I’ve been flirting with the idea of the “feminine hero” as an intermediary figure between ordinary persons and divine beings in Process Buddhism, inspired partly by the Tibetan rendering of “bodhisattva” as “byang chub sems dpa'” or “enlightened/awakened hero”.
The reason why I label it, at the moment, as “feminine hero” rather than heroine is because I tend to find that heroines are often just female versions of the hero or their secondary complements. The classical hero — no matter how truly altruistic and benevolent — is always operating on a Master model of self-world relation, where the purpose of the hero is to overcome and conquer and stand above the world. All of the supporting figures in the hero’s journey (often feminine figures, by the way) are mere background means to his ultimate end, and end which often requires some kind of major test involving the slaying or destroying of some ancient natural force or being, like a dragon or serpent. Even accounts of an alternative “heroine’s journey” are often too bound or concerned with undoing the trauma of the hero’s journey, and while such a journey is an important part of the process of establishing heroism on a renewed, post-patriarchal basis, I do not think it is a genuine alternative quiet yet.
The feminine hero would be the true alternative to the classical hero. The heroine is either the classical hero’s equal, his sidekick, or a journey about rectifying his excesses, and so is not a true alternative. The anti-hero is not a true alternative either because he forms a dialectical couple with the hero, operating on the same Master model but inverting the usual qualities associated with the hero. The feminine hero is the true alternative because she completely goes beyond the bounds of the Master model entirely, without relinquishing the compassionately responsive energy that motivates her heroism.
In ancient Greece, the hērōs was a demi-god, a “man born from a God and mortal”, making it a fitting concept in Process Buddhism as an intermediary figure between ordinary beings and divine beings, someone who simultaneously inhabits the finitude of mortal, Samsaric existence and embodies the infinitude or limitlessness of divine, Nirvanic existence. Neither wholly finite or wholly infinite, the hero is on a self-exceeding, indefinite path of self-realization. This is the case whether the hero is the classical masculine hero following the Master model or a “neoclassical” feminine hero.
If the classical masculine hero (which is always anthropocentric or human-centered and includes anti-heroes and classical female heroines alike) achieves full satisfaction only by gaining victory over the world, the neoclassical feminine hero (which can be embodied by any gender, body or species) achieves full satisfaction by the act of self-abolition, by making herself obsolete. The classical hero attains an elevated status over everyone else in the world, and the world is supposed to be able to call upon the hero when it needs him. The feminine hero may gain recognition as a great facilitator of greater harmony in the world, and if she has done her work well then the beings of the world do not need to call upon her during times of need because they would have learned from her example on how to take care of themselves and each other, independently. The classical hero only offers gifts in the form of several contingent acts of service, often, even if only implicitly, being transactional in nature (if not money or boons, at least he demands recognition). The feminine hero offers herself as a gift by passing away into “objective immortality” in the way that she continues to live on in the body and minds of those who have been touched and inspired by her example.
While the classical hero often stands above, shining bright and being hard to ignore, almost by being imposing, don’t be surprised if the feminine hero goes unnamed, performing her works in the background, in the darkness of what is often obscured by virtue of the narrow focus we put on the classical hero. The feminine hero does what is right because it is in her nature to spontaneously do so, not because she may gain recognition for it. Unlike the classical hero, the feminine hero may not even be a single person: she may be a multitude of compassionately responsive agential processes momentarily coalescing and concrescing together to form a heroic nexus, a kind of Deleuzian “assemblage” or a Whiteheadian structured “society of societies”, naturally dispersing when the conditions of her arising and her initial aim for becoming are completely satisfied.
Like the late Thich Nhat Hanh suggested about the future Buddha Maitreya, the feminine hero may not be a single individual but a community of micro-heroes acting in divine concert. Classical heroes are unreliable because they are special individuals who come and go. Feminine heroism is always reliable because it is the heart of who we all (human and non-human others alike) already are, and if there’s anything that the feminine hero intends to do it is to remind us of this very fact. There is no one who will save us, and that’s OK, because we will save us, by manifesting the feminine heroism latent in our hearts.
