It's been a while since I wrote about the ancestors and our lineage. As another Fusatsu service occured on Sunday and the new moon is today, I thought I would start writing about at least 1 of them each month.
MahaMaya doesn't currently appear on our lineage list, and yet she is an important female ancestor. Having carried the child who would mature into the Buddha we treasure today.
As many of the women in Buddhism have been traditionally writen out of history, there is a movement to find the stories that do survive, and raise them up as part of the collective.
MahaMaya's cultural names:
Māyā (माया) means "illusion" in Sanskrit.
Māyā is also called Mahāmāyā (महामाया, "Great Māyā")
and Māyādevī (मायादेवी, "Queen Māyā").
In Chinese, she is known as Móyé-fūrén (摩耶夫人, "Lady Māyā"),
in Tibetan she is known as Gyutrulma
and in Japanese she is known as Maya-bunin (摩耶夫人).
Also, in Sinhalese she is known as මහාමායා දේවී (Mahāmāyā Dēvi).
Childhood:
As a child she was raised with her sister Gotami in the Kolyan clan. They lived in the town of Devadaha in the foothills of the Himalayas.
Marriage:
Māyā married King Śuddhodana (Pāli: Suddhodana), the ruler of the Śākya clan of Kapilvastu. She was the daughter of King Śuddhodhana's uncle and therefore his cousin; her father was king of Devadaha.
Her husband:
Śuddhodana (Sanskrit: शुद्धोदन; Pali: Suddhōdana), meaning "he who grows pure rice," was a leader of the Shakya, who lived in an oligarchic republic in Present day Nepal, with their capital at Kapilavastu.
Śuddhodana was often referred to as a king, though that status cannot be established with confidence and is in fact disputed by modern scholars.
He does not appear as yet on our lineage list.
Māyā and King Suddhodhana did not have children for twenty years into their marriage.
Unto her a child was born:
According to legend, one full moon night, sleeping in the palace, the queen had a vivid dream. She felt herself being carried away by four devas (spirits) to Lake Anotatta in the Himalayas.
After bathing her in the lake, the devas clothed her in heavenly cloths, anointed her with perfumes, and bedecked her with divine flowers.
Soon after a white elephant, holding a white lotus flower in its trunk, appeared and went round her three times, entering her womb through her right side. Finally the elephant disappeared and the queen awoke, knowing she had been delivered an important message, as the elephant is a symbol of greatness.
Traditional interpretation of the dream:
The Buddha-to-be was residing as a bodhisattva in the Tuṣita heaven, and decided to take the shape of a white elephant to be reborn on Earth for the last time.
The birth of Siddhatta:
Māyā gave birth to Siddharta c. 563 BCE.
The pregnancy is said to have lasted ten lunar months.
Following custom, the Queen returned to her own home for the birth.
On the way, she stepped down from her palanquin to have a walk under the Sal tree (Shorea robusta), often confused with the Ashoka tree (Saraca asoca), in the beautiful flower garden of Lumbini Park, Lumbini Zone, Nepal.
Maya Devi was delighted by the park and gave birth standing while holding onto a sal branch. Some say that the tree bent so to assist her.
Legend has it that Prince Siddhārtha emerged from her right side. The side the elephant had entered.
That he took 7 steps, at each lotus flowers blossomed, he stopped and declared...
"I am chief of the world,
Eldest am I in the world,
Foremost am I in the world.
This is the last birth.
There is now no more coming to be."
It was the eighth day of April.
Some accounts say she gave him his first bath in the Puskarini pond in Lumbini Zone.
Whereas legend has it that devas caused it to rain to wash the newborn baby.
When the king learnt of the birth, he was very happy, and as news of the long-awaited heir spread around the kingdom there was rejoicing all over the country.
The child was later named Siddhārtha, "He who has accomplished his goals" or "The accomplished goal".
Grief that overshadows joy:
Scholars generally agree that most Buddhist literature holds that Maya died seven days after the birth of Siddhartha, and was then reborn in the Tusita Heaven.
All mothers of the previous Buddhas also had this fate, in the Buddhist tradition.
In the usual accounts Maya appears just long enough to give birth to the Buddha, unnaturally from her right side, after which she vanishes from the storyline altogether
We are not privy to the lamentation or grief we would expect at the loss of the Shakya clan’s queen, the king his wife, or the infant prince his mother.
Pema Chodren wrote in "Buddha", a superbly writen fiction based on the established facts of Siddhartha's life, that Suddhodana was too overcome with grief to preform his duties at her funeral pyre.
We do know that due to predictions made at Siddhartha's naming ceremony he was protected from the outside world.
Might too he have been protected because of his father's grief for a beloved wife? Though she may have been one of many, as was custom.
As part of the customs, Suddhodana next elevated to chief consort Maya's sister Mahapajapati Gotami, with whom he had a second son Nanda and a daughter Sundarī Nandā.
So it was that MahaMaya's sister Prajāpatī (Pāli: Pajāpatī or Mahāpajāpatī Gotamī) became Siddhartha's foster mother.
Buddha honoured his mother:
In the imagination of the early storytellers, MahaMaya's life carries forward in the celestial realms buoyed by the power of a mother’s love for her child.
It’s worth a moment to pause and reflect on the significance of this to the Buddha narrative.
Maya’s love for her son becomes the enduring, timeless love of motherhood, a theme as relevant then as it is today.
