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The History of the Bhikkhuni Sangha
by Dr. Chatsumarn
Kabilsingh ©
The bhikkhuni
order was established at the time of the Buddha and exists
until this day. For centuries, ordained women have practiced,
realized, and upheld the Buddha's teachings, benefiting not
only themselves but also the societies in which they lived.
Here I will give a brief history of the order, including its
spread to other countries, and discuss interesting points
in the Vinaya.
When King Suddhodana, the Buddha's father,
passed away, his stepmother and aunt, Mahapajapati, together
with five hundred royal women, went to the Buddha who was
in Kapilavatthu to request permission to join the sangha.
The Buddha responded, "Do not ask so." She repeated
the request again three times, and each time the Buddha simply
said, "Do not ask so." Nobody knew what he was thinking,
and it is not clear why he refused. However, that the Buddha
hesitated to accept her into the sangha has been interpreted
by some to mean that the Buddha did not want women to join
the order. Therefore, some people think that it was no problem
when the bhikkhuni order died out in India approximately one
thousand years later. In our study of the historical development
of the bhikkhuni sangha, when others quote from the texts
to prove authoritatively that the bhikkhuni order cannot be
restored today, we have to be equally conversant and fluent
in quoting from the texts to prove that it can.
The Buddha left Kapilavatthu and went
to Vesali, which was many days' journey on foot. By that time,
Mahapajapati had shaved her head and put on the robes. Together
with five hundred royal women who had done the same, she walked
to Vesali, thus demonstrating women's determination to be
ordained and follow the Buddha. Once there, she sat by the
entrance to the vihara, weeping, her feet swollen and bleeding
from the journey. Ananda, the Buddha's cousin and attendant
saw the women, spoke with them and learned of their problem.
He approached the Buddha on their behalf saying, "Mahapajapati,
your aunt and stepmother, is here, waiting for you to give
her permission to join the order." Again, the Buddha
said, "Do not ask so." Ananda tried another tact,
"After all, your aunt is also your stepmother. She was
the one who fed you with her milk." The Buddha still
refused. Then Ananda asked, "Are you not giving permission
because women do not have the same spiritual potential as
men to become enlightened?" The Buddha said, "No,
Ananda, women are equal to men in their potential to achieve
enlightenment." This statement opened a new horizon in
the world of religion in general at that time. Previously,
no founder of any religion had proclaimed men and women to
have equal potential for enlightenment.
Then, the Buddha said he would give women
permission to join the order if Mahapajapati would accept
the eight gurudhamma-eight
important rules-as the nuns' garland to decorate themselves.
Mahapajapati did. One of these rules is very annoying to many
Western Buddhist scholars; it says that a nun ordained even
a hundred years must bow to a monk ordained but one day. By
Western standards, it seems as if nuns are being suppressed,
but there is another way to look at this. The Vinaya recounts
the story of six monks who lifted up their robes to show their
thighs to the nuns. When the Buddha learned about this, he
made an exception to that rule and told the nuns not to pay
respect to these monks. A nun, then, does not have to bow
to every monk, but only to a monk who is worthy of respect.
We need to understand each gurudhamma
properly, for the Buddha always made exceptions after the
general rule was established.
One of the gurudhamma
mentions sikkhamanas, probationary
nuns who train for two years in preparation to become bhikkhunis.
It says that after a probationary nun has trained with a bhikkhuni
for two years, that bhikkhuni preceptor has the responsibility
to fully ordain her. However, when the Buddha ordained Mahapajapati,
there were no probationary nuns. He ordained her directly
as a bhikkhuni. So how do we explain that within the eight
important rules, one of them states that before becoming a
bhikkhuni, a woman must be a probationary nun? In addressing
this, an English monk told me he believes that the gurudhamma
arose much later on, and were shifted to the forefront by
the monks who were the historical recorders. These eight important
rules very clearly put nuns in a position subordinate to monks,
so would have been to the monks' advantage for the recorders
to attribute them to the Buddha.
The Buddha may have hesitated to accept
women into the order for several reasons. One might have been
his compassion for the nuns, especially his aunt, for the
bhikkhus and bhikkhunis received their food by collecting
alms in the villages. Sometimes they received very little,
just a handful of rice, a piece of bread, or some kind of
vegetables. Imagine the elderly queen Mahapajapati and five
hundred royal women going out begging. It would have been
almost impossible because they had led such comfortable lives
in the palace. Maybe out of compassion the Buddha did not
want these women to face such hardship.
