Dear All,
Another great talk about bhikkhunis and equality of women 
.
Credit and much anumodana to Portal Sasana.pl for posting 
with añjali and mettā,
russ
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Thank you for uploading this! I have reblogged it on https://sujatoeurope.wordpress.com/
@Sujato and @blake - is it possible to add a Wordpress sharing function as well other than copying and pasting the link?
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at 20:20 mark venerable says that the Buddha had taught and built his community for 45 years with the aim at the beginning of that time being to build the 4-fold assembly and his lifework not being complete until the 4-fold assembly is well established
but it’s known that the nuns order was only founded thanks to Ven Ananda’s and Pajapati persistence at persuading the Buddha and at quite a late stage of the Buddha’s life
so it appears that establishment of the nuns order wasn’t originally his intention
isn’t it at odds with what venerable has said in the lecture?
I’m not sure what it is that you’re looking for.
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There are buttons for sharing on Twitter, Facebook and Google+. WP is not available as it is not used as much.
This is also dependent on the veracity of the Mahapajapati Gotami ordination story in the Vinaya. If we assume that the Buddha was indeed reluctant to ordain women (as opposed to his reluctance being a later/modified addition) then we can only conclude that his intention was never to ordain women.
However, as Bhante Sujato notes, the Sanskrit text shows an earlier intention to ordain women, notably,
Wicked One, I will not attain final Nirvāṇa until I have disciples who are clever, skilled, wise, competent to refute with Dharma the doctrines of others that arise from time to time, competent and accomplished to teach with their own words the monks, nuns, laymen, and laywomen so that my spiritual path will be extensive, for the many-folk, widespread, rightly elucidated for gods and men.
This perhaps suggests that the nuns ordination story is, at least in part, a kind of imposition of later cultural values.
Also, are the heading titles suddenly Times New Roman and I didn’t notice? Weird. 
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Dear LXNDR,
Bhadda Kundalakesa was one of the first bhikkhunis. She had a tragic life that led her to be a (Jain) wanderer (kundalakesa means curly hair as her hair grew back curly after being pulled out one by one, which was a Jain practice) and became the best woman debater at that time. She traveled all over the place and one day, in a village set up her walking stick on a sand mound and challenged any one who would dare. Ven. Sariputta at that time was passing through that village and he toppled her walking stick to signify his acceptance.
During their debate, she asked all the questions as far as her knowledge would allow and Ven. Sariputta answered them all to her satisfaction. She was won over with a single question “What is the one” by Ven. Sariputta.
Bhante @Sujato, wrote about her but I couldn’t find the link to it, unfortunately.
But suffice to say, Mahapajapati was a later renunciant.
with anjali and metta,
russ
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can i ask on what basis it is stated that Mahapajapati’s ordination postdates Bhadda Kundalakesa’s?
if we assume that it’s at Mahapajapati’s request that the nuns order was first established, then nuns couldn’t have exsisted prior to that
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i think this too can be something which reflects the later state of affairs projected back onto the Buddha’s life story
and the fact that the story is of mythical type indicates that it could have well been fabricated with the words being attributed to the Buddha
if we assume that establishment of the nuns order was the Buddha’s intention to begin with, the question to be asked is whether it was already in existence at the early stages of his ministry and if it wasn’t - what impeded its establishment
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Dear LXNDR,
Finally found the link for Bhante Sujato’s article:
http://santifm.org/santipada/2010/w15/
Hope this helps!
with anjali and metta,
russ
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Dear Ayya Vimala,
You’re most welcome venerable 
with respect, reverence, and gratitude,
russ
thank you, Rus for the link
do you know the source of Bhadda Kundalakesa’s story? i didn’t find it explicitly mentioned in the article
I wrote about this in my White Bones red Rot Black Snakes, and made an imaginative retelling of her story in Dreams of Bhadda. I always wanted that book to be available for young people, as there’s not enough examples of teenage rebels in Buddhism, and Bhadda was definitely one!
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Bhadda’s verses are in the Therigatha, and here story is elaborated first in the Theiapadana, and further in the commentaries for both the Therigatha and Theriapadana. These were mostly translated by William Pruitt, I can’t recall the title right now. There are, of course, the usual inconsistencies and so on in the various versions. Bhadda was clearly a fascinating and powerful woman: even the Jains had a work about her!
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I take this as a personal insult. Not now, nor never, will we use Times New Roman! I hope this travesty has righted itself for you.
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Note that the same passage is found in the Pali mahaparinibbana Sutta (and other versions of these texts in Chinese, and probably Tibetan too, it is a widespread passage.) I think the Skt in this respect preserves an earlier form, as the passage is simpler, and it fits better in the early narrative. But these long narrative suttas were subject to considerable editing, so the relationship between the redactions is complex.
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both Therigatha and Theriapadana are in verse whereas in your work the story is told in sutta-like prose
is it a modern day stylization?
My faith in humanity has been restored.
It is a novella loosely inspired by the traditional accounts.