©Yu-chen Li
Not to be quoted without permission of the author!

Introduction

The end of summer usually means the end of fun for Taiwan’s college students, as they return to their crowded classrooms and dormitories, either from their families’ homes or from summer camp. In 1996, however, 129 female students did not return to school. As hundreds of worried parents and relatives gradually learned that the whereabouts of these young women were unknown, a frantic search began. Soon they realized that all of the missing students had disappeared after participating in a summer camp held by the Zhongtai Chansi. Although the confronted monastic authorities claimed to be in the dark, all of the clues pointed to the monastery as the last place the women had been seen. Driven to desperation, the searchers refused to leave and even occupied the monastery compound by force. When police officers and journalists arrived they learned that the monks and nuns of Zhongtai Chansi had already inducted all of the girls into the order, shaved their heads and concealed them for days in the monastery garden.

When they were interviewed, all of the young women claimed that they had joined the monastic order entirely of their own free will, and they refused to return home with their parents. Some parents became so angry that they tied their daughters’ hands and feet as one might truss up a pig and dragged their daughter home. Other heartbroken parents kneeled down in front of their tonsured daughters, begging them to return home. Images of weeping parents and screaming, kicking daughters were quickly broadcast through the public media and attracted national attention and concern.

In the world of Chinese Buddhism women have traditionally been pushed to one side. But in contemporary Taiwan things look quite different. There not only do Buddhist nuns constitute at least 75% of the clerical population, approximately one third of Taiwanese nuns are under the age of thirty and have either a professional diploma or a college degree. During the 1980s and 1990s so many female college students entered Buddhist orders that the term xushini (literally, "nuns with bachelor’s degrees") has emerged. By abandoning a privileged position and collectively taking the robe, these young women have attracted a great deal of attention. In addition they have established new orders and actively engage in philanthropic, missionary, educational and even political work. While most such activities are not considered traditional monastic practices, they are recognized as an important aspect of the modernization of Buddhism. More and more women are taking active roles in Buddhist institutions, thereby revolutionizing the distribution of power within a sphere heretofore dominated by men. This interesting and dramatic shift in the gender distribution of Buddhist membership, and the process that is bringing it about, are the subjects of my research.

In addition to an increasing effort to identify themselves as professional clergy, these Taiwanese scholar nuns generally refer to their spiritual vocation as a "religious career." Meantime, lay society also tends to treat them as something like career women. For instance, Bhiksuni (the fully ordained Buddhist nun) Yifa, the first Taiwanese Buddhist nun to get her doctoral degree from Yale’s department of religious studies (1996) , was named an "Outstanding Representative of Youth" by Taiwan’s Association of Young Merchants in 1997 for her contributions to education. The following year, Bhiksuni Hongxiang, who increased the enrollment of her Dharma Center in the Taipei county from ten followers to two hundred between 1993 and 1995, was cited by the Association of Career Women in the Republic of China as a role model for Taiwanese businesswomen.

Chinese patriarchal society very often interprets women’s devotion to celibate Buddhist orders as a personal act of private withdrawal from the secular world. This situation is especially clear when we examine the promotion of monks in the clerical system. Sometimes religious isolation begins to look like a punishment for those women who have been seen as failing in their socially dictated gender role--wives unable to bear children and young widows come to mind. Given such prejudices, how can the scholar nun present her religious practice as a career?

The increasing rate of women’s participation in the labor market has given rise to the notion of the "career woman," an idea that has affected even monastic orders. In Taiwan, financially self-sufficient women who opt not to marry are referred to as "noble singles." Even though it is very common for husband and wife both to work in Taiwan, professional women are often called "superwomen" because of the presumption of conflict between married life and a woman’s professional career. But those who take the robe have opted against marriage. More specifically, use of a term like "career" may shed light on how scholar nuns interpret their religious commitment and practice.

The Legend of Princess Miaoshan and Contemporary Taiwanese Buddhist Nuns

From the late sixteenth century to the present the worship of Guanyin has dominated the religious life of Taiwanese women, and the most important of the incarnations of Guanyin in Taiwan is the legendary figure of Princess Miaoshan. Originating in a fourteenth-century baojuan (precious scripture) and popularized by pilgrimage activities devoted to Guanyin, the legend of Princess Miaoshan has inspired innumerable Buddhist women to adopt vegetarianism and forswear marriage.

