Synopses & Reviews
When the Buddha established his community over twenty-five centuries ago, he did so upon a foundation of radical equality among women and men. And indeed, the earliest Buddhist scriptures celebrate the teachings and inspiring influence of these path-blazing female renunciants. Nonetheless, through much of the Buddhist world, the order of nuns has disappeared or was never transmitted at all.
Dignity & Discipline represents a watershed moment in Buddhist history, as the Dalai Lama together with scholars and monastics from around the world, present powerful cases, grounded in both scripture and a profound appeal to human dignity, that the order of Buddhist nuns can and should be fully restored.
Review
The controversy surrounding full female ordination is one of the most pressing issues facing modern Buddhism. Dignity and Discipline is without a doubt the most valuable book on the subject to date, and should be required reading for anyone interested in contemporary Buddhism. As the book makes clear, the ordination of women as full-fledged monastics is not only a religious and political issue, it is an issue pertaining to a basic human right: gender equality. The seventeen papers included here are from a 2007 conference in Hamburg, the International Congress on Women's Role in the Sangha, which was convened to fulfill a request by the Dalai Lama, and brought together religious leaders from across Asia as well as Europe and North America, including leading scholars such as Janet Gyatso, Karma Lekshe Tsomo, and Bhikku Bodhi. Intended to effect real progress, the book begins with the assumption that full ordination is inevitable and charts a course to bring it about, investigating history and the doctrinal issues that must be settled before the Tibetan and Theravadin sanghas embrace such change.” Buddhadharma: The Buddhist Review
Review
The controversy surrounding full female ordination is one of the most pressing issues facing modern Buddhism.
Dignity and Discipline is without a doubt the most valuable book on the subject to date, and should be required reading for anyone interested in contemporary Buddhism.”
Buddhadharma: The Buddhist Review"This carefully edited volume--comprehensive in scope and well organized in presentation--offers rare insight into the doctrines and monastic laws that contemporary Buddhist clerics are drawing upon in their efforts to restore the bhikkhuni sagha. It is essential reading for those who want to understand how Buddhists are thinking through the question of bhikkhuni ordination. I recommend this volume with warm enthusiasm." Journal of the American Academy of Religion
"A selection of the papers from...a public dialogue on a global scale: [one that] brought together Buddhist scholars and practitioners, Asian and Western, across sectarian boundaries, to discuss a shared and pressing concern that has larger implications for how Buddhism will adapt to changing socio-historical contexts.... The opening essay...boldly envisions what a future with a strong, vibrant order of fully ordained Buddhist nuns might look like and how they might contribute to current global issues... Dignity and Discipline documents an important and unique moment in Buddhist history...[and] the editors have been successful in creating a readable volume that works as a whole." Journal of Global Buddhism
Review
"The controversy surrounding full female ordination is one of the most pressing issues facing modern Buddhism. Dignity and Discipline is without a doubt the most valuable book on the subject to date, and should be required reading for anyone interested in contemporary Buddhism."
Review
"This carefully edited volume--comprehensive in scope and well organized in presentation--offers rare insight into the doctrines and monastic laws that contemporary Buddhist clerics are drawing upon in their efforts to restore the bhikkhuni sagha. It is essential reading for those who want to understand how Buddhists are thinking through the question of bhikkhuni ordination. I recommend this volume with warm enthusiasm."
Review
"A selection of the papers from...a public dialogue on a global scale: [one that] brought together Buddhist scholars and practitioners, Asian and Western, across sectarian boundaries, to discuss a shared and pressing concern that has larger implications for how Buddhism will adapt to changing socio-historical contexts.... The opening essay...boldly envisions what a future with a strong, vibrant order of fully ordained Buddhist nuns might look like and how they might contribute to current global issues... Dignity & Discipline documents an important and unique moment in Buddhist history...[and] the editors have been successful in creating a readable volume that works as a whole."
Synopsis
Many of the issues surrounding bhiksuni (nun) ordination in Tibetan Buddhism are shared by other parts of the Buddhist world. While some regard the bhiksuni ordination movement to be largely driven by Western Buddhist converts, efforts to revive the female order have actually been initiated by various progressive Asian monks and nuns over the last century. New bhiksuni groups at various sites, including Korea, Sri Lanka, and Thailand, are now at varying stages of maturity. All of these groups are participating in an ineluctable movement across Buddhism, one that is ultimately to be connected to larger shifts in our contemporary global civil society. This is a collection of essays taken from a global conference on bhiksuni ordination from all traditions that took place in Hamburg, Germany. The essays in this book cover the breadth of Buddhist traditions and convey the history and the vision for the future of the role of women as ambassadors and curators of the ordained Buddhist community. This book shows a shift toward granting women full ordination in all traditions of Buddhism.
About the Author
Thea Mohr is author and director of numerous documentaries dealing with religious subjects, primarily Buddhism. Since 1994 she has been a lecturer for religious studies at Goethe University in Frankfurt.Bhikshuni Jampa Tsedroen (Carola Roloff) is an ordained Tibetan Buddhist nun and a lecturer and research fellow at Hamburg University specializing in nuns' ordination and women in Buddhism.