[Buddha-l] Orders and Ordinations (was women & , er, religion)

[Richard Hayes]

On Jul 22, 2009, at 6:53 AM, Alex Wilding wrote about Jayarava's  
observations on the word "ordination":

> Your definition of "ordination" would include anybody who has been  
> through taking refuge formally. This would run roughshod over the  
> distinctions that have been made amongst Buddhists for many, many  
> centuries.

Needless to say (but I go ahead and needlessly say it), I agree with  
Alex in this debate on the Rectification of Names. My wife and I have  
had many an animated discussion about the use of the term "monk" as  
used by people who participate in a well-known Zen organization here  
in American-speaking America. My wife used to be a "nun" in a Tibetan  
"order"; she was "ordained" by HHDL. (I follow the pedantic practice  
of putting problematic words in scare quotes; I have no idea why they  
are called "scare quotes," since they do not frighten me a bit, but  
already I digress.) Her forty-some vows, though not those of a fully  
ordained bhikṣuṇī of any of the traditional vinaya-observing  
bhikṣuṇīsaṃghas, included abstaining from sexual relations and  
abstaining from alcohol. So when she sees an American Zen "monk"  
drinking beer while he's wearing robes and hears him talking about his  
various sexual exploits (which happened, one assumes, while he was not  
wearing robes), she becomes indignant. Trying to take the edge off her  
indignation, I point out such helpful mitigating factors as the fact  
that these "monks" belong to a Zen lineage from Japan and that  
Japanese "priests" and "monks" routinely marry and not uncommonly have  
mistresses on the side, and that among the most frequent offerings at  
a Japanese Buddhist temple are large bottle of sake. I also observe  
that the only time in my post-adolescent life in which I was falling- 
down drunk was in a Buddhist temple in Japan, where the married  
"priest" poured incessantly from bottles of sake left as dāna at the  
altar of his temple by his pious parishioners. Buddhist things are  
different in Japan, and therefore in Japanese-influenced Buddhism in  
Europe and America. So it's not as if the behavior she is observing is  
without a centuries-long precedent. Having said all that, I also agree  
with her that it is potentially confusing to see a "monk" wearing  
robes as he drinks beer and brags about his sexual conquests. It is  
not, to my Puritan-influenced Buddhist mind, Buddhism at its best. A  
drunken lecherous monk does fly in the face of that old Buddhist (er,  
Confucian) principle of 正名 (the Rectification of Names).

I think Jayarava's claim that when we are in the English-speaking  
world we are entitled to use English words as they have traditionally  
been used is weakened when the context in which we are using the words  
is Buddhist. Buddhism is relatively new in the English-speaking world,  
and terminology is evolving. The English terminology used by Buddhists  
has not yet evolved to the point where distinctions that are  
traditionally quite important to Buddhists are adequately captured by  
English phrases. So these discussions about how to use terminology may  
be helpful. Therefore, let the discussion continue, or, as we say in  
English, "Que l'on continue!"

Dayamati Mubul Coyote Hayes