Chapter 11: Modern Chinese Buddhism and Humanistic Buddhism¶

The preceding chapters traced Chinese Buddhism’s ancient traditions from early translation through the Song, Ming, and Qing. Tiantai, Huayan, Chan, and Pure Land, formed during the Tang and Song, continued for centuries afterward but produced no philosophical creativity of comparable scale. This final chapter examines how Chinese Buddhism responded to colonialism, modernization, communism, and globalization. Its most important response was concentrated in the formulation and development of Humanistic Buddhism, Renjian Fojiao.

I. The Predicament of the Late Qing: Decline and Challenge¶

Decline since the Song and Ming

After the Song, Chinese Buddhism’s philosophical originality declined substantially. The precise doctrines of Tiantai and Huayan gradually gave way to everyday combinations of Chan and Pure Land. During the Ming and Qing, monastic activities centered on “performing daily services”—morning and evening recitation and rites transferring merit to the dead—became mainstream, while high-level doctrinal discussion was comparatively rare. Many monasteries principally supplied ritual services for lay weddings and funerals, especially funeral rites. Critics, including later reformers, described it as “a Buddhism dedicated to serving the dead.”

External shocks

After the Opium War of 1840, Western pressure occurred culturally and religiously as well as militarily and politically. Christian missionaries criticized Buddhism as idolatry and superstition, while the arrival of Western science challenged the epistemic legitimacy of traditional religious belief.

Even more severe criticism came from within China. Reformers such as Kang Youwei proposed confiscating Buddhist monastic property to build schools. Intellectuals of the New Culture Movement after the May Fourth Movement of 1919 treated Buddhism as part of feudal superstition to be replaced by “science” and “democracy.”

The question of the Śūraṅgama Sūtra as an apocryphon deserves separate mention. The scripture has extremely high standing in Chinese Buddhism and is especially important in Chan daily liturgy and monastic education. Yet its provenance was already questioned during the Tang. In the modern period, the introduction of historical criticism made the doubts more explicit: no Sanskrit original, no Tibetan translation, a style markedly different from Indian Buddhist literature, and unclear records of translation. These signs suggest that it was probably composed in China during the Tang, an apocryphon mentioned in Chapter 10.4. During the New Culture period, intellectuals represented by Hu Shi criticized the Śūraṅgama as a typical instance of Buddhist “fabrication,” a cultural deception transmitted in the name of authority under feudal conditions. The attack produced enduring defensive reactions within Buddhist circles and also encouraged later scholars to confront textual reliability directly.¹

Against this background, Chinese Buddhism at the beginning of the twentieth century faced a double crisis: internal doctrinal stagnation and institutional corruption, and external cultural rejection and political pressure. These conditions prompted modern Buddhist reform.

II. Master Taixu: Pioneer of Humanistic Buddhism¶

Taixu (1890–1947)

Master Taixu, born Lü in Chongde, Zhejiang, was the most important initiator of modern Chinese Buddhist reform. He became a monk at fourteen, encountered a wide range of Buddhist scriptures in his youth, and read extensively in Western philosophy and social theory, from which he developed a systematic program for Buddhist modernization.⁶

Three great revolutions

Taixu argued that Buddhism required “revolution” in three areas.

Revolution in doctrine. Buddhist teachings had to be reinterpreted in response to modern science, socialism, democracy, and other currents of thought, while feudal superstition had to be removed.

Revolution in institutions. Monasteries had to shift from dependence on ritual offerings from laypeople toward self-sustaining productive labor, education, and social service. Monastics should receive systematic modern Buddhist education rather than merely learn scripture chanting and ritual.

Revolution in property. Monastic wealth should support schools, hospitals, and social welfare institutions, not merely the internal expenses of monasteries.

Buddhism for human life and Humanistic Buddhism

Taixu’s most important conceptual contribution made “Buddhism for human life,” later developed as Humanistic Buddhism, the central orientation of Buddhist modernization.

Buddhist concern should turn from the postmortem world—rebirth in the pure land and merit-transfer rites for the dead—toward living people and this present life. The bodhisattva spirit of benefiting sentient beings should be realized through active social participation rather than remaining in individual practice or mortuary ritual.

His concrete proposals included founding modern Buddhist academies, including the Wuchang Buddhist Academy in 1922; publishing Buddhist journals; promoting relations with other religious traditions and the global Buddhist world; and active participation in public welfare.

