Santipada

In the debate about bhikkhuni ordin­a­tion, inform­a­tion plays a key role. We have made sub­stan­tial strides in our under­stand­ing of Buddhism in his­tory, the rela­tion between dif­fer­ent Buddhist tra­di­tions, and so on. Unfor­tu­nately, little of this inform­a­tion has per­meated into the tra­di­tion Sangha bod­ies. It seems to be assumed that organ­iz­a­tions like the Thai Sangha are a pre­serve of pro­found Dhamma know­ledge, full of experts who are thor­oughly versed in the issues. But this is, alas, far from the case. The real­ity is that the vast major­ity of Thai monks recieve no more than a basic Buddhist edu­ca­tion, which is largely based on a set of text­books com­piled around a hun­dred years ago.

At that time, Thai Buddhism was being rap­idly mod­ern­ized, and the lead­ers of the Thai Sangha, were fore­most in pro­mot­ing a re-evaluation of their own tra­di­tion based on the earli­est teach­ings avail­able in the texts. This tra­di­tion was ini­ti­ated by Prince Mon­gkut and car­ried on by Prince Vajirañāṇa dur­ing their time in robes. By redis­cov­er­ing the cent­ral import­ance of the Pali Canon, and pro­mot­ing a rational, non-superstitious approach to Dhamma, they laid the found­a­tions for mod­ern Thai Buddhism. How­ever, they had access to only a small sec­tor of the Buddhist scrip­tures, and our tex­tual, archae­olo­gical, and his­tor­ical under­stand­ing has developed rap­idly since then. But due to the royal prestige of these texts, it has proven almost impossible to update them. Thus the Sangha today clings to the out­dated and often incor­rect con­clu­sions of these texts, while ignor­ing the spirit of inquiry and explor­a­tion on which they were founded.

In the debate on bhikkhunis, the fol­low­ing pas­sage stands as one of the most influ­en­tial state­ments on the mat­ter. It is found in Prince Vajirañāṇa’s Vinayamukha, the basic Vinaya text learnt by all Thai monks. Later, I will show how its con­clu­sions about bhikkhunis are wrong, but we must appre­ci­ate that this cri­ti­cism is entirely in the spirit of the text itself. The text does not assert a dog­matic ideo­logy, it bases itself on reas­ons and tries to estab­lish a his­tor­ical case. We are able to cri­ti­cize it from a rational per­spect­ive pre­cisely because the text itself is rational. But, as the Buddha said, what is hammered out by reason is not neces­sar­ily correct.

The Bhikkhuni Sangha star­ted in the middle of the Buddha’s time. But at the time of the great passing away of the Buddha there was no men­tion of the bhikkhunis. That time it was a great event, so if the bhikkhunis still exis­ted they should have come for the crema­tion, or been part of the cel­eb­ra­tion of the rel­ics. With this evid­ence, bhikkhunis might have already dis­ap­peared after the Buddha passed away for a hun­dred years.

There was a story [from the time of the Second Coun­cil, 100 years after the Buddha’s par­in­ib­bana] of Ven. bhikkhuni Nandā Therī, King Kālaśoka’s sis­ter, who informed him that the Vajji­put­taka monks were propagat­ing wrong under­stand­ing [of the Vinaya].

Then there was a long story dur­ing King Aśoka’s reign in B.E.236 when Saṅghamittā, King Asoka’s daugh­ter, was ordained as bhikkhuni. The King sent her to Sri Lanka to estab­lish the bhikkhuni Sangha there. At the same time Mahindathera, King Asoka’s son, was already there estab­lish­ing Buddhism. Saṅghamittā Therī gave ordin­a­tion to Sri Lankan women with prin­cess Anulā as their chief.

Regard­ing these two stor­ies, Ven. Nandā Therī’s story was not found in the Pali Sat­tasa­tikkhandaka [the canon­ical source for the Second Coun­cil], but in the Mahavaṁsa, which was writ­ten after the com­ment­ar­ies [in the fifth cen­tury C.E.].

