Buddhist Responses to Christianity in Postwar Taiwan: Awakening the World 9789048544424

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Buddhist Responses to Christianity in Postwar Taiwan

Religion and Society in Asia The Religion and Society in Asia series presents state-of-the-art cross-disciplinary academic research on colonial, postcolonial and contemporary entanglements between the socio-political and the religious, including the politics of religion, throughout Asian societies. It thus explores how tenets of faith, ritual practices and religious authorities directly and indirectly impact on local moral geographies, identity politics, political parties, civil society organizations, economic interests, and the law. It brings into view how tenets of faith, ritual practices and religious authorities are in turn configured according to socio-political, economic as well as security interests. The series provides brand new comparative material on how notions of self and other as well as justice and the commonweal have been predicated upon ‘the religious’ in Asia since the colonial/imperialist period until today. Series Editors Martin Ramstedt, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle Stefania Travagnin, University of Groningen

Buddhist Responses to Christianity in Postwar Taiwan Awakening the World

Scott Pacey

Amsterdam University Press

Cover illustration: Speaker at a Catholic event on religious persecution in China held in 1960 Source: Central News Agency (photo by Deng Xiubi) Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden Typesetting: Crius Group, Hulshout isbn 978 94 6372 411 1 e-isbn 978 90 4854 442 4 doi 10.5117/9789463724111 nur 718 © Scott Pacey / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2020 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book.



Table of Contents

Acknowledgments 7 A Note on Romanization and Translations

9

Preface 11 Introduction 17 Chinese Buddhism and identity 19 The three teachings 27 Buddhism and Christianity in China 33 New intellectual and political responses 36 Enter the KMT 40 Modernity, and “KMT modernity” 41 Taixu 46 Overview of the study 48 1 Buddhism and Patriotism 57 Taiwan’s political context 60 Buddhism and KMT values 63 Awakening the world 77 Conclusion 87 2 Buddhism and Chinese Culture 89 Cultural renaissance 93 From Moses to Marx 94 “Slave society” 101 East of Eden 106 The genesis of a new approach 109 The study of Buddhism 113 Conclusion 119 3 Buddhism and Modernity Pointing at the moon Open letters to Du The science of Śākyamuni God and Gotama

121 127 132 136 140

Yinshun’s sources 142 Conclusion 145 4 Decline and Revitalization 149 Perceiving the decline 154 History as polemic 159 From the temple to the ivory tower 163 Conclusion 175 5 Sermons Among Mountains 177 Dharma Drum Mountain 183 Tzu Chi 188 Buddha-Light Mountain 195 Lingjiu Shan and Zhongtai Chansi 198 Conclusion 202 Conclusion 205 Religious inter-connectivity 206 Interfaith competition in Taiwan after 1949 207 KMT modernity 210 Interfaith competition and identity 214 List of Chinese Characters

217

Bibliography 225 Index 249

Acknowledgments In writing this book, I have benefitted from academic engagement with scholars too numerous to mention. However, I would like to thank Benjamin Penny, who was my doctoral supervisor at the Australian National University; this study in part stems from research I pursued for my thesis. I would also like to thank Stefania Travagnin for her support of this volume, and to Saskia Gieling, the Commissioning Editor of this series, for guiding me through the publication process. Between 2011 and 2013, when I commenced this project in earnest (while still pursuing other projects), I was a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Asian Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. My time there was funded by the Australian Friends of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the form of a Golda Meier Fellowship for Postdoctoral Research. My second year in Jerusalem was also partly funded by the Louis Frieberg Center for East-Asian Studies. I am grateful to these institutions, and to Yuri Pines for making me feel so welcome during those two years. Finally, my parents supported me unfailingly throughout my university study and in the years since then—during the long and difficult transition into academia and during my moves to different countries. This book is dedicated to them.



A Note on Romanization and Translations

This book uses the Hanyu pinyin system of romanization. However, if the name of an individual is commonly romanized in another way (e.g. Chiang Kai-shek), this more usual romanization will be given. Sanskrit terms listed in the Oxford English Dictionary (www.oed.com, as of November 28, 2019) are considered naturalized English terms, and appear here without diacritical marks. I refer to the “People’s Republic of China” using the abbreviation “PRC” or simply as “China,” while the “Republic of China” is referred to as the “ROC”. After 1949, when the ROC was confined to the island of Taiwan and other smaller, surrounding islands, the ROC is also referred to simply as “Taiwan”. Meanwhile, following convention, the Chinese Communist Party (Gongchandang) is abbreviated as “CCP,” and the Nationalist Party (Guomindang) is abbreviated as “KMT,” based on its Wade-Giles romanization (Kuomintang). Finally, unless otherwise noted, the translations in this volume are mine, but quotations from the Bible are taken from the English Revised Version, the source text of which was used when translating the most popular Protestant translation of the Bible in Taiwan—the Chinese Union Version (CUV; Heheben).1

1 See I-Jin Loh, “Chinese Translations of the Bible,” in An Encyclopedia of Translation, ed. Chan Sin-wai and David E. Pollard (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2001); Jost Oliver Zetzsche, The Bible in China: The History of the Union Version or the Culmination of Protestant Missionary Bible Translation in China (Nettetal: Steyler Verl., 1999), 200. See also Joseph Hong, “Revision of the Chinese Union Version Bible (CUV): Assessing the Challenges from an Historical Perspective,” The Bible Translator 53, no. 2 (2002).

Preface In the 1950s and 1960s, Christianity was rapidly expanding in Taiwan—so much so that in 1961, the senior presidential advisor Hollington Tong (18871971) proclaimed that “at the present rate of conversion, Taiwan is destined to become a Christian island in less than half a century.”1 While Tong may have been trying to shore up support for the island’s ruling party, the KMT, by appealing to American Christians, shortly after making his prediction Christian growth plateaued. Today, Taiwan is not a “Christian island” at all. In fact, according to the 2015 Taiwan Social Change Survey, Christians have instead made more modest gains; only 4.5% and 1.5% of respondents were Protestants and Catholics respectively. By way of contrast, Buddhists comprised 19.9%—and Daoists 16.6%—of the population; adherents of folk religion (35.5%) were even more numerous.2 But when Tong was writing his book, the situation was quite different. In 1945, Taiwan was returned to China after half a century spent in the Japanese Empire; then, there were only 8-10,000 Catholics and 60,000 Protestants on the island.3 But by the early 1960s, it was home to 300,000 Catholics and 280,000 Protestants. 4 In addition, Christians sat atop Taiwan’s political pantheon. This included the “Father of the Nation” (Guofu), Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925), who in 1912 became the ROC’s Provisional President after the overthrow of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), and the “generalissimo” Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975)—who ruled Taiwan as President of the ROC after losing the mainland to the Communists in China’s civil war, in 1949. Hundreds of foreign missionaries were active on the island as well.5 As we will see, this expanding Christian presence was particularly challenging to a vocal and influential group of Buddhists. It led them to issue stern critiques of Christianity, because they considered the rise of Protestantism and Catholicism to pose an existential threat—one that 1 Hollington K. Tong, Christianity in Taiwan: A History (Taipei: China Post, 1961), 240. 2 See page 168 of Fu Yangzhi, Zhang Yinghua, Du Suha and Liao Peishan (eds.), “Taiwan shehui bianqian jiben diaocha di qi di yi ci diaocha jihua zhixing baogao” (Zhongyang Yanjiuyuan Shehui Kexue Yanjiusuo, 2016). Available at: http://www.ios.sinica.edu.tw/sc/cht/datafile/tscs15. pdf (accessed January 25, 2019). Module II results are on page 290. 3 Government Information Office, The Republic of China Yearbook 1996 (Taipei: Government Information Office, 1996), 425. 4 Ibid. 5 See Murray A. Rubinstein, The Protestant Community on Modern Taiwan: Mission, Seminary and Church (Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 1991), 35.

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complemented Communism in mainland China. This is because after 1949 in the PRC, Buddhists (and other religious practitioners, including Christians) were faced with severe limitations on their religious freedom. Following more than a decade of repressive policies, during China’s Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), the Red Guards (Hong Weibing) decimated the country’s religious infrastructure, and religious practice itself was driven underground. Across the Taiwan Strait, a perusal of Buddhist publications reveals a general anxiety about the long-term viability of their tradition—with both Christianity and Communism mentioned as threats. Taiwan’s political context also incorporated clear boundaries of religious acceptability. For Buddhists to do well in the socio-political environment of the ROC—that is, to expand and flourish rather than just survive—they needed to demonstrate their adaptation to this climate. Between the mid1950s and mid-1970s, Buddhist laymen and monks, as well as Christian pastors and priests, thus competed with each other to demonstrate their compatibility with the party-state’s modernizing vision, and over which side was more loyal to the KMT’s conservative vision of Chinese culture. This book will show that while genuine interfaith dialogue in the PRC was impossible, Buddhist-Christian engagement remained vibrant in Taiwan—and that this had direct implications for how Buddhists saw and represented themselves. We will see that as Taiwan’s Buddhist-Christian engagement unfolded, a process of identity formation took place. This saw Buddhists frame their tradition using the language of modernity as a way of competing with Christians for socio-political acceptance. The microhistory that unfolds in the following pages also demonstrates that when we think about the engagement of religious actors with “modernity,” we should give due consideration to the type of modernity they dealt with. In this case, the process had implications for the continued development of Buddhism after the intensive phase of this interfaith competition had ended. This research evolved over a long period of time. I arrived in Taipei in 2005 as a doctoral student with the intention of researching contemporary Buddhist organizations. Although I did complete my dissertation on this subject, I found myself often surrounded by Christians rather than Buddhists. That year, I spent my first week in Taipei in the Living Stone Church (Huo Shi Jiaohui) in the district of Muzha,6 at the invitation of friends who, when dropping me off from the airport, baulked at the messy state of my pre-arranged accommodation. After leaving the church, I subsequently 6 The name of this church is taken from Peter 2:4, which refers to “a living stone, rejected indeed of men”.

Preface

13

remained in Muzha, where one could find other churches besides this one. Indeed, while I was there, two new churches opened nearby: one affiliated with “Little Flock” (Xiaoqun) movement, and a branch of the True Jesus Church (Zhen Yesu Jiaohui).7 Close-by was the Muzha Peniel Church (Muzha Bianyilihui). And, sharing a house with Christians, the television was often tuned to “Good TV”—a cable channel broadcasting Christian content. Although I lived near National Chengchi University, in 2005 I was actually an exchange student in the Philosophy Department at National Taiwan University (NTU). I was struck by the significant Christian presence in this area too. In front of the campus, one found everything you would expect in a student area—bookstores, print-shops and fast-food restaurants. But the area was (and remains) home to numerous churches as well. Staff and students at NTU were especially familiar with the Presbyterian “Grace Baptist Church” (Huai’en Tang), since it was situated directly opposite the university. In those days, it beamed the words “God is Love” in bright red lights from atop the roof, although this sign had disappeared when I passed by again in 2013. Another Christian edifice also towered nearby—the “True Lutheran Church” (Zhenli Tang)—the construction of which had been completed by the end of 2005. At night, a shining red crucifix gleamed from their sleek, ten-story building. There are other Christian establishments in the area besides these particular churches. Nearby is a brightly-lit bookshop called “Campus Books” (Xiaoyuan Shudian). With a slick, inviting interior, it does not specifically cater to the broader NTU community as the name would suggest—it only sells Christian publications and stationary. Yet it is bustling and wellpatronized. Meanwhile, Xinsheng South Road, which runs right near the university, is known as the “Road to Heaven” (Tiantang Lu) because of its high concentration of religious establishments.8 And a short distance away on Dingzhou Road, next to the Christian Morrison Academy-Bethany School (a Christian elementary and junior high school), is the China Evangelical Seminary (Zhonghua Fuyin Shenxueyuan), which provides comprehensive programs in theology, Bible Studies and missiology. It is not just around universities that one finds churches in Taipei. When the subway emerges from beneath the city, crucifixes compete with shopsigns for attention. And in Taiwan’s rural areas, tucked away between dumpling stalls, motorcycle repair shops and 7-11s, small congregations 7 Both are indigenous church movements with roots in China. 8 See “About Daan District,” Taipei City Government, available at: http://english.gov.taipei/ ct.asp?xItem=1104101&ctNode=27830&mp=100002 (accessed April 19, 2018).

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Buddhist Responses to Christianit y in Post war Taiwan

meet in much less obvious facilities. Yet, while this brief portrait may suggest that Christians have a significant numerical presence in Taiwan, they are a minority. According to 2005 statistics from the Ministry of the Interior, Taiwan was home to 3,609 Protestant churches and 1,151 Catholic churches. That is a sizeable number, but recall that in the mid-2000s, Catholics and Protestants together made up less than 4% of Taiwan’s overall population (which was nearly 23 million). At that time, Buddhists still had a comparable number of temples (4006) to Christian churches, but comprised a much higher proportion of the population.9 A word of caution is in order, however. As scholars of Chinese religion know, this type of data can be seriously misleading. Exclusivist beliefsystems, such as Christianity, have traditionally been alien to the Chinese religious framework. Even if respondents do align themselves with a particular religious identity, it might very well imply preference rather than exclusivism. Despite this, establishments identifying themselves exclusively in Buddhist terms these days dominate the island’s religious landscape. Organizations such as Tzu Chi, Dharma Drum Mountain and Buddha-Light Mountain today have numerous, highly visible projects across the island, and their outreach extends abroad. They contribute to a Buddhist cultural and media industry that includes books, television productions and websites. Buddhist mega-temples, almost brutalist in their declaration of presence—and their associated hospitals and universities—now loom large on the island. Twenty-first century Buddhism has greater institutional strength than it did in the middle of the twentieth century, when for the Buddhists we shall deal with here, the Christian challenge seemed urgent. Towards the end of this book, I will argue that the shape of modern Buddhism in Taiwan is partly due to its earlier engagement with Christianity—and that even as Buddhists critiqued Christian beliefs on the dimensions of KMT modernity, they emulated Christian behavior in areas such as charity, education and institutional organization. In this sense, for Buddhists, Christianity was a model “modern” religion. While it played this exemplary role in the republican era (1911-1949) in mainland China too, the Communist victory in China’s civil war meant that the framework for Buddhist engagement with Christianity was radically altered there. It was 9 Daoists, in turn, had a much larger number of establishments (18,274 temples) than Buddhists and Christians combined. See: Government Information Office, Taiwan Yearbook 2006, available at: http://web.archive.org/web/20070708213510/http://www.gio.gov.tw/taiwan-website/5-gp/ yearbook/22Religion.htm (accessed August 2, 2019).

Preface

15

in Taiwan, rather than China, that Buddhist-Christian engagement could continue to unfold, and where the implications of this earlier phase of their dialogue would manifest more fully. This had tangible, real-world effects on Taiwan’s religious landscape. Finally, a note on the methodology employed in this study. A scholar seeking to document Buddhist-Christian debate in China’s or Taiwan’s recent history is faced with a vast swathe of materials too numerous for any one individual to deal with. To avoid this archival deluge I have taken a microhistorical approach, and instead drawn from a limited range of inter-linked publications consisting of books, essays and magazine articles. I concentrate on a small number of actors—who were among the most vibrant and well-known participants in their respective religious communities. The time-span of this study has also been carefully chosen. Not only does it reflect the actual timeline of engagement between these religious actors—it commences when Christianity was growing rapidly on the island, and finishes when this growth had already plateaued. By then, Chiang Kai-shek’s death, and shifts in Taiwan’s socio-political landscape, changed the conditions in which interfaith competition took place. Through this more limited analysis, we will see the bigger-picture themes of adaptation and influence develop and operate in the process of Buddhist identity formation. By the end of the book, it will be clear that even as some Buddhists framed their self-conceptualization in opposition to Christianity, they also learned much from the normative model of modern religiosity they perceived in it. Later, they founded organizations and temple complexes that would eventually dwarf comparable Christian examples. The analysis will show that Buddhism in Taiwan thus bears the imprint of its engagement with Christianity in the middle of the twentieth century—something that can be seen in contemporary Buddhist self-conceptualizations, as well as the Buddhist hospitals, universities and media—of today.

Introduction Abstract The introduction outlines the study’s historical context and main questions. Beginning with a discussion of a 1981 conference on Buddhism and politics, it asks why elite Buddhist figures, in the decade after Chiang Kai-shek’s death, aligned KMT ideology with Buddhism—especially when the two figureheads of the party, Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek, were both Christians. Stepping back, and having outlined a phase of Christian growth in the early postwar era, it then describes the party’s modern Chinese cultural vision and values, which it promoted in the postwar period and which elite Buddhists aspired to in their competition with Christians for adherents. It then outlines the focus of the study: how Buddhists defined themselves as patriotic, “Chinese” and “modern”, in contrast to Christians, as a way of generating socio-political acceptability. Keywords: identity, modernity, KMT, Sanminzhuyi, Taixu, BAROC

In 1981—the 70th anniversary year of the revolution that brought an end to dynastic China—the Buddhist Association of the Republic of China (BAROC; Zhongguo Fojiao Hui) held a conference in Taiwan. As the official body representing Buddhists on the island, the BAROC had a close relationship with its ruling political party, the KMT.1 An important aim of the meeting was to express support for the party and its guiding ideology—the Three Principles of the People (Sanminzhuyi; consisting of nationalism, democracy and livelihood).2 What is notable about the speeches given there is the extent to which presenters were willing to actually equate Buddhism with this ideology. The three principles had been devised by the party’s founder, Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925), who led the movement to overthrow the Qing dynasty 1 See Laliberté, The Politics of Buddhist Organizations in Taiwan, 1989-2003: Safeguard the Faith, Build a Pure Land, Help the Poor (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004), 46-47. 2 See Orville Schell and John Delury, Wealth and Power: China’s Long March to the Twenty-First Century (New York: Random House, 2013), 127-135.

Pacey, S. Buddhist Responses to Christianity in Postwar Taiwan: Awakening the World. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020. doi: 10.5117/9789463724111_intro

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Buddhist Responses to Christianit y in Post war Taiwan

and establish the Republic of China in 1911-12. Although he was a Christian, speakers praised Sun and his ideological system in Buddhist terms, evoking a curious mixture of sacred and secular ideals. For example, according to the speaker Wuyi, only the thorough implementation of the Three Principles of the People, and the improvement of material and spiritual forms of life, accords with the needs of the Chinese people. This is also consistent with the Buddha’s original intention to purify the world. Therefore, using the Three Principles of the People to unite China is a unanimous requirement of all Chinese people. Naturally, Buddhists are no exception.3

According to Wuyi, then, involvement in the project to unify Taiwan and mainland China, brining it under KMT rule, was necessary not only because the Buddha’s teachings would perish under Communism, but because it was a patriotic duty. 4 Other speakers went further in their praise of Sun. The monastic Kaizheng compared him to the Buddha himself.5 Another contributor, Nianfa, asserted that Mahayana Buddhism (the form of Buddhism predominating in China and Taiwan) and the Three Principles of the People shared the same aim—that of “saving sentient beings.”6 Another, Longdao, even praised the principles as “a special Dharma-gate for seeking rebirth in the Pure Land.”7 In other words, it was a path leading to rebirth in an important paradisiacal realm featuring in Buddhist cosmology.8 By way of contrast, the monastic Shengkai described the PRC as a Buddhist “hell [existing within] the world of human beings.”9 Buddhism and the Three Principles of the People were therefore compatible; and the Buddha, and Sun Yat-sen, were spiritually aligned. (We shall 3 Wuyi, “Lixing de jueze,” in Fofa yu xiangguan zhengzhi sixiang lunji, ed. Cheng Wenxi (Taipei: Tianhua chuban shiye gufen youxian gongsi, 1981), 1. 4 Ibid. 5 Kaizheng, “Lun sixiang yu zhuyi,” in Fofa yu xiangguan zhengzhi sixiang lunji, ed. Cheng Wenxi (Taipei: Tianhua chuban shiye gufen youxian gongsi, 1981), 7. 6 Nianfa, “Cong Tiantai zongzu Tingzhe jiangning boguan zongjiangsi bei xian shuo qi,” in Fofa yu xiangguan zhengzhi sixiang lunji, ed. Cheng Wenxi (Taipei: Tianhua chuban shiye gufen youxian gongsi, 1981), 12. 7 Longdao, “Shixian Sanminzhuyi yu qiu sheng Jingtu,” in Fofa yu xiangguan zhengzhi sixiang lunji, ed. Cheng Wenxi (Taipei: Tianhua chuban shiye gufen youxian gongsi, 1981), 52. 8 Ibid., 54. 9 Shengkai, “Tuixing rensheng Fojiao jianshe renjian jingtu,” in Fofa yu xiangguan zhengzhi sixiang lunji, ed. Cheng Wenxi (Taipei: Tianhua chuban shiye gufen youxian gongsi, 1981), 44.

Introduction

19

see a similar approach taken by the monastic Taixu—this time during the republican era—later in this chapter and again in chapter five.) Considered alongside each other, the meaning behind these statements is clear—they conveyed a message to the party that Buddhists were patriotic supporters, because KMT ideology and Buddhism shared similar goals. Meanwhile, the speakers reiterated the view that the Communist political system would lead to Buddhism’s demise—after all, Communists saw religion as the “opium” of the people, and therefore, they implicitly urged Buddhists to support the ROC’s leadership—both for the sake of the nation, and their religion.

Chinese Buddhism and identity Did the speakers really believe in KMT ideology, or was their professed alignment with the party simply a matter of political expediency? We have reason to believe it was both. On the basis of research and interviews conducted in the mid-twentieth century, Holmes Welch reported that most émigré monastics (those who had fled the mainland) opposed Communism—and the BAROC was dominated by such figures.10 More recently, studies have shown that Taiwanese Buddhists (and indeed, most Christians) sought cooperation, rather than confrontation, with the government during Taiwan’s authoritarian era. Cheng-tian Kuo has demonstrated that that under martial law in Taiwan between 1949 and 1987, most Christians and Buddhists either supported the KMT or stepped back from political engagement.11 Richard Madsen has found that in the post-authoritarian era, Buddhist organizations contributed to democracy through their civic activities, but like other religious groups, they sought to cooperate with the government rather than confront it.12 And André Laliberté has also shown that the BAROC continued supporting the government even after martial law ended.13 Therefore, we cannot discount the probability that while the BAROC stance was expedient, it did not contradict their beliefs about the relationship between their faith and the party-state. 10 See Holmes Welch, The Buddhist Revival in China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968): 158-159. 11 Presbyterians were a notable exception, since they opposed the KMT’s authoritarian governance and advocated democracy. See Cheng-tian Kuo, Religion and Democracy in Taiwan (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008). 12 See Richard Madsen, Democracy’s Dharma: Religious Renaissance and Political Development in Taiwan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007). 13 Laliberté, The Politics of Buddhist Organizations in Taiwan.

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This should come as no surprise; Buddhism and nationalism have been entwined at numerous points in China’s recent history. Chan Sin-wai observes that late Qing figures like Tan Sitong (1865-1898) saw a unity between Buddhism and modernity that would enable China to elevate its global status and play a constructive role in the modern world.14 Zhang Taiyan (1868-1936) thought that Buddhism incorporated concepts which could foster an antiQing revolution.15 In republican China, the government official Dai Jitao (1891-1949), and the politician Zhang Jian (1853-1926), considered Buddhism as capable of saving society from moral decay. And reformer monastics like Taixu (1890-1947) saw it as the cure for China’s (and the world’s) modern ills.16 Others played an active role in opposing the Japanese invasion and defending the nation, arguing that it was acceptable to temporarily renounce vows against killing, or that killing was justifiable if it was to defend the lives of sentient beings.17 All of them saw Buddhism as able to save China from a moment of national crisis—either the domination of the crumbling Qing dynasty; social decline; intellectual and cultural instability; or the warlordism, Japanese invasion, and civil war that ravaged the nation until 1949. Even with these examples in mind, we are still no closer to understanding why the monastics in 1981, who were supposed to renounce worldly affairs, would promote nationalism or assert conceptual unity between Buddhism and secular politics. In reality, the question is probably more complex than this, because the KMT was not just a political party. According to its own narrative, it was the protector and promoter of Chinese culture that the Communists were destroying on the mainland. And to be sure, under Chiang Kai-shek, the government saw itself as representing all of China on the world stage. After all, the ROC occupied the China seat at the United Nations until it was replaced by the PRC in 1971, and Chiang planned to eventually retake the mainland by military force. Gestures towards Chinese cultural values were therefore not politically empty—by virtue of their connection to the KMT, they were bound up in the party’s conception of Chinese nationhood and identity. 14 Chan Sin-wai, Buddhism in Late Ch’ing Political Thought (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 1985). 15 Hao Chang, Chinese Intellectuals in Crisis: Search for Order and Meaning, 1890-1911 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987). 16 Xue Yu, “From Rejection of Buddhism to Advocacy of Buddhism,” Chinese Studies in History, 46:3 (2013), 7-27; Gregory Adam Scott, “The Buddhist Nationalism of Dai Jitao,” Journal of Chinese Religions 39:1 (2011), 55-81; Don A. Pittman, Toward a Modern Chinese Buddhism: Taixu’s Reforms (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2001); see also Xue Yu, Buddhism, War and Nationalism: Chinese Monks in the Struggle Against Japanese Aggressions, 1931-1945 (New York: Routledge, 2005). 17 See chapter 2 of Xue, Buddhism, War and Nationalism.

Introduction

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Culture, politics and the nation have also been closely related in recent Chinese history. For scholars such as James Harrison, in pre-modern China, identity in fact derived from “culturalism” rather than any political affinity.18 Being “Chinese” was therefore open to anybody who partook in the Confucian culture. This perspective complemented the imperial project, enabling emperors to rule over a vast, diverse empire and ensure ideological unity. But with China’s transition to the Westphalian model of statehood after 1911, culturalism gave way to nationalism. With this change in how “China” was conceived, one could express loyalty to the nation while critiquing its culture since the two were now seen as related, but separate.19 Joseph Levenson explains that Chinese nationalism resulted from an “intellectual alienation from traditional Chinese culture,”20 which intellectuals blamed for China’s fall from great power status. Intellectuals subsequently grappled with which aspects of Chinese tradition should be retained, and which should be rejected, if there were to be a national rejuvenation. The “culturalism to nationalism thesis” has an heuristic appeal, but it is not without its detractors. James Townsend notes that in reality, there was no clear distinction between culturalism and nationalism. His observation reminds us that in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, “contrary to the thrust of the thesis, culturalism could co-exist with other ideas about state and nation, could lend support in modern times to both state and ethnic nationalism, and hence could retain some influence on Chinese nationalism down to the present.”21 We can say the same for republican China; Sun promoted a form of Chinese nationalism devoted to bringing about the end of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911)—a dynasty presided over by the non-Han Manchus.22 His nationalism was therefore tied up with notions of culture and ethnicity.23 And Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975)—Sun’s ideological heir and leader of the ROC between 1928 and 1975—promoted Chinese nationalism alongside Confucianism.24 18 James Harrison, Modern Chinese Nationalism (Hunter College of the City of New York, Research Institute on Modern Asia, New York, n.d). 19 Joseph R. Levenson, Confucian China and its Modern Fate: The Problem of Intellectual Continuity, Vol. 1 of 3 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958), 98. 20 Ibid., 95 21 James Townsend, “Chinese Nationalism,” The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs 27 (January, 1992): 123-124. 22 Schell and DeLury, Wealth and Power, 123. 23 Ibid., 131. 24 Ibid., 182-187.

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The KMT’s cultural projects during the republican era, and later in Taiwan, reflected its particular cultural vision. In Religion and Nationalism in Chinese Societies, Cheng-tian Kuo argues that The political and religious anarchy in the early Republican era contributed to the rise of a new state religion, called “Chinese nationalism”. China became the new god above all other gods (Buddha, Confucius, Laozi, Jehovah, Allah, Mother of No Birth, and others). The Chinese state off icials and intellectuals became the greatest prophets and priests among all religious clergy, although they were free to take on other religious identities. All other religions were supposed to serve this supreme god and obey the new political revelations of its prophets and priests.25

Such was the context—one of “asymmetrical religion-state relations”26—in which Buddhists, Christians and other religious groups carried out their own forms of religious practice. That is, one in which the state clearly held the balance of power in the emerging church-state relationship. After the civil war, the KMT continued to promote Chinese nationalism in Taiwan. But in time, Taiwanese nationalism came to compete with the KMT’s Chinese nationalism. Martial law ended in 1987, and the ensuing democratization meant that “various religious groups are no longer subject to the guidance of Chinese nationalism nor the strong state.”27 The reconsideration of what it means to be Taiwanese, rather than simply “Chinese,” meant that different conceptions of identity developed. Today, Kuo argues that a nascent civil religion has emerged in Taiwan—one that “bestows godly status to universal human rights and democracy rather than Taiwanese nationalism or Chinese patriotism.”28 This has, in turn, been a powerful influence on religion in Taiwan over the last several decades.29 Meanwhile, Edmund Frettingham and Yih-Jye Hwang have observed that while modernization is normally associated with a division between religion and national identity, in Taiwan, “religious traditions have been shaped by the same impulses towards culturally authentic modernity that 25 Cheng-tian Kuo, “Introduction: Religion, State, and Religious Nationalism in Chinese Societies,” in Religion and Nationalism in Chinese Societies, ed. Cheng-tian Kuo (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017), 23. 26 Ibid., 27. 27 Ibid., 28. 28 Ibid., 33. 29 Ibid., 33-34.

