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City of Ten Thousand Buddhas
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/9/20


City of Ten Thousand Buddhas 萬佛聖城
The mountain gate to the city
Religion
Affiliation: Chan Buddhism
Ownership: Dharma Realm Buddhist Association
Location: 4951 Bodhi Way, Ukiah, California, United States
Style: Kirkbride Plan

1848 lithograph of the Kirkbride design of the Trenton State Hospital

The Kirkbride Plan was a system of mental asylum design advocated by Philadelphia psychiatrist Thomas Story Kirkbride (1809–1883) in the mid-19th century. The asylums built in the Kirkbride design, often referred to as Kirkbride Buildings (or simply Kirkbrides), were constructed during the mid-to-late-19th century in the United States. The structural features of the hospitals as designated by Dr. Kirkbride were contingent on his theories regarding the healing of the mentally ill, in which environment and exposure to natural light and air circulation were crucial. The hospitals built according to the Kirkbride Plan would adopt various architectural styles, but had in common the "bat wing" style floor plan, housing numerous wings that sprawl outward from the center.

The first hospital designed under the Kirkbride Plan was the Trenton State Hospital in Trenton, New Jersey, constructed in 1848. Throughout the remainder of the nineteenth century, numerous psychiatric hospitals were designed under the Kirkbride Plan across the United States. By the twentieth century, popularity of the design had waned, largely due to the economic pressures of maintaining the immense facilities, as well as contestation of Dr. Kirkbride's theories amongst the medical community.

Numerous Kirkbride structures still exist today, though many have been demolished or partially-demolished and repurposed. At least 30 of the original Kirkbride buildings have been registered with the National Register of Historic Places in the United States, either directly or through their location on hospital campuses or in historic districts.

-- Kirkbride Plan, by Wikipedia

Founder: Hsuan Hua
Date established: 1974; 46 years ago
Groundbreaking: 1925[1]
Completed: 1933[1]
Construction cost: $331,545[1]
Direction of façade: South
Site area: 700 acres (280 hectares)
Elevation: 627 ft (191 m)[2]
Website: http://www.cttbusa.org


Aerial view of the city

The City of Ten Thousand Buddhas (traditional Chinese: 萬佛聖城; ; pinyin: Wànfó Shèngchéng; Vietnamese: Chùa Vạn Phật Thánh Thành) is an international Buddhist community and monastery founded by Hsuan Hua, an important figure in Western Buddhism. It is one of the first Chan Buddhist temples in the United States, and one of the largest Buddhist communities in the Western Hemisphere.

The city is situated in Talmage, California, a rural community in southeastern Mendocino County about 2 miles (3.2 km) east of Ukiah and 110 miles (180 km) north of San Francisco. It was one of the first Buddhist monasteries built in the United States. The temple follows the Guiyang school of Chan Buddhism, one of the Five Houses of Chan. The city is noted for its close adherence to the vinaya, the austere, traditional Buddhist monastic code.

History

The Dharma Realm Buddhist Association purchased the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas site in 1974 and established an international center there by 1976.[3] In 1979, the Third Threefold Ordination Ceremony at the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas was held, in which monks from China, Vietnam, Sri Lanka and the US transmitted the precepts. It was considered unique, as it represented both the Mahayana and Theravada traditions.[4][5]

Originally the site housed the Mendocino State Asylum for the Insane (later renamed the Mendocino State Hospital), founded in 1889. There were over seventy large buildings, over two thousand rooms of various sizes, three gymnasiums, a fire station, a swimming pool, a refuse incinerator, fire hydrants, and various other facilities. A paved road wound its way through the complex, lined with tall street lamps and trees planted during the asylum's initial construction. The connections for electricity and pipes for water, heating, and air conditioning were all underground, but centrally controlled.

Considering the natural surroundings to be ideal for cultivation, Hsuan Hua visited the valley three times and negotiated with the seller many times. He wanted to establish a center for propagating the Buddhadharma throughout the world and for introducing the Buddhist teachings, which originated in the East, to the Western world. Hsuan Hua planned to create a major center for world Buddhism, and an international orthodox monastery for the purpose of elevating moral standards and raising people's awareness.

The city comprises 488 acres (197 hectares) of land, of which 80 acres (32 hectares) are developed. The rest of the land includes meadows, orchards, and forests. Large institutional buildings and smaller residential houses are scattered over the west side of the campus. The main Buddha hall, monastic facilities, educational institutes, administrative offices, the main kitchen and dining hall, Jyun Kang Vegetarian Restaurant, and supporting structures are all located in this complex.

In 2009, the walls of the Long Life Hall suffered structural damage caused by an electrical fire. However, no major damage occurred to the altar, artwork or statues inside the hall.[6]

Notable structures

The Jeweled Hall of 10,000 Buddhas
• The Jeweled Hall of 10,000 Buddhas: Finished in 1982, the hall is adorned with streamers, banners, lamps and has in the center a 20-foot (6 m) statue of a thousand-armed Avalokiteśvara (a bodhisattva popularly known as Guanyin in Chinese and Chenrezik in Tibetan). Rows of yellow bowing cushions line the red carpet. Walls are adorned with 10,000 images of the Buddha, molded by Hsuan Hua.[7]
• Hall of No Words: This is where Hsuan Hua often held classes for his disciples in the early years of the city. The abbot's quarters, where Hsuan Hua dwelled, were on the second floor. This was also where Hsuan Hua lay in state during the 49-day mourning period. Now, it is a memorial hall that contains relics of the Buddha, Hsu Yun, and Hsuan Hua. It is closed to the public and opened on special days.
• Dharma Realm Buddhist University: DRBU was established in 1976 by Venerable Master Hsuan Hua, who devoted his life to education in developing the human character. The University offers two degree programs: Bachelor of Liberal Arts[8] and Master of Arts in Buddhist Classics.[9] In 2018, it became accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges.[10]
• Jyun Kang Vegetarian Restaurant: The university cafeteria, which serves only vegan food. The goal is to serve healthful nutritious food full of the good karma of non-harming.
• Tathāgata (Rulai) Monastery: The dorm rooms for monks (left home persons) and male lay persons persuaded toward the monastic lifestyle.
• Great Compassion Courtyard: Dorm rooms for guests and visitors.
• Bell and Drum House: Houses the instruments that are played daily to ready monastics for daily practice.
• Institute for the Translation of Buddhist Texts: This facility was active in the early years of the city as a center for translation and as a residence hall for nuns and laywomen. The Institute has since moved to Burlingame, California.[11]
• Tower of Blessings: Hsuan Hua allocated the Tower of Blessings as a home for the elderly monastics residing in the city.
• Wonderful Words Hall: Site for daily gatherings to listen to Hsuan Hua's taped lectures in the 10,000 Buddhas Hall.
• Five Contemplations Dining Hall: Completed in 1982, it is where the monastics and resident lay community follow the formal monastic style in taking their lunch meal. Only purely vegetarian food is served here, and the hall can seat over 3,000 people.
• Instilling Goodness Elementary and Developing Virtue Secondary Schools: The elementary (kindergarten through 6th grade) and secondary (7th grade through 12th grade) schools were founded by Hsuan Hua in 1976. The schools are divided into two divisions, Boys and Girls, and teach such classes as meditation, yoga, Buddhism, and World Religions. Many foreign and non-local students also reside on campus in school dorms for the duration of the school year (excepting winter, spring, and summer vacations). As of spring 2006, there were about 130 students in both divisions.
• Organic Farm: A ten-acre CCOF-certified organic farm, whose produce supplements the meals in the dining hall.


The Five Contemplations Dining Hall, with a forty-foot-high painting of thousand-armed Avalokiteśvara

Traditions

Two practices distinguish the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas from many other Chinese Buddhist monasteries: the monastics always wear the long sashes that are worn outside the kāṣāya or monastic clothing, and they eat only one meal a day, always before noon.

At night most of them sit up and rest, rather than lying down to sleep. Monastics at the city do not have any social lives, nor do men and women intermingle. Whereas many ordinary Chinese monks go out to perform rituals for events such as weddings or funerals, none of these monks do so. Some monastics even choose to maintain a vow of silence, for varying periods of time. They wear a tag saying "No Talking" and do not speak with anyone.

There are monks and nuns who maintain the precept of not owning personal wealth and not touching money, thus eliminating the thought of money and increasing their purity of mind. Master Hsuan Hua often reminded his disciples:[12][13]

In cultivation, we have to stick to our principles! We can't forget our principles. Our principles are our goal. Once we recognize our goal, forward we go! We've got to be brave and vigorous. We can't retreat. As long as we are vigorous and not lax in ordinary times, we could become enlightened any minute or any second. So by no means should we let ourselves be confused by thoughts, and miss the opportunity to get enlightened.

— Venerable Master Hsuan Hua

Atmosphere

The City of Ten Thousand Buddhas is a strict Buddhist monastery adhering to the traditional Asian monastic culture although it is located in a liberal area of California. While the traditionalists are more drawn to the spiritual and devotional side of Buddhism, Westerners are often more interested in meditation. Some of the boarding school children are Westerners from the local community who want their children to grow up in a community-oriented place, while some of the children come from Taiwan and China, and even from European countries, such as France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, where parents think highly of Hsuan Hua.[14]

The monastery houses both male and female Sangha, students from the boarding school, and is open to the public. However, males and females have separate campuses, with gender-neutral buildings in the middle of the campus. In contrast, many monasteries in China, Taiwan, and the West house only monks or only nuns (but not both), and are closed to the public.

Guiding principles and customs

Hsuan Hua set up the six principles for all monastics and lay practitioners to follow as guidelines for spiritual development. These principles were "not to fight nor be greedy, not to seek nor be selfish, not to pursue personal advantage, and not to lie."

Since spiritual development is a full-time endeavor, certain rules and customs are followed in the community, including:

• Different sections of the campus are designated for men or women, and generally the genders do not commingle. This is particularly noticeable at ceremonies and meals, where men and women separate into different sections.
• Out of respect to the lifestyle of the monastics, modest clothing is worn by the laity at all times.
• Smoking, drug use, and the consumption of meat products and alcoholic beverages are prohibited.

Other notable customs:

• Unlike in many temples found in Asia, no incense is ever offered personally by any of the lay practitioners and guests. Hsuan Hua believed that it was superstitious to insist on personally offering incense to the Buddhas and pointed out that high-quality incense is expensive while poor-quality incense can ruin the walls and statues. Instead, a single stick of incense is offered by a monastic for the entire assembly, and then all practitioners would simply bow and pay respects.

Wildlife


One of the city's many peacocks

Many animals roam the grounds of the City, including peafowl, deer, squirrels, and other species. The peacocks are generally quite accustomed to the presence of people and are tame. The peacocks pose a large problem on the farm, so countermeasures have been taken against them, including covering the plants, moving the peacocks to a walnut farm, and planting extra food based on the assumption that a significant fraction will be eaten or damaged by peacocks. During special Dharma Assemblies, a Liberating of Life ceremony is held, in which many animals – especially pheasants and chukar partridges – bought from hunting preserves, are set free.

Daily schedule

Morning schedule

4:00 AM - 5:00 AM: Morning Recitation
5:00 AM - 6:00 AM: Universal Bowing
6:00 AM - 7:00 AM: Meditation / Self-study
6:15 AM - 6:45 AM: Breakfast
7:00 AM - 8:00 AM: Avatamsaka Sutra recitation (in Chinese)
8:00 AM - 10:30 AM: Classes, study or work
10:30 AM - 12:00 PM: Meal Offering / Lunch

Evening schedule

6:30 PM - 7:30 PM: Evening Recitation
7:30 PM - 9:40 PM: Lecture / Closing recitation

"Largest in Western Hemisphere" claim

Hsi Lai Temple, associated with Fo Guang Shan and located in Hacienda Heights in Southern California, has claimed since 1988 that they are the largest Buddhist temple in the Western Hemisphere. However, the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas has over 80 acres (32 hectares) of developed land on a total of 488 acres (197 hectares) compared to Hsi Lai's dense temple complex on 15 acres (6.1 hectares). Therefore it is unclear which is the largest, as there is a significant difference between the structure and location of the two Buddhist organizations.

See Also

• Buddhism in the United States

References

1. "Mendocino State Hospital - Asylum Projects". http://www.asylumprojects.org. Retrieved 2019-09-22.
2. "Talmage". Geographic Names Information System. United States Geological Survey. 1981-01-19. Retrieved 2019-09-22.
3. In Memory of the Venerable Master Hsuan Hua. Buddhist Text Translation Society. 1995. p. 26. ISBN 9780881395518.
4. "Footsteps of an Ascetic Monk". City of 10,000 Buddhas. Retrieved 2019-09-22.
5. "A Year-By-Year Record Of The Life Of Venerable Master Hua And The Activities Of Dharma Realm Buddhist Association". Dharma Realm Buddhist Association. Retrieved 2019-09-22.
6. "Fire at City of 10,000 Buddhas". Ukiah Daily Journal. 2009-01-28. Archived from the original on 2017-04-27. Retrieved 2019-09-23.
7. "Hall of Ten Thousand Buddhas". City of 10,000 Buddhas. Retrieved 2014-09-10.
8. "Undergraduate Program". Dharma Realm Buddhist University. Retrieved 2019-09-23.
9. "Graduate Program". Dharma Realm Buddhist University. Retrieved 2019-09-23.
10. "Dharma Realm Buddhist University". WASC Senior College and University Commission.
11. "About Us". Buddhist Text Translation Society. Archived from the original on 2016-10-14. Retrieved 2014-09-10.
12. "History & Background". City of 10,000 Buddhas. Archived from the original on 2019-03-13. Retrieved 2019-09-22.
13. "The City of Ten Thousand Buddhas at Wonderful Enlightenment Mountain - In Memory of the Venerable Master Hsuan Hua". Dharma Realm Buddhist Association. Archived from the original on 2019-09-22. Retrieved 2019-09-22.
14. "Education: Teaching People to Love the Country, Love the Family, and Cherish Life". City of 10,000 Buddhas. Retrieved 2019-09-22.

External links

• Official website

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Dharma Realm Buddhist Association
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/10/20


The DRBA logo


The mountain gate to the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas, the headquarters of DRBA.

The Dharma Realm Buddhist Association (shortened to DRBA, Chinese: 法界佛教總會, PY: Fajie Fuojiao Zonghui, formerly known as the Sino-American Buddhist Association) is an international, non-profit Buddhist organization founded by the Venerable Master Hsuan Hua in 1959 to bring the orthodox teachings of the Buddha to the entire world. DRBA has branch monasteries in many countries and cities, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Vancouver, as well as in Malaysia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Australia.

History

The Sino-American Buddhist Association was founded in San Francisco, California in 1959. A small temple, the Buddhist Lecture Hall was started. The Venerable Master Hsuan Hua came over from Hong Kong in 1962 by plane, stopping over at Japan and Hawaii before arriving at San Francisco.

From 1962 to 1968 the Venerable Master lectured on the Lotus Sutra, the Diamond Sutra, and the Amitabha Sutra among many other Buddhist sutras and texts. Many of his Dharma talks and line-by-line explanations of sacred Buddhist texts have been published in book form by the Buddhist Text Translation Society, both in the original Chinese and in English translation.[1]‹See TfM›[failed verification]

In June 1968 he began a 96-day intensive Study and Practice Summer Session for students and faculty from the University of Washington in Seattle. After the session had concluded, many of the participants remained in San Francisco to continue their studies with the Venerable Master. In that year five Americans (three Bhikshus, two Bhikshunis) were ordained, marking the beginning of the Sangha in the United States.

In 1970 Gold Mountain Monastery, one of the first Chinese Buddhist temples in the United States was founded in San Francisco, and a Hundred Day Chan Session was begun. Vajra Bodhi Sea, a monthly journal of DRBA about Buddhist topics and teachings, was also founded in 1970.

In 1972 the first Threefold Ordination Ceremony for the transmission of the complete precepts was held at Gold Mountain Monastery.

In 1973 the Institute for the Translation of Buddhist Texts and Instilling Goodness Elementary School were founded in San Francisco. In the same year, Bhikshus Heng Ju and Heng Yo began a Three Steps One Bow pilgrimage from San Francisco to Seattle to pray for world peace - a hard journey over 1,000 miles. This was the first such pilgrimage in the history of American Buddhism.

The site of the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas was purchased in 1974, and in November of that year the Venerable Master Hsuan Hua led a delegation to propagate the Dharma in Hong Kong, India, Singapore, Vietnam, Taiwan and other places. The delegation lasted for three months, ending on January 12, 1975.

Gold Wheel Monastery was founded in Los Angeles in 1975.

In 1976 the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas completed the second Threefold Ordination Ceremony. Developing Virtue Secondary Schools and Dharma Realm Buddhist University were also founded. The next year Dharma Masters Heng Sure[2] and Heng Chau began a second Three Steps, One Bow pilgrimage from Gold Wheel Monastery to the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas.

Branch Monasteries

Note that this is only a partial list of all branch monasteries of DRBA.

United States

• The City of Ten Thousand Buddhas 萬佛聖城 - Talmage, CA[3]
• The City of the Dharma Realm 法界聖城 - West Sacramento, CA
• Gold Mountain Monastery 金山聖寺 - San Francisco, CA
• Institute for World Religions & Berkeley Buddhist Monastery 法界宗教研究院 - Berkeley, CA
• The International Translation Institute 國際譯經學院 - Burlingame, CA
• Gold Wheel Monastery 金輪聖寺 - Los Angeles, CA
• Long Beach Monastery 長提聖寺 - Long Beach, CA
• Blessings, Prosperity & Longevity Monastery 福祿壽聖寺 - Long Beach, CA
• Gold Sage Monastery 金聖寺 - San Jose, CA
• Gold Summit Monastery 金峰聖寺 - Seattle, WA
• Avatamsaka Vihara 華嚴精舍 - Bethesda, MD

Canada


Gold Buddha Monastery in Vancouver.

• Avatamsaka Monastery 華嚴聖寺 - Calgary, Alberta, Canada
• Gold Buddha Monastery 金佛聖寺 - Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Malaysia

• Dharma Realm Guan Yin Sagely Monastery 法界觀音聖寺 - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
• Prajna Guan Yin Sagely Monastery 般若觀音聖寺 - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
• Lotus Vihara 蓮華精舍 - Selangor, Malaysia
• Fa Yuan Sageley Monastery 法緣聖寺 - Seri Kembangan, Selangor, Malaysia
• Malaysia Dharma Realm Buddhist Association - Penang Branch 馬來西亞法界佛教總會檳城分會- Penang, Malaysia

Hong Kong

• Cixing Monastery 慈興寺
• Buddhist Lecture Hall 佛教講堂

Taiwan

• Dharma Realm Buddhist Books Distribution Society 法界佛教印經會 - Taipei, Taiwan
• Amitabha Monastery 彌陀聖寺 - Hualien, Taiwan
• Dharma Realm Monastery 法界聖寺 - Liugui, Taiwan

Australia

• Gold Coast Dharma Realm 金岸法界 - Gold Coast, Australia

See also

• Hsuan Hua
• Buddhism in America
• Timeline of Zen Buddhism in the United States

References

1. "Buddhist Text Translation Society". Retrieved 10 September 2014.
2. Heng Sure
3. "City of 10,000 Buddhas". Retrieved 10 September 2014.

External links

• Dharma Realm Buddhist Association
• Dharma Realm Buddhist University
• Buddhist Text Translation Society
• Dharma Realm Buddhist Young Adults
• DRBA

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Hsuan Hua [An Tzu] [Tu Lun]
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/10/20


Hsuan Hua 宣化
Hsuan Hua in Ukiah, California

Title Chan Master, Founder and abbot of the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas, President of the Dharma Realm Buddhist Association, Rector of the Dharma Realm Buddhist University, the ninth patriarch of guiyang school.

Personal
Born: Bai Yushu, April 16, 1918, Jilin, China
Died: June 7, 1995 (aged 77), Los Angeles, United States
Religion: Chan Buddhism
Nationality: Chinese
School: Guyiang School
Lineage: 9th generation
Dharma names: An Tzu; Tu Lun
Senior posting
Teacher: Hsu Yun
Students: Heng Sure, Heng Lyu, Heng Chau, Heng Lai


Venerable Hsuan Hua meditating in the lotus position. Hong Kong, 1953.

Hsuan Hua (Chinese: 宣化; pinyin: Xuānhuà; lit.: 'proclaim and transform'; April 16, 1918 – June 7, 1995), also known as An Tzu and Tu Lun, was a monk of Chan Buddhism and a contributing figure in bringing Chinese Buddhism to the United States in the 20th century.

Hsuan Hua founded several institutions in the US. The Dharma Realm Buddhist Association[1] (DRBA) is a Buddhist organization with chapters in North America, Australia and Asia. The City of Ten Thousand Buddhas (CTTB) in Ukiah, California, is one of the first Chan Buddhist monasteries in America. Venerable Master Hsuan Hua founded Dharma Realm Buddhist University at CTTB. The Buddhist Text Translation Society works on the phonetics and translation of Buddhist scriptures from Chinese into English, Vietnamese, Spanish, and many other languages.

Early life

Hsuan Hua, a native of Shuangcheng County of Jilin (now Wuchang District, Harbin, Heilongjiang), was born Bai Yushu (白玉書) on April 16, 1918. His parents were devout Buddhists. At an early age, Hua became a vegetarian like his mother, and decided to become a Buddhist monk.

At the age of 15, he took refuge in the Three Jewels under the Venerable Chang Zhi. That same year he began to attend school and studied texts of various Chinese schools of thought, and the fields of medicine, astrology, and physiology. At 19 years of age, Hua became a monastic, under the Dharma name An Tzu. (安慈)

Bringing Chinese Buddhism to the United States

In 1959, Hsuan Hua sought to bring Chinese Buddhism to the West.[2] He instructed his disciples in America to establish a Buddhist association, initially known as The Buddhist Lecture Hall, which was renamed the Sino-American Buddhist Association before taking its present name: the Dharma Realm Buddhist Association.

Hsuan Hua traveled to Australia in 1961 and taught there for one year, returning to Hong Kong in 1962. That same year, at the invitation of American Buddhists, he traveled to the United States; his intent was to "come to America to create Patriarchs, to create Buddhas, to create Bodhisattvas".[3]

San Francisco

Hsuan Hua resided in San Francisco, where he built a lecture hall. Hsuan Hua began to attract young Americans who were interested in meditation. He conducted daily meditation sessions and frequent Sutra lectures.

At that time, the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred between the United States and the Soviet Union, and Hsuan Hua embarked on a fasting period for thirty-five days to pray for an end to the hostilities and for world peace. In 1967, Hsuan Hua moved the Buddhist Lecture Hall back to Chinatown, locating it in the Tianhou Temple.

First American Sangha

In 1968, Hsuan Hua held a Shurangama Study and Practice Summer Session. Over thirty students from the University of Washington in Seattle came to study the Buddha’s teachings. After the session was concluded, five young Americans (Bhikṣu Heng Chyan, Heng Jing, and Heng Shou, and Bhikṣuṇīs Heng Yin and Heng Ch'ih) requested permission to take full ordination.

Venerable Hsuan Hua lectured on the entire Śūraṅgama Sūtra in 1968 while he was in the United States. These lectures were recorded in an eight-part series of books containing the sutra and a traditionally rigorous form of commentary that addresses each passage. It was again lectured by the original translator monks and nuns of the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas at Dharma Realm Buddhist University in the summer of 2003.

Vision of American Buddhism

With the founding of his American Sangha, Hsuan Hua embarked on his personal vision for Buddhism in the United States:

• Bringing the true and proper teachings of the Buddha to the West and establishing a proper monastic community of the fully ordained Sangha here
• Organizing and supporting the translation of the entire Buddhist canon into English and other Western languages[4][5]
• Promoting wholesome education through the establishment of schools and universities

Hosting ordination ceremonies

Because of the increasing numbers of people who wished to become monks and nuns under Hsuan Hua's guidance, in 1972 he decided to hold ordination ceremonies at Gold Mountain Dhyana Monastery. Two monks and one nun received ordination. Subsequent ordination platforms have been held at the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas in 1976, 1979, 1982, 1989, 1991, and 1992, and progressively larger numbers of people have received full ordination. Over two hundred people from countries all over the world were ordained under him.

Theravada and Mahayana traditions

Having traveled to Thailand and Burma in his youth to investigate the Southern Tradition of Buddhism, Hsuan Hua wanted to bridge what he perceived as a rift between the Northern (Mahayana) and Southern (Theravada) traditions. In an address to Ajahn Sumedho and the monastic community at Amaravati Buddhist Monastery on October 6, 1990, Hsuan Hua stated:[6]

In Buddhism, we should unite the Southern and Northern traditions. From now on, we won't refer to Mahayana or Theravada. Mahayana is the "Northern Tradition" and Theravada is the "Southern Tradition." [...] Both the Southern and the Northern Traditions' members are disciples of the Buddha, we are the Buddha's descendants. As such, we should do what Buddhists ought to do. [...] No matter the Southern or the Northern Tradition, both share the common purpose of helping living beings bring forth the Bodhi-mind, to put an end to birth and death, and to leave suffering and attain bliss.

On the occasion of the opening ceremony for the Dharma Realm Buddhist University, Hsuan Hua presented Venerable K. Sri Dhammananda of the Theravada tradition with an honorary Ph.D. He also donated a major piece of the land that would become Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery, a Theravada Buddhist monastery in the Thai Forest tradition of Ajahn Chah, located in Redwood Valley, California.

Hsuan Hua would also invite Bhikkhus from both traditions to jointly conduct the High Ordination.

Chinese and American Buddhism

From July 18 to the 24th of 1987, Hsuan Hua hosted the Water, Land, and Air Repentance Dharma Assembly, a centuries-old ritual often seen as the "king of dharma services" in Chinese Buddhism, at the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas and invited over seventy Buddhists from mainland China to attend. This was the first time the service was known to have been held in North America.

On November 6, 1990, Hsuan Hua sent his disciples to Beijing to bring the Dragon Treasury (Chinese: 龍藏; pinyin: lóngzáng) edition of the Chinese Buddhist canon back to CTTB, furthering his goal of bringing Buddhism to the US.

Death

On June 7, 1995, Hsuan Hua died in Los Angeles at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. His sudden passing came as a shock to most of his disciples.

Funeral

Hsuan Hua's funeral lasted from June 8 to July 29. On June 17, Hsuan Hua's body was taken from southern to northern California, returning to the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas. All major services during the funeral were presided over by Venerable Ming Yang, abbot of Longhua Temple in Shanghai and a longtime friend of Hsuan Hua's.

On July 28, monks from both Theravada and Mahayana traditions hosted a memorial ceremony and cremation. More than two thousand followers from the United States, Canada, and various Asian and European countries, came to CTTB to take part in the funeral service. Letters of condolences from Buddhist monks and dignitaries, including from President Bush, were read during the memorial service.

A day after the cremation, July 29, Hsuan Hua's ashes were scattered in the air above the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas by two disciples, Heng Sure and Heng Chau, one of Master Hua's first disciples, from a hot air balloon.

After the funeral, memorial services commemorating Hsuan Hua's life were held in various parts of the world, including Taiwan, China, and Canada. His śarīra (relics) were distributed to many of his temples, disciples and followers.

See also

• Buddhism in the United States
• Timeline of Zen Buddhism in the United States
• Buddhism in the West

References

1. DRBA Founder's Bio Archived 2008-01-13 at the Wayback Machine
2. Epstein, Ronald (1995). "The Venerable Master Hsuan Hua Brings the Dharma to the West." In Memory of the Venerable Master Hsuan Hua, Volume One. Burlingame, CA:Buddhist Text Translation Society, pp. 59-68. Reprinted in The Flower Adornment Sutra, Chapter One, Part One “The Wondrous Adornment of the Rulers of the Worlds; A Commentary by Venerable Master Hsuan Hua. Burlingame, CA: Buddhist Text Translation Society, 2004, pp. 274-286.
3. Prebish, Charles (1995). "Ethics and Integration in American Buddhism". Journal of Buddhist Ethics, Vol. 2, 1995.
4. Epstein, Ronald (1969). “The Heart Sūtra and the Commentary of Tripiṭaka Master Hsüan Hua.” Master’ Thesis, University of Washington.
5. Epstein, Ronald (1975). “The Śūraṅgama-sūtra with Tripiṭaka Master Hsüan-hua’s Commentary An Elementary Explanation of Its General Meaning: A Preliminary Study and Partial Translation.” Ph.D. Dissertation. University of California at Berkeley.
6. Hsuan Hua. The Shurangama Sutra with Commentary, Volume 7. 2003. p. 261

External links

• Tripitaka Master Hsuan Hua

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Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/10/20


Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery
View from the Bhikkhu Commons
(Monks' Utility Building, or MUB)
(Photo by Reginald White)
Religion
Affiliation: Thai Forest Tradition
Location: Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery, 16201 Tomki Road Redwood Valley, CA 95470, United States
Completed: 2018
Website: http://www.abhayagiri.org/


Buddha statue at Abhayagiri

Abhayagiri, or Fearless Mountain in the canonical language of Pali, is a Theravadin Buddhist monastery of the Thai Forest Tradition in Redwood Valley, California. Its chief priorities are the teaching of Buddhist ethics, together with traditional concentration and insight meditation (also known as the Noble Eightfold Path), as an effective way of completely uprooting suffering and discontent.

Origins & Development

About 16 miles (26 km) north of Ukiah, the monastery has its origins in the 1980s when the UK-based Ajahn Sumedho, foremost western disciple of the Thai meditation master Ajahn Chah, started getting requests to teach in California. Visits by Ajahn Sumedho, as well as other senior monks and nuns, resulted in the Sanghapala Foundation being set up in 1988. The monastery's first 120 acres (0.49 km2) were given to the foundation by the devotees of Chan Master Hsuan Hua, founder of the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas in Talmage, before he died in 1995.[1] Currently, the monastery rests on 280 acres (1.1 km2) of mountainous forest land.[2]

Six months after the monastery was settled by Ajahn Amaro, Ajahn Pasanno arrived to join him as co-abbot. They served together in this role until July, 2010, when Ajahn Amaro departed to take up the invitation to serve as abbot of Amaravati Buddhist Monastery in England.[3] Ajahn Pasanno was the sole abbot of Abhayagiri between July, 2010 and July, 2018.[4]

Abhayagiri Monastery developed significantly under Ajahn Pasanno's and Ajahn Amaro's leadership and guidance, along with the support of the monastic and lay community, and more specifically, the Abhayagiri Building Committee. Over 25 kutis, monastic huts, were built in the mountainous monastery forest during their time as co-abbots as well as when Ajahn Pasanno was the lone abbot. In addition, during the early years, the co-abbots converted both current and new buildings into a Dhamma Hall, kitchen, office spaces, a room for disabled visitors, a laundry room and bathrooms/showers for lay women and men, along with monastery infrastructure and extensive creation of forest paths and roads.

The co-abbots also contributed to the building of the Bhikkhu Commons, more affectionately know to the residents as the MUB: Monks' Utility Building, a 1600 square foot complex located in the upper forest of the monastery. The MUB offers monks access to bathrooms, showers, a multipurpose meeting room, a large sewing room, a laundry room, a small kitchenette and a large storage room below. The MUB was dedicated and officially opened on July 4, 2010.

After Ajahn Amaro's departure to England in July, 2010 building a new Reception Hall was the next major undertaking of Ajahn Pasanno and the Abhayagiri Community. This took more than three years of planning and 4 years of building and would be a two-story complex with over 3000 square feet of covered outdoor decks and 6000 square feet of internal space. The internal space included a spacious meditation hall, a larger, commercial style kitchen, a library, a food storage room, guest rooms, a child care room, multiple bathrooms, showers for laymen, a laundry room, a small shrine room/reliquary, and a large storage room. Major landscaping was also accomplished. The Reception Hall building broke ground in July, 2013 and ended all construction on June 30, 2018 with the cloister area inauguration.[5][6]

Also in 2010, Ajahn Pasanno supported the establishment of the Pacific Hermitage, a branch of Abhayagiri Monastery, founded in the Columbia River Gorge along a forested stretch in White Salmon, Washington. Through Ajahn Pasanno's encouragement, Ajahn Sudanto lead the effort to establish the Pacific Hermitage.[7] Three years after its founding, the hermitage was offered a purchased property on the outskirts of White Salmon where it is presently located. Three monks typically stay in residence at the Hermitage, year round.

The October 2017 Northern California wildfires threatened Abhayagiri[8] but it survived undamaged.

