On the Question of “Discipline” (Vinaya) and Nuns in Theravāda Buddhism

Abstract

This article centers on the relationship of rules (nīti) to the monastic form of life of contemporary Buddhist nuns in Sri Lanka. A genealogy of scholarship focusing on the rules of Buddhist monks and nuns has led scholars to affirm a clear-cut distinction between nuns who have the higher ordination (bhikkhunῑs) and those who do not have it. However, that distinction is not self-evident, because bhikkhunῑs and other nuns lead lives that do not foreground a juridical notion of rules. The lives of nuns focus on disciplinary practices of self-restraint within a tradition of debate about their recent higher ordinations. Whether or not they are bhikkhunῑs, nuns today refer to rules in ways that are different from that which dominant Vinaya scholarship assumes. This article proposes that it is misleading to differentiate Buddhist nuns based on an enumeration of their rules and argues that nuns’ attitudes to rules say more about attempts to authorize claims to power in current debates about their ordination than about their disciplinary practice as a communal form of life.

1. Introduction

This article raises questions about ideas of monastic discipline (vinaya) and (nīti) rules in Theravāda Buddhism with some focus on the relationship of rules to the monastic life of contemporary nuns in Sri Lanka, and in the context of current debates about their higher ordination.1 Firstly, I argue that a genealogy of scholarship on the Pāli Vinaya and a translation of disciplinary practice centering on rules limits our understanding of monastic conduct.2 Secondly, I demonstrate that the discipline of nuns entails practices of self-discipline more than adherence to rules, and suggest that monastics’ attitudes to rules per se speak to a claim to power and its authorization in particular discourse and debates. Thirdly, I argue that it is misleading to center on a juridical notion of enumerated rules in order to differentiate between bhikkhunῑs, who have the higher ordination, and Ten Precept Mothers (dasa sil mātās) who do not.3

The question of “discipline” (vinaya) plays a crucial part in the debates about the authenticity of the higher ordination and lineage of nuns in Theravāda Buddhism.4 In Theravāda Buddhism, the Vinaya is used as a touchstone to differentiate between fully ordained nuns (associated with 311 rules in the Pāli Vinaya texts) from other nuns (such as dasa sil mātās, identified with ten rules).5 Though scholars of Theravāda Buddhist monasticism continue to focus on the Pāli Vinaya as the authoritative and canonical code of rules governing Theravāda Buddhist monks and nuns, monastic discipline is not simply an exercise in observing a collection of rules. The practice of vinaya in contemporary monastic communities does not always follow the structure of an unchanging set of textual rules. This is not merely to suggest that texts and practices differ, but that the relationship between rule and life in monastic practices has to be thought differently. I make some suggestions toward that end by noting how the history of scholarship has misconstrued questions of monastic discipline by considering them in terms of juridical rules and injunctions. The recurring assumptions that Vinaya stipulations are either rules or laws,6 and that the communal life of monastics can be captured in a number of discrete injunctions reinforces the faulty notion about self-evident distinctions of monastic identities themselves (in terms of bhikkhunῑ and non-bhikkhunῑ nuns in this case).7 In this essay, I begin by examining some of the ways in which ideas about Buddhist monasticism get configured in monastic debates to note the limitations of understanding monastic discipline as observing iterations of rules. I discuss how the dominant scholarship associates monastic discipline with rules, missing the connection between the monastic practice of vinaya and a “form of life.”8 I elaborate on this point by drawing on research on current vinaya practices found in communities of nuns in Sri Lanka. A monastic form of life constitutes a communal existence that aims at a constant awareness of every activity that monks and nuns do. It can neither be reduced to individual rules, nor be regulated by them. My point is that the practice of Buddhist nuns is not grounded in a notion of rules. When nuns do speak of rules (nīti), they generally do so in terms of disciplinary practices of power that seek to authorize a coherent and common form of life in a monastic community.

Over the past four years, my research has focused on understanding the practice of discipline in terms of distinct programs and techniques of training novices in monastic communities.9 My particular interest is in examining the relationships between what are called “rules” (nīti) and vinaya (monastic discipline). Nīti, which literally translates as “rules” or “laws,” is commonly used by government officials and lawmakers. Among contemporary monastics, the notion of this juridical sense of a rule (nīti), when used in conjunction with disciplinary practice, is treated with some circumspection.10 When I asked monks and nuns about the relevance of nīti to their institutions, I encountered varying responses. Those who used the term generally did so in relation to what one might call the gatekeeping of a monastic community. Institutional gatekeeping was evidenced in regulations of activities involving admission to and exit from a nunnery and a nun’s full acceptance in the communal activities of the institution.11 It also differentiated between those who were deemed to have the capacity to live disciplined lives, and those who were not.12 Some bhikkhunῑs and sil mātās who referred to Vinaya stipulations as nīti or vinayanīti did so in affirming a state recognition of monastic rules or in authorizing their position vis-à-vis the higher ordination. Others rejected the nomenclature outright. However, those differing points of view are not revelatory in themselves; the monastic use of nīti or vinayanīti is made possible by the present social conditions of the lives of monastics and does not correlate with assumptions about monastic rules articulated in most Vinaya scholarship. In other words, how concepts like rule and discipline are used depends on how they operate in distinct forms of language and power within a tradition. Appeals to such concepts are appeals to particular modes of power—that is, the ability to authorize distinct modes of conduct.

One might be tempted to infer that there is an unmistakable difference between the identity of fully ordained monks and nuns and that of sil mātās. The former are seen to be associated more closely with the Pāli Vinaya text and the observance of its rules than sil mātās, who are not bound by them.13 However, my research indicates that positing such a clear distinction is not useful, since even fully ordained monks and nuns are quick to assert that the Vinaya text does not center on rules (nīti). Monks and nuns rarely refer to rules when speaking about discipline within community, where community includes those who already have the capacity to lead a disciplined life and, thus, do not need to observe rules.14 In such a community of nuns, what matters is not whether they have the higher ordination, but rather their commitment to living a monastic form of life that goes beyond discrete rules.15 Teacher monastics today want to assume that novice monastics’ desire for correction, bound as it is with their moral transformation in community, renders the need for harsh punishment (daṇḍuvama) gratuitous.16 When punishment is enforced, it assumes a defiant novice, involves authorizing her exclusion from community, and is associated with the transgression of a rule. In such instances where monastics are empowered as gatekeepers of a community and can exclude those who transgress, monks and nuns may speak of rules.17 Yet, those same monks and nuns reject a notion of individual rules that may seemingly constitute a communal form of life. In The Highest Poverty: Monastic Rules and Form-of-Life, Giorgio Agamben argues that the rule was inseparable from life in medieval Christianity. That indistinction, he suggests, is not easily comprehensible to modernity. He shows how the Franciscans in particular questioned “the very substance of the rule as a set of norms separate from life,” and, citing Hugh of Digne’s commentary on the Franciscan rule, he writes that the Franciscan “promises according to the formula of the rule and, therefore, is not obligated to observe either the individual norms or the three principle vows (obedience, poverty, and chastity), but all of them indistinctly in such a way that the monk’s very form of life (forma vivendi) falls ‘under the efficacy of the vow.’”18 In other words, not only are seemingly discrete rules not discrete,19 but the very presupposition that rules can somehow be abstracted from the life of monastics is questionable.

