Living in the Mountains: The Hengshan Poems of Woman Chan Master Jizong Xingche

Stanford University will host Beata Grant to give a talk on the poetry of Jizong Xingche.

Beata Grant
Professor of Chinese Language and Literature, Religious Studies and Women and Gender Studies and Director of Religious Studies Program, Washington University in St. Louis

"Living in the Mountains" ("Shanju") is a recurrent theme in poetry composed by buddhist monastics from the Tang dynasty onwards. Many such poems are composed in sequences of eight or more verses, in which the poet explores the varied scenes and changing moods of the mountain landscape, relating them in some way to his or her own inner spiritual landscape. This talk will focus on the "shanju" poetry of the woman Chan master Jizong Xingche (b. 1606), whose personal connection with the crags and crannies of Hengshan (Hunan province) informs her poems with a striking, if not obviously gendered, immediacy.