Equal Ordination.

The Triratna Buddhist Community and the Triratna Buddhist Order are open to all, and no distinction is made on the basis of gender, race, nationality, class, caste, age, or sexual orientation. One particular implication of this is that men and women are ordained on an equal basis, and have been since the beginning. In fact, the first person that Sangharakshita ordained was a woman, in 1968.

We look forward to a time when this is no longer noteworthy in the Buddhist world. In many Buddhist lineages, women can take a lower ordination, but are denied full ordination, in such as way that nuns are held to subservient positions in relation to monks. There has been a vibrant transnational multi-decade movement to re-establish full female ordination in a number Buddhist schools of South East Asia and Tibetan Buddhism, but there is still a ways to go before equal ordination exists everywhere, and before all women are fully encouraged, supported and recognized in their wish to ordain. In Triratna, we certainly do not claim to be exempt of the patriarchal conditioning which permeates most of our societies, but we cherish the fact that equal ordination was unequivocally established at the get go in our tradition.