At the end of Ajahn Pasanno's tenure as abbot, July 11, 2018, he departed for a year sabbatical leaving the monastery to co-abbots Ajahn Karunadhammo and Ajahn Nyaniko for the foreseeable future.[9] Ajahn Pasanno plans to reside at Abhayagiri after his sabbatical, but will not be taking up the role of abbot when he returns.

Lifestyle


Ajahn Pasanno, Ajahn Karuṇadhammo, and Ajahn Ñāniko walking in Ukiah, accepting offerings of alms food. Full Moon Observance Day, September 2013 (Photo by Brian Carniello)

As of July 2018, there were two abbots (co-abbots), a total of 13 fully ordained bhikkhus (Buddhist monks), two samaneras (novices), and 4 anagarikas (postulants) and a long term female monastic resident.[10] Men and women live in separate locations in the monastery following guidelines of formal celibacy. Male residents live in small huts nestled in the forest. Female residents live in a house and a couple of huts on an adjoining property which was separately donated for the purpose of housing women at the monastery. Guest teachers come from forest monasteries in Thailand, England, as well as other countries in Europe and Australia. Visitors come to the monastery regularly for day visits,[11] and can also stay as overnight guests.[12]


Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery, Asalha Puja 2014

The daily schedule, in keeping with tradition, is rigorous.[13] Most residents (monastics and lay visitors) rise well before sunrise. Morning puja begins at 5:00 am and lasts an hour and a half. It includes chanting in both Pali and English,[14] as well as an hour of silent meditation. This is followed by a half-hour chore period and a simple oatmeal breakfast. At 7:30 am, there is a meeting where a short Dhamma reflection is given and work assignments for the morning period are announced. A three-hour work period follows this meeting, ending with a meal around 11:00 am, which has to be consumed before midday. All lay residents follow the 8 precepts which include not eating food after noon until dawn the next day. Around 1:00 pm, after the post-meal cleanup, the schedule is open for individual practice of sitting and walking meditation as well as Dhamma study. It is at this time that monks, in addition to their meditation and study practice, care for their personal requisites like the huts they live in and the robes they wear. One can also walk around the extensive network of trails that wind about the mountainside. At 5:30 pm, tea is served in the kitchen and on most days one of the Ajahns is available in the Dhamma Hall for questions and answers. Tea time is followed by the evening puja beginning at 7:00 pm, which includes chanting in Pali and another hour of silent meditation.[15] Formal Dhamma talks are offered on Saturday evening and lunar observance days during evening puja just after the period for silent meditation. On lunar observance days, which mark the four moon quarters, sitting and walking meditation continue until 3:00 am the next morning, followed by a morning puja.

Special lunar observance days at Abhayagiri include Asalha Puja, which commemorates the first teaching given by the Buddha after he attained enlightenment and the first time another being attained stream-entry as a result of the Buddha’s teaching. The next day is the beginning of vassa (Thai: พรรษา), the three-month Rains Retreat where monks are required to stay at a single residence for the duration of this time (they can leave for 6 days at time under specific circumstances). Vassa is followed by Kathina, a festival in which the laity expresses gratitude to monks and offers to the monastic community gifts of cloth and supplies that will be useful for the coming year. The cloth is then cut, sewn and dyed by the monks to make a robe on that day to offer to one of the Saṅgha. Other days that the monastic community at Abhayagiri sets aside each year for special commemoration include Ajahn Chah’s birthday (June 17), Vesakha Puja (usually the first full moon of May), and Magha Puja (usually on a full moon in late February/ early March).

Programs & Teaching in the Community


Abhayagiri monastery

Abhayagiri offers a variety of programs and teachings throughout the year. The Upāsikā Program was created for laypeople in order to assist individual practice, enhance spiritual training, and deepen both the intellectual and experiential understanding of Dhamma. Upāsikā Days are held throughout the year at the monastery and are open both to those who have made a formal commitment to the program and to those who may simply wish to attend for the day. Each year’s commitment ceremony takes place in the spring. There is a different theme for the teachings that are offered on each Upāsikā Day.[16]

Members of the Abhayagiri Saṅgha regularly travel from Abhayagiri throughout the year to offer teachings in the immediate area and other parts of the country. Once a month, they offer teachings at Yoga Mendocino (Ukiah, California),[17] at the Three Jewels Meditation Hall (Fort Bragg, California),[18] and at Berkeley Buddhist Monastery,[19] and they offer teachings at least once throughout the year at Portland Friends of the Dhamma (Oregon),[20] Spirit Rock Meditation Center,[21] Insight Santa Cruz,[22] and the Common Ground Meditation Center (Minneapolis, Minnesota).[23]

See also

• Ajahn Amaro
• Ajahn Pasanno
• Amaravati Buddhist Monastery, UK
• Bodhinyana Monastery, Australia
• Chithurst Buddhist Monastery, UK
• Birken Forest Buddhist Monastery, Canada
• Index of Buddhism-related articles
• Wat Pah Nanachat, Thailand

References

1. Talbot, Mary (Winter 1998). "Just Another Thing in the Forest". Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. Retrieved September 10,2019.
2. "Origins of Abhayagiri", Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery.
3. "Ajahn Amaro Biography" Archived 2014-07-29 at the Wayback Machine, Amaravati Buddhist Monastery. Retrieved on 19 September 2013.
4. "Monasteries in the lineage of Ajahn Chah", Forest Sangha. Retrieved on 19 September 2013.
5. "Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery - About - Construction". http://www.abhayagiri.org. Retrieved 2018-07-21.
6. "Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery - News - 254 Cloister Area Inauguration A Big Success". http://www.abhayagiri.org. Retrieved 2018-07-21.
7. " The Pacific Hermitage: About Us" Archived 2014-11-01 at the Wayback Machine.
8. Atwood, Haleigh (October 13, 2017). "California wildfires threaten Buddhist centers and monasteries". Lion's Roar. Retrieved September 10, 2019.
9. "Abhayagiri news 248 Luang Por Pasannos birthday and taking leave celebration". http://www.abhayagiri.org. Retrieved 2018-07-21.
10. "Residents", Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery.
11. "Day Visits", Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery.
12. "Overnight Stays", Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery.
13. "Daily Schedule", Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery.
14. "Chanting Book", Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery.
15. "Chanting Book", Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery.
16. "Upasika Program", Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery.
17. "Yoga Mendocino (Ukiah, California)"
18. "Three Jewels Meditation Hall (Fort Bragg, California)"
19. "Berkeley Buddhist Monastery"
20. "Portland Friends of the Dhamma"
21. "Spirit Rock Meditation Center"
22. "Insight Santa Cruz"
23. "Common Ground Meditation Center (Minneapolis, Minnesota)"

External links

• Abhayagiri official website: offers free audio, books & newsletter
• Forest Sangha website
• On-line Pali Language Course

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Taixu [Tai Hsu]
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/10/20

-- Chapter 2: The Sound of the Tide for a New China [Taixu/Tai Hsu] [Bodhi Society] [Right Faith Buddhist Society of Hankou], Excerpt from Toward a Modern Chinese Buddhism: Taixu's Reforms, by Don Alvin Pittman

-- The Communist Pure Land: The Legacy of Buddhist Reforms in the Early Chinese Revolutionary Period, by Kenneth J. Tymick

-- Humanistic Buddhism From Venerable Tai Xu to Grand Master Hsing Yun, by Darui Long

Taixu, then thirty-nine years old, returned to China from the United States in late April 1929, arriving in Shanghai feeling rather optimistic about the future of his program of modernization and reform. He was encouraged by the response that he had received in the West to his plans for a World Buddhist Institute and to his call for greater cooperation among Buddhists around the globe, and obviously pleased that many had recognized him as a religious leader with both a vision for the modern reformation of Buddhism and a realistic plan for carrying it out. Arthur C. March, of the Buddhist Lodge of London, had concluded, for example, that "Taixu is a very practical man. He is no dreamer.... Now that China has definitely entered the work of establishing Buddhism throughout the world as a universal religion, we may expect great results to follow."

-- Toward a Modern Chinese buddhism: Taixu's Reforms, by Don Alvin Pittman

The Society’s prehistory goes back to the nineteenth century, and I would like to begin by mentioning the Theosophical Society. It was and is a strange and interesting Society, that has a global multinational reach. It did an enormous amount in its own way to bring Eastern culture to the West, but it did not necessarily follow either a strictly intellectual or an entirely comprehensible approach. The two things we can say about its members is that they were true seekers after understanding, knowledge, wisdom and compassion and that, most of all, they wanted to solve the problem of human existence. They did this in their own idiosyncratic manner, and some of them have taken much criticism from academics. However, we are not interested in that. We are interested in the heart of these people and in what motivated and inspired them and what ultimately came out of the work and commitment they made in their individual lives, and their devotion.

The Buddhist Society’s roots are in the Theosophical Society. Some years ago, when we were doing renovation work here, it was decided to clean the Buddha-rupa in the shrine room. When it was emptied out, to some people’s horror a photograph of Madame Blavatsky was found inside. This caused consternation among some members of the Council but it was stealthily put back in again.

The three objects of the Theosophical Society are to form a nucleus of the universal brotherhood of humanity without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste or colour; to encourage the comparative study of religion, philosophy and science; and to explore the unexplained laws of nature and the powers latent in humanity. These are clearly worthy goals, and it would be good if more of us could put more effort into attaining them.

Let us explore the history of the Theosophical Society a little more, starting with Madame Blavatsky....

An important figure in bringing Buddhism to the West is Anagarika Dharmapala, previously Don David Hewavitarne (1864–1933)....

Another visitor to Bodh Gaya was Sir Edwin Arnold, who went there in 1880....

The next important figure is Ananda Coomaraswamy, who was educated in London and trained as a geologist...

Another important figure is Ananda Metteyya....

Next is the Venerable Tai Hsu, who was the third Buddhist missionary to come to England and is acclaimed by many as a leading figure in the revival of Buddhism in China. Tai Hsu was a friend of Christmas Humphreys and gave money to the Buddhist Society at a time when it was really struggling.

-- The 90th Anniversary of The Buddhist Society 1924–2014, by The Buddhist Society

None were closer than the Dalai Lama's two brothers in exile...

The other brother, Gyalo Thondup, was residing in Darjeeling. Six years Norbu's junior, Gyalo was the proverbial prodigal son. The problem was, he was the figurative son to a number of fathers. He was the only one of five male siblings not directed toward a monastic life. As a teen, he had befriended members of the Chinese mission in Lhasa and yearned to study in China. Although this was not a popular decision among the more xenophobic members of his family, Gyalo got his wish in 1947 when he and a brother-in-law arrived at the Kuomintang capital of Nanking and enrolled in college.

Two years later, Gyalo, then twenty-one, veered further toward China when he married fellow student Zhu Dan. Not only was his wife ethnic Chinese, but her father, retired General Chu Shi- kuei, had been a key Kuomintang officer during the early days of the republic. Because of both his relationship to General Chu and the fact that he was the Dalai Lama's brother, Gyalo was feted in Nanking by no less than Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek.

The good times were not to last. With the communists closing in on Nanking during the final months of China's civil war, Gyalo and his wife fled in mid-1949 to the safer climes of India. Once again because of his relationship to the Dalai Lama, he was added to the invitation list for various diplomatic events and even got an audience with Prime Minister Nehru.

That October, Gyalo briefly ventured to the Tibetan enclave at Kalimpong before settling for seven months in Calcutta. While there, his father-in-law, General Chu, attempted to make contact with the Tibetan government. With the retreat of the Kuomintang to Taiwan, Chu had astutely shifted loyalty to the People's Republic and was now tasked by Beijing to arrange a meeting between Tibetan and PRC officials at a neutral site, possibly Hong Kong.

Conversant in Chinese and linked to both the Dalai Lama and General Chu, Gyalo was a logical intermediary for the Hong Kong talks. The British, however, were dragging their feet on providing visas to the Tibetan delegation. Unable to gain quick entry to the crown colony, Gyalo made what he intended to be a brief diversion to the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan. But Chiang Kai-shek, no doubt anxious to keep Gyalo away from General Chu and the PRC, had other plans. Smothering the royal sibling with largesse, Chiang kept Gyalo in Taipei for the next sixteen months. Only after a desperate letter to U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson requesting American diplomatic intervention did the ROC relent and give Gyalo an exit permit.

After arriving in Washington in September 1951, Gyalo continued to dabble in diplomacy. Within a month of his arrival, he was called to a meeting at the State Department. Significantly, Gyalo's Chinese wife was at his side during the encounter. Because of the couple's close ties to Chiang [Kai-shek], department representatives assumed that details of their talk would quickly be passed to the Kuomintang Nationalists...

[T]he NSC still advocated continued covert assistance to the ROC in order to develop anticommunist guerrillas for resistance and intelligence. Even temporary guerrilla successes, the council reasoned, might set off waves of defections and stiffen passive resistance.

Chiang Kai-shek could not have agreed more. Eager to vastly increase the scope of guerrilla support, the generalissimo in 1954 asked Washington for some 30,000 parachutes. Turned down the first time, he made further high-priority appeals over the next two years. These parachutes were needed for an ambitious plan to drop 100-man units near major PRC population centers. Hoping to set off a chain of uprisings, Chiang optimistically talked in terms of uprooting Chinese communism in as little as two years...

[T]he CIA's assistance program continued unabated...

The Hiu agents, meanwhile, remained on Taiwan through the spring of 1959. By that time, events in Tibet were creating unforeseen opportunities in the minds of the ROC leadership. During late March, immediately after the Dalai Lama fled Lhasa, Chiang Kai-shek offered public support to his "fellow countrymen" in Tibet and called for accelerated aid to mainland revolutionary movements. Other ROC officials claimed that radios had been supplied that month at the request of the NVDA, and additional forms of assistance were reportedly being considered.

In reality, the ROC's connection to the Tibetan resistance was all but non-existent. Although intelligence agents from Taiwan had been floating in and out of the refugee community in Kalimpong since at least 1956, they had been largely ineffective in winning recruits. And aside from a token $15,000 in refugee assistance provided by Taipei during May, there was no paramilitary aid extended to, or requested by, the NVDA.

The problem, recognized U.S. officials, was that the Tibetan revolt was not so much anticommunist as it was anti-Chinese. The Tibetans were antagonistic to all Chinese, noted U.S. Ambassador to Taipei Everett Drumright, regardless of political affiliation. Still, with Chiang's long-standing request for more action on the mainland given newfound urgency by the upsurge in Tibetan resistance, key U.S. foreign policy makers on 25 March had given the green light for exploratory discussions with the ROC regarding enhanced covert operations against the PRC. Drumright, who attended the meeting, advocated increased support to Taipei, provided there were no joint activities in Tibet.

Drumright's proviso meshed perfectly with conclusions drawn earlier by the CIA. From the onset of ST CIRCUS, the agency had taken great pains to exclude the ROC from its Tibetan operations. But there was no denying a convergence of interests, especially with regard to closing the logistical corridor across Amdo. Taking exception on this single occasion, the agency in May made plans for a joint project code-named ST WHALE.

The agents for ST WHALE would be drawn from the contingent of Hiu Muslims trained earlier by Tony Poe. Four were selected as a pilot team, which was scheduled to drop near the Qaidam Basin in the central part of Amdo -- within easy striking distance of the road to Lhasa. Although none of the Tibet Task Force's assets would be exposed to Taiwan, there was a hitch. The ROC's elite aviators from its Special Mission Team, which had long been handling airborne infiltrations across the mainland, had taken a beating over the previous year due to better PRC defenses strung along the coastal provinces. Its converted B-26 bombers did not have sufficient fuel for an Amdo mission and, in any event, had been eliminated from the agent-dropping role in March 1959 after taking losses. The B-26s were supposed to be replaced by the sophisticated P2 V-7 , but crews for this new plane had not yet graduated from the final stages of U.S. training. This left the venerable B-17, which had neither the speed nor the range to elude aerial interception and perform the round- trip from Taiwan to Amdo.

To assist, the CIA arranged to lend ST WHALE some of the aerial delivery methods it had used for ST BARNUM. Just as with the cargo drops to the NVDA, the Hiu would jump from the same CAT-piloted unmarked C-118. Significantly, that plane had recently been modified with pressurized doors, providing the crew with a quantum leap in comfort due to its now sealed cabin. As during the Tibet missions, the aircraft would stage through Kurmitola, putting it within closer range of Amdo and allowing the aircraft to circumvent the PRC's concentrated defenses along the coast.

Because the team would be left to its own devices on the ground, it was important that it bring adequate supplies. The problem was turned over to the CIA's logistical guru on Okinawa, Jim McElroy. He intended to use the jumper to-bundle system perfected during the 1957 jumps into Tibet. This time around the lead parachutist would be connected to 5,000 pounds of supplies lashed to a plywood pallet. Inside the bundle would be everything from jerked meat to gold ingots and coral beads for trading.

To study the topography around the target area, the CIA was granted presidential approval for two U-2 overflights of Tibet and China on 12 and 14 May. Shortly thereafter, the C-118 headed for Kurmitola. Most of the crew -- Doc Johnson at the controls, Jim Keck as navigator, Bob Aubrey at the radio, and Bill Lively as flight mechanic -- had experience on the supply drops the previous fall. In the copilot's seat was Truman "Barney" Barnes, a World War II ace with five confirmed Japanese kills in his P-38. In the rear, Richard "Paper Legs" Peterson was assigned as the kicker. One of two smoke jumpers seconded to the CIA at the close of 1958, Peterson had been sitting idle at Okinawa until ordered in April 1959 to give some additional parachute training to the Hiu team before escorting it to East Pakistan.

Upon arrival at Kurmitola, the crew and agents waited at the austere base for the order to launch. Fighting off boredom, Barnes asked for permission to visit his sister-in-law, a Holy Cross sister running an orphanage in Dacca, but his request was denied by the CIA support team in the interest of secrecy. The mood was already tense, and it was not helped when Johnson and Colonel Weltman -- the CIA air operations officer from Tokyo -- got into an argument over stolen liquor.

As soon as the weather and lunar conditions proved cooperative, the C-118 was airborne and heading northeast over NEFA, Kham, and the Amdo steppes. Upon seeing the moon reflected on the surface of Koko Nor -- the largest lake in all of Tibet and China -- the crew turned west for 160 kilometers. The drop zone, which had been identified in overhead imagery, proved difficult to pinpoint from the cockpit. "There were two forks in a river," recalls Barnes. "We thought we were at the right one and gave the signal."

In the cabin, Peterson, Keck, and Lively were all waiting near the bundle. There had been problems earlier in the flight when they belatedly realized that the parachute harnesses did not easily fit over the padded jackets worn by the agents. Three of the Hiu eventually made the squeeze; the fourth was forced to take his jacket off. "I held on to his jacket, " said Lively, "and motioned that I would throw it out the door after he jumped." [39]

There was another concern as well. As Peterson maneuvered the bundle along the rollers toward the door, one of the packing straps caught on a piece of steel. With the pallet hopelessly stuck and time pressing, he pulled out a knife and sliced off the tie. "In the back of my mind," he remembers, "I became concerned the bundle would not deploy its chute properly."

The jumper connected to the pallet, meanwhile, was also having ill-timed second thoughts. As the supplies roared out of the cabin and the cord started to play out from his chest, he stood firm. Reaching forward, Peterson grabbed the reluctant agent by the chute and heaved him out the door. "I'll never forget the look of raw terror," said Keck, "in the brief second before he disappeared into the dark."

With no further hesitation, the other three Muslims leaped from the plane. As promised, Lively stepped forward to release the jacket of the last agent into the slipstream. The plane then turned south and reached Kurmitola without incident.

Within a week, the four Hiu made brief radio contact with Taiwan. Encouraged, the same C-118 crew was summoned the next month for a repeat performance. This time around, they were to drop only supplies; McElroy had rigged almost 8,000 pounds on a single pallet.

Heading north from Kurmitola during the full moon phase, Doc Johnson came upon a ground signal and activated the green light in the cabin, Like clockwork, the bundle roared out the side, and the C-118 returned to East Pakistan. Refueling, the crew then turned east and flew for an hour before one of the engines gave a loud mechanical cough and ground to a halt. Limping along at reduced altitude, Johnson diverted to Bangkok for repairs. "If it had happened during the supply drop," said copilot Barnes, "we would have never made it back across the Himalayas."

The ST WHALE agents, it seems, were not nearly as lucky. When their handlers raised them over the radio and asked if they had received the supplies, the Hiu claimed that no cargo had come. Livid, the CIA case officers grilled the C-118 crew over the accuracy of the drop. Very quickly, however, doubt fell on the team itself. Communications intercepts later indicated that the agents had been captured early on, and the radio operator doubled. ST WHALE was quietly shelved, and no additional Hiu saboteurs were dropped inside Amdo. The PLA truck convoys to the Tibetan front remained on schedule.

-- The CIA's Secret War in Tibet, by Kenneth Conboy and James Morrison

Taixu 太虛
Photo of Taixu from a book published in 1933
Personal
Born: Lǚ Pèilín (呂沛林), 8 January 1890, Haining, Zhejiang, China
Died: 17 March 1947 (aged 57), Shanghai, China
Religion: Chan Buddhism
Nationality: Chinese
School: Linji school
Senior posting
Students: Chiang Kai-shek

Taixu (Tai Hsu[1]) (traditional Chinese: 太虛; simplified Chinese: 太虚; pinyin: Tàixū; Wade–Giles: T'ai Hsü), (8 January 1890 – 17 March 1947)[2][3][4][5] was a Buddhist modernist, activist and thinker who advocated the reform and renewal of Chinese Buddhism.

Biography


Taixu wearing his traditional kāṣāya robes.

Taixu was born in Hǎiníng (海寧) in Zhejiang province. His lay name was Lǚ Pèilín (呂沛林). His parents died when he was still young, and he was raised by his grandparents. At 16, he was ordained into the Linji school of Chan Buddhism in Xiao Jiǔhuá Temple (小九華寺) in Suzhou. Not long after being ordained he was given the Dharma name of Taixu, meaning Great Emptiness. In 1909, he traveled to Nanking to join the Sutra Carving Society established there by the lay Buddhist Yang Renshan.

As a result of being exposed to the political writings of Kang Youwei,...

Kang Youwei (Chinese: 康有為; Cantonese: Hōng Yáuh-wàih; 19 March 1858 – 31 March 1927) was a Chinese philosopher and politician. He was also a noted calligrapher and prominent political thinker and reformer of the late Qing dynasty. Through his connections, he became close to the young Guangxu Emperor and fervently encouraged him to promote his friends and consequently soured the relationship between the emperor and his adoptive mother, the powerful Empress Dowager Cixi. His ideas inspired a reformation movement, the Hundred Days' Reform. Although he continued to advocate a constitutional monarchy after the founding of the Republic, Kang's political theory was never put into practice as he was forced to flee China for repeated attempts to assassinate the Empress Dowager Cixi. He was an ardent Chinese nationalist and internationalist...

Kang was a strong believer in constitutional monarchy and wanted to remodel the country after Meiji Japan.

-- Kang Youwei

Liang Qichao,...

Liang Qichao (Chinese: 梁啓超; Cantonese: Lèuhng Kái-chīu; 23 February 1873 – 19 January 1929) was a Chinese historian, journalist, philosopher, and politician who lived during the late Qing dynasty and the early Republic of China. He inspired Chinese scholars with his writings and reform movements...

Inspired by the book A short account of the maritime circuit, Liang became extremely interested in western ideologies. After returning home, Liang went on to study with Kang Youwei, who was teaching at Wanmu Caotang (萬木草堂) in Guangzhou. Kang's teachings about foreign affairs fueled Liang's interest in reforming China.

In 1895, Liang went to the capital Beijing again with Kang for the national examination. During the examination, he was a leader of the Gongche Shangshu movement. After failing to pass the examination for a second time, he stayed in Beijing to help Kang publish Domestic and Foreign Information. He also helped to organize the Society for National Strengthening (強學會), where Liang served as secretary...

As an advocate of constitutional monarchy, Liang was unhappy with the governance of the Qing Government and wanted to change the status quo in China. He organized reforms with Kang Youwei by putting their ideas on paper and sending them to the Guangxu Emperor (reigned 1875–1908) of the Qing dynasty. This movement is known as the Wuxu Reform or the Hundred Days' Reform. Their proposal asserted that China was in need of more than "self-strengthening", and called for many institutional and ideological changes such as getting rid of corruption and remodeling the state examination system. Liang thus was a major influence in the debates on democracy in China.

This proposal soon ignited a frenzy of disagreement, and Liang became a wanted man by order of Empress Dowager Cixi, the leader of the political conservative faction who later took over the government as regent. Cixi strongly opposed reforms at that time and along with her supporters, condemned the "Hundred Days' Reform" as being too radical.

In 1898, the Conservative Coup ended all reforms, and Liang fled to Japan, where he stayed for the next 14 years. While in Tokyo he befriended the influential politician and future Japanese Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi. In Japan, he continued to actively advocate the democratic cause by using his writings to raise support for the reformers’ cause among overseas Chinese and foreign governments. He continued to emphasize the importance of individualism, and to support the concept of a constitutional monarchy as opposed to the radical republicanism supported by the Tokyo-based Tongmeng Hui (the forerunner of the Kuomintang). During his time in Japan, Liang also served as a benefactor and colleague to Phan Boi Chau, one of Vietnam's most important anti-colonial revolutionaries.

In 1899, Liang went to Canada, where he met Dr. Sun Yat-Sen among others, then to Honolulu in Hawaii. During the Boxer Rebellion, Liang was back in Canada, where he formed the "Chinese Empire Reform Association" (保皇會). This organization later became the Constitutionalist Party which advocated constitutional monarchy. While Sun promoted revolution, Liang preached incremental reform.

In 1900-1901, Liang visited Australia on a six-month tour that aimed at raising support for a campaign to reform the Chinese empire and thus modernize China through adopting the best of Western technology, industry and government systems. He also gave public lectures to both Chinese and Western audiences around the country. This visit coincided with the Federation of the six British colonies into the new nation of Australia in 1901. He felt this model of integration might be an excellent model for the diverse regions of China. He was feted by politicians, and met the first Prime Minister of Australia, Edmund Barton. He returned to Japan later that year.

In 1903, Liang embarked on an eight-month lecture tour throughout the United States, which included a meeting with President Theodore Roosevelt in Washington, DC, before returning to Japan via Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada...

Besides Duan Qirui, Liang was the biggest advocate of entering World War I on the Allied side. He felt it would boost China's status and also ameliorate foreign debts. He condemned his mentor, Kang Youwei, for assisting in the failed attempt to restore the Qing in July 1917...

Liang was head of the Translation Bureau and oversaw the training of students who were learning to translate Western works into Chinese. He believed that this task was "the most essential of all essential undertakings to accomplish" because he believed Westerners were successful - politically, technologically and economically.

After escaping Beijing and the government crackdown on anti-Qing protesters, Liang studied the works of Western philosophers of the Enlightenment period, namely Hobbes, Rousseau, Locke, Hume and Bentham, translating them and introducing his own interpretation of their works. His essays were published in a number of journals, drawing interest among Chinese intellectuals who had been taken aback by the dismemberment of China's formidable empire at the hands of foreign powers.

In the early 20th century, Liang Qichao played a significant role in introducing Western social and political theories into Korea such as Social Darwinism and international law. Liang wrote in his well-known manifesto, New People (新民說):

“Freedom means Freedom for the Group, not Freedom for the Individual. (…) Men must not be slaves to other men, but they must be slaves to their group. For, if they are not slaves to their own group, they will assuredly become slaves to some other....”

In the late 1920s, Liang retired from politics and taught at the Tung-nan University in Shanghai and the Tsinghua Research Institute in Peking as a tutor. He founded the Chiang-hsüeh sheh (Chinese Lecture Association) and brought many intellectual figures to China, including Driesch and Tagore. Academically he was a renowned scholar of his time, introducing Western learning and ideology, and making extensive studies of ancient Chinese culture...

He also had a strong interest in Buddhism and wrote numerous historical and political articles on its influence in China.

-- Liang Qichao, by Wikipedia

Tan Sitong ...

He was executed at the age of 33 when the Reformation Movement failed in 1898. Tan Sitong was one of the "Six gentlemen of the Hundred Days' Reform" (戊戌六君子) and occupies an important place in modern Chinese history. To many contemporaries, his execution symbolized the political failure of the Qing Dynasty's reformation, helping to persuade the intellectual class to pursue violent revolution and overthrow the Qing Dynasty...

In September of 1898, Tan Sitong became aware the Dowager was planning to interfere with the Reformation campaign and immediately visited general Yuan Shikai, hoping Yuan's army might support the Reformation Movement and defeat the opposition forces headed by Cixi. However, after returning to Tianjin, Yuan immediately betrayed the Reform movement and divulged the conspiracy to overthrow Cixi’s power. As a result, Cixi swiftly returned to the Forbidden City from the Summer Palace and led a coup, in which she seized the throne power from Emperor Guangxu and ordered the arrest of all those involved in the Reformation. The short-lived Reformation movement effectively ended 103 days after it began; as a result, it has been known ever since as the Hundred Days' Reform. Emperor Guangxu was imprisoned, allowing Cixi to consolidate her public standing and authority. All the Reformation policies were abolished except for Jing Shi Da Xue Tang (京师大学堂), the first government-established tertiary educational institution in China’s history, which later on became Peking University.

Tan Sitong was arrested at the "Guild Hall of Liuyang" (浏阳会馆) in Beijing on September 24. He had been encouraged to escape to Japan, where the government had expressed sympathy for Reformist scholars, but he refused to go, hoping his death would serve as a catalyst for Reformation ideals among the people of China...

After being caught, Tan Sitong was put in the Xing Bu Da Lao (刑部大牢), a jail belonging to the Ministry of Justice, and charged with treason and attempting a military coup. The legal process was interrupted by an Emperor’s order (from Empress Dowager Cixi) calling for an immediate execution due to the severity of his crimes. Consequently, Tan was escorted to the Caishikou Execution Grounds (菜市口刑场) outside Xuanwu Gate (宣武门) of Peking on the afternoon of September 28, 1898, where he was executed by beheading along with five others (杨深秀, 林旭, 刘光第, 康广仁, 杨锐; Yang Shenxiu, Lin Xu, Liu Guangdi, Kang Guangren, and Yang Rui). Historically, these men are called the six gentlemen of the Hundred Days' Reform.

-- Tan Sitong, by Wikipedia

and Zhang Taiyan,...

After the First Sino-Japanese War, he went to Shanghai, becoming a member of the Society for National Strengthening (強學會) and writing for a number of newspapers, including Liang Qichao's Shi Wu Bao (時務報). In September 1898, after the failure of the Wuxu Reform, Zhang escaped to Taiwan with the help of a Japanese friend and worked as a reporter for Taiwan Nichinichi Shimpō (臺灣日日新報) and wrote for Qing Yi Bao (清議報) produced in Japan by Liang Qichao.

In May of the following year, Zhang went to Japan and was introduced to Sun Yat-sen by Liang Qichao. He returned to China two months later to be a reporter for the Shanghai-based Yadong Shibao (亞東時報), and later published his most important political work, Qiu Shu (訄書).

In 1901, under the threat of arrest from the Qing Empire, Zhang taught at Soochow University for a year before he escaped to Japan for several months. Upon return, he was arrested and jailed for three years until June 1906. He began to study the Buddhist scriptures during his time in jail.

After his release, Zhang went to Japan to join Tongmeng Hui and became the chief editor of the newspaper Min Bao (民報) which strongly criticized the Qing Empire's corruption. There, he also lectured on the Chinese classics and philology for overseas Chinese students. His students in Japan include Lu Xun, Zhou Zuoren and Qian Xuantong. His most important student was Huang Kan. In 1908, Min Bao was banned by the Japanese government. This caused Zhang to focus on his philological research. He coined the phrase "Zhonghua Minguo" (中華民國, literally "People's State of China") which became the Chinese name of the Republic of China.

Because an ideological conflict with Sun Yat-sen and his Three Principles of the People, Zhang established the Tokyo branch of Guangfu Hui in February 1909.

After Wuchang Uprising, Zhang returned to China to establish the Republic of China Alliance (中華民國聯合會) and chief-edit the Dagonghe Ribao (大共和日報).

After Yuan Shikai became the President of the Republic of China in 1913, Zhang was his high-ranking advisor for a few months until the assassination of Song Jiaoren. After criticizing Yuan for possible responsibility of the assassination, Zhang was put under house arrest, in Beijing's Longquan Temple, until Yuan's death in 1916. After release, Zhang was appointed Minister of the Guangzhou Generalissimo (大元帥府秘書長) in June 1917.

In 1924, Zhang left Kuomintang, entitled himself a loyalist to the Republic of China, and became critical of Chiang Kai-shek. Zhang established the National Studies Society (國學講習會) in Suzhou in 1934 and chief-edited the magazine Zhi Yan (制言)....

