Subtle Erudition and Compassionate Devotion: Longlian, the ‘Most Outstanding Bhikṣuṇī’ in Modern China

Longlian 隆蓮 (1909-2006), the “first bhikṣuṇī of the modern era”, was a renowned Buddhist scholar, a skilful calligrapher, a talented poet. Before taking her monastic vows, she was the first woman ever to pass the civil service examinations and to work for the Sichuan provincial government. She studied with some of the most important Buddhist masters and scholars of the modern era, including Fazun 法尊, Nenghai 能海, Sherap Gyatso and Wang Enyang 王恩洋. Since the early 1950s, she was the first woman to play an active role at leadership level in the Chinese Buddhist Association, and was President and Honorary President of the Buddhist Association of Sichuan. Her main achievements are the re-establishment of “dual ordination” procedures for bhikṣuṇīs ordination and founded the first seminary for the training of a new generation of learned nuns in the PRC. The main aim of this article is to understand whether Longlian can be considered a modern “saint” at all, given that she firmly rejected any form of spiritual devotion directed to her person. To date we lack a comprehensive, fully developed hagiographic account of her life; instead, we have a number of independent narratives, which do not really contradict each other but tend to emphasize different aspects and elements, thus resulting in rather dissimilar portraits. The diverse character of the existing sources about Longlian mirror the multifaceted nature of the cult that has developed around her.