Eminent nuns
Subtitle: women Chan masters of seventeenth-century China
By: Beata Grant.
Publisher: University of Hawai'i Press
Published: 2009
Place of publication: Honolulu
Language: eng
Number of pages: 241
ISBN-13: 9780824832025
Subjects: Buddhist nuns -- China -- Biography; Monastic and religious life (Zen Buddhism) -- China; Zen Buddhism -- China -- History -- 17th century
Genres: Biography.
Description: Although Buddhist nuns have been a continuous presence in Chinese culture since early medieval times and the subject of numerous scholarly studies, this book is one of the first not only to provide a detailed view of their activities at one particular moment in time (the seventeenth century), but also to be based largely on the writings and self-representations of Buddhist nuns themselves. This perspective is made possible by the preservation of collections of "discourse records" (yulu) of seven officially designated female Chan masters in a seventeenth-century printing of the Chinese Buddhist Canon rarely used in English-language scholarship. The collections contain records of religious sermons and exchanges, letters, prose pieces, and poems, as well as biographical and autobiographical accounts of various kinds. Supplemental sources by Chan monks and male literati from the same region and period make a detailed re-creation of the lives of these eminent nuns possible.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [191]-235) and index.
Table of contents: title: Setting the stage: seventeenth-century texts and contexts; title: Images of nuns in the writings of seventeenth-century monks; title: The making of a woman Chan master: Qiyuan Xinggang; title: Qiyuan Xinggang as abbess, dharma teacher, and religious exemplar; title: Passing on the lamp: the dharma successors of Qiyuan Xinggang; title: From Hengzhou to Hangzhou: Jizong Xingche; title: From wise mother to Chan master: Baochi Jizong; title: Reviving the worlds of literary Chan: Zukui Jifu; title: From Beijing to Jiangnan: Ziyong Chengru.