The Renewal Of Buddhism In China

Download or read book The Renewal of Buddhism in China written by Chün-fang Yü and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-02 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1981, The Renewal of Buddhism in China broke new ground in the study of Chinese Buddhism. An interdisciplinary study of a Buddhist master and reformer in late Ming China, it challenged the conventional view that Buddhism had reached its height under the Tang dynasty (618–907) and steadily declined afterward. Chün-fang Yü details how in sixteenth-century China, Buddhism entered a period of revitalization due in large part to a cohort of innovative monks who sought to transcend sectarian rivalries and doctrinal specialization. She examines the life, work, and teaching of one of the most important of these monks, Zhuhong (1535–1615), a charismatic teacher of lay Buddhists and a successful reformer of monastic Buddhism. Zhuhong’s contributions demonstrate that the late Ming was one of the most creative periods in Chinese intellectual and religious history. Weaving together diverse sources—scriptures, dynastic history, Buddhist chronicles, monks’ biographies, letters, ritual manuals, legal codes, and literature—Yü grounds Buddhism in the reality of Ming society, highlighting distinctive lay Buddhist practices to provide a vivid portrait of lived religion. Since the book was published four decades ago, many have written on the diversity of Buddhist beliefs and practices in the centuries before and after Zhuhong’s time, yet The Renewal of Buddhism in China remains a crucial touchstone for all scholarship on post-Tang Buddhism. This fortieth anniversary edition features updated transliteration, a foreword by Daniel B. Stevenson, and an updated introduction by the author speaking to the ongoing relevance of this classic work.

Download or read book Chinese Buddhism written by Chün-fang Yü and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2020-06-30 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What are the foundational scriptures and major schools for Chinese Buddhists? What divinities do they worship? What festivals do they celebrate? These are some of the basic questions addressed in this book, the first introduction to Chinese Buddhism written expressly for students and those interested in an accessible yet authoritative overview of the subject based on current scholarship. After presenting the basic tenets of the Buddha’s teachings and the Chinese religious traditions, the book focuses on topics essential for understanding Chinese Buddhism: major scriptures, worship of buddhas and bodhisattvas, rituals and festivals, the monastic order, Buddhist schools such as Tiantai and Chan, Buddhism and gender, and current trends—notably humanistic Buddhism in Taiwan and the resurgence of Buddhism in post-Mao China. Each chapter ends with discussion questions and suggestions for further reading. A convenient glossary of common terms, titles, and names is included.

Download or read book Thriving in Crisis written by Dewei Zhang and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2020-05-19 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Buddhism in Contemporary Tibet written by Melvyn C. Goldstein and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-09-01 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following the upheavals of the Cultural Revolution, the People's Republic of China gradually permitted the renewal of religious activity. Tibetans, whose traditional religious and cultural institutions had been decimated during the preceding two decades, took advantage of the decisions of 1978 to begin a Buddhist renewal that is one of the most extensive and dramatic examples of religious revitalization in contemporary China. The nature of that revival is the focus of this book. Four leading specialists in Tibetan anthropology and religion conducted case studies in the Tibet autonomous region and among the Tibetans of Sichuan and Qinghai provinces. There they observed the revival of the Buddhist heritage in monastic communities and among laypersons at popular pilgrimages and festivals. Demonstrating how that revival must contend with tensions between the Chinese state and aspirations for greater Tibetan autonomy, the authors discuss ways that Tibetan Buddhists are restructuring their religion through a complex process of social, political, and economic adaptation. Buddhism has long been the main source of Tibetans' pride in their culture and country. These essays reveal the vibrancy of that ancient religion in contemporary Tibet and also the problems that religion and Tibetan culture in general are facing in a radically altered world.

Download or read book Enlightenment in Dispute written by Jiang Wu and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-12 with total page 478 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Enlightenment in Dispute is the first comprehensive study of the revival of Chan Buddhism in seventeenth-century China. Focusing on the evolution of a series of controversies about Chan enlightenment, Jiang Wu describes the process by which Chan reemerged as the most prominent Buddhist establishment of the time. He investigates the development of Chan Buddhism in the seventeenth century, focusing on controversies involving issues such as correct practice and lines of lineage. In this way, he shows how the Chan revival reshaped Chinese Buddhism in late imperial China. Situating these controversies alongside major events of the fateful Ming-Qing transition, Wu shows how the rise and fall of Chan Buddhism was conditioned by social changes in the seventeenth century.

Download or read book Kuan-yin written by Chün-fang Yü and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2001-03-22 with total page 657 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By far one of the most important objects of worship in the Buddhist traditions, the bodhisattva Avalokitesvara is regarded as the embodiment of compassion. He has been widely revered throughout the Buddhist countries of Asia since the early centuries of the Common Era. While he was closely identified with the royalty in South and Southeast Asia, and the Tibetans continue to this day to view the Dalai Lamas as his incarnations, in China he became a she—Kuan-yin, the "Goddess of Mercy"—and has a very different history. The causes and processes of this metamorphosis have perplexed Buddhist scholars for centuries. In this groundbreaking, comprehensive study, Chün-fang Yü discusses this dramatic transformation of the (male) Indian bodhisattva Avalokitesvara into the (female) Chinese Kuan-yin—from a relatively minor figure in the Buddha's retinue to a universal savior and one of the most popular deities in Chinese religion. Focusing on the various media through which the feminine Kuan-yin became constructed and domesticated in China, Yü thoroughly examines Buddhist scriptures, miracle stories, pilgrimages, popular literature, and monastic and local gazetteers—as well as the changing iconography reflected in Kuan-yin's images and artistic representations—to determine the role this material played in this amazing transformation. The book eloquently depicts the domestication of Kuan-yin as a case study of the indigenization of Buddhism in China and illuminates the ways this beloved deity has affected the lives of all Chinese people down the ages.

Download or read book Tibetan Buddhists in the Making of Modern China written by Gray Tuttle and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gray Tuttle reveals the surprising role Buddhism and Buddhist leaders played in the development of the modern Chinese state and in fostering relations between Tibet and China from the Republican period (1912-1949) to the early years of Communist rule. Tuttle offers new insights on the impact of modern ideas of nationalism, race, and religion in East Asia. He draws on previously unexamined archival and governmental materials, as well as personal memoirs of Chinese politicians and Buddhist monks, and ephemera from religious ceremonies.