Zhang's interest and studies in Buddhism only became serious during the three years he spent in prison for "publishing anti-Manchu propaganda and insulting the Qing emperor as a 'buffoon' in 1903". During this time, he read the Yogacara-bhumi, the basic texts of Weishi "Consciousness Only" school, and the foundational work of Chinese Buddhist logic (the Nyayapravesa). These texts were given to him by members of the Chinese Society of Education (Zhongguo jiaoyuhui). He later claimed that "it was only through reciting and meditating on these sutras that he was able to get through his difficult jail experience". His experiences with Buddhist philosophical texts gave him a framework to reassess the significance of his pain and suffering and view it in a different light. In 1906, after he was released from prison, Zhang went to Japan to edit The People's Journal (Minbao) and developed a new philosophical framework that critiqued the dominant intellectual trend of modernization theory.

He emerged from jail as devout Yogacarin.

-- Zhang Binglin, by Wikipedia

Taixu turned his mind to the reformation of Buddhism. In 1911 while in Guangzhou, he made contact with the revolutionaries plotting to overthrow the Qing dynasty and participated in some secret revolutionary activities.

Huashan gave him a wide variety of provocative books with which he was unfamiliar, including Kang Youwei's utopian classic Datong shu (The Book of the Great Community), Liang Qichao's Xinmin shuo (On New People), Zhang Taiyan's (1868-1936) Gao fozi shu (Letter to Followers of the Buddha) and Gao baiyi shu (Letter to Lay Buddhists), Yan Fu's Tionyan lun (On Evolution), and Tan Sitong's Renxue (An Exposition on Benevolence)...

and Zou Rong's (1885-1905) Geming jun (Revolutionary Army).

-- Chapter 2: The Sound of the Tide for a New China [Bodhi Society] [Right Faith Buddhist Society of Hankou], Excerpt from Toward a Modern Chinese Buddhism: Taixu's Reforms, by Don Alvin Pittman

Yan Fu was one of the most influential scholars of his generation as he worked to introduce Western social, economic and political ideas to China. Previous translation efforts had been focused mainly on religion and technology. Yan Fu was also one of the first scholars to have personal experiences in Western culture...

[F]rom 1898 to 1909, Yan Fu went on to translate the following major works of Western liberal thought:

• Evolution and Ethics Thomas Henry Huxley as Tianyan lun 天演論 (On Evolution) 1896-1898
• The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith as Yuan fu 原富 (On Wealth) 1901
• The Study of Sociology by Herbert Spencer as Qunxue yiyan 群學肄言 (A Study of Sociology) 1903
• On Liberty by John Stuart Mill as Qunji quanjie lun 群己權界論 (On the Boundary between the Self and the Group) 1903
• A System of Logic by John Stuart Mill as Mule mingxue 穆勒名學 (Mill’s Logic) 1903
• A History of Politics by Edward Jenks as Shehui tongquan 社會通詮 (A Full Account of Society) 1903
• The Spirit of the Laws by Montesquieu as Fayi 法意 (The Meaning of the Laws) 1904-1909
• Primer of Logic by William Stanley Jevons as Mingxue qianshuo 名學淺說 (An Outline of Logic) 1909

-- Yan Fu, by Wikipedia

In 1903, he published a book on this topic: The Revolutionary Army (geming jun 革命軍). The deeply patriotic book, informed by Republicanism and Social Darwinist racial theories, was widely read and had a profound influence on the revolutionary movement. Thousands of copies of the book were distributed internationally by Sun Yat-sen in support of the revolutionary cause...

Moreover, he condemned China's traditional monarchical system, which had made the Han Chinese "slaves" rather than "citizens." He was also influenced by racialist Han ideology, as evidenced in his distaste for the Manchu governing class, as he advocated “genocide [of] the five million and more of the furry and horned Manchu race, cleansing ourselves of 260 years of harsh and unremitting pain, so that the soil of the Chinese subcontinent is made immaculate, and the descendants of the Yellow Emperor will all become Washingtons.”

His calls for sovereignty of the Chinese people included the establishment of a parliament, equal rights for women, freedom of speech and freedom of the press. These seemingly liberal ideals were underpinned by a potentially genocidal ethnic nationalism; it was not the liberty of the individual, but the sovereignty of the ethnic nation-state ("A man cannot live without his country") that formed the foundations for the Republic of China as envisioned by Zou Rong.

-- Zou Rong, by Wikipedia

Taixu would later describe the formation of his political thinking during this time in his Autobiography (自傳 zìzhuàn):

My social and political thought was based upon 'Mr. Constitution', the Republican Revolution, Socialism, and Anarchism. As I read works such as Zhang Taiyan's "On Establishing Religion", "On the Five Negatives", and "On Evolution", I came to see Anarchism and Buddhism as close companions, and as a possible advancement from Democratic Socialism.[6]

After the establishment of the new Republic of China, Taixu founded the Association for the Advancement of Buddhism (佛教協進會/佛教协进会 fójiào xiéjìn hùi), which lasted only a short time due to resistance from conservative Buddhists. Unable to convince the Buddhist community of his ideas, and shocked by the outbreak of the First World War and the sufferings in China, Taixu went into seclusion (閉關/闭关 bìguān) on Putuoshan for three years from October 1914.

Until his death Taixu worked toward the revival of Buddhism in China, although because of the economic and political turmoil that China experienced through wars and revolutions, few of his projects were successful. He died on March 12, 1947 at the Jade Buddha Temple (玉佛寺 yùfó sì) in Shanghai. One of his influential disciples was Dongchu 東初 (1907–1977).

Buddhist Modernism

Main articles: Humanistic Buddhism and Buddhist modernism

Besides being a revolutionary activist for the Chinese, Taixu was a Buddhist modernist. He took the doctrine and adapted it so that he may propagate Buddhism throughout the world. One of his grand schemes was to reorganize the Sangha. His envisioned plan was to cut the number of monks in the monastic order down and according to history of religion professor Don A. Pittman, by 1930 Taixu had

these numbers [down] to include only twenty thousand monastics; five thousand students, twelve thousand bodhisattva monastics, and three thousand elders. Of the twelve thousand bodhisattva monastics, five thousand should be spreading the Dharma through public preaching and teaching, three thousand serving as administrators in Buddhist educational institutions, fifteen hundred engaging in Buddhist charitable and relief work, fifteen hundred serving as instructors in the monastic educational system, and one thousand participating in various cultural affairs.[7]

This reorganization of the Sangha was an attempt to revitalize Buddhism, an important step to bring about a Pure Land in this world. Pure Land Buddhism was widely practiced in China during his time. Taixu's modernist mentality caused him to propagate the idea of a Pure Land, not as a land of Buddhist cosmology but as something possible to create here and now in this very world. Pittman writes:

His views on the realization of that ideal were far from those of the mainstream of the contemporary Sangha. Rather than focusing on the glories of distant pure lands, which were accessible through reliance on the spiritual merit and power of other great bodhisattvas and buddhas, Taixu visualized this earthly world transformed into a pure land by the dedication and sacrificial hard work of thousands of average bodhisattvas who were mindful of what their concerted witness could mean.[8]

Like many Buddhist modernists, Taixu was interested in using tactics such as cultural translation (a method of explaining Buddhism) so that non Buddhists can better comprehend the complexity of the tradition. For example, in his essay "Science and Buddhism," Taixu makes a translation of the Buddha's teaching that inside of every drop of water, there are 84 thousand microbes, a Buddhist teaching that basically states that within our world there are many more worlds. He goes on to explain how that when one looks inside of a microscope one will be able to see these tiny microbes and that each one is a life of its own.

In his writings he connected the scientific theory that there is infinite space with no center of the universe to the Buddhist Sutras that states "Space is endless and the number of worlds is infinite, for all are in mutual counterpoise like a network of innumerable beads."[9] However, Taixu did not believe that science was the be-all and end-all. As a matter of fact he saw that in no way was it possible to reach enlightenment through science even though it is capable of explaining many of the universe's mysteries. "Scientific knowledge can prove and postulate the Buddhist doctrine, but it cannot ascertain the realities of the Buddhist doctrine."[10] He understood Buddhism to be scientific and yet surpassing science. Like other Buddhist modernists, Taixu condemned superstition. Taixu explains that the two deeply rooted superstitions were the "Superstition of God" and the "Superstition of Reality." These two superstitions go hand-in-hand in regards to explaining why, according to Taixu, Buddhism is the only way to true enlightenment. The "Superstition of God" can be understood as how science will never be able to explain the existence of the supernatural. Also science is also only able to explain the materialistic aspects of the world, which leads to the second superstition, "Superstition of Reality." The "Superstition of Reality" is basically materialism but as materialism, in this sense, means what science is capable of explaining. These two superstitions essentially blind science and people's ability to see the truths that only Buddhism can reveal.

One final note to mention was Taixu’s desire for Buddhism to be seen as more of a science than a religion because it was based on reason, not faith. In Justin R. Ritzinger’s, Taixu: To Renew Buddhism and Save the Modern World, he wrote that Taixu believed Buddhism to be “completely compatible with science since it is based not upon an untenable belief in a creator god, but upon an ‘eternal, unlimited, and absolute conception of the spiritual and material phenomena of the Universe.’” Unlike other religions, science and Buddhism could coexist because there are no inherent contradictions between the two; that is, so long as Buddhists interpreted sutras containing superstitions and mysticism as prescriptive rather than descriptive. More striking than his attempt to distance Buddhism from its role of religion was the idea that true religion would prepare humankind for an atheistic future. Taixu’s reforms were characteristic of Mahāyāna Buddhism, which perceived its teachings as a “great vehicle” serving to reach the ultimate truth, the absolute, or enlightenment. For Taixu, this nirvāṇic experience was equivalent to the pure, moral culture he wished to achieve on a worldwide scale. He wrote, “After the world honors the Dharma for a long time, the truth will be spoken, the gates of all expediencies open, the true nature of reality manifest, and atheism will still be considered the final teaching.” Buddhism was, perhaps unbeknownst to Taixu, advancing the goal of Mao’s Communist Party. As progressive as the monk was, the final years of Taixu’s life were marked by his impression that Communists were “simply a devil mob of wild beasts and poisonous snakes,” even though much of Taixu’s plan for a new moral culture was, ironically, in harmony with Maoist vision for a future China. But Taixu’s death did not end Buddhism’s reform. Many disciples of Taixu began to see what he could not—an opportunity to advance progressive reforms to the sangha under joint ambitions of the Communist Party, with the ultimate goal of a worldwide pure land. The Party could serve as a similar great vehicle, helping to educate the masses on Taixu’s lifelong endeavor of creating a universal change within the human heart. Regardless of his efforts, Taixu felt he failed in his mission given the intense polarization in the political climate of China, and was disheartened by the dire circumstances of the nation as well as the dim prospects of reform in the sangha.

-- The Communist Pure Land: The Legacy of Buddhist Reforms in the Early Chinese Revolutionary Period, by Kenneth J. Tymick

Contacts with Christianity

See also: Buddhism and Christianity and Comparison of Buddhism and Christianity

Taixu's reforms of the Sangha were influenced in part by Christianity. While in Europe, Taixu saw the successes of Christian charitable organizations and hoped to bring that organization style into his reformed Buddhism.[11] He implemented these methods into organizations like the Bodhi Society and Right Faith Society, lay organizations devoted to providing charity to the sick, poor, and misfortunate.[12]

Organizing and Educating "New Monks"

After his travels through Japan and Taiwan, and after consultations with Zhang Taiyan and Wang Yiting, Taixu instigated his reformist movement with the founding in Shanghai, in August 1918, of the Bodhi Society (Jue she). During his biguan, Taixu had spent considerable time on imaginative plans for reorganizing the Chinese sangha, a project he considered as necessary as it was difficult. The first of several versions of his Zhengli sengqie zhidu lun (The Reorganization of the Sangha System) was written in 1914, in response to the threat presented by the Regulations for the Control of Monasteries and Temples. Yet Taixu recognized that the ultimate reception of such a controversial proposal would require the establishment of bases of monastic and lay support that could serve as effective organs of propaganda. The Bodhi Society -- so named, said Taixu, "because of my long-cherished hope that the world could be saved through Buddhism" -- was to be one such base. According to Xuming, the founding of the organization constituted "the beginning of Taixu's new Buddhist movement." With its creation, the number of the reformer's followers began to increase rapidly. The society's explicit purposes, noted Taixu, were "to publish research, edit collected works, sponsor lectures on Buddhism, and encourage religious cultivation." The monk himself later recalled:

The next year [1918], I was invited to visit the South Sea Islands [where there are colonies of prosperous Chinese emigrants]. I formed the idea of building a National Monastery. My observation leads me to feel that the monastic institutions in our country have fallen away from ancient pure ideals and are corrupt beyond reform. If I could raise the funds from people abroad, I would build the national monastery [as a model of renewed and purified monasticism]. If I should fail to attain my object I would reconcile myself to the life of a wandering mendicant and, leaning upon Buddha's mercy, thus travel to my life's end.

When I was at Putuo, some of my earnest devotees requested me to lecture on "Weishi lun." ... I talked to them about my wish to reform monastic institutions and my plan to go south. They also saw the works I have written. They strongly advised against the southern trip at the time as the European War was at its height, and it would be difficult to raise money there, but urged me to publish my works and to organize a society for the promotion of Buddhism in China as the first step of my larger plans. And so we organized the "Bodhi Society" in Shanghai.

The initial announcement of the Bodhi Society reveals the organization's aim to promote "self-enlightenment and the enlightenment of others" an d its rules designed to nurture those on the bodhisattva path. The basic bylaws read as follows:

I. Purpose:

A. To set forth the true principles of Mahayana Buddhism to cause those who slander the truth to repent, those who doubt to have faith and understanding, those who believe and understand to put their faith into action, and those who understand and practice their religion to witness to others; to transform fools and common people, radicals and ultraconservatives into sages, saints, and buddhas.

B. To proclaim the true principles of Mahayana Buddhism to turn those who are cruel and evil into benevolent people and those who are greedy and belligerent into righteous people; so that the wise will rejoice in the way and the strong will honor morality; to turn this war-torn and suffering world into a place of peace and happiness.

-- Toward a Modern Chinese Buddhism: Taixu's Reforms, by Don Alvin Pittman

However, he was critical of Christian philosophy, believing that it was incompatible with modern science and failed to prevent economic depressions in Europe and both World Wars.[1] Western critics argued that he was naive and ill-informed about Christian philosophy, calling his Lectures in Buddhism "a rambling, incoherent, amateurish talk."[13]

Survey of Writings

In one publication by Taixu, he discusses the importance of interreligious dialogue. He realizes the problems that exist in China and through a conversation with a French archbishop he was able to understand this importance. Taixu writes:

All religions should be regulated in order that they conform to the situation in China. There should be no overt rejection of Catholicism.[14]

This quote shows that Taixu believed there was no reason to deny the teachings of another religion because different religions, with cooperation and open-mindedness, have the ability to work together and learn from each other. Taixu went as far as incorporating some Christian ideas, such as methods of pastoral training and revival style preaching, into his own Buddhist practices.

Beyond adopting select Christians methods, a more controversial topic that Taixu dealt with openly was the existence of God. When Taixu went into three years of self confinement after a failed reform attempt he reflected on the subject -

Who is God? Is He made of matter or not? . . . If He exists in the heart only, then his existence is legendary, similar to such non-existent things as "turtle hair" and "hare horn." Thus, we should not believe that God created all things in the world. . . . How did He create the Universe? If the Holy Father is part of the universe, it is unreasonable that He created the world. I challenge the existence of God. Show me the evidence of the birth of God. What was He before His birth? Does He exist because He possesses an inherent nature? It is not rational to claim that all things exist before His birth. If there is a birth, or a beginning, there should be an end. It is unreasonable to say that He is almighty. . . . If, with knowledge, God created man and all things at His will, then did He create man blindly or ignorantly? How could He create sinful things, crimes, ignorance, and even blasphemers? This would be unreasonable. If He did all these things, it would be unreasonable that God sent people into exile, to make them suffer, rather than allowing them to stay in Paradise. How could God create men who do not respect Him?[14]

Taixu questions the existence of God because rationally if one looks at the world's situation there is no evidence of a god. He appears to tie this argument to the connections between Buddhism and science, and how superstition creates an obstacle on the path to enlightenment.

In Taixu’s own article “Science and Buddhism” he offers many interesting and original thoughts on science and superstition. Taixu’s main argument in the article is that all of the superstition in the world such as “The superstition of God or the restriction of the ego” and “the superstition of reality” prevent the advance of scientific discovery because of the closed-mindedness of the superstitious people to see beyond their beliefs. Taixu writes,

Science therefore, can never be the main support of Buddhism although it may act as a valuable auxiliary and much may be expected from uniting the two methods of investigation.[15]

From his writings Taixu’s followers can grasp an understanding that he believes science is a valuable resource but because of people's steadfast faith in superstitions it will never be a successful asset to Buddhism. He seems to argue that science is a means to enlightenment but it will never allow someone to get there. In Taixu's words, "Scientific methods can only corroborate the Buddhist doctrine, they can never advance beyond it."[16]

Don Pittman wrote a book entitled “Toward a Modern Chinese Buddhism” in which he analyzes Taixu’s reform efforts. One of his reform efforts was the attempt to make Pure Land Buddhism a reality.

If today, based on good knowledge of our minds, we can produce pure thoughts and work hard to accomplish good deeds. How hard can it be to transform an impure China into a Chinese pure land?... All persons have this force of mind, and since they already have the faculty (benneng) to create a pure land, they can all make the glorious vow to make this world into a pure land and work hard to achieve it."[17]

This among many things was one of Taixu's greatest ideas of reform. He believed that the only way to end the suffering on this world was to bring the Pure Land to it. He attempted to do so through many means, including the reorganization of the Sangha. Unfortunately for Taixu, his attempts at global propagation of the Dharma failed. Most of his institutions that were set up to help bring about this better life were crushed by many different things, including the communists.[18]

See also

• Chiang Kai-shek

References

1. D. Lancashire. "Some Views on Christianity Expressed by the Buddhist Abbot Tai Hsu." Quarterly Notes on Christianity and Chinese Religion 3, no. 2 (1959).
2. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Taixu
3. http://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/en ... maps/taixu
4. https://wapbaike.baidu.com/item/太虚大师/3740330?fromtitle=释太虚&fromid=448997
5. http://www.yufotemple.com/cstg/5386.htm
6. http://www.guoxue.com/www/xsxx/txt.asp?id=976
7. Pittman 2001, p.238
8. Pittman 2001, p.222
9. p. 87 Taixu. "Science and Buddhism" Lectures in Buddhism Paris, 1928.
10. p. 86 Taixu, "Science and Buddhism" Lectures in Buddhism Paris, 1928.
11. Long, Darui. "An Interfaith Dialogue Between the Chinese Buddhist Leader Taixu and Christians." Buddhist-Christian Studies 20 (2000): 178.
12. Justin R. Ritzinger, "Taixu: To Renew Buddhism and Save the Modern World," (Buddhist Digital Library & Museum, 1999), 68-69.
13. Donald S. Lopez Jr. Science and Buddhism: A Guide for the Perplexed (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 222.
14. Long, Darui (2000). "An Interfaith Dialogue between the Chinese Buddhist Leader Taixu and Christians". Buddhist-Christian Studies. 20: 167–189.
15. pg. 89 Taixu, "Science and Buddhism" Lectures in Buddhism Paris, 1928.
16. pg. 89 Taixu, "Science and Buddhism" Lectures in Buddhism Paris, 1928
17. pg. 427, Taixu, "On Establishing a Pure Land on Earth." Complete Works. Taipei 1956.
18. Pittman, Don A. Toward a Modern Chinese Buddhism. Hawai'i UP. Honolulu, 2001

Sources

• Taixu, "Science and Buddhism." Lectures in Buddhism. Paris, 1928
• Taixu, Taixu dashi quanshu. (The Complete Works of the Venerable Master Taixu), 20 vols. Taipei, 1956.
• Pittman, Don A. Toward a Modern Chinese Buddhism: Taixu's Reforms. Hawai'i UP. Honolulu, 2001.
• Welch, Homles. The Buddhist Revival in China. Havard UP. Cambridge, 1968.

Further reading

• Goodell, Eric (2008). Taixu’s Youth and Years of Romantic Idealism, 1890–1914
, Chung-Hwa journal of Buddhist Studies 21, 77-121
• Pittman, Don Alvin (2001), Toward a Modern Chinese Buddhism: Taixu's Reforms, University of Hawaii Press

External links

• Works by or about Taixu
at Internet Archive
• The Short Record of Master Taixu
• Taixu: To Renew Buddhism and Save the Modern World
• Taixu Biography
• An Interfaith Dialogue [1]

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The Communist Pure Land: The Legacy of Buddhist Reforms in the Early Chinese Revolutionary Period
by Kenneth J. Tymick
Illinois Wesleyan University, [email protected]
2014
© by Kenneth J. Tymick

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Abstract: Prominent Buddhist Ju Zan, disciple of the venerable Taixu, saw an opportunity for Buddhism to thrive under the auspices of the Communist's period of New Democracy. However, as is usual in the retelling of history, many sides of a story are told. In the eyes of many modern historians, the treatment of Buddhism during the 1950s seemed to be an antagonistic crackdown to subject and politicize religion. Historian Ernst Benz has compared Chinese Buddhism to that of a "religious museum under state supervision," but that was hardly the case in the immediate post-war period. In the very least, New Democracy supported religious freedom -- an aspect that Ju Zan and others hoped would legitimize their genuine efforts to reform. This paper will seek to understand how New Democracy affected Buddhism, or in reverse, how Buddhism responded to the New Democratic period in China. By examining Taixu's teachings and establishing the background for Buddhist reforms in pre-Communist China, one can perceive the myriad journal editions of Modern Buddhism (1950-1966) as a continuation of Taixu's vision to create a humanistic Buddhism. With this knowledge, it will be possible to understand that a congenial relationship existed between Buddhism and the Communist Party leading up to the late 1950s, which was due largely in part to the compatibility and joint ambition of a pure land on Earth.

Keywords: China, communism, chan, buddhism, Ju Zan, Taixu, Chinese Communist Party, Mao Zedong, Modern Buddhism, Pure Land

Acknowledgements: Thank you to Professor Lutze, Professor Tao Jin, Siming Peng
 
Buddhism’s survival in the wake of the Communist Revolution in China is a peculiar instance, considering that most religion was seen then as symbolic of feudalism and imperialism—the two targets of the Communist Revolution in 1949. Even more striking was the shared view among Chinese Communists that religion was a “great hoax,” that its genesis was manufactured in a time of humanity’s immaturity, and that it was eventually “seized by the exploiting classes as an instrument of oppression.”1 Buddhism had been no stranger to oppressing the masses during its thousands of years of existence under old Confucian culture. Buddhism promoted subservience to social hierarchies through superstitions and ancient Buddhist scripture, and its monks lived like parasites, taxing the poor for religious services. But these issues were the targets that some Buddhists wished to reform. From the era surrounding the May Fourth Movement of 1919 to the start of Cultural Revolution in 1966, radical reformists sought to restore integrity to Buddhism. One such reformist was the venerable master Taixu, considered a “misguided and dangerous” influence by more conservative Dharma masters.2 Instead of encouraging Buddhism to continue its parasitic tendencies, Taixu was hopeful of a practical Buddhism that aimed at creating a heaven on earth, or, using numinous terminology, a pure land. These ideals became a dominant force throughout Communist China, and were picked up after Taixu’s death in 1947 by his converts and disciples.

Ju Zan, one of Taixu’s most prominent students, saw an opportunity for Buddhism to thrive under the auspices of the Communist’s period of New Democracy. However, as is common in the retelling of history, many versions of the story have been told. In the eyes of many modern historians, the treatment of Buddhism during the 1950s seemed to be an antagonistic crackdown to subject and politicize religion. Historian Ernst Benz has compared Chinese Buddhism to that of a “religious museum under state supervision,”3 but that was hardly the case in the immediate post-war period. At the very least, New Democracy supported religious freedom—a platform that Ju Zan and others hoped would legitimize their genuine efforts to reform. This paper will seek to understand how New Democracy affected Buddhism and how Buddhism simultaneously responded to the New Democratic period in China. By examining Taixu’s teachings and establishing the background for Buddhist reforms in pre-Communist China, one can perceive the myriad journal editions of Modern Buddhism (1950-1966) as a continuation of Taixu’s vision to create a humanistic Buddhism. With this knowledge, it will be possible to understand that a congenial relationship existed between Buddhism and the Communist Party leading up to the late 1950s, which was due largely to their ideological compatibility and the joint ambition of realizing a pure land on Earth.

The overarching trend of historical retellings of the New Democratic period in China principally paint the Communist Party as a domineering overlord that viewed religious organizations, like the Chinese Buddhist Association, “as an instrument for remolding Buddhism to suit the needs of the government.”4 But one must refrain from blanketing this time period as simply an example of Communist suppression of religion. While Communists did not think highly of religion, Chairman of the Communist Party Mao Zedong was certain to point out that religious freedom was necessary. It was not his intent to suppress it, but rather to have competing ideologies wage intellectual debates.5

By examining the themes and methodologies of other historians, it can be understood that most of the secondary sources written about the Communist-Buddhist relationship during the New Democratic period are either lacking in detail or altogether inaccurate due either to ignorance of the Chinese political climate at the time or to prevailing anti-Communist sentiments that swept through the Western world after World War II. Drawing extensively on Holmes Welch’s works, there is a theme of the victimization of Buddhism under Maoism. Kenneth Chen’s article and Earl Benz’s book rebuke the Buddhist establishment for allowing Communism to control their faith. These similar themes can be attributed to the fact that they were written in the 1960s during the height of the Cold War rivalry between world communism and capitalist Western powers. Also occurring during the 1960s was the Cultural Revolution. Both internationally and domestically, this movement was deeply criticized, for it actually did suppress many facets of self-governing bodies in China, including Buddhism. But these authors mistakenly apply this time period of religious suppression to the whole existence of the People’s Government of China since its establishment in 1949, and fail to realize the freedoms that allowed and advanced many liberal reforms during the first decade of Communist power. Thus, this paper aims to show that the Buddhist response to the New Democratic period in China featured optimism and independence, and surprisingly owed much of its preliminary success to the early guidance of the Communist Party.

To prove this thesis, one must look at the primary sources of Buddhist reformers before and around this time to understand how they matched with the reforms that actually did occur under Communist authority, and also utilize more recent works by historians detached from that era of extreme bias toward China. The more objective accounts of Buddhism in Communist China, such as Pittman’s account of Taixu, and MacInnis’s impartial presentation of political documents relating to religion, give insight into what the relationship between the two parties was. The primary sources coming from the written word of Buddhist scripture and the ideas of reform espoused by Taixu, Ju Zan, and from articles in Modern Buddhism (early 1950s), all support the changes that occurred in Buddhism during the New Democratic era. In 1955, Modern Buddhism declared, “In the not too distant future, we will completely wipe out exploitation and poverty and set up a happy, prosperous socialist society. This is the great enterprise of establishing ‘the Western Paradise on earth’ in order that all men may be released from suffering and win happiness.”6 This statement is one of many that tied together Taixu’s pre-war vision for reform with the real movements of reform in the early post-war period. Buddhists worked alongside the Communists congenially to create a new, pure China. It was their goal before the Communist Party even formed, and a look at these specific sources discredit the more biased works written by the historians in the 1960s.

To begin this study, a historical context must first be set that explains in detail the reasons why many Buddhists felt the need for reform. For generations, Chinese folklore had justified religious oppression. Typically Chinese children would learn the myths of the three most prominent religions—Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism—and thus sought during the after-life to get the benefit of all of them.7 From childhood on, the masses were instilled with notions of the importance of the after-life, indirectly implying the helplessness of their position in their current lives. It was typical in Chinese culture to pay for funeral rites so as to provide comfort for the soul of the deceased. These rites also served as a means to enable the soul to repay heavy, spiritually-concocted birth fines to the god of the dead that had allowed a soul to leave his realm and be born in the living world.8 For Buddhism, this was justified through the karmic cycle of rebirth that weighed immensely on the average mind of the peasant, and the expenses of the funeral rites would only further their ever-increasing worldly debt owed to landlords.9 Dating as far back as 819 CE, anti-Buddhist sentiment was present, and the practice of collecting birth fines was compared to atrocities committed by a group of barbarians that had ruined the peace and prosperity of China.10

Death Ceremonies.

As the rites in connection with a death include a considerable amount of devil worship, they may be noticed in this place.

On the occurrence of a death the body is not disturbed in any way until the Lama has extracted the soul in the orthodox manner. For it is believed that any movement of the corpse might eject the soul, which then would wander about in an irregular manner and get seized by some demon. On death, therefore, a white cloth is thrown over the face of the corpse, and the soul-extracting Lama ('p'o-bo) is sent for. On his arrival all weeping relatives are excluded from the death-chamber, so as to secure solemn silence, and the doors and windows closed, and the Lama sits down upon a mat near the head of the corpse, and commences to chant the service which contains directions for the soul to find its way to the western paradise of the mythical Buddha — Amitabha.

After advising the spirit to quit the body and its old associations and attachment to property, the Lama seizes with the fore-finger and thumb a few hairs of the crown of the corpse, and plucking these forcibly, he is supposed to give vent to the spirit of the deceased through the roots of these hairs; and it is generally believed that an actual but invisibly minute perforation of the skull is thus made, through which the liberated spirit passes.

The spirit is then directed how to avoid the dangers which beset the road to the western paradise, and it is then bid god-speed. This ceremony lasts about an hour...

Meanwhile the astrologer-Lama has been requisitioned for a death-horoscope, in order to ascertain the requisite ages and birth-years of those persons who may approach and touch the corpse, and the necessary particulars as to the date and mode of burial, as well as the worship which is to be done for the welfare of the surviving relatives.

The nature of such a horoscope will best be understood by an actual example, which I here give. It is the death-horoscope of a little girl of two years of age, who died at Darjiling in 1890...

Her Park'a being Dva in relation to her death, it is found that her spirit on quitting her body entered her loin girdle and a sword. [In this case the affected girdle was cast away and the sword was handed over to the Lama.] Her life was taken to the east by Tsan and king demons...

Her Mewa gives the "3rd Indigo blue." Thus it was the death-demon of the deceased's paternal grandfather and grandmother who caused her death; therefore take (1) a Sats-ts'a (a miniature earthern caitya), and (2) a sheep's head, and (3) earth from a variety of sites, and place these upon the body of the deceased, and this evil will be corrected.

The Day of her Death was Friday. Take to the north-west a leather bag or earthern pot in which have been placed four or five coloured articles, and throw it away as the death-demon goes there. The death having so happened, it is very bad for old men and women. On this account take a horse's skull, or a serpent's skull and place it upon the corpse.

Her Death Star is Gre. Her brother and sister who went near to her are harmed by the death-messenger (s'in-je). Therefore an ass's skull and a goat's skull must be placed on the corpse...

On obtaining this death-horoscope the body is tied up in a sitting posture by the auspicious person indicated by the horoscope, and placed in a corner of the room which is not already occupied by the house-demon.

Notice is sent to all relatives and friends within reach, and these collect within two or three days and are entertained with food of rice, vegetables, etc., and a copious supply of murwa beer and tea. This company of visitors remain loitering in and around the house, doing great execution with hand-prayer-wheels and muttering the "Om-mani" until the expulsion of the death-demon, which follows the removal of the body, and in which ceremony they all have to join. The expense of the entertainment of so large a company is of course considerable.

During this feasting, which is suggestive of an Irish "wake," the deceased is always, at every meal, offered his share of what is going, including tobacco, etc. His own bowl is kept filled with beer and tea and set down beside the corpse, and a portion of all the other eatables is always offered to him at meal times; and after the meal is over his portion is thrown away, as his spirit is supposed to have extracted all the essence of the food, which then no longer contains nutriment, and is fit only to be thrown away. And long after the corpse has been removed, his cup is regularly filled with tea or beer even up till the forty-ninth day from death, as his spirit is free to roam about for a maximum period of forty- nine days subsequent to death...

At this stage it often happens, though it is scarcely considered orthodox, that some Lamas find, as did Maudgalayana by his second-sight, consulting their lottery-books, that the spirit has been sent to hell, and the exact compartment in hell is specified. Then must be done a most costly service by a very large number of Lamas. First of all is done "virtue" on behalf of the deceased; this consists in making offerings to the Three Collections, namely: To the Gods (sacred food, lamps, etc.); to the Lamas (food and presents); to the Poor (food, clothes, beer, etc.).

