Pǔcháng 溥常 (b. 1866)
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Pǔcháng 溥常 (b. 1866) a lecturer and teacher active in the Jiāngnán 江南 region in the 1910s and 1930s.
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As a youth, Pǔcháng attended a traditional Confucian academy. At the age of 15 suì 歲, Pǔcháng lost his sight. He made a number of vows before an image of Guānyīn, including the vow to remain a vegetarian for the rest of his life, and his sight later returned. Pǔcháng's father, an officer, died in a French attack on Jīlóng 基隆, Táiwān 台灣 in 1884. In 1886, Pǔcháng himself joined the military.
Pǔcháng was tonsured in 1891 at Qìngchéng Temple 慶城寺 by Guǎngquán 廣權, and he received full ordination the following year at Yǒngquán Temple 湧泉寺 on Mt. Gǔ 鼓山. In 1902, while traveling to many of the famous Buddhist sites of China, Pǔcháng met Chan Master Fǎrěn 法忍. His peregrinations ended in 1904 when he took a position at Pílú Temple 毗盧寺 in Nánjīng 南京. Two years later, he and Yùexiá 月霞 edited Fǎrěn's lectures on the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra into Léngqié bǐjì 楞伽筆記.
During the first decade of the 20th century, Pǔcháng lectured widely. Notably, he taught the Śūraṅgama Sūtra at the Universal Saṇgha Study Hall 普通僧學堂 in the late 1910s. He also lectured on the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra in Tōkyō. (He returned to Japan in 1924 as part of a Chinese delegation that went to there to teach Buddhism and offer relief in the wake of the devastating 1923 Kantō Earthquake.)
In 1912 he traveled to Kūnmíng 昆明 with Master Xūyún 虛雲 to help with ordinations and in the establishment of branches of a Buddhist organization. He stayed in southwest China for seven years.
In 1919 Pǔcháng returned to the East coast, where he settled at Qītǎ Temple 七塔寺 in Níngbō 寧波 for a period of intensive practice. This temple became his home base, and he eventually became abbot there in the mid 1930s. prior to becoming abbot, he established the Bào'ēn Buddhist Seminary 報恩佛學院 there in 1928. For three years he lectured on the Huáyán Sūtra in the seminary, and these lectures were later collected and published as Huáyán jīng qiǎnshuō 華嚴經淺說. In 1933 Pǔcháng oversaw the ordination of over 600 monastics at his temple. He also contributed a number of articles to to only issue of his seminary's periodical, Qītǎ Bào'ēn Fóxuéyuàn yuànkān 七塔報恩佛學院院刊, which was published in October 1936. There is currently no other information available about his life after this date.