Can girls actually rock? (video)

Wisdom Quarterly
(Lailathephotographer/Laila Iravani/Palliard/Flickr)

Portland's Girl Rock Camp is in its tenth year

Ellen Kobe, The Oregonian (OregonLive.com)
Fabi Reyna played rock 'n' roll for four years before she made it into the spotlight. But it wasn't a lack of talent that kept her from it -- it was boys.

Attending music camps as a child in her hometown of Austin, Reyna was often forced to play back-up guitar for boys her age. When she was, on a rare occasion, given the chance to play lead guitar, she says boys would get so mad they would sometimes cry. And once, when she was 12, a boy told her that her gender prevented her from being a good musician.

Mini-summer session called Rock Camp Studio has
the girls working with their instructors and bands.

Reyna says she timidly backed down from the insult. But she came to Portland the next summer, in 2006, to attend the Rock 'n' Roll Camp for Girls, and her perspective changed: She realized being female didn't mean she couldn't rock out.

"I was like, 'Yeah, what am I doing listening to dudes and holding myself back?'" says Reyna, now 19. Now she lives in Portland and tours with two bands -- Fabi and Sexhair -- and runs a record label, Talking Helps Records, with two friends. This week, Reyna will attribute much of her success to girls rock camp when she performs at a ceremony in honor of the organization's 10th anniversary. More

• Female fronted rock bands (rockreviews247)
• Q&A on Girl Groups
• VIDEO: Japanese school girls rock
• VIDEO: Jade Justine masters Metallica
  

Juliette V solo of Pink Floyd's "Great Gig in the Sky"


So simple even a kid (Taylor) can master rock


Even a toddler (Zoe) can learn and perform by 7.


But judgments focus on looks over talent for females.

Empowering the Women of Asia (photos)

The Asia Foundation, Seven (Wisdom Quarterly)

Asia Foundation : Multimedia : Empowering the Women of Asia

In recent decades, Asia has experienced transformative economic growth and reform. And women have made significant advances in gender equity, political participation, and personal security.

• An unprecedented number of women ran in Afghanistan's recent parliamentary elections.
• Nepal's prime minister declared 2010 the "year to combat gender-based violence."
• The Philippines now ranks 9th among nearly 200 countries in gender equity.

But challenges remain: Women still make up the majority of [the world and] Asia's low-skilled and highly vulnerable workforce. Many Asian countries are both the primary sources and destinations for the victims of trafficking. Others remain trapped in a cycle of illiteracy, poverty, or ill health, lacking the means to raise themselves and their families out of it.

• The Asia Foundation's Women's Empowerment Program seeks to identify change agents, create new political and economic opportunities for women, build constituencies for reform, develop leaders, increases women's rights, and ensure their personal security. More
• JOBS: Work for the Asia Foundation

All are dear. Let light join our voices.

Agitation and Ahimsa (video)

Sanjiv Kakar (Times of India), OccupyWallStreet.org, Wisdom Quarterly, Feminist.com

Ahimsa means harmony, non-violence, non-harming. Police are not familiar with it.

Today we see tens of thousands of citizens, including many youths, taking to the streets for a better tomorrow. In a country with a sizable youth population, having youngsters at the forefront of political agitation is not surprising.

• occupywallst.org
• Satellite to fall Friday night
  

Let movements remain nonviolent. For violence always ends in failure. It is truth that wins out in the end because, like the sun hidden by clouds, it will shine before long.

The spectacle of families bringing their children to Anna Hazare's fast at the Ramlila Maidan in Delhi for a dose of morality and [divine] ethics raises fundamental questions. What is it that we can do to establish ahimsa in our youth? Since protest is here to stay as a vital tool in the political arena, education in non-violence becomes a priority. More

• Take action! (feminist.com)
• V Day for safer college campuses
• Nepal supports Palestine's independence
• Tibetan monks visit Red Bank's Westside
• Nepali Congress will stay together
• Remote Indian village reached after quake
  
• Uprising Radio: Rise Up for Justice and Peace
• Buddhist pilgrimage to expand in Indian state
• Between China and India lies Burma's future
• Meditation in New York (free class Oct. 2)
• Buddhism in Northeast USA (directory)
  
• Temple to teach Thai, Buddhism classes
• LAYTON, Utah - Wat Dhammagunaram Buddhist Temple is teaching a 12-part series on basic Theravada Buddhism Saturdays, 2-4 pm. Wear white. Chase12@comcast.net, (801) 966-0639, 644 E. 1000 North.

