Rusha Jin

Thesis title: Zhanran's Citations in the Zhiguan fuxing chuanhongjue 止觀輔行傳弘決

Background

Rusha received her MA at Remin University of China in July 2020 and began her PhD research at the University of Edinburgh in September. Her MA thesis focuses on Zhanran's "Adamantine Scalpel" 金剛錍 (T1932), exploring the idea of the "insentient beings' Buddha nature" 無情有性. Her PhD thesis builds upon her previous work and examines another of Zhanran's works, the "Zhiguan Fixing Chuanhongjue" 止觀輔行傳弘決 (1912). She explores its usage of citations and relates the features of these citations to a broader background concerning the intellectual history and the construction of genealogy through textual re-use.

Qualifications

MA (2020, Remin University of China, China)

BA (2017, Shaanxi University, China)

Responsibilities & affiliations

Research Assistance of Edinburgh Buddhist Studies Network

Member of East Asian Buddhism Institute (EABI, 东亚佛教研究中心), Minzu University of China

Research summary

Her study interest is Chinese Buddhism in the 8th century, namely in the Tang Dynasty. Her study focuses on a commentary created by a Chinese monk called Zhanran, whose works on Tiantai Buddhism greatly influenced Chinese Buddhism and later Japanese Buddhism when introduced to Japan. Rusha Jin is thinking about how to connect textual research to more familiar aspects that would be of interest to a wider audience. Her study on the citations of the commentary examines the intellectual networks of the time and also explores the citation tradition and takes it as a case in the long history of textual re-use, in contrast to the way we cite now.