會議地點：越南胡志明市；時間：2009.12.18 - 2010.01.03；大會主題：傑出的女性修行者與典範=Eminent Buddhist Women
摘要
In China, the form of Buddhism known as Chan (Zen) was well known for insisting that liberation could only be found beyond words and language, emerging from prajna, or enlightened wisdom. At the same time, Chan Buddhists were known for making deft use of words and language, especially poetic words and paradoxical language. In Chinese Buddhist history, most of these eminent masters were male, but from the 12th-century onward, there were also a handful of officially-recognized women Chan masters who composed Dharma talks, letters, eulogies, and poems. This paper introduces the poetry of one of these woman Chan master, the eminent nun Zukui Jifu.
Zukui Jifu was born in Jiangsu province sometime in the early 17th century. Her family name was Li and, even as a young girl, she was known for her precocious intelligence and literary talent. What was unusual was not only that she became an eminent nun, but also an officially-designated Chan master and one of a handful of women Dharma successors of the well-known male Linji Chan (Zen) master, Tuiweng Hongchu (1605-72). She served as abbess at two major convents in the Hangzhou area and was the author of a collection of writings, including Dharma talks, letters, eulogies and poems. In addition, she and one of her Dharma-sisters, Chan master Baochi Jizong, compiled a collection of gathas (short poems) to “harmonize with” gathas written by an eminent nun from the Song dynasty, Miaozong (1095-1170). All three of these collections were printed and appear to have circulated fairly widely. Fortunately, they were also included in what is known as the Jiaxing Tripitaka, a privately-printed edition of the Buddhist canon. If the literati-laymen who were the editors of this canon had not decided to include Zukui Jifu's collections, together with collections by six other women Chan masters of this period, they may well have been lost, along with any trace that such women ever existed.
