A Woman’s Gita: Bhagavad Gita by and for Western Women

Beyond Patriarchy: Reclaiming the Feminine in Sacred Texts

• Nischala Joy Devi & Kamala Rose • Season 2 • Episode 8

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Step beyond traditional boundaries in "Beyond Patriarchy: Reclaiming the Feminine in Sacred Texts." In this special episode, Kamala Rose and Nischala Joy Devi celebrate a year of groundbreaking dialogue by exploring how women’s voices have historically been sidelined in spiritual traditions—and how they are reclaiming their rightful place today. Drawing on the legacy of the Seneca Falls Convention and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and examining the Bhagavad Gita through a contemporary, inclusive lens, the hosts dive deep into how reclaiming the feminine transforms both faith and society.

Key topics covered:

  • The historic Seneca Falls Convention and its relevance to modern women’s rights
  • The influence of the Declaration of Sentiments and the Woman's Bible
  • The impact of patriarchy in both Western and Eastern religious traditions
  • How religious texts have reinforced and now challenge women’s subjugation
  • The importance of gender-neutral, inclusive interpretations of the Bhagavad Gita and other scriptures
  • Celebrating Chapter 9, Sloka 32 of the Gita as a verse of empowerment and equality
  • The role of spirituality versus institutional religion in fostering freedom and equality
  • Personal stories of empowerment, sisterhood, and advocacy in the yoga and spiritual communities
Kamala Rose:

Namaste. Welcome to a woman's Gita Podcast. I'm Kamala

Nischala Joy Devi:

rose and I'm NischalaJoy Devi.

Kamala Rose:

Today is a special edition of our podcast, as we are celebrating our one year anniversary. Nischala Devi and I have been recording this woman's Gita podcast for one year now, and it's been quite a lot of interesting discussions between us. I want to start today by acknowledging where we began, how we began this podcast a year ago, which was on July 20 of 2024 and we specifically started on July 20 as a way of acknowledging the historic meeting at Seneca Falls in New York, which was the very first conference on women's rights, a meeting that was a gathering of Quakers, abolitionists, a bringing together of those concerned with the social, civil and religious conditions and rights of women. In the Seneca Falls convention, they brought together a lot of ideas under what they called the Declaration of Sentiments, one of the causes that was brought forward for discussion was the right to vote, which was not supported by everyone there. There were so many complex issues during that time, such as the abolition of slavery and land rights to all people. The United States was moving quickly into the Civil War, but the right to vote became the clarion call of this meeting, and 50 years later, another historic document emerged and authored by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, but also by a panel of women who who began the work at Seneca Falls, they came together to draft a woman's Bible and address Some of the underlying issues that the document of sentiments was aiming to address, many of which came to the inequity of women that is seated in religious belief in the short document called a woman's Bible, the woman's Bible, Elizabeth Cady Stanton outlines many points of argument with standard interpretations of the traditional reading of the Old and New Testaments. She says, the first step in the elevation of woman to her true position as an equal factor in human progress is the cultivation of the religious sentiment in regard to her dignity, her equality, the recognition by the rising generation of an Ideal, Heavenly Mother to whom their prayers should be addressed, as well as to a father. This is an argument that falls on curious ears here on this podcast, something Nischala Devi and I have discussed at length, the importance of the feminine in the religious dialog nistula, what can Seneca Falls teach us today?

Nischala Joy Devi:

Boy, you know, it's sad to me, also that so many people don't even know about this. They don't you say to them, you know about the Seneca Falls convention. They just look at you like you have, they have no idea. So I think one of the main things that I feel when I hear this is we have done something in our in our society, many societies, we've separated the spiritual from the material. And I think this has gotten us on a lot of problems because of that separation. So here we see in this convention that what they are saying is the right to vote is paramount, because if women do not have a say in how they're treated, in how. The land is distributed into their education, all these things, the right to have their own money. If all these things are not being able to be decided by the women themselves, as well as men, we lose because they have there's no benefit to them in giving us these rights. And we can see historically they haven't. What I don't understand is, what are they so afraid of? Why are they so afraid of women and the power that we have, that they're keeping us in they're trying to keep us in these positions, yet we see they can't. It's impossible, because the power of that regeneration, that that power of creation, is so strong, and it was given to women. Women were given that. Do men have a part in it? Absolutely, but they don't carry that baby for nine months. They don't provide the food and literally build the body of that baby. So the fear that they have in our rejuvenation and regeneration seems to fall they can't do anything about it spiritually, so they have to do something about it materially and take our rights away. Yet we're still the ones that bring the next generation forward. We're still the ones that take care of the home, the education, etc, etc, of the children. So there's this dichotomy that I'm not sure a lot of people realize when we talk about the right to vote, it's not just to decide if roads should be built, or who should be president or not. It's also the rights of the people. And also I feel like women have traditionally been more accepting of other people, whether it's color, whether it's national origin, whatever it is, and they can then vote for those people to have their rights at the same time. So I think this is very significant, and at a time now where even the voting is real in the United States is very touchy at this point. I think it's something worth fighting for.

