. I had to continue. And so Covid struck and I was staring at my computer and I thought, okay, we need to keep going. I have to follow them into the forest and figure out what was it like for these women? What was it like? It was just such a crazy question as these women went off into the forest to ask without any support structure, or can we do this too? And then they don't. They don't even get the answer that would have made them safe. So to me, this was very courageous and it was very reflective of what women are still facing today in many different contexts. And I thought, I have to tell this story so that it had to happen.
- [12:51]
Interviewer (possibly Sharon)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So then I guess one of the things, I was wondering if you could speak about your choice to make Vimala the protagonist and you know, first, why, why, you know, why choose her as the kind of central, you know, voice of the book, even though you, you know, pop around with, with a couple of other voices and. But Vimala is certainly the kind of through line. And then I'm curious too, how you chose Patachara and Bata Kundalakesha as her companions. Like, what was that process?
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Vanessa Sasson
So there's a different kind of process with creative writing that I'm starting to really enjoy, and that is that some of it is just instinctive, right. Not everything is as planned out as it tends to be when you're working through an academic argument. So there's. There's some spontaneity involved and there's some kind of attraction that happens that. That's not always calculated. So there's a little bit of the answer to that. But. So one of the thoughts that I had, so you get a lot in the literature is these, these references to Mapajapati. Gotami goes into the forest with these 500 Shakyan ladies. And that always, that line just always bugged me as I kept imagining it was very artificial. It felt like an art, like a. An ancient artifice of like her with these noble ladies who kind of obediently walk behind her. And so it's almost like she's still the queen and she decides they go. So all the noble women go. And it felt very impersonal and almost invisible. Like these women had no character. It was just this conglomerate of 500 check in ladies. So I couldn't relate to that as a concept. So what I did do was I. I kind of moved into the Terry Gata and I lived in that book for a while, I used Charlie Hallis's translation. I looked at all of them, but I think Charlie's is really quite beautiful and very poetic and gets to a voice that resonated. And so I sat that translation. I looked at the Pali, obviously, as well, but it was really his translation that spoke to me and tried to figure out, okay, these women are also. And they're not all the five. This isn't 500 check in women. These are women of all kinds. And they are described in the Terri Gata as this group of women, they're grouped together just by virtue of the book, who are understood to be these first Buddhist women. And so I exchanged. That was a conscious decision of exchanging the 500 shakin women as the first women asking for ordination for the women of the Terri Gata. And so then the question was, who in the Terri Gatta will I work with the most to create this story? And I was looking for. At first I thought, well, maybe Yashoda should keep doing the storytelling since she was there as well. But I thought, no, she. She had her book, so I wasn't going to follow her anymore. And I could not do Mahapajapati. That became very clear. And it became clear because I started to really engage with her as almost the woman's Buddha, right? Like, they're like, you know, you have. Is it Walters who made that argument, I can't remember now, of her being, you know, the female Buddha, the voice for the women, as he is the voice for the men. And that argument was sitting with me. I mean, he wrote that in, like, the 90s, but that article was so important. And so she's almost like the women's voice of the Buddha. I cannot take her on. That felt inappropriate. I felt like a trespass, to be honest. So I was looking for someone that I would not feel like I was trespassing. So someone who was less known, someone who did not have a big story. So Patachara was one I thought about, but her story's too big and it's too known, so I couldn't take her on too much. And then I came across Vimala, and I thought her poem was so audacious and sad at this. Like, she had such character in her poem, you know, she. She talks about herself in the Teri Gata is, like, standing by the door of the house, like, basically undressed, beckoning the men, right? Like. And so there's something about her that is sensual and salacious and hurt and complicated and arrogant, and yet there's virtually nothing else about her. We have only one other scene that I was able to find of Vimala anywhere in the Pali canon and in later literature as well. I couldn't find anything about her, so I thought, she's unknown enough that she's there. I like her character, so that gave me something to hold on to. But she's not someone I was trespassing into. And that felt like the right move was that I didn't want to take someone that was too known. Because then you're projecting all of what you know about a character and you're reading the book going, that's not how she is. So almost no one knows Vimala. And so I figured that was a kind of safe road to follow. Even, like writing about Ambapali and Patachara, I felt like we have our impressions of them. They're strong characters, so it's only so far I can describe them. But Vimala, I thought I could play with a lot and give her space to move around all of this without bothering people's imagination of what they expect. Because they're going to have that. When I introduce them to the Buddha, they're going to have that. When they're going to meet Mahapajapati, you're already gonna be like, well, no, that's not how I see her. So I needed her to be pretty neutral. That was. So that was a bit of a strategy. And then Patachara, because she. She just has always meant so much to me as a character that I had to have her participate because she breaks my heart. And yet she's so courageous. And I just. She baffles me. And so I wanted to spend time with her. And Barakunda Lakesa, I think, is just feisty and fantastic. She's a debater. She's. She's wild. I mean, I just. You know, she was a Jane nun before she became a Buddhist. And the exposure that this woman had, if we take her story seriously, I. To me, she's a force of nature. So I had to take characters that I was drawn to, that I was excited about or that affected me so that I could engage with them. But Vimala had to be. She had to be a small character in the popular Buddhist imagination or it wouldn't work. Yeah.
