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311 Notes Introduction 1. Takagi suggests that as many as ten of these provincial nunneries were actually built (1988, 73). 2. The exoteric-esoteric orthodoxy (kenmitsu) was represented by the so-called six Nara schools, plus the Tendai and Shingon schools of the Heian period. For an overview of relevant issues, see Abé 1999, esp. 399–428. 3. An ordination platform, or kaidan, refers to a physical space sanctioned, usually through purification rites, for ordination ceremonies. Most typically, kaidan consisted of large, raised platforms. Sometimes they were made into small halls known as kaidan-in. 4. I have adopted Dorothy Ko’s (1994) translation of sanjū (Chns. sancong) as “thrice following.” 5. Other convents associated with the movement that were revived or established during this period include Chūgūji, Kōtaiji, Tōrinji, Shōbōji, Dōmyōji, Manishu -in, Sairin-in, Sanka-in, Shana-in, Kaiganji, Mimuradera, Sōji-in, Myōrakuji, and Myōhōji (Ushiyama 1986). 6. Eison’s movement stressed strict adherence to the vinaya precepts but also embraced the practice of esoteric Buddhism. Its doctrinal position on the precepts is based primarily upon the following texts: the Four-Part Vinaya (T. no. 1428), the Brahma Net Sutra (Chns. Fanwang jing, T. no. 1484), and the Yuqie shidu lun (Discourses on the stages of concentration practice, Jpns. Yugashijiron, abbr. Yugaron, Skt. Yōgācāra-bhūmi-śāstra, T. no. 1579). 7. According to Katsuura Noriko (1989, 23), state-authorized ordination platforms for nuns had disappeared by the end of the ninth century. In the eleventh century, an official precepts ordination platform for women was established at Hōjōji, but after the temple burned down in 1058, this platform came to an end. 8. Mount Hiei, a mountain northeast of Heian-kyō (present-day Kyoto), was the center of the Tendai school of Buddhism (Chns. Tian-tai). Mount Hiei’s Enryakuji , the main temple of the Tendai school, was founded by the priest Saichō in the year 788. Saichō established a precepts platform at Enryakuji that focused on the ten major and forty-eight minor bodhisattva precepts of the Brahma Net Sutra. This ordination platform was distinguished from the Tōdaiji platform in Nara, where the Four-Part Vinaya was used. See Groner 1984 and Minowa 1999. 9. See Eison’s own remarks about his ordination of women at Hokkeji. KJGSK 1999, 350. 312 10. Here I refer primarily to the Kongō Busshi Eison kanjin gakushōki (KJGSK), which is widely recognized as the autobiography of Eison. 11. Gregory Schopen’s work, in particular, has revised many long-entrenched scholarly assumptions about monastic life. Drawing on archaeological and epigraphic evidence, he has illustrated the degree to which monastic life as practiced on the ground in ancient India diverged from monastic ideals preserved in classical Buddhist texts. See Schopen 1997, 2004, and 2005. Other recent works that emphasize the need for greater attention to the sociocultural and material realities of monastic life (as opposed to studies that focus only on ideals as presented in doctrinal texts) include Dreyfus 2003 and Hao 1998. 12. Tanaka Takako has lamented the comments of Ishida Mizumaro in particular . Ishida emphasizes the notion that nuns were pitiable figures in the Buddhist world: they occupied the lowest position in the community and were governed by priests. Given such oppression, he surmises, nuns must have lost all will to study Buddhist texts or to train in ritual performance. Women who became nuns, he says, had no choice but to tuck themselves away in some obscure corner of society and to spend their last days lethargically reading through the sutras. Tanaka 2005, 169–171; Ishida Mizumaro 1978. 13. Recent scholarship in this area suggests that goke-ama, or “widow nuns,” used official document seals that ordinary women may have had a more difficult time using. See Shiga-kenritsu Biwako Bunkakan 2007, 93. 14. Also qtd. in Dobbins 1995. See also Seidensticker’s translation: “If only they might share the same lotus in another world....These are the thoughts, one is told, with which [Genji] tormented himself” (1976, 359). 15. Nomura also counts terms related to henjō nanshi, such as tennyo jōbutsu (transforming women into buddhas), tennyo jōnan (transforming women into men), nyonin no mi o hanare (separation from the female body), and nyonin no mi o itō (to grow weary of or give up attachment to the female body). These terms and phrases, which had considerable conceptual overlap, were often...

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