Image: Dignity Cambodia

By Mona
8th March 2019

There still are no possibilities for nuns in Cambodia to study or be ordained. Most nuns remain in the role of the servant.

To be a nun in Cambodia is not easy, says 24-year-old Kosorl. Her name in Pali sounds like Kosorla which means wholesome, while in the Khmer language it means “good deed.” Both meanings seem to fit the young Cambodian Obasica (student nun).

The Andeuk Pagoda is one of the few wats (pagodas) in Cambodia where nuns practice meditation along with their male counterparts. I met Kosorl and her mother for the first time at the Vipassana Center in Battambang in 2012, shortly after I arrived in Cambodia. She was 17 years young at the time, still a high-school student. About a year later, after she finished high school, she decided to shave her long, black, shining hair, depart from her colorful garments and become a nun too, like her mother and the other women around her.

There are 3 different types of nuns in Cambodia, I learn. Most nuns are elderly women. Through serving the monks they gain merit. These dounjies don’t feel the need to study Buddhism; they find fulfillment through their selfless giving to the monks. The second type of nuns is younger, but these nuns may not stay for long in the temple. They often seek refuge from their troubled life and usually go back to it once they have calmed their minds. The third group are also young nuns, who seek to learn. But often they fail to find teachers who would introduce them to the right practice of mediation and study; those who do find the path to mediation often lack the foundation of Buddhist teaching.

There still are no possibilities for nuns in Cambodia to study or be ordained. Most nuns remain in the role of the servant. While caring for the spiritual journey of monks, they have limited access and little time to be concerned with their own spiritual path to enlightenment.

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