Taixu promoted reform throughout his life, but many of his institutional plans were never implemented on a large scale before his death. China’s political turbulence interrupted numerous projects. He nonetheless established the direction: Buddhism should serve the living, participate actively in society, and accept modern education. This became the most important intellectual framework of later Chinese Buddhist reform.

III. Ouyang Jingwu and the Chinese Inner Studies Institute: Another Route of Scholarly Revival¶

Taixu represented the practical route of reform in progress. Ouyang Jingwu (1871–1943) represented another direction: rebuilding Buddhism’s scholarly foundation through rigorous textual research.

The Chinese Inner Studies Institute, 1922

Ouyang founded the Chinese Inner Studies Institute in Nanjing for specialist study of Consciousness-Only treatises, including the Yogācārabhūmi and Cheng Weishi Lun. It attracted leading Chinese intellectual figures: the philologist and revolutionary Zhang Taiyan, Liang Shuming, later a representative of modern New Confucianism, and Xiong Shili, who later developed a “New Treatise on Consciousness-Only.”

The institute emphasized strict textual analysis, treating Buddhist texts as philosophical literature requiring precise understanding rather than beginning from premises of faith. Ouyang himself held positions diverging from tradition—for example, he judged the Awakening of Faith in the Mahāyāna to be a Chinese pseudepigraph and denied that it translated an Indian treatise—an academically radical stance at the time.

Xiong Shili (1885–1968)

Beginning from the institute, Xiong developed his “New Consciousness-Only,” reconstructing a Chinese philosophical system synthesizing Buddhist, Confucian, and Daoist thought from Consciousness-Only concepts. Its central idea was that substance—benevolent substance or self-nature—is a continuously unfolding creative force, while appearances, its functions, manifest substance but cannot be reduced to it. The framework absorbed Consciousness-Only analysis while integrating the Confucian cosmology of ceaseless generation.

Xiong’s New Treatise on Consciousness-Only is one of the most original systems of twentieth-century Chinese philosophy and an important source of contemporary New Confucianism.⁷

IV. Japan’s “Mahāyāna Is Not the Buddha’s Word” Controversy: A Contemporary Historical Background¶

Before examining Yinshun, we must introduce a major scholarly event that occurred in Japan at almost the same time. It resonated with debate in the Chinese-speaking world but remains little known in Chinese Buddhist circles.

Background

After the Meiji Restoration, Japan imported Western scholarly methods on a large scale, including comparative religion and Indology. Through systematic comparison of Pāli and Sanskrit sources, European Sanskritists found Mahāyāna scriptures later in both language and content than the Pāli canon. They concluded that the Mahāyāna scriptures could not readily be treated as words spoken by the historical Buddha and more likely originated in later devotional communities. This judgment gradually became the Western scholarly mainstream.

After Japan adopted these methods, Japanese scholars began reexamining Mahāyāna from the same perspective. In 1901, Murakami Senshō (1851–1929), a scholar-monk affiliated with the Ōtani-ha, or Higashi Honganji branch, of Jōdo Shinshū, published the first installment of Bukkyō tōitsuron (On the Unification of Buddhism). He argued that Mahāyāna was a later historical development and that the extant Mahāyāna scriptures could not simply be treated as the historical Buddha’s direct words. Buddhist institutions, he held, had to confront this historical-philological problem. His intervention became one of the emblematic events in modern Japan’s “Mahāyāna was not spoken by the Buddha” controversy.²

Development of the controversy

Murakami’s view immediately provoked fierce reaction and brought pressure upon him within the Ōtani-ha. In the same year he published A Confession concerning My Withdrawal from the Clerical Registry of the Shinshū Ōtani-ha. It is therefore inaccurate to describe the episode as discipline imposed by Nishi Honganji. As research accumulated, historical-philological scholarship increasingly ceased to treat the extant Mahāyāna scriptures as contemporaneous records traceable word for word to the historical Buddha. That conclusion does not, however, entail that every Mahāyāna idea lacks historical continuity with early Buddhism.

Over the following decades, every Japanese school had to face the question: how could it acknowledge historical facts while preserving the religious authority of Mahāyāna scriptures? Answers differed. Some said the “spirit” of Mahāyāna came from the Buddha even if its words were later; others called it a “legitimate development” of the teaching; still others emphasized that doctrinal value does not depend upon historical source.

