Meditation Sickness as Gendered Karmic Consequence: An Analysis of Thai Female Monastic’s Adverse Meditation Experiences

Institutions of Theravada Buddhism do not socially recognize women as female monks. Nevertheless, women – known as Bhikkhunis – continue to receive ordination and practice, despite this lack of formal recognition. While prior literature on bhikkhunis has focused on the personal narrative and charismatic qualities of the movement’s founder, Venerable Dhammananda, this paper instead focuses on the meditation techniques bhikkhunis apply to not only train toward enlightenment, but also ‘undo’ meditator’s prior meditation techniques that have led to forms of meditation sickness. Through a presentation of the visions some meditators experience at this bhikkhuni temple, accompanied by personal interpretations, I argue for the importance of gendered mentorship in meditation practice to alleviate the negative effects of meditation, a topic that has been generally neglected in Buddhist studies. Implicit to this argument is the prevailing cultural beliefs of female rebirth as a karmic consequence, and how these bhikkhunis’ meditation techniques and explanations reconstitute gender roles in Buddhism.