ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 31, 2024
Buddhist Performing Arts: Thematizing Gender and Developing a New Pedagogy in Modern Thai Buddhism
Martin Seeger
University of Leeds
Apirak Chaipanha
Burapha University
Naris Charaschanyawong
Independent Scholar
This article sets out to describe and reflect on the development, execution, and impact of two devised theatre performances that the authors of this paper designed as an innovative and effective way of engaging audiences with Buddhist teachings and gender issues in Thai Buddhism. Based on long-term research into the biographies, soteriological practice and teaching, and veneration of historical Thai female Buddhist practitioners, each of these two plays was staged publicly twice in or near Bangkok in 2018 and 2019 respectively. We will discuss how the educational potential of performing arts can be harnessed to change understandings of audiences and performers or, at least, prompt their curiosity in the study of Buddhism, both as a doctrinal system and in terms of aspects of current religious practices, understandings, and perceptions. Read article
ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 30, 2023
The Function and Contemporary Role of sikkhāpaccakkhāna (Abandoning the Training Rules) in the Pāli Canon
Chandima Gangodawila
Ronin Institute
This article examines the intricacies of abandoning the monastic training rules (sikkhāpaccakkhāna) in key Pāli sūtta and Vinaya texts to better understand how these textual sources, in addition to early modern Sri Lankan monastics as well as the contemporary saṅgha, have understood the abandonment of the training rules not as a spiritual failure, but rather as a set of pragmatic monastic principles that emphasize the retention of monkhood and the continuity of the Buddhasāsana. To demonstrate this, I propose an innovative approach to examining the first pārājika (concerning sexual intercourse) in relation to the sikkhāpaccakkhāna by considering Pāli sūttas, Vinaya texts, and the example of noncelibate seventeenth-century Laṅkān gaņinnānse (non-bhikkhu monks). I conclude by arguing that the contemporary Sri Lankan saṅgha can use sikkhāpaccakkhāna to avoid falling into the first pārājika, which provides a basis for reordination and thus a more human-centered framework for supporting the stability and duration of the Buddhasāsana.
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 30, 2023
New Perspectives in Modern Korean Buddhism: Institution, Gender, and Secular Society. Edited by Hwansoo Ilmee Kim and Jin Y. Park. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 2022, ix + 334 pages, ISBN 978-1-4384-9131-8, $99.00 (hardback), 978-1-4384-9132-5, $36.95 (paperback).
Reviewed by Kevin Cawley
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 28, 2021
Superiority Conceit in Buddhist Traditions: A Historical Perspective. By Bhikkhu Anālayo. Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2021, 184 pages. ISBN 978-1-61429-719-2 (hard-back), $24.95/978-1-61429-733-8 (e-book), $12.99.
Reviewed by Maria Heim
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 28, 2021
If You Meet the Buddha on the Road: Buddhism, Politics, and Violence. By Michael Jerryson. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018, 240 pp., ISBN 978-0-19-068356-6 (hardback), $115.00.
Reviewed by Manuel Litalien
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 27, 2020
Women in British Buddhism: Commitment, Connection, Community. By Caroline Starkey. London: Routledge, 2020, x + 212 pp., ISBN 978-1-138-08746-0 (Hardcover), $155.00.
Reviewed by Sarah-Jane Page
Second of two reviews of the Review Section: Lives of Ordained Women.
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 27, 2020
Gender and the Path to Awakening: Hidden Histories of Nuns in Modern Thai Buddhism. By Martin Seeger. Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2018, xvii + 341 pp., ISBN 978-616-215-147-7 (Paperback), $40.00.
Reviewed by Elizabeth Angowski
First of two reviews of the Review Section: Lives of Ordained Women.