This inspirational story reflects the conflict between filial piety and religious piety. While her father hopes that a suitable marriage will guarantee Princess Miaoshan’s happiness and maintain the good name of the family, for her it gives rise to a momentous conflict between her duty to her family and to her religious beliefs. Miaoshan’s devotion to Buddhism so enrages her father that he tries to murder her. She barely escapes, only to set out on a living journey to the underworld. At the moment when she releases the suffering ghosts from their infernal captivity, Miaoshan reveals her identity as Guanyin. Apprised that her father has fallen ill--a punishment for having killed Miaoshan’s fellow nuns instead of her--Miaoshan disguises herself as a mendicant Buddhist and cures her father by treating him with medicine made from her eyes and arms. Finally, her father recognizes her and is converted to Buddhism, at which point Miaoshan miraculously grows new eyes and arms, becoming the thousand-eyed and thousand-armed incarnation of Guanyin. By combining filial piety with transcendent compassion for all human beings, Miaoshan finally wins the recognition her father has withheld and symbolically resolves the dilemma faced by all Chinese women.

Other aspects of Princess Miaoshan--such as the figure of a barefoot woman in a white robe--connect her to the feminine attributes of Guanyin. As the research of Yü Chun-fan has shown, many of the images assigned to Guanyin emerged as the sex of Guanyin underwent a transformation. In some areas she was portrayed both as a beautiful young prostitute and as an old beggar woman--other places she was even presented as a monkey, a demon. I believe that these images imply different aspects of Guanyin’s power, and the different uses to which her power may be put in ritual. For instance, Taiwanese are fond of Guanyin Dashi (great master), a blue-faced general who wields his sword in hell, and his image is everywhere during the Ghost Festival of the seventh lunar month. When a miraculous cure is needed, Taiwanese pray to the thousand-armed and thousand-eyed image of Guanyin found on the altars of Buddhist temples. But Princess Miaoshan remains the only human aspect taken on by Guanyin. So popular is Princess Miaoshan in Taiwan that her birthday is celebrated, as well as the anniversaries of her entry into the Buddhist order and of her enlightenment. The legend of Princess Miaoshan is told in booklets and in books supplemented with personal testimonies to the miraculous power of Guanyin. In addition to these printed materials, Taiwanese operas, movies, radio and television programs have all presented the Miaoshan story. For practical purposes, in Taiwan Princess Miaoshan is Guanyin.

Historically, Chinese monks referred to Taiwan as Guanyin’s dharma field because of the scale of the pilgrimage activities devoted to the figure. The pilgrimage centers are always located in mountains and are connected with important ritual activities on the coast of Southeastern China. In the early days of Guanyin’s Taiwanese existence, temples in her honor were built by Chinese missionary monks and by local communities inspired by the mysterious incense bags they knew of from mainland Chinese Guanyin temples. (Another common reason for building a temple devoted to Guanyin was the discovery of a fine freshwater spring; this explains the importance of water to the Taiwanese nun Fuhui.) Even during the Japanese colonial administration (1895-1945), Chinese monks continuously advertised in Taiwanese newspapers, touting the great value of pilgrimages to Zhejiang province’s Mt. Putuo.

Another reason why Taiwan has historically been considered a special place for Guanyin is the remarkable number of female devotees and nuns found there. Such influential Chinese scholar monks as Yinshun and Mingfu attribute the overwhelming number of Taiwanese nuns to the popularity of Guanyin worship in Taiwan. "Since Taiwan was the land dedicated to the Compassionate (and female) Bodhisattva, Guanyin," Mingfu has said, "the number of Buddhist nuns tended to be greater than that of monks." Since the fourteenth century, a type of lay Buddhism referred to as "vegetarian religion" has dominated the religious horizon of Taiwan; female devotees tried to follow the example of Princess Miaoshan and led religious lives very similar to those of Buddhist nuns. Though they never put on a nun’s robe or shaved their heads, these women observed a strict asceticism amd denied themselves meat and sex. The Chinese monks who fled to Taiwan after World War II were astonished to find that on their new island home female devotees, most of them these vegetarian women, outnumbered monks. The Chinese system of Buddhist ordination somehow shifted these vegetarian women into the ranks of the Buddhist nuns between the 1960s and the 1970s. (More careful study of the religious change that took place during this period would no doubt yield interesting results, but the focus of this paper is somewhat different.)