Introduction

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animate nationalist projects.”30 In the case of the Buddhist figures to be discussed here, some of them maintained a close relationship with the state through various institutions, while others, such as Yinshun and Shengyan (as we will see), had close, tense encounters with state authorities. These relationships and pressures created a normalizing influence that supported the nationalist project at the elite religious level. Given that BAROC served as an interface between the government and Taiwanese Buddhism on the ground, we would therefore expect representatives to cite an affinity not only between Buddhism and KMT thought, but also Chinese (primarily Confucian) culture. And in 1981, other speakers did just this. The prolific writer and lecturer on Buddhism and Chinese philosophy, Zhang Tingrong, for example, said that the Father of the Nation’s [Sun Yat-sen’s] Three Principles of the People inherits Chinese culture and Confucian orthodoxy. It is broad and extensive, and blends the virtues and wisdom of a fine culture. Mahayana Buddhist culture has existed in China for 2,000 years. Inseparable, like water mixed with milk, it has combined with mainstream Confucian and Mencian culture, and the habits and lives of the Chinese people.31

Meanwhile, the Buddhist layman Wen Genghe stated that Buddhism “has influenced our culture and way of life,” and that the teachings of ancient Chinese sage kings and philosophers, such as “Yao, Shun, Wen, Wu, the Duke of Zhou, and Confucius, not only are the same as what the Father of the Nation said, but are a line of Confucian orthodoxy that is continued forth by the Three Principles of the People.”32 Zhang and Wen thus linked Buddhism not only to the progenitors of Confucian thought, but directly to Sun Yat-sen and his ideology. At the same conference, then, we encounter multiple kinds of Buddhists— Buddhists as patriots, and Buddhists as cultural loyalists. These comments 30 Edmund Frettingham and Yih-Jye Hwang, “Religion and National Identity in Taiwan: State Formation and Moral Sensibilities,” in Religion and Nationalism in Chinese Societies, ed. Cheng-tian Kuo (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017), 367. 31 Zhang Tingrong, “Fahui Fojiao wu tezhi yi zengqiang sanminzhuyi tongyi Zhongguo wu zhong Liliang,” in Fofa yu xiangguan zhengzhi sixiang lunji, ed. Cheng Wenxi (Taipei: Tianhua chuban shiye gufen youxian gongsi, 1981), 85. Mencius (371-289 BCE) was the most important Confucian after Confucius himself. 32 Wen Genghe, “Shijian Fofa jiushi shijian datong lixiang,” in Fofa yu xiangguan zhengzhi sixiang lunji, ed. Cheng Wenxi (Taipei: Tianhua chuban shiye gufen youxian gongsi, 1981), 22.

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are emblematic of a decades-long process of Buddhist identity-formation within a political context dominated by the KMT. After half a century in the Japanese empire, being returned to China in 1945, and then becoming the last bastion of the ROC after Chiang’s loss to the Communists in 1949, Taiwan has a complex history of identity. Mark Harrison has shown how the KMT sought to exert control over this, aiming to “naturalize notions like a singular coherence to Chinese identity and 5,000 years of continuous history,”33 teaching Chinese identity through the education system and military. We can perhaps see the fruits of this identity-building project in the above speeches, made by figures associated with BAROC, itself an interface between the state and temples. But with the US-China détente in 1972, as Harrison writes, and “without the external reference of cold war geopolitics … the rhetoric of anti-Communism, struggle, and hope for revival became more and more hollow.” And following this decline of KMT ideology, alternative expressions of Chinese nationalism filled the void left by its increasing hollowness. A new generation was emerging at the same time as these broad geopolitical changes were occurring. Its members were the product of twenty years of economic development and of a broadening of the demographic base of education. By 1970, this generation of younger Taiwanese found themselves in schools, universities, and the armed forces reciting KMT ideology. But precisely as the meaning of KMT rhetoric evaporated, those in a position to perceive its emptiness immediately sought to fill the social vacuum with a different language, one that was legitimized in ways alternative to those of the KMT, and through which they could sustain the meaning of the nation and of their place in it.34

Harrison argues that identity in Taiwan “does not simply have a location and Taiwanese identity is as much nowhere as everywhere.”35 And yet, identity itself is not an empty construct; as we have seen, it can encompass political, cultural, and religious elements; it is a useful concept that can help us understand why the BAROC speakers, even in 1981, claimed Sun’s thought to have Buddhist, rather than Christian, leanings, and why they were so intent on displaying their cultural and political cache. And as Harrison 33 Mark Harrison, Legitimacy, Meaning and Knowledge in the Making of Taiwanese Identity (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 99. 34 Ibid., 117. 35 Mark Harrison, “Where is Taiwanese Identity?” in The Margins of Becoming: Identity and Culture in Taiwan, 241-253, ed. Carsten Storm and Mark Harrison (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2007), 248.

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makes clear, notions of identity do not emerge from a vacuum—instead, they exist in a complex relationship with the environment and other actors in it. Since a repertoire of politically-charged values proliferated under the KMT, it is not the case that one configuration was possible when identifying with the party or its values. Moreover, identity itself is not fixed or static. As Craig Calhoun has written, essentialist approaches to identity posit rigid categories that do not allow for fluidity,36 but recent work on identity postulates that “as lived, identity is always project, not settled accomplishment; though various external ascriptions or recognitions may be fixed and timeless.”37 Bearing in mind the malleability and contextual-embeddedness of identity, it becomes possible to see how varieties of Buddhist identity could incorporate cultural, nationalist and “modern” elements among different actors across the ROC’s history. The multi-dimensionality of Buddhist identity in the ROC was a product of the engagement it had with different actors on the religious and socio-political landscape, since identity-formation occurs through interaction—something that scholars such as George H. Mead and Erving Goffman have dealt with in their now-classic studies. For Mead, “the transformation of the biologic individual to the minded organism or self takes place … through the agency of language” and occurs in interactive contexts.38 And for Goffman, identity is not only contextual but also performative, because on the basis of “setting, appearance, and manner” we project desired identities to other social actors.39 Other scholars have shown us that identity is constructed discursively.40 This is affirmed by Stuart Hall, who points out that identities are “never unified and, in late modern times, increasingly fragmented and fractured; never singular but multiply constructed across different, often intersecting and antagonistic discourses, practices and positions.”41 He explains that since identities are constructed within, not outside, discourse, we need to understand them as produced in specific historical and institutional 36 See Craig Calhoun, “Social Theory and the Politics of Identity,” in Social Theory and the Politics of Identity, ed. Craig Calhoun (Oxford, Blackwell: 1994). 37 Ibid., 27. 38 Charles W. Morris, “Introduction,” in George H. Mead, Mind, Self & Society: From the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1952), xx. 39 Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Hammondsworth: Penguin, 1990), 39. 40 Bethan Benwell and Elizabeth Stokoe, Discourse and Identity (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006), 29. 41 Stuart Hall, “Who Needs ‘Identity’?”, in Identity: A Reader, ed. Paul Du Gay, Jessica Evans and Peter Redman (London, Sage: 2000), 17.

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sites within specific discursive formations and practices, by specific enunciative strategies. … Moreover, they emerge within the play of specific modalities of power, and thus are more the product of the marking of difference and exclusion …42

Identities may not be fixed and interminable, but they take shape in relation to frameworks of normativity and the power they embody. 43 From where do these frameworks of normativity, and power, derive? According to Foucault, “each society has its régime of truth, its ‘general politics’ of truth: that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true.”44 A truth regime is an expression of power precisely because without the institutional capacity to discipline, or the disciplinary conventions of truth, truth itself cannot be established as such. Looking at Taiwan, we find a clear example of this in the martial law period. Normative truth (concerning the culture and politics related to the party-state) was promoted through official state channels, while counter-truths were censored by government departments. To actively oppose this meant risking arrest and punishment. Discursive expressions of identity, in 1981 and in the decades before, therefore unfolded against a background of the KMT’s own particular presentation of what the nation was and what Chinese culture meant. While the dynamics of identity-formation can be understood in this way—that is, as being multi-dimensional, contingent upon interaction, and formed within frameworks of normativity and power, we are still no closer to understanding the actual motives of Buddhists in 1981. Why would they articulate such an identity—one that aligned them with the KMT’s worldly, secular values and cultural vision—and Sun Yat-sen, who was a Christian? To answer this question, we need to situate Buddhism on China’s political, cultural and religious landscapes during the decades prior to the conference. In particular, we must consider the emergence of the narrative of modernity, and how this impacted discussions of religion by establishing new frameworks of normativity. Following on from this, we must consider the role of Christianity as a model of normative modern religiosity, in competition and in dialogue with Christianity. But first, we need to gain some background knowledge—about Buddhism and its place in China’s broader religious world, and about the historical 42 Ibid. 43 Ibid., 23-24. 44 Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977, ed. Colin Gordon (New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1980), 131.

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reception of Christianity in China. This will prepare us for the discussion that follows, but will also provide another example of how Chinese Buddhists framed their identity in response to interactions with non-Buddhists. Our coverage of this history will not only provide us with necessary contextual information; it will also demonstrate that the twentieth-century was not the first time Buddhist identity and self-representation emerged as an adaptation to external, non-Buddhist frameworks of truth and normativity.

The three teachings After its arrival in the first century from the Indic cultural sphere, Buddhism interacted with China’s two main religico-philosophical traditions: Confucianism and Daoism. In time, these traditions were seen as broadly compatible, forming a triad called the “three teachings” (or sanjiao, in Chinese). Stephen Teiser provides an example of how this was conceived with the scholar Li Shiqian (523-588), who compared “the three traditions to significant heavenly bodies, suggesting that although they remain separate, they also coexist as equally indispensable phenomena of the natural world.”45 Even though, as Joachim Gentz notes, such conceptions ascribed primacy to one tradition or another, 46 they indicated a recognition of the place of each within a larger system. Such comments indicate how Buddhists were able to successfully integrate into a broader framework of normativity by showing that they did not conflict with pre-existing values and attitudes. The three teachings did not, and do not, account for the totality of Chinese religion—popular religion expanded beyond these to include magical practices, the veneration of different deities, spirit-writing, as well as oral and textual traditions that vary across communities.47 But because Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism provided so much conceptual material to these traditions; and because the three teachings are most relevant to the discussion at hand, we will focus on them here. The first we will consider is Confucianism. Confucius (551-479 BCE) himself was responsible for laying the foundation of China’s perennial system of civic ethics, which, at their most fundamental level, teach that 45 Stephen F. Teiser, “The Spirits of Chinese Religion,” in Religions of China in Practice, ed. Donald S. Lopez, Jr (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 3. 46 See Joachim Gentz, “Religious Diversity in Three Teachings Discourses,” in Religious Diversity in Chinese Thought, ed. Perry Schmidt-Leukel and Joachim Gentz (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). 47 See Tesier, “The Spirits of Chinese Religion,” 21.

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human life should be ordered according to normative standards and forms of behavior, the performance of which generates virtue. According to this view, social order would be achieved through the regulation of relations between people who performed different social roles (those of friends, siblings, husbands and wives, rulers and ministers, and parents with their children). 48 Meanwhile, Confucians upheld filial piety (xiao) as underpinning notions of what it meant to be civilized. As we will see in the next chapter, questions around filiality—or the roles and duties of children and parents—became important in the discussion that unfolded between Buddhists and Christians, as it was also considered a defining feature of what it meant to be “Chinese.” We can understand how individual identities and responsibilities contributed to Confucian governance by consulting the Great Learning (Daxue)—a key fifth to third century BCE Confucian text. This taught that the ancients who wanted to manifest their bright virtue to all in the world first governed well their own states. Wanting to govern well their states, they first harmonized their own clans. Wanting to harmonize their own clan, they first cultivated themselves. Wanting to cultivate themselves, they first corrected their minds. Wanting to correct their minds, they first made their wills sincere. Wanting to make their wills sincere, they first extended their knowledge. 49

Confucianism, in this construct, links the individual to the state through the family and society. At each level, successful regulation according to ethical and behavioral standards contributed to stability and order in the next. But Confucianism was, and is, not simply a device for social control; it also taught people how to become morally exemplary individuals. The Confucian thinker, Mencius, explained that human nature was fundamentally good—but that this goodness had to be cultivated. While others suggested that human nature was fundamentally selfish, the Mencian view gained precedence in China, and thus we might say that Confucianism is a total system of moral, behavioral and political standards and ideals. Following on from this, Dong Zhongshu (179-104 BCE)—whose reading of Confucianism stressed strong centralized government—successfully 48 On this, see Herbert Fingarette, Confucius: The Secular as Sacred (New York: Harper and Row, 1972). 49 Charles A. Muller (trans.), The Great Learning, 2013. Available at http://www.acmuller.net/ con-dao/greatlearning.html (accessed June 7, 2016).

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lobbied for Confucian texts to become the only philosophical treatises to be studied at the imperial academy, further cementing their influence.50 Confucianism has been influential in Chinese politics since then, and we can see elements of Confucian loyalty extended to the state in the KMT’s conception of government. One example of this concerns the party’s treatment of the “Great Unity” (datong). Originally, the Great Unity was a concept proposed in the second to third century BCE text, Book of Rites (Liji). It described an idealized, wellordered, peaceful, virtuous society; this provided inspiration for Sun Yat-sen, who conceived of his three principles as underpinning the establishment of a modern datong.51 Chiang Kai-shek likewise praised the Great Unity, taking it as an ideal for China’s future economic development.52 Clearly, then, this ancient utopia occupied a unique place in KMT theory. Establishing continuity between KMT thought and China’s Confucian past was a key legitimizing strategy for the government. The aspiration towards the Great Unity remains in the national anthem of the ROC today.53 Confucianism has traditionally incorporated the veneration of deceased ancestors, which became problematic for Christians seeking to convert followers in China. These ancestors required sustenance in the form of sacrifice; to be unfilial towards one’s ancestors was profoundly inhuman and it was therefore an essential part of Chinese religiosity. In the early eighteenth century, ancestor veneration became an obstacle to the continued promotion of Christianity in China by the Catholic priesthood, since Rome regarded this practice as pagan. It was only in 1939 that the Church finally decreed that the veneration of ancestors was an expression of respect, that it had lost its religious connotations and that it was civic in nature. In many ways, the second tradition we will consider, Daoism (sometimes also romanized as “Taoism”), is fundamentally different to Confucianism. It is unlikely that the first Daoist thinker, Laozi (fl. 6th century BCE), actually existed. Rather, the text attributed to him, the The Classic of the Way and Virtue (Daodejing—differing versions of which date to at least the 3rd century BCE)—probably stems from a broad community of teachers. Unlike 50 See Daniel L. Overmyer, “Chinese Religion,” in The Religious Traditions of Asia: Religion, History and Culture, ed. Joseph Kitagawa (London: Routledge, 2002), 271. 51 See Bart Dessein, “Yearning for the Lost Paradise: The ‘Great Unity’ (datong) and its Philosophical Interpretations,” Asian Studies 5: 1 (2017): 83-102. 52 Chiang Kai-shek, China’s Destiny and Chinese Economic Theory (New York: Roy Publishers, 1947), 288-292. 53 See Sun Yat-sen, “National Anthem,” Office of the President of the Republic of China (Taiwan), available at: https://english.president.gov.tw/Page/97 (accessed April 17, 2019).

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the clear standards of morality and behavior found in Confucianism, The Classic of Way and Virtue talks about the “Way” (Dao) being unknowable, and explains that adaptation to the processual unfolding of reality can yield personal benefit. The next most important Daoist thinker after the putative Laozi, Zhuangzi (369-286 BCE), taught that standards such as Confucius’s were human constructs, did not reflect nature, and should not be adhered to unquestioningly. Instead, he actively flaunted tradition and taught a doctrine of opposites, finding truth in the space between juxtapositions. Laozi and Zhuangzi are representative of what we call “philosophical Daoism”. But by the fourth century, Daoism had “a literate and self-perpetuating priesthood, a pantheon of celestial deities, complex rituals, and revealed scriptures in classical Chinese.”54 A key focus of this religious form of Daoism was the pursuit of longevity and immortality through dietary, alchemical, meditative and physical techniques aimed at replenishing the body’s qi, or vital energy. Although these practices are different to those found in Buddhism, Daoist cultivation led to early practitioners taking an interest in Buddhism.55 Buddhism shares some similarities with Confucianism and Daoism, but there are also many differences. Like Christianity, it originated outside the Chinese cultural sphere. The Buddha himself was born in the sixth century BCE in Lumbinī, in modern-day Nepal. The body of doctrine that emerged from his teachings centers on becoming “enlightened,” or understanding the world in its true and correct totality. This realization leads to liberation from the continuous cycle of rebirths known as “samsara.” Such a state, known as “nirvana,” is the absence of the dissatisfaction and suffering which characterizes samsara. Two broad kinds of Buddhism proliferate in the world today: Hinayana and Mahayana.56 (We have already heard “Mahayana Buddhism” referred to at the 1981 conference.) The first kind, which means “small vehicle” in the Buddhist liturgical language of Sanskrit, and which is pejoratively named as such by adherents of Mahayana, predominates in Sri Lanka and South-East Asia. The second kind, which emerged by the first century and means “great vehicle,” predominates in Central and East Asia. Mahayana Buddhists accept a greater number of canonical texts than Hinayana Buddhists do; one the most important features of these is the expanded role of the “bodhisattva”—a 54 Overmyer, “Chinese Religion,” 279. 55 See Erik Zürcher, “Buddhist Influence on Early Taoism: A Survey of Scriptural Evidence,” T’oung Pao Second Series 66:1/3 (1980): 84-147. 56 Tibetan Buddhism, or Vajrayana, is sometimes considered a third vehicle.

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being who delays full enlightenment in order to help others reach that state. The Mahayana pantheon also includes an expanded cosmos, replete with innumerable buddhas and bodhisattvas. Both Hinayana and Mahayana Buddhists nominally take refuge in the “Three Jewels”: the Buddha, the “Dharma” and the “sangha.” (Few Chinese adherents, though, actually go through a ceremony to do this.) The Buddha features among the so-called “jewels” because his enlightenment serves as evidence that the cycle of reincarnation can be brought to an end. Meanwhile, his doctrine—the Dharma—provides the teachings necessary to achieve enlightenment. At the most basic level, this consists of the eightfold path, which includes right views, thoughts, speech, actions, livelihood, effort, mindfulness and concentration.57 Finally, the sangha, or community of Buddhists, provides a network of mutually supportive followers. In China, monastics (who are celibate and vegetarian), renounce all family ties and devote themselves to practice, providing ceremonial and teaching services to lay-Buddhists on whom they depend for alms. Mahayana Buddhism underwent substantial development in China after it started arriving there in the first century. But tension with Confucians and Daoists ensued in the centuries that followed. Mario Poceski notes regarding the intellectual climate following Buddhism’s introduction that in the eyes of many Chinese ideologues and intellectuals, their culture was glorious and complete. It also had distinguished sages such as Confucius and Laozi, who in ancient times have revealed the essential patterns of proper human behavior and have plumbed the timeless mysteries of the Dao. Therefore, it looked unseemly for their countryman to worship an odd foreign deity, or to follow strange customs imported from distant lands.58

Besides accusations of general corruption, philosophers and members of the Chinese literati also charged Buddhism with being unsuited to China’s socio-political context, and the monastery as being a drain on economic resources. In contrast, Buddhists argued that there was coherence between their tradition, and Daoist and Confucian ideas.59 Tension also spilled over 57 See Digital Dictionary of Buddhism, s.v. “eightfold correct path”. Available at http://www. buddhism-dict.net/cgi-bin/xpr-ddb.pl?q=%E5%85%AB%E6%AD%A3%E9%81%93 (accessed June 4, 2016). 58 Mario Poceski, “Buddhism in Chinese History,” in Wiley Blackwell Companion to East and Inner Asian Buddhism, ed. Mario Poceski (Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley Blackwell, 2014), 45. 59 See chapter 5 of E. Zürcher, The Buddhist Conquest of China: The Spread and Adaptation of Buddhism in Early Medieval China (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1959).

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into the political arena. The Northern Wei tried to abolish Buddhism in 446-452, and the Northern Chou ordered monks to return to lay-life in 574-577.60 Along with other foreign religions, Buddhism underwent a severe persecution in China between 843 and 845 at the hands of the Daoist emperor Wuzong (814-846).61 Why would such tensions exist? Confucians charged that Buddhism was antithetical to values such as filial piety, seeking instead to transcend the conventional world and society. For example, monastics did not produce male heirs to continue the family line—an egregious Confucian sin. In tracts such as the second-to-fifth century text, Master Mou’s Treatise on Resolving the Doubts (Mouzi lihuo lun), Buddhists argued their tradition enabled disciples to present a means of ultimate liberation to their parents—a supreme act of filial piety.62 And while Daoists saw similarities between their tradition and Buddhism, even regarding it as a doctrine that had been taught by Laozi himself (in the guise of the Buddha) in India, there was, of course, a difference: Buddhists aimed at escaping the cycle of rebirths, and key Daoist aim was to extend life, even attaining immortality. However, meditative, conceptual, and cosmological similarities meant that Buddhism and Daoism found a way to coexist within the three teachings construct. By the Tang dynasty (618-907), Buddhism had become a key influence on Chinese intellectual and artistic life. In the Song (960-1279), Confucian philosophers were deeply influenced by Buddhist ideas; neo-Confucianism subsequently became a mainstay of Chinese religico-philosophical life, particularly among literate elites.63 And Buddhism itself remained important, despite the tensions surrounding its presence in China and its compatibility with native Chinese traditions, in the centuries that ensued. There are two Buddhist traditions, in particular, that we need to consider in order to understand our discussion in later chapters: Pure Land, and Chan. The first centers on paradisiacal realms located in distant regions of the Buddhist cosmos, which various buddhas have purified of negative karma by fulfilling benevolent vows. The Pure Lands themselves are supremely suited to Buddhist practice, since none of the earthly afflictions hindering progress on the path to enlightenment can be found there. In China, the focus of Pure Land belief is the land of Sukhāvatī, over which the Buddha 60 Kenneth Ch’en, Buddhism in China: A Historical Survey (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), 199. 61 Overmyer, “Chinese Religion,” 288. 62 Erik J. Zürcher, The Buddhist Conquest of China: The Spread and Adaptation of Buddhism in Early Medieval China (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2007), 13-15. 63 Overmyer, Chinese Religion,” 290-291.

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Amitābha presides. Practitioners aim for rebirth in this realm, focusing their practice on the recitation of his name.64 Meanwhile, Chan (or Zen, in Japanese) focuses on meditation, in which the mind is stilled so as to gain direct insight into reality. Tradition holds that the Indian monastic Bodhidharma (b. 5th century) brought this practice to China, and later, according to an account found in the Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch (Liu zu tan jing; composed in the 9th century), a debate emerged between two monastics—Shenxiu (606-706) and Huineng (638713), each of whom represented a different approach to enlightenment. Huineng apparently won this debate and became the sixth patriarch of Chan, establishing the idea that one could become instantaneously enlightened as orthodox. Later still, two important schools of Chan emerged; the Linji school employed riddles aimed at disrupting conventional thought, and the Caodong school employed sitting meditation as a way of gaining “silent illumination.”65 The Buddhist writers we will examine later emerged from a background in which these ideas were dominant—and later on, we will see what role they played in their discussions with Christians.

Buddhism and Christianity in China In sum, although tensions existed around the presence of Buddhism in China, it eventually came to be broadly accepted as a part of the Chinese religious landscape. Buddhist writers paid homage to Confucian and Daoist ideas, also influencing these two traditions. While this process of adaptation and development was underway, Nestorian Christians entered the Chinese world from the Sassanian Empire (224-636).66 Yet the context surrounding Christianity 64 Digital Dictionary of Buddhism, s.v. “forty-eight vows”. Available at: http://www.buddhismdict.net/cgi-bin/xpr-ddb.pl?q=%E5%9B%9B%E5%8D%81%E5%85%AB%E9%A1%98 (accessed June 4, 2016). On Chinese Pure Land thought, see Charles B. Jones, “The Pure Land in the History of Chinese Buddhism,” in The Buddhist World, ed. John Powers (London: Routledge, 2015); David W. Chappell, “The Formation of the Pure Land Movement in China: Tao-ch’o and Shan-tao,” in The Pure Land Tradition: History and Development, ed. James Foard, Michael Solomon and Richard Payne (Berkeley: Regents of the University of California, 1996), 162. 65 For an overview of Chan, see Heinrich Dumoulin, Zen Buddhism: A History. Volume 1: India and China, trans. James Heisig and P. Knitter (Bloomington: World Wisdom, 2005). 66 Nestorius (381?-451?), the bishop of Constantinople, held Jesus had a dual nature: he was both a man, and the son of God. This position differed from that arrived at by the councils of Nicaea (325) and Constantinople (381)—that these divine and human aspects existed in a perfect union. Nestorius was exiled to Egypt in 436, but a school formed around his teachings in the fifth century in Edessa.

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in China was quite different to the Buddhist experience. While Buddhism was becoming increasingly sinified, the Nestorian presence remained mostly foreign. And when the emperor closed foreign religious institutions in 845, there was no Chinese community to maintain Nestorian Christianity, leading to its disappearance. Although Christianity later returned to China with the expansion of the Mongolian Yuan dynasty (1260-1368), Nestorians lost contact with westward Christians when the Mongols embraced Islam. During the Yuan, Christianity again gained a foothold in China when the Franciscan monk Giovanni da Montecorvino established a church in Beijing in 1294. Even so, it was nearly three centuries before a concerted Catholic effort to spread the gospel in China would commence. In 1583, the Italian Jesuits Michele Ruggieri and Matteo Ricci arrived in the southern Chinese city of Zhaoqing; eager to show their respect for Chinese tradition, they shaved their heads and dressed as Buddhist monks. They soon learned that it was Confucians, rather than Buddhists, who were held in most respect and formed the political and philosophical elite. Ricci and his colleagues therefore changed tack and emphasized the similarities between Christianity and Confucianism.67 And they interpreted Confucian rituals as civic rather than religious in nature (and hence as compatible with Christianity).68 Rome later forbade Chinese Christians from practicing rites venerating ancestors in 1704—a ban reinforced by Benedict XIV in 1742.69 In response, in 1724, the emperor proscribed Christianity, and missionary efforts stalled until after China’s defeat in the Opium War with Britain in 1842. Despite the liberal approach of Jesuit missionaries to proselytization in the early seventeenth century, and some initial admiration from the literati, Christianity had already begun provoking strong critiques from Buddhists and Confucians. According to Paul A. Cohen, this opposition was founded in two notions—the “heterodox” (xiejiao) and “orthodox” (zhengjiao)—terms that were used to label teachings that were “subversive of the political and social status quo.”70 The accusation was that Christianity was an alien tradition 67 This lead to critiques from some members of the literati—the Buddhist Ouyi Zhixu, for example, criticized their use of the Confucian term for “Heaven”—Tian—as a translation for “God,” thus implying that Confucianism embodied an ancient monotheism. See Charles Jones, “Pi xie ji: Collected Refutations of Heterodoxy by Ouyi Zhixu, 1599–1655,” Pacific World Journal (Third Series) 11 (Fall, 2009), 352. 68 Jacques Gernet, China and the Christian Impact, trans. Janet Lloyd (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 24. 69 They did, however, recognize them as secular and permit them in 1939. 70 Paul A. Cohen, China and Christianity: The Missionary Movement and the Growth of Chinese Antiforeignism, 1860-1870 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963), 19.

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which disrupted the traditional religico-philosophical order founded in the teachings of past Chinese sages,71 leading to attacks that were sufficiently consistent and continuous to represent a “tradition” of Chinese anti-Christian thought. This “proved a major influence on, as well as source for, the antiChristian attitudes of the nineteenth-century Chinese intellectual”;72 as we shall see, the impact of this tradition carried forth into the twentieth century. We can get a sense of this “tradition” by considering a collection of Buddhist and Confucian criticisms of Christianity called the Record of Refutations against Heterodoxy (Poxie ji), which was published in 1640. The works in this compilation included different kinds of texts—those based in “reason and common sense,” in which authors tried to demonstrate that Christianity was nonsensical and contradicted itself; those which employed a skeptical approach, citing a lack of “proof” for Christian claims;73 and those which charged Christians with violating the Ming legal code,74 and established Chinese tradition.75 Later texts aimed at discrediting Christianity by presenting it as counter to Chinese morality. In 1643, the Buddhist monk Ouyi Zhixu (1599 – 1655) published a notable attack on Jesuits, mainly from the perspective of Confucianism.76 For example, he wrote that “we Confucians say that the sagehood of Yao and Shun [ancient sage kings venerated by Confucians—also referenced, as we have seen, in 1981] was not able to cover their sons’ evil. … But now that the Lord of Heaven [God] is able to redeem men’s faults, people can do all the evil they please and wait for the Lord of Heaven to redeem them in his mercy.”77 Ouyi appealed to Chinese tradition by citing the Confucian sage-kings from China’s distant, mythologized past as moral exemplars. He also levelled skeptical arguments against Christianity. For example, “Now let us suppose that prior to the division of Heaven and Earth there was one who was most spiritual and holy called the Lord of Heaven. Such a being would have the power to govern and there would be no disorder; he would be good and there would be no evil.”78 In both examples, Confucian notions of morality and governance 71 Ibid., 58-60. 72 Paul A. Cohen, “The Anti-Christian Tradition in China,” The Journal of Asian Studies 20:2 (1961): 170. 73 Cohen, China and Christianity, 22. 74 Ibid., 24. 75 Ibid., 23. 76 See Beverley Foulks, “Duplicitous Thieves: Ouyi Zhixu’s Criticism of Jesuit Missionaries in Late Imperial China,” Chung-Hwa Buddhist Journal 21 (2008): 55-75. 77 Jones, “Pi xie ji,” 12. 78 Ibid., 27-28. See Jones’s explanation on page 28.

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formed the standard against which Christianity was to be judged. According to this logic, Christianity could not be accepted because it ran counter to the teachings of China’s past sages and Confucian exemplars—unlike Buddhism. Christianity also came to be associated with violence and imperialism. The Treaty of Nanjing, signed after China’s loss to Britain in the Opium War in 1842, allowed missionaries to operate in treaty ports; its defeat in the Arrow War against Britain and France in 1860 allowed them to once again travel in China’s interior. In other words, the right of missionaries to proselytize had resulted from victory in war. Around this time, China also faced a threat from the Taiping Rebellion. This arose when Hong Xiuquan (1814 – 1864), who, after repeated failed attempts to pass the civil service exam, concluded he was Jesus’s younger brother, established his own “kingdom” in southern China. With its capital in Nanjing, and replete with a system of government and army, 20-30 million people perished in the ensuing war with the Qing state. According to Cohen, hostility towards Christianity subsequently grew due to its “identification with the Taiping rebellion, its association with the use of foreign force and gunboat diplomacy, [and] the interference of some missionaries in Chinese administrative affairs”.79 This resentment found expression in the 1900 Boxer uprising. The Boxers (Yihetuan) were members of a religious movement dedicated to driving foreigners and Christians out of China; to help them achieve this aim, they engaged in physical exercises they believed would grant them supernatural abilities. After killing an unknown number of Chinese Christians, missionaries and their families, they surrounded foreigners and Chinese Christians in Beijing’s Legation Quarter (where the embassies were located) and besieged them for almost two months. The siege ended only when the Boxers were defeated by the combined response of seven Western powers and Japan—a force consisting of 20,000 troops.

