Here's something to rejoice! Tibetan Buddhist nuns finally receive Ph.D degrees

[harrynephew]

Dear All,

Found this piece of interesting news online. At least there's some good news from the Tibetan community after all. read on folks!

HN

http://www.thetibetpost.com/en/features/education-and-society/3419-tibetan-buddhist-nuns-finally-receive-phd-degrees

Dharamshala: - After years of deliberation the Department of Religion and Culture of the Central Tibetan Administration in Dharamsala finally took the decision to grant the Geshema degree to Buddhist nuns.

The first ever Geshema dialetic debate is currently underway at Jamyang Choeling nunnery, located about 10 kms from Dharamshala.

27 Buddhist nuns from various nunneries across India are participating in the Buddhist philosophy debate.

The decision was also pushed by his Holiness the Dalai Lama of Tibet, who strongly advocated for the Geshema degrees which are the equivalent of a PhD in Buddhist Philosophy. In the past these degrees were only open to Tibetan monks.

Geshe Ladangpa Yeshe Lhundup from the Loseling Monastery says that the system of debate is similar with the monks except for a few minor differences.

With this degree nuns are given the opportunity to appear for the very stringent doctorate examinations after graduating from a rigorous 19-year program of philosophical studies. When successful they will be able to teach Buddhist philosophy in nunneries and schools.

From 20th May till 3th June the first Geshema dialectic debate will be held at Jamyang Choeling nunnery situated about 10 kilometers from Dharamsala. Nuns from all over India and Nepal will participate.

The historic decision to award Geshema degrees to qualified nuns was reached last year after a two-day meeting between high lamas, representative of nuns and members of the Tibetan Nun Project.

It was decided during the meeting that nuns who passes the final examination after completing a total of 21 years of Buddhist studies will be conferred a Geshema degree.

Accordint to the Department of Religion and Culture, the debating session is 30 minutes, 15 minutes for questions and 15 minutes for answering. The debates are fully monitored and controlled by the Nun Examination Board, comprising of members from Gaden Choeling, Dolma Choeling, Jangchup Choeling, Kachoe Gakyil, the Tibetan Nun's project and the Department of Religion. Six Geshes from the three great monasteries are also assessing the performance of the nuns.

[lotus1]

Thanks harrynephew for sharing this inspiring news! Indeed, rejoice to see that nuns are getting their Geshema degrees which are equivalent to PhD in Buddhist Philosophy. It is not easy for women to be a nun as there are extra vows that they need to take on and how some in the society look at women differently from men.
These nuns have taken extra steps to go extra miles for the sake of benefiting others. 21 years of Buddhist Study! It is truly inspiring and great role examples for us to follow. 
All the best to the nuns who take on the Geshema exam and please do share us the good news once they have passed the exam!

[Ensapa]

This is great news indeed! it is true that many women are equal, if not more capable than men when it comes to spirituality, although women do have more obstacles to overcome compared to men in some aspects, as the Buddha has outlined in earlier sutras, but if women can overcome these they can be even better than men when it comes to spiritual practice. After more than 2000 years, finally nuns are given the same opportunity as monks as traditionally, and according to the vinaya, nuns are not allowed to teach the Dharma and they must show respect to monks, even those who are junior in ordination to them. Perhaps this is a start of a new era in Buddhism.

[Tenzin Malgyur]

So happy to read this piece of good news. Finally the hardworking and diligent nuns can sit for the Geshema degree exams after studying for 21 years. The CTA is doing something positive for once with their decision to grant this honorable title to the nuns who have renounced the world and studied for so many years so that they could teach and spread the dharma to more people. Indeed, education is the way to help people progress and not demonstrations and blind faith. May the nuns be able to excel in this exam and then continue on to teach dharma to all.

[harrynephew]

So happy to read this piece of good news. Finally the hardworking and diligent nuns can sit for the Geshema degree exams after studying for 21 years. The CTA is doing something positive for once with their decision to grant this honorable title to the nuns who have renounced the world and studied for so many years so that they could teach and spread the dharma to more people. Indeed, education is the way to help people progress and not demonstrations and blind faith. May the nuns be able to excel in this exam and then continue on to teach dharma to all.