In Taiwan Buddhist nuns and Guanyin cannot be spoken of separately. Though monks established most of the pilgrimage centers dedicated to Guanyin, men are not thought of as speaking for her and to the extent that nuns are seen as charismatic, it is thanks to the blessing of Guanyin. The most remarkable examples are Bhiksuni Fuhui (1930-1985) and Zhengyan (1925 to the present). These nuns are greatly worshipped for their healing abilities-- Fuhui performed miraculous healings by distributing "Great Compassion Water" (dabei shui) in the name of the Thousand-Armed and Thousand-Eyed Guanyin, and Zhengyan established the Buddhist Ciji Hospital system. Although they represent the opposite extremes of nuns’ charisma, from traditional to modern, both are respected as the incarnation of Guanyin.

Bhiksuni Fuhui

Known for her miraculous healing, Bhiksuni Fuhui founded Daxinshansi (Great Merit Accumulation Nunnery) in the 1970s in Taiwan’s Miaoli county. Her strict ascetic regimen included fasting by limiting her intake to nothing but Great Compassion Water, meditating all night (and even for weeks), maintaining a vow of silence at an abandoned house and subsisting on discarded vegetables. Despite her extremely strict diet, she provided food for others and the homeless men and women from neighboring areas crowded in front of her door for dinner every day.

In time she began to perform miraculous healings and established a small nunnery, which quickly became a bustling market crowded with the ill people who placed their trust in her. Critically sick patients visited in great numbers to receive the holy water that Fuhui had blessed. Though the nunnery was moved after her death in 1985, pilgrims continued to make their way to the new site, where her relics were stored; it has become a sacred place, famed for its healing water. The efficacy of the holy water is usually attributed to the power of Guanyin, a transcendent authority. So remarkable were her healings that Fuhui was viewed as the incarnation of Guanyin.

Fuhui’s statue, which contains her relics, depicts her as a smiling nun sitting with legs folded. It is on display at the convent Dharma Hall along with other Buddhist statues, including a version of Sakyamuni Buddha as a child and various images of Guanyin. The exhibition of various statues of Guanyin on the same altar usually identifies the temple as a "natal home" of Guanyin. Moreover, pilgrims to the Great Merit Accumulation Nunnery honored Fuhui as the "Bodhisattva who saves the world through great kindness and great compassion" and the "Bodhisattva master who alleviates difficulty and suffering"--these are in fact the most popular titles assigned to Guanyin. Indeed, Fuhui’s disciples and supplicants claim that Fuhui often appears in dreams as a figure in a white robe.

Bhiksuni Zhengyan

Both Fuhui and Zhengyan are associated with the feminine attributes of Guanyin and exhibit her divinity through healing and nurturing. The Ciji Gongdehui (Buddhist Association of Compassion and Relief, hereafter Ciji Association), founded and directed by Zhengyan, was one of the most successful grassroots movements in Taiwan during the last two decades of the twentieth century. Through the association, which is devoted to various philanthropic activities around the world, Zhengyan wields great power as a nun, since three million laywomen (they make up at least 80% of the association’s membership) do her bidding. Not only is Zhengyan’s association a financial force to be reckoned with, the hospital it runs also offers excellent opportunities for its members to "experience the reality of suffering" through routine volunteer service. The Ciji Association is the embodiment of a moral revival movement, and Zhengyan is a symbol of limitless compassion, a "Taiwanese Mother Theresa" as well as the "Consciousness of Taiwan."

Both Fuhui and Zhengyan routinely demonstrated their strong commitment to the example set by Guanyin, but the latter did so in a more accessible way. Zhengyan established the Ciji Buddhist Hospital and the Ciji Nursing and Medical Schools to lend the "Venerable One in White" (Guanyin’s popular epithet) a palpable presence in the mundane world, while the hundreds of volunteer workers who partially staff these establishments act like the thousand arms and thousand eyes of Guanyin.