Comparison with Chinese Buddhist circles

Japan’s controversy and New Culture criticism of Buddhism in China shared the same methodological source: the introduction of Western historical-philological scholarship. The difference was that the Japanese dispute occurred chiefly within Buddhist scholarship and concerned coexistence between faith and historical criticism. Chinese New Culture criticism more often came from intellectuals outside Buddhism and directly joined critique to a political position of opposing superstition.

Yinshun’s work unfolded against both backgrounds.

V. Master Yinshun: The Doctrinal Foundation of Humanistic Buddhism¶

If Taixu first formulated Humanistic Buddhism, Master Yinshun (1906–2005) gave it its strongest doctrinal foundation.

Life

Born Zhang Luqin in Zhejiang, Yinshun was a disciple of Taixu. He left mainland China in 1949, stayed in Hong Kong for three years, and settled in Taiwan in 1952, where he spent a long and prolific second half of life. His voluminous writings covered nearly every field of Buddhist thought—early Buddhism, the schools, Madhyamaka, and tathāgatagarbha—and made him one of the most influential Chinese Buddhist scholar-monks of the twentieth century.⁶

The doctrinal basis of Humanistic Buddhism

Yinshun furnished a stricter historical basis for Humanistic Buddhism than Taixu had.

Taixu’s “Buddhism for human life” began principally from practical necessity and argued that Buddhism should act this way in modern society. Yinshun’s “Humanistic Buddhism” began chiefly from historical foundations and argued that the spirit of early Buddhism had originally been humanistic, and that there lay “genuine Buddhism.”

The early Buddha was an awakened human being active in the human world. His audience was humanity, not gods; the problem he addressed was suffering in this life, not postmortem concerns. For Yinshun, Humanistic Buddhism meant returning to Buddhism’s original spirit; modernization was only the surface.

He criticized an exclusively Pure Land focus on rebirth after death, exclusively esoteric emphasis on mysterious ritual, and orientations toward heaven that placed Buddhism’s focus upon gods and ghosts. He regarded them as historical departures progressively farther from the original spirit.

Principal works

Yinshun’s important writings include A History of Indian Buddhist Thought, narrating Indian Buddhist thought from early Buddhism to Mahāyāna; The Compilation of the Scriptures of Early Buddhism, a critical historical study of the Āgamas; Madhyamaka in Contemporary Interpretation, a modern reading of Nāgārjuna; and An Outline of the Buddha-Dharma, a systematic introduction to early Buddhist doctrine.

A structural analysis of Yinshun’s position

The book offers an overall analysis because the internal structure of his position deserves careful identification.

On the one hand, Yinshun clearly inclined toward historical recovery. He systematically studied the Āgamas, corresponding to the Pāli Nikāyas, and held that early Buddhism centered on human suffering, dependent origination, and not-self stood closer to the Buddha’s intention than later Mahāyāna developments. He critically regarded apocrypha such as the Awakening of Faith, reserved judgment about tathāgatagarbha, and explicitly criticized Esoteric Buddhism. Within Chinese Buddhism of the time, these positions were almost heretical.

On the other hand, Yinshun was unwilling directly to repudiate the Mahāyāna tradition. His solution was a particular theory of “spiritual transmission”: although Mahāyāna scriptures were not spoken by the Buddha, the principles they contain—such as the three Dharma seals, “all conditioned phenomena are impermanent, all dharmas are without self, and nirvāṇa is peace”—accord with the Buddha’s intention and can therefore be “regarded as spoken by the Buddha” in the sense that this is what he would have said. His famous distinction was between “spoken through the Buddha-Dharma” and “spoken from the Buddha’s mouth.” It emphasizes doctrinal continuity rather than the truth of historical provenance.³

This position is structurally almost identical to one solution offered by some Japanese scholars in the “Mahāyāna is not the Buddha’s word” controversy: acknowledge the historical facts but preserve Mahāyāna’s religious legitimacy through continuity of “spirit” or “doctrine.” Both seek a balance between historical criticism and maintaining faith: not lying academically, yet not destroying the religious foundation.

Greater hostility from within

The fiercest attacks on Yinshun came from within Mahāyāna, while secular critics outside Buddhism were secondary. His opponents included teachers committed to tathāgatagarbha, Pure Land representatives, supporters of Esoteric Buddhism, and conservatives who regarded historical criticism itself as harmful to Buddhism.

