The Story of Rupavati: A Female Past Birth of the Buddha; Rupavati Avadana

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Aemilius
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The Story of Rupavati: A Female Past Birth of the Buddha; Rupavati Avadana

Post by Aemilius »

"The Rupavati Avadana actually consists of four separate episodes
involving four different manifestations of the "same" individual. The
initial frame-story opens with the Buddha preaching a short sermon on
the virtue of generosity (dana) to his assembled monks. To illustrate the
virtue of generosity, the Buddha then launches into a "story of the past"
that actually involves four separate episodes. In the first episode, a
woman named Rupavati cuts off her own breasts in order to feed a
starving woman who is about to devour her own, newly born child.
Drawing on the power of her gift, she later performs an Act of Truth by
which she abandons her female sex permanently and transforms herself
into a man, who is then christened with the name Prince Rupavata. In
the second and briefest episode, Prince Rupavata (formerly Rupavati) is
appointed as the new king of UtpalavatI when the former king dies and
leaves no heirs. He rules righteously for sixty years and then dies. In the
third episode, the same individual is reborn as a merchant's son named
Candraprabha, who goes to a charnel ground in order to feed hungry
beings with his body. At the charnel ground, he has his eye plucked out
repeatedly by an inquisitive bird, and is ultimately killed when his body
s torn to pieces by a flock of hungry birds. In the fourth episode, the
same individual is reborn as a brahmin's son named Brahmaprabha, who
gives his body as food to a starving tigress about to devour her own
cubs. Finally, at the end of the story, the Buddha reveals that all four
characters were previous births of himself."

REIKO OHNUMA
The Story of Rupavati: A Female Past Birth of the Buddha https://fdocuments.in/document/the-stor ... tml?page=1
svaha
"All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.
They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Sarvē mānavāḥ svatantrāḥ samutpannāḥ vartantē api ca, gauravadr̥śā adhikāradr̥śā ca samānāḥ ēva vartantē. Ētē sarvē cētanā-tarka-śaktibhyāṁ susampannāḥ santi. Api ca, sarvē’pi bandhutva-bhāvanayā parasparaṁ vyavaharantu."
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 1. (in english and sanskrit)
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curtstein
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Re: The Story of Rupavati: A Female Past Birth of the Buddha; Rupavati Avadana

Post by curtstein »

I wasn't able to follow that link (it's on some kind of blacklist of sites that might have malware, or at least my browser things it is).

But I did find this article by Reiko Ohnuma, "The Story of Rupavati: A Female Past Birth of the Buddha", which has the same version of the story as the one quoted in the OP:
https://journals.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/i ... /9168/3027

The article is from Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies Volume 23 • Number 1 • 2000
"there's no one here. there's only you and me." leonard cohen
https://www.mindisbuddha.org/
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