Kamala Rose:

Well, the idea that your vote is your voice certainly should, should resonate in all of us, that that is how we are able to speak in civil society and looking at the world history, and the votes of women in the United States and countries across the world as a fairly recent happening, as well as the votes of minorities and people who were othered to the point of being kept as slaves. Right? These all address the ability to make choices for oneself, who is allowed to do that and who is not allowed to do that, and I think the role of religion to reinforce those ideas of who is and who is not has has fallen on men to be the voice of God in a way of interpreting the way it should be played out in civil society. And I think, I think, you know, looking, looking at Elizabeth Cady Stanton's work and those ideas, and having this last year with you discussing the Bhagavad Gita, another text that has brought a religious a religious worldview that has oppressed Women in 1000 different ways. I think, as a general, you and I both agree that religion, as institutional religion, has played a mighty role in women's subjugation, and we can just say in in general, organized religion. But whether that is east or that is West, and I think we can make a differentiation in a way between spirituality as it is experienced in the internal space of an individual and religion as a political force. That is dictated by the powers that be and in the patriarchal systems that we live in today, and we can study in our recorded history, it's a it's a history of men ruling over everyone and elite men ruling over the other classes of people. So when we talk about something like having the right to vote and to have your voice heard, we're addressing issues that go deep into human history, and they really address patriarchy, specifically in the idea of having hierarchies, that there are rankings of people, some people being more valuable than other people as an essential part of that control over who can speak and who can't. I mean, we're sure we're seeing so much unfold in our United States now, and it's interesting to look back 175 years to Seneca Falls. I'll tell you one thing I was struck by reading Elizabeth Cady Stanton's words is there's a section where she takes an overview of some of the creation myths, and she clearly has never read anything of Eastern thought. And so she spoke. She was at the Norse myths and right and everything abramaic, but the East was not yet known at that time of her writing. And so when I was reading that and feeling so grateful, but also humble in the time that we live in, and feeling the contrast between then and now, but even now, our voices are still The subject

Nischala Joy Devi:

when we put a human as a god, and that human happens to be in a male body without any compromise, the rest of the people immediately are demeaned. That's what happens. That just happens. So when it said that man, and it does say that M A N was created in God's image. What happens to the rest of us? We suddenly are without a place that we were created. And then it was a second thought, oh, mainly it was the man. And we can see how this plays out now, in in homes, even that a folk, a girl baby is born, it's great, but if a boy baby is born, ah, because they were the only ones that could inherit, they could be the only ones that could become the queen, the king, I'm sorry, the king or the Emperor afterwards. So here we have elevated one portion of human beings to that level, and all else are not counted. So when we look at this, we see that when you were talking about even using the term abramic, right? Abraham, we're coming from Abraham. Why? When was the last time anyone, and I'm going to say anyone on this earth, ever saw a man give birth to anything? They just can't it's just not humanly possible, or even, I'm sorry to say, divinely possible. So when we give this credit of creation and we say these things to them, I actually have to step back, step back, and little laugh a little bit. The father is given all the congratulations. She did, all the work. He's getting all the congratulations. And then he feels this is something now somebody has created in my image, so he's taking on that idea also. So I think this is so significant from the spiritual point of view that we can't assume everything that's said in these scriptures is originally right. And originally said because it's been translated, re translated and re translated so many times, and we have that. So here we are again. We're trying to defend women. I think I'm getting a little tired of it. I think women just have to be and let's not try to defend them, I think. And we've talked about this before, a lot of the issue comes from the way the scriptures describe us. I think I mentioned this at some point. When I was writing the secret power of yoga, I tried to find some positive quotes from these different scriptures about women, and what I found mostly is that there were either prostitutes or they were barren, and nothing that glorified not only women, But motherhood, the ability to give birth to another human being that comes out of your body alive. I don't think we stop and realize how amazing that is on a regular basis. So here we are. On one hand, we're saying, Oh, this is an amazing thing birth, and on the other hand, we're saying, Yeah, well, it's not quite as good as what the men do

Kamala Rose:

that's considering the considering creation and the process of creation and the enormous inequity. I'll remind our listeners that at the Seneca Falls convention, it was quite radical, because at that time, women were not allowed to speak in public. So that's a good thing to remember that there have been times when something like this podcast would have been never happened outside of the law, but women daring to reinterpret scripture, what a radical proposition. What does it mean to us? What does it mean to you? Nischala, a feminine lens, a feminine voice.