2. Toward a Genealogy of the Idea of Vinaya/vinaya

Let me first discuss how some scholarship represents the relationship between discipline and rule, and why I think that my research speaks to the limitations of that representation, as nuns understand that relationship very differently. Rules (and laws), in addition to often being viewed as state-sanctioned, often presuppose an abstract and universal juridical subject who risks punishment in transgressing rules. Vinaya stipulations, however, do not, for the most part, presuppose such a subject and are not universally applicable.20 Moreover, the idea that the Vinaya is a set of laws readily available for analysis is misleading because it effectively assumes that the text may be abstracted from a living tradition. However, it is just such a tradition that consistently gives meaning to the text.21 What this kind of interpretation ignores is that nuns and monks live lives of continuous moral training in which they are not expected to be free from the possibility of lapses in discipline. However, the very lapses in certain forms of conduct do not simply constitute occasions for punishments, but also opportunities for learning what constitutes proper modes of conduct.

Nevertheless, the juridical language that scholars use to interpret rules of the Vinaya continues to influence how we think about monastic discipline to this day. It seeks to demarcate and reconcile putative differences between original monastic stipulations and historical practices, thereby always having to reconcile the past with the present. Such scholarship tends to employ a cryptographer’s approach, attempting to decipher a supposed coding of the text (where the Buddha is a codifier) or to advance new readings of it to account for the text’s seeming elisions and inconsistencies.22 Take Maurice Winternitz, who thinks of the Vinaya as a code of rules with strict regulations. Consequently, he is puzzled by what he finds to be inconsistencies in it, referring to a “liberality, if not laxity in the rules,” since “the monk is to live only on what he obtains by begging, but he is also allowed to accept invitations to meals. He is to clothe himself in cast-off rags, but he may also wear garments of linen, cotton, and even silk. He is to live at the foot of a tree, but he may also seek a more comfortable lodging in houses, huts, or caves.”23 This is hardly an outdated example.

More recently, in his study, Mohan Wijayaratna refers to a “precise judicial system” of Buddhist monastics in which a “final version of the rule” becomes consistent with a “code of law.”24 While contributing important and timely studies on Buddhist monks and nuns, Wijayaratna presents a narrative about Vinaya stipulations that consistently refers to them as quasi-juridical rules. This is problematic, since it is crucial to recognize that the Pali does not refer to Vinaya stipulations collectively and uniformly as “rules.”25 Nevertheless, scholarly narratives about the Vinaya, like those of Winternitz and Wijayaratna, continue to refer to an essentialist and abstract notion of rules that were established in early Buddhism. However, Vinaya stipulations are always contingent on the conditions in which they are learned and practiced. In other words, their formulation is subject to specific contingent conjunctures and debates.26

In translating Vinaya prescriptions as rules or laws, scholars ascribe a rigidity to the formulation and practice of the Vinaya stipulations that is inaccurate. Another example of how Vinaya stipulations may be misunderstood as fixed rules is present in some scholarly accounts of the aṭṭhagarudhammā, which center on an interpretation of the Eight Conditions as rules that must be followed. As I indicate elsewhere, “the multivalent connotations and denotations of dhamma as ‘truth’, ‘reality’, ‘building block of reality’, and ‘factor of existence’ or simply ‘thing’ perhaps provide more scope for the meaning of aṭṭhagarudhammā… Translating garudhamma as ‘rule’ can be misleading” and the aṭṭhagarudhammā would be better translated as the Eight Conditions.27 According to Nancy Auer Falk, these Eight Conditions were “imposed on the women as a price for allowing them to found their order” and ensured their subordination.28 Falk proceeds to assume that these stipulations are rigid rules, stating that “the discriminatory provisions meant that women would never be leaders in the life of the whole community.”29 Rita Gross, who finding recourse in the aṭṭhagarudhammā as rules in a similar vein, seeks to demonstrate that “regarding the major issue of how the women’s order would rank vis-à-vis the men’s order, there was far less flexibility.”30 and that they “mandated institutional subordination.”31 Here again, we see how the notion of the flexibility of rules has become a concern in scholarly narratives. Unsurprisingly, interpretations of the Eight Conditions as rules has led to the publication of several studies on them that focus primarily on how and why their very existence should be challenged. Yet, scholarly engagement of the aṭṭhagarudhammā would be better served by thinking differently about the Eight Conditions.

In his article on Buddhist nuns in Sri Lanka, Lowell Bloss, refers to a distinction between the ten “rules” of the Ten Precept Mothers and the Vinaya “rules” of fully ordained monastics.32 Similarly, in their 2010 publication on Buddhist nuns in Thailand, Steven Collins and Justin McDaniel discriminate between nuns on the basis of the number of precepts that they observe and that are distinguished from the so-called rules of the Vinaya.33 Likewise, Tessa Bartholomeusz, who conducted research in Sri Lanka in 1988–1989, also refers to Vinaya stipulations as rules which might differentiate some Sri Lankan nuns from others who do not follow them.34 Nuns are of course fully aware of the number of monastic stipulations that they may have undertaken to formally observe. However, they do not limit their practice to a specific number of stipulations. Their renunciant everyday is not grounded in discrete lists such as the Ten Training Precepts or the 311 Vinaya stipulations.35 What is important is that even nuns who are not fully ordained observe most Vinaya stipulations. Hence, it is not surprising, that some maechii in Thailand, like some sil mātās in Sri Lanka, find no reason to seek the upasampadā.36 Additionally, householders (in Sri Lanka, in particular,) generally do not (or sometimes cannot) differentiate between bhikkhunῑs and sil mātās.37 One reason for Theravada Buddhist nuns’ ambivalence toward the upasampadā, and for the inability of most Sri Lankan householders to differentiate between nuns who are fully-ordained or not, is that, regardless of their supposed ordination status and their formal observances of monastic stipulations, nuns’ form of life is strikingly similar. That is why scholars’ persistent categorization of nuns according to a rigid notion of rules remains questionable.

Likening the Vinaya to a strict legal code of rules and regulations leads to the kind of bafflement that Winternitz expresses about the so-called laxity of the rules. Some scholars have compared Vinaya recommendations to state laws. However, the monastic form of life that all nuns live, grounded as it is on vinaya practices rather than a book of rules, is significantly different. By considering Vinaya recommendations as rules, rather than as stipulations that are formed in a discursive tradition that constantly affirms, questions, and reinterprets them, scholars cannot but be perplexed by the seeming inconsistencies of Vinaya practice. The “liberality, if not laxity” that confuses Winternitz would not be an issue if Vinaya stipulations and other monastic precepts were understood not as rigid rules that are imposed on abstract monastic subjects, but rather as prescriptions whose individual contexts cannot be separated from the lives of those specific monastics who live them at particular moments in time. The cultivation of self-discipline as a form of life is grounded in such particular moments.