The story of Saṅghamittā is told in the [Vinaya] com­ment­ary [Samantapāsādikā]. There were no names of the accom­pa­ny­ing bhikkhunis, unlike in the case of Mahinda [who traveled to Sri Lanka with a group of monks whose names are given]. It was recor­ded only that King Aśoka Mahārāja invited the Therī and her fol­low­ers aboard the ship. There was no details of her fol­low­ers, num­ber of bhikkhunis or their names. If she went alone how can she give ordin­a­tion? Also the com­ment­ator did not think that one bhikkhuni can­not give ordin­a­tion every year. With this reas­on­ing we can­not depend on this evid­ence. So it is agreed that the bhikkhunis have dis­ap­peared since then.¹

This pas­sage would appear on the sur­face to be incon­sist­ent: for if bhikkhunis had dis­ap­peared by the time of the par­in­ib­bana, how could they have sur­vived until the time of Aśoka? How­ever, while the reas­on­ing used is not always entirely clear, it seems to me that this pas­sage devel­ops a per­fectly rational argu­ment. I think we can reph­rase the logic like this.

The canon­ical texts sug­gest that the bhikkhunis had dis­ap­peared even by the time of the par­in­ib­bana. There are, how­ever, occa­sional ref­er­ences to bhikkhunis in later lit­er­at­ure. But these pas­sages occur in texts that include much unhis­tor­ical inform­a­tion, and so may well be incor­rect. Nev­er­the­less, if the bhikkhunis did sur­vive until the time of Aśoka, then the fact that Saṅghamittā did not have a full Sangha to per­form ordin­a­tion means that the lin­eage died out then.

Let us take this one piece at a time.

1. The bhikkhunis were not present at the Buddha’s parinibbana.

The Mahā­par­in­ib­bāna Sutta, the stand­ard Pali text on the Buddha’s passing away, does not men­tion the bhikkhunis being present at the Buddha’s deathbed. The Vinayamukha, while it is not com­pletely clear, seems to think that this shows that the bhikkhunis had already dis­ap­peared. But this con­clu­sion is obvi­ously wrong, not just because of the many ref­er­ences to bhikkhunis through his­tory, but even in the Mahā­par­in­ib­bāna Sutta itself.

The first ref­er­ence to bhikkhunis in the Mahā­par­in­ib­bāna Sutta is where the Buddha men­tioned a bhikkhuni who had recently died, Nandā, and praised her as a non-returner.

More import­antly, it is recor­ded that the Buddha said to Māra:

I shall not come to my final passing away, Evil One, until my bhikkhus and bhikkhunis, lay­men and lay­wo­men, have come to be true dis­ciples — wise, well dis­cip­lined, apt and learned, pre­serv­ers of the Dhamma, liv­ing accord­ing to the Dhamma, abid­ing by the appro­pri­ate con­duct, and hav­ing learned the Master’s word, are able to expound it, preach it, pro­claim it, estab­lish it, reveal it, explain it in detail, and make it clear; until, when adverse opin­ions arise, they shall be able to refute them thor­oughly and well, and to preach this con­vin­cing and lib­er­at­ing Dhamma.²

Thus not only were bhikkhunis present, but they were an essen­tial part of his dis­pens­a­tion. The Buddha would only pass away when the bhikkhunis were well estab­lished. This state­ment, found widely in the dif­fer­ent ver­sions of this text, was said to have been made by the Buddha shortly after his Awaken­ing. It was his stated aspir­a­tion, right from the start of his teach­ing, to estab­lish the bhikkhunis.

A little later the Sutta refers to bhikkhunis yet again as a pos­it­ive and essen­tial sec­tor of his dispensation:

But, Ananda, whatever bhikkhu or bhikkhuni, lay­man or lay­wo­man, abides by the Dhamma, lives uprightly in the Dhamma, walks in the way of the Dhamma, it is by such a one that the Tath­agata is respec­ted, ven­er­ated, esteemed, wor­shipped, and honored in the highest degree. There­fore, Ananda, thus should you train yourselves: ‘We shall abide by the Dhamma, live uprightly in the Dhamma, walk in the way of the Dhamma.’

And a little fur­ther down the same theme recurs:

These, Ananda, are the four places that a pious per­son should visit and look upon with feel­ings of rev­er­ence. And truly there will come to these places, Ananda, pious bhikkhus and bhikkhunis, lay­men and lay­wo­men, reflect­ing: ‘Here the Tath­agata was born! Here the Tath­agata became fully enlightened in unsur­passed, supreme Enlight­en­ment! Here the Tath­agata set rolling the unex­celled Wheel of the Dhamma! Here the Tath­agata passed away into the state of Nib­bana in which no ele­ment of cling­ing remains!’ And who­ever, Ananda, should die on such a pil­grim­age with his heart estab­lished in faith, at the break­ing up of the body, after death, will be reborn in a realm of heav­enly happiness.