Nischala Joy Devi:

You know, when you said that just now, something in me just kind of recoiled, because I don't think we're reinterpreting anything. I think we're interpreting it. I think it's just going back to what we know as truth, that all beings are equal. We're all born that way. What we do with it afterwards is changed, but we're all that, whether what color, what shape, what gender, all of that, it doesn't matter, because the same spirit is there. And I think if we look at the Bibles and the spiritual books and the Seneca Falls convention. What it was trying to do, it was just trying to get a placeholder. Let's get let's bring these women back in. And they don't have to be prostitutes, they don't have to be barren. They can be pillars of the community, like the men are. They can be deciding things like the men do, and I that was the purpose of it. But when you say how long ago it was, it's so sad how little has really happened in that time. And you know, when I talk to someone who's younger, they don't know about this, and they don't know about how hard we fought for the rights of women to vote, to be able to take care of their own bodies and to see it then wiped away. Is very, very demeaning to us, demeaning to us, because what makes anyone superior to the other? I was just talking and I said, you know, I have a really great ability to do this, but that doesn't mean I can do everything. So somebody else can do something that I can't do. And I think this is, this is the way of the world to appreciate others talents, and that Seneca Falls convention, the fact that there were so many abolitionists there, the fact that they saw that as also A form of slavery, which it was, is not was keeping money from people, keeping them uneducated. Call it what you want. It's, it's the same. They didn't have the freedom. You see, if we can look at these stories, I read a lot of historical novels, and you. See you say, Why didn't she leave Why didn't she just leave him? And you realize she couldn't she had no education, she had no money, she she had no place to go. So here we see this again and again and to I wish they had a holiday that celebrated that national that convention, maybe someday we will, finally, we got a holiday of Juneteenth, so maybe there will be something for the women too. I don't know. I'm hoping

Kamala Rose:

recognizing the limitation of participation in society that this equals, that to give equal rights, to give civil rights, to give a vote is to give a voice. And I think to me, the feminine perspective is important in the dialog on spirituality, if that's what we want to call this, in our in our ongoing dialog on the Gita, I really feel that a woman's perspective is is different for so many of the reasons that you've brought up the idea of having, of giving birth, the potential to give birth, the perspective of someone who knows what it feels like to not be the primary player or agent, speaks to so Many people that experience life on the margins who are are secondary characters who exist in relationship to other people. I think this is really what a woman's perspective brings, is someone who is not the hero, who is not striving for an individual win and victory, we're hearing from a voice that knows what it means to be in relationship and in deep connection to others. And I would argue that this is realistic to a lot of the people on planet Earth are not coming from the vantage point, the point of view of the hero or that person who has The opportunity to excel in that way. I also was watching a historical drama, and this was from the 1930s and one of the daughters says, but I really, really want to go and learn. And the father says, school is for boys, end of matter,

Nischala Joy Devi:

yep and his, his word is law.

Kamala Rose:

That was the end of the discussion. School is for boys, yep, yep,

Nischala Joy Devi:

and look what they did to us for dress. You talk about these times with these big hoop skirts and the big bustles in the back, we could hardly move. I mean, it's like, it's like they foot, they bound the feet in China of women, because somehow that turned men on, and then they couldn't get away. I mean, these things that they're doing that's accepted, I don't I don't understand the acceptance of it, that if there's enough population, why don't we do something? Is it fear again, we this keeps coming up. Is it fear of what they are going to and can do to us? Or are we afraid of our own power as women? I think that's the other thing we have to look at. Why aren't we stepping up when we have the chance? Yes, some do, but many don't. They still follow their husbands. They still don't think that they're worthy of getting an education. They're not, still not contributing to society at large. They're raising the children, which is a very important thing to do. But a lot of women, that's not the only thing they want to do. They want to contribute on a larger scale. You know, it's interesting. Some years ago, my literary agent used to send Christmas cards every year to everybody and and then she started pulling back, and she wrote to us, and she said, You know, I'd rather take that money and give it to women as literacy and. Because when women are literate, the whole family becomes literate. She teaches everybody. And when she when I read that, that note that she had written, I thought to myself, How true is that? How true is that you really you learn something, and you come home and you share that with your children, and then they become educated. So there, there's a part that women and men are different. I know sometimes we want to think we're not, and on a spiritual level, we're not we're the same, we're not different. But on the other levels, we are we're different, not necessarily better or worse, but different. We have different roles. We have different ways of expressing the roles. Even if we move into a more of a masculine role, we express it differently. I saw this when suddenly all these women started to be accepted. Not that they went they accepted to medical school, because for a long time there was a quota. You couldn't have very many women. First of all, there wasn't any and then they had a quota. So maybe 10 women per class were invited in. And once you saw these women starting to take over to now there's 52 53% of all the medical students are women. You start to see the change in medicine. You start to see the things that happen. You start to see someone actually listening to you, not just treating you. And it will continue to change, because now women are not taught by men in medical school anymore. There's now medical school professors that are women. So the whole idea of compassion and listening is coming back. We need to bring it back in all the professions, not just medicine.

