Women, Men and the Sangha

Overview

Recall questions on Mahapajapati Gotami, the eight garudhammas, the disputed and revived bhikkhuni lineage, options for women without full ordination, family life and changing roles, feminist approaches, and Salgado and Bartholomeusz.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   Who was Mahapajapati Gotami and why does she matter?

   Model answer

   The Buddha's maternal aunt, who raised him after his mother's death. Buddhist accounts describe her asking to be ordained, being refused, then walking with a group of women to petition again; Ananda interceded on their behalf and the Buddha agreed, so she is remembered as the first bhikkhuni and the founder of the women's order.

2. 2

   What are the eight garudhammas, and why are they controversial?

   Model answer

   Eight additional rules traditionally said to have been the condition of women's ordination, subordinating even senior nuns to monks in matters of seniority, instruction and discipline. They are contested: some Buddhists accept them as given by the Buddha, others argue on textual grounds that they were added later, and others keep them while treating them as reflecting the social conditions of the time.

3. 3

   Why is the bhikkhuni lineage disputed in Theravada?

   Model answer

   Full ordination traditionally requires a quorum of existing bhikkhunis, and the Theravada women's lineage is generally held to have died out, in Sri Lanka around the eleventh century, so the argument runs that it cannot be restarted. Others reply that the East Asian Dharmaguptaka lineage descends from the same origin and can validly supply the quorum. The question is genuinely unsettled within Theravada, not resolved.

4. 4

   What happened when bhikkhuni ordination was revived?

   Model answer

   Ordinations from the 1990s onwards, held in India and then in Sri Lanka with the participation of East Asian bhikkhunis, re-established a Theravada women's order in Sri Lanka, where it now numbers in the thousands. Senior monastic authorities in Thailand and Burma have not recognised these ordinations, and monks who have supported them have sometimes faced sanction.

5. 5

   What options exist for women who cannot receive full ordination?

   Model answer

   Recognised renunciant roles short of it: the ten-precept mothers in Sri Lanka, the mae chi in Thailand and the thilashin in Burma. They live celibate religious lives but without the legal standing, education, funding or lay support that ordained monks receive, and campaigners argue that this inequality of support matters as much as the formal question of ordination.

6. 6

   How does the question of full ordination for women stand in Tibetan and East Asian Buddhism?

   Model answer

   East Asian traditions have maintained a full bhikshuni order for centuries, and China, Taiwan, Korea and Vietnam have large communities of fully ordained nuns. The Tibetan traditions never received the bhikshuni lineage; the 14th Dalai Lama has expressed support for establishing it but has said that as a matter of Vinaya it requires a collective decision rather than a personal ruling.

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