Community of Buddhism

The nuns' lineage question.

Full ordination for women requires nuns who are already fully ordained. In Theravada countries that line died out around the eleventh century, and whether it can be restarted using surviving Chinese lineages is the tradition's longest-running procedural fight.

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How you joinFull ordination requires a quorum of already-ordained nuns, which is precisely the problem

Who leadsNational monastic councils, which have mostly declined to move

The unitThe bhikkhuni sangha — intact in East Asia, lapsed in Theravada, never fully established in Tibet

Understanding it — context, not catechism: how this passage is held

The bhikkhuni question is the sharpest live argument in Buddhism, and it is procedural rather than theological. The Vinaya requires that full ordination for women be conferred by an assembly of already fully ordained nuns; that lineage survived in China, Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam, but died out in Sri Lanka around the eleventh century and was never established in Tibet or most of Southeast Asia. Since 1996 women have been ordained in Sri Lanka using Chinese lineage nuns to make the quorum, and thousands now have. Thai and Burmese monastic authorities do not recognise those ordinations; the Dalai Lama has repeatedly said he supports restoring the lineage but cannot do it unilaterally. Meanwhile hundreds of thousands of women practise under intermediate statuses — mae chi, thilashin, ani — with fewer rights and much less support than monks.

From the sources — the passages this rests on; concise renderings, cited

Are women, having gone forth in this teaching and discipline, able to realise the fruits of the path? — They are able, Ananda.
Cullavagga X (rendered)
The founding exchange the modern argument keeps returning to.

The same ground, other faiths

claims that share this one's ideas

Birth does not decide worth — and the tradition has argued about that for three thousand years. Hinduism · core tenet Go deeper →

To save a life, break the law. Judaism · precept Go deeper →

What was written down about women. Sikhism · precept Go deeper →

The Heavenly Commandments, as state law. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom · precept Go deeper →

Ahimsa at the table. Jainism · precept Go deeper →

The good Samaritan. Christianity · story Read it in full →

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