- [19:13]
Interviewer (possibly Sharon)
Wow. That's. Yeah, that's very, very illuminating to think about kind of the different characters and how you do. You do have to kind of think about everyone's feelings about them. And I found myself, you know, I teach with the Terri Gata in my class as well. And, you know, there's certain poems on the Pali that students love, you know, for its poetic quality and all these other things. And so, yeah, so they do feel very familiar. And so. But Vimala was definitely not very familiar to me. And so I now. But now she'll be very familiar to me, I'm sure.
- [19:48]
Vanessa Sasson
Now you're gonna project.
- [19:49]
Interviewer (possibly Sharon)
Right?
- [19:50]
Vanessa Sasson
That's the problem is now you're gonna project the Vimala of this book onto the poem.
- [19:53]
Interviewer (possibly Sharon)
Right.
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Vanessa Sasson
We do this in our minds all the time. Have to kind of stay conscious of that.
- [19:59]
Interviewer (possibly Sharon)
Right, right. You mentioned before we were talking about this decision about the different characters, that there were kind of insights that you had in doing a book through this process versus a more kind of traditional academic research book. So are there. Can you think of, like, exam. Was there any examples or standout incidences where you really like writing it in. In this way, in this fictionalized way, really, you know, changed your mind on something or some story or idea that you hadn't?
- [20:31]
Vanessa Sasson
Yeah, well, there was one thing that really struck me that I. I didn't even think about before, and that was I never even wondered, like, how did the women get away with this? Like, I never. I never thought about that before. I just. The story is the women, they go. They ask. He says sort of yes, sort of no. Then they follow him, they ask again, and he's like, fine, but here's the guy with dumbass, right? Like, that' the story. But when I'm like, trying to build a story of these women going from the no. Or the sort of that evasive thing that you get in all the different vinyas to them, just walking to Vasily to ask again. There was a couple things. First of all, the fact that they did it again, that I never dawned on me until I was writing it that he had already said no three times, and three is a big number. So it was no. I mean, he didn't say no. So that's like, there's this evasive frustration of that story, but it sort of sounds like no. And then they just follow him and ask again so that they asked a fourth time. And I don't think I registered that until I was writing it, that they kind of went against convention and they were like, well, we'll just follow him to the next town and do it again. And it. I really. I presented this at a Sakyadita meeting in Korea this summer, and I talked about how they asked the fourth time, even though you don't normally Ask four times. And one of the nuns, one of the monastic women in the audience came to see me right afterwards and she was so emotional and she kept saying, I never realized she did four. Like that was the one thing that stuck out for her, was that she just did it again. And so that the, the courage of that moment, the audacity of the moment. Now I read it this way now maybe I'll read it differently in a few years, but writing about it in this way really got me quite excited about the story as this extraordinary breaking of a wall that they weren't supposed to do. So that really struck me. But the thing that I thought about a lot as I was writing the book was that, like, how does this group of women all of, like, if you read the Terry Gate, that's one woman leaving her circumstances after another to join this group of women asking the Buddha for ordination. Like how they get away with it, right? Like, it's kind of a crazy thing to think about. It's just one woman after another leaving her home, leaving her brothel, and just saying, I'm going over there now. And the only way that I can imagine women as a group walking, making this request is because the queen was there. And I don't think I ever registered that as a politically significant feature of the story until I realized they're out there without any protection, without any institutional structure, they're completely abandoned. When he doesn't say yes after those first three nos or whatever those evasive responses mean they have no institutional protection. She doesn't have her kingdom, there's no guards, there's no husbands, there's no structure. And the Sangha has not accepted them. So they really are in this weird bardo of nowhere land. And