Chapter 10 Mainland and Insular Southeast Asia 407monkhood, questioned them about their spiritual qualifications, and blessed
them. New robes were laid around each novice’s neck, and they withdrew to a
private space behind the dais to don the orange robe of the fully ordained monk.
A bell rang during the clothes-changing, announcing this final transition.
When they returned, they joined the seated monks while their families
came forward to present gifts to the wat. The initiate’s wife carefully laid her gift
on a handkerchief. Most important was the stainless steel begging bowl by
which the monk will collect alms. Finally, the families formed a human chain,
with the first person holding a small silver vase to pour water into a cup. At a
precise moment in the chanting, the first person dipped the tip of a finger in the
water, thus beginning the automatic transfer of merit around the chain of family
members. Lastly the water was taken out and poured on a tree in the courtyard.
Although a chief mark of ordination is renunciation of wealth, it is not
cheap to take ordination at a major wat like Wat Po. One hundred baht must
given to each monk who witnesses the ceremony (there must be at least five);
good quality aluminum begging bowls at that time cost from 1,200 to 1,500
baht; robes were 700–800 baht; and the pre-packaged gift sets were 300–400
baht. The total cost thus was in the neighborhood of 3,200 to 3,700 baht
(roughly 100 dollars).
Women in Theravada Buddhism
Can a woman be a monk?
That proves to be a controversial question. It was possible in early Bud-
dhism—the Buddha himself ordained his own mother—until it was abolished
in 456 C.E. In 1932 a monk secretly ordained two women monks in Thailand,
but he was forced out of the sangha for this and the two women were forced to
disrobe (Swearer 1995:154). In China, Sri Lanka, and some other Asian
nations, women can be ordained as monks, but in Thailand it has been next to
impossible. There is currently a strong movement under way in Thailand
toward founding orders for women similar to the move toward ordaining
women in American Christian churches. In 1971 a Thai woman named Vora-
mai Kabilsingh traveled to Taiwan to receive ordination; she then returned to
found Wat Songdharma Kalyani, a monastery for women near Bangkok. How-
ever, the Thai sangha does not recognize her ordination (Swearer 1995:154).
More recently, an older Thai woman, Dhammananda, flew to Sri Lanka where
women began to be ordained in the mid-1990s; she then returned to Thailand
to become the abbess of a temple outside Bangkok (Winn 2016). She has had
more success; there are now about 100 ordained female monks (bhikkuni) in
Thailand wearing the ochre robe.
One often sees white-robed, shaven-headed women who are erroneously
referred to as nuns. These “women in white” (maechi), mostly old and poor, fol-
low a lifestyle similar to that of monks but are not ordained and are not “fields
of merit” for laypeople. They must support themselves from their own or their
family’s income, or by selling Buddhist charms on the fringes of wats (Van