Harvest season for Sakyadhita.

Ayya Khema stared her international center for Buddhist women in 1984 on Parappaduwa Island in southern part of Sri Lanka. At the same time I started N.I.B.W.A. the newsletter on International Buddhist Women's Activities (which later became Yasodhara). The newsletter has served as a network linking buddhist women in various part of the world together.

And we did come together for the first time in an International Buddhist Nuns' conference held in February 1987 in Bodh Gaya. The credit must go to Ven. Bhikkhuni Karma Lekshe Tsomo (Patricia Zenn) an American nun who was in India at that time. We had been corresponding earlier, and three of us agreed to co-ordinate, for the first time, an international conference for Buddhist women; Ayya Khema in Germany, Ven. Karma Lekshe Tsomo in India and myself, then Dr. Chatsumarn Kabilsing, in Thailand (Please read the full report in N.I.B.W.A. April 1987).

While preparing for the conference, monks and laymen lent their hands as much as the women. It was indeed moving to see so much cooperation. We even set up a platform in the market place to raise both donation and social awareness among the local people as well as the international pilgrims. Ven. Thupten Choedron from Germany gave us a big hand. She assisted with registration and handled the accommodation which anyone travelling through India will appreciate was not an easy task.

It was from this conference that Sakyadhita, an international Association for Buddhist women gracefully emerged. Later it was registered in the U.S.A. and it is now based with Ven Karma Lekshe Tsomo.

Ven. Karma Lekshe Tsomo suggested that we have the conference right after H.H. the Dalai Lama's teaching in Bodh Gaya. In this way we would be still able to capture a large group of pilgrims who had come to attend the teaching. When H.H. the Dalai Lama presided over the opening ceremony of our meeting, sure enough, we had more than a thousand people at the opening session. H.H. the Dalia Lama also kindly accepted to come to lunch, which we hosted. It was moving to see him sitting at the head of a U shape table--on his right were all the senior monks invited from the local international temples in Bodh Gaya, and on his left were all the bhikkhunis who came from different part of the world to attend the conference.

After the conference, we had a private audience with H.H. the Dalia Lama, and he suggested that next we should consider holding similar conference in Thailand and Sri Lanka. We took that as an omen.

In 1991 I organized the next conference in Thailand. This time we expanded the theme to cover Buddhist women and not only Buddhist Nuns as the one in 1987. We had some disagreement regarding this decision, but it was Ayya Khema who settled the issue. According to her only Buddhist nuns without the inclusion of women would not work. We, both the lay women as well as the ordained ones must work hand in hand.

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I was elected as the president of Sakyadhita at this conference.

On the third day of the conference, I took the large group of participatns in 4 bus loads and we hosted a luncheon party for the participants at our temple, Songdhammakalyani, 52 kms. west of Bangkok. It was here that Ranjani de Silva saw the work of Ven. Grandmother Voramai Kabilsingh and she became much inspired. She had a determination to start something similar in Sri Lanka. That visit became Ranjani's life commitment.

Ranjani asked to host the next conference in Sri Lanka in 1993. The government officer who gave permission for the conference to be held asked that we have nothing on bhikkhuni or the revival of bhikkhuni in our agenda. True to our words we did not have the bhikkhuni issue on the agenda. But more than half of the 300 participants were bhikkhunis wearing robes of different traditions. It was much more effective than just talking about it.

Successfully Ranjani invited the President of the country to preside over the opening ceremony of the conference along with the Minister of Education and Buddhism. The national hall was crowded with monks and dasasilmatas all over the island, and the news was covered well by the media.

I was elected again as the president for the second time in 1993.

The next conference was held in Ladakh in 1995. It was again organized by the local Buddhists and Ven. Karma Lekshe Tsomo. At this conference I completed my term and Ranjani took over as the president.

Sakyadhita conferences were held in Cambodia, Lumbini, Taiwan and this year we will meet in Korea.

This year the UN has recognized and given 15 awards to outstanding women in Buddhism.

The three of us were among the recipients of the award.