NUNS: BUDDHIST NUNS

Buddhism has evolved during more than 2,000 years in many different Asian countries (including India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Myanmar, China, Korea, Japan, and Tibet). At times Buddhist nuns had a prominent and respected role and at other times they vanished into obscurity. This article will endeavor to explain why there exist such diverse types of Buddhist nuns with different status, robes, and cultures.

Two thousand five hundred years ago in India, Buddhist women shaved their heads, donned saffron robes, and became celibate nuns. They aspired to awakening, meditated, and taught lay followers. Their precepts forbade them to touch money, and thus they depended on alms for their support. The nuns' accomplishments and awakening experiences are recounted in the Therīgāthā (Psalms of the Sisters ), seventy-three poems expressing the spiritual search and struggles of the first Buddhist nuns, which had been orally transmitted until they were written down six hundred years later, and the Apadāna (collection of moral biographies) composed in the second and first century bce, which contains forty biographies of eminent early nuns.

The order of Buddhist nuns (bhikṣuṇī ) began later than the monks' order (bhikṣu ). As tradition has it, the Buddha at first seemed reluctant to give ordination to his female followers. His attendant, Ananda, pointed out that because the Buddha agreed that men and women were equal in their capacities for spiritual attainment, it seemed only equitable to let women enter his order of mendicants. Ananda was moved by the distress and spiritual aspiration of the Buddha's foster mother and aunt, Mahāpajāpatī, and of the many women in her entourage. They became the first Buddhist nuns.

Nonetheless, according to tradition, the Buddha gave eight extra rules to the nuns for entering the homeless life:

• A nun who has been ordained for a century must bow to a monk who has been ordained for a day.
• A nun must not spend the meditation season (vassa, i.e., the monsoon period) in a place where there are no monks.
• Every fifteen days, the nuns must ask the monks for the date of the observance day, and must ask them to give the nuns a teaching.
• After the meditation season a nun must tell her faults to both the order of monks and the order of nuns.
• If a nun commits a grave error she must submit herself to the scrutiny of both orders for fifteen days.
• A nun can obtain full ordination from both orders only after she has observed the six precepts during two years as a postulant.
• A nun must never scold a monk.
• The nuns cannot teach the monks, but the monks can teach the nuns.

As with the monks' order, a vinaya (rule of discipline) was developed for the Buddhist nuns' order in which their precepts were collected. After the death of the Buddha, different schools developed their own vinayas. Today, the Theravāda Vinaya, which contains 227 precepts for monks and 311 for nuns, is followed by the monastics in Southeast Asia (Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Burma [now Myanmar]); the Dharmagupta Vinaya, which contains 250 precepts for monks and 348 for nuns, by those in Northeast Asia (China, Korea, and Vietnam); and the Mūla-Sarvāstivāda Vinaya, with 253 precepts for monks and 364 for nuns, by those following the Tibetan tradition. Some scholars account for the greater number of precepts for nuns by the fact that the relevant monks' precepts were the starting point for the nuns' list. Specific rules relating to the nuns' situation were then added.

TheravĀda Nuns

At the time of the Buddha, women were required to observe six precepts for two years before receiving higher ordination. Over time this situation changed for Buddhist nuns as they encountered different historical and cultural conditions. As Buddhism spread in the Indian subcontinent after the death of the Buddha, the nuns' order reached Sri Lanka in the third century bce, and many nunneries were established. But the female order died out in Sri Lanka in the tenth century ce and was never reconstituted. It did not seem to reach Thailand or survive in Myanmar, and died out totally in India.

At the end of the nineteenth century some Sri Lankan laywomen were attracted to the religious life and decided to take ten precepts. They shaved their heads and started to wear white and saffron clothes—white being the color for the Buddhist lay followers, and saffron the color of the monks' robes in most Theravāda countries. Eventually most of them started to wear saffron only. They were called dasasil mātās (ten-precept women). They created an in-between status role for Buddhist women. Some lived by themselves; others gathered in nunneries. Today most of them serve their communities by counseling, teaching, and performing religious ceremonies for laypeople; some devote themselves to meditation.

Until recently it was thought to be impossible to revive the higher ordination for nuns. Because the order had died out, the necessary quorum of ten nuns (bhikṣuṇī) to ordain others did not exist. In the mid-1980s, various attempts were made to restore the higher ordination in Sri Lanka, but there was great opposition from the conservative elements in the male hierarchy. Finally, thirty Sri Lankan nuns were fully ordained in February 1998 in Bodh Gayā, India, at an international ordination for both men and women, organized by Chinese monks and nuns from Taiwan. Several higher ordinations followed in Sri Lanka in the Dambullah Temple, whose monks are supportive of the nuns' movement. In 2004, there were about 400 fully ordained nuns (bhikṣuṇī) and 2,100 dasasil mātās in Sri Lanka.

