Chinese Buddhism Today; Conservatism, Modernism, Syncretism and Enjoying Life on the Buddha’s Light Mountain; Yao; Gombrich

Yu-Shuang Yao [+–]

Fo Guang University, Taiwan

Yu-Shuang Yao completed her PhD in Sociology of Religion at the University of London in 2001. She is a Professor at Fo Guang University, Taiwan, specializing in contemporary religions of Taiwan.

Richard Gombrich [+–]

University of Oxford / Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies

Richard Gombrich is founder and President of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies. Before his retirement in 2004, he held the Boden Chair of Sanskrit at Oxford University and a Professorial Fellowship at Balliol College for 28 years. He supervised nearly 50 theses on Buddhist topics, and is the author of 200 publications. He continues to lecture and teach at universities round the world.

Fo Guang Shan, “Buddha’s Light Mountain”, is a Buddhist movement founded in Taiwan in 1967 and led by the Ven Hsing Yun (b.1927), who had fled to Taiwan from mainland China in 1949. It stands in the Chinese tradition of Mahāyāna Buddhism and more specifically is a form of Buddhism which in English is usually referred to as “Humanistic Buddhism” or as “engaged Buddhism”. Humanistic Buddhism owes its origin to the Chinese monk Tai Xu (1890-1947). He found the Buddhism which surrounded him in China dreary and moribund, preoccupied with rituals for the dead, and offering nothing to help or guide people living in the world outside monasteries. His determination to reverse this decay centred on the idea that it was the vocation of a Mahayana Buddhist to do good to others, finding their own spiritual benefit in benefitting society.

Hsing Yun has been a devoted disciple of Tai Xu. It is telling that he founded a seminary before he founded a monastery, and has laid huge emphasis on education. As the sub-title of this book indicates, in order to make Buddhism widely attractive and relevant he has incorporated every influence available. Gifted with a benign personality, he has turned his seemingly boundless energy and prodigious versatility to creating an institution which presents Buddhism as potentially a source for benefitting society through making life enjoyable. This book hopes to convey the movement’s ethos primarily by focusing on his views and activities.

Series: Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies Monographs

Foreword

Foreword [+–] ix-xi

Eileen Barker

London School of Economics

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Eileen Barker is Professor Emeritus of Sociology with Special Reference to the Study of Religion at the London School of Economics.

Prelims

List of Figures xiii

Yu-Shuang Yao,Richard Gombrich

Fo Guang University, Taiwan

Yu-Shuang Yao completed her PhD in Sociology of Religion at the University of London in 2001. She is a Professor at Fo Guang University, Taiwan, specializing in contemporary religions of Taiwan.

University of Oxford / Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies

Chapter 1

Preamble: Previous Work [+–] 1-11

Yu-Shuang Yao,Richard Gombrich

Fo Guang University, Taiwan

Yu-Shuang Yao completed her PhD in Sociology of Religion at the University of London in 2001. She is a Professor at Fo Guang University, Taiwan, specializing in contemporary religions of Taiwan.

University of Oxford / Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies

The authors explain their intentions in undertaking this project, which is to show how FGS is in the mainstream of Chinese Buddhism, while consciously also trying to bring that Buddhism up to date. The chapter summarizes previous work by the authors themselves as well as others who have published on this topic and provides a short history of the context in which Hsing Yun founded FGS. They introduce 2 features about Mahāyāna Buddhist teachings which are important to the study of FGS and which will be explored in later chapters — its internal variety, and its attention to the dead, particularly one’s ancestors.

Chapter 2

Introduction: Our Title [+–] 12-36

Yu-Shuang Yao,Richard Gombrich

Fo Guang University, Taiwan

Yu-Shuang Yao completed her PhD in Sociology of Religion at the University of London in 2001. She is a Professor at Fo Guang University, Taiwan, specializing in contemporary religions of Taiwan.

University of Oxford / Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies

The authors discuss the history of Buddhism in China, which they liken to “an unwieldy whole”, and suggest that throughout its life in China, Buddhism has been seen as one of three great ideologies with their own concomitant values, institutions and practices — the other two being Confucianism and Taoism. They argue that these three systems have influenced each other, developing both similarities and contrasts and also observe that new, consciously syncretistic, religions have also developed such as FSG and have been accepted, like the other three, as essentially ‘Chinese” . The chapter goes on to investigate a range of influences on FSG, such as Zen and Pure Land traditions, but draws attention to the pragmatic flavour of Hsing Yun’s Buddhism in which he combines transcendent optimism with the ambiguity inherent in a gnostic creed, “convincing devotees that they will deserve to live in a paradise, in either this or a future life” and how this attention to the here and now owes much to Tai Xu’s writings of the previous century and yet also speaks to the ascendency of American-style “material” culture and values in 1970s and 80s Taiwan following that country’s democratization. The authors draw attention to how this contrasts with traditional or mainstream Buddhism where the basic motivation for leaving home and joining the Saṅgha is supposed to be the wish to escape forever from this world, where life is permeated by suffering. They conclude by providing examples of how Hsing Yun contrives to preach modernism without sacrificing his allegiance to Chinese tradition: his syncretism often turns out to be a combination of the old and the new, merging ancient lineages and casting a net wide enough to attract even non-believers.

