[ad_1]
The Je Khenpo, the senior Buddhist authority in Bhutan, has begun ordaining a gaggle of 144 girls as bhikshunis, or feminine monks, on the Ramthangkha monastery
(RNS) – On Tuesday (June 21), the Je Khenpo, the senior Buddhist authority in Bhutan, started ordaining a gaggle of 144 girls as bhikshunis, or feminine monks, on the Ramthangkha monastery within the tiny Himalayan nation.
The ceremony “is of historic significance for all girls in Buddhism and brings Tibetan Buddhism into the twenty first century,” mentioned Bhikshuni Jampa Tsedroen, a German Tibetan writer. “For these nuns, it’s a main alternative to display their skills to contribute to Buddhism.”
___
This content material is written and produced by Faith Information Service and distributed by The Related Press. RNS and AP associate on some faith information content material. RNS is solely answerable for this story.
___
Lots of the new bhikshunis are Bhutanese, however some got here to Bhutan from different international locations in Asia. They’re all being ordained within the Tibetan lineage.
A Fb put up 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 Neighborhood in Virginia.
Requested concerning 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 fruits 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 in recent times as girls worldwide have sought to revive a follow 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 of one of many key parts of the four-pronged preferrred Buddhist neighborhood, consisting of lay males, lay girls, male monks and feminine monks. Nevertheless, over time, conflict, famine and illness took the lives of bhikshunis throughout Southeast Asia and Tibet.
Girls have continued to stay 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 did not exist.
To interrupt this bind, some girls have taken different routes to full ordination. In 1996, a gaggle of Sri Lankan nuns was ordained with assist from Korean bhikshunis of the Mahayana lineage, which has by no means been damaged. Since then, tons of 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 supplied ordination to nuns with out the presence of bhikshunis. Sometimes, this ceremony is simply granted to a small variety of girls, and by no means on the size seen on Tuesday. In response to Finnegan, an ordination this huge ensures a sangha, or bhikshuni neighborhood, that may persist effectively 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 Girls’s Position within the Sangha after years of analysis.
As well as, lay individuals throughout Asia have referred to as consideration to the wonderful habits of nuns compared with male spiritual leaders. Scandals, equivalent to fraud at Wat Dhammakaya in Thailand and an uptick in sexual assault costs in opposition to Tibetan lamas, have been rocking Buddhist communities world wide.
Thai journalist Sanitsuda Ekachai referred to as consideration to this dichotomy in her e-book “Conserving the Religion: Thai Buddhism on the Crossroads,” encouraging lay individuals to contemplate the way forward for the monastic order and the way feminine monks may enhance it.
Even with highly effective voices and a clear observe file behind the motion, gender fairness within the Tibetan monastic order had but to take off on the massive scale that occurred in the present day in Bhutan.
“This historic ordination ceremony might effectively create additional strain on different Buddhist communities in numerous international locations to make full ordination out there 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 line with the Fb announcement, the looks in Bhutan of “rainbows encircling the solar.”
[ad_2]
Source link
