Daughters of the Buddha: celebrate their 8th international conference in South Korea.

At the 8th Sakyadhita International Conference on Buddhist Women, women from around the world cleric and lay, gather to deepen their understanding of and strengthen their spiritual commitment to Buddhist discipline and practice. Here, a participant offers her personal reflection of the gathering.

On 7 July 2004, two days after the end of a three-day tour of Korean temples by six busloads of international participants following the 8th Sakyadhita International Conference on Buddhist Women in Seoul, walking a university campus ground and thinking about my academic research seem unreal.

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I have been to a few international gatherings, large and small, of inspiring women before, but never had I been as spiritually moved as by my first attendance of the Sakyadhita Conference, this time in South Korea. Coming from a predominantly Buddhist country where religious authorities can comfortably say that bhiikhunis never existed in its national history and other forms of Buddhist monastic women have never been officially recognized, a sheer sight of hundreds of Buddhist monastic women of different traditions, ethnicities, ages, outfits, languages and practices, all considering themselves sakyadhitas or daughters of the Buddha, made a deep imprint on my psyche.

Information from the organizers indicates that there were approximately one thousand participants from some 20 countries joining this Conference-about 200 international and 800 Korean. While monastic women in their multiple and distinctive colours and patterns of outfits made a prominent presence at Joongang Sangha University, the venue of the Conference, contributions of laywomen were also well recognized. Boundaries of most kinds seemed vaguely relevant in that particular time and space. One of the sunims, as bhikkhunis and bhikkhus are addressed in the Korean language, told me that the poster advertising the conference, featuring a nun and a laywoman sitting side by side, which could be seen throughout the conference venue, conveyed a message of shared responsibilities of both monastic and lay women in maintaining Buddhist discipline and practice and upholding the Buddhadhamma. True to this theme, panel presentations at the Conference featured both cleric and lay women. The topics of presentations covered a wide array: from doctrinal and practical issues like meditation methods, dealing with negative emotions and practising dhamma in everyday life, to social issues such as education and training for monastic and lay women, situations of women's monasticism in different countries, and engaged Buddhism.

Parallel group discussions following each panel session offered great opportunities for sharing of experiences and thoughts. It was in these group discussions that similarities were appreciated, differences recognized, and gaps in understanding bridged. For instance, some Korean bhikkhunis were taken by surprise upon hearing about difficulties women of Theravada tradition faced in seeking bhikkhuni ordination, an aspiration hardly seen as unattainable in the contemporary Korean context. Inquiries were then made about how Buddhist ascetic women in some Theravada countries could maintain their monastic discipline and practice amid the lack of institutional support. Words of appreciation and moral supports were then exchanged between women from different backgrounds.

At times, difficult questions were tackled such as what "sangha" and "monastic" really meant given the variety of forms, disciplines, and practices of monastic women witnessed at the Conference. Should unified definitions of these keywords be reached, or should possibilities be opened for certain degrees of self-defined monastic identities?

On other occasions, simple but crucial questions were entertained in these small gatherings, reflecting mutual trust and consideration among the participants. In one such discussion group, Korean laywomen packed a room in the hope of hearing from people of other traditions how the latter established their daily routine of dhamma practice. As some Korean participants reflected, Buddhism in contemporary Korea is often perceived as difficult and remote from people's everyday life. By means of sharing experiences, participants from Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam related how daily routine of practice might possibly be achieved, leading our Korean friends to discover their already existing practice as the discussion moved on. Also, I heard from other participants that other topics concerning everyday life, such as dealing with anger, drew a lot of attention from participants. This may be an indication of an increasingly significant role Buddhism plays in today's society, that is, to help people deal with sufferings in their daily living.

Following the conference, six busloads of international participants went on a three-day tour of Buddhist temples in different regions of South Korea. The great hospitality of our Korean hosts expressed at the Conference continued at every stop we made. Deep sounds of the Heart Sutra chanting along with rhythmic beating of a wooden gong at every temple we visited marked the beginning of a warm welcome.