This phenomenon deserves separate notice: hostility toward heretics is often greater than hostility toward outsiders. This is a general rule of religion and indeed all ideology. External criticism can easily be dismissed as “ignorant,” but internal dissent expressed in the tradition’s own language genuinely threatens authoritative narratives. Yinshun accepted historical-critical method and Mahāyāna’s later origins and criticized tathāgatagarbha and Esoteric Buddhism. That these positions provoked stronger reactions within Mahāyāna than among New Culture intellectuals shows the real weight of what he touched.

Controversies

Yinshun’s critical historical position created continuing tension in Taiwanese Buddhism. Some traditional Buddhists regarded his criticism of the Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra and its buddha-nature theory, the Awakening of Faith, and Esoteric Buddhism as denigrating Mahāyāna. Critics argued that his standard of “original Buddhism” was too narrow and that Mahāyāna development had its own internal legitimacy. In one sense, the dispute is a modern version of the Indian controversy between Madhyamaka and tathāgatagarbha, now replayed publicly within Taiwan’s modern democratic society.

VI. Taiwan’s Four Great Practice Centers¶

After the Nationalist government moved to Taiwan in 1949, many mainland monastics followed. Together with Yinshun’s doctrinal work, this made Taiwan the most dynamic region of twentieth-century Chinese Buddhism. Four organizations represent the principal forms of Taiwanese Humanistic Buddhism.

Fo Guang Shan and Master Hsing Yun (1927–2023)

Master Hsing Yun founded Fo Guang Shan in Kaohsiung in 1967. It is one of Taiwan’s largest Buddhist practice centers and among the most influential global Chinese Buddhist organizations.

His Humanistic Buddhism emphasizes active social, cultural, and educational participation: founding schools, universities, museums, hospitals, and publishers; establishing the Buddha’s Light International Association with branches around the world; and promoting Buddhist art, culture, and community service among global Chinese and non-Chinese communities.

Compared with Yinshun, Hsing Yun accepted Mahāyāna traditions, including Pure Land and tathāgatagarbha, more optimistically and did not practice strong historical criticism. His Humanistic Buddhism placed greater emphasis on bringing the Dharma to modern people through a warm, inclusive, and pluralist attitude.⁸

Dharma Drum Mountain and Master Sheng Yen (1930–2009)

Master Sheng Yen founded Dharma Drum Mountain in northern Taiwan in 1989, centering it on Chan practice.

He inherited both Linji and Caodong lineages. His central concept was “spiritual environmentalism”: genuine environmental protection must begin with mind; only by purifying one’s mind can one purify society and the natural environment. He established a systematic Chan training program making traditional teachings accessible to modern people. His Humanistic Buddhism emphasized meditative practice more than Hsing Yun’s and stood closer to Yinshun’s historical-critical orientation.

The Tzu Chi Foundation and Master Cheng Yen (1937–)

Master Cheng Yen founded Tzu Chi in Hualien in 1966. It is one of the most influential Humanistic Buddhist organizations in Taiwan and the world.

Tzu Chi is characterized by the thoroughness of its “doing,” concentrating on direct action: disaster relief, medicine, environmental protection, education, and bone-marrow donation. It has millions of volunteers worldwide and conducted large-scale relief during major disasters, including Taiwan’s 1999 earthquake, the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, and the 2010 Haiti earthquake.

Cheng Yen’s theology centers on the “action” of the bodhisattva path: doing is practice, and helping sentient beings is seeing buddha-nature. Her organization is centered on laypeople rather than monastics and emphasizes that everyone can become a “bodhisattva.”⁹

Chung Tai Chan Monastery and Master Weichueh (1928–2016)

Master Weichueh founded Chung Tai Chan Monastery in Nantou in 1986. It follows a comparatively traditional Chan route: strict seated practice and systematic Vinaya education combined with large monastic architecture and educational institutions. Weichueh’s Humanistic Buddhism emphasizes beginning from one’s own cultivation: “the aspiration to awakening begins now; purify from the inside outward.” This forms a contrast with the intensely outward orientations of Hsing Yun and Cheng Yen.

