In the aftermath of the 2008 Great Wenchuan Earthquake, China, the ancient Buddhist Luohan Monastery became an important locus for disaster relief services. This included becoming a temporary maternity ward as the nearby hospital was badly damaged. This paper examines the monastery's relief efforts as a case of socially engaged Buddhism. It pays particular attention to the ways in which the head monk of the monastery, Shi Suquan, negotiated tensions between responding to the desperate needs of nearby residents and long-standing religious rules and taboos which, on the surface at least, stood in opposition to certain forms of relief practices. The paper argues that he used Buddhist doctrines, particularly the Mahāyāna concept of ‘skillful means,’ to renegotiate the taboos by privileging the ethical imperative of compassionate action.
Daoxuan's view on monastic slavery is based mainly on the principle of the Vinaya, but it seems that he particularly opposes individual monastics to possess slaves and supports the releasing of monastic slaves and the ordination of slaves of a certain kind.
This paper deals with some points about the translator and contents of a Chinese Buddhist scripture, the Chengju guangming jing. It analyses the links between some historical figures and this scripture, scrutinizes passages of the text closely similar to
other scriptures, and clears some doubts over the credibility of its translation. In doing so it is hoped that a better understanding of the authenticity of the text in general and a reliable ascription of translatorship of the scripture in particular can be established.
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