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LIFE LESSONS | BUDDHISM | AGILITY
The art of losing: Getting rid of attachments and dependencies
(Girls in Practice: Caroline and Muttā)
One of the most precious collections of ancient Pāli literature is a book of poetry called Therīgāthā (Psalms of the Sisters), now part of the Khuddakanikāya (Short Pieces) in the Chapter of Discourses of the Pāli Buddhist canon.
I first came across The Sisters Songs in my student years, when I plucked from the library shelves at my university a volume called The Psalms of the Early Buddhists, introduced and translated by Mrs. Caroline Augusta Foley Rhys Davids, Fellow of University College, London, 1909.
Caroline Rhys Davids (1857–1942), the daughter of a vicar, I discovered was by all means a remarkable woman. A lifelong vocal activist for poverty relief, children’s rights, and women’s suffrage, she was also a prolific writer and publisher. Far ahead of Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen, she wrote papers on the economy of the poor, contributed to Palgrave’s Dictionary of Political Economy (1894–1910), and was the only woman on the editorial board of The London Economic Journal.
And then she turned to Buddhism — tirelessly studying Sanskrit and Pāli, and pioneering the field of feminist epistemology in Buddhist history…