Wendy Garling May 12, 2017
"... spent five years researching biographies of the Buddha originally from Pali and Sanskrit sources in search of women’s stories, holding out optimism that [she] would find some and that there might be stories supporting a more positive, inclusive view of women during the Buddha’s lifetime...
Maya’s Anguish as Her Son Nears Death
The first story takes place during the period of Gautama’s fierce austerities, when he finally becomes so emaciated and weak that he collapses from exhaustion. Alarmed, celestial messengers make haste to inform Maya (as a goddess abiding in heaven) that her beloved son is dying.
Hearing the terrible news that her son is near death, Maya leaves immediately for the banks of the Nairanjana River, where she finds him cadaverous and unconscious on the ground.
Choking with tears, she lovingly sings to him,
When I gave birth to you, my son, in the Lumbini Grove,
Without support, like a lion, you took seven steps on your own,
You gazed in the four directions and said these beautiful words:
“This is my last birth.” Those words will now never come to pass.
. . .
To whom can I turn to about my son?
To whom shall I cry out in my pain?
Who will give life back to my only son,
Who is barely alive?".
Gautama awakes from his stupor, confused, and asks who she is. Again she sings to him,
"It is I your mother, O son,
Who for 10 months
Carried you in my womb like a diamond.
It is I who now cry out in despair."
Gautama now consoles his mother, assuring her that the prophecies surrounding his superior destiny would definitely come to pass. She should not despair, he says, but rejoice because soon her son will become a fully awakened Buddha. Reassured by his response, Maya circumambulates him three times sprinkling him with flower petals and returns to her heavenly abode. [Lalitavistara, chap. 17]"
According to tradition after Siddhartha had attained Enlightenment and become the Buddha, he visited his mother in heaven for three months to pay respects and to teach the Dharma.
Seven years after the Buddha's enlightenment, she came down to visit Tavatimsa Heaven, where the Buddha later preached the Abhidharma to her.
Wendy found...
"Maya Reunites with Her Son in Heaven
In this next story, the scenario flips, and we find the Buddha traveling to heaven to see his mother. He is near the end of his life and has been tirelessly teaching the dharma for more than 40 years. It’s on his (and every Buddha’s) bucket list to convert his mother to the dharma as an act of gratitude for giving him life. The Buddha’s father, Suddhodana, had already converted before he died. Many sources mention the Buddha’s three-month sojourn in Trayastrimsha heaven, one of several celestial realms in Buddhist cosmology, but the following story tells us about his meeting there with Maya:
The Buddha has arrived in heaven and is seated under a tree surrounded by a vast assembly of disciples.
In a lengthy discourse, he relates stories of his birth and expresses the wish to see again the sublime face of his mother.
A messenger swiftly relays this message to Maya, some distance away.
Upon hearing her son’s words, milk streams from her breasts. Overwhelmed with emotion, she responds that if he is indeed her son, her milk will reach his mouth directly. And so, miraculously, her milk enters his mouth from afar. Maya declares she has not experienced such joy since the moment of his birth. Mother and son reunited, Maya takes refuge with the stated purpose of realizing awakening for herself. After eons as his mother nourishing him at her breast her goal now is to cut forever the bonds of rebirth, even as that means finally ending her relationship with her son. The Buddha gives her a teaching on the inevitability of separation, which heralds his impending parinirvana [nirvana after death]. When the time comes for him to depart, Maya is beset with sorrow.
Here we are reminded not only of Maya’s love for her son, but also the Buddha’s devotion to his mother. But Maya also has agency here, seeking awakening for herself through her son’s profound teachings. This story further tells us that Maya so rapidly attained realizations that she too taught dharma in heaven, in the presence of her beloved son."
And...
"Maya at Her Son’s Parinirvana
A final story upends the usual conclusion to the Buddha’s parinirvana narrative. Traditionally we’re told that the last person to pay homage to the Buddha’s body prior to cremation was his disciple Mahakasyapa, and that the Buddha’s feet spontaneously emerged from beneath the shroud so that this disciple could venerate them.
However, the following story tells us that Maya was the last person to receive the Buddha’s earthly blessing.
The antiquity of this story from the Mahamayasutra is corroborated by the 7th-century Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang, who noted in his chronicles that there was a stupa in Kushinigar near the cremation site commemorating Maya’s final visit with her son.
Word reaches Maya in heaven that her son has died. Arriving swiftly at the coffin, she faints from emotion.
Revived, she mournfully touches his robe, bowl, and staff lying nearby. At that moment the coffin’s lid miraculously opens, and the Buddha sits up. Brilliant light rays burst forth in all directions. Reunited for the last time, the Buddha praises Maya as a woman and a mother and comforts her with his final teaching: “I beg you not to cry, as all these events conform to the dharma.”
And so, Maya’s love for her son marked the bookends of his life, flowing unbroken from his birth to his death. However mythic or symbolic, these stories (and others) tell us that the Buddha always honored and revered his mother. While mostly unseen, her presence is felt throughout his life.
Maya’s enduring love is just one of many themes that valorizes women and the feminine in these “forgotten” stories.
Freeing them from obscurity can help us untangle misogynistic knots from Buddhism’s past and offer new possibilities for weaving a fresh account of Buddhism’s inception."
Wendy Garling is the author of Stars at Dawn, Forgotten Stories of Women in the Buddha’s Life, Shambhala Publications, 2016.
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