Mo-shan Liao-jan

There is not a lot of information in English about China, in general. 

I'm reading Zen Baggage by Bill Porter (Red Pine), and the highlight of the book is his visiting a temple. What is unique about the temple is that it's for women. Most women nunneries are Pure Land. This one is Zen, where women meditate. 

Porter's trip in China was in 2006, so maybe the abbot's plans to advance means there are 2 nunneries. And there was a smaller one supposedly near the Korean border, 3 maybe.

When you read the Wikipedia article on Tianmenshan Temple, it doesn't say it's a nunnery on Wikipedia. I might have the wrong temple. 

When Porter was there, he reads about Mo-shan Liao-jan. There is no Wikipedia page for her. There are a few pages:

Chinese Bhiksunis in the Ch'an Tradition

First Woman Dharma Heir In Chinese Zen Buddhism

Moshan Liaoran

The Dragon Girl and the Abbess of Mo-Shan: Gender and Status in the Ch'an Buddhist Tradition by Miriam L. Levering: 

"Ch'an teaching contributed to the ease with which Chinese women in the twentieth century have been able to accept their essential equality with men, viewing centuries of constraint more as a product of an inequitable social structure than as reflecting unequal endowments of intelligence or of moral and spiritual capacities. Rejecting or more often quietly ignoring much in the Buddhist heritage that suggested that birth as a woman indicated that one was less prepared to attain enlightenment than men, or indeed faced severe, perhaps insuperable, obstacles to rapid enlightenment, Ch'an teachers urged upon their students the point of view that enlightenment, the source of wisdom, compassion, serenity and moral energy, was available to everyone at all times; any other view was seen as a hindrance to practice."

Levering ends the essay quoting the Dogen's Shobogenzo:

"What demerit is there in femaleness? What merit is there in

maleness? There are bad men and good women. If you wish

to hear the Dharrna and put an end to pain and turmoil, forget

about such things as male and female. As long as delusions

have not yet been eliminated, neither men nor women have

eliminated them; when they are all eliminated and true reality

is experienced, there is no distinction of male and female."

Porter gets to meet the abbot of the Tachinshan Temple, Yin-k'ung. She was born in 1921 and was born near the temple. She had her head shaved when she was 19, by Pen-huan at Paoen Temple in Hsinchou. She set about restoring the temple. In 1947 it had 50 nuns. But the Cultural Revolution was not kind to Buddhists. She sought advice from Pen-huan, who was suggesting people go abroad, or into the mountains. He was beaten, but was supposedly 116 at the time Yin-k'ung sought out advice from him during the Cultural Revolution.

“During that time, Chinshan was destroyed by the Red Guards, and her fellow nuns were forced to return to lay life and undergo reeducation. Yin-k'ung refused to give up her practice, and in 1985, with the members of the Gang of Four in prison or dead and the principle of religious freedom once more affirmed by the central government, the authorities in Fuchou asked her to come back and rebuild Chinshan. By that time there was only one small building at the summit with room for three or four nuns. It took her eight years, but she more than accomplished her goal of restoring the temple to its T'ang-dynasty glory- far outdoing her earlier efforts at rebuilding the temple during the Second World War. After that, she decided to build a Buddhist academy to train all the nuns who were arriving. It opened in 1994. Three years later, she also built a meditation hall for nuns. And in 1999, she began holding meditation retreats during the winter.” (P244 Zen Baggage by Bill Porter)

I would encourage you to read more about the story there.

Eat Sleep Sit

Eat Sleep Sit: My Year at Japan's Most Rigorous Zen Temple has had an effect on me. I was feeding the cats, and I wondered if I could be more intensional with it, if I could create a ritual. I made sure to scrape out everything in the cans. Preciousness without waste seems to be part of the ritual. At work I wash my hands and then use to towel to clean the toilet, even though it's not my mess. Ananadi said, "why don't you do that at home?!" We don't have paper towels.

The Vinaya is the part of oral teaching, written down hundreds of years later, that encapsulate all the rules the Buddha came up with to help people live together with mindfulness as the monastic tradition was beginning. Dogen's Shobogenzo is the rules for conduct in the Eihei-ji are derived from this book. Every act seems to be prescribed. In a way that could be comforting to not have to think, but just learn the routines, rituals and manners. They meditate 3x a day for 40 minutes, and there are work periods and study and there are rotating duties, and no duty is considered less, and it's just a matter of taking turns. You can get up at 130am to study, but everyone goes to bed at--I forget, I think it's 9pm. Most get up at 330AM. Each day has a confession of mistakes, and the violence that happens is off putting for Ananadi, and she doesn't buy the justification, but the author seems to feel like it strips away his imperfect outer shell.

There's a brief video on YouTube, of a monk tearing around the monastery ringing a bell, waking everyone up, that stuck in my head.

When someone makes a mistake ringing a bell, everyone knows. One time the bell broke and the guy ran around trying to vocalize the sound. It seems pretty intense. Supposedly you can do a 1 or 3 day retreat, and I've put that on my list of things to do when I win the lottery, which is to say I can't afford to follow my interest unless I get weirdly wealthy suddenly.

The refuge tree of teachers and inspiration for the TBC does not mean we have to sit facing a wall because that is how Dogen does it. It is an option and if you do a retreat in this sect, it helps to know what you're getting into. Dogen's example is an inspiration for us, and helps us to learn the tradition of Buddhist greats. I bet everyone could write a Shobogenzo of sorts for their particular circumstances. The Vinaya is not so much taken literally in the west, and is more about thinking about mindfulness and harmony in your actions. The TBC is working to define the essential elements, but Bhante has often talked in terms of principles, so there's a reluctance to explicitly define actions. I imagine a TBC ceremony looks pretty sloppy to Soto Zen eyes. Or maybe not. I've felt great harmony in being in the shrine room with my dharma brothers, and thought their actions were mindful.

More than other memoirs of zen, this book explicitly shares the nitty gritty of Soto Zen, and is therefore valuable for the praxis information. You learn about Dogen, Japanese culture and a form of practice that stretches back into time, that is strangely attractive to me.

That many of the people who do the 2 year training course at Eihei-ji are the eldest sons of father's who own temples, is not as much to my liking, I prefer choosing, but again, like the rules, having a strict plan in some ways is appealing the way an arranged marriage. All the strum und drang is taken away from choices. But there are people who go who are not eldest sons, and they are valued too. I don't know where they end up, but they are welcome.

Here is another video on this topic.