Through strenth of will and personality, Zhengyan created a modern vocation--modeled on that of Guanyin--at the meeting place of human resources, modern technology and religious community. Most importantly, the Ciji Buddhist Hospital fulfills Zhengyan’s commitment to the bodhisattva vow of compassion as well as simultaneously connecting her with the maternal side of Guanyin. All of the statues and pictures dedicated to Zhengyan by her followers are displayed in the hospital and the convent, and they are exclusively in the form of the female image of Guanyin.

The feminine attributes of Guanyin, combined with the virtues of healing and nurturing, form a powerful image of female religiosity. While Fuhui shared food with the homeless and cured many patients, Zhengyan initiated her philanthropic organization by offering emergency aid and food to the poor; the establishment of the Ciji Hospital was also aimed at helping the poor. Unselfish giving and self-sacrifice in the name of Guanyin characterize the religiosity of these two nuns.

Zhengyan and Miaoshan

The striking similarities between the legend of Miaoshan and the biography of another famous nun, Zhengyan, also demonstrate the continued influence of traditional gender expectations on Buddhist women. The miraculous recovery of parents from illness thanks to Guanyin’s blessings constitutes the main theme in these two heroines’ lives. Zhengyan’s adoptive mother was often confined to bed by poor health. So critical was her condition on one occasion that Zhengyan appealed to Guanyin: if her mother was cured, Zhengyan was willing to offer her own life as a replacement. For three nights Guanyin appeared in Zhengyan’s dreams as a gentle figure dressed in white; in a shabby cottage she handed medicine to Zhengyan and watched her prepare it and administer it to her mother. After the third night’s dream, Zhengyan’s mother suddenly recovered. In thanks, Zhengyan embarked on a lifelong vegetarian diet. From then on, villagers addressed Zhengyan as "the filial daughter" (xiaonü).

Another striking similarity between Miaoshan and Zhengyan is the unhappiness brought into their lives by their fathers. From her teens Zhengyan showed great competence in helping her adoptive father run a string of dramatic theaters. When her father had a stroke, Zhengyan moved him from his office back to the family home, which worsened his condition. To save him, Zhengyan braved foul weather, kneeling on the muddy ground through a long rainy night to pray to Guanyin. But her efforts were in vain: he died. Zhengyan experienced the torments of guilt. Crazed, she searched for her father’s soul, and consulted spirit mediums who promised to look for her father in hell.

Though Guanyin had not interceded to save her father, Zhengyan entered a Buddhist order. She interpreted her father’s death as an even more profound teaching from Guanyin, the lesson of the reality of sorrow and the need to transform filial piety into transcendent compassion.

After arranging the family business so it would support her mother and four younger brothers, Zhengyan left home twice in order to fulfill her religious commitments. When her daughter had been absent from home for several months, Zhengyan’s mother finally accepted her decision. In time Zhengyan gave up the life of a wandering mendicant and took up residence in a small temple that bore a remarkable resemblance to the cottage that had appeared in her dreams. So ramshackle was the hermitage that Zhengyan had to place her small cot next to the altar set up for the worship of Guanyin. On the first and fifteenth days of every month she meditated in this small cell to transfer merit to her father. Soon her neighbors, who noticed a bright light radiating from this poor temple twice every month, recognized her pious devotion. Zhengyan finally released herself from guilt by entering the Buddhist order.

More than once, Zhengyan’s public appearances were marked by emotional outbursts in which she revisited her father’s death. "If my father’s doctor had told me not to move him, if I had known anything about medicine, I would not have taken him home from that hot and noisy office." While the explanation most commonly offered for Zhengyan’s determination to build the Buddhist Ciji Hospital involved the story of an aboriginal Taiwanese woman refused emergency medical treatment when she could not pay, I tend to believe that Zhengyan was also motivated by her father’s death. Does not her habit of addressing doctors and nurses as "great people in white clothes" (baiyi dashi), a common title assigned to Guanyin, support my argument? Most importantly, like Miaoshan, Zhengyan is recognized as a filial daughter who extended her compassion to all people.

The popularity and consequent success of Zhengyan’s order may be attributed to reverberations between her story and that of Miaoshan. Both involve the conflict between filial piety and religious commitment, a fundamental dilemma for Chinese women, particularly for those who have not married. Miaoshan-style Buddhism offers a strategy permitting women to resolve their dilemma by promoting filial piety from the individual familial dimension to the universal transcendent dimension. There, Guanyin symbolizes the feminization of Buddhist virtue: unconditional love and universal compassion. In turn, Chinese daughters are able to justify their religious commitment by identifying themselves with Guanyin.

