By Tenzin Choephel
Phayul Correspondent
Kathmandu,27th September- Local authorities in Tawu County of Kandze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province have allegedly restricted nuns of Sinapu nunnery from seeking alms in their traditional way since August 2005 and it has made life of nuns difficult.
According to a nun of Sinapu Nunnery who recently arrived from Tawu County, trekking across the Himalayas and arriving in Nepal after 22 days, the nunnery is situated near Tawu County town has over 300 nuns, it has a long history but it does not have the right environment for studying and practicing religion because there are very few educated nuns and most of them spend their life by just praying everyday.
The nunnery could not provide them anything. They bring food from their home and during Autumn season groups of nuns go to different places for about three months to seek alms to support themselves. It is a Tibetan tradition and every household give something according to their condition. The money that people donates for prayer services and ‘ngoten’ (donation in the name of a deceased person) are used for expenditures of the nunnery. Furthermore, if nuns go to private homes for prayer services then the alms they receive for the service is given to the nunnery and there is no custom of keeping alms for yourself because if nunnery has to grow then such customs should be followed.
Besides that, there is no other support for the nunnery. But from August 2005, a new regulation was made that if nuns need to go to seek alms then they need to get a permission letter from the County Religion Bureau and not only that they could not go to seek alms anywhere as they like. The reason authorities gave for restriction is that they want to help the nunnery, change their way of earning livelihood and improve the condition of the nunnery. They also said that if you go to seek alms without permission of the Religion bureau then it is against law that says that people advocating such campaigns should be expelled from the monastery. Nuns pleaded with authorities but they told that since it is a decision of the government, no one could protest against it.
Since then, when they need to go and seek alms from public, they have to take an application of the nunnery chief, get signature of the township leader, then signature of the Bureau Chief and stamp from the County Religion Bureau and then only they can go to seek alms. However, the permit is good for one month and fifteen days only and after collecting alms, nuns have to register the amount of alms received at the Religion Bureau and declare how long the alms would support many nuns in one year and if anyone fails to register then she would be punished.
Generally, a nun needs about 200 ‘gyama’ (0.5 kilogram) barley and 150 ‘gyama’ of wheat as annual food supply; however, all nuns on average don’t receive that much alms as it has decreased from before because earlier nuns could go to seek alms in their county and other counties also but nowadays they could only go in their county.
It is difficult to understand why Chinese authorities put such restrictions on humble nuns who probably do not pose any security threat to whomsoever and it is still difficult to understand why such traditional practices are restricted in Tibet. We could presume that China wants to discourage any type of begging or seeking alms to show the world that China is indeed developing fast in every sector but according to our source the nunnery has so far not received any aid or support from the local Chinese Government.
