Eroding Sexism with the Yogācāra Dialectics of Gender

In this article, I turn to a tradition that has been much overlooked by feminist scholars, namely the Yogācāra philosophy of consciousness-only. I re-read the Yogācāra canon and rediscover previously marginalized writings by Xuanzang (玄奘c. 602–664) and his disciple Kuiji (窺基 632–682) where they detail the gendering of sentient beings in the larger context of saṃsāra. As such, I investigate how the Yogācāra theory of consciousness-only can be read as a gendered account of the mind where their view of non-duality is both a critique of gender essentialism and a call for collaborative effort to promote inclusion. To be more specific, gender/sex is an embodied performance to be enacted moment by moment. There are, further, two ways of enacting gender: those in an ignorant mindset naturally act out gender as an immutable essence, whereas those who are awake embody gender fluidity. Since gender is constantly in the making, it can be transformed through a collaborative effort of rehabitualizing the mind(s). I refer to such a gender metaphysics as the Yogācāra dialectics of gender that does not explain gender away but rather furnishes sentient beings, especially the practitioners, a set of vocabularies in disposal for combating social injustices.

To detail the first way of enacting gender, I shift my focus to the passage that delineates the intermediate phase (antarābhava) between death and rebirth in the Yogācārabhūmi (T30.1579.282c). This passage presents the intermediate phase both generally as a stage in saṃsāric history and specifically as a gendering moment. Given that Yogācāra refuse to reduce time to a one-dimensional linearity, I explore a heuristic interpretation of this passage different from the embryological and psychoanalytical readings. That is why I argue for perceiving the intermediate phase as a gendering moment in the lived experience of sentient beings, a gendering moment that mirrors, repeats, crystalizes, and co-exists with the gendered past and future. To unpack this re-reading, I find it helpful to recall that Yogācārins contextualize the intermediate phase in consciousness and consider it to be sustained by the power of seeds in the deeper layer of the mind. Evoking the language of seeds, Yogācārins capture how previous experiences of a sentient being are sedimented as seeds to condition this sentient being’s current action and interaction, a conditioning that stretches to the future and shapes its arrival. Seeds thus amount to the habitual tendencies of an embodied mind throughout time.

And every moment of time is also a gendering moment. What has been foregrounded in this passage is a sentient being, who is an active agent with companions in the intermediate phase. This sentient being is capable of perceiving and discerning others of the same kinds, generating desires of a perpetual field, identifying gender/sex-featured activities, and developing a viewpoint on gender identity. Such a depiction alludes to the backdrop that coalesces a gendered past quathe previous round of life and a gendered future qua being reborn. Against this backdrop, the intermediate phase showcases how this sentient being enacts their gender to make their individual life-story integrated into the larger gendered karmic history shared by a plurality of sentient beings of similar mindsets.

Throughout karmic history, the gendering moment keeps being repeated, reinforced, and eventually consolidated by virtue of seeds. As a result, sentient beings come to internalize a fixed way of acting themselves out to finalize their essentialist identity. They find it natural to reduce their lived body into the material form, further enacting this form as and only as that of a man or a woman. The dualist and also reductionist mindset bespeaks ignorance. Ignorant sentient beings naturally equate femininity with women, masculinity with men. When the apparent heterosexism becomes indoctrinated, sentient beings also normalize the patriarchal prescription of gender relationship. To be gendered, thereafter, is tantamount to being gendered patriarchally.

Contemporary critical phenomenologists have also scrutinized how gender/sex reveals the internationalization of patriarchal norms, even though they do not use the language of seeds and rebirth. Building on their insight, I want to march one step further to explore how it is possible to change such conditioning and transform the mindset at the personal, interpersonal, and communal levels. I derive my inspiration from the Yogācāra theory of the Bodhisattva ideal.

For the Yogācārins, to change how seeds are perfumed calls for a collaborative effort. Specially for Xuanzang and his disciples, seeds can be inherited but they can also be newly cultivated. If someone realizes that what they believe to be true is just a very fixed way of understanding lived experience, they will also know that nirvāṇa is a joint achievement of all sentient beings throughout saṃsāra. As such, a sentient being cannot fully transform their personal mindset without transforming the shared mindset. Such a realization furnishes incentives for those who are willing to engage with others. In their engagement, these sentient beings encourage their interlocutors to become critical of the predominant viewpoint. For these sentient beings, since they have already removed ignorant viewpoints, they see beyond the male-female dichotomy to open the door for gender fluidity. Embodying fluidity, a sentient being enacts gender as an actualized performance out of a plethora of other possibilities that are always ready for reforming, and from there, recognition follows. When awakened sentient beings come to help ignorant ones, they enact their illusory gender not to consolidate but to criticize ignorance for the purpose of awakening others. Illusory gender, though ultimately empty, has a function of being a critique of ignorance in this interpersonal exchange. These ignorant ones, upon recognizing their own limitations, learn to caution against biases and stereotypes of gender and sexuality. Following this line of reasoning, I contend that gender, which is an illusorily enacted performance, can still promise the possibility of collaboratively transforming dominance for inclusion and emancipation. To illustrate such collaborative transformation, I will make references to the literary and artistic portrayals of female teachers in Buddhism.