Buddhism’s doctrinal position on women’s capacity has been consistent since the Therigatha: women can attain every stage of the path, including full awakening. Its institutional record has been considerably less consistent, and the gap between the two is the subject of this article.

The early order #

The first generation is well documented in the Pali texts.

Mahapajapati Gotami, the Buddha’s aunt and foster mother, whose request founded the nuns’ order and who is said to have attained arahantship.

Khema, formerly a queen of Bimbisara, named by the Buddha as foremost among nuns in wisdom — the counterpart of Sariputta. A discourse records her being questioned by King Pasenadi about the state of a Tathagata after death and answering with the simile of counting the grains of sand in the Ganges; the king later put the same question to the Buddha and received the same answer in the same words.

Uppalavanna, foremost in psychic powers, the counterpart of Moggallana.

Dhammadinna, whose exposition of doctrine in the Culavedalla Sutta (MN 44) is endorsed by the Buddha, who tells her questioner that he would have answered in exactly the same way.

Patacara, who lost her entire family and became a senior teacher of nuns; several Therigatha poems are by her students.

Visakha, the principal laywoman donor, who negotiated with the Buddha directly and whose requests changed monastic practice.

The pattern is that the early texts name women as foremost in particular attainments, record their teaching, and have the Buddha endorse their expositions without qualification.

Later Asian traditions #

Tibetan #

Yeshe Tsogyal (8th c.), consort and student of Padmasambhava, is the central female figure in Nyingma tradition and is regarded as a fully awakened being. She is credited with concealing many of the terma treasures.

Machig Labdron (1055–1149) is unusual in Tibetan history: a woman who founded a lineage that was transmitted back to India, which almost never happened in the other direction. Her practice, Chöd (“cutting through”), involves visualising the offering of one’s own body to demons and spirits, and is practised across all Tibetan schools.

Tara is the principal female enlightened figure in Tibetan practice, and her origin story is pointed: as the princess Jnanachandra, she is told that she should pray to be reborn in a male body in order to progress, and refuses, vowing to attain buddhahood in female form and to work for beings in that form always.

East Asian #

The Chinese Biqiuni Zhuan (“Biographies of Eminent Nuns”), compiled in the sixth century, records 65 nuns from the fourth to sixth centuries — a substantial body of evidence for an established and respected order.

Japanese Zen has Mugai Nyodai (1223–1298), the first woman to receive Rinzai dharma transmission and the founder of a network of convents. Chinese Chan records female masters including Moshan Liaoran, whose encounter with the monk Guanzhi — who came to test her and left as her student — appears in the koan collections.

The pattern #

In each tradition there are women of unquestioned attainment whose names survive. In each tradition the institutional structures gave them less support, less education, and less material security than their male counterparts, and the lineage records that survive are overwhelmingly male.

The modern generation #

Western Buddhism’s first generation of teachers included women from the beginning, and several were central to establishing the traditions in the West.

Ruth Fuller Sasaki (1892–1967) — the first Western woman to be ordained as a Rinzai priest, and the driving force behind the First Zen Institute’s translation work in Kyoto.

Freda Bedi (1911–1977) — an Englishwoman who worked with Tibetan refugees in India, founded the Young Lamas Home School, and became the first Western woman ordained in the Tibetan tradition, as Sister Palmo. Her students included Chögyam Trungpa and Akong Rinpoche.

Tenzin Palmo (b. 1943) — a Londoner ordained in 1964 who spent twelve years in a Himalayan cave, three of them in strict retreat, and founded Dongyu Gatsal Ling Nunnery in India. Her advocacy for nuns’ education and full ordination has been sustained and public.

Pema Chödrön (b. 1936) — the most widely read Western Buddhist author, resident teacher at Gampo Abbey, and the figure through whom lojong practice reached a large general audience.

Sharon Salzberg (b. 1952) — co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society in 1975, and the person most responsible for the prominence of metta practice in Western insight.

Joanna Macy (b. 1929) — scholar and activist, whose work links Buddhist practice to ecological and systems thinking.

Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, Thubten Chodron, Ayya Khema, Dhammananda Bhikkhuni, Roshi Joan Halifax, Angel Kyodo Williams, Rev. angel Kyodo williams, Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, Larry Yang and others have shaped the contemporary Western landscape, and the last several named have been central to addressing race and inclusion in convert Buddhist communities — a question Western Buddhism was slow to take up.

Ayya Khema (1923–1997), born in Berlin and a refugee from Nazi Germany, founded Parappuduwa Nuns Island in Sri Lanka and organised the first international conference of Buddhist nuns in 1987, which led to Sakyadhita, the international association of Buddhist women.

The abuse cases #

Any honest account of women in modern Buddhism has to include this, because it substantially shaped the current situation.

A series of well-documented scandals involving senior male teachers and female students emerged from the 1980s onward and accelerated after 2010. The pattern recurs: a teacher with substantial authority, a doctrine of devotion to the teacher, an institution dependent on his reputation, and complaints that were disbelieved, suppressed, or reframed as the student’s spiritual failure.

Cases have involved teachers in Zen, Tibetan, and insight lineages, in the United States, Europe, and Asia. Among the most widely reported: Sogyal Rinpoche of Rigpa, the subject of a 2017 letter from eight senior students and a subsequent independent investigation that substantiated allegations of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse; Sakyong Mipham of Shambhala, following a 2018 report by the Buddhist Project Sunshine; and Joshu Sasaki Roshi, whose conduct over decades was documented in a 2013 independent witnessing council report.

Several features made these institutions vulnerable. The guru relationship in Vajrayana involves commitments (samaya) that were invoked to discourage complaint. “Crazy wisdom” was used to reframe abusive behaviour as teaching. Non-attachment and non-judgement were used to discourage objection. And organisations were financially and existentially dependent on a single figure.

The response has been substantial and is ongoing: codes of conduct, independent grievance procedures, teacher accountability bodies, and a considerably more sceptical culture around teacher authority. Women teachers and former students did the great majority of this work.

The practical upshot for anyone looking for a teacher is in Finding a Teacher and a Sangha: ask what the safeguarding process is, and note whether the answer is straightforward.

Where things stand #

Full ordination is available to women in East Asian traditions, has been substantially revived in Sri Lanka, remains unrecognised in Thailand and Burma, and is unresolved in Tibetan Buddhism. See Bhikkhuni Ordination.

Education has improved markedly. Tibetan nuns now sit the geshema examinations, the first cohort graduating in 2016 — a change achieved within a generation.

Western convert Buddhism has women in senior teaching positions across essentially all traditions, and in several lineages they are the majority of active teachers.

Institutional authority in Asia remains overwhelmingly male, and the highest positions in most traditional hierarchies are not open to women.

Common questions #

Are there female lineage holders in Tibetan Buddhism? Some, and the number is growing. Jetsunma Khandro Rinpoche and Jetsun Kushok Chimey Luding are among the recognised teachers; several tulku lineages are female. The great majority remain male.

Can women be recognised as tulkus? Yes, and there are established female tulku lineages, the Samding Dorje Phagmo being the best known. They are a small minority.

Has any tradition always treated women equally? No. The doctrinal affirmation of women’s capacity has been consistent; the institutional treatment has not, anywhere.

Is this improving? In education, publication, and Western teaching authority, substantially and quickly. In traditional Asian institutional hierarchies, slowly and unevenly.

Sources & further reading #

Karma Lekshe Tsomo (ed.), Buddhist Women Across Cultures (SUNY, 1999) and the Sakyadhita conference volumes. Tenzin Palmo, Reflections on a Mountain Lake (Snow Lion, 2002); and Vicki Mackenzie, Cave in the Snow (Bloomsbury, 1998), the biography. Rita M. Gross, Buddhism After Patriarchy (SUNY, 1993) — the foundational feminist analysis of the tradition. Sandy Boucher, Turning the Wheel: American Women Creating the New Buddhism (Beacon, rev. ed. 1993). Ann Gleig, American Dharma (Yale, 2019) — on the abuse crisis and the response to it.