The essay looks at the Buddhist Association of China (BAC), which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has promoted as an influential actor in Buddhist circles on the global stage, via one of its key instruments for influence in Chinese societies and abroad, the United Front Work Department (UFWD). This chapter argues that Buddhist actors who seek to shape the legal-political framework of their societies according to their values are facing increasing competition from a fellow influential Buddhist association that conveys the positions of its political mentor rather than shared religious values.

Gives a good history of the CCP’s relationship with Buddhism—from antagonism to co-option—and gives some thoughts about the relationship between Buddhism and the state across Asia.

[In Taiwan,] two Humanistic Buddhist groups have influenced the majority of Buddhists on the island to adopt important aspects of sustainable lifestyles. This multi-sited ethnographic study uses participant observation with formal and informal interviews to research these two groups—the Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation and Dharma Drum Mountain—in the two different social contexts of Taiwan and California.

A comparative analysis of the results finds that the believers’ adoption of pro-environmental lifestyle changes is strongly influenced by their membership in a strong moral community, by sensing the material and social, or “terrestrial,” strain of environmental degradation coupled with a feeling that the government and other official institutions are not doing enough, and by integrated religious teachings, which include theory and praxis, from authoritative figures who model the desired behaviors. Moreover, this study shows the power of the sacred to inspire behavioral change, which, in the context of Buddhism, is cultivation of the bodhisattva ethic

[Children in these picture books] have qualities that differ from what mature adults have, but they are valuable none-the-less. And actually, in the case of 一休 (Ikkyū) especially, he is often shown as being wiser in a certain way or at least more clever than the adults. [… They show that] naughty or mischievous behavior isn’t necessarily an endpoint, and that change and growth are possible. [… So,] you can think about how these stories work for both children and for the adult caregivers who might be reading them.

This dissertation looks at the political behavior of three Taiwanese Buddhist organizations from 1989 to 1997: the Buddhist Association of the Republic of China (BAROC), the Buddha Light Mountain monastic order (or Foguangshan) and the Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Association (or Ciji). It concentrates on trying to understand the rationale behind the different strategies that each of them has adopted in its interaction with the government.

The BAROC has adopted a strategy of lobbying in an attempt to remedy the steady decline of its status throughout the 1990s: it has tried to sway the government to adopt a law that would restore the authority over Buddhists the association held before 1989. Foguangshan has resorted to a strategy of remonstrance to advance its religious ideals between 1995 and 1997: its founder Xingyun supported the bid of his lay disciple Chen Lii’an for the presidency of the Republic of China (ROC) and launched large public demonstrations critical of the government that followed that election. During the same period of time, Ciji has steered away from the controversies over the law on religion and conspicuously avoided supporting Chen, while continuing to grow to become the largest organization of its kind in Taiwan.

Born in 1957, Rurui 如瑞, the abbess of Pushou Monastery 普寿寺 on Mount Wutai, in Shanxi province, belongs to the generation of Buddhists that became monastics after the opening up of China in the 1980s and came to leadership afterwards. She has been building Pushou Monastery, and the Mount Wutai Buddhist Institute for Nuns (中国五台山尼众佛学院) that it hosts, since 1991, as part of the institutionalised system, and negotiating with both the political authorities and the laity.

The founder of Fo Guang Shan is one of the most influential Buddhist monks in Taiwan and around the world. This study examines the biographies of Hsing Yun as depicted in Fo Guang Shan’s popular media to elucidate the uses and significance of Buddhist hagiography in contemporary Taiwan. I argue that unlike the Buddhist hagiographies of earlier times in which eminent monks were depicted as transcendental beings with superhuman powers and spiritual attainments, the informal and intimate portrayals of Hsing Yun in popular media seek to portray the monk as a worldling bodhisattva

Founded in Taiwan in 1989, the Modern Chan Society was a community of lay Buddhists that challenged monks’ religious privileges and put forward the idea of equality between monks and lay believers. It asserted an independent authority from that of the monasteries in managing “salvation goods” and accordingly recruited its own clergy.