And once more:

Cap­able and judi­cious is Ananda, bhikkhus, for he knows the proper time for bhikkhus to have audi­ence with the Tath­agata, and the time for bhikkhunis, the time for lay­men and for lay­wo­men; the time for kings and for min­is­ters of state; the time for teach­ers of other sects and for their followers.

It is per­fectly obvi­ous that, accord­ing to the Pali ver­sion of the Mahā­par­in­ib­bāna Sutta, bhikkhunis exis­ted at the time of the Buddha’s par­in­ib­bana and, moreover, were regarded as a reg­u­lar, essen­tial part of the Buddha’s com­munity. The fact that no bhikkhunis appear in the text as actu­ally present at the Buddha’s passing away must be due to other factors. Per­haps the redact­ors of the texts, who were of course monks, simply didn’t men­tion the bhikkhunis. Or per­haps there were no bhikkhunis in the nearby dis­tricts who could be summoned in time.

A search of the (very many) altern­at­ive ver­sions of this Sutta avail­able in Chinese, Tibetan, and Sanskrit would also be neces­sary before reach­ing any firm con­clu­sions. But, sadly, hardly any monks in Thai­l­and even know of the exist­ence of these texts. For them any­thing out­side the Pali Canon is ‘Mahay­ana’ and there­fore wrong and irrel­ev­ant. This naïve, sec­tarian mis­use of tex­tual cri­ti­cism is, again, largely based on 19th Cen­tury ideas. Mon­gkut and Vajirañāṇa, with their western-influenced edu­ca­tion, intro­duced the notion of a skep­tical scru­tiny of the received texts. But this was based on the state of know­ledge of Buddhist texts in the wider aca­demic sphere at the time. The Chinese and Tibetan texts had hardly been read by any West­ern­ers, and it was widely believed, even among West­ern schol­ars, that the Mahay­ana tra­di­tions were noth­ing more than later degen­er­a­tions. The course of 20th cen­tury schol­ar­ship has sys­tem­at­ic­ally cor­rec­ted this bias, while retain­ing respect for the Pali Canon. Yet the exist­ence of sev­eral dif­fer­ent ver­sions of the Vinaya, of sev­eral col­lec­tions par­al­lel to the Pali Nikāyas, of large quant­it­ies of manu­script mater­ial recovered from Cent­ral Asia and else­where, has had no prac­tical effect on the ideo­lo­gical stand that regards the Pali Canon as the be-all and end-all of Buddhism.

2. Bhikkhuni Nandā’s story is not men­tioned in the canon­ical ver­sion of the Second Council.

This is true, but we can­not use this as an argu­ment to say the bhikkhunis did not exist. There are many details of the later accounts that are not men­tioned in the canon. King Kāḷaśoka is not men­tioned in the canon­ical account, and we do not infer from this that there were no kings at the time. Nor is there any men­tion in the canon of the recit­a­tion of the scrip­tures, or of any con­nec­tion between the Vajji­put­takas and the Mahāsaṅghikas, and so on. That does not stop these ‘facts’ being repeated end­lessly in Theravadin accounts.

It is entirely appro­pri­ate that the canon­ical accounts do not men­tion the bhikkhunis, for the Second Coun­cil was essen­tially a dis­cip­lin­ary action taken against the miscre­ant Vajji­put­taka monks, and bhikkhunis would not be present at such a meet­ing. King Kāḷaśoka, Bhikkhuni Nandā, and the rest, entered the story much later.

But the story of Nandā shows the influ­ence of bhikkhunis in ancient Indian Buddhism. Whether or not the story is his­tor­ical it shows that bhikkhunis could been seen in such a power­ful role.

3. Saṅghamittā had no bhikkhuni com­pan­ions, there­fore could not have done bhikkhuni ordin­a­tion correctly.

This con­clu­sion was made on the basis of the Samantapāsādikā and also the Mahāvaṁsa. The Vinayamukha acknow­ledges that the Samantapāsādikā does indeed men­tion that Saṅghamittā traveled with a group, but points out that there is no evid­ence that they were bhikkhunis. But the Mahāvaṁsa is just a later retell­ing of the Dīpavaṁsa, which was earlier and more his­tor­ic­ally reli­able.³ The Dīpavaṁsa does, indeed, men­tion the names of Saṅghamittā’s com­pan­ions: ten bhikkhunis, all ara­hants with psychic powers.⁴ But this text was little known in Thailand.

