Over 2,000 statues fill the walls of Vientiane’s Wat Si Saket, the Laos capital’s oldest temple (built in 1818). (Photo: Nikko Snyder)
By Gita Tewari
Briarpatch Magazine
March/April 2010
It’s the last day of the week-long Living Buddhism class I’ve been attending at Wat Songdhamma Kalayani, an all-female temple in Nakhon Pathom, Thailand. After our morning chants and prayers, we have set off on an alms round with nuns and novitiates from the temple. We make our way from the temple grounds into the surrounding community, where groups of people are waiting along the street and in front of their homes to donate food and other supplies to the nuns.
We walk quietly, in single file. It is still early in the morning and the air doesn’t have the oppressive humidity to which I have grown accustomed. We see male monks in their saffron robes down the street from us, also making their daily alms rounds.
When a man kneels reverentially in front of the young female nun leading the prayers, I finally understand the religious clergy’s resistance to ordination of Bhikkhunis (the highest order of Buddhist nuns) in Thailand. In a country where even the King defers to monks, the implications of allowing women to inhabit the same spiritual plane as men would have a profound effect on a country that is still bound by ancient traditions.
