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
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 30, 2023
Buddhism under Capitalism. Edited by Richard K. Payne and Fabio Rambelli. London: Bloomsbury, 2022, 280 pages, ISBN 978-1-350-22832-0 (hardback), $90.00, 978-1-350-22833-7 (paperback), $29.95, 978-1-350-22835-1 (e-book), $26.95.
Reviewed by Stephen Christopher
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Volume 29, 2022
A Buddhist Sensibility: Aesthetic Education at Tibet’s Mindröling Monastery. By Dominique Townsend. New York: Columbia University Press, 2021, 272 pages, ISBN 978-0-231-19487-7 (hardback), $120/978-0-231-19487-7 (paperback), $30/978-0-231-55105-2 (e-book), $29.99.
Reviewed by Nancy G. Lin
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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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Volume 28, 2021
Is Buddhism Individualistic? The Trouble with a Term
Donna Lynn Brown
University of Manitoba
Western scholars have been calling expressions of Buddhism “individualistic”—or denying the charge—since the 1800s. This article argues that “individualism” and related terms are sometimes problematic when applied to Buddhism. Because they are associated with Western modernity, they contribute to hegemonic discourses about Asia and Buddhism, skew representations, and reinforce stereotypes. Because their referents have been many and varied—including escaping caste and family, asociality, lay practice, and racism—their use leads to imprecision, confusion, and lack of comparability among analyses. And because they have moral connotations, they can blend observation with valuation and polemic. The article examines selected scholarly works that maintain or deny that Buddhism is individualistic, highlights problems associated with the term, and concludes that, in many cases, more precise and less value-laden descriptors should be found.
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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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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
Borrowing a Prophetic Voice, Actualizing the Prophetic Dimension: Rita Gross and Engaged Buddhism
Charles R. Strain
DePaul University
“I am taking permission, as a Buddhist,” Rita Gross boldly affirmed, “to use the prophetic voice.” More than any other engaged Buddhist scholar she made this voice an explicit part of her work. This article explores the prophetic voice/dimension within Buddhism by pushing further along the path that Gross has blazed. This involves, first, a return to the classical Hebrew prophets where, arguably, the religious dimension of the prophetic voice is most clearly presented. The second section deconstructs the misogynistic narratives that pervade the prophetic literature and their theology of retributive justice and then offers an argument about what is salvageable in the prophet’s raw speech. The third section examines how Gross applies a prophetic method to the deconstruction of the androcentric views and the patriarchal structures of all schools of Buddhism. The final, fourth, section comes to terms with the religious chords sounding in the prophets’ declamations. It does so by examining three aspects of the prophetic mode of being religious: allegiance to the God of Exodus, the practice of grief, and the practice of hope. In each case it suggests what challenges these modes of being religious present to engaged Buddhists.
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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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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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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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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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Volume 23, 2016
Narratives of Sorrow and Dignity: Japanese Women, Pregnancy Loss, and Modern Rituals of Grieving. By Bardwell L. Smith. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013, xvii + 410 pag-es, ISBN 978-0-19-994213-8 (cloth), $115.00.
Reviewed by Maureen L. Walsh
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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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Volume 22, 2015
Predictions of Women to Buddhahood in Middle-Period Literature
Bhikkhunī Dhammadinnā
Dharma Drum Institute of Liberal Arts
This article studies narratives related to the topic of women receiving a prediction or declaration (vyākaraṇa) for Buddhahood. The texts in question—in their received form—have their place in the Indian Buddhist traditions of the Middle Period. The first episode taken up is the story of Princess Munī who receives the prediction of becoming the present Buddha Śākyamuni; this is found in the so-called “Scripture on the Wise and the Fool.” The second episode is the story of Yaśomatī who receives the prediction that she will become the Buddha Ratnamati; this is found in the Avadānaśataka. When evaluating these comparatively rare instances of predictions received by women, two aspects come up for special consideration: (a) the textual significance of variations regarding the presence or absence of a change of sex, and (b) the epistemological and soteriological consequences for female audiences of women’s narratives constructed by the third-person perspective of male monastic text transmitters. The variations document that the transmitters did not always perceive the transformation of sex into a male as a categorical necessity. This transformation may not have been integral to these narratives of the bodhisattva path as articulated by the textual communities in which these texts originated and circulated.
