IB World Religions 2.2.4. Gender and Ritual: Bhikkhus, Bhikkhunis and Meditation Practice Notes

2.2.4. Gender and Ritual: Bhikkhus, Bhikkhunis and Meditation Practice

Bhikkhus and bhikkhunis

1. A bhikkhu (Sanskrit bhikshu) is a fully ordained monk and a bhikkhuni (Sanskrit bhikshuni) a fully ordained nun. Both words mean almsperson, and both orders live under the Vinaya, the monastic rule.
2. The Vinaya records that the order of nuns began when Mahapajapati Gotami, the Buddha's aunt and foster mother, asked to be admitted. The account has her refused twice and accepted after Ananda put the case that women were as capable of enlightenment as men.
3. Acceptance came with conditions attached. She agreed to eight additional rules that placed the nuns' order under the monks' order, and Theravada tradition has read those rules as permanently binding on bhikkhunis.
4. The two orders were never ritually equal in Theravada practice. Buddhists differ over how to read this, some treating it as the Buddha's own arrangement and others as a concession to the social expectations of fifth century India.
5. The asymmetry is about ritual and legal standing rather than about capacity. The same texts that subordinate nuns organisationally record women reaching arahant status on the same terms as men.
6. Numbers made the difference durable. The monks' order spread across South and Southeast Asia while the nuns' order established itself in fewer places, which shaped what survived later.

The eight garudhammas

1. The garudhammas, the heavy rules, are the eight conditions attached to the founding of the nuns' order. They govern precedence, instruction and discipline rather than doctrine or meditation.
2. The first is the most often quoted. A bhikkhuni of a hundred years' standing must bow to a bhikkhu ordained that same day, so seniority between the orders never crosses over.
3. Several rules bind the ritual calendar together. A bhikkhuni must spend the rains retreat within reach of monks, must ask the monks' assembly each fortnight for the uposatha date and for instruction, and must perform pavarana before both assemblies at the retreat's end.
4. Two rules govern speech. A bhikkhuni may not revile a bhikkhu and may not formally admonish one, while a bhikkhu may admonish a bhikkhuni, so correction runs in a single direction.
5. The sixth rule is the one with the longest consequences. Full ordination must be conferred by both assemblies, monks and nuns together, after two years of training as a sikkhamana (probationer).
6. Modern Buddhist scholars and nuns have questioned the rules' origin, pointing to inconsistencies in how the Vinaya reports them. Traditional Theravada authorities treat them as the Buddha's own words and therefore not open to amendment.

The Theravada lineage question

1. The Theravada bhikkhuni lineage lapsed. Sri Lanka's order did not survive the upheavals of the eleventh century, and no bhikkhuni order was ever established in Thailand, Myanmar, Laos or Cambodia.
2. The sixth garudhamma then became an obstacle. With no bhikkhunis left to sit in the ordaining assembly, conservative authorities held that valid full ordination had become impossible for Theravada women.
3. Women kept ordaining anyway, at a lower legal status. Thai mae chi wear white and keep eight precepts, Burmese thilashin wear pink and keep ten, and Sri Lankan dasa sil mata keep ten as well.
4. These women are recognised as renunciants but not as bhikkhunis. In ritual terms they cannot form the assembly that confers ordination, and in several countries they receive a smaller share of the alms and legal privileges given to monks.
5. A revival began through the East Asian orders. Ten Sri Lankan women were ordained at Sarnath in 1996 with Korean bhikkhunis in the assembly, and a large international ordination followed at Bodh Gaya in 1998.
6. The revival divides the Theravada world. Sri Lanka now has more than a thousand bhikkhunis in practice, while the Thai Sangha Supreme Council maintains a prohibition dating from 1928 on Thai monks ordaining women.

Nuns in East Asian Buddhism

1. The Dharmaguptaka Vinaya lineage carried the bhikkhuni ordination to China, and from there to Korea, Vietnam and Japan. That line has continued without a break, which is why East Asian nuns could supply the assemblies the Theravada revival needed.
2. Taiwan is the clearest case of a different balance. Fully ordained nuns there outnumber monks, and they lead major organisations, including the Tzu Chi relief foundation founded by the bhikkhuni Cheng Yen.
3. Ritual authority follows ordination. East Asian bhikkhunis preside at ceremonies, ordain other women, run monasteries and teach mixed congregations, roles that Theravada practice has largely reserved to monks.
4. Mahayana doctrine gives the pattern a rationale. The bodhisattva path is presented as open to any being, and Mahayana teaching that each person carries both feminine and masculine qualities cuts against making ritual capacity depend on sex.
5. Devotional imagery moved in the same direction. The bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara is generally depicted in female form in East Asia as Guanyin, or Kannon in Japan, so the most widely venerated figure in Chinese Buddhism is a female one.
6. Tibetan practice sits between the two positions. Women ordain as novices rather than as bhikkhunis, though the geshema degree, the scholastic qualification long restricted to monks, was first conferred on Tibetan nuns in 2016.

Meditation practice and gender

1. Meditation is the point at which the gender asymmetry stops. Bhavana (mental cultivation) prescribes the same exercises for women and men, and no branch teaches a separate technique for either.
2. The standard objects of practice make no reference to the practitioner's sex. Breath, the body, feeling, states of mind and the three marks of existence are watched in exactly the same way in samatha (calm) and vipassana (insight) practice.
3. The reasoning is doctrinal. Since anatta denies a permanent self of any kind, Buddhists hold there is no fixed gendered self for the practice to accommodate.
4. Early texts record the results. The Therigatha, the collected verses of the elder nuns, presents women describing their own attainment of liberation in the same terms the monks use.
5. Practice can still be organised separately. Retreats and meditation halls are often segregated by sex for the sake of the discipline around celibacy, which is a matter of arrangement rather than of method.
6. Contemporary teaching reflects the parity. Women lead retreats and train practitioners across the Theravada, Zen and Tibetan traditions, including in Western communities where meditation is the main form practice takes.

Gender and ritual today

1. The dispute is now mostly about ordination rather than about capability. Almost all Buddhists agree that women can reach enlightenment, and they disagree over whether a valid bhikkhuni ordination can be reconstituted.
2. Dhammananda Bhikkhuni in Thailand is the best known test case. She took full ordination in Sri Lanka in 2003 and runs Songdhammakalyani monastery, which the Thai monastic hierarchy still does not formally recognise.
3. Western orders have generally settled the question differently. Communities founded by convert Buddhists in Britain, the United States and Australia usually ordain and train women and men on the same terms.
4. Lay ritual life shows less asymmetry than monastic life. Women organise and fund most temple ceremonies in Theravada countries, prepare the offerings and make up the majority of those attending festivals and observance days.
5. Buddhists arguing for change appeal to the tradition's own resources, citing Ananda's argument and the Therigatha. Those resisting appeal to the Vinaya's procedural requirements, holding that a rule cannot be met by ignoring it.
6. The two positions are therefore not simply progress against tradition. Each side argues from the same texts, and the disagreement is over which of the tradition's commitments governs the other.