In addition, at that time there were no
monasteries. The monastics lived a very difficult lifestyle,
dwelling under trees and in caves. Who would give this group
of wandering women dwelling places? Moreover, who would teach
the nuns? They could be ordained, shave their heads, and put
on robes, but if they did not receive an education and training,
they would be just like any wanderer in India at that time.
No plan for educating them existed yet. Later, it was established
that the bhikkhu sangha could assign a few excellent monks
to teach the nuns.
Furthermore, the Buddha had already received
criticism from lay people that he was destroying the family
unit. To accept five hundred women into the order implied
that he was going to destroy five hundred families because
women were the heart of the family. However, later the Buddha
learned that the husbands of these women had already joined
the order. Thus by ordaining the women, he would not break
up those families. The Buddha must have thought through all
these issues, and upon realizing that the problems could be
overcome, he accepted the nuns into the order.
It is also possible that he had never
thought about women joining the order prior to Mahapajapati's
request because in ancient India, women never left household
life. In fact, it was unthinkable for women to be on their
own at that time. Even nowadays in India, women seldom leave
the family. But since the Buddha knew that enlightenment was
a possibility for all human beings, he opened the door for
women to be ordained. This was a revolutionary step given
the social climate at the time.
Thus the bhikkhuni sangha was formed about
seven or eight years after the bhikkhu sangha. I see this
as one of the reasons the Buddha made the bhikkhuni sangha
subordinate to the bhikkhu sangha. They are subordinate in
the sense of being younger sisters and elder brothers, not
in the sense of being masters and slaves.
It was recorded that just after admitting
women into the sangha, the Buddha said, "Because I have
accepted women into the order, Buddhadhamma will only last
five hundred years." I view this statement as a reflection
of the mentality of the monks who first recorded the Vinaya
in written form in Sri Lanka 400-450 years after the Buddha's
parinibbana. These monks
apparently did not agree that women should join the order.
Some Western scholars think that this statement was later
attributed to the Buddha but was not really his. As we see,
over twenty-five hundred years have gone by, and not only
is Buddhism still prospering in Asia but it is also spreading
to the West. The prophecy saying that the Buddhadhamma would
last only five hundred years because women joined the sangha
is invalid.
Questioning the authenticity of certain
passages in the Buddhist scriptures is a delicate issue, and
we have to be very careful. How can we prove that everything
was passed down exactly as the Buddha spoke it? On the other
hand, isn't there danger in saying that certain passages are
later interpolations? I become suspicious only when a passage
does not correspond with the spirit of the main core of the
Buddha's teachings. In general, we have to trust that the
Indian monks had accurate memories and be grateful to them
for preserving and transmitting the texts. The Buddhist monks
were meticulous in preserving the teachings and handing them
down. In Christianity, different men wrote the Four Gospels
and they did not confer among themselves, while the Buddhist
monastics held councils to compile and systematize the Buddha's
teachings, during which they checked each other's information.
The first council was held just after the Buddha's passing
and five hundred arhats attended. The second one occurred
one hundred years after that, with seven hundred monks coming
together to recite the agreed upon body of knowledge.
The Relationship between the Bhikkhu
and the Bhikkhuni Sangha
As we would expect, the monks treated
the nuns in the same way that men in general treated women
in Indian society at that time. When women joined the order,
the monks expected them to clean the monastery and to wash
their dishes, robes, and rugs. Lay people noticed this and
reported it to the Buddha, saying that these women wanted
to be ordained so that they could study and practice the teachings,
but now they had little time for these. In response, the Buddha
established rules for monks regarding how to treat nuns. For
example, he established precepts forbidding monks to ask bhikkhunis
to wash their robes, sitting cloths, and so on.
The Buddha also protected nuns from being
taken advantage of by lax monks. One 120-year-old bhikkhuni
went on almsround each morning, walking the long distance
from the monastery to the village. She received food and took
it back to the monastery in her almsbowl. At the entrance
to the monastery waited a young monk, who was too lazy to
walk into the village for alms. Noticing that his bowl was
empty, she offered her food to him. It was enough for only
one person, so she then had nothing to eat for the rest of
the day.
