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Haley Barker
(RNS) —Tuesday (21 June), Bhutan's senior Buddhist authority Je Khenpo put a group of 144 women in a small Himalayan. Bhikshunis, or a female monk in the country's Lamtanka monastery.
This ritual is "historically important to all Buddhist women and brings Tibetan Buddhism to the 21st century," said German Tibetan writer Bhikshuni Jampa Tsedroen. "For these nuns, it is a great opportunity to show their ability to contribute to Buddhism."
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Many of the new bhikshunis are Bhutanese, but some have come to Bhutan from other Asian countries. They are all ordained to Tibetan pedigree.
A Facebook post on the Bhutanese Central Monk's page posted the news. This was confirmed by Damcho Diana Finnegan, an ordained Buddhist nun and co-founder of the Dharmadatta nun community in Virginia. When asked about the ceremony, Finnegan called it "a major step towards ending the institutionalized inequality between men and women in Tibetan Buddhism." The
ceremony spans decades for a complete ordination for women of Tibetan pedigree facing fierce resistance from top-level monks, scholars and political leaders across Asia. It is the culmination of exercise. In recent years, the nun movement has sought to restore the practice of nuning women around the world, which was established by the Buddha himself, but has gained momentum as it has slowly disappeared from much of the Buddhist world.
After the death of the Buddha, female monks are generally a key element of a four-pillar ideal Buddhist community consisting of ordinary men, ordinary women, male monks and women. Was considered one of the. Monk. But over time, war, famine and illness have killed Bikshnis throughout Southeast Asia and Tibet.
Women have continued their ascetic lives as nuns, but have been forbidden to take the next step towards a complete ordination. Officially, their status was constrained by the rules of the priesthood law, which required bhikshunis to be ordained by other bhikshunis that did not exist.
To break this bond, some women took other routes to the complete ordination. In 1996, a group of Sri Lankan nuns was ordained with the help of Mahayana Buddhist Korean Bikshnis. Since then, hundreds of Bikshni have been ordained in Sri Lanka, and Zedroen calls it the "Council", essentially reviving the population.
However, in Bhutan, a handful of monks took the ordination in their hands and provided the ordination to the nuns without the presence of bhikshunis. Normally, this ceremony is only allowed for a few women and never on the scale seen on Tuesday. According to Finnegan, this large ordination guarantees the Sanga, or Bikshni community, which will survive into the future.
"All other Buddhist pedigrees had female monks who were ordained as monks. This is the first time a Tibetan Buddhist woman has been given that opportunity," she said. Said.
The current Pope Dalai Lama has long encouraged the ordination vows of the nuns. A prominent Theravada Buddhist monk, Bhikkhu Bodhi, who is practicing in India and Southeast Asia, is calling on an army of his supporters to support the nun movement. Influential Tibetan scholar priest Geshe Lalampa Biksh Rinchen Ngdolp, after many years of study, during a lecture at the first international conference on the role of Buddhist women in Sanga in 2007. He insisted on the Buddhist priesthood.
In addition, the general public throughout Asia is calling attention to the superior behavior of nuns compared to male religious leaders. Scandals such as fraud in Wat Phratan Makaya, Thailand and increased sexual assault charges against llamas in Tibet have shaken the Buddhist community around the world.
Thai journalist Sanitsuda Ekachai cautioned against this dichotomy in her book "Keeping the Faith: Thai Buddhism at the Crossroads" and told the general public what the future of priesthood and what female monks would do. I urged them to think about how they could improve.
Despite the strong voice and clear track record behind the movement, gender equality in the Tibetan monk order has not yet begun on the large scale that took place in Bhutan today. ..
"This historic ordination could put more pressure on other Buddhist communities in different countries to make the full ordination available to Tibetan Buddhist nuns. "There is," said Susannum Logik, associate professor at Mount Horiot University.
For some Buddhists, the fact that the ordination began at the summer solstice is an auspicious sign, similar to the appearance of the "rainbow surrounding the sun" in Bhutan, according to Facebook's announcement. ..