Given the evid­ent con­cern shown by Mahinda for the Vinaya, it is incon­ceiv­able that ordin­a­tion would be given without bhikkhunis present. But the text as it has come down to us is far more inter­ested in weav­ing legends around the bring­ing of the Bodhi tree than about describ­ing Vinaya pro­ced­ures. Argu­ments from absence are always dubi­ous, as what is left out is determ­ined entirely by the redactors.

Not only this, but the Samantapāsādikā itself men­tions bhikkhunis sev­eral times. The names of Saṅghamittā’s pre­ceptor and teacher are given. And at a great assembly, it is said that 9 600 000 bhikkhunis were present.⁵ An impossible num­ber, no doubt, but a clear indic­a­tion of a sub­stan­tial bhikkhuni community.

All the above evid­ence was avail­able to the author of the Vinayamukha, and there is no excuse for not tak­ing it into account. How­ever, since that time sub­stan­tial new evid­ence has come to light. The most sub­stan­tial evid­ence of all is the Aśokan edicts, which do men­tion bhikkhunis; in fact, they always men­tion bhikkhus and bhikkhunis together. Accord­ing to the research of Gregory Schopen, the inscrip­tions found in India men­tion bhikkhunis roughly the same num­ber of times as bhikkhus, and they play sim­ilar roles, includ­ing being teach­ers, reciters of texts, spon­sors of major build­ing pro­jects, etc. Sim­il­arly, through­out the scrip­tures of Indian Buddhism, bhikkhunis play their role, even if it is a quiet one.

Of course, we could not expect that the author of the Vinayamukha would have known of such mat­ters. Nor could he have known of the his­tor­ical records telling of the trans­mis­sion of the bhikkhuni lin­eage from Sri Lanka to China; or of the fact that the Chinese Dharmagup­taka Vinaya lin­eage is essen­tially identical to the Theravada; or of the sub­stan­tial evid­ence for bhikkhunis in Thai his­tory. Nor, sadly enough, could we expect him to be respond­ing in a mean­ing­ful way to the spir­itual aspir­a­tions of women in our mod­ern times. It seems that he, like many in Thai Buddhism, believed that the higher spir­itual attain­ments were not avail­able in our degen­er­ate times, and his main goal was to con­struct a reli­gious basis to sup­port Thai nation-building.

But we can, and should, expect that today’s Sangha should know these things. The tragedy is not that a Dhamma book was writ­ten that con­tains obvi­ous mis­takes; this is nor­mal. The tragedy is that the mis­takes are per­petu­ated again and again, without invest­ig­a­tion or revi­sion. The spirit of inquiry and reason on which the 19th Cen­tury Thai Sangha reforms were based has dis­ap­peared. The cri­ti­cisms I am mak­ing are noth­ing new or unusual. They have been voiced many times by Thai monks and within the Thai com­munity. But the Thai Sangha no longer appears to be cap­able of reform­ing itself to become rel­ev­ant for our times. The spirit of reform which inspired prince Vajirañāṇa has long depar­ted from the insti­tu­tions that he set up.⁶ Today, we must seek the Dhamma elsewhere.

Notes

1. Vinayamukha vol.III, Liengchi­eng Press, Bangkok, pg. 170. Trans­la­tion sup­plied by Bhikkhuni Dham­man­andā. ↩
2. This and fol­low­ing pas­sages from the Mahā­par­in­ib­bāna Sutta are from Sis­ter Vajira & Fran­cis Story’s trans­la­tion. ↩
3. Else­where (Sects & Sec­tari­an­ism) I have cri­ti­cized cer­tain aspects of the Dīpavaṁsa, but as I made clear there, this was only rel­ev­ant for the earlier sec­tions, not the events in Sri Lanka. ↩
4. Dīpavaṁsa 13.2.77–8: Saṅghamittā mahāpaññā uttarā ca vicakkhaṇā/Hemā ca māsagallā ca aggimittā mitāvadā/Tappā pabbatach­innā ca mallā ca dhammadāsikā/Ettakā tā bhikkhuniy­od­hūtarāgā samāhitā. Eng­lish trans­la­tion: Her­mann Olden­burg, 3rd reprint, New Delhi 2001. p.205 chapter 18.11–13. ↩
5. The Chinese Sudassan­av­inayavibhāsā has the more mod­est, if still improb­able, num­ber of 960 000. ↩
6. See, for example, Than­is­saro, ‘The Tra­di­tions of the Noble Ones’, Phra Paisan Vis­alo, ‘When Buddhist Monks Cheat in Exams’. ↩