#MahapajapatiGotami

“The Buddha's own foster-mother — the woman who nursed him — shaved her head, walked some 250 kilometres barefoot, stood at his gate with swollen feet and refused to go home, and was told no three times before the door opened; and the order of nuns she forced into existence is still being fought over, twenty-five centuries later.”

“A century of brilliant Indian women had been admitted to the life of the mind one at a time, as exceptions. Mahāpajāpatī refused the exception and demanded the institution — an order with rules, robes, teachers and a lineage, so that a woman seeking liberation would never again need anyone's special permission.”