A HEART LETTER
TO PATRIARCH MAHĀPAJĀPATĪ GOTAMĪ
Dear Master Mahāpajāpatī Gotamī,
First, I would like to send to you a thousand thoughts of gratitude. Thanks to your grace and all the relationships in this life, I have been a part of the renunciate disciples dwelling in the Dharma of the Tathagata. Since I entered the Dharma house, I have somehow felt peace in my soul. However, sometimes I feel lost on the way ahead.
When I accepted the invitation of Venerable Bhikkhunī Giới Hương, I was very much concerned about what to write on the activities of the Nun Sangha in the United States. I am a new learner with limited knowledge of the Dharma, so I don't dare to comment. However, here are some lines of gratitude to our respected Nun Patriarch who paved the liberated way for us.
Samsara is a temporary realm which is full of love, anger and jealousy. Each person's karma is different, resulting in the karma from countless lifetimes. Since joining the ranks of the Sangha in the monastery, I have pondered a lot about my responsibilities and mission towards Buddhism, but so many ambitions have stopped before they were carried out. I had to review what our nun predecessors went through to motivate me to move forward. Today, turning each page of history about Patriarch Gotamī, a noble senior nun, I am very impressed and have a deep admiration for her. Thanks to her spiritual, non-regressive spirit, women became the Buddha's disciples. As a result of her actions, the congregation of nuns was established.
According to scholar E. J. Thomas, in the fifth year after his enlightenment, the Buddha returned to the palace of Kapilavatthu to visit his ill father, King Suddhodana. His sermon helped the king to attain arahantship before death. On that occasion, Mahāpajāpatī Gotamī came to Nirodha Park where the Buddha was staying, begging him to allow women to join the Sangha to live a homeless life.
After three times refusing the petition, the Buddha returned to Vesāli. Mahāpajāpatī Gotamī, along with many royal Sākyan women, shaved their heads, put on yellow robes and walked to Vesāli to meet the Buddha. Moved by the steadfastness and earnest practice of these Sākya women, Venerable Ānanda agreed to pass on their request to the Blessed One. Three times, Venerable Ānanda on behalf of them asked the Buddha to allow women to leave home. Venerable Ānanda asked, “Dear Lord, if a woman ordained, living a life without a family, living in the Dharma and being taught by the Tathagata, could she attain the four stages of enlightenment?” The Buddha answered, “Ānanda, a woman has the ability to witness the four levels of enlightenment.” “Then,” Venerable Ānanda said, “as your stepmother is the person who nurtured and held the Tathagata in childhood . . . she deserves to be ordained and join the Sangha.” Finally, the Buddha agreed to allow women to become nuns and gave the “Eight Rules of the Bhikkhunis,” which are the eight rules the nuns must obey for life. Stepmother Mahāpajāpatī Gotamī and the Sākyan women were happy to abide. The Bhikkhunī Congregation was born from that moment.
Reviewing the history of Mahāpajāpatī Gotamī and the founding of the Nun Sangha from the very beginning, I was truly thrilled and impressed by your determination and the entourage of the Sākya royal ladies at that time. It can be said that the event of womens’ ordination in the Sangha of the Buddha is the prelude to the issue on the earliest gender equality. Although, we cannot determine in which period of human history the liberation movement for women and gender equality was formed, most of the sources related to India shed light that Indian religions have never mentioned the fact that women ordained. When Gotama Sakyamuni Buddha accepted the ordained women and allowed the founding of the Nun Sangha, it is said that the Buddhist Sangha was the first organization to lay the groundwork for the idea of gender equality in ancient India, although there was still some disagreement about the event.
In fact, the Buddha did not struggle to claim one right or another right for women. He recognized women’s real role as human beings without discrimination in regard to gender, paving the way for them to lead a happy life. Gender or racial discrimination will end as people reach a spiritual level where there is no more conflict. Only in the realm of spirituality does human joy find true expression. Only in the realm of spirituality can each person achieve absolute freedom without harming others, and only in the spiritual realm can love never turn into jealousy and hatred. It is only the great masters who do not have any prejudice or discrimination against women. The Buddha is the great teacher who opened the door for women, not only from the darkness of gender discrimination, but also from the narrow prison of egoness to reach true enlightenment.
Indeed, in the Buddhist Sangha, the bhikkhunīs’ role is as prominent as that of monks. If the bhikkhus have great disciples such as Sāriputta, Moggalāna, the bhikkhunīs have bright disciples like Dhammadinna, Khemā and many others. This shows that every member of the Sangha who is trying to practice precepts, concentration and wisdom has the same ability to realize the same enlightenment. Everyone has the right to express his or her own views to the public. We can find the impressive atmosphere of the Sangha at the beginning, through the Theragāthā and Therigāthā. The enthusiasm for the practice that the Buddha aroused in the hearts of his disciples, the optimism about the Theravāda Sangha on the path of salvation, the joy of spiritual realization and liberation – all of these are stated vividly these two books.
Turning to historical accounts of the virtuous life of early Buddhist disciples, I reflected more on the current lifestyle of the Nun Sangha in the United States. Living in a place known as the paradise of freedom, human rights are protected, and the role of women is always respected, but sometimes it is also a factor that makes the spiritual life weaken. The bigger the selfness is nourished, the more it is not honed and removed. This is the weak point that makes us lose the opportunity to sit together, to share our experiences of studying and teaching each other.
In the rough opinion of the later learners, I think the Nun Sangha is prosperous. Each of them must reform herself first. Reform and perfect the five aggregates that have a lot of greed, anger and envy in each person, then everything will gradually stabilize. So, no matter how developed the technological society, the basics for the monastic lifestyle remain the same, the foundation of precept-concentration-wisdom.
Thinking we do not need to worry too much about reforming or introducing new methods to build the virtuous Nun Congregation that is suitable for contemporary society, let's return to the source of the origin of Dharma to practice and experience the spiritual life in the most practical way. Moreover, according to the Buddhist dependent-origination spirit, the individual and the society are as one body. Therefore, if each member improves, the collective will be completed naturally. In other words, every social organization is man-made and its destiny depends on humans. Of course, there are many factors that play an important role in determining the prosperity of an organization, but human beings are still the key factors.
A I confided at the beginning, all this is just openness and thoughts from a small nun who lives in the present time, thousands of years away from Patriarch Mahāpajāpatī Gotamī. But anyway, I still hope this heart letter goes back in time and you receive the love we are sending.
Minh Đăng Quang Vihara, California, June 26, 2020
Bow three times,
Bhikkhunī Thích Nữ Ngọc Liên
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1.14._Heart_Letter_to_Patriarch_Gotami_-_Bhikkhuni_Ngoc_Lien.pdf