yet they just keep going. And that weird in between space that they're in, and there's lots of arguments about what that space was. And. But I just keep thinking, you know what? I think that the only way the story makes sense is that the Queen was walking ahead of the pack, because otherwise they were a free for all. Like, anybody could have done anything to these women. So I don't think I've registered how significant that queen, this queen character is. Mahapajapati Gotami being present there at this time, that if she wasn't there, it probably would not have worked. And that's humbling because they're almost a bit of a sense that if the gatekeepers aren't giving their blessing, it doesn't. But there's a reality to that as well. Like, how could Vimala have survived this. Right. So realizing also she never left the brothel until Mahapajaba. Like that's how I constructed the story. But she can't leave her brothel until she finds out about this group that is head by the queen. Then she can leave her brothel because then she'll be safe. So I think writing the story helped me appreciate the courage and the political surprise of the story that I don't think I appreciated until I tried to write it.
- [24:58]
Interviewer (possibly Sharon)
Yeah. And I think the particular scene where she has to talk about where she has to announce that he said no to the group and the ways, it's a flashback scene, right.
- [25:14]
Vanessa Sasson
Where.
- [25:15]
Interviewer (possibly Sharon)
Where Gautami has to explain, you know, that he. That he hasn't agreed. And. And you get the sense from the way you've written it, the real gravity of her sense of responsibility to the women, Right. That like one way or another she's going to. To make this happen. And that is something that again, as you, as you put it, when you just read it, you know, in the traditional texts, it is a little bit more rote. It's more mechanical.
- [25:44]
Vanessa Sasson
You don't think of. Yeah.
- [25:46]
Interviewer (possibly Sharon)
This real sense of responsibility that she must have felt for womankind, but also her, her immediate community that she was, you know, that she was leading.
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Vanessa Sasson
Well, they're also. They've. They've left. Right. Like. Like the notion of renunciation is not flip floppy. They've made. They've made the decision. They've left home all those women, whoever they were, whether it's the 500 Sakyans or whether it's the women of the Terri Gata, whoever these women are, that she's leading. She's leading a pack of women who have made a decision to leave home. You're not supposed to turn back and go back home the second the road gets rough. So she is responsible for them. And the road got. The road got rough. Right. But I never imagined that moment until I had to imagine it to write it and then realized, oh, that's a significant moment. And that was a great thing to understand that I think I didn't understand before. One of the kind of most amazing things. I think I had a really an experience of a lifetime when I was in Korea launching the book at the Sakadita meeting, I shared the stage. We organized it as a panel. I didn't organize it, they did, but they put me on a panel where Sharon so was going to interview me about the book. But before that we had three women who were part of the group. Of women who were ordained in Bhutan last year. And so 153 women were ordained in Bhutan for the first time in a and tradition. And so they talked about their experience on the stage first, and then there was some other discussion, and then it was the discussion of the book. And it was really a, a wild experience because what they were really. Women have been asking for ordination, Himalayan traditions for a long time, and the gatekeepers have never opened the doors. But the king of Bhutan, according to these women, was the one to say, it's enough, we're going to do it. And it felt very parallel. It was again, it was the king who said, yes, it can happen. We're going to do it. And then all these people who pushed to make it happen, and it felt very parallel to the story in the book of it was Mahapajapati got to me who said, yes, we're going to do this. And then all this energy can go into making it happen. So it was an amazing thing to hear their story and then for me and Sharon to discuss this story. And we realized what was true to, you know, then is still true today, that you need the grassroots, but then at one point, the gatekeepers have to meet you and open the door. And it was a, it was quite an experience to match those stories together on the stage together. Yeah.