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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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Volume 22, 2015
Buddha’s Past Life as a Princess in the Ekottarika-āgama
Ven. Anālayo
University of Hamburg and Dharma Drum Institute of Liberal Arts
In the present article I study the Ekottarika-āgama version of a past life of the Buddha as a princess. I begin with some general observations on the gender of the Buddha’s past lives as reported in jātaka narratives, followed by a translation of the relevant section from the Ekottarika-āgama. Then I compare this Ekottarika-āgama version to three other versions of this tale preserved in Pāli and Chinese, in particular in relation to the way they deal with the dictum that a woman cannot receive a prediction of future Buddhahood.
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Volume 22, 2015
Becoming Bhikkhunī? Mae Chis and the Global Women’s Ordination Movement
Lisa J. Battaglia
Samford University
Women’s full ordination as Buddhist nuns (Pāli: bhikkhunī, Sanskrit: bhikṣuṇī) has been a contested issue across Buddhist traditions and historical periods. Today, there is a global movement to secure women’s full participation in Buddhist monastic institutions. The present study examines this “bhikkhunī movement” in Thailand from the perspective of mae chis, Thai Buddhist female renunciates who abide by eight precepts yet do not have full ordination or ordination lineage. Employing an anthropological approach informed by postcolonial critical theory, my research reveals that mae chis, women who lead a Buddhist monastic lifestyle characterized by celibate practice and spiritual discipline, are not, on the whole, eager to relinquish their present status, fight against the existing socio-religious order, or pursue bhikkhunī ordination. A critical-empathic consideration of mae chis’ apparent illiberal subjectivities regarding gender hierarchy, female renunciant identity, and women’s liberation brings to light goals and strategies of the global bhikkhunī movement that do not necessarily resonate with the motivations, aims or cultural sensibilities of the Thai white-robed female renunciates.
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Volume 21, 2014
Bhikkhave and Bhikkhu as Gender-inclusive Terminology in Early Buddhist Texts
Alice Collett
York St John University
Bhikkhu Anālayo
University of Hamburg
In what follows we examine whether the use of the vocative bhikkhave or the nominative bhikkhu in Buddhist canonical texts imply that female monastics are being excluded from the audience. In the course of exploring this basic point, we also take up the vocative of proper names and the absence of the term arahantī in Pāli discourse literature.
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Volume 21, 2014
Blossoms of the Dharma: The Contribution of Western Nuns in Transforming Gender Bias in Tibetan Buddhism
Elizabeth Swanepoel
University of Pretoria
This article investigates the nature of gender imbalance in Tibetan Buddhism, particularly pertaining to the unavailability of bhikṣuṇī ordination, and the specific role Western nuns have played in contributing to transforming this imbalance. The article postulates that male privilege continues to dominate the institutional cultures of religious life in Tibetan Buddhism. However, fertile tensions have of late emerged between an underground tradition of highly accomplished female practitioners and the institutional preference for male practitioners. A revalorization process has been initiated in recent years by a number of Western female Buddhologists, some of whom are also fully ordained Tibetan Buddhist nuns. The article highlights the efforts of these accomplished nuns as well as a number of other prominent Western Tibetan Buddhist nuns.
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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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Volume 21, 2014
Female Monastic Healing and Midwifery: A View from the Vinaya Tradition
Amy Paris Langenberg
Eckerd College
Monastic lawyers who formulated the various classical Indian Buddhist Vinaya collections actively promoted the care of the sick within monastery walls and treated illness as a topic of great importance and relevance for monks and nuns, but also mandated that monastics should exercise caution with respect to practicing the healing arts and provide medical care to lay people only on a restricted basis. A closer examination of Vinaya sources shows that this ambivalence is gendered in interesting ways. The Vinaya lawyers regulated nuns’s involvement in the healing arts, and other types of service, with special care, suggesting that nuns were more likely than monks to take up community work, especially the work of healing. This study attempts to sort out the subtleties of Vinaya attitudes towards the public (as opposed to internal monastic) practice of medicine by nuns, suggesting that social constraints forced laywomen and nuns into relationships of collusion and mutual need and created a situation in which nuns were more likely than their male counterparts to engage in the healing arts. A female monastic ethic emphasizing reciprocity and mutual obligation made it doubly unlikely that Buddhist nuns would turn away from the medical needs of laywomen. Thus, a complex combination of factors accounts for the disproportionate focus on nuns in Vinaya prohibitions regarding the practice of the healing arts.
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Volume 21, 2014
Karma and Female Birth
Bhikkhu Anālayo
Numata Center for Buddhist Studies, University of Hamburg;
Dharma Drum Buddhist College, Taiwan
With the present paper I examine the notion that birth as a woman is the result of bad karma based on selected canonical and post-canonical Buddhist texts.