All too often, studies of the Vinaya in European languages assume that it constitutes a legal system of penalties for transgressions, whereby monastic life can be uniformly maintained through regulations.38 Characteristically, scholars view Vinaya prescriptions tautologically, as regulations that Buddhist monastics must observe, because monastics are observers of rules. However, monastics whose form of life is shaped by programs of discipline, do not use Vinaya prescriptions as rules in the ways that such scholarship seems to assume.39 While many scholars point out the importance of reconsidering the tendency to reconstruct monastic realities on the basis of texts,40 my interest is not in differentiating between text and practice per se, but rather in thinking through the inadequacy of translating monastic discipline as rules in both text and practice. The focus on the techniques of training young novice nuns gives us clues as to how Buddhist monastics engage vinaya. That is why, following such scholars as Asad, Agamben, and Abeysekara, I argue that discipline constitutes a form of life, not simply a set of rules governing conduct. In the latter formulation, form already stands separated from life. This in turn has implications for reconsidering the place of Vinaya prescriptions as rules, whereby scholarship makes distinctions between ordinands within the communities of nuns (e.g., between bhikkhunῑs and sil mātās).41 At times, Buddhist monastics do indeed find recourse in the Vinaya to mark such differentiation of monastic statuses, but that is made possible by the social conditions of their lives and specific relationships of power; such differentiations become a form of ability to perform particular tasks in monastic life.

The term vinaya, often used in conjunction with the word dhamma (Buddhist teaching), is inseparable from the notion of sāsana/śāsana, the Buddhist dispensation it is said to uphold. However, vinaya concerns an entire mode of life that is already generally assumed among ordained monastics.42 Nuns see no need to talk about that life unless queried about it. In effect, it evokes an existential reality that defies translation.43 Essaying the impossible is not my labor here. On the contrary, I consider how studies of monastic practice that discuss communal discipline in terms of juridical notions of rules and laws, since such a focus on rules has implications for how scholars continue to differentiate bhikkhunῑs and their novices (sāmaṇerῑs) from sil mātās and their novices, where the former seemingly observe Vinaya rules, and the latter do not. My point is that nuns’ observance of stipulations in the Vinaya is not always seen to define a distinct form of practice, because their practice concerns a much broader understanding of vinaya.

Although some works on Buddhist nuns see training precepts (and other Vinaya prescriptions) as expressions of the cultivation of sῑla (moral dispositions), they continue to equate them with rules.44 My research suggests that such works can distort how training precepts and vinaya inform the lives of nuns. Sῑla speaks to an ability to cultivate particular sets of dispositions and sensibilities that are not reducible to observations of manifest precepts and rules. That is to say, the cultivation of moral dispositions does not amount to the nuns’ observation of precepts; rather, it forms part of a discursive domain, constituting a tradition of training. As such, one cannot take for granted that such dispositions are self-evidently available for appropriation.45 Moreover, that is why a monastic training presupposes an existential process of becoming, which is underscored in the daily training and education of young novices. That initial training segues into an ongoing cultivation of sῑla practiced by all nuns, whether fully ordained or not.46 What nuns are expected to do changes as they age, as do the demands and needs of their hermitages, underscoring how continual processes of self-discipline and becoming persist well beyond novitiate training and the notion of unchanging rules. Those processes are a form of life that cannot be understood in terms of individual precepts or juridical prescriptions.

3. Translating Disciplinary Practice

I now turn to discussing in more detail why some scholarly studies that translate vinaya as monastic rules or laws are limited, and what that means for the study of Buddhist nuns. Both novice sil mātās and sāmaṇerῑs observe the Ten Training Precepts47 and live in communities under the authority of senior nuns. While admission to a bhikkhunῑ training center demands a certain level of literacy, and access to bhikkhunῑ ordination requires passing examinations after a rigorous course of studies in Vinaya and other texts, no such requirements apply to sil mātā ordinations. Nevertheless, teacher-nuns at bhikkhunῑ and sil mātā training centers train novices in ways that cannot be significantly distinguished. For the most part, the stipulations in the Vinaya text, which one might assume apply only to bhikkhunῑs, are also observed by sil mātās. One may find rules in the Vinaya that are reserved only for monks and nuns who have the upasampadā. For example, only bhikkhus and bhikkhunῑs participate in certain rituals such as those associated with the rains’ retreat and the pāṭimokkha recitation.48 However, that ritual engagement primarily serves to affirm certain power relations within a discursive tradition and authorizes their status as monastics who have the upasampadā among monks, nuns, and state officials at large. It is mistaken to assume that participation in such rituals is essential in marking a distinction between the form of life bhikkhunῑs lead and the form of life of sil mātās lead. That is precisely why training centers for sil mātās and bhikkhunῑs are strikingly similar, and even some householders today see little difference between bhikkhunῑs and sil mātās.49 Framing the identity of a monk or a nun in terms of a juridical idea of rules belongs to a genealogy of scholarship that continues to create divisions between disciplinary practices and a form of life.50

Among most scholars, the Vinaya prescriptions, including the training precepts (sikkhāpadas/śikṣāpadas), are invariably defined as rules and regulations or as laws,51 and the Vinaya in general is viewed as the “highest legal authority.”52 The claim was also made that “in every Vinaya scholars have examined, the Buddha is depicted as the lawgiver.”53 However, the monks and nuns with whom I conversed do not think of the Buddha as a lawgiver, nor do they consider Vinaya prescriptions or training precepts as laws. Moreover, present as those precepts are within a discursive tradition, their very interpretation is subject to dispute.54 We should remember that the Ten Training Precepts are usually observed by novices prior to their becoming novice nuns; thus, it is not always possible to differentiate practitioners according to the training precepts they observe.55 Vinaya should be equated not with training precepts or rules, but rather with the cultivation of self-discipline. This is clearly stated in Oliver Abeynayaka’s Vinaya Piṭakaya, which is currently used as a training manual for nuns: “Vinaya means restraint (saṅvara). It concerns the overcoming of the kleśas (moral impurities). It is about bodily and verbal restraint; ‘vinaya’ does not mean ‘śikṣāpada’. The śikṣāpada were introduced for the purpose of protecting/observing vinaya.”56 When translated as a form of restraint, vinaya points to an entire mode of life in which the elimination of unwholesome attitudes is emphasized. Such a life cannot be achieved by simply following rules that are imposed by others.

The problem with translating training precepts or Vinaya stipulations as rules is seldom explicitly recognized by scholars of Buddhism.57 Nevertheless, the pitfalls of translating them as such were intimated by some scholars even as they seem to be mired in that very terminology. Daniel A. Getz, in his entry on Buddhist “Precepts” in the Encyclopedia of Buddhism, refers to them as “rules and guidelines intended to properly shape the mind and its manifestations in physical and verbal behavior so as to facilitate progress on the path to liberation.” Having referred to precepts as rules, Getz proceeds to focus on them more as moral guidelines, indicating that they refer to sῑla yet cannot be “seen as ends in themselves, but rather as necessary steps in training for awakening.” Hence, precepts, ostensibly seen as “moral obligations,” demarcate “different levels of progress and commitment in religious life.” Getz qualifies what the “rules” mean by putting them in the context of religious life, claiming that, whereas “the five and eight precepts pertain to the moral training of lay persons, the category of ten precepts sets forth a basic moral vision for Buddhist monastics.” Although this categorization of the precept listings is not as strictly differentiated as he suggests—moral training and moral vision are relevant to all Buddhist practitioners—Getz hints at how training precepts constitute a practice and a moral process that cannot be satisfactorily subsumed under the terminology of rules.58 Like Getz, Jotiya Dhirasekera, in his study of monastic discipline, refers to the training precepts as rules, and emphasizes that they indicate an ongoing training of monastics to eliminate dukkha (dis-ease). Having researched both canonical and commentarial sources, he notes that the term sῑla was often used interchangeably with sikkhāpada.59 Dhirasekera’s study consistently refers to monastic stipulations in terms of their legality;60 however, his study of the disciplinary literature often reminds us that vinaya practice responded to new demands even after the time of the Buddha. Dhirasekera, though circumscribed by the terminology he uses, seeks, like Getz, to contextualize how monastic stipulations may be practiced within a discursive tradition.

