Women's Buddhism, Buddhism's Women: Tradition, Revision, Renewal

by Ellison Banks Findly (Editor)

Throughout Buddhism's history, women have been hindered in their efforts to actualize the fullness of their spiritual lives; they face more obstacles to reaching full ordination, have fewer opportunities to cultivate advanced practice, and receive diminished recognition for their spiritual accomplishments.

Here, a diverse array of scholars, activists, and practitioners explore how women have always managed to sustain a vital place for themselves within the tradition and continue to bring about change in the forms, practices, and institutions of Buddhism. In essays ranging from the scholarly to the personal, Women's Buddhism, Buddhism's Women describes how women have significantly shaped Buddhism to meet their own needs and the demands of contemporary life.

Genres: Buddhism

512 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Ellison Banks Findly is Scott M. Johnson ’97 Distinguished Professor of Religion, Emerita at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. Professor Findly graduated from Wellesley College in 1971 with a B. A. in Religion, from Columbia University in 1973 with an M.A. in History of Religions, and from Yale University in 1978 with a Ph.D. in Hinduism and Buddhism, specializing in the Rig Veda. She taught at Mt. Holyoke College from 1976-1978, was a visiting curator at the Worcester Art Museum in South Asian art from 1978-1980.

Reviews

[Niklas Braun · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting book I picked up in a used book store! It has papers, essays, and personal accounts in every field from the state of nuns in Thailand, to the development of non-voilent resistance in Sri Lanka, to a personal obituary for a head nun at a nunnery. There are many fascinating stories, histories, and personal accounts to be read in this book.

My personal favorite (which is hard, because I think there were between 20 and 30 accounts in this book) is about the Korean dancer turned Buddhist-shaman. She had a very interesting journey that connected her with her own roots and was quite a unique experience.

I recommend this book to anyone interested in the history of Buddhism, history in general, or the state of women in the Buddhist Sangha.

[Totochelamouche · Rating 4 out of 5]

Monks would have had no need to make special rules to limit nuns' actions and rights if nuns hadn't already shown monks how independent they could be.

The government gives support to the monks with free education, free medical care, and free or reduced fares for buses and trains. Nuns do not receive such support from the government because of their official status as laity. However, the same government denies mae chis the right to vote in public elections, citing their ascetic status and renunciation of worldly matters.

There are some who advocate the establishment of the bhikkhuni order in Thailand. The best known is Dr. Chatsumarn Kabilsingh, who has long advocated the reestablishment of the nuns' Sangha.

A nun is not to spend the rainy season in a district where there is no monk.

My mother was ordained as a mae chi [nun] when I was ten, thirty-six years ago. She transformed our house into a temple.

However, the Buddha established a conundrum by prescribing that monks and nuns could neither cook nor make their own clothes. To satisfy this, he provided ways for monks and nuns to be clothed and fed. He specified where and how cloth could be acquired - initially from discarded cloth in cemeteries and forests and, later, from lay people - and how it could be made into appropriately respectable yet devalued garments.

On the other, however, monks followed heightened prohibitions in their association with women, including not touching them and not sitting on the same bench or being alone with them.

Two events involving water are of particular importance in understanding the role of women in Theravāda Buddhism, as well as in household and village continuity that focus on this holiday: (1) the request for blessings that descendants ask of the eldest generation in the family line [...]

As they do this, the monks and novices perform chants and throw stones, sand, the nam mon, and shredded money in the various directions to ensure that bad spirits will not enter.

In this system, women form the core and continuity of households: men move to their bride's house at the time of marriage, not the other way around; men move from their mothers to their statuses as monks in Theravāda Buddhism; it is women who hold property, rice and rice fields; and it is women who renounce their sons as the means for the continuity of their households by giving them to the monkhood.

Individualism, including a lack of concern with ancestors and obligations, is a paramount product of modernization.

I use "stūpa" as a proxy for a number of places in which these ashes might be kept. Many reliquaries, which may simply be glass jars in which something has been bought and used, such as instant coffee, are kept either at home or in the wat along with other such containers from other households.

Thus, counter to all expectations of our cultures and our families, we quit our jobs, part from our loved ones, are ordained as Buddhist nuns and, in many cases, go to live in other countries.

