From Solitary Sitting to Social Engagement—
Gender, Buddhism, and The Making of
Modern Female Chan Teachers at Dharma Drum Mountain
From Solitary Sitting to Social Engagement—Gender, Buddhism, and The Making of Modern Female Chan Teachers at Dharma Drum Mountain ,the first English monograph of DDM female Buddhists practitioners will be published in the U.S. this year 2020.
Written by DDM monastic Bhikshuni Changshen (常諗法師), From Solitary Sitting to Social Engagement —Gender, Buddhism, and The Making of Modern Female Chan Teachers at Dharma Drum Mountain ,the first-ever English monograph of DDM female Buddhist practitioners will be published in the U.S this year 2020 by Feminist Studies in Religion Press (FSR) in U.S.A.
Prior to this book, in the American publishing world, there were only 3 monographs that aimed at the studies of Buddhist organizations in Taiwan. This book presented as the first portrayal of Chinese Chan Buddhist Bhikshunis’ practices in modern society, preserving the precious and priceless assets. A better understanding of Chinese Buddhist monastic’s perspectives would be thus facilitated for scholars across the world.
Bhikshuni Changshen started her field work of participant observations and structured interviews in 2004; in this study, 40 participants who had been ordained from 3 to 30 years were interviewed. In addition to Introduction (Women and Modern Buddhist Revival in Taiwan), this book comprises of four chapters. The first chapter
“Sheng Yen and Chan Buddhist Modernism” starts by contextualizing the historical development of contemporary female practitioners’ practices which reminisces DDM’s history of transition in the past half century. This chapter portrays the whole picture of how late Master Sheng Yen followed master Taixu’s Buddhism modern reform: Humanistic Buddhism. On this basis of humanistic Buddhism, DDM was built into a Chan monastery as well as a centre of education with patterns of social engagements.
From chapter 2 to 4, Bhikshuni Changshen divides the history of DDM into 3 stages: “Farming Chan (1979-1988)” , “Social Engagement (1989-2000)” , and “Religion as Education”, and explores how DDM nuns’ monastic training, Chan practices, and dharma outreach from the model solitary sitting to social engagement.
According to Bhikshuni Changshen, compares to the existing images of female practitioners in Chan School history, nuns in DDM demonstrate unprecedented vivid capability of leadership in dharma propagation. Due to the limited records of female practitioners in Chan School historic documents, Bhikshuni Changshen stressed the importance of keeping records of contemporary nuns’ practices in modern Chan monastery, and this book will contribute significantly to Buddhist studies and women’s studies in religion.
Text: Dharma Drum Monthly Photo:Bhikshuni Changshen (常諗法師)
Translation: Elenda Huang
Editing: DDM Australian Editorial team; Bhikshuni Changshen