It is not uncommon for Vinaya scholars seeking an overarching Buddhist framework to anchor Vinaya prescriptions in an ideal or normative monastic community. John Holt, for example, posits such a framework, disputing that the Pāli Vinaya is based either on sῑla or on law.62 He asserts that “if we are to argue that the basis of Buddhist discipline consists of the primary concerns of sῑla, we would have to admit that the basis of Buddhist discipline is not exclusively Buddhistic nor even monastic for that matter.”62 Holt’s assertion that the Vinaya does not concern sῑla is puzzling. Indeed, bhikkhunῑs unequivocally state that the Vinaya is about an immeasurable sῑla of restraint (koṭiyak saṅvara sῑla). It is well known that training in the cultivation of sῑla as a form of restraint is crucial to monastic life.63 Holt proceeds to state that the Vinaya, “rather than being merely a legal code enforced by sovereign authority or rather than being only an elaboration of sῑla, represents the effective behavioral expression which became normative for the path leading to the final spiritual goal of the religion. The basis of the discipline is, therefore, to be found in the fact that it represents an ideal realization of the teaching of the Dhamma.”64 Holt’s rendering of the Vinaya as a representation—that is, as something different from practice—and the discursive tradition to which it belongs is problematic. His conceptualization of the Vinaya as a normative expression for the path of spiritual realization promotes an idealization and orientalization of Buddhist monasticism that has long permeated scholarship in the field.65

As the anthropologist David Scott has observed,

The Western misinterpretation of Buddhism is shaped not only by a colonial misreading, but by the selective and biased account in the authoritative texts themselves. However, what is curious about this view is that it presumes that Western interpretive discourse occupies the same conceptual relation to Buddhist tradition that any Buddhist texts do. Canonical texts do not present “a view from nowhere;” they are employed to make claims for what the dhamma is, how it is to be interpreted, and so on. It is this internal argument as a discursive—if nonunitary—whole that should form the object of the anthropological investigation. The texts form part of a tradition and, as such, are integral to arguments within that tradition, and to positions regarding what correct views and practices are. The Western dilemma arises only insofar as its discourses seek to adjudicate what the truth of that tradition is.66

Here, Scott not only questions the privileging of particular texts as normative or ideal on their own terms, but also indicates that the search for an all-encompassing norm, rooted as it is in a panoptic Western discourse, downplays the extent to which competing discourses constitute tradition.67 As we will see, nuns’ reference to rules has little to do with discipline within a community in the way that most scholarship assumes.68 However, rules are invoked when they instantiate a position in particular discourses. What becomes important when thinking about nuns is not that they should be defined according to the number of rules they supposedly observe, but that, when they recognize rules, they do so as a way of appealing to certain relationships of power that enable their authorization of a specific mode of conduct.

It is not accurate to assume that the Vinaya is the code of conduct of the ideal monastic and a form of jurisprudence whereby monastics must always be evaluated. For monks and nuns, vinaya as a form of discipline informs a lifelong training of monastics who, like any other people, make mistakes. Scholars seeking in the Vinaya texts and commentaries some original truth or basing their analysis on the assumption of an ideal monastic are engaging in an endeavor that sets the texts apart from the discourses to which they belong. It is tempting to seek an underlying norm in Vinaya prescriptions, not just because of the end-of-the rainbow coherence such a norm might bring to Vinaya texts, but also because vinaya frequently occurs with the term dharma, which is sometimes translated as “norm.”69 Charles Willemen (2004) underscores how vinaya and dharma are interrelated even while couching his observations in juridical language: “The practice of dharma is found in the Vinaya, the monastic instructions. The practical application of dharma [involves] the rules and regulations and their sanctions. Each of these rules is also called dharma. Dharma and vinaya together constitute the teachings of the Buddha; what in the West is called Buddhism, the Buddhists themselves call the Dharmavinaya” (p. 218).70 Any separation of vinaya from dharma is conducive to thinking not about coherence in a tradition, but rather about how vinaya is different from dharma (to which it ought to be connected), and detachable from the life in which it is lived.71 More attention could yet be given to how ideas about dharmavinaya/dhammavinaya are sought to establish coherence within particular traditions of monastic discipline; however, such coherence should be seen not as an objective essence that is somehow subject to change, but rather as that which involves a claim to power where practitioners might seek authority to establish one form of coherence over another at a particular moment in time.72

A closer look at how terms such as vinaya and nīti are used is relevant to understanding the training practices of Buddhist nuns. Though the definitions of such terms may appear to change with time, it is more important to recognize how monks’ and nuns’ use of those terms authorizes particular relations of power today. The Pali Text Society’s Pali–English Dictionary (PTSD) defines vinaya as a “norm of conduct, ethics, morality, good behavior” and also as a “code of ethics, monastic discipline, rule, rules of morality, or canon law.”73 The PTSD indicates that the verb vineti, also connected to vinaya, means “to lead, guide, instruct, train, educate.”74 That use of vinaya has received little attention in most scholarship, which tends to see the Vinaya as a comprising a set of rules that need decoding. The term vinaya shares the same semantic field as the nouns netti and netta and nῑti. Netti is glossed as “a guide, conductor, support,”75 whereas netta (from Sanskrit netra) refers to “guidance, anything that guides, a conductor, (figuratively) the eye.”76 Gregory Schopen’s sense of vinaya as a guide is in keeping with these connotations of vinaya.77 In his entry on “Vinaya” in the Encyclopedia of Buddhism, he draws attention to the meaning of vinaya as Buddhist “teachings” and behavior, and explains that vinaya is “derived from a Sanskrit word that can mean to lead, or take away; remove, to train, tame, or guide (as a horse) or to educate, instruct, direct. All these meanings or shades of meaning intermingle in the Buddhist use of the term, where it refers to both specific teachings of the Buddha that bear on behavior, and to the literary sources in which those teachings are found.” Though the notion of vinaya as a guide was affirmed by monks and nuns with whom I conversed, the term nῑti, which appears to have had similar connotations to vinaya at one time, is now used differently. It is not a term that contemporary nuns and monks generally equate with vinaya.78

The use of nῑti to mean “guide” is well established in Pāli. Indeed, the Pāli term can refer to “guidance; rules; conduct; prudent behavior; policy; moral philosophy; political science.”79 The translation of the Pāli term nῑti as “guide” is affirmed by Oskar von Hinüber (even though he does not shy away from using legal terminology in his discussion of Vinaya texts) in his reference to the “nῑtisuttadhāra” as “the one, who is an expert in the guidelines.”80 George Bond, in his study of the Netti-Pakaraṇa, or Guide-Treatise (also called the Netti or Guide), notes that “the Netti was intended as a guide for all those in the Sangha… The commentary on the Netti supports this view, for it says that the work is called Netti (guide) because it is a guide for expositors.”81 We might suppose that the currency of the term nῑti as “guide,” either for interpretation of the dhamma or as a guide for moral conduct, was once prevalent among monastic circles; however, that is not the case now. In contemporary Sri Lanka, the term nῑti refers primarily to a law or rule, akin to the dictates of a state.

