The question of whether women can be fully ordained as Buddhist nuns is the most contested institutional issue in contemporary Buddhism. It is also one where the arguments are genuinely technical — turning on Vinaya procedure, lineage continuity, and the interpretation of a founding narrative — rather than simply on attitudes.

The founding story #

The traditional account appears in the Cullavagga of the Vinaya and in AN 8:51.

Mahapajapati Gotami — the Buddha’s aunt and foster mother, who raised him after Maya’s death — asks him to permit women to go forth into the homeless life. He refuses. She asks a second time and a third; he refuses each time.

She then cuts off her hair, puts on ochre robes, and walks with a group of Shakyan women to where the Buddha is staying, arriving with swollen feet and covered in dust, and stands weeping outside.

Ananda finds her, learns what has happened, and takes up the case. He asks the Buddha directly; he is refused three times. He then reframes the question: are women capable of attaining the fruits of the path — stream-entry, once-return, non-return, arahantship? The Buddha answers that they are.

Ananda then presses the argument: if women are capable of attaining the goal, and if Mahapajapati was of great service as his foster mother, women should be permitted to go forth. The Buddha agrees, on condition that Mahapajapati accept eight garudhammas, rules of respect.

The passage then has the Buddha predict that the sasana — the dispensation — will now last five hundred years rather than a thousand.

The eight garudhammas #

The eight rules, in summary:

  1. A nun, even of a hundred years’ standing, must bow to a monk ordained that day.
  2. A nun must not spend the rains retreat where there is no monk.
  3. Nuns must ask the monks’ community fortnightly for the date of the uposatha and for instruction.
  4. After the rains, a nun must undergo the pavarana invitation before both communities.
  5. A nun who commits a serious offence must undergo penance before both communities.
  6. A female novice must be ordained by both communities after two years of training.
  7. A nun must not revile or abuse a monk.
  8. Nuns may not admonish monks, though monks may admonish nuns.

Their effect is to subordinate the nuns’ order institutionally to the monks’, permanently, regardless of seniority or attainment.

The scholarly problem #

The narrative has been examined closely, and several features do not sit well together.

The prediction did not come true. The sasana did not end after five hundred years, which the tradition itself must explain.

The reluctance is out of character. The Buddha of the canon regularly and cheerfully overturns brahminical assumptions about caste and status, and the Therigatha records women attaining arahantship without qualification.

The garudhammas presuppose a nuns’ order. Several of the eight refer to procedures involving an existing community of nuns — which could not exist at the moment of its founding. Bhikkhu Analayo has pressed this point: rules regulating the relation between two orders cannot logically precede the establishment of the second.

The parallel versions differ. Comparative study of the Chinese, Sanskrit, and Tibetan Vinaya recensions shows substantial variation in the number, content, and order of the garudhammas, which suggests development over time rather than a single promulgation.

Ananda is blamed for it. At the First Council, one of the charges laid against Ananda is that he advocated for women’s ordination — which reads as a later community registering discomfort with a decision it had inherited.

The scholarly consensus is not that the episode is invented but that it has been substantially reworked, and that the garudhammas in their present form are later than the ordination of women itself.

The lineage problem #

Whatever the origin, the present difficulty is procedural, and it turns on a rule rather than on principle.

Under the Vinaya, full ordination of a bhikkhuni requires a dual ordination: first before a quorum of existing bhikkhunis, then before a quorum of bhikkhus. This creates a chain that cannot be restarted once broken — you need existing nuns to make new nuns.

In Theravada, the bhikkhuni lineage died out. In Sri Lanka it ended around the eleventh century amid war and dynastic collapse; in Burma and Thailand it either never became fully established or lapsed early. By the modern period there were no bhikkhunis in the Theravada world.

In East Asia, the lineage survived. It was transmitted to China in 433 CE — by a group of Sri Lankan nuns, led by Devasara, who travelled there specifically to complete a dual ordination — and has continued unbroken in the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya lineage in China, Korea, Vietnam, and Taiwan ever since.

In Tibet, the bhikkhuni lineage was never transmitted. Tibetan women ordain as novices (getsulma) but full ordination has not historically been available within the Mulasarvastivada lineage used there.

The women in between #

Without full ordination, women in Theravada and Tibetan countries developed intermediate roles — renunciant, respected, and without the legal status, material support, or educational access of monks.

Thailand: mae chi, white-robed women keeping eight or ten precepts. Not legally recognised as ordained, historically excluded from monastic education and from the material support the sangha receives.

Burma: thilashin, pink-robed, keeping ten precepts. Better integrated into monastic education than mae chi, and still not fully ordained.

Sri Lanka: dasa sil mata, ten-precept mothers, a role revived in the late nineteenth century.

