Time period
Zhidong (Zhitong) lived in China during the Song Dynasty (960–1279), a time of great prosperity in many areas. The economy flourished, trade was thriving, and overall wealth increased. The social and administrative structure expanded, leading to a large bureaucratic system. There were numerous advancements and inventions in science and technology. Culturally, this period saw many new developments. Festivals were organized, and various societies emerged for poetry, music, and art collecting.
mundane life
Zhidong is born into an educated, literate family and has one older brother. She receives a good education and grows up in a home filled with books. Her father is a government official and belongs to the upper class of the Song Dynasty. Her mother is also well-educated. Zhidong turns out to be an intelligent girl and loves studying. At one point, she even masters algebra—something her brother could not do.
However, she has little affinity for the lavish celebrations and the glittering lifestyle typical of her social class. Her father arranges a highly suitable marriage candidate for her—the grandson of the prime minister. Zhidong marries, but finds the obligations of married life unbearable and asks her husband for a divorce. In that era, this would have been a source of great shame. However, her husband lets her go without officially divorcing her.
When Zhidong returns to her parents’ home, she asks for permission to be ordained as a nun. Her father refuses. According to tradition, she is expected to care for her parents. Additionally, her father is likely concerned about his daughter’s well-being in a Buddhist temple. Corruption and instability are increasing within the bloated bureaucracy, making governance more difficult. Many blame the Buddhists for these problems.
Buddhist practice
Despite this, Zhidong’s desire for practice and study remain strong, so she seeks alternative paths. Amid her domestic responsibilities and daily tasks, she visits various Zen masters and receives the Buddhist name Kongshi Daoren. During this period in China, many people who wish to enter monasteries are unable to do so due to their obligations. Instead, they practice within their everyday lives and follow the basic Buddhist precepts. These individuals were called Daoren, people of the Way. For Kongshi, this is the only way to pursue her spiritual aspirations within the constraints of her circumstances.
In addition to caring for her parents, she studies, meditates, dresses modestly, and lives a simple life. As a guiding principle for her meditation, she follows the Contemplation of the Dharmadhatu by Dushun, the first patriarch of the Huayan school:
One includes all and enters all,
All includes one and enters one
One includes one and enters one;
All includes all and enters all.
They interpenetrate one another
without the slightest obstruction.
[Dushun (557–640), Patriarch of the Huayan School, a
Mahayana tradition based on the Avatamsaka Sutra.]
Kongshi comes to a profound realization: nothing exists in isolation—everything is part of the whole. Each thing contributes to and shapes the whole. Nothing is more or less important than anything else because everything is interconnected. Every single thing influences and permeates all the other parts. At the same time, each part functions perfectly in its own way.
At some point, both of her parents pass away, and Kongshi is no longer bound by the duty to care for them. She asks her brother for permission to be ordained, but he, too, refuses. Tradition dictates that she must now care for him. It must have been hard for her to accept, as she had a deep longing. Once again, she couldn’t do what she so desperately wanted. This is her real, living practice: daily existence arises from everything else, and the self is not the one in control. This situation is the result of countless events.
For Kongshi, this is realization and actualization—rejecting nothing, not even the difficult emotions of pain, disappointment, frustration, or resistance. It is about acknowledging that this is her situation, her life. Only from embracing the entire situation can the right action emerge.
“A single form encompasses the multitude of dharmas”
Her brother is moving to Nanjing for his work, and Kongshi is going with him. The flourishing era of the Song Dynasty reveals itself in full splendor in Nanjing—a vibrant, modern city focused on material wealth and worldly pleasures. There are festivals, acrobats, rare delicacies, exotic animals, shops selling jewelry and ivory, porters, merchants, and constant activity. But there is also drunkenness, beggars, prostitutes, violence, and theft. Kongshi witnesses the full spectrum of life, including attachment, suffering, sickness, and death.
freedom
In 1111, at the age of 61, her brother passes away, leaving her a significant sum of money. Kongshi is free. For a long time, entering a monastery and turning away from worldly life had been important to her. Over the years, however, she has come to realize that liberation is not found in wearing monastic robes but in clarifying the mind, in being awake, and expressing that presence in daily life. There was no right place, and no wrong place. There is just this-here.
