Dr. Linjiao Zeng earned her Ph.D. degree this spring 2022 from the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Arizona. She is currently a lecturer in the Department of English of the College of Foreign Languages at Shandong University, China.
Her doctoral dissertation, titled “Regional Buddhism in Action: The Rise and Fall of Lingyan Monastery from the Eastern Jin Dynasty to the Tang Dynasty,” examines the history of Lingyan Monastery from the Eastern Jin Dynasty to the Tang Dynasty in an attempt to sketch out its rise and fall on the basis of the existing gazetteers and Jinshi zhi. Lingyan Monastery, located in Jinan, Shandong Province, was a Buddhist monastery with a history of about 1600 years. It was first established in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, experienced several ups and downs, and arrived at its heyday in the Tang Dynasty. However, the history of Lingyan Monastery was rarely described in the historical records before the Song Dynasty.
Her dissertation explores the causes counting for the rise and fall of this renowned monastery. As a local Buddhist monastery, the rise and fall of Lingyan monastery was not the result of a single reason but a combination of factors both on the state level and on the regional level. The study employs the newly developed approach of Regional Religious System to investigate how these various factors interacted with each other to shape and transform Lingyan Monastery. The rise and fall of Lingyan Monastery reflect the trend of Buddhist development in China in general on the one hand; on the other hand, it embodies distinctive regional features that have played important roles in the formation and transformation of Lingyan Monastery.