The Blood Pool Hell

The Blood Pool inferno crystalized the concept and helped codify the concept of women as a gender flawed by their really temperament. Paul Groner ( ) writes, "By the late Heian period, ideas about pollution had become so deep-rooted in Japanese thought that they were a prime basis why women were said to be permanently inferior" (p. 73).

Because of the hike of this notion, menopausal women in particular could gain some power. As Faure ( ) observes, "It is often after reaching that state that women became nuns; however, this was more in recognition of the point that they moved beyond the threat of be fe manful by fulfilling their procreative duties" (p. 69). Later movements also specifically attempted to go against the blood jackpot sutra notions, attri hardlying the very fact of a woman's ability to bear children to "the 'spiritual power' of women" (Faure, __, p. 73).

Nevertheless, the blood pool sutra had a powerful impact on the ways that Buddhism developed in the late medieval period and beyond. Hank Glassman (2005) argues, "This is one of the final chapters in a process that began with the transformation of noble and warrior phase women from daughters to wives" (p. 2).

Faure ( ) argues that this development was connected to the changing ideas of class in Japanese society: "The taboos of blood and death be notions that Japanese Buddhists developed in ensnare to participate in royal rituals" (p. 89). This suggests that the blood pool hell sutra and similar concepts were mod by a patriarchal system in order to confirm power at the highest levels of society. If noble women were allowed the same place as noble men, they would be able to take forth some of this power. If, instead, they were shown to be inherently flawed, compared to men, and in need of male intervention in order to be saved from damnation, they were easier to stamp out and dominate.

ng hold, "women were responsible for their own salvation and had to take stairs in this life to avoid punishment in the abutting" (Glassman, 2005, p. 15).

Yet as it became more ingrained in phantasmal tradition, women were increasingly relegated to a passive role. As Glassman (2005) writes, "The blood pool hell presents a real conundrum for women since it threatens damnation for the very potential motherhood that is a woman's passport to salvation" (p. 30). In other words, the biology that defines the gender (and makes women an essential partner in continuing life) is also the essential cause of damnation. Because women are inherently damned, they do not have the ability to save themselves but must rely instead on intervention on their behalf.

This paper is an examination of two of the most important and plethoric images of women in Japanese literature during the medieval period. An significant ethnic belief at the time was that, because women were inherently lustful, they were by nature capable of transforming into serpents or dragons. This contrasts with the story of the Naga (Dragon) King's daughter in The white lily Sutra who, despite her serpent nature, was able to achieve nearly instantaneous buddahood. This paper looks at the images of women as dragons and serpents in legen
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