The virtue resulting from these charitable acts is supposed to tell in favour of the spirit in hell. Then many more expensive services must be performed, and especially the propitiation of "The Great Pitying One," for his intercession with the king of hell (a form of himself) for the release of this particular spirit. Avalokita is behind to terminate occasionally the torment of tortured souls by casting a lotus-flower at them. Even the most learned and orthodox Lamas believe that by celebrating these services the release of a few of the spirits actually in hell may be secured. But in practice every spirit in hell for whom its relatives pay sufficiently may be released by the aid of the Lamas. Sometimes a full course of the necessary service is declared insufficient, as the spirit has only got a short way out of hell, — very suggestive of the story of the priest and his client in Lever's story, — and then additional expense must be incurred to secure its complete extraction...

The ceremony of guiding the deceased's spirit is only done for the laity — the spirits of deceased Lamas are credited with a knowledge of the proper path, and need no such instruction...

But the cremation or interment of the corpse does not terminate the death-rites. There needs still to be made a masked lay figure of the deceased, and the formal burning of the mask and the expulsion from the house of the death-demon and other rites...

The Lay Figure of Deceased, and its Rites.

Next day the Lamas depart, to return once a week for the repetition of this service until the forty-nine days of the ghostly limbo have expired; but it is usual to intermit one day of the first week, and the same with the succeeding periods, so as to get the worship over within a shorter time. Thus the Lamas return after six, five, four, three, two, and one days respectively, and thus conclude this service in about three weeks instead of the full term of forty-nine days...

On the conclusion of the full series of services, the paper-mask is ceremoniously burned in the flame of a butter-lamp, and the spirit is thus given its final conge. And according to the colour and quality of the flame and mode of burning is determined the fate of the spirit of deceased, and this process usually discovers the necessity for further courses of worship...

To Exorcise Ghosts.

The manes of the departed often trouble the Tibetans as well as other peoples, and special rites are necessary to "lay" them and bar their return. A ghost is always malicious, and it returns and gives trouble either on account of its malevolence, or its desire to see how its former property is being disposed of. In either case its presence is noxious. It makes its presence felt in dreams or by making some individual delirious or temporarily insane. Such a ghost is disposed of by being burned...

For this purpose a very large gathering of Lamas is necessary, not less than eight, and a "burnt offering" (sbyin-sregs) is made. On a platform of mud and stone outside the house is made, with the usual rites, a magic-circle or "kyil-'khor," and inside this is drawn a triangle named "hun-hun." Small sticks are then laid along the outline of the triangle, one piled above the other, so as to make a hollow three-sided pyramid, and around this are piled up fragments of every available kind of food, stone, tree-twigs, leaves, poison, bits of dress, money, etc., to the number of over 100 sorts. Then oil is poured over the mass, and the pile set on fire. During the combustion additional fragments of the miscellaneous ingredients reserved for the purpose are thrown in, from time to time, by the Lamas, accompanied by a muttering of spells. And ultimately is thrown into the flames a piece of paper on which is written the name of the deceased person -- always a relative -- whose ghost is to be suppressed. When this paper is consumed the particular ghost has received its quietus, and never can give trouble again...

Expelling The Death-Demon...

After a long incantation the Lama concludes: "O death-demon do thou now leave this house and go and oppress our enemies. We have given you food, fine clothes and money. Now be off far from here! Begone to the country of our enemies!! Begone!!!"...

"Dispel from this family all the sorceric injury of Pandits and Bons!! etc. Turn all these to our enemy! Begone!"...

-- The Buddhism of Tibet, or Lamaism With Its Mystic Cults, Symbolism and Mythology, and in its Relation to Indian Buddhism, by Laurence Austine Waddell, M.B., F.L.S., F.R.G.S., Member of the Royal Asiatic Society, Anthropological Institute, etc., Surgeon-Major H.M. Bengal Army

The verses of one poem, “Idle Droning,” displayed another complaint against Buddhism’s vices.

Since earnestly studying the Buddhist doctrine of emptiness,
I’ve learned to still all the common states of mind.
Only the devil of poetry I have yet to conquer—
let me come on a bit of scenery and I start my idle droning.11

Another Chinese intellectual succinctly listed the offenses of the Buddhist religion in T’ang Era China:

First, innumerable monasteries and temples were established with a view to propagating superstition. . . . Second, many sects were founded to spread poison . . . [all in favor of the ruling class]. Third, peasants were benumbed and uprisings obstructed. . . . Buddhism was preached precisely for the purpose of preventing the peasants from rising to oppose oppression.12

It is clear from poems and complaints like these that the Buddhist sangha, or community, was a corrupt, oppressive, and parasitic establishment. Yet its power remained indisputable in Chinese culture for centuries. It was only at the turn of the twentieth century that reform could be seriously implemented. The May Fourth Movement in 1919 made real the cries for change in all facets of Chinese society, and intellectuals led the charge for the realization of a new culture.

The New Culture Movement of the mid-1910s and 1920s was characterized by a sweeping call to arms to break the bonds of feudalism and imperialism oppressing the people. Under the guidance of literary elites such as Lu Xun and Chen Duxiu13 and the proliferation of Western liberal values that were expounded by such magazines as New Youth, the cultural climate became compliant to the will of the people. This genuine effort to restore the societal integrity of China was accompanied by a serious concern for the state of the Buddhist sangha. A scholar in the early Chinese Republic period, Liang Qichao, acknowledged that “the Chinese had been quite badly tainted with the poison of superstition,” and this superstition was a contributing factor to that same backwardness the New Culture Movement sought to combat.14 He continued by affirming that Buddhism “will always be an important factor in our social thinking; whether this is beneficial or baneful to our society depends solely on whether the new Buddhists appear.”15 A new Buddhism was necessary, or else it would conflict with the ideas present in a rapidly liberalizing society. Liang’s comment on social thinking sparked a new direction for Buddhism to develop toward a new moral culture.

Born Lǚ Pèilín and ordained with the Dharma name, Taixu composed vast numbers of tracts and speeches detailing his desire for Buddhism to work toward a new moral culture. At the age of eighteen, four years after being ordained in a local sangha, Taixu had the opportunity to meet with a progressive Buddhist monk. Impressed by this monk, Taixu began to broaden his learning, researching and traveling to other monasteries to develop his thoughts on modernizing the sangha. In the summer of 1910, he had the chance to begin publishing his ideas. It was at this time that he wrote, “The good student of Buddhism relies on his heart and mind, not on ancient tradition, relies on the essential meaning of words, not on the words themselves. The good student is constantly adapting to circumstances and cleverly provoking people to think.”16 Through his description of a good student, Taixu justified his developing progressive viewpoints. Taixu had realized the defects that were plaguing Buddhism and averred that “Buddhism’s failure to remain a vital force in modern China was due to the otherworldliness of the sangha and the tendency of Buddhists to hold onto the externals of their religion without understanding its essence.”17 Buddhists strive to transcend from the samsāra, a term roughly translating to our world, or the realm in which most souls are reborn into; however, in Taixu’s opinion, that does not permit Buddhists to detach themselves from it. In fact, Taixu believed that the worldly, mundane samsāra could be transformed through a conscious moral reformation, led by Buddhism, into an idealized perfection of the western paradise on Earth. This would do away with the “Idle Droning” and parasitic funeral rites, for which Buddhism had so long been scorned.

Taixu’s ideas fully materialized during New Culture period of China, and his radical interpretation of scripture paved the way for a new Buddhism to continue to live alongside the people, rather than living off the people. His most fundamental view asserted that “[t]o achieve a lasting peace, what the world needed most fundamentally was a sweeping spiritual transformation, a universal change within the human heart that would alter the very fabric of social interaction and political engagement.”18 Once Taixu became well known in China, he traveled abroad to solicit support for a worldwide Buddhist movement toward moral transformation. The “sweeping spiritual transformation” would abide by two very simple provisions: “First, if a person harms another, both persons are harmed. Second, if a person benefits from another, both persons benefit.”19 For Taixu, these two principles were of supreme importance. Only by following this definition of morality could the world become a pure land.

However, there were additional elements necessary for the sincerity of religious reform to become a reality. Taixu believed that for reform to be successful and lasting, Buddhism needed to exhibit “genuine religious conversion...great vows to engage in compassionate service within the world...practical knowledge of how to accomplish things in the everyday world... [and] courageous moral actions that were appropriate to the uniquely dangerous circumstances of the age.”20 To provide humankind with a new moral behavior, funeral rites, superstitions, and other old, repressive ways of the sangha had to be discarded for a more dialectical, scientific approach. In this respect, practical knowledge was stressed over otherworldly meditation. Without reform, Buddhism could not survive in an increasingly secular and liberal China. As Taixu preached his revolutionary thoughts, China began to ready itself for a revolution of its own. Two major parties, the Communist Party and the Nationalist Party, would join forces in a united front to attain national unification and independence for all of China.

To prove that Buddhists could no longer divorce themselves from the physical world, Taixu spoke extensively about revolution and was actually something of a political activist himself.

As a result of being exposed to the political writings of Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao, Tan Sitong and Zhang Taiyan, Taixu turned his mind to the reformation of Buddhism. In 1911 while in Guangzhou, he made contact with the revolutionaries plotting to overthrow the Qing dynasty and participated in some secret revolutionary activities. Taixu would later describe the formation of his political thinking during this time in his Autobiography (自傳 zìzhuàn):

My social and political thought was based upon 'Mr. Constitution', the Republican Revolution, Socialism, and Anarchism. As I read works such as Zhang Taiyan's "On Establishing Religion", "On the Five Negatives", and "On Evolution", I came to see Anarchism and Buddhism as close companions, and as a possible advancement from Democratic Socialism.[6]

-- Taixu, by Wikipedia

For a pure land to exist, first peace must exist. Thus, he supported the idea of revolution, remarking once, “Even the idea of revolution growing out of love for the people . . . is in harmony with Buddhism. . . . In the process of revolution there is always a phase of destruction preceding reconstruction.”21 Mao spoke this sentiment near verbatim in “On New Democracy,” where he said “There is no construction without destruction.”22 Despite the similarities his teachings shared with Communist ideals, Taixu distanced himself from the Party. His view that individual development and social progress were dialectically related was indeed more or less in line with socialist or communist ideology, but Taixu idolized a certain harmony between Buddhism and Nationalist Sun Yat-sen’s Three Principles of the People (sanmin zhuyi), [Nationalism (independence from foreign imperialist domination; Rights of the People (Democracy); and People's Livelihood (Socialism/Welfare] stating once that “Buddhism is the ultimate goal of Sanminism and Sanminism is Buddhism put into practice.”23 Sun Yat-sen’s Sanminism had the ultimate goal of creating a unified country with a democratic government and promoting a “land to the tiller” economic aspect to narrow the tremendous wealth gap between the peasants and the elite. In his work entitled, “Using Buddhist Dharma to Criticize Socialism,” Taixu expressed his belief that socialists strictly focus on property and neglect morality. He also noted that an outline for a period of political tutelage to teach the people democracy, like the one outlined in Sun’s Principles, was absent in socialist ideology.24 Yet in his “On New Democracy,” published in 1940, Mao introduced a platform for tutelage nearly identical to the one found in Sun Yat-sen’s Three Principles, which had so absorbed Taixu.

After the Great Chinese Revolution of 1924-1927 ended abruptly with the brutal repression of Communists, Taixu continued to participate in politics until his death in 1947. The monk would find more faults with the Communist Party, arguing that while they were fighting for the benefit of the people, the poor peasant should not follow those revolutionaries who could not establish good after removing evil.25 His comment came in 1935, five years before Mao would write his plans in “On New Democracy.” Taixu’s aversion to the Communists would later be rejected by the majority of China, including his own disciples, who viewed the program of New Democracy as a resolution to the civil war that had began to be perceived as Nationalist-provoked.26 It is important to note that toward the end of his life, Taixu expressed much despair over the state of politics, suggesting his disapproval of both parties in China.27

One final note to mention was Taixu’s desire for Buddhism to be seen as more of a science than a religion because it was based on reason, not faith. In Justin R. Ritzinger’s, Taixu: To Renew Buddhism and Save the Modern World, he wrote that Taixu believed Buddhism to be “completely compatible with science since it is based not upon an untenable belief in a creator god, but upon an ‘eternal, unlimited, and absolute conception of the spiritual and material phenomena of the Universe.’”28 Unlike other religions, science and Buddhism could coexist because there are no inherent contradictions between the two; that is, so long as Buddhists interpreted sutras containing superstitions and mysticism as prescriptive rather than descriptive. More striking than his attempt to distance Buddhism from its role of religion was the idea that true religion would prepare humankind for an atheistic future.29 Taixu’s reforms were characteristic of Mahāyāna Buddhism, which perceived its teachings as a “great vehicle” serving to reach the ultimate truth, the absolute, or enlightenment. For Taixu, this nirvāṇic experience was equivalent to the pure, moral culture he wished to achieve on a worldwide scale. He wrote, “After the world honors the Dharma for a long time, the truth will be spoken, the gates of all expediencies open, the true nature of reality manifest, and atheism will still be considered the final teaching.”30 Buddhism was, perhaps unbeknownst to Taixu, advancing the goal of Mao’s Communist Party. As progressive as the monk was, the final years of Taixu’s life were marked by his impression that Communists were “simply a devil mob of wild beasts and poisonous snakes,” even though much of Taixu’s plan for a new moral culture was, ironically, in harmony with Maoist vision for a future China.31 But Taixu’s death did not end Buddhism’s reform. Many disciples of Taixu began to see what he could not—an opportunity to advance progressive reforms to the sangha under joint ambitions of the Communist Party, with the ultimate goal of a worldwide pure land. The Party could serve as a similar great vehicle, helping to educate the masses on Taixu’s lifelong endeavor of creating a universal change within the human heart. Regardless of his efforts, Taixu felt he failed in his mission given the intense polarization in the political climate of China, and was disheartened by the dire circumstances of the nation as well as the dim prospects of reform in the sangha.

The reforms Taixu fought for had been largely ignored before the Communist victory in 1949, due in part to the fact that China had been in a state of chaos for twenty years. With a new beginning, Mao and the Communist Party began to develop their vision for a united, independent, and socialized China. Returning to Mao’s concept of New Democracy, the practicality and willingness to cooperate and include all non-hostile groups in China’s future government is an issue of great significance. The idea of a coalition government was conceived and immediately enacted when the Communists took power, and certainly went a long way in garnering widespread support for their overarching acceptance from all peoples in China. Moreover, the coalition government also protected freedom of religious belief and held that “neither compulsion nor discrimination is permitted” toward religion.33 In the actual document, “On New Democracy,” Mao did not mention religion, even under his attack on the “four olds” of old habits, ideas, customs, and culture.34 His failure to acknowledge religion signified, at the very least, that it was not a primary enemy of the new government. Under these conditions it seemed that Buddhism could be given the opportunity to thrive.

The “New China” that the Communist Party strove to create was much the same as the “pure land” that reformists in the Taixu school of Buddhism desired to achieve. For example, the Chan school of Buddhism averred that the Buddhanature, the ability to become enlightened, was inherent in all of humankind. In accordance with the Communist’s emphasis on dispelling the feudal myth that those who worked with their mind should rule over those who worked with their hands, Chan Buddhism “did not insist on intellectual efforts and prolonged periods of study in scripture...It was, therefore, egalitarian and progressive.” 35 The Communist effort to equalize land distribution among the poor and create improved living conditions both in the urban and rural areas was not contradictory to the ultimate goal of Buddhism. Social reforms put in place had, for instance, replaced patriarchal marriage laws with ones based on love and equality. Under Communist supervision, China had also managed within two years to make prostitution in the most debauched of cities vanish, and within four years, drug addiction had been wiped out.36 The Chinese journal, Modern Buddhism, ran an article propounding,

[U]nder the leadership of the People’s Government . . . Everyone will cherish peace and treasure freedom. From now on there will be no wars, no disasters. From now on all the sufferings of human life will be eliminated forever. Does not this mean transforming our world into a peaceful, happy, free and beautiful Pure Land? . . . The Vimalakirti-nirdesa Sutra says: ‘If you want to get the Pure Land, you must make your mind pure. Once the mind is pure, then the land becomes pure of its own accord.’ This tells us that if we want to turn our land into the Pure Land, the first step is for the masses of the people to purify their minds. . . Fellow Buddhists, rise up with your hearts set on the Western Paradise here in the world.37

Written in 1951, these words serve as a more reliable indication of Buddhist cooperation and compatibility with the Communist Party. Based on this article’s reasoning, as the condition of human life improves, China comes closer to achieving the status of a pure land. Societal China was finally shedding its feudal and oppressive layers of the Confucian past and was working toward the general welfare of the common people.

Ju Zan, former disciple of Taixu, led the charge for Buddhist cooperation with the Communist Party and helped foster a healthy relationship between the sangha and the state. Around 1950, Ju Zan organized a group of twenty-one individuals and drafted a letter to send to Mao Zedong calling for a nationwide reform of Buddhism. Its four main points were as follows: 1. Buddhists applauded the wiping out of feudalism and superstition, and anticipated Buddhism to abandon these corrosive elements in the sangha; 2. the Communist victory allowed for the ability for Buddhism to reform based on the assertion that society was now reformed; 3. Buddhism was “atheist” in nature and advocated the “realization of selflessness” that melded congenially with Communism; and 4. the “shift to production” and “shift to scholarship” would be advanced so as to do away with feudal organizations and superstitions within the sangha indefinitely.38 The leaders of the Party accepted these points, and as a result Ju Zan was appointed to the board for the Chinese Buddhist Association and placed as Editor-in-Chief of Modern Buddhism, giving him the most authority of any Buddhist monk in directing reforms.

Modern Buddhism was produced on June 18, 1950 as a way to publicize Buddhism’s new form under the authority of the Chinese Communist Party. The journal immediately began to produce articles that would promote three main reforms for Buddhists to consider. The first two dealt with aspects derived from Taixu’s ideas, that is, the switch to an emphasis on secularizing monks by involving them in practical labor and the strive towards creation of the Pure Land. The last major point had to do with scriptural justification for killing, so as to free the Communist Party from repudiation by Buddhists. The Buddhists writing for Modern Buddhism were not forced into sending out these messages; it was on their own accord that these ideas were promulgated to the public.

For Modern Buddhism, the secularization of monks promoted an active interest in the national construction of China, and peace and purity in the country was the first step towards worldwide nirvāṇa. As a means of generating an enlightened society, the Communist Party urged productive labor for all members of the country. Buddhists adopted this same belief, not because the Communist Party forced them to, but because it had been one of Taixu’s reforms back in 1927. He believed that monks should be engaged in some form of productive labor to ensure the self-sufficiency of the monasteries.39 The healthy relationship between Buddhists and Communists started off with mutually harmonious beliefs, so when Ju Zan’s 1952 article in Modern Buddhism claimed that labor should be treated as a religious practice, it should not be mistaken for political propaganda. In the same article, Ju Zan also wrote, “To talk about religious practices isolated from the masses of living creatures is like catching the wind and grasping at shadows . . . we can know that absolutely no one becomes a buddha while enjoying leisure in an ivory tower . . . this is just another pastime and opiate of landlords, bureaucrats, and petit bourgeois . . .”40 This mentality was simply an update of Taixu’s 1927 ideology. The relationship between Ju Zan and the Communist Party was hardly discordant given the congenial spirit of their policies.

Modern Buddhism also called attention to Taixu’s intended design to reeducate monks with more modern ideas. Chinese Communist Party reforms of the feudal superstitions and traditions present in schools of Buddhist thought have been seen primarily as aggressive, suppressive Communist atheistic policy, but Buddhists had begun this campaign long before the Communist government was even fathomed. Ju Zan wrote that only after an inner-circle meeting of the most prominent Buddhist reformists on how to improve the cultural and religious education of monks, did the discussion turn to “how to help the People’s Government get rid of charlatans who practice exorcism, sorcery, and other harmful superstitions under the guise of religion.”41 The significance is two-fold. On the one hand, these Buddhists talked freely amongst themselves, separated from the pressure of Communist supervision. Their main concern was how Buddhists could reform Buddhism, not how Communists could control its reforms. Second, the fact that these monks felt comfortable enough involving the People’s Government revealed the apparent healthy relationship between the two parties. The word choice, “to help,” indicates a friendship, not antagonism.

The main moral imperative that Modern Buddhism espoused was, of course, the creation of a terrestrial Pure Land. The impetus behind the movement for a Western Paradise on Earth had to do with the fact that only by creating such a paradise in the mortal world could Buddhist hope to be reborn in one after they died. 42 Some Buddhists began to see Communist economic reforms as an indicator of pure land development. Zhao Buchu, a monk and member of the Chinese Buddhist Association, affirmed in 1953, “The first Five-Year Plan is the initial blueprint for the Western Paradise here on earth.”43 The Five-Year Plan allowed for a larger centralized industrial and agricultural sector, thus improving the living conditions of the average Chinese. Even though the Communist Party’s outward methods of reforming China contrasted with Buddhism’s focus on inner methods to provoke change, there was no reason for Buddhism not to work with the People’s Government to achieve the ambitions of reformer monks such as Taixu. Ju Zan realized that the two parties could coexist while still working towards the same goal of bettering China—and eventually the world—eventually creating a more pure, moral, egalitarian paradise. Chinese historian Holmes Welch cited rather poignantly from the Buddhist Avatamsaka Sutra that “no bodhisattva can attain the supreme enlightenment without living creatures” and went on to draw from it the implication that enlightenment cannot be won in isolation from the toiling masses.44 To create a pure land, Buddhism could work alongside the Communist Party in aiding the people through outward means and through the inner persuasion and cleansing of the mind which Buddhist teachings try to instill.

Most controversial, however, was the effort by Modern Buddhism to justify the killing, a concept that contradicts the pacifism of the Buddha in Buddhist scripture. Another member of the Chinese Buddhist Association, Shirob Jaltso, declared once that “Buddhists should seek to keep their behavior in tune with the time and place, but doctrine and religious cultivation (hsiu-yang), that is, the Buddhist religion as such, were absolutely not open to change and this point should be firmly maintained.”45 How did Buddhists reconcile this contradiction? First, it is important to note again the autonomy of this decision. Welch attests that at this time, “The reinterpretation of Buddhist doctrine, then, was largely voluntary...”46 When other Buddhists repudiated those contributors to Modern Buddhism for aligning with the Communists who had spent years fighting the Japanese and Chinese Nationalists despite the fundamental pacifism characteristic of the faith, Ju Zan and other reformers produced scriptures that had actually condoned killing. In one example, the great Mahayana philosopher Asanga’s clause of “preventive killing” declared that to kill a sinner to prevent further sins would gain one merit.47 Another story told of a Buddhist traveling alongside a caravan when a brigand approached him. Recognizing the Buddhist as an old friend, he opted to warn the monk that the caravan was about to be attacked by five hundred other brigands. The monk’s dilemma, according to the story, was if he told his caravan what the brigand said, they would surely kill the brigand and all suffer in hell. If he did not tell the caravan, they would all die to the brigands. The monk solved his dilemma by cutting down his old friend, the brigand. Thus, not hearing back from their scout, the five hundred bandits fled, and the monk saved 999 lives from the death of one.48 By appealing to utilitarian themes, the Buddhists of the 1950s found the justification they needed to absolve themselves from working with the “killers” of the Communist Party.

Perhaps forgotten, too, is the long history of Buddhist martial arts. The Shaolin martial practice looked to a Buddhist staff-wielding deity, whose legend “could be read therefore as a Buddhist apology for the monastic exercise of violence: if an incarnated Buddhist deity could wage war in defense of a monastery, then, by implication, Buddhist monks could do so as well.”49 Pacifism may be part of Buddhist doctrines, but so is violence in defense of Buddhism. In this respect, Buddhism and the Communist Party were in one more way congenial with each other; Taixu’s pacifism should not be misinterpreted as dogmatic among his disciples.

While Taixu may have been a pacifist, there should be no confusion as to the legacy of his vision amongst Buddhist reformers like Ju Zan. As briefly mentioned earlier, many in China felt that the Communists were victims of a violent civil war that Chiang Kai-shek of the Nationalists had prompted. Ju Zan was in the majority opinion surrounding the justness of the Communist cause, but that does not make him any less a successor to Taixu’s teachings. The maturation of Ju Zan’s ideas came about during Nationalist suppression of nationalist opposition to Japanese aggression in China. Taixu’s ideology was formulated years before in the New Culture Movement, and as such, it is not surprising that such a generational gap could produce a difference of opinion toward the legitimacy of the Communist Party.

[Taixu's] Students: Chiang Kai-shek

-- Taixu, by Wikipedia

Toward the end of the 1950s, the freedom of all Chinese was seriously encroached upon with the failure of the Hundred Flowers Campaign and later Anti-Rightists Movement. What started off as an effort by Mao to encourage criticism degenerated into hostile attacks and allegations that became reminiscent of a form of reverse McCarthyism. Buddhism was not exempt from prosecution, and much of Modern Buddhism and the Chinese Buddhist Association post 1958 became heavily politicized. With a forced arm, Shirob Jaltso made a speech in 1960 where he said, “In dealing with differences between political and religious matters, we should follow the Party, not the religion, in respect of those Buddhist teachings which run counter to the policies of the Party and which are not vital to Buddhism. . . “50 Already severely restricted and tamed, Buddhism began to resemble the analogy of a state-supervised religious museum, and by 1966 the transformation was complete. Buddhism was suppressed entirely under the New Culture Movement. In 1957, Mao’s intentions for religion were made clear when he wrote in his Hundred Flowers program, “We cannot abolish religion by administrative decree nor force people not to believe. . . . The only way to settle questions of an ideological nature . . . is by the democratic method, the method of discussion, criticism, persuasion, and education, and not by the method of coercion or repression.”51 The struggle between Maoist ideologues and the bureaucratic capitalists in the Communist Party affected all of China, Buddhism included. But for a few short years, Taixu’s vision had been acted upon, and if Maoists won the battle, perhaps Buddhism could have created a Communist pure land.

Regardless, what can be proved is that through an examination of Taixu’s teachings and his disciples’ actions toward the realization of his vision of a pure land on Earth, one can understand that what was once previously thought of as Communist oppression of Buddhism can be interpreted instead as a continuation of Buddhist reforms that had existed during the New Culture Movement. Articles in Modern Buddhism during most of the 1950s exemplify the ideology of Taixu, and with this knowledge it will be possible to understand that a congenial relationship existed between the Communist Party and Buddhism because of the compatibility of the pure land with the creation of a socialist state.

 _______________

Notes:

1. Richard C. Bush, Religion in Communist China (Nashville: Abingdon, 1970), 28.

2. Don Alvin Pittman, Toward a Modern Chinese Buddhism: Taixu’s Reforms (Honolulu: University of Hawaii, 2001), 237.

3. Ernst Benz, Buddhism or Communism (London: Allen and Unwin, 1966), 183.

4. Holmes Welch, Buddhism under Mao (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1972), 7.

5. Mao Zedong, “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People,” People’s Daily, June 19, 1957.

6. Chao P’u-ch’u, “All the Country’s Buddhists Must Struggle to Fulfill the Five-Year Plan,” Modern Buddhism (July 1955): 2.

7. A. R. Wright, “Some Chinese Folklore,” Folklore Vol. 14, No. 3 (Sep. 29, 1903): 293.

8. Ibid., 297.

9. Buddhism’s “Cycle of Rebirth” is a theory that describes different levels of rebirth. The Buddha was the pinnacle, a literal transcendence out of the endlessness of the cycle. Purchasing funeral rites was a way to gain merit, or karma, to elevate one’s rebirth. With enough Karma, a poor peasant may be reborn as a rich peasant, a king, or even a form of Buddhist deity (arhats or bodhisattvas). The inability to purchase funeral rites put one’s soul in peril, as they risked being reborn as animals, inanimate objects, or, worst, a beastly or hellish ghost. Thus, peasants exhausted their finances to avoid such a fate.

10. Edwin O. Reischauer, Ennin’s Travels in T’ang China (New York: Ronald Press, 1955), 224; Ironically, the poet who made this comparison, Han Yu, was a Confucian intellectual and xenophobe. He was especially repulsed by the “barbarian origins” of the Buddha Sakyamuni.

11. Po Chü-I: Selected Poems, trans. Burton Watson (New York: Columbia University Press 2000), 88.

12. Fen Wen-lan, Hsin Chien-she (New Construction), (October, 1965): 16.

13. Lu Xun had written many short stories for Chen Duxiu’s New Youth Magazine. Specifically, Lu’s “A New Year’s Sacrifice” spoke on the topic of reforming feudal customs that had plagued China.

14. Pittman, Taixu’s Reforms, 29.

15. Ibid., 30.

16. Yinshun, Taixu dashi nianpu (Chronological Biography), 40.

17. Pittman, Taixu’s Reforms, 71.

18. Ibid., 195

19. Taixu, “The Contribution of Religion of Modern Human Beings,” in Complete Works, 280- 281.

20. Pittman, Taixu’s Reforms, 176.

21. Taixu, “The Meaning of Buddhism,” trans. Frank R. Millican, Chinese Recorder Vol. 65, No. 11 (November 1934): 690.

22. The full quote read, “Imperialist culture and semi-feudal culture are devoted brothers and have formed a reactionary cultural alliance against China’s new culture. This kind of reactionary culture serves the imperialists and the feudal class and must be swept away. Unless it is swept away, no new culture of any kind can be built up. There is no construction without destruction, no flowing without damming and no motion without rest; the two are locked in a life-and-death struggle.” Mao Zedong, “On New Democracy,” in the Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung 1945, http:// http://www.marxists.org/reference/archi ... wv3_25.htm (April 20, 2013).

23. Pittman, Taixu’s Reforms, 184-185.

24. Taixu, “Yi fofa piping shehui zhuyi” (Using the Buddhist Dharma to Criticize Socialism), in Complete Works, 1210-1211.

25. Taixu’s exact quote read, “So if they think that they can merely remove the consequences...without realizing the need to improve the root causes, then while their aim is certainly a good one, they can only get rid of evil results but they cannot sow good seeds.” Taixu, “Using Buddhist Dharma,” 1041.

26. Chiang Kai-shek launched what become known in China as the White Terror that exterminated millions of Chinese. When Japan formally declared war on China in 1937, after years of unrepressed Japanese advancements into northern China, Chiang focused on his own civil war with the Communists.

27. Pittman, Taixu’s Reforms, 138.

28. Justin R. Ritzinger, Taixu: To Renew Buddhism and Save the Modern World. http://enlight.lib.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/ ... ledgements (April 13 2013).

29. Pittman, Taixu’s Reforms, 251; Pittman wrote that when the absolute truth of Buddhism’s Dharma was realized, Buddhism would have no need in the world. Another way to look at the idea would be to consider Buddhism as a vehicle leading toward enlightenment, and once one is enlightened, religion is unnecessary.

30. Taixu, “Wusen lun” (On Atheism), in Complete Works, 286.

31. Paul E. Callahan, T’ai-hsü and the New Buddhist Movement, Paper on China 6 (Harvard: 1952), 167.

32. Pittman, Taixu’s Reforms, 138.

33. Mao Zedong, “On Coalition Government,” in Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung http://www.marxists.org/reference/archi ... wv3_25.htm (March 30, 2013).

34. Donald E. MacInnis, Religious Policy and Practice in Communist China: A Documentary History (New York: Macmillan, 1972), 4.

35. Kenneth Chen, “Chinese Communist Attitudes Towards Buddhism in Chinese History.” The China Quarterly 22 (April-June, 1965): 19.

36. Thomas Lutze, “The Chinese Revolution,” Lecture. Liberation: Continuing the Revolution (Illinois Wesleyan University, Bloomington, March 22, 2013). For more information on marriage laws in China, read Ono Kazuko’s “The Impact of the Marriage Law of 1950,” Chinese Women in a Century of Revolution: 1850-1950 (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1989), and for more on how drug addiction was handled, read Nancy Southwell, “Kicking the Habit: How China Cured its Drug Addicts,” in New China Vol. 1, No. 3 (Fall 1975).

37. Modern Buddhism (June 1951): 146.

38. Welch, Buddhism under Mao, 395-396.

39. Pittman, Taixu’s Reforms, 233. Taken from Taixu, “Sengzhi jinlun” (A Current Discussion of the Monastic System), in Complete Works, 195-199.