Tibet: ani, novice nuns. Their access to the full monastic curriculum has improved substantially in the diaspora, and in 2016 the first Tibetan nuns were awarded the geshema degree — the equivalent of the geshe, the highest academic qualification in Geluk monasticism.

The revival #

From the 1990s, women and their supporters began ordaining using the surviving East Asian lineage.

1996, Sarnath. Ten Sri Lankan women received full ordination with the participation of Korean nuns.

1998, Bodh Gaya. A large international ordination organised by Fo Guang Shan, with over a hundred women from around twenty countries.

Sri Lanka has since seen the bhikkhuni order substantially re-established, with over a thousand fully ordained nuns, functioning with de facto acceptance though without full recognition from the official monastic hierarchy.

2009, Perth. Four women were fully ordained at Bodhinyana Monastery in Australia under Ajahn Brahm. The consequence was immediate: the monastery was formally expelled from the Thai forest tradition’s Wat Pah Pong lineage. Ajahn Brahm has continued to support bhikkhuni ordination.

Thailand has not recognised the revival. A 1928 order by the Supreme Patriarch prohibiting Thai monks from ordaining women remains in force, and Thai women seeking full ordination go abroad — notably Dhammananda Bhikkhuni, ordained in Sri Lanka in 2003, a former academic who is the most prominent Thai advocate.

The arguments #

Against the revival, from conservative Vinaya scholars:

That the lineage is genuinely broken and cannot be restarted, because the Vinaya specifies dual ordination with no provision for restoration. That the Dharmaguptaka lineage is a different Vinaya tradition, so East Asian nuns cannot validly ordain Theravada women. That this is a matter of monastic law, not of attitude, and that good intentions do not make an invalid act valid.

For the revival:

That the Buddha did initially permit ordination by monks alone — the dual-ordination requirement came later — which establishes a precedent for monks ordaining women when no nuns are available. That the Dharmaguptaka and Theravada Vinayas descend from a common source and are close enough that ordination in one is recognisable in the other; Bhikkhu Analayo has argued this in detail. That the Vinaya contains provisions for adaptation, and that the Buddha’s own stated criterion — whether women can attain the fruits of the path — was answered affirmatively. And that the practical consequence of the conservative position is the permanent exclusion of women from an institution the Buddha admitted them to.

The situation now #

Full ordination is available in East Asian traditions, where it never lapsed, and Taiwan in particular has a very large nuns’ order that outnumbers monks and is academically and institutionally powerful.

Sri Lanka has a functioning bhikkhuni order without full official recognition.

Thailand and Burma continue to withhold recognition, though ordained Thai women exist.

Tibetan Buddhism is in transition. The fourteenth Dalai Lama has repeatedly stated his personal support and has equally repeatedly said that the decision is not his alone to make and requires consensus among Vinaya holders. The geshema degree has been a substantial advance; full ordination remains unresolved.

In the West, most convert communities ordain women on the same terms as men, and the question presents itself mainly where a Western group is connected to an Asian lineage that does not.

Common questions #

Did the Buddha not want women to ordain? The text says he refused three times and then agreed. Whether the refusal is historical, and what it meant if so, is contested. The same text has him affirm without qualification that women can attain every stage of awakening — which is the doctrinal question, and it is answered.

Why does the lineage matter so much? Because Buddhist monastic identity is constituted by valid ordination in an unbroken lineage under a Vinaya. It is closer to a question of legal standing than of sentiment, which is why the argument is conducted in procedural terms.

Are nuns’ rules stricter than monks’? Yes: 311 rules against 227 in the Theravada recension, plus the eight garudhammas. The additional rules largely concern interaction with monks and restrictions on independent travel and residence.

Is Buddhism sexist? The tradition’s record is mixed and should not be smoothed. The doctrine holds that women can attain full awakening, and the Therigatha records them doing so. The institutions have subordinated women structurally for two and a half millennia. Both are true.

Sources & further reading #

Bhikkhu Analayo, The Foundation History of the Nuns’ Order (Hamburg University Press, 2016) — the definitive comparative study of the founding narrative, freely available. I. B. Horner, Women Under Primitive Buddhism (Routledge, 1930) — the pioneering study, still cited. Karma Lekshe Tsomo (ed.), Buddhist Women Across Cultures (SUNY, 1999). Thea Mohr & Jampa Tsedroen (eds.), Dignity and Discipline: Reviving Full Ordination for Buddhist Nuns (Wisdom, 2010) — the 2007 Hamburg congress papers, with the arguments on both sides. Chatsumarn Kabilsingh (Dhammananda Bhikkhuni), Thai Women in Buddhism (Parallax, 1991).