SN 5.2

Somā sutta: With Somā

Somāsutta

Bhikkhunīvagga

When meditating in the Dark Wood, the nun Somā is taunted by Māra, who claims that a mere woman can never see the subtle truth. She rejects him, stating that gender does not matter when one is perceiving deep truths, and telling Māra to go see those still attached to gender.

Překlady

At Sāvatthī.

Then the nun Somā robed up in the morning and, taking her bowl and robe, entered Sāvatthī for alms. She wandered for alms in Sāvatthī. After the meal, on her return from almsround, she went to the Dark Forest for the day’s meditation, plunged deep into it, and sat at the root of a tree to meditate.

Then Māra the Wicked, wanting to make the nun Somā feel fear, terror, and goosebumps, wanting to make her fall away from immersion, went up to her and addressed her in verse:

“That state’s very challenging;
it’s for the sages to attain.
With her two-inch wisdom,
it’s not possible for a woman.”

“Two-inch wisdom” (dvaṅgulapaññā) is literally “two finger(-breadth’s) wisdom”. It is explained by the commentary as limited wisdom; or because women hold thread between two fingers. The subcommentary and the commentary to the Therīgāthā say it is because women test whether rice is cooked by pressing a grain between two fingers. Normally, aṅgula with a number is a unit of length equal to the width of the middle finger. For example, the time past noon is measured when the sun’s shadow moves two inches (Kd 22:1.10.16), which is the same distance the shadow moves each month (Arthaśāstra 2.20.42). Thus the first commentarial explanation is the most plausible: “two-inch wisdom” means “limited wisdom”.

It is Māra, not the Buddha, who doubts women’s capacity. It is interesting to see who adopts Māra’s view. In Mahāvastu 3.391, a brahmin ascetic urges a female competitor to throw a debating match with him, lest people say that he was beaten by “a mere woman’s two-inch wisdom”. In Vv 18:8.4, a former serving woman celebrates how she as a woman attained the Dhamma, but the commentary says this was “despite her two-inch thick intelligence”. In the late literary text Bṛhatkathāślokasaṁgraha the idiom is employed by a woman to dismiss women’s wit (22.35)—as so often, a woman makes the best misogynist—or by a man who muses that perhaps men like him are the real fools since they allow women to entice them (22.302–3).

Then the nun Somā thought, “Who’s speaking this verse, a human or a non-human?”

Then she thought, “This is Māra the Wicked, wanting to make me feel fear, terror, and goosebumps, wanting to make me fall away from immersion!”

Then Somā, knowing that this was Māra the Wicked, replied to him in verse:

“What difference does womanhood make
when the mind is serene,
and knowledge is present
as you rightly discern the Dhamma.

Surely someone who might think:
‘I am woman’, or ‘I am man’,
or ‘I am’ anything at all,
is fit for Māra to address.”

Then Māra the Wicked, thinking, “The nun Somā knows me!” miserable and sad, vanished right there.

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