By IPS Correspondents
BANGKOK, Feb 5 2003 (IPS)

Thai Buddhist nuns find themselves falling in between two realms – they are often considered religious people by many in this mainly Buddhist country, but are considered lay by the religious.

While they have left the secular life to enter the monastic life, nuns or ‘mae chi’ cannot be monks in Thailand.

Yet the nuns do not have the rights that ordinary citizens have – like the right to vote – because they are supposedly part of the religious community.

”They are not part of the prestigious ‘Sangha’ (community of clergy), nor do they belong to the lay world since they have given up their identity for the monastic life. That gives the nuns a marginalised position in society,” says Dr Monica Lindberg Falk of Sweden’s Goteburg University, who did her doctoral dissertation on Buddhist nuns in Thailand.

”Their ambiguous position becomes obvious when the same government denies the nuns the right to vote in public elections with reference to their ascetic status and renunciation of worldly matters,” says Lindberg.

Likewise, Lindberg told a discussion here recently, the government supports the country’s 300,000 male monks with free education and medical care and free or reduced fares on buses and trains.

But nuns, whose number is estimated at 15,000, do not receive such support from the government on account of their official status as laity.

”Unlike monks who receive much support from the government and majority followers, most nuns depend on their own money for studies and means to live,” confirms ‘Mae Chi’ Srisalab, who helped found a school and college for Buddhist nuns and girls in Nakhon Ratchasima province, 259 km north-east of Bangkok.

In short, she adds, ”ordaining as a Buddhist nun is not an easy life”.

Yet, she points out, ”Buddhism cannot claim its universality if half of the population remains discriminated.”

Buddhist nuns do not hold any formal role at the temples. They have always been subordinate to monks, with many helping in the maintenance of monasteries. Some temples strictly forbid the nuns from studying.

Buddhist nuns usually keep their lay names after ordination, another sign of their ambiguous standing.

Lindberg says that in many ways, this role of nuns reflects the roles – and gaps – in larger society.

”The ideal Thai woman is expected to fulfill the role of wife and mother,” Lindberg explains. ”Thus ‘mae chi’ violate the cultural norms of gender by abandoning their home life and renouncing the world. Female ordination has traditionally not been encouraged, in contrast to the boys’ and men’s ordination, which is celebrated and desirable.”

In the Thai social context, she adds, young men become socially mature through the rite of passage – ordination as novice monks, which many undergo at least at one point in their lives.

Young women, being tied to the secular realm, are perceived to reach maturity through marriage and giving birth, she says.

Likewise, monks are expected to uphold higher standards in the religious life. Nuns are expected to follow only 10 percepts and 80 Buddhist rules, unlike ordained monks who are expected to hew to five religious precepts and 227 Buddhist rules.

From this also flows the procedure that nuns must always bow before a monk, no matter how long she has been a monk or how senior she is.

Gender in Thailand is actually related to the popular notion of ‘kamma’, the law of cause, that believes a female birth lower than a male birth, says Lindberg.

Buddhist nuns are commonly depicted as elderly, widowed, or as young women who have been ill or suffered some misfortune, rather than people who make a conscious choice to follow the teachings of the Buddha.

”We Buddhist nuns (in fact) have diverse backgrounds and different aspirations for receiving ordination,” says ‘Mae Chi’ Srisalab, who achieved her master’s degree from India in 1997.

But because of perceptions that women become nuns because of problems, ”this negative attitude leaves the role of ‘mae chi’ vague and questionable,” she adds.

In recent years, some nuns have tried to address the gender disparity in different ways, inside and outside the Buddhist framework in Thailand. It follows the Theravada tradition of Buddhism, although Sri Lanka, which follows the same strand, has female monks.

Last year, Buddhist nuns and women activists tried again to push parliament to consider a nun act, to contain a set of basic regulations for nuns. But it was rejected by the education ministry, which became the object of protests this month by 5,000 Buddhist monks and lay people objecting to a monastic reform bill.

The two incidents, however, are very different, said Phra Chai Worathammo, a member of a group of activist monks called ‘Sekhiyatham’. While the monks were backed by many members of the clergy and groups of lay people, Buddhist nuns often find little such support.

Meantime, Buddhist nuns have taken to education as a way of achieving spiritual capacity and meeting their communities’ needs. ”Education together with religious practice are crucial for Buddhist nuns in their role as ordained persons,” says Lindberg.

In 1990, a nunnery in Ratchaburi province opened the first secondary school for nuns and underprivileged girls in Thailand. In 1999, a college for nuns and lay women, Mahapajapati Theri College, was opened. It was named after the first female monk and the Buddha’s foster mother, Bhikkuni Mahapajapati.

”The Buddhist nuns should be able to fulfill their spiritual potential to the fullest extent in order to serve as guides for others and communities,” says Phra Chai Worathammo.

Other Buddhist nuns have taken the more radical path – and underwent ordination as monks despite the bar on this in Thailand.

Dr Chatsumarn Kabilsingh, a Buddhist scholar, was the first Thai woman to received ordination as ‘bhikkhuni’ – female Buddhist monk of the Theravada tradition in Sri Lanka in 2001.

In February last year, Samaneri Dhammarakhita became the first woman to be ordained a novice in Thailand. That enables her, after two years of training, to seek the ”higher ordination” of a ‘bhikkuni’.

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