The Buddha's Forgotten Nuns (2013)

when you study Buddhism thoroughly you realize that Buddhism go beyond this gender issue you know enlightenment as everyone is for everyone and because of that the Buddha allowed women to be ordained because women can also be enlightened I see this kind of colonial you know white man's burden kind of you find you know where where the where the Westerners we've got it all sort of that we've got to drag these validations into the 21st century I can't live my life right upstanding the truth that I know and speaking about that [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Applause] I was brought up Buddhist when I was a child my parents had built a bush temple and invited a Thai monk to stay with us he taught us in the Thai forest tradition which aims to live by the Buddha's teachings given 2500 years ago I returned to the Buddhist teachings as an adult in search of a spiritual path I found one particular teaching of the Buddha a very powerful the teaching of not-self meaning we are not defined by characteristics such as body mind gender or ethnicity I assumed I had the option to be ordained as a bhikkhuni or female monk in the Thai forest tradition but I soon discovered this shocking truth no matter how committed I was or how much my practice advanced I would never be granted this right the Buddha who taught equality would surely be surprised by this 2500 years ago he made the radical decision to ordain both men and women at the time women couldn't be ordained in any spiritual discipline he called the ordained men bhikkhus and the ordained women bikinis and gave them both a code of conduct called the Vinaya the buddha established a four-fold sangha or community which included bhikkhus bhikkhunis laymen and laywomen but in the monastic practice of Buddhism today I discovered discrimination and inequality based on gender what happened how and why did the role of women in Buddhism change so drastically [Music] in Thailand I met bikuni Dom Ananda who has founded a women's monastery to revive the female order despite opposition from the Thai authorities they say it is wrong for women to wear orange robes as it is seen to be impersonating monks we know that this is responsibility given to us by the Buddha and and even the monks do not have right to take away this responsibly which which is actually handed down I see it as a heritage a very special heritage that we are keeping it the Thai jungle or the Thai community of monks became one sided is simply because they had been like this for the last seven hundred years so they could not think otherwise you know in fact it is very much Buddhist culture for women to be ordained and when the Buddha set up the Sangha community of monks and women the only problem is that in Thailand we don't have the female Order the two major schools of Buddhism today are Mahayana and Theravada in Mahayana countries such as China Korea and Vietnam the bikuni lineage is still strong although the bhikkhunis there must still defer to monks but in tera vaada countries such as Cambodia Sri Lanka and Thailand the bikini lineage died out almost a thousand years ago traditionalists do not believe it can or should be revived they argue that new bikinis can't be ordained because ordination requires a quorum of both bhikkhus and bhikkhunis and without the tera vaada bikini lineage a quorum cannot be achieved in Thailand Buddhist nuns known as may she wear white robes rather than the orange robes of the bikini these nuns can only practice eight precepts or training guidelines the same as any layperson can while the novice monk practices ten precepts and is generally more supported in the training in Thailand there was no role for for ordering women so they shave their head which looks like one nasty but they are not allowed to put under robes because they are not being given the the ordination procedure therefore they just put on white robe as a kind of renunciant you know just just an expression of a whom a homeless lifestyle the man she was not in the Buddhist days you know but because we don't have all the ordination for women so these women wanting wanting to have this religious lifestyle but the path is not made for them properly some of the independent man she's has tried to set up their own center you know and a nunnery that they can be apart from the monks so that they don't have to be simply serving the month only so they wanted to express their role in in monastic life another big difference between the mushy and the bikini is that the bikini can carry out the ancient tradition of collecting food offerings from the local villagers which in turn brings the villagers good merit but the maishy are not eligible for this type of support to find out what the Thai Tsonga think about the couny ordination I visit one of the most senior Western monks of the Thai forest tradition originally from England ajahn joyous ro has been living in Thailand since 1978 we're all agreed basically we want to be creating structures and environments in which women can practice the Dhamma in the way the monks do or is a similar but and and in what particular form that could be pursued that everyone can can can live with that the tera vaada tradition its identity has always been founded upon the conservativism and maintaining the tradition laid down by the first council of monks following the death of the Buddha if the bhikkhuni option is is just pushed too much and then you're strengthened their more conservative factions in the Theravada sanga's and then and there'll be no real acceptance or harmony between the two groups in the long run the forest tradition took root in the West in the 1970s bringing with it the conservative attitudes and hierarchies that exist in Thailand I visited the first western monastery of this tradition in a small hamlet in rural England [Music] [Music] well when we first came there it was nothing was that formed you know things were happening it was a very young community there was