Recognising the importance of the female energy, the Buddha Vajradhara himself has laid down vows and commitments never to degrade any women. This has since been a step for protecting women and ensuring that women takes up prominent place within Buddhist society and eventually the world. The foresight of the Buddha is really amazing when you think of it, how the Buddha skillfully acts and crafts even his own order to fulfill the needs of sentient beings is incomparable!

Hence, the nun's order within Buddhism carries a heavier and sacred mission to ensure that this tradition carries on into the future to preserve Buddha's message of peace and compassion into the world.

[Ensapa]

Recognising the importance of the female energy, the Buddha Vajradhara himself has laid down vows and commitments never to degrade any women. This has since been a step for protecting women and ensuring that women takes up prominent place within Buddhist society and eventually the world. The foresight of the Buddha is really amazing when you think of it, how the Buddha skillfully acts and crafts even his own order to fulfill the needs of sentient beings is incomparable!

Hence, the nun's order within Buddhism carries a heavier and sacred mission to ensure that this tradition carries on into the future to preserve Buddha's message of peace and compassion into the world.

However, in the southern tradition, it is pretty sad that the lineage of nuns have been lost in their tradition and they do not allow women to be nuns in Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand etc, and even quoting that the Buddha had said that if nuns are allowed to join the order, the Buddhadharma will disappear 500 years earlier than the time it should from earth. Personally, I do find it quite discriminatory but then again, i also read some material by a Chinese master where it says that the Buddha pointed out the 10 inherent weaknesses that comes from one being born as a female and that if they could overcome those points, they could be just as capable as any male or even better. I do hope that there are more female teachers soon!

[Ensapa]

Here's another take on this piece of good news:

Buddhist nun professors or none?
By Michaela Haas, Published: June 7, 2013 at 9:33 am


Exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama speaks during a public discourse. (B MATHUR/REUTERS )

Buddhist women are celebrating a landmark victory: For the first time in the history of Tibetan Buddhism, 27 nuns have gathered in North India at Jamyang Choling Nunnery near Dharamsala and have begun their exams for the Tibetan equivalent of a Ph.D., the so-called Geshe-title.  To understand the impact and range of this decision, take a moment to imagine what it would be like if until now only men had been allowed to pass their doctorate exams. As many American students are preparing for their final exams and graduation celebration during these weeks, picture what this would look like if girls were excluded. This was the situation for women in the Himalayas—and it is about to change!
So, why is this such a big deal and why did it take so long? After all, in the Western world the first professor degree was awarded to a woman at a European university almost 300 years ago, in 1732. (Scientist Laura Bassi taught physics at the University of Bologna.) And more than 2,500 years ago the Buddha himself allowed women into his order and ordained his own foster mother, Mahaprajapati. She and 500 like-minded women had to shave their heads and walk 350 miles barefoot to show their unwavering determination, before Buddha Shakyamuni finally granted their request—a revolutionary decision in India at the time. The Buddha’s order was the first in Asia along with the Jains to formally allow women in its ranks.
Yet it may come as a surprise to many that despite its progressive image in the West, the Tibetan Buddhist tradition does not know full ordination for women, and thus women cannot study the entire curriculum. For complex historical and patriarchal reasons, the ordination lineage did not migrate when Buddhism spread from India to Tibet, thus outclassing the Tibetan Buddhist nuns as inferior. Tibetan Buddhist nuns have to travel to countries where the Chinese ordination lineage is alive to receive full ordination in a Buddhist lineage that they are not entirely familiar with. “Most Tibetan nuns don’t have the means to travel to Hong Kong or Korea,” says Jetsun Tenzin Palmo, the most senior Western born Tibetan Buddhist nun alive today, in the new book Dakini Power, “and even if they did, they want to be ordained in their own tradition, by their own lamas, in their own robes.” A side-effect of this issue is that the nuns don’t have equal access to the full curriculum – only fully ordained monastics can study ethics in their entirety.

