Santipada

What do I know about grow­ing nuns? Well, not much, actu­ally, but I’m try­ing to learn. I use this meta­phor because I want to emphas­ize the organic, com­plex, con­tex­tual nature of what this involves. It’s like we’re tak­ing vari­ous stems and clip­pings and breed­ing a new hybrid in a spe­cial, untried envir­on­ment, and no-one really knows how it’s going to work. But we do know that it’s worth hav­ing a go. As Santi grows and matures, we expect to pro­ceed as the Buddha did: learn­ing through exper­i­ence. This little essay intends to make it more clear what we are doing, and to present my opin­ions on some mat­ters of dis­cus­sion within the com­munity of those who are work­ing together to sup­port bhikkhuni ordination.

Anāgārikā

At Santi Forest Mon­as­tery, our nuns prac­tice in a man­ner that fol­lows more or less the pre­ced­ent that is gen­er­ally used by the Ajahn Chah tra­di­tion mon­as­ter­ies, espe­cially in the West. This means that the can­did­ate will stay in the mon­as­tery for a time, then if they wish to seek ordin­a­tion, they must request to take anāgārikā pre­cepts. This just means they are keep­ing eight pre­cepts, as all guests in the mon­as­tery do, but this is more form­al­ized; in addi­tion they must shave their heads and wear white.

Before tak­ing anāgārikā pre­cepts they must sup­ply the Sangha with three things: a police record check (or if they can’t get this, a stat­utory declar­a­tion that they have no crim­inal record); a blood test to check for HIV, hep­at­itis, etc., and a report on their psy­cho­lo­gical health from a qual­i­fied psy­cho­lo­gist or coun­sel­lor. The Sangha con­siders these things, and dis­cusses the con­duct and atti­tudes of the can­did­ate, before decid­ing whether to accept a can­did­ate for anāgārikā pre­cepts. This dis­cus­sion involves all the res­id­ent monks and nuns and Santi, and only with the approval of all will this first stage proceed.

After accept­ance as an anāgārikā, the can­did­ate will have to wait for a year before tak­ing ordin­a­tion as a sāmaṇerī (novice). Dur­ing this time, there will be reg­u­lar teach­ings in the mon­as­tery. These teach­ings will vary from time to time, but will include reg­u­lar Dhamma talks, med­it­a­tion instruc­tions, private med­it­a­tion inter­views, and classes in Sut­tas, Vinaya, and Pali. All our scrip­tural stud­ies are done on a com­par­at­ive, ana­lyt­ical basis, which means that we use text-critical meth­ods to work out, as best we can, what the Buddha actu­ally taught. I believe that Santi is the only, or one of the only, mon­as­ter­ies in the world to use such an approach, des­pite the Buddha’s repeated exhorta­tions to his dis­ciples to not con­fuse those things that he him­self taught with things he never taught. I expect that all can­did­ates should have a sin­cere per­sonal com­mit­ment to the Dhamma, a found­a­tion in med­it­a­tion, a good know­ledge of Sut­tas and Vinaya, and at least some know­ledge of Pali, Buddhist his­tory and philo­sophy, and gen­eral back­ground in such things as the vari­ous Buddhist tra­di­tions, com­par­at­ive reli­gions, and so on. In addi­tion, they learn to live as part of our close and some­times intense com­munity, which also means deal­ing with long peri­ods of time in solitude. Dur­ing this year, in a small com­munity such as ours, I am able to per­son­ally mon­itor each can­did­ate, and to assess how they handle these dif­fer­ent and some­times demand­ing situ­ations. We make it clear to the can­did­ates that there are no guar­an­tees: even up the the day of the ordin­a­tion, the Sangha can decide to say no.

Sāmaṇerī

How­ever, if all goes well and the can­did­ates make it to the one year mark, we pro­ceed with a sāmaṇerī ordin­a­tion. This means that they will take the 10 pre­cepts, which includes not using money. From then on, they will be entirely depend­ant on the mon­as­tery for all their mater­ial needs. This is a cru­cial point: up until now, they have been stay­ing in the mon­as­tery, but respons­ible for their own funds for things such as travel, visas, medi­cine, etc. But now, we have to bear all costs and respons­ib­il­it­ies. That means we are very cau­tious about mak­ing sure the can­did­ates are respons­ible and under­stand the step they are taking.