The next day, he waited for her again,
and again she offered him her food. On the third day, after
having not eaten for three days, she went to the village to
collect alms. A carriage owned by a wealthy supporter of Buddhism
passed very near to her, and as she stepped out of its way,
she fainted and fell to the ground. The rich man stopped to
help her and discovered that she fainted because she had not
eaten for three days. He reported the situation to the Buddha
and protested that a nun had been treated that way by a monk.
The Buddha thereby established the precept prohibiting monks
from taking food from bhikkhunis. Of course, understanding
the spirit of each precept is important; this one does not
mean that nuns having plenty of food should not share it with
monks.
Nuns at the time of the Buddha had equal
rights and an equal share in everything. In one case, eight
robes were offered to both sanghas at a place where there
was only one nun and four monks. The Buddha divided the robes
in half, giving four to the nun and four to the monks, because
the robes were for both sanghas and had to be divided equally
however many were in each group. Because the nuns tended to
receive fewer invitations to lay people's homes, the Buddha
had all offerings brought to the monastery and equally divided
between the two sanghas. He protected the nuns and was fair
to both parties.
The First Council and the Bhikkhuni
Patimokkha
Ananda, the Buddha's attendant, played
a very important role in relation to the nuns. He was well
liked by the nuns and visited many nunneries in order to teach
them. Because he heard almost all of the Buddha's teachings
and had a phenomenal memory, he was a key person at the First
Council when the teachings were recited and collected.
That some monks had not been happy that
the Buddha allowed women to join the order had never been
expressed while the Buddha was alive. It first came out at
the First Council, which five hundred male arhats attended
about three months after the Buddha's parinibbana,
his passing away. Before the actual recitation of the Buddha's
teachings, they told Ananda he had made eight mistakes and
forced him to confess to these. One was that he had introduced
women into the sangha. Ananda responded that he did not see
that as a mistake, nor did he violate a precept in doing so.
However, in order to avoid causing schism in the sangha so
soon after the Buddha's parinibbana,
he said that if the monks wanted him to confess, he would
do so.
I have doubts that only men-five hundred
male arhats-were at this council. On uposatha
days every new and full moon, the bhikkhunis would recite
their Patimokkha Sutta apart
from the monks. I believe that technically, it could not be
possible for the monks to recite the Patimokkha
Sutta of the nuns, and so bhikkhunis must have been
present at the First Council. The recorders, who were all
monks, may not have thought it important to mention their
presence. Some monks have been kind enough to speak about
this point: recently, a Sri Lankan monk told me that he too
did not think that only men attended the First Council.
The Bhikkhuni Order in India and Its
Spread to Other Countries
Both the bhikkhu and bhikkhuni sanghas
existed until the eleventh century A.D. when the Muslims attacked
India and wiped out the Buddhist monasteries. In 248 B.C.E.,
about three hundred years after the passing away of the Buddha,
King Asoka the Great came to the throne. A great supporter
of Buddhism, he sent Buddhist missionaries in nine different
directions. His own son, Mahinda Thera, traveled to Sri Lanka
to teach the Dhamma and establish the bhikkhu sangha. Princess
Anula, the sister-in-law of King Devanampiyatissa of Sri Lanka,
converted to Buddhism when he did. After listening to the
teachings of Mahinda Thera, she became a stream-enterer and
asked him if she could join the sangha. Mahinda Thera told
her that dual ordination by both the bhikkhu and the bhikkhuni
orders was necessary to become a bhikkhuni. At least five
bhikkhunis must be present to form a sangha, and the preceptor
must have at least twelve years standing as a bhikkhuni in
order to give the precepts. He suggested that she ask King
Devanampiyatissa to send a messenger to India to request King
Asoka to send his daughter, Sanghamitta Theri, and some other
bhikkhunis to give the ordination. Sanghamitta Theri, a princess,
had given up royal luxury to practice the Dhamma. Well versed
in the Vinaya, she also taught the Dhamma. Thus, upon request
from the king of Sri Lanka, King Asoka sent Sanghamitta Theri
and other bhikkhunis to establish the nuns' order in Sri Lanka.
With her, King Asoka also sent a branch of the bodhi tree
from Bodhgaya. She and the other Indian bhikkhunis, together
with the bhikkhu sangha, ordained Princess Anula and other
Sri Lankan women, thus establishing the bhikkhuni sangha in
Sri Lanka, the first one outside India.