In tracing the history of the Modern Chan Society, this article assesses modern Chinese Buddhism: the role of the prophet in symbolic power, the conditions governing the emergence of a prophet, the legitimisation of religious reforms in modern practice and the paradox of institutionalisation.

This study examines the early career of the renowned Buddhologist Lü Cheng as an aspiring revolutionary. My findings reveal that Lü’s rhetoric of “aesthetic revolution” both catapulted him into the center of the New Culture Movement and popularized a Buddhist idealism—Yogācāra—among thinkers who sought alternative social theories.

Buddhist soteriology supplied powerful tools for theorizing the social: The doctrine of no-self refuted philosophical solipsism and curtailed individualism; dependent-origination refashioned social evolution as collective spiritual progress.

This article examines how modern Chinese Buddhism has been influenced by Christianity. For our purposes ‘modern Chinese Buddhism’ refers to a form of what has become known in the West as ‘Engaged Buddhism’, but in Chinese is known by titles which can be translated ‘Humanistic Buddhism’ or ‘Buddhism for Human Life’.

We differentiate between conscious imitation and analogous development due to similar social circumstances, and show how Protestant Christianity and Roman Catholicism have had different effects. In Part four, we examine Fo Guang Shan as a missionary religion.

The underlying idea of improving and extending through time (xiū 修) linked renovations and rituals. Managers viewed both as ways to renew the temple community, to protect temple buildings, and to pass liturgical and craft knowledge to future generations.

At all those locations stood former temples/shrines that gods and ghosts used to occupy but were demolished to make way for urban infrastructure. Despite repeated banning and purging of deities and temples, worshippers burn incense and paper money, make offerings, and become possessed in those places. The gods’ agency seems to be exercised even after their temples and bodies are destroyed.

In Kunming, meat has long been a sign of prosperity and status. Its accessibility marked the successes of the economic reforms. Yet Kunmingers were increasingly concerned about excessive meat consumption and about the safety and quality of the meat supply. Buddhist vegetarian restaurants provided spaces where people could share meat-free meals and discuss and develop their concerns about meat-eating.

While similar to and influenced by secular, Western vegetarianisms, the central role of Buddhism was reflected in discourses on karmic retribution for taking life and in a non-confrontational approach that sought to accommodate these discourses with the importance of meat in Chinese social life. Finally, the vegetarian restaurants spoke to middle-class projects of self-cultivation, and by doing so potentially challenged associations between meat-eating and social status.

Mutually they devour each other’s flesh,
Locked in an endless chain of combat…

A series of poems, quotes, and stories encouraging vegetarianism and a compassionate stance towards animals.

How do we understand the evolution of a prominent figure or any kind of deity like this over long stretches of time, especially when they have many, many iterations?

One of the early functions of the talisman was for a ruler to authorize the conduct and scope of authority of a general (e.g., how many troops he could command). The military context of talismans later found a corollary in the spiritual realm and permitted their possessor to summon and control a variety of deities that could be drawn on in battles with spirits.

When it came to such significant acts, such as warding off disease demons and protecting or extending one’s life, Buddhist and Daoists were occupied with the same types of concerns and employed a similar arsenal of powerful techniques that drew on the powers embedded in esoteric talismans.

For many Chinese speakers in China and elsewhere, experiencing or connecting with matters of religion often includes mediation through or with material objects. Such mediation is readily accessible to larger and larger audiences and often occurs through the consumption of religious material goods, thanks also to media technologies and the Internet. In this article, the author seeks to complicate the notion that the production and consumption of novel Buddhist religious goods can be analyzed solely in terms of ‘market theory.’ While on the one hand the author shows that Buddhist technologies of salvation are historically associated with materiality, she also contends that the ‘aura’ of Buddhist-inspired modern religious goods is not so much effaced as it is reconfigured and transformed by technological mediations.

Ethnobotanical surveys were conducted in six provinces of China to investigate and document Bodhi bead plants.

Forty-seven species in 19 families and 39 genera represented 52 types of Bodhi beads that were collected. The most popular Bodhi bead plants have a long history and religious significance. Most Bodhi bead plants can be used as medicine or food, and their seeds or fruits are the main elements in these uses.