There were about 30,000 nuns in Myanmar in 2004. They take eight or ten precepts but are not considered novices (śrāmaṇerikā), but tila shin (possessors of morality). The nuns wear pink robes, and the monks wear the original saffron. Many are great meditators and do in-depth study of Buddhism. They are less well-supported financially than the monks.

The lowest position for Buddhist nuns must be in Thailand, where it is forbidden by a Buddhist law promulgated by a supreme patriarch in 1928 that a Thai bhikṣu give any ordination to women. So women with a religious vocation take five or eight precepts and are called maeji (mother ascetic) and wear white. There were 10,000 maejis and 850 nunneries in 2004. Since creating the Thai Nuns' Institute in 1969, nuns have started to organize themselves and to develop opportunities for studies and meditation, which have led to greater respect and support from the Buddhist lay followers.

In 1956 Voramai Kabilsingh received her first ordination from Pra Prommuni, the deputy abbot of Wat Bavorn in Bangkok, and in 1971 she received full ordination in Taiwan. She started to wear light yellow robes and was criticized by the monastic hierarchy for doing so. Her daughter, Chatsumarn Kabilsingh, followed in her footsteps by receiving the lower ordination in Sri Lanka in 2001 and higher ordination in 2003 from the newly formed bhikṣuṇī order there. She wears brown robes. Her actions have stirred great debate at all levels of Thai society (government, Buddhist hierarchy, media). However, not all five-, eight-, or ten-precept nuns want to become bhikṣuṇīi. Some foresee difficulties in trying to maintain 348 precepts, some of which are outmoded and hard to follow. They are very aware that they would be scrutinized even more closely than the monks. Many nuns actually enjoy their freer status and also the fact that they are not controlled by the male hierarchy. In England, Western monks trained in the Thai tradition asked for a derogation and in 1994 were able to ordain Western nuns, who wear brown habits and follow ten precepts, in Amaravati Temple near London.

Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean, and Japanese Nuns

In the fifth century ce, Sri Lankan nuns traveled to China by sea and founded an order of bhikṣuṇī that has been preserved to this day and that also spread to Korea and Vietnam. The lives of these early Chinese nuns are recorded in the Biqiuni zhuan, a collection of biographies of sixty-five eminent Chinese Buddhist nuns from the fourth to the sixth centuries. These nuns were great scholars, teachers, meditators, and ascetics. On the basis of statistical research, some Western scholars have claimed that at the beginning of the twentieth century there were three million monks and nuns in China. Monks and nuns suffered greatly, but some survived the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), and at the beginning of the twenty-first century one could find a few Buddhist nunneries in mainland China. The nuns perform religious services, study, and meditate, but many of them are quite old, though a few younger ones are starting to enter the homeless life. Of the thousands of nuns living in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos before 1962, many died or had to disrobe because of wars and the Communist takeover. Since then, however, women in these countries have regained an interest in the ordained life.

After 1949, mainland Chinese Buddhist nuns went to Taiwan and Hong Kong and strengthened Buddhism there. In Taiwan in 2004, Buddhist nuns number about 7,000—two-thirds more than the number of monks—and half of them are young women, newly ordained. They receive a good Buddhist education and are very active and involved with society. Bhikṣuṇī Zhengyan (b. 1937, ordained in 1963, she has been called China's Mother Theresa) was able to develop the Ciji Foundation, which builds hospitals and medical schools in Taiwan and provides disaster relief all over the world by encouraging her followers to create financial surplus to help others. Bhikṣuṇī Hiu-wan created Hua Fan University near Taipei, founded a nun seminary, and is also a renowned scholar and painter.

Buddhism came to Korea in the fourth century ce and developed until the thirteenth century; thereafter, it was repressed until the turn of the twentieth century by the Confucian state. But the nuns' order managed to survive intact, and at the turn of the twenty-first century Korea was a vibrant place for nuns, who number about 8,000. Their status is fairly equal to that of the monks and they live separately from them. Over time in China and Korea, the eight extra rules given by the Buddha to his aunt diminished in importance. In modern Korea, there are many nunneries set far away from monasteries, the monks and the nuns bow equally to each other, and the nuns have total control of their own affairs. Following the devastation of the Korean War in the 1950s, nuns even rebuilt some monasteries and transformed them into nunneries. One such is Unmun Temple, a leading seminary with 300 young nuns under the direction of scholar and abbess, Bhikṣuṇī Myŏngsŏng.

Korean women can become nuns after high school graduation. They begin by being postulants for a year to learn about the celibate life and to decide if it is their vocation. After a year they become novices (śrāmaṇerikā) with ten precepts. After another three to five years they can then receive the full ordination of a bhikṣuṇīi, first given by a panel of ten nuns and secondly by a panel of ten monks. The novices study Buddhist texts for three years, then join a meditation hall for the biannual three-month meditation retreats. They will meditate for at least ten hours a day with ten to fifty other nuns. Upon reaching middle age, they might take a position such as a manager or abbess in their home nunnery, or a professor at a seminary or a university. Some have become artists. Others serve laypeople in towns or villages or create charitable organizations; Bhikṣuṇī Myohi, for example, built a retirement home for old nuns and women without support.

