Dhammananda Bhikkhuni: “Monastic life is far from comfortable. So it has to be one’s own choice, selecting to lead a life of renunciation. But once chosen and settled down in, it is meaningful. 
It is a happy life too — happy in the mind and emotions, and the physical body too settles down to being happy.”
This fact was evident in all the women in robes I had spoken with and written about in the recent past — Ajahn Vayama, Sister Suvimali, Singaporean Sister Chuehmen from Taipei and now Dhammananda Bhikkhuni.
Dhammananda Bhikkhuni comes often to Sri Lanka from Bangkok where she is resident. I had met her around twelve years ago when the Sakyaditta organization of Buddhist women held their biennial gathering in Colombo. She was then Dr. Chatsumam Kabilsingh. It was Ven. Ayya Khema and she who founded the association in 1987.
Ten Preceptors and Bhikkhunis
Unlike Ajahn Vayama whom I wrote about in a previous article and mentioned in another, this nun, as her appellation implies is a Bhikkhuni, ordained in Sri Lanka. Since the nuns order in the Theravada tradition died down and cannot be revived unless a Theravada nun effects the ordination, Dhammananda Bhikkhuni, like Ayya Khema who received her higher ordination in San Francisco, and Sister Kusuma and others from Sri Lanka who were ordained in Buddha Gaya some years ago, is of the Mahayana tradition. There is no gainsaying that fact.
Ajahn Vayama is happy as a ten preceptor in the Theravada tradition and keeps her rules very strictly like not having or carrying any money with her. She traveled back to Perth, via Singapore where she was due to do some teaching, without carrying a single dollar. Sri Lankan ten preceptors I have spoken with have said they did not think it was important to reach or receive higher ordination. But as Dhammananda Bhikkhuni pointed out, it is important that the four “support groups” of the Buddha Sasana, namely the Sangha or order of monks, the order of nuns, lay men and lay women are in existence. Hence the necessity to have higher ordained nuns, who serve the community, specially women, with their greater understanding of problems and the opportunity they give troubled women to lay bare their particular problems and seek advice and consolation with greater ease; woman to woman, so to say.
Following her Mother
“I was ten years old when my mother went to the barbers and returned with her head shaved. She became a ten preceptor and insisted on wearing a light yellow robe. This was a revolutionary move since all women in Thailand who had gone forth were in white. There was no higher ordination nor the wearing of brown/yellow robes in my country then. Later she received higher ordination in Taiwan. It was my mother who started the monastery in which I live now. My father did not protest. He was a politician and continued in politics while also seeing to our welfare.”
Bhikkhuni Dhammananda was naturally attracted to Buddhist philosophy and Buddhism with her mother ordained and starting her own monastery. This interest drew her to India as it still does. She went to university in Shantiniketan and successfully completed her first degree obtaining a first class in Buddhist philosophy. She studied Chinese too. Her Chinese teacher, discerning her intellect and interest in religion, encouraged her to come over to Canada when he had taken up a teaching appointment in that country. So Chatsuman Kabilsingh also went to Canada and registered for a Masters degree in McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario. She proceeded to obtaining a PhD from this university thus spending four years in Canada as she had done in India.
Returning to Thailand she took to teaching Buddhist studies at Thammasart University in Bangkok and freelance journalism, writing a column to a Bangkok newspaper and a weekly magazine. She was following in her mother’s journalistic footsteps; her influence inducing her to carry a notebook, pen and camera with her wherever she went for forty long years. She followed her mother to the monastery she had set up, but unlike her mother who left much younger children, Chatsuman’s youngest son of three was 24 and well set in life when she finally decided to leave it all for a life devoted to religion.
When her husband, a Buddhist chaplain in the Thai air force proposed to her, the young lecturer cum journalist had extracted a promise that if some day she wished to renounce lay life and enter a monastery, he would not stand in her way as obstacle to her chosen path. This he did and her three sons encouraged her to fulfill her wish.