My concern with thinking about the provenance of the terms vinaya and nῑti stems from a need to better understand how much these concepts and their usage may overlap, how they are articulated by monks and nuns today, and what that might mean for a monastic form of life. The Sinhala term nῑti, referring either to vinaya prescriptions or to life at hermitages, was rarely used by the monastics I interviewed. In common parlance, nῑti refers to civil and state regulations—an understanding of the term that seemed to resonate best with my informants. Whereas some nuns I met were willing to entertain my use of nῑti in describing training practices, they tended to prefer invoking such terms as vinaya, saṅvara (“restraint”), or hikmῑma (“discipline”) rather than nῑti. When I introduced the term vinayanῑti to them, monks and nuns generally dismissed it, as if rejecting the very idea of rules (nῑti) in relation to vinaya. Some did refer to monastic prescriptions as vinayanῑti (“Vinaya rules”), or buddhanῑti (“Buddha rules”), but they also shied away from using the term in relation to a complete program of monastic discipline. Their discussions about the training processes and the cultivation of moral dispositions at training centers indicate that the idea of a rule as a punitive regulation that controls the lives monastics lead is hardly present in their vinaya practice.82

Since the establishment of the bhikkhunῑ order, leading members of the national sil mātā committee became increasingly active in proposing state regulations that differentiate between sil mātās (who continue to receive some state funding) and bhikkhunῑs (who do not). Vinayanῑti, bound as it is to the current debates regarding the acceptance of the bhikkhunῑ upasampadā, is inseparable from articulations of power, identity, and religious status.83 When I asked monastics about their use of the terms vinayanῑti and buddhanῑti, some pointed out that they are of recent coinage, but others said they were unaware of such terms.84 It is only since the full ordination of nuns was introduced to Sri Lanka that certain Vinaya practices expected only of fully ordained monastics became relevant to Sri Lankan nuns. Some bhikkhunῑs, seeking to legitimate their status vis-à-vis other nuns, state that vinayanῑti are obligatory for them and irrelevant or unnecessary for sil mātās. In that context, the use of the term vinayanῑti in reference to stipulations in the Vinaya text is invoked to sanction a bid for power and authority, especially in privileging one form of ordination over another.85 Interestingly, one bhikkhunῑ who used the terms vinayanῑti and buddhanῑti interchangeably as a means of differentiating bhikkhunῑs from sil mātās in terms of their ordination, later stated that that vinaya concerned not individual rules, but rather the development of correct monastic attitudes. Here again, we see how notions of rules are affirmed in the context of power relations, rather than as instruments governing communal discipline in a nunnery.

A leading sil mātā who, like the aforementioned bhikkhunῑ referred to nīti in a bid for state recognition and power, spoke to me of the need to obtain the support of the national sil mātā organization and the state in order to establish their acceptance of a Vinaya prescription for all sil mātās. The Vinaya prescription in question concerned the two-year waiting period required of a trainee nun who is expected to train under the tutelage of a bhikkhunῑ prior to receiving her ordination. What is important in this case is not so much that this leading sil mātā sought to affirm for all sil mātās a Vinaya prescription meant for trainee bhikkhunῑs and not sil mātās, but that she used the term nῑti to refer to the possibility of a state regulation that she wished were established, as though it were law. My point is that senior sil mātās are similar to senior bhikkhunῑs in the way that they refer to rules. They both tend to do so when asserting a claim to power, rather than when speaking about vinaya practices.

Hitherto I have discussed why focusing on a juridical notion of rules (implying by the term nīti), as dominant scholars of the Vinaya do, is questionable. Though nuns may mention nīti when authority is at stake in defining who may be considered a nun in particular discourses of power, asking senior nuns about the rules of their nunnery to find out how their lives are governed is not useful because their focus in communal life is on the cultivation of self-discipline rather than on enforcing punitive regulations. Such self-discipline becomes a form of life that cannot be understood in terms of rules. Moreover, it is not useful to focus on a notion of enumerated rules in order to discriminate between nuns. I pursue these points further in the next two sections on the disciplinary practices of habit and on how nuns make use of the term nīti. Firstly, I discuss nuns’ daily schedules, since their use of schedules shows how they might think about nunnery rules.

4. The Virtue of Habit

When I initially asked nuns about the rules of their nunnery, they generally told me that they did not have any. After some hesitation and further pondering, they would either make mention of a constitution (if they had one) or a daily schedule. The daily schedule would be presented to me orally. Yet nuns’ schedules, even though they outline what nuns should do throughout the day, do not constitute a list of rules.86 Monks and nuns speak about them not as regulations that require enforcement and punishment, but only as guidelines for daily practice that help develop self-discipline. Though specific activities are to be done at particular times, it became evident that things tend to happen differently in practice. In fact, monastic timetables or schedules are not what they appear to be.

What emerged from conversations with monks and nuns is that the cultivation of moral dispositions as a habit, though centered on seemingly routine activities, does not always entail strict adherence to a set timetable. When asked about timetables, nuns detailed their daily activities from their awakening at about 4:30 a.m. to their retirement at night, describing when they are to bathe, sweep, clean, partake of alms, rest, observe ritual devotions, study, and meditate. Interestingly, a schedule, even when hung up, is seldom posted in a prominent place where nuns can refer to it daily. The nunnery training centers I visited neither display clocks to assist trainee nuns in keeping time nor allow trainees to wear watches. Although a center may have a wall clock or use a gong to mark communal activities, chronometric timekeeping is not emphasized. Yet, senior nuns insisted that communal participation in all activities at the center is intrinsic to the training of all nuns, as it is central to the development of sῑla. Nuns must show up when they are expected to and perform their ritual and monastic duties in a proper sequence and within a particular time frame.87 While bhikkhunῑs and sil mātās referred to their daily schedules when I asked them about the rules they follow, they were often perplexed or dismissive when I requested a written version of their schedules. If a written version existed, nuns often could not locate it. This had less to do with their reliance on oral tradition than with their having naturalized the sequence of their individual and communal responsibilities so thoroughly that they did not need a written schedule. In other words, what nuns do every day is inseparable from a habitual and communal program that requires no explanation—unless an outsider makes queries about it.

