"What is Mo-shan (lit., summit mountain)?" Liao-jan said, "Its peak is not exposed." Chih-hsien said, "What is the occupant of Mo-shan like?" Liao-jan replied, "(S)he has neither male nor female form (hsiang.)" Chih-hsien shouted,

"Why doesn't she transform herself?" Liao-jan replied, "She is not a spirit, nor a ghost. What would you have her become?"

Chih-hsien at this could only submit. He became a gardener at the nunnery, where he stayed for three years.15

Later after Chih-hsien became a Ch'an master, he acknowledged Liao-jan's instruction to his disciples. He said, "When I was at Lin-chi's place I got half a ladle, and when I was at Mo-shan's place I got another half-ladle. Obtaining the full ladle that has enabled me to satisfy my hunger until today."16

The encounter of Mo-shan and Chih-hsien is very significant in that firstly, a Ch'an monk was, in his pursuit of enlightenment, was willing to break the tradition against a monk's learning from or bowing to a nun. Secondly, after obtaining enlightening instruction, he publically gave her credit, and lastly, the Ch'an School as a whole was willing to acknowledge the spiritual superiority of the nun by documenting this event.17

According to the tradition, the Buddha set eight rules as pre-conditions before he admitted women to the Sangha. These rules put the Bhiksuni Sangha in a subservant position to Bhiksu Sangha. Five of the rules specify that the bhiksunis should get instruction or certification from bhiksus on such matters as the Vassa, Uposatha ceremony, Upasampada initiation and so forth. Nowhere in the Buddhist scriptures does it indicate that a bhiksu should request instruction from a bhiksuni. The monk's bowing to a nun was unacceptable in Buddhist tradition. Thus, what Chih-hsien did represented a radical breaking away from male-dominant mentality.

However, one can still sense the attachment to the hsiang between male and female from the conversation between Liao-jan and Chih-hsien. Liao-jan's anwser of "its peak is not exposed" to Chih-hsien's question of "what is Mo-shan?" implies the invisibility or transcendence of hsiang. Yet Chih-hsien did not get the message. So he asked what the occupant of Mo-shan (lit. summit mountain) was like. In reply Miao-jan spelled out clearly that she (Mo-shan) had neither male nor female form. Still Chih-hsien was not satisfied with the answer and therefore pushed her further by asking her to transform herself. The implication was that to prove her realization, she should transform herself into a male before she could get enlightened as the Dragon Girl did. Liao-jan flatly rejected the idea. It is not known whether she had the supernatural powers to perform a sex transformation. But this is not the point. Her refusal to even accept the idea of the transformation indicates that she had already comprehended the irrelevance of gender to the realization of Buddhahood.

Another significant point that Liao-jan made in the encounter was that she had no interest in supernatural powers, because it had nothing to do with enlightenment. It is true that Buddhism teaches that after a practitioner achieves a certain degree of realization, spiritual power develops. An Arhat is said to possess six supernatural powers ( `sadabhijna` ): l. the ability to see anything anywhere, 2. the ability to hear any sound anywhere, 3. the ability to know the things in all other minds, 4. the knowledge of all former existences of self and others, 5. the power to be anywhere or do anything at will, and 6. the supernatural consciousness of the waning of vicious propensities.18 Even so, Liao-jan understood that it is through enlightenment that supernatural powers are manifested, rather than that supernatural powers enhance enlightenment. Furthermore, supernatural powers are not attainable exclusively by Buddhists. It is possible for anyone who has deep religious and spiritual cultivation to develop some kind of super-normal powers. In some cases even non-human beings, such as gods, spirits or ghosts, have supernatural powers that ordinary human beings do not have. This is why she insisted that she was neither a spirit nor a ghost.

As mentioned above, the status of women culminates in the triumphant appearance of Srimala in the `Srimala-Sutra` and the Goddess in the `Vimalakir-nirdesa Sutra`. `Srimala`, an advanced female Bodhisattva, not only is the leading character in a Buddhist sutra, but actually teaches the very important doctrine of `Tathagatagarbha` thought, which happens to advocate the existence of universal Buddhahood. The Goddess, a symobolic figure, represents a liberal "feminist" who boldly teaches the doctrine of `sunyata` to `Sariputra` , a representative of the conservative traditon. It emphasizes that all conventional distinctions-maleness versus femaleness, good versus evil, `samsara` versus nirvana and so forth--are simply illusory. Liao-jan, although he lived in a male-dominated Chinese society, had fully comprehended the Buddhist teaching of `sunyata` and the unconventional spirit of Ch'an. She truly demonstrated that she had the same calibre, vision and insight as `Srimala` and the Goddess.