Ordination is not a career decision in most Buddhist cultures — it is temporary and expected. In Thailand and Myanmar a young man may ordain for a rains-retreat and disrobe without stigma; in Tibet and much of East Asia it is a lifelong commitment. The ceremony requires a quorum of already-ordained monastics, which is why the full ordination of nuns has been the tradition's most consequential procedural crisis: in Theravada countries the female lineage lapsed centuries ago, and whether it can be restarted using surviving East Asian lineages is argued in exactly those terms — as a question of quorum and continuity, not of worth.