I visited a remote training center that was home to thirty nuns who observe the ten training precepts and do not consider themselves bhikkhunīs. Their center provides occasional meditation retreats to interested householders. When I first visited, two householder-renunciants, together with select senior nuns, were primarily responsible for attending to the administration and discipline of the center. On successive visits, I spoke with one of the householder-renunciants, Saro, as well as with senior nuns.88 When I questioned Saro about the nīti at the center, she responded,

The nuns have no “big” nīti. They do work according to a timetable that has been set; they do things from dawn to dusk according to the timetable. They do not go out on their own. It is dharma kaṭayutu (things that ought to be done according to the dharma) that they do; there is no other list of rules or a constitution. The nuns have considerable discipline (hikmīma).

Here again, we see how vinaya and dharma are inseparable. The idea of “‘big’ nīti” was an unsurprising response to my query about nīti. What Saro and the nuns indicated was that the very idea of extraneous or “big” rules did not resonate with them. What mattered was the kaṭayutu—“things that ought to be done” according to the dharma—and those things were to be done as vinaya so as to inculcate correct habits and dispositions. A senior teacher-nun at a bhikkhunī training center about the same size as the training center where Saro lived spoke about nīti in a similar manner. While including among nīti some gatekeeping procedures, she too emphasized that nuns were expected to do the work that ought to be done (vӓḍa kaṭayutu) in a disciplined manner, which is what shaped the renunciant life (pӓvidi jīvitaya), adding that “there is no need for any amutu (‘strange’ or ‘new’) nīti.”

“Work that ought to be done” is a blanket way of referring to whatever nuns should do, given their capabilities according to seniority, age, and health. That could vary, depending on the everyday needs of a center and the expectations of the senior monastics. Nevertheless, what needed to be done daily at the different training centers tended to be done by sil mātās and bhikkhunis alike.

Monks seem to perceive schedules similarly to nuns. A senior scholar-monk (A) whom I (Q) interviewed told me how monastics became attuned to a communal sense of habit that cannot be coded by a timetable:

A.

Using a timetable is not something we do. The reason for that is that [the timetable] must be kept in our thoughts.

Q.

Do you generally use a gong?

A.

In earlier times, a gong was sounded, but even that is not there now. That is not needed now. If you are going to sweep, you get up at the time you are to sweep and you sweep.

Q.

How do you know when to do it?

A.

There really is no such thing as beginning to do some specific thing at some specific time. You get up at dawn, and when it is time to sweep you sweep.

Q.

How do you know when to do something?

A.

Having awoken in the morning, then at a time when you can do the sweeping, you go outside and sweep.

Q.

That is a communal activity?

A.

Yes, yes.

Q.

How do you know when to do something at a certain time?

A.

You just do it; it just happens.

Q.

What about partaking in alms (dāna) on time?

A.

Usually, if there is a very big group going for dāna, a bell is rung. The bell is rung only because there is a very big group. But generally, the custom is like this: having done the sweeping at dawn, one washes, pays respects to the Buddha, and then goes to the refectory for alms.

Q.

Is there a clock there?

A.

There is no need for something such as a clock. Yes, there is a clock. But we do not do the work by watching a clock.

Q.

Do you watch the sun?

A.

No, it is like doing things without thinking; we are just aware of when to do things.

This monk offered an insightful take on time vis-à-vis the interrelationship of all phenomena arising in the process of Dependent Origination (paṭiccasamuppāda). My questions tended to seek a causal relationship between specific times and the activities related to them, whereas his responses pointed out that the chronometric scansion of monastic activity is just not possible. In other words, as he indicated in this discussion, nothing can begin at some abstractly defined moment, and there is no temporal stand-point outside the “being-time” of a practitioner and her activities. In effect, monastics are immersed in a causal field within a play of relations in which time cannot be abstracted as something different from who you are when you do something, because you are what you do. As this monk indicated, what monastics do elides the timekeeping of the rigid schedules most of us observe. Senior monks, bhikkhunīs, and sil mātās all intimated in different ways that time is causally inseparable from the performance of monastic duties—duties that evoke the dependent co-arising of duties and time. Analogously, one cannot create a division between rule and life. A monastic’s consistent focus on mindfulness and restraint, while possibly referencing a timetable, is not subject to it.

How nuns sequence their responsibilities may alter according to the demands made of them on any given day. They must attend to visitors who come unannounced, to medical or other emergencies within or outside the nunnery, and to pre-arranged duties and appointments. Such communal demands are not subject to timetables or rules, but unfold in the broader cultivation of communal habits and daily practices that correlate with nuns doing monastic things in a particular sequence.

Schedules that seem to define nuns’ practice, which were often presented in response to my inquiries about nῑti, may be what nuns ostensibly observe. However, they do not observe schedules as such, because their schedules do not correspond to chronometric timekeeping.89 That was evident in my conversation with Karuṇā sil mātā. During my most recent visits to her training center, located in the hub of the city, Karuṇā was a senior nun who, while sitting for monastic exams, supervised the education and training of junior nuns. I spoke with her in the middle of a busy day, when she had just returned from a distant journey in the heavy rain after reciting all-night pirit (protective stanzas). When I asked her about her daily program, she responded that her timetable was variable: “I plan to do specific things on certain days, but if the head nun asks us to do something, we cannot say no.” I noticed a timetable hanging in the room where guests would meet the head nun. The timetable indicated a sequence of activities that was almost identical to that of other training centers. When I asked her about it, she said, “that is not what takes place; for the most part, it changes;” however, she then added, “some nuns do follow that.” She then proceeded to detail a sequence of activities that nuns followed at the center, and that seemed to mirror the listing framed on the wall. However, her description (excluding the time for awakening (4:00 a.m.) and for partaking of alms (noon)) omitted the times when things were done.90 When I asked about specific times when things were done, it became evident that those were of little consequence to her. In effect, her timetable, if she had one, hardly reflected an iteration of conventional timekeeping.

Karuṇā’s listing of activities indicated that nuns were “doing what ought to be done” in their daily life. Such phraseology was frequently given in response to my queries. Parsing and regulating monastic activities according to a daily schedule is simply unhelpful. While segueing into an example of how she was unable to keep to a specific schedule, Karuṇā provided the details of her immediate situation. She had stayed up the previous night with several other nuns, reciting all-night pirit. The home the nuns had visited was on the summit of a hill. Since there was no proper road, the nuns had climbed the hill with difficulty, all the while combating an incessant downpour that muddied the path they walked. Though she and the other nuns had been invited to wash at the home, the facilities there were so unsanitary that they felt unable to do so. Upon returning to her center, she had felt obliged to spend some pre-arranged time with a guest (me), but was due to leave to visit a funeral home. Even though she was exhausted, and her head nun was unwell, they were planning to visit that home to honor a deceased teacher of her head nun. When I suggested that I leave to afford her time to wash, she insisted I not do so, since she now felt that it was unnecessary to wash. She said she was fully awake (despite having had no sleep the night before), and was due to leave for the funeral home.91 Being short on time, and needing to bathe after the upcoming visit anyway, she wished to delay bathing until she returned.

