“This carefully edited volume-comprehensive in scope and well organized in presentation-offers rare insight into the doctrines and monastic laws that contemporary Buddhist clerics are drawing upon in their efforts to restore the bhikkhuni sangha. It is essential reading for those who want to understand how Buddhists are thinking through the question of bhikkhuni ordination. I recommend this volume with warm enthusiasm.” —Journal of the American Academy of Religion
“The controversy surrounding full female ordination is one of the most pressing issues facing modern Buddhism. Dignity and Discipline is without a doubt the most valuable book on the subject to date, and should be required reading for anyone interested in contemporary Buddhism. As the book makes clear, the ordination of women as full-fledged monastics is not only a religious and political issue, it is an issue pertaining to a basic human right: gender equality. The seventeen papers included here are from a 2007 conference in Hamburg, the International Congress on Women's Role in the Sangha, which was convened to fulfill a request by the Dalai Lama, and brought together religious leaders from across Asia as well as Europe and North America, including leading scholars such as Janet Gyatso, Karma Lekshe Tsomo, and Bhikku Bodhi. Intended to effect real progress, the book begins with the assumption that full ordination is inevitable and charts a course to bring it about, investigating history and the doctrinal issues that must be settled before the Tibetan and Theravadin sanghas embrace such change.”—Buddhadharma: The Buddhist Review
