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2. Images of Nuns in the Writings of Seventeenth-Century Monks
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c h a p t e r t w o Images of Nuns in the Writings of Seventeenth-Century Monks This study is primarily concerned with the perspectives and representations of religious women as articulated by religious women themselves—since it is precisely these that have been so conspicuously lacking from previous studies of Chinese nuns. However, a brief look at the descriptions and images of nuns found in the writings of seventeenth -century male monastics and Buddhist laymen—as opposed to writers of fiction—will help illuminate the variety of male views of women religious. Even a cursory perusal of the discourse records of the seventeenthcentury male Chan masters included in the Jiaxing canon reveals the significant presence of women as both disciples and patrons. Some of these writings, it is true, contain little more than a handful of Dharma talks delivered on the occasion of the funeral or death anniversary of a female devotee, usually the mother or wife of a lay patron. In some cases, the deceased is a nun, and often the nun in question was also the mother of the monk. In yet other discourse records, we find many more references to Buddhist nuns, although, again, primarily in the context of funeral or death anniversary rituals. Many of these nuns are referred to explicitly as abbesses of such-and-such convent; others note that the request to perform the ritual and deliver the Dharma talk comes from female disciples. In a significant number of these collections, however, we find references to Buddhist nuns in a far greater range of contexts, including “words of instruction” (shi); letters, tomb (as opposed to funeral) inscriptions designed to be carved into stone, portrait inscriptions, elegies, and poems commemorating such occasions as tonsure ceremonies, birthdays, the beginning or conclusion of solitary retreats, and the inauguration of new nunneries. Many of these discourse records are of eminent Chan masters associated with so-called reinvention of Linji Chan Buddhism, 18 eminent nuns such as Miyun Yuanwu and his successors. In the discourse record collection of Miyun Yuanwu’s Dharma heir Poshan Haiming (1597–1666), for example, there are no less than eighteen texts addressed to named Buddhist nuns, and just as many to laywomen disciples. And in the discourse records of Baichi Xingyuan, a second-generation Dharma successor of Miyun Yuanwu, there are over two dozen texts addressed to or composed for named nuns. The quantity and range of these texts point to the active participation of a significant number of educated nuns and laywomen in seventeenthcentury Chan Buddhist circles. They also give us some indication of how such women were regarded by at least some of their male monastic counterparts . These views are, not surprisingly, considerably more positive than what one finds in fictional texts (although one might well interpret the complete absence of any mention of women at all in some monks’ discourse records as a clear example of androcentric if not explicitly misogynist attitudes). The texts that do refer to women are varied and diverse, however, and by no means free of ambivalence and contradiction. They range from a conviction that the best place for a woman to seek liberation was within the home, to an explicit use of Buddhist-nun-as-symbol to make one or another polemical or doctrinal point, to what appears to be a genuine concern for nuns’ religious practice and aspirations as well as high praise for their ultimate achievements. Although in-depth study of the images of religious women in seventeenth -century Buddhist writings is beyond the scope of this study, a general overview of these three major viewpoints may be useful as a context for our subsequent discussion of these women’s own self-representations. Some Chan Buddhist monks—especially, perhaps, monks such as Hongzan Zaican (1611–1681), who belonged to the Caodong lineage and who entered the monastery only after having had a thorough immersion in the Confucian classics, clearly held very traditional attitudes about the role that religious piety should play in the lives of women. A Guangzhou native, and one of many literati men who became a monk after the fall of the Ming, Hongzan Zaican studied with several eminent Chan masters in the Jiangnan area, finally receiving Dharma transmission from Caodong master Xueguan Zhiyin (1585–1637), who advocated a parallel emphasis on Chan meditation on the one hand, and discipline, sutra study, and Pure Land devotional practice on the other. Hongzan Zaican’s Confucian background, coupled with the...