Kamala Rose:

One profession that women are still sorely, sorely underrepresented in is on commentary on religious scripture. Yes, right, women and clergy is rare, rare occasion. And many religions still have that glass ceiling of non admittance into the into the priesthood, into further ordination, and for for women who even would be interested in that role, I think we should understand it as as an issue, that there is a ceiling on advancement spiritually as well. It means that you don't get the training, right? You are not allowed to learn at that level, right, right? That's what the glass ceiling means. It doesn't mean that you can't give communion on Sunday, but you also do not have access to the more advanced levels of practice and teaching, right? This has been an area where Western women have fought back, and I was reminded of that wonderful quote from the Dalai Lama who said the Western women are going to get us out of this mess. Yeah, right, and Tibetan Buddhism is one area that has had a huge influx of Western women who have who have been empowered and emboldened by the women's movement and feel called to question. You know, many of our listeners might not know, but in traditional, many traditional Eastern practices, it's men only, and the room is filled with men and women. Can sit in another room. Probably cannot listen to a more advanced teaching because of the cut off and ordination. So right here's here's us here for in 2025 disc. Discussing the Bhagavad Gita, which is a text that also has a restriction to be interpreted by men, traditionally by Brahmin priests, women are not allowed to traditionally interpret the Bhagavad Gita in traditional Vedic society. Since we are here, we're Western women. We're considered outside of the Sanskrit culture. We're we're called malachas, right? We're not inside the it's a, it's a word for non Indian, non Sanskrit. Exists. We're already outside of the tradition. So here we are discussing this ancient battlefield text, and we've had so many conversations we've worked hard on our translations, and we've worked hard to continue this dialog for the benefit of the yoga community, which is really made up predominantly of Western women. So here we are. Nischala Devi, what do you find is one verse that we can read to empower women.

Nischala Joy Devi:

Well, I think, I think we, it all has to be tweaked a little bit. We, first of all, I think gender has to be taken out of Scripture. And I try to use the word one rather than he or she, because we're now dealing with non binary people. We're dealing with all kinds of people that have to be included. And I think that's the other thing women do. Women are inclusive. We include. So you know, when you were talking, I had I was smiling, which people can't see, but because, I think this is the reason that so many women went to Eastern religion. Went to that because it's not something that we have from birth, that we were taught and brought to church or synagogue or temple or whatever we were brought to mosque. This is something that we took on as adults with an adult mind to be able to look at it, and I must say, with all the prejudices against women and all the restrictions. I was actually initiated into a very masculine order, and there were half women. And when we were taken even to the Shankaracharya to see he, looked at first women, and then he said, aha, when you are sannyasi, when you're a renunciate, there's no gender. You're the sexless self. And I think that's what we have to get to more with all this taking that, that gender out of it, and just remembering that the the essence of who we are doesn't have a gender. There's no sex with it. There's there's, it's just pure energy, pure light. It's neither masculine nor feminine. Just like the moon we want to call it masculine or family. It's an either it doesn't reproduce itself. You know, that's a function of reproduction that you have to decide if it's male female. Once you get to the spirit, it's not so what we were looking at before,

Kamala Rose:

I'll just add that. Sorry, yes, I'll just add that. Right? That idea of gender as more an outer feature and not really part of the subject that we're reading, the Gita to consider, which is the transcendent, spiritual aspect. So I, for me, the distinction here is between religion that deals with the rules and laws of governing people under a religious belief, right, and then to make, to make a distinction between spirituality, which is inherent in every living thing, in every living being, a completely different experience. So as we're reading the Bhagavad Gita and we're taking the shlokas to into a spiritual meaning, something that's meaningful to the to both of us as long time practitioners, long time meditators, both ordained in our traditions and spending a lot of time with births and deaths and rites and rituals and the things that ordained People are concerned with right the the the workings of the spiritual life, but right this, this idea of the restrictions of religion as they apply to gender, I think, is this is one important dialog to have and to be able to discern the deeper spiritual message. That does always apply to everyone, whether we're reading the Old and New Testament or we're reading the Bhagavad Gita here. So anyway, I just that that really, that really comes to mind as a distinction between something that's not, not so much a female centric thing, but belongs to everyone. Spirituality belongs to everyone, but religion belongs to men.