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Volume 20, 2013
Power, Wealth and Women in Indian Mahāyāna Buddhism: The Gaṇḍavyūha-sūtra. By Douglas Osto. New York: Routledge, 2008, xvi + 177 pages, ISBN978-0-415-50008-1 (paperback), $49.95.
Reviewed by Amy Langenberg
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Volume 21, 2014
“We Love Our Nuns”: Affective Dimensions of the Sri Lankan Bhikkhunī Revival
Susanne Mrozik
Mount Holyoke College
In this paper I examine lay responses to the Sri Lankan bhikkhunī revival of the late 1990s. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted between 2010 and 2012, I argue that laity have very different concerns than do the scholars, activists, government officials, and monastic authorities engaged in public debate over the scriptural validity of the controversial revival. The primary concern of laity is whether or not they can get their religious needs met at their local bhikkhunī temple, not whether or not the bhikkhunī revival conforms to Theravāda monastic regulations (Vinaya). Taking a rural farming village as a case study, I focus particular attention on the affective ties between laity and nuns, demonstrating that laity in this village express their support for the bhikkhunī revival in the language of love (Sinhala: ādayara, ādare). I analyze what laity mean by the word “love” in the context of lay-nun relationships, and what this can tell us about the larger dynamics of the Sri Lankan bhikkhunī revival.
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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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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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Volume 20, 2013
Bad Nun: Thullanandā in Pāli Canonical and Commentarial Sources
Reiko Ohnuma
Dartmouth College
In Pāli literature, Thullanandā is well known for being a “bad nun”—a nun whose persistent bad behavior is directly responsible for the promulgation of more rules of the Bhikkhunī Pātimokkha than any other individually named nun. Yet these very same sources also describe Thullanandā in significantly more positive terms—as a highly learned nun, an excellent preacher, and one who enjoys significant support among the laity. In this article, I analyze the Pāli traditions surrounding Thullanandā. I argue that her portrayal is quite complex in nature and often extends beyond herself as an individual to suggest larger implications for the nature of monastic life and monastic discipline. In addition, once Thullanandā is labeled as a “bad nun,” she becomes a useful symbolic resource for giving voice to various issues that concerned the early sangha. In both ways, Thullanandā reveals herself to be far more than just a “bad nun.”
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Volume 19, 2012
Did the Buddha Correct Himself?
Ven. Pandita (Burma)
University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka
In this paper, I look at two related issues in Vinaya, (1) the requirement of parental consent for all candidates wishing to join the Order and (2) the additional requirement of spousal consent for female candidates but no such requirement for male candidates, and I try to prove that both these regulations stemmed from the same principle.
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Volume 19, 2012
Right View, Red Rust, and White Bones: A Reexamination of Buddhist Teachings on Female Inferiority
Allison A. Goodwin
College of Liberal Arts
National Taiwan University
Hundreds of psychological and social studies show that negative expectations and concepts of self and others, and discrimination based on the idea that a particular group is inferior to another, adversely affect those who discriminate as well as those who are subject to discrimination. This article argues that both genders are harmed by negative Buddhist teachings about women and by discriminatory rules that limit their authority, rights, activities, and status within Buddhist institutions. Śākyamuni Buddha’s instructions in the Tripiṭaka for evaluating spiritual teachings indicate that because such views and practices have been proven to lead to harm, Buddhists should conclude that they are not the True Dharma and should abandon them.
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Volume 18, 2011
The 1918 Shikoku Pilgrimage of Takamure Itsue, an English translation of Musume Junreiki by Takamure Itsue. Translated by Susan Tennant. Bowen Island, BC: Bowen Publishing, 2010, 274 pages, ISBN 978-1-45-054075-9 (paper), $16.95.
Reviewed by Ronald S. Green
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Volume 18, 2011
A Garland of Feminist Reflections: Forty Years of Religious Exploration. By Rita M. Gross. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2009, viii + 340 pages, ISBN 978-0-520-25586-9 (paper), US $24.95; ISBN 978-0-520-25585-2 (cloth).