- [28:14]
Interviewer (possibly Sharon)
Do you just want to say what Sakyadita Conference is for those who may not familiar? Yeah.
- [28:20]
Vanessa Sasson
Sakyadita is an organization that's been around, I think, since the 80s, maybe the 90s, and they do these meetings every couple of years. Obviously it stopped during COVID but to give an opportunity for Buddhist women, mostly monastic women, but all women women in the Buddhist community and for scholars and practitioners to network and to discuss and to share ideas and talk about what's happening for Buddhist women, so in academia and on the ground. And so I've attended a number of these meetings over the years, and this one in Korea was the biggest they'd ever done. It was a stadium with like 2,500 women in the audience. It was extraordinary experience to be with so many women to talk about women's history and women's current realities. It's quite an experience to have at least one your lifetime. And so it was there that I launched the book, and it was quite an amazing way to start this little book's journey into the world.
- [29:14]
Interviewer (possibly Sharon)
Yeah, absolutely. So I, I, There were several themes in the book that just really resonated throughout. Themes like motherhood and female friendship and trauma and grief. And I just Wondered if you could say a little bit about any one of those themes and how. How you thought about, you know, their presence in the book.
- [29:40]
Vanessa Sasson
Well, those are themes that I think are. I think they're all over the Terry Gata. I think they're the themes of many women's lives. Like, I like. It just seems pretty natural to me that if you're going to have a group of women who are walking together and who are trying to accomplish something together, then all those themes would have to be there. Motherhood is all over the early Buddhist literature, and it's complicated. It's not one way. It's not just idealization or destruction. It's. It's women losing their children like Patachara and Kisa Ghotami, and women handing their children over to others to raise them, like Vadamata, and women like Mabajapati Gotami and Yashodara who say, okay, you can go. And I. I find that so sophisticated and beautiful that Buddhist literature gives you all these venues for motherhood. They don't make it like one picture. There's women who give up their children, there's women who walk away from their children. There's women who lose their children, there's women who go into renunciation with their children. I. To me, there's such nuance in all of those pictures. And it's was a pleasure for me to be able to paint some of those images. And I was getting it from the literature. It wasn't for me. And grief and trauma and poverty. I mean, all of these things are in the literature. And so it seemed natural that it would be in this group. What, what did strike me as being really special, though, that I've had time to reflect on since I finished writing the book was that when men often are described as going into ordination, it's often individual. So one man shows up, another man. Sometimes you'll have friends who go together, like Sariputra, Mogulana. They go together as friends. They have an agree. Sometimes you have husbands with their wives, but a lot of it. But it's not a mass. It tends to be pretty solitary. When the women go, they go as a team. And that's what I imagine. That's what I see in the Terry Gata. That's what I see in the story of the women arriving as a Mass to present themselves to the Buddha. And so I imagine that there's got to be friendship there and community. And there's something quite amazing to imagine women and. And this is women of all different backgrounds. That's also something I had not thought about until I wrote the book is that you have homeless widows and you have prostitutes and courtesans and queens and princesses, and they're all eating from the same food. I mean, it's not separate meals. I can't imagine, anyway, that you have, like, queen's food being produced, you know, so presumably they're all eating the same food and they're walking together and their poems are all in the same book, and they're from different kingdoms that were probably warring from each other, speaking different languages, and they did it as a community. And I find that really quite beautiful. And I don't think I appreciated that until I had to imagine it.
- [32:37]
Interviewer (possibly Sharon)
Yeah, I think I found myself wanting to call my girlfriends, like, throughout.
- [32:44]
Vanessa Sasson
Because.