For ordin­a­tion can­did­ates in non-traditional coun­tries, this is not usu­ally such a prob­lem. In tra­di­tional coun­tries, it is not unusual for people to ordain to seek some kind of worldly end, such as an edu­ca­tion, status, money, or the pos­sib­il­ity of travel and hav­ing a nice lazy life­style. there’s no way this can hap­pen here. All the can­did­ates have been through a lot before they get here, and are in almost all cases pro­pelled by intense exper­i­ences of suf­fer­ing to trans­gress their social expect­a­tions and seek ful­fil­ment in a way of life that is so exceptional.

The sāmaṇerīs wear the same robes as the bhikkhus and bhikkhunis, and are extern­ally indis­tin­guish­able. In addi­tion, their life­style becomes very sim­ilar to that of the fully ordained monks and nuns, except the details of some of the minor rules are more relaxed. It should, how­ever, be noted that by not hand­ling money, the sāmaṇerīs here are abid­ing by a stricter level of pre­cepts than the vast major­ity of fully ordained mon­ast­ics in all tra­di­tions. Gen­er­ally speak­ing, how­ever, this is the time when they will learn most of the basics of mon­astic life: how to wear the robes, how to do the chant­ing, how to behave in vari­ous situ­ations, etc. In their year as a sāmaṇerī, then, they will have plenty of time to taste the sweet­ness of ordained life, and to learn of the pecu­liar stresses and chal­lenges it imposes. These include, cru­cially, the pres­sure of expect­a­tion both from one­self and oth­ers. In terms of teach­ing, etc., the sāmaṇerīs will con­tinue with the edu­ca­tion as when they were anāgārikās, with the excep­tion that they are expec­ted to take a more ser­i­ous interest in Vinaya. Our sāmaṇerīs have already done some highly advanced research in com­par­at­ive Vinaya stud­ies, as well as the more con­ven­tional prac­tices such as start­ing to mem­or­ize the pāṭimokkha for recitation.

In addi­tion to this train­ing offered in the mon­as­tery itself, I fully sup­port our sāmaṇerīs to seek extra train­ing else­where. Examples of this so far include doing retreats with dif­fer­ent med­it­a­tion teach­ers, stay­ing for a period in a dif­fer­ent mon­as­tery, or doing formal edu­ca­tion in Buddhism and Psychotherapy.

In some tra­di­tions, it is believed that those who are not fully ordained should not be taught Vinaya. As far as I under­stand, this belief stems ulti­mately from a rule that the can­did­ates should not be taught the four requis­ites before ordin­a­tion, as that might scare them off. But these days, the entire Vinaya is pub­lished and read­ily avail­able; in fact we owe a great deal to the researches of lay people who have con­trib­uted greatly to our under­stand­ing of Vinaya. Nowhere in the Pali Vinaya is there a pro­hib­i­tion on teach­ing Vinaya as such. I strongly believe that such a pro­hib­i­tion is dir­ectly counter to the open­ness and inquir­ing nature of the Buddha’s teach­ing, and that it is essen­tial that all can­did­ates receive a good ground­ing in Vinaya before they take ordin­a­tion. I would go so far as to say that refus­ing to teach Vinaya to ordin­a­tion can­did­ates is a viol­a­tion of the can­did­ates’ basic rights to be informed of what they are embark­ing upon.

Bhikkhunī

So, after a year of study and prac­tice, of learn­ing how to wear the robes and live as a mon­astic, the Sangha decides whether the can­did­ate is ready to take full ordin­a­tion. This is a ser­i­ous step, given the con­tro­ver­sial nature of bhikkhuni ordin­a­tion. We must be sure that our can­did­ates are men­tally and spir­itu­ally ready for the pres­sures they will encounter. They must under­stand the vari­ous gender prob­lems in Buddhism, and be able to artic­u­late their reas­ons for seek­ing bhikkhuni ordin­a­tion to those who will ques­tion this. If we are unsure of a candidate’s read­i­ness, we will ask them to wait. Nev­er­the­less, des­pite the undeni­able fact that this is a big step, in terms of prac­tical implic­a­tions it is less of a jump than the step between anāgārikā and sāmaṇerī; Ajahn Brahm notes that the Sut­tas say that one of the things you should always remem­ber is the date of your pab­ba­jjā, the ordin­a­tion as sāmaṇera or sāmaṇerī, sug­gest­ing that this is more sig­ni­fic­ant than the actual full ordination.