a lot of energy a lot of ideas it was very powerful in that way I think all of us for our own different reasons felt for sure we want to take this path as far as we can and that's that was the form was the you know to shave your head take presets but on her own and start and that was very much how we started they felt very radical in a way just to cut our hair and then eventually shave it and to wear robes I felt very outside of my culture I felt okay about that because I was very committed to the Dharma practice increasingly I've began to us as the men that come into the oil at the same time as ourselves and were getting the the coordination as mendicants and being seen as part of Sangha and I began to realize we weren't actually seen as part of the Sangha we were seen as you know I mean I don't quite know how he was seen we were like an appendage I think we were just shaped by how it was done in Thailand we were here there to enable the monks journey in some ways that's a while they thought they'd like to take it a bit deeper because that basically no one knew how this thing work and on Donna's training world all that happens the time model which nobody knew that thoroughly anyway and so they do basically these he's like cooking and driving handing money into this nature they wanted to give that up so after a couple of years two or three years I mean waiting to Tyler and talk to the Tigers about what they could what could be done they said well he can take the ten precepts which means giving up money and they'd also sort of become more like arms mendicants which we don't cook so they'd be out of the kitchen this adapted form of ordination is called the seal adhara although it is a small step forward it limits nuns to being a novice with no option to advance as a bikuni there are things frustration and doubt not about the practice not about the Dharma at all but gender gender so it's an ancient tradition and a hallmark of it is its adherence to the the earliest teachings and practices and so these come from a completely different time completely different cultural context one in which I would never have liked to move myself as a woman and so here we are eastern half thousand years later with the Thai cultural overlay everything that we have has come to us through the generosity of supporters much of the support comes from local people but an awful lot also come from Thais locally and overseas and there is that sense of well how do you honor that support and honor the cultural context to which you find yourself without alienating people this idea that it's all actually in one's heart and you can realize the truth without having any conditions externally is is that's true on an ultimate level but in there in the practical level what it does is it can be it can be an opportunity for a disconnect with what's really happening and using a kind of language in order to not take appropriate action and responsibility for seeing that the conditions are supportive and conducive for awakening in the buddha's time bikinis took 311 rules which is 84 more than bhikkhus while the cellar-door are none officially takes only ten presets she in fact practices many more and leads a similar life to a bikini just like a big who she owns nothing but her bowl and her robes relying completely on the Buddhist supporters for her food shelter and medicine for some women ten precepts are enough but there are others who wish to follow the original path given by the Buddha it was in Sri Lanka that the first tera vaada bikuni ordination took place in the 1980s paving the way for more to come including that of iesous dama who in 2003 was the first american-born woman to become a tara vada bikuni while my ordination was 2003 but I went to Sri Lanka because I wanted to serve be Cooney's I finally had the thought Who am I to want to become apocrine II would have never served Pekinese and this opportunity for higher ordination or rows while I was there there was something so different about the higher ordination for me for one I truly had the entire livelihood of like a beaker of a big honey in a way I hadn't had as a 10 preceptor I hear so much and so many people there's more and more these days about how oppressive these rules are how terrible they are they're not terrible they're not impressive this is our ticket to freedom please stop trying to take it from me it's a whole livelihood it's a whole dance of support between the lay people and the and the bhikkhus or bhikkhunis that you just don't have with ten precepts particularly with eight precepts addition you get the whole the whole package of any based lifestyle and a respect from the people that I actually hadn't known would be there there are many accusations that women just want to ordain to gain that respect you know you just want to puff yourself up that kind of thing it was so much more than that it was so deep for me I wanted to be the Buddhist child despite the early attempts at reviving the tera vaada bikuni order there remains great resistance from many Buddhist traditions around the world [Music] in 2007 his Holiness the Dalai Lama initiated an international conference in Hamburg on the role of women in Buddhism this was in response to requests to open a dialogue on this issue I thought it did regret that isn't obvious that's all I could ever be since the Tibetan tradition it does not allow it to take full ordination a few years later when I went to Hong Kong for the big Shirley ordination there was a tremendous sense of fulfillment that finally I could be a part of his press precious monastic lineage stretching all the way back in an unbroken line of the Lord Buddha himself so why should not be denied this deep monastic satisfaction which the monks take for granted as their right I think I'm hundred percent sure if Buddha today here certainly his he give us the permission the Bhutanese visually ordination much easily it doesn't no doubt but unfortunately now no more put the hair so I don't know how to I cannot