Mahapajapati Gotami- Buddhist FigureMortal"First Buddhist Nun"

Foster Mother of the Buddha

Mahapajapati's elder sister Maya, queen of the Shakyas, died seven days after giving birth to Prince Siddhartha. Mahapajapati married her sister's widower, King Suddhodana, and nursed the infant prince at her own breast alongside her own children, Nanda and Sundari Nanda. She raised the future Buddha as her own son.

The Request for Ordination

After the Buddha's enlightenment and the founding of the monks' order, Mahapajapati came to him with a request: that women be allowed to ordain as monastics. The Buddha refused three times. Mahapajapati and five hundred Shakya women shaved their heads, put on yellow robes, and walked barefoot from Kapilavatthu to Vesali, some 150 miles. They arrived with swollen, bleeding feet and covered in dust.

The monk Ananda took up their cause. He asked the Buddha whether women were capable of attaining the four stages of enlightenment. The Buddha said they were. Ananda pressed: Mahapajapati had been like a mother to him. Given this debt and women's capacity for awakening, should they not be allowed to ordain? The Buddha relented and established the bhikkhuni sangha with Mahapajapati as its first member. The ordination came with eight heavy rules placing nuns subordinate to monks, which Mahapajapati accepted "as a man with a head bowed down takes a garland of jasmine flowers and places it on his head."

The Therīgāthā Verses

Mahapajapati attained full enlightenment. Her verses in the Therīgāthā address the Buddha directly: she had done his teaching, laid down the heavy burden, pulled out the root of suffering. She guided the growing community of nuns, and her disciples composed their own poems of awakening in the same collection.

Final Passing

At 120 years old, Mahapajapati and five hundred of her fellow nuns approached the Buddha to announce their impending parinirvana. The Buddha confirmed their liberation. Mahapajapati and her companions rose into the air, emitted fire and water from their bodies, then entered final nirvana together. Their bodies were consumed by inner fire, leaving no remains.