The spiritual leader of the Tibetans, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, has long been an advocate for the empowerment of women and recently reaffirmed enthusiastically that his successor could be a woman. He also insisted that there should be a doctorate degree for Tibetan Buddhist nuns. “I`m a feminist”, he said at the Vancouver Peace Summit, “Isn`t that what you call someone who fights for women`s rights?” In April 2011, he advised the renowned Institute for Buddhist Dialectical Studies (IBD) in Dharamsala, India, to confer the degree of “Geshe” to Venerable Kelsang Wangmo, a German nun (formerly Kerstin Brunnenbaum). This was a historic milestone: Traditionally, Geshe degrees are conferred on monks after 12 or more years of rigorous study in Buddhist philosophy. For the first time in history, a nun received this degree, and even more surprising, a Western woman. In spring 2012, the Department of Religion and Culture of the Central Tibetan Administration convened a special meeting of abbots and scholars who decided unanimously that more nuns be allowed to be acknowledged for their academic achievements—a promise that is now becoming reality. The 27 nuns who are currently taking the exams will finally be rewarded for mastering more than 20 years of studying advanced Buddhist philosophy and they will be the first generation of female professors in the Tibetan tradition.
The Dalai Lama has also publicly supported full ordination for nuns and equal access to education. “I think it’s very important for women to try to appropriate all their rights. Among the Tibetan refugee community in India, I have for many years been advocating for the female side, the nuns’ side,” the Dalai Lama said.
The Dalai Lama stresses that he cannot simply dictate change—the whole community of senior Tibetan masters needs to agree to change the traditional rules. Therefore a full-fledged discussion is in place about the position of Tibetan Buddhist nuns. To this day the female nuns have to observe 98 more precepts than the monks, including the rules that they have to obey the monks, can’t give them advice, and even the most senior nun still has to take a lower seat than the greenest rookie monk. Tenzin Palmo seriously doubts that these extra precepts were really taught by the Buddha and has researched reasons to believe that they were added by later patriarchs to reflect the dominant views about females at that time. Tenzin Palmo was born as Diane Perry in London and shares her own insight into the hardships of following the Buddhist path as a Western woman. What started out as the most revolutionary welcome to women at the Buddha’s time, has turned into a misogynistic adventure. “It’s just time they get their act together!” Tenzin Palmo said pointedly when I visited her in the Himalayas, “and give the nuns their full ordination!”

[WisdomBeing]

So happy to read this piece of good news. Finally the hardworking and diligent nuns can sit for the Geshema degree exams after studying for 21 years. The CTA is doing something positive for once with their decision to grant this honorable title to the nuns who have renounced the world and studied for so many years so that they could teach and spread the dharma to more people. Indeed, education is the way to help people progress and not demonstrations and blind faith. May the nuns be able to excel in this exam and then continue on to teach dharma to all.

It is certainly good news to rejoice over. It is great to know that women finally have equal access to the Geshe degree. However, i do not think that the CTA has anything to do with it, or should not have had anything to do with it since this decision is a spiritual one and not a secular one. The CTA's purview only covers the secular, which is why its carrying out its witch hunt on Dorje Shugden practitioners is completely illegal and unconstitutional. It is unconstitutional according to the Tibetan AND Indian constitutions, which both give religious freedom to its people.

This change of direction for women to become Geshes is long overdue, but it shows that everything is impermanent and Buddhism can move with the times. It is now time for the ban against Dorje Shugden to be lifted and i hope that time will be soon.

[dondrup]

Ordination is a path for the serious and committed practitioners. It is an irony that the nuns had not been allowed full ordination in the Tibetan lineage until only recently!  This is outright discrimination! It does not seem practical and logical for these Tibetan Buddhist nuns having to travel to countries where the Chinese ordination lineage is alive to receive full ordination! 

It is certainly rejoicing news to all the Tibetan Buddhist nuns when the Department of Religion and Culture of the Central Tibetan Administration in Dharamsala had finally decided to grant the Geshema degree to Buddhist nuns!

[Ensapa]

So happy to read this piece of good news. Finally the hardworking and diligent nuns can sit for the Geshema degree exams after studying for 21 years. The CTA is doing something positive for once with their decision to grant this honorable title to the nuns who have renounced the world and studied for so many years so that they could teach and spread the dharma to more people. Indeed, education is the way to help people progress and not demonstrations and blind faith. May the nuns be able to excel in this exam and then continue on to teach dharma to all.

