Nuns and women in contemporary transcultural Buddhism
While the historical Buddha (ca. 4th cent. BCE) established an ascetic community for women, this nuns’ community ceased to exist with the 12th century CE. However, since the 1980s, successful attempts have been made to re-establish this women’s community. The presentation discusses how the Buddhist nuns’ monastic community was brought back in the South Asian Buddhist tradition (Theravāda), after an interruption of more than 1000 years. Bringing back the Buddhist nuns' community happened both within local communities and through cooperation across different countries and cultures. These multiple networks made the process very complex, and I explore some of these complexities. Key points include Buddhist women working together across different Buddhist schools and ongoing discussions about how to apply traditional monastery rules in practice, both within communities and with outside groups. More recently, we also see groups of Asian Buddhist nuns working together while deliberately avoiding involvement from “Western” Buddhist nuns, sometimes even directly excluding them. This presentations looks at how women navigate patriarchal religious structures and create alternative spaces for religious authority and community formation. The complex dynamics of inclusion and exclusion among Buddhist nuns across cultural boundaries also reveal how gender intersects with race, nationality, and colonial histories in shaping contemporary religious movements.
Date: 19. November 2025
Place: Neue Universität
Speaker: Ute Hüsken