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National Recognition of a Religious Festival: Comparing Buddha’s Birthday Celebration Organized in Taipei to the Northern Wei Buddha’s Birthday Parade
Festivals make up a major feature of all religions1 and human societies. A festival means to most people a “special day or period, usually in memory of a religious event, with its own social activities, food and eremonies,” or an “organized set of special events, such as musical performances.” A religious festival presents a unique opportunity to gain insight into the confluence of religion, culture, and politics. Among Buddhist festivals, Buddha’s birthday stands out as the most popular and most public. When religious celebrations go outside the temple gates, it is an indication of wide acceptance of Buddhism by its host populace. In this paper, I shall compare two significant Buddha’s birthday celebrations: one in antiquity and one in recent times. These two circumstances are significant because the heads of state are conspicuously present outside their symbols of power and the entire capital city observed the occasion. By comparing large-scale commemoration of Buddha’s birthday celebrations held before the Office of the President in contemporary Taipei with a city-wide parade held in Luoyang during the Northern Wei Dynasty (386–534), this paper will identify the factors critical to indigenous Chinese people accepting major festivals of a foreign religion.
【Buddhist Encounters: Finding a Home in the Human Condition】Introduction
Since the outbreak of the global COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Dr. Lewis R. Lancaster, Emeritus Professor of the University of California, Berkeley, USA, has been giving online lectures for the Department of Religious Studies at University of the West, USA (one of the universities established by Fo Guang Shan). Through his engaging teaching approach, he has guided students to explore the depths of Buddhist teachings and its application. In the hope for more people to benefit from his lectures, they will be featured as a column series in the Humanistic Buddhism: Journal, Arts, and Culture journal, which will be published in both Chinese and English. Dr. Lancaster has granted permission for the FGS Institute of Humanistic Buddhism to translate the content into Chinese. We included an introduction written by Dr. Lancaster in this current issue of the journal to set the stage for this unique column series.
Humanistic Religion: From Guodian to Vimalakirti
This paper will argue that the term “Humanistic Buddhism,” which Venerable Master Hsing Yun describes as central to all of Buddhism, is also fundamental to Chinese religion as a collective group. Such an expansion is in keeping with the spirit of his recent publication 365 Days for Travelers: Wisdom from Chinese Literary and Buddhist Classics. Here we see an enlargement of humanism to include a general assessment of Chinese culture. It because of this expansion that this paper uses the term “Humanistic Religion” instead of “Humanistic Buddhism.” Crucial support for the centrality of humanism to Chinese religion comes from it being expressed with the greatest clarity and earliest date in the recently excavated Guodian corpus ( 郭店楚簡). As such, Guodian represents a missing link between Buddhism and other pre-Han religious systems. Venerable Master Hsing-yun sees Humanistic Buddhism as a system that has particular utility for overcoming divisions; as such it is interested in developing the linkages with indigenous Chinese religion that I will be detailing in this paper. Specifically, Humanistic Buddhism: Holding True to the Original Intents of Buddha, states that the schisms which arose after the passing of the Buddha can be overcome with humanism.2 In the publications by Fo Guang Shan I have reviewed so far, however, recently excavated manuscripts have not been considered and this will one of the contributions of this paper.
發刊緣起
January, 1, 2016, Fo Guang Shan Residence of the Founding Master This year (2016) marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of Fo Guang Shan Monastery. Previously, we published the Awakening the Wor.....
