Words
June Campbell writes in her book Traveller in space that Chandra Das in his Tibetan English Dictionary describes twenty synonyms for woman. The words used most often are kyemen (Tibetan: skye.dman) meaning inferior birth and pumo (Tibetan: bu.mo.) meaning female human being. There are others like tsamdenma (Tibetan: mtshams.ldan.ma.), chingchema (Tibetan: bching.byed.ma.), dodenma (Tibetan: bdod.ldan.ma.), gaweshi (Tibetan: dgah.wabi.gshi.) and tobmema (Tibetan: stobs.med.ma.).
Throughout the Mahāyāna world, Avalokiteśvara, who takes on both male and female form e.g., Guan Yin, and Tara, a female Vajrayana yidam, are bodhisattvas who embody karuṇā, and Prajnaparamita is a female buddha who embodies wisdom.
Read more about this topic: Women In Buddhism
Famous quotes containing the word words:
““When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.””
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“... it was religion that saved me. Our ugly church and parochial school provided me with my only aesthetic outlet, in the words of the Mass and the litanies and the old Latin hymns, in the Easter lilies around the altar, rosaries, ornamented prayer books, votive lamps, holy cards stamped in gold and decorated with flower wreaths and a saint’s picture.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“The words of the prophets
Are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls
And whispered in the sounds of silence.”
—Paul Simon (b. 1941)