I was listening to talk a while back about reinstating the bhikkhuni order by @sujato, and I think @Brahmali, and I heard that one of the options was transgender monastics. I remember hearing that the buddha let bhikkhus become bhikkhunis and bhikkhunis become bhikkhus without having to re-ordain, however I have not been able to find this sutta or example in the vinaya. I tried using index.readingfaithfully.org to no avail.
Thanks!
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This is in the vinaya Bu Pj 1:10.6.1
At one time female characteristics appeared on a monk. They told the Buddha.
“Monks, I allow that discipleship, that ordination, those years as a monk, to be transferred to the nuns. The monks’ offenses that are in common with the nuns are to be cleared with the nuns. For the monks’ offenses that are not in common with the nuns, there’s no offense.”
At one time male characteristics appeared on a nun. They told the Buddha.
“Monks, I allow that discipleship, that ordination, those years as a nun, to be transferred to the monks. The nuns’ offenses that are in common with the monks are to be cleared with the monks. For the nuns’ offenses that are not in common with the monks, there’s no offense.”
This is what is being used to allow/argue for transgender monastics.
We need to keep in mind that at the time of the Buddha there wasn’t the modern day concept of ‘transgender’ and ‘transition’ and there was no medical transition. Ideas of gender were different from today.
Perhaps this was a case of social transition.
A lot of the current ideas of transition and transness and what qualifies as ‘trans enough’ could be mistakenly projected onto this idea from 2600 years ago.
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yay!
to no avail.
Oh, yeah. As venerable said, this is a Vinaya thing. The CIPS is just suttas. Vinaya indexing would be a very different, yet valuable, endeavor.
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Thanks for the info! I thought it was cool that something like this was mentioned 2600 years ago.
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