Hundreds of women wanted to receive ordination
when Sanghamitta Theri arrived, and King Devanampiyatissa
set about building nunneries for them. The bhikkhuni sangha
prospered there along side the bhikkhu sangha, until both
the orders were wiped out when the Chola King from Southern
India attacked Sri Lanka in 1017 A.D. The next Buddhist king
who came to the throne searched the entire island and found
only one male novice left. To revive the sangha in Sri Lanka,
he sent envoys to Burma and Thailand to request the kings
there to send monastics to give ordination in Sri Lanka. However,
since Thailand never had the bhikkhuni order, no bhikkhunis
could be sent, and the Sri Lankan king was able to revive
only the bhikkhu sangha.
The Chinese Nuns
From the second century A.D., Chinese
men were ordained as monks. In the early fourth century, one
Chinese woman, Ching-chien, was very enthusiastic to become
a bhikkhuni. Although she received sramanerika ordination
from a monk, she did not receive bhikkhuni ordination, because
the Chinese monks said that dual ordination was necessary.
Later, a foreign monk, T'an-mo-chieh, said that insisting
women receive dual ordination was not practical in a land
where no bhikkhunis were present. He and a bhikkhu sangha
ordained Ching-chien, whereupon she became the first bhikkhuni
in China.
Later the Chinese people invited bhikkhunis
from Sri Lanka to come to China. Some came, though not enough
to give the bhikkhuni ordination. These nuns remained in China
to study the Chinese language, while the ship owner returned
to Sri Lanka to invite enough bhikkhunis to come to China
to give the ordination. The following year, the ship brought
many bhikkhunis from Sri Lanka, including one named Tessara.
Together with the Sri Lankan bhikkhunis who had arrived earlier,
they gave ordination to more than three hundred Chinese women
at Southern Grove Monastery. The Indian monk Sanghavarman
and the bhikkhu sangha also gave the ordination, making this
the first dual ordination of bhikkhunis in China.
According to the Theravada Vinaya found
in Southeast Asia-and this is different from the Dharmagupta
Vinaya found in China-a bhikkhuni preceptor can give ordination
to only one nun every alternate year. Nowadays some people
question the validity of the Chinese ordination because many
nuns are ordained together. However, when we study the spirit
of the precept, it is evident why initially the number of
disciples each bhikkhuni preceptor ordained was limited. First,
for safety reasons, the nuns could not live in the forest,
but had to stay in dwellings, and there weren't enough of
these. Secondly, the number of Indian women ordaining was
so great that the bhikkhuni sangha did not have enough teachers
to train them. One way of limiting the population of nuns
was to limit the number of women each preceptor could ordain.
In China, the situation was different, and it was practical
to ordain many bhikkhunis at once.
Earlier this century, many huge monasteries
existed in Mainland China. Before the communist takeover,
the monks thought they were strong and would be able to survive.
However, when the nuns heard that China might be taken over
by the communists, they started to migrate to Taiwan. They
brought their resources along with them, began to build nunneries,
and became well settled in Taiwan. When the communists took
over the mainland, the monks realized that they could not
survive under the communist rule, so they fled to Taiwan in
a hurry and arrived with almost nothing. The nuns' sangha
gave them considerable help as they became reestablished.
The monks remember their kindness, and thus the nuns in Taiwan
are well respected by both the monks and the lay Buddhists.
The nuns far outnumber the monks, are well educated, and have
strong communities with their own abbesses.
Taiwan is a stronghold for bhikkhuni ordination;
the nuns there are progressing very well. Venerable Master
Wu Yin is noted for the high level of secular and religious
education of her nuns. Bhikkhuni Cheng Yen received the Magsaysay
Award for starting a hospital for poor people and a medical
school. Her charitable organization is so popular in Taiwan
that one has to be on a list to do volunteer work there! Another
nun, Venerable Hiu Wan literally bought a mountain and built
a college for engineering. Slowly she is introducing Buddhist
studies in that college. During my visits to Taiwan, I have
been very impressed with the nuns, and think that countries
that are currently without the bhikkhuni lineage could bring
it from Taiwan. However, due to some problems in the past,
a few bhikkhunis in Korea and Taiwan are not very willing
to train foreigners as nuns. They say that the Western nuns
were too individualistic, making training difficult. It is
hard for Chinese and Korean nuns to understand the Western
mentality, so steps need to be taken to bridge the gap.