VII. Taiwan: Returning to the Āgamas and the Arrival of Southern Buddhism¶

Outside the mainstream Humanistic Buddhism of Taiwan’s four great centers, another current quietly formed beginning in the 1980s and 1990s. Smaller but influential among intellectuals, it sought a return to early Buddhism through the Āgamas and brought about the local introduction of Southern Buddhism in Taiwan.

Renewed attention to the Āgamas

Yinshun’s writings were an important catalyst. His systematic research on the Āgamas, including The Compilation of the Scriptures of Early Buddhism, led some Taiwanese intellectuals to recognize that the four Chinese Āgamas, corresponding to the Pāli Nikāyas, are the most reliable relative sources for early Buddhism. The historical development of Mahāyāna texts must be distinguished; they cannot all be read indiscriminately as “the Buddha’s original words.” This realization led some scholars and practitioners to seek a foundation of practice directly within the Āgamas.

At the same time, Taiwanese academia began using modern philological methods to study the Āgamas and connecting with international Pāli and early Buddhist scholarship. Dharma Drum Mountain, the Faguang Institute of Buddhist Studies, and other institutions contributed to training monastic scholars possessing both academic ability and depth of practice.⁴

Travel to Sri Lanka in search of the Dharma

Beginning in the 1990s, a small number of Taiwanese monastics and lay practitioners traveled to Sri Lanka—or Myanmar and Thailand—to receive full ordination in a Southern tradition or undertake long-term meditation training. Though limited in scale, the phenomenon marked a definite turn within Taiwanese Buddhist circles: from the institutional framework of Chinese Mahāyāna toward direct contact with the early Pāli textual tradition. Some returned with Southern insight methods and taught them in small meditation centers.

The international insight movement, through Goenka, Mahāsi, and other lineages, also acquired a degree of influence. The number of Taiwanese attending ten-day courses grew year by year, providing another channel for Southern Buddhism’s entry.

Overall assessment of Southern influence in Taiwan

The return to early Buddhism and contact with Southern traditions remain minority trends. In both scale and cultural influence, Taiwanese Buddhism is still principally a Mahāyāna Humanistic Buddhism centered on Chan and Pure Land. Yet the minority demonstrates the diversity of Taiwan’s Buddhist ecology and the space of questions opened by historical criticism, Yinshun’s legacy. Once serious practitioners recognize the historical complexity of Mahāyāna texts, some move toward the earlier literature.

VIII. The Core Ideas and Internal Controversies of Humanistic Buddhism¶

Shared core

Despite differing emphases, Taiwanese Humanistic Buddhism shares several central ideas.

First, orientation toward the present world: Buddhism should concern this life and living people rather than remaining focused on death and supernatural worlds.

Second, social participation: the bodhisattva spirit should be realized through concrete charity, education, medicine, and environmental action rather than relying only on personal cultivation or ritual.

Third, modern adaptation: Buddhist forms—monastic administration, education, and media—should adapt to modern social conditions rather than rigidly preserve tradition.

Internal controversies

Humanistic Buddhism also contains genuine tensions.

Depth versus breadth. If Buddhism emphasizes social service and mass dissemination, will meditation and doctrinal study—work requiring sustained attention and time—be marginalized?

The risk of secularization. Critics argue that in approaching modern society, Humanistic Buddhism may lose Buddhism’s transcendent dimension: liberation, Nibbāna, the thorough realization of not-self, and deep understanding of rebirth. “Serving others” cannot directly replace these. If Buddhism becomes elevated humanism, how does it essentially differ from Christian social service?

Traditional authority versus historical criticism. Yinshun’s historical-critical method is academically serious, but its relation to Mahāyāna traditions such as tathāgatagarbha, Pure Land, and Esoteric Buddhism remains unresolved. If those traditions are “historical departures,” what does that mean for hundreds of millions who practice through them? The dispute continues within Chinese Buddhism.

IX. Buddhism in Mainland China: Suppression and Revival¶

Suppression during the Cultural Revolution

After 1949, the People’s Republic of China regarded religion as “feudal dross.” The Cultural Revolution of 1966–1976 inflicted the most thorough blow upon Buddhism: many temples were destroyed or repurposed, statues smashed, monastics forced into lay life or imprisoned, and religious activity completely prohibited.

The institutional destruction of Chinese Buddhism during the Cultural Revolution was comparable in scale to the Huichang Persecution of 845. Much historical art, literature, and transmission was permanently lost.

