Shi Baochang's An Lingshou After The Lives Of Nuns

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Shi Baochang was a Buddhist monk who lived in the early sixth century. He would have been highly educated and in a position to devote large amounts of his time to compiling the biographies in his work. He was a master of Buddhism who preached in the Fields of Buddhism, making him as near to an authority of Buddhist teachings as existed at that time. Most of the women in his collection of stories lived hundreds of years before him, showing that he both was diligent about collecting stories and most likely wrong about a number of things. He wrote this piece to both tell famous nuns’ stories and to encourage other people to join Buddhism. When Lingshou and Shi Baochang were alive China was in both political and theological chaos. After the …show more content…

The excerpt being reviewed in this paper is the story of An Lingshou whose “secular surname was Xu” (Shi 307). She is an upper class woman who “was intelligent and fond of studies” and “took no pleasure in worldly affairs” (Shi 307). She is devoutly Buddhist and doesn’t want to be married, but her father Xu Chong disagrees, accusing her of being “unfilial” (Shi 307). She responds that her “mind is concentrated on the work of religion” and questions why she must “submit three times before [she is] considered a woman of propriety” (Shi 307). Her father thinks this is selfish and goes to see a “Buddhist magician monk” who tells him to “keep a vegetarian fast and after three days . . . come back” (Shi 307). Xu Chong does so and the monk “spread Xu Chong’s palm with the oil of sesame seed ground together with safflower” and has him read what’s there (Shi 307). He sees “a person who resembled his daughter” as Buddhist preaching to a large group. The monk tells him that it “is a former incarnation of” his daughter who left her house to help the world at large and that “she indeed shall raise her family to glory” and help them find Nirvana (Shi 307). Lingshou is allowed to become a nun and “cut off her hair, discarded secular ornaments, and received the rules of monastic life from” the monk who spoke to her father and another famous nun (Shi 308). Lingshou goes on to be a famously great nun who “built five or six monastic retreats” and her family goes on to be honored and promoted (Shi

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