Nuns, Invisibility, And The Question Of Buddhist Activism

From Tikkun:
Nuns, Invisibility, and the Question of Buddhist Activismby: Natalie Wendt on July 23rd, 2010
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Though they live as monastics, these Buddhist women in Burma cannot ordain

There is a huge movement going on in Buddhism today, one that could make Buddhism the only major world religion with gender equal access to ordination in nearly all denominations. All over the Buddhist world, women are battling for full ordination of nuns, something that is now only consistently available in one tradition and is hotly debated in the others. It’s also shockingly overlooked outside of these debates.



Consider an audience member’s question during a wonderful presentation by David Loy and Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi at the recent NSP conference. A long-time activist who’d been involved in Buddhism for a decade and a half wondered why most Buddhists aren’t also activists. The man noted that there were some exceptions, such as Thich Nhat Hanh, and “monks in Burma who were slaughtered, Tibetan monks who were slaughtered,” but that was about it. The way he phrased his question – and the way it was answered – is problem that must be addressed before we can consider other aspects of Buddhist activism.



Did you notice who was missing in those examples? David Loy didn’t catch it, and he’d just been talking about how a fear of death and nature relates to denigration of women. Neither did Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi, who is a fantastic supporter of women’s rights. Oh, but maybe the term “monk” was meant include “nun” too, so Tibetan nuns passionately engaged in nonviolent resistance weren’t being ignored. (We’ll get to the question of nuns in Burma in a minute). The term “monks” implies the subset of “nuns,” just like “man” includes the subset of women, right?



Except we know it doesn’t. A child of the ’80s, I find use of the word “man” to mean “human” distractingly unfamiliar. Growing up with a feminist mom, it just seems outdated and bizarre to use gender-specific terms to refer to the whole of humanity. I also benefited from feminist activism within my Western Buddhist community, which had corrected a lot of sexist language before I ever heard it. In the thirteen years I’ve been saying translations of Tibetan prayers, I’ve been saying phrases like “monastics” or “monks and nuns” instead of just “monks.” In my early twenties I trained at a Western Buddhist Abbey that uses the term “monastics” instead of words that emphasize gender. This abbey was founded and is run by a Western bhikshuni (fully ordained Buddhist nun) who has been confronting sexism within the Buddhist community for decades.



General questions about Buddhism activism, or lack thereof, is beyond the scope of this post, though I intend to discuss them on Tikkun Daily in the future. But the cliché that Buddhists in the West are all stuck on our cushions thinking “me and my enlightenment!” actively ignores movements for equality within the Buddhist community, movements with wide-reaching potential. Full ordination of Buddhist nuns has implications for Buddhists societies in general, something I will explore in a future post. First, though, I’ll provide a brief overview of current state of bhikshuni ordination.



Bhikshuni ordination is practiced frequently in Taiwan and some other parts of East Asia, but is unavailable in the Tibetan tradition and to most Theravada women. Though the Tibetan tradition has novice nuns, bhikshuni ordination never reached Tibet, and a movement to introduce bhikshuni ordination it has met with strong resistance from some Tibetan teachers. His Holiness the Dalai Lama and some other prominent teachers support bhikshuni ordination, but they are a minority. Nuns who want to fully ordain are forced to go outside of the tradition, sometimes without support of their teachers.



Ordination for nuns was completely lost in the Theravada tradition, which predominates in Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Laos, Burma, and Thailand. Women who are sometimes called “nuns” in these countries shave their heads and remain celibate, but are in fact lay women, not samaneris (ordained novice Theravada nuns). However, in recent decades Theravada Buddhists have worked to revive the lineage by turning to Taiwanese bhikshunis and supportive Theravada male teachers like Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi. The Theravada nuns’ ordination is being revived in Sri Lanka, and women are attempting to join the ranks of Theravada monastics in other countries as well.



One of those countries is Burma, where the repressive government touts itself as “Buddhist.” It is incorrect to suggest that resistance to this dictatorship is the domain of monks alone. Lay Buddhist women and men engage in this activism at least as much as monks. Celibate lay women who live as nuns, called thilashin, also took part in the Saffron Revolution that monks are famous for. The only reason nuns aren’t involved is because there aren’t nuns – women are not allowed religious ordination in Burma. A few years ago the government actually arrested a Burmese woman as she returned from her ordination as a Buddhist nun elsewhere in Asia. Her crime was simply that she became a Buddhist nun. Her case is extreme, but her struggle as a nun is not unique.



Buddha Shakyamuni (the historical Buddha) set up full ordination for both monks and nuns, and he did so for a reason. Without full ordination, nuns are constantly in a lower position than the majority of monks, and do not hold the same decision-making power in the larger sangha (Buddhist community, here referring to the ordained community). Novice nuns, even those ordained for decades, are rarely in charge of monastic communities. Novices keep fewer vows, and rarely get the kind of Dharma education available to bhikshus and bhikshunis. For example, in His Holiness’ Gelu tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, only the fully ordained can earn a geshe degree, similar to a doctorate of religious studies. It includes study of the vinaya, the vows of fully ordained monastics, which Tibetans only allow the fully ordained to study in-depth. With a few notable exceptions, earning a geshe degree is essential for becoming a respected, influential monastic teacher in this tradition.



In the West we often minimize the importance of monasticism, saying that it has no real place in Western Buddhism. But monastic traditions directly affect all of us in the Buddhist world. As long as many traditions exclude bhikshunis, most teachers with monastic education will be men, whether or not those teachers are currently ordained. Currently most convert Buddhists are women, yet most prominent Buddhist teachers and writers, both Western and Asian, are male. The lack of bhikshunis means there are fewer well-educated nuns to give teachings, lead retreats, write books, run monastic communities and Dharma centers, educate the next generation of teachers, and develop Buddhist activism. It means that at a Network of Spiritual Progressive conference in 2010, brilliant, well-intentioned, well-educated, committed, wise Buddhist teachers and practitioners don’t notice when women are being ignored. They don’t see the battle for gender equality that is being fought in our community. They don’t answer questions about engaged Buddhism by acknowledging the activism of marginalized members and offering suggestions about how we can support this and build on it be become genuine spiritual progressives. If the spokespeople for engaged Buddhism fall short here, what can we expect of the convert Buddhists who are just clinging to their cushions?