New intellectual and political responses While Buddhists had previously adapted to China’s Confucian climate, in the twentieth century, the discourse of modernity dominated intellectual and political landscapes. The political and intellectual acceptance of this discourse increasingly demanded adaptation, or at least a response, from all religions. Christianity was a key vector for the discourse of Western modernity in China, leading Buddhists later in Taiwan to recognize an association between the two. 79 Cohen, “The Anti-Christian Tradition in China,” 169.

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As Thoralf Klein has pointed out, from the mid-nineteenth century Christian missionaries, who “agreed that secular activities could usefully supplement direct evangelization,”80 published translations of Western secular materials, as well as opened schools, universities and hospitals.81 Whether religion could, and should, be socially useful was a question emerging from China’s discourse on modernization. Intellectuals—including Zhang Zhidong (1837-1909) and Kang Youwei (1858-1927) in 1898—suggested transforming temples into schools.82 In the following years, local officials devoted temples to a range of non-religious purposes, which included (in addition to schools) “police stations, barracks, post offices, and new local administrations.”83 According to the scholar of Chinese religion, Vincent Goossaert, under the Qing and republican governments “probably more than half of the million Chinese temples that existed in 1898 were emptied of all religious equipment and activity.”84 It was therefore in the interest of Buddhists to demonstrate their capacity to partake in this modernization drive; and so in coming decades, some would model their social activities on Christian examples.85 But the crux of the problem was whether Buddhism could be considered a religion equal to Christianity, with its bureaucratic framework and social activities. Vincent Goossaert and David Palmer write that of particular importance was the national religious association. This particular form of organization, as it appeared in 1912 and developed throughout the rest of the century, indigenized Christian models of clerical training, community organization, confessional identification, and social engagement. In the Republican context in which a “religion,” to be recognized by the state and protected by law, had to conform to the Christian-secular model, Chinese traditions, whether Confucian, Buddhist, or Taoist, had to reinvent themselves.86 80 Thoralf Klein, “Christian Mission and the Internationalization of China, 1830-1950,” in Trans-Pacific Interactions: The United States and China, 1880-1950, ed. Vanessa Künnemann and Ruth Mayer (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 145. 81 Ibid., 141-160. 82 Vincent Goossaert, “Le destin de la religion chinoise au 20ème siècle,” Social Compass 500:4 (2003), 433. 83 Ibid., 431. 84 Goossaert, “1898,” 308. This figure is not limited to Buddhist temples. 85 For an overview of Buddhist activities after the Taiping Rebellion and during the early twentieth century (including Taixu’s), see Raoul Birnbaum, “Buddhist China at the Century’s Turn,” The China Quarterly 174 (June, 2003): 428-438. 86 Vincent Goossaert and David A. Palmer, The Religious Question in Modern China (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2011), 74.

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At the national level, then, religious professionals aimed to “eliminate superstition, ritual, and autonomous local communities” and present themselves as national, and religious (rather than superstitious) bodies.87 But besides these national associations, “the most visible manifestation of the Christian-liberal normative model of a good religion was social action in the field of education and charity.”88 This put pressure on Buddhists to initiate activities in these areas in order to cohere with political and intellectual expectations. Christianity’s association with Western modernity lent it a special status in this regard. According to Daniel H. Bays, “in 1915 there were almost 170,000 students in mission schools (as opposed to 17,000 in 1889). In the mid-1920s the figure reached almost a quarter million.”89 And “by 1941 over 51 per cent of all hospital beds in China were in mission hospitals.”90 Christian institutions—hospitals, schools, the YMCA and so on—were therefore a principal means for Chinese people to encounter not just Christianity, but modernity itself. Similar, non-Christian efforts were not unknown in China. Various Chinese associations had long carried out charitable work; Yu-Yue Tsu’s thesis, itself published just after the fall of the Qing, and Liang Qizi’s study, describe Chinese philanthropic activities carried out across a range of fronts.91 Reports from missionaries in the late Qing and early republic thus presented a skewed picture of Chinese charity that contrasted unfavorably with Christian enterprises. However, while charitable work was encouraged and carried out privately in China, it was only in the late Ming that records of it increased, along with publishing and literacy. Philanthropists drew from Buddhist, Daoist and Confucian ideas to support their efforts; Joanna Handlin Smith provides examples of voluntary societies that performed socially useful acts such as distributing food and medical care to the needy.92 In addition, David Palmer and Vincent Goossaert write that in the late Qing, “Buddhist and Taoist pious societies financed, within or without monasteries, 87 Ibid., 75. 88 Ibid., 77. 89 Daniel H. Bays, A New History of Christianity in China (Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 94. 90 Kathleen L. Lodwick, “4.7. Good Works,” in Handbook of Christianity in China, Vol. 2 of 2, ed. R. G. Tiedemann (Leiden, Brill: 2010), 431. 91 Yu-Yue Tsu, “The Spirit of Chinese Philanthropy: A Study in Mutual Aid,” doctoral thesis, Columbia University, 1912; Liang Qizi, Shishan yu jiaohua: Ming-Qing de cishan zushi (Taipei: Lianjing chuban shiye gongsi, 1997). 92 See Joanna Handlin Smith, The Art of Doing Good: Charity in Late Ming China, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009.

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activities such as rituals, the making of scriptures or icons, and mutual aid between members.”93 Folk religious institutions also performed social roles. A prominent example was the “Red Swastika Society”—modelled on the Red Cross (which was too readily identified with Christianity)—and founded in 1922 by a redemptive society called the Daoyuan (School of the Dao). This “ran disaster relief operations as well as schools and war hospitals, in which Chinese medicine as well as talismans and spirit-writing cures were provided.”94 Zhang Hua has written about the influence of the Christian social gospel on Buddhism during the Republic. This included “the interpretation of teachings, organizational form, the form of denominational expression, economic sources, the status of the laity, the mode of cultivating teaching personnel, exchanges between China and abroad, especially in terms of proselytization techniques, all [of which] resulted in new changes. These changes transformed the relationship between Buddhism and society”.95 For Zhang, these developments revitalized Buddhism, which had declined after the destruction caused by the Taiping Rebellion, and suffered from a lack of organizational capacity, the illiteracy and ceremonial emphasis of the clergy, and the movement to turn temples into schools.96 The social gospel thus formed a model for Buddhist activity beyond the monastery; Taixu (1890-1947), who we shall discuss below, is the most notable example of a monastic pursuing such social Buddhist practice. Focusing on Shanghai, Zhang Hua also discusses the charity work, study opportunities, publishing activities, radio productions and so on that arose from this context. Nevertheless, Chinese modernizers were increasingly skeptical of religion. The 1920s, in particular, saw the rise of a major anti-Christian movement.97 Marxist and scientistic students and intellectuals, critical 93 Goossaert and Palmer, The Religious Question in Modern China, 25. 94 Ibid., 101. 95 Zhang Hua, “20 shiji shangban ye Fojiao xuexi Jidujiao zhi xin fuxing: yi Shanghai weili,” in Ji Zhe, Tian Shuijing and Wang Qiyuan (eds), Ershi shiji Zhongguo Fojiao de liang ci fuxing, Shanghai: Fudan Daxue chubanshe, 2016, 25. See also the following chapter in this volume, on Buddhist medical initiatives: Li Tiehua and Li Zhaojian, “Minguo shiqi dushi Fojiao yiyao cishan shiye lüeshuo,” in Ji Zhe, Tian Shuijing and Wang Qiyuan (eds), Ershi shiji Zhongguo Fojiao de liang ci fuxing, Shanghai: Fudan Daxue chubanshe, 2016, 51-59. 96 Ibid., 26. 97 See Tatsuro Yamamoto and Sumiko Yamamoto, “II. The Anti-Christian Movement in China, 1922-1927,” The Far Eastern Quarterly 12:2 (1953): 133-147; Douglas Lancashire, “Introduction,” in Chinese Essays on Religion and Faith, trans. Douglas Lancashire (Hong Kong: Chinese Materials Center, 1981), 6-10. See also Yip Ka-che, Religion, Nationalism and Chinese Students: The AntiChristian Movement of 1922-1927 (Bellingham: Center for East Asian Studies, Western Washington University), 1980.

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of Chinese tradition as a source of national weakness and backwardness, attacked Christianity as unmodern and outmoded—some also charged it with being linked to Western imperialism; saving the nation, for them, meant opposing Christianity.98 In 1923, this heightening anti-religious climate erupted in a textual debate over whether science or religion could provide the moral framework for a modern China.99 “Metaphysicians” such as Zhang Junmai claimed that science did not deal with morality and therefore could not, on its own, provide moral guidance. Meanwhile, anti-religious thinkers such as the communist Chen Duxiu, or Hu Shi—a student of the American pragmatist John Dewey, along with an array of scientists, argued that science could in fact provide adequate perspectives for navigating moral life.100

Enter the KMT As we can see, religion was an important locus for debates on the relationship between tradition, modernity and identity in China. And in turn, as Rebecca Nedostup has shown,101 there was much debate among KMT intellectuals about how to actually manage religion itself. In the early years of the ROC, the government continued to insert itself in Buddhist life, including in economic matters and matters of property and temple management. For example, the 1929 “Temple Management Rules” stipulated that temples should operate facilities such as schools, libraries, hospitals and factories; and that monastics should confine their public talks to Buddhist doctrine or patriotic topics. Later that year, new regulations declared that temples should carry out philanthropic work.102 And in 1936, all monastics were required to join the Chinese Buddhist Association (CBA), which came under the authority of the Ministry of the Interior. The CBA held powers regarding monastic property and the selection of new abbots.103 Buddhists naturally felt pressure both to inform the development of such rules. But injunctions 98 Jessie Gregory Lutz, Chinese Politics and Christian Missions: The Anti-Christian Movements of 1920-1928 (Notre Dame: Cross Cultural Publications, 1988). 99 Danny Wynn Ye Kwok, Scientism in Chinese Thought 1900-1950 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965), 135. 100 Ibid., 150. 101 Rebecca Nedostup, Superstitious Regimes: Religion and the Politics of Chinese Modernity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2009). 102 See the appendix in Nedostup, Superstitious Regimes. 103 Welch, The Buddhist Revival in China, 141-43.

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like these represented a clash of monastic authority and modern, secular institutions. For Buddhists, the situation became more urgent when the Nationalists lost all of their territory on the mainland to the Communists in 1949. Concerned for the future of their tradition, monastics were soon were confronted with the dramatic rise of Christianity on the island as well. The KMT “tried hard to make the missionaries welcome,”104 because according to Murray A. Rubinstein, it was aware that as an anti-Communist force linked to their primary benefactor, the United States, missionaries were a valuable political asset—one that also provided tangible forms of aid to the populace. American funds enabled Christians to set up schools, universities and clinics, and to provide material aid, thereby complementing the KMT’s nation-building project.105 The seeming favoritism shown towards missionaries provoked resentment among Buddhists. Meanwhile, the number of Christians continued to grow. By 1963, the island was home to 300,000 Catholics, and by 1964, 280,000 Protestants106—up from a total of around 70,000 Christians in 1945. Much growth came from the Presbyterian Church, which initiated a movement to double their membership between 1955 and 1965, resulting in it increasing by nearly 100,000.107 Some of the church growth can be explained through the particular receptivity of new arrivals from the mainland to Christianity.108 Missionaries would later theorize that the plateauing of growth stemmed in part from an increase in Taiwan’s economic prosperity, and because converts were no longer drawn to Christianity by the promise of charitable aid.109

Modernity, and “KMT modernity” The success of Christianity in Taiwan during the postwar period therefore derived in part from its capacity to complement the state’s efforts to establish itself in Taiwan. And we have already seen that earlier, in the republican 104 See Murray A. Rubinstein, The Protestant Community on Modern Taiwan: Mission, Seminary, and Church (Armonk, M.E. Sharpe, 1991), 37 105 Ibid., 33. 106 Government Information Office, The Republic of China Yearbook 1996, 425. 107 See Peter Chen-main Wang, “Christianity in Modern Taiwan—Struggling Over the Parth of Contextualisation,” in China and Christianity: Burdened Past, Hopeful Future, ed. Stephan Uhalley Jr. and Xiaoxin Wu (Routledge, London, 2001), 330. 108 Rubinstein, The Protestant Community on Modern Taiwan, 38-40. 109 Ibid., 27-28.

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period on the mainland, the provision of aid, and the promotion of modern knowledge through educational institutions founded by Christians themselves, lent Christianity an association with modernity. In turn, the “Christian normative model” informed political and social expectations about the role of religion in modern Chinese society. But what is modernity, exactly—and what did it mean in the context of the Republic? As Matthew J. Lauzon writes, arriving at a definition is fraught with difficulty due to the varied contexts in which the term is used, but “at the most prosaic level, the words [‘modernity’ and ‘modern’] imply simply something like ‘new,’ ‘now,’ or ‘of recent invention.” As a project, modernity—founded on Enlightenment thought and enacted through the nation-state—led to progress.110 Prasenjit Duara describes the discourse of modernity unfolding in the Republic as about structuring “the world not only cognitively through the categories of rationality and science, but also by means of such values as progress and secularism, which are often inseparably entwined with the former.”111 The Chinese understanding of modernity mirrored these broad definitions, but modernity itself was viewed through a Chinese lens and reflected Chinese concerns. Initially, modernity in the late Qing and early republican periods, where the roots of the KMT’s modernity can be found, had the connotation of being Western. The question for Chinese intellectuals was therefore how to combine elements of Western modernity with Chinese tradition so as to create something that could be applied to the issues of their day. Of particular interest was the question of how the nation could attain “wealth and power,” and be restored to its perceived former levels of greatness.112 As Edmund Fung has shown, while some did call for either complete Westernization or were resolute Marxists, others combined elements of Chinese tradition with modernity. Therefore, while “it was clear to them that modernity, or modernization, meant progress, liberty and national wealth and power, and that it entailed a reevaluation of Chinese traditions against Western values,”113 this led to many intellectuals being “liberal in one respect, con110 Matthew J. Lauzon, “Modernity,” in The Oxford Handbook of World History, ed. Jerry H. Bentley (2011). Available at: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199235810.013.0005 (accessed April 20, 2018). 111 Prasenjit Duara, “Knowledge and Power in the Discourse of Modernity: The Campaigns against Popular Religion in Early Twentieth-Century China,” The Journal of Asian Studies 50:1 (1991), 67. 112 James Reeve Pusey, China and Charles Darwin (Cambridge, Mass.: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University: Distributed by Harvard University Press, 1983), 50. 113 Edmund S. K. Fung, The Intellectual Foundations of Chinese Modernity: Cultural and Political Thought in the Republican Era (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 11.

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servative in another and socialist in a third, each representing a modern response to China’s socio-political crisis.”114 Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek likewise shared a complex approach to tradition and modernity. Both gestured towards different political, social and economic ideas in their conception of nationalism, livelihood, and democracy. But as David J. Lorenzo shows, Sun understood democracy almost in a Legalistic sense—that is, akin to the ancient Chinese philosophy of governance which saw law as instrumental to politics. He also believed that democracy was compatible with Confucian notions of elite governance.115 And for Chiang Kai-shek, even more than Sun, “the teachings of Chinese philosophy” would “provide the collective spirit necessary to mold a people’s will and a common good.”116 Chiang saw the people’s responsibility as reforming themselves on the basis of Confucian ethics,117 and in this formulation, democracy and the Three Principles of the People were fundamental qualities both of human nature (renxing),118 the universe itself (tianxing), and natural order (the Dao)—concepts from Chinese philosophy.119 At the same time, Chiang felt that Chinese culture needed to be creatively reconstructed—that is, combined with aspects of Western modernity. He explained in his 1947 book, China’s Destiny, that as to the nation’s original culture, its essence is found in China’s three far-reaching virtues of wisdom, benevolence, and courage, and the sincerity with which these virtues are put into practice. The teachings of Sun Yat-sen were based on China’s ancient culture, and combined with this the most advanced theories of the world in order to formulate China’s superior principles of national reconstruction.120

But he issued words of warning, too: In short, our citizens must become actively creative, must use their own initiative, and must transform their cold lethargy into a warm enthusiasm 114 Ibid., 16. 115 David J. Lorenzo, Conceptions of Chinese Democracy: Reading Sun Yat-sen, Chiang Kai-shek, and Chiang Ching-kuo (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013), 11, 26. 116 Ibid., 10. 117 Ibid., 11, 118. 118 Ibid., 26. 119 Ibid., 22. 120 Chiang, China’s Destiny and Chinese Economic Theory, 163.

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for progress. In particular, they must transform their present attitude of passivity and depression into positive, determined, and daring action, and cultivate the ancient traditions of neatness, austerity, practical action, and earnest endeavor. Only then can we establish the psychology for revolutionary reconstruction.121

Sun and Chiang therefore advocated a specific reading of modernity that incorporated notions of science, democracy, the nation, industrialization, and marketization—all bound up in the Three Principles of the People. But more than this, it was a Chinese modernity. It advocated hierarchy, order, and tradition. It looked to Western systems and methods, but was steeped in a romantic rendering of Chinese history and identity—looking backwards to imagined notions of national greatness, and gazing towards a hopeful future the party would take the lead in constructing. In this sense, KMT modernity had a special resonance that Western modernity lacked, providing the nation, at a time of political chaos, with a vision of national rejuvenation, and a rightful restoration of China’s place in the world as a great political, economic and cultural power. The KMT promoted its political-cultural vision in Taiwan throughout the 1950s. And its ideological conflict with the PRC escalated in 1966 when Mao launched the Cultural Revolution; in response the KMT launched its own “Cultural Renaissance Movement” (wenhua fuxing yundong). In 1967, the party founded the “Committee for the Revival of Chinese Culture”—which according to Paul R. Katz was “mainly responsible for promoting the KMT’s vision of Chinese culture … which combined traditional Confucian values such as loyalty to the state and filial piety with doctrines created by party leaders like Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek.” The Committee enacted a number of programmes to inculcate these ideas, including ‘What citizens should know about daily life [activities]’ (Guomin shenghuo xuzhi), which focused on patriotic values and proper behavior; and ‘Models for citizens’ rites and ceremonies’ (Guomin liyi fanli), which attempted to shape religious practice by stressing the importance of good manners and simple (that is, not lavish or expensive) rituals.122

121 Ibid. 122 Paul R. Katz, “Religion and the State in Post-War Taiwan,” The China Quarterly 174 (Jun., 2003): 402-403.

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We can see, then, that the issues of culture and modernity were implicated in politics, and that culture itself was contested during the ideological conflict with the PRC. But did discussions of culture actually matter to Buddhists, specifically? In fact, we find that the relationship between Buddhism and Chinese culture, including the question of how to “revive” Chinese culture, was a common topic in Buddhist magazines of the period. Shortly after the onset of the KMT’s cultural renaissance, many articles capitalized on the movement to proclaim that a revitalization of Chinese culture necessarily implied that Buddhism should play a crucial role. For example, in a speech printed in the Buddhist magazine Torch of Wisdom (Hui ju), the speaker (from Zhongxing University in Taizhong) took pains to show that Buddhism was an integral part of Chinese culture—asserting its compatibility with Confucianism, and presenting Buddhism as playing a crucial role in the ROC’s cultural revitalization—claiming that it would also help to form a bulwark against Communism.123 Likewise, in the Buddhist periodical, Buddhist Culture (Fojiao wenhua), the monastic Dongchu wrote that Buddhism had enriched Chinese culture and thus should be part of the ROC’s cultural renaissance.124 If we return to 1981, we find Buddhists venerating KMT modernity at the BAROC conference as well. Consider the famed Buddhist writer and layman, Chen Huijian’s, assertion that when “the Father of the Nation [Sun Yat-sen] developed the Three Principles of the People, the basic aim was to cast aside China’s old-style autocratic, dark, backward society and become an ideal country that is free, equal, stable and wealthy and which is ‘of the people, for the people and by the people’.”125 His identification of Sun’s thought with Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, and his rejection of China’s past, evinces his identification of Sun with Western modernity.126 But Sun’s thought had Buddhist import too, since “only a political environment in which the Three Principles of the People is the ideal category will satisfy us as individual people practicing the buddhadharma.”127

123 Zhou Chunhua, “Zhonghua wenhua yu foxue de guanxi,” Hui ju 53/54 (1967): 39-40. 124 Dongchu, “Fuxing Zhonghua wenhua weihu Fojiao daotong,” Fojiao wenhua 6 (1967): 2-3. 125 Chen Huijian, “Sanminzhuyi de lixiang shehui yu jingtu sixiang,” in Fofa yu xiangguan zhengzhi sixiang lunji, ed. Cheng Wenxi (Taipei: Tianhua chuban shiye gufen youxian gongsi, 1981), 24. 126 On Sun’s appreciation of Lincoln’s address, see Lyon Sharman, Sun Yat-sen: His Life and Its Meaning, a Critical Biography (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1934). 127 Chen, “Sanminzhuyi de lixiang shehui yu jingtu sixiang,” 24-25.

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Taixu These were not the first attempts to articulate a Buddhist identity that was patriotic, emphasized Chinese culture, or was modern. And not all Buddhists gravitated towards the three principles, or towards “secular” issues like politics or culture. Moreover, the 1981 speeches were, in fact, one of the last instances of such a discourse in Taiwan, occurring during the waning of the BAROC’s relevance and the KMT’s monopoly on political power. As we have seen, Buddhists faced political pressures and challenges during the republican period on the mainland as well, and it was then that the articulation of a modern Buddhist identity, along the lines of the examples above, began taking shape. The monastic Taixu was the most prominent advocate of this,128 but KMT modernity was not the only important influence on him. Just as Western political ideologies and science helped shaped his Buddhist thought, Christianity also had an important role to play.129 As Xue Yu has shown, Taixu sought dialogue with Christians from early in his career; 130 in 1938, he gave a speech entitled “China Needs Christianity and Euro-America Needs Buddhism,” where he stated that his own efforts to reform Buddhism were in part inspired by the introduction of Christianity to China. This is because, in recent times, Christianity has had a great influence on China’s cultural undertakings, social welfare, and spirit of belief. Although Chinese Buddhism has a long history, and because of its propagation has become a part of the people’s mentality, and has profound teachings, in recent times it has not made much of a contribution to the country or society.131

His career was devoted to showing that, in fact, Buddhist teachings should focus on, and enrich, the human experience—an articulation of Buddhism he called “Buddhism for human life” (rensheng Fojiao) or “Buddhism for the 128 For example, in a 1933 speech, he noted that Buddhism had indeed started to become popular in Europe, precisely because it accorded with science. Taixu, “Zenyang lai jianshe renjian Fojiao,” in Taixu dashi quanshu (CD-ROM), ed. Yinshun, Vol. 24 of 35 (Xinzhu: Caituan faren Yinshun wenjiao jijinhui, 2005 [1933]), 454. 129 On Taixu and Christianity, see Darui Long, “An Interfaith Dialogue between the Chinese Buddhist Leader Taixu and Christians,” Buddhist-Christian Studies 20 (2000): 167-189. See also Don A. Pittman, “The Modern Buddhist Reformer T’ai-hsü on Christianity,” Buddhist-Christian Studies 13 (1993), 73. 130 Xue Yu, “Buddhist-Christian Encounter in Modern China: Taixu’s Perspective on Christianity,” Ching Feng (N.S.) 4:2 (2003): 157-201. 131 Taixu, “Zhongguo xu Yejiao yu Oumei xu Fojiao,” in Taixu dashi quanshu (CD-ROM), ed. Yinshun, vol. 21 of 35 (Xinzhu: Caituan faren Yinshun wenjiao jijinhui, 2005 [1938]), 335-36.

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human world” (renjian Fojiao). To make this stance clear, he explained that practitioners should focus on the human path of rebirth rather than the Pure Lands, or the aspects of Buddhism which appeared “akin to ‘theism’ or ‘spiritualism’”.132 Like the speakers in 1981, he gravitated towards the KMT’s political vision, professing an affinity between Sun Yat-sen’s Three Principles of the People and Buddhism, believing that the Dharma could complement the state’s modernization project. Taixu went quite far in asserting an alignment between Buddhism and the Three Principles of the People. He even devised a Buddhist ideology to complement them, which he called Sanfozhuyi, or the “Three Principles of the Buddha.” These centered on the clergy, society and the nation, but like Sun Yat-sen’s ideological construct, comprised a vague ideal rather than a concrete proposition. He did suggest some tangible reforms—these included eradicating the system of hereditary temple ownership, and reforming monastics with “superstitious” views. He called for monastics to provide religious instruction, conduct academic research, and engage in philanthropy. Other aspects of his plan remained utterly utopian, and involved using Buddhism to improve different aspects of society—from the economy, to politics, to social customs.133 Some, such as the famous Chan master Xuyun (1864-1959),134 Hongyi (18801942),135 or Yinguang (1862-1940),136 remained comparatively traditional. And not all Buddhists who engaged with modernity saw KMT ideology as the clearest expression of this. Besides KMT thought, another main intellectual trend in the Republic was socialism, which some Buddhists were also interested in. Essays on Buddhism and socialism can be found, for example, in a 1934 special issue of Tidal Roar,137 and later, monastics cited 132 Taixu, “Rensheng Foxue de shuoming,” in Taixu dashi quanshu (CD-ROM), ed. Yinshun, vol. 3 of 35 (Xinzhu: Caituan faren Yinshun wenjiao jijinhui, 2005 [1928]), 209. 133 Taixu, “Duiyu Zhongguo Fojiao geming seng de xunci,” in Taixu dashi quanshu (CD-ROM), vol. 17 of 35 ed. Yinshun (Xinzhu: Caituan faren Yinshun wenjiao jijinhui, 2005 [1928]), 603. 134 See Daniela Campo, “Chan Master Xuyun: The Embodiment of an Ideal, the Transmission of a Model,” in Making Saints in Modern China, ed. David Ownby, Vincent Goossaert and Ji Zhe (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017). 135 See Raoul Birnbaum, “Two Turns in the Life of Master Hongyi, a Buddhist Monk in TwentiethCentury China,” in Making Saints in Modern China, ed. David Ownby, Vincent Goossaert and Ji Zhe (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017). 136 See Jan Kiely, “The Charismatic Monk and the Chanting Masses: Master Yinguang and his Pure Land Revival Movement,” in Making Saints in Modern China, ed. David Ownby, Vincent Goossaert and Ji Zhe (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017). 137 See, for example, Shuyi, “Renjian Fojiao yu shehuizhuyi,” Haichao yin 15:1 (1934): 83. This issue focused on Buddhism for the human world.

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similarities between Buddhism and Communism in the PRC.138 What this suggests is that besides their gravitation towards specific political ideologies, Buddhists, like others in the Republic, were interested the narrative of modernity more generally, in the sense identified by Lauzon and Duara.

Overview of the study While the KMT merged modernity with its narrative of a romanticized Chinese past and a projected, future destiny, Taixu juxtaposed these against notions of timeless Buddhist exceptionalism. His Buddhist vision indicates that the discourse of modernity (read through KMT ideology) was an important force shaping his idealized Buddhist identity. But more generally, it embodied the broader, ongoing debate on the relationship between tradition and modernity in China. Taixu was responding to this in a way that positioned Buddhism advantageously amid republican China’s confluence of intellectual and political trends, maintaining its religious legitimacy by not solely conforming to the Confucian normative framework, but also the new framework comprised of modern values. While not all of the Buddhist figures covered in this book explicitly upheld Taixu’s political views, in terms of his general Buddhist vision, he did exert an influence on them. One figure, Yinshun (1906-2005), considered Taixu his teacher, and stated that “‘Buddhism for human life’ was a great awakening for me.”139 Another, Dongchu (1908-1977) advocated Taixu’s general approach, and founded the magazine Humanity (Rensheng) to promote an engaged form of Buddhism. Dongchu’s student, Shengyan (1930-2009), upheld Taixu’s broad agenda, seeking to find ways to focus on, and make Buddhism relevant to, everyday life.140 Another of the monastics we will examine, Zhuyun (1919-1986), was an associate of Xingyun (b. 1927), who took Taixu’s philosophy to heart and later promoted it in Taiwan.141 Like Taixu, Zhuyun promoted the Dharma among laypeople, and actively defended it against non-Buddhist critique. 138 See, for example, Xue Yu, “Buddhist Contribution to the Socialist Transformation of Buddhism in China: Activities of Ve. Juzan During 1949-1953,” Journal of Global Buddhism 10 (2009): 217-253. 139 Yinshun, “Youxin fahai liushi nian,” in Youxin fahai liushi nian, qili qiji zhi renjian Fojiao hekan (Xinzhu: Zhengwen chubanshe, 2005 [1984]), 5. 140 Shengyan, “Dongchu laoren de rensheng Fojiao.” Available at: http://dongchu.dila.edu.tw/ html/01/1_5.html (accessed April 20, 2018). 141 Dingmin, “Zhuyun fashi de Fojiao jingyan yu Fojiao shiye: 1949 nian dalu laitai qingnian senggong gean yanjiu,” Zhonghua foxue xuebao 12 (1999): 275-302. Available at: http://www.chibs. edu.tw/ch_html/chbj/12/chbj1219.htm (accessed April 20, 2018).

