By Ayya Yeshe
Are monks and hippies and poets relevant? No, we’re deliberately irrelevant. We live with an ingrained irrelevance which is proper to every human being. The marginal person accepts the basic irrelevance of the human condition, an irrelevance which is manifested above all by the fact of death. . . . there is something deeper than death, and the office of the monk or the marginal person, the meditative person, is to go beyond death. Even in this life to go beyond. To go beyond the dichotomy of life and death and to therefore be a witness to life.
—Thomas Merton
For those who think nuns are obsolete anachronisms, to be parodied or mocked as sexually repressed and outdated individuals, please know that nuns are the original single gals. In many societies for the last three millennia, being a nun (in the Buddhist context, nuns can be defined as bhikkhunis/bhikshunis, or more liberally, celibate tsunma) was, and often is, the only socially acceptable way to avoid domestic enslavement or being controlled directly by a man. Nuns were often much more educated than other women, composed music and poetry, practiced herbalism, received divine visions, acted as social workers, midwives, bee-keepers, brewers, nurses, doctors, spiritual teachers and so much more.
Nuns consecrated their love and sublimated their passion for life, family, and friends, and partners to a greater and vaster love, in service to the sacred and to humanity.
Their lives, when lived the right way, are meaningful and freeing. Being a nun, anchorite, or contemplative gave women time to think, and protected them from male violence and rape (even though there are unfortunate exceptions). The path of a nun offered poor children pathways to education, knowledge and dignity. Comedies that portray nuns as isolated, out of touch and unlovable, or irrelevant come from the same misogynistic cultures that portrayed non-conforming women as witches until even early modern times. Nowadays, our contemporary witches are crazy artists, mad ladies with broods of cats, or simply women of an older age, which despite being as natural as older men, are negatively characterized as “dried up,” “bitter,” and above all, “useless.”
In truth, ridiculing or portraying our religious communities as laughable is a way to dismiss spiritual, older, and single women’s wisdom and power. More and more women around the world are choosing to remain single for so many reasons. Many are tired of the growing hard or far right attitudes of some younger men. Many among these younger generations of men, despite facing structural or systemic crises that are not the fault of individual women, refuse to go to therapy, and often exhibit attitudes that are counterproductive to their malaise of lacking feminine love and warmth in their lives. They refuse to share domestic labour and family care. They are envious and dismissive of the professional and material achievements of modern women. They lack self-insight and empathy, and therefore simultaneously desire and despise women.
The idea that women might lead fulfilling lives alone and childless, not living in service to men, is a trigger for insecurity and anger. Or the notion that women could attain spiritual realization, write religious texts, comprehend philosophy, medicine, art and music (or that they actually might even be better at these things) is terrifying to men that have been marinating in the patriarchal system (or, heaven forbid, the online alt-right) for too long.
Unfortunately, it’s true that religions have harmed people. Some Christian nuns in various institutions were radical enforcers of a toxic expression of Christianity and misogyny, and later on, colonialism and imperialism and racist structures. They were complicit in taking children from indigenous people, enslaving unwed mothers, and beating children in school. This is a side of religious life which we should never glory in or forget. Context, however, also matters. These nuns were from an era when parents beat their children, single mothers starved to death with their children on the street, and poor women who actually didn’t want to be nuns joined religious ranks to stay fed.
I hope as time moves forward, many women will see that their celibate sisters are there for them, offering silence, peace, community, and sanctuary. We are often there for men too. I actually get more men than women applying to being part of my monastery in the wilderness.
The peace of wild places, and a life dedicated to the sacred, is an antidote to so much of the misery that capitalism, racism, sexism, online addiction, stress and anxiety, disconnection, and soulless alienation is forcing on the world. You don’t have to ordain or even be Buddhist to come and spend some time with us. Why not come join us and discover a different possibility?
Deloraine, Tasmania
Explore more from Ayya Yeshe and support her work at: www.bodhicitta-monastery.com
This article first appeared on Ayya Yeshe’s Substack.