his holiness the karmapa and women's issues
A Pillar
is Missing from our House:
Gyalwang Karmapa on Full Ordination for Women
Article by Dharmadattā Nuns' Community member Lhundup Damcho, originally written for publication in German in Dharma-Nektar Magazine.
An abbreviated version of this article will appear in the Spring 2010 edition of Buddhadharma Magazine. Download a pdf of this and the accompanying articles on women's place in Buddhism.
Last
winter, His Holiness the 17th Gyalwang Karmapa stunned an international audience
in Bodhgaya by making an unprecedented declaration of commitment to ordaining women
as bhikshunis in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. Responding to a question as to
when there would ever be bhikshuni ordination in the Tibetan tradition, His
Holiness leaned forward and spoke directly in English. “I will do it,” he said.
As enthusiastic applause broke out across the large assembly hall, Gyalwang
Karmapa cautioned against expecting quick results. “Be patient,” he said. “Be
patient.”
“As
to when it will begin, and when there will be bhikshuni
ordination,” His Holiness stated, during his annual winter teachings at Tergar
Monastery in Bodhgaya last December. “I cannot say when exactly the right time
will be. But I am making every effort, with a sincere motivation, and I believe
there is great hope. So please rest easy. The bhikshuni vows that lead to
liberation and enlightenment are extremely important, and are in a sense the
root of the Buddha’s Dharma. Therefore I do not believe it is wise to act hastily.
So please relax, and please be patient.”
Despite
the warning that full ordination was not imminent, Gyalwang Karmapa’s statement
in Bodhgaya was nevertheless ground-breaking, for it constitutes the first time
that any spiritual leader in Tibetan Buddhism has publicly committed to making bhikshuni
ordination available. His Holiness’ declaration marks the culmination of intensive
research into the feasibility of establishing full ordination for women
according to the monastic code that regulates Tibetan Buddhism. More broadly,
it reflects Gyalwang Karmapa’s intense commitment to women’s issue and to nuns
in particular.
At
present, women in Tibetan Buddhism may take a lower level of ordination, as novice
nuns (Tibetan: getsulmas) or (Sanskrit: shramanerikas), but they do not have
the opportunity to take the highest level of ordination that Buddha Shakyamuni initially
created for women: bhikshuni or gelongma ordination. Full ordination for women is
available in Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese Buddhist traditions, and has
recently been re-established for nuns in the Theravada Buddhist tradition of
Sri Lanka. Tibetan Buddhism still lags behind these traditions in the movement
towards offering equal spiritual opportunities to women.
For
the past several decades, His Holiness the Dalai Lama has consistently spoken
out in favor of establishing bhikshuni ordination in the Tibetan tradition. To
date, progress toward that goal has been incremental, consisting mainly of
inconclusive conferences and discussions. Gyalwang Karmapa’s acceptance of a
personal role in extending the opportunity of full ordination to women thus marks
a decisive step forward on a path that His Holiness the Dalai Lama first asked
Tibetan Buddhists to traverse.
Not Just a Women’s Issue
During
a stay in Sarnath, India, Gyalwang Karmapa granted an interview to
discuss his views on bhikshuni ordination. His Holiness began by
describing his reasons for taking such a strong stance on the matter.
“There
are several issues and several purposes,” he said.“If something is missing —
such as gelongma vows, which do not exist in the Tibetan community—this affects
the getsulmas and rabjungmas as well.… It affects the basic ordination of
women. This means it is a very important issue.”
But
His Holiness went on to point out that the issue of bhikshuni ordination in
Tibetan Buddhism is not only an issue of concern to women: “It also affects the
whole teachings,” he added. “There are two types of people who practice the
teachings, women and men. There are two types of holders of the teachings, male
and female. So what affects women automatically affects the teachings, and
impacts the flourishing of the Dharma.”
Just
days before his public statement in Bodhgaya, Gyalwang Karmapa presided over a
five-day vinaya conference that he himself had convened during the Kagyu Winter
Debates. High on the agenda of that conference was the question of bhikshuni ordination.
His Holiness spoke at length to the large gathering of Kagyu khenpos, monks and
nuns on the importance of establishing bhikshuni ordination in Tibetan Buddhism.
