The First Free Women Quotes

“[written 2,600 years ago]

Another Sama

After twenty-five years on the Path,
I'd experienced almost everything--
except peace.

When I was young,
my mother told me
that I would find true happiness
only in marriage.

Remembering her words all those years
later,
something in me began to tremble.

I gave myself to the trembling--
and it showed me
all the pain
this little heart
had ever known.

And how countless lives of searching
had brought me
at last
to the present moment,
which I happily married.

Can you imagine?

We've been living together
ever since,
without
a single
argument.”
― Matty Weingast, The First Free Women: Poems of the Early Buddhist Nuns

“He said:
How could a woman,
who knows no more than how to cook,
clean, and make babies,
possibly reach the further shore—
on the way to which so many good men
have drowned or turned back?

I said:
The mind is neither male nor female.

When directed towards the arising
and passing away
of all things,
it easily penetrates
this mass of darkness.

Be serious.

What’s a few inches of meat
compared to the immeasurable reaches
of the liberated mind?”
― Matty Weingast, The First Free Women: Poems of the Early Buddhist Nuns