Bhikkhuni: Revival of the Women's Order

I've just come across this short video which is a teaser for the forthcoming documentary film "Bhikkhuni: Revival of the Women's Order", A documentary about discrimination and the quest for gender equality in Buddhism.

Bhikkhuni: Revival of the Women's Order - teaser reel from Budaya Productions on Vimeo.

SINCE I ORIGINALLY POSTED THIS ITEM THE ABOVE TRAILER HAS BEEN WITHDRAWN. SO HERE INSTEAD IS AN EXCERPT WITH AJAHN BRAHM.

"What happens when the truth isn’t where you expect to find it? Or when you discover a truth that contradicts that which you have been taught your whole life? Filmmaker Wiriya Sati, having grown up on the east coast of New South Wales with Buddhist teachings from a Thai monk and her devout hippy parents, meets a Buddhist nun for the first time in her early twenties and is inspired to follow her on a spiritual quest with camera in hand.

Wiriya’s journey takes her from Thailand to the US and Europe, then back to Australia as she uncovers a disturbing reality within the Buddhist world: that women are barred from receiving full ordination and thus from the support and spiritual advancement available to men who can devote their life entirely to spiritual awakening as monks. This is due to the original lineage of ordained nuns dying out in Sri Lanka almost 1000 years previously, and there are all sorts of excuses used by monks to justify the ‘impossibility’ of reinstating proper ordination for women.

Wiriya finds that in all the monasteries she visits, nuns wanting to ordain are offered a lesser ordination placing them in a permanent junior position to monks. In Hamburg, Germany, Wiriya attends a conference initiated by the Dalai Lama to investigate re-introducing full ordination for women across Buddhist traditions. But despite strong arguments from various nuns, scholars and monks, the proposal to do so is denied.

Bhikkhuni: Revival of the Women’s Order is a documentary film that seeks to explore the issue of female ordination in Buddhism, and shed some light on the current injustices which are occurring within the tradition."