Kongshi chooses not to enter a monastery but frequently visits the Linji Zen teacher Sixin Wuxin. They exchange many poems. One day, the final veil falls away for Kongshi. She sees the ever-influencing field of forms, events, emotions—her desires, the passing of her parents, her brother’s opinions, the blooming trees, insects, the dead in Nanjing, the migrating geese overhead. Everything, and at the same time, nothing. A moment, a dream, a reflection. She sees how her many limited perspectives have each illuminated only one side of reality. Seeing only this side of the moon, never the other, is simply the way things were. Just as all things pass, yet at the same time, remain precisely as they are—essential, eternal, joyful, pure.
She goes to Sixin and says, “I make the universe. I unmake the universe.” She expresses her realization in a poem:
Subject and object from the start are no different,
The myriad things nothing but images in the mirror.
Bright and refulgent, transcending both guest and host,
Complete and realized, all is permeated by the absolute.
A single form encompasses the multitude of dharmas,
All of which are interconnected within the net of Indra.
Layer after layer there is no point at which it all ends,
Whether in motion or still, all is fully interpenetrating.
Sixin confirms her awakening and, as is customary after transmission, soon sends her away. It is said that their parting was as light as a whisper, as if nothing had happened at all.
self-employed
Kongshi goes her own way. She does not become a Zen master in a monastery, does not gather students, and does not give formal Dharma teachings. Instead, near a monastery, she opens a public bathhouse. Inside, she displays images of Lingzhao Pang—an awakened woman from the 8th century who, like Kongshi, lived an ordinary life—and her father, layman Pang. On the bathhouse door, she hangs a poem of her own, which begins:
Nothing exists, not even dirt, so why are you bathing?
Even a speck of dust—where would it come from?
If you say one sentence worth hearing, you may enter the bath.
The ancient teachers can only scrub your back,
How can I clarify your mind?
If you want to be free from dust,
You should first make such an effort
that your whole body sweats.
It is said that water can washes off dirt,
But do you understand that water itself is also dirty?
Even if you see no difference between the water and the dirt,
It all must be washed completely away when you enter here.
Running a bathhouse becomes the living expression of her Dharma. Monks from the nearby monastery come, as do ordinary townspeople. Kongshi scrubs the tubs, heats the water, and expresses her insight whenever and with whomever it was appropriate.
Within the vast expanse of dust
essentially a single suchness,
Whether vertical or horizontal,
everything bears the seal of Vairochana.
Although the entire wave is made of water,
the wave is not the water;
Although all of the water may turn into waves,
the water is still itself.
Kongshi hands out soap and clean towels, washes the used ones in the evening, and neatly folds them once they are dry. No difference between folding a monastic robe at night and folding freshly laundered towels.
During her free hours, likely in the evenings, she writes a commentary titled The Record on Clarifying the Mind. She sends it to her old teacher, Sixin. He makes copies, and the book spreads throughout China. Esteemed Zen teachers add their own commentaries, as it is highly valued in its time. Unfortunately, the book is lost to history.
Few people likely understood that the elderly woman running the bathhouse was a great Zen master.
ordination
At the end of her life, at the age of 74, Kongshi closes the bathhouse and moves into a convent. There, she becomes a significant presence for lay people, nuns, and monks alike. It is said that many awakened in her presence. Near the very end, she chooses to be formally ordained. She receives the Buddhist name Weiju and wears her robes. It was merely a loose end that needed to be taken care of—nothing more. To Kongshi, the truth was clear: the essence does not lie in wearing a robe. Washing a monastic robe or a bath towel—what’s the difference?
Bronnen
- Women of the Way – Sallie Tisdale
- Daughters of Emptiness, Poems of Chinese Buddhist Nuns – Beata Grant, 2003
- Women and Gender in the Discourse Records of Seventeenth-Century Sichuanese Chan Masters Poshan Haiming and Tiebi Huiji – Beata Grant, 2015
- Commentary to the Hua-Yan Dharma-Realm Meditation – Sallie Behn King, 1975
- Song dynasty – Wikipedia
- Song dynasty Module – Asia for educators, Columbia University