During the Buddhist Rainy season, I was invited to go to Cambodia as part of a group to deliver some relics and see Angkor Wat. While most people don’t know much about Cambodia as a Theravāda Buddhist Country, it is actually 97% Buddhist, which ranks them as the most Theravāda Buddhist Country in the world. The trip ended up being more than 1000 times more powerful than we ever expected and it will be a memory for a long time to come.

cc0 picture https://pxhere.com/en/photo/489726 There is not much written in English explaining why bhikkhuni ordinations are rejected by the Theravāda Community of Monks. The English writings are a poor representation of the vast majority of Buddhist Scholarship and that is why there is “controversy” regarding the revival of the extinct Theravāda Bhikkhuni order. There is really no controversy to speak about once you know the full story. Many Westerners believe that women are not able to become nuns without such a revival, but that is not true. The extinct bhikkhuni ordination had rules that were numerous, restrictive, and heavy in consequence to protect their brahmacariya life. To give monastic opportunities to women, the senior monks created new lineages in Myanmar, Sri Lanka and within the Western Thai Tradition long before this “revival”. Not only that, these “new” traditions have been designed to simplify and remove many of the “difficult to follow” rules which gives more freedom to practice to attain the goals of Buddhist meditation. Pa-Auk allocates roughly half of its residential resources to female monastics with equal access to the teachers. Na-Uyana in Sri Lanka and Amaravati in England have similar arrangements. One of these nuns has her own international meditation center with donors to offer full autonomous support.