Ven. Dhammadinna: "The Theravāda Bhikkhunī Revival and the Bhikkhu-saṅgha: Institutional, Legal and Existential Dissonances"

Abstract:

Bhikkhunī Dhammadinnā will reflect on hermeneutic situation in which the contemporary revived Theravāda bhikkhunī-saṅgha finds itself. A foundational issue in the saṅgha’s institutional, legal, and ideological discourse revolves around an existential question: whether “bhikkhunīs exist” or else “bhikkhunīs do not exist.” This becomes a lived existential predicament, which will be explored through the lenses of a specific case study—the bhikkhu-saṅgha’s obligations under the Vinaya to provide fortnightly formal exhortations or teachings (ovāda) to the bhikkhunīs. This examination will be contextualized within the legal and historical developments of the bhikkhunī-saṅgha’s revival in the 20th century.

Bio:

Born in Italy in 1980, Bhikkhunī Dhammadinnā went forth as a monastic in the Theravāda Buddhist tradition of Sri Lanka in 2012. She studied Indology, Indo-Iranian philology, and Tibetology at the University of Naples ‘L’Orientale’, at the International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology at Soka University in Tokyo and at the Institute for Research in Humanities at Kyoto University, receiving her doctorate in 2010 with a dissertation on the Khotanese ‘Book of Zambasta’ and the formative phases of bodhisattva Mahāyāna ideology in Khotan in the fifth and sixth centuries. Her scholarly work focuses on early Buddhist Sūtra and Vinaya literature as well as the doctrinal and historical development of Buddhist meditative traditions in India. She is the co-founder and director of the Āgama Research Group (established in 2012) and an associate research professor in the Department of Buddhist Studies of the Dharma Drum Institute of Liberal Arts in Taiwan. Bhikkhunī Dhammadinnā also serves as a Buddhist minister with the Italian government through the Italian Buddhist Union.