After the full ordin­a­tion, the new nun must stay here at Santi Mon­as­tery for an abso­lute min­imum of two years, dur­ing which time they may only stay else­where for a short period of time, for example, to do a retreat or to visit their fam­ily. After the two year period, they may request to go and stay at another mon­as­tery. I will grant that per­mis­sion if the mon­as­tery is a good one, with a com­pat­ible stand­ard of Vinaya, a sup­port­ive com­munity, and a respons­ible teacher. How­ever, that request must be driven by a genu­ine aspir­a­tion, not by mere rest­less­ness. For example, they might be inspired by a par­tic­u­lar teacher, or to prac­tice within a cer­tain med­it­a­tion tra­di­tion. If the aspir­a­tion is genu­inely pos­it­ive and con­struct­ive, I will grant them per­mis­sion to go.

After five years, they should have learnt the Vinaya and the spirit of the life­style to a suf­fi­cient degree. Nor­mally the Vinaya allows that the bhikkhus should be able to be free from ‘depend­ence’ on a teacher after this time; how­ever this does not apply if the can­did­ate lacks matur­ity and is not com­pet­ent. Typ­ic­ally, the monks will move about after five years, stay­ing in dif­fer­ent coun­tries or with dif­fer­ent teach­ers, or spend­ing time in solitude. The nuns, of course, have far fewer options, and it may be the case that they will tend to travel less. But this remains to be seen.

Con­tinu­ity & change

This, then, is the basic out­line of the train­ing for the nuns here at Santi. It fol­lows the gen­eral out­line of the edu­ca­tion at most of the branch mon­as­ter­ies of the Ajahn Chah tra­di­tion, which has his­tor­ic­ally been the most suc­cess­ful tra­di­tion in estab­lish­ing West­ern mon­as­ter­ies in the Theravada; in fact, it is just about the only tra­di­tion to suc­cess­fully estab­lish and main­tain mon­as­ter­ies in many non-traditional Buddhist coun­tries. The exper­i­ence and meth­ods that have worked thus far should not be dis­carded lightly, and while we should not blindly fol­low, we should be care­ful before chan­ging those aspects that work.

The two things that, in my opin­ion, have not worked well in the Ajahn Chah tra­di­tion are how they have dealt with gender and with study. These aspects we change: obvi­ously, by intro­du­cing bhikkhuni ordin­a­tion, we are announ­cing very clearly that the exist­ing gender mod­els are not adequate, as they are not solidly groun­ded in the Buddhadhamma. The second thing, related to this, is the greater emphasis on scrip­tural study, the lack of which I believe to be a great weak­ness of the Forest Tra­di­tion in general.

What we do not emphas­ize is ritual and the minutae of mon­astic etiquette. We do very few cere­mon­ies, and the whole ritu­al­istic aspect of mon­ast­i­cism is min­imal com­pared with every other mon­as­tery I have stayed in. There is, of course, not the slight­est bit of ritu­al­ism in the Sut­tas and Vinaya, and all the very many and com­plic­ated rituals that have accrued in Buddhism over the years are products of cul­ture, of time and place. At Santi, we are exceed­ingly for­tu­nate that there are many culturally-based mon­as­ter­ies in the area, who do all the funer­als, sea­sonal cere­mon­ies, chant­ing rituals, and so on, free­ing us up for what we are really inter­ested in: study and prac­tice of the Buddha’s teach­ing. In my exper­i­ence, the area of ritual shades off into the pre­oc­cu­pa­tion, which I believe to be excess­ive, that I have seen for details of mon­astic etiquette. Again, such things con­sti­tute only a minor part of the Buddha’s teach­ing, but in some cases receive great atten­tion in mod­ern Buddhism. Often, the main motiv­a­tion appears to be on how to present an attract­ive face for the lay people. For myself, I am quite happy to let people take me or leave me as I am, and I expect my stu­dents to have the same attitude.

Mon­astic train­ing in the Vinaya

It is worth com­par­ing this approach with that found in the Vinaya. It seems that the nor­mal situ­ation was that the can­did­ates would be given full ordin­a­tion straight away. There is no pro­vi­sion within the Vinaya for a period of train­ing before­hand. Of course, this may well have happened inform­ally; we hear, for example, of someone stay­ing in the mon­as­tery expect­ing ordin­a­tion, so it would seem likely that there was some edu­ca­tion at least in this time. Nev­er­the­less, this is clearly not man­dated or form­al­ized in any way. The concept of the ‘anāgārikā’ is, it seems, a mod­ern inven­tion, developed by anāgārikā Dharmap­ala, though quite pos­sibly based on tra­di­tional models.