- [32:44]
Interviewer (possibly Sharon)
I think it's a really celebration of female friendship and the power of it. And I think too, you know, there's plenty of places in the Buddhist literature about the power of friendship and liberation. Right. The importance of having good companions. But it's usually talked, you know, it's usually referring to male monastics. Right. And so we don't get a lot of that kind of vivid depiction of the role of female relationships and female friendships. And as, you know, it's often, you know, it's about us as women overcoming our relationships because they're, you know, we're too attached to those relationships, we're too.
- [33:23]
Vanessa Sasson
Competitive about them or something. Right. Yeah.
- [33:26]
Interviewer (possibly Sharon)
Whereas the Buddha, you know, has to remind men, no, actually, you can maintain, you know, good relationships with good friends. They will help you. You know, that. That was. That we have that in the Buddhist text, but not so much for women. And so I think it was really one thing that made me think about. Was about this. And that is not in the terri gata. You don't see the friendship that's not really there.
- [33:49]
Vanessa Sasson
Right. Well, there's actually a surprising verse in Kisa Gautami's poem, if you go back to it. I don't have it on me now. I think it's actually at my office. But in Kise Gotami's poem, I think it's near the beginning of it that she talks about the importance of friendship.
- [34:04]
Interviewer (possibly Sharon)
Oh, okay. Okay.
- [34:06]
Vanessa Sasson
Yeah. So, I mean, it's not everywhere. I think you're right, but I think. But certainly in her poem, there's this statement that you need good friends. I can't remember how it's. It's phrased, but there's some. We'd have to look it up right now. But there's something about that Having good friendships is true for anyone in the world, that we need friendships and that if you have good friendships, then you'll be well or something to that extent. Right. And then what you do also have. You see, it's a question of how we look at it. We're so trained not to see certain things. And then all of a sudden you see something different. You're like, wait a minute, that's everywhere. Another way I'm just saying this now for the. Hadn't thought about this until you said this, so you're helping me see it differently, is that there's so many places in the Terry Gata, and it's probably true in the also where there's a interaction between the women in the text. Right. So if I'm thinking just of that Kisa Gautami poem, she's inspired by Patachara, and I think that's why the conversation is about friendship. And then there's a female goddess who jumps in and she talks about.
- [35:10]
Interviewer (possibly Sharon)
Right.
- [35:10]
Vanessa Sasson
So they're all kind of talking to each other. Even Vadamata's poem, which is so striking, her son is in there talking with her and he says, I learned this because of her. My mother taught me. Right. So you do have a sense of conversation. It'd be really worthwhile for somebody to study that and see if there's more or less in the Terry Gatan, the Terragotta. But.
- [35:31]
Interviewer (possibly Sharon)
Right.
- [35:31]
Vanessa Sasson
Where is that role? Because it's not explicit, but I think it's there in terms of enacted behavior. They're all telling each other's stories and inter. Interjecting in each other's poems. And so the. The friendship is there. We just don't know to look for it because we don't. We don't think about it or we don't value it or it's. I don't know, this funny that way. We miss a lot of things that then you see when you look again.
- [35:58]
Interviewer (possibly Sharon)
Right.
- [35:59]
Marshall Po
Right.
- [36:00]
Interviewer (possibly Sharon)
I wonder if you could say a little bit about how maybe if you use this in your classroom, how you use it or if you envision other. Or if you've heard from others that have used it in the classroom. I. I certainly. Yes. The book. I plan to use it in my class next semester on sexuality and gender in Buddhism. And I'm, you know, just curious to hear your thoughts on whether or not you've used it or if you have plans to use it and how you might use it.
