BANNER OF THE ARAHANTS

Chapter VII - 

BHIKKHUNIS AND BUDDHIST NUNS NOW 3

Vaddhamātā, the name means Vaddha’s mother - parents often being nicknamed after their children, was born in a good family in the town of Bharukaccha (=Bharoch). When married, she bore one son who was known as Vaddha. After hearing a Bhikkhu teach Dhamma she handed her child over to relatives and became a Bhikkhunī. Afterwards she won Arahantship and in due course her son became a Bhikkhu, learned and eloquent in preaching. One day negligently, he went alone and with only his upper and wider robes to see his mother.[13] She rebuked him for both these things so that he returned to his own quarters and sat in meditation there, attaining Arahantship.

This incident is interesting in view of the prohibition on Bhikkhunīs instructing Bhikkhus (see above, Eight important Points, 8), but perhaps this prohibition only covers formal sermon-type instruction and not more informal conversation of this sort:

Vaddha’s mother:

            Do not, Vaddha, ever get entangled

            in jungle lusts[14] regarding the world!

            My son, do not again and again

            become a sharer of dukkha!

 

            Happy indeed are the Wise Ones, Vaddha,

            having no craving, cut off doubt,

            become quite cool, taming attained,

            unpolluted now they live.

 

            The way that Seers have practised

            for attaining insight,

            for putting an end to dukkha,

            that, Vaddha, you should develop.

Yaddha:

            You have spoken confidently to me

            concerning this matter, mother.

            I think, indeed, my mother,

            no jungle-lust in you is found.

Vaddha’s mother: 

            Whatever conditioned elements are,

            whether middling, low or high[15]

            for them not a speck, even an atom,

            of jungle-lust in me is found.

 

            My pollutions, all destroyed

            by meditating diligently,

            possessed of triple knowledge

            done is the Buddha’s Sāsana.

Vaddha:

            Splendid is the goad indeed,

            these verses on the Highest Goal,

            which out of her compassion

            my mother has applied to me.

 

            Having heard her words,

            the instructions of my mother,

            I was aroused in Dhamma

            to reach security from bonds.

            I resolved to exert myself,

            unrelaxing, day and night;

            incited by my mother

            I touched the Peace Supreme.

                                                            (204-212)

As a result of pride in former lives, Punnikā was born in the household of Anāthapindika, to a domestic slave. After hearing a discourse by the Buddha called the (Lesser) Lion’s Roar (Middle Length Collection, Discourse 11), she became a Stream-winner. After the incident described below, Anāthapindika freed her so that she could gain Acceptance as a Bhikkhunī. In no long time she attained Arahantship and one day reflecting on this attainment, uttered these verses of exultation:

Punnikā:

            I am a water-carrier who,

            even in the cold, goes down into the water

            fearful of ladies’ blows,

            harassed by fear of blame.

            What is it, brahmin, that you fear

            always going down into the water?

            Why with shivering limbs

            do you suffer bitter cold?

Brahmin:

            Already you know, Miss Punnikā,

            the answer to what you ask:

            Making wholesome kamma

            while annulling evil kamma,

            Whoever, whether young or old,

            evil kamma makes,

            even he from evil kamma’s free

            by baptism in the water.

Punnikā:

            Who has told you this,

            O ignorant of the ignorant -

            that truly he’s from evil kamma free

            by baptism in the water?

            If this is so all turtles, frogs,

            serpents, fish and crocodiles,

            all that live in the water,

            all will go to heaven!

            Butchers of sheep and swine,

            fishermen and trappers,

            robbers and murderers too,

            all who make evil kamma,

            even they by water-baptism

            will be free from evil kamma!

            And if these streams could bear away

            the evil formerly done by you,

            then your merits they’d bear away

            leaving you stripped and bare!

            That of which you’re frightened,

            and so go into the waters,

            that thing, brahmin, do not do;

            let not the cold pierce your skin.

Brahmin:

            From the practice of the wrong path

            to the Noble Path you’ve led me!

            This cloth for water-baptism

            now I give to you.

Punnikā: 

            Let the cloth be yours,

            no desire for cloth have I.

            If you are afraid of dukkha,

            if dukkha is not dear to you,

            then make no evil kamma

            either openly or in secret.

            But if you make, or you will make,

            all kinds of evil kamma

            then you’ll not be free of dukkha,

            even by flying or running off.

            If you are afraid of dukkha,

            if dukkha, is not dear to you,

            go to the Buddha who is ‘Thus’[16]

            as refuge, to Dhamma and Sangha too,

            undertake the training-rules,

            for your benefit that will be.