Revival after 1978

Religious policy gradually relaxed after reform and opening. Monasteries began to reopen, monastics could again receive ordination, and religious activity was permitted within limits. The Buddhist Association of China, a state-approved religious administrative organization, resumed activity.

The revival took place under state control. Religion had to operate within an approved framework, and ordination, monastic administration, and religious education remained subject to state supervision.

The shape of contemporary mainland Buddhism

Contemporary mainland Buddhism presents a complex picture. On one hand, the number of monasteries increased substantially, Buddhist cultural tourism flourished, and many sites attracted large congregations and pilgrims. On the other, the commercialization of monasteries through tickets and commercial activity and the consumerization of Buddhist culture are real.

Some younger mainlanders seek deeper Buddhist practice through meditation, doctrinal study, and lay cultivation. This resembles aspects of Taiwanese Humanistic Buddhism, but occurs under very different conditions.

Southern Buddhism on the mainland: Yunnan traditions and new transmissions

Theravāda in mainland China is not limited to recent Han Chinese encounters. Dai, Blang, De’ang, and other communities in Yunnan have long sustained monastic education, Pāli liturgy, and local-script traditions connected to Buddhism in Myanmar, Thailand, and Laos. Dates of transmission and institutional histories differ by region and should not be compressed into a single unbroken thousand-year lineage. These are nevertheless historical traditions of China’s southwestern borderlands, not branches of Chinese Buddhism or merely recent imports.⁵

After 1978, Buddhist influences from Taiwan and Southeast Asia also entered the mainland. Insight courses and books and recordings by Theravāda teachers circulated in some cities, and some Han Chinese readers and practitioners began engaging Pāli literature and Southern practice. Public evidence establishes that such contacts exist, but does not support a reliable estimate of participation or organizational scale.

Small groups independently organizing collective religious activity are subject to the general rules governing registered religious organizations, venues, and religious personnel. Those constraints apply across organized religion and are not specific to Theravāda. The most defensible conclusion from public evidence is therefore narrower: Han Chinese engagement with Theravāda remains dispersed and difficult to quantify; the evidence does not justify describing the school itself as the target of a specific policy of either exclusion or encouragement.⁵

X. Globalization and Chinese Buddhism¶

Chinese Buddhism spread around the world together with Chinese migration. Communities and practice centers of varying scale exist in Southeast Asia—Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia—North America, Australia, and Europe.

Taiwan’s four great organizations, especially Fo Guang Shan and Tzu Chi, established dense networks in global Chinese communities and became the most important vehicles of Chinese Buddhist globalization.

Chinese Buddhism encounters different circumstances in the West from Japanese Zen and Tibetan Buddhism. Western understanding of East Asian Buddhism has long centered on Japanese Zen through D. T. Suzuki and Tibetan Buddhism through exiled Tibetans. Chinese Buddhism’s Western image remains comparatively indistinct. Yet the growth of Chinese immigrant communities and active internationalization by Taiwanese organizations are increasing its visibility.

XI. This Book’s Assessment¶

Humanistic Buddhism is a genuine philosophical and religious response

Faced with modernity, Humanistic Buddhism chose active participation. It presents Buddhism as a living tradition capable of responding to contemporary needs rather than an ancient artifact in a museum. In Taiwan, the attempt produced real social effects worthy of serious treatment.

Humanistic Buddhism’s internal tensions remain unresolved

Its founders’ works did not finally solve its central philosophical problems.

The relation between social service and liberation: Buddhist liberation—the complete realization of Nibbāna and not-self—and social participation on the bodhisattva path can be integrated theoretically. In practice, ensuring that social participation does not become merely secular humanitarianism remains a continuing tension.

Historical criticism and traditional authority: Yinshun’s historical method is academically serious, but its relation to Mahāyāna traditions such as tathāgatagarbha, Pure Land, and Esoteric Buddhism remains unresolved. If they are “historical departures,” what does that mean for hundreds of millions who practice through them?

The future of Chinese Buddhism

Whether in Taiwanese Humanistic forms, revived mainland Buddhism, or the diverse traditions of global Chinese communities, Chinese Buddhism stands at a crucial historical moment. Tension between tradition and modernity is unresolved; no stable balance between institution and spirit has been found; and relations with other Buddhist traditions and the global religious field are being redefined. These unfinished questions are not only regrets. They may also become resources through which the tradition continues to adjust itself.

References¶