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 and/or buddhism:
“Family values are a little like family vacations—subject to changeable weather and remembered more fondly with the passage of time. Though it rained all week at the beach, it’s often the momentary rainbows that we remember.”
—Leslie Dreyfous (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)