Amazing Transformations of Arahant Theri Uppalavanna

Religions of South Asia, 2012

The Apadāna is a well-known but relatively little-studied text. The Therī-Apadāna, the section of the text on women, tells of the lives of female disciples of Gotama Buddha. Alongside versified narrative accounts of the lives of these women during the time of Gotama Buddha, the text reveals the past lives of these women, under former buddhas. These past-life accounts of women as disciples of former buddhas add a new dimension to the notion of female discipleship in early Buddhism. Gotama was not alone in having a fourfold community of monks, nuns, laymen and laywomen; former buddhas had the same. The Therī-Apadāna establishes a narrative recounting that women were motivated and enabled to practise in the remote past, and that former buddhas allowed for the ordination of women just as Gotama did. In order to highlight this, in this paper I look at a section of past-life narrative in the Therī-Apadāna that is repeated in the accounts of six nuns.

“Coming Into Our Own,” the second part of the two-part “Remaking of the Bhikkhunī Saṅgha in Transcultural Contexts,” offers internal perspective on how Dhamma and Vinaya studies are brought into and inform bhikkhunīs’ monastic community life (with highlights on the role of the Bhikkhunī Vibhaṅga Project), together with offering a look at some of the puzzles or problems that bhikkhunīs are working on within the Theravāda tradition. The author draws from her experience with ordinations and bhikkhunīs’ individual and community life including but not limited to North America, Australasia, India, Sri Lanka & Thailand over a 30 year period, from approximately the last decade of the 20th century to the second decade of the 21st. Topics of active interest and work center on a dynamic and creative tension or fusion between ideals and vision, with striving, attainments and lived practices in the renascent bhikkhunīs’ community. These topics include: I. From past to present—the dynamic interplay between envisioned past (or pasts) and present; II. From “ordination” to “full acceptance”—forms of dual ordination and one-sided ordination; upasampadā as “full acceptance” or “fully sharing in the training and way of life” and the actuality in the contemporary greater Saṅgha; questions of belonging, lineage and saṃvāsa; III. From text to congruence in cultural context/s—the gārudhammas and sikkhamānā; the position of senior teaching bhikkhunīs with regards to ovāda, and bhikkhunī teachers’ and community leaders’ position in Buddhist monastic teaching and leadership structures; support, living with Vinaya, and religious alms mendicancy in the contemporary West; IV. From renascence to renaissance—bhikkhunīs’ discipline and developing bhikkhunī saṅgha/s as optimal container or the most optimal conditions for supporting and effecting the Buddhist intention and aim of women’s liberation, ceto-vimutti.

2008

I argue in this paper that, according to early Pāli 1 sources: 1. The Buddha lived above and beyond the Vinaya rules he prescribed; 2. Throughout his life, the sole moral guideline for his activities was the Dhamma that he had realized, not the explicit Vinaya rules. 3. The supposedly earliest three suttas given in full in Mv probably enshrine the nutshell of Dhamma which had been the moral guideline of the Buddha and his followers before explicit Vinaya rules appeared. 4. Those concepts were also the general framework in which the Vinaya was founded and developed, and based upon which Vinaya rules must be understood.

2013

In this book, only the canonical texts of the Pāḷi Canon are discussed. In addition to these texts, there is a huge amount of commentarial and subcommentarial literature as well as many non-canonical works, including anthologies, cosmological texts, poetry, stories, chronicles, and letters and inscriptions. Among these are famous works such as the Dīpavaṁsa (“Chronicle of the Island” [Śri Lanka]), the Mahāvaṁsa (“Great Chronicle” [also of Śri Lanka]), the Milindapañha (“Milinda’s Questions”), the Visuddhimagga (“Path of Purification”), the Abhidhammattha Sangaha (“A Comprehen-sive Manual of Abhidhamma”), etc.

I argue in this paper that, according to early Pāli sources: 1. The Buddha lived above and beyond the Vinaya rules he prescribed; 2. Throughout his life, the sole moral guideline for his activities was the Dhamma that he had realized, not the explicit Vinaya rules; 3. The supposedly earliest three suttas given in full in Mv probably enshrine the nutshell of Dhamma which had been the moral guideline of the Buddha and his followers before explicit Vinaya rules appeared. 4. Those concepts were also the general framework in which the Vinaya was founded and developed, and based upon which Vinaya rules must be understood.

These entries: – ‘Bodhisattva Career in the Theravāda’, ‘Buddha’ (main entry), ‘Buddha, Dates of’, ‘Buddha, Early Symbols’, ‘Buddha, Family of’, ‘Buddha, Historical Context’, ‘Buddha, Relics of’‘Buddha, Story of’, ‘Buddha, Style of Teaching’, ‘Buddha and Cakravartins’, ‘Buddhas, Past and Future’, ‘Ennobling Truths/Realities’, ‘Ennobling Truths/Realities, the First’,‘Ennobling Truths/Realities, the Second’, ‘Ennobling Truths/Realities, the Third: Nirvāṇa’, ‘Ennobling Truths/Realities, the Fourth: the Ennobling Eightfold Path’, ‘Not-Self (Anātman)’, ‘Pratyeka-buddhas’.

The Bhikkhu Saṅgha and the Bhikkhunī Saṅgha are two legally separate entities and subsequently one cannot exert its will on the other. It follows, therefore, that the Bhikkhu Saṅgha cannot determine the legality of the Bhikkhunī Saṅgha. The legality of bhikkhunī ordination is a choice to be made by bhikkhunīs, not for bhikkhunīs. This is the argument based on Vinaya.