The sāmaṇera/sāmaṇerī stage was not inten­ded as a pre­lim­in­ary train­ing period before ordin­a­tion. Rather, it was a lower ordin­a­tion plat­form for boys and girls under twenty, who were not able to under­take the full rigour of the Vinaya rules. But the usual Pali idiom for ordin­a­tion was pab­ba­jjaṁ upasam­padaṁ, which in the nor­mal Pali style is just a pair of syn­onyms. How­ever, the two terms came to be dis­tin­guished and sep­ar­ated in time: pab­ba­jjā is the novice ordin­a­tion, and upasam­padā is the bhikkhu ordin­a­tion. This dis­tinc­tion, which creeps into the later strata of the Vinaya itself, is then back­read into the basic pas­sages as imply­ing that the can­did­ate takes a novice ordin­a­tion before doing full ordin­a­tion. Once this is accep­ted, it becomes pos­sible to sep­ar­ate out the two stages in time. But the real­ity is that in the Buddha’s day, the Buddha or the Sangha would give full ordin­a­tion imme­di­ately, with no pre­lim­in­ary training.

This is not to sug­gest that the Vinaya does not sup­port the notion of a ser­i­ous train­ing com­mit­ment for mon­ast­ics. It does; how­ever this is not done through the concept of levels of ordin­a­tion. The train­ing period is the five years’ ‘depend­ence’ (nis­saya), dur­ing which, as I have explained above, a newly ordained bhikkhu or bhikkhuni must stay with a teacher who can guide and sup­port them. This period as a young mon­astic is itself the train­ing period, when the basics are mastered and the holy life is embodied.

In addi­tion, for the bhikkhunis there is a require­ment that they fol­low their pre­ceptor for two years, so that they can receive a proper edu­ca­tion. We can­not fol­low this as it stands at Santi yet, as I am the teacher and we do not have a res­id­ent bhikkhuni pre­ceptor. We do, how­ever, remain in reg­u­lar con­tact with vari­ous senior bhikkhunis, includ­ing the pre­ceptor. It is my under­stand­ing that this rule should be read in con­junc­tion with the nor­mal pro­ced­ure of the Vinaya, whereby the role of the pre­ceptor (upa­jjhāya for the monks, pavat­tinī for the nuns) may be ful­filled by a teacher (ācariya), if they are able to offer sim­ilar levels of edu­ca­tion and sup­port. In addi­tion, there is a non-offence clause for this rule in the case of and acci­dent or mis­for­tune; I would sug­gest that the cur­rent situ­ation, with a severe paucity of oppor­tun­it­ies for women’s ordin­a­tion, is just such an ‘unfor­tu­nate’ con­di­tion, which will be rec­ti­fied as time goes on.

Sikkhamānā

The other ordin­a­tion plat­form for women, unshared by men, is the ‘trainee’ (sikkhamānā). This is defined as ‘train­ing for two years in the six rules’. We have deeply researched this aspect of the bhikkhuni Vinaya, and my per­sonal con­clu­sion is that there are so many severe tex­tual prob­lems that it is not pos­sible to work out with a reas­on­able degree of cer­tainty how it may have been prac­tised. It seems prob­able to me that the sikkhamānā train­ing was ori­gin­ally inten­ded for teen­age girls, and only at a later date was it taken to be norm­at­ive for all can­did­ates. While some com­munit­ies do prac­tice the sikkhamānā train­ing and find it to be bene­fi­cial, I believe that the level of uncer­tainty is such that the whole pro­ced­ure can­not be regarded as normative.

