Chinese Buddhism Today - Conservatism, Modernism, Syncretism and Enjoying Life on the Buddha’s Light Mountain - Yu-Shuang Yao
Preamble: Previous Work
Chinese Buddhism Today - Conservatism, Modernism, Syncretism and Enjoying Life on the Buddha’s Light Mountain - Yu-Shuang Yao
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.
Description
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.