On Sisters And Sisterhood: A Transcendental View

Many students and colleagues of mine at the University of the Philippines (UP Cebu) have often asked me why I am very passionate in my advocacy for women’s empowerment, women’s rights and gender equality. Some of my friends in the academe have oftentimes asked me how I became an activist for women and children in my own little way. As a teacher, I published my own writings that were featured in some feminist academic journals both here in the country and abroad. I simply brushed all these questions aside with a smile by saying that all of us should be concerned for the plight of the womenry, and this is our bounden duty as humans since women have always been marginalized in a patriarchal society such as ours; and therefore it is a matter of prime importance that we, in our own way, must work assiduously to equalize the societal playing field fairly and justly across gender divide. I, likewise, told my colleagues and students that it is expected from people in the academe to be in solidarity with the marginalized advocacy for women in their fight for equity and justice. In my present essay however, I would like to answer the questions above on a more personal note—a short story telling, if I may.

When I was in my early college student days, I was blessed to have experienced a very beautiful, unique friendship with an intelligent thirteen-year-old girl whom I considered as my sister in the truest sense of the word. She resided in an orphanage here in the city managed by a religious organization since her mother abandoned her when she was yet 5 years old and her poor relatives turned her over to the nuns because they too were very destitute to support her. While I was studying in college, I volunteered to help as tutor in this orphanage during my free time in school. I met her in one of my own volunteer work in this orphanage. Then I pledged myself to her that I will become a brother to her and that she will be a true sister to me. Since all my siblings are boys, in my heart of hearts, I longed to have a sister whom I can truly love and cherish. Then, Providence came and gave me this “yearned-for” sister.

I loved my pledged-sister so much that my life at the time revolved around her; to borrow the poet’s phrase, I can say that “my life was intimately entwined with hers”. I considered this dear sister as my treasure. This emotional attachment to her led me to this “paranoid”, jealous brother who guarded her from all dangers, both real and imaginary. I simply cannot describe adequately how I cherished and protected my sister. I took seriously my multiple roles as her “father”, “brother” and “policeman”.

I can still fondly remember those times when I used to crack jokes with her. I can still hear her carefree laughter at my silly nonsense. I was so proud of her achievements. She was a gifted teen who sang well. She wrote poetry during her leisure time. She often participated in literary contests and won them many times. Despite her sad and traumatic past, she was such a promising girl of teenage vivaciousness and spontaneity.

When she was on her way to junior high school, a horrible nightmare came to both of our lives. She chronically got sick for almost two weeks and passed-away during the time when I had my semestral break. I was so unprepared to accept the truth of her passing away. My dearest, pledged-sister passed away leaving me angry, empty, confused and devastated. I spent many nights weeping as I try to recall the fond memories of our happy days together. At the time, I felt that my life was a total wreck without her living presence.

My first psychological response to this tragedy was to deny her death. Months after she died, I often have vivid dreams of her. I was so overwhelmed by sorrow that the only thought in my subconscious mind was to flush-out all awareness regarding the painful truth of her death.

I was seething-mad at God and angry with my late pledged-sister. I asked God: “How come You took my sister away at the prime of her youth and in the midst of a promising future ahead of her?” I felt that my sister was also being unjust in leaving me for the next world after all the love and concerns that I lavished on her. I faulted her for not fighting-out for her life during her illness. I was really filled with hate over what happened to her and to the disruption that death had caused to our being pledged-sister and brother.

I harbored these choking emotions of denial and resentment for months until a sudden realization came to me. While reading a book about the Dalai Lama, I came to encounter the following epigraph:

“Thus one should observe and realize/
that all the world’s phenomena and ideas are impermanent/
like water bubbles, like dew and like lightning/
they all soon vanish away/
too soon, so very soon…”

Reading this stanza brought an unexpected moment of grace into my grieving being. This instant insight on the impermanence of things caught me “by the neck”, so to speak, so that after reflecting on this stanza, I felt a sudden liberation from the heavy burden that enveloped my existence. I experienced immediate release from the excruciating load that I had been carrying these past months.