Nischala Joy Devi:

Interesting, yeah, when we see my thing is that trickle down, I feel like a lot of the problems started from the books, the scriptures, and when it's given in a Scripture, we even use the expression, this is law. This is the way it is, and there's no question, and we've been taught not to question it. So what happens? It becomes law, and it becomes the law of the land, and it'll also becomes the way we are treated. When I think of that, I always laugh, because in India, the cows are sacred. If there's a cow crossing the street, all traffic stops, all pedestrian traffic stops, all vehicular traffic stops, but it's okay to beat your wife or your child, so I think things need to be realigned. If I can use a very gentle phrase for something that's not gentle at all, and it gets back to you and I calmly belonging to yoga gives back because we don't want to see the women treated like that anymore. We want the women to have a say. We want them to have an education. We want them to have money, so that money brings power. But if you think of that ridiculousness of taking care of a cow, but not a woman, not that a cow shouldn't be taken care of, of course, it should. It serves them, it gives them food. And they're they're magnificent animals. But what about women? She also gives them food and has their children and takes care of them and washes their clothes and does all those things, and in the Western world, brings in as much, if not more, money than he does. Where is that? So as you asked me a few minutes ago about a sloka And in chapter nine, and those of you that are enjoying us going through the Gita as hopefully, as much as we are, we're having a great time with it. It may seem slow and it may seem like we're not when is chapter nine going to happen? When are we going to get there? But we want to really have you understand this, not just read it through and and move on, but to really take it into your life and see how it affects you as a woman in today's world. So this is chapter nine, sloka 32 and it says, No matter your birth, race, gender or cast, even if you are scorned by others, if you take refuge in Me, then certainly you will change the supreme goal. I think they should have put that number one sloka. Why bury it back in chapter nine? Because that way, when you pick up the Gita, you feel like you're in it. This is also talking to you, not just the person sitting next to you, who happens to be in a male a male body. We need to understand there was a beautiful poem that Swami Vivekananda. We talked about him before. He was the one that really brought yoga to the United States in 1893 the parliament religions. He He wrote many songs, many poems. He was a poet, and one of them, he says, no birth, no death, no caste. Have I Right? No gender, nothing. This is, this is what the Spirit is, no, death, no birth, no death, no caste. Have I five? Mother, Mother, have I none? I am spirit. I am spirit. I am spirit. And that's really what we're talking about here. I think the only hope of peace and joy and love in this world is going to the spiritual level, as long as we stay on the level of male, female, white, black, Indian, non Indian, Eastern Asian, this and that, we're always going to be fighting with each other because we can't appreciate the differences. We only see the differences. But doing this, moving to that level, we all become one.

Kamala Rose:

I think you're so right to choose 932, as an important verse that although to us moderns, right, it does sound like confronting. Here's another translation, those who are considered low birth, right? This is the or come from evil wombs say some translations, right? It still is saying that everyone is equal. Everyone is equal and for a religious and spiritual text to make a declaration of equality in this way is significant, and it is a real strength of the Bhagavad Gita, is that it does lend itself to an equality that Krishna is speaking here about bhakti, that in the devotional spirit we are, we are all equal in the eyes of the Divine. So here is we're getting ready to wrap up, right? What is one thing that we can leave our listeners with right this is our one year anniversary, and we are. We've continued. We're still recording. So I hope our listeners, I hope you stay tuned with us. But what is one practice or question that we can leave our listeners with you?

Nischala Joy Devi:

It's power. Don't be afraid of your own power. Show it in a benevolent way. Show it with love wrapped around love, and I think that will change the world. Don't let anybody demean you in any way, spiritually, mentally, emotionally or physically, and always remember that you're not alone. Women have a sisterhood. There's something there. There's a power that we're there for each other, and hold on to that,

Kamala Rose:

to claim our power to use our voices and to trust each other. I'd like to like, I'd love to see more leaning into trusting and supporting each other, especially in the yoga community, as we're holding on in a rare moment of time to something very sacred, and so I hope you'll continue to listen and learn more about the deep tradition of yoga and what it has to offer us in the modern world. Thanks for being with us. Namaste. Namaste. You.