{"id":3495,"date":"2023-03-12T16:20:29","date_gmt":"2023-03-12T21:20:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thereligioushistorynerd\/?p=3495"},"modified":"2023-03-16T09:50:18","modified_gmt":"2023-03-16T14:50:18","slug":"the-determined-buddhist-nuns-of-sri-lanka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thereligioushistorynerd\/2023\/03\/the-determined-buddhist-nuns-of-sri-lanka\/","title":{"rendered":"The Determined Buddhist Nuns of Sri Lanka"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
The Buddhist<\/a> nuns of Sri Lanka have needed determination for there to be nuns at all. The last post, The Buddhist Nun Controversy<\/a>, explained that Buddhist nuns\u2019 orders died out in southeast Asia, including Sri Lanka, centuries ago. And because of ancient rules that govern the ordinations and training of monks and nuns, for centuries women in most southeast Asian countries were not allowed full ordination because there were no fully ordained nuns to ordain them.<\/p>\n
To recap: The Buddhism<\/a> in most of southeast Asia is of the Theravada<\/a> tradition. The loss of nuns in southeast Asia meant there were no Theravada nuns at all, anywhere. The only lineage of nuns that survived through the centuries to the present day began in China. It\u2019s believed the first Chinese nuns were ordained in about 434 CE. The officiants were nuns from Sri Lanka who traveled to China to offer full ordination to their Chinese sisters. But the Chinese nuns were of the Mahayana<\/a> tradition, not Theravada.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s believed the first order of Buddhist nuns was established in India by the Buddha, who is thought to have lived from about 563 BCE to 483 BCE. Over the centuries Buddhist monks carried the Buddha\u2019s teachings everywhere in Asia. But the nuns\u2019 orders did not spread as far. We know that there were once Buddhist nuns in Sri Lanka, probably from the 3rd century BCE to about the 11th century CE, but then the number of Buddhist nuns dwindled away. The time was marked by war, drought, and famine, and the number of monks in Sri Lanka dwindled also. But the monks\u2019 order rebounded; the nuns\u2019 order did not.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the lineage of Mahayana nuns that began in China spread to the Korean peninsula, Japan, Vietnam, and Taiwan, where nuns\u2019 orders thrive to this day.<\/p>\n
In the late 20th century a few women of Sri Lanka were able to receive full nuns\u2019 ordinations, for the first time in centuries. But these nuns are still struggling to be recognized as nuns by the monastic establishment in Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n