Kathryn Ann Tsai
A millennium and a half ago some remarkable women cast aside the concerns of the world to devote their lives to Buddhism. Lives of the Nuns, a translation of the Pi-ch’iu-ni chuan, was compiled by Shih Pao-ch’and in or about A.D. 516 and covers exactly that period when Buddhist monasticism for women was first being established in china. Originally written to demonstrate the efficacy of Buddhist scripture in the lives of female monastic, the sixty-five ...