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 27, 2020
Tilling the Fields of Merit: The Institutionalization of Feminine
Enlightenment in Tibet’s First Khenmo Program
Jue Liang and Andrew S. Taylor
University of Virginia
This article documents the history and social effects of the khenmo (mkhan mo) program at Larung Gar (Bla rung sgar), the first institution in Tibet to systematically grant nuns advanced Buddhist degrees. We argue that Jigme Phuntsok (’Jigs med phun tshogs, 1933-2004), Larung’s founder, started the program in hopes of challenging the public perception of women as incapable of advanced learning. Legitimating nuns as a field of merit for donors represented an important step in his larger project of changing the status of nuns and women in Tibetan society more generally. We begin with a brief history of Larung, demonstrating how Jigme Phuntsok’s singular vision of gender equality in Buddhist education and practice led to the arrival of thousands of nuns to his small encampment. We proceed to give an overview of the khenmo program, including its curriculum and degree requirements. We conclude with an examination of the social effects of the khenmo movement, exploring how the presence of educated nuns is changing both women’s self-understandings of their own practice and lay attitudes toward women’s religious capacities. Read article
ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 25, 2018
The Case for Reviving the Bhikkhunī Order by Single Ordination
Bhikkhu Anālayo
Numata Center for Buddhist Studies, University of Hamburg
In this article I examine the legal validity of reviving the Theravāda Order of bhikkhunīs by an act of single ordination, granted by bhikkhus on their own. My presentation responds to criticism voiced by Bhikkhu Ṭhānissaro of this possibility of restoring the missing one out of the four assemblies in the Theravāda tradition.Read article
ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 25, 2018
Social Inequalities and the Promotion of Women in Buddhism in Thailand
Manuel Litalien
Nipissing University
Studies have shown that religion can support or hinder social development (Haynes 2007; Tomalin 2013). This article makes a case in favor of how, in Thailand, the demands for greater justice and gender equality have engaged groups of women to seek higher Buddhist ordination as a means to better promote human and social development. Equal religious philanthropic contribution between men and women is presented as a component to democratic participation in the struggling political Kingdom of Thailand. The study finds that the women’s Buddhist movement in Thailand capitalizes on the limited welfare resources offered by the government, along with the current institutionalized politics of religious diversity, as defined in the Thai constitution. To present the inequalities and challenges faced by Thai Buddhist women, the function of the Thai Buddhist monastic community (saṅgha) will be portrayed as an organization promoting an “inequality regime.” The governing structural configuration of the saṅgha will be presented as reinforcing social roles divided by oppressive gender conceptions. The Buddhist institution’s inequality regime will be depicted in light of its refusal to ordain bhikkhunīs. The exclusion of Thai Buddhist nuns is situated in eight different lenses: namely, biological, ritual, scriptural, cultural, political, institutional, historical, and legal contexts. Finally, the vital sustainable core to these women is introduced as both a global and a local network of Buddhist women. This is better known as a glocalization strategy for the promotion of gender equality in Theravāda Buddhism.
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 25, 2018
The Ruination of a Dead Nun’s Stupa: Does This Really Evince the Suppression of Nuns?
Ven. Pandita (Burma)
University of Kelaniya
It is firstly Horner, and later Schopen, who have expressed negative opinions on a story in the Vinaya. I argue, however, that the aforesaid story, at least its Pāli version, is not so bad as it sounds if we interpret it properly.
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 24, 2017
Tradition, Power, and Community among Buddhist Nuns in Sri Lanka
Nirmala S. Salgado
Augustana College
This article focuses on the relationship between two aspects of monastic comportment among Buddhist nuns in Sri Lanka. How nuns present themselves is embedded both in a discourse of power and in a discourse of morality. Their comportment is the subject of public debate insofar as it relates to disputes about tradition and the recognition of the higher ordination of Theravāda nuns. Yet that comportment also relates to the cultivation of moral dispositions (sῑla), such as restraint and discipline, which are intrinsic to tradition and the daily work of nuns in the communal life of a nunnery. The article argues that nuns live a communal form of life in which their cultivation of moral dispositions relates to questions about power and tradition that they cannot ignore, even though they may seek to do so.
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 24, 2017
Quitting the Dhamma: The Ways of Forsaking the Order According to the Early Vinaya
Ven. Pandita (Burma)
University of Kelaniya
In this paper, I argue that in the early Vinaya, contrary to the commentarial tradition: (1) two ways of forsaking the Order, equally valid, co-exist; and (2) nuns who have left the Order may be re-ordained without guilt.
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 23, 2016
Buddhist Nuns’ Ordination in the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya Tradition: Two Possible Approaches
Bhikṣuṇī Jampa Tsedroen
Academy of World Religions and Numata Center for Buddhist Studies, University of Hamburg
This article examines the possibilities of reviving the Mūlasarvāstivāda lineage of fully ordained nuns (bhikṣuṇī). It explores two ways to generate a “flawless and perfect” Mūlasarvāstivāda bhikṣuṇī vow, either by Mūlasarvāstivāda monks alone or by Mūlasarvāstivāda monks with Dharmaguptaka nuns (“ecumenical” ordination). The first approach is based on a Vinaya passage which traditionally is taken as the Word of the Buddha, but which, from a historical-critical point of view, is dubious. The second approach is not explicitly represented in the Vinaya but involves “re-reading” or “re-thinking” it with a critical-constructive attitude (“theological” approach). Each approach is based on my latest findings from studying the Tibetan translation of the Bhikṣuṇyupasaṃpadājñāpti and related commentaries.
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 23, 2016
Family Matters in Indian Buddhist Monasticisms. By Shayne Clarke. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2014, xiii+275 pages, ISBN 978-0-8248-3647-4 (cloth), $52.
Reviewed by Cuilan Liu
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 23, 2016
The Going Forth of Mahāpajāpatī Gotamī in T 60
Bhikkhu Anālayo
University of Hamburg
In what follows I translate a discourse preserved as an individual translation in the Taishō edition under entry number 60, which reports the going forth of Mahāpajāpatī Gotamī. Following that is a discussion concerning the different attitudes toward women that emerge from this discourse and a comparison to the current setting in Thailand.
