Thailand's female monks (cautiously) lobby for legal recognition

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A quiet campaign to grant female monks legal recognition began this summer. Advocates hope that the minimal fanfare will help the 'Bhikkhunis' evade conservative religious opposition.

BANGKOK, THAILAND -- Dhammananda Bhikkhuni grips a wobbly stack of feminine hygiene products and sorts them on a long table. Her followers watch before mimicking her quick movements.

<< Novice monk Dhammarakhita (C), dressed in a brick-colored robe after her ordination by Sri Lankan Bhikkuni, an order of female monks, gestures at Songdharmakalyani Temple in Nakhon Pathom, in this 2002 file photo. Formally known as Varangghana Vanavichayen, Dhammarakhita, a mother of two who divorced her husband to dedicate her life to Buddhism, became the first woman to be ordained as a monk in Thailand.
AFP/Newscom File

Bhikkhunis (Pee-KOO-nees), ordained female monks, in Thailand consider their gender to be an essential bridge to the women they help through charity work and spiritual guidance, since women are forbidden to be alone with male monks, known as Bhikkhu (Pee-KOO).

But Thai Bhikkhunis have their own limitations, not just because they number only 25 compared with the approximate 200,000 male monks here. They lack legal recognition – a denial that accompanies various withholdings of public benefits, and it highlights a persistent issue of discrimination for women across the country.

A revived campaign to grant Bhikkhunis legal recognition launched quietly at the end of July, with advocates hoping that minimal fanfare would help them evade the conservative religious opposition that has prevented the movement from strengthening for more than 80 years.

“This is a basic human rights issue,” says prominent former senator and lawyer Paiboon Nititawan, an organizer of the Bhikkhunis’ rights movement.

The new approach to take a cautious tact to achieve legal recognition for Bhikkhunis won’t grant them entirely equal status with the male monks. But Bhikkhunis and their supporters are eager to accept whatever gains they can secure in the still largely conservative country.

The trick? “We have to stay low key,” says Dhammananda, the eldest and longest-standing Bhikkhuni in Thailand. “We won’t go out and march through the streets.”

Dhammananda presides over a monastery that is home to nine Bhikkhunis in Nakhon Pathom province, one-hour northwest of Bangkok.

The residing Bhikkhunis, all ordained in Sri Lanka, which practices their observed chapter of Buddhism, Theravada, strictly follow the eight guiding principles of Buddhism.

Like their male counterparts, the women pray several times a day and discuss Buddhist teachings. But only Bhikkhuni can physically touch the other women who travel long distances for prayer.

“I love that it is easy to touch and talk with Dhammananda,” said Khun Tip, a layperson who visits the monastery daily. “Women who have problems with their husbands or families cannot talk to male monks about these things.”

Hurdles for women monks

Everyday barriers male monks don’t have to consider stunt Bhikkhunis’ work with women, the female monks say.

Male monks receive free public transportation and reserved bus seats, government identification cards, and public funds to support their monasteries. Bhikkhunis, meanwhile, have to rely on help from laypeople and private donations.

“If we go on the bus there is no place for us to sit,” explains Dhammananda. “To many people, this here would not be considered a temple, because with a temple you must have a monk, and we are not considered that.”

Bhikkhunis’ rights campaign reveals the subtle, yet entrenched brand of gender discrimination in Thailand, which has achieved gender parity in classrooms and the workforce. However, women still earn only 94 percent of what male colleagues make and hold the minority of executive, high-level positions in business and politics.

Dhammananda acknowledges the “injustice” of Bhikkhunis’ lack of recognition, but says if their campaign is to be successful it must appeal to Buddhist morals and honor the Buddha's word – not necessarily women's empowerment.

“We will bring these donations to women who are in the local prison,” explained Ms. Dhammananda. “If we don’t, then who?”

Thai constitution

Bhikkhuni ordination is permitted under the Thai constitution, but the Thai Sangha Council, a government-linked religious advisory group, does not accept Bhikkhunis’ legal status or right to be ordained within the country. It cites a 1928 Sangha Act, which banned ordination of women following the last known attempt to recognize Bhikkhunis.

A new constitution in 1932 made that religious order void, says Mr. Nititawan.

But the Thai Sangha and some Bhikkhu – who remain largely unaware of the revitalized campaign – continue to cite the 1928 order, which recognizes only Bhikkhu, along with Vietnamese and Chinese male monks.

Nititawan says nearly 1,000 people have signed a petition to propose an amendment to the Sangha Act – one-tenth of what is needed to bring the measure before the Thai Parliament.

The change in law would place Bhikkhunis in the “other sangha,” or ordained monks, category, along with Vietnamese and Chinese monks. Bhikkhuni would still have to travel abroad to receive ordination, a costly and time consuming process of several years.

“We believe that the government will support this because there is no reason not to,” explained Sutada Mekrungruengkul, director of the Gender and Development Research Institute in Bangkok, who helped organize the campaign’s launch among 30 people in Bangkok on July 29.

The movement also references the Buddha's support of Bhikkhunis when he allowed women to join the order of female Sangha, according to Dhammananda, because they were capable of enlightenment.

Dhammananda received her full ordination in 2003 and took over the temple her mother, the first fully ordained woman in Thailand, built in the 1970s.

A former university professor and divorced mother of three grown children, Dhammananda, then known as Chatsumarn Kabilsingh, says she found her spiritual calling mid life, when she felt something was missing from her otherwise full life. She realized it was a lack of fulfillment of her spirituality. She looked in the mirror one day and asked herself, “How much longer do I have to keep on doing this?” Competing for recognition at work seemed insignificant to adopting a simpler life of charity, reflection, and spirituality.