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With this history and context in mind, we are in a position to understand why the BAROC conference participants identified with the party-state in 1981—citing affinities between Sun, the three principles and Buddhism (rather than Christianity, which they conspicuously did not mention). For them, demonstrating their allegiance with the KMT implied political, cultural and religious acceptability. As we have seen, events in the twentiethcentury would have taught the speakers one thing: that governments founded on modern, secular ideologies on either side of the Taiwan Strait were capable of altering the existential conditions of religion through regulatory measures. Conforming to the KMT’s framework of normativity was a pragmatic step aimed at safeguarding a constellation of interests: power, status and influence within the Buddhist world, and by claiming “ownership” of Sun and his legacy, political authority over Christianity—their main religious competitor. On the other hand, we cannot dismiss the idea that it also reflected the true beliefs of these Buddhists, who lived within a complex social milieu in which these ideas were forcefully promoted. But this background does not explain everything. If the identity of Taixu’s followers was altered through dialogue—and competition—with two particular representatives of modernity, Christianity and the KMT, how did this take shape on the ground, and what practical effect did it have? Did their Buddhist beliefs change, and if so, how? More fundamentally, we are faced with the question of how modernity—beyond its expression in particular ideological formations such as communism or the three principles, and aside from its association with Christianity, is used to support traditions that run counter to it. Do the examples we have covered thus far, point to an instrumental application of modernity aimed at enhancing the legitimacy of traditional perspectives? Or did modernity, as a generalized, malleable ideal, exert a transformative influence on traditional ideas? Events in Taiwan provide a case study that can be used to answer these questions. Taiwan’s authoritarian government, with its clear political vision, is a good example of a clear framework of normativity—one that was itself a solution to the dilemma of how to combine Western modernity and Chinese tradition. As we have seen, religious groups during the martial law period acquiesced to state power by actively supporting it or remaining politically disengaged—the Presbyterians being the notable exception in the 1970s. But at the same time, the Buddhists examined here were pressured by the expansion of Christianity—which was associated with modernity on the island through its bureaucracy, hospitals, schools, and aid-work. Their ensuing interaction was emblematic of the broader, multi-faceted Buddhist engagement with modernity in its different forms in the Chinese context.

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In the chapters that follow, we will focus on one instance of this. As we know, the figures to be examined upheld Taixu’s basic approach to Buddhism. They variously presented it as aligned with core KMT values—patriotism, or loyalty to the party-state; Chinese culture, as read through the prism of the KMT’s cultural vision; and modernity. This latter feature entails embracing values and ideas identified by Lauzon and Duara—rationality, science and progress, and the “new-ness” embodied in the three principles: nationalism, democracy and the people’s livelihood. These values became reference points for the formation of a Buddhist identity through interfaith competition—one that that held the promise of political, intellectual and social acceptance. As we have seen, republican-era Buddhists on the mainland were concerned about what they saw as political interference in Buddhist affairs. Meanwhile, Christian missionary work in the republican period, animated by the social gospel and a Christian rational-bureaucratic mode of organization and activity that Vincent Goossaert and David Palmer have called the “Christian normative model,” posed a challenge to Chinese religion. They write that the greatest impact of Christianity in Republican China was through its normative model, in its various Catholic and Protestant versions, or what a religion should be, which were adopted by the intelligentsia, the state, and even the leaders of other religions. … [T]he desire to conform to Western expectations regarding Chinese religious practices ran deep among both lay and religious leaders.142

Modernizing Buddhists, best represented by Taixu, essentially advocated a Buddhist version of this model, believing that it needed to adapt to the times. Following him then, the monastics we will consider in this volume strove to demonstrate their alignment with key features of this ROC landscape. They cast Christianity as discordant with modern values, while embedding Buddhism into the KMT’s social, political and intellectual value system. The present study therefore focuses on Buddhists rather than Christians, showing how they articulated their identity in response to the Christian challenge in the context of the KMT’s “regime of truth”. Perhaps recalling the KMT’s anti-superstition campaigns in the republican period,143 and the suppression of religion under Mao, Buddhists were well aware of the state’s capacity to regulate religion. In the late Qing, there 142 Goossaert and Palmer, The Religious Question in Modern China, 73. 143 See chapter two of Goossaert and Palmer, The Religious Question in Modern China.

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had been little interference from the state (in practice, even if the actual laws regulating monasteries were strict), but as we have seen, this began to change in the early twentieth century.144 In Taiwan, the corporatist model of religious representation under the KMT meant that framing Buddhism in terms of its political values could ensure political and social acceptability after decades of tension. Interfaith competition with Christians was, in the case to be examined here, a process not only of actually competing with them for adherents, but also of demonstrating Buddhism’s compatibility with the KMT’s framework of normativity. To demonstrate this, we must turn to the only materials available to us—the textual material in which Buddhist-Christian interfaith competition unfolded. But how does one cope with their sheer volume, and the difficulty of placing them into sensible, discursive relationships? It is for this reason that I have devised this study as a microhistory. The microhistorical approach focuses on a small number of actors and events as a way of elucidating broader, overarching themes. As István Szijártó remarks, “Microhistorians hold a telescope in their hands. Focusing on certain cases, persons and circumstances, microhistory allows an intensive historical study of the subject, giving a completely different picture of the past from the investigations about nations, states, or social groupings, stretching over decades, centuries or whatever longue durée.” At the same time, “micro-historians always look for the answers for ‘great historical questions’” and treat their subjects as autonomous agents rather than subjects of historical forces.145 Perhaps the best-known example of microhistory is Carlo Ginzburg’s 1976 book The Cheese and the Worms. In this, through a reading of records from the trial of the sixteenth-century Italian miller Menocchio (on trial for heresy), Ginzburg shed light on his cultural and religious world—something that would be obscured were we to rely on other official documents composed by, and for, elites.146 Such a method of historical analysis is also well-suited to subjects with a voluminous and unwieldly archival records, allowing conclusions to be drawn from a smaller, and more manageable, series of records. For this reason, we will focus on a small and inter-connected group of Buddhist figures, including Zhuyin, Dongchu, Shengyan, and Yinshun—all 144 See chapter eight of Welch, The Buddhist Revival in China. 145 See István M. Szijártó, “Introduction: Against Simple Truths,” in What is Microhistory? Theory and Practice, ed. Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon and István M. Szijártó (London, Routledge: 2013), 146 See Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Seventeenth-century Miller, trans. John Tedeschi and Anne Tedeschi (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992).

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of whom were influenced by Taixu in some way—and the engagement they had with Christians including Wu Enpu (b. 1914), Gong Tianmin (b. 1926) and Du Erwei (b. 1913). The texts to be examined were published in Buddhist magazines, or as books. Each focused on critiquing or engaging with Christianity or Buddhism, and was usually a response to one of these other writers. By reading across texts, connecting them to each other if and when they are explicitly mentioned, I have reconstructed a period of interfaith competition that unfolded over a period of twenty years. This textual production spanned from 1955, when Zhuyun wrote his first antiChristian tract, through to 1975, when Chiang Kai-shek died and the last major anti-Christian essay from the above circle of Buddhist figures emerged. Some of these texts are available in digital formats, but I have strived to consult the original hard copies where possible, so as to avoid reconstructing their engagement through potentially revised versions that differ from how they were originally published. I have also read around these texts to establish context, and to gain a sense of how their anti-Buddhist or Christian writings are situated within their broader oeuvres. And I have consulted major Buddhist magazines of the period, in which some of the texts I discuss were first published, to determine if the writers from this particular circle of Buddhists were outliers, and if their contemporaries were also dealing with similar topics.147 These are typically not digitized and therefore not text-searchable; I have therefore manually searched those issues that were published in the 1950s through to the mid-1970s in order to identify relevant articles. As a result of this process, by juxtaposing Buddhists and Christians alongside one another and contextualizing their writings, I have constructed a microhistorical account of how a small group of inter-connected Buddhist writers have competed with Christians by establishing a particular identity for themselves through textual means. Through this engagement with Christianity, these writers articulated an identity that resonated with different facets of the KMT world—reverence for cultural tradition, appropriation of modernity, and respect for the party-state. This process of identity-formation led to the transformation of the very ideas they were trying to preserve. 147 A list of Buddhist periodicals printed between 1952 and 1972 in Taiwan is provided in Xing Fuquan, Taiwan de Fojiao yu Fosi (Taipei: Taiwan shangwu yinshuguan gufen youxian gongsi, 2006), 222-223. The list this was derived from appeared in Fojiao wenhua yanjiusuo, Ershi nian lai Fojiao jingshu lunwen suoyin (Taipei: Zhonghua dadian bianyinhui and Zhonghua xueshuyuan Fojiao wenhua yanjiusuo, 1972), 299-300.

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I therefore do not focus on the large Taiwanese Buddhist groups that occupy such dominant positions in the island’s Buddhist world today. These include Foguang Shan (Buddha-Light Mountain), Fagu Shan (Dharma Drum Mountain), Tzu Chi, Zhongtai Chansi, and Lingjiu Shan. While these groups have much to say about Christianity, they achieved prominence as the martial law period was ending, or after, and thus were not participants in the textual exchanges I examine in this volume. But because they provide a different perspective on Buddhist-Christian interaction, we will touch on these organizations later. We will see that these groups took a different tack when engaging with Christianity. And we will see that the BuddhistChristian engagement under examination here, while representative of certain trends, was by no means the only type of contact that occurred. For the most part, though, our focus will be on a smaller group of interconnected writers, during a specific time-period, who, as mentioned above, will enable us to see the process of identity-formation and self-representation unfold in the context of interfaith engagement. My primary interest is in examining how contact with Christianity led certain Buddhists to reassess their identity within an overarching normative framework of values dominated by the KMT. In doing so, it will explore the idea that religious identity is not simply a product of different belief frameworks, but also the self-representation that emerges in the process of interfaith competition with reference to particular external values. It will also consider whether, more generally, Buddhist-Christian engagement in Taiwan, in the post-war period, had repercussions for Buddhist identity construction and self-representation later in Taiwan’s history. As such, present-day Buddhist groups will be considered for comparative purposes towards the end of this book. A note about positionality. I have approached this study as an objective, detached historian, informed by social scientific theoretical considerations, while reporting on the views of others. I do not follow any of the religions discussed in this volume. I reject the xenophobic and anti-Semitic attitudes exhibited by some of the writers discussed in this book. And I do not consider the texts I cover here to be good examples of interfaith dialogue—in fact, little true “dialogue” took place, and for this reason I avoid using the word, preferring (in most cases) interfaith “competition” or “engagement”. But this is a little-known episode in Taiwan’s religious history—one that involved figures who were themselves well-regarded or influential at the time, or were becoming so. The moments of direct engagement I examine give us insights into how the participants saw each other and themselves. This research aims to help us understand their multifaceted engagement, showing how it unfolded at a time of political tension, and how it embodied trends that

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had been present since the early twentieth century. At the same time, it will give us insights into how religious identity can be formed amidst religious competition and in rigid political contexts. The first chapter focuses on the attempt to articulate Buddhism in a way that resonated with one of the KMT’s key political values: patriotism, or loyalty to the party-state. We will discuss the claims of the Buddhist monastic Zhuyun, the Christian pastor Wu Enpu, and Shengyan, then a lay-Buddhist, that their respective religions were aligned with the values promoted by the KMT, and hence that they could foster loyalty to the party-state. It will show that by doing so, both Christians and Buddhists were attempting to lend their religions legitimacy in Taiwan’s authoritarian political context. Of course, the question of Sun Yat-sen’s, and Chiang Kai-shek’s, Christian religious affiliations was a sensitive topic for Buddhists, which will be dealt with in the fifth chapter. In seeking political acceptance, the Buddhists under examination here also portrayed their tradition as more aligned with Chinese tradition; the second chapter therefore focuses on the question of culture. It discusses the monastic Yinshun, as well as the writing of Wu Enpu and another Christian essayist, Gong Tianmin, and shows how both sides of the debate sought to present their respective traditions as compatible with Chinese culture more generally, as well as the ethical and moral values associated with Western modernity. The third chapter deals more specifically with the question of modernity, and examines Yinshun’s responses to the writings of a Catholic priest, Du Erwei. Yinshun’s own attacks on biblical doctrine exemplified a growing realization that academic studies could be used in a utilitarian sense to provide an objective basis for establishing the superiority of Buddhism over Christianity. At the same time, Yinshun’s arguments continued to reference Chinese cultural values, showing the continued importance of Chinese tradition. The fourth chapter is about history. It focuses on two of Shengyan’s books—one on world religions, the other on Christianity—and his attempt to devise a narrative for what many Buddhists saw as the decline of their tradition to a state where it could be criticized as superstitious and socially disengaged. The fifth chapter will discuss how the positioning of Christianity on Taiwan’s religious landscape, beneath the KMT’s ideological canopy, had on-the-ground effects too. We will see how nascent Buddhist organizations, founded in the mid-1960s, were inspired by Christian activities. It will show that although Buddhists critiqued Christianity, it also inspired them to mobilize resources from their own tradition to retort the Christian charge that Buddhism was unmodern and socially disengaged. It will also consider some later examples of Christian-Buddhist engagement.

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The chapter will also deal with a particular conundrum faced by Buddhists seeking to align themselves with the values of the KMT—that Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek were themselves Christian. It will show that the Buddhists under consideration here largely dealt with the problem by discussing it in oblique terms. They did not, and could not, directly attack the beliefs of these esteemed statesmen and forefathers of the nation. Instead, they proclaimed them as figures who were sympathetic to Buddhism or who embodied trans-religious perspectives. As the pressure to conform to KMT ideology subsided in the late 1970s and 1980s, such propositions became less. The conclusion will show that the nature of Buddhist-Christian engagement in the postwar period in Taiwan was in some ways replicated in other contexts. But it will also point out that modernity itself is a fraught concept, and therefore, when considering the role of modernity in interfaith competition and identity formation, we must be aware of the “type” of modernity to which we are referring. In this case, we can refer to “KMT modernity” as comprising the particular value-set, promoted by the KMT, that inspired religious efforts at political justification. Following on from chapter five, it will also show that the instance of Buddhist-Christian engagement covered in this volume was not an example of dialogue—but it was, at least for Buddhists, an instance of competition—one that drove the figures covered in this volume to think about their Buddhist identity in new ways.

1

Buddhism and Patriotism Abstract The KMT sought to foster one value in particular—that of patriotism, or loyalty to the Republic of China. In this context, the elite Buddhists covered in this chapter presented Buddhism as patriotic, and aligned with the “modern” Chinese values promoted in the post-war context. On the other hand, they presented Christianity as antithetical to these. Such a stance painted Christianity as inherently unpatriotic, and therefore discordant with the KMT’s socio-political vision. Interfaith competition thus allowed these Buddhists to craft, and express, a politically acceptable identity. The chapter examines these issues through the writings of two Buddhist figures: Zhuyun and Shengyan (then writing as “The General who Awakens the World”), and a Christian pastor, Wu Enpu. Keywords: Zhuyun, Wu Enpu, the General who Awakens the World, Jesus, the Buddha

The Buddhist canon is large and its contents are highly varied. A widely used edition for scholars of Chinese Buddhism is the Taishō Tripitaka. This was originally published in 55-volumes in the 1920s in Japan, and encompasses a diverse array of teachings that developed throughout the Buddhist world over time.1 When the Chinese began receiving Buddhist sutras and commentaries from the Indic cultural sphere in the first century, they had trouble reconciling this diversity and difference. Attempts to systematically arrange and make sense of the multitude of texts led to the rise of the Chinese schools of Buddhism, but crucially, this great diversity means there is no widespread agreement over which of them are the most important. In contrast, although a number of Bible translations 1 See Greg Wilkinson, “Taishō Canon: Devotion, Scholarship and Nationalism in the Creation of the Modern Buddhist Canon in Japan,” in Spreading Buddha’s Word in East Asia: The Formation and Transformation of the Chinese Buddhist Canon, ed. Jiang Wu and Lucille Chia (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015), 296.

Pacey, S. Buddhist Responses to Christianity in Postwar Taiwan: Awakening the World. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020. doi: 10.5117/9789463724111_ch01

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circulated in China in the nineteenth century, in the twentieth century, it was the Protestant Union Version that predominated.2 Therefore, while Christians had a standard, portable set of scriptures they could use when proselytizing, Buddhists seeking a missionizing tool faced challenges over the choice of texts to disseminate, and how to render them in a convenient format. To resolve this conundrum, in 1957 the Buddhist laywoman Yang Xiuhe published the Buddhist Bible (Fojiao shengjing) in Taiwan.3 Yang’s volume in fact follows on from earlier efforts, elsewhere in the Buddhist world, to compile a concise statement of Buddhist teachings. Among the better-known of these are the American Theosophist, Henry Steel Olcott’s A Buddhist Catechism (1881); the German-American philosopher, Paul Carus’s The Gospel of Buddha (1894); the Japanese scholars, Nanjō Bun’yū and Maeda Eun’s Buddhist Bible (Bukkyō Seiten, 1905);4 and the American missionary and Buddhist enthusiast, Dwight Goddard’s A Buddhist Bible (1932).5 None of these books were ever universally accepted. Their efforts show how fraught with difficulty the enterprise was—even if many in the Buddhist world thought that, at least in theory, it was a good idea. We can hear these sentiments echoed in comments from a professor at the New School in New York, Zhang Chengji, who in 1957 wrote that Christianity has been able to spread around the world for many reasons. But the main one is that it has a bible, which represents Christian teachings … Does Buddhism have such a book? Therefore, I think that nothing is currently more important, pressing, or fundamental for Buddhism than the compilation of a Buddhist bible! If we had a Buddhist bible, we could immediately translate it into vernacular Chinese, and attract the masses who have just started on the [Buddhist] path. On the other hand, it could be translated into English, for proselytization abroad.6 2 Zetzsche, The Bible in China. The first single-volume Catholic Bible in Chinese appeared in 1968, towards the end of this study’s time-frame, in Hong Kong. See Thor Strandenaes, “The Bible in the Twentieth-Century Chinese Christian Church,” in Reading Christian Scriptures in China, ed. Chloë Starr (London: T&T Clark, 2008). 3 See Yang Xiuhe, Fojiao shengjing (Zhonghe: Zhongguo xinwen, 1957). 4 Wilkinson, “Taishō Canon,” 292-293. 5 See Robert Aitken, “The Christian-Buddhist Life and Works of Dwight Goddard,” BuddhistChristian Studies 16 (1996): 3-10. 6 Zhang Chengji, “Women jiqie xuyao yi bu Fojiao ‘Shengjing’,” in Fojiao shengjing (Zhonghe: Zhongguo xinwen, 1957), 147. The essay is included in Yang’s book as an appendix. It is also included in Zhang Chengji, Foxue si jiang (Taipei: Jingangsheng xuehui, 1957).

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Yang admitted, though, that such an undertaking faced a serious problem when it came to the choice of texts to be included.7 With a multitude to choose from, and no centralized Buddhist authority to impose a decision on followers, the compilation of a universally acceptable Buddhist bible was a project that could never be realized. And yet, the strength of the Christian normative model was such that modernizing Buddhists felt compelled to try, because for them, a religion needed a bible. Yang Xiuhe perhaps felt this more acutely, since she herself had converted to Buddhism from Christianity, 8 and would have been aware of this resounding lack of a central, scriptural focus-point. Yang even noted in her introduction that the bible’s profits would be used to found an orphanage.9 Besides imitating the Christian mode of presenting authoritative teachings, then, her bible also embodied the Buddhist trend to emulate Christian philanthropy. Yet the compilation, which brought together excerpts from a range of Buddhist sutras, does not seem to have made much of an impact. The influence of Christianity on Taiwanese Buddhist self-conceptions is evident in this example. Yet, Buddhist-Christian engagement did not unfold in a vacuum in Taiwan. Looming above both religions was an overarching political context comprised of KMT thought; and representatives of both faiths thought it was in their interest to demonstrate alignment with this if their religion was to gain socio-political acceptance. The history of Buddhist initiatives in the preceding half century had shown that political patronage could be the arbiter of success and failure in the religious realm. To endure, Buddhists needed to adapt to the ROC’s political climate—lest their missionizing efforts faded into irrelevance. This chapter is about the Buddhist competition with Christians in this political context. In particular, it focuses on the Buddhist effort to demonstrate their patriotism—a key value on this landscape—and their loyalty to the KMT’s guiding ideology—the “Three Principles of the People,” by examining key texts written in the 1950s. We begin with a discussion of the monk Zhuyun’s criticisms of Christianity, published in 1955, and follow with the pastor Wu Enpu’s Christian response. We will consider how Christians and Buddhists debated with each other on the basis of KMT values as a way of gaining political and social acceptance, and how the Three Principles, as a political and ideological structure, formed the 7 Zhang, “Women jiqie xuyao yi bu Fojiao ‘Shengjing,’” 149. 8 Yang, Fojiao shengjing, 1. 9 Ibid., 2.

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framework in which Buddhist-Christian competition would unfold. At the same time, as a political philosophy the KMT identified with Chinese tradition, the three principles served as a vehicle for Buddhists to express their loyalty to Chinese culture and the nation. As such, patriotism and political loyalty were articulated as part of Chinese Buddhist identity, in contrast to Christianity.

Taiwan’s political context After the KMT’s move to Taiwan, the government saw its promotion of Sun’s principles as crucial for ensuring ideological and social solidarity. At the same time, they linked their political project to Confucianism as a philosophy that emphasized respect for authority, and which could also be used as a tool to “sinicize” native Taiwanese—those who had not come across from the mainland with the KMT, and had just spent 50 years under Japanese colonial rule. Meanwhile, venerating Confucius enabled the KMT to present itself, rather than China’s Communists, as the true inheritors of Chinese culture.10 The government thus proceeded to present Confucianism in a way that paralleled state ideology; in this form, it was present in the national curriculum for elementary and secondary schools.11 For acceptance at the political level, then, one needed to demonstrate an allegiance not only to KMT ideology, but also to Chinese culture (qua Confucianism) as interpreted by the party’s political elites. Buddhists continued to demonstrate their affinity with the Three Principles and the KMT’s political vision; compared to Taixu, however, Buddhist commentators in Taiwan tended to strike an even more nationalistic tone. For example, in the 1950s, there were a number of incidents in which Christian students and teachers refused to salute the national flag or perform ceremonial bows to portraits of Sun Yat-sen, citing the Christian prohibition against idolatry.12 10 Joel S. Fetzer and J. Christopher Soper, Confucianism, Democratization, and Human Rights in Taiwan (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2013), 47-48. 11 See Huang Chun-chieh, “Confucian Thought in Postwar Taiwanese Culture,” Contemporary Chinese Thought 41, no. 1 (2009): 28-48. 12 The denominational affiliation of the individuals concerned is unclear, but “Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that bowing down to a flag or saluting it, often in conjunction with an anthem, is a religious act that ascribes salvation, not to God, but to the State or to its leaders.” See “Appendix: Flag Salute, Voting, and Civilian Service,” Jehovah’s Witnesses, available at: https://www.jw.org/en/ publications/books/gods-love/flag-salute-voting-civilian-service/#?insight[search_id]=0859ed893559-4ac8-8372-41f0fd199766&insight[search_result_index]=1 (accessed August 1, 2019).

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These incidents generated reports in the media,13 and for some, they raised the question as to whether Christians could be patriotic and loyal to the state. An example can be found in a letter from the “anti-communist patriot” Liu Renbin, which was published in the Buddhist magazine Bodhedrum (Puti shu) in 1954. According to an editorial note included before the letter, Liu “not only fervently loved Buddhism, but also deeply loved the motherland.”14 A photograph published in the magazine showed him to be tattooed with KMT insignia, with characters reading “exterminate Communism, restore the teachings” (mie gong fu jiao) and “oppose Communism, resist Russia” ( fan gong kang E) emblazoned across his chest and arm.15 In his letter, Liu expressed hope that Christians and Buddhists could join forces to destroy Communism in mainland China. Although ostensibly written in response to a recent event involving Christian students who refused to salute a portrait of Sun Yat-sen, the letter can also be read as a statement on Buddhism’s inherent patriotism, and as casting doubt on Christian political loyalties. An editorial in the same magazine—entitled “It is Necessary to Recognize the Religions of the Chinese People and Non-Chinese Peoples”—explained that Liu’s Buddhist teacher, Qingdu, met him while proselytizing on a military base. The article praised Liu as a soldier, and remarked that he does not see Buddhism as a pessimistic and world-renouncing religion, but rather as a religion that teaches people to deeply understand how one can positively save people, and the rationale of sacrificing oneself to save the world. Since becoming a believer in Buddhism, he feels that he has had more self-discipline, and, in terms of spirit, is happier than before! He is even more confident that under orders to resist attack on the battlefield, he will be more courageous, and will give even more strength for the motherland.16

This depiction was a clear retort to Christians whose religious beliefs apparently placed them in opposition to the patriotic requirements of the KMT. But his arguments against Christian opposition to saluting the flag and Sun’s portrait also reflected a deep Buddhist sensitivity to the charge that 13 For a Buddhist collection of the reports, see Gejia [various], “Xifang zongjiao wenhua de weihai,” in Shenjiaotu gai fanxing le, ed. Zhuyun (Taipei: Jueshi xunkan she, 1963), 102-109. 14 Liu Renbin, “Gei san wei Jidu qingnian de gongkai xin,” Puti shu 17 (April 8, 1954): 18. 15 The “teachings” in this case probably refer to traditional Chinese values as embodied in Confucianism. 16 Benshe [editorial], “Yao renshi Huazuxing ji fei Huazuxing de zongjiao,” Puti shu 16 (March 8, 1954): 2. This is a quote, but it is unclear to whom it should be attributed.

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Buddhism was a form of idolatry. This stemmed from a concern about differentiating Buddhism from “superstition” (mixin), but also evinces the deep absorption of Christian standards for acceptable religious practice.17 Liu thus wrote that Sun’s portrait was not an idol, but a representation akin to pictures of ancestors in the home that one made offerings (gongyang) to each day. Saluting the portrait was an expression of remembrance, gratitude and respect. By virtue of his own Buddhist identity, then, Liu established himself as culturally Chinese—Confucian and Buddhist—and a true KMT patriot, willing to kill and die for the nation. Christians, on the other hand, with their alien views, could not easily share in these sentiments. In their defense, Christians referred to the same patriotic values as Liu. The 1954 Law of the Republic of China on the National Symbols and National Flag (Zhonghua Minguo guohui quoqi fa) stipulated that each morning the national flag should be raised at government organs, schools and military installations. Those assembled had to stand, sing the national anthem, and perform a salute.18 The KMT propagandist and Christian, Hollington Tong, reported that regulations requiring students to salute the national flag and bow to the portrait of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, founder of the Republic of China, caused much unpleasant controversy in missionary circles in Taiwan and abroad. To the Chinese the salute and bow are simply expressions of loyalty and gratitude. The Chinese often bow on ceremonial occasions. The missionaries do not understand why the Chinese Christians in government service do this. They regard bows as a form of idol worship.19

Tong assured his readers that this was not true. Bowing was a “custom observed by the Chinese people for thousands of years.”20 In the case of bowing to the portrait of Sun Yat-sen, this was an expression of gratitude for “overthrowing the Manchu dynasty [Qing dynasty; 1644-1911] and establishing the republic.”21 Tong’s assurance was that, contrary to the 17 In 1958, the monastic Shengyan (then in the army and writing under a nom de plume) remarked that “Buddhism was a religion opposed to idolatry,” but that Christians had been successful in convincing many that that Buddhism was in fact idolatrous. Xingshi Jiangjun [Shengyan], “Fei ouxiang lun,” Zhongguo Fojiao 2, no. 5/6 (1958): 7. 18 See the law here: “Zhonghua minguo guohui guoqi fa,” Quanguo fagui ziliaoku, available at: http://law.moj.gov.tw/LawClass/LawAll.aspx?PCode=D0020020 (accessed October 15, 2016). 19 Tong, Christianity in Taiwan, 132. 20 Ibid., 133. 21 Ibid., 134.

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understanding of foreign missionaries, bowing was an aspect of Chinese culture that did not conflict with Christianity. Both Liu and Tong, then, appealed to the same set of political ideals—and sought to show that their respective religions were compatible with Chinese cultural norms and Taiwan’s political requirements.

Buddhism and KMT values After the flag-raising incidents of the early 1950s, perhaps the most important figure to argue that Buddhists were naturally patriotic was the monk Zhuyun. Born in Jiangsu Province, Zhuyun entered the clergy in 1939 at the age of 21. He received his monastic training on the mainland, but in the closing stages of China’s civil war, the KMT began conscripting monks. To avoid breaking their vow against killing, many monastics pre-emptively volunteered for non-combat roles.22 Zhuyun himself joined an ambulance unit and arrived in Taiwan in 1950. He then worked in a military hospital in Taizhong for one year, where he set about promoting Buddhism. And, he occupied a number of roles in the BAROC—Taiwan’s official interface between the government and its Buddhist institutions. According to the compendium Eminent Monastics of Taiwan (Taiwan gaoseng), while in China the prominent monastic Dongchu (1907-1977)—who was later in fact responsible for establishing the BAROC in Taiwan23—scoffed at Zhuyun’s academic ability.24 But whatever abilities Zhuyun lacked in this area, he made up for in entrepreneurial spirit. With Christianity making inroads into Taiwanese society, he began focusing on a market that Christians had so far dominated: Taiwan’s aboriginal population, who he targeted for proselytization soon after his arrival on the island. Working in central Taiwan, he became critical of Christian missionizing efforts, which included providing material goods to these communities. As discussed in the previous chapter, since post-war Taiwan’s economy was poor, such offerings were a major Christian drawcard and something that Buddhists would frequently mention as a source of resentment. Zhuyun himself lamented that Taiwan’s monasteries were not as well-resourced as the Christian missions 22 See Xue Yu, Buddhism, War and Nationalism, 194-195. 23 Kuo, Religion and Democracy in Taiwan, 19. 24 Kan Zhengzong, Taiwan gaoseng (Taipei: Puti changing chubanshe, 1996), 191-222. The text is available online at: https://web.archive.org/web/20121106114331/http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/ formosa/people/1-zhu-yun.html (accessed October 28, 2019).