We must understand the nature of our emotions and learn to deal with them in constructive ways without depending on others to comfort us or make us feel good about ourselves.

Sometimes people ask me to discuss how nuns in general, and Western nuns in particular, face discrimination. I do not find this particularly useful. For me it is sufficient to be aware of the habits of discrimination and to understand its cultural roots, and thus to not let it undermine my self-confidence.

Some people think that if a woman relinquishes her anger and pride in such circumstances, she must see herself as inferior and will not work to remedy the situation. This is not a correct understanding of the Dharma, however, for only when our own mind is peaceful can we clearly see methods to improve bad circumstances.

For many Westerners, the main form of Buddhist practice, that is, meditation, is an alternative to other recreational activities. Such people go to Buddhist temples or Buddhist centers to learn meditation, saying "I like meditation, but I am not a Buddhist." Serious Buddhist women in the West, however, ask questions such as "How does our meditation practice influence the interactions we have with people and help us deal with everyday situations [...]

Their freshly shorn heads signaled a lifelong intention to renounce sex and fertility.

They would now be among the "homeless ones" who pledged themselves to celibacy, detachment, and compassion towards all other sentient beings.

Even today, Yeshe still regrets that she was unable to maintain the initial practice of fasting after noon. Since she was on pilgrimage thousands of kilometers from home, she had to rely on sporadic meals given at any time during the day. While many novices fast after noon for a few weeks after their ordination, most later abandon this precept due to health constraints.

With the Dalai Lama and others on record in support of reviving female ordination lineages, many Theravāda authorities and some feminists remain opposed, albeit for distinctly different reasons. While the religious authorities contend that there are not enough disciplinary structures in place to ensure the purity of the lineage being transmitted, the feminists argue that women are better off as precept holders, free from the disciplinary gaze of monastic authorities.

Analogously, full ordination is significant in the Tibetan Buddhist context not so much because it separates fully ordained monks from novices, but because it separates monks from nuns, since only the former were eligible for full ordination until recently.

The peripatetic and penniless disciples who followed the Buddha's example have given way to a sedentary lot of officiants and bureaucrats. The monastery, which began as a temporary way station for monks during the rainy season, has become a vast corporation managed by a staff of monastic stewards and treasurers.

The Buddha forbade fasting if it would endanger the health and thus well-being of a monk or nun due to illness or the severity of the climate. Tibetan monastics use the same argument to justify eating meat in Tibet, where vegetables are relatively scarce, although this argument holds less for exiles in India.

Although Buddhist discipline actually forbids monastics from handling money, most Zangskari monastics accept payment for their ritual services, and some serve the monastic treasury, which loans cash to local villagers, in addition to managing other endowments.

In Kathmandu, a charismatic Theravāda nun, Dhammawati, has encouraged her urban novices to complete their secular education even after they take ordination, and actively promotes foreign study in Burma and Sri Lanka. Her rigorous program of study, meditation, and ritual recitation at Dharmakirti Vihar has drawn patrons and practitioners from throughout the Kathmandu valley [...]

As Bell shows, rituals are strategic actions that use culturally specific tactics to achieve particular ends.

I have argued elsewhere that although most translate saddhā as "faith," a better choice would be "confidence"or "trust," since these shift the emphasis away from a blind belief in the saving power of a religious tradition toward sure mental knowledge that certain religious views are true but have yet to be experienced by an individual as lived wisdom.

For a time I was still teaching library science in the university. After five years of meditating while working, I became convinced that meditation was the path I should take. Everything I should have done, I had done already. I had fulfilled my function and duty as a citizen of this society. I felt free, and decided to quit everything to study and practice under Achaan Chah.

Thus, bolstered by Buddhist ideology, which teaches that reproduction is the beginning of samsāra and the perpetuation of suffering on into the next generation [...]

Thirdly, some of the older yogis find fasting in the afternoon strenuous, as they cannot consume the large amounts of food in the morning that professional nuns are used to consuming from an early age.

Domesticated sangha ... often possess property, the most problematic of which is land.

In 1967, the Myanmar government ordered all foreigners to leave the country.