- [36:33]
Vanessa Sasson
I have. I do a course on storytelling and so my students. So that's actually Not a Buddhist studies course, Matt, I feel a little more comfortable with just because it's odd for me as the author. So I can play with it in a storytelling course, but in a Buddhist studies course, I haven't done it. That's where I get shy and awkward. But. But I do know that a number of, Like, I know it's being used a lot. Well, the gathering just starting, but Yashoda has been used in a lot of classrooms, and I've jumped in on zoom to a lot of classrooms in the last couple of years to meet with the students after they've read it, which is really fun for me. I think it's fun for them too. But, yeah, it's getting used quite a bit. And I think what people are finding is that hearing the story is a. It's a really nice way to engage with learning. Right. I mean, it's. We know that students have a hard time with academic writing. We want them to still be able to read academic writing because there's a discipline there that we need to keep. But a story really is a nice way to, like, settle in with some new learning. And so I think for courses on women in Buddhism or religion and sexuality and gender, or introductory courses in Buddhism, these are really nice ways to get to know the tradition. And then you can follow up with the bibliography. Where else will I learn? How can I learn this stuff? But at least you've had a positive engagement to start you off. And then you can use the notes in the bibliography to keep going. I wouldn't stop with this book, but I do think it's a really good place to start where I would do it. Yeah.
- [38:08]
Interviewer (possibly Sharon)
I would even suggest, maybe also when you introduce some of the primary texts, students often want to really couch things in very black and white terms. And so I could see the usefulness of this, especially in your last chapter, the Eight Heavies, where you go into this kind of back and forth debate about all of the ways you could argue for or against these rules and the Buddha's intentions and what role they're going to play in the women's lives and whether or not they should accept them. I could see it as kind of allowing students giving students permission to have more nuance than they often do when they see these. These rules. So I'm. I'm looking forward to seeing how that. How that helps. Hopefully helps them.
- [38:57]
Vanessa Sasson
Yeah. Well, they get. So my experience has been that students get much more invested. Right? Like, they get upset, they get engaged, they wonder. Right. Like, there's like A, it gets personal. And I think that's really exciting. We want our students to take it personally. Not in the sense of it's happening to me, but take it personally. Like, this matters to me. And I think sometimes that's where we have the hardest time, in the classrooms. How do I hook them? How do I get them to realize that this literature is worth learning? Right. Or that. But. But sometimes it's so long to get in there. Right? It's like, it's only in your graduate studies that you start to really fall in love. But it's hard to get that. That sense of discovery sometimes in an undergraduate classroom. And I find that using a story, students just wake up. They're like, but wait a minute, what do you mean? The Buddha said that. How could he say that? Isn't he supposed to be an enlightened being? Like, I get all those questions of just. Right. But. But that's not fair. And so I'm like, okay, now we have a conversation. So what do we do with this? Right? And then you've got space because they're invested. But if they're not invested, it's just more information in one ear, out the other. And there's no room for nuance because they haven't taken it seriously. But when you start to care about it, you also don't want to turn it into a either or, right? You want to figure out how to figure it out. And that's the energy that I want in my classroom, is the energy of wanting to figure it out. And to do that, they have to be engaged. And I think stories does it for all of us. And what's been interesting, too, is that it does it also. I think it really works at the introductory level. And then I think it works really well at a much later level because now you're going back to the story, right? And all of a sudden you're like, oh, I didn't let it come alive, or I didn't think of that. So then it becomes another venue, right? To. Just because you've done the work in the middle, and now you can sit back again and enjoy it and go, is that how the story goes? Was that what I would do with it? Is that what this part means? And you can engage it on a more serious level.
- [41:05]
Interviewer (possibly Sharon)
Right, Right. So I want to jump a little bit back to the. The conference in Sakadita.
- [41:12]
Vanessa Sasson
You've.
- [41:12]
Interviewer (possibly Sharon)
You had some. You have a blurb on the back of your book from Bhikkhuni Damananda. I wanted to know what, what the reception of your book from, you know, from maybe some of the participants in Sakyadita or. Or other women, you know, Buddhists.
- [41:31]
Vanessa Sasson
What have you.
- [41:31]
Interviewer (possibly Sharon)
What have they said to you about. About the book?