… the average sound levels at the four temples over the course of an entire day were between 47.0 and 52.7 dBA, and approximately 70% of those surveyed tended to evaluate the temples’ soundscapes as comfortable and harmonious. When the sound level of a temple was higher than 60 dBA, respondents were more likely to feel uncomfortable

An upsurge in Taiwan-based Mazu temple buildings has been observed in China recently. This paper applies qualitative research methods, including participatory observation and semi-structured interviews, to explore the development of Mazu temples in Tianjin, Kunshan, and Xiamen, China in terms of cross-regional connectivity, materiality, and cross-regional locality, to explore the process of transplantation and construction in the mainland. This paper finds that Mazu culture is a reproduction of the vision of “one race one culture” in the cultural space, and this spatial reproduction is realized through cross-strait religious and cultural exchanges.

… the Buddhist nuns’ revival movement fit into the broader women’s liberation discourse and the national modernization project

Fulfill One’s Duties and be Responsible

A basic introduction to Chinese Mahayana Buddhism.

What is the “otherwise” of modernism in Mongolia and Inner-Asia?

A sketch of the life and works of Zawa Damdin: a prolific, Mongolian historian who lived through—and theorized—the destruction of his tradition.

Like an object circling the sun, the visitor senses she is within the gravitational pull of a powerful entity.

An analysis of the Fo Guang Shan Buddha Museum’s immense Buddha statue and its rich dàochǎng 道場: a bodhimaṇḍala for the (postmodern) human realm.

Even the most bizarre propaganda claims [about Tibet] are accepted by Hans [without] any apparent qualms about them. But on the part of Tibetans, the messages are completely counter-productive. The more the propaganda is imposed on them, the more resolute they become in their rejection of that propaganda.

No explanation has ever been offered or demanded for the admiration the Chinese have had for hermits. Hermits were simply there: beyond city walls, in the mountains, lone columns of smoke after a snowfall. As far back as records go, there were always hermits in China.

A beautifully written introduction to the (living!) tradition of Chinese eremitism: from its pre-Daoist roots to contemporary Chungnan Shan.

Buddhists pray to the Laughing Buddha requesting for healthy living, good luck, wealth and prosperity; and the Laughing Buddha, as a symbol of motivation, inspires them.

A brief word on the ubiquitous “Laughing Buddha” statues which adorn Chinese establishments the world over.

Just as a river is geographically conditioned to flow in a certain direction, [compassionate] efforts are predetermined to move toward success (as sentient beings are endowed with Buddha nature). But just as a river will never dry up, their project will never end.

A lengthy summary of Tan Sitong’s 仁學 (Rénxué), which outlined his eclectic Buddhist defense of non-discriminating compassion’s agency in the unfolding of history, this paper shows how one Chinese philosopher grappled with the challenges of modernity emerging at his time and how his themes continue in the work of Buddhists such as Thich Nhat Hanh.

… the problem with tourism as it manifested itself in places like Kumbum was that it was the kind of tourism which might actually give monasteries a very bad reputation, rather than being something productive

… neither of those positions equipped anyone to address concrete social, political, or any other kind of human problem

Regardless of the historical reality, we could at least observe, on the textual level, that qíufǎ (求法 = the search of Dharma) represents the main objective for [these early] Chinese pilgrims.

One day these novices come up to me after class and they say, “Mr. Tom, can we talk to you about something?” I say, “Of course” expecting some rich conversation about the religious life or something… and they start breaking out into two or three part harmony

A brief interview about the extensive network of monastic schools in Southeast Asia and the ethnic minorities who leverage them for mobility.

I have seen much death in my lifetime–war, famine, disease. I am at the end of my life now. One day soon I will die. The lesson of the flood is still with me. I know that there is no use worrying about death. The important thing is to live fully until the moment when it comes.

A modern Zen master tells his story of hardship and diaspora, showing how Buddhism moved from China to Taiwan and, eventually, the West.

For the 2020 documentary, see Master Sheng Yen (Film).