act as a Buddha there's a clear your holiness mahaparinirvana sutra when the Buddha was about to die he did give permission that minor rules if Sanka should decide go ahead so you don't need to wait for the future Buddha I was very thrilled that the conference happened it was a devastating conclusion I have to say cuz I felt what happened when the door remained closed was it pushed it back on the women to have to almost prove themselves even more you know it's like you you know felt for the nuns it's like well maybe you can come to Dharamsala and practice and inspire people as well who what do they have to do to have either them but the goalpost moved really what do they have to do to be accepted after the conference some members of the Buddhist community in England took steps to prevent bikini ordination from taking place there I tried to speak with monks and nuns involved but no one was willing to discuss what had happened meanwhile some progressive monks in Australia were pushing for change the Sangha in number what he and cheetah's were studying together what's called the five walls what they call I think the five points of clarification this came out as a direct response to the opening of dialogue around bikini ordination it came out as a direct response to the Homburg conference on bikinis and essentially the five points of clarification say that the nuns have to always walk behind the monks that they can't give Dhamma talks while monks the present in the room and even if they are invited to give a dumb a talk in front of months when monks are present in the room that doesn't set a precedence so that they can do it again in the future and so on and so forth and a whole bunch of rules like this and the last one is that the ten precept or donation platform which the nuns are following in those communities does not form a stepping stone to bikuni ordinations specifically formed to prevent and become an obstacle to bikuni ordination the nuns were asked to accept these rules and if they didn't accept it they were told that the monks would not perform anymore other nations for them so effectively the future the community would be throttled so the nuns were quite distraught at the both of the rules and also the way that it was presented to them but eventually having no choice they decided to accept them during this time a monastery of the forest tradition in Western Australia decided to go the other way for the first time in the forest traditions recent history a bikuni ordination of four women took place in October 2009 as you know internationally the discussion about the peculiar donation was getting stronger and stronger and I is the spiritual director of the Buddhist society here in the committee we considered that there was no reason to deny that in fact it would be wrong to deny the legitimate aspirations of four women for the bhikkhuni ordination they had practiced well they fulfilled every possible criteria and also in the development of the research on the PQ new ordination became very clear to me and the other monks at the monastery at serpentine that there was no legal obstacle for that obviously we knew that people would talk about it and that some people wouldn't like it we had no idea of the the scale and the swiftness and the energy of the opposition to it it was immediately clear to me that there was you know again there was some something else that there's some underlying force which is driving it and it's not just the the fact of the ordination as such I think it's generally generally agreed in Thailand and Burma at least as with the heartland of tera vaada Buddhism that those ordinations are not valid by the Theravada understanding of what a bhikkhuni ordination consists of or should consist on if the leaders of the Sangha or the official policy of the Thai Sangha is has been decided on a particular issue then individual monks or individual monasteries don't have the right so just unilaterally declared that they don't agree with that any more than they're going to follow their own their own view so it's not so much a reason view based upon analysis of text as as the idea that the strength and the continuity of the Sangha is based upon consensus our greatest respect will be for the Dhamma vinaya and part of that states that every monastic community is independent we have to make our own resolutions no within the Vinaya at any monk or nun outside of your community has no say this is the way the Buddha established a community as autonomous for us the ordination was about the women who wanted to become ordained and it was about supporting them to live their spiritual journey and to fulfill their dreams and to support them to practice in accordance with the way that the Buddha practice and from our point of view we were gathering together as inner Sangha in a way that was prescribed and laid down very clearly in the monastic discipline passed down for the last two-and-a-half thousand years we performed the ceremonies in the exact same way in the exact same languages have been passed down for the last two-and-a-half thousand years and we were participating in that great kind of river of community and tradition which which has flourished all across the Buddhist world for such a long time the ordination went ahead without the approval of the Thai Sangha and as a result the Western Australian monastery was delisted the beacon is there are not officially recognized within the Thai forest tradition to me it was a very holy moment and actually after the ordination you truly feel there's a change in you can't quite express it in words but in yourself you feel that you're part of that very ancient tradition of that very ancient Pico and bhikkhunis Sangha and it's bad also at times but you also feel the greater responsibility of representing the bhikkhunis of representing the hope not only to yourself to your other fellow monastics but also to the community at large if you are engulfed in a complete beautiful handed-down and many times