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and were thus were unable to provide concrete forms of aid; he instead began establishing Buddhist chanting (nianfo) groups for laypeople.25 While such groups were part of Chinese Buddhist tradition, they hardly countered the Christian charge that Buddhists lacked genuine charitable enterprises. At the same time, according to his own account, during his proselytization tours around the island Zhuyun encountered numerous Buddhists who asked him to find a solution to Buddhism’s predicament: that it was “poor” and being “bullied.”26 In 1955, when a temple in the city of Tainan invited him to speak on Buddhism and Christianity, he used his platform to take a stand against Christian expansion. Eminent Monastics of Taiwan reports that Zhuyun’s talks were popular, with his audience numbering five thousand by the last lecture in the series. Afterwards, he published his lectures under the title A Comparison of Buddhism and Christianity (Fojiao yu Jidujiao de bijiao). It seems the rationale behind this enterprise was that if Buddhists could not compete with Christians on a material basis, perhaps there was an intellectual and theological rationale for demonstrating the superiority of Buddhism over Christianity. The volume was placed in Buddhist temples and made available free of charge,27 and it was this small edition, rather than any other, that laid the foundations for the subsequent, sustained Buddhist-Christian textual debate. Part of Zhuyun’s strategy in painting Buddhism as patriotic was to juxtapose it with the Christian legacy in China, which he associated with Western colonialism. He characterized the arrival of Christianity in China as an “invasion” that was accompanied by “Western firearms.”28 This forced entry into China’s religious scene was not just a historical phenomenon; it was an ongoing one that took place at the level of individual temples. He cited a number of recent examples of Christian missionaries loudly bursting into Buddhist gatherings and meetings, and recalled an episode in which a group of missionaries refused to leave a temple in Pingdong, which led the resident monastics to call the police.29 Such behavior was not unusual for Christians since, according to Zhuyun, violence was intrinsic to their religion. As proof, he cited the example of the 25 These had been a long-standing feature of Chinese Buddhist life, and were devoted to reciting the name of a buddha, principally Amitābha, as a way of generating merit and securing rebirth in a Pure Land. 26 Zhuyun, Fojiao yu Jidujiao de bijiao (Gaoxiong: Huacheng shuju, 1956), 4. 27 Wu Enpu, Bibing qishi nian: yi wei bibing shifeng Zhu qishi nian de huiyilu (Xindian: Xiaoyuan shufang, 2008), 58. 28 Zhuyun, Fojiao yu Jidujiao de bijiao, 3. 29 Ibid., 5-6.

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Taiping Rebellion, which had led to the deaths of between 20 and 50 million people.30 As mentioned in the previous chapter, this rebellion against the Qing dynasty was led by Hong Xiuquan, who believed that he was the brother of Jesus. Hong’s was not, ostensibly, a “Christian” movement; it deviated from commonly accepted denominational variation and incorporated new religious innovations.31 However, it also led to widespread anti-Christian sentiment, and was responsible for destroying Buddhist establishments in the areas under Taiping control. Zhuyun also cited the example of Feng Yuxiang (1882-1948)—a republican-era Christian warlord who destroyed temples and removed artefacts from the Imperial Palace to Moscow after his invasion of the capital. These examples led Zhuyun to express doubt about the sincerity of the Christian doctrine of “fraternal love” (boai). In the following quote, where he ridicules the idea, Zhuyun puns on the Chinese character bo (the first part of the compound) which means “to extend,” replacing it with the homonym character “to peel”: Each instance of fraternal love gains more of our land. The first SinoBritish treaty, of Nanjing, “peeled” off Hong Kong. (“Bo” and “bo” have the same pronunciation.32) The second Sino-British treaty, of Peking, then “peeled” off the Kowloon Peninsula. The third instance of fraternal love was even more devastating—the Boxer indemnity—which “peeled” off 450 million taels of silver to be paid in full over 39 years, with an annual interest rate of 4 li. Thus, it was not limited to just 450 million taels. When I was a child, I heard my parents say that China had 450 million people. Each person had to pay one tael of silver plus interest to Christian countries so they could practice their fraternal love.33

For Zhuyun, then, Christianity was associated with Western colonialism and aggression, as well as with social chaos and war. He could see this predisposition towards violence and oppression in the very symbol of Christianity itself—the crucifix: The crucifix was the Romans’ most severe instrument of torture. When Jews committed the heinous crimes of murder, arson, treachery or 30 Ibid., 59. 31 It is worth mentioning that this was also the case for China’s historical millenarian cults, which anticipated political change through the figure of Maitreya—the prophesized future buddha. 32 This is Zhuyun’s own interjection 博 vs. 剝. 33 Ibid., 61.

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debauchery, they were nailed to the cross—the cruelest form of capital punishment. When Jesus was nailed to the cross, there were also two thieves [next to him]. Clearly, the crucifix is a death-rack for murderers and prisoners. This rack is strongly symbolic of violence, cruelty, gloom, sorrow and deathly silence. … I have always thought it a little bit odd that someone would hang a cruel instrument of torture on their chest.34

Christianity was therefore clearly theologically inclined towards violence and subjugation. Zhuyun’s implicit question, then, was: how could a patriotic Chinese possibly become a Christian? On the other hand, Zhuyun claimed that Buddhism was completely patriotic. He provided some examples to prove this, asserting that 80% of the Taiwanese soldiers who fought in the Korean War were Buddhists.35 In contrast to the Christian students and teachers in Taiwan who refused to salute the flag and bow before the portrait of Sun Yat-sen, soldiers interred in a Korean POW camp made a Taiwanese flag that they dyed red with their own blood; eighteen were killed before the nineteenth managed to finally raise it.36 Even the Buddha, explained Zhuyun, demonstrated his patriotism when he prevented the annihilation of his “race” (zhongzu) when faced with foreign invasion.37 To be Buddhist was therefore to be patriotic and support the state, while to be Christian was to align oneself with violent colonial forces bent on China’s subjugation. This claim of cultural compatibility brought Buddhism into alignment with KMT ideology. As has been discussed, the KMT promoted its articulation of cultural values as a way of strengthening social solidarity, and hence the nation-state. In the 1930s on the mainland, before the KMT had lost China to the Communists, the “New Life Movement” (xin shenghuo yundong) embodied the party’s presentation of these values. The movement aimed at implementing a set of cultural norms among the populace that were founded in Confucianism and Western social mores, coupled with the disciplinary ethic Chiang Kai-shek witnessed in Japanese military barracks.38 Although the movement itself soon petered out, the KMT continued to present itself as the inheritors of Chinese cultural tradition. In 1966, to act as a counterweight to China’s Cultural Revolution, it launched a “Cultural 34 Ibid., 70. 35 Ibid., 22 36 Ibid., 22. 37 Ibid., 20 38 See Lloyd E. Eastman, “Fascism in Kuomintang China: The Blue Shirts,” The China Quarterly 49 (1972): 1-31.

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Renaissance” movement aimed at celebrating and promoting traditional Chinese culture. Taiwan thus presented itself to the world as a cultural ark that had preserved true Chinese culture, in contrast to the Maoism then proliferating on the mainland. In this context, Zhuyun apparently wanted to show that Buddhism could complement the KMT’s project to support a modernized version of Chinese tradition, and thereby gain political acceptance. But his discussion was also intended to show would-be Christians that Buddhism was a natural fit with their already-held cultural beliefs and values. Zhuyun explained that all countries had their own national—or ethnic—features (minzuxing). In the case of the Chinese, this was summed up in the terms “loyalty” (zhong) and “filiality” (xiao). He explained that this is why, from the outset, the Father of the Nation’s Three Principles of the People talk about “nationalism” (minzuzhuyi). The culmination of nationalism is the advocacy of the recovery of intrinsic ethics, which are the eight virtues of loyalty (zhong), filiality (xiao), benevolence (ren), love (ai), belief (xin), righteousness (yi), moderacy (he), and peacefulness (ping). The two terms, loyalty and filiality, sit at the head of the eight virtues. One can therefore see how important loyalty and filiality are to the nation-state.39

Such claims were not new. As we saw in the introduction, Buddhists had been making similar assertions for centuries, arguing that their tradition advocated filiality and did not contravene China’s Confucian norms. (Nothing, Buddhists claimed, could be more filial that helping one’s parents attain a good rebirth by teaching them the Dharma, or devoting merit to deceased ancestors so they could escape the trauma of bad rebirths.) In a political context in which the KMT had established itself as upholding Chinese tradition, Zhuyun’s claim thus had an additional, political level of importance. Having established that Buddhism was filial, early in his series of lectures, Zhuyun then tried to show that Christianity was unfilial. He cited specific examples from the Bible, such as Mark 3:31-33, which states: And there come his mother and his brethren; and, standing without, they sent unto him, calling him. And a multitude was sitting about him; and they say unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren without seek for thee. And he answereth them, and saith, Who is my mother and my brethren? 39 Zhuyun, Fojiao yu Jidujiao de bijiao, 19.

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A second example came from Matthew 8:21-22: And another of the disciples said unto him, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. But Jesus saith unto him, Follow me; and leave the dead to bury their own dead.

And his final example was from John 2:1-4: And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; and the mother of Jesus was there: and Jesus also was bidden, and his disciples, to the marriage. And when the wine failed, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have no wine. And Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come.

With these citations, Zhuyun explained that Jesus was teaching his disciples to do the opposite of what Confucianism required: first, to deny the authority of the parent; second, to ignore the responsibility to mourn appropriately when a parent dies; and third, to directly disobey one’s parents altogether. This Christian lack of f iliality was evident in Christian societies as well. Zhuyun told of how foreign students “often report of the sorrows of elderly people in the United States,” who, when they seek to move in with their children, lacking other means of support, are asked to “pay rent and board. When the old person can’t pay any money, the children rudely ask them to move.”40 Christian children clearly did not respect or care for their parents; it was thus evident that Jesus “definitely did not want his disciples to experience the joy of family life (tianlun zhi le).”41 He found evidence for this in Matthew 10:37, where Jesus states: “He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” In short, Christianity was entirely opposed to Confucian, and hence Chinese, values. But in the Republic of China, political loyalty did not just mean adherence to Chinese tradition—it entailed upholding the KMT’s understanding of modern values as well. Rather than see these as uniquely “Western,” the party located them in China’s past. Zhuyun, as other Buddhists in republican China had done, argued that Buddhism essentially brought modernity to its full conclusion. In his speeches and the published book that resulted from them, he cited the ideals of the French Revolution—liberty, equality, and 40 Ibid., 31. 41 Ibid., 33.

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fraternity—as “symbols of the spiritual civilization of Western European countries,”42 and hence as modern ideas. But he then claimed that Buddhism and Confucianism embodied them, and thus argued against the Christian charge that Buddhism was the relic of an unenlightened age. These were also the ideals which in a key 1924 speech Sun Yat-sen himself referred to as akin to his three principles, likening freedom to nationalism, equality to democracy, and fraternity to livelihood. 43 He argued, for example, that Buddhism and Confucianism valued freedom because they were meritocratic traditions. Both allowed followers to attain the highest states within them—buddhahood, or the “exemplary person” ( junzi) in Confucianism. 44 Christianity, on the other hand, lacked true freedom in this sense because it was not entirely meritocratic—Christians were forever in a constant position of subservience. He wrote: Soldiers hope they can become a senior officer. Staff members hope they can become a section chief. Buddhists hope they can become a buddha. May I ask, can Christians become God in the future? No! No! The highest aim of Christians … is only to become a son of God. They will never be able to hold their heads high. If those who believe in Christianity could become God, then I could agree to believe [in Christianity]. 45

He concluded rhetorically: “Only Christians—who can never become God—will forever remain beneath the foot of God as his son! Is this freedom, I ask?”46 We can detect in Zhuyun’s statement a continuation of his view that Christianity embodied imperialistic objectives, because it established a hierarchy between believers and God—a situation akin to how he saw foreign powers as having forcibly dominated the Chinese. Although the notion of democracy remained important for patriotic, anti-communist Buddhists between the 1950s and 1970s, one could hardly say that Taiwan itself was democratic during this period. Indeed, the government declared martial law in 1949, lifting it only in 1987. Opponents of the KMT 42 Ibid., 40. 43 The text of this speech is available at the “Museum of Dr. Sun Yat-Sen” website: Sun Zhongshan (2006 [1924]), “Sanminzhuyi: minquanzhuyi: di er jiang,” Sun Zhongshan guju jinianguan, available at: http://www.sunyat-sen.org/index.php?m=content&c=index&a=show&catid=46 &id=6631 (accessed October 4, 2019). 44 The exemplary person is an individual who spontaneously and perfectly embodies Confucian virtue. 45 Zhyun, Fojiao yu Jidujiao de bijiao, 41. 46 Ibid., 42.

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were imprisoned and many were executed. 47 Taiwan’s first opposition party was officially formed only in 1986,48 and the first direct presidential election was held ten years later. 49 At the same time, as we saw in the first chapter, only one national Buddhist association—the BAROC—was permitted to exist.50 And Taiwan’s censorship regime scrutinized publications for any possible pro-Communist or anti-KMT ideas. Therefore, the political situation on the island was hardly as free as Zhuyun implied. Indeed, as Cheng-tian Kuo has shown, the only major religious group to actually oppose KMT rule was the Presbyterians in the 1970s—others remained politically neutral or acquiescent.51 What is important for us to note, however, is not whether Zhuyun’s reading of the Bible, or Taiwan’s political landscape, was accurate or not. Rather, what is notable is his clear devotion to Buddhism as an aspect of Chinese identity, and the expression of this identity through an identification with the party-state. His strategy in critiquing Christianity was essentially to paint it as being the opposite of modern, KMT values—hence, it was antithetical to Chinese tradition and to Chinese nationalism. In this sense, Zhuyun did not differ from anti-Christian writers of previous decades, encountered in the introduction, who opposed Christianity because it was not “Chinese.” And yet, even Zhuyun initially replicated Christian methods of proselytization on the island, targeting aborigines—most of whom had converted to Christianity—and seeking to supply them with charitable aid. He conformed to the Christian normative model, then, of being socially engaged, and articulating his tradition in terms that supported the modern, bureaucratic state. Zhuyun’s criticisms did not go unanswered. His book soon made its way into the hands of a Christian pastor in Hong Kong named Wu Enpu. Born in 1914 in Shantou, Wu came from a Baptist family, and commenced his ministry in 1937. In 1946, he began working in Hong Kong, before returning to Shantou in 1950 and continuing his pastoral work. He started teaching at the Guangzhou Bible College (Guangzhou Shengjing Xueyuan) in Hong Kong in 1954—an institute he remained at for the next 14 years.52 Wu was 47 See J. Bruce Jacobs, Democratizing Taiwan (Leiden: Brill 2012), 35. 48 The Democratic Progressive Party (Minjindang). 49 See chapter one of Jacobs, Democratizing Taiwan. 50 See Charles Brewer Jones, Buddhism in Taiwan: Religion and the State, 1660-1990 (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1999), 182-183. 51 Kuo, Religion and Democracy in Taiwan. 52 The website of the Alliance Bible Seminary in Hong Kong provides a brief biographical entry for Wu. See “Bufen zhongwai jiaoshi chitu zhi Xianggang de luxian jianjie,” Jiandao Shenxueyuan, available at: http://gideon.mcnet.com.hk/abs-old/www.abs.edu/live/zh/content0007.

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a prodigious author and editor, writing extensively on Christian belief in the Chinese context. He received Zhuyun’s book anonymously in the mail,53 and took this as a direct challenge: the Buddhists were “doing what the author of the book, Zhuyun, called ‘pissing on your head.’”54 Wu wrote that his colleagues advised him to not bother with a response; they said that if he ignored Zhuyun, he would soon go away. But he was concerned that the opposite would happen—that unless the book met with a swift and firm response, Zhuyun and his monastic counterparts would only grow stronger.55 He therefore published his own tract in 1957, calling it A Critique of “A Comparison of Buddhism and Christianity” (Bo “Fojiao yu Jidujiao de bijiao”). This first appeared in the Christian magazine Life Bimonthly (Shengming shuangyuekan) and was then published as a standalone volume. According to Wu’s own account, the tract met with great acclaim among Christians; he even claimed that many Buddhists wrote to him, agreeing that Zhuyun’s work was itself flawed.56 Hong Kong—then a British colony—was not governed according to the Three Principles of the People. But Wu’s intended audience seems to have been in Taiwan rather than Hong Kong, since Life Bimonthly was published in Taipei. And he argued on each of the same dimensions as Zhuyun—but claimed that it was Christianity, rather than Buddhism, that was patriotic, democratic and scientific. As a response to Zhuyun’s work, and as something published in Taiwan, we can assume that Wu was in fact also appealing to these notions as features of the KMT-dominated political landscape. How then, did he refute Zhuyun’s critiques while claiming to uphold similar values? One of Zhuyun’s main arguments was that Buddhism was not “superstitious”—that its pantheon of buddhas, bodhisattvas and deities were not theistic in the true sense of the word and were subject to natural laws. Wu, on the other hand, essentially considered Buddhism nonsensical, and attacked some of its core beliefs—one of these was the Buddhist pantheon of already-enlightened and spiritually advanced beings: “Buddhism has html?section_id=3031§ion_lvl=8§ion_past_id=3,877,1513&ck=1&main=3 (accessed April 12, 2017). 53 He suspected a Buddhist institution, rather than a Christian individual, had sent the book to him as part of a mass mail-out. This was because the characters for “printed matter” (yinshuapin) were stamped on the envelope. 54 Wu Enpu, Bo “Fojiao yu Jidujiao de bijiao,” Hong Kong: Shengwenshe, 1957, 1. Wu is referring to Zhuyun on page 5 of Fojiao yu Jidujiao de bijiao. The quote is absent from later editions; see Zhuyun, Fojiao yu Jidujiao de bijiao (Taipei: Huacheng shuju, 1966), 5. 55 Wu Enpu, “Chi Yinshun heshang ‘Shangdi ai shiren’ pian de miuwang,” in Shangdi ai shiren, by Wu Enpu and Yinshun (Taipei: Kaiyuan si fojing liutong chu, 1967), 36. 56 Wu, Bibing qishi nian, 56.

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bodhisattvas, the king of hell [Yama] and hungry ghosts—the whole sky is full of deities and buddhas. … Buddhism has already sunken to the level of a superstitious religion in China. This is a fact that cannot be denied.”57 By showing Buddhism to incorporate belief in these beings, Wu made the point that it was akin to a pantheistic religion, and thus was no different to the multitude of other faiths found throughout the world that missionaries designated as idolatrous and primitive. Another example was the doctrine of reincarnation. He argued that since the earth was originally lifeless, it could not have supported reincarnation, which was supposed to be a universal and trans-historical reality. Wu argued that science had in fact disproven this doctrine; paleontological discoveries proved that human beings emerged, as a species, quite recently in the planet’s history. How then, Wu asked, could the human path of rebirth, when one had the opportunity to understand the Dharma and practice Buddhism, be so recent, when Buddhist history was purported to stretch back countless eons into an infinite past? There was also a basic problem of arithmetic, since the number of living beings in the world was clearly increasing. This should not have been the case were they all to be in a continual cycle of rebirth.58 Much of the time, however, Wu simply spoke past Zhuyun instead of engaging with him. Even though they both argued within the parameters of common political ideals and scientific positivism, they shared fundamentally different worldviews, making direct engagement and true dialogue difficult. Both sides found support for their positions with scriptural evidence that would not be acceptable to the other. For example, when Zhuyun argued that Buddhists were patriotic, Wu responded that Zhuyun had not actually supplied examples of texts that instructed monastics to support the state.59 But Wu himself argued that there were many examples of biblical patriots, including Moses, as well as “Joshua, the judges, Saul, David, Nehemiah … Samuel, Ezra, Daniel, Elisha … Deborah, [and] Esther.”60 Yet these arguments would have been just as unconvincing to Zhuyun as his were to Wu. Therefore, this was certainly not a case of ecumenical interfaith dialogue; their conversation had only one aim, and that was to show how their respective tradition was superior to the other. While Zhuyun associated Christianity with violence and pointed to various historical episodes as evidence, Wu provided a very different historical 57 Wu, Bo “Fojiao yu Jidujiao de bijiao,” 32. 58 Ibid., 27. 59 Ibid., 15. 60 Ibid., 16.

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narrative. He instead referred to the activities of Christians and missionaries who upheld the political and social values of modernist intellectuals. It was Christians, Wu argued, who had brought modernity to China, and the knowledge and institutional apparatuses required for the nation-state: From the time Morrison61 brought the teachings to the East through to today, in contrast [to Buddhism], how many great things has Christianity done? Who established schools, brought new, Western culture [to China], and built the basis for a new system of education? Who brought the ideas of freedom, egalitarianism, and fraternal love [to China], influenced Sun Yat-sen and many other martyrs, rose and overturned China’s several thousand-year-old autocratic regime, and established the Republic of China? Who opposed opium-smoking, visiting prostitutes and gambling? Who advocated education for girls, and releasing women from foot-binding? Who opposed concubinage, and advocated gender equality? Who opposed superstition, and eliminated arrogant ignorance? Who introduced new kinds of medicine, opened hospitals in all parts of China, established orphanages and homes for the elderly … was it monks? Was it Buddhism? Come on, monk Zhuyun. Answer me.62

These issues were in fact very much alive for Buddhists, who throughout the republican period on the mainland had struggled to adapt to the new social and political context brought about by the arrival of Western modernity, which required active social engagement mirroring the state’s modernization effort. Yet Wu noted that even Zhuyun himself had lamented the comparative weakness of Buddhist philanthropic and educational activities, while adding that Buddhist benevolence focused on relatively minor issues—such as freeing individual animals about to be slaughtered for food—neglecting more significant activities that would bring widespread benefit (such as building schools, orphanages and hospitals).63 Finally, as we have seen, besides arguing that Buddhism was “modern,” Zhuyun claimed that it was aligned with Chinese culture and values through Confucianism. In turn, he attempted to show that Christianity was antithetical to Confucian values, and supplied quotes from the Bible showing that Jesus advocated disobeying and disrespecting the parents. Wu thus presented 61 Here, Wu means Robert Morrison (1782-1834)—a Protestant missionary in China and famous Bible translator. He also compiled a Chinese-English dictionary. 62 Ibid., 29-30. 63 Ibid., 23. For Zhuyun’s original statement see his Fojiao yu Jidujiao de bijiao, 83-84.

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alternative citations showing filiality to be a core tenet of Christian belief. He claimed that Jesus exemplified this filiality to his parents, citing Luke 2:51, which states that Jesus “went down with them, and came to Nazareth; and he was subject unto them: and his mother kept all these sayings in her heart,”64 and John 19:27, in which Jesus saw a disciple standing next to his mother, and “Then saith he to the disciple, Behold, thy mother! And from that hour the disciple took her unto his own home.”65 He wrote that Zhuyun’s citation of Mark 3:31-33—where Jesus apparently refused to recognize his mother—was taken out of context. Instead, he explained that Jesus was preaching that “all under heaven were one family.” This is made clear in Mark 3:33-34, which adds “And looking round on them which sat round about him, he saith, Behold, my mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother.”66 Wu also cited Ephesians 6:2 (“Honor thy father and mother”). Since “monks reject their parents, leaving the family to engage in [religious] practice, it is this that is unfilial behavior!”67 For Wu, then, Christians should be “filial to one’s parents,” and could therefore uphold Confucian values.68 Again, these competing citations show how Wu and Zhuyun both supplied evidence to support their arguments, but there was little direct engagement between them.69 While Zhuyun will return in the next chapter, he did not respond in print to Wu’s criticisms. According to his biography in Eminent Monks of Taiwan, facing a number of health problems over subsequent years, he instead continued to work on popularizing Chan and Buddhist recitation programs.70 Wu, on the other hand, published critique of Buddhism in 1957; this was his response to a debate between an American Buddhist, Bhikkhu Upaya (n.d.), and a Bible scholar—James D. Bales (1915—1995). The book itself was published by the Buddhist Youth Magazine Society (Fojiao qingnian zazhishe) in 1955.71 64 Wu, Bo “Fojiao yu Jidujiao de bijiao,” 19. 65 Ibid. 66 Ibid. 67 Ibid., 21. 68 Ibid. 69 Erik Hammerstrom has argued that Buddhists in republican China selectively drew from the canon to support their assertion that Buddhism was compatible with science. Here, both Buddhists and Christians are employing the same tactic, in an effort to show that they conform to the values promoted by the state. See Erik J. Hammerstrom (2015), The Science of Chinese Buddhism: Early Twentieth-Century Engagements, New York: Columbia University Press. 70 See Zhuyun’s biography in Taiwan gaoseng. 71 Another translation was serialized in the Buddhist magazine Haichao yin in 1955 (volume 36, issues 7 to 9).

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It is perhaps curious that this work should have become implicated in the emerging Buddhist-Christian debate. Bales and Upaya were far removed from Taiwan. Bales was a professor of Bible Studies at a Christian liberal arts college—Harding University—in Searcy, Arkansas,72 and his opponent, Bhikkhu Upaya, was not a monk as his name would suggest. (Bhikkhu means “monk” in the Buddhist canonical language of Pali.) His original name was Frank Newton; by the time an article about him appeared in the Spartanburg Herald Journal in 1961, he had been divorced and was again married with children.73 While his original vocation was a Baptist preacher, he eventually gave up Christianity, divorced his first wife and converted to Buddhism on a trip to India. He then served as a Buddhist missionary in San Diego and Arkansas.74 The record of their debate in one sense resembles Zhuyun and Wu’s. Upaya and Bales often focused on minor points of doctrine and provided little substantive argumentation. However, even though Bales and Upaya engaged each other in a very different context, their dialogue did touch on some of the overarching themes dominating Buddhist-Christian competition into the late 1960s in Taiwan. These include biblical history, as well as modernity and religion.75 Wu’s response to Bales and Upaya also appeared in the magazine Life Bimonthly.76 He stated that he felt pressed to respond because the book was popular among Buddhists,77 although given its lack of mention in later texts, this popularity seems to have been fleeting—Wu seemed to have been relying on the translator’s own assertions regarding the book’s stature. (In his autobiography, Wu also wrote that he was not aware of any Buddhist response to this work.78) In any case, in Wu’s lengthy retort he touches less on Chinese values, and is more concerned with refuting Upaya’s attacks on Christianity from a doctrinal perspective. At certain points we do see 72 See Travis Cox, “A Look Back on the Life of Dr. James D. Bales.” This was originally published in 1996 in the Searcy Daily Citizen. As of April 12, 2017 it remained available online at: http:// web.archive.org/web/20030121015329/http://www.jonbales.com/Family/1996/CitizenArticles. html#Part2. 73 “Once Protestant … Now Buddhist,” Spartanburg Herald Journal, March 5, 1961, B2. As of April 12, 2017, this article remained archived at: https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=SF OYbPikdlgC&dat=19610305&printsec=frontpage&hl=en. 74 Ibid., A5. 75 See Wu Baya [Bhikkhu Upaya] and Ba Lesi [James D. Bales], Fojiao shifou bi Jidujiao chonggao weida?, trans. Sun Mune (Taipei: Fojiao qingnian zazhishe, 1955). 76 Wu Enpu, Ping “Fojiao shifou bi Jidujiao chonggao weida?” (Hong Kong: Shengwen she, 1957), 1. 77 Ibid. 78 Wu, Bibing qishi nian, 61.

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Wu refer specifically to the Chinese context, and explain that evidence of Christian superiority again came from its history. He wrote: Take the example of China; after Christianity’s arrival, they [Christians] established schools, built hospitals, orphanages, foundling hospitals, old peoples’ homes, opposed gambling, opposed whoredom, opposed opium, opposed slavery, opposed concubinage, opposed prostitution, opposed foot-binding, promoted equal education, education for girls and so on, and cleared the way for people towards wisdom, which had previously been obstructed. It enacted a basic change in the corrupt virtues and customs of the people. However … since the introduction of Buddhism to China, what has their contribution to society been? We cannot say that there have not been any progressive social functions, but it merged into the old society as though driving a cart backwards, leading society back into a mire … Let us consider Christian countries. Because people’s level of knowledge, culture, scientific achievement, and living standards [there] are high, these countries are wealthy and powerful, and the people there live peacefully, and are industrious and happy. What about China? And especially, the Buddhist countries of South-east Asia? Not only are the people ignorant and poor—even their countries are weak. And what is the reason? In the last 2,000 years? Christians have been busily spreading the gospel among backward peoples, even to barbaric peoples. This is an ironclad fact. Wherever Christianity goes, the barbarians become civilized, the rough are transformed, and the backward are advanced. Christianity can be considered a gospel for saving people and the world. I’m not boasting—this is a historical fact. But China is a civilized state; the good and the wise are abundant. This is a fertile piece of land where Buddhism has been disseminated—and if Buddhism really is magnificent, it should call China to even greater levels of magnificence. If it is great, it should call China to even more greatness. But unfortunately, after the transmission of Buddhism to China, what it has given China is not magnificence or greatness, nor beauty or selflessness. Rather, Chinese people have become increasingly superstitious, more ignorant, poorer, weaker and more selfish—and social ethics have vanished.79

Therefore, although both sides could present textual evidence from religious scriptures supporting their arguments, for Wu, history showed 79 Wu, Ping “Fojiao shifou bi Jidujiao chonggao weida?”, 71-73.

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Christianity to be more aligned with modernity—and benef icial to China—than Buddhism. Zhuyun could cite evidence to show that Buddhism was intrinsically democratic or scientif ic, or that it embodied modern values, while Wu could do the same for Christianity. And it was this kind of portrayal, of Christianity as a force for modernity, and Buddhism, for social backwardness, that inspired our next figure to respond to Wu.

Awakening the world When Zhuyun stepped back from the emerging print debate with Christians for the next few years, a rising young star of Taiwan’s Buddhist world— Shengyan—entered the fray. He was born as Zhang Baokang (Shengyan’s childhood name) in 1930 in the Chinese province of Jiangsu.80 He entered monastic life in 1943 at the Guangjiao Temple,81 and in 1947, went to Shanghai to study at the Jing’an Buddhist Institute.82 According to Shengyan, most of the instructors there were aligned with Taixu’s reformist ideals.83 But, swept up in the tides of history, and with the Communist victory in the civil war immanent, he made plans to leave the mainland. Lacking funds to book private passage across the Taiwan Strait, he instead joined the signal corps (tongxinlian) of the KMT army.84 When Shengyan left, he took his cassock with him in the belief that the KMT would retake the mainland, and he would return to monastic life before too long.85 It would be ten years, however, before the army discharged him, and he would not leave Taiwan for nearly two decades. Of his work, Shengyan wrote that: In August 1956, I was transferred to Taipei because I passed the exam for an Intelligence Interception and Collection Unit at the Ministry of National Defense, and I began doing duties at intercepting and collecting wireless communication intelligence. We faced the wireless operators from Mainland China everyday; although the Taiwan Strait separated us, we even knew their gender, name, and age. They didn’t know of our 80 On Shengyan, also see Pittman, Toward a Modern Chinese Buddhism, 277-285. 81 Shengyan, Shengyan fashi xuesi licheng (Taipei: Zhongzheng shuju, 1993), 6. 82 Ibid., 13. 83 Ibid., 15. 84 Ibid., 22-23. 85 Ibid., 18.