40. Modern Buddhism (April 1952): 145-146.

41. Ju Zan, “A Buddhist Monk’s Life,” China Reconstructs III (January-February, 1954), 42-44.

42. Welch, Buddhism under Mao, 596.

43. Bush, Religion in Communist China, 333.

44. Holmes Welch, “The Reinterpretation of Chinese Buddhism,” The Chinese Quarterly 22 (June, 1965): 148.

45. Modern Buddhism (Oct. 1959): 10-15

46. Welch, “Chinese Buddhism,” 152.

47. Welch, Buddhism under Mao, 282.

48. Ibid.

49. Meir Shahar, “Ming-Period Evidence of Shaolin Martial Practice,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies Vol. 61, No. 2 (Dec. 2001): 404-405.

50. Jen-min Jih-pao (People’s Daily), (April 15, 1960).

51. Mao Zedong, “Correct Handling.”

[admin]

Zhang Binglin [Zhang Taiyan]
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/11/20


Zhang Binglin
Born: 12 January 1869, Yuhang, Zhejiang, Qing Empire
Died: 14 June 1936 (aged 67), Suzhou, Jiangsu, Republic of China
Political party: Tongmenghui; Unity Party; Republican Party; Progressive Party
Spouse(s): Tang Guoli
Children: Zhang Dao 章導; Zhang Qi 章奇; Zhang Li 章㸚; Zhang Chuo 章叕; Zhang Zhan 章㠭; Zhang Lei 章㗊
Chinese name: Chinese 章炳麟
This is a Chinese name; the family name is Zhang.

Zhang Binglin (January 12, 1869 – June 14, 1936), also known as Zhang Taiyan, was a Chinese philologist,[1] textual critic, philosopher, and revolutionary.

His philological works include Wen Shi (文始 "The Origin of Writing"), the first systematic work of Chinese etymology. He also made contributions to historical Chinese phonology, proposing that "the niang (娘) and ri (日) initials [in Middle Chinese] come from the ni (泥) initial [in Old Chinese]" (known as niang ri gui ni 娘日歸泥). He developed a system of shorthand based on the seal script, called jiyin zimu (記音字母), later adopted as the basis of zhuyin. Though innovative in many ways, he was skeptical of new archaeological findings, regarding the oracle bones as forgery.

An activist as well as a scholar, he produced many political works. Because of his outspoken character, he was jailed for three years by the Qing Empire and put under house arrest for another three by Yuan Shikai.

Life

Zhang was born with the given name Xuecheng (學乘) in Yuhang (now a district in Hangzhou), Zhejiang to a scholarly family. Later he himself changed his given name to Jiang (絳) with the sobriquet Taiyan, to show his admiration for the early Qing scholar and activist Gu Yanwu. When he was 23, he began to study under the great philologist Yu Yue (1821–1907), immersing himself in the Chinese classics for seven years.

After the First Sino-Japanese War, he went to Shanghai, becoming a member of the Society for National Strengthening (強學會) and writing for a number of newspapers, including Liang Qichao's Shi Wu Bao (時務報). In September 1898, after the failure of the Wuxu Reform, Zhang escaped to Taiwan with the help of a Japanese friend and worked as a reporter for Taiwan Nichinichi Shimpō (臺灣日日新報) and wrote for Qing Yi Bao (清議報) produced in Japan by Liang Qichao.

In May of the following year, Zhang went to Japan and was introduced to Sun Yat-sen by Liang Qichao. He returned to China two months later to be a reporter for the Shanghai-based Yadong Shibao (亞東時報), and later published his most important political work, Qiu Shu (訄書).

In 1901, under the threat of arrest from the Qing Empire, Zhang taught at Soochow University for a year before he escaped to Japan for several months. Upon return, he was arrested and jailed for three years until June 1906. He began to study the Buddhist scriptures during his time in jail.

After his release, Zhang went to Japan to join Tongmeng Hui and became the chief editor of the newspaper Min Bao (民報) which strongly criticized the Qing Empire's corruption. There, he also lectured on the Chinese classics and philology for overseas Chinese students. His students in Japan include Lu Xun, Zhou Zuoren and Qian Xuantong. His most important student was Huang Kan. In 1908, Min Bao was banned by the Japanese government. This caused Zhang to focus on his philological research. He coined the phrase "Zhonghua Minguo" (中華民國, literally "People's State of China") which became the Chinese name of the Republic of China.

Because an ideological conflict with Sun Yat-sen and his Three Principles of the People, Zhang established the Tokyo branch of Guangfu Hui in February 1909.

After Wuchang Uprising, Zhang returned to China to establish the Republic of China Alliance (中華民國聯合會) and chief-edit the Dagonghe Ribao (大共和日報).

After Yuan Shikai became the President of the Republic of China in 1913, Zhang was his high-ranking advisor for a few months until the assassination of Song Jiaoren. After criticizing Yuan for possible responsibility of the assassination, Zhang was put under house arrest, in Beijing's Longquan Temple, until Yuan's death in 1916. After release, Zhang was appointed Minister of the Guangzhou Generalissimo (大元帥府秘書長) in June 1917.

In 1924, Zhang left Kuomintang, entitled himself a loyalist to the Republic of China, and became critical of Chiang Kai-shek. Zhang established the National Studies Society (國學講習會) in Suzhou in 1934 and chief-edited the magazine Zhi Yan (制言).

He died two years later at 67 and was buried in a state funeral. On April 3, 1955, the People's Republic of China moved his coffin from Suzhou to Nanping Mountain, Hangzhou. The People's Republic established a museum devoted to him beside the West Lake.

He had three daughters with his first wife. With Cai Yuanpei as witness, he married again in 1913, with Tang Guoli (湯國梨), an early Chinese feminist. They had two sons, Zhang Dao (章導) and Zhang Qi (章奇).

Philosophical Beginnings

Originally, Zhang Binglin was firmly rooted in "Old Text" philology, which emphasized "the diversity of China's intellectual heritage led to a serious erosion of the paramount position of Confucius as upheld by the unwavering guardians of orthodoxy" (Kurtz 302). Zhang shared the views of his contemporary, Liu Yiqing, that the Confucian classics should be read as history, not sacred scripture. However, he firmly rejected Liu's suggestion to put Chinese intellectual heritage into the matrix of Western philosophy. Joachim Kurtz writes:

Zhang Binglin did not oppose radical reconceptualizations per se but only those that uncritically mirrored European taxonomies. Rather than squeezing ancient Chinese texts and concepts into a Western-derived disciplinary corset, Zhang suggested expanding existing categories in such a way as to make space for the new knowledge that the nation, as he readily agreed, so desperately needed.[2]

Zhang replaced conventional sense of mingjia (which was the name of one of the nine philosophical schools pre-Qin) with a new understanding—the methodology of debate similar to European logic and Buddhist dialectic.

Zhang's thoughts on religion went through multiple phases. Originally, in his pre-imprisonment days, he was highly critical of religion, and wrote several essays that criticized religious concepts: "Looking at Heaven", "The Truth about Confucianism", and "On Bacteria".[3] In these essays, he emphasized that the scientific world could be reconciled with classical Chinese philosophy. However, his thoughts on religion significantly changed following his imprisonment.

Imprisonment (1903-1906)

Zhang's interest and studies in Buddhism only became serious during the three years he spent in prison for "publishing anti-Manchu propaganda and insulting the Qing emperor as a 'buffoon' in 1903".[4] During this time, he read the Yogacara-bhumi, the basic texts of Weishi "Consciousness Only" school, and the foundational work of Chinese Buddhist logic (the Nyayapravesa). These texts were given to him by members of the Chinese Society of Education (Zhongguo jiaoyuhui).[5] He later claimed that "it was only through reciting and meditating on these sutras that he was able to get through his difficult jail experience".[6] His experiences with Buddhist philosophical texts gave him a framework to reassess the significance of his pain and suffering and view it in a different light.[7] In 1906, after he was released from prison, Zhang went to Japan to edit The People's Journal (Minbao) and developed a new philosophical framework that critiqued the dominant intellectual trend of modernization theory.

He emerged from jail as devout Yogacarin. His attitude towards religion—namely Buddhism—changed after his time spent in prison. This is made apparent in "Zhang Taiyan's Notes on Reading Buddhist Texts", in which he is concerned with the concepts of "freedom, constraints, sadness, and happiness".[8] After 1906, Buddhist terms became more prevalent in his writing, especially in his interpretation of Zhuangzi's "Discourse on Making Things Equal".

Time in Japan (1906-1910)

Zhang was further exposed to Yogacara Buddhism during his time in Japan (1906–1910), when he was actively involved in nationalist, anti-Manchu politics. During his time there, he edited the Tokyo-based The People's Journal (Minbao), where he first expressed a "Buddhist voice".[9] While he was in Japan, he joined Tong Meng Hui, a party that was primarily made up of anti-Manchu exiles (including Sun Yat-sen) seeking the cultural and political regeneration of China.

Upon his return to China, Zhang worked on the commission "convened by the new Nationalist government's Ministry of Education in 1913 to establish a national language and helped develop the Chinese phonetic symbol system still used today in Taiwan, among other places."[10]

The terminology used by Zhang is not common in earlier Chinese philosophical discussions of symbol, language, and the sacred—before the 20th century, Chinese philosophical texts were in classical Chinese (wenyanwen), which uses monosyllabic style. The vernacular (baihua) began to be more commonly used after the May 4th Movement in 1919. Compound words like yuyen were rarely used in pre-20th-century Chinese writings. Zhang was exposed to these linguistic approaches during his time in Japan following his imprisonment.[10]

Yogacara and Zhang

Zhang’s Buddhist-Daoist Approach to History

In a time when most Chinese intellectuals favored modernization ideologies and endorsed history as a progressive movement, Zhang Taiyan (Binglin) drew on Buddhism and Daoism to express his critiques. Social and intellectual life during the Qing Dynasty was primarily influenced by "widely circulating discourses of modern philosophy and the concrete forces of the global capitalist system of nation-states".[6] Following a string of defeats in the late 19th century, Chinese intellectuals began to focus on how China could be improved in order to compete in the global capitalist system. This marked a clear departure from previous Chinese thought, which had primarily focused on the teachings of traditional classical Chinese texts. This was thought to effectively prepare bureaucrats for their positions in the imperial government. However, a national crisis—the loss of several armed conflicts—spurred Chinese philosophers towards modernization thinking. Zhang was particularly revolutionary, as he "mobilized Buddhism for politics"[11] and combined elements of Yogacara thought with concepts he had developed himself in his pre-revolutionary years.

Zhang understood the conditions of possibility (Kant) in Buddhist terms, “namely as the karmic fluctuations of the seeds in alaya consciousness (the storehouse consciousness)”.[6] Zhang saw history as an “unconscious process of drives”[6] and drew on Yogacara Buddhism. The storehouse consciousness, which is defined as the highest level of consciousness, contains seeds that initiate historical process. He believed that "karmic experiences develop from unseen roots, which stem from seeds. As we act in these experiences, we unconsciously plant new karmic seeds and so a cycle of the interplay between past, present and future continues".[6] In his essay On Separating the Universal and Particular in Evolution, Zhang utilizes this framework to explain Hegel's philosophy of history. What Hegel describes as "a triumphant march of spirit" is actually "a degenerative disaster created by karmic seeds"[6] according to Zhang.

Yogacara Buddhism and Chinese Philosophy

Yogacara (or Weishi) primarily focuses on cognitive processes that could be used to overcome ignorance that prevented one from escaping the karmic rounds of birth and death. Practicers/proponents of Yogacara stress attention to the issues of cognition, consciousness, perception, and epistemology. Yogacara Buddhism is based on the following concepts: three self-natures, storehouse consciousness, overturning the basis, and the theory of eight consciousnesses.[12]

Zhang viewed the teachings and principles of Yogacara as "a sophisticated knowledge system which could serve as an authoritative alternative to the knowledge systems being introduced from the West."[13]

Yogacara focuses on meditative practice, epistemology and logic. This strain of Buddhism ceased to be popular in China by the time period of the Yuan dynasty (1206–1368). Yogacara principles and writings were reintroduced to China during the 19th century from Japan, where they had been flourishing for centuries. This revival was primarily led by Liang Qichao, Yang Wenhui, Tan Sitong, Zhang Taiyan and many other prominent intellectuals of the late Qing period.

Yogacara was popular with the intellectuals of this period because it was characterized by structured and organized thoughts and concepts. Zhang found Weishi easy to understand “because it was essentially concerned with mingxiang (definitions of terms), matters in which he had been well grounded due to his rigorous training in the evidential learning techniques associated with Han Learning approaches to Classical Studies (jingxue).”[14]

Zhang wrote:

There is good reason for my singular respect for faxiang (an alternate name for Weishi). Modern scholarship [in China] has gradually followed the path of 'seeking verification in actual events.' Of course the detailed analysis carried out by Han Learning scholars was far superiod to that which scholars in the Ming were able to achieve. With the beginnings of science [introduced in China in the late-nineteenth century] scholars applied themselves with even greater precision. It is for this reason that faxiang learning was inappropriate to the situation in China during the Ming but most appropriate in modern times. This was brought about by the trends that have informed the development of scholarship.[15]

Zhang wanted to promote Yogacara Buddhism as a philosophy, not a religion. Buddhism was thought to be a form of scientific philosophy superior to religion, science and philosophy. Zhang based his philosophical vision on the doctrine of three natures. He believed that the third nature—the nature of existence being perfectly accomplished—was suitable to serve as the foundation for Chinese philosophy and religion. Zhang was not the only one who believed this—the late Qing discussion of religion became a philosophical project designed to modernize China so it could compete "as a nation-state in an increasingly rationalized and reified world."[16] He used this belief to critique Western philosophers Kant, Hegel and Plato, who he felt only represented the first and second doctrines of Yogacara.

Zhang felt that yinming, or the knowledge of reasons, enabled people to recover the true meaning of Mohist and Confucian tests in ways that Western philosophy could not. Zhang’s decision to frame his comparative inquiry in terms of yinming demonstrates his belief in yinming as a more effective 'art of reasoning' than either the 'Mohist Canons' or European logic. In his essay Discussion on the Equalization of Things, Zhang uses Yogacara Buddhist concepts to make sense of Zhuangzi, an ancient Daoist philosopher. He claims that Zhuangzi's notion of equality entails making distinctions without the use of concepts:

'Equalizing things’ (qiwuzhe) refers to absolute equality (pingdeng). If we look at its meaning carefully, it does not simply refer to seeing sentient beings as equal...One must speak form (xiang, laksana) without words, write of form without concepts (ming) and think form without mind. It is ultimate equality. This accords with the 'equalization of things.'[17]

Zhang tried to render equality without contradiction between the particular and the universal. Zhang believed that conceptual framework is generated through our karmic actions. When compared to his contemporary Liu Shipei's attempt to extract logic from the masters of the Zhou dynasty, Zhang's writings and thoughts display a higher level of theoretical sophistication as he had a firmer grasp of the purposes and limitations of European logic as well as knowledge of yinming principles and thinking. This enabled him to draw more convincing parallels between the notions he gleaned from his plethora of sources.[18]

Legacy

During previous decades, Chinese thinkers have institutionalized history—for example, many claimed that communism represented China’s failure to fully modernize. However, recently, thinkers are beginning to develop a critical version of history based on Zhang’s writings in order to question the legitimacy of contemporary capitalist society.

The current notion of Chinese philosophy as an academic field of study first appeared during the 20th century. In 1918, Hu Shih published "An Outline of the History of Chinese philosophy". In the preface of this book, Chinese educator Cai Yuanpei wrote:

There has been no systematic recording of classical Chinese learning. All we have are very pedestrian accounts. If we wish to compose a systemic account of classical learning, the studies f Antiquity are of no help, and we have no other way but follow the criteria of histories of philosophy in the West. In other words, only those who have studied the history of western :philosophy can determine the appropriate form of exposition.[19]

Ultimately, Zhang's most important contribution to the field of Chinese philosophy was "to show that it was possible, at least on an elementary level, to assert the validity of a 'traditional', namely Chinese Buddhist conceptual framework while simultaneously redefining individual notions, such as the boundaries of the logical realm, in accordance with a Western-derived understanding".[20] Zhang ultimately showed students and contemporary intellectuals that ancient Chinese ideas could be brought back to life through the dialectic of Yogacara Buddhism. He also used ancient Chinese philosophic thought and Yogacara Buddhism as a framework to critique the political climate of his contemporary world. His deep understanding of Yogacara concepts allowed him to go beyond a critique of nationalistic politics and question the very foundations of the principles of modernity.

References

1. Elisabeth Kaske (2008). The Politics of Language in Chinese Education: 1895 - 1919. BRILL. pp. 409–. ISBN 90-04-16367-0.
2. Kurtz, Joachim. “Heritage Unearthed: The Discovery of Chinese Logic”, The Discovery of Chinese Logic, (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill (July 1, 2011)), 303.
3. Murthy, Viren. "Buddhist Epistemology and Modern Self-Identity: Zhang Taiyan's 'On Establishing Religion'". The Political Philosophy of Zhang Taiyan (Leiden, NL: Brill, 2011), 103.
4. Kurtz, Joachim. "Heritage Unearthed: The Discovery of Chinese Logic". The Discovery of Chinese Logic (Leiden, NL:Brill Press, July 1, 2011), 305.
5. Murthy, Viren. "Buddhist Epistemology and Modern Self-Identity: Zhang Taiyan's 'On Establishing Religion'". The Political Philosophy of Zhang Taiyan (Leiden, NL: Brill, 2011), 107.
6. Murthy, Viren (2007). "Equalization as difference: Zhang Taiyan's Buddhist-Daoist response to modern politics"(PDF). IIAS Newsletter #44. p. 24.
7. Murthy, Viren. "Buddhist Epistemology and Modern Self-Identity: Zhang Taiyan's 'On Establishing Religion'". The Political Philosophy of Zhang Taiyan (Leiden, NL: Brill, 2011), 108.
8. Murthy, Viren. "Buddhist Epistemology and Modern Self-Identity: Zhang Taiyan's 'On Establishing Religion'". The Political Philosophy of Zhang Taiyan (Leiden, NL: Brill, 2011), 109.
9. Murthy, Viren. "Buddhist Epistemology and Modern Self-Identity: Zhang Taiyan's 'On Establishing Religion'". The Political Philosophy of Zhang Taiyan (Leiden, NL: Brill, 2011), 90.
10. Hurst, Cecily. The Origin of Language in Chinese Thought, Anthropoetics 6(2): Spring/Summer 2000
11. Murthy, Viren. "Buddhist Epistemology and Modern Self-Identity: Zhang Taiyan's 'On Establishing Religion'". The Political Philosophy of Zhang Taiyan (Leiden, NL: Brill, 2011), 91.
12. Dan Lusthaus, "Buddhist Philosophy, Chinese" http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/G002
13. Makeham, John. "Zhang Taiyan, Yogacara Buddhism, and Chinese Philosophy". in Makeham., ed., Learning to Emulate the Wise, 103.
14. Makeham, John. "Zhang Taiyan, Yogacara Buddhism, and Chinese Philosophy". in Makeham., ed., Learning to Emulate the Wise, 105.
15. Zhang Taiyan, "Da Tiezheng" [Reply to Tiezheng], in Zhang Taiyan ji [Collected writings of Zhang Taiyan], edited by Huang Xia'nian (Beijing: Zhongguo shehuikexue chubanshe, 1995), p. 19
16. Murthy, Viren. "Buddhist Epistemology and Modern Self-Identity: Zhang Taiyan's 'On Establishing Religion'". The Political Philosophy of Zhang Taiyan (Leiden, NL: Brill, 2011), 89.
17. Zhang Taiyan, "Qiwulun shi," in Zhang Taiyan quanji (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1980) vol. 6, 1-59, 4.
18. Kurtz, Joachim. “Heritage Unearthed: The Discovery of Chinese Logic”, The Discovery of Chinese Logic, (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill (July 1, 2011)), 311-312.
19. Hu Shih, "An Outline of the History of Chinese Philosophy" (in Chinese), Vol. I, p. 1
20. ^ Kurtz, Joachim. "Heritage Unearthed: The Discovery of Chinese Logic", The Discovery of Chinese Logic, (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill (July 1, 2011)), 312.

Additional Sources

• He Jiuying 何九盈 (1995). Zhongguo xiandai yuyanxue shi (中囯现代语言学史 "A history of modern Chinese linguistics"). Guangzhou: Guangdong jiaoyu chubanshe.
• Laitinen, Kauko (1990). Chinese Nationalism in the Late Qing Dynasty: Zhang Binglin as an Anti-Manchu Propagandist. London: Curzon Press.
• Murthy, Viren (2011). The Political Philosophy of Zhang Taiyan: The Resistance of Consciousness. Leiden; Boston: Brill. ISBN 9789004203884.
• Tang Zhijun 湯志鈞 (1996). Zhang Taiyan zhuan (章太炎傳 "A biography of Zhang Taiyan"). Taipei: Taiwan Commercial Press.
• Xu Shoushang 许寿裳 (2004). Zhang Taiyan zhuan (章太炎傳 "A biography of Zhang Taiyan"). Tianjin: Baihua wenyi chubanshe.
• Zhongguo da baike quanshu (1980–1993). 1st Edition. Beijing; Shanghai: Zhongguo da baike quanshu chubanshe.

External links

• (in Chinese) Chronology and some of his works

[admin]

Liang Qichao
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/11/20

This is a Chinese name; the family name is Liang.


Liang Qichao
Liang Qichao in 1910
Born: 23 February 1873, Xinhui, Guangdong, Qing dynasty, China
Died: 19 January 1929 (aged 55), Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Beijing, Republic of China
Education: Jinshi degree in the Imperial Examination
Occupation: Historian journalist philosopher politician
Political party: Progressive Party
Spouse(s): Li Huixian (m. 1891); Wang Guiquan (m. 1903)
Children: 9 children, including Liang Sicheng and Liang Siyong
Liang Qichao: Traditional Chinese 梁啓超; Simplified Chinese 梁启超

Liang Qichao (Chinese: 梁啓超; Cantonese: Lèuhng Kái-chīu; 23 February 1873 – 19 January 1929) was a Chinese historian, journalist, philosopher, and politician who lived during the late Qing dynasty and the early Republic of China. He inspired Chinese scholars with his writings and reform movements.[1]

Biography

Family

Liang Qichao was born in a small village in Xinhui, Guangdong Province on February 23, 1873.

Liang's father, Liang Baoying (梁寶瑛, Cantonese: Lèuhng Bóu-yīng; courtesy name Lianjian 蓮澗; Cantonese: Lìhn-gaan), was a farmer and local scholar, but had a classical background that emphasized on tradition and education for ethnic rejuvenescence allowed him to be introduced to various literary works at six years old. By the age of nine, Liang started writing thousand-word essays and became a district-school student soon after.

Liang had two wives: Li Huixian (李惠仙; Cantonese: Lléih Waih-sīn) and Wang Guiquan (王桂荃; Cantonese: Wòhng Gwai-chyùhn). They gave birth to nine children, all of whom became successful individuals through Liang's strict and effective education. Three of them were scientific personnel at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, including Liang Sicheng, the prominent historian of Chinese architecture.

Early life

Liang passed the Xiucai (秀才) degree provincial examination at the age of 11. In 1884, he undertook the arduous task of studying for the traditional governmental exams. At the age of 16, he passed the Juren (舉人) second level provincial exams and was the youngest successful candidate at that time.

In 1890, Liang failed in his Jinshi (進士) degree national examinations in Beijing and never earned a higher degree. He took the exams along with Kang Youwei, a famous Chinese scholar and reformist. According to one popular narrative of Liang's failure to pass the Jinshi, the examiner was determined to flunk Kang for his heterodox challenge to existing institutions, but since the exams were all anonymous, he could only presume that the exam with the most unorthodox views was Kang's. Instead, Kang disguised himself by writing an examination eight-legged essay espousing traditionalist ideas and passed the exam while Liang's paper was assumed to be Kang's and picked out to be failed.

Inspired by the book A short account of the maritime circuit,[2] Liang became extremely interested in western ideologies. After returning home, Liang went on to study with Kang Youwei, who was teaching at Wanmu Caotang (萬木草堂) in Guangzhou. Kang's teachings about foreign affairs fueled Liang's interest in reforming China.

In 1895, Liang went to the capital Beijing again with Kang for the national examination. During the examination, he was a leader of the Gongche Shangshu movement. After failing to pass the examination for a second time, he stayed in Beijing to help Kang publish Domestic and Foreign Information. He also helped to organize the Society for National Strengthening (強學會), where Liang served as secretary. For time, he was also enlisted by the governor of Hunan, Chen Baozhen to edit reform-friendly publications, such as the Hunan Daily (Xiangbao 湘報) and the Hunan Journal (Xiang xuebao 湘學報).

Reform movements

As an advocate of constitutional monarchy, Liang was unhappy with the governance of the Qing Government and wanted to change the status quo in China. He organized reforms with Kang Youwei by putting their ideas on paper and sending them to the Guangxu Emperor (reigned 1875–1908) of the Qing dynasty. This movement is known as the Wuxu Reform or the Hundred Days' Reform. Their proposal asserted that China was in need of more than "self-strengthening", and called for many institutional and ideological changes such as getting rid of corruption and remodeling the state examination system. Liang thus was a major influence in the debates on democracy in China.[3]

This proposal soon ignited a frenzy of disagreement, and Liang became a wanted man by order of Empress Dowager Cixi, the leader of the political conservative faction who later took over the government as regent. Cixi strongly opposed reforms at that time and along with her supporters, condemned the "Hundred Days' Reform" as being too radical.

In 1898, the Conservative Coup ended all reforms, and Liang fled to Japan, where he stayed for the next 14 years. While in Tokyo he befriended the influential politician and future Japanese Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi. In Japan, he continued to actively advocate the democratic cause by using his writings to raise support for the reformers’ cause among overseas Chinese and foreign governments. He continued to emphasize the importance of individualism, and to support the concept of a constitutional monarchy as opposed to the radical republicanism supported by the Tokyo-based Tongmeng Hui (the forerunner of the Kuomintang). During his time in Japan, Liang also served as a benefactor and colleague to Phan Boi Chau, one of Vietnam's most important anti-colonial revolutionaries.[4]

In 1899, Liang went to Canada, where he met Dr. Sun Yat-Sen among others, then to Honolulu in Hawaii. During the Boxer Rebellion, Liang was back in Canada, where he formed the "Chinese Empire Reform Association" (保皇會). This organization later became the Constitutionalist Party which advocated constitutional monarchy. While Sun promoted revolution, Liang preached incremental reform.

In 1900-1901, Liang visited Australia on a six-month tour that aimed at raising support for a campaign to reform the Chinese empire and thus modernize China through adopting the best of Western technology, industry and government systems. He also gave public lectures to both Chinese and Western audiences around the country. This visit coincided with the Federation of the six British colonies into the new nation of Australia in 1901. He felt this model of integration might be an excellent model for the diverse regions of China. He was feted by politicians, and met the first Prime Minister of Australia, Edmund Barton.[5] He returned to Japan later that year.

In 1903, Liang embarked on an eight-month lecture tour throughout the United States, which included a meeting with President Theodore Roosevelt in Washington, DC, before returning to Japan via Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

The descendant of Confucius Duke Yansheng was proposed as a replacement for the Qing dynasty as Emperor by Liang Qichao.[6]

Politician

With the overthrow of the Qing dynasty, constitutional monarchy became an increasingly irrelevant topic. Liang merged his renamed Democratic Party with the Republicans to form the new Progressive Party. He was very critical of Sun Yatsen's attempts to undermine President Yuan Shikai. Though usually supportive of the government, he opposed the expulsion of the Nationalists from parliament.

In 1915, he opposed Yuan's attempt to make himself emperor. He convinced his disciple Cai E, the military governor of Yunnan, to rebel. Progressive party branches agitated for the overthrow of Yuan and more provinces declared their independence. The revolutionary activity that he had frowned upon was utilized successfully. Besides Duan Qirui, Liang was the biggest advocate of entering World War I on the Allied side. He felt it would boost China's status and also ameliorate foreign debts. He condemned his mentor, Kang Youwei, for assisting in the failed attempt to restore the Qing in July 1917. After failing to turn Duan Qirui and Feng Guozhang into responsible statesmen, he gave up and left politics.

Contributions to journalism

As a journalist

Lin Yutang (林語堂) once called Liang "the greatest personality in the history of Chinese journalism," while Joseph Levenson, author of Liang Ch'i-ch'ao and the Mind of Modern China, described Liang as "a brilliant scholar, journalist, and political figure."

Liang Qichao was the "most influential turn-of-the-century scholar-journalist," according to Levenson. Liang showed that newspapers and magazines could serve as an effective medium for communicating political ideas.

Liang, as a historian and a journalist, believed that both careers must have the same purpose and "moral commitment," as he proclaimed, "by examining the past and revealing the future, I will show the path of progress to the people of the nation." Thus, he founded his first newspaper, called the Qing Yi Bao (淸議報), named after a student movement of the Han dynasty.

Liang's exile to Japan allowed him to speak freely and exercise his intellectual autonomy. During his career in journalism, he edited two premier newspapers, Zhongwai Gongbao (中外公報) and Shiwu Bao (時務報). He also published his moral and political ideals in Qing Yi Bao (淸議報) and New Citizen (新民叢報).

In addition, he used his literary works to further spread his views on republicanism both in China and across the world. Accordingly, he had become an influential journalist in terms of political and cultural aspects by writing new forms of periodical journals. Furthermore, journalism paved the way for him to express his patriotism.

New Citizen Journal

Liang produced a widely read biweekly journal called New Citizen (Xinmin Congbao 新民叢報), first published in Yokohama, Japan on February 8, 1902.

The journal covered many different topics, including politics, religion, law, economics, business, geography and current and international affairs. In the journal, Liang coined many Chinese equivalents for never-before-heard theories or expressions and used the journal to help communicate public opinion in China to faraway readers. Through news analyses and essays, Liang hoped that the New Citizen would be able to start a "new stage in Chinese newspaper history."

A year later, Liang and his co-workers saw a change in the newspaper industry and remarked, "Since the inauguration of our journal last year, there have come into being almost ten separate journals with the same style and design."

Liang spread his notions about democracy as chief editor of the New Citizen Journal. The journal was published without hindrance for five years but eventually ceased in 1907 after 96 issues. Its readership was estimated to be 200,000.

Role of the newspaper

As one of the pioneers of Chinese journalism of his time, Liang believed in the "power" of newspaper, especially its influence over government policies.

Using newspapers and magazines to communicate political ideas:

Liang realised the importance of journalism's social role and supported the idea of a strong relationship between politics and journalism before the May Fourth Movement, (also known as the New Culture Movement). He believed that newspapers and magazines should serve as an essential and effective tool in communicating political ideas. He believed that newspapers did not only act as a historical record, but was also a means to "shape the course of history."

Press as a weapon in revolution:

Liang also thought that the press was an "effective weapon in the service of a nationalist uprising". In Liang's words, the newspaper is a “revolution of ink, not a revolution of blood.” He wrote, "so a newspaper regards the government the way a father or elder brother regards a son or younger brother — teaching him when he does not understand, and reprimanding him when he gets something wrong." Undoubtedly, his attempt to unify and dominate a fast-growing and highly competitive press market has set the tone for the first generation of newspaper historians of the May Fourth Movement.

Newspaper as an educational program:

Liang was well aware that the newspaper could serve as an "educational program", and said, "the newspaper gathers virtually all the thoughts and expressions of the nation and systematically introduces them to the citizenry, it being irrelevant whether they are important or not, concise or not, radical or not. The press, therefore, can contain, reject, produce, as well as destroy, everything."

For example, Liang wrote a well known essay during his most radical period titled "The Young China" and published it in his newspaper Qing Yi Bao (淸議報) on February 2, 1900. The essay established the concept of the nation-state and argued that the young revolutionaries were the holders of the future of China. This essay was influential on the Chinese political culture during the May Fourth Movement in the 1920s.

Weak press:

However, Liang thought that the press in China at that time was quite weak, not only due to lack of financial resources and to conventional social prejudices, but also because "the social atmosphere was not free enough to encourage more readers and there was a lack of roads and highways that made it hard to distribute newspapers". Liang felt that the prevalent newspapers of the time were "no more than a mass commodity". He criticized that those newspapers "failed to have the slightest influence upon the nation as a society".

Literary career


Liang Qichao

Liang Qichao was both a traditional Confucian scholar and a reformist. Liang Qichao contributed to the reform in late Qing by writing various articles interpreting non-Chinese ideas of history and government, with the intent of stimulating Chinese citizens' minds to build a new China. In his writings, he argued that China should protect the ancient teachings of Confucianism, but also learn from the successes of Western political life and not just Western technology. Therefore, he was regarded as the pioneer of political fiction.