It must also be said that the idea that women need to undergo a dif­fer­ent and more rig­or­ous train­ing than men is by its very nature sex­ist. Dis­crim­in­a­tion has been shown by count­less empir­ical stud­ies to be inher­ently harm­ful. Accord­ing to Buddhist eth­ics, what leads to harm is akus­ala, and in my view this is suf­fi­cient reason to con­clude that such a train­ing could not have been inten­ded by the Buddha in this way. Buddhaghosa com­ments that the sikkhamānā train­ing is required for all women ‘because women are nat­ur­ally wan­ton’ (mātugāmo nāma lolo hoti), which proves that it was expli­citly inter­preted by the tra­di­tion in a sex­ist way. This does not mean that the sikkhamānā idea was sex­ist from its incep­tion. There may be other reas­ons: for example, it could have been an ‘affirm­at­ive action’ pro­vi­sion for a time when women’s edu­ca­tion was unavail­able in the soci­ety gen­er­ally, enabling young women to bene­fit from a higher train­ing at an earlier age. Or it could have been intro­duced in the bhikkhuni com­munity simply because of the par­tic­u­lar back­ground and exper­i­ence that the nuns brought, per­haps from the Jains, and the dif­fer­ence from the bhikkhu sys­tem is entirely acci­dental, with no par­tic­u­lar gender significance.

Con­tem­por­ary practice

So much for the Vinaya. In the present day ordin­a­tion is done in diverse ways, and is pur­sued very dif­fer­ently in dif­fer­ent places. In most Theravada tra­di­tions, bhikkhu ordin­a­tion is done quickly, with little or no pre­lim­in­ary train­ing. The can­did­ate will do the cere­mon­ies of tak­ing the eight pre­cepts as an anāgārikā, and then the ten pre­cepts as a novice, and on the same day or shortly after­wards, will pro­ceed to take full ordin­a­tion. After their ordin­a­tion, there is some expect­a­tion that the new monk will take some edu­ca­tion in Buddhism, but this is far from guar­an­teed, and many monks have, in fact, little or no ser­i­ous know­ledge of Buddhism. If they ordain in a good tra­di­tion, how­ever, there will be teach­ing, sup­port for med­it­a­tion, and so on. This situ­ation con­trasts greatly with the con­di­tions in many of the East Asian tra­di­tions, where new mon­ast­ics are expec­ted to pur­sue sev­eral years of intense study after their ordin­a­tion, or even before they are accep­ted for full ordination.

In the case of bhikkhunis, there is no agree­ment as to whether the sikkhamānā period is man­dat­ory; some mon­as­ter­ies will do it, oth­ers will not. Some of the tra­di­tions require instead a two year period as a sāmaṇerī. This seems to be derived from a par­tic­u­lar inter­pret­a­tion of the sikkhamānā train­ing: appar­ently, some of the Sri Lankan eld­ers have argued that, since the sikkhamānā has only six pre­cepts, while the sāmaṇerī has ten, the sāmaṇerī stage is a higher ordin­a­tion plat­form and two years as a sāmaṇerī super­sedes the two years as a sikkhamānā. I dis­agree with this inter­pret­a­tion. It is clear from many con­texts in the Pali and other Vinayas that the sikkhamānā was a higher ordin­a­tion plat­form than the sāmaṇerī. Why then does the sikkhamānā have fewer pre­cepts? The con­ven­tional explan­a­tion is that they are expec­ted to hold them without break­ing for their entire two year period. Thus the pre­cepts are less, but the degree of strict­ness is higher. I must admit to a degree of scep­ti­cism as to this explan­a­tion; it sounds sus­pi­ciously post hoc. Von Hinuber has sug­ges­ted that the sikkhamānā train­ing was intro­duced into the Buddhist world by ex-Jain nuns, and was an import from the Jain Vinaya that simply does not mesh all that well with the Buddhist sys­tem. I find this explan­a­tion more con­vin­cing, as it is simple, his­tor­ic­ally plaus­ible, and explains a whole host of prob­lems. In the light of this hypo­thesis, we may be simply wast­ing our time in try­ing to find com­plete har­mony between the sikkhamānā train­ing and the rest of the Vinaya. It is quite plaus­ible, and in view of the dis­par­it­ies between the Vinayas, even prob­able that there never was one uni­ver­sally accep­ted sys­tem of ordin­a­tion, and that the dis­crep­an­cies in the exist­ing Vinayas simply reflect the diversity that was ancient Indian Buddhism.

In any case, I am cer­tain that the sāmaṇerī stage was not in any sense inten­ded as a replace­ment for the two year sikkhamānā train­ing. If mon­as­ter­ies decide to do this as a mat­ter of policy, this is simply a part of the nat­ural vari­ation in approaches to train­ing which always has, and always will be, a part of Buddhism. In the Saccavibhaṅga Sutta (MN 141), the Buddha states:

Cul­tiv­ate the friend­ship of Sāri­putta and Mog­gallāna, monks, asso­ci­ate with Sāri­putta and Mog­gallāna. They are wise and help­ful to their com­pan­ions in the holy life. Sāri­putta is like a mother; Mog­gallāna is like a nurse. Sāri­putta trains oth­ers in the fruit of stream-entry; Mog­gallāna for the supreme goal.