It is certainly good news to rejoice over. It is great to know that women finally have equal access to the Geshe degree. However, i do not think that the CTA has anything to do with it, or should not have had anything to do with it since this decision is a spiritual one and not a secular one. The CTA's purview only covers the secular, which is why its carrying out its witch hunt on Dorje Shugden practitioners is completely illegal and unconstitutional. It is unconstitutional according to the Tibetan AND Indian constitutions, which both give religious freedom to its people.

This change of direction for women to become Geshes is long overdue, but it shows that everything is impermanent and Buddhism can move with the times. It is now time for the ban against Dorje Shugden to be lifted and i hope that time will be soon.

yeah you're right. This change was not implemented by the CTA. They have nothing to do with the Tibetan monastic system and it should stay that way. CTA tried to meddle with the whole system when the Dorje Shugden ban was in place, even requiring monks to swear that they have not practiced Dorje Shugden, thus forcing them to break their vow of not swearing just so that they can be politically correct!! I mean, this is just ridiculous. While in history Japan made their monks marry to dilute their power, there is no reason for CTA to do what they did. I hope that the Dalai Lama will make it clear to forbid the CTA from participating in religious affairs so that the whole thing wont go down and out of purportion.

[Rinchen]

So happy that the nuns can get their Geshe degrees as well after so long. They work hard and are committed, never wanted any limelight. I am so happy for them.

Finally they can have a Geshe degree with the same recognition as monks.

I definitely hope to read some good news from the nuns when the get their degrees!

[Ensapa]

So happy that the nuns can get their Geshe degrees as well after so long. They work hard and are committed, never wanted any limelight. I am so happy for them.

Finally they can have a Geshe degree with the same recognition as monks.

I definitely hope to read some good news from the nuns when the get their degrees!

I hope that they can benefit many by teaching. However, traditionally, nuns are quite limited in mobility, as this was the Buddha's instructions at that time as there were many cases of nuns who were raped while practicing meditation in the forest. Which is why in the Vinaya, Nuns are not allowed to travel alone and are usually confined to a monastery in order to protect them. As their contact with monks are also severely limited, their opportunities for education is also naturally cut. However, this piece of news is groundbreaking as it breaks that mentality.

[Rinchen]

I hope that they can benefit many by teaching. However, traditionally, nuns are quite limited in mobility, as this was the Buddha's instructions at that time as there were many cases of nuns who were raped while practicing meditation in the forest. Which is why in the Vinaya, Nuns are not allowed to travel alone and are usually confined to a monastery in order to protect them. As their contact with monks are also severely limited, their opportunities for education is also naturally cut. However, this piece of news is groundbreaking as it breaks that mentality.

Thank you for the sharing. I have never knew that it was so difficult for the nuns. It has never occurred to me that the nuns might be suffering so much. It is really a heart warming news that nuns can get their degrees. I believe that this would be great news to many of them, they would be so happy as they know that now, they are being more recognised.

There are many nuns out their that are very attained but it is just that they are not being well recognised due to the lack of recognition for them. Which I think it is very sad for that.

[Midakpa]

It is not stated where the nuns who took their Geshe examinations had taken their Bhikshuni ordination. I think most probably, they had done so in another country through another lineage. Since only fully ordained nuns (bhikshunis) can be conferred the title of "geshe", I think  they must have  travelled overseas for their bhikshuni ordination. I feel that if this is the case, it is high time the Tibetan authorities revive the lost Bhikshuni ordination line, if there was one, or make it possible for a new line to be introduced to Tibetan Buddhist traditions, perhaps through the Dharmagupta Bhikshuni lineage.

[Positive Change]

This is a rejoicing news indeed!

Being born a man or a woman is a matter of karma. And when women are not allowed this and that, they suffer from their karma created when they forbid this and that to others in a previous life.

So when men forbid this and that to women, they create the karma to suffer the same later on.

So when men stop doing that and ease the access to things once forbidden to women, they stop the infernal cycle of karma that allows such practices to keep on-going.

Men should care for women, women should care for men, better so every being should care for all other beings, this is Buddhism in action!