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 22, 2015
The Cullavagga on Bhikkhunī Ordination
Bhikkhu Anālayo
University of Hamburg
With this paper I examine the narrative that in the Cullavagga of the Theravāda Vinaya forms the background to the different rules on bhikkhunī ordination, alternating between translations of the respective portions from the original Pāli and discussions of their implications. An appendix to the paper briefly discusses the term paṇḍaka.
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 22, 2015
The Princess Nun: Bunchi, Buddhist Reform, and Gender in Early Edo Japan. By Gina Cogan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014, xvi+309 pages, ISBN 978-0674491977 (hardback), $49.95.
Reviewed by Febe D. Pamonag
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 21, 2014
Bhikkhunī Academy at Manelwatta Temple: A Case of Cross-Tradition Exchange
Cheng Wei-yi
Hsuan Chuang University
This article is the result of an investigation continued from an earlier article on an exchange between Buddhists in Taiwan and Sri Lanka (“A Cross-Tradition Exchange Between Taiwan and Sri Lanka,” Journal of Buddhist Ethics, vol. 18, 2011). In that article, I investigated the exchange between a Mahāyāna Taiwanese nunnery and a Theravāda Sri Lankan missionary monk. After the initial exchange, described in the 2011 article, a more permanent institute for the education of Sri Lankan Buddhist nuns has been established. This article describes the cross-tradition exchange behind the founding of the educational institute and its implication for exchanges across different Buddhist traditions in Asia.
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 21, 2014
Rethinking the Precept of Not Taking Money in Contemporary Taiwanese and Mainland Chinese Buddhist Nunneries
Tzu-Lung Chiu
University of Ghent
According to monastic disciplinary texts, Buddhist monastic members are prohibited from accepting “gold and silver,” and arguably, by extension, any type of money. This rule has given rise to much debate, in the past as well as in the present, particularly between Mahāyāna and Theravāda Buddhist communities. The article explores the results of my multiple-case qualitative study of eleven monastic institutions in Taiwan and Mainland China, and reveals a hitherto under-theorized conflict between Vinaya rules and the bodhisattva ideal, as well as a diversity of opinions on the applicability of the rule against money handling as it has been shaped by socio-cultural contexts, including nuns’ adaptation to the laity’s ethos.
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 20, 2013
The Revival of the Bhikkhunī Order and the Decline of the Sāsana
Bhikkhu Anālayo
Center for Buddhist Studies, University of Hamburg
Dharma Drum Buddhist College, Taiwan
In this article I study the revival of the bhikkhunī order in the Theravāda traditions and its supposed relation to a decline of the Buddha’s dispensation.
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 18, 2011
Mahāpajāpatī’s Going Forth in the Madhyama-āgama
Ven. Anālayo
Center for Buddhist Studies, University of Hamburg
Dharma Drum Buddhist College, Taiwan
The present article provides an annotated translation of the Madhyama-āgama account of the founding of the Buddhist order of nuns, followed by a discussion of some of its significant aspects, which open new perspectives on the way this event is presented in the canonical scriptures.
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 18, 2011
A Cross-Tradition Exchange Between Taiwan and Sri Lanka
Wei-Yi Cheng
Hsuan Chuang University
This paper uses as an example an alms-offering ceremony that took place on October 5, 2010 to illustrate cross-tradition exchanges between Asian Buddhists of different geographic locations. This ceremony had been intended to give alms to all of the bhikkhunīs in Sri Lanka and was thus itself noteworthy. However, the attention of this paper is on the two main players behind this ceremony. One is a Sri Lankan monk who has been a long term Theravāda missionary in Mahāyāna Taiwan, and the other is a Taiwanese nunnery which has not limited its works to Taiwan. This paper wishes to shed light on cross-tradition exchanges among Asian Buddhists.
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 15, 2008
Eight Revered Conditions: Ideological Complicity, Contemporary Reflections and Practical Realities
Nirmala S. Salgado
Augustana College
Scholarly debates focusing on the “Eight Revered Conditions,” a list of conditions suggestive of the dependence of nuns on monks in early Buddhism, have long been the focus of scholarly debates. These debates, centering on the legitimation of a patriarchal Buddhism, have reached an impasse. Here I argue that this impasse logically flows from questionable reconstructions of the imperative and authoritative nature of these eight conditions in early Buddhism, perceived as Buddhavacana, or the word of the Buddha. In contemporary Sri Lanka, practitioners’ reflections on the eight conditions suggest that they function less as imperative injunctions than as markers defining social and moral boundaries, in terms of which monastics conceptualize their world. I demonstrate that scholarly presuppositions of the hierarchical nature of the controversial conditions are contested by perspectives of current praxis, and may also possibly be questioned, at least theoretically, by the process of reconstructing earlier Buddhist realities.
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