Note (return) — Chapter IX · - THE BUDDHISM OF THE JAPANESE
Reading edition
To their everlasting honor, also, the Shin believers have probably led all other Japanese Buddhists in caring for the Eta, even as they probably excel in preaching the true spiritual democracy of all believers, yes, even of women.16 "According to the earlier and general view of Buddhism, women are condemned, in virtue of the pollution of their nature, to look forward to rebirth in other forms. By no possibility can they, in their existence as women, reach the higher grades of holiness which lead to Nirvana. According to the Shin Shu system, on the other hand, a believing woman may hope to attain the goal of the Buddhist at the close of her present life."17 This doctrine seems to be founded on that passage in the eleventh chapter of the Saddharma Pundarika, in which the daughter of Sāgara, the Nāga-king, loses her sex as female and reappears as a Bodhisattva of male sex.18