Brahmin:

            I go to the Buddha who is ‘Thus’*

            as refuge, to Dhamma and Sangha too;

            I undertake the training-rules;

            for my benefit that will be,

            Formerly ‘Brahma’s kin’,

            today a brahmana true,[17]

            possessed of triple knowledge,

            learned and washed pure.

                                    (236-251)

The Brahmin became a Bhikkhu and shortly afterwards an Arahant when he repeated joyously these verses.

Sumangalamātā (Sumangala’s mother) is the last of the Bhikkhunīs whose stories and verses are given here. She was born in poor family and in due course, married to a rush-plaiter. Her first child was called Sumangala who grew up, became a Bhikkhu and attained Arahantship, while she became a Bhikkhunī. One day reflecting on her sufferings as a laywoman, insight quickened and she attained Arahantship, afterwards exclaiming:

            Well freed am I, well freed indeed,

            thoroughly free from my pestle,

            from my shameless man, the sunshade maker,

            from my poverty and cooking pots.

            I live with lust and aversion completely cut off

            and having gone to the foot of a tree

            meditate on this happiness - ‘Ah! happiness indeed!’

                                                            (23-24 - Numbers following verses refer to

                                                                        numbers in the Verses of Elder Nuns)

We do know that the good name of the Bhikkhunīs lasted far beyond the Buddha-time, supported by the „embankment“ that he had constructed. There were many Arahants among the Bhikkhunīs and some of their discourses survive in the Basket of Suttas. Their inspired poems spoken often at the moment of Enlightenment have also survived in Pali. How these were included in the Canon is not clear since there is no mention of Bhikkhunīs taking part in the First Council: only five hundred Arahants are mentioned and they are all said to be Bhikkhus. But perhaps some Bhikkhunīs did participate, for the records of both first and second Councils are lacking in details.

In the reign of the Emperor Asoka the Bhikkhunīs must have had a good name both in learning and in practice, for the Emperor’s daughter, Sanghamitta, joined their Sangha. Later, she embarked with many Bhikkhunīs for Sri Lanka bearing the southern branch of the Bodhi Tree under which the Buddha’s Enlightenment took place. This was reverently planted in the capital of Anuradhapura and still more than two thousand years later, is accorded great devotion.

The Bhikkhunī-Sangha continued to flourish in Sri Lanka for many centuries and the construction of nunneries by various Sinhalese Kings is recorded in the Great Chronicle (Mahāvamsa), even up to the reign of Kassapa, IV (898-914 CE). Bhikkhunīs were treated with respect as the king’s wards and in Sri Lanka their nunneries were in the Inner (Royal) City. This fact may have led to their disappearance during the conquest of the island by the Cholas, from south India in the tenth century. The Bhikkhu-Sangha could survive as it was scattered over the whole land but the Bhikkhunīs, concentrated in a few cities and towns, would have been vulnerable to destruction. When peace later returned to Sri Lanka the kings of those times were either not interested in restoring the Bhikkhunī-Sangha, or more likely, were unable to do so for lack of pure Bhikkhunīs. There is even less record of the history of the Bhikkhunīs in India and we do not know now whether their Sangha perished before its extinction in Sri Lanka, or continued right up to the final end of the Buddha’s teachings there.

However, long before the lineage of the Bhikkhunīs died out in Sri Lanka, their Sangha was established in China, as recorded in the Chinese work, „Lives of Bhikkhunīs“:

„In the sixth year of Yuan Chia (429 CE) the foreign ship owner Nandi arrived from the Lion Country (Sri Lanka) bringing with him some Bhikkhunīs.[18] They went to the Sung capital (Nanking) and lived in the Ching-fu Convent. After a time they asked the (partly-ordained) nun Song-kuo[19] whether any foreign Bhikkhunīs had ever come to China. She told them that they were the first that had ever come. „Then how did previous nuns manage to have Bhikkhunīs as well as Bhikkhus to conduct their ordination (acceptance)?“ asked the Bhikkhunīs from Ceylon. „We were ordained by a senior Bhikkhu,“ said Seng-kuo. „Any woman whose nature prompted her to take the vows was accepted. The earnest desire of the candidates gave rise to this expedient, which is in some measure justified by the case of (the Buddha’s aunt) Pajāpati, who was admitted to the Sangha, on the strength of her Eight Declarations Of Reverence, and afterwards she in turn acted as Sīla-upadhya (preceptress in the rules) to five hundred ladies of the Sakya clan.“

Such was Seng-kuo’s reply. But in her heart of hearts she was not very happy about the situation and consulted the Master of the Three Baskets Gunavarman, who supported her contention. She also asked him if it was possible for nuns who had been ordained already (only by a Bhikkhu-Sangha) to be re-ordained (with a Bhikkhunī-Sangha). „Morality, Meditation and Wisdom“, he said „are all progressive states. If an ordination is repeated, so much the better“.

