his thoughts would have
been declared radioactive
and contained them in
lead-coated walls of
the kitchen for safety.
His thinking would have
been declared a public health
hazard to confine him to
the boundaries of a building
by his own father.
And God forbid if he left
the house in the middle of
the night, his long road to
enlightenment would have
been one heck of a treatise
on women's safety and
sexual harassment.
The Bodhi tree would have
grown conscious suddenly
to question his chastity.
And to maintain its own purity,
the Buddha would have been
asked to stay away on that
week of the month.
If Buddha were a woman,
the first sermon in Sarnath
wouldn't have gone past
the absolutely bizarre
conditions women have
been put through.
The entire religion would
have been about methods
to escape chauvinistic tyranny,
and then there would
have been four Buddhist
councils for equal rights.
Perhaps that way, there
would have been a religion
to represent this half of
humanity. But alas,
Buddha was a man and
he himself excluded women
in his monasteries.
If he hadn't, enlightenment
wouldn't just be flexing muscles
with meditation and the four
noble truths of Dhamma
would reek of hypocrisy of
patriarchy first.