Reviewed by Ravenna Michalsen
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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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Volume 17, 2010
Attitudes Towards Nuns: A Case Study of the Nandakovāda in the Light of its Parallels
Ven. Anālayo
Center for Buddhist Studies, University of Hamburg
Dharma Drum Buddhist College, Taiwan
The present article provides an annotated translation of the Saṃyukta-āgama parallel to the Nandakovāda-sutta of the Majjhima-nikāya, followed by a discussion of differences between these two versions that are relevant for an assessment of the attitude towards nuns in early Buddhist discourse. An appendix to the article also provides a translation of the Tibetan parallel to the Nandakovāda-sutta.
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Volume 17, 2010
The Mūlasarvāstivāda Bhikṣuṇī Has the Horns of a Rabbit: Why the Master’s Tools Will Never Reconstruct the Master’s House
Bhikṣuṇī Lozang Trinlae
Buddhist Hong Shi College
At the First International Congress on the Buddhist Women’s Role in the Saṅgha held at the University of Hamburg in 2007, Venerable Samdhong Rinpoche offered the pronouncement, “Our efforts toward re-establishing the Mūlasarvāstivāda bhikṣuṇī ordination are not driven by Western influence or feminist concerns about the equality of the sexes—this issue cannot be determined by social or political considerations. The solution must be found within the context of the Vinaya codes” (Mohr and Tsedroen 256). Using the perspective and comparative analysis of contemporary moral theory, I argue to the contrary that restoration of Mūlasarvāstivāda bhikṣuṇī communities by Vinaya [discipline rules] alone is most unlikely, if not entirely impossible, without a consideration of gender equality, and, by extension, social considerations and Western influence. Thus, Vinaya code compliance may be seen as a necessary but insufficient condition for producing Mūlasarvāstivāda (Mula) bhikṣuṇī communities. Furthermore, not only the result of bhikṣuṇī Vinaya restoration, but also the cause of it, a desire for its existence, is also very unlikely, if not entirely impossible, in a convention-determined Vinaya framework whose stance is self-defined as being mutually exclusive with post-conventional morality. A fundamental change of attitude embracing modern perspectives of women’s rights is itself necessary.
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Volume 16, 2009
The Bahudhātuka-sutta and its Parallels On Women’s Inabilities
Anālayo
University of Hamburg
Dharma Drum Buddhist College, Taiwan
The present article offers a comparative study of the Bahudhātuka-sutta, based on a translation of one of its parallels found in the Madhyama-āgama preserved in Chinese translation. The study focuses in particular on the dictum that a woman cannot be a Buddha, which is absent from the Madhyama-āgama version.
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Volume 15, 2008
Making Fields of Merit: Buddhist Female Ascetics and Gendered Orders in Thailand. By Monica Lindberg Falk. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007, 238 pages, ISBN 0-2959-8726-X, US $30.00.
Reviewed by Vanessa R. Sasson
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SSN 1076-9005
Volume 10 2003
Luminary Buddhist Nuns in Contemporary Taiwan: A Quiet Feminist Movement
Wei-yi Cheng
School of Oriental and African Studies
Luminary order is a well-respected Buddhist nuns’ order in Taiwan. In this essay, I will examine the phenomenon of Luminary nuns from three aspects: symbol, structure, and education. Through the examination of the three aspects, I will show why the phenomenon of Luminary nuns might be seen as a feminist movement. Although an active agent in many aspects, I will also show that the success of Luminary nuns has its roots in the social, historical, and economic conditions in Taiwan.
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Volume 10, 2003
Portraits of Buddhist Women. By Ranjini Obeyesekere. Albany: SUNY Press, 2001. ISBN: 0791451127.
Reviewed by Justin McDaniel
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SSN 1076-9005
Volume 9 2002
Identität in Exil. Tibetisch-Buddhistische Nonnen und das Netzwerk Sakyadhita. By Rotraut Wurst. Edited By H.-J. Greschat, H. Jungraithmayr, and W. Rau. Marburger Studien zur Afrika- und Asienkunde Series C, vol. 6. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag, 2001, 314 pages, ISBN 3-496-02711-8.
Reviewed by Eva K. Neumaier
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Volume 6, 1999
A Buddhist View of Women: A Comparative Study of the Rules for Bhikṣuṇīs and Bhikṣus Based on the Chinese Prātimokṣa
In Young Chung
Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley
A generalized view of women in Buddhism is imposed by almost one hundred additional rules and the “Eight Rules” upon nuns. Some scholars, writers, and practitioners have asserted that the rules in the Prātimokṣa subordinate nuns to monks. However, I argue that the additional pārājikas for nuns treat sexual matters seriously because of the fertility of females. Some sa.mghĀva”seṣas for nuns provide safeguards against falling victim to lustful men. Some ni.hsargika-pāyantikas for monks forbid them from taking advantage of nuns. Two aniyatas for monks show a landmark in trust in women. Furthermore, seven adhikara.na”samathas provide evidence of the equality of men and women. Many of the additional pāyantikas for nuns originated because of nuns’ living situations and social conditions in ancient India. Finally, the totally different tone and discrepancies in penalties for the same offenses between the pāyantikas and the “Eight Rules” suggest that the “Eight Rules” were appended later.