In the tenth year (433 CE), the ship-owner Nandi came again to China bringing the Sinhalese Bhikkhunī Tessara and ten other Bhikkhunīs from Ceylon. The Bhikkhunīs who had arrived previously could now speak Chinese. They asked the Indian Bhikkhu Sanghavarman to re-ordain with their assistance three hundred Chinese nuns … at the Southern Forest Monastery (at Nanking), receiving them in batches. (Takakusu, Lives of Bhikkhunīs, 939).

This brings us to the question of whether there are Bhikkhunīs in the present day. If you ask a Chinese Buddhist from Taiwan, Hong Kong, or a Korean from the South, or a Vietnamese, they would reply, „Yes, there are Bhikkhunīs“. These ladies are certainly nuns for they keep the Holy Life. They have their own nunneries as the Bhikkhunīs of ancient times had their upassaya, the special name for their vihāras. Their Dhamma-study of course, as they come through the Chinese tradition, is largely of Mahayana texts, as their dress is in Chinese-style robes.

But they are not judged to be Bhikkhunīs by this or that style of robes but according to the lineage of their Acceptance. It seems these days that Bhikkhunīs, wherever they are ordained, take Acceptance only from the Bhikkhu-Sangha. They do not have the dual Acceptance laid down in the Vinaya, which means that they can be counted, at best as ’once-accepted-Bhikkhunīs’. Then the question arises whether such partial Bhikkhunīs can rightly be called ‘Bhikkhuni’ for they are not passing on their lineage through ordination at all. This ‘bhikkuni-sangha’ is being constantly re-created by the Bhikkhu-Sangha. In fact their position is not much different from the nuns of Theravada Buddhist countries who are also given their precepts by senior Bhikkhus, though not as an act of the Sangha.

There have been a few westerners ordained as ‘bhikkhunis’ in this way but in the light of strict Vinaya practice they could well doubt their true status. Then someone might ask, ‘well, will it ever be possible for women to become Bhikkhunīs in Theravada lands?’ It is difficult to see how this could be done. A Sangha of Bhikkhus led by responsible Theras would have to recognise that the Bhikkhunīs are perhaps not quite extinct and then re-ordain them in Theravada tradition. Many problems would arise since there have been no Bhikkhunīs for such a long time and ways of doing things have been forgotten. More serious than this, however, would be the danger of causing a schism in the Sangha. In fact the Bhikkhunī-Sangha could only be restored properly by majority approval of the Theras in Theravada countries, a thing difficult to accomplish. In the future, as conditions change, particularly with greater knowledge in Theravada countries of the Sangha in northern Buddhist lands, a different attitude could be taken to this question.

Meanwhile, though there are no Bhikkhunīs in Theravada, there are ladies who live the Holy Life as nuns. This has been the case since the Bhikkhunī-Sangha disappeared and since there was no Sangha for them to join they have lived with the Eight or Ten precepts as their rule. They shave their heads and wear robes of differing colours according to their country of ordination - white in Thailand[20], yellow in Sri Lanka and pinkish-brown in Burma. Generally they live in special sections of vihāras though in some places they have established their own nunneries. Such independence usually indicates the presence among them of learned nuns, or those highly developed in meditation.

The Pali name for these nuns is ‘upāsikā’. This word means literally ‘(a woman) who sits down near to (a Teacher)’ but as this is a word used also for laywomen devotees living the household life, the word ‘nun’ will be used here. And this is how many nuns come to be ordained, having been attracted to the Dhamma taught by a famous Bhikkhu-teacher. In Thailand they are called Mae chee, literally ‘mothers (an honorific for ‘women’) who are ordained’. In Burma, they are known as Thila-shin, literally ‘possessors of the precepts’ while in Sri Lanka they are called Silmatavaru (lit. ‘mothers (honorific) observing the precepts)’.

Their status in Buddhist countries now does not usually approach the esteem in which Bhikkhus are held by most people. In the popular way of thinking Bhikkhus have 227 precepts but nuns only eight. Therefore Bhikkhus are more virtuous! Sometimes it is not considered that a diligent nun can excel a lax Bhikkhu in both learning and practice. And no one has thought that as a Bhikkhuni had 311 precepts, she was therefore much more virtuous than a Bhikkhu! Popular estimation of the worth of nuns is based on their usual lack of Buddhist education in the past. In some places the nuns were pious ladies who had finished with family life and wished to devote the rest of their existence to making merits. This meant that they cooked food and offered it to the Bhikkhus there, swept the temple compound and made various decorations for the shrine. They were not expected to study or to be learned and their practice would be limited generally to keeping their eight or ten precepts pure and some devotional chanting twice a day. And where younger women shaved their heads this was not always for the highest reason - poverty or the desire for a quiet uncomplicated life were (and are) sometimes causes. (But such reasons apply to some Bhikkhus too).