Liang shaped the ideas of democracy in China, using his writings as a medium to combine Western scientific methods with traditional Chinese historical studies. Liang's works were strongly influenced by the Japanese political scholar Katō Hiroyuki, who used methods of social Darwinism to promote the statist ideology in Japanese society. Liang drew from much of his work and subsequently influenced Korean nationalists in the 1900s.

Historiographical thought

Liang Qichao’s historiographical thought represents the beginning of modern Chinese historiography and reveals some important directions of Chinese historiography in the twentieth century.

For Liang, the major flaw of "old historians" (舊史家) was their failure to foster the national awareness necessary for a strong and modern nation. Liang's call for new history not only pointed to a new orientation for historical writing in China, but also indicated the rise of modern historical consciousness among Chinese intellectuals. He advocated the Great Man theory in his 1899 piece, "Heroes and the Times" (英雄与时势, Yīngxióng yǔ Shíshì), and he also wrote biographies of European state-builders such as Otto von Bismarck, Horatio Nelson, Oliver Cromwell, Lajos Kossuth, Giuseppe Mazzini, and Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour; as well as Chinese men including Zheng He, Tan Sitong, and Wang Anshi.[7][8]

During this period of Japan's challenge in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–95), Liang was involved in protests in Beijing pushing for an increased participation in the governance by the Chinese people. It was the first protest of its kind in modern Chinese history. This changing outlook on tradition was shown in the historiographical revolution (史學革命) launched by Liang Qichao in the early twentieth century. Frustrated by his failure at political reform, Liang embarked upon cultural reform. In 1902, while in exile in Japan, Liang wrote "The New Historiography" (新史學), which called on Chinese to study world history to understand China rather than just Chinese history.[8] The article also attacked old historiographical methods, which he lamented focused on dynasty over state; the individual over the group; the past but not the present; and facts, rather than ideals.[9]

Translator


Liang's calligraphy

Liang was head of the Translation Bureau and oversaw the training of students who were learning to translate Western works into Chinese. He believed that this task was "the most essential of all essential undertakings to accomplish" because he believed Westerners were successful - politically, technologically and economically.

Philosophical Works:

After escaping Beijing and the government crackdown on anti-Qing protesters, Liang studied the works of Western philosophers of the Enlightenment period, namely Hobbes, Rousseau, Locke, Hume and Bentham, translating them and introducing his own interpretation of their works. His essays were published in a number of journals, drawing interest among Chinese intellectuals who had been taken aback by the dismemberment of China's formidable empire at the hands of foreign powers.

Western Social and Political Theories:

In the early 20th century, Liang Qichao played a significant role in introducing Western social and political theories into Korea such as Social Darwinism and international law. Liang wrote in his well-known manifesto, New People (新民說):

“Freedom means Freedom for the Group, not Freedom for the Individual. (…) Men must not be slaves to other men, but they must be slaves to their group. For, if they are not slaves to their own group, they will assuredly become slaves to some other.”

Poet and novelist

Liang advocated reform in both the genres of poem and novel. The Collected Works from the Ice-Drinker's Studio (飲冰室合集) is his representative works in literature compiled into 148 volumes.

Liang gained his idea of calling his work as Collected Works of Yinbingshi from a passage of Zhuangzi (《莊子•人間世》). It states that "Every morning, I receive the mandate [for action], every evening I drink the ice [of disillusion], but I remain ardent in my inner mind" (吾朝受命而夕飲冰，我其內熱與). As a result, Liang called his workplace as "The Ice-drinker's studio" (Yinbingshi), and addressed himself as Yinbingshi Zhuren (飲冰室主人), literally Host of the Ice-drinker's studio, in order to present his idea that he was worrying about all the political matters, so he would still try his best to reform the society by the effort of writings.

Liang also wrote fiction and scholarly essays on fiction, which included Fleeing to Japan after failure of Hundred Days' Reform (1898) and the essay On the Relationship Between Fiction and the Government of the People (論小說與群治之關係, 1902). These novels emphasized modernization in the West and the call for reform.

Educator

In the late 1920s, Liang retired from politics and taught at the Tung-nan University in Shanghai and the Tsinghua Research Institute in Peking as a tutor. He founded the Chiang-hsüeh sheh (Chinese Lecture Association) and brought many intellectual figures to China, including Driesch and Tagore. Academically he was a renowned scholar of his time, introducing Western learning and ideology, and making extensive studies of ancient Chinese culture.

During this last decade of his life, he wrote many books documenting Chinese cultural history, Chinese literary history and historiography. Liang reexamined the works of Mozi, and authored, amongst other works, The Political Thought of the Pre-Qing Period, and Intellectual Trends in the Qing Period.[10] He also had a strong interest in Buddhism and wrote numerous historical and political articles on its influence in China. Liang influenced many of his students in producing their own literary works. They included Xu Zhimo, renowned modern poet, and Wang Li, an accomplished poet and founder of Chinese linguistics as a modern discipline.

Publications


The Collected Works of Yinbingshi vol 1-12, written by Liang Qichao

• Introduction to the Learning of the Qing Dynasty (1920)
• The Learning of Mohism (1921)
• Chinese Academic History of the Recent 300 Years (1924)
• History of Chinese Culture (1927)
• The Construction of New China
• The Philosophy of Lao Tzu
• The History of Buddhism in China
• Collected Works of Yinbingshi, Zhonghua Book Co, Shanghai 1936, republished in Beijing, 2003, ISBN 7-101-00475-X /K.210

Family

• Paternal grandfather
o Liang Weiqing (梁維淸) (1815 - 1892), pseudonym Jingquan (鏡泉)
• Paternal grandmother
o Lady Li (黎氏) (1817 - 1873), daughter of Guangxi admiral Li Diguang (黎第光)
• Father
o Liang Baoying (梁寶瑛) (1849 - 1916), courtesy name Lianjian (蓮澗)
• Mother
o Lady Zhao (趙氏) (1852 - 1887)
• First wife
o Li Huixian (李蕙仙), married Liang Qichao in 1891, died of illness on 13 September 1924
• Second wife
o Wang Guiquan (王桂荃), initially Li Huixian's handmaiden before becoming Liang Qichao's concubine in 1903

Issue and descendants


From left to right: Liang Sining, Liang Sirui, Liang Sili and Liang Sida, were at Tianjin in 1934.

• Eldest daughter: Liang Sishun (梁思順) (14 April 1893 – 1966), became an accomplished poet, married Zhou Xizhe (周希哲) in 1925
o Zhou Nianci (週念慈)
o Zhou Tongshi (周同軾)
o Zhou Youfei (周有斐)
o Zhou Jiaping (周嘉平)
• Eldest son: Liang Sicheng (梁思成) (20 April 1901 - 9 January 1972), became a famous architect and teacher, married Lin Huiyin (10 June 1904 - 1 April 1955) in 1928
o Son: Liang Congjie (梁從誡) (4 August 1932 - 28 October 2010), prominent environmental activist, married firstly Zhou Rumei (周如枚), married secondly Fang Jing (方晶)
 Son: Liang Jian (梁鑑), son of Zhou Rumei
 Daughter: Liang Fan (梁帆), daughter of Fang Jing
o Daughter: Liang Zaibing (梁再冰)
• 2nd son: Liang Siyong (梁思永) (24 July 1904 - 2 April 1954), married Li Fuman (李福曼)
o Daughter: Liang Baiyou (梁柏有)
• 3rd son: Liang Sizhong (梁思忠) (6 August 1907 – 1932)
• 2nd daughter: Liang Sizhuang (梁思莊) (1908 - 20 May 1986), married Wu Luqiang (-hant吳魯強) in 1933
o Daughter: Wu Liming (吳荔明)
 Son: Yang Nianqun (楊念羣) (20 January 1964-), male-line great-grandson late-Ch'ing era personage Yang Du
• 4th son: Liang Sida (梁思達) (16 December 1912 – 2001), married Yu Xuezhen (俞雪臻)
o Daughter: Liang Yibing (梁憶冰)
o 1st son: Liang Renyou (梁任又)
o 2nd son: Liang Renkan (梁任堪)
• 3rd daughter: Liang Siyi (梁思懿) (13 December 1914 – 1988), married Zhang Weixun (張偉遜)
o 1st daughter: Zhang Yuwen (張郁文)
o 2nd son: Zhang Anwen (張安文)
• 4th daughter: Liang Sining (梁思寧) (30 October 1916 – 2006), married Zhang Ke (章柯)
o Zhang Antai (章安泰)
o Zhang Anqiu (章安秋)
o Zhang Anjian (章安建)
o Zhang Hui (章惠)
o Zhang Anning (章安寧)
• 5th son: Liang Sili (梁思禮) (24 August 1924 – 14 April 2016), married Mai Xiuqiong (麥秀瓊)
o Liang Zuojun (梁左軍)
o Liang Hong (梁紅)
o Liang Xuan (梁旋)

Liang Sishun, Liang Sicheng, and Liang Sizhuang were borne by Li Huixian. Liang Siyong, Liang Sizhong, Liang Sida, Liang Siyi, Liang Sining, and Liang Sili were borne by Wang Guiquan.

Legacy

Liang's pedigree book was once lost with only one page left. The family members recreated the naming method by giving sixteen characters in a sequence, each generation following one. Liang didn't follow it by using ‘思’ to his children.

See also

• Gongche Shangshu movement

Notes

1. Yang, Xiao. "Contemporary Chinese Philosophy" (PDF). Kenyon College.
2. 徐繼畬 (Xu Jiyu) . 1849 . 瀛環志略 (A short account of the maritime circuit )
3. Ch 3, "Liang Ch'i-ch'ao and the Chinese Democracy Movement," Andrew Nathan, Chinese Democracy (1985): 45-66.
4. Campbell, Allen; Nobel, David S (1993). Japan: An Illustrated Encyclopedia. Kodansha. p. 888. ISBN 406205938X.
5. John Schauble, Australia visit shaped ideas of Mao favorite, The Sydney Morning Herald, 9 December 2000
6. Modernization of Chinese Culture: Continuity and Change (revised ed.). Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 2014. p. 74. ISBN 1443867721.
7. Matten, Marc Andre (March 2011). "The Worship of General Yue Fei and His Problematic Creation as a National Hero in Twentieth Century China". Frontiers of History in China. 6 (1): 74–94.
8. Horner, Charles (2009). Rising China and Its Postmodern Fate: Memories of Empire in a New Global Context. University of Georgia Press. p. 102.
9. Chen, Qineng (2005). "The "New History" in China: A Contrast to the West". Storia della Storiografia [History of Historiography]. 48: 112–118.
10. Hsu, Immanuel (2000). The Rise of Modern China: Sixth Edition. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 509–510. ISBN 978-0-19-512504-7.

References

• Chang, Hao. Liang Ch'i-Ch'ao and Intellectual Transition in China. London: Oxford University Press, 1971.
• Chen, Chun-chi. Politics and the novel: a study of Liang Ch'i-Ch'ao's future of New China and his views on fiction. Ann Arbor: UMI dissertation services, 1998.
• Huang, Philip: Liang Ch’i-ch’ao and Modern Chinese Liberalism (1972). Seattle and London: University of Washington Press.
• Kovach, Bill and Rosenstiel, Tom. The Elements of Journalism. New York: Random House, 2001.
• Levenson, Joseph. Liang Ch'i-Ch'ao and the Mind of Modern China. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1970.
• Li Xiaodong [李曉東]: Kindai Chūgoku no rikken kōsō – Gen Puku, Yō Do, Ryō Keichō to Meiji keimō shisō [近代中国の立憲構想－厳復・楊度・梁啓超と明治啓蒙思想] (2005). Tokio: Hōsei daigaku shuppankyoku.
• Li Xisuo [李喜所] (ed.): Liang Qichao yu jindai zhongguo shehui wenhua [梁启超与近代中国社会文化] (2005). Tianjin: Tianjin guji chubanshe.
• Shin, Tim Sung Wook. The concepts of state (kuo-chia) and people (min) in the late Ch'ing, 1890 - 1907: the Case of Liang Ch'i Ch'ao, T'an S'su-t'ung and Huang Tsun-Hsien. Ann Arbor: University Microfilms International, 1986.
• Tang, Xiaobing. Global space and the Nationalist Discourse of Modernity" the Historical Thinking of Liang Qichao. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996.
• Wang, Xunmin. Liang Qichao zhuan. Beijing: Tuan jie chu ban she, 1998.
• Wu, Qichang. Liang Qichao zhuan. Beijing: Tuan jie chu ban she, 2004.
• Xiao, Xiaoxui. China encounters Western ideas (1895 - 1905): a rhetorical analysis of Yan Fu, Tan Sitong and Liang Qichao. Ann Arbor: UMI dissertation services, 1992.
• Yang Gang [杨钢] and Wang Xiangyi [王相宜] (ed.): Liang Qichao quanji [梁启超全集] (1999). Beijing: Beijing chubanshe. (dates of letter before mid 1912 messed up).
• Xiao, Yang. Liang Qichao’s Political and Social Philosophy, in Chung-ying Cheng, Nicholas Bunnin (eds.), Contemporary Chinese Philosophy (Malden: Blackwell), 2002, pp. 17–36.
• Hsu, Immanuel. The Rise of Modern China: Sixth Edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Further reading

• Pankaj Mishra (2012). "Liang Qichao's China and the Fate of Asia". From the Ruins of Empire:The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 0374249598.
• Liang Chi-chao (Liang Qichao) 梁啓超 from Biographies of Prominent Chinese c.1925.
• Kaplan, Lawrence M. Homer Lea: American Soldier of Fortune. University Press pf Kentucky, 2010. ISBN 978-0813126166.
• Vittinghoff, Natascha. "Unity vs. uniformity: Liang Qichao and the invention of a" new journalism" for China."Late Imperial China 23.1 (2002): 91-143, sharply critical

External links

• CCTV article on the Chinese Revolution
• Book Review: Liang Ch’i-ch’ao and the Mind of Modern China
• Liang's former residence in Xinhui, Guangdong province (Photo)
• Democracy in China
• Kang Youwei-Liang's teacher
• Memorial hall for Liang Qichao at his former residence in north China's Tianjin City (Photo)

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Part 1 of 2

Chapter 2: The Sound of the Tide for a New China [Taixu/Tai Hsu] [Bodhi Society] [Right Faith Buddhist Society of Hankou]
Excerpt from Toward a Modern Chinese Buddhism: Taixu's Reforms
by Don Alvin Pittman

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

-- Chapter 3: An Ecumenical Vision for Global Mission [Taixu/Tai Hsu] [Bodhi Society] [Right Faith Buddhist Society of Hankou], Excerpt from Toward a Modern Chinese Buddhism: Taixu's Reforms, by Don Alvin Pittman

The Society’s prehistory goes back to the nineteenth century, and I would like to begin by mentioning the Theosophical Society. It was and is a strange and interesting Society, that has a global multinational reach. It did an enormous amount in its own way to bring Eastern culture to the West, but it did not necessarily follow either a strictly intellectual or an entirely comprehensible approach. The two things we can say about its members is that they were true seekers after understanding, knowledge, wisdom and compassion and that, most of all, they wanted to solve the problem of human existence. They did this in their own idiosyncratic manner, and some of them have taken much criticism from academics. However, we are not interested in that. We are interested in the heart of these people and in what motivated and inspired them and what ultimately came out of the work and commitment they made in their individual lives, and their devotion.

The Buddhist Society’s roots are in the Theosophical Society. Some years ago, when we were doing renovation work here, it was decided to clean the Buddha-rupa in the shrine room. When it was emptied out, to some people’s horror a photograph of Madame Blavatsky was found inside. This caused consternation among some members of the Council but it was stealthily put back in again.

The three objects of the Theosophical Society are to form a nucleus of the universal brotherhood of humanity without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste or colour; to encourage the comparative study of religion, philosophy and science; and to explore the unexplained laws of nature and the powers latent in humanity. These are clearly worthy goals, and it would be good if more of us could put more effort into attaining them.

Let us explore the history of the Theosophical Society a little more, starting with Madame Blavatsky....

An important figure in bringing Buddhism to the West is Anagarika Dharmapala, previously Don David Hewavitarne (1864–1933)....

Another visitor to Bodh Gaya was Sir Edwin Arnold, who went there in 1880....

The next important figure is Ananda Coomaraswamy, who was educated in London and trained as a geologist...

Another important figure is Ananda Metteyya....

Next is the Venerable Tai Hsu, who was the third Buddhist missionary to come to England and is acclaimed by many as a leading figure in the revival of Buddhism in China. Tai Hsu was a friend of Christmas Humphreys and gave money to the Buddhist Society at a time when it was really struggling.

-- The 90th Anniversary of The Buddhist Society 1924–2014, by The Buddhist Society

To understand the mental universe of many religious leaders, it is important to know something about the fabric of their lives. In such cases, interpretation requires a sense not only of the person's historical context but of how he or she experienced and engaged it. Thus biographical accounts and autobiographical reflections are crucial to appreciating the diverse forms of piety represented by spiritual guides such as Augustine (396-430), Nichiren (1222-1282), Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786), Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948), Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), and the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (1902-1989). The modern Buddhist reformer Taixu was also such a figure.

The Chinese monk lived and taught in a time of revolution and renaissance, a complex and turbulent period of change for China and the entire world. During Taixu's lifetime, the Chinese people experienced the end of dynastic rule and the beginning of a republican experiment. They entertained grand dreams for the country's future and suffered the grim nightmares of social, political, and economic upheaval. They engaged in bitter civil strife and were enveloped in a devastating global war. Taixu sought to serve as a transformative agent within that context. He heard "the sound of the sea tide" (i.e., the Buddha's voice) calling for a new Buddhism for a new China. He firmly believed that the propagation of that modern form of Buddhism held the keys not only to the salvation of his country but to the emergence of a just and peaceful global civilization. Accordingly, he commended to the Mahayana community an ethical form of piety that centered bodhisattva practice not on exercises of religious philosophy, sitting meditation, or ritual observance but on expressions of enlightened social responsibility within the world. Highlighting the reformer's religio-historical context, Frank Millican once commented:

To understand Taixu we need to see him as a lad among a group of droning priests at Tiantong Monastery, situated in the seclusion of the beautiful hills of Zhejiang, near Ningbo city. Here he lived under the shadow of the images of Buddha and the many Buddhist worthies and learned to chant his prayers, make his prostrations, and share in the daily routine of a typical monastery. There must have been In his veins some blood different from that of his fellow priests, or, to speak in the language of the school of thought in which he was trained, the person of a previous existence whose "karma" was reborn in him must have lived a life which merited much, that he alone of hundreds should have risen above the humdrum existence of his fellow priests and have emerged as interpreter of Buddhism to this age.1

There were, of course, many other influential and competent voices within the Chinese sangha interpreting the Dharma in relation to the challenges of the modern world. Yet because of the force of Taixu's charismatic personality, the breadth of his academic interests, the timeliness of his ecumenical concerns, and the scope of his vision for a reenergized and missionary form of Buddhism, he left a lasting impression on many both within and outside of his own religious community. Just as the firebrands of the late Qing and early Republican years called for a thoroughgoing political revolution and the creation of a "new people" (xin min), so in a parallel manner did Taixu call for a "Buddhist revolution" (fojiao geming) and the creation of "new monks" (xin sing). To achieve this end, he proposed a reorganization of the sangha through broad structural, educational, and economic reforms, called for closer ties between the monastic and lay communities, and proposed new measures of cooperation in global mission. Sometimes his ideas were rejected; sometimes what was rejected was Taixu the man. His critics perceived not only errors in judgment but personality flaws; his disciples rarely acknowledged either.

Taixu's story, therefore, consists of both ideas and events, concepts and confrontations, opinions and opponents. Despite the fact that Taixu was never recognized as a brilliantly original Mahayana theoretician, the contours of his map of the bodhisattva path in and through the modern world continue to inform the practice of many Buddhists in East Asia and around the world. Taixu is remembered most for his unique embodiment of one compelling perspective on what it might mean to be a Chinese patriot, a Buddhist devotee, and a global citizen.

SPIRITUAL FORMATION AND EARLY EDUCATION

Taixu (original school name: Lu Peilin) was born in the village of Chang' an in the Haining county of northern Zhejiang province on January 8, 1890, in the fifteenth year of the Qing emperor Guangxu's reign. His father was a bricklayer who died when his son was only a year old. Two years later, when his mother remarried into the Li family, he became the responsibility of his maternal grandmother. A devout woman who was well versed in poetry and literature, she cared for the young boy and introduced him to Buddhism through frequent visits to nearby temples. Although Taixu suffered from remittent fevers and was frequently ill, his maternal uncle, a local schoolteacher, made certain that he received a sound primary education in the Chinese classics.


Venerable Master Taixu. Source: Yinshun Cultural and Educational Foundation (Yinshun wenjiao jijin hui). Xinzhu County, Taiwan

When Taixu was eight, his grandmother began to take him on pilgrimages to some of the more famous Buddhist centers in the sacred mountains of east-central China. He was fascinated with the rituals performed by the monks of Anhui's Jiuhua Shan and the large and impressive Jin Shan monastery near Zhenjiang in Jiangsu province. Eventually he also accompanied his grandmother to the famous Buddhist center on Putuo Shan on the coast of Zhejiang, as well as to the Yuwang (Asoka) and Tiantong monasteries near Ningbo. These religious pilgrimages were formative journeys during which Taixu began to develop an interest not only in Buddhism but in the ideals and daily rhythms of the monastic life.

In 1901, Taixu accepted a business apprenticeship in Chang'an, but this was soon interrupted by the unexpected death of his mother and further health problems of his own. Although in time he returned to his duties as a shop clerk, recurring illnesses presented considerable difficulties for both his professional responsibilities and personal study. According to Yinshun, in 1903, for the very first time, Taixu "began to long for the carefree life of the Buddha's way."2

Just a year later, in the spring of 1904, as the impoverished Qing government was authorizing the confiscation of monastic property to support new educational ventures, Taixu was actively contemplating joining the sangha. At the age of fourteen, influenced by his grandmother's piety, grieved by the death of his parents, and anxious about his physical health and stamina, he decided to renounce lay life. His original plan was to travel by river boat to Putuo Shan via Shanghai. However, when he realized that he had mistakenly boarded a boat heading to Suzhou, he got off at Pingwang and walked to the nearby Xiao Jiuhua si, which he and his grandmother had visited briefly when on a pilgrimage to temples near the city of Zhenjiang, at the intersection of the Grand Canal and Yangzi River.3

Judging his karma to be in harmony with his ultimate aim, Taixu presented himself to Master Shida, the prior of the monastery (jian yuan), and explained his intent. The prior received him, but because the Xiao Jiuhua si was a public monastery (shifang conglin) that was not permitted to tonsure and train novices, he soon arranged to conduct the young man's tonsure ceremony at a small hereditary temple in Suzhou. There Shida gave him the Dharma name Weixin (Mind Only). Remembering the occasion at a later date, Taixu confessed, "I renounced the lay life, longing for the supernatural powers of the immortals (xian) and Buddhas (fo)." In fact, he noted, "still not distinguishing between the immortals and the Buddhas, but thinking of attaining their supernatural powers, I entered the sangha."4

Several months later, Shida escorted the novice to meet the Buddhist Master Zhuangnian, who was the head monk of the Yuhuang temple near Ningbo. It was Master Zhuangnian who gave the young monk the style or courtesy name Taixu (Supreme Emptiness) to forever remind him that he "existed in the midst of supreme emptiness."5 The elderly master also provided the herbal medicines that finalIy helped cure the novice of his persistent fevers. In the late fall of 1904, Zhuangnian accompanied Taixu to the Tiantong si at Ningbo, where he officially took the Buddhist precepts and was ordained under the revered old Chinese master and poet Jichan, also widely known as Eight Fingers (Bazhi Toutuo).6

In light of Taixu's intellectual promise, Eight Fingers soon recommended that he begin studies with the respected Buddhist master Qichang, abbot of Ningbo's nearby Yongfeng si. Master Qichang undertook to instruct Taixu in meditational disciplines using the hua tou ("critical phrase") method of Chan, posing enigmatic questions for contemplation.7 He also guided the young monk's introduction to Buddhist history and literature. In his studies of famous Buddhist texts such as the Zhiyue lu (Record of Pointing at the Moon) and Gaoseng zhuan (Record of the Lives of Eminent Monks), Taixu proved himself an earnest and able pupil.

In his early studies of the Chinese Tripitaka, Taixu was especially attracted to the Lengyon jing (Surangama Sutra) and Fahua jing (Lotus Sutra), the study of which helped him recognize the fundamental differences between Buddhist and Daoist teachings. It was during this initial period of Buddhist training that Taixu first met Yuanying (1878-1953), a disciple of Eight Fingers who came to visit Master Qichang in the summer of 1906.8 Twelve years Taixu's senior, Yuanying would become an important leader within the sangha and serve as the first president of the Chinese Buddhist Association of 1929. Acknowledging their common interests, Taixu and Yuanying established a friendship and pledged to work with each other for a revitalized religious tradition in China. Because of differences of opinion and personal style, it would turn out to be a difficult relationship to maintain. Many years later, in fact, Taixu wrote in his autobiography, "Although afterwards he and I were constantly engaged in conflict, when I think back on those days of scriptural studies, ... I shall always remember his friendship."9

Taixu benefited not only from Qichang's instruction but also from private interviews with Eight Fingers at the Tiantong si nearby, as well as from opportunities to meet other respected Chinese Buddhist masters who visited the Ningbo area monasteries, including the Venerable Daojie (1866-1932), another of Eight Fingers' disciples.10 Yet in the fall of 1907, inspired by lectures on the scriptures given by Daojie and strongly encouraged by Yuanying, the young monk bid farewell to Qichang and departed for Cixi to pursue more advanced studies at the Xifang si, which maintained one of the larger Buddhist libraries in Jiangsu. It was there, while concentrating on the Prajnaparamira (Perfection of Wisdom) literature, that Taixu had a powerful religious experience that was to prove a milestone in his spiritual progress. For Taixu, this represented the arising of the thought of enlightenment (bodhicitta) and was the real beginning of his bodhisattva career. He testified that it enabled him to slough off the "pollution of the world" and gave him "new life."11 He later recalled, "After some time, knowledge of the Buddha came to me like a pearl, lost and found again, and as with a mirror, I was enabled to see clearly through the changes of this life and the world."12

In the spring of 1908, when Taixu was eighteen years old, the reformist monk Huashan came to the Xifang si, where Taixu was staying. According to Yinshun, Huashan was actually "the first person to start modernizing the sangha."13 Impressed with Taixu, Huashan told him about those working for revolutionary political and social changes within China, asserting that the monastic order itself must modernize and promote educational reform. Initially, Taixu was uncertain about Huashan's ideas; indeed, the two monks argued for more than ten days about what such modernization efforts would require. Challenging Taixu to broaden his reading, Huashan gave him a wide variety of provocative books with which he was unfamiliar, including Kang Youwei's utopian classic Datong shu (The Book of the Great Community), Liang Qichao's Xinmin shuo (On New People), Zhang Taiyan's (1868-1936) Gao fozi shu (Letter to Followers of the Buddha) and Gao baiyi shu (Letter to Lay Buddhists), Yan Fu's Tionyan lun (On Evolution), and Tan Sitong's Renxue (An Exposition on Benevolence).

Deeply influenced by these writings, Taixu soon aligned himself with Huashan's modernist stance. Committed to both political reform for the nation and religious reform for the Buddhist community, he formalized a special alliance of friendship with Huashan and began to consider how in practical terms a "new Buddhism" could be created in China to parallel the creation of a new nation. Writes Yinshun, "Because of Taixu's great resolve to save the world through Buddhism, he moved forward from that point and could never again restrain himself. Turning from the kind of religious path that seeks to transcend the human realm in order to enter the Absolute, rather he chose to distance himself from the Absolute in order to confront the world of humankind."14 The vow to pursue this kind of path to transform the world, Taixu stated, was a direct result of his close relationship with Huashan.15

Soon thereafter, at the Xiao Jiuhua si near Pingwang, Taixu met Qiyun, the revolutionary monk from Hunan. Qiyun was a former student of Eight Fingers who, during studies in Japan, had become an early member of the Tongmeng hui (Chinese United League) founded by Sun Yat-sen in 1905. An iconoclastic spirit, Qiyun was associated with Xu Xilin (1873- 1907), Qiu Jin (1879-1907), and other revolutionaries intent on the overthrow of the Qing government. 16 Yinshun notes that, according to the demands of each particular situation, Qiyun wore either western clothes with leather shoes or Buddhist monastic garb. When Taixu first encountered him, he was wearing the monastic robes that permitted him to hide from government officials in the monastery. It was through Qiyun's influence that Taixu was first encouraged to read political materials such as Sun Yat-sen and Zhang Taiyan's Minbao (People's Journal), Liang Qichao's Xinmin congbao (New People's Review), and Zou Rong's (1885-1905) Geming jun (Revolutionary Army). Influenced deeply by Sun's three principles of the people (sanmin zhuyi), he became filled with optimism about revolutionary proposals for broad Chinese political and social reforms. Comments Yinshun, "This was the beginning of Taixu's associations with political partisans (dangren)."17

In the fall of 1908, Taixu went to Ningbo to work with Eight Fingers. The elderly master was serving as director of the Ningbo Sangha Educational Association (Ningbo seng jiaoyu hui), which he had founded earlier that year. When Taixu learned that Qiyun had been arrested on suspicion of involvement in subversive activities, he immediately sought Eight Fingers' help in pleading for Qiyun's release. After the monk was freed from prison, Taixu, Yuanying, and Qiyun assisted Eight Fingers with the promotion of his newly established educational association. The association in Ningbo was only one of a number of ideas for expanding monastic education that had been developed since the Qing government had suspended the imperial examination system in September 1905. That governmental decision had resulted in renewed efforts to confiscate Buddhist property by many local officials throughout China, because each locality faced the daunting expense of creating new educational institutions at which students could become qualified for official service. Buddhist leaders intended to counter such confiscations of property in part by highlighting their own attempts to improve education within the sangha.

Taixu's introduction to such efforts through the Ningbo Sangha Educational Association gave him a glimpse of the promise of educational reforms not only for enhancing the public image of the sangha but for advancing broad reforms of Buddhist thought and practice. Moreover, the organization gave Taixu some of his first opportunities to lecture on contemporary trends within Chinese society and religion, as well as to test the support for his views among the established leaders of the sangha. Thus, observed one commentator, by design and good fortune, Taixu had by his eighteenth birthday already made the acquaintance of "the most celebrated Buddhists in China and obtained a profound view of Buddhism." 18

In the spring of 1909, Yuanying and Zhuangnian recommended that Taixu go to Jin Shan to practice meditation. Nevertheless, Taixu later confessed, "By that time my thoughts were already directed toward modern studies."19 Thus he traveled instead to Nanjing, with the encouragement of Huashan and Qiyun, to begin studies at the Jetavana Hermitage (Zhihuan jingshe) operated by Yang Wenhui, later often called "the father of the Buddhist revival." 20 As noted in Chapter 1, Yang was a well-educated Buddhist layman who had devoted himself to publishing and distributing Buddhist literature through his Jinling Scriptural Press. In addition, as an aspect of his special alliance with the Ceylonese lay devotee Anagarika Dharmapala, he had founded a new kind of school on his estate for all those interested in Buddhism's global mission. Yang himself lectured on the Buddhist scriptures, especially on the Surangama Sutra, which he judged to be especially compatible with modern science.

Olcott left one further legacy. Authority in Buddhism is often a matter of lineage, traced backwards in time from student to teacher, ideally ending with the Buddha himself. If one were to imagine a lineage of modern Buddhism traced forwards in time, one might begin with Gunananda (who clearly saw himself as representing the original teachings of the Buddha) to Colonel Olcott, to a young Sinhalese named David Hewaviratne, better known as Anagarika Dharmapala (1864-1933).

Hewaviratne was born into the small English-speaking middle class of Colombo. His family was Buddhist; at the age of nine he sat with his father in the audience of the Panadure debate, cheering for Gunananda. But like many middle-class children, he was educated in Catholic and Anglican schools. He met Blavatsky and Olcott during their first visit to Ceylon in 1880 and was initiated into the Theosophical Society four years later. In 1881 he changed his name to Anagarika Dharmapala ('Homeless Protector of the Dharma') and, although remaining a layman until late in life, wore the robes of a monk. In 1884, when Blavatsky departed for the Theosophical Society's headquarters in Adyar, India, after a subsequent visit to Ceylon, Dharmapala accompanied her. Upon his return to Ceylon, he became Colonel Olcott's closest associate, accompanying him on a trip to Japan in 1889. In 1898 he worked with Olcott to found the short-lived Dravidian Buddhist Society, dedicated to converting (or, according to Dharmapala, 'returning') the untouchables of south India to Buddhism. Clearly more political than Olcott in both Ceylon and India, he declared that 'India belongs to the Buddhas'.