Chapter 3

Karma, Death and Ancestors [+–] 37-53

Yu-Shuang Yao,Richard Gombrich

Fo Guang University, Taiwan

Yu-Shuang Yao completed her PhD in Sociology of Religion at the University of London in 2001. She is a Professor at Fo Guang University, Taiwan, specializing in contemporary religions of Taiwan.

University of Oxford / Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies

The chapter begins with the observation that Tai Xu was particularly critical of of contemporary Chinese Buddhism for devoting far too much attention to rituals for the dead and the income derived from performing those rituals, at the cost of doing the many things which would directly benefit the living. The authors then trace the history and development of the doctrine of Karma and note how all the Indian soteriologies – Brahminical/Hindu, Jain and Buddhist come to agree that since all lives are finite and a good rebirth will inevitably come to an end, the best solution – the only final one – is liberation. There then follows a discussion of the specifically Buddhist views regarding fate of the dead, the role of mortuary rites, sacrifice and ritual and the importance of the debates about the the the transfer of merit and the notion of intention. They argue that the link between karma and intention was broken in Mahāyāna teachings since, if one could acquire merit through some act of empathy, without even being aware of it, then the Buddha’s teaching that we are solely and wholly responsible for our own karma becomes less significant. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the concept of collective karma and whether it is implied in the Buddha’s teachings or whether there are words for the concept in the traditional lexicons. The authors, in fact, conclude that the notion of collective karma that may be observed in aspects of contemporary Buddhism is an inheritance from Western esoteric speculations on the concept which first appeared in Helena Blavatsky’s The Key to Theosophy (1889).

Chapter 4

Hsing Yun’s Ethos and Activities [+–] 54-69

Yu-Shuang Yao,Richard Gombrich

Fo Guang University, Taiwan

Yu-Shuang Yao completed her PhD in Sociology of Religion at the University of London in 2001. She is a Professor at Fo Guang University, Taiwan, specializing in contemporary religions of Taiwan.

University of Oxford / Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies

The chapter explores the ethos of FGS first by contrasting it with another Taiwanese Buddhist movement of much the same age as FGS, Tzu Chi, finding that the focus of their activities and underlying ethos are quite different although both are known as “humanistic buddhsim”. The authors go on to narrate the biography of Hsing Yun in an effort to show how aspects of his larger-than-life personality have influenced the character of FGS. They pay attention to his writing, publishing and other media activities which have always been his main method of proselytizing, as well as spiritual tourism/pilgrimage operations which they run on a massive scale.

Chapter 5

FGS and Education [+–] 70-83

Yu-Shuang Yao,Richard Gombrich

Fo Guang University, Taiwan

Yu-Shuang Yao completed her PhD in Sociology of Religion at the University of London in 2001. She is a Professor at Fo Guang University, Taiwan, specializing in contemporary religions of Taiwan.

University of Oxford / Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies

The authors begin this chapter with a short review of the history of Buddhist education since the Chinese Xinhai revolution of 1911. In 1967 Hsing Yun founded a seminary (now a women’s college), near Kaohsiung in southern Taiwan. This was the first of what has become a college/seminary system which has trained vast numbers of monastics both in Taiwan and overseas. The authors describe the system itself including providing in an appendix, the course curriculum. The chapter also covers Hsing Yun’s educational activities beyond the seminary and suggest that his manner of operating these might be described as “Confucian paternalism.”

Chapter 6

Public Ritual at FGS Main Monastery, Kaohsiung [+–] 84-94

Yu-Shuang Yao,Richard Gombrich

Fo Guang University, Taiwan

Yu-Shuang Yao completed her PhD in Sociology of Religion at the University of London in 2001. She is a Professor at Fo Guang University, Taiwan, specializing in contemporary religions of Taiwan.

University of Oxford / Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies

This chapter surveys the public rituals performed at FGS’s main monastery or at other sites including details of what transpired on certain specific occasions.

Chapter 7

Ritual as Symphony [+–] 95-109

Yu-Shuang Yao,Richard Gombrich

Fo Guang University, Taiwan

Yu-Shuang Yao completed her PhD in Sociology of Religion at the University of London in 2001. She is a Professor at Fo Guang University, Taiwan, specializing in contemporary religions of Taiwan.