The Buddha was enlightened, not sexist

Ven. Anālayo Bhikkhu (Buddhist monk) in a letter to the nun Ayya Tathāloka

(Isharak) In the fifth year after his enlightenment, the Buddha spent the rainy season in Kutagarasala. It is the abbey where he most frequently stayed while visiting the great city of Vaishali. It was here that his stepmother, Mahapajapati Gotami, was ordained as the first Buddhist nun, creating the Bhikkhuni Sangha. (To visit: 1upindia.com)

Gender Discrimination and the Pali Canon

...In the case of the attitude towards women, we find contradictory positions and thus a lack of consistency in the Pāli canon [the oldest extant redaction of the Buddha's teachings].

One example is the account of the founding of the Order of Nuns.⁴ According to the "Great Final Nirvana Discourse" (Mahāparinibbāna Sutta), soon after his awakening the Buddha proclaimed that he would not pass away until he had nun disciples who are wise and learned.⁵

From this it would follow that right from the outset he wanted and intended to have an Order of Nuns. This impression is further supported by a closer perusal of the Pāli canon, which shows recurrent references to the importance of having four assemblies of disciples (monks and nuns and male and female lay followers) and to the significant contribution made by nuns to the prosperity and success of the Buddha's dispensation.

These passages stand in contrast to the impression created by the account of the foundation of the Order of Nuns, which reads as if the Buddha did not want to allow women to go forth.⁶

A comparative study of this account in the different collections of Disciplinary Rules (Vinayas), mainly extant in Chinese, shows clear signs of later additions and thus makes it probable that it does not accurately reflect the Buddha's attitude.

Another example would be a pair of discourses in the Collection of Numerical Discourses (Aṅguttara-nikāya) that compare women to black snakes -- as both are dirty, smelly, and betray friends, and so on.⁷

Would it be reasonable and coherent for an awakened teacher to make such derogatory remarks about women?

That enlightened teacher, according to other discourses, had nun-disciples that had reached full awakening and thus total freedom from any defilement,⁸ who according to the same discourse collection proclaimed various nuns and lay women as outstanding in qualities like deep concentration and profound wisdom,⁹ and who apparently placed such trust in women that he (in a twin monastic regulation found in all Vinayas) sanctioned acting on a trustworthy laywoman's report about a monk's breach of the rules?¹⁰

The comparison of women to snakes recurs in two parallel versions -- one in the Tibetan Vinaya, where a similar remark is headed by the qualification "some" (i.e., "some women are..."¹¹) and another in a late text in Uighur [a language in China], where this remark is not made by the Buddha, but rather by some Sakyan youths.¹² More plus footnotes

• The first all Sri Lankan nun's great almsgiving
• Buddhist nuns of Burma (allmyanmar.com)

2,500 yrs later, Tibetan Buddhists on women

Michaela Haas (author and UC Santa Barbara lecturer) HuffingtonPost.com (edited by WQ)

Tibetan lamas honor the historical Buddha's relics (Choice Kurniawan/Flickr.com)

2,500 years after the Buddha, Tibetan Buddhists acknowledge women

Buddhist women are celebrating a landmark victory: In April, the renowned Institute for Buddhist Dialectical Studies (IBD) in Dharamsala, India, conferred the degree of "Geshe" -- the Tibetan equivalent of Ph.D. -- to Ven. Kelsang Wangmo, a German [Vajrayana Buddhist] nun.

This is a first in many ways: Traditionally, Geshe degrees are conferred on monks after 12 or more years of rigorous study in Buddhist philosophy. For the first time in history, a nun has now received the degree. Even more surprising, it was conferred on a Western woman.

Ven. Kelsang Wangmo [pictured here] was finally rewarded for mastering the strenuous course of study in higher [Tibetan] Buddhist philosophy. She had already been teaching philosophy at the Institute for more than five years.

So why is this such a big deal, and why did it take so long? In the West, the first female professorship was awarded to a woman at a European university in 1732. Almost 300 years ago scientist Laura Bassi taught physics at the University of Bologna. And more than 2,500 [now almost 2,600] years ago the Buddha allowed women into the monastic order [Sangha]. He did this by ordaining his foster mother, Maha Prajapati.

She and 500 like-minded [Shakyan] women donned saffron robes, shaved their heads, and walked 350 miles barefoot to show their unwavering determination. But it was only after Ven. Ananda intervened on their behalf that the Buddha finally granted their request -- a revolutionary decision in India at the time.

[This was a first for a world religion, but it was not a first for India. Not long before, the Buddha's contemporary Mahavira, the founder of Jainism, admitted women into a wandering ascetic order similar to Buddhism's.] More