Building the Buddhist Revival

Building the Buddhist Revival
Author: Gregory Adam Scott
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2020-02-28
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 019093073X

Between 1850 and 1966, tens of thousands of Buddhist sacred sites in China were destroyed, victims of targeted destruction, accidental damage, or simply neglect. During the same period, however, many of these sites were reconstructed, a process that involved both rebuilding material structures and reviving religious communities. The conventionally accepted narrative of Chinese Buddhism during the modern era is that it underwent a revival initiated by innovative monastics and laypersons, leaders who reinvented Buddhist traditions to meet the challenges of modernity. Gregory Adam Scott shows, however, that over time it became increasingly difficult for reconstruction leaders to resist the interests of state actors, who sought to refashion monastery sites as cultural monuments rather than as living religious communities. These sites were then intended to serve as symbols of Chinese history and cultural heritage, while their function as a frame for religious life was increasingly pushed aside. As a result, the power to determine whether and how a monastery would be reconstructed, and the types of activities that would be reinstated or newly introduced, began to shift from religious leaders and communities to state agencies that had a radically different set of motivations and values. Building the Buddhist Revival explores the history of Chinese Buddhist monastery reconstruction from the end of the Imperial period through the first seventeen years of the People's Republic. Over this century of history, the nature and significance of reconstructing Buddhist monasteries changes drastically, mirroring broader changes in Chinese society. Yet this book argues that change has always been in the nature of religious communities such as Buddhist monasteries, and that reconstruction, rather than a return to the past, represents innovative and adaptive change. In this way, it helps us understand the broader significance of the Buddhist "revival" in China during this era, as a creative reconstruction of religion upon longstanding foundations.

Building the Buddhist Revival

Building the Buddhist Revival
Author: Gregory Adam Scott
Publisher:
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2020
Genre: History
ISBN: 0190930721

Between 1850 and 1966, tens of thousands of Buddhist sacred sites in China were destroyed, victims of targeted destruction, accidental damage, or simply neglect. During the same period, however, many of these sites were reconstructed, a process that involved both rebuilding material structures and reviving religious communities. Gregory Adam Scott argues that over the course of this period monastery reconstruction in China changed drastically. The power to determine whether and how a monastery would be reconstructed, and the types of activities that would be reinstated or newly introduced, began to shift from religious leaders and communities to state agencies that had a radically different set of motivations and values. Building the Buddhist Revival explores the history of Chinese Buddhist monastery reconstruction from the end of the Imperial period through the first seventeen years of the People's Republic.

Monks in Motion

Monks in Motion
Author: Jack Meng-Tat Chia
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2020-08-25
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0190090995

Chinese Buddhists have never remained stationary. They have always been on the move. In Monks in Motion, Jack Meng-Tat Chia explores why Buddhist monks migrated from China to Southeast Asia, and how they participated in transregional Buddhist networks across the South China Sea. This book tells the story of three prominent monks Chuk Mor (1913-2002), Yen Pei (1917-1996), and Ashin Jinarakkhita (1923-2002) and examines the connected history of Buddhist communities in China and maritime Southeast Asia in the twentieth century. Monks in Motion is the first book to offer a history of what Chia terms "South China Sea Buddhism," referring to a Buddhism that emerged from a swirl of correspondence networks, forced exiles, voluntary visits, evangelizing missions, institution-building campaigns, and the organizational efforts of countless Chinese and Chinese diasporic Buddhist monks. Drawing on multilingual research conducted in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, Chia challenges the conventional categories of "Chinese Buddhism" and "Southeast Asian Buddhism" by focusing on the lesser-known--yet no less significant--Chinese Buddhist communities of maritime Southeast Asia. By crossing the artificial spatial frontier between China and Southeast Asia, Monks in Motion breaks new ground, bringing Southeast Asia into the study of Chinese Buddhism and Chinese Buddhism into the study of Southeast Asia.

The Huayan University Network

The Huayan University Network
Author: Erik J. Hammerstrom
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 163
Release: 2020-09-29
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0231550758

In the early twentieth century, Chinese Buddhists sought to strengthen their tradition through publications, institution building, and initiatives aimed at raising the educational level of the monastic community. In The Huayan University Network, Erik J. Hammerstrom examines how Huayan Buddhism was imagined, taught, and practiced during this time of profound political and social change and, in so doing, recasts the history of twentieth-century Chinese Buddhism. Hammerstrom traces the influence of Huayan University, the first Buddhist monastic school founded after the fall of the imperial system in China. Although the university lasted only a few years, its graduates went on to establish a number of Huayan-centered educational programs throughout China. While they did not create a new sectarian Huayan movement, they did form a network unified by a common educational heritage that persists to the present day. Drawing on an extensive range of Buddhist texts and periodicals, Hammerstrom shows that Huayan had a significant impact on Chinese Buddhist thought and practice and that the history of Huayan complicates narratives of twentieth-century Buddhist modernization and revival. Offering a wide range of insights into the teaching and practice of Huayan in Republican China, this book sheds new light on an essential but often overlooked element of the East Asian Buddhist tradition.

