DHAMMANANDA Bhikkhuni, the first fully ordained Theravada nun in Thailand, received novice ordination on February 6, 2001. She couldn’t be ordained in her native country, where there were approximately 300,000 male monks and no ordained women. Instead, she had to travel to Sri Lanka, where the bhikkhuni lineage had been reinstated just three years before, after having died out for almost a thousand years. Dhammananda’s ordination sparked a strong public debate in Thailand, protests by the Thai clergy, and ridicule from the conservative press. In spite of that opposition, she returned to Sri Lanka in 2003 to receive full ordination as a bhikkhuni; Buddhadharma featured an article about her and the challenges she faced, “Ordination at Last,” that same year.
In Dhammananda’s telling, the history of the bhikkhuni sangha in Thailand has come about in three waves. The first wave occurred in 1928, when a man named Narin Klung arranged for his two daughters to be ordained. The two young women were imprisoned and forced to disrobe, and subsequently, the Thai sangha’s Supreme Patriarch gave an order forbidding male monks to ordain women as bhikkhunis. That order, the 1928 Sangha Act, is still quoted by the sangha as support for their refusal to accept bhikkhunis.
The second wave began in 1956, when Dhammananda’s own mother, Voramai, appealed to her teacher to be ordained. She knew she did not want to be a maeji. Maejis are laywomen who take eight precepts, wear a white robe, vow to be celibate, and live an ascetic life. For the most part these women were, and still are, marginalized in Thai society; many are uneducated, and they do not receive financial support. They typically reside in a Wat, or temple, where they clean and cook for the monks. Voramai chose instead
