From Illiteracy to PhD:
“Some feminists from the West could accuse me by saying, ‘The Dalai Lama is the authority but he doesn’t help the nuns.’”
It has been six decades since he escaped into India and established a government in exile, and two since he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, but His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama still faces the charge that the Buddhist tradition he represents does not give nuns the same rights as monks.
The allegation is not unfair. Of the eight representatives of Tibetan Buddhism in the Parliament-in-exile – two each from the four sects of Gelug, Kagyu, Sakya, and Nyigma – all are monks. The two members from the pre-Buddhist Bon religion are also men.