Women in brown a short history of the order of sīladhara, nund of the english forest sangha part 1.pdf

Buddhist Studies Review 23(1) 2006, 93–112

ISSN (print): 0256-2897

ISSN (online): 1747-9681

Women in Brown 1 : a short history of the

order of sīladharā, nuns of the

English Forest Sangha, Part One

JANE ANGELL

jane@wadleynet.com

ABSTRACT : At Chithurst Buddhist Monastery, in the UK, in 1979, four women joined

the newly formed community of Theravāda monks. They lived initially as novices, and

their wish to engage more fully with the life of renunciation, combined with the sup-

port and commitment of the community leader Ajahn Sumedho and other monks, led

to the formation of a unique order of Theravāda Buddhist nuns, who became known

as sīladharā . This paper will appear in two parts. This ﬁ rst part begins with a brief

contextual overview of Theravāda nuns, from the founding and decline of the order

of bhikkhunī s to the various forms of ordination available for women in the Theravāda

world today. It then gives a history of the order of sīladharā from its inception until

approximately 2000, focusing on the development of their rule and ordination proce-

dures, the way the order has changed over the years and issues and con ﬂ icts it has had

to deal with, as well as a period when some nuns lived in a women-only community.

My research was undertaken by personal interview with founding members of the

order as well as by e-mail, telephone and written communications with nuns past and

present and with a senior monk involved in the order’s early days. The history until

the present day and consideration of future developments will form the second part

of the paper.

INTRODUCTION

The order of sīladharā (upholders of virtue) is a unique monastic order for Theravādin

Buddhist women that was created in 1983 at Chithurst Buddhist Monastery in West

Sussex by Ajahn Sumedho, senior monk of the English Forest Sangha 2 .

1. This paper and its concluding part originally formed a research dissertation as the ﬁ nal part of

the MA in Buddhist Studies of the University of Sunderland which I completed in 2005.

2. This community of monks was founded following the visit in 1977 from Thailand of Ajahn Chah.

The English Sangha Trust (EST), founded in 1956, had been attempting to establish an indigenous

saṅgha in England but had only been intermittently successful. Once Ajahn Chah had approved

the request of the EST to help re-establish such a venture, he left Ajahn Sumedho and three other

western-born monks who had trained in Thailand at the EST’s Hampstead property. Inevitably,

BUDDHIST STUDIES REVIEW

This article (and a sequel to appear in a subsequent issue of BSR) attempts to

tell the story of how a place was made for women in a tradition that, in the last

ten centuries, has not had a fully ordained female saṅgha.

My research has focused on primary sources; that is, on some of the individu-

als who have been key to the order of sīladharā . Ajahn Candasirī, currently sen-

ior nun at Amaravati Buddhist Monastery, and one of the ﬁ rst four women to

be ordained, supported the idea of a history of the order. I undertook a series of

interviews with her in which we recorded as comprehensively as possible her own

memory of the order’s history. This forms the skeleton of the historical part of

the current study. I also interviewed Ajahn Sucitto (abbot of Cittaviveka Buddhist

Monastery 3 ), one of the earliest monks at Chithurst. It was he who Ajahn Sumedho

asked to be the nuns’ teacher and who oversaw the development of their training

and rules, covered below.

I also communicated with the remaining original nuns: Ajahn Sundarā in a

personal interview, Thānissarā, now a laywoman living and teaching in South

Africa, by e-mail, and various other current and ex- sīladharā , including Ajahn

Thāniyā and Jitindriyā. Information on the setting up of a similar order of nuns

in Western Australia was received in response to my written requests from their

abbot, Ajahn Vāyāmā, and Ajahn Brahmavamso, Abbot of Bodhinyāna monastery

in Western Australia. This material will form part of the second article.

ORDAINED THERAVĀDA WOMEN WORLDWIDE – PAST AND PRESENT

There are many studies which give considerable detail on the current place of

women and their opportunities for ordination in the Theravāda Buddhist world, 4

as well as many studies looking at the founding of the bhikkhunī order and its

demise in the Theravāda world around the start of the second millennium. Much

of this material is outside the scope of these articles but I shall give a short over-

view of current female monasticism in the Theravāda.

women too were drawn to the teachings and the lifestyle of these monks who, living such an aus-

tere and apparently restrictive lifestyle, yet seemed radiantly happy. Ajahn Candasirī says of her

ﬁ rst encounter with Ajahn Sumedho and other monks: ‘I [was] very impressed … knowing about

their incredibly strict discipline and yet seeing how radiant and happy they were – somehow the

two didn’t seem to go together’ (interview of 6 September 2004).

3. Cittaviveka Buddhist Monastery was created in the shell of a Victorian house, Chithurst House,

in the village of Chithurst, West Sussex. It is sometimes referred to by its proper name as a Bud-

dhist monastery, Cittaviveka, but commonly (by both saṅgha and laypeople) it is referred to as

‘Chithurst’. I shall use the terms interchangeably here.