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existence or perhaps they did know, but they didn’t know who we were. In this capacity we provided results to the supervisors according to our own personal diligence, and being a diligent worker I received several awards.86

Why did Shengyan remain in the army after arriving in Taiwan? He wrote that it was only partly due to the attitude that when I joined the army I wanted to do my share and was hoping to return soon to Mainland China. It was also because I heard news from several fellow monks who had left the army; during that period, circumstances for monks who left Mainland China for Taiwan were very difficult. The monasteries in the local province refused to accept them, so monks who came from outer provinces had no way to support themselves.87

Some monks were also arrested; indeed, at one point, Shengyan himself was suspected of having been “sent by someone” and that his monastic identity was a cover. He appealed to senior colleagues who intervened on his behalf, remarking that “this dispute, which almost got me killed, was settled in the end.”88 In the army, Shengyan received a very different education to that provided during his monastic studies. His period spent in secular, military life introduced him to a highly nationalistic culture, but one that expanded his intellectual scope beyond the confines of the seminary. He began reading literary, philosophical, political, legal and scientific works,89 and published in his unit’s journal, Fierce Lion (Xiong shi); in popular magazines, such as Contemporary Youth (Dangdai qingnian);90 and in various Buddhist titles, including the respected Tidal Roar (Haichao yin) and the nascent Humanity (Rensheng zazhi). 86 Sheng Yen, ‘My Intellectual Autobiography: Life in the Army’, trans. by Chang Luo, Chan Magazine (Spring, 2006): 14. Available at: http://chancenter.org/cmc/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/ ChanM-Spring-2016-web.pdf (accessed March 30, 2019). For the original Chinese, see Shengyan, Shengyan fashi xuesi licheng, 39-40. 87 Sheng Yen, ‘My Intellectual Autobiography: Life in the Army’, 6. For the original Chinese, see Shengyan, Shengyan fashi xuesi licheng, 25-26. 88 Sheng Yen, ‘My Intellectual Autobiography: Life in the Army’, 10-11. For the original Chinese, see Shengyan, Shengyan fashi xuesi licheng, 33-34. 89 Ibid., 32. 90 Ibid., 35.

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The army subjected Shengyan to ten years of KMT propaganda, intended to maintain ideological unity and hence effectiveness as a fighting force. According to Bernard D. Cole, The education offered by the political warfare structure in the military aimed to accomplish much more than indoctrinate military personal in a sort of anti-communist nationalism. Its goal was to develop and instill nothing less than a new national ideology within the military, and through the military as its agents, within the civilian population as a whole.91

As we will see, the fruit of this indoctrination will appear in Shengyan’s anti-Christian writings.92 In short, his mentality in the late 1950s was the product of a nationalistic military culture, his Buddhist background and his newly acquired knowledge of Western history, philosophy and religion. It is from the resulting, sinocentric perspective that Shengyan assessed Christianity. Shengyan was able to develop contacts with Taiwan’s Buddhist world during his time in the military. After postings in Jinshan in northern Taiwan, and the southern city of Gaoxiong, he was transferred to Taipei in 1956 to do radio intelligence work;93 and there, he could obtain more Buddhist texts. A student of the well-known clerical scholar, Yinshun (who we shall meet in the next chapter), named Yanpei, gave Shengyan copies of Yinshun’s books. He was already familiar with Yinshun’s work, having previously read his Overview of Buddhism (Fofa gailun), and in Yinshun, Shengyan found a model for his own career. Yinshun was a popularizer of Buddhism (he published a multitude of accessible books, including a Buddhist textbook for children), but was also a learned teacher of the Dharma and the author of scholarly works. This was the type of persona that Shengyan increasingly began to carve out for himself. Although he was formally discharged from the army in January of 1960, he actually re-donned his cassock at the end of 1959, becoming a disciple of the monastic Dongchu.94 Dongchu himself had arrived in Taiwan in 1949, whereupon he founded the magazine Humanity at the Guanyin Temple in the Taipei suburb of Beitou. This magazine was devoted to discussing 91 Bernard D. Cole, Taiwan’s Security: History and Prospects (London: Routledge, 2006), 137. 92 He was also required to write regularly in his journal. 93 Shengyan, Shengyan fashi xuesi licheng, 39-40. 94 For details concerning his second ordination, see: Shengyan, Shengyan fashi xuesi licheng, 55.

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Buddhism in relation to the practical affairs of human life. Like Yinshun, Dongchu helped lay the foundations for Shengyan’s engagement with secular scholarship by establishing the Chinese Buddhist Culture Institute (Zhonghua Fojiao wenhuaguan), and producing some academic works of his own, including A History of Modern Chinese Buddhism (Zhongguo Fojiao jindaishi) in 1974.95 In 1967, he became an advisor to the Chinese Culture College (Zhonghua xueshuyuan) in Buddhist Studies.96 In time, these socially-engaged, scholarly influences would inform Shengyan’s approach to both Buddhism, and Christianity. Both Dongchu and Yinshun had been influenced by Taixu’s approach to Buddhism, and Shengyan’s agenda, over the coming years, combined influences from all three clerics. Each was, in different ways, concerned with engaging with the broader public through Buddhist publications; in showing how Buddhism was related to human life; and, to varying degrees, with academia. But Shengyan’s emerging identity drew from his time in the army too. During the latter years of his service, he used a nom de plume that combined these two strands of his biography to date—the Buddhist and the military. He called himself Xingshi Jiangjun, or, the “General Who Awakens the World.” One of his f irst concerns, as a nationalistic Buddhist immersed in KMT ideology, was defending Buddhism against the rise of Christianity, and thus his pseudonym was also, in a sense, a nom de guerre. The f irst anti-Christian article Shengyan authored was about the Old Testament, and it appeared in 1955.97 A precursor to many of the critiques he would develop in the following years, it focused on the morality found in the text, which he characterized as “pages and pages of nonsense and bloody carnage”.98 According to Shengyan, missionaries did not talk about this part of the Bible, instead inviting potential converts to focus on the New Testament. And yet Jesus’s teachings mainly consisted of the fried up “cold rice of the ‘Old Testament’”; 99 thus there was no 95 Dongchu, Zhongguo Fojiao jindaishi (Taipei: Zhonghua Fojiao wenhuaguan, 1974). 96 See Guoche, “Dongchu laoren jianpu,” Zhonghua foxue yanjiu 2 (1998). This can be accessed online: http://buddhism.lib.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-BJ012/2-2.HTM (accessed October 28, 2019). 97 This is according to the timeline of his works online. See Fagu Wenli Xueyuan and Zhonghua Foxue Yanjiusuo, “Zhuzuo nianbiao,” Fagu quanji, available at: http://ddc.shengyen.org/year. htm (accessed August 2, 2019). 98 Shengyan, “‘Jiuyue’ zhe bu shu,” in Pingjie, lixing (Taipei: Fagu wenhua, 1992), 208. Shengyan did not note where this was originally published, but it is available online: Shengyan, “‘Jiuyue’ zhe bu shu,” in Pingjie, lixing (Taipei: Fagu wenhua, 1992), available at: http://ddc.shengyen.org/ cgi-bin/ccdd/show.py?s=03-06p0208 (accessed August 2, 2019). 99 Ibid., 208-209.

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fundamental theological difference between the two parts of the text. He wrote that God was the product of early people’s (chumin) imagination 100 —that the document was a relic from an unscientif ic age—and that it would be “eliminated” (through a process of historical natural selection).101 He characterized the people of that time as “barbarians”; 102 God himself reflected their mentality with his harsh, cruel justice. 103 China, in contrast, had been more civilized at the corresponding point in history, when it valued “trust and harmony as the spirit of the country’s founding.”104 In the coming years, Shengyan took missionary activities in Taiwan as a sort of call to arms. He bristled at their concerted attempts to penetrate the Buddhist world. In one of his later memoirs, he recalled the activities of Daofeng Shan, a Lutheran organization based in Hong Kong that was founded by the Norwegian missionary Karl Reichelt in 1930, and which specifically took as its mission the conversion of Buddhists.105 To this end, Shengyan recalled how they studied Buddhism and practiced meditation, just like a pious Buddhist layperson. Then, they took everything they had learned from temples … and founded a new group [Daofeng Shan] using Christian views and beliefs to explain Buddhism, while using the conduct and mode of life in Buddhist temples for Christian spiritual practice and prayer.106

He noted that this strategy, in which for example, “thusness, buddhanature, and Dharma nature” were explained as the “God, Logos and Spirit of Christianity,” resulted in the conversion of numerous monastics.107 We can see, then, that Christian missionary efforts in Taiwan greatly concerned Shengyan, like Zhuyun, and that a principal, specific point of contention was the Christian incursion directly into Buddhist space—whether that be physical (temples and the Buddhist community) or ideational (through the Christian colonization of Buddhist concepts). 100 Ibid., 210. 101 Ibid., 210. 102 Ibid., 213. In reference to Ge 38. 103 Ibid., 216-217. 104 Ibid., 214. 105 See the overview of Daofeng Shan at: “Tao Fong Shan Christian Centre,” Tao Fong Shan Christian Centre, available at: http://www.tfscc.org/eg/index.htm (accessed April 12, 2017). 106 Shengyan, Shengyan fashi xuesi licheng, 79. 107 Ibid.

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Thus, in 1956, when he saw Wu Enpu’s book on a colleague’s table,108 it immediately piqued his interest, and he read it in one sitting.109 According to Shengyan, Zhuyun could not continue with the debate “because he then suffered high blood pressure and diabetes, as well as headaches and insomnia.”110 He determined to issue a response himself. Still in the army, he did so in a tract that was written over a period of ten days. A thousand copies were subsequently published, in November of that year, in the southern city of Gaoxiong. The resulting book was at times very personal. He criticized the tone of Wu’s essay, noting that at times he was insulting, and Shengyan used the nature of Wu’s writing to claim that he was in fact a bad Christian: It really is unbelievable that a Christian, of at least middle-age—a religionist whose job is [religious] propagation—could [speak] such base words. I’m really worried about him. And the omnipotent God? If he wants such a person to be his disciple, I’ll send a message to Mr. Wu Enpu: if you really do ascend to the Heavenly Kingdom, please leave this mouth behind, to avoid God blaming you for eating too much garlic in the world of humans.111

What concerned Shengyan was whether Wu was loyal to Chinese tradition and identity. He challenged Wu over his patriotism, asking him if by worshipping a foreign God he was really Chinese, and if he “hoped all Chinese people would become Christians, and then become red-haired and green-eyed.”112 He also addressed the question of the relationship between the Three Principles of the People and Christianity, since Sun Yat-sen himself was a Christian. Shengyan thus referred to a 1935 speech by Chiang Kai-shek, where he claimed that Sun’s thought had three origins: 1) “China’s innate politics and ethics, and orthodox philosophical thought,” 2) “Euro-American social 108 Zhang Caiwei [Shengyan], Ping “Bo Fojiao yu Jidujiao zhi bijiao,” Gaoxiong: Qingfang, 1956, 1. This was a name Shengyan used on joining the army. On Shengyan’s pen-names, see Lin Qixian, Shengyan fashi qishi nianpu (Taipei: Fagu wenhua, 2000), 22-23. On the name he used in the army, see pages 21-22. In a 1983 preface to the text, he stated that he was unable to locate a copy of this himself until that year, when Zhuyun gave him one. He subsequently included it as an appendix in Research into Christianity. See Shengyan, Jidujiao zhi yanjiu (Taipei: Dongchu chubanshe, 1993), 243-244. 109 Zhang [Shengyan], Ping “Bo Fojiao yu Jidujiao zhi bijiao,” 15. 110 Shengyan, Shengyan fashi xuesi licheng, 80. 111 Zhang [Shengyan], Ping “Bo Fojiao yu Jidujiao zhi bijiao,” 15. 112 Ibid., 26.

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science, and the essence of their political systems,” and 3) “the truth of his own unique insights and innovations”. Shengyan remarked: “the Father of the Nation’s teachings lack the new thought (xin sixiang) you advocate: not offering sacrifices to one’s ancestors, not saluting the flag. Do you seek to completely eradicate the Chinese nation’s (Zhonghua minzu) innate customs and practices?”113 Again, the urgency of responding to the Christian challenge seemed, in part, to stem from his fear that Chinese identity—of which Buddhism was a key part—was itself at stake. In fact, according to Shengyan, there was no reason to follow Jesus. Not only did his teachings conflict with Chinese values and identity—Jesus himself embodied the very features that, as we saw in the introduction, missionaries had previously ascribed to Buddhism and Chinese religion generally: he was irrational, uneducated, and promoted superstition. We can see Shengyan’s views on Jesus from this period encapsulated in further essays published soon after his response to Wu. These appeared later in his military career, in 1958 and 1959, in the Buddhist magazine Chinese Buddhist (Zhongguo Fojiao).114 Of most interest to us here is the second of these essays—entitled “Further Discussion of the Similarities and Differences between Buddhism and Christianity”—which mainly consists of a comparison of Jesus, in the Gospel of Matthew, with the Buddha. It characterized Jesus as against the values embodied in the KMT’s three principles—particularly democracy—since Jesus himself was essentially an authoritarian figure. The comparison ran as follows. According to Shengyan’s account, the Buddha had been raised in an affluent household, and received an excellent education. This social and intellectual status was later reflected in his disciples. He emphasized that although the Buddha had many poor followers, there were also many who were like him: wealthy, educated, and influential men. In contrast, Jesus’ disciples consisted of the destitute, the sick, women, and children. Jesus himself was poor because his father was a carpenter, and he lacked an education because his childhood was spent in his father’s workshop. His parents were of low social status. While Shengyan elsewhere praised Greece for its humanism, science, and freethinking, Jesus could not access this, since he claimed that the Jews were opposed to Greek culture. 113 Ibid., 31. 114 Xingshi Jiangjun [Shengyan], “Lun Fojiao he Jidujiao zhi tongyi,” Zhongguo Fojiao 3, no. 2 (1958): 4-8 and Xingshi Jiangjun [Shengyan], “Zai lun Fojiao he Jidujiao zhi tongyi,” Zhongguo Fojiao 3, no. 8 (1959): 6-9. For a partial translation of the latter, see Xingshi Jiangjun [Shengyan], “Zai lun Fojiao he Jidujiao de tongyi,” trans. Scott Pacey, in Jesus Beyond Christianity: The Classic Texts, eds. Gregory A. Barker and Stephen E. Gregg (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).

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As a result, Shengyan asserted that Jesus, “apart from being familiar with the Old Testament, was quite ignorant”.115 And while Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount was worthy of praise, later his “emotions frequently buried his rationality,” and he was “constantly beset by a mental condition characterized by layers upon layers of contradictions.”116 In contrast, the Buddha was well educated and his “powers of understanding were exceptional.”117 Thus, while Jesus was irrational, lowly, and uneducated, the Buddha was “honest, sincere, and stable, as well as bright and penetrating.”118 Shengyan continued to add that while Jesus’ teachings were based in emotion and lacked consistency, the Buddha’s were coherent and entirely rational. As a result, the ambiguity of Christian doctrine, caused by Jesus’s confused sermons which often perplexed the gospel writers, had not only led to fractures within the church, but to religious wars between competing factions. In contrast, Buddhist teachings had never led to religious conflict.119 Moreover, Jesus spoke in confusing parables, only explaining them to the apostles. He merely cured the illnesses of his followers, and chose to keep his deeper teachings hidden from them as a way of maintaining authority over their salvation. The Buddha, however, preached openly, and in a systematic way. Moreover, while the Buddha attained recognition from the wealthy and educated, and caused numerous respected people to become his followers, Jesus remained largely unknown to the Roman polity during his lifetime. He was frustrated by his lack of social recognition. Eventually, in what Shengyan characterized as an irrational and desperate act, he sought martyrdom. He characterized Jesus’ death as being akin to his birth, claiming that “Jesus grew up in a poor and lowly environment, preached his doctrine in a poor and lowly environment, and from amidst a poor and lowly environment headed towards a poor and lowly crucifix—to be crucified at Golgotha 115 Xingshi Jiangjun [Shengyan], “Zai lun Fojiao he Jidujiao zhi tongyi,” 6. 116 Ibid., 7. 117 Ibid., 6. 118 Ibid. 119 This is a mischaracterization of Buddhist history. On Buddhism and violence, see Michael K. Jerryson, Buddhist Fury: Religion and Violence in Southern Thailand (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2011); Patrick Grant, Buddhism and Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2009); Michael Jerryson and Mark Juergensmeyer, eds., Buddhist Warfare (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); Xue Yu, Buddhism, War and Nationalism: Chinese Monks in the Struggle Against Japanese Aggressions, 1931-1945 (New York: Routledge, 2005); Brian Daizen Victoria, Zen at War (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefijield Publishers, 2006).

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between two thieves!”120 He suggested that if Jesus had been more “rational” and less “fanatical,” he could have avoided an early death, perhaps becoming a more seasoned and wise teacher.121 Thus, Christian teachings largely ran counter to Chinese, Confucian values. But Shengyan could see a future for Christianity in China—if it adapted to Chinese culture and circumstances.122 He stated that if Christians can abandon the evil qualities [moxing] in Jesus’s bloodline (the national characteristics Jesus inherited from the Hebrew nationality or the national characteristics of the Old Testament period), and put effort into exhibiting the divine qualities in Jesus’s character, in the future, there could still be a bright way forward.123

We shall deal with the question of Buddhist anti-Semitism in the next chapter. For the moment, we can see that Shengyan’s essays were different to those Zhuyun and Wu had written. While they appealed to readers mostly on the basis of Taiwan’s dominant political and cultural values, Shengyan had begun to draw on Western academic works to support his arguments. However, the scholarship available in Chinese, in the late 1950s, did not represent the most up-to-date Western studies. Although he does not credit it, one such publication that informed his views on Jesus was the French historian Ernest Renan’s (1823-1892) The Life of Jesus. Although the original book was first published in 1863, a Chineselanguage edition was published in the same year that Shengyan’s article on 120 Xingshi Jiangjun [Shengyan], “Zai lun Fojiao he Jidujiao zhi tongyi,” 8. This sentence was omitted from a later reprinting of the essay. See Shengyan, “Zai lun Fojiao yu Jidujiao de tongyi,” in Shentong yu rentong (Taipei: Fagu wenhua, 1997), 224. 121 Xingshi Jiangjun [Shengyan], “Zai lun Fojiao he Jidujiao zhi tongyi,” 8. 122 Shengyan later also argued that that Chinese culture emphasized inclusivism and could not accommodate exclusivist religion. See “Cong zongjiao wenwu zhanlan tan Fojiao,” Haichao yin 45, no. 9 (1964): 4-5. 123 Xingshi Jiangjun [Shengyan], “Zai lun Fojiao he Jidujiao zhi tongyi,” 9. Shengyan discusses evil obstacles to spiritual progress, which he associates with the forces of the demon king (Mara) at least in the Buddha’s case, elsewhere in this text. On page 7, he praises the Buddha’s triumph over these demonic (mogui) challenges, which he characterizes as greater than Jesus’s accomplishments in this regard. And he expresses admiration for Jesus’s teachings when the demonic forces were far from him, making him “bright” and “loveable.” He wrote that “this kind of evil obstacle (mozhang), we can affirm as factual, and can also explain as forming the embodiments (huashen) of various kinds of internal erroneous and evil thoughts.” Regarding the quote above, the words in parentheses were omitted from a later reprinting. See “Zai lun Fojiao yu Jidujiao de tongyi” (in Shentong yu rentong), 231.

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the Old Testament appeared, in 1955.124 Influenced by German scholarship on the Bible, and particularly David Friedrich Strauss’s Das Leben Jesu,125 Renan attempted to view Jesus historically, and consider the gospels as historical documents. His book had proved controversial, if also popular, in the past. The Catholic Church in France criticized Renan’s study for its treatment of Jesus as a man rather than solely as the Son of God, even though Renan, reflecting both French positivist and romantic trends, used Jesus for his own philosophical ends. (He wrote, for example, that Christ “came as close to perfection as humanity ever could; and this perfection arose not from any divine spark, nor from any wider cultural flowering, but from the inner recesses of Christ alone.”126) Yet Shengyan regarded this as a reliable source, marked by scholarly detachment, for information on Jesus’s life beyond the accounts in the gospels. Clear parallels exist between Renan’s and Shengyan’s texts. They include Renan’s characterization of Jesus as the poor and unworldly son of a carpenter, ignorant of Hellenic philosophy and science, and his gravitation to the poor and people of low status. More fundamentally, Shengyan’s own description of Jesus’s descent from a promising spiritual teacher to a state of delusion and paranoia is paralleled in Renan’s narrative. Renan wrote that his core disciples became “a sort of private circle, which Jesus calls to him at certain moments when he distrusts the faith and intelligence of the rest,”127 and that his followers were mostly “fishermen and simple people.”128 In Shengyan’s account, too, Jesus was eventually overcome with bitterness because the “Pharisees and the doctors” had rejected his teachings.129 However, while the similarity of Renan’s and Shengyan’s portrayal of Jesus indicates that Shengyan relied heavily on Renan’s work, he arrived at a different assessment of Jesus’s career. Following on from his nationalistic critiques of Wu Enpu, Shengyan painted the portrait of a Buddha who was diametrically opposed to Jesus. He made his case, along the way, that Jesus was not worthy of serious consideration when the Chinese world already possessed a superior religious teacher such as the Buddha. 124 Lenan [Ernest Renan], Yesu chuan [Vie de Jesus], trans. Lei Songsheng (Taipei: Taiwan shangwu, 1955). 125 Ibid., 92. 126 Alan Pitt, “The Cultural Impact of Science in France: Ernest Renan and the Vie de Jésus,” The Historical Journal, 43, no. 1 (2000): 91. 127 Renan, The Life of Jesus, 160. 128 Ibid., 166. 129 Ibid., 192.

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Finally, although Shengyan read extensively while in the army, it was still a restrictive environment that affected his intellectual outlook. He spent his youth in conservative institutions, and had a limited exposure to Judaism or Christianity beyond the dated sources he was able to obtain. These displayed the anti-Semitic prejudices common to the time in which they were produced. Renan himself held that Christianity was superior to Judaism, and took a depreciatory view of Jewish culture and history.130 Shengyan absorbed these assessments into his worldview, but time spent in more open environments in the 1970s—Tokyo as a doctoral student, and New York as a Zen instructor—seemed to wither his ethnocentrism. That is not to say that other Buddhists did not display similar attitudes—indeed, we shall see them return in the next chapter.

Conclusion Although Renan’s book had been superseded by more recent and objective studies, as we have seen, it had just been republished before Shengyan wrote his essay refuting Wu’s critique and thus was somewhat current. His essays in Chinese Buddhist marked the entrance of academic, historical sources into the emerging Buddhist-Christian debate. While Shengyan’s 1956 refutation of Wu was emotional and focused on the question of values, by 1958-59, he was drawing from Renan’s treatment of Jesus as a historical person to achieve his polemical aim: showing that Buddhism embodied the ideals of his age. The ensuing debate unfolded in a way that reflected this polemical end. Rather than engaging in genuine interfaith dialogue with the intention of reaching common ground and mutual understanding, both sides sought to critique the other while defending their own position. Shengyan, in particular, would eventually become a venerated commentator in Buddhist circles in Taiwan, but there is little theological detail in his discussion. At this stage, he was a layperson in the army; although he entered monastic life 130 Renan also held that “Semites” were inferior to “Aryans.” On Renan and anti-Semitism, see Tzvetan Todorov, On Human Diversity: Nationalism, Racism, and Exoticism in French Thought (Cambridge: Harvard University Press), 111, 148; Jacob Katz, From Prejudice to Destruction: Anti-Semitism, 1700-1933 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980), 133-137. Zhou Xun has shown there have been a variety of Chinese-language representations of Jews since the late Qing. Some mirrored Western anti-Semitic attitudes; others took inspiration from Jewish culture or the notion of a “Jewish renaissance” connected with Zionism in the May Fourth era. See Zhou Xun, Chinese Perceptions of the “Jews” and Judaism: A History of the Youtai (London and New York: Routledge), 2013. However, it does not seem likely that these sources influenced Shengyan.

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at a young age, he was not as seasoned an academic debater as Yinshun, who we will encounter in the next chapter. Even so, Wu Enpu, who was a more experienced religious professional, like Shengyan, framed his arguments in terms of values. We can see, then, that their aim was to justify the legitimacy of their respective traditions in the political and cultural context of their time, rather than to hold a nuanced, theologically-grounded and respectful interfaith dialogue. Shengyan became one of the main contributors to the discussion with Christians during the 1950s and 1960s. We shall consider his later work in depth in chapter four, when he developed a uniquely Buddhist approach to academic Religious Studies. But for now, we can begin to see that in the mid to late 1950s, certain Buddhists were articulating a specific identity for themselves in response to various factors in their religious, cultural and political context. The engagement we will cover in the following chapters was a continuation of that which occurred in the republican era on the mainland, but which could no longer continue there under Communism, and which was stimulated, in this case, by Dongchu’s observations of Christian proselytization while spreading his own faith on the island. The context in which this occurred was defined by the prevalence of the KMT’s values and ideology, anti-communism and a concern about the future of Buddhism in China, and a renewed focus on Christian proselytization on the island. Both Buddhists and Christians thus asserted the coherency of their religion with the KMT’s political vision and with the values of the party-state. And in the Buddhist case, we also detect a commitment to Chinese culture, showing that while their presentation of Buddhism was a conscious adaptation to Taiwan’s political context, their attitudes were also the product of an environment in which these values were taught, encouraged and praised.

2

Buddhism and Chinese Culture Abstract The Buddhists covered in this volume also presented their tradition as compatible with Chinese culture, contrasting it with Christianity. This chapter focuses on the well-known Buddhist Yinshun, who argued that biblical belief conflicted with Chinese cultural values, and introduces Gong Tianmin, a Christian, whose academic study of Buddhism aimed at showing it to be historically derived. Gong’s approach is contrasted with Yinshun’s, who, within his own scheme of Buddhist history, took core beliefs to be fundamentally “true”. The chapter will show that the Buddhist writers, covered here, displayed a preoccupation with Western values such as freedom, democracy and egalitarianism, but also with defining these as Chinese—and hence, as Buddhist. Keywords: communism, anti-Semitism, Yinshun, Gong Tianmin, Genesis, God

“The teachings of Jesus were spoken two thousand years ago in Judea—they were not spoken in the China of today. They are therefore certainly not suited to China.”1 Thus declared the scholar Zhang Chunyi (1871-1955) in Buddhist Christianity (Fohua Jidujiao). Although this was published in Shanghai in the 1920s, it was reprinted in Taiwan in 1956—a year after Zhuyin’s publication of A Comparison of Buddhism and Christianity. 2 Zhang himself was originally a Christian, but converted to Buddhism in 1925 under the influence of Taixu, who he first heard speak in Beijing in 1919. He developed the view that Christianity was an expedient presentation 1 Zhang Chunyi, Fohua Jidujiao (Taipei: Taiwan yinjing chu, 1956), 1. On Zhang, see Pan-chiu Lai and So Yuen-tai, “Zhang Chunyi’s Buddhist-Christian Pneumatology,” Ching Feng 4, no. 1 (2003). 2 See note 12 on page 85 of Lai Pan-chiu and So Yuen-tai, “Mahāyāna Interpretation of Christianity: A Case Study of Zhang Chunyi (1871-1955),” Buddhist-Christian Studies 27 (2007). This states that the date of original publication was not earlier than 1926.

Pacey, S. Buddhist Responses to Christianity in Postwar Taiwan: Awakening the World. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020. doi: 10.5117/9789463724111_ch02

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of Buddhist teachings, but that Buddhism itself held the true essence of Christianity.3 He thus urged his compatriots to reject it, and embrace Buddhism instead. As purveyors of a partial truth, Zhang had a very dim view of Western missionaries. They “lack true religious knowledge,”4 he wrote. Westerners “are barbaric and superficial,” while missionaries themselves “do not revere their ancestors or parents. They demand that we … become animals” and “foolishly call Jesus God, contemptuously regard the bodhisattvas and sages of the East as human beings [rather than deific figures], and extinguish this land’s true culture.”5 Not only did they deny Confucian filiality and Buddhism, the level of Western missionaries was “suited to proselytizing in Africa, and not suited to proselytizing in China.”6 Thus, while Zhang saw comprehension of Buddhism as essential for understanding the ultimate religious truth of Christianity,7 he also seemed to resent the failure of missionaries to recognize the value of China’s cultural and religious traditions. Zhang’s comments evince his belief in the superiority of Buddhism over Christianity. The sages of China’s past, though living at a time prior to Buddhism’s introduction to China, were conversant with the truth of the Dharma. But the same could not be said about Judean culture, which was “extremely superficial (bilou).” For this reason, Jesus went to teach among the Israelites, where he reformed Judaism. Jesus was not, however, needed in India or China—these regions were already comparatively advanced. In India, the Buddha set about reforming the already existing religious tradition of Brahmaism into the more advanced Buddhism, while China already had great teachers like Laozi, Confucius and Mozi, whose own teachings were compatible with the Buddha’s.8 3 Taixu—the reformist monk introduced in chapter one—was also writing in the 1920s, but his writings usually had a different tenor. Rather than denigrate Christianity, Taixu situated its teachings in a Buddhist context, explaining that Buddhism could encompass, fulfill, and surpass those teachings. In fact, according to Taixu, Buddhism had a similar, expedient “vehicle” to enlightenment: Pure Land Buddhism. Even though this was not suited, according to Taixu, to modernity in its traditional form, Taixu still accepted a role for this kind of teaching, based on salvation from other, enlightened beings. 4 Zhang, Fohua Jidujiao, 1. 5 Ibid., 2. 6 Ibid. Zhang’s implication was that the standards for African conversion to Christianity were lower than for China. Shengyan would repeat the same view in the 1960s, as we will see in chapter four. 7 On Zhang’s Buddhafied Christianity, see Su Yuantai, Zhang Chunyi de Fohua Jidujiao shenxue (Hong Kong: Daofeng shushe, 2007), 117-166. 8 Zhang, Fohua Jidujiao, 3-4.