- [41:34]
Vanessa Sasson
Well, so I launched it at Sakyadita, so they had an excerpt of it, but they hadn't had the time. Like, it just. Just came out, like, five minutes before. Like, we timed it for me to go there to release it, so they didn't have a chance to read it. They only got to hear from me, the way I'm talking now. And it was intimidating because it was a stadium of monastic women and they could have got what was going to happen. I was very nervous about it. I thought, oh, this could go in any direction. The experience was extraordinary. I mean, first of all, to have the Bhutanese women presenting first and stayed on the stage while I was on. Like, we were all on the stage together and to listen to their story and to hear a firsthand account of were fighting for ordination now. And they walked us through it, and they were such compelling speakers. And one of the women who helped organize it, she talked about getting all of this hate mail, and she didn't open one letter until it was over because she knew that if she did, she'd lose her courage, right? So it was a very emotional thing to listen to. Like, you were watching these women relive this moment where they were asking again and then to kind of turn the story over to me and for me to be like, well, so nothing's new under the sun. And so then I told the story up there, and I almost, you know, Sharon and I talked about it before of how to set things up. And I wasn't going to tell the story of the Request for a Nation, because I figured if ever I'm in a room where everybody knows the story, this is it, right? And then at the last second, I. I changed directions. I didn't tell Sharon. I just kind of spontaneously made a decision while we were up on the stage, and I said, let me tell the story first. And I told the story as I've been able to put it together based on my readings of these texts. And I took about 20 minutes. I really told the story, and then she asked me questions, and we did it back and forth. And while I was telling the story of Mapajapati going and the requests and the rejection and then going again to Vesali, there's 2500 women in that room. I mean, it was a stadium, and it was so quiet. It was Just like nobody was moving. It was a very strange thing for me to experience. And I saw every once in a while, women just nodding, but they nodded in places that I didn't anticipate. Like, I talked about Chanda, who in the Terry Gata. She's this homeless widow. And she asks Patachara, you know, if I if with you, will you give me something to eat? And so she's not asking to join the women because she has some deep aspiration to become free of, you know, mental suffering. She. She's hungry. And so I talk about how not all the women of the ter have these pure aspirations to start with. They come with all kinds of baggage and. And histories. And so I described Chanda, and I saw so many women in the room at that moment nod, like, yes, this I recognize. You go to the monastery for all kinds of reasons. And Sundari Nanda in the Terri Gata, she goes. Because all her friends went, right? So she's like, nobody's left in the palace. I guess I'll have to go now. And so she is like, you know, she's kind of a funny character to me in my head of this woman who's like, everybody left. I'm bored, so I'll go. And when I described her, women nodded again, right? Like, this was what was familiar, was the ordinary everyday. It was just such a surprising experience to sit up there and, you know, in contemporary scholarship, we have a lot of concerns about cultural appropriation and about storytelling and who gets to tell which story and where the boundaries are. And it's something that I worried about a lot and thought about a lot and prepared myself for a lot and tried to do the best I could, to be as careful as I could about it. And I was worried that that was going to happen on that stage, that they were. So you're not a nun, right? Or you're Western, or who knows? Like, I didn't know. And the response I had was so different. They were so happy that I told them the story. And for the next five days that I was with Sakadita women, the nuns, I think I'm on every nun's phone because they all took pictures of me. Like, I was just selfie over selfie over selfie. And the way they called me, they could literally call me on the street, they go, there goes the story, lad. I became the story lady. And it was what moved me the most, was they know some of the repercussions of the story. Like, they don't have the same level of Ordination. Not all women have the same access. They know about the Garudangas. But to have the story kind of laid out and to go through it, I think most of those women had never had somebody just tell this because it's in pieces, and I've put it together. And they were very emotional. I mean, I'm sure different women had different responses, but what I saw was this kind of flood of emotional gratitude that I didn't anticipate. And I got to speak with so many of the women over the next few days, and the ones who at least approached me, maybe some were really mad and they didn't approach me, but everything I received was really quite warm. And so many of them said, thank you for paying attention to us. And so here I was worrying, like, am I doing a wrong thing? Am I doing cultural appropriation? Have I. Am I stepping in places I shouldn't be stepping? And I kept going anyway. But I was. I was thinking about it, and I wanted to be careful. And so far, that has been the response. And when Bhikkhuni Damananda read the book, I. She. She said she didn't want it to end. She was like, I just want to hear more about these women's lives. And she's like, you brought them to life. I. She was so happy. So I don't know. I don't know what's gonna happen. Somebody might get mad at me soon. But so far, I've had a very nice experience about all of this. But, you know, it can change on a dime, so we'll find out. Yeah.