4. Of these, Tessa Bartholomeusz (1994) gives a comprehensive summary of the position of

women in Sri Lanka; another excellent overview is Nancy Barnes (1996). More detailed studies

on individual countries include Kawanami (1990) on the nuns of Burma and Kabilsingh (1991)

on Thailand.

ANGELL A SHORT HISTORY OF THE ORDER OF SĪLADHARĀ , I

Renunciant Theravāda women today

What is available for Theravāda women who wish to pursue a renunciant spir-

itual life? 5 In Sri Lanka, so far, no evidence has been found of renunciant women

in the period between the demise of the bhikkhunī order and the late nineteenth

and early twentieth centuries when women again began to seek to ‘go forth’. The

order of women which began under the auspices of such ﬁ gures as the Anagārika

Dharmapāla and Catherine De Alwis (later Sudharmācārī) gradually became

known as dasa sil mātāvo, literally mothers of the ten precepts 6 . In Thailand, there

are the mae-ji , women who follow ten, or more usually eight, precepts (and have

been around for several hundred years at least, probably far longer; Nancy Barnes

states that seventeenth century travellers encountered and wrote of ‘shaven-

headed women in white robes who lived within the compounds of some temples’

(Barnes, 1996: 267). In Burma, there are the thila shin , similarly following eight or

ten precepts . 7

Whilst the details of the lives of these nuns vary, they have much in common.

First, they may be the main domestic support for the monks. Many (though not

all) mae-ji prepare food for monks. This is less true of nuns in Sri Lanka, who often

have a role more akin to social work. This stems in part from the late nineteenth

century pioneers, who modelled their nunneries not on a world-renouncing model,

but on providing education and social care, in much the way some Christian monas-

tic orders have traditionally operated. Bartholomeusz 8 mentions some nuns who

concentrate on meditation, including westerners who at the time of her research

were in Sri Lanka 9 , but these were a small minority of the dasa sil mātāvo. Secondly,

their material support is less assured that that of the bhikkhu saṅgha . Whilst some

nuns’ vihāra s are well-provided for by generous lay supporters, many experience

extreme poverty. Mae-ji, thila-shin and dasa sil mātāvo are seen as less worthy of oﬀ er-

ings and not in the same way a ‘ ﬁ eld of merit’ as the bhikkhu saṅgha .

It can be seen that these models of female renunciation might not appeal to

the Western women coming to Ajahn Sumedho to ‘go forth’ 10 . In 1979, Bhikkhu

5. Whilst there are Theravāda nuns in Cambodia, Nepal and also Laos, for the purposes of this

study I will concentrate on Thailand, Sri Lanka and Burma.

6. See Bartholomeusz (1994) for a full account of the Buddhist nuns of Sri Lanka.

7. For further general information on Theravāda renunciant women see Barnes (1996). On Bur-

mese nuns see, Hiroko Kawanami (1990) and on Thai mae-ji see Kabilsingh (1991: 36–44).

8. Bartholomeusz uses the term ‘lay nuns’ throughout her 1994 book, but I ﬁ nd this an ambigu-

ous term which, whilst going some way to explaining their in-between status, neither lay per-

son nor fully ordained saṅgha , slightly muddies the issue that they have in fact renounced the

attractions and the responsibilities of lay life.

9. These included Ayya Vāyāmā who is now Abbot of Dhammasara Nuns’ Monastery (as it is

called) in Western Australia, a community similar to the sīladharā but not identical. For more

on this, see part two of this paper.

10. Ajahn Thāniyā has made some valid points about why taking robes in Thailand did not seem a

viable option: ‘While I was there, I was treated as “special”, and having seen the result of that in

others I wanted to be where I had the friction of a community (which I found!). Also the access

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Khantipalo mentioned that the number of Western women choosing to take robes

in Thailand was signi ﬁ cantly lower than the number of Western men ordaining

there. He put this down to the issue of ﬁ nancial support and to the diﬀ erences

between the women interested in renouncing; he described Asian women who took

robes as generally of poor education, with little experience of the world, whereas

Western women ordaining were usually well-educated and independent. 11

In recent years in Asia, things have started to change. Since 1996, there has

been a revival of an ordination for bhikkhunī s in Sri Lanka, with several hundred

women now ordained as bhikkhunī s. There has also been in Sri Lanka the ordina-

tion of at least one Thai bhikkhunī , Dr. Chatsumarn Kabilsingh (now Bhikkhunī

Dhammānandā), a well-respected Buddhist scholar and daughter of the late

Voramai Kabilsingh, who for years lived as an unrecognized bhikkhunī and took

an independent, dynamic and proactive role. The history of these developments

in Sri Lanka is recounted in Rajani De Silva’s paper ‘Reclaiming the Robe: Reviving

the Bhikkhunī Order in Sri Lanka’ (2004). The wider Theravāda establishment

however, has yet to accept these bhikkhunī ordinations as valid, despite many

supporters.

