Bhutan Buddhist leader ordains 144 women, resuming tradition

A Fb publish on the central monastic physique of Bhutan web page posted the information, which was confirmed by Damcho Diana Finnegan, an ordained Buddhist nun and co-founder of the Dharmadatta Nun’s Group in Virginia.

Requested in regards to the ceremony, Finnegan referred to as it a “main step in direction of ending the institutionalized inequality between women and men in Tibetan Buddhism.”

The ceremony is the end result of a decades-long motion for full ordination for ladies within the Tibetan lineage, which has confronted heavy resistance from top-level monks, students and political leaders throughout Asia. The bhikshuni motion has picked up steam lately as girls worldwide have sought to revive a observe of ordaining girls established, they are saying, by the Buddha himself, however which slowly disappeared from a lot of the Buddhist world till now.

After the demise of the Buddha, feminine monks have been generally thought-about one of many key parts of the four-pronged very best Buddhist group, consisting of lay males, lay girls, male monks and feminine monks. Nonetheless, over time, warfare, famine and illness took the lives of bhikshunis throughout Southeast Asia and Tibet.

Ladies have continued to reside ascetic lives as nuns however have been barred from taking the following step to full ordination. Formally their standing was held again by guidelines of the monastic code that require bhikshunis to be ordained by different bhikshunis, who didn’t exist.

To interrupt this bind, some girls have taken different routes to full ordination. In 1996, a bunch of Sri Lankan nuns was ordained with assist from Korean bhikshunis of the Mahayana lineage, which has by no means been damaged. Since then, a whole bunch of bhikshunis have been ordained in Sri Lanka, in what Tsedroen describes as an “ecumenical ceremony,” basically reviving the inhabitants.

However in Bhutan, a handful of monks have taken ordination into their very own palms and offered ordination to nuns with out the presence of bhikshunis. Usually, this ceremony is simply granted to a small variety of girls, and by no means on the size seen on Tuesday. In keeping with Finnegan, an ordination this huge ensures a sangha, or bhikshuni group, that can persist properly into the long run.

“All different lineages of Buddhism have had sanghas of ladies absolutely ordain as monks. That is the primary time Tibetan Buddhist girls are given that chance,” she mentioned.

The present Dalai Lama has lengthy inspired bhikshuni ordination vows, and Bhikkhu Bodhi, a distinguished monk within the Theravada lineage, practiced throughout India and Southeast Asia, has appealed to his legion of supporters to advocate for the bhikshuni motion. Influential Tibetan scholar-monk Geshe Lharampa Bhikshu Rinchen Ngudrup made a powerful case for bhikshuni ordination in 2007 throughout a chat on the first Worldwide Congress on Buddhist Ladies’s Position within the Sangha after years of analysis.

As well as, lay folks throughout Asia have referred to as consideration to the superb conduct of nuns compared with male spiritual leaders. Scandals, akin to fraud at Wat Dhammakaya in Thailand and an uptick in sexual assault prices towards Tibetan lamas, have been rocking Buddhist communities world wide.

Thai journalist Sanitsuda Ekachai referred to as consideration to this dichotomy in her e book “Protecting the Religion: Thai Buddhism on the Crossroads,” encouraging lay folks to contemplate the way forward for the monastic order and the way feminine monks might enhance it.

Even with highly effective voices and a clear observe document behind the motion, gender fairness within the Tibetan monastic order had but to take off on the massive scale that occurred immediately in Bhutan.

“This historic ordination ceremony might properly create additional strain on different Buddhist communities in several nations to make full ordination accessible to nuns inside Tibetan Buddhism,” mentioned Susanne Mrozik, affiliate professor of faith at Mount Holyoke Faculty.

For some Buddhists, the truth that the ordinations started on the summer season solstice is an auspicious signal, as are, in response to the Fb announcement, the looks in Bhutan of “rainbows encircling the solar.”