Postgraduate students

Gihani De Silva BA MPhil

Buddhist Nuns and Social Empowerment

Contemporary Buddhist female renunciation in Sri Lanka has turned into a very complex phenomenon. On the one hand, Buddhist nuns are struggling with an ambiguous social status, sanctions and fragmentation. Pertinent authorities (government, mahānāyaka thera) intentionally neglect to solve their problems. They sanction neither the bhikkhunī status nor legal functional organization to dasasilmātās. Does this mean nuns have renounced their role of gaining social recognition? A study of the affective ties between laity and bhikkhunīs might reveal the untold stories about the role of Buddhist nuns in social transformation. Therefore, my present proposed study will fill this gap by concentrating on Sri Lankan Buddhist nuns' agency in social empowerment.

Under present circumstances, social acceptance or social recognition is vital for both dasasilmātās and bhikkhunīs. The bhikkhunī movement has sought new strategies to gain a social reputation at the outset. But what would be dasasilmātās responsive answer for this? Are they willing to accept whatever they have been granted or do they enhance the status of their order by searching new avenues of social recognition? Therefore, I will explore the discrepancies between the strategic tools used by both bhikkhunīs and dasasilmātās to achieve empowerment institutionally. This comparison is crucial in order to recognize the challenges these nuns encounters in acquiring social empowerment. Buddhist nunneries are organized in order to manage their activities and resolve conflicts. For instance, recruitment is a crucial decision, which is being made to continue the lineage. Nunneries abide by various agreed practices for smooth functionality. Identifying the potential skills of a nun and providing recognition is a complex process with a unique mechanism that dasasilmātās and bhikkhunīs would follow. Generationally, nunneries convey 'power to' newly ordained nuns and in turn, they gain 'power with' (collectively shared with lay disciples). Ultimately, these empowered nuns: who gained 'power within' become the agents of social transformation.

Understanding these strategies of empowerment of Buddhist nuns requires an understanding of them in relation to their everyday lives. “Renunciants everyday" refers to the conditions of Buddhist nuns’ engagement in daily work (veda) lists them as maintaining and running a hermitage, cooking, cleaning, meditating, accepting alms from supporters, counseling, performing religious services, and teaching. Therefore, the next crucial arena of inquiry is about how bhikkhunīs and dasasilmātās perceive their own situation in terms of empowerment in the context of everyday life for a renunciant? Do they have freedom of choice? The ability to exercise choice can be thought of in terms of resources (pre-conditions); agency (process); achievements (outcomes). All steps in this process are more than observable actions. When it comes to particular renunciant everyday activity, one should consider the background, preconditions, encompassed meanings, motivation and purposes which individual and groups of nuns bring to their activity. Therefore, the study will look at various aspects of the process of the empowerment, including awareness/consciousness, choice/alternatives, recourses, voice, agency and participation in a holistic perspective.

Supervisors: Associate Professor Ben Schonthal, Dr Elizabeth Guthrie, and Professor Ruth Fitzgerald.