Thirty Years of Dream-Wandering: Zhang Ruzhao (1900-1969) and the Making of a Buddhist Laywomanâ©
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Zhang Ruzhao (1900-69), also known as Zhang Shenghui, was ordained as a Buddhist nun, with the title Tiantai Master Benkong. In early life, Zhang established a reputation as a poet, and was actively engaged in many of the political and feminist movements of the 1920s. Disillusioned both politically and personally, she turned to Buddhism and reinvented herself as Chinaâs premier female lay Buddhist scholar, writer and educator during the 1930s and 40s. From 1949, she took ordination as a Buddhist nun and was officially designated a lineage holder in the Tiantai lineage. She was persecuted severely during the early years of Cultural Revolution, and died in 1969. This study offers a historical overview of the life of this relatively unstudied twentieth-century Buddhist woman, with a special focus on a selection of autobiographical writings published in the early 1930s in which Zhang reflects, in both poetry and prose, on her first three decades of personal and emotional turmoil, and how they contributed to her decision to dedicate the second half of her life to the practice and propagation of Buddhism.â©
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6
âJing M. Wang, When âIâ Was Born: Womenâs Autobiography in Modern China (Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2008), 39. For more on the flourishing of womenâs autobiographical writing, see also Janet Ng, The Experience of Modernity: Chinese Autobiography of the Early Twentieth Century (Madison, WI: University of Washington Press, 2003) and Lingzhen Wang, Personal Matters: Womenâs Autobiographical Practice in Twentieth Century China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004).
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7
âJing M. Wang, When âIâ Was Born: Womenâs Autobiography in Modern China, 41.
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10
âSee Shengqing Wu, Modern Archaics: Continuity and Innovation in the Chinese Lyric Tradition, 1900-1937 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2013).
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11
âHu Ying, Burying Autumn: Poetry, Friendship, and Loss (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2016), 11. See also Hu Ying, Tales of Translation: Composing the New Woman in China, 1899-1918 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000). Lü Bicheng also belonged to this early generation of new women of talent. See Shengqing Wu, ââOld Learningâ and the Refeminization of Modern Space in the Lyric Poetry of Lü Bicheng,â Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, 16. 2 (2004): 1-75 and more recently, her chapter on Lü Bicheng in Modern Archaics: Continuity and Innovation in the Chinese Lyric Tradition, 1900-1937.
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18
âJing M. Wang, When âIâ Was Born: Womenâs Autobiography in Modern China, 82. See, for example, Lin Beilinâs æåéº (1916-?; also known as Lin Yin æé±) "A Journey of Twenty-Seven Years," translated by Shirley Chang and included in Jing M. Wang, ed., Jumping Through Hoops: Autobiographical Stories by Modern Chinese Writers (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2003), 93-138.
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21
âJing M. Wang, When âIâ Was Born: Womenâs Autobiography in Modern China, 36.
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30
âZhang Ruzhao, Haiou ji, 38. Aimee Millican and her husband, Frank Millican, had arrived in China in 1907 and served as missionaries in Hunan until 1915, after which they were transferred to Ningbo where Frank Millican served as the principle of the Presbyterian Boys High school and later vice-president of the Union Middle School, while Aimee Millican engaged in evangelistic work with Chinese women. In 1930 they were assigned to the Christian Literature Society in Shanghai where Aimee helped start a Christian broadcasting station, before returning to the United States in 1940.
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45
âIn 1934, Zhang went to the Xuedou Monastery éªç« where Taixu was serving as abbot at the invitation of the Jiang family, to meet with him in person.
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48
âSee Erik J. Hammerstrom, The Science of Chinese Buddhism: Early Twentieth-Century Engagements (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015).
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52
âIn 1919, Taixu had published two articles on this topic in which he called upon Chinese Buddhists to monks to follow the example purportedly set by the Tang Chan master Baizhang Huaihai ç¾ä¸æ·æµ· (720â814), mainly to counter the widespread perceptions that monastics were parasites on society. See Darui Long, âBuddhist Initiatives for Social Well-Being in Chinese History, With Special Reference to Modern Exponents of Humanistic Buddhismâ in Hsi Lai Journal of Humanistic Buddhism 5 (2004): 204-207, and see page 204.
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64
âZhang Ruzhao, Haichao yin 15:4, 477-490. Reprinted in Bore hua, 12-44.
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70
âAs early as 1935 and 1936, Zhang had begun to participate in meditation retreats with Master Genhui. As her knowledge of Buddhist scriptures and Tiantai ritual deepened, she also began to be called upon to deliver lectures at temples, seminaries and various lay Buddhist associations in the Ningbo and Shanghai area. For more on this and other rituals first developed by Tiantai founder Zhiyi æºé¡ (538-597), see Daniel B. Stevenson, âThe Four Kinds of Samadhi in Early Tâien Tâai Buddhism,â in Peter Gregory, ed., Traditions of Meditation in Chinese Buddhism (Honolulu: University of Hawaiâi Press, 1986), 45-97, see especially, 67-72. See also Daniel B. Stevenson,â Buddhist Practice and the Lotus SÅ«tra in China,â in Stephen F. Teiser and Jacqueline I. Stone, eds., Readings of the Lotus SÅ«tra (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 132-150, and particularly, 142-43.
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Thirty Years of Dream-Wandering: Zhang Ruzhao (1900-1969) and the Making of a Buddhist Laywomanâ©
In: NAN NÃSearch for other papers by Beata Grant in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Zhang Ruzhao (1900-69), also known as Zhang Shenghui, was ordained as a Buddhist nun, with the title Tiantai Master Benkong. In early life, Zhang established a reputation as a poet, and was actively engaged in many of the political and feminist movements of the 1920s. Disillusioned both politically and personally, she turned to Buddhism and reinvented herself as Chinaâs premier female lay Buddhist scholar, writer and educator during the 1930s and 40s. From 1949, she took ordination as a Buddhist nun and was officially designated a lineage holder in the Tiantai lineage. She was persecuted severely during the early years of Cultural Revolution, and died in 1969. This study offers a historical overview of the life of this relatively unstudied twentieth-century Buddhist woman, with a special focus on a selection of autobiographical writings published in the early 1930s in which Zhang reflects, in both poetry and prose, on her first three decades of personal and emotional turmoil, and how they contributed to her decision to dedicate the second half of her life to the practice and propagation of Buddhism.â©
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 812 | 182 | 26 |
| Full Text Views | 316 | 12 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 214 | 22 | 0 |
