Prajapati

“We owe so much to Prajapati. In raising and nurturing Siddhartha to become a noble, healthy and majestic prince, Prajapati gifted us with a human being who showed us that, as long as we are human, we can be liberated from all bondage.

But Prajapati matters to us not only because she reared the future Buddha but because of her own courage, vision and leadership as a woman and a student, a truth-seeker, and a teacher in her own right.

Despite the major restrictions on women of that era, Prajapati insisted that women as well as men can realize enlightenment and she was instrumental in creating a Buddhist order of nuns. In so doing, she cleared a path to liberation followed by countless other women since that time. In that way Prajapati was a true revolutionary.

Alicja Zmigrodzka’s beautiful illustrated book on Prajapati will certainly help us remember one lady we cannot afford to forget.”