Celebrating the revival of bhikkhuni order

Susanne Mrozik
Associate Professor of Religion
Mount Holyoke College
South Hadley, Massachusetts, USA

 Part II

Continued from the last week

The Sri Lankan bhikkhunis who were ordained with the help of South Korean and Taiwanese nuns in 1996 and 1998 are Theravda bhikkhunis. They regard themselves as Theravada bhikkhunis and so do the Sri Lankan bhikkhus who sponsored their ordinations. Since 1998 Sri Lankan women can also be ordained as bhikkhunis in Sri Lanka itself. All of these bhikkhunis follow the Theravda Pali Vinaya. None follow the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya and none are Mahayana Buddhists. One need only visit their temples to see that the Buddhism practised and taught there is the same Buddhism practised and taught in Sri Lankan bhikkhu temples.

Given the important services bhikkhunis perform for Buddhism and society, as a whole, why has the revival of the Theravada bhikkhuni order been controversial in Sri Lanka and elsewhere in the Theravada world? Why do some Sri Lankan monks still tell their subscribers that there are absolutely no Theravada bhikkhunis in Sri Lanka?

Those rejecting the bhikkhuni revival commonly claim that because the first modern-day Sri Lankan bhikkhunis were ordained by South Korean and Taiwanese nuns, who follow Mahayana Buddhism, the Sri Lankan bhikkhunis must be Mahayana Buddhist nuns themselves. This claim rests upon an incorrect understanding of Buddhist history and Vinaya. theravada Buddhists, like all Buddhists, believe that the Buddha established the Vinaya. the Buddha, however, wrote no scriptures, and his teachings were initially transmitted orally by his Sangha. Only several centuries after the Buddha’s partinibbana did Buddhists begin the long process of compiling his teachings in written form. By then there were already several different early Buddhist schools in India, each with their own set of scriptures, including their own Vinaya.

Tibetan Buddhists

Three Vinayas are still in use today. Theravada Buddhists use the Theravada Pali Vinaya. Unlike the Theravada, however, Mahayana and Tibetan Buddhists never compiled their own Vinayas. Instead they adopted the Sanskrit Vinayas of two early Buddhist schools called the Dharmaguptaka and Mulasarvastivada. These schools died out a long time ago, but Mahayana and tibetan Buddhists still use their Vinayas, having translated them into Chinese and Tibetan. The Mahayana bhikkhunis from South Korea and Taiwan, who ordained the first modern-day Sri Lankan bhikkhunis in 1996 and 1998, follow the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya.

Vinaya experts have demonstrated that there is no substantive difference between Dharmaguptaka and Theravada Vinayas. This is especially the case for the oldest and most important part of the Vinaya, namely, the Patimokkha. Bhikkhu Bodhi, a learned American Theravada monk who ordained in Sri Lanka under Ven. Ananda Maitreya and served for many years as the editor of the Buddhist Publication Society in Kandy, explains what happened at the 1998 international ordination ceremony in India:

The grand ordination ceremony assembled bhikkhus from several traditions - Chinese Mahayana, Theravada, and Tibetan - along with Taiwanese and Western bhikkhunis to conduct the full dual ordination in accord with the Chinese tradition... One might think that this was a Mahayana rite that made the nuns Mahayana bhikkhunis, but this would be a misunderstanding. While the Chinese monks and nuns were practitioners of Mahayana Buddhism, the monastic Vinaya tradition they observe is not a Mahayana Vinaya but one stemming from an early Buddhist school, the Dharmaguptakas, which belonged to the same broad Vibhajyavada tradition to which the Southern Theravada school belongs. they were virtually the northwest Indian counterpart of the Theravada, with a similar collection of suttas, an Abhidharma, and a vinaya that largely corresponds to the Pali Vinaya (‘The Revival of Bhikkhuni Ordination in the Theravada Tradition’, in Dignity and Discipline:Reviving Full Ordination for Buddhist Nuns, ed. Thea Mohr and Jampa Tsedroen, Wisdom Publications 2010, pp. 120-121; versions of this article can also be found on the web by googling ‘Bhikkhu Bodhi’).

Thus the Sri Lankan bhikkhunis did not become Mahayana bhikkhunis. At most one could claim that they became Dharmaguptaka bhikkhunis. But even this claim is hard to defend given what happened next. Again, Bhikkhu Bodhi explains:

.... the bhikkhunis from Sri Lanka wanted to become heirs to the Theravda Vinaya lineage and to be acceptable to the Theravda bhikkhus of Sri Lanka. the Sri Lankan bhikkhus who sponsored their ordination, too, were apprehensive that if the nuns returned to Sri Lanka with only the Chinese ordination, their co-religionists would have considered their ordination to have been essentially a Mahayanist one.

to prevent this, shortly afterward the newly ordained bhikkhunis travelled to Sarnath, where they underwent another upasampada conducted in Pali under Theravda bhikkhus from Sri Lanka... While recognizing the validity of the upasampada they received through the Chinese sangha, the Sri Lankan bhikkhus effectively admitted them to the Theravda sangha and conferred on them permission to observe the Theravda Vinaya and to participate in sanghakammas, legal acts of the sangha, with their brothers in the Sri Lankan bhikkhu sangha (‘The Revival of Bhikkhuni Ordination in the Theravda Tradition’,pp. 121-122).

Theravada bhikkhunis

The Sri Lankan bhikkhunis who were ordained with the help of South Korean and Taiwanese nuns in 1996 and 1998 are Theravda bhikkhunis. They regard themselves as Theravada bhikkhunis and so do the Sri Lankan bhikkhus who sponsored their ordinations. Since 1998 Sri Lankan women can also be ordained as bhikkhunis in Sri Lanka itself. All of these bhikkhunis follow the Theravda Pali Vinaya.

None follow the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya and none are Mahayana Buddhists. One need only visit their temples to see that the Buddhism practised and taught there is the same Buddhism practised and taught in Sri Lankan bhikkhu temples.

Let us rejoice on the occasion of this 2600th Sambuddhathwa Jayanti that Sri Lanka once again has a complete fourfold Sangha, as originally established by the Buddha. Let us express our gratitude to the many bhikkhus, bhikkhunis, and laymen and women who have made this possible for the benefit of us all.