The Bhikkhuni Ordination
After the Buddha's passing, several Vinaya
schools arose. Considering that the Patimokkha Sutta
in each school was passed down orally for many centuries and
that the schools developed in very disparate geographic areas,
they are remarkably similar. Naturally, minor differences
occur in the number of precepts and in their interpretation.
The Chinese follow Dharmagupta Vinaya, which is a sub-branch
of Theravada, the tradition followed in Thailand, Sri Lanka,
and other Southeast Asian countries. The Tibetans follow Mulasarvastivada.
I am not sure which of these Vinaya lineages
the Sri Lankan bhikkhunis brought to China. More research
needs to be done to establish this important point. Nowadays
there is much discussion about women from countries such as
Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Tibet receiving the bhikkhuni ordination
from the Chinese community and bringing it back to their own
countries, where the lineage of bhikkhuni ordination does
not exist at present. However, in general the monks in Sri
Lanka and Thailand do not accept the bhikkhuni ordination
of the Chinese tradition because it is considered to be from
a different Vinaya lineage than theirs. I do not see this
as important because all the traditions follow the same general
body of Vinaya.
The Buddha said that for Buddhism to flourish
in a country, the four groups of Buddhists are needed: bhikkhus,
bhikkhunis, laymen, and laywomen. Thus it would be advantageous
to bring the bhikkhuni sangha to Buddhist countries where
it is not currently present. I think two types of people talk
about the possibility of bhikkhuni ordination: the ones who
say "no" to it cite a quote from a text and say,
"You see, the Buddha never wanted women to join the order."
Those who say "yes" to it cite a quote from the
same text and say, "You see, it is possible, if you understand
the spirit of the precepts." However, indications of
change are slowly beginning to appear. For example, in 1998
some prominent Theravada monks participated in a bhikkhuni
ordination given by a Chinese master in Bodhgaya, India. Twenty
Sri Lankan nuns took the ordination at this time.
Nuns have committed their lives to the
Dhamma, and they must not be shy to show others what a positive
influence they can have on society. The Buddha's last words
were, "Be beneficial to yourself; be beneficial to others."
To win the support of society, the bhikkhuni sangha can show
that through their Dhamma practice, they benefit themselves
by becoming peaceful and happy. They can show that they benefit
others by helping them to become peaceful as well. If the
nuns come forward and show their capabilities, society will
support them. Only then will the conservative monks understand
that it is worthwhile for women to join the order. They will
see that nuns can help solve many problems and serve others
in ways that men cannot do.
Approaching the Vinaya
Initially, only a small number of monks
and nuns existed, and since most of them were enlightened,
there was no need for a system of precepts. Later, the sangha
grew much larger and its members came from more diverse backgrounds.
The sangha needed a common set of guidelines for behavior,
and thus the Vinaya came into existence. Theravada texts mention
ten reasons why the sangha should follow the Vinaya. I have
grouped these ten into three major purposes of the Vinaya:
- To uplift one's own body, speech,
and mind. The Vinaya helps each person who joins the sangha
to channel his or her physical, verbal, and mental actions
in a virtuous direction.
- To support harmony in the sangha.
The sangha consists of people of different castes, social
classes, genders, racial and ethnic backgrounds, habits,
and values. Without following the Vinaya, such a diverse
group could not be harmonious.
- To confirm the belief of those people
who are already Buddhists and to gladden the hearts of those
who have not yet become Buddhist. The way an ordained person
walks, eats, and speaks influences how people view the Dhamma
and the sangha. It helps the general population when they
see kind, polite, non-aggressive people. It enhances the
faith of Buddhists and helps those who are not yet on the
path to come to the path.
Reflecting on these three purposes, we
see that the Vinaya is not meant to benefit solely the individual
monastic but also the community. For example, if the bhikkhunis
follow the Vinaya properly, it will make waves. It will influence
the countries that do not have ordained nuns, and the nuns
will in turn be appreciated and respected by the larger population.
The Buddha was not a legalist. Each precept
was established in response to a specific event. When monastic
made a mistake or acted in a way that the lay people found
bothersome, it was brought to the Buddha's attention, and
he established a precept to guide future disciples in similar
situations. In this way, the list of precepts was developed
gradually.
