Thailand and Southeast Asia Regional Office

Association of Nuns and Lay Women (ANLWC)

Women, Morality and Reconciliation

by Naurin Ahmad-Zaki

The teachings of Buddha have laid down the following five precepts for Buddhist lay women: ``You shall not kill, you shall not steal, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not tell lies, and you shall not drink liquor.´´ If a woman desires to enter nunhood and wishes to become an eight-precept-nun, she is additionally not allowed to use any make-up, sleep on a high bed and eat after noon. The ten-precept-nuns, who stand on the highest possible level of nunhood in Buddhism, are disallowed to possess money and must refrain from dancing and watching dance performances. Unlike the lay women, the eight-precept-nuns as well as ten-precept-nuns shave their heads and wear white.

``Ideally speaking I would like to be a Don Chee (nun), but I still have my bindings with worldly affairs like my children and my family, thus I just hold five precepts and am hence a lay woman,´´ laughs Thavory Huot, the initiator and force behind the Association of Nuns and Lay Women, the first of its kind in Cambodia. This organisation aims at training and streamlining lay women and nuns all over the country for two purposes. ``I believe that religion 'improves' the women, but in Cambodian society, it can help in achieving peace. This way the lay women and nuns can join the monks for the promotion of Buddhism, the religion of the majority of Cambodians.´´ The role of this second aim of the association in Cambodia, a country which is still struggling from the aftermath of the terror regime of the communist dictator, Pol Pot, in the seventies, is extremely significant for the reconstruction and development of Cambodian society which is torn by poverty as well as mistrust for each other. These noble aims harmonise with the goals of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, which focuses specifically on educational and training programmes in Southeast Asia in order to support cultural development as well as the strengthening of traditional knowledge and leadership and the integration of these with appropriate modern capacities and knowledge to encourage sustainable development. This is one of the foremost reasons why the foundation lends support to socially engaged Buddhist activities in the region, especially to women’s religious development such as this one.    

The association was first started in 1995 by a batch of dedicated nuns under the laic guidance of Chan with the establishment of a training centre in the Kandal province and today boasts sites in 12 out of the 23 provinces in Cambodia. However, the training centre in Kandal is still the only one of its kind. Here, lay women along with nuns from all over the country gather for three weeks of intensive training sessions. After the completion of the sessions, the lay women and nuns are expected to go back to where they came from and spread their newly acquired knowledge. These sessions are held twice a year. The last session held from March to April 1998 was attended by 142 lay women and nuns and was, for the first time, headed by a ten-precept-nun; all the previous sessions had been taught by monks.  

Set in Udong which till the last century used to be the capital of Cambodia, the training centre is one of the very few educational facilities in the area. It includes a large building where the women gather for lectures and for meditation and a library which boasts a set of the Tripitaka, the Buddhist doctrine, in 110 volumes. These pagoda-styled buildings are surrounded by numerous 'kutis', little huts where the nuns live during the sessions and another large kuti where they gather for food.

In Cambodia, like in many other Buddhist countries, usually older women become nuns, but there are many exceptions to this rule. It is a false and widespread belief that nunhood, and therefore this project, does not provide the structure for younger women to choose the religious way of life. This last session of the training centre included a nun who was in her forties and had been a nun for  many years. The youngest nun among them, however, is only 21 years old and has just completed high school. ``She always wanted to become a nun, and even though her family discouraged her, she insisted on fulfilling her dream at this tender age,´´ narrates one of the older nuns of the session.  

``Often the children and grandchildren are old enough and don't need to be looked after, so these women commit themselves to the life in the pagodas. Some might feel redundant at home and often the nuns are divorcees and have no place to go to,´´ explains Thavory. Usually nuns are over 60 years old and have entered what is called the third phase of life in Buddhism, the phase in which a human being is supposed to retire from work and prepare for the next life. There are two types of eight-precept-nuns and ten-precept-nuns - those who live in the pagodas and those who live with their families. However, women who enter the religious life in Cambodia as Don Chees are not fully ordained like the monks and receive little or no support from their communities and the temples. A person who donates something to a Don Chee acquires more merit for his donation beyond what would accrue from donating to any beggar or poor person, but less than that accruing from a donation to a monk, simply because Don Chees practice more Dhamma than an ordinary person. Broadly speaking, there is very little evidence of support of the nuns’ spiritual development and training in the country.  

This is one of the reasons why the training institute plays such a crucial role in the lives of most Don Chees. During the sessions, the lay women and the nuns are taught about the benefits of positive thinking. ``There are four truths of Buddhism: Suffering, the cause for suffering, the elimination of the suffering and the way of elimination. The women are taught to master and overcome suffering with the help of their five senses,´´ explains Thavory, ``and an integral part of this training is meditation.´´