To a remarkable extent, Zhengyan has become the contemporary incarnation of Guanyin in Taiwanese society. As I mentioned earlier, the statues dedicated to Zhengyan and displayed at the Jingsi Convent, the Center for Ciji History and the Memorial Hall are all iconographically true to the Guanyin model. And with the expansion of the Ciji organizations and their increasing social influence, it is hardly surprising that in the 1995 version of Zhengyan’s biography she and the members of the Ciji Association are referred to as the "thousand arms of Bodhisattva Guanyin." More specifically, the motto of the Ciji Association is to "take the vows of the mistress as our own, and to fulfill the wish of the master as our own"--they swear to serve as Zhengyan’s eyes and arms.

Zhengyan’s biography was not only a national bestseller, it also brought her fame fairly early in her career and made her a sacred model for the members of the Ciji Association. The first edition of the biography, written by Chen Huijian, appeared in 1982. A brief pamphlet, it was distributed throughout the worldwide Chinese community. This early version established the basic theme of Zhengyan’s biography for later publications. How did accounts of the early life of Zhengyan change with time? In the articles in newspapers and women’s magazines published before 1985 she was described as a filial and weak girl (xiaonüzi, ruonüzi). Later she came to be described as a social leader, but she has been continuously admired as a filial daughter. As the Ciji Association expanded into a huge religious organization after 1985, the reputation of Zhengyan as a philanthropist enhanced her religious status. I believe that the disappearance of the term "weak girl" from Zhengyan’s biography also indicates a change in the traditional image of Buddhist nuns.

CHANGING INTERPRETATIONS OF THE LEGEND OF MIAOSHAN

The rapid industrialization and economic boom of 1970s Taiwan did little to modify the patrilineal family system, the society continuously confine womanhood by marriage. Similarly to the radical response of the father of Princess Miaoshan to her taking the vow of celibacy, consequently, most Taiwanese parents view the Buddhist nunhood as a refugee for discarded women--those whose social positions are no longer defined through marriage, including widows and those who never marry. Thus, these parents of nuns feel shame and guilt: they have failed to fulfill their responsibility to their daughters by finding them mates. However, the increasing financial independence and education of young women, particularly after the obligatory education initiated in 1968, marriage may be no more the first concern of young women. The relatively privileged status of the Taiwanese scholar nuns provides an excellent example of the interaction between financial autonomy and spiritual pursuit of women.

If the parents of scholar nuns express deep reservations about a life choice that promises no social payoff, the young nuns have chosen a path they hope will lead them to freedom. The older generation views the Buddhist nunhood as marginal and shut off from the patriarchal family system, while their daughters see in the Buddhist order a relatively autonomous life. Modern Buddhist nunhood can involve a more flexible and mentally engaging existence than marriage, and may choose to concentrate on public Buddhist education, what they consider "engaged Buddhism."

The first public conflict of any size between women’s religious commitments and filial piety occurred in the 1996 Zhongtai Chansi Event, which lead about 200 young college students to enter the Buddhist order. In a patrilineal society such as Taiwan’s, the sort of behavior evinced by these college girls and the monks and nuns of the monastery cannot be tolerated. In newspapers, on radio and television, members of the public attacked the Buddhist order as socially nonproductive; they reverted to longstanding criticisms of Buddhism, pointing out that it was not of this world. In addition, Buddhism was criticized for "destroying the promising future of these members of the social elite." A few isolated voices supported the would-be nuns and suggested that their actions were reasonable reactions to being treated like chattel, but many more accused these college girls of unfilial behavior--they were throwing away the investment made in them by their families and, more broadly, by society.

The Changing Legend of Princess Miaoshan

The biographies of Zhengyan endow a new metaphor of the thousand arms and thousand eyes with a strong notion of community. After the first version of the biography of Zhengyan, written by Chen Huijian in 1982, in 1995 a new chapter was added to Zhengyan’s official biography: this section focuses on a reference made by Zhengyan to the members of the Ciji Association as the thousand arms and thousand eyes of Bodhisttva Guanyin. Zhengyan used this attribute of Guanyin to convey finely coordinated communal labor; she also wanted to emphasize that everyone could become Guanyin by following the Bodhisattava path. Not only Zhengyan herself, every member of the Ciji Association could become the sacred incarnation of Guanyin.