His
Holiness pointed out that Buddha Shakyamuni himself offered bhikshuni ordination
to women as a means to bring about their liberation from samsara. The need to
offer women all the conditions to achieve liberation is particularly clear from
a Mahayana perspective of compassion and sense of responsibility for the
well-being of others, he added. Nowadays the majority of those who seek the
Dharma in Dharma centers outside India and Tibet are in fact women, he noted.
Along
with the need for bhikshuni ordination to support women on their path to
liberation, bhikshuni ordination is needed for the benefit of the Dharma, to
allow the teachings to spread and become fully accessible to people throughout
the world, His Holiness explained. He commented that the four circles of
disciples that Buddha created were like four pillars in a house. (The four
pillars are bhikshus, bhikshunis, female holders of lay precepts and male
holders of lay precepts.) Since the bhikshuni order was one of those four
pillars, and is now lacking in Tibetan Buddhism, the house of Buddha’s
teachings is missing an important condition needed to remain stable.
His
Holiness suggested that while there are procedural issues to be resolved, any obstacles
need to be weighed against the great need to offer bhikshuni ordination to
qualified female candidates. As such, research into the issues surrounding
ought to take place with an appreciation of the need to offer women the
opportunity to follow the complete path to liberation that Buddha created for
them, he stressed.
Grappling with Procedural Issues
Earlier
in 2009, Gyalwang Karmapa summoned
khenpos from the major Karma Kagyu monasteries for several months of study and
research under vinaya experts at his residence in Dharamsala. Gyalwang Karmapa himself
was directly engaged in exploring the various options for conferring valid full
ordination of women. According to the Mūlasarvāstivāda vinaya followed by
Tibetan Buddhism, standard ordination practices stipulate that a sangha of
bhikshus as well as a sangha of bhikshunis be present at the ritual ceremony to
fully ordain new women. Yet a bhikshuni order does not appear to have been
brought to Tibet from India. This absence of bhikshunis in Tibetan Buddhism has
posed a stumbling block to the modern efforts to establish full ordination for
women.
However,
a number of great Tibetan masters of the past did fully ordain some of their
female disciples. Such masters include no less authoritative a figure than the
Eighth Karmapa, Je Mikyö Dorje, one of the greatest vinaya scholars in Tibetan
history. In the end, these isolated instances of ordinations did not result in
the formation of a bhikshuni order in Tibet. Nowadays, two major options have
been considered in Tibetan monastic circles. One is ordination by a bhikshu
sangha alone, which would consist of monks from the Tibetan Mūlasarvāstivāda
tradition. Another is what is known as “dual sangha ordination,’” in which the
sangha of Tibetan bhikshus conferring the ordination would be joined by a bhikshuni
sangha from a separate vinaya lineage, the Dharmagupta lineage preserved in
Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese Buddhism.
While
the Eighth Karmapa Mikyö Dorje and other great masters in Tibet held bhikshuni
ordinations using this first option—a bhikshu sangha alone—such a method was
not universally accepted among Tibetan Buddhist schools. “Although perhaps in
the vinaya we can find sources for ordination by the bhikshu sangha alone, this
is something disputed and controversial,” His Holiness said. “I do not want to
make more controversy, because nowadays Tibetan Buddhism is all together in
exile, and if one lineage acts on its own, for example, if I give the
ordination in our school alone, then other schools may be uncomfortable with
that, and that is not good. But there are other ways and methods available to
do so.”
Asked
which method he favors, Gyalwang Karmapa said: “I think the best way is dual
sangha ordination, with the Dharmagupta tradition and Mūlasarvāstivāda tradition
acting together. This is a more profound way. It would mean not only that we
can offer gelongma vows, but also if we did this, we would create a
relationship between Dharmagupta and Mūlasarvāstivāda. This would also be
beneficial for the harmony between Buddhist schools.”
A
major objection lodged against dual sangha ordination has been that it would
entail a “mixing” of traditions, potentially raising questions as to which
vinaya lineage the bhikshunis would then hold, or which procedural rules should
prevail during the ceremony itself. But His Holiness dismisses the gravity of
this concern. “I do not think this is a major problem,” he said. “Why? There
are many sources, but basically Buddhism evolved into 18 different sects, but
they are all pure. They all proceed according to the Dharma. Each school has a
different vinaya, and according to their own vinaya and rituals, the vows can
be generated. This means it is not a problem to hold dual sangha ordination with
different vinaya lineages.”
