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After the Buddha\u2019s enlightenment, his aunt and adoptive mother, Mahapajapati Gotami, asks him to ordain women and welcome them into his new monastic community. The Buddha declines to fulfill her request. But Mahapajapati Gotami doesn\u2019t give up\u2014accompanied by a large gathering of women, she sets out to ask him again.\nIn her new novel, The Gathering: A Story of the First Buddhist Women, scholar Vanessa R. Sasson offers an imaginative retelling of the women\u2019s request for ordination, following the women as they travel through the forest together seeking full access to the Buddha\u2019s teachings. Building on decades of research and drawing from the poems of the Therigatha, the novel explores how the women navigate the paradox of seeking ultimate liberation while still bound by social inequality.\nIn this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle\u2019s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Sasson to discuss what we can learn from the first Buddhist women\u2019s resilience, how contemporary women monastics understand this story, why she first started writing fiction, and the role of mythology and storytelling in the Buddhist world.