I woke up at 6 am yesterday to do volunteer at my Buddhism Organization (Soka Gakkai Internation). It was my first time there but I did do the same volunteer in Boston before.

As I was greeting our member in front of the Cultural Center, I noticed something. There was much bigger number of women than men who joined the morning chanting meeting. I would say at least 80% of our members yesterday were women and I am pretty sure it happens to any religious and spiritual group as well.

I asked myself why women tended to be more spiritual than men. While all of religions are founded by men and great philosophers are also men, for instance, Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, Krishnamurti, Aristotle, Socrates, Homer, Confucius, Chuang Tzu, Khishna, Dalai Lama, Hugo, you name it, women are very faithful followers.

After I asked the question, I came up with 5 assumptions.

1. From the scientific research, human being has spiritual genes that can be inherited by their offspring. So, it might be possible that women have more spiritual genes than men. Also, women always are more emotional than men and spiritual are closely related to emotion, so it might be easier for women to get wired with this side of life.

2. The main reason that there was rare well-known women philosopher is patriarchy that men control and dominate the society. Women have played a passive role since the ancient time. So they did not bother to initiate any philosophies or if they did, it would be very unlikely to be accepted by the patriarchal society.

3. Focus in life. Men tend to focus on their career and do not have time to think about spiritual life.

4. The difference of problem solving. While men tend to solve their problems by searching for external answers like using logic and science, women tend to solve their problems from inside using intuition and faith to guide their life.

5. The conflict between spiritual life and normal life. Most men are subject to have fun as much as they can but the spiritual life turns down those worldly funs. As a result, it turns those men off.

However, the number of men joining the spiritual activities increases when they are older. I think they feel a sense of urgency. They are hitting the bottom of the cliff. They want to find the answer of life and life after death or just want to make sure that their soul will not be left out when the judgment day comes.

Or women are simply subject to heaven and men are subject to…..?

Tae Athikomvittaya