Upasaka Nyanaloka investigates
the history of Buddhist nuns

Lineage is important in both Buddhism and some of the Christian churches. An Anglican priest must be ordained at the hands of a properly consecrated bishop in a line that goes back to Jesus. It does not matter that divisions have taken place within the body of the Church, so that a Russian Orthodox priest, say, has radically different practices from an Anglican or Catholic, as long as the lineage remains unbroken.

In Buddhism the emphasis on lineage extends even into lay ordination. At the Zen Jukai ceremony, the devotee is presented with a scroll that illustrates how the teaching has been passed from the Buddha down a long line of Indian, then Chinese, then Japanese disciples; at the very end one’s own name appears as a disciple of the master of the monastery where the ceremony is held. Some of those Indian disciples would be claimed by Theravadins as the head of their lineages too, even though the two schools are now far apart in both practice and doctrine.

The question of Theravadin female ordination rests upon this question of unbroken succession. Ashoka’s daughter, Theri Sanghamitta, took the institution of nunhood to Sri Lanka, where it remained the longest among Theravadins. Even there it disappeared during the political troubles of the 11th and 12th centuries, as did the male monastic line for a while. Though the order of monks was restored by requesting ordination from Thai monks, this did not happen and was perhaps impossible in the case of nuns.

The main problem was that, as some monks still argue, they could not simply make nuns on their own initiative. The Buddha had set up a separate order when his stepmother Pajapati requested ordination in the fifth year of His ministry. Thereafter the monastic rule declared that bhikkhuni ordination should be at the hands of senior nuns. This had to be confirmed by bhikkhus at a later ceremony, however, as one of several supplementary rules that kept the female order subordinate to the male even then. Naturally women still wanted to dedicate their lives to religion but had to content themselves with a still more subordinate role. Thereafter they could not progress beyond the position of novice, keeping the ten precepts (or of a female attendant keeping eight). This is the case with the Amaravati ‘nuns’ at present. They are samaneri observing Siladhara Vinaya training, which includes 120 rules and monastic observances besides. Like the monks, however, they are equally dependent on alms for the four requsites.

One of the anomalies of the Mahayana/ Hinayana division in India was that monks holding divergent views continued to live together in the same monastery – for a while at least. Even when some of these took the Mahayana teachings to countries outside India, most notably to China, the monastic discipline (Vinaya) that they established there was largely unchanged. The teaching lineages, however, were different. Theravadins took their Vinaya southwards whereas the Sarvastavadins (an almost parallel Hinayana school) took theirs northwards and eventually along the Silk Road and into China. Another which took this route was the Dharmaguptaka school, which had resulted from the same split in the Hinyana ranks that produced the Theravadins.

Tibet was rather isolated from this activity. It was Tantric Buddhism which became established there and this did not share the common Vinaya. Later on, firm monastic discipline was introduced by the Dalai Lama’s Gelug school but, again, there seemed to be no mechanism for introducing a legitimate order of nuns. One of the many happy consequences of the present Dalai Lama’s exile from Tibet has been that he looked into the question of linear succession and found orders of nuns in China, Taiwan, Korea and Vietnam claiming unbroken ordination through the Sarvastivada and Dharmaguptaka lines. Since the 1980s Western women of the Gelug order have received ordination from Far Eastern bhikshuni Masters; there are now enough nuns of the required seniority to superintend ordinations in their own right at the main Gelug nunnery in France.

Female ordination is returning to India too. Eight women from Sri Lanka received it from an order of Korean nuns there in 1997. Twenty more received it in 1998 at an immense Taiwanese-sponsored series of ceremonies in Bodh Gaya which also included 10 Western women, 28 from Maharashtra, 8 Nepalese and several others, among them a Thai and four Congolese. This activity certainly set the cat among the pigeons in Theravadin countries. In Thailand the institution of nunhood has been declared unThai. Sri Lanka is more sympathetic for equally nationalistic reasons although senior clerics have declared against it. Unfortunately the greatest supporter of bhikkhuni ordination, Mahanayaka Anandamaitreya, the most senior of them all, had died only shortly before these events took place. In Myanmar also opinion is divided. In the past it was much more liberal and progressive. The learned U Adicca agitated for nun’s ordination as early as the 1930s, as did one of Mahasi Sayadaw’s teachers, the Jetavana Sayadaw, in the 1950s. The main argument, however, seems to be that only unbroken ordination through the Theravadin lineage will do.

Whether as a result of all this agitation or not, the number of young Myanmar women seeking temporary Samaneri (novice) ordination has shot up in recent years and this has had a knock-on effect in England. The question of seeking full bhikkhuni ordination cannot arise here since there aren’t enough nuns. In any case, one must first learn to walk before one can run. Talking to the small number of women connected with our Vihara who have so far expressed interest, I have encountered fear at taking such a step even for a short while. It’s understandable, I felt the same before my own! But equally it is a powerful and unforgettable experience, as Bryan and James have made clear in these pages. The opportunity will be there this summer. So the question is, dare you miss it?