<i>Yi jie wei shi</i>以戒為師: theory and practice of monastic discipline in modern and contemporary Chinese Buddhism

Bianchi, Ester

doi:10.1080/23729988.2017.1378004

Cited by 6 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 22 publications

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“…The revival of the Buddhist monastic disciplines (vinaya; jielu 戒律) is a feature in modern and contemporary China (Bianchi 2017). Observing precepts is a prerequisite training for practicing meditation in both Theravāda (Cook 2010) and Mahāyāna traditions.…”

Section: Mind-body Training With Precepts and Vipassanā Meditationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Teaching Transnational Buddhist Meditation with Vipassanā (Neiguan 內觀) and Mindfulness (Zhengnian 正念) for Healing Depression in Contemporary China

Lau

2021

Religions

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This paper examines how the teaching of embodied practices of transnational Buddhist meditation has been designated for healing depression explicitly in contemporary Chinese Buddhist communities with the influences of Buddhist modernism in Southeast Asia and globalization. Despite the revival of traditional Chan school meditation practices since the Open Policy, various transnational lay meditation practices, such as vipassanā and mindfulness, have been popularized in monastic and lay communities as a trendy way to heal physical and mental suffering in mainland China. Drawing from a recent ethnographic study of a meditation retreat held at a Chinese Buddhist monastery in South China, this paper examines how Buddhist monastics have promoted a hybrid mode of embodied Buddhist meditation practices, mindfulness and psychoanalytic exercises for healing depression in lay people. With analysis of the teaching and approach of the retreat guided by well-educated Chinese meditation monastics, I argue that some young generation Buddhist communities have contributed to giving active responses towards the recent yearning for individualized bodily practices and the social trend of the “subjective turn” and self-reflexivity in contemporary Chinese society. The hybrid inclusion of mindfulness exercises from secular programs and psychoanalytic exercises into a vipassanā meditation retreat may reflect an attempt to re-contextualize meditation in Chinese Buddhism.

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Section: Mind-body Training With Precepts and Vipassanā Meditationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Teaching Transnational Buddhist Meditation with Vipassanā (Neiguan 內觀) and Mindfulness (Zhengnian 正念) for Healing Depression in Contemporary China

Lau

2021

Religions

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The Fall of a Chinese Buddhist Monk: Law and State Governance of Buddhism in Post-Imperial China

Liu

2020

J. law relig.

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In August 2018, revelations of the sexual, financial, and administrative misconduct of a high-profile Chinese Buddhist monk named Xuecheng 學誠 were in the spotlight of domestic and international attention. The validity of the allegations and their social and religious impact have been widely debated, and this article focuses on the legal procedures used in handling the allegations and traces their source back to the Republican era (1911–1949). The state's governance of Buddhism and the efficacy of the Buddhist clergy's jurisdictional self-governance operating in Xuecheng's case in China today are significantly older than the People's Republic of China. As early as 1929, ordained Buddhists collectively denounced personal clerical privileges, in exchange for the state law's protection on monastic properties. Then, while protesting against unfavorable articles in the Charter of the Buddhist Association of China (Zhongguo fojiaohui zhang cheng 中國佛教會章程) proposed by the Nationalist government in 1936, the Buddhist clergy lost their legal jurisdiction over adjudicating internal disputes among ordained Buddhists. These two events have come to define the relationship between the state and the Buddhist establishment in contemporary China, where state law is harsh on religion while enforcement through legal practice is lax.

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Questioning the Revival

Gildow

2020

Rev. Relig. Chin. Soc.

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A common narrative of Buddhist monasticism in modern China is that monastic institutions were virtually eliminated during the Cultural Revolution period (1966–1976) but have undergone continuous revival since that time. This simplistic narrative highlights differences in state-monastic relations between the Maoist and post-Maoist eras, even as it oversimplifies various developments. In this article, I analyze the notion of revival and assess the state of Han Buddhist monasticism in the prc. My focus is on clarifying the “basic facts” of monasticism, including the numbers and types of monastics and monastic institutions. I draw on studies published since Holmes Welch’s works as well as on my own fieldwork conducted in China since 2006. This article questions the revival metaphor and shows that it is misleading. First, as Welch noted for the Republican period, recent developments are characterized by innovations as much as by revivals. Second, evidence for the growth of monasticism from around the year 2000 is weak. Yet in two aspects, monasticism today revives characteristics of Republican-period monasticism: ritual performance is central to the monastic economy, and Buddhist seminaries are important for monastic doctrinal education.

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Yi jie wei shi以戒為師: theory and practice of monastic discipline in modern and contemporary Chinese Buddhism

Cited by 6 publications

References 22 publications

Teaching Transnational Buddhist Meditation with Vipassanā (Neiguan 內觀) and Mindfulness (Zhengnian 正念) for Healing Depression in Contemporary China

Teaching Transnational Buddhist Meditation with Vipassanā (Neiguan 內觀) and Mindfulness (Zhengnian 正念) for Healing Depression in Contemporary China

The Fall of a Chinese Buddhist Monk: Law and State Governance of Buddhism in Post-Imperial China

Questioning the Revival

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