This brings us to consider how a nun is supported. Bhikkhus usually do not have too many difficulties here as robes are offered, food comes from the alms round or from invitation, dwellings are given and medicines provided, all by generous lay-supporters. But nuns are rarely supported in this way and while a few may have laypeople that guarantee support, most of them must rely upon small alms from their families or upon their own savings. It is true that in some country areas (in Thailand) nuns do go upon alms round with bowls just as Bhikkhus do, but this is the exception rather than the rule. The writer remembers seeing a small group of nuns who used to do this in Bangkok and how their mindfulness contrasted with some rather distracted looking Bhikkhus! Materially, therefore, the life of a nun can be more difficult than that of a Bhikkhu.

This is not always a disadvantage, especially if a nun has just enough. She will not suffer at any rate as some Bhikkhus do, from excess of support and too much attention from wealthy laypeople. While a Bhikkhu may be spoiled by this, a nun need not be in the limelight and so not involved with the dangers to the Holy Life which this entails. Another of these ‘negative’ advantages is that nuns have fewer possibilities for their livelihood if they disrobe, than Bhikkhus. This fact and perhaps the generally stronger faith-element in women makes disrobing among them much less frequent than it is with Bhikkhus.

The popular reason why nuns get less support is based on the misapprehension of numbers of precepts mentioned above. The fruit or result of kamma made by giving to a Bhikkhu is thought to be greater than can be expected from gifts to a nun. This could be quite wrong, for instance if the Bhikkhu is not careful with his Vinaya while she is pure-hearted, even a Stream-winner or more.

These attitudes are beginning to change as a result of more attention paid to nuns and their education. In some places they have their own institutions and organisations, which will be described below.

Now we should say something about the life of nuns in Thailand, the country most familiar to the writer.[21] A nun there can either engage in studies in a town vihāra, or meditate with a, Teacher in the forest.

It is not necessary to describe her daily life in detail, as it will to some extent resemble that of Bhikkhus but with the addition of such work as food preparation and gardening. Recently another kind of livelihood has opened for nuns: teaching and other social service. More will be said about this below.

Nuns, wherever they stay, in town or country, live usually in special compounds within the vihāra grounds. In the towns these have fences and gates surrounding the nuns’ kutis, sālā and gardens, but in the country a line of trees and bushes separates these quarters from the rest. In some vihāra a certain amount is charged for food each month and nuns must be able to find this in order to stay there. Other vihāras give them the second choice of the Bhikkhus’ pindapāta food after the latter have taken what they want. As the alms round usually produces more than enough the nuns may be quite well provided for. And in some places nuns’ going on almsround is also common. However, when all food requirements are taken care of there still are other expenses. Some vihāras provide the area for the nuns while the kutis that they live in have been erected by generous laywomen. In other vihāras, nuns must pay for the construction of their own kutis. As my informant says after commenting on nuns and how they must be self-supporting: „However, there are still stationery, expenses, books, soap, washing powder etc. to buy …“ Elsewhere she remarks that nuns have a little help from their families - “It is not a life of comfort for nuns“.

This brings us to consider a western woman becoming a nun. There are now only a very few by comparison with the number of western men who join the Bhikkhu-Sangha. What are the reasons for this? One factor, financial support, has been mentioned already. “However as far as western women are concerned they have generally cut off from their families, or have been cut off by their families, so they have no income on which to subsist. They have no way to live therefore, even if they become nuns. After all, one must eat, wash and so on“.        

Another difficulty is the differences between western women and easterners who become nuns. The former are „independent types, already well-travelled, often well-educated, worldly, etc.“ But many women who become nuns in Buddhist countries may have poor education and very little experience of the world as they will have led a much more sheltered life. It is difficult for people so different to relate to one another and the only way of doing this is through the common interest in Dhamma. Even here, the meeting-ground can be narrow enough because a western woman will have an enquiring attitude to Dhamma while many Asiatic Buddhists have a more traditional approach. Great patience and perseverance, as well as adaptability, are needed by a western woman to succeed as a nun.

And humility is very important too. „Another point about western women is that they are ‘women-libber’ types who are definitely not happy[22] in the East where women are subservient to men. For myself, I take the attitude that there is nothing in the world except nāma (mind, mental states) and rūpa (body, material qualities) and therefore if offence arises at having to pay respect first to a man, then it is only the ego that is offended or unhappy“. Without such an attitude no progress will be possible, whether as a Bhikkhu or a nun.