Asia Times: Thai female novice monk fights for religious pluralism


	February 19, 2002	atimes.com

Southeast Asia

Female novice treads new path in Thai Buddhism
By Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK - Samaneri Dhammarakhita is looking forward to the quiet path she will tread in her new state as an ordained Buddhist novice in Thailand. Besides seeking truths about Buddhism, the bald, bespectacled 56-year-old expects the journey to include sharing knowledge and spiritual secrets of the Buddha's teachings she has acquired during her training. Offering spiritual guidance to Buddhist women in Thailand, a country where 95 percent of its 62 million people are Buddhists, is among her interests.

"I want to make the dhamma [teachings of the Buddha] more accessible to women," Dhammarakita explained during an interview at Wat Songdharmakalyani, a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok. Those words, however, are also the words of a reformer in Thai Buddhism. That is the mantle she unwittingly acquired on February 10, when she became the first woman to be ordained a novice in Thailand. This enables her, after two years of training to seek the "higher ordination" of a bhikkuni, or female monk.

Her ordination - when she went from being Varangghana Vanavichayen, a mother of two and a divorcee, to the Venerable Dhammarakita Samaneri - occurred at the Songdharmakalyani temple under the guidance of a bhikkuni from another largely Buddhist country, Sri Lanka. Thus far, the only option available to Buddhist women was to become Buddhist nuns called dasasilmata, which means following important precepts of Buddhism. But this put them on a status lower than that of novices and monks. Dhammarakita herself was a nun prior to being trained for ordination.

The precedent set by her ordination as a novice has already kicked up a fuss here, since it challenges the way Buddhism has been practiced under the direction of a male-dominated clergy.

Thai Rath, the largest-circulation Thai-language newspaper in the country, has condemned the ordination, openly attacking it as a violation of Thai Buddhist traditions.

For its part, the government has requested the Religious Affairs Department to study the impact of ordaining women to the bhikkuni order. "They have the freedom to get ordained as long as their activities do not affect our national security," Deputy Education Minister Chamlong Krukhunthod was quoted as having told the independent English-language daily Bangkok Post. "Thai people who have faith in them also have the freedom to join their activities. But after being ordained, they won't be recognized under the Thai Sangha [the council of Buddhist clergy] law," he added.

However, Dhammarakita is receiving support from many quarters. "Like it or not, the clergy must face the fact that religious pluralism is here to stay. And they can no longer avoid the issue of female ordination," said Bangkok Post columnist Sanitsuda Ekachai, who has written books on Buddhism.

Tavivat Puntarigvivat backs the ordination as a necessary step to ensuring equal rights for men and women in Buddhism. "It is timely. Thai women entering the clergy will enhance equal rights in the Thai Buddhist culture," says Tavivat, director of research and development at the Bangkok-based World Buddhist University.

Women's rights groups feel likewise, underscoring the importance of a female perspective to be accommodated by the clergy. "We have been waiting so long for this, " says Thanavadee Thajeen, director of the non-governmental Friends of Women Foundation. "Women have a right to be bhikkunis and to assist women who go to temples seeking guidance for social problems that are particular to women."

Thus far, Dhammarakita has been unfazed by the fallout of her action. When confronted about the heat it has generated, she chuckles softly and dismisses her critics as being "narrow-minded", alleging they have "suppressed" the actual state of women in Buddhism.

Lending support to that view is Samaaneri Dhammananda, a Thai female monk who was ordained in Sri Lanka in February last year. "We want to offer an alternative to people keen on Buddhism, to women, with a stress on values," she said. "Our interest is the Buddhism practiced by the Buddha, not Buddhism according to the Thai tradition. We offer space for women at our temple," Dhammananda added in reference to the Songdharmakalyani temple, whose faded green roof and pale pink walls give it the look of a poor cousin when compared with the ornate and decorative exteriors of other temples in Bangkok. "The presence of female monks makes it easier for women to discuss social issues like abortion, prostitution and other abuse," she explained. "Male monks don't see the need to help women on social issues and the setting of the temples are not geared to make women feel comfortable."

But getting that message across Thailand will be a trying task for both Dhammarakita and Dhammananda, who was a Buddhist scholar prior to ordination. For instance, they come up against the number of temples that are part of the existing order. Currently, Thailand has some 300,000 male monks in about 25,000 temples across the country.

The female novices, on the other hand, are only three in number and they have one temple - Songdharmakalyani - that is administered by a female monk for lay Buddhist women. "How can three of us be a threat to 300,000 of them?" asked Dhammananda.

Then, there is a Thai law and a sangha order forbidding Thai monks from ordaining women. Those who have dared to challenge this view have, in fact, been rebuked. In the 1930s, two women who were ordained as monks were forced to disrobe by the government and last year, following Dhammanada's ordination, a hate campaign to vilify and discredit her was launched.

Still, these female reformers of Thai Buddhism have a reason to feel sanguine, given what has occurred in Sri Lanka, which, like Thailand, follows the Theravada Buddhist tradition. On that South Asian island nation, similar opposition arose shortly after the bhikkuni order was revived in 1998. But since then, the opposition has given way to more approval, enabling close to 200 bhikkunis to pursue their Buddhist mission.

"The Buddhist public, particularly the educated people, has no problems with female priests and looks at it in the context of women's liberation and so on," says Upali Salgado, a Sri Lankan analyst on Buddhist affairs.

Buddhist history, too, weighs heavily in favor of the bhikkunis, since the Buddha encouraged the creation of the bhikkuni order during his life. The Buddha's aunt, Maha Pajapatu Gotami, was the first bhikkuni.

While it did spread thereafter, like in Sri Lanka centuries ago, the bhikkuni order gave way to the male-dominated clergy. This is true today in other Asian countries following the Theravada Buddhist tradition, too, such as Myanmar and Cambodia.

"All we are doing is giving life back to this tradition," asserted Dhammananda. "It is the Buddha who gave the bhikkuni tradition to us."

Sanitsuda added: "The bhikkuni order from Sri Lanka which is taking root in Thailand is just one example of how disillusioned Buddhists are seeking alternatives to the feudal, out-of-touch clergy who cannot answer their spiritual needs."

(Inter Press Service)