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Zhang’s belief that Christianity was an expedient presentation of Buddhism led him to develop some original theological views. For example, he held that while Jesus “spoke of eternal life,” the Buddha “spoke of ‘not beginning’ and ‘not ending’ (bu sheng bu mie).” The Christian belief in life after death in fact pointed to a core Mahayana Buddhist concept—one famously elaborated on by the Indian Buddhist philosopher Nāgārjuna (2nd-3rd century)—that phenomena are constantly in flux and transforming, and yet are neither created nor destroyed. Jesus exemplified this view with his death on the cross, after which he was resurrected. Zhang held that “today’s Christians talk about being mired in beginning and ending. They do not know to seek emancipation from beginning and ending.”9 Jesus therefore demonstrated a Mahayana Buddhist principle with his own life, death and resurrection. Although this teaching was central to Christianity, Christians themselves had failed to apprehend it. According to Zhang, then, despite teaching a simplified version of the Dharma, Jesus had laid the foundations for Westerners to understand it—something that globalization could now facilitate. He wrote that “today, the world’s great level of inter-connectedness means that it interlinks with Asia.” And thus, through the preparatory teachings of Jesus, Westerners could be led “to the buddha vehicle, [thus] guiding Euro-America to the true Dharma.” The task now was one of “transforming Christianity through Buddhism.”10 With his interpretation of Christianity, then, he turned the tables on Christian missionaries. He asserted that the modern era was when the light of Buddhism would enable the incipient seeds of truth, which Jesus had planted in the religion, to finally take root. Buddhist Christianity was penned at a time of intense antireligious hostility in China, when calls to abandon religion in favor of scientific worldviews were loud and vociferous. And in some ways, similarly challenging conditions existed in the 1950s and 1960s. In Taiwan, both Buddhists and Christians, as we saw in the last chapter, faced circumstances with clear political and intellectual parameters, defined by the hegemonic presence of KMT ideology. Meanwhile, in Zhang’s time, representatives of Buddhism and Christianity also competed with one another for intellectual acceptance, and over the question of which religion embodied modernity. On this dimension, Zhang’s essay is at once disparaging of Christianity while affirming its worth, placing it in a hierarchy beneath Buddhism. And like Zhuyun and Shengyan, Zhang claimed that Buddhism was culturally 9 Ibid., 7. 10 Ibid., 70.

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appropriate for China. As we will see in this chapter, such an argument was of central concern for Christians. Although Christian writers refuted the view that Christianity was not suited to China, some acknowledged that if Christianity was to gain acceptance, it needed to take account of China’s cultural heritage. We can see an example of this type of argument in a 1964 editorial for the magazine Christian Research (Jidujiao yanjiu). It asserted that “we must make China’s religious thought accord with the Bible’s principles,”11 and provided some examples of how this could be done, explaining that Shangdi, a deity appearing in ancient Chinese texts, could be compared to, or equated with, the biblical God. According to the editorial, Christians also needed to “Christianize” (Jiduhua) traditional Chinese philosophy and literature, and incorporate it into the Christian education system. Finally, they would need to transform Chinese social customs, stripping them of any non-Christian, “superstitious” elements. This process would produce a thoroughly Chinese form of Christian belief and culture. We can see, then, that Christians themselves recognized the importance of highlighting the interface between Christianity and Chinese cultural forms. Were they not to do so, they risked rejection on the basis of what Cohen referred to as China’s “anti-Christian tradition”—which held that Christianity itself should be rejected as a doctrine conflicting with the teachings of China’s ancient sages and cultural conditions. This discussion, in the 1920s just as in the middle of the twentieth century, evinces the fact that for members of both faiths, a demonstration of their compatibility with Chinese culture, and thus their Chinese identity, was crucial for the success of their tradition over the long term. This chapter will focus on how Buddhists framed Christianity as a Western religion that was inherently non-Chinese, and therefore, as ill-suited to China due to a conflict of values. While Zhang (and, indeed, Shengyan, as we have seen) saw hope for Christianity if it could be viewed in a Buddhist framework, the figures we shall focus on here took a harder line.12 They continued to elaborate on the view that the Bible underlay not just Western violence and imperialism, but also an approach to politics, society and knowledge that was at odds with the Chinese worldview and way of life. To 11 Shelun, “Lun Zhongguo wenhua Jiduhua,” Jidujiao yanjiu 1, no. 4 (1964): 1. 12 For an article in which Shengyan urges his compatriots not to blindly follow Western religion but to study both its good and bad points, and to see Buddhism as a resource for social improvement that already has strong roots in the Chinese context, see Xingshi Jiangjun, “Shehui fengqi yu zongjiao Xinyang,” Zhongguo Fojiao 2:11 (1958).

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explore these issues, we will focus on the monk Yinshun, the pastors Wu Enpu and Gong Tianmin, and their discussion on values in the Bible. We will finish the chapter by considering the evolution of this discourse—from an appeal to values as self-evident within their traditions, to an academic discussion founded on close textual and historical analysis. This signaled a search for objective standards by which religions could be judged, and thus ranked in a hierarchy of truth that was nevertheless defined by cultural considerations.

Cultural renaissance Notions of cultural identity and loyalty were part of Taiwan’s social and political milieu, existing beyond the limited parameters of the island’s Buddhist-Christian debates. These were inspired and led by the government. In the 1930s, on the mainland, Chiang had led an effort to foster behavioral codes based on Confucian ethics, Western etiquette and military-inspired personal discipline,13 designed to instill a unified national consciousness and loyalty to the party-state among the people.14 While it lost momentum, in 1966 the KMT began another concerted effort to define Chinese culture— called the “Cultural Renaissance Movement” (Zhonghua wenhua fuxing yundong)—in opposition to the Cultural Revolution which commenced on the mainland that year. Grounded in an authoritarian reading of Confucian ethics, the Cultural Renaissance Movement also extolled democracy, science and patriotism.15 And yet, according to the scholar Allen Chun, this “was not a spontaneous discovery of traditional culture. It was a systematic effort to redefine the content of those ideas and values, to inculcate widespread social movements as the spiritual framework for national development in other domains.”16 After Chiang Kai-shek launched the Movement, the Ministry of Education began to promote it in schools. The government formed a council to guide it in society at large.17 13 W. Tozer, “Taiwan’s ‘Cultural Renaissance’: A Preliminary View,” The China Quarterly 43 (1970), 94. 14 Pichon P.Y. Loh, “The Ideological Persuasion of Chiang Kai-Shek,” Modern Asian Studies 4, no. 3 (1970). 15 Tozer, “Taiwan’s ‘Cultural Renaissance’.” 16 Allen Chun, “From Nationalism to Nationalising: Cultural Imagination and State Formation in Postwar Taiwan,” The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs 31 (1994). 17 Tozer, “Taiwan’s ‘Cultural Renaissance’,” 84-85.

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It was to this broad context that Christians and Buddhists alike needed to adapt if they were to find political and social acceptance. In the case of Buddhists, Taixu provided much groundwork by identifying his own Buddhist reform effort with Sun Yat-sen’s Three Principles of the People. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Buddhists associated with the BAROC continued to align themselves with government policy and cultural requirements.18 Christians, including Chiang Kai-shek’s pastor Chou Lien-hua (1920-2016), likewise advocated adaptation to Chinese culture.19 The establishment of this cultural narrative thus bestowed Taiwan with a national consciousness linked to the KMT itself.20 And in the resulting Buddhist narrative, to be a proper citizen of the Republic of China also meant being opposed to the destructive forces inherent in Christian theology—which led to colonialism, enslavement, authoritarianism and violence. Some Buddhists went so far as to define Christianity as closely aligned, in a philosophical sense, with the KMT’s ideological enemy: communism. They cast Buddhism as completely patriotic, and Christianity, as a dangerously untrustworthy religion. We will consider some examples of this narrative below.

From Moses to Marx In 1963, the monk Zhuyun, whom we encountered in the last chapter, edited a volume entitled Thesists Should Engage in Reflection! (Shenjiaotu gai fanxing le!). This included essays from authors such as Yinshun, and even a translated pamphlet by Charles Smith—an “outspoken racist and anti-Semite,”21 and founder of the American Association for the Advancement of Atheism. Despite Smith’s presence, the book generally exemplif ied a culturalist orientation, with authors trying to show that Christianity was not only not a force for modernity, but also underlay a Western approach to politics, 18 See Laliberté, The Politics of Buddhist Organizations in Taiwan. 19 Lai Pan-Chiu, “Chinese Culture and the Development of Chinese Christian Theology,” Institute of Sino-Christian Studies, accessed April 12, 2017, http://www.iscs.org.hk/Common/ Reader/News/ShowNews.jsp?Nid=838&Pid=3&Version=0&Cid=191&Charset=gb2312#_ftnref4. For more on the Christian engagement with the KMT, see Ceng Qingbao, Yuese he ta de xiongdimen (Taipei: Taiwan jiaohui gongbaoshe, 2017). 20 Chun, “From Nationalism to Nationalising.” 21 Eric Chalfrant, “Atheism in America,” Oxford Research Encyclopedias, available at: https://oxfordre.com/religion/abstract/10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.001.0001/acrefore-9780199340378-e420?rskey=tbC3xF&result=1 (accessed October 3, 2019).

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society and knowledge that was at odds with Chinese tradition. Yinshun, for example, cited the example of God forbidding Adam and Eve from eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and wrote that from the perspective of Chinese Confucianism and Buddhism, a sense of shame is an expression of the inclination towards goodness. Buddhist texts consider this to be what differentiates human beings from animals. But the Hebrew God regards this as sin, and thus determined that they [Adam and Eve] should die. So, God cast them out.22

For Yinshun, this lack of emphasis on shame also meant that Christianity differed from Daoism, which despite advocating a return to nature, also valued truth, whereas Christianity merely advocated obeying God.23 Thus, although “Western religionists seem to promote education, scientific research and so on, in reality the core ideas underlying Hebraic monotheism oppose knowledge.”24 Yinshun’s comments were therefore a direct challenge to the association of Christianity with schools, education, and modern knowledge. As we saw in the last chapter, some Buddhist writers also saw Christian missionary efforts as a form of cultural imperialism. An essay appeared in the volume on this theme, mainly consisting of quotes from other sources. It included part of an article that appeared in a 1955 issue of the magazine Humanity by the monastic Dongchu—who was Shengyan’s teacher after he left the army. Dongchu explicitly linked the Bible to communism, doing this in such a direct fashion that it is worth reproducing his explanation here: Today, the type of thinking that poses a true danger to human existence is not just materialist thought, but also Western monotheistic (weishenlun) thought. We should understand the reasons why Western religious culture poses a threat to humanity, and first must understand the context from which Christianity emerged. We should know that around the time Judea was subjugated, John appeared in the world. John was Jewish, and Jesus was also Jewish. John was definitely a nationalist. He was always thinking about how to resurrect Judea. But Judea had fallen into the enemy’s hands; how could they strike at the enemy and liberate Judea? The only way was to promote incest, enmity, conflict, and murder—to destroy social order, 22 Yinshun, “Shenjiaotu gai fanxing le!” in Shenjiaotu gai fanxing le, ed. Zhuyun (Taipei: Jueshi xunkan she, 1963), 1-2. 23 Ibid., 2. 24 Ibid., 1.

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to disrupt people’s minds, to topple right and wrong, and to bring chaos into the world—only then could the goal of liberating Judea be reached. So, the thought of Jesus not only influenced the society of his time, it has continued to influence the minds of people in the world today. Everybody knows about Marxism, which threatens world peace. But why did Marx advocate communism? We should know that Marx was also Jewish, and that he deeply knew that the intention of Jesus was to restore Judea. After Judea disappeared, there was displacement, and there was no way to restore the country. At first, Marx was in Germany, where he was subjected to environmental forces that drove him to Britain to study economics. He came to understand the mysteries of the Christian scriptures. He then advocated the conflict, murder, enmity and incest of communism, upsetting global order, leading the world’s people to become like the anxious like the dog of a deceased family or slaves without a country. He could then clean away the hatred that had come from the loss of their country, and put an end to the anger in their hearts. Nowadays, surprisingly, there are many in the world who have swallowed Jesus’s and Marx’s poison for vanquishing countries. Yet they don’t realize it.25

Dongchu thus drew a connection between biblical thought and communism, which in the context of the KMT’s authoritarian governance, when communist references were censored and when sympathy with communism brought unwelcome attention from the police and possible arrest, immediately cast Christianity in an un-Chinese, treacherous hue.26 But more than this, he linked Christianity to a deliberate attempt to disrupt Roman rule in Judea through the promotion of behaviors and ideas that he defined as explicitly antithetical to Confucian values. The implicit question, then, is how someone who identified with the KMT’s project to restore Chinese greatness, and retake the mainland through military conquest, could subscribe to such unpatriotic, and un-Chinese, beliefs as those contained within Christianity. 25 Gejia [various], “Xifang zongjiao wenhua de weihai,” 91-92. While this text is unattributed, it was also published in the magazine Rensheng (Humanity), in an article by Dongchu: Dongchu, “Fojiao wenhua sixiang de yiyi (zhong),” Rensheng 7, no. 2 (1955): 6. 26 For example, in one essay Yinshun depicted a continent in Buddhist cosmology, Uttarakuru, in terms that the authorities felt was Marxist. Eventually, after investigators had been sent to Shandao Temple to search for information on Uttarakuru, and had copied down parts of the relevant Buddhist text, he republished the passage with a number of amendments. See Yinshun, Pingfan de yisheng, 83-85.

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Another essay in the book, by Dai Zhongjun, also followed this line of reasoning. Dai traced the roots of Marxism to Jewish thought, and linked it to authoritarianism: Marx inherited the “Hebraic consciousness form” from his forefathers, and also absorbed Hegel’s and Feuerbach’s philosophical thought. He turned the notion of the God/human dichotomy into the concept of the “communal”/“private ownership” dichotomy. He turned the concept of the dichotomy between “the chosen people” and “gentiles” into the concept of the dichotomy of classes. He turned the dichotomy of the obedience and betrayal into the concept of the dichotomy between “revolution” and “reaction.” … This theoretical system, with the Hebraic consciousness structure as its basis—is like how foreign controllers used Moses’s technique to control the Hebrews, or how Constantine used Moses’s technique to control his huge Roman Empire, or the Slavic people used it as a tool to invade the world.27

According to Dai, the “Slavic people” in fact absorbed this “Hebraic consciousness form” from the Greek Orthodox Church: “they regard themselves as the best people in the world, and see themselves as having a “special mission from God,” and as sure to govern Europe, and govern the world. In their view, the future “Heavenly Kingdom” will belong to the Slavic people …”28 Essays like this were an elaboration of a view we saw expressed in the 1950s—that Christianity was not patriotic. Shengyan referenced such a view in one of his early essays, where he referred to Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy (a Chinese translation of which was published in Taipei in 1955).29 In this particular piece, he replicated Russell’s “dictionary,” which equated themes in Marxism and Christianity: God Yahweh = Dialectical Materialism The Messiah = Marx The Elect = The Proletariat 27 Dai Zhongjun, “Buersaiweike celüe genyuan: lishi shang de zhengzhi mosu,” in Shenjiaotu gai fanxing le, ed. Zhuyun (Taipei: Jueshi xunkan she, 1963), 74. 28 Ibid., 75. 29 See Bertrand Russell, Xifang zhexue shi, trans. Zhong Jianhong (Taipei: Zhonghua wenhua, 1955). For Shengyan’s reference to the key, see Shengyan, “Lixiang de shehui,” in Shentong yu rentong (Taipei: Fagu wenhua, 1997), 129. This essay was originally published in August in 1957 in Rensheng. For Russell’s presentation of this, see Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972), 364.

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The Church = the Communist Party The Second Coming = Violent Revolution Hell = Punishment of the Capitalists The Millennium = Communist Society30

It was in fact common to find anti-communist articles in Buddhist magazines of the period. In Contemporary Buddhist (Jinri Fojiao),31 one writer exclaimed that all religionists should be like the bodhisattva Dizang, who entered hell to save sentient beings, and seek to wipe communism out from the PRC and USSR. In Taiwan Buddhist (Taiwan Fojiao) in 1966, we find a denunciation of communism jointly issued by Taiwan’s leading Buddhist magazines.32 And in another Buddhist magazine, Lion’s Roar (Shizi hou), in 1975, Shi Daoan detailed the PRC’s restrictive governance of religion, including Buddhism and Christianity.33 In 1949, before his arrival in Taiwan, Yinshun published An Overview of Buddhism (Fofa gailun) in Hong Kong.34 In this, he stated that Buddhism and communism were fundamentally different; communism was “essentially materialism. It is a philosophy of conflict—[it represents] a totalitarian government.”35 He claimed that “there is absolutely not even the slightest convergence with the communism of Marx and Lenin.”36 But in 1951, he published a volume we shall discuss in more detail soon, entitled A New Treatise on the Pure Land (Jingtu xinlun). In this, he described realm of Buddhist cosmology, Uttarakuru, in terms that resonated with resonated socialist themes. This led Taiwanese authorities to investigate; he later republished the relevant section with a number of amendments. These cast the social features of Uttarakuru in a different light—as the result of ignorance. He portrayed people there as indulgent, and emphasized that their social condition was an obstacle to enlightenment.37 Later, when writing his autobiography, Yinshun expressed regret about these changes.38 30 Shengyan, “Lixiang de shehui,” 129. The key is translated from Shengyan’s text, rather than taken from Russell’s. 31 Dai Wenmei, “Fan gong jiushi de Fojiao wenhua,” Jinri Fojiao 2:10 (1959), 32. 32 Zhonghua minguo Fojiao zazhi jie, “Shengtao gongfei huimie Fojiao wenhua,” Taiwan Fojiao 11/12 (1966): 2-3. 33 Shi Daoan, “Zhonggong dui zongjiao de pohuai,” Shizi Hou 14:8 (1975): 7-17. 34 Yinshun, Pingfan de yisheng, 81. 35 Ibid., 79-80. 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid., 83-84. 38 Ibid., 85. On this, also see Yang Huinan, “Taiwan Fojiao de ‘chu shi’ xingge yu paixi fenzheng,” in Dangdai Fojiao sixiang zhanwang (Taipei: Dongda chuban, 1991 [1980]), 29-30.

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We can see, then, the pressure to take an anti-communist stance that was exerted to monastics, like other ROC citizens. Besides this, China was presented as they enemy in ROC propaganda; with this shared social understanding, aligning Christianity and communism was a strategy aimed at maligning the latter. But why did some examples attribute negative cultural attributes and values to Judaism? Their dated, translated sources on Christian history and theology incorporated casual anti-Semitic sentiments. But recall that Cohen’s anti-Christian tradition was founded on the view that Christianity should be rejected because it did not accord with Chinese culture, traditions and religico-philosophical teachings. We can see such attitudes replicated among the Buddhists we have examined thus far, even if this culturalism was expressed through the language of KMT nationalism. Christianity challenged the place of Buddhism within the traditional three teachings model of Chinese religiosity. It shifted the center of history away from China to Jerusalem and the West. And while some Christians argued for the compatibility of Chinese culture and Christianity, others saw it as imparting a set of values that challenged Chinese tradition. The writers above, buoyed by Western texts and influences, perhaps extending from missionaries themselves, thus attacked Christianity through its source material in the Old Testament—reading this as the embodiment of values that were antithetical to China’s own value system, imagined past and the three teachings model. This point—that Buddhism coexists peacefully with Confucianism, unlike Christianity—is elaborated on by Liu Yongxi in Buddhist Culture (Fojiao wenhua) in 1965, where Liu writes that before, China’s gods and India’s gods never fought or contended for affections. But when the religion of Jesus [Yejiao] arrived in China, not only did it make the Chinese people unsettled, it became probable that in the future there would be a religious war. So, finally, I want to give China’s Christians a piece of advice: that is, when it comes to Westerners, gain extensive knowledge of a subject in order to surpass it. You are [still] a true Chinese person, a descendent of the Yellow Emperor. Chinese people have conquered (zhengfu) external cultures as a way of enriching their own power. The most obvious example is Buddhism. Chinese people have been absorbing Buddhism for several hundred years. By the Sui and Tang, the stage of gaining extensive knowledge about a subject in order to surpass it had been reached. Xuanzang [602-664—a Chinese monastic who travelled to India in search of Buddhist texts] had been to India and debated teachers—none could rival him. One can see how this is a deep attainment. Thus were Xuanzang’s diligent efforts—completely unlike

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the rumors, and superficial teachings, that are recited by the average Christian from memory today.39

What, then, does this writer see as worth learning from the West? Precisely the modern values identified by Lauzon and Duara, along with KMT ideology: 1. Respect for human dignity, individual freedom, as well as rationalism, advanced ideas, the spirit of honesty and cooperation, notions of kindness (liangxin) and service, etc. 2. Nationalism, democracy, livelihood (minshengzhuyi), legal governance ( fazhi guojia), notions of civic responsibility, parliamentary governance, etc. 3. Science on the basis of experimentalism, and the spirit of seeking the truth and facts, seeking finance on the basis of rational management, entrepreneurial techniques and organization, maritime and air travel, etc. 40

According to Liu, while China already had such ideas and knowledge, they were expressed with particular acuity in the West. But concerning “gods (shen), China’s folk gods (tushen), and the foreign Western god (Yangshen), these are all things China does not need.”41 In other words, just as intellectuals had rejected folk religion in the late Qing and republican China as superstitious and unmodern, the Christian God, too, was relegated to the status of a local deity—also to be rejected. How can we explain these views? Although written mainly from a Confucian perspective, an essay appearing in the Buddhist magazine Lion’s Roar in 1975, by Lai Hongbiao, encapsulates the views of these Buddhists writing earlier. For Lai, the problem of Christian belief stemmed from an undeveloped nationalism. Lai wrote that Jesus’s teachings are not an independent thing. They are attached to the people of Israel. They arose from the survival needs of a people, so the teachings of Jesus have an ethnic quality. The religious consciousness is subordinate to the ethnic consciousness. Today, the average Christian is bewildered by religious myths, misunderstanding them to be high 39 Liu Yongxi, “Shijia, Yesu zai Zhongguo,” Fojiao wenhua 4 (1965), 17. 40 Ibid. 41 Ibid. Liu may be punning on the character for “earth” (tu), and the character for “ocean” (yang)— which can also mean “foreign” or “Western”. Hence, “yangshen” is taken to mean the “Western” god.

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and sacred, inviolable, seeing themselves as descendants of Abraham and forgetting they are descendants of Yan-Huang, and that when the culture of the Yellow River area was already established, the Christian peoples remained in a barbarous stage. Today, even the backward peoples of Africa all recognize and declare that they must believe in a God with black skin. And the Christians of my country [China] willingly worship the god of the Jews, Jehovah, becoming members of the Jewish culture, because nationalism is not manifest. 42

For Lai, Christianity was a tool for social stability based on theism, whereas my ancestors formally renounced theocratic religion 2,500 years ago and entered the realm of humanism. If today’s Chinese people turn around and go back to believing in primitive theocratic religion, allowing primitive religion to replace our own intrinsic, advanced, mature and rational lives in a maniacal fashion, isn’t this a sign of going in cultural reverse, or the decline of ethnic intelligence? Christians should think about this. 43

Meanwhile, “Chinese Christian belief is not pure, fervent belief but comes from their own unrecognized ethnic inferiority complex and a psychology of venerating the foreign. Moreover, it is not of their own initiative, but due to forceful Western promotion.”44 Lai’s views are instructive because they clearly evince the importance of culturalist and nationalist sentiment in the rejection of Christianity—a theme we will see again when we discuss Yinshun, below.

“Slave society” While Yinshun did not explicitly link Christianity and communism as the authors in Zhuyun’s edited volume had done, he did claim that the religion embodied a predisposition to authoritarianism, imperialism and anti-intellectualism—political ideals that were at odds with Chinese culture and identity. His remarks drew a swift response from the Christian Wu Enpu, whom we encountered in the last chapter. Meanwhile, both of them were committed to arguing on the basis of culture, Yinshun had begun to 42 Lai Hongbiao, “Cong wenhua guandian kan Yejiao,” Shizi hou 14, no. 5 (1975): 24. 43 Ibid. 44 Ibid., 25.

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talk about religious history, and to present academic arguments in support of his anti-Christian polemic. This marks a scholarly turn in the period of Buddhist-Christian competition we are examining here. In 1963—the year Zhuyun’s edited volume appeared—Yinshun was teaching at the Huiri Lecture Hall—a Buddhist temple in Taipei.45 He was by this time a self-avowed “opponent of theism and superstition,”46 and his impressions of Christianity—and missionaries—were not positive. He wrote that they visited the Hall, and gave him a Bible and implored him to read it—an action he called “rather excessive.”47 This encounter led him to write “God Loves the World” (Shangdi ai shiren), 48 which he published in the pages of Tidal Roar (Haichao yin) in 1963. 49 The title of the essay was taken from one of the most widely quoted Bible verses—John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have eternal life.” The title was intended to be sarcastic—throughout the essay, he questioned whether God really did love humanity;50 his intention was evidently to pull the rug from under the missionaries, and show that the values they espoused contradicted those presented in the Bible. The article’s presence in Tidal Roar immediately marked it as being a piece of Buddhist apologia. Tidal Roar was a publication with a venerable history that was intimately linked to Yinshun’s teacher Taixu and his reform 45 See: “Yinshun daoshi lüepu,” Yinshun wenjiao jijinhui, available at: http://www.yinshun. org.tw/A03-0-101.htm (accessed April 12, 2017). Yinshun founded the Hall in 1960. See: “Huiri jiangtang jianjie,” Huiri Jiangtang, available at: http://www.lwdh.org.tw/lwdh.php (accessed April 12, 2017). 46 Yinshun, “Zhongguo de zongjiao xingshuai yu Rujia,” in Wo zhi zongjiaoguan (Xinzhu: Zhengwen chubanshe, 2003 [1953]), 53. 47 Yinshun “Youxin fahai liushi nian,” in Huayu ji (wu) (Xinzhu: Caituan faren Yinshun wenjiao jijinhui, 2005 [1984]), 25. 48 Ibid. 49 Chen Hui, “Taixu dashi chuangkan ‘Haichao yin’ ji zaoqi kanzhi Hangzhou Nanlu Doulü Si (Dafo Si) kaoshu,” Minnan Foxue, accessed April 12, 2017, http://www.nanputuo.com/nptxy/ html/201103/0809344973499.html. 50 Around the same time, between 1963 and 1964, The Rambler (Ziyou tan) ran a series of articles summarizing the content of the Old Testament. In the first instalment, the author, Hu Xianglin, wrote that he “had always fostered an ambition to use modern and colloquial language to write out the miraculous stories of the Old Testament … and to allow readers of the Bible to have a clear understanding of Old Testament times, the historical development of this great religion, and its sources.” Hu Xianglin’s account of the Old Testament in a popular magazine had the potential to win new converts to Christianity. Although he did not mention these articles in his writings, it was precisely this kind of popular retelling which Yinshun could not have left unanswered. See Hu Xianglin, “Jiuyue zhong de gushi,” Ziyou tan 14, no. 9 (1963), 42.

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efforts. The magazine had begun in 1918 as the journal of the “Realization Society” (Jueshe). After hearing Taixu speak, a group of laymen established the society in Shanghai with the intention of propagating the Dharma. At this early stage, the journal was called Realization Miscellanea (Jueshe congshu), but in 1920, had begun to appear under its new name.51 After Taixu’s death in 1947, the monk Daxing became the editor, and in 1950 he took the magazine to Taiwan. It was therefore a prestigious outlet, and one that also bore links to Taixu’s “Buddhism for the human world” on the mainland. As Yinshun pointed out at the beginning of his essay, his unexpected visit from missionaries was not the f irst time he had encountered the Bible. Before entering the Buddhist clergy, he investigated Christianity for almost two years.52 In fact, in his early twenties, he rejected the two core works of philosophical Daoism, Laozi and Zhuangzi, because they were not sufficiently focused on the practical affairs of human life. Christianity, he noted, had “belief, hope, and love”—which “Confucianism and Daoism did not have.”53 However, he ultimately rejected Christianity because at the time there was an “anti-Christian movement”; somehow influenced by this, Yinshun “couldn’t avoid suspecting there was an element of cultural invasion” associated with the religion. However, this was not his main reason for rejecting it. Instead, he explained that “some of the ideas were hard to accept.”54 One of these was the notion that one’s destination post-mortem was determined solely by belief.55 He was later impressed by Buddhism’s emphasis on conduct rather than faith.56 Yinshun described himself as an advocate of the Three Treatise School of Buddhism, and in particular, the texts of the second and third century Indian Buddhist thinker Nāgārjuna, which explicitly deny the existence of a divine creator. His emphasis of these texts is not surprising given the demands of the intellectual climate. According to Dan Lusthaus, Nāgārjuna is often associated with the four-cornered negation (rejecting X is, X is not, X both is and isn’t, X neither is nor isn’t), [although] that does not 51 Huang Xianian, “Zhongguo Fojiao chuban shijian zui chang de kanwu: ‘Haichao yin’,” in Wuyue Fojiao: di er juan, ed. Hangzhou Foxueyuan (Beijing: Zongjiao wenhua chubanshe, 2007), 293. 52 Yinshun, “Wo zenyang xuanze le Fojiao,” in Wo zhi zongjiaoguan (Xinzhu: Zhengwen chubanshe, 2003 [1954]), 304. 53 Ibid. 54 Ibid. 55 Ibid. 56 Ibid., 306.