Even the Buddha's action was the cause
of at least one rule. When the Buddha ordained his son, Rahula,
as a novice, the Buddha's father complained. His father was
sad because his only son, the Buddha, had become a monk, and
now his only grandson, Rahula, was leaving the family life.
His father asked the Buddha in the future to ordain young
children only with the consent of their parents or guardians,
and the Buddha set up a precept in this regard.
It is helpful to divide the material found
in the Buddhist teachings into two parts: the teachings dealing
with worldly life and those concerning the development of
the mind and mental faculties. The latter teachings pertain
to everyone. For example, enlightenment is a quality of the
mind. It is not related to one's gender, race, and so forth.
On the other hand, the teachings concerning
worldly life deal with society and the world, and therefore
sometimes speak of the behavior of men and women differently.
These teachings can be subdivided into two categories. One
corresponds to what was practiced in Indian society at that
time. Certain ancient Indian social values were taken into
Buddhism, because the Buddhist community was not separate
from the general Indian society at that time. Of course, some
of these values concerned the position of women. For example,
women were to be submissive to men. Spiritual enlightenment
was not spoken of in conjunction with women. In India, the
only path through which a woman could achieve salvation was
bhakti or devotion to her
husband.
The second category of teachings concerning
worldly life shows gender equality. The Buddha came forward
and said that a woman can achieve enlightenment. She can be
single and does not have to have children. If we look at the
formation of the nuns' order and their precepts in the social
context of ancient Indian society, we see that the Buddha
was ahead of his time when he validated women's spiritual
abilities and uplifted their position. By allowing women to
be ordained, the Buddha gave women a vision and an unprecedented
opportunity that no other religion at that time could offer.
Thus, two types of material are in the
Tripitaka, the Buddhist Canon. One clearly supports women.
The other seems discriminatory against women due to the incorporation
of Indian social values. When we can distinguish between these
two types, we can look at Buddhism in a clearer light.
Before the Buddha passed away, he allowed
minor precepts to be lifted. However, the elders at the First
Council could not decide which precepts were major and which
ones minor. As a result, some of the elders proposed keeping
the entire body of precepts without changing any.
The first category of precepts, parajika,
means defeat. If one transgresses any of them, one is defeated
in the sense that one no longer is a monastic. The sangha
community does not expel that person. Rather, by one's own
action one is defeated. Interestingly, monks have four defeats
whereas nuns have eight. At the time nuns joined the order,
the four defeats for monks were already in existence. The
other four were added due to actions of the nuns.
For example, the fifth defeat for nuns
says that if a nun feels sexual pleasure from a man stroking
upward, lightly touching, squeezing, or holding her in the
area from the collar bone down to the knees, she is defeated
and is no longer a nun. At first, I did not understand why
these actions were serious enough to be considered a parajika.
Having thought about it for a long time, I see that if both
the man and the bhikkhuni feel sexual pleasure, it is like
lighting a match. The fire will burn everywhere. If that kind
of touching was allowed and sexual pleasure arose, it would
be difficult for the two people to stop. That is why the precept
is so serious.
How Nuns Can Help Society
Nuns help society simply by being a good
example of people who are unpretentious and live in the spirit
of non-harmfulness. Aside from their spiritual studies and
practice, nuns can also directly benefit society in other
ways, one of which is to become involved in issues concerning
women. For example, bhikkhunis can help with problems regarding
abortion, prostitution, menopause, and other issues that women
prefer to discuss with other women. Nuns can also help unwed
mothers, many of whom do not want to have an abortion but
do not know how to handle the situation. In Thailand, we have
just opened a home for women with unwanted pregnancies, so
they can avoid abortion and receive the care they need.
Nuns can also help women who suffer after
having an abortion. Although as Buddhists, we discourage abortion,
some women undergo them. Afterwards, some of these women have
regret and confused emotions about their actions. We need
to help them accept that this act was committed, teach them
means to purify its karmic imprints, and encourage them to
go forward in their lives without the burden of a guilty conscience.
Some Buddhist women in the West have begun to create rituals
to help these women do this.
The nuns' order has great potential, for
whatever nuns do will have a ripple effect for Buddhist women
all over the world. My hope is that the nuns will use their
collective energy to help each other, to contribute to society,
and to preserve and spread the precious teachings of the Buddha.
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