There are perhaps several hundred thousand Buddhist nuns in the world. Their circumstances vary more than monks’ do, because their institutional status varies: a fully ordained bhikkhuni in Taiwan and a mae chi in Thailand are both nuns, and they occupy very different positions.

This article is about the daily reality. The institutional question — who can be fully ordained and why — is covered in Bhikkhuni Ordination and Its Revival.

The statuses #

Fully ordained bhikkhunis exist in East Asia, where the lineage never lapsed, and increasingly in Sri Lanka and in the West through the revival. They hold 311 rules in the Theravada recension, 348 in the Dharmaguptaka.

Novices (samaneri, getsulma) hold ten precepts and are, in traditions without full ordination for women, the highest available status.

Intermediate roles developed where full ordination was unavailable:

  • Thailand: mae chi, white-robed, eight or ten precepts. Not legally recognised as ordained, historically excluded from monastic education and from the material support the sangha receives. Some have effectively been temple domestic staff; others run their own communities and teach.
  • Burma: thilashin, pink-robed, ten precepts. Considerably better integrated into monastic education than mae chi, and able to sit the demanding scriptural examinations.
  • Sri Lanka: dasa sil mata, ten-precept mothers, a role revived in the 1900s and now coexisting with the restored bhikkhuni order.
  • Tibet: ani, novice nuns, with full ordination not historically available in the Mulasarvastivada lineage.

The daily schedule #

Varies by tradition and institution, and the shape is consistent.

A Theravada nunnery might run: waking around 4am; morning chanting and meditation; almsround or the morning meal; study, work, and teaching through the morning; the midday meal, after which no more solid food; rest; afternoon study or work; evening chanting; evening meditation; sleep around 10pm.

A Tibetan nunnery in the diaspora adds formal debate to the curriculum, which is a substantial change from historical practice. A Taiwanese monastery may include university-level study, publishing, and running social service programmes.

The work is real. Nunneries are run by their residents: cooking, cleaning, building maintenance, gardens, accounts, and the administration of whatever educational or charitable activity the institution runs.

Material support #

This is where the difference from monks is sharpest, and it is not primarily doctrinal.

Merit. In Theravada countries, dana given to a fully ordained monk is traditionally held to generate more merit than the same gift to a nun or to a mae chi. Since donors are making merit, the material flow follows.

Legal status. In Thailand, mae chi are not recognised as clergy, which has affected access to the concessions and support monks receive.

Consequence. Nunneries in Theravada Asia are frequently poorer than comparable monasteries, with fewer resources for education, buildings, and healthcare.

The situation in East Asia is entirely different. In Taiwan, nuns substantially outnumber monks, are well educated, and occupy senior institutional positions; the major organisations — Fo Guang Shan, Dharma Drum, Tzu Chi, the last founded by a nun, Cheng Yen — have nuns in leadership. Korea’s Jogye Order has a large and well-established nuns’ community with its own training monasteries.

Education #

The area that has changed most, and quickly.

Tibetan nuns historically had limited access to the full monastic curriculum. In the diaspora this has been systematically addressed: nunneries including Dolma Ling, Jangchub Choeling, and Dongyu Gatsal Ling teach the full curriculum with formal debate, and in 2016 the first twenty Tibetan nuns were awarded the geshema degree — the equivalent of the geshe, requiring roughly seventeen years of study and examination. The Tibetan Nuns Project and Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo’s work were central to this.

Burmese thilashin have long had access to scriptural education and sit the same examinations as monks, with some achieving the highest results in the country.

Taiwanese and Korean nuns are among the best-educated monastics anywhere, frequently with university and postgraduate degrees alongside monastic training.

Practice #

Nuns’ practice is not distinctive in content — the same meditation, the same study, the same chanting — and the Therigatha establishes that the attainments are not distinctive either.

What differs is circumstance. A community with less material support has more work to do and less time. A community without full ordination cannot perform certain formal acts, cannot ordain others, and in some settings cannot teach with the same authority.

Several of the most rigorous meditation communities anywhere are nunneries. Ayya Khema’s Parappuduwa Nuns Island in Sri Lanka, before it closed, was among them; Amaravati’s siladhara community in Britain and Aloka Vihara in California are contemporary examples.

The Western situation #

Western Buddhist nunneries are few and growing.

Aloka Vihara in California and Dhammadharini monastery, founded by Ayya Tathaaloka and others, are Theravada bhikkhuni communities.

Sravasti Abbey in Washington State, founded by Thubten Chodron, is a Tibetan-tradition monastery in which women are fully ordained — taking ordination in the East Asian lineage, since the Tibetan one is unavailable.

Amaravati and Cittaviveka in Britain have siladhara communities, a ten-precept order created in the Thai forest tradition’s Western branch. The “five points” adopted in 2009, reaffirming the siladhara’s subordination to monks, prompted several nuns to leave.

Dongyu Gatsal Ling in India, founded by Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, trains nuns from Himalayan regions and has an explicit aim of producing female teachers.

Western convert communities generally ordain women on the same terms as men where they have the authority to do so, and the friction arises where a Western group is attached to an Asian lineage that does not.

Common questions #

Are nuns’ rules stricter than monks’? Yes: 311 against 227 in the Theravada recension, plus the eight garudhammas. The additional rules concern interaction with monks and restrictions on independent travel and residence.

Can nuns teach? Fully ordained nuns teach widely, and the early canon records nuns as senior teachers — Patacara had her own students, and Dhammadinna’s doctrinal exposition was endorsed by the Buddha. Where full ordination is unavailable, teaching authority is in practice more limited.

Do nuns shave their heads? Yes, in most traditions, as monks do. The shaving is renunciation of adornment and of a marker of social identity.

Can I visit or stay at a nunnery? Many accept guests and run retreats. Several of the Western communities listed above have guest programmes, and it is often easier to arrange than at large monasteries.

Is the situation improving? In education, markedly and quickly — the geshema degree within a generation is a substantial change. In full ordination, unevenly: restored in Sri Lanka in practice, unrecognised in Thailand and Burma, unresolved in Tibetan Buddhism.

Why should I care if I’m not a nun? Because a tradition that holds women can attain full awakening while structurally limiting their institutional access has a gap between its doctrine and its practice, and how it closes that gap is a live question for the whole tradition.

Sources & further reading #

Karma Lekshe Tsomo (ed.), Buddhist Women Across Cultures (SUNY, 1999) and the Sakyadhita conference volumes. Thubten Chodron (ed.), Blossoms of the Dharma: Living as a Buddhist Nun (North Atlantic, 1999). Hiroko Kawanami, Renunciation and Empowerment of Buddhist Nuns in Myanmar-Burma (Brill, 2013). Vicki Mackenzie, Cave in the Snow (Bloomsbury, 1998) — Tenzin Palmo’s biography. Steven Collins & Justin McDaniel, “Buddhist ‘Nuns’ and the Teaching of Pali in Contemporary Thailand,” Modern Asian Studies 44 (2010).