Buddhist education between tradition, modernity and networks: reconsidering the ‘revival’ of education for the Saṅgha in twentieth-century China

Travagnin, Stefania

doi:10.1080/23729988.2017.1392193

Cited by 8 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…One group depicts a sangha in serious disrepair, where even the basic literacy of monks can be questioned, and thus the early twentieth century had to bring about an unprecedented revival to ensure the survival of the community (Ch' en 1972;Welch 1968). Others question the notion of revival, as well as the level of deterioration of the late-nineteenth-century sangha (Travagnin 2017). Nevertheless, one conclusion can be drawn that high-level monastic education was concentrated in a small number of leading monasteries, while large numbers of the monastic community sustained their livelihood as wandering monks or performing funerary rites while residing in hereditary temples (Pittman 2001).…”

Section: Historical Background and The State Of The Sanghamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Nevertheless, despite touching upon the topic of education, none of these works, or those with a narrower focus on individual monks of the period, have made educational reforms their explicit focus (Yao and Gombrich 2017;Kiely 2017;Goodell 2012). The few analyses that have addressed this question in detail are Rongdao Lai's doctoral dissertation and 2017 article, along with Stefania Travagnin's 2017 article (Lai 2014(Lai , 2017Travagnin 2017). Both authors provide indispensable insights regarding the connections between Buddhist education and nation-building in the Republic of China, and the question of a "Buddhist revival" during this period, respectively.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As for the second part of the research, previous work has mostly focused on the structural reasons for Buddhist educational reform, such as the general modernisation of the education system, and the governmental push to prove the usefulness of religions in a modern environment (Travagnin 2017;Wei 2010). However, no research has made its central focus the individual journey of the three generations of reformers, and the effect of their experiences on the concrete unfolding of the reforms.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Communities of Practice and the Buddhist Education Reforms of Early-Twentieth-Century China

Boros

2024

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Over the course of only a few decades during the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, part of mainstream Buddhist education underwent a striking shift in China. From being a secluded practice within monastery walls taught by monastics for monastics with a strict focus on Buddhist scripture, it became one where monastics and laypeople study together, guided by teachers, both monastic and lay, studying a curriculum of both Buddhist and secular subjects. Although general reforms within the Buddhist community of the times received considerable scholarly attention, the topic of education development was discussed in only a few instances. Therefore, the present article sets out to explore why this radical methodological shift happened, and more concretely, how the individual learning trajectories of the reforms’ leading actors, and their involvement in specific communities, influenced the way the reforms unfolded. The author analyses the work and life of three generations of Buddhist reformers, namely the layman Yang Wenhui, and the monastic masters Taixu, Hsing Yun and Cheng Yen, employing Étienne Wenger’s social theory of learning. The theory’s main assertion that communities of practice provide the main fora of learning for individuals, and its description of the concrete ways in which this learning takes place can provide new insights regarding the specific unfolding of late-nineteenth to early-twentieth-century Buddhist education reforms in China.

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Section: Historical Background and The State Of The Sanghamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Communities of Practice and the Buddhist Education Reforms of Early-Twentieth-Century China

Boros

2024

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“…As was the case with Welch, these works were partial. Dongchu, like Welch, was disappointed by some of the reforms of Buddhism and Buddhists, as well as by its secularization (Travagnin 2017a).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Epistemic Communities of Buddhist Scholarship in Modern China: Narratives and Paradigms

Travagnin¹,

Laliberté²

2019

State of the Field and Disciplinary Approaches

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“…The final part will be about transformation in the saṃgha education from the late Qing onwards, with focus on the Republican period. As I have already explored in previous works (Travagnin 2014(Travagnin , 2015(Travagnin , and 2017, the changes in institutions, policies, and curricula have been matched by a revision of the label terms in the education sector. Therefore, this chapter will propose a critical analysis of the transformations in education policies and the history of the ideas of learning, education, and pedagogy through the study of different conceptual termssuch as xue 學 and jiaoyu 教育and institution namessuch as xueshe 學社, (seng)xuetang (僧)學堂, foxueyuan 佛學院that emerged in the Chinese Buddhist context.…”

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confidence: 99%

From Xue學to Jiaoyu 教育: Conceptual Understandings of ‘Education’ in Modern Chinese Buddhism

Travagnin¹

2020

Intellectual History of Key Concepts

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There are a few nunneries on Mt. Emei, in Sichuan; as I enter the Shengshui Chan Nunnery (Shengshui chanyuan 聖水禪院), some of the resident nuns are working in their field, some others are helping with the refurbishment of an old building. Fuhu Nunnery (fuhu si 伏虎寺) presents a different scenario, with two distinct groups of nuns, living in two different areas of the temple, and conducting two different forms of life. Some nuns are busy with liturgy, cleaning the temple, interacting with lay volunteers, some others reside in a separate area, and spend their time in classrooms, listening to senior nuns lecturing about Buddhist philosophy; the latter are the student nuns of the Mt. Emei Female Institute of Buddhist Studies (Emeishan foxueyuan nizhongban 峨眉山佛學院尼眾班). A similar setting is found at the Big Buddha Chan Monastery (Dafo chanyuan 大佛禪院), down the mountain: some monks are working in various halls of the Monastery, and others, in a separate area of the compound, the Mt. Emei Institute of Buddhist Studies (Emeishan foxueyuan 峨眉山佛學院), are attending classes; this is the largest saṃgha male institute in Sichuan province. The library of the institute has several editions of the Chinese Buddhist Canon, a large collection of books on the history of Buddhism, but also volumes of Chinese literature and Chinese political ideologies, as student monks need to attend courses on secular subjects and also governmental policies. In the library, I met Wang Rongyi 王荣益, the grandson of Wang Enyang 王恩洋 (1897-1964); the latter was a prominent intellectual and the protagonist of several educational institutions, for monastics and laity, in Nanjing and various locations of Sichuan, during the Republican period and early 1950s. In Chengdu, in the Pidu 郫都 district, a bridge has been named 'Śākyamuni' (shijia qiao 釋迦橋) to celebrate the late Buddhist monk Changyuan 昌圓 (1879-1945), who is well-known for his contribution to local education; in the first decades of the twentieth-century, Changyuan established Buddhist societies for the education of the laity and several schools for nuns in various districts of today Chengdu. These are just a few examples of saṃgha

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Buddhist education between tradition, modernity and networks: reconsidering the ‘revival’ of education for the Saṅgha in twentieth-century China

Cited by 8 publications

References 15 publications

Communities of Practice and the Buddhist Education Reforms of Early-Twentieth-Century China

Communities of Practice and the Buddhist Education Reforms of Early-Twentieth-Century China

Epistemic Communities of Buddhist Scholarship in Modern China: Narratives and Paradigms

From Xue學to Jiaoyu 教育: Conceptual Understandings of ‘Education’ in Modern Chinese Buddhism

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