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Volume 6, 1999
Damming the Dhamma: Problems with Bhikkhunīs in the Pali Vinaya
Kate Blackstone
University of Manitoba
Why should one of the contesting voices insist on the decline of saddhamma? How can women’s subordination help preserve the dhamma? This paper poses a possible answer. The Vinaya represents a very formalized statement of both the individual and communal dimensions of monastic life. It prescribes the activities, appearance, decorum, and lifestyle of individual bhikkhus and bhikkhunīs. It also specifies the procedures and protocol for the administration of the sangha. In so doing, the Vinaya authorizes and delimits the mandate of the monastic community over its members and in relation to its supporting community. In the terms of my analysis, it articulates a model of self-identity and a set of guidelines for the expression of that identity.
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Volume 4 1997
Passionate Enlightenment: Women in Tantric Buddhism. By Miranda Shaw. Princeton University Press, 1994, xv, 291 pages, ISBN 0-691-01090-0, $14.95 (paperback).
Reviewed by Roy W. Perrett
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Volume 6, 1999
Die Vorschriften für die Buddhistische Nonnengemeinde im Vinaya-Piṭaka der Theravādin. By Ute Hüsken. (Monographien zur Indischen Archäologie, Kunst und Philologie. Edited By Marianne Yaldiz, Vol. 11.) Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag, 1997, 519 pages, ISBN 2-496-02632-4, DM 148.00.
Reviewed by Eva K. Neumaier
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 5 1998
Women in the Footsteps of the Buddha: Struggle for Liberation in the Therigatha. By Kathryn R. Blackstone, Curzon Critical Studies in Buddhism, The Curzon Press, 1998, xiii + 185 pages, ISBN: 0-7007-0962-2.
Reviewed by Nancy J. Barnes
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 5 1998
Sisters in Solitude: Two Traditions of Buddhist Monastic Ethics for Women. By Karma Lekshe Tsomo. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1996, xii + 198 pages, ISBN 0-7914-3089-8 (Cloth). $59.50, 0-7914-3090-1 (Paper), $19.95.
Reviewed by Charles S. Prebish
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 5 1998
Opening the Lotus. By Sandy Boucher. Boston: Beacon Press, 1997, 224 pages, ISBN: 0-8070-7308-3, $20.
Reviewed by Sandra Bell
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 5 1998
Buddhism Through American Women’s Eyes. Edited by Karma Lekshe Tsomo. Ithaca, New York: Snow Lion, 1995, 179 pages, ISBN 1-55939-047-6, US $12.95, UK £8.95.
Reviewed by Enid Adam
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 4 1997
Traveler in Space: In Search of Female Identity in Tibetan Buddhism. By June Campbell. New York: George Braziller Incorporated, 1996, x, 225 pages, ISBN 0-485-11494-1 (cloth), $27.50.
Reviewed by Karen Lang
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 4 1997
Spirited Women: Gender, Religion, & Cultural Identity in the Nepal Himalaya. By Joanne C. Watkins. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996, xii, 347 pages, ISBN 0-231-10215-1 (paper), $18.50.
Reviewed by Karen C. Lang
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 4 1997
Charming Cadavers: Horrific Figurations of the Feminine in Indian Buddhist Hagiographic Literature (Women in Culture and Society Series). By Liz Wilson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996, 258 pages, ISBN 0-2269-0054-1, (paperback), $19.95.
Reviewed by Tessa Bartholomeusz
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 4 1997
Walking on Lotus Flowers, Buddhist Women Living, Loving and Meditating. By Martine Batchelor. San Francisco: Thorsons, HarperCollins, 1996, xiv, 205 pages, ISBN 0-7225-3231-8, £9.99; $18.00.
Reviewed by Sylvia Wetzel
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 4 1997
Women Under the Bo Tree: Buddhist Nuns in Sri Lanka. By Tessa Bartholomeusz. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, xx, 284 pages, 0-5214-6129-4 (cloth), $59.95.
Reviewed by Kate Blackstone
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