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To: PROLIFE who wrote (268193)	6/28/2002 11:07:59 PM
From: gao seng	Respond to of 769670

Yeah, right. You noticed my profound disappointment? Lol! Have I ever said what a gao seng is? I think there is tremendous wisdom form these "eminent" monks: The Wine-drinking Meat-eating Monks of Medieval Chinese Hagiography John Henry Kieschnick, Stanford University Compiled by prominent scholar monks, the three great collections of medieval Chinese Buddhist hagiography known collectively as "Biographies of Eminent Monks" (gao seng zhuan) can be read in part as an attempt to present the literate public with a positive image of the monk. In general, the monks in these accounts conform to conventional notions of what a monk should be. Many are selfless ascetics, dedicated to lives of self cultivation, or to proselytizing. They keep to a strict vegetarian diet, eschew wine, women, comfortable clothing, and so on. But curiously, mixed in with these biographies of humble ascetics we occasionally find accounts of monks who are just the opposite. They openly eat meat, fall down drunk in the middle of town, associate with wayward nuns, and curse their detractors with foul language. These monks are not condemned in the "Biographies"; they are apparently considered just as admirable as their more conventional counterparts. This paper attempts to explain where these figures came from, and what they are doing in what are supposed to be collections of "eminent" monks.