Paṭācārā
A figure from the books
#Patacara
Paṭācārā · c. 6th–5th century BCE
In the books · 1 chapter
Who this is
Buddhist nun, poet and jurist — declared by the Buddha foremost among the nuns in mastery of the Vinaya, the monastic law; the counterpart among women of Upāli among men.
“The tradition's answer to unbearable grief was not a doctrine but a person — a person who had borne it — and the same shattered woman became the order's living law-book: grief and law, the two things a community of the bereft most needs, carried in one biography.”
The big idea, in the book's words:
“When the early Buddhist community needed someone to send its grieving mothers to, it sent them to the woman who had lost husband, children, parents and brother in the space of days and been mad in the streets — and she taught them with the plainest images on earth: wash-water sinking into dust, a lamp's wick drawn down.”
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