proven system of training so this is I think a great gift which doesn't take anything away from anyone and I think women and all of us we have supported monks for many many years and just by being able to have the same opportunity of training and actually I don't want any favors or just only want to have the opportunity to prove myself [Music] if there's any change going to take place in you know in the heartland of tera vaada buddhism then needs to come from tera vaada women in in these countries and if the impulse is coming from the West I don't I don't think that it will be that effective except among very small number of middle-class more cosmopolitan groups the women that I that I know who are nuns are generally you know what I've got all the conditions that I need for practice I have solitude I have support for requisites and I have teachers that I can speak to and ask for advice and many women say well you know this is good enough for me if Thai Buddhists women come together and they say this is an injustice tum' we've been oppressed what can you do about it then that would really be something that I have to really consider and monks would have to consider but it's not it is this just not it's just a very minor phenomena in in this country whatever yes put imagine no matter what the size and I have up yy9 me can I pick so DME kqp okapi rock we can and allow me making this ended me but now you tell me button are you now pendency Sudhir ah come Monday I wanna play the new house what I don't how loud on the item there are natal pan some Timon have also been seeking bhikkhuni ordination from lineages in sri lanka and elsewhere as a way to get around the tile position now small vicuna monasteries are popping up in thailand like this one i visited in the north the thai people support them in the same way they support monks offering food land and resources when it was a nun one or two years and then I don't know that in the future I am a pickle tea I don't know I don't know how we have this place I don't know how we have buildings many building many people come I never know before but when it happened it's okay it's happened in the prison I'm just sorry that and then it's appeared and it's disappear so don't cling to it and don't cling to the future Medicaid women come here not only from the common office right the laypeople from anywhere I think not only in Chiang Mai but many provinces in Thailand and maybe some from abroad I never thought that we would see women in the room in my lifetime and when it happened it was like a contagious disease still it goes from one country to another and because of this globalization you know a real connected soul so very quickly of course we need time to prove to them that as female Santa as Pekinese ANCA we are going to contribute something to our society and I think before you know it the ball has already started to move so to say once a beacon against ten years in the robe she can ordain new bikinis in 2010 the first tera vaada ordination involving both bhikkhus and bhikkhunis took place in the United States finally after centuries of resistance the bikini lineages are growing in numbers and support around the world [Music] the monastic tradition is of a tradition of renunciants it's much easier to announce as a as a because of bikuni you have the support structure you have the expectations you have the Vinaya everything there is supporting you obviously you have to relate to the Western world but if you look at the original villainess suitors is no problem there at all where there is a problem is if you have you keep the cultural interpretations that is the impasse you keep the vinay and separate that from the culture and you find the Buddhism will fit very perfectly in every Western culture now in monasteries like Dharma sera in Western Australia novices such as alpaca have the option of devoting their entire life to a spiritual practice with the full support of the Sangha it's a journey that evolved I've tried the good life I travelled to the nth degree I party to the nth degree that I actually asked when I was about 24 or 25 if I could come here to ordain and within a week I changed my mind and got married yeah which is a good thing because I guess I needed to have done that I guess to me it's not a commitment vitam a great joy yeah great joy and extreme feeling grateful really everyday to live this life I don't think I've lost anything at all in fact I think why don't more people become nuns there are questions which you can ask bikuni which you'll never ask about can you get answers which I will never be able to give you they have their special place which monks will never be able to fulfill and if we don't have a big who knew it means it's this big hole in Buddhism they were teaching and the dissemination of the Dhamma and where does this big hole and discrimination is discrimination they call it by its proper name and it also means that Buddhism whenever grow either in Thailand or in the West so I think if you are doing something positive you know that that vibration that energy is a good energy and I believe that the society will be will be opening their heart for it if you hear more about good women doing something somewhere talk about it you know tell the world about it and then it's it's encouraging others to do the same thing the between the ordination is there is growing it will continue to grow and I ask everyone to look it so bad where I can get on the back leg and otherwise you get crushed under the wheels these women are regaining the spiritual path that was given to them by the Buddha inspiring us and lighting the way for those who plan to follow [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Budaya Productions

Views: 189,577

Keywords: Buddhism, human rights, nuns, monks, buddhist nuns, buddhist monks, theravada, gender equality, sexism, descrimination, religion, ethics

Id: ngPkZ5zY_tQ

Length: 33min 55sec (2035 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 07 2017