University of Oxford / Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies

The authors begin this chapter by surveying the history of Buddhist attitudes toward ritual and contrasting this with the importance accorded to ritual in traditional Confucian society. This leads into a discussion of merit transfer. They point out thatItis hardly an exaggeration to say thatthe Mahāyāna was constructed by generalizing the transfer of merit and abolishing the condition that it is possible only when the person who receives the merit is aware that it is being transferred to them. In contrast, in the tradition of Chinese Buddhism, as followed by FGS, the commonest form of communal ritual centres on transferring merit to the dead, particularly to one’s own parents and other ancestors. They point out how busy FGS temples are and how much of the activity is communal and describe a number of common rituals including musical performances. Attention is also paid to funeral rituals and to rituals practiced overseas.

Chapter 8

Fo Guang Shan’s Activities: Edification through Spectacle and Entertainment [+–] 110-114

Yu-Shuang Yao,Richard Gombrich

Fo Guang University, Taiwan

Yu-Shuang Yao completed her PhD in Sociology of Religion at the University of London in 2001. She is a Professor at Fo Guang University, Taiwan, specializing in contemporary religions of Taiwan.

University of Oxford / Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies

The authors describe various undertakings, such as the construction of the massive Buddha Memorial Center (completed in 2011) and the transportation of the Buddha’s tooth relic into Taiwan in 1998. All designed to convince devotees that the Pure Land is already here, constantly evoked in art, music, rituals, and the never-failing benignity of the Master.

Chapter 9

Offshoots of FGS [+–] 115-120

Yu-Shuang Yao,Richard Gombrich

Fo Guang University, Taiwan

Yu-Shuang Yao completed her PhD in Sociology of Religion at the University of London in 2001. She is a Professor at Fo Guang University, Taiwan, specializing in contemporary religions of Taiwan.

University of Oxford / Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies

The authors supply three cases where men ordained in FGS have gone off to start institutions ontheir own, some with female followers: Ven. Xindao and the Ling Jiou Mountain monastery; Ven. Huiye and the Nanhai Buddhist Association (nanhai jiangtan) and Ven. Huili and the Amitofo Care Centre (ACC).

End Matter

Bibliography 121-122

Yu-Shuang Yao,Richard Gombrich

Fo Guang University, Taiwan

Yu-Shuang Yao completed her PhD in Sociology of Religion at the University of London in 2001. She is a Professor at Fo Guang University, Taiwan, specializing in contemporary religions of Taiwan.

University of Oxford / Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies

Index 123-127

Yu-Shuang Yao,Richard Gombrich

Fo Guang University, Taiwan

Yu-Shuang Yao completed her PhD in Sociology of Religion at the University of London in 2001. She is a Professor at Fo Guang University, Taiwan, specializing in contemporary religions of Taiwan.

University of Oxford / Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies

Reviews

Whether we are considering the extravagant, yet sensitive and perceptive FGS of Hsing Yun or the more sober but impressively productive Tzu Chi of Cheng Yen, suffice it to say that the authors present us with a wide-ranging, informed and sensitive picture of Humanistic Buddhism.
From the Foreword by Eileen Barker, Professor Emeritus of Sociology with Special Reference to the Study of Religion, London School of Economics

Chinese Buddhism Today provides a succinct, yet thorough introduction to the history of Fo Guang Shan. The reader comes away with a real sense of Hsing Yun’s optimism and the energy he injected into the organization ever since he established it in 1967. Two audiences in particular will find this monograph useful. First, those with an interest in contemporary society in Taiwan, but who have limited background in Buddhism, will not only become familiar with one of the preeminent religious organizations on the island, but will also learn much about such fundamental Buddhist doctrines as the four Noble Truths (16-18) and karma (38-42), as well as the central assumptions of Pure Land Buddhism (21-25). Alternatively, those familiar with Buddhism, but who do not focus on the religion’s development in contemporary Chinese society, will gain clear insight into how a very charismatic individual has shaped the tradition through founding both a worldwide network of monasteries and an accompanying lay society, Buddha’s Light International Association.
Reading Religion

The book represents an addition to the growing body of research on modern and contemporary Chinese Buddhism, combining historical and sociological perspectives.
Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies

Books and Journals in Humanities, Social Science and Performing Arts

Chinese Buddhism Today

Conservatism, Modernism, Syncretism and Enjoying Life on the Buddha’s Light Mountain

Yu-Shuang Yao [+–]

Fo Guang University, Taiwan

Richard Gombrich [+–]

University of Oxford / Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies

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