III

The bhikkhunis in Sri Lanka propagated the faith and also seem to have worked as nurses. In the early fifth century C. E., Sri Lankan bhikkhunis went to China and established an order of nuns there. As the centuries progress, there is less and less mention of the bhikkhunis. By the third century C. E. there is almost no mention of bhikkhunis in India, although we know the order survived there in some form until at least the seventh century. There is similarly little mention of Sri Lankan bhikkhunis.

We do know that the bhikkhunis were declared wards of the king, and their monasteries were kept within the walled interiors of major cities, where they could (theoretically) be protected. The last certain reference to them is at the end of the tenth century. By then the order was not very numerous. The nuns were probably largely controlled by the edicts of the monarchy, and spent much of their time working as nurses and performing other social duties. It seems unlikely that they maintained much of their original spiritual autonomy and freedom to pursue enlightenment.

In the eleventh century, Sri Lanka was conquered by the Colas of southern India. The Colas destroyed all the monasteries and killed the monks and nuns. When the Colas were finally defeated in 1070, the new government worked to restore Buddhism. They managed to get some monks from Burma to come and restore the order of bhikkhus, but there were no surviving orders of Theravada nuns. (Buddhism had pretty much disappeared in India by this time.) Since ten nuns were needed to ordain a new nun, ordination of bhikkhunis stopped. Since that time, there has been no fully ordained order of Theravada bhikkhunis.

Thus, for the last millennium, female Theravada Buddhists have had to content themselves with lay life. The primary religious practice available to them has been support of the bhikkhus. While lay women's support has certainly been useful for the continuance of institutional Buddhism, it is questionable whether this support has been similarly useful in freeing women to attain nirvana.

Clearly, not all Sri Lankan women have been content to pursue nirvana only in the limited ways permitted by traditional lay life. By the end of the nineteenth century a group of women had appeared in Sri Lanka who had renounced the lay life and vowed to keep the ten precepts (the most basic of the monastic vows). These women are referred to as "Dasa-Sil-Maniyo," (DSM) or mothers of the ten precepts. As of 1984, there were approximately 2500 such women in Sri Lanka.

These women live very much as bhikkhunis used to. To most people's eyes they would appear to be bhikkhunis. They shave their heads and wear saffron colored robes, just as the bhikkhunis did. They spend much of their time teaching people about Buddhism, meditating, and participating in Buddhist ceremonies. However, both the DSM and the people of Sri Lanka insist that the DSM are not bhikkhunis, because they could not be properly ordained by ten bhikkhunis and ten bhikkhus, as was the custom.

Not being allowed proper ordination has made life difficult for the DSM. Traditionally, laity gain merit by donating to ordained monastics much more than they gain merit by donating to lay people. Therefore, the laity do not feel they have strong religious reason to help support the DSM. Consequently, the DSM are poverty stricken. According to one recent report,
 

"The majority have no proper dwellings, no means of subsistence, no provision for obtaining clothing and material for their robes, and . . . no opportunity is given them to improve their understanding of the religion."8

The government of Sri Lanka is making some attempt to rectify this unfortunate state of affairs. I do not know how much success this effort has had.

There is also a very small group of women in Sri Lanka who claim to be real bhikkhunis. They live in a cloister in the same complex as a a cloister of bhikkhus. The chief monk of the complex explains the claim that the women are bhikkhunis by pointing out that the traditional ordination was merely a custom, begun to encourage institutional stability. The Buddha only preached about the monastic life, and not about the details of ordination, so it is the monastic life which is important. What matters is that the monastic women properly understand the dharma and vow to follow the monastic rules. It is this that makes them bhikkhunis. This argument, however, is not accepted as valid by most Sri Lankans. This order of modern bhikkhunis does not seem likely to prosper. Thus, the two primary choices offered to female Buddhists in Sri Lanka are the life of a lay woman, supporting the bhikkhus, or the life of a marginalized quasi-monastic lay-nun.

And what of the West? How is Theravada Buddhism being incorporated into the lives of female Western followers? There are women in the United States who are living lives much like those of the DSM. These women dress like nuns and accept the ten precepts, but are not officially ordained. They often have difficulties similar to the DSM in Sri Lanka. The monastic women who live alone have difficulty supporting themselves and often have to resort to taking paid jobs just so they can eat and have a place to live. Doing paid work is against the traditional monastic rules, but these women have little other choice but to starve. They often have difficulty receiving religious instruction.

Other monastic women live in temples or meditation centers. These women are usually more financially secure and have regular religious instruction. However, they have to abase themselves before monks regularly. Western monastic women must let monks eat first, must sit in the back of the room during religious instruction, and must bow down before all monks, no matter what their level of religious attainment. Western women are not brought up to humble themselves before men, so these traditions tend to rankle enormously. There are a few women who are so involved with the meditation practice that they scarcely seem to notice the sexist social structure within which they practice. Other women are acutely aware of the sexism and try to ignore it so that they can reap the benefit of the actual practice. These women tend to try to use the humbleness demanded of them as a practice, but often they cannot help but mind the fact that this humbleness is not required of male practitioners. Although the Buddha taught that the same path leads women and men to enlightenment, women and men are given somewhat different paths.

A number of women have split off from the traditional monastic paths. These women, after receiving extensive training in Theravada Buddhist meditation, have become independent teachers of meditation and the dharma. They continue to follow the basic Buddhist precepts, but disregard all traditional limitations put on women. They bow down only to people whom they feel are more advanced than they are, themselves. They live where they choose and wear what they choose. Some of them are married. They teach both men and women. They often teach traditional Theravada meditation, but they sometimes combine Theravada meditation with the practices of other sects of Buddhism, or even practices of completely different religions. They often explain the dharma in their own language, eschewing the traditional explanations in favor of language less foreign to typical lay Americans. From the perspective of traditional Theravada practice, these women are renegades, scarcely similar enough to most Theravadans to be worthy of the identification.

Yet I suspect that these women, revolutionary as they are, probably point the way to the future of American Buddhist practice. Their way is one of dissolving boundaries. They dissolve the boundaries between various Buddhist sects, between traditional Buddhist language and secular American language, between lay and monastic life, and between traditional male and female roles. Somehow, all this dissolving of boundaries strikes me as being quite true to the Buddha's original teachings. Although Theravada Buddhism as traditionally practiced may not survive in the melange that will probably become American Buddhism, I have a feeling that the most important pieces of the Theravada tradition will be preserved. At least, I hope so. I have high hopes for the ultimate outcome of the peculiar admixture of American independence and Buddhist liberation.