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A Letter to Dharma Protectors and Friends in 2018
Spring flowers, autumn moon, winter goes, and spring arrives once again. As the seasons follow their order of time, we welcome 2018. Venerable Master Hsing Yun gives his blessings and encouragement to all through his spring couplet, “A Family of Loyalty and Honor.” Loyalty and honor are most important in life. We must remain loyal and righteous towards people. We must stay loyal in our relationships, responsibilities, friendships, and towards our leaders. We must show sensibility towards human relationships, remain righteous towards the world, have benevolence for society, and sense our connection with the whole universe. It is essential to understand, be grateful for, realize, and keep as family legacy the spirits of loyalty and honor.
TRANSLATION FORUM 2019: HUMANISTIC BUDDHIST TEXTS IN TRANSLATION: STANDARDS, THEORY AND PRACTICE
Objectives TRANSLATION FORUM 2019: HUMANISTIC BUDDHIST TEXTS IN TRANSLATION: STANDARDS, THEORY AND PRACTICE This Forum will be divided into two parts: Prospects of Translation: Standardization, style.....
A Letter to Dharma Protectors and Friends in 2020
In the Year of the Rat, I, Hsin Bau, on behalf of the Fo Guang Shan Board of Directors, Abbots, Abbesses, Superintendents, and sangha communities of Fo Guang Shan temples worldwide, wish for everyone to do good things, speak good words, and think good thoughts. With the Three Acts of Goodness, every journey in this world is a path to happiness. In January last year, Fo Guang Shan held the International Ten-Thousand Buddha Triple Platform Full Ordination Ceremony with preceptees from twenty-one countries and regions worldwide. The Sila Upadhyaya, Venerable Master Hsing Yun, encouraged everyone with this recollection, “Throughout my entire life, I have only focused on doing one thing, that is, to play the role of a monastic well.”
A Study of Gender Equality in Humanistic Buddhism
Since Humanistic Buddhism was first proposed by Master Taixu, the issue of gender equality has gradually kindled widespread discussion in the field of Buddhism. During the Republican Era, Master Taixu and the female Buddhists of the Pure Bodhi Vihara have actively expressed their views on gender equality. Eventually, they reached a consensus of respecting a woman’s character, protecting her rights, and advocating equal status between men and women. After 1949, under the impetus of Venerable Master Hsing Yun, Venerable Yin Shun, Venerable Sheng Yen, Venerable Chaohwei, thoughts on gender equality in Taiwan have made great strides. After 1980, the rejuvenation of Humanistic Buddhism in Mainland China in turn developed thoughts on gender equality. As a result, the overall status of female Buddhists in Mainland China has remarkably improved.
Toward a Modern Buddhist Hagiography Telling the Life of Hsing Yun in Popular Media
My interest in the biography of Master Hsing Yun (Xingyun 星雲, 1927–) began when I co-taught the “Buddhism in Asia” summer program in 20091 and visited the Fo Guang Shan ( 佛光山; Wade-Giles: Fo Kuang Shan, literally “Buddha’s Light Mountain”) headquarters in Kaohsiung (Gaoxiong 高雄) and a branch temple in Ilan (Yilan 宜蘭).2 My college students and I were rather impressed with the scale of the monastery in Kaohsiung and the global reach of its branches (Fo Guang Shan 2011).3 However, what intrigued me the most was our visit to the Fo Guang Shan Museum located in the Ilan branch temple. At the museum, our guides, who were nuns from the temple, showed us an illustrated comic biography of Hsing Yun, the founder of Fo Guang Shan. They told us stories, which are illustrated in the comic book, about their master’s arrival in Taiwan, the difficulties he encountered in his early religious career, and his successful missionary activities. Reading this comic helped me understand Hsing Yun’s leadership and the influence he has over his disciples and devotees. Following this, I started to consider the possibility of studying the life of Hsing Yun as portrayed in popular media and, with the help of some friends, began to track down the biographies of the monk as presented in various media.
Humanistic Buddhism: Plurality and Humanistic Buddhism in the Context of a Buddho-Christian Comparison
On the morning of July 27, 2015, Venerable Master Hsing Yun met scholars and other devotees attending the Third Symposium on Humanistic Buddhism on the third floor of the Dharma Transmission Center, during which he gave a speech “How I Realized Humanistic Buddhism,” (originally titled “The Causes and Conditions that Guided Me to Humanistic Buddhism”).1 I had the great fortune of personally listening to this speech, during which Venerable Master responded to doubts (eight of them) on Humanistic Buddhism raised by those who do not quite understand it, covering topics such as tradition and modernization, laity and monastic, transcendence and engagement, origins and contemporary, spiritual cultivation and activities, etc.
Buddhist Economics: A Cultural Alternative
Watching weeds grow in the garden turns out to be a powerful lesson outside the classroom. First, the weeds look innocently beautiful until they start invading the space of the expensive grass that is fighting for survival. Alarmed, the gardener moves into action with industrial-strength weedkiller. Before long, the herbicide poisons both the weeds and grass. Alas, weeks later, it is the weed that manages to survive the new level of toxicity in the soil and springs back to life ahead of the grass. The battle resumes with the weeds ahead.
Modern Religious Tourism in Taiwan: A Case Study of Fo Guang Shan Buddha Memorial Center
Fo Guang Shan Buddha Memorial Center, founded by Venerable Master Hsing Yun, is a newly opened Buddhist site in Taiwan, which not only serves as a combined museum, art gallery and religious landmark, but also a diverse cultural, education and art center whose total number of visitors in the first year of its opening exceeded ten million, higher than that of the Louvre in 2012, and has continued to rise in successive years. The Center also became the youngest museum to be recognized as a member of ICOM, receive ISO50001 certification, and listed on Tripadvisor as one of the top three tourist destinations in Taiwan within the first four years of its opening.