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Chinese Origin of Humanistic Buddhism and Venerable Master Hsing Yun’s Contribution in the Contemporary Humanistic Buddhist Movement in Taiwan
Humanism has been defined in various ways. It is a contemporary cult or belief calling itself religious but substituting faith in man for faith in god.1 Similarly, humanism is also explained as the faith in the supreme value of self-perfectibility of human personality. However, humanism broadly indicates to a shifting of focus from supernaturalism to naturalism, from transcendental to the existing, from absolute reality to the living reality. Humanism is the term for those aspirations, activities and attainments through which natural man puts on “super nature”.
Rethinking the Precept of Not Taking Money in Contemporary Taiwanese and Mainland Chinese Buddhist Nunneries
Around two and half millennia ago, the order of nuns was established when the Buddha allowed women to join the Buddhist monastic community. Buddhist nuns play prominent and respected roles in the Therīgāthā (Verses of the Elder Nuns) from ancient India. The historical work the Biqiuni zhuan 比丘尼傳 (Biographies of Nuns) reports how Buddhist nuns influenced and contributed to Chinese Buddhism in the medieval era. In recent decades, there has been a strong revival of Chinese Buddhism, amid which Buddhist nuns have exerted an ever-growing impact on the monastic environment, and their opinions have gradually become very influential, particularly in Taiwan. Indeed, as aptly put by Chün-fang Yü (Light 1), “Taiwanese nuns today are highly educated and greatly outnumber monks, characteristics unprecedented in the history of Chinese Buddhism.” In Mainland China, some prominent nuns (e.g., Shi Longlian) have held posts in the official organization of Chinese Buddhism or made significant contributions to Buddhist education and Dharma teaching. However, contemporary Mainland Chinese nuns’ religious life has scarcely been explored or discussed. This study aims to rectify this imbalance by examining a central ethical issue of monastic daily life to which scant scholarly attention has hitherto been paid.
The Changing Functions of Renjian Fojiao (人間佛教) in Mainland China
Since the revival of Buddhism in the People’s Republic of China following the Cultural Revolution, renjian fojiao (人間佛教), often translated as “Humanistic Buddhism,” has become a very prominent label. It has served as a basic concept for various purposes, from the political self-legitimation of Buddhists, to the revival of traditional(ized) thinking, to religious innovation. It has undergone a continuous process of adaptation to Buddhists’ needs at the moment in question. With its initial role, quite early in the 1980s, emphasized officially by Zhao Puchu 趙朴初 (1907-2000), the president of the Buddhist Association of China (BAC), it became an important element of the statutory purpose of the BAC and developed separately from, but not without the influence of, later dynamics in Taiwan. This article reflects on some of the steps in the 40-year development of what has been declared in the People’s Republic of China as renjian fojiao (“Humanistic Buddhism”). It focuses on its metamorphosis within the context of the BAC’s statutory purpose, asking what the concept has been necessary for and how it might still be relevant today.
