Thai Women Don Monks’ Robes

Thai Women Don Monks’ Robes – IPS, November 1, 2013
…Unlike the 33,903 Buddhist temples that house an estimated 250,000 monks in Thailand, the Songdhammakalyani Monastery is the first temple built for women by women. The abbess, Venerable Dhammananda Bhikkhuni, is the country’s first fully ordained nun or Bhikkhuni in a Theravada monastic lineage.
The temple’s roots stretch back nearly five decades when Venerable Dhammananda’s mother, Venerable Voramai or Ta Tao Fa Tzu, became the first fully ordained Thai woman in the Mahayana lineage in Taiwan and turned their family home into a monastery…