The above epigraph showed me the virtues of detachment and equanimity as the enlightened and appropriate responses to the ephemeral nature of our mundane existence. Now, I realize that it was neither God’s fault nor the fault of my sister that death snatched her away from me. The fault solely lies in my unreasonable attachment to her, my failure to admit the reality of the impermanence of all phenomena and my rigid perspective of the past that created misery to my psychological well being. The culprit was my undue clinging to her and my erroneous view that our relationship in this earthly plane is permanent. This obsession was caused by my selfishness in thinking that I own her forever. Thanks to this short Buddhist poem, I realized that nobody can ever come to own anybody, in the existential sense; for, at the end of the day, the person belongs to the Ultimate Ground of Being Itself. I am aware now that in order to realize what the Buddha calls the “Impermanent”, I need to cultivate detachment and equanimity in all areas of my life.

Armed with this “paradigm shift” of perspective, I still remember my sister with fondness, but I firmly resolved to let go of my unnecessary attachments to her and focus instead of making the whole womenry as my sister now. This means freedom for me and also for her. She is still my sister in the mental, astral and spiritual planes but now I see her as truly free and unfettered from the material limitations of time and space. My sister ultimately belongs to the Cosmic Noumenon itself: that is my sister has now become an ineffable spiritual presence surrounding me in the phenomenon of Nature. She envelopes me in the vastness of the clouds, caresses me in the warm summer breeze, floods my soul with showers of love in the drizzling rain and manifests her playful vivaciousness in the ocean waves that touch my feet. This realization of her ineffable presence as my Cosmic sister broke the narrow entanglements that bind me to her.

The Buddhist Heart Sutra contains a short but beautiful Sanskrit mantra of detachment that shows the relationship between genuine equanimity and existential freedom leading to the enlightened experience of universal love, which knows neither boundaries nor limits. The mantra goes like this: “Gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate bodhi svaha!”. This is the meaning of the mantra: “Gone, gone, gone Beyond, gone altogether Beyond! What an Awakening! All hail!”

Equanimity means looking at persons things and phenomena devoid of attachment and aversion. Equanimity means not favoring one person over another—male or female, gay or straight. This virtue of equanimity cuts off all artificiality of preferences and narrow views regarding race, creed, kinship, ethnicity and relationship. Equanimity is a necessary consequence to the experience of liberating detachment.

Once I was able to remove this selfish tendency of wanting to possess my sister, I was able to receive this healing grace of equanimity. That moment when I “let go” of my narrow attachment to my sister, I then begin to see all women as my sisters without claiming them as my exclusive property. I see my sister’s joy in the smile of a “probinsyana” lass. I sense the aspirations of my sister through the eyes of a saleslady or of a waitress as she longs for a better life. I feel her broken heart in the cries of frustrations of a teenage gal upon the breaking up of a love relationship. I encounter her carefree spirit in the boisterous laughter of a happy sixth grader in the midst of her friends. I feel her righteous indignation in every girl who has been harassed, molested, emotionally abused and taken advantaged of by inconsiderate, chauvinistic, cruel and egotistic men. The whole womenfolk have truly become my sisters now—and I have truly become a brother to all women. What a wonderful gift of illumination from the eternal wisdom of the Buddha!

In the past, I thought of friendship and relationship in terms of narrow and selfish exclusivity but my reflection on the truth of Buddhist detachment effectively freed me from such pettiness. The womenfolk with all their sighs, longings, joys, pain, anger, dreams, aspirations and struggles have become the realm and domain of my empathy on account of my love for my late pledged-sister. In this metaphysical yet down-to-earth sense of solidarity, my late sister has become the “whole womenfolk”, and all women have become my sisters. My sister did not pass away; she was mystically transformed into somebody limitless, infinite and eternal. She has become my Cosmic Sister and all the women that I encounter today and will ever encounter in the future participate in this Cosmic Sisterhood of Love and Compassion that lives in the very core of my heart! Indeed, what a liberating thought!