Dàojiē was the first great international monk of the modern period.
Biography
From Héngshān Township 衡山縣 in Hunan. As a youth he studied at a private academy and liked stories about divine transcendents 神仙. At age 14 he became a vegetarian. He took tonsure at age 19 under Zhēnjì 真際 at Zhìshèng Temple 智勝寺 in Héngyáng 衡陽. He was fully ordained the following year at Bàoēn Temple 報恩寺 in Lěihéng 耒衡. After ordination, he went into seclusion at Èrduān Temple 二端寺 on Mt. Shǎn 陝山 for three years to practice Chán. During this time he made the acquiantance of Jìchán 寄禪. In the following years, Dàojiē lectured on a variety of scriptures at a number of different temples. In 1901, he accepted an invitation from Jìchán to lecture at Tiāntóng Temple 天童寺 in Níngbō where Jìchán had recently become abbot. There, Dàojiē lectured on the Chéng wéishì lùn 成唯識論, Fǎhuá jīng 法華經, and Léngyán jīng 楞嚴經.
In 1907, Dàojiē became on of the first Chinese monks of the modern period to travel to Buddhist sites in South and Southeast Asia. He went to Malaysia, Indonesia, Burma, Thailand, Sri Lanka and India. In these places he gathered jade Buddha statues, relics, a Buddha tooth, and palm leaf manuscripts. When he returned to China, he became abbot of Hunan's Jīnqiánshān Temple 金錢山寺. While in Beijing requesting a copy of the Qianlong Buddhist Canon (Lóng zàng 龍藏) in 1909, he became a Dharma heir of Zhìguǒ 智果, the abbot of Beijing's Fǎyuán Temple 法源寺. When the Republic started, Jìchán asked him to participate in the short-lived Chinese General Buddhist Association 中國佛教總會. In 1915, he went back from Beijing to Hunan, where he served as the abbot of a number of different temples. He returned to be abbot of Fǎyuán in 1920. He held ordinations there in 1921, and one of disciple was Fǎfǎng 法舫.
In 1925, Dàojiē was on the delegation that attended the East Asian Buddhist Conference 東亞佛教大會 in Japan, along with Tàixū 太虛, Wáng Yìtíng 王一亭, and Hú Ruìlín 胡瑞霖. In Japan, he was named was Vice-chief of the conference. After the conference, Dàojiē toured various Buddhist sites in Japan and Taiwan before returning to the mainland.
During the chaos of the Northern Expedition [1], Dàojiē was forced to leave the country. In 1928 he went to Myanmar as a representative of the Chinese Buddhist Association 中華佛教會. After this he traveled to India again, where he visited the stūpa built by the Maha Bodhi Society [2] in Deer Park. Dàojiē made a vow to build a Chinese temple at that location, which eventually happened with the funds of Singaporean lay man Lǐ Jùnchéng 李俊承. Dàojiē died on March 15, 1934 in Malaysia. His relics are housed at Fǎyuán Temple n Beijing.
References:
Yú Língbō 于凌波, ed. Xiàndài fójiào rénwù cídiǎn 現代佛教人物辭典 (A Dictionary of Modern Buddhist Persons), 2 vols. (Taipei: Foguang, 2004), 2.1386b-1388a.