Karuṇā described to me a life apparently governed by neither time nor rules—a renunciant everyday calibrated to the particular contingencies of the given day. That is not to say that the nuns at her center neglected doing the usual kinds of things that nuns ought to do, including obeying the head nun, making offerings to the Buddha, meditating, cleaning the nunnery, and studying. Yet, their monastic practice cannot be disassociated from attending to the needs of the householders they knew who were a part of the larger communal network to which they belonged. Traveling away from the hermitage, performing ritual services at homes, and attending to visitors constituted a necessary part of what Karuṇā did. Here, we can see how the virtue of habit might best be seen as the cultivation of a habit of virtue in which adherence to a fixed schedule is not essential.

I have indicated how timetables are less about observing rules than about following guidelines of a monastic program that are inseparable from a communal form of life. Such a mode of life, in which rules do not rule, cannot make clear distinctions between the life of bhikkhunῑs and that of sil mātās. Nuns’ daily life is less about a division between time and the activities with which it supposedly correlates, than about how nuns go about being nuns as they cultivate self-discipline and mindfully do the tasks that they need to do.92 I now turn to conversations with monks and nuns that say something more about training precepts, since scholars continue to equate training precepts and Vinaya stipulations with rules. I proceed to argue that, just as a precise chronometric scansion of time lacks significance in determining the minutiae of what is done when, and in regulating the life of a nunnery in terms of rules, it is problematic to assume that discrete Vinaya stipulations and training precepts are rules that can govern the cultivation of self-discipline in monastic life.

5. Renouncing Rules

As we can see, monastics do not focus on Vinaya stipulations or training precepts as rules, or nīti. In my discussions about what a training center expected of novice nuns, monastics often centered less on the kinds of punitive regulations generally associated with rules and more, as with our conversations about schedules, on developing the daily awareness of vinaya as discipline. A communal program of training among nuns may be understood as the cultivation of a habit of virtue that defies the observation of schedules and rules, as they are generally understood.

I now wish to focus on how nuns maintain discipline at their institutions. When I asked senior nuns about the communal cohesion of their centers, bhikkhunīs and sil mātās alike talked about the importance of vinaya and hikmīma, both used to mean “discipline,” as well as saṅvara. What they talked about was not a discipline that senior nuns expected to enforce, but rather a form or self-discipline that had to be cultivated. Even though some nuns referred to nīti as a means of attempting to authorize a particular relationship of power, the idea that nīti correlates with vinaya was rarely entertained by them.

One bhikkhunī who trains novice nuns for the higher ordination, said that the word vinayanīti lacks accuracy, for “there is a distinction between vinaya and nīti. Vinaya refers to discipline, restraint, and behavior, as practiced in the practice of the Path in the spiritual sense, whereas nīti refers to rules and regulations in minute detail concerning that discipline that is recommended for the saňgha (community of monastics). For instance, what is there so spiritual about not having a night meal? When we see the evolution of the rule (about the night meal), we see that the regulation came about because of certain circumstances and contingencies. My point is that vinaya and nīti have two distinct meanings.”93 Noting that a putative rule was not spiritual, this bhikkhunī, like others I met, echoed the sil mātās in affirming the importance of upholding discipline (vinaya)—rather than observing rules.

Tappā, a senior sil mātā I interviewed at another training center, addressed my queries about nīti in a similar way. Tappā heads a training institute for sil mātās of all ages that provides a monastic education akin to that of monks. Her training center is home to sixteen sil mātās, ten of whom come from other hermitages. When I asked her about nīti at her center, she asserted, “yes, there are nīti—that is, a nīti paddatiya (list of rules), a constitution—for example, that nuns cannot stay overnight at the home of a householder.” After my asking her for it, she showed me a list of rules constituting a written “constitution.” The rules include injunctions about gatekeeping at the monastery.94 Though the constitution reads as a list of rules to be followed, those apparent nīti occur in the context of Buddhist disciplinary practice. Prefacing the list is a statement confirming that, in addition to providing a Buddhist education for the nuns, the nunnery aims to “increase religious knowledge and Buddhist education in order to establish a retinue that could work for the sāsana and according to the vinaya.” The document also states that, if a sil mātā did not comply with the list or “acted in opposition to vinaya,” she could be asked to leave the institution. When I asked Tappā precisely what she meant by vinaya (since the Vinaya text is primarily associated with fully ordained monastics rather than with sil mātās), she responded that “sil mātās must have a vinaya; we cannot do without a vinaya. It is like this: even though we do not in fact have the upasampadā, we (sil mātās) too must have a vinaya.” Her reference was not to the Vinaya Piṭaka but rather to the vinaya as a disciplinary practice intrinsic to moral cultivation. She proceeded to cite a passage, known well among monks and nuns, in which vinaya and sāsana (Buddhist dispensation) are considered inseparable: “Vinaya and sāsana have a coexistence. If vinaya is present, the sāsana is present. When the sāsana is present, vinaya is necessarily present. The sāsana itself is protected/observed because of vinaya. Those two are inseparable.”95

For Tappā, the focus of life at her training center is not on the observance of rules or nīti per se, but rather on cultivating a disciplinary foundation for life. Though she acknowledged some nīti, she also asserted that the relevant rules apply only within a framework of vinaya and sāsana. Notably, the Ten Training Precepts are not among the listed regulations. Indeed, none of the training centers for sil mātās that I visited display a listing of the Ten Training Precepts. Some nuns told me that only those who can follow nīti are accepted into their communities. However, such nīti are generally gatekeeping regulations, which reflect the assumption that nuns are already observing training precepts and prepared to do what nuns ought to do in the communal life of the center even before they formally join it.

Mittā, who leads a meditation center for about thirty adult sil mātās, affirmed Tappā’s perspective on nīti, even suggesting that the Ten Training Precepts alone are of little relevance. In accord with the previously cited bhikkhunῑ, she noted that the training precepts were introduced by the Buddha to facilitate the cultivation of sīla and the elimination of wrongdoing. In our discussion about Buddha nīti, she said, “one cannot protect the sāsana without nīti, no? You cannot do that without vinaya, no?” Seemingly equating nīti with vinaya, she eschewed the conventional meaning of nīti as “law” and elaborated on how the cultivation of sīla and the Ten Training Precepts relates to vinayanīti. In stressing that her practice is not ruled by the training precepts, she downplayed their relevance in seeking to cultivate a deeper and more extensive meditative practice. Even though sῑla is sometimes equated with the training precepts, she pointed out that it is not meaningful to parse the precepts (in differentiating bhikkhunῑs from sil mātās) when it comes to the development of sῑla.

I (Q) began the following discussion by asking her (A) how the Ten Training Precepts (dasa sil) relate to vinayanīti, which we had already discussed as being the nīti introduced by the Buddha:

Q.

Can the dasa sil be considered vinayanīti?

A.

There is no such thing as dasa sil; if one marks regular observances (piḷivet), the necessary duties of the sāsana, even if one has no understanding of nīti or that which we call nīti, meditative cultivation (bhāvanā) is fulfilled. It is sīla, samādhi, and paňňā [moral cultivation; concentration {meditation}; wisdom] that one must have, no? If one can observe sῑlaya [sῑla], if one can develop samādhi, and if one can do one’s work with paňňā—that is all a part of Buddha nīti.

Q.

So we cannot say that the Vinaya book is about nīti alone?

A.