In Japan, the full ordination for monks and nuns lasted only briefly after the introduction of Buddhism in the sixth century ce. Over time, different sets of precepts were adopted, such as the fifty-eight or the sixteen bodhisattva precepts. At the end of the nineteenth century the Meiji government put an end to celibacy for all Buddhist monks and it became a matter of choice whether to be celibate or not. (It has been suggested that Japanese married monks should be called priests.) Most Japanese monks are married, and most Japanese nuns are celibate, though Western female priests from Japanese Buddhist traditions who teach in the United States and Europe are often married.

There were relatively few nuns in Japan in 2004: the number 2,000 nuns in 1,500 temples has been reported. There are three training centers for nuns in the Soto tradition and one in the Pure Land tradition. The biggest such center is Aichi Semmon Nisodo (Sōtō Zen) in Nagoya, founded in 1903, whose abbess, Aoyama Sensei (a celibate nun), is remarkable in her practice and her scholarship. Most Japanese nuns live on their own in small temples where they perform religious services for laypeople and support themselves by teaching arts such as tea ceremony and flower arrangement.

Tibetan Nuns

When Buddhism came to Tibet in the seventh century ce the higher ordination for nuns was not transmitted: women were only able to receive ten precepts from fully ordained monks and become novices. Tibetan nuns still take ten precepts, which are subdivided into thirty-six. In 1959 there were 618 nunneries with 12,398 nuns in Tibet, but they suffered greatly during the Chinese Communist takeover and Cultural Revolution. A few nunneries can still be found in Tibet, and some nuns still practice as hermits in caves, but their circumstances are very difficult. There are nunneries in the border regions of Tibet (Ladakh, Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan), but the social position of nuns is often quite low and sometimes they have to serve menially the monks or even their own families. To remedy this situation, training nunneries have been built in Dharamsala, the residence-in-exile of the Dalai Lama, and other places in northern India. For example, the English nun Tenzin Palmo, who was a hermit in the Himalayas for ten years, has started a nunnery for women from the Indian border regions to train, study, and practice like the monks. In the West there are an increasing number of Western nuns (more than 300) in the Tibetan tradition, but there are very few places where they can train together. One exception is Dhagpo Kundrel Ling, a Tibetan Buddhist training center in France, dedicated to three years' retreats and monastic life. In November 2004 ten of the fifty women who became nuns for the duration of the traditional three years' retreat joined thirty other nuns living in a hermitage for nuns with a life-long commitment. These nuns follow a rigorous training but also participate in the life of the center and teach worldwide.

International Outreach

The first International Conference on Buddhist Nuns took place in 1987 in Bodh Gayā, India. At the end of this conference, the international Buddhist women's association Sakyadhita (Daughters of the Buddha) was created. Its objectives were to create a network for Buddhist women around the world, to educate women as teachers of Buddhism, to conduct research on women and Buddhism, and to work for the establishment of the bhikṣuṇī saṃgha where it does not currently exist. Sakyadhita has been instrumental in the reestablishment of the higher ordination in Sri Lanka. Since 1991, Sakyadhita has organized international conferences on Buddhist women every two years in various Asian countries (Thailand, Sri Lanka, India, Cambodia, Nepal). There has also been one North American conference. Most of the conferences are situated in Asia to enable Asian women and nuns to participate in greater numbers and to support Buddhist nuns by bringing highly educated and respected bhikṣuṇī to countries where the position of nuns is low. Often these conferences have stimulated improvements for the nuns in the places visited. They have also helped nuns in isolated situations to make contact and gain support from nuns and women from all over the world. At the conference in Ladakh in 1995, 108 delegates came to this remote part of northern India and met with many Buddhist women from the Himalayan border regions for a conference titled "Women and the Power of Compassion: Survival in the Twenty-First Century."

There is no doubt that the topic of Buddhist nuns has been an underresearched area, but this is slowly changing as contemporary scholars begin to delve into historical and archival materials in Sanskrit, Chinese, and Korean to seek the traces left by Buddhist nuns. It is a search rendered difficult by a patriarchal cultural and religious bias, which have resulted in Buddhist nuns having nearly no place in the lineage, little authority, and no part in the formal hierarchy. Thus they have tended to be omitted in official records. Most of the inscriptions with reference to nuns show them as donors or sponsors of religious festivals.

Because Buddhism is a decentralized religion which has found diverse expressions throughout Asia, Buddhist nuns have been unable to speak in a single voice and with a formalized authority. With the founding of Sakyadhita, Buddhist nuns and women have been able for the first time to meet and support each other and to develop the basis for a nondogmatic authority where diversity is encouraged and Buddhist women and nuns are able to establish their own authority both as individuals and as part of a larger tradition.

See Also

Gender and Religion, article on Gender and Buddhism, Jainism; Monasticism, article on Buddhist Monasticism.

Bibliography

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Martine Batchelor (2005)