NUNS AT CHITHURST: THE EARLY DAYS

In the United Kingdom in the late 1970s, women as well as men were becoming

seriously interested in the meditation teachings that Ajahn Sumedho was oﬀ er-

ing, and in the example of the monastic life that they demonstrated.

The history of the arrival of the Western disciples of the Thai meditation

master Luang Por Chah has been well documented elsewhere. 12 What is perhaps

less well known is how the nuns’ order came into being: the aim of the present

study.

Even before the community moved from the Hampstead Vihāra to the derelict

Chithurst House in 1979, women as well as men had been a part of the lay com-

munity gradually forming around the monks, and had been attending meditation

retreats and other events led by Ajahn Sumedho.

The nucleus of a nuns’ community

The arrival of the ﬁ rst women came about in various ways: they were women

of the Thai nuns to teaching seemed limited to me – as opposed to that of the men – so I wanted

to be where I had more access to live teaching’ (Ajahn Thāniyā, letter of January 2005).

11. From Banner of the Arahants. Chapter VII: 3, www.palikanon.com/english/arahats/arahants13.

htm (April 2006).

12. See for example, the excellent Bell (2000). See also www.amaravati.org/abm/english/hist3.

html (April 2006) and www.amaravati.org/abm/english/hist4.html (April 2006).

ANGELL A SHORT HISTORY OF THE ORDER OF SĪLADHARĀ , I

who had had contact with Ajahn Sumedho and other monks through attending

the Hampstead Vihāra; or going on retreats or through an already existing com-

mitment to Buddhism. By the end of September 1979, four women had arrived

at Chithurst to stay. Ajahn Sumedho had agreed with the other monks that they

were welcome and that they were to have a formal opportunity to lead the monas-

tic life. They took eight precepts at a ceremony on the 28 October 1979, wearing

white robes of their own design. They were given Pāli names and became Rocanā,

Sundarā, Candasirī and Thānissarā. Their hair was closely cropped, not at ﬁ rst

shaven. 13

I remember that it was late afternoon on 28th October 1979. There was

an autumnal chill in the air. The four of us were busily sewing white

robes, while practising chanting, putting ﬁ nishing touches in prepara-

tion for the unprecedented ceremony, (the ﬁ rst Theravadan [ sic ] ordina-

tion of Western Women on British soil), due to take place that evening.

There was good humour among us as we shared both the apprehension

and enthusiasm that accompanied this move from each of our very dif-

ferent lives into the unknown terrain of monasticism. Over the following

years there were also diﬃ culties and con ﬂ icts; however, beneath such

passing mind states there grew enormous camaraderie, mutual caring

and deep aﬀ ection. 14

The eight-precept ordination is remembered by Ajahn Candasirī as a joyful occa-

sion, with many lay supporters present as well and a tangible atmosphere of good-

will. There to oversee the occasion was a senior Sri Lankan bhikkhu from London,

Bhante Vajiragnana, who had been Rocanā’s teacher for a number of years.

At ﬁ rst they were accommodated in the attic of the main house but it ‘was

considered grossly inappropriate’ 15 for the laywomen to be not only in the same

building as the monks, but above them. Shortly before their ordination, a nearby

cottage was rented and later purchased for their occupation. It had electricity,

but this was only powered by an extremely noisy generator. Much of their life

there (at ﬁ rst, precious little, as they spent most of their day at the main house

13. In the following year, a Korean nun (a Frenchwoman, now in lay life again – Martine Batchelor)

was visiting the nuns, and with Ajahn Sumedho’s approval, shaved their heads. For the nuns,

this was a further step into renunciation, giving them a greater sense of belonging. Martine

Batchelor remembers the occasion thus: ‘As is usual when visiting another monastic institu-

tion, I was freshly shaved. In Korea generally nuns will shave each other but one can also do

it on one’s own. The nuns saw me shaved [and] seeing me they thought – why could not they

too be shaved like me … it was an opportunity not to pass since I could do it for them. So they

convinced whoever was in charge … that it was time to let them be shaved. So I did it outside

in the courtyard I think. They were happy though one or two a little tremulous at losing their

hair possibly. For them it was the ﬁ rst time and exciting, for me I had done this many times

before and I really could not see why they could not have shaved before. But I was very happy

to contribute to this small step for them to become “real” nuns’ (e-mail of 18 March 2005).

14. Thānissarā in the Introduction to Freeing the Heart (Amaravati Publications, 2001: 20).

15. Ajahn Candasirī, interview of 6 September 2004.

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