1. Buddhism is a tradition that says you have “no-soul,” or anatta, but that also says nuns are subservient to monks, that one requires bad karma to be reborn as a woman, and that women may cause things to be ritually polluted. Is this a contradiction? How do we make sense of the reality of women in Buddhist countries considering the doctrine of anatta?
1. Is there any comfort to be found in the Buddhist acknowledgment that life is defined by suffering? Does suffering, the first of the Four Noble Truths, mean that Buddhism is a pessimistic religion? Or is it simply more realistic?
1. In the Arrow Sermon, the Buddha says that a man shot with a poisoned arrow should not waste time in fruitless speculation about who shot the arrow, but rather focus instead on pulling it out. What does the poison that is slowly killing the man represent? What do his useless questions represent? Why won’t the Buddha simply answer useless questions instead of refusing to discuss them? What does this tell us about Buddhism as a religious tradition?