We should praise and encour­age a healthy level of diversity, for it is a simple fact that the world we live in is diverse, that people are diverse, and that situ­ations are diverse. If dif­fer­ent mon­as­ter­ies choose to emphas­ize dif­fer­ent qual­it­ies, and make dif­fer­ent require­ments, as long as these are within the spirit and let­ter of the Vinaya this should be sup­por­ted, just as the Buddha praised both Sāri­putta and Mog­gallāna, without insist­ing that one way was the right one. This diversity is expli­citly acknow­ledged in the Vinaya when, for example, the Buddha read­ily made spe­cial allow­ances for monks liv­ing in the ‘outly­ing bor­der dis­tricts’, includ­ing relax­ing the require­ments for ordin­a­tion. When things are dif­fi­cult and the Sangha is young, as is the case in Aus­tralia, we should fol­low this example and go out of our way to enable the young Sangha to flour­ish and grow in its own good time, and in its own way.

Ordain­ing in the West

Another con­sid­er­a­tion that is of primary import­ance is the nature of the people who come to Buddhism. This is some­thing I have con­sid­er­able exper­i­ence in, as I have ordained and trained almost exclus­ively in mon­as­ter­ies that were set up by and for English-speaking mon­ast­ics. Since com­ing to Santi, there has been a steady stream of applic­ants for ordin­a­tion, and we have suc­cess­fully ordained and trained sev­eral bhikkhus. In the past three years or so, there have been around 15 applic­a­tions or ser­i­ous expres­sions of interest in bhikkhuni ordination.

Our can­did­ates are of vary­ing ages, typ­ic­ally have a high level Uni­ver­sity edu­ca­tion (unlike myself!), are motiv­ated, independent-minded, and like to think for them­selves. They are West­ern­ers, or have lived in West­ern coun­tries for many years. They are highly aware of the pain­ful nature of gender dis­crim­in­a­tion in Buddhism, and yet retain faith in the holy life: this itself is, for me, always a remark­able thing. West­ern mon­astic can­did­ates – and I include myself – will not tol­er­ate the more regi­men­ted and con­strained envir­on­ment that is often found in train­ing mon­as­ter­ies, espe­cially in East Asia. This is, I believe, one of the reas­ons why the Thai forest tra­di­tion in par­tic­u­lar has been a suc­cess­ful model for the West, as it is char­ac­ter­ized by a relaxed ease and sim­pli­city in extern­als, focus­sing on the inner qualities.

The teacher

That’s me. I’ve been ordained as a bhikkhu since 1994, and trained ori­gin­ally at Wat Pa Nanachat, the forest mon­as­tery in Thai­l­and for English-speaking monks. There I received a good ground­ing in mon­astic life­style and decorum, and the basics of Dhamma, from my teach­ers at the time, Ajahn Pas­anno and Ajahn Jay­as­aro. My main med­it­a­tion teacher has been Ajahn Maha Chat­chai in Bangkok. I had a short but lovely visit to him recently, and we were vis­ited by a sāmaṇerī; I was sur­prised and delighted when Ajahn Maha Chat­chai, com­ment­ing on my sup­port for nuns, said: ‘That’s because Sujato is so even-minded and has no dis­crim­in­a­tion.’ But my main teacher for the past ten years or more has been Ajahn Brahm. I stayed with him for three years, and con­tinue to main­tain a close rela­tion­ship. I have taken the role of senior monk lead­ing a com­munity of monks, and some­times nuns, for the past seven vassas.

The two main­stays of my own prac­tice have always been med­it­a­tion and study of the Sut­tas. So these are the primary emphases at Santi FM, although I strongly believe that indi­vidual dif­fer­ences should be respec­ted, and that there is no point in try­ing to force every­one into the same Pro­crustean bed. I am quite con­fid­ent in my abil­ity to lead the com­munity in these mat­ters. I have a strong per­sonal com­mit­ment to this mon­as­tery, and limit my travel to around one month per year so that I can spend time here. I saw at Wat Pa Nanachat the unfor­tu­nate situ­ation where the abbot simply didn’t really want to be there. So I have made it my first pri­or­ity to develop and run Santi FM in a way that I am happy with, so that I can live here and develop in my own practice.

