'Rebel' female
Buddhist monks challenge Thailand status quo
Denis D. Gray (Associated
Press) | September 12, 2015
NAKHON PATHOM,
Thailand — On a rural road just after daybreak, villagers young and
old kneel reverently before a single file of ochre-robed women,
filling their bowls with rice, curries, fruits and sweets. In this
country, it's a rare sight.
Thailand's top
Buddhist authority bars women from becoming monks. They can only
become white-cloaked nuns, who are routinely treated as domestic
servants. Many here believe women are inferior beings who had
better perform plenty of good deeds to ensure they will be reborn
as men in their future lives.
Yet with the
religion beset by lurid scandals, female monastics or "bhikkhunis"
are emerging as a force for reform, not unlike activists in the
Christian world seeking gender equality including ordination of
women as priests in the Catholic Church. They are growing in
numbers and appear to be making headway.
Thailand has
some 100 bhikkhunis who were ordained in Sri Lanka, where women are
allowed to become monks. They and their monasteries are not legally
recognized in Thailand, and don't enjoy state funding and other
support the country's 200,000 male monks are granted.
Living spartan
lives, the women are governed by 311 precepts from celibacy and
poverty to archaic ones like having to confess after eating garlic.
Their ranks and those of hundreds of aspirants — there are five
stages before ordination — include a former Google executive, a
Harvard graduate, journalists and doctors, as well as village
noodle vendors.
"It is our
right, our heritage, to lead a fully monastic life. We are on the
right side of history," says Chatsumarn Kabilsingh, an author,
former university professor and the first bhikkhuni in Thailand
from the Theravada branch of Buddhism, which is dominant in
Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka. Using her religious name of Venerable
Dhammananda, she contends that the Buddha 2,500 years ago built the
religion as a four-legged stool — monks, nuns, laymen and laywomen
— but "we are now sitting on just three legs."
The
male-dominated religion has been blighted in recent years by crimes
and gross violations of vows, just as widespread sex abuse and
Vatican financial scandals have damaged the Roman Catholic
Church.
Monks in
Thailand have been convicted of everything from murder to wildlife
trafficking. Sexual depravity is frequently reported. One former
abbot, fugitive Wirapol Sukphol, faces charges of drug use, money
laundering, fathering a child by an underage woman and illegally
amassing millions of dollars. A photograph shows him seated in a
private jet wearing aviator sunglasses.
The Supreme
Sangha Council, the religion's ruling body, is under fire over the
mishandling of corruption allegations against prominent abbots,
including one of its own members. The allegations include
embezzling funds intended for the cremation of an abbot's
predecessor and the investment of $1.2 million from donations into
the stock market.
With Buddhism so
intimately tied to Thai identity — more than 90 percent adhere to
the faith — these misdeeds and what is termed "checkbook Buddhism"
have spurred calls in Parliament for curbing the almost total
authority the council wields over the clergy and the
corruption-stoking $4 billion in annual donations to monasteries. A
proposed Patronage and Protection of the Clergy Bill would impose
stiff penalties for those who break the religion's cardinal rules
and set up a panel to monitor donations. Corruption within Buddhism
may also be dealt with in Thailand's next constitution, now being
drafted.
The role of
women in Buddhism has also aroused national-level
debate.
The Sangha
council has urged the government to ban Sri Lankan clergy from
coming into the country following what Dhammananda calls a "rebel
ordination" in Thailand of eight bhikkhunis last November by Sri
Lankans. That drew broad criticism of the council
itself.
"The clergy can
no longer insist on operating in a closed, feudal system that
violates universal norms and values," said an editorial in the
English-language Bangkok Post. Instead of trying to crush women's
aspirations, it said the "clergy should concentrate on cleaning up
its own house to restore declining public faith."
No scandal has
emerged among Thailand's female clergy. Dhammananda said she has
seen no misbehavior in her monastery beyond a few nuns who had used
their mobile telephones to excess.
"I think that
many nuns see themselves as exemplary. They are, and they're
carving a new role for themselves that didn't exist," said Juliane
Schober, an expert on Southeast Asian Buddhism at Arizona State
University. "That that puts pressure on the Sangha doesn't surprise
me."
Women clergy
interviewed at three monasteries said it was essential to maintain
a high moral ground so as not to give opponents an excuse to stop
their movement. Some cast them as Western-educated feminists out to
undermine traditional Buddhism.
"They can be a
force for change in Buddhism," said Phramaha Boonchuay Doojai, a
leading activist monk at Chiang Mai Buddhist College.
"If everything
is in the hands of men, it is as if Buddhism was just the way of a
father, not mother. But you need both," he said. "Mothers have some
unique feelings that men do not share. They may have more loving
kindness."
Proponents of
ordination like Boonchuay say bhikkhunis originated with Buddha
himself; the first was an aunt who raised him. Opponents argue that
the lineage of the Theravada bhikkhuni order, under which women
could be ordained, died out long ago and cannot be restored. The
Mahayana branch of Buddhism practiced in East Asia has historically
ordained women.
"We simply
follow the rules. The ordination of female monks was allowed in the
Lord Buddha's time. But as time passed, the lineage of bhikkhuni
disappeared," Phra Tepvisutthikawee of the Buddhism Protection
Center has said.
Despite
conservative opposition, bhikkhunis are gaining ground with the
general public in Thailand.
"It is a
movement now. When I was struggling by myself it was just this
crazy woman who wanted to be a monk," says Dhammananda, who was
ordained in 2003. "Now people don't feel strange when they see a
female monk in the streets. We don't have problems with people,
with society."
Aside from
spiritual pursuits, the 15 monastics at her Songdhammakalyani
Monastery visit prisoners, aid the poor and infirm and maintain
other links with the surrounding community near Nakhon Pathom in
central Thailand. Regularly they make alms rounds, a timeless
tradition of food offerings by the faithful who are then blessed by
the monks.
To the north, in
the shadows of the country's highest mountain, hundreds of civil
servants, businessmen, villagers and others regularly flock to an
idyllic monastery to hear talks by Venerable Nandanyani, a
bhikkhuni and onetime mathematician. Families attend a weekend
religion "camp" on the monastery grounds. A bhikkhuni leads a group
of men and women in the slow motions of walking
meditation.
Seated below a
statue of the Buddha, the abbess energetically explains why
ordination of women is vital, punctuating her words with thumbs-up
gestures. It enables individuals to probe Buddhism's depths and
live the full monastic life, she says, and also allows intimate
communication between female clergy and laywomen unhindered by the
barriers of sex and traditional propriety between women and
monks.
"We must wait,"
she says. "Slowly but surely it will come."