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Commentary: Yang Renshan, a Living Bodhisattva
Yang was born in an eminent family of Confucian literati in Anhui Province in 1837, two years before the outbreak of the Opium War. He witnessed the years of turmoil in nineteenth century China: the Taiping Rebellion and subsequent series of China’s defeats and humiliations. When he was twenty-seven years old, his father died of illness and the following year Yang Renshan himself contracted the plague. After his recovery in Hangzhou, he continued to suffer from depression. By chance, he read two texts entitled Dacheng Qixin Lun (Mahāyānśraddhotpāda Śāstra; Mahayana Treatise on the Awakening of Faith) and Lengyan Jing (Śūraṅgama Sūtra).
Sacred Secularities: Ritual and Social Engagement in a Global Buddhist China
Surrounded by greenery and build on a quiet hillside in an unincorporated suburban community of Los Angeles County lies a brightly colored Chinese Buddhist temple. This Temple, Hsi Lai Temple xilai si 西來寺 or ‘Coming West Temple’ in English, is one of the biggest Chinese temples in the US and serves as the North American headquarters of the modernist Han Buddhist order Fo Guang Shan 佛光山 (Buddha’s Light Mountain). The Buddhist tradition promoted by Fo Guang Shan is renjian 人間or Humanistic Buddhism.1 It is a modern Buddhist tradition with its roots in late 19th and early 20th century China that has become Buddhist mainstream in Taiwan today (Long 2000). Fo Guang Shan is one of the biggest promoters of this tradition, not only in Taiwan but on a global scale, and while different groups have adapted different interpretations of renjian Buddhism, one of the primary characteristics of this modern tradition is a new esteem for society, or, in other words, the sphere of ‘the secular’.
A Proposal for Experimental Application of Humanistic Buddhism to Psychotherapy and Counseling
At a time when Shakyamuni Buddha’s teachings are emerging from the shadows of philosophical thought, our world is becoming more open to applying Buddhist views in search for Ultimate Reality. A merging of these doctrines with modern psychology is a challenge to be met by proponents in the varied arenas of human behavior. There is a significant moνe within the Behavioral Sciences to break through parochial, stilted barriers in order to seek a more humanistic, holistic view of a person in ethical relations with states of well being. This paper posits methods whereby the principles of Humanistic Buddhism (HB) can be integrated within a theoretical system of activities which perceives and analyzes foundations of social harmony, reaching the roots of conflict within complex human systems. In this, the work of psychotherapy and counseling can be effective in fostering changes in clients by teaching self-analysis and how to search for the paths of moral, social and psychological wellness. Points of emphasis in this proposal define and discuss the elements envisionednecessary to effect a counseling and research center modeled after the principles of HB. Not confined within the specifics of organizational, cultural or geographic restrictions, the system approach is meant to be broad-based to allow flexibility of such a center’s operation. The theoretical background and philosophy of both psychotherapy and counseling, as currently styled, includes a description of tried and proved techniques devised by four noted 20th century Western psychologists, νiz. Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Carl Rogers, and Albert Ellis. To this I have suggested ways of broadening these somewhat diverse techniques to include HB. An integration of this nature would not restrict but rather provide another, (perhaps now lacking) spiritual dimension in therapeutic services, which is our proposed product, to a given target population. Hence, more effective psychotherapy and counseling can be offered, and feedback loops would identify the needed elements of a scientific research effort to be built into the system design and operation.
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.
Situating Buddhist Modernism within a Global Context: The Global Spread of Fo Guang Shan
Only in the last decades has modern Buddhism become a serious topic of academic investigation. Today, however, the field is flourishing. Modern Buddhism in its many forms is studied in many languages and disciplines. Despite this recent advancement, the subject of investigation is not always that clear. What are we talking about when we are speaking of modern Buddhism? This paper aims to tackle this question by considering the global spread of Fo Guang Shan from a transnational perspective. Transnationalism describes a recent advance within the social sciences and humanities to move away from a research approach that examines its object of interest solely by placing it within the context of one nation state.
Perspective: The Teacher and Late Modern Buddhism in the West: Commitment and Dilemmas
The teacher plays a key role in Buddhism. In some traditions, the practitioner is advised to remain patient and persistent in the search for a lifelong teacher, as the right teacher is said to appear only once the practitioner is “ready.” The teacher may be the abbot in a monastery, the geshe in a gompa, or the roshi or ajahn in a temple. However, in this late-modern world, it is becoming increasingly common for Convert Buddhists to have no link or personal connection to any such organization or individual Dharma teacher.
Transnational Networks of Dharma and Development: Engaged Buddhism in the Era of Globalization
The various Buddhist social reformation and liberation movements are broadly referred to as Engaged Buddhist movements. While addressing issues concerning their communities, they have also acquired global dimensions as evident from the transnational networking among Buddhists/Buddhist organizations in Asia, as well as in the West, and the multicultural following that has come to characterize these contemporary Buddhist social movements.
Mapping Fo Guang Shan and the Spread of Humanistic Buddhism
With over 250 temples throughout the world, Fo Guang Shan (FGS) has emerged as a global Buddhist movement and significant force in the spread of Humanistic Buddhism. In this talk, I will demo an interactive map of FGS temples (existing and retired) developed by the project team at the Institute for the Study of Humanistic Buddhism at the University of the West. The map is constructed using QGIS technology and includes basic information for each temple (name, address, GPS coordinates) and a sliding timeline by which the user can view the historical spread of FGS temples across the world. QGIS allows for additional layers in which the user can also develop their own components (e.g., Taiwan’s population and GDP growth) and visually analyze the relationship of other data to the base map. As such, the interface provides scholars with a powerful research tool and significant starting point that can be used to investigate the geo-social dimensions of Buddhist institutions and understand the factors that have contributed to the growth of Humanistic Buddhism.
