THE BUDDHIST ORDER OF NUNS:ORIGINATION IN STRUGGLE, STRUGGLING SINCE ORIGINATION (original) (raw)
Related papers
Buddhist Nuns: Between Past and Present
Numen, 2011
One of the most debated issues in present-day Buddhism is the question of access of women to a full ordination as a nun (bhikṣ uṇ ī). Of the three extant ordination traditions -Dharmaguptaka, Theravāda and Mūlasarvāstivāda, it is only in the first one that both men and women are accepted without any dispute as fully ordained members of the monastic community. This situation has given rise to many discussions pleading for a revival of a full ordination ceremony in all Buddhist traditions. In these revival movements, special attention goes to several technical questions of monastic discipline (vinaya). The present article focuses on these questions, while also paying attention to the role played by concepts involving gender. As we will analyze in the first two parts, the technical questions, and the debates surrounding them, are not at all new. Right from the start of the first Buddhist communities, they gradually gained importance. This process thoroughly influenced the spread and the survival of the ordination ceremony for women throughout the history of Buddhism. The third part of our research returns to the present day, demonstrating how the technical questions of the past still play a major role in present-day discussions on status of female monastic members of the Buddhist community.
Debt to the Mother: A Neglected Aspect of the Founding of the Buddhist Nuns' Order
Journal of the American Academy of Religion 74:4 (2006) 861-901, 2006
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The Social Status of Buddhist Nuns.docx
This paper is a study of “The social Status of Buddhist Nuns : A Study of Nagi Gompa. This study is based on the information collected through field observation, personal contact with the lay Buddhist practitioners, Nuns from Nagi Gompa and Nuns from other Gompas. The researcher made the maximum participation, textual references and personal interviews with the concerned members and lay participants of Gompa from nearby village and some of the academic experts. In Nepal both male Buddhist monks and Female Buddhist Nuns are staying in monastery and they practice the Buddhist philosophy for the salvation of all the living animals equally. But our society is not giving equal respect to monks and nuns due to various reasons. The ordination system of the nuns in the Himalayas including Nepal is being practiced without following the authentic and original method developed by Buddha. In Nepal, the Buddhist monks are following the unbroken lineage from Mulasarvastibad Vinaya, but the monastics never followed the Mulsarvatibad Bhikshuni Vinaya. Theravada Bhikshu and Bhikshuni are taking the unbroken lineage from Dharmagupta Vinaya from Taiwan, Hongkong, China, etc. By basing the logic in this rationality, it is derived that the present social status of the Nuns of the Nagi Gompa is the product of various factors involved ranging from the cultural, socio-religious, educational and economic. This present status of the nuns is not only due to the societal conditioning but also from the nuns themselves and their institutional affiliation and the authorized Rinpoches. The nuns’ status can be resolved by the collective efforts of the Buddhist practitioners both monks and nuns, senior responsible lamas, international and national bodies working for the enhancing their status physically, psychologically, mentally and philosophically. The current historical problem of ordination must be resolved and made authentically practiced as soon as possible for garnering the trust and support for the monastic institutionalization and Buddhist practices from various concerned
Religious Studies Review, 2014
In Buddhist Nuns and Gendered Practice: In Search of the Female Renunciant Nirmala S. Salgado directs a post-colonial lens at the lives of female renunicants, or, more accurately, critiques the way othersparticularly feminist scholarshave represented the nuns and their interests. Arguing that scholarly and political representations homologize and recolonize Buddhist nuns in support of agendas they do not themselves espouse, Salgado shows through narratives that the nuns' own concerns differ from those described in the representations she critiques. These narratives are not the primary focus of the book, however, as Salgado does not attempt 'to represent and interpret nuns' identity in terms of who they are and by way of what they do' (1), and, therefore, does not try to paint a complete picture of their lives. Rather, Salgado's goal is 'to raise some questions about representing nuns' (1) by using interviews and narratives to critique prior scholarship. Rather than attempt to rectify that scholarship, Salgado utilizes post-colonial theory to demonstrate how scholars and others mistakenly represent nuns as endeavoring to achieve secular liberal goals, such as parity with monks. Where scholars' focus on agency and equality leads them to err, Salgado advocates a focus on what the nuns themselves emphasize: their religious practice. After an introduction detailing Salgado's theoretical orientation and framing her critique of scholarship on Buddhist nuns, the book consists of three parts: 'Narration,' 'Identity,' and 'Empowerment.' In the 1st chapter in 'Narration,' 'Decolonizing Female Renunciation,' Salgado critiques three scholars of gender and Buddhism: Rita Gross, Tessa Bartholomeusz, and Wei-Yi Cheng, arguing that their scholarship recolonizes the Buddhist women they study by viewing their experiences through a feminist lens that advocates agency and gender equality. This framing, she explains using Mandair (2009), is a 'colonial event' that makes these women's social positions into problems, particularly vis-à-vis debates about higher ordination, and creates a 'narrative disjunction' by misrepresenting their lives and recolonizing them for the scholars' own debates by 'superimposing notions such as equality and human welfare on the representations of lived lives, … [and producing] a narrative of erasurea narrative that simplifies or seeks to erase from view the conditions that inform the very living of such lives' (47). For example, Salgado characterizes Gross as analyzing Buddhism through a Western feminist lens that looks for egalitarianism and, on failing to find it, argues Buddhism should be reformed by the West. The second chapter, 'Institutional Discourse and Everyday Practice,' extends the argument to examine how the language used in discourse about the lives of Buddhist women misrepresents their experiences. Drawing on Mandair's use of Derrida's concept of 'globalatinization,' Salgado argues that terms drawn from scholarship on Western religions, and particularly dichotomies such as lay/renunciant or this-wordly/otherworldly, mistakenly presume a religious universality and frame women practitioners as structurally disadvantaged. Thus, discourse transforms the women's own stories, which emphasize understanding key Buddhist concepts such as samsara, into concerns more relevant to liberalism. For example, Salgado sees others casting the choice of renunciation as one of liberation from the supposed subordination of householder life and an expression of 'resistance,' 'freedom,' or 'equality' rather than one of pursuing religious goalsa narrative which would better reflect the nun's own stories.
Buddhist Nuns and Gendered Practice: In Search of the Female Renunciant
This book centers on narratives about female renunciation in Buddhism as well as the construction of gender and renunciant identity in the study of Buddhist nuns. Focusing on research about Buddhist nuns from Sri Lanka and including conversations with Theravada and Tibetan Buddhist nuns from around the world, the book raises important theoretical questions about the applicability of modern liberal ideas of “empowerment,” “agency,” “autonomy,” “freedom,” and “resistance” in the translation of the lives of Buddhist nuns. It engages canonical Buddhist texts and contemporary religious practices as it considers the construction of the female renunciant as a modern “third-world” subject and questions the idea that the higher ordination of Sri Lankan nuns has been the outcome of a feminist “movement.” By reflecting on colonialist readings of nuns’ lives and on debates about their higher ordination, this book not only asks new questions about the politics of representation regarding the lives of female renunciants but also makes a case for a more nuanced and sensitive reading of their practices. On the basis of extensive long-term research, the book breaks new ground by proposing that key Buddhist concepts such as dukkha and samsāra, the everyday renunciant practices of nuns, and the upasampadā (higher ordination) itself cannot be subsumed under liberal feminist paradigms, and it argues that the idea of an “authentic” Theravada upasampadā for bhikkhunīs is inseparable from claims about specific ideas of monastic seniority and power.