As Zhengyan became identified with Miaoshan, Guanyin ceased to be regarded primarily as a filial daughter and came to be seen as a potent nun. When Zhengyan herself spoke of the thousand eyes and thousand arms of Guanyin she was offering a modern interpretation of Guanyin and the increasing visibility and vitality of scholar nuns guaranteed that the image would strongly resonate.

In addition to describing the relationship between lay Buddhists and their nun leaders, the thousand arms and thousand eyes of Guanyin suggest a community identity for Taiwanese nuns. For example, the nuns of the Foguangshan order refer to their yearly activity (mainly social education and public lectures) as "the work of the Thousand-Armed and Thousand-Eyed Guanyin." In this case, the cooperation of different arms and eyes unifies the scholar nuns, not the admiration of a majestic and marvelous Guanyin.

For the scholar nuns, busy with their missionary work, a set of almighty arms and eyes is necessary. In addition to the help they receive from laypersons, these nuns equip themselves with secular professional skills (mainly their college education). Both the ability to adjust to the modern world and the mutual support offered among these arms and eyes contribute to Taiwanese nuns’ self-identity.

It is not Zhengyan’s domestic image and the Great Compassion Water that have awakened Taiwanese society to the thousand-armed and thousand-eyed image of Guanyin, but the contemporary image of Buddhist nuns as women of ability, industry and esoteric knowledge. Whether in the crowded streets of Taipei and on small village roads in southern Taiwan, people are used to seeing nuns driving cars and using cellular phones. Nuns also give public lectures on radio, television, and at large public gatherings. Inside nunnery walls, many nuns are surfing the Internet and setting up complicated computing systems. Abroad, Taiwanese nuns are busy developing missionary sites in American Chinatowns and remote European castle towns. Today, Taiwanese nuns are active in conducting public discussions on religious affairs on television, publishing Buddhist books, exhibiting their art work, teaching various classes, administrating Taiwanese nuns now penetrate almost every corner of social life.

The Mother-Daughter Complex

When we consider the legend of Princess Miaoshan from a feminist perspective, relations between mother and daughter remain unsettlingly vague. As Steven Sangren points out, Miaoshan’s personal struggle is quintessentially that of the strong-minded daughter demanding recognition from her father, no easy task in Chinese patrilineal society. But this story involves more than one parent, and the anxiety and frustration of the daughter who struggles with an orthodox gender role could also disturb the relations between mother and daughter. In particular, the daughter’s resistance to marriage is a betrayal of the image of womanhood embodied by the mother. But important as this dynamic must be it remains wholly invisible in the phallocentric narrative of Princess Miaoshan.

While the transmission of religious experience and gender identity from mothers to daughters is commonly recognized, it has long been neglected in the study of Chinese religions. But in listening to the scholar nuns of modern Taiwan, I made a remarkable discovery in this neglected area of research: fathers and mothers often respond differently when their daughters enter a Buddhist order. It is more common for fathers than for mothers to react by feeling that they have lost face. Nuns often told me: "My angry father"--they sometimes spoke of brothers--"threatened to kill me if I insisted on having my head shaved."

As the head of the household and the agent of the patrilineal family line, fathers no doubt felt more pressure than did mothers to see the family perpetuate itself. By contrast, mothers tended to question their daughters’ religious commitment by suggesting that nuns led a carefree life. If the daughters insisted on taking the robe, fathers usually demanded certain guarantees from the monastic authorities--a frequent example was continuous support for their daughter’s education. Mothers minimized their own guilt by describing the life of the nun as ka-qinh, a Taiwanese word meaning "involving less labor and less worry."

The responses of different mothers to their daughters’ entrance into a Buddhist order diverge sharply, ranging from strongly advocating patriarchal gender expectations to aggressively pushing their daughters into the nunnery. In some cases years elapse before mothers can accept their daughter’s decisions. The concern most consistently voiced by mothers is whether their daughters can be happy as nuns. Many view the nunhood as an abnormal life of misery and an abandonment of conventional womanhood, but even if they see joining a monastic order as a practical means of escape from the misery of conventional marriage, all of these mothers struggle with the economic question of whether a well-educated daughter is giving up all chance of comfort by becoming a nun.