The power of Ma's presence was profound. In a group interview Jack Kornfield innocently asked Ma, "Just what is it like in your mind?" Ma smiled, closed her eyes, and quietly answered. In my mind there are three things, concentration, loving-kindness, and peace." Jack, not sure he was hearing right, said, "Is that all?" Ma calmly replied, "Yes...that's all."

Almost every day, our roshi started a one-hour "cooking meditation" at 5 P.M. and served us a delicious, healthy meal at 6 P.M. sharp.

I remember a couple of times trying to hold myself back, so I could look into this whirlwind of giggles, tears, guffaws, and roiling bodies, which seemed to be far out of proportion to the meager stimulus of a pun or slip-of-tongue. Her laughter was too deep and overwhelming for me to sustain an objective distance: I always caved in to her glee.

Becoming a buddha is slow work, so that we can learn patience with ourselves and others, give ourselves a break from schedules and missions that pull at our guilt tendons, and take enough time, as long as we need, to practice doing "one moment, one thing."

Tsepon Shakpa estimates monks made up 18 percent of Tibet's pre-1950 population while nuns comprised only 2 percent.

The Tibetans are marginalized in their own country and subjected to invasive tourism. Many monastics are directly coopted into the tourist trade as monastery guides, ticket takers, and guesthouse workers, while others have their routine continually interrupted by tourists stumbling into their spaces and their ceremonies at any hour of the day.

They talk about how communities and families are being broken down by the psychological pressures of advertising, television and tourism [...]

Male Buddhists see the women as a resource to do much of the work for which the men can take the credit. Female Buddhist activists, however, see the men as a problem and the Buddhist movement as a means for their emancipation from it.

First, the word Dalit means "ground down or oppressed," and it is the word now used by politically aware groups of Untouchables in India in place of earlier terms such as Depressed Classes, Gandhi's term Harijan or "people of god," the government term Scheduled Castes, indicating castes on a list or schedule to receive affirmative action benefits, and the word Untouchable itself, which indicates pollution by birth.

The hostel offers participation in Girl Guides, the British term for Girl Scouts, and the possibility of learning karate, as well as more conventional help for its chiefly rural students.

The retreat at Bhaja that brought her to Pune in the first place was an intense period of meditation and Dhamma lectures for ten women, including four dhammacārinī from England.

In her effort to spend time outside the house, now in Bombay, she met a Buddhist monk in a local temple and through her ties with him discovered political work.

Such poems seem to indicate a very personal view of the Buddha, appreciative of his bringing truth to the world but wondering about the sacrifice his wife made for the sake of others.

I became a nun thirteen years ago because I was tired of living. I wanted to stop for a while. To stop, you have to choose a new way to go, and I chose Buddhism. I do not know if I will stay a nun all my life, but right now being Buddhist is the most important thing I can do.

In Thai Buddhism, it is not a condition that nuns have to be together - we only have to belong to the Thai Nun's Institute. I do not have to be in a large nunnery if I can be financially independent. Most nuns cannot be financially independent so they choose to be in a temple.

As long as this is the case, Buddhism in America will continue to mirror the hierarchical and patriarchal institutions it has maintained throughout its long history in Asia. If genuine progress is to be made, the issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality need to be addressed much more seriously then they have been thus far. Only then will the tantalizing promises of Buddhist philosophical notions like selflessness, interdependence, inclusiveness, and, ultimately, insight and compassion become real possibilities.

Here we try to have a sense of Sangha, community, while at the same time living alone together. There is a great respect for people's individual spaces. There is often deep silence here. The rooms are quite insulated from each other because of the adobe, the deep walls, so it's quite quiet, although we're not far from the center of the city. So it is a strong community with a great respect for solitude...[...]

I corresponded with a Peruvian lay man who is a university professor and has spent three years meditating in a cave in Nepal.

Since monks are not supposed to travel more than forty-five minutes from their monasteries, it is more than likely that this alms-giving was re-enacted in this very spot [...]

My mother took me to school the year my hand could reach over my head and touch my ear.

Every morning we gave food to the monks who walked by our house. This meant that we had to get up very early to cook.