In
such a scenario, the vows that the new bhikshunis receive would be Mūlasarvāstivāda,
the tradition followed by Tibetan Buddhism. According to Mūlasarvāstivāda ordination
procedures, “the bhikshuni vows actually come from primarily the bhikshu
sangha, not the bhikshuni sangha,” His Holiness explained. “Since in the dual
sangha ordination, the bhikshu sangha will be from the Mūlasarvāstivāda
tradition, this means the bhikshuni vows
will be from the Mūlasarvāstivāda tradition.”
During
the teachings in Bodhgaya, Gyalwang Karmapa had stressed that results would not
come overnight. “I do not think there are major obstacles or challenges,” he
told Dharma-Nektar. “But we do need to develop our views on the matter. There
are some old views and old ways of thinking, and people who hold them are not
prepared to accept bhikshuni ordination. But I do not think this is a big
obstacle. The main need is for some leader to take a step, to move beyond
conferences and discussions. What is needed is to take full steps.”
Thus
far, many Tibetan Buddhists have looked to His Holiness the Dalai Lama to take
the initiative in organizing bhikshuni ordinations. When Gyalwang Karmapa was
asked why he himself was now willing to accept the responsibility for doing so,
he said: “His Holiness the Dalai Lama always takes responsibility. But he has
lots of activities and is very busy, so he cannot devote a great deal of his
attention to this issue and try to find sources and join every conference
himself. He cannot simply focus on this issue. …Maybe I have more time, and so
more opportunities to find some sources and hold conferences. And I also have
some sort of personal interest in it myself.”
Gyalwang
Karmapa added, “I just want to be a simple Buddhist practitioner. I just want
to give some suggestions or information to Tibetan nuns, to encourage them and
increase their confidence. This is very important. I can’t take bhikshuni vows.
Some Tibetan nuns will take these vows. They need encouragement and they need
to know the benefits and the importance of bhikshuni vows.”
Working for the Welfare of Women
In
the end, what is perhaps most noteworthy about Gyalwang Karmapa’s stance is precisely
the degree of his personal involvement. In an extraordinary articulation of his
concern for nuns’ welfare, Gyalwang Karmapa concluded a series of teachings he
gave at Tilokpur Nunnery in India in 2007 by stating: “My body is male, but my
mind has lots of feminine qualities, so I find myself a little bit both male
and female. Therefore although of course I have high aspirations to be of
benefit to all sentient beings, I especially have a commitment to work for the
welfare of women and especially of nuns. As long as I have this life, I would
like to work one-pointedly and diligently for their cause. I have this
responsibility as the head of this school of Buddhism, and from that point of
view also, I promise that I will try to do my best to see that the nuns’ sangha
will progress … I will do my very best.”
Indeed,
Gyalwang Karmapa’s willingness to work for the welfare of nuns extends well
beyond settling procedural policy or issuing statements. His Holiness himself
has undertaken to translate a volume of biographies of Chinese nuns from
Chinese into Tibetan. While that translation project is ongoing, he is next planning
to translate a collection of narratives of the lives of Buddha’s direct female
disciples from the classical literary language of the Tibetan canon into
colloquial Tibetan, in order to make the examples of these early nuns’ lives
more available to modern Tibetan readers.
His
Holiness himself traces his early involvement with the bhikshuni issue in particular
to the time when he instituted new discipline rules for monastics attending the
Kagyu Monlam Chenmo. “We were deciding how to organize the gelongs and getsuls,
and there were some gelongmas from the Chinese tradition. Then we needed to
think: Where do they sit? How do we make arrangements for them?” Since that
time, bhikshunis have been given a prominent place at the annual Kagyu Monlam
events in Bodhgaya, with special invitations issued to bhikshunis to attend.
At
a later point, His Holiness added, he came across an important source from the
Eighth Karmapa, Je Mikyö Dorje. “We rediscovered an old text in the collected
works of Mikyö Dorje on rituals,” His Holiness said. “In that text, he said that
in Tibet there was no bhikshuni lineage, but that we can give bhikshuni vows using
the bhikshu rituals. I thought, ‘Oh! This is news!’ I thought, okay, maybe…
This was a sort of small beginning.”
From
that small beginning to the historical moment of establishing full ordination
for women in Tibetan Buddhism may be a long journey. But it will not be the
first long journey this exceptional lama has completed in order to benefit
beings and the Dharma. And given his youthful age and his remarkable
determination, it will surely not be the last.