HUMANISTIC BUDDHISM IN CONTEMPORARY CHINA: PRACTICES AND INTERPRETATIONS

Abstract

Known as "Renjian Fojiao" (Buddhism in the Human Realm) in the Chinese-speaking region, Humanistic Buddhism has emerged as a hot topic for scholarly studies on Buddhist institutions from Taiwan and their transnational networks over the past decade. Mainland China, as the birthplace of this new brand of Buddhism centering on self-cultivation, has yet to gain attention from the English-language scholarship on this paradigm. The present paper explores the practices under the banner of Humanistic Buddhism and its interpretations of the institutional level in the mainland. To that end, two months of fieldwork were conducted at Bailin Chan Si in Hebei, North China, and Hongfa Si in Shenzhen, South China. A series of semi-structured interviews were undertaken with the six senior monks and ten laypeople at these two renowned Buddhist temples, where their religious and cultural programs were attended and examined. The paper also analyzed the literature published by the Party-state of China and or under its sponsorship in the past ten years. It finds that no Buddhist temples explicitly label their practices as Humanistic Buddhism in China despite their emphatical promotion of cultivating oneself in daily life, the essential principle of Humanistic Buddhism. The temples mainly adhere to orthodox doctrines and teachings from their respective Dharma lineages for reference. Though sporadically noting the concept of Buddhism, the State's propaganda of Buddhism prioritized patriotism before the Buddhist faith. Nevertheless, in its global promotion of Buddhism as a religious version of China's soft power, the State often raised the concept of Humanistic Buddhism for international empathy and even gained particular attention. In conclusion, the paper argues that the articulation of Humanistic Buddhism in China is limited to an abstract extent and is only known by knowledgeable Buddhists or non-religious intellectuals. The concept itself has still been left far behind the Party-state's public discourse about patriotism, though sometimes it was instrumentalized to supplement the latter's soft power diplomacy abroad.