Claremont Colleges Scholarship @ Claremont Scripps Senior Theses Scripps Student Scholarship 2009 Anis of Dolma Ling: Buddhist Doctrine and Social Praxis Through the Monasticism of Tibetan Nuns in Exile Amy L. Mann Scripps College Recommended Citation Mann, Amy L., "Anis of Dolma Ling: Buddhist Doctrine and Social Praxis Through the Monasticism of Tibetan Nuns in Exile" (2009). Scripps Senior Theses. Paper 13. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/13 This Open Access Senior Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Scripps Student Scholarship at Scholarship @ Claremont. It has been accepted for inclusion in Scripps Senior Theses by an authorized administrator of Scholarship @ Claremont. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ANIS OF DOLMA LING: NEGOTIATING BUDDHIST DOCTRINE AND SOCIAL PRAXIS THROUGH THE GENDER AND MONASTICISM OF TIBETAN NUNS IN EXILE By AMY L. MANN SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES, SCRIPPS COLLEGE IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF BACHELOR OF ARTS PROFESSOR NG PROFESSOR KASSAM PROFESSOR SHAW © Amy L. Mann April 24, 2009 Acknowledgements First and foremost I would like to thank the nuns of Dolma Ling Nunnery, without whom this research would not be possible. In particular, Anis Champa Dechen, Tenzin Droma, Karma Tsomo, Tenzin Yetga, Kelsang Lhamo, Tenzin Choedon, Sherab Sangmo, Tenzin Choeni, and Tsering Yangpal, for sharing their lives with me. Secondly I would like to thank Rinchen Khando Choegyal and the Tibetan Nuns’ Project, who have done amazing work creating the beautiful space in which these lovely nuns are able to learn and flourish. Also, I would like to thank Dolma Tsering of the TNP for helping me to coordinate interviews, as well as Penpa, for stepping in as a translator when things got tough. Thank you also to Anis Delek Yangki and Champa Dechen for helping to facilitate my stay at the Dolma Ling Guest House. I would also like to thank my three readers Professors Zhiru Ng, Zayn Kassam, and Teresa Shaw, for their guidance and patience in this process. In particular, Zhiru and Professor Kassam, thank you so much for mentoring me these four years. You both have taught me to think deeply and critically about religion, and appreciate the good it has to offer. Lastly, I would like to thank Mom and Dad for their unconditional love and support. Without you two I would never have been able to take part in this awesome journey. Nuns at Dolma Ling. Photograph taken by author. 2 Introduction............................................................................................................................. 4 Chapter 1. Women in Buddhism and Buddhist Texts....................................................... 13 I. Introduction: The Account of the Founding of the Nun’s Order................................ 13 II. Enlightenment: Equal Opportunity?............................................................................ 15 III. Gender as an Immaterial Phenomenon ........................................................................ 24 IV. Dākinīs and the Female Principle: Models for Female Practitioners .......................... 29 V. Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 36 Chapter 2. Women’s Suffering and Renunciation: Severing the Ties of Worldly Existence ................................................................................................................................ 38 I. Introduction................................................................................................................. 38 II. Birth as the Fruits of Karma: Women as Skye Dman and the Embodiment of Suffering ............................................................................................................................. 39 III. Descendents of the Ogress: The Female Body and its Impurity................................. 47 IV. Tibetan Householders’ Perceptions of Nuns .............................................................. 53 V. Reasons for Renunciation: Rejecting Life as a Householder and Bending Oneself Towards the Sacred............................................................................................................. 58 Chapter 3. Experiences of Monasticism and the Nuns of Dolma Ling ............................ 70 I. Existence within the Monastic Gender Hierarchy ...................................................... 70 II. Nuns’ Education and Ordination................................................................................. 81 Chapter 4. Tibetan Nuns’ Views on Gender and............................................................... 96 Its Relation to Self-Realization ............................................................................................ 96 I. Ani Is Like Pumo, But Not Like Laywomen .............................................................. 96 II. Anis v. Monks: Differences in Mind and Body......................................................... 103 III. Revisiting Gender in Buddhism: Their Spiritual Capabilities ................................... 109 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................... 116 Works Cited......................................................................................................................... 120 Appendices........................................................................................................................... 122 A. List of Interviews...................................................................................................... 122 B. Biographies of Rinchen Khando Choegyal and the Nuns of Dolma Ling........... 123 3 Photograph of Temple at Dolma Ling Nunnery in Sidhpur, H.P. Photograph taken by author. Introduction The figure of the Tibetan Buddhist nun as a female monastic is situated within a matrix of complexities and contradictions that are constituted by textual and doctrinal sources, Tibetan social views on gender and female monasticism, and experiential realities. In order to understand the situation of nuns, one first must understand that monasticism, mainly the order of monks, has been a highly respected and financially supported institution in Tibetan society for centuries. However, because the histories of Tibetan nuns and female renunciants have gone primarily undocumented, their lineages and stories are much more opaque than those of Tibetan monks. Therefore, most of the scholarship on female Buddhist practitioners, with the exception of a few extraordinary yoginis, dates after the Chinese occupation of Tibet in the 1950s. Historically it is believed that there were a few great 4 nunneries that existed centuries ago, but the majority of Tibetan nunneries have been smaller and lacking in the lay support and funding granted to monasteries. Currently, however, the landscape of Tibetan nuns is beginning to shift, as new resources and educational opportunities are beginning to be made available for Tibetan nuns in exile. It is on these nuns and nunneries in exile that this thesis will focus. The heart of this thesis is ethnography. I carried out the entirety of my fieldwork at Dolma Ling Nunnery and Institute, a branch of the Tibetan Nuns Project in Sidhpur, India, near Dharamsala. Dolma Ling Nunnery is a branch of the Tibetan Nuns Project, which is a non-profit organization that was formed in 1987 by current director Rinchen Khando Choegyal, in order to provide humanitarian aid and education to refugee nuns from Tibet and the surrounding Himalayan regions of India. Since 1987, through international support, the Tibetan Nuns Project has established Shugsep and Dolma Ling nunneries and also assists four other nunneries. Nuns in the six different nunneries represent all of the Tibetan Buddhist traditions. Moreover, the Tibetan Nuns Project sponsorship program has grown over the years to support over 650 nuns. Dolma Ling Nunnery was the first nunnery built by and fully supported by the Tibetan Nuns Project. The nunnery, which took twelve years to complete, currently houses approximately 250 nuns. The facilities include housing, classrooms, an infirmary, kitchen, dinning hall, library, and temple. Dolma Ling is dedicated to the higher education of Buddhist nuns from all traditions and offers educational programs previously unavailable to nuns. Such programs include philosophical debate and the prestigious geshe degree in Buddhist philosophy, which is the highest scholarly degree available to Tibetan monastics. 5 There are currently approximately five nuns at Dolma Ling working on this degree.1 Moreover, Dolma Ling Nunnery was designed by a Delhi-based architect and aims to be environmentally sustainable. The nunnery works to be self-sustaining, growing most of its own food, and has recently earned funding for a project to install a solar-heated shower system. Dolma Ling also has a number of income-generating projects, which include a vegetable garden, paper-making, and the making of rosaries. All of my interviews at Dolma Ling were conducted between April 20 and May 1, 2008. I met approximately one third of the nuns interviewed at meals in the mess hall or in the kitchen where I volunteered, so I had started to develop a relationship with these nuns before interviewing them. The rest of the interviews were set up with the help of Dolma Tsering of the Tibetan Nuns Project office, who organized