Suffering and Liberation Through the Body in Pain: Strategies of Resilience Among Taiwan's Buddhist Nuns

Buddhist monastics across Asia have long been held in esteem by their community of lay adherents, are frequently the recipient of material support as "fields of merit", and are given an elevated social status as advanced spiritual practitioners and clergy who perform important rituals. This paper looks at ways in which Buddhist monastics affirm that difference through their attitude toward the physical body. Are Buddhist monastics made different through their practices of ignoring the body, and how is that manifested in their responses to physical pain? As a lens through which religious transformation can be understood, pain can lead to both suffering and liberation, functioning as both an obstacle and a teacher along the spiritual path. My ethnographic research focuses on the Xiangguang or "Luminary" bhikshunis in southern Taiwan and their strategies of resilience, exploring what it tells us about Buddhist understandings of transcendence and the purpose of monastic life.