Eminent Nuns: Women Chan Masters of Seventeenth-Century China by Beata Grant

Author:Beata Grant [Grant, Beata]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: 17th Century, China, History -China, History, Nonfiction, History -Women, China -History
ISBN: 9780824832025
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Published: 2008-06-03T14:10:39+00:00

Although it does appear that male literati were Jizong Xingche’s primary correspondents, she also attracted a following among gentry women.31 But it is worth pointing out that Jizong addresses most of the women, except nuns of course, as “wife of so-and-so”—perhaps an indication of the extent to which, as an honorary male, she identified with male literati. However, it is important to note as well that, as with Qiyuan Xinggang (and Dahui Zonggao before her), the message she conveyed to gentry laywomen was not that they should leave home to become nuns, but rather that they should engage in intensive huatou practice within the home. Even more importantly, she insists that their goal should be “genuine” enlightenment in this very lifetime, and she criticizes those who would have women believe otherwise. As she instructs a certain Lady Xiang, the wife of a Hanlin scholar:

[The old masters of the past said,] “In practicing Chan, one must seek enlightenment; if there is no enlightenment, there will be no way by which one may escape the great sea of birth and death. Nowadays [so-called] followers of the Way mistakenly swindle by means of mouth and ear those who dwell in the inner chambers when they tell them that they do not need to be enlightened in order to be liberated from life and death; glib and loquacious, they vilify the great wisdom of insight and even go so far as to completely obscure its sacredness. This demonstrates a lack of gratitude toward the sages of the past. How can it not be lamented!32

From many of the Dharma talks in Jizong Xingche’s yulu that were addressed “to the congregation,” we can see that the standards to which she held her nuns were high indeed. As with Qiyuan Xinggang, it is clear that Jizong Xingche felt she had a particular responsibility to counter the perception, often well founded, of moral laxity and lack of discipline within Chan Buddhist establishments. Not only was she clearly anxious to prove by her own impeccable behavior that she was worthy of the Dharma transmission that Wanru had given her, but also, as a Chan master, she was meticulously careful about not indiscriminately bestowing such transmissions herself. In his preface to her yulu, the Buddhist layman Yan Dacan makes explicit mention of this:

Although among the followers both in their homes and in her community there were many in whom insight was awakened, the Master did not indiscriminately give her stamp of approval. On one occasion, she said: “Those in the school of nonduality who adhere strictly to the precepts and discipline are very few; those who in the entire Buddha universe who have truly attained enlightenment are even fewer.” Therefore the Master’s discipline was as coldly stern as a mouthful of snow, and her leadership of the community as solemn as mouthful of twigs. [In this, she demonstrated] not even the slightest bit of hypocrisy or excess—unlike those workman-like teachers among her contemporaries who recklessly bestow Dharma seals and ignorantly impart instructions to unworthy people who lack the requisite goodness.

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