Her mother had discerned her having inherited a revolutionary streak in her nature. It must have gladdened her heart to have her daughter follow closely her footsteps. She was 96 when she died, just two months before ten preceptor Sister Dhammananda took higher ordination in Sri Lanka.
Although, as in Sri Lanka, the Thai Sangha and general public subscribe to the fact that the bhikkhuni order in the Theravada tradition was broken, the two major newspapers of the land,The Nation and Bangkok Post as well as Thai TV, were sympathetic to the cause women in robes worked for, namely higher ordination and the setting up of an Order of Bhikkhunis. Thus opined Dhammananda Bhikkhuni.
Tired of the trivialities of life
To my question as to what really pushed her to give up her full life of university teaching, journalism, TV work of thirty years and homemaker duties of wife and mother, Bhikkhuni Dhammananda replied: “I felt a sudden disappointment with life, symbolically. I was tired of getting up each morning and putting on my makeup and dressing and going into the daily routine which was beginning to pall. You know, I started the day with curling my eyelashes, a done thing, and then applying all that mascara and eyeliner and make-up. Ugh! Gradually I began to lose interest in studying myself in the mirror and being happy with what I saw. I wanted out. ‘Why do I have to do all this?’ was a niggling question that snowballed to annoy and frustrate me.
“I had also been lonely, even in a house full of men — my husband and three grown sons; in the university, in the crowded streets of Bangkok. I used to sometimes cry over my feeling of loneliness. And so I decided to follow my mother to her monastery and took ten precepts and wore robes. How happy I became, how my sense of loneliness disappeared.
“We offer flowers at the feet of the Buddha; I offered myself, the greatest gift a human can offer — his or her life. That was what I did and it brought me immense joy and a sense of fulfillment, which I continue to savour. I had known the Buddhist Dhamma fully in my head. Now I knew it in my heart. I feel my life is worthwhile now. The loneliness I used to feel, which became frightening, disappeared like a miracle after ordination. I became a different person. I had fulfilled my maternal duties since when I left home to take to robes my youngest was 24 and had got his Master’s degree. The sons said that if Mother is going to be happy, they should give her, her freedom.”
Opinions
“You say you love India and visit often. What is your favourite place?”
“Rajgir. The kuti up there and the presence of the Buddha still to be discerned. I openly weep when I visit the place and sit in quiet reflection.”
“What has interested or impressed you most in Sri Lanka?”
“The strong tradition of Buddhist Sunday schools. There are so many of them, so well organized, with such large numbers of students. I have visited some — at the Vajiraramaya temple, Samboddhi Vihara where the classes are conducted in English, and Kelaniya temple. The numbers of young children attending the classes and the excellent syllabuses and the fact the government is involved in this spiritual training of the young is very impressive. I mean to take this example to Thailand and make every effort to emulate Sri Lanka. I will attempt lobbying the government to set up Sunday schools or at least encourage and assist temples to do so.”
Mentioning the fact that Thai men enter a monastery and take to robes for three months and then return to their jobs, families and former lives, I asked whether women in her country were privy to the same concession from employers. Ven. Dhammananda Bhikkhuni smiled and replied that women were denied this opportunity. “Of course women get maternity leave over and over again when needed, but not this concession to their religious longing.”
In her monastery are ten women in robes, four being samaneris. They conduct live-in retreats and have had Sri Lankans too joining them for such retreats.
Dr. Kabilsingh got into robes in 2000 and received higher ordination in 2003.
The most obvious fact when meeting and talking to Dhammananda Bhikkhuni is that she combines serenity with verve; is religious but not cut off from the world; meditates and is in retreat often but also continues to write her newspaper and magazine columns. She is dynamic and seems to still want to change the world. Having been a university academic, she is happy to teach struggling lay people and counsel them. She is now desirous of introducing Buddhist Sunday schools to Bangkok first and to the entirety of Thailand later.
Blessed are they who strive to make others blessed within the refuge of the Dhamma; happy are they who help others to be happy through accepting and understanding the great truths taught by the Buddha.