Thriving in Crisis

Thriving in Crisis
Author: Dewei Zhang
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2020-05-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 0231551932

Late imperial Chinese Buddhism was long dismissed as having declined from the glories of Buddhism during the Sui and Tang dynasties (581–907). In recent scholarship, a more nuanced picture of late Ming-era Buddhist renewal has emerged. Yet this alternate conception of the history of Buddhism in China has tended to focus on either doctrinal contributions of individual masters or the roles of local elites in Jiangnan, leaving unsolved broader questions regarding the dynamics and mechanism behind the evolution of Buddhism into the renewal. Thriving in Crisis is a systematic study of the late Ming Buddhist renewal with a focus on the religious and political factors that enabled it to happen. Dewei Zhang explores the history of the boom in enthusiasm for Buddhism in the Jiajing-Wanli era (1522–1620), tracing a pattern of advances and retrenchment at different social levels in varied regions. He reveals that the Buddhist renewal was a dynamic movement that engaged a wide swath of elites, from emperors and empress dowagers to eunuchs and scholar-officials. Drawing on a range of evidence and approaches, Zhang contends that the late Ming renewal was a politically driven exception to a longer-term current of disfavor toward Buddhism and that it failed to establish Buddhism on a foundation solid enough for its future development. A groundbreaking interdisciplinary study, Thriving in Crisis provides a new theoretical framework for understanding the patterns of Buddhist history in China.

The Cultural Practices of Modern Chinese Buddhism

The Cultural Practices of Modern Chinese Buddhism
Author: Francesca Tarocco
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2007
Genre: History
ISBN: 0415375037

Buddhism in China during the late Qing and Republican period remained a powerful cultural and religious force. This innovative book comes from a rising star in this field, offering a new perspective on the influence of Buddhism on Chinese culture.

Varieties of Atheism in Science

Varieties of Atheism in Science
Author: Elaine Howard Ecklund
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2021
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0197539165

Why study atheism among scientists? -- "Tried and found wanting" : how atheist scientists explain religious transitions -- "I am not like Richard:" modernist atheist scientists -- Ties that bind : culturally religious atheists -- Spiritual atheist scientists -- What atheist scientists think about science -- How atheist scientists approach meaning and morality -- From rhetoric to reality : why religious believers should give atheist scientists a chance.

The Future of the Bamiyan Buddha Statues

The Future of the Bamiyan Buddha Statues
Author: Masanori Nagaoka
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2020-12-07
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3030513165

This Open Access book explores heritage conservation ethics of post conflict and provides an important historical record of the possible reconstruction of the Bamiyan Buddha statues, which was inscribed in the UNESCO World Heritage List in Danger in 2003 as “Cultural Landscape and Archaeological Remains of the Bamiyan Valley”. With the condition that most surface of the original fragments of the Buddha statues were lost due to acts of deliberate destruction, this publication explores a reference point for conservation practitioners and policy makers around the world as they consider how to respond to on-going acts of destruction of cultural heritage. Whilst there has been an emerging debate to the ethics and nature of heritage reconstruction, this volume provides a plethora of ideas and approaches concerning the future treatment of the Bamiyan Buddha statues. It also addresses a number of fundamental questions on potential heritage reconstruction: how it will be done; who will decide; and what it should be done for. Moreover when it comes to the inscribed World Heritage properties, how can reconstructed heritage using non-original materials be considered to retain authenticity? With a view to serving as a precedent for potential decisions taken elsewhere in the world for cultural properties impacted by acts of violence and destruction, this volume introduces academic researches, experiences and observations of heritage conservation theory and practice of heritage reconstruction. It also addresses the issue not merely from the point of a material conservation philosophy but within the context of holistic strategies for the protection of human rights and promotion of peace building.

Trúc Lâm Buddhism in Vietnam

Trúc Lâm Buddhism in Vietnam
Author: Laura Thuy-Loan Nguyen
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 181
Release: 2021-01-13
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1527564460

In the thirteenth century, King-Monk Trần Nhân Tông founded the Trúc Lâm Thiền (Chan/Zen) sect. During the Golden Age in Vietnamese Buddhist history, the sect flourished under three patriarchs with renowned Thiền masters. Unfortunately, the Trúc Lâm sect faded over the following centuries, and Thiền Buddhism in Vietnam, for the most part, disappeared. In the late twentieth century, a growing new religious movement led by Thích Thanh Từ, a Pure Land monk, called for a restoration of Trúc Lâm Thiền Buddhism. Who is Thích Thanh Từ? How and why did he choose to revive this particular sect and its emancipation practices? Trúc Lâm currently boasts hundreds of monasteries and thousands of monks and nuns in Vietnam and beyond, but how have the forces of modernity influenced its original traditions? Through existing literature and extensive onsite fieldwork, this book analyzes the history and revival of a forgotten Buddhist sect and examines the movement’s reform.