The exper­i­ence of being an abbot has been dif­fi­cult, but genu­inely reward­ing, and it con­tin­ues to be so. It forces me to go into areas I would not go by myself, and gives me the grat­i­fic­a­tion of being able to help many people along the path. Since going down the path of sup­port­ing bhikkhuni ordin­a­tion, I have been altern­ately inspired and dis­ap­poin­ted by the atti­tudes and emo­tions this arouses; but for me it has become an intrinsic part of my jour­ney. Even in the past vassa, I felt a sub­stan­tial shift in my atti­tudes, an increased capa­city both for empathy and for bound­ar­ies. I am look­ing for­ward to con­tin­ued growth together with my won­der­ful sis­ters in the Dhamma.

The place

Santi Forest Mon­as­tery has been a viable entity for the past five years. It has not been easy, we have had to build up a sup­port com­munity from scratch. But the place is extraordin­ary, and plays no small part in encour­aging people to stay here and enjoy solitude, espe­cially the young.

We have both monks and nuns liv­ing here. This was an exper­i­ment, as I have not lived in a mixed com­munity before. But I have found it to be extremely bene­fi­cial and reward­ing, and I think both com­munit­ies have grown because of it. At Santi, the bhikkhu com­munity entirely lacks the some­times juven­ile atti­tudes towards women that pre­vail all to eas­ily in all-male com­munit­ies. Heart­felt respect and appre­ci­ation are the norm. As time goes on and the bhikkhuni com­munity finds its feet, we will develop the mon­as­tery so that the two com­munit­ies will have more autonomy, and will be able to make decisions inde­pend­ently. But we hope to never lose the con­nec­tion, or to go back to a world where friend­ship is determ­ined by gender.

I have made it clear to all that the bhikkhuni com­munity is the first pri­or­ity, and we will make land and build­ings here avail­able for the nuns’ use as they need it. Even­tu­ally, we plan to assign at least half of our plot of land for the bhikkhunis to live and prac­tice. But I will always be here to offer help when it is needed.

A word of caution

It is abso­lutely cru­cial that we do not make excess­ive demands or place unreal­istic expect­a­tions on the bhikkhuni can­did­ates. This is, apart from any­thing else, sex­ist, as there is no short­age of monks with little or no genu­ine spir­itual aspir­a­tion at all who man­age to remain in robes. If we make cri­teria for bhikkhunis that are in excess of those that have been prac­tised for monks, the can­did­ates will, quite rightly, see this as just more dis­crim­in­a­tion. It also increases the pres­sure on the nuns, both inner and outer, and does not respect their own sense of judge­ment and matur­ity. Young nuns are young nuns, and like young monks they need their time to grow into the robes, to make their own mis­takes, to find their own path. We must learn to see them as nor­mal, as people who just want to prac­tice Dhamma.

It is not the case that stricter is bet­ter. Appro­pri­ate is bet­ter. And that is a con­stantly chan­ging dynamic, not a fixed for­mula. West­ern can­did­ates are often rel­at­ively weak in faith; or rather, their faith must come through con­stant nur­tur­ing and inquiry, rather than being simply assumed. Again, the Vinaya pre­ced­ent applied by the Buddha in his wis­dom was that if a mon­astic is weak in faith, newly ordained, then the Sangha should be gentle and not harsh on them, encour­aging their good qual­it­ies, not being quick to rep­rim­and them for their faults. For West­ern mon­ast­ics, growth in faith comes from provid­ing a con­tainer for them to inquire, to study, and to med­it­ate. It is a demand­ing job, but an extremely reward­ing one, for a teacher to sum­mon up the cour­age to allow chal­lenges and ques­tions, to sup­port a diversity of views, and to encour­age shared respons­ib­il­ity and decision making.

Things are strong at Santi. We have good teach­ings, good sup­port, a suit­able envir­on­ment, and highly intel­li­gent, tal­en­ted, and motiv­ated can­did­ates for bhikkhuni ordin­a­tion. The stand­ard of the can­did­ates we have been see­ing is, quite frankly, far bet­ter than any group of monk can­did­ates I have ever seen. With ten­der­ness, time, and encour­age­ment the bhikkhuni Sangha of Santi Mon­as­tery will become a thing of rare beauty.