Family Life in Buddhism
The Buddha offers advice to married women in the Anguttara Nikaya (7:59; IV 91-94), from the Pali (Theravada) canon, where he tells of seven types of wives - the first three types are destined for unhappiness, while the last four, as they are imbued with long term self control, are destined to be happy. These latter wives are characterised as alternately benevolent and possibly dominant (motherly-wife), equal (friend-wife) and submissive (sister-wife and slave-wife) - the Buddha thus endorsed a variety of power dynamics within marriage.
According to Diana Paul, Buddhism inherited a view of women whereby if they are not represented as mothers then they are portrayed as either lustful temptresses or as evil incarnate.
Read more about this topic: Women In Buddhism
Famous quotes containing the words family, life and/or buddhism:
“Nor does the family even move about together,
But every son would have his motor cycle,
And daughters ride away on casual pillions.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“The great passion in a man’s life may not be for women or men or wealth or toys or fame, or even for his children, but for his masculinity, and at any point in his life he may be tempted to throw over the things for which he regularly lays down his life for the sake of that masculinity. He may keep this passion secret from women, and he may even deny it to himself, but the other boys know it about themselves and the wiser ones know it about the rest of us as well.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)
“A religion so cheerless, a philosophy so sorrowful, could never have succeeded with the masses of mankind if presented only as a system of metaphysics. Buddhism owed its success to its catholic spirit and its beautiful morality.”
—W. Winwood Reade (1838–1875)