In 1891, inspired by Edwin Arnold's account of the sad state of the site of the Buddha's enlightenment and by his own trip to the site that year, he founded the Maha Bodhi Society, whose aim was to wrest Bodh Gaya from Hindu control and make it a place of pilgrimage for Buddhists from around the world. Dharmapala achieved international fame after his bravura performance at the World's Parliament of Religions, held in conjunction with the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. His eloquent English and ability to quote from the Bible captivated the audience as he argued that Buddhism was clearly the equal, if not the superior, of Christianity in both antiquity and profundity, noting, for example, its compatibility with science. While in Chicago, he met not only the other Buddhist delegates to the parliament, such as the Japanese Zen priest Shaku Soen, but American enthusiasts of Buddhism, including [url=x]Paul Carus[/url].

The lineage of modern Buddhism was passed to China, when Dharmapala stopped in Shanghai in 1893 on his journey back from the World's Parliament of Religions, where he met Yang Wen-hui (1837- 1911). Yang was a civil engineer who had become interested in Buddhism after happening upon a copy of The Awakening of Faith, an important Mahayana treatise. He organized a lay society to disseminate the dharma by carving woodblocks for the printing of the Buddhist canon (a traditional form of merit-making). After serving at the Chinese embassy in London (where he met Max Muller, editor of the 'Sacred Books of the East' series, and his Japanese student Nanjo Bun'yu), he resigned from his government position to devote all of his energies to the publication of Buddhist texts.

Accompanying Dharmapala to Shanghai was the famous Baptist missionary Reverend Timothy Richard, who had also attended the parliament in Chicago. After an unsuccessful attempt by Dharmapala to enlist Chinese monks into the Maha Bodhi Society, Reverend Richard arranged for him to meet Yang Wen-hui. Yang did not think it possible for Chinese monks to go to India to assist in the cause of restoring Buddhism in India, but he suggested that Indians be sent to China to study the Buddhist canon. Here, we note another element of modern Buddhism. Dharmapala felt that the Buddhism of Ceylon was the most pure and authentic version of the Buddha's teachings and would have rejected as spurious most of the texts that Yang had been publishing. Yang, on the other hand, felt that the Buddhism of China was the most complete and authentic, such that the only hope of restoring Buddhism in India lay in returning the Chinese canon of translated Indian texts (including many Mahayana sutras) to the land of their birth. The ecumenical spirit found in much of modern Buddhism does not preclude the valuation of one's own form of Buddhism as supreme.

Yang and Dharmapala seem to have begun a correspondence that lasted over the next fifteen years, in which they agreed on the importance of spreading Buddhism to the West. Towards that end, Yang collaborated with Reverend Richard in an English translation of The Awakening if Faith, and in 1908 established a school to train Buddhist monks to serve as foreign missionaries, with Yang himself serving on the faculty, perhaps the first time in the history of Chinese Buddhism that monks had received instruction from a layman. Yang's contact with figures such as Muller and Dharmapala had convinced him that Buddhism was a religion compatible with the modern scientific world.

The situation faced by Buddhist monks in China was different from that in Ceylon. The challenge came not so much from Christian missionaries, although they were also a strong presence in China, but from a growing community of intellectuals who saw Buddhism as a form of primitive superstition impeding China's entry into the modern world. Buddhism had periodically been regarded with suspicion by the state over the course of Chinese history, and such suspicions were intensified in the early decades of the twentieth century (especially after the Republican revolution of 1911) when Buddhism was denounced both by Christian missionaries and by Chinese students returning from abroad imbued with the ideas of Dewey, Russell and Marx. In 1898 the emperor had issued an edict ordering many Buddhist temples (and their often substantial land holdings) to be converted into secular schools. Although the order was rescinded in 1905, a number of Buddhist schools and academies for the training of monks were founded at monasteries in an effort to prevent the seizure of the property and the establishment of secular schools. The monastic schools set out to train monks in the Buddhist classics, who would in turn go out in public and teach to the laity (as Christian missionaries did). Yang's academy was one such school. Although most were short-lived, they trained many of the future leaders of modern Buddhism in China, who sought to defend the dharma through founding Buddhist organizations, publishing Buddhist periodicals and leading lay movements to support the monastic community. One of the students at Yang's school was the monk T'ai Hsu [Taixu], later to become one of the most famous Chinese Buddhists of the twentieth century. New organizations included the Buddhist Pure Karma Society, founded in 1925 in Shanghai, which ran an orphanage and a free outpatient clinic, sponsored public lectures on Buddhist texts, published the Pure Karma Monthly and operated radio station XMHB, 'The Voice of the Buddha'. The Chinese Metaphysical Society was founded in 1919 in Nanjing. Originally intended for laymen, monks were later allowed to attend, on the condition that they not meditate, recite the Buddha's name, or perform services for the dead. Here Buddhism was presented as a philosophy rather than a religion, and the emphasis was placed not on the recitation of the scriptures (sutras) but on the study of the scholastic treatises, especially those of the Fa-hsiang school, regarded as a form of Buddhist Idealism. For many who participated in these groups, the support and study of Buddhism served as a means of maintaining their Chinese identity during a period of sometimes chaotic social and political change.7

-- A Modern Buddhist Bible: Essential Readings from East and West, by David S. Lopez

Otto Franke reported that the bylaws for the school were carefully articulated in thirty-five articles.21 The school was designed to have three levels of education, with a total curriculum of eight years of academic work. At each level. there were requirements in Buddhist textual studies, modern Chinese literature, and English language and literature, with a minimum of forty-two hours of class time each week. The bylaws called for a limitation of enrollment to twenty-four students, monks, and laymen. All those selected for admission were to have as their ultimate goal the propagation of Buddhism throughout the world. Although Yang's innovative school was forced to close for financial reasons at the end of the academic year, Taixu's brief experience at the Jetavana Hermitage further fueled his optimism about possibilities for real social, political, and religious reformation in China.

By this time, Yuanying had become head monk of the Jiedai si at Ningbo, while Daojie had assumed similar responsibilities at the Fayuan si in Beijing. On Huahan's recommendation. Taixu served for a semester on the faculty of the Huayu Primary School at Putuo Shan. Staying at the famous monastery gave him an opportunity to meet many leaders within the sangha whom he did not know, including the Pure Land master Yinguang, whose conservatism would always set the two at odds.22 Although Taixu returned to the Xifang si in Coo to continue his studies of the Tripitaka, only a month later, early in 1910, he accepted Qiyun's invitation to help him organize in Guangzhou an Association for the Education of Monks (Seng jiaoyu hui), as encouraged by his friend Yuebin, the head monk of the Shuangxi si, which was located on White Cloud Mountain (Baiyun Shan) outside the city. At the time, Guangzhou was a major center for anti-Qing revolutionary activity. In fact, during the period when Taixu was in Guangzhou, radicals staged an unsuccessful uprising in the city, while in Beijing others plotted the assassination of the prince regent.

In the summer of 1910, Taixu, Qiyun, and Yuebin were all invited to lecture at the Hualin si in Guangzhou. While there, Taixu visited the Shizi lin (Lion's Grove), where he helped organize a new center for Buddhist studies (fojiao jingshe). Because several of his lectures at the Shizi lin were eventually edited and published, Yinshun claims that "this was the beginning of Taixu's scholarly writing." 23 Indeed, it was Taixu's first opportunity to publish some of his ideas about the path of a modern-day bodhisattva and the necessity for a comprehensive reformation within the sangha. For example, stressing the need for developing an attitude that is open to religious change, he wrote in "Jiao guan zhuyao" (An Introduction to Buddhist Teaching and Meditation), "The good student of Buddhism relies on his heart and mind, not on ancient tradition, relies on the essential meaning of words, not on the words themselves. The good student is constantly adapting to circumstances and cleverly provoking people to think." 24 And in "Fojiao shi lue" (An Outline of Buddhist History), Taixu asserted that Buddhism's failure to remain a vital force in modern China was due to the otherworldliness of the sangha and the tendency of Buddhists to hold onto the externals of their religion without understanding its essence. Claimed Taixu, "China has entered the era of a world community. Government, religion, and science have all changed. Therefore Buddhism must change or it will definitely not survive!" 25

CONFLICTS AND COMMITMENTS

Although Taixu was only in his early twenties, he was already beginning to be recognized within the Chinese Buddhist community for his personal charisma and modernist positions. Indeed, because he was respected by many prominent government officials and gentry in Guangdong and Jiangxi provinces, Taixu was selected in the fall of 1910 to undertake for the first time in his career the heavy responsibilities of a head monk (zhuchi). When his colleague Yuebin resigned as head monk of the Shuangxi si near Guangzhou, Taixu was called to the position. Within a year, in which he was constantly lecturing both in the monastery and in the city of Guangzhou, Taixu prompted the transformation of the monastery into a "Great Lecture Center" (Mohe jiangyuan). His educational goal was to emphasize the equality of all Buddhist schools and yet the special characteristics of each.26

In the months preceding the successful revolt at Wuchang in October 1911, which led to the downfall of the Qing dynasty, Taixu cultivated his many dose relationships with known socialists and revolutionaries in Guangdong. Among his friends were political radicals such as Pan Dawei, Liang Shangtong, and Mo Jipeng, the latter "a well known anarchist of this period who was associated with the 'assassination teams' that specialized in killing government officials in South China." 27 Together they read the controversial works of Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921), Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876), Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865), and Karl Marx (1818-1883). In discussing China's political future, they debated a broad spectrum of views proposed by advocates of anarchism, socialism, democracy, and constitutional monarchy. Although there is no evidence of Taixu's participation in any overtly subversive activity, it was said that he met almost daily in secret with radicals plotting revolution. Their common anxiety about being discovered was justified when Qiyun was arrested again in April 1911 . Soldiers were soon dispatched to the Shuangxi si to arrest Taixu as well. According to Yinshun, when Qiyun was taken into custody, a eulogy that Taixu had written in memory of the revolutionary martyrs who had died in the unsuccessful 1910 Guangzhou uprising was discovered among Qiyun's papers. Taixu was able to escape by hiding at the newspaper offices of his associate Pan Dawei. Because of these difficult circumstances, he decided to return to Zhejiang as soon as possible.

Accordingly, Taixu resigned as head monk of Shuangxi si that summer, then traveled to Ningbo to consult with Zhuangnian and Eight Fingers before going on to Putuo Shan for the remainder of the season. In the early autumn, he responded to Eight Fingers' urgent request to return to the Tiantong si at Ningbo. At the time, new attempts to confiscate Buddhist property by force had led Buddhist leaders in Shanghai to ask the elderly master to carry a petition to Beijing in protest. Taixu helped write the petition beseeching the Qing government to help protect Buddhist institutions. He even planned to accompany Eight Fingers to the capital to present the plan, hoping to have an opportunity to explain his own ideas about the revitalization and reform of Buddhism, but revolutionary activities along the rail line made the lon2 trip to the capital too dangerous.

Taixu soon decided, however, to travel up the coast as far as Shanghai to meet with the gifted revolutionary monk. Zongyang (1861-1930?), who was then at work on a major publication project designed to contribute to the education of the sangha: a newly edited edition of the entire ChineseTripitaka.28 Zongyang was a close associate and supporter of Sun Yat-sen, with whom he had become friends during an earlier period of residence in Japan. At this time he was living as a layman and using his lay name, Huang Zongyang.29 He was settled at Hardoon Gardens (Ai li yuan), the large estate in the French Concession of Shanghai owned by his devoted and wealthy follower, Mrs. Silas Hardoon (Luo Jialing). It was there that Taixu heard the exciting news of the Wuchang revolt that precipitated the fall of the Qing dynasty. Jubilant at the reports, he considered with colleagues the future of the country and the precarious situation of Buddhism.

At the time of the 1911 revolution, Taixu noted that some monks actually organized monastic troops (seng jun) to support and participate in the military struggle against the Manchus.30 According to Yinshun, in addition to the monk Quefei, who organized monastic troops at the Yufo si in Shanghai, "Tieyan of the Kaiyuan si in Shaoxing [in Zhejiang province] used monastic assets for troop provisions, organized monastic forces, and appointed Dixian, the head monk of the Jiezhu si in Shaoxing, as commander." 31 In Wuhan, Welch reports, sangha troops were actually formed by order of revolutionary military commanders, although such quasi-military activities by Buddhist monks were, without exception, short-lived and insignificant.32

The Republic of China was officially founded in January 1912, when Sun Yat-sen accepted the provisional presidency in Nanjing. Taixu, who had spent the previous few months visiting monasteries in Zhejiang, also traveled to Nanjing to organize an Association for the Advancement of Buddhism (Fojiao xiejin hui). With help from associates in the Socialist Party, he obtained permission from the office of the president to initiate operations from the Pilu si. As Taixu was just beginning his organizational efforts, the radical monk Renshan (1887-1951), whom Taixu had known as a fellow student at Yang Wenhui's Jetavana Hermitage, came to Nanjing and met with him.33 The discussions between the two monks bent on reform were significant because the immediate result would soon become widely known as "the invasion of Jin Shan" (danao Jin Shan). Indeed, the dramatic events that subsequently unfolded at the famous Jin Shan monastery marked a most important chapter in Taixu's career. As he later declared, "From this incident, the reputation of my Buddhist reformation spread, and since then it has been either respected, feared, despised, or admired by the people."34

Renshan had come to Nanjing with the intention of petitioning the Ministry of Education to change the well-endowed Jin Shan monastery -- a large and traditionally conservative monastic institution -- into a modern school for monks. When he heard about Taixu's plans for an Association for the Advancement of Buddhism, Renshan told him that there were many monks and lay devotees who resided in nearby Zhenjiang, just down the Yangzi River from Nanjing, who would be interested in a modern program of Buddhist education. Thus he encouraged Taixu to travel with him to Jin Shan to open and establish such an association there. When they reached the monastery, they stayed at the Guanyin ge, a hereditary temple in the large Jin Shan complex where Renshan had first entered the sangha. With the knowledge of Abbot Qingquan, Prior Yinping, and Guest Prefect Shuangting, Renshan and Taixu prepared to hold the opening conference of the new association in the meeting hall. They printed and sent out invitations to the monks in Zhenjiang, Yangzhou, Nanjing, and as far away as Shanghai. Invitations were also sent to potential lay supporters, who were members of the army, government officials, merchants, or scholars in the Zhenjiang area.

When the conference opened, Taixu estimated that there were two to three hundred monks in attendance plus three to four hundred lay guests. Many of the latter were reportedly members of the Socialist Party in Zhenjiang. Taixu was chosen to serve as chairman, and he set forth briefly his basic principles of religious reform. As Howard Boorman summarizes,

He [Taixu] believed that Buddhist land holdings were the common property of all followers of the religion and should be dedicated to the promotion of social welfare. particularly education. In a statement that aroused strong controversy, he advocated the adoption in religious communities of the principle that each person should be judged by his abilities and rewarded according to his work. Moreover, he argued for the rede6nition of Buddhist doctrine because he believed Buddhism to be a religion for this world.35

Taixu also discussed the aims and purposes of the new association at Jin Shan and read its proposed bylaws. After Renshan made a supporting speech, a monk from Yangzhou named Jishan offered a sharply critical response. Angered, Renshan replied by recounting in detail the autocratic ways of Qingquan, Jishan, and other monks. Furthermore, he proposed that the entire Jin Shan monastery be turned into a modern school by using its considerable resources to cover the school's operating expenses. At this, according to Taixu, most of the guests clapped enthusiastically. However, shouting between opposing forces ensued, and the whole crowd became agitated. Renshan's proposal was ultimately accepted, and he and Taixu were elected to transform the Jin Shan monastery into the headquarters of the Association for the Advancement of Buddhism with a modem monastic school. Taixu later acknowledged that the struggle certainly did not end there:

That evening Renshan led more than twenty fellow students into the monastery to designate rooms for the association's offices. The next morning, when the association began to function. they went into the monastery's business office to examine its 6nancial ledgers, and then into the meditation hall to announce the opening of the school. However, Qingquan, Yinping, Shuangting, Jishan and others had already left the monastery and were posting notices and even making appeals to government offices in order to oppose and stop the association .. . .

Entrusting affairs in Zhenjiang to the care of Renshan, I went to Nanjing .... One night thereafter, Shuangting and others led more than ten workmen in fighting their way into the association's offices. Renshan and a number of others were wounded with knives and dubs. Afterwards, they initiated legal action, and in several months it was decided that Qingquan, Shuangting, plus five or six others be imprisoned for terms ranging from several months to several yean. Because of this whole incident. the association's activities as well as the operation of the Jin Shan monastery were equally disrupted and the result was a confused situation that could not be straightened out. 36

As Yinshun points out, Taixu maintained throughout his life that his intent at Jin Shan was only the very worthy one of providing modern educational opportunities for the monks of the Zhenjiang area. Taixu later wrote, "The association's bylaws did contain the revolutionary socialist idea of utilizing Buddhist property to operate a public Buddhist enterprise, but [what was] intended were peaceful, progressive steps," 37 He also stated, "It was with a peaceful attitude that I announced the preparation for these events." 38 Naturally, however, staunchly conservative opponents to modernization efforts within the sangha, as well as many moderates, fully sympathized with the monks of Jin Shan. While eschewing the violence, many Buddhists thought that the convicted monks had acted only to defend their monastery from an illegal takeover attempt that was substantially no different than those encouraged by hostile military and government officials.

Among traditionalists, therefore, Taixu soon came to represent the radical modernism and aggressive tactics that they feared and resisted. At the same time, he was embraced by the more progressive spirits within the Buddhist community as a promising young leader for reform.39 Comments Welch, "Whatever the motives of its perpetrators, the 'invasion of Jin Shan' epitomizes the shock with which the Republican era burst upon the Buddhist establishment, It drastically foreshadowed the long conflict ahead between conservatives and radicals in the sangha." 40

On April 1, 1912, less than two months after the abdication of the child Xuantong emperor later known as Puyi, Taixu responded to a call from Eight fingers and traveled to Shanghai to participate in the establishment of the Chinese General Buddhist Association (Zhonghua fojiao zonghui). The old master had been very upset by the intemperate actions of the progressive young Buddhist leaders that had led to the serious events at Jin Shan. He was also concerned about the threateningly far-reaching charter of the Chinese Buddhist Association (Zhongguo fojiao hui), founded in Nanjing some weeks earlier by several radical Buddhist laymen who had little respect for the monastic order. The most prominent among these lay leaders was the scholar Ouyang Jingwu, who had been Taixu's fellow student at Yang Wenhui's Jetavana Hermitage. 41 The charter of the Chinese Buddhist Association claimed for itself extensive and unprecedented religious authority: the right to superintend all Buddhist properties, to reorganize and promote all Buddhist financial affairs, and to arbitrate all disputes within the Buddhist community. According to the monk Weihuan, the association's charter promised the government, in return for such broad powers and organizational independence, that the association would not sanction activities beyond the religious sphere proper to Buddhism. The charter was actually submitted to and approved by Sun Yat-sen, the provisional president of the Republic, in the early months of 1912.42

Welch asserts that Ouyang's organization never actually represented more than the audacious plans of a small group of his close friends and colleagues." Nevertheless, it did challenge Eight Fingers to seek the help of Yuanying, Dixian, Xuyun (1840-1959), Taixu, and other monastic leaders to organize a more representative and responsible Buddhist association that was supportive of the sangha." Hoping to promote reconciliation and harmonious order, Eight Fingers persuaded Taixu to cease any further promotion of his own Association for the Advancement of Buddhism in order to merge it with a new organization, the Chinese General Buddhist Association.45 He invited monks from seventeen provinces to convene at Shanghai's Liuyun si for the inaugural meeting of a new association. The result was the first truly broad-based national Buddhist organization established in China.

The Chinese General Buddhist Association proposed to improve the quality of the sangha through the close supervision of ordination, educational standards. leadership selection, and social work activities. Some monks wanted the new association to pursue special agreements with the military to guarantee protection for Buddhist property in exchange for direct financial contributions. Taixu persuasively opposed the plan, however, arguing that "it is the government's natural responsibility to protect the sangha's property. With regard to the sangha contributing directly to the military, that is rather an obligation of all the citizenry. The sangha ought not use its contributions to obtain the government's protection, and the government should not we protection of property as a way to elicit direct financial support from the sangha."46

Such a potentially powerful national Buddhist organization had never existed before, requiring all Chinese monks and nuns to join and to abide by its regulations. Yet the leaders of the sangha believed that the times called for new measures. Because the proposed organization was basically the product of moderate voices within the sangha, it received wide support. Xuyun states that he accompanied Eight Fingers to Beijing to present the chaner of the Chinese General Buddhist Association to representatives of Yuan Shikai's newly established government.47 According to Yu-yue Tsu, the charter's basic provisions included the following:

1. This society is formed by the union of all Buddhist monks.

2. With branches all over the country, it exercises supervision over all the monasteries and monks.

3. All monks, formally admitted into the Order, are given certificates attesting to their membership in the society.

4. No monk is permitted to receive any pupil [candidate for the Order) unless the candidate is a bona fide applicant and of good family.

5. No monastery is permitted to alienate any of its property without authorization from the society.

6. Observance of monastic rules should be strictly enforced; for violation of the same rules, monks are to be punished.

7. Seminaries for the training of candidates for the Order are to be established, and in them Buddhist scriptures and Chinese classics are to be taught.

8. Persons under twenty years of age are not to be admitted into the Order; also those who have not had three years' theological training.

9. For monks to hire themselves out for the performance of funeral services. especially appearing in funeral processions, is considered derogatory to the dignity of the monastic order, and so the practice is to be strictly prohibited.48

Although Eight Fingers was rudely rebuffed by officials of the Ministry of the Interior, the charter was eventually ratified, even as Ouyang Jingwu's rival association ceased to exist. Before the charter's ratification, however, the elderly master became ill and died in Beijing's Fayuan si, on November 10, 1912, believing that he had failed in his mission.49 Taixu was deeply grieved by the death of the teacher whom he respected so much. Moreover, without Eight Fingers' strong leadership within the sangha, the new association for which the master worked so hard during the last year of his life functioned for only two short years. Yet the continuing need to defend Buddhist property and to address the infighting between the more conservative and radical factions within the Buddhist community contributed to the creation of more than a dozen other Buddhist organizations through the 1920s. Taixu himself was soon promoting the Buddhist Society of the Great Vow (Fojiao hongshi hui) from Ningho's Yanqing si. To facilitate reform, he also considered trying to organize a specifically Buddhist "Tongmeng hui" (Buddhist Chinese United League), which he named the League for the Support of Buddhism (Weichi fojiao tongmeng hui).50

Speaking at Eight Fingers' memorial service at Shanghai's Jing'an si in February 1913, Taixu spoke of the urgent need for three revolutions: an organizational revolution (zuzhi geming), an economic revolution (caichan geming), and an intellectual revolution (xueli geming). In consonance with these three revolutions, Taixu argued, in the founding policy statement of the League for the Support of Buddhism, for five essential elements that he judged would be absolutely necessary for the revivification and preservation of the Buddhist faith in China: first, a religious community freely organized; second, a spirit as fearless as that of sacrificial animals; third, a desire to learn and to seek education; fourth, a plan for putting into actual practice compassionate action toward all; and fifth, a dedication marked by peace of mind and a sense of vocation. 51

When the first national assembly of the Republic began meeting in Beijing that year, Taixu was arguing publicly that religious practice founded on such elements deserved freedom of expression. In a petition to members of the assembly, he declared boldly that, "based on the principle of religious freedom, we should recognize in practice the separate jurisdictions of government and religion." 52 At the same time. he emphasized to members of the Buddhist community that the struggle for religious freedom from government intervention was something about which they could never become complacent. Indeed, that struggle would be joined again soon because of the expansive new regulations of the Buddhist establishment approved by Yuan Shikai's government in 1915.

In early 1913. Taixu took up residence at the Qingliang si in Shanghai, where the editorial offices of the Chinese General Buddhist Association were located. There he helped with the editing responsibilities for the association's new journal, Fojiao yuebao (Buddhist Monthly). Along with like-minded colleagues at the Qingliang si and Jing'an si, the site in Shanghai of the official headquarters of the association, Taixu considered the possibilities for Buddhist reforms and the divisive political debates within the fledgling Chinese republic. The summer months brought the national turmoil of what became known as "the second revolution," as a number of provinces declared independence from the Republic in the clash between parliament and the provisional president Yuan Shikai. Although the rebellion was quickly crushed by Yuan's army, attempts to check presidential powers continued well into the fall, when Yuan actually dissolved the Guomindang and assumed dictatorial authority.

New intrusions into Buddhist monasteries were reported in relation to the fighting. Taixu and his friends Zongyang, Yuexia (1857- 1917), and others considered the dangers ofcheir political radicalism in view of Yuan's reactionary style of leadership.53 In response to the heated political debates on China's future at the time, Taixu himself asserted, "The political perspectives of anarchism and Buddhism are very close. yet beginning from the stage of democratic socialism we can make gradual progress toward anarchism."54 In the fall of 1913, the Fojiao yuebao ceased publication because of lack of funds. At age twenty-four, Taixu had reached what he later considered to be a pivotal point in his life.

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Part 2 of 2

CONTEMPLATION IN SEALED CONFINEMENT

In the summer of 1914, Taixu elected to travel to Putuo Shan near the coast of the East China Sea, where he stayed at the Xilin temple. World War I, with its disillusionment about human capacities for progress and mutuality, had just begun in Europe. In addition, the distrust and enmity aroused by the Jin Shan incident remained acute in certain circles of the sangha. According to the monk Xuming (1919- 1966), upon recognizing the failures of his own reformist endeavors within the Chinese Buddhist community and the war-torn state of his country and the world, Taixu actually began to have doubts about Buddhism's ability to be an effective and universal healing force.55 Unwilling and unable to back away from his long-term aims, Taixu nevertheless considered a period of strategic retreat appropriate. He was later to recall:

The wish gradually formed within me of applying the law of Buddha for the harmonizing of the philosophies of ancient and modern times and of the east and the west, and of leading the nations of the whole world to follow the teachings of Sakyamuni. Since then, during the past decade, through circumstances favorable and unfavorable, whether traveling abroad or staying at home, whether engaged in mundane affairs or retired in lonely hermitage, this wish has not for one moment been permitted to leave my mind.

Then the European War broke out. Added to the rottenness of the inward life of man, was the brutal struggle of the outward world. I was convinced of the magnitude of the human calamity. which like a wagonload of hay on fire could not be extinguished with a cupful of water. Since it was ordained that I should wait until the ripe time to carry out my wish, I decided to make use of the waiting to exercise my religion [contemplation], and so I "shut myself" on Putuo Island for three years.56

In October, Taixu entered a voluntary three-year period of isolated study and meditation known as "sealed confinement" (biguan). Such self-isolation was a highly respected religious practice of self-discipline for Chinese monks, during which they were released from the usual expectations associated with communal living and permitted to read and meditate on their own. Small cells or huts for monks so dedicated were often erected and provided for as an act of merit-making by lay supporters. The initiation of biguan was normally accompanied by elaborate rituals in which the monk's quarters were sealed with bright red banners announcing his inspirational example of commitment to the Dharma.57 In Taixu's case, it was the Venerable Yinguang who presided over the formal ceremonies that sealed Taixu in his cloister.

The Christian missionary Karl Ludvig Reichelt, who became well acquainted with the monk, describes Taixu's surroundings at Putuo Shan in his book The Transformed Abbot, a biography of one of Taixu's disciples who eventually converted to Christianity:

The idea of biguan is that a monk may be given opportunity to rehabilitate himself by concentrated meditation and thorough study of the Buddhist scriptures. Long meditations were not according to Taixu's mind but studies were simply life to him and he looked forward to having time for writing too. From the monastic library he had brought Buddhist writings. Paper and Chinese ink he regularly obtained through the little trap-door that opened and shut whenever food was pushed in for him. In the cell were a bed, a bench to sit on, a table with writing instruments and chopsticks, an extra table for books and a small altar in one corner with an image of Buddha. In the yard, just large enough to allow him a little exercise. were a small flower-bed and a few water jars. The water supply came through a long bamboo pipe from the mountain stream beyond. A couple of poles were set up with a string for laundry and in one corner of the yard the necessary "little room" had been erected. 58

According to Reichelt, the silence and tranquillity of the place were accentuated by the sound of the sea tide as it rushed in and out among the sandbanks of Putuo Island. The profound influence of this setting on the development of Taixu's career, he points out, was reflected in the title of the most significant and long-lasting Buddhist periodical originating in the Republican period, namely, Haichao yin (The Sound of the Sea Tide), which Taixu founded in 1920.

During his three years of sealed confinement, Taixu devoted himself to an extensive reading program. In his autobiography, he claims that he kept firmly to a daily schedule that called for meditation and veneration of the buddhas (li fo) upon arising; the study of Buddhist literature in the morning; additional reading and writing in the afternoon, with attention not only to the Chinese classics but to modern literature as well; and, each evening, veneration and a final period of meditation before retiring. 59 Within his broad-ranging program of studies, Taixu was especially intrigued by the writings of Zhang Taiyan and the scholar-translator Yan Fu. both of whom maintained an active interest in Buddhism.60 His reading included works in western history, philosophy, and science, although he spent most of his time studying the sacred scriptures of Buddhism, with special attention given to the Lengyan jing (Surangama Sutra), Dasheng qixin lun (*Mahayana- sraddhotpada Sastra), and Cheng weishi lun (Vidya-matra-siddhi Sastra).

During his period of confinement, Taixu wrote such diverse pieces as "Fofa daolun" (An Introduction to the Buddhist Dharma), "Jiaoyu xinjian" (New Conceptions of Education), "Zhexue zhengguan" (Proper Perspectives on Philosophy), "Lun Xunzi" (On Xunzi), "Lun Zhouyi" (On the Book of Changes), and "Lun Hanyu" (On Hanyu). Throughout his various works he called for a globalized form of modern education, individual freedoms in the context of a community committed to the welfare of all, and Buddhist wisdom and compassion as the basis for a new world civilization. According to Yinshun, in many of these works readers could easily see how "Taixu blended socialism (shehui zhuyi) with Buddhist teachings."61

Although in seclusion for three yean, Taixu continued to monitor political developments in China and overseas. In May 1915,Yuan Shikai, hoping that affairs with foreign governments would not interfere with his bid for presidential powers chat extended beyond even the extraordinary privileges granted in the revised constitution of May 1914, accepted the infamous Japanese "Twenty-one Demands." As Immanuel C.Y. Hsu notes, these called for "(1) recognition of Japan's position in Shandong; (2) special position for Japan in Manchuria and Inner Mongolia; (3) joint operation of China's iron and steel industries; (4) nonalienation of coastal areas to any third. power; and (5) control by Japan of China's several important domestic administrations."62 Additional agreements were signed with Russia and Great Britain for their special interests in Outer Mongolia and Tibet, respectively. These humiliating actions, along with Yuan's shocking announcement in December 1915 that he would assume the full powers of a monarch, led to a series of revolts throughout the country.

Taixu was also made aware while in seclusion of the adoption by the parliament in October 1915 of the Regulations for the Control of Monasteries and Temples (Guanli simiao tiaoli) promulgated through the parliament with Yuan's full support. The regulations were not only more restrictive than those adopted by the Ministry of the Interior in 1913, but extended supervision well beyond the Qing codes. As Tsu comments, the act was particularly troublesome for Buddhism:

While these regulations were supposed to apply to Buddhist and Daoist institutions without discrimination. it was clear that owing to the fact that Buddhist institutions far outnumber those of the Daoist faith and that Daoism has no monks anyway. the regulations would fall more heavily upon the Buddhists -- in fact. that was the intention of the government. The government justified itself by arguing that temples and monasteries are public institutions and many of them are of historic and artistic importance, and so supervision was necessary to prevent their falling into private hands. The chief features of the regulations are: (1) registration of temples and monasteries, monks and nuns; (2) taxation of temple property; (3) non-alienation of temple property; (4) subjection of religious activities and preaching services to police regubtion.63

Welch notes that the final sweeping element of the policy aimed to limit any public statements by monks and nuns "to doctrinal exegesis, moral exhortation, and 'stimulating patriotic thoughts.' "64 The government also reasserted its right to monitor and control ordination through required certificates issued by the Ministry of the Interior. Yet it went even further, claiming the authority to dismiss abbots for infractions not only of the civil code but of monastic rules as well. Paul Callahan reports that these actions resulted. in vehement opposition in China "from both Buddhists and Christians." On the sangha's reaction, he remarks:

The Buddhist National Society [Chinese General Buddhist Association (Zhonghua fojiao zonghui) founded in Shanghai in 1912] set up a lobby, a preaching hall, near the National Assembly and worked zealously to influence the populace and delegates against the government. In retaliation. the government declared the society. inimical to p-blic safety. and closed it. Though Yuan's schemes failed and the Society was reorganized after his fall, it was again closed by the government in 1917. 65

The confrontations with the government that continued during Taixu's period of sealed confinement eventually led him to reflect further on the Sangha's relation to the world and its inability to speak with one voice. He came to believe that these issues were not unrelated to the diversity within the Buddhist community itself. Thus he began to argue that those pursuing the bodhisattva path needed to understand deeply -- and actually integrate -- the different emphases and diverse forms of piety associated with what he had customarily spoken of as two basic approaches to the Dharma: the intuitive approach of Chan, which was not founded on special scriptures (buli wenzi), and the teaching approach adopted by the Vinaya (Lu), Tiantai, Huayen, Yogacara (Weishi, or Mind-Only), Pure Land (Jingtu), and Tantric (Zhenyan) schools.