It turns out that most scholar nuns are from villages and small towns and most of them are the first women from their areas to receive a college education. While in college they are under great pressure from their parents to repay the efforts and sacrifices made to get them into college by performing well in their classes. In a patrilineal society such as Taiwan, the general rule is that only the son’s success matters for the ritual representation of the family line. Although economic growth has improved women’s educational rights, parents in villages tend to assign far more of their resources to sons rather than daughters. From the patrilineal perspective, this is quite logical since daughters will eventually marry out of the family line. Parents who do invest in the education of their daughters place very high expectations on them, ranging from supporting a household to marrying well so as to glorify the family.

But these educationally successful village girls find out soon enough that they are trapped by their limited social access and their gender. At college, usually in urban areas, these girls realize that better educational and professional training will permit them to break through the glass ceilings of family and career. Though in Taiwan women with professional careers achieve economic autonomy, there is rarely any question of equal payment for the same jobs men do. Neither can they expect to be exempt from trivial housework and most of the labor associated with raising children. There is, too, the work involved in making a decent marriage and maintaining it long enough to play the roles of wife and mother. But young women from rural areas face an additional burden: their families tended to delay their marriages in order to take the larger portion of their professional salaries.

A more serious problem has very often confronted these college girls: did they want to repeat their mothers’ experience? I was intrigued by the discovery that the mothers of most scholar nuns are not ordinary housewives: they are the main financial providers in the household and insist on providing their children with good educations. Their husbands are usually minor figures, sidelined by poor health and weak personalities. In order to play the combined role of father and mother, these women often shift responsibilities to their daughters. With duties ranging from trivial housework to farming, taking care of younger siblings and educating them, these village girls have the briefest of childhoods, and carry heavy emotional and mental burdens while their mothers labor in the rice fields and factories. The cooperation between hardworking mothers and their helpmate daughters is full of tension, as is the need these daughters felt to orient themselves to life as adult women.

Mothers usually play a critical role in their daughters’ socialization, particularly in exemplifying gender roles. This may help explain why scholar nuns were often unsatisfied with the options offered them in family life. Moreover, as the "useful" eldest daughters, many nuns identify themselves consciously or unconsciously as sons. However, a daughter would never qualify as a son in a patrilineal society such as Taiwan. The kind of recognition offered in the Miaoshan legend is an impossible ideal. But an alternative exists. By joining a Buddhist order that downplays gender difference through monastic celibacy Taiwanese daughters shake off their dilemma and exorcize their frustration.

Conclusion: The New Orientation of Gender Roles

The model provided by Princess Miaoshan has long affected the religious life of Taiwanese Buddhist women by persuading them that recognition in a patrilineal society is possible, but the younger generation of scholar nuns possesses a new set of social resources, such as higher education and a commitment to the modernization of Buddhism--they have put the image of Miaoshan to a new use. Even as young Taiwanese village women moved beyond the limited social and professional milieus of their mothers, their new role as surrogate parents increased the tension between them and their mothers. They were able to resolve all of the tensions in their lives by turning to modern Buddhist nunhood.

Unlike the ending of the Miaoshan legend, where the filial daughter is reunited with her father, Taiwanese nuns unite with their followers. Drawing on the miraculous healing power of Thousand-Eyed and Thousand-Armed Guanyin, these individuals release themselves from frustrating family ties and from the womanhood of their mothers. In addition, by enriching their healing power through modern expertise, they transform themselves and their followers into the almighty hands and eyes of Guanyin. They expand the path of Miaoshan and replace the recognition they once had from their patrilineal families with a broader social approval.

Along with the social changes of the last thirty years of the twentieth century have come anxieties. As Taiwanese women have struggled to make traditional gender roles work in an age of two-parent employment, anxiety has inspired many women’s search for recognition through the Buddhist order. The trick is that some Taiwanese women have chosen a very traditional way to protest an unchanging family structure. Scholar nuns are certainly religious figures, but the emphasis they place on the priesthood as an alternative route for recognition makes it very much like a secular career. If taking the robe initiates a woman’s career it also reflects a strong feminist consciousness, even though it is legitimized in the context of religious reform.