[Buddha-l] Re: Soccer mad monks too tired to take alms

[jkirk]

Oh my--------and let it be noted, one gains no merit by offering the alms
food to the mae chi (quasi nuns in every monastery).
Joanna
================
mjwilson wrote:

I have met Tibetan ani, and Corean biguni, but not the mae chi.  I think 
they don't shave their heads right, so they are kind of quasi 
nuns?.............
============
The Thai mae chi do shave their heads, wear white, and serve the monks by 
cooking, cleaning, sweeping, laundry, etc. I said "quasi nuns" because they 
cannot be ordained, according to the current Theravada sangha rules, that 
justify this policy on the basis that female ordination was lost in Thai 
history. Same in Sri Lanka.

So women wanting to be ordained nuns in those countries, usually go to China 
or Taiwan and get ordained there, then they often return to the home country 
and join or start regular monasteries for nuns. However, this official 
liability has not stopped one or two mae chi in Thailand from becoming 
famous meditation teachers, attracting large mumbers of devotees and fame. 
There is also a nunnery for bhikhunis in Thailand begun by a Thai woman who 
went elsewhere to be ordained (who knows, there now may be more of these 
institutions). She has occasional run-ins with the official sangha, who 
still won't accept that she and her fellow nuns are really ordained, because 
they got ordained in a Mahayana tradition.

In Ladakh, where Tibetan Buddhism prevails, donating to nuns also does not 
acquire merit for the donor, whereas donating to monks does.  The bhikkhuni 
ordination traditionally was said to have been lost in Tibet, and this idea 
is maintained in Ladakh. The higher the monk in the monastic hierarchy, the 
more the merit that accrues from supporting him with gifts, donations, etc. 
Allowing a daughter to join a nunnery does acquire a modicum of merit for a 
family, but not equal at all to merit acquired by a son taking permanent 
vows. After she joins up, she and the other nuns have to work their butts 
off supporting their nunnery because they don't get support from the 
community analogous to what's regularly donated to monks. Ladakhi nuns also 
may not perform Buddhist rituals for donors, a source of income for a 
monastery.  Parents of a nun will donate toward their support, not only 
because they are their children, but mainly because they work in the 
parents' fields. Daughters (as opposed let's say to orphans) are expected to 
continue working in family fields during various agricultural seasons of the 
year, nuns or not.
See my review of an excellent study on nuns in Ladakh, by Kim Gutschow, in 
the _Journal of Buddhist Ethics_ ( http://jbe.gold.ac.uk/12/current12.html ) 
if you can't get the book: _Being a Buddhist Nun: The Struggle for 
Enlightenment in the Himalayas_, Harvard U.P., 2004.

Joanna