Building the Largest Female Buddhist Monastery in Contemporary China: Master Rurui between Continuity and Change

Résumé En

Born in 1957, Rurui 如瑞, the abbess of Pushou Monastery 普寿寺 on Mount Wutai, in Shanxi province, belongs to the generation of Buddhists that became monastics after the opening up of China in the 1980s and came to leadership afterwards. She has been building Pushou Monastery, and the Mount Wutai Buddhist Institute for Nuns (Zhongguo Wutaishan nizhong foxueyuan 中国五台山尼众佛学院) that it hosts, since 1991, as part of the institutionalised system, and negotiating with both the political authorities and the laity. As the leader of the largest institutions for Buddhist nuns in the contemporary People’s Republic of China (PRC), Rurui also has a responsibility specifically to nuns, within the Buddhist community at large. Drawing from ethnographic data, this paper will look into the model that she built, and from that model and her individual trajectory, inquir into how she legitimised her leadership and authority. More generally, this will be an opportunity to ask ourselves about how one asserts oneself as a female Buddhist leader in contemporary PRC.