- [47:50]
Interviewer (possibly Sharon)
I had a curiosity throughout reading. There were many references to trees and birds. And so every time I saw that reference, I was kind of scanning the COVID to see kind of if I could read. Read the meaning of the COVID So I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the COVID design of the book.
- [48:12]
Vanessa Sasson
Well, the trees. I mean, I have a thing for trees, but the trees and the birds and the forest was really important to me. It wasn't. I wanted it to feel alive. That was in part because I think that's very true in Buddhist literature, is that, you know, there's agency to trees and to Nagas, and there's, like, this whole kind of universe that is textured and alive and complicated, with all kinds of living things pulsating everywhere in Buddhist sources. And I was trying to capture some of that without going over the deep end and then losing my audience. So I was trying to get as much of that in there as I could without it being Unreasonable to a contemporary audience. But I also had Amitav Ghosh in my head about that. So he's a Indian American novelist. He also has a PhD, I think, in sociology or anthropology or something. But he wrote a book called the Great Derangement that had a huge effect on me, where he talks about climate change. And he makes this argument that artists really have to bring the natural world to the forefront in their artwork. He says, we tend to tell stories where the Earth is tame and it's the background to our dramas, the human dramas, but the Earth is alive. And the more we just put it as the stage that is dead and make it as the back, we're not developing an imagination to see it as alive. And that's what's missing in all our discussions about climate change, is we have to imaginatively engage with the Earth as a living being. And so we have to make it part of our stories. Right? Because right now we don't see it in our stories. And so scientists are talking about climate change, but storytellers are not. And I found that such an interesting challenge. And so that was in my mind that I wanted the Earth to be more of a participant, but it was very hard to do. So I struggled with it. I don't think I've completely managed it yet. I want to try again, but I still don't quite see how we separate the human drama from the Earth's drama. Because I'm drawn to the human drama. But that was a big part of why the trees and the birds and they're all just. The forest is such a big part of the story. And when I did the COVID with the publishers, I wanted it to be imaginative and playful, and I wanted it to. I wanted that one crow to be there. So that's why the crow is there, because I feel like he's a little bit of the guardian angel of the story and he's following the women. So it's just kind of creating this. This pretty landscape that I think is alive and is playing a part in the story. It's not just about the women.
- [50:58]
Interviewer (possibly Sharon)
But, yeah, yeah, I sort of saw that the various types of birds as kind of representing, like, just some of the diversity of the women represented. Right. That they're all. So. But. And then when the crow comes into the picture, of course, I was like, okay, so we've got him represented or her crow's there. But, yeah, I appreciated the biodiversity on the COVID So I've taken up a lot of your time. And before we leave, I would love to hear about projects that are in the works, things you're thinking about, next steps or current things that you are working on.
- [51:43]
Vanessa Sasson
I am in a very odd position that I have not been in over 20 years where there's nothing in the works. I have never been in this position. I mean, I have a book in my head, but I have not started. I think. I don't know. I think I'm taking a break. I'm not sure what's happening, but I haven't started working on anything else. I had another book with Kristin Scheibel that just came out like two weeks ago. That was a strictly academic book, kind of your classic, a biography of the Buddha's life, which I really enjoyed doing with her. And we did it as a team of scholars. So that's two books out this year. And I've got come to the end of my capacities, but I have another book in my head. I just haven't had the courage to start writing it. So we'll see if I write or not. I don't know.
- [52:37]
Interviewer (possibly Sharon)
Well, rest is generative, so I'm sure it will lead to good things. And I'm excited to talk with you about that second book in a couple of weeks about the new edited volume that just came out.
- [52:50]
Vanessa Sasson
With pleasure.
- [52:51]
Interviewer (possibly Sharon)
Well, thank you so much for, for your time today. And it was. It was wonderful chatting with you.
- [52:56]
Vanessa Sasson
Thank you for having me. It was really nice.
- [53:11]
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