Other Bhikkhunis also chose ordination over promising careers.

Dhamma Vijaya planned to become an ambassador, and later considered social justice work, before she joined the monastery as a novice.

“It doesn’t matter to me that we are not recognized,” Ms. Dhamma said. “I would like to learn and that is my right.”

She thinks that the ranks of Bhikkhunis will grow if they receive legal recognition.

“It will help us become stronger,” Dhamma continued.

Approximately 1,200 Bhikkhunis practice across Southeast Asia and some parts of South Asia, among other places. Aside from Sri Lanka, Bhikkhunis can also receive ordination in China, Taiwan, Australia, and the United States.

Many national communities of Bhikkhunis say they have had their own struggles for equality, and they support one another through an international alliance. The alliance, of which Dhammanada is a member, works to support ordination of women worldwide.

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Rival Tibetan lamas compete for recognition

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New Delhi, India -- Thaye Dorje was only 18 months old when, according to his biographers, he began telling people he was the reincarnation of one of Tibetan Buddhism's most influential leaders, the Karmapa Lama.

<< Tibetan leader Thaye Dorje gestures during an interview in New Delhi. Dorje was only 18 months old when, according to his biographers, he began telling people he was the reincarnation of one of Tibetan Buddhism's most influential leaders, the Karmapa Lama.
Photograph by: Getty Images , Agence France-Presse

Now 28, and embarking on a global religious teaching tour, he is one of two young men at the centre of a murky, divisive and seemingly intractable dispute over the Karmapa title.

Other major players in the long-running row include Tibet's spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, China's communist government, India's Supreme Court and a remote monastery that holds relics and treasures valued at up to $1.5 billion.

Among those relics is the "Black Crown" of the Karmapas - said to be made from the hair of female deities and a symbol of the Karmapa's status as head of the Karma Kagyu lineage, one of the four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism.

But since the death of the 16th Karmapa Lama in 1981, the crown has been locked away, coveted but unworn, in the vaults of Rumtek Monastery in the northeast Indian state of Sikkim, bordering Tibet.

A long and hotly disputed search for the 16th Karmapa's reincarnation split the Karma Kagyu school behind two candidates, Thaye Dorje and Urgyen Trinley, 26 - each enthroned by their respective factions as the 17th Karmapa.

The two rivals both now live in India. Thaye Dorje fled Tibet with his family in 1994, while Urgyen Trinley escaped in 2000.

"We've never even met," Thaye Dorje told AFP in an interview in New Delhi ahead of his four-month, 12-country tour.

"I've thought for a long time that it could be done - that the two of us could just sit down. I really wonder why it hasn't happened," he said.

Of the two, Urgyen Trinley is the better known internationally and is recognized as the 17th Karmapa by both the Chinese government and the Dalai Lama.

Recent appearances with the Dalai Lama - notably during a visit to Washington last year - have fuelled speculation that he is being groomed as the Nobel peace laureate's spiritual successor.

Thaye Dorje's take on the feud - he prefers the term "confusion" - surrounding the Karmapa title is couched in a strongly Buddhist perspective.

"We are taught that everything is impermanent, always changing, always in motion, and we must expect there will always be obstacles and challenges.

"This confusion tests one's courage in terms of devotion and in terms of seeing obstacles as an opportunity for turning negative circumstances into positive ones," he said.

But the existence of two rival Karmapas sets a dangerous precedent for the Tibetan movement as a whole, given fears that a similar situation might arise over the Dalai Lama's eventual reincarnation, with China anointing its own successor.

And the dispute also has a distinctly non-spiritual side, tainted by violence and a series of bitterly fought cases - some of them ongoing - in the Indian courts.

In 1993, followers of Urgyen Trinley stormed the Rumtek Monastery and ousted members of the Karmapa Charitable Trust (KCT) - a body set up the 16th Karmapa which had recognized Thaye Dorje as the true reincarnation.

But legal control of the monastery - and the Black Crown - remains in dispute with India's Supreme Court in 2004 having dismissed a petition to challenge the KCT's guardianship.

While voicing "disappointment" that the row had dragged on for so long, Thaye Dorje said it was inevitable that lawyers would become involved.

"The legal route is naturally there ... (the courts) are another tool, another way," he said.

"I really wish that sooner rather than later we can find a solution, because it's completely unnecessary."

Soft-spoken but self-assured, the young lama - whose musical tastes range from Mozart to the Irish singer Enya and who lists Star Wars among his favourite films - was born in Tibet in 1983.

His father was a high lama and his mother descended from Tibetan nobility. According to his official biography, he was just oneand-a-half years old "when he started telling people that he was the Karmapa."

Some observers see his tour of Asian and European countries as an effort to raise his profile and counter the publicity his rival has enjoyed as a result of the Dalai Lama's endorsement.

Thaye Dorje says he has enormous respect for the Dalai Lama as "one of the greatest" Buddhist teachers, but is more circumspect when talking about his spiritual authority.

The Karma Kagyu lineage has always maintained a proud independence from the Dalai Lama's Gelugpa school of Tibetan Buddhism and many of Thaye Dorje's hundreds of thousands of followers argue that the elderly monk has no say in the Karmapa's reincarnation.

"In terms of defining whether the Dalai Lama is the spiritual head of Tibet or not, that answer would go into the political side of things," Thaye Dorje said.

"It would be a political statement, and that's something I've always tried my very best to avoid," he added.

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