Buddha Representations vs Gender Norms Religion & Theology Term Paper (Term Paper Sample)

TO WHAT EXTENT DO REPRESENTATIONS OF THE BUDDHA CARRY THE POTENTIAL TO BOTH ENFORCE AND CHALLENGE GENDER NORMS?
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Introduction
Firstly, this excerpt seeks to discourse in overall art history in South East Asia, secondly it will delve more into how South East Asia religious practice, specifically Buddhism. And particularly how Buddha’s representations enforce or challenge contemporary gender norms. Ancient Buddhism practices barely portrayed the Buddha himself in its place they used an unoccupied throne as well as the Bodhi Tree to symbolize the Buddha and as a result might have inclined in the direction of physical representations of the supernatural and natural world in various cultures (aniconism). The leading indication of a human depiction in Buddhist symbolism comes about with the Buddha footmark albeit full depictions were mostly influenced by Greco-Buddhist art. Greco-Buddhist art is the imaginative expression of Greco-Buddhism, a cultural amalgamation between Buddhism and the conventional Greek culture, which advanced over an era of nearly1000 years in Central Asia. Figure 1: Image of Guatama Buddha .

The originator of Buddhism, Gautama Buddha, allowed women to become members of his monkish community and to totally play a part in it, albeit there were particular ‘garudhammas’ or stipulations. According to some feminist exponents such as Laura Mulvey, the conformist perspective of women in early Buddhism is that they are comparatively mediocre. Paul Faure, another philosopher contends that in early Buddhist practices woman are evidently lacking, or they come into being like they are simply elements of the Buddhist treatise on sexuality: hardly as herself, as distinct entity, but as a pole of repulsion or attraction in a gendered masculine treatise regarding sex. Deprived of the task of a subject in this discussion, the woman is principally the symbol of a bigger procreative, social or karmic process, with affirmative or undesirable soteriological worth. Elements of misogyny were equally found in early Indian Buddhism, although the existence of some evidently misogynistic dogmas barely infers that the entire of primeval Indian Buddhism was leaning towards misogyny. Even though, there are proclamations in Buddhist sacred writings that seem misogynist, for instance the representation of women as inhibitors of men’s spiritual growth or the impression that a woman’s birth is an mediocre one characterized less prospect for spiritual growth. This excerpt seeks to discourse the degree to which the representations of Buddha carry the potential to both enforce and challenge gender norms in South East Asia