An engaging introduction to the fascinating Xiangguang (Incense Light) community of Taiwanese Buddhist nuns, Chün-fang Yü’s Passing the Light incorporates historical and ethnographic research, yet is unencumbered by either the former's frequent footnotes or the latter's reflexivity and theory. Even someone desiring more explicit analysis will recognize the valuable window this book provides onto an interesting community of highly educated female renunciants, its inspiring leader, and its unique history.
Yü begins by tracing the tradition of contemporary Taiwanese Buddhism to mainland China. Using the lives of historical Chinese nuns as points of comparison and reference, she asks how Taiwanese nuns, such as those of Xiangguang, maintain or remake the traditions they inherit, and why nuns' orders are growing in Taiwan. Other chapters describe the founding of the Xiangguang organization, its leaders and other prominent nuns within the group, the promotion of Buddhism by college Buddhist studies societies, Xiangguang's seminary, and its curriculum for adult laypeople. Several of these chapters include pages of lengthy translations of materials used by Xiangguang adherents, such as lists of community regulations (pp. 86–90) and translated curricula (pp. 117–20).
Yü's spare use of references in her historical sections sometimes leaves the reader wanting more information. However, much of this history has already been well covered by other scholars, and Yü uses it primarily as background from which to raise questions of continuity and change. In addition to her fascinating discussion of lay leaders' roles in promoting collegiate Buddhist studies groups, it is her description of Xiangguang, and its remarkable leader, Ven. Wuyin, that is Yü's major contribution.
Yü's biographical chapter on Wuyin depicts a capable and remarkably open-minded nun whose love of learning led her to emphasize education for both nuns and laypeople at Xiangguang. Yü provides a compelling description of a teenaged Wuyin standing outside a seminary window to listen to lectures not available to the lay public. This experience shaped her later decision to offer free Buddhist instruction to the public, modeled on the free language courses she took during a brief sojourn as a nun in Hawaii. Xiangguang's willingness to adapt its curriculum to reach the broadest possible audience is manifest in its use of modern and accessible examples in lectures, its development of curricula in both Mandarin and Taiwanese, and its provision of materials to illiterate elderly people that teach them reading and writing in addition to Buddhism. With engaging descriptions, Yü moves readers to admire not just Wuyin's personal history but also Xiangguang's methods of reaching wider audiences and teaching them effectively.
Although Yü wisely remarks that the nuns in her study may not be representative of the heterogeneous population of Buddhist nuns in Taiwan (the majority of which, she explains, live and work alongside monks), that caveat in no way diminishes the value of her project. Indeed, no one group could represent that large population, and it is the idiosyncrasies of the Xiangguang community, including the fact that it is an intentionally single-sex order, that are the most interesting. One example is the way in which Wuyin's collective leadership style resulted in Xiangguang's shifting to emphasize vipaśyanā meditation after a member of the community advocated it. That it portrays real heterogeneity and conflict within the group is also one of Passing the Light's major strengths.
Yü's rare reflexive turns, such as in the preface when she relays how she became interested in her research and how she became a Buddhist, suggest that the relationship between the scholar and her subject could also be productively explored. One wonders whether she considers Wuyin to be her own teacher—and whether Yü's compelling description of Wuyin's biography and teaching stems in part from her admiration for her subject—but without a discussion of her own personal feelings about Xiangguang and its leader, the reader does not know how to interpret this effect.
To answer her question of whether this is a community that is inventing its own tradition, Yü gives a qualified yes. She also suggests that Wuyin's extraordinarily hands-off management style and consequently unclear succession path may mean the tradition will not long outlive her. This analytical interpretation is one of few Yü provides, as she generally errs on the side of description rather than analysis. Some of Yü's questions about continuity and change might have been addressed in conversation with recent social theory, and Nirmala Salgado's remarkable Buddhist Nuns and Gendered Practice (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013) suggests how such an analysis might have illuminated Yü's subordinate question about the relevance of feminism for the Xiangguang community. Nevertheless, Yü's own interestingly ambivalent answers are sufficiently thought-provoking that they do not suffer for this lack. Perhaps Yü has manifested Wuyin's own approach: rather than an esoteric, theory-laden analysis, she has provided the reader with accessible stories, including Wuyin's biography and those of Xiangguang's curriculum. That these are quite compelling—even inspiring—is unusual in an academic text. In some ways, this book is at its best when it comes closest to another genre, profiles of Taiwanese religious leaders distributed to promote their teachings.