Taixu came to claim that since no one school encompassed the entire canon and none was without a sound foundation in the Buddha's Dharma, practitioners would benefit from a synthetic approach to enlightenment based on a broad study of scripture and tradition. Nevertheless, Xuming observes, while the reformer began to advocate forging a new religio-philosophical synthesis and was convinced that each school's perspectives were grounded in a "pure mind" (jing xin), he was always extremely appreciative of the idealistic philosophical perspectives that he discovered in the Weishi tradition. Thus, on the one hand, as Xuming asserts, it was most clearly in the terms of this tradition that Taixu "grasped the fundamental principles of Chinese Buddhism." 66 On the other hand, as Shengyan indicates, his stance was clearly that of a Chan master:

Taixu studied Chan in his early yean; and although Taixu later judged the eight schools to be of equal importance, he did state, "When one reaches understanding, one naturally comes to the Prajna (Sanlun) School and the Chan School of Bodhidharma." ... He emphasized the application of Yogacara philosophy and constantly used its terminology to explain Buddhist texts. Hence. he often has been mistaken for a scholar of the Yogacara School, when in fact he only borrowed its terminology as a matter of expediency. 67

Concurring that Taixu came to stress the unity of Buddhism early in his monastic career, Gao Yongxiao argues that one can discern in the monk's writings three distinct stages of reflection on the issue of the unity and diversity of Buddhist teaching (fofa de panshe).68 In the first period of the reformer's religious life, Gao says, from about 1908 to 1914, Taixu followed the traditional method of distinguishing between a zong or "lineage," and a jiao, or "school." A zong primarily emphasized the transmission of enlightenment experiences, while a jiao focused on certain highly prized scriptures and the transmission of enlightened undentandi0S' about the human situation and the nature of reality.

During the second phase of Taixu's career, from 1915 to 1923, after extensive studies of the Chinese Tripitaka during his biguan, the monk began to emphasize the fundamental interrelationship between Nikaya Buddhism and Mahayana Buddhism." Indeed, notes Gao, Taixu began to highlight the teaching of the Lotus Sutra that in fact "there is only one Dharmic vehicle, not two or three." 70 The Sravakayana (shengwen sheng), the Pratyekabuddhayana (yuanjue sheng), and the Bodhisattvayana (pusa sheng) were just expedient expressions of the one Buddhayana (fo sheng). The eight schools of Buddhism, Taixu thought, represented only di1ferent aspects of the one true Dharma. which is adapted according to the various needs of its hearers. Shengyan observes:

According to Taixu, "There are many tributaries of the Dharma, yet the source is one." True Suchness, being the essence of the Dharma, is one and undifferentiated. Differences among the treatises are for promoting the effect of preaching. Taixu divided the teachings into the Prajna (Sanlun [Madhyamika]) School emphasizing "Selectivity," the Yogacara [WeishiJ School emphasizing "Existence," and the True Suchness Schools (Chan, Tiantai, Xianshou [Huayan), and Esoteric [Zhenyan]) emphasizing "Emptiness." He also explained these three emphases in terms of the three natures noted in Yogacara: the Prajna School emphasizes the nature of wrong discrimination. the Yogacara School emphasizes the nature of dependence on others, and the True Suchness Schools the nature of perfect knowledge. All three are perfect teachings, despite their different functions.71

John Blofeld once remarked, after a conversation with Taixu about the great diversity of traditions within the Buddhist household, "I comfort myself with the words of the Venerable Taixu who declared that the various sects are like beads in the same rosary and that each one of them is the best approach for certain individuals."72 Although Taixu acknowledged that every person must begin his or her pilgrimage through earnest study of one particular school's teaching about the truth, he judged that all practitioner.; would finally realize that the same goal could be reached by different routes. Thus, he concluded. "Upaya (fangbian) has many gates, but in returning to the origin (gui yuan), there are not two roads."73

According to Gao. during the third phase of Taixu's career, from 1923 to 1947, he "distinguished between 'schools' (jiao), 'doctrines' (Ii), and 'actions' (xing) in order to organize a comprehensive presentation of Sakyamuni's transmission of Dharma."'· As Chou Hsiangkuang shows in outlined detail, in his teaching Taixu used "schools" as a category for explaining the historical development of the various Nikaya, Mahayana, and Vajrayana traditions, as well as for introducing Pali, Chinese, and Tibetan, the languages that he judged to be most critical for advanced Buddhist studies. Under the category of "doctrines," Taixu explored with his students basic Buddhist teachings about karma, Samsara, nirvana, and conditioned origination. as well as the more difficult Mahayana doctrines of buddha-nature, mind-only, and so forth. The category of normative Buddhist "actions" provided Taixu with a framework for a detailed discussion of Buddhist morality in terms of the five vows (wu jie), the ten forms of good action (shi de), and the great career of the bodhisattva in wise and compassionate service to all. 75

As Yang Huinan points out, it was also in this third. period, after 1923, that Taixu began frequently to refer to an important threefold distinction within Buddhism to embrace the scope of its doctrine -- namely, the Dharma common to the Five Vehicles, the Dharma common to the Three Vehicles, and the distinctive Dharma of the Great Vehicle (Mahayana).76 As discussed in Chapter 4, his central points were that the basic moral precepts required of all beginners on the path toward enlightenment remain significant for more advanced followers, and that reliance on only one part of the teachings is unproductive.

Just as Taixu had entered sealed confinement in 1914 with a certain amount of fanfare, so he came out of seclusion on February 4, 1917 with more than the usual attention. Reichelt says that. on the appointed day for the monk's return to society, a number of abbots, Buddhist scholars, and dignitaries gathered at Putuo Shan, formed a procession, and proceeded to Taixu's cloister. "Salvoes of firecrackers were discharged," he writes, "and a solemn mass was offered in front of his cell. Then the red seal was removed by the abbot and the hero was led out and acclaimed with enthusiasm." n Acutely aware of the great conflagration that raged on in Europe, of China's own instability, and of disorder within the sangha, the twenty-seven-year-old Taixu immediately began traveling to important monasteries throughout central China and visiting colleagues among the more conservative monastic leaders, such as Yuanying, as well as the more radical, like his old colleague Renshan.

Invigorated by the experience of confinement and more determined than ever to make a difference in advancing the Dharma in an age of confusion, Taixu also accepted invitations to travel to Japan and Taiwan (then a Japanese colony) to consult with other Asian Buddhist leaders about the present and future condition of their religion. He talked constantly about the dilemmas of a war-weary world, the bankruptcy of western culture, the certain demise of Christianity, the problems of Buddhist sectarianism, and the possibilities for the development of a "new Buddhism." Yet as Xuming has emphasized, Taixu never used the term "new" in any popular sense of the term (i.e., to mean "western," "foreign," "ultramodern," or "anti-traditional"). Rather. he claims, the reformer always intended "new" in the sense of the true, original essence of Chinese Buddhism. which needed to be rediscovered. 78

That rediscovered essence of wisdom and compassion, embodied by the bodhisattva, was for Taixu the hope of all sentient beings. History had shown that neither western humanism nor western religion could adequately support the creation of a global culture. Yet Mahayana Buddhism, Taixu confidently proclaimed, could provide the foundation for a lasting world peace that would be an Asian gift to the rest of the world. As he concluded in a lecture at the Yunhua tang, in the city of Zhanghua in central Taiwan, in October 1917:

Buddhism is representative of East Asian civilization. Now Christianity, which is representative of contemporary Western civilization, has already at this point lost its religious power in Europe and America. Europeans and Americans have thus lost their basis for a secure life and the fulfillment of their destiny. It is because of this fact that the great World War is now taking place. We ought to proclaim our East Asian good word of peace and spread Buddhism universally throughout the world in order to change their murderous perversions and save all beings from great disaster. 79

Organizing and Educating "New Monks"

After his travels through Japan and Taiwan, and after consultations with Zhang Taiyan and Wang Yiting, Taixu instigated his reformist movement with the founding in Shanghai, in August 1918, of the Bodhi Society (Jue she). During his biguan, Taixu had spent considerable time on imaginative plans for reorganizing the Chinese sangha, a project he considered as necessary as it was difficult. The first of several versions of his Zhengli sengqie zhidu lun (The Reorganization of the Sangha System) was written in 1914, in response to the threat presented by the Regulations for the Control of Monasteries and Temples. Yet Taixu recognized that the ultimate reception of such a controversial proposal would require the establishment of bases of monastic and lay support that could serve as effective organs of propaganda. The Bodhi Society -- so named, said Taixu, "because of my long-cherished hope that the world could be saved through Buddhism" -- was to be one such base. According to Xuming, the founding of the organization constituted "the beginning of Taixu's new Buddhist movement." With its creation, the number of the reformer's followers began to increase rapidly. The society's explicit purposes, noted Taixu, were "to publish research, edit collected works, sponsor lectures on Buddhism, and encourage religious cultivation." The monk himself later recalled:

The next year [1918], I was invited to visit the South Sea Islands [where there are colonies of prosperous Chinese emigrants]. I formed the idea of building a National Monastery. My observation leads me to feel that the monastic institutions in our country have fallen away from ancient pure ideals and are corrupt beyond reform. If I could raise the funds from people abroad, I would build the national monastery [as a model of renewed and purified monasticism]. If I should fail to attain my object I would reconcile myself to the life of a wandering mendicant and, leaning upon Buddha's mercy, thus travel to my life's end.

When I was at Putuo, some of my earnest devotees requested me to lecture on "Weishi lun." ... I talked to them about my wish to reform monastic institutions and my plan to go south. They also saw the works I have written. They strongly advised against the southern trip at the time as the European War was at its height, and it would be difficult to raise money there, but urged me to publish my works and to organize a society for the promotion of Buddhism in China as the first step of my larger plans. And so we organized the "Bodhi Society" in Shanghai.

The initial announcement of the Bodhi Society reveals the organization's aim to promote "self-enlightenment and the enlightenment of others" and its rules designed to nurture those on the bodhisattva path. The basic bylaws read as follows:

I. Purpose:

A. To set forth the true principles of Mahayana Buddhism to cause those who slander the truth to repent, those who doubt to have faith and understanding, those who believe and understand to put their faith into action, and those who understand and practice their religion to witness to others; to transform fools and common people, radicals and ultraconservatives into sages, saints, and buddhas.

B. To proclaim the true principles of Mahayana Buddhism to turn those who are cruel and evil into benevolent people and those who are greedy and belligerent into righteous people; so that the wise will rejoice in the way and the strong will honor morality; to turn this war-torn and suffering world into a place of peace and happiness.

II. Regulations for members …”

A. Rules for self-cultivation:

1. Required practices:

a. To take refuge in the Three Jewels of Buddha, Dharma and Sangha and take the four universal vows of a bodhisattva to make definite one’s faith and resolve.

b. To observe the ten great precepts for the laity as found in the Brahmajala Sutra. If a member is not immediately able to observe all of the precepts, then he should select one or two of them and gradually increase the number until he is in compliance with all the right actions.

c. To reflect on perfect knowledge, investigate the essence of the mind, study the Buddhist scriptures, and practice bodhisattva behavior in order to develop your own wisdom.

2. Special regular practices:

a. To reflect on the [teachings of the] Chan school,

b. To support the teachings of the Zhenyan school,

c. To chant the Mahayana scriptures,

d. To recite the name of Amitabha,

e. To practice one form of meditation (zhiguan),

f. Or to engage in several of these practices simultaneously.

3. Things to be done at one's convenience: to worship, offer repentance, and make donations. Practice all these things properly as opportunities arise in all times and places.

B. Regulations about group activities for the entire membership ... :

1. On the eighth day of the fourth month, members should gather for one day to observe the birthday of Buddha by fasting, offering penance, releasing living beings, making donations, and doing other meritorious deeds.

2. Beginning on the evening of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, and continuing for seven days, members should hold a meeting for reciting the name of Buddha (nian fo hui). The time should be limited so as to attain a oneness of mind without confusion.

3. Each year, from the first to the eighth day of the twelfth month, members should hold a meeting for meditation (can chan hui). The time should be limited so as to become enlightened to the original Mind from which all things arise. 85

Late during the next year, following the Beijing demonstration in May 1919 at which students protested the government's humiliating policy toward Japan and the outcome of the Versailles peace negotiations, the headquarters of the Bodhi Society were moved from Shanghai to Hangzhou, as Taixu moved to the Jingfan yuan near the West Lake. Shortly thereafter, in early 1920, the Jueshe congshu, the organization's quarterly magazine that Taixu edited, was renamed Haichao yin and became a monthly publication. In a relatively short time, it was to become the most important and widely read Buddhist periodical of the Republican period. Its goal was the exploration of models for the organization and education of "new monks." Although Taixu was obviously directing events to achieve his long-range goals, his own recollection, not surprisingly, is self-deprecating. He wrote in 1920.

Lately I have been living in Jingfan yuan monastery, on the side of the Western Lake, Hangzhou. Here I had desired to live quietly for the practice of contemplation, but the members of the Bodhi Society have asked me to edit a new magazine, called Haichao yin [The Voice of Sea Waves] to meet the needs of the time. I have consented to do it for one year, as the work is congenial to my original wish, and so for this year, I have decided to lay aside other work. and devote myself to editing the magazine. But at the close of ten thousand years, the Tathagata will surely raise up men to establish the Law and spread it throughout the world of the living.86

The society's publishing effort -- for which Taixu was able to secure financial assistance from interested laypersons -- aimed both at religious instruction and institutional reform. The ultimate goal of Haichao yin was no less than a modernizing transformation of Chinese Buddhist piety and of the institutional structures that could encourage and support an expression of that piety. Observed Tsu:

It aims to lift the voice of Mahayana Buddhism for the guidance of mankind tossed as it is by the waves of modern thought. The magazine contains (1) exposition of Buddhist doctrines, as for instance a new commentary of "Mahayana-sraddhotpada-sastra" (Awakening of Faith); (2) apologetics or defense of the faith in face of modern criticism; (3) advocacy of reformation, as reorganization of the monastic order; (4) testimonials: stories of conversion experience, lives of saintly devotees, etc.; (5) critical review of works on religion and philosophy, especially on Buddhism. It is of high quality and is edited by Taixu Fashi himself. 87

The significance of the appearance of the innovative Chinese Buddhist periodical was soon acknowledged by the Japanese editors of the international journal, The Eastern Buddhist, who wrote:

The Kaichoou (Haichao yin), a Buddhist monthly, published at Wuchang under the editorship of Rev. Taixu is full of interest and information. This we wish to be the real beginning of a general re-awakening of interest in Buddhism throughout the length and breadth of the Middle Kingdom, which produced in the past so many saintly souls and spiritual leaders contributing to the ever-upward progress of Eastern civilization, and where Buddhism, fully assimilated by the native genius and mode of feeling. has resulted in the creation of its special form now designated as Zen or Chan. 88

One of the first articles published in 1920 in Haichao yin was from Taixu's Zhengli sengqie zhidu lun (The Reorganization of the Sangha System), composed in first draft during his period of sealed confinement. According to Callahan, the essay "took the Chinese Buddhist world by storm."89 Although the specifics changed slightly in later revised versions, as discussed in Chapter 5 below, Taixu's plan called for Chinese Buddhism to be reshaped institutionally with new model monasteries, benevolent organizations, and educational ventures. It required higher levels of education for all monks and nuns in view of the increasing levels of education in the general populace. It proposed productive physical labor by all able-bodied monastics so that the community could be self-supporting, eliminating the need for the decadent commercialism of masses for the dead. Taixu also envisioned monasteries and temples more as places of study and meditation than as centers for esoteric rites. Accordingly, an exemplary national monastery was to be established, complete with a massive library and a museum of Buddhist art and artifacts open for research. Affiliated with it would be a network of related institutes for Buddhist studies, as well as centers for Dharma proclamation and meditation.

As Taixu refined his plan in the years that followed, he chose to address not only the issue of the sangha's functional organization but the question of how many monastics were needed to propagate Buddhism in China. His recommendations eventually called for drastic reductions in the size of the monastic community, while redefining the sangha's role vis-a-vis society to reflect his own form of ethical piety. Under his controversial scheme, a moderate number of professional monks would perform good works for the benefit of society as a whole (such as operating schools, orphanages, and hospitals) under the direction of a small cadre of highly educated scholar-monks who were experts in Buddhist doctrine, and complemented by an almost equally small number of elderly monks who specialized in spiritual cultivation through meditation and chanting. The great majority of monks, who Taixu thought shouldn't really be called monks at all, would engage in manual labor to support the propagation of the religion by those most able to do so in a modern society. Welch comments:

Between 1915 and 1947 he produced seven more versions [of his plan for reorganizing the sangha], each representing an evolution over the last. None was ever put into practice: they were, in fact, so impracticable and so grandiose that it is hard to see how they could have been taken seriously. Rather, as if he were a child deploying regiments of toy soldiers, Taixu divided up the sangha into departments, each with its own specialty. For example, according to one of his later schemes, China was to have ten thousand scholar monks, who earned academic degrees in four grades according to the number of years they spent at study. The highest grade would consist of eight hundred monks with the Ph.D., each of whom had studied for nine years. Twenty-five thousand monks were to engage in good works (nine thousand teaching Buddhism, seven thousand running hospitals, orphanages, and so on). Finally, a small number of elders would run sixty centers of religious cultivation (xiu lin). at which a thousand monks would meditate and recite Buddha's name. This accounted for only thirty-six thousand of China's half a million monks. What would have happened to the rest is unclear. Perhaps Taixu expected that many of them would disrobe to avoid manual labor and military service, both of which he is said to have favored for monks. With the sangha reduced to scholars and functionaries, there would not have been funerary specialists to perform rites for the dead, but this objection carried no weight with Taixu, for such rites were something of which, by now, he tended to disapprove. Indeed, he seems sometimes to have had grave doubts about monkhood itself. 90

Taixu, with his "utopian propensity," was convinced that Buddhism could revitalize itself in the twentieth century through educational modernization, social service, and international cooperation. His greatest accomplishment in the area of monastic education was the Wuchang Buddhist Institute (Wuchang foxue yuan), founded in 1922. According to Earl Herbert Cressy, Taixu moved in that year from Hangzhou in Zhejiang province to the Wuchang and Hankou area in Hubei province because "he found the monasteries in Hangzhou too conservative to welcome his more up-to-date attitude."91 In Hankou, in contrast, his lectures on modern Buddhist reform soon inspired the establishment of a new lay organization, the Right Faith Buddhist Society of Hankou (Hankou fojiao zhengxin hui), for which Taixu served as "Guiding Master" (daoshi). The society soon built a large three-story complex for its publishing and educational activities, and by 1933 claimed a membership of thirty thousand.92 Still, Taixu's principal concern at the time was the creation of his new type of monastic school across the Yangzi River in the neighboring city of Wuchang. Cressy reports:

Upon the arrival of the Monk Taixu in Wuchang, in 1922, there was an emphasis upon securing better educated leaders for Buddhist monasteries and associations. Accordingly a college was established which had a plant consisting of three main buildings and ample accommodations for classrooms, service departments, and living quarters for faculty and students.

About $60,000 was expended in establishing the school. For the first two years it was conducted on a modest basis, but later it was divided into a number of departments. The writer visited this school in 1925 and interviewed Taixu, its head. The seventy students in residence were middle-school graduates and were a very intelligent and keen group of young men.93

With the generous support of lay Buddhist leaders Li Yinchen, ChenYuanbai,Wang Senpu, Li Kaicheng, and others, Taixu's seminary in Wuchang became a pioneer in Buddhist education. The school adopted the western educational format of lecture and discussion classes. It employed monastic and lay instructors, provided blackboards for use by teachers and students, and required academic course work not only in Buddhist studies and languages but in secular subjects, such as history, literature, and psychology, as well.94 Its excellent library was renowned for a collection that eventually included more than forty thousand books. Because of the success of Taixu's innovations, the Wuchang Buddhist Institute gained recognition as an educational model for Buddhist seminaries throughout China. James B. Pratt, who visited the seminary in 1923, reported attending one of the lectures after a pleasant private interview with the master:

At the lecture were sixty-three students, all but five of them being monks. Taixu lectured without notes and very easily, making constant use of the black board. Each student had a copy of the sutra that was being expounded, and followed the lecture eagerly, taking careful notes. I gathered from what my interpreter told me that his lectures were less abstruse than those of Mr. Ouyang [Jingwu]. His influence must be considerable. If sixty monks, or half that number, can be sent out every year with his impress upon them, there is still hope for Chinese Buddhism.

Taixu's aim, he told me, is chiefly to make Buddhism known as it really is. He is the more hopeful that his effort in this direction will bear fruit, because it is in response to a real demand. Chinese students are returning every year from Europe and America, or graduating from colleges in China, and demanding to know what Buddhism is. The question, he insists, must be answered from Chinese sources -- from the great Mahayana sutras -- and in a scholarly and philosophical way. His primary aim is, therefore, scholarly and philosophical. Solid knowledge and solid thinking must form the basis of anything lasting in the way of a Buddhist revival. Only indirectly does he hope to spread Buddhism among the common people. 95

Taixu's modernization extended well beyond the five seminaries that eventually came under his direct authority. Conservative leaders disparaged the broader scope of education available in Taixu's seminaries, maintaining that it served only to distract monks and nuns from the more essential elements of a uniquely Buddhist style and content to learning. Yet many Chinese Buddhists found a more comprehensive form of education especially relevant given the intellectual challenges in the wake of the "May Fourth Movement" and the anti-religion activities of the 1920s. While others debated his methods, Taixu never altered his course or wavered in his insistence that students seek to understand the Dharma in relation to the social and political issues of the day. Nevertheless, after 1934, financial difficulties forced the closure of the groundbreaking school at Wuchang, and the plant was occupied by soldiers, as it had been for a brief period in 1929. Attempts to revive the school by transferring it to Beijing ultimately failed to continue its operation beyond 1937, when the war with Japan made funding extremely scarce.

Meanwhile, Taixu founded and directed other monastic schools. each theoretically a part of his World Buddhist Institute. The seminary in Beijing at the Bolin si (Bolin si jiaoli yuan), which, like the Wuchang Buddhist Institute, was to specialize in English-language studies, functioned only for the 1930-1931 academic year.96 Taixu's important South Fujian Seminary (Minnan foxue yuan) in Xiamen (Amoy), which specialized in Japanese-language study, functioned from 1925 to 1939. His seminary in Chongqing, Sichuan (Han Zang jiaoli yuan), specializing in Tibetan studies, was in operation from 1932 to 1949. And in Xi'an, Shaanxi, the seminary that he established at the Daxingshan si (Bali sanzang yuan), specializing in Pali studies, functioned for only a short period after its founding in 1945.97

Taixu was not only a pioneer administrator concerned with new structures for monastic education but a popular Buddhist lecturer who was able to adjust the tone and content of his messages to the special character of different audiences. On the one hand, he could explicate for his students in the classroom the difficult metaphysical theories of Weishi idealism. On the other hand, though he viewed Buddhist devotionalism as a upaya (skillful means), he could speak impressively for the laity on the glories of the pure lands. In fact, when Taixu had been appointed head monk of the West Lake's Jingci si in the spring of 1921, he had urged the transformation of the traditional meditation hall (chan tang) into a "horned tiger hall" (jiaohu tang), "so as to continue the complementary practice of Chan and Pure Land Buddhism that was the custom of Yongming Yanshou [904-975]."98 Moreover, Taixu and his seminarians from Wuchang effectively wed Protestant-style worship services in brightly illuminated street chapels to attract potential followers. Describing Taixu's accomplishments in Hankou in the 1920s, Reichelt commented:

A new and interesting scene was revealed when darkness fell. A door had been opened wide and people from the street poured in to the preaching-chapel where an imposing image of Amitabha stood at the rear. The niche where the image was set up was brilliantly illuminated by electric bulbs. The radiant figure of Amitabha and the music from the organ soon had their effect and the hall became completely filled. A sermon began, followed by short "testimonies" from the students. Taixu had impressed upon his assistants that on such occasions it was best to concentrate upon the message of the Pure Land School, because this was all the ignorant people could understand. In this way Buddhists could compete better with Christians who had made so much progress in China especially through evangelism in street chapels.99

Taixu was good at planning for his mission ventures and often sent disciples ahead of his scheduled visits to different areas to prepare the community for his preaching and teaching activities. In addition, his disciples frequently engaged in mission trips of their own when the master could not be present. For example, A. J. Brace, a YMCA official in Chengdu, reported that efforts to increase membership in his own Christian organization had been "seriously hurt" by the visit to the city in 1922 of some of Taixu's students. Providing us with a helpful picture of the new form of missionary endeavors that the Buddhist reformer actively encouraged, Brace wrote:

In the summer of 1922 disciples of the famous monk, Taixu journeyed from Shanghai to Chengdu in Sichuan Province to bring the modernized message of Buddhism as taught by their master. Their coming was the occasion of great rejoicing, and a real revival of Buddhism was the result. They had been heralded for more than a year and their way was prepared by a wide circulation of Taixu's popular magazine, "Haichao yin" -- "The Voice of the Sea," or "The Sound of the Tide." Very carefully edited articles had prepared the people for the visit of the missionaries, and the new message found a ready response even before their arrival. It brought a message of peace for the troubled days, and the magazine clearly stated that the new message was destined to lift the sublime teachings of the Mahayana Doctrine for the help of the people tossed about in the sea of modern doubt. The message was essentially spiritual and taught, or stood for, three propositions, (1) a real desire to reform monasticism, (2) a plan to reconstruct Buddhist theology along lines of modern philosophy, (3) to use the teachings of Buddha to elevate the people and improve social conditions.

On the arrival of the missionaries, they were welcomed officially by the Governor of the Province. The sixteen daily papers all joined in a welcome, and gave columns to the new teaching, thus supplying a liberal supply of advertising. The opening meetings were attended by large crowds who listened attentively to the new program, and large numbers voluntarily enrolled themselves for the daily course to be given. In fact, a real program was gotten out, much like a university course, or a summer school curriculum, and fees charged for the course. Then daily the large hall in the Public Garden of the Manchu City was thronged with auditors to hear the public addresses, and the class rooms were filled with eager students to listen and follow the course throughout.

A thorough course was given in the history of Buddhism, what it had done for the world, and how it had become encrusted with many superstitions. Now all was changed. The old simple story of the Enlightened One and how he found the way of salvation was declared. Idolatry was opposed, and in bygone days it was only tolerated as an accommodation to the weakness of the ignorant people. Now education was to be stressed, the priests had always been ignorant. A Buddhist university was to be established. The monks were to be encouraged to be busy as learners and servants of the people rather than follow the lazy lives of the past. The mercy of Buddha was taught and enjoined so that the wicked might be led to kindness, the selfish to righteousness. the hungry to find satisfaction in the doctrine. Most emphasized were the daily hours for fasting and meditation.

A real revival was effected along these lines. and many of the foremost business and professional men took the vows and followed the course of meditation regularly. Many men who had not been interested in religion came under the sway of the new-found faith, and personally told me of the value of the hours of meditation and how their faith had been strengthened. The course on reading was followed widely. The students burnt incense daily as they read and meditated. At the meetings singing was indulged in, and often tunes quite similar to Christian tunes were used, and one song with the refrain. "Take the name of Buddha with you." They even organized a Young Men's Buddhist Association which is going strong. 100

Taixu also began enthusiastically to involve his seminarians and lay supporters in social service ministries. He asserted that the non-differentiation of self from others was the very basis of a bodhisattva's compassionate activities in the world, and that helping another person was coterminous with helping one's self. As a result, after Taixu's weekend sermons in Hankou, his students would commonly usher people in need of health care to rooms where physicians, who were among his lay disciples, provided free treatment and medicine, exemplifying a long tradition of Buddhist concern for healing.101 He helped his disciples Miaoji and Hualin establish a modern school for children and a welfare program for the diseased, destitute, and jobless. It was reported that they "used to go around to the sick with medicines, dressing wounds and distributing articles to the needy."102

The previously mentioned Right Faith Buddhist Society of Hankou became one of the most socially active lay Buddhist associations in the country. In accord with Taixu's emphasis on social responsibility, the society operated a clinic that provided free medical treatment for the poor, administered a free primary school for children of low-income families, donated coffins to families who could not afford them, funded a non-Buddhist social service agency that provided assistance to indigent widows, distributed food to needy families on holidays, served meals in fire catastrophes, and rescued people and animals in flood crises.103 Most of the major cities of China developed similar lay Buddhist organizations, with laity (jushi) active in a variety of religiously motivated pursuits, in order "to propagate the Dharma and to benefit humanity."104 Seeking to characterize the type of lay believers who were often attracted to Taixu's teachings and whose devotion was a driving force in aspects of the effort at Buddhist revitalization, John Blofeld once wrote:

The jushi (lay devotees) are often men of considerable learning as well as faith and piety, they sometimes exhibit a more profound understanding of Buddhist philosophy than many of the monks and nuns. To this learning they add active observance of the teaching that the utmost compassion should be shown to all sentient beings ....

The jushi is usually a cultured person. He prefers to wear the dignified Chinese gown of blue, gray or bronze-coloured silk, and by his habits and gestures, exhibits his fondness for and understanding of the traditional culture of his country. He is often a poet or painter as well as a philosopher and metaphysician, and may be something of a historian or possess a knowledge of Chinese herbal medicine in addition ....

They often show themselves to be far above the vulgar superstitions which have done much to lower the tone of the great moral and metaphysical system created by the Indian sage Gautama. 105

In the early 1920s, Taixu also initiated a new program of Buddhist visitation to prisons, encouraging students at his seminary in Wuchang to minister to the incarcerated. It was recognized as an innovative program by most Buddhists, although the charter of the 1912 Chinese General Buddhist Association, founded in Shanghai, had at least called for prison visitation.106 Perhaps Taixu's program was interpreted as new because there had been little or no actual response to this element of the association's 1912 charter. Emphasizing the Christian precedents for such activities and describing Taixu's program as merely imitative, the missionary-scholar Reichelt comments:

Taixu had noticed that Christian missionaries and some Chinese evangelists had obtained permission from the authorities to visit the public gaols in order to speak to the prisoners. It was even described in the newspapers because quite a number of prisoners had become converted and had left the gaols as new men. This challenged Taixu. Why should not Buddhists do the same? He placed the matter before his students, and of course everybody offered for service. Taixu applied to the authorities and permission was given ....

Prisoners used to gather in a large room and young Buddhist monks in their dignified robes performed with the greatest eloquence as "teaching masters" to this mixed audience. They too were "written up" in the newspapers.107

After a time, enthusiasm waned among students at the Wuchang Buddhist Institute, and the prison program lost much of its momentum. Yet despite Taixu's eventual disappointment with this development in Wuchang, the idea of prison miniseries did spread to other Buddhist groups and to other parts of China.108

Through all these educational and human service activities, Taixu sought to respond to the demands of the time while recalling what he considered to be the true nature of his religious tradition. He wanted Chinese Buddhists to build on an essential dimension of their Mahayana heritage that had been overlooked and inadequately developed. In view of criticisms by Christians who facilely contrasted their own tradition's social consciousness with the blatantly self-centered spirituality of Buddhists, the reformer tried to present those on the bodhisattva path as members of a socially responsive and morally responsible religious community.

In large measure, of course, Taixu shared with Christian missionaries a critical outlook on "real" Chinese Buddhism -- that is, the religion as "commonly practiced" in the Republican period. At the same time, however, he envisioned an "ideal" Chinese Buddhism that could change forever not only the future of Asia but that of the entire world. Indeed, it was to the task of articulating more clearly aspects of that projected global religion that Taixu was to give much of his time and energy during the last half of his monastic career.