The Gurudharmas in Buddhist Nunneries of Mainland China

Abstract

According to tradition, when the Buddha's aunt and stepmother Mahaprajapati was allowed to join the Buddhist monastic community, she accepted eight 'fundamental rules' (gurudharmas) that made the nuns' order dependent upon the monks' order. This story has given rise to much debate, in the past as well as in the present, and this is no less the case in Mainland China, where nunneries have started to re-emerge in recent decades. This article first presents new insight into Mainland Chinese monastic practitioners' common perspectives and voices regarding the gurudharmas, which are rarely touched upon in scholarly work. Next, each of the rules is discussed in detail, allowing us to analyse various issues, until now understudied, regarding the applicability of the gurudharmas in Mainland Chinese contexts. This research thus provides a detailed overview of nuns' perceptions of how traditional vinaya rules and procedures can be applied in contemporary Mainland Chinese monastic communities based on a cross-regional empirical study

Equality of Access? Chinese Women Practicing Chan and Transnational Meditation in Contemporary China

“…Interestingly, despite the hope of escaping from the dependencies in the secular world, women who joined the Buddhist order were forced to depend on the monks serving them as fathers and sons at monasteries. Moreover, the acceptance of the eight gurudharma (bajingfa 八敬法) in the long history of Chinese Buddhism, reflected the inferior roles of Chinese Buddhist women (Chiu and Heirman 2014). This paper will subsequently examine the spiritual potential of women in the Theravāda tradition and the Chan School, from the texts in the historical and contemporary context, accordingly.…”

When Mahāyāna Meets Theravāda: The Position of Chinese Bhikṣuṇīs in Contemporary Myanmar

“…While exploring the interaction between monks and nuns in terms of this rule's implementation, however, we should not overlook the impacts of social contexts and cultural customs. For instance, nuns' practice of paying homage to monks via bowing indicates complex implications in Chinese contexts (Chiu and Heirman 2014). In contemporary Taiwan, kneeling down to anyone is not a socially common custom, and thus is likely to carry heavier hierarchical implications there than in cultures where it is fairly commonplace, such as in South Asia (Tsomo 2004;Cheng 2007).…”

“…Such discussion is, however, beyond the scope of this paper. See for example Qin (2000); Chiu and Heirman (2014);and Péronnet (2020).…”

Epistemic Communities of Buddhist Scholarship in Modern China: Narratives and Paradigms

“…This includes historical overviews of nuns' networks and nunneries from the late Qing and the Republican period (He 1997) to contemporary China (DeVido 2015). It also comprises comparative analyses of vegetarian female monastic orders (zhaigu 齋姑) in China and Taiwan (Jiang 1996;Chang 2007;Li 2016), and studies of monastic discipline and temple rules in nunneries in contemporary China (Chiu and Heirman 2014) and Taiwan (Chiu and Heirman 2012). Moving to a more micro approach, scholars like Travagnin have offered studies of Taiwanese nuns and nunneries belonging to Yinshun's neworks, as renjian fojiao practitioners (Travagnin 2005 and.…”