At our first stop, the Haein-sa (sa meaning 'temple'), we received a very rare privilege of strolling into an old wooden hall where the precious complete collection of some 800 years old carved woodblocks of the Tipitaka Koreana was preserved on countless shelves. A friend described this experience of being in close proximity to the texts of the Buddha's teachings, embodied through a dedication of hard labour on 81,340 slabs of wood, as auspicious, and I completely agreed with her.

On the second evening of the trip, we arrived at Unmun-sa and the Unmun Sangha College located amid a misty pine forest area known by the name of Mount Hoger or Leaping Tiger Mountain. At this women's seminary, we were received warmly by Ven.Myeong Seong Sunim, President of the National Bhiksuni Assembly of the Korean Jogye Order, who is the Chair the organizing committee of the 8th Sakyadhita Conference and who also serves as the Dean of the Graduate School of Unmun Sangha College. Aided by professor bhikkhunis and numerous enthusiastic student samaneris, we were quickly oriented into the daily life at this by far the largest Buddhist college in South Korea.

The history of Unmun Sangha College, first established as a professional school for bhikkhunis in 1958, provides perhaps part of the picture of changes in gender situation in Korean Buddhism. From stories told during the Conference and the temple tour, it seems that serious and perpetual decline of Buddhism due to Confucian influence, Japanese colonization, and the Korean War, has resulted in a void wherein strong women's monasticism could emerge along with the Buddhist Purification Movement in the mid-1950s. The gendered legacy of this historical fate of Korean Buddhism has lasted up to now. In most monastic orders in Korea at present, there are more bhikkhunis than bhikkhus. The Unmun Sangha College itself has produced more than 1,250 educated bhikkhunis over the past 40 years. Quite a few monasteries such as Unmun-sa, which once belonged to a succession of Korean Supreme Patriarchs, as we were told, have been turned into bhikkhuni temples or women's seminaries over the past 30-50 years. Ven.Myeong Seong Sunim herself is one of the few bhikkhuni masters who are entitled to ascend the Lion Seat to give sermons to assemblies of both bhikkhus and bhikkhunis in large monasteries (whereas a bhikkhuni giving a sermon to an audience which included bhikkhus was regarded as inappropriate in the past).

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Our last stop for the temple tour was at Bongyeon-sa. The fascinating lifestory of Ven.Myoom Sunim, the abbess of this temple, had unfolded in one of the Conference presentations by a Korean PhD student bhikkhuni. Having heard the story of her arduous quest for knowledge of the Buddhadhamma, it was heart-warming to see this senior venerated bhikkhuni in real person speaking from in front of an elaborated Buddha's altar at her own temple. Hardships undergone in obtaining Buddhist education in her youth has led Ven.Myoom Sunim to dedicate herself to providing education, in the comfort of modern environment, to young monastic women of Korea today. Therefore, located on her temple ground are the Lotus School for monastic women and the Vinaya Institute dedicated to studies of Buddhist monastic disciplines.

Back to where I am now at the time of writing, I can still recall the warmth of different colours and patterns of monastic outfits seen at the Conference: the maroon and golden yellow of Tibetan nuns, the solemn black and brown of the Japanese tradition, different shades of orange and yellow of Theravada tradition and the Vietnamese Mendicant sect, lighter shades of brown among Taiwanese and some Vietnamese bhikkhunis, the humble dark brown of Siladhara of Western forest monk lineage, the clean white of mae-chii and don-chii from Thailand and Cambodia, and the light-hearted grey, sometimes covered with brown kasa robes, of the many active Korean sunims. I recall hearing people saying, as the end of the temple tour drew near, that they started to miss one another even before parting. Floating also in damp air of the monsoon season of South Korea were their hopeful promises to see each other again at the next Conference in Malaysia.