The Center for Buddhist Studies and the Department of East Asian Studies are pleased to announce that Ziling Wan is a recipient of the 2024–2025 Khyentse Foundation Doctoral Fellowship. In addition to this honor, she has also received three other major external awards for her dissertation, entitled “Writing Miracle Tales in Early Modern China: Chan Master Huishan Jiexian’s (1610–1672) Representation of the Supernatural World”:
1. Khyentse Foundation PhD Scholarship (2025)
2. Young Scholar Award / Scholarship for Doctoral Dissertation Research in Chinese Studies from China Times Cultural Foundation (2024–2025)
3. Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation Dissertation Fellowship for ROC Students Abroad (2024–2025)
Ziling Wan (Ch. 萬子菱) is a PhD candidate in East Asian Studies at the University of Arizona. Her dissertation examines the tension between iconoclasm and supernaturalism, addressing the question of why a Chan master produced a vast collection of Buddhist miracle stories during the early modern period, a phenomenon without precedent in the history of religious literature. The primary source is a rarely examined collection, entitled Record of Present-Life Karmic Retribution (Xianguo suilu 現果隨錄, abbreviated as Miracle Record), written by Huishan Jiexian 晦山戒顯 (1610-1672). While medieval Chan monks were often associated with iconoclasm and antinomianism, rejecting formalized practice and discouraging supernatural pursuits as irrelevant to enlightenment, Jiexian’s Miracle Record preserves numerous accounts of supernatural phenomena and ritual activity. Although medieval Chan accommodated the miraculous, as seen in lamp records emphasizing monastic superpowers, the Miracle Record signals a notable shift: from Chan monks’ superpowers to a heightened emphasis on karma’s miraculous effects. It reveals the continuity between medieval and early modern Chan, challenging assumptions shaped by the lens of modern Rinzai Zen orthodoxy.
The project employs a multidisciplinary approach that brings together the socio-historical method with regional perspectives, religious studies with comparative approaches, and digital humanities with Geographical Information Systems (GIS). To understand the underlying causes behind a Chan master’s extensive documentation of supernatural events blended with popular religion, the study closely examines the diverse religiosity and space presented in the stories, exploring the complex dynamics among Jiexian, his narrative community, and the regional religious culture. This dissertation contends that the Miracle Record tales were molded by a rich texture of popular religion in the Jiangnan region that nourished and crafted Jiexian’s ideology and miracle writings, leading to the formation of narrative communities in which these remarkable tales circulated and a collective consciousness of supernatural intervention was omnipresent. Hypothetically, the Miracle Record also represents a Chan master’s innovation in religious propagation, as well as a responsive action by a monastic to the challenges of both domestic and international religious competitors in early modern China.
See more about Ziling Wan at her E-Portfolio: zilingwan.com