It is useless just to study and read the Vinaya book. By developing sīla, samādhi, and paňňā (alone), one can also be observing the dasa sil and Buddha nīti and all that. There is no issue with sῑlaya, even though one might divide it up (e.g., into eight or ten training precepts). It is guṇa (virtue) that one wants; it is the virtue of the dharma (guṇa dharma) that we must observe. Even if one were to (formally) take all the śikṣāpadas, but were not really to observe them, there is no use in that, no? It is not possible to proceed in the dharma in that way, is [it]? Would sīla, samādhi, and paňňā develop in that way?

Although at one point she was willing to entertain the relevance of nīti to vinaya and sāsana, she now qualified her use of nīti and focused on the cultivation of a contemplative life in terms of following the Eightfold Path comprising sīla, samādhi, and paňňā. Mittā’s comments on the training precepts are not unlike those of the bhikkhunῑ mentioned earlier who questioned the “spirituality” of the training precept concerning the noon meal. In sum, precepts guide practice; they do not rule.

In a similar vein, even a senior bhikkhunῑ, who occasionally used the terms Buddha nīti and vinayanīti to differentiate the identity and status of bhikkhunῑs from those of sil mātās, indicated that monastic discipline cannot be limited to observing a collection Vinaya rules. When I asked her how she could possibly even remember all 311 Vinaya observances that she was expected to keep as a bhikkhunῑ, she responded with the following account of a conversation purportedly dating to the time of the Buddha:

A monk told the Buddha, “I cannot keep to all those numerous Vinaya rules (nīti), so I am going to disrobe and leave.” Then the Buddha asked him, “Can you cultivate your thought?” The monk responded, “Yes.” Then the Buddha said, “That is all that you need to do.” Later, that monk became enlightened.

Even while finding recourse to the term nīti in reference to the Vinaya, this bhikkhunῑ, commenting on a well-known textual account, added that “observing training precepts is about observing vinaya. Vinaya means ‘discipline’ (hikmῑma). It is about the discipline of the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and body; that is what is called vinaya. That is what the Buddha has said.” This bhikkhunῑ, like the other nuns I conversed with, centered on how living the renunciant life can defy the idea of observing rules. Rules (nīti) may relate to schedules or gatekeeping procedures, but they fail to distinguish adequately between the monastic life of bhikkhunῑs and that of sil mātās. The discipline that matters to all nuns concerns a discipline of self-restraint rather than rules.

Some monastic teachers I interviewed rejected any likening of the training precepts to nīti. A senior monk who serves as a teacher and consultant at several nunnery training centers said, “the Buddha did not impose rules (nīti). What he said was, this was good and that was bad, and he would say why one thing was good and another bad. He said that we would benefit from avoiding what was bad if we followed some basic things.” Referring to Vinaya stipulations as śikṣā, the monk responded, “none of them are rules (nīti). Where is the word nīti used? Those are śikṣā (trainings). Nīti is about punishment (daṇḍuvama). But here there is no punishment. Rather, there needs to be an effort (among monastics) to follow the path of the various vinaya śikṣā (disciplinary trainings).” That monk, like the nuns mentioned above, emphasized that the prescriptions of the Vinaya texts focus on training monastics, not punishing them.

My conversations with senior monastic teachers indicated that rules are not central to governing the moral training of nuns in ways that have been thought. Nuns do not talk about their lives in terms of rules, but rather in terms of the practice of self-discipline and duties that must be done while cultivating particular moral dispositions and sensibilities. I propose that the relationship between rules and a monastic mode of life needs to be thought about differently. Rules might well determine who may or may not join a community of nuns or might be invoked in specific discourses of power. However, it is misleading to think that the vinaya of nuns concerns a juridical idea of rules, as scholars often assume.

6. Concluding Remarks

In this article, I have argued that the dominant scholarly focus on Buddhist monastic discipline as if it were a set of rules is misguided. A genealogy of scholarship on the Vinaya has misled us into thinking that it is the enumerated Vinaya rules or “laws” that are central in governing the life of Buddhist monks and nuns. That scholarship assumes monastic regulation to be juridical and fails to see monastic vinaya practice as a form of life. I have demonstrated that the practice of monks and nuns generally foregrounds vinaya as the exercise of self-discipline and self-restraint and not as the enumeration of rules to be followed. That does not mean that ideas about nīti or rules are always completely rejected, but rather that they are not central in the ways they are thought to be. More specifically, nuns’ reference to enumerated rules, far from being constitutive of monastic life, is context-dependent. Nīti do become relevant for nuns in the context of gatekeeping procedures and who may or may not remain in their community. Nevertheless, even the bhikkhunῑs, who occasionally refer to Vinayanīti that should be observed, assert that they are not of much significance. Most often, when nuns resort to talking about rules, they do so in the context of affirming particular authoritative discourses and power relations more than in the practice of monastic discipline per se. I have indicated that training centers for bhikkhunῑs and sil mātās alike focus on developing a shared understanding of vinaya in daily practice and argued that, contrary to what is generally assumed, rules are not helpful in differentiating between the mode of life of bhikkhunῑs and that of sil mātās. Though there is some distinction between the formal education of bhikkhunῑs and that of sil mātās, and though bhikkhunῑs and sil mātās may participate in different rituals, what matters most to them both is forming a habit of virtue as they develop moral dispositions grounded in the daily activities of a nunnery. It is noteworthy that householders in Sri Lanka generally do not differentiate between bhikkhunῑs and sil mātās. Nevertheless, the scholarship on Buddhist nuns continues to highlight differences between bhikkhunῑs and sil mātās and often focuses on monastic rules and questions of status in order to emphasize that some nuns are lacking certain rights and privileges. Such scholarship promotes the ideals of liberal feminism and overlooks the renunciant everyday of nuns. There is, thus, a disconnect between the way that nuns talk about vinaya and the ways that some scholars discuss their practice in terms of “rules.”

I contend that distinctions based on an idea of rules comes into play primarily when monastics make claims to particular authoritative discourses, e.g., in relation to state recognition. Distinctions based on an idea of rules are not of particular significance in differentiating between the general everyday life of bhikkhunῑs and sil mātās. In Buddhist texts, vinaya is often juxtaposed with, and seen as inseparable from the dhamma. Monastics today, echoing what is stated in early texts, affirm that the Buddhist dispensation cannot survive without vinaya.96 The practice of vinaya and the maintenance of the dispensation are interdependent. Bhikkhunῑs and sil mātās agree that vinaya grounds a consistent practice of monastic life based on sīla, which has Nirvana as its goal. To assume that monastics have rules that are readily available for representation and analysis, and to posit divisions between nuns on the basis of their observation of collections of rules or on whether they have the higher ordination is to misconstrue the everyday life that nuns lead. Just as a life cannot be reduced to law,97 monastic training precepts cannot be reduced to rules. Rather, they are guideposts for the development of moral dispositions and a lifelong training in accordance with the dhamma. Although dhamma is translated as “norm,” a norm may not “refer to single acts and events but to the entire existence of an individual, to his forma vivendi. It is no longer easily recognizable as a law, just as a life that is founded in its totality in the form of a rule is no longer truly life.”98 Likewise, vinaya, grounded as it is in a life of virtue, is no longer easily recognizable as a law.