Dragon king's daughter
dragon king's daughter
竜女 ( Jpn ryunyo )
Also, dragon girl or naga girl. The eight-year-old daughter of Sagara, one of the eight great dragon kings said to dwell in a palace at the bottom of the sea. According to the "Devadatta" (twelfth) chapter of the Lotus Sutra, the dragon girl conceived the desire for enlightenment when she heard Bodhisattva Manjushri preach the Lotus Sutra in the dragon king's palace. When Manjushri asserts that she is capable of quickly attaining the Buddha wisdom, Bodhisattva Wisdom Accumulated challenges him, saying that even Shakyamuni attained enlightenment only after fulfilling the bodhisattva practice for many kalpas, and that she cannot become a Buddha so easily. Just then the dragon girl appears in front of the assembly and praises Shakyamuni Buddha. Shariputra then speaks to her, saying that women are subject to the five obstacles and are incapable of attaining Buddhahood.
At that moment, she offers a jewel to the Buddha, transforms herself into a male, and instantaneously perfects the bodhisattva practice. She then appears in a land to the south called Spotless World and mani-fests the state of Buddhahood without changing her dragon form. With the thirty-two features and eighty characteristics of a Buddha, she preaches the Lotus Sutra to all living beings there.The dragon girl's enlightenment has important implications. First, it refutes the idea of the time that women could never attain enlightenment.
Second, it reveals that the power of the Lotus Sutra enables all people equally to attain Buddhahood in their present form, without undergoing kalpas of austere practices. Perhaps the social circumstances in which the Lotus Sutra was compiled did not allow the dragon girl to be depicted as attaining Buddhahood without first becoming a male. But the transformation occurred instantaneously, not in the next life, and in this respect differs significantly from that of other, provisional teachings, which hold that a woman must be reborn as a man and then practice bodhisattva austerities for innumerable kalpas in order to become a Buddha. See also dragon deity.