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appear prominently in his arguments. These instead tend toward sophistic dialectics, drawing an opponent’s position into either/or options and then rendering either option non-viable. Generally he demonstrates that what the opponent claims, while appearing on the surface to be rational and logical, is actually held together by one of three types of fallacies: infinite regress, tautology, or mutual exclusion.57

Yinshun subsequently wrote extensively on Nāgārjuna throughout his career; in particular, his New Treatise on the Middle Way (Zhongguan jin lun) is considered a modern Buddhist classic by many devotees in Taiwan. But while such arguments might have been fine for attacking monotheism as a concept, Yinshun’s target was Christianity itself—as a movement, and as a set of institutions. In “God Loves the People of the World,” Yinshun took a similar tack to Nāgārjuna. He took certain assumptions about Christianity and turned them on their head in an attempt to discredit the religion as a whole, and show that God did not love human beings at all, as John claimed. Known for its schools and universities, for both genders, Yinshun also tried to show that Christianity did not value education or equality, and that God in fact acted malevolently towards human beings. This attitude was paralleled in aggressive Western imperialism against other societies. He provided a number of examples with which to validate these points. To show that God was not loving, but cruel, he pointed out that he had flooded the earth, allowing only Noah and his family to survive among humans. This was just like “Zhang Xianzhong [1606-1647], who Communist Party members have praised as a peasant revolutionary,” but who is renowned in Chinese history for massacring the Sichuanese after his conquest of the province.58 According to Yinshun, this “exposes [the truth of] Yahweh’s love for the world.”59 Meanwhile, God’s creation—the world itself—was hardly perfect. Relations between men and women were frequently harmful; Yinshun asked his readers to “look at history, or open up the news. It’s full of male-female relations that gave rise to boundless disputes, crime and suffering.” Similarly, while various types of vegetation and animals were indeed useful, many 57 Digital Dictionary of Buddhism, s.v. “Nāgârjuna,” accessed April 23 2016, http://www. buddhism-dict.net/cgi-bin/xpr-ddb.pl?q=%E9%BE%8D%E6%A8%B9. 58 Yinshun, “Shangdi ai shiren: du ‘jing’ xinde,” in Shangdi ai shiren (Tainan: Kaiyuan si Fojing liutong chu, 1967), 4. 59 Ibid.

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were also dangerous.60 Thus, God actively harmed human beings—while his creation, and the relationships within it, were replete with problems. Yinshun also tried to show that God was not egalitarian. He questioned God’s fairness, and hence his love. He noted the economic and physical inequalities among people, and asked how a fair God (and Jesus, whose humanity, rather than divinity, he emphasized with the appellation “Mr.”) could allow this to happen: Among human beings, some are born into poverty, some are born crippled, some are born mad, and some are born as slaves. … Once, Mr. Jesus cured someone who had been blind from birth. Someone asked the reason for his being born blind. Mr. Jesus assumed that “Neither did this man sin, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him” (John 9:3). In the view of Mr. Jesus, this was entirely rational. But in today’s world, how many are born crippled, deformed or mad? Was this all so “that the works of God should be made manifest in him?” Mr. Jesus, the Chinese people of the East will never be able to comprehend such a theory.61

The Christian response to the inequality and suffering in the world, reported Yinshun, was that all that is “beneficial” comes from God, and all that caused “suffering” came from demons.62 But, Yinshun asked, since God has also felt hatred, in addition to loving his creation, “can we also not say that God hates the world”?63 He thus cast Christianity as not advocating equality or egalitarianism, but rather chaos, and asserted that this unequal world-view was foreign to Chinese cultural, religious and philosophical values. Not only was Christianity a religion full of hate, cruelty and unfairness, it underpinned authoritarian governance. Christianity was therefore unsuited to China, since “Eastern, and Chinese people” are “born in a culture with an anti-totalitarian consciousness, and are replete with humanism and rationality.”64 The roots of this authoritarianism were fundamental to Christian belief—since humanity was the creation of God, Yinshun argued, we were completely subservient to his will. He continued to illustrate this in very human terms that resonated in the context of China’s recent history 60 Ibid., 5. 61 Ibid., 5-6. 62 Ibid., 6. 63 Ibid. 64 Ibid., 7.

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of foreign aggression, and the history of slavery in the United States. He noted that when the master tells you to sweep the floor, you sweep the floor. When the master then tells you to clean the chair, you then clean the chair. … [If the master] tells you to open the door you open the door, and [if the master tells you to] close the door, you close the door. … Aside from carrying out the master’s wishes, can you exercise your own will?65

Proof of this attitude in the Bible came from the story of Job, whose faith in God was tested by Satan. Job, who seemed to be favored by God and to be faithful, still managed to regret his birth when faced with suffering, thus earning God’s rebuke. But for Yinshun, rather than being primarily a story about faith, this was because Job had “forgotten his place as a slave,” and “to be a genuine believer in Yahweh, one needs to make a slave mentality one’s nature.”66 In other words, Yinshun was arguing that it was Buddhism (and Chinese culture generally), rather than Christianity, which embodied values associated with Western modernity: egalitarianism, democracy, and justice. According to Yinshun, however, the world was moving into an age more favorable to Chinese values, since “now was the age of democracy and freedom—the age of opposition to enslavement.”67 Since “Hebraic monotheism, including even the gospel of Mr. Jesus, originates in the age of slave society,” therefore, “master-slave relations reflect, and have been molded into, a religious consciousness,”68 the religion was entirely incompatible with Chinese modes of thought. Yinshun therefore declared that “I am Chinese, and am unable to cultivate the slave qualities that Yahweh and Mr. Jesus require. I have never been willing to be anyone’s master, and I am also unwilling to be anyone’s slave.”69

East of Eden In the remainder of his essay, Yinshun set out to prove that God, and the Christian religion, were opposed to human progress and the acquisition of 65 Ibid., 8. 66 Ibid., 9. 67 Ibid. 68 Ibid. 69 Ibid., 10.

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knowledge. His first piece of evidence was God’s injunction that Adam and Eve not eat fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. This showed that God had always intended to keep humanity enslaved by preventing them from increasing their level of understanding and thus challenging him. When they ate from the tree, “Yahweh became frightened … So, he expelled them from the Garden of Eden.”70 Meanwhile, he described Eden as “enclosed in an iron curtain of thought”.71 By preventing the growth of wisdom and knowledge, he implemented a control mechanism designed to retain his position of power and authority. Just as an “iron curtain” divided Warsaw Pact countries from the West during the Cold War, Eden itself was an authoritarian enclave where thought was not free, and its two human inhabitants lacked self-determination. The parallel with communist China’s depiction during this time is clear, and as we saw earlier in this chapter, maligning Christianity by likening it to communism was a tactic employed by other Buddhists as well. The main difference, then, between Chinese and Christian culture was embodied in the Garden of Eden which, Yinshun remarked, the Bible idealized. And yet Eden itself symbolized ignorance. Buddhism and Confucianism, on the other hand, embraced learning and hence progress: According to Chinese Confucianism, “a heart/mind of right and wrong” (shifei zhi xin) and “a heart/mind that is ashamed of evil deeds” (xiu e zhi xin) comprise good knowledge and abilities (liang zhi liang neng). They represent moral qualities, which enable the development of virtue and holiness. The buddhadharma is also like the Confucians’ belief that “shame” (cankui), or a sense of shame (xiuchi xin) is what distinguishes human beings from animals.72

Christianity was therefore antithetical to the Confucian and Buddhist emphasis on true knowledge and moral development.73 This led him to refute the first half of Proverbs 1:7 (“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge”) and claim that actually, “ignoring Yahweh and eating the forbidden fruit is the beginning of knowledge.”74 Finally, God sought to keep humanity divided so he could continue to rule over them. After human beings gained the capacity to distinguish good 70 Ibid., 12. 71 Ibid. 72 Ibid., 14. 73 Ibid., 15. 74 Ibid., 18.

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from evil, with continued progress, it was possible that they would cease respecting God’s authority.75 Yinshun explained that By the time God muddled up the accents, people had already progressed from agriculture to industry. They could make bricks and build cities. They also wanted to construct a tall tower with an apex that reached the sky. … This was because humanity wanted to lead a more organized and united life. … This was certainly something that made Yahweh nervous.76

He therefore scattered human beings throughout the world and divided them into different linguistic groups. This prevented them from collectively gaining in knowledge, and hence from challenging his authority. Jesus brought God’s oppressive religious system to completion. His intention was to increase social disharmony and conflict; this was explained in Matthew (10:34-35), where he said: Think not that I came to send peace on the earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law: and a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.77

And in Luke (12:51-53), where he states: Think ye that I am come to give peace in the earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division: for there shall be from henceforth f ive in one house divided, three against two, and two against three. They shall be divided, father against son, and son against father; mother against daughter, and daughter against her mother; mother in law against her daughter in law, and daughter in law against her mother in law.

The Bible was therefore, Yinshun claimed, a “philosophy of governance” for “stultifying the masses, and [keeping them] blind and ignorant,” as well as ensuring they remained divided and thus easier to dominate.78 One can see how his reading of the Bible resonates with contributors to Dongchu’s volume, 75 Ibid., 21. 76 Ibid. 77 Yinshun did quoted verse 36 but did not include the number in his reference. 78 Ibid., 28.

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Theists Should Engage in Reflection!, where they asserted that communism was deliberately intended to be disruptive and to foster social disharmony. Overall, while Yinshun cited the greater appeal of Buddhist doctrine as his reason for embracing Buddhism over Christianity, political and cultural considerations also played a role. He argued that Christianity underlay imperialism, slavery and authoritarianism. It kept humanity divided and ignorant, and thus easier to govern. That is not to say that he denied any similarity between Buddhism and Christianity. As we shall see, he regarded aspects of Buddhist cosmology—such as the paradisiacal Pure Lands one could be reborn in after death—as being akin to the Christian heaven. But Yinshun redefined these as expedient means, designed to lead less able followers of the Buddha’s deeper, trans-historical teachings. Meanwhile, Buddhism itself accorded with the Chinese teachings of Confucians and Daoists, as well as Western modernity. It was democratic and valued progress. Therefore, not only was Buddhism culturally Chinese, it was pre-eminently modern. It was the perfect religion for the ROC.

The genesis of a new approach In his autobiography, the Christian pastor, Wu Enpu (who we encountered in the last chapter, writing against the monk Zhuyun), wrote that Yinshun posed a more serious challenge to Christianity than did his first monastic opponent, because he was educated, eloquent and good at debating (neng yan shan bian), and therefore was deeply respected by followers of the Buddhist path. It’s said that when he was young he studied with parishioners at a local church, so his knowledge of the Bible far exceeded that of the monk Zhuyun, and the abilities of other impertinent monks. Because of this, followers of the Buddhist path exalted the monk Yinshun’s attacks on Christianity halfway to the sky, and were seen as authoritative.79

Another Christian pastor, Gong Tianmin, sent Wu Yinshun’s essay, “God Loves the World” and urged him to respond.80 Wu was right about Yinshun—he did command the respect of many Buddhists in Taiwan, and he wasn’t a stranger to Christianity. He had once lived 79 Wu, Bibing qishi nian, 63. 80 Ibid.

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quite a different life—one in which he was not yet a Buddhist monk, and was married. According to the third edition of his autobiography, published after his death in 2005, after finishing school in 1918, his father sent him to study Chinese medicine. Requiring help to raise silkworms, Yinshun’s father also arranged for him to marry a young woman named Jin Yinbao. In 1922 she bore him a daughter, and in 1929, a son.81 In 1994, long after being ordained as a monk and his move to Taiwan, Yinshun returned to China and met with his children and grandsons. It was then that he learned his wife had died in 1945.82 Long before this, however, from 1921, Yinshun had worked as a teacher and spent his free time reading about Daoism and Confucianism. He first encountered Buddhism when he taught in a school near a Buddhist temple. In 1925, he read in the introduction to an edition of Zhuangzi that the Buddha had pre-empted Zhuangzi’s discoveries. He thus developed an interest in Buddhism and started to read texts acquired from local temples, taking a special interest in the Yogacara and Three Treatise schools. He soon noticed a disjunction between the world of textual Buddhism and its lived reality on the ground. He wrote that in my hometown, the monks (there was no female community) in the temples did not talk about the sutras or the Dharma. Some recited sutras or performed repentance ceremonies. [But their] lives were not so different from those of lay-people. Lay-Buddhists only sought peace and happiness after death. The small number of [non-ordained] female practitioners followed the “Former Heaven” (Xiantian) or “Non-Action” (wuwei) paths and practiced in temples, and still called it Buddhism.83

These latter two “paths” that Yinshun mentioned were not Buddhist as such, but rather syncretic traditions that drew from Buddhism. His criticisms of local Buddhists echoed both those of Christian missionaries, and Buddhist lay-intellectuals from the early twentieth century such as Zhang Taiyan and Su Manshu, along with Buddhist modernizers, most notably Taixu—who opined that Buddhism was disengaged from society, 81 This fact only became widely known after Yinshun’s death in 2005 and the publication of the third edition of his autobiography An Ordinary Life, which according to the post-script, was when Yinshun requested that this addition be published. See Yinshun, Pingfan de yisheng (chongding ben) (Zhubei: Zhengwen chubanshe, 2005), 229-30. 82 See ibid., 211. 83 Yinshun, “Youxin fahai liushi nian,” in Youxin fahai liushi nian, qili qiji zhi renjian Fojiao hekan (Xinzhu: Zhengwen chubanshe, 2005 [1984]), 4.

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and that monastics were uneducated and ignorant of their own doctrines and religious history. Yinshun’s negative appraisal of the lived Buddhist world became the driving force behind his investigations of Buddhist philosophy. In 1930, after the deaths of his mother and grand-uncle in 1928, and his father in 1929, he applied to the “Beijing Bodhi Institute” (Beiping Puti Xueyuan) to study Buddhism. He later learned that plans for the institute had stalled and he eventually made his way to Putuo Mountain—an island home to numerous Buddhist monasteries and temples off the coast of eastern China. In 1930, at the Fuquan Hermitage, Yinshun was tonsured, and in 1931, he went to study at the Minnan Buddhist Seminary in Xiamen, where Taixu was the official head. Although Yinshun fell ill after four months of study and left, he was influenced by Taixu’s approach, stating that it was “a great awakening for me.”84 Thus, Yinshun had experienced both lay-life and Christianity, but renounced both of them. And, despite being critical of the Buddhism he saw around him, and indeed seeing its lived reality in terms that were perhaps as disparaging as Buddhism’s Christian critics, it was to this religion that he turned. As Wu noted, Yinshun therefore did have a much deeper engagement with Christianity than Zhuyun, who encountered it mainly during his proselytization missions in central Taiwan. Yinshun was well-published, known as a scholar, and had a clear philosophical outlook based on his particular Buddhist preferences. He also had a close engagement with Taixu, whose articulation of Buddhism as a worldly, human-centered doctrine, he upheld. But the debate between Yinshun and Wu did not develop into a deep theological discussion. Instead, although he could not deny that Yinshun had read the Bible or knew about Christianity, Wu charged Yinshun with misunderstanding them. He asked why, for example, if the story of the Tower of Babel was really about preventing mankind from challenging God, past theologians had never interpreted it in this way.85 And Wu refuted Yinshun’s argument that Jesus sought to break families apart. In reality, he explained, Christian families were strong, and full of happiness.86 We can see then, that both sides continued to center on the question of values, but were also mainly concerned with how to interpret different biblical passages. 84 Ibid., 5. 85 Wu, “Chi Yinshun heshang ‘Shangdi ai shiren’ pian de miuwang,” 46. 86 Ibid., 49

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Questions of identity and political acceptability were more significant than tackling theological or philosophical questions. Wu did cite evidence with which to challenge Yinshun; but this again evinced the circuitous nature of their engagement. It consisted of examples and counter-examples—interpretations, and counter-interpretations. So, rather than condone slavery, Wu argued that Christians had fought against it, and that because of Christian opposition to slavery, the practice had ended in ancient Rome and Euro-America.87 This was also the case with communism—Wu countered that rather than being ideologically sympathetic to Communism, Christians in China had opposed it.88 And as for the question of whether Christians were slaves to God or not,89 he noted that the Bible used many words to describe the relationship of God to his followers, and even so, that given the status of a human being in relation to him, humans were indeed servants.90 Wu explained, however, that Christians were pleased to serve God.91 Perhaps the most serious of Yinshun’s charges was that Christianity was opposed to education, because Christians had founded many schools and universities in Taiwan.92 Educational institutions comprised an important aspect of Christianity’s identity and its association with the modern bureaucratic state. Thus, Wu countered that rather than wanting to keep humanity ignorant—God had actually provided us with a “conscience” (liangxin), “innate sense of right and wrong” (liangzhi), or “intuitive ability” (liangneng).93 In his own reply essay, Yinshun retorted that Genesis was simply a collection of “naïve, juvenile, fantastic legends that embody the religious 87 Ibid, 52. Yinshun later backpedaled and claimed he had only described the relationship of Christians to God in terms of the master-slave relationship, not that Christianity itself advocated slavery, after Wu pointed out the Christian opposition to slavery in the United States. See Yinshun, “Shangdi ai shiren de zai taolun,” in Shangdi ai shiren (Tainan: Kaiyuan si Fojing liutong chu, 1967), 61. Meanwhile, Yinshun characterized “slavery” in China as completely different to that in the United States, because Chinese slaves were treated as human beings and family members rather than commodities, and in any case, in China the system naturally dissolved because of the “heightened ethical consciousness, some thought the slavery system was unreasonable, and the government took some measures to repeal it.” See ibid., 62. 88 Wu, “Chi Yinshun heshang ‘Shangdi ai shiren’ pian de miuwang,” 36. 89 Ibid, 53. 90 Ibid, 54. 91 Ibid., 55. 92 See Zheng Zhiming, “Taiwan zongjiao tuantide jiaoyu shiye” (paper presented at the Nanhua daxue zongjiao jiaoyu xueshu yantaohui, December 03, 2004). As of April 12, 2017, this was available at: http://scholar.fju.edu.tw/%E8%AA%B2%E7%A8%8B%E5%A4%A7%E7%B6%B1/ upload/012234/content/982/D-9002-02795-.doc (accessed October 25, 2016). 93 Wu, “Chi Yinshun heshang ‘Shangdi ai shiren’ pian de miuwang,” 41.

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consciousness of the Hebrews and which occasionally display evidence of human progress.”94 But just as Yinshun had drawn from Genesis to supply his arguments about the true nature of Christianity, so did Wu. He countered that knowledge did not come at the point when Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Eve already knew, for example, that they were forbidden from eating the fruit.95 According to Wu, Genesis was really a story of humanity’s spiritual fall—it was not the “history of human civilizational development.”96 He pointed out that there were no specific passages in which God stated that he wanted humanity to remain ignorant.97 Thus, Yinshun and Wu were not really able to agree on a common ground for analysis—that is, whether Genesis should be read literally or metaphorically. Without a clear framework, it must have become apparent that the two sides would continue talking past one another. It is perhaps for this reason that there was a turn towards academic history as a more concrete way of evaluating religion, thus rejecting subjective arguments for an approach based on evidential research. As we shall see, though, history became a battleground that was just as fiercely fought over as the question of values. We will begin our discussion of this phase of Taiwan’s Buddhist-Christian encounter with reference to Gong Tianmin.

The study of Buddhism Gong issued a critique of Yinshun in the inaugural issue of the Christian magazine A Quarterly for the Study of Christianity (Jidujiao Yanjiu) in 1963. We will examine this momentarily, but first we will look at how Gong and Yinshun differed from one another in a scholarly sense. Our examination will show that while both of them advocated an academic approach to religious history, they arrived at different conclusions. Gong concluded that Buddhism was a historically derived religion. For Yinshun, Buddhism embodied transhistorical truth, but this had become obscured through historical accretions. Although a Christian, Gong had a solid academic background in the study of Buddhism. He was born into a Buddhist family in Zhejiang and converted to Christianity at the age of 20, later graduating from the Evangelical Lutheran seminary of Hong Kong having studied divinity and theology. 94 95 96 97

Yinshun, “Shangdi ai shiren de zai taolun,” 76. Wu, “Chi Yinshun heshang ‘Shangdi ai shiren’ pian de miuwang,” 40-41. Ibid., 42. Ibid., 44.

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In 1954 he became a pastor, subsequently gaining a BA in Buddhist Studies from Bukkyo University in Tokyo, and an MA in Buddhist Culture from Otani University in Kyoto. He later studied at a Lutheran Theological Seminary in Minnesota.98 During his career, besides proselytizing to Buddhists in Japan, he was a professor at the Taiwan Lutheran Theological Seminary, and taught in the United States.99 In 1958, he published a book in Hong Kong called Research on Buddhism (Fojiaoxue yanjiu),100 which was based on lectures he gave at the Shizuoka Lutheran Bible Institute.101 Although unassuming, it posed a significant challenge to Buddhists—not because it was revolutionary in terms of its findings, but because it appeared at a time of religious rivalry and was written by a Christian. Gong did not, himself, articulate a clear polemic against Buddhism, but rather presented it as a religion derived from particular historical contexts. Rather than portray it as the product of trans-historical revelation or enlightenment, he removed the authority of the Buddha as a possessor of special wisdom or insight. His time spent in Japan also meant that he had access to the latest Japanese academic research on Buddhism. While Yinshun had written on Buddhist history too (his Indian Buddhism, or Yindu zhi Fojiao, was published in 1942), in contrast to Gong, he lacked formal academic training and was limited to reading material in Chinese (or in Japanese if it made heavy use of kanji—the Chinese characters that feature in written Japanese). Gong’s work was therefore ostensibly more “academic” and up to date in terms of its sources when compared to Yinshun’s. Indian Buddhism is important, though, for understanding his approach to Buddhism more generally. It marked the beginning of his concerted efforts to determine the cause of the gap he had observed between Buddhist theory and practice early in his career. Over the course of his research, he determined that Buddhism had declined in India rather than China, as it became gradually more distant from the Buddha’s original teachings. He maintained that the stages of Buddhism’s Indian development could be compared to periods of youth, maturity and old age.102 This explained why 98 Gong Tianmin, Gong Tianmin wenji sanshipian (Taipei: Xiaoyuan shufang chubanshe, 1993), 7-8. 99 Du Xiaoan, Jidujiao yu Zhongguo wenhua de ronghe (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2010), 246. 100 Gong Tianmin, Fojiaoxue yanjiu: yi wei mushi yanjiu Foxue de baogao (Hong Kong: Jidujiao wenhua gongsi, 1958). 101 See Wu Mingjie’s introduction in ibid., 3. 102 Bhikkhu Bodhi, “Master Yinshun,” The Buddhist World, ed. John Powers (London: Routledge, 2016), 621-622.

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Buddhism had degenerated, in his view, to the point where it could later be criticized as superstitious and unmodern. According to Yinshun, later philosophical developments in the Three Treatise School (which, if we recall from earlier in this chapter, he became set on as representing the essential, fundamental truth of Buddhism) could also be found in the earliest strata of Buddhist teachings. In other words, the writings attributed to the philosopher Nāgārjuna, which form the basis of the Three Treatise School, were a particularly clear explication of the Buddha’s original doctrine.103 Over time, though, Buddhism was gradually influenced by Brahmanical ideas, and a general trend of deification and supernaturalization. In China, this later strata of Mahayana Buddhism had proliferated, later leading modernist intellectuals to be dismissive of the religion. He maintained that if Buddhism was purified of these later, “superstitious” and historical accretions, intellectuals would see it was in fact unlike the degraded form of Buddhism he observed prior to joining the clergy. Instead, they would see it was a rational, philosophical religion—one that accorded with modern intellectual trends, and indeed surpassed them. Gong struck at the heart of accepted Buddhist truths. One of these was that the sutras, or discourses of the Buddha as recited by his disciple Ānanda, represented the Buddha’s true words and teachings. To show that they had been written by later authors, he cited the work of a Japanese Buddhologist from Ryukoku University—Ikemoto Jushin—who argued that the sutras were not the true words of the Buddha at all, and were later textual productions.104 It had become common in Japanese Buddhist Studies circles to question the authenticity of Buddhist texts after Murakami Senshō argued on the basis of textual scholarship, in 1901, that they did not represent the Buddha’s authentic voice.105 Gong claimed, then, following on from Ikemoto, that Buddhist texts were products of history, and had undergone many iterations. He covered other aspects of Buddhist history, too. Rather than consider it a discrete body of teachings that had begun with the Buddha, Buddhism was closely related to India’s pre-Buddhist religions. He explained that the “Aryans” (Yalianren) were polytheists, which may explain why Buddhists later believed in a cosmos populated with buddhas and bodhisattvas.106 This 103 See Yang Huinan, Dangdai fojiao sixiang zhanwang (Taipei: Dongda, 1991), 173–220, 207. 104 Gong, Fojiaoxue yanjiu, 33 105 Whalen Lai, “The Search for the Historical Śākyamuni in Light of the Historical Jesus,” Buddhist-Christian Studies 2 (1982). 106 Gong, Fojiaoxue yanjiu, 2.

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group of people, which scholars now typically refer to as Indo-Europeans, were in fact signif icant for Buddhist history because as they migrated into northern India, they brought with them their religion based on orally transmitted texts—the Vedas. Their theistic worldview, which the Buddha critiqued but also built upon, provided the context in which he arrived at his own teachings.107 Gong wrote that Buddhism declined from originally being an atheistic philosophy to absorbing theistic qualities from India’s non-Buddhist traditions.108 Although Gong and Yinshun were both interested in Buddhist history, there were clearly signif icant differences between them. For Yinshun, enlightenment remained a trans-historical truth. Gong, on the other hand, deconstructed Buddhist teachings to show that they were the products of history, placing his own faith in the divine, trans-historical Christian message. Gong even suggested that certain Buddhist teachings may have been the product of Christian influence. He cited a similarity between Nāgārjuna’s emphasis on the buddhanature—the innate capacity of sentient beings to become enlightened—and Christian egalitarianism. He claimed that when Mahayana Buddhism was flourishing in India, the church of Thomas the Apostle had become established there too. Thus, the possibility of Christian influence was an open question.109 He also suggested that Christianity may have influenced the development of Pure Land Buddhism, since both emphasized the salvific power of higher beings, and Christianity had arrived in India around the time that Pure Land belief was developing.110 These are views that Yinshun would not be able to accept, since he attributed core Buddhist teachings to the Buddha himself. But Yinshun would have agreed with some of Gong’s other views on Pure Land Buddhism. For example, Gong summarized Japanese scholarly opinions on why Sukhāvatī, the Pure Land presided over by Amitābha (the most popular of the Pure Land buddhas) was located in the west. He explained that there were historical and cultural reasons for why this was the case. One explanation was that Indians associated the east with the past, and the west with the future. Another was that Amitābha became conflated with the worship of a non-Buddhist solar deity—thus he was placed in the region of the sky in which the sun set.111 107 Peter Harvey, s.v. “Buddha, Historical Context,” in Encyclopedia of Buddhism, ed. Damien Keown and Charles S. Prebish (London, Routledge: 2009), 122. 108 Gong, Fojiaoxue yanjiu, 70. 109 Ibid., 84. 110 Ibid., 150. 111 Ibid., 145-146.

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Gong himself asserted that because central India—where Pure Land thought originated—was hot, this gave rise to thoughts of “the cool and comfortable world the sun disappeared into in the west.” Moreover, the west was a rich environment for Indians to explore—he wrote that “the ancestors of Indians are Aryans, who originally came from the belt between western India and Central Asia, and invaded India. And Greek culture’s influence on India has been great; Greece is also to the west of India.” Perhaps “Indians, yearning for the native land of their ancestors, and, as a result of their being influenced by Greek culture, regarded the West as a heavenly land and realm of bliss.” Finally, “if we can accept that, as many scholars have postulated, belief in Amitābha stemmed from the worship of a solar deity, then, Egypt, to the west of India, undoubtedly became a model for the Western Pure Land. This is because Egypt was a famous place that worshipped the sun.”112 As Fujita Kōtatsu explains, there have been many “external origin theories” explaining how Pure Land belief was derived from non-Buddhist sources, or which describe external influences on Buddhism.113 Thus, it is not surprising that Gong should adhere to these. But, in Japan, according to Gong, even those who taught about Pure Land thought in universities regarded these celestial locations as mythological—something that academic research had proven.114 In fact, Yinshun had already taken this approach in his 1951 work, A New Treatise on the Pure Land (Jingtu xinlun).115 In this volume, he regarded the Buddhist Pure Lands through the lens of history, and tried to show that teachings about these celestial paradises emerged in specific historical contexts. He wrote, for example, that the Pure Lands did not contain mountains, seas, thorns or gravel because the area in which Buddhism developed lacked these features. And Indians excluded rivers from the Pure Land because the Ganges itself was a source of danger and disaster. 112 Ibid., 146-147. 113 See Fujita Kōtatsu, “Pure Land Buddhism in India,” in The Pure Land Tradition: History and Development, ed. James Harlan Foard, Michael Solomon and Richard Karl Payne (Fremont: Jain Publishing Company, 2006), 23. 114 Gong, Fojiaoxue yanjiu, 149. 115 On Yinshun’s conceptualization of the Pure Lands, see William Yau-Nang Ng, “Yin Shun’s Interpretation of the Pure Land,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 34, no. 1 (March, 2007); Stefania Travagnin, “Master Yinshun and the Pure Land Thought: A Doctrinal Gap Between Indian Buddhism and Chinese Buddhism,” Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 57, no. 3 (2004). Charles Jones also discusses elements of Yinshun’s Pure Land conception in his Buddhism in Taiwan, 124-133.

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Meanwhile, the Pure Land’s “orderliness” stemmed from the emphasis on “balance” in Indian culture.116 Thus, like Gong, Yinshun agreed that the physical form the Pure Lands took was a product of history rather than the direct reflection of reality. But unlike Gong, he regarded these Pure Lands were merely expedient methods of teaching the Buddha’s Dharma. The veracity of Buddhism did not pivot on whether such landscapes actually existed or not. Yinshun still maintained the value of Buddhism, and used the study of history to support his trans-historical truth claim. And Gong himself seems to have had some respect for the Buddhist tradition, echoing even the concerns of Buddhists earlier in the twentieth century who lamented what they perceived as Buddhism’s decline. He thus wrote that apart from a minority of genuinely practicing clerics, the rest have all descended to the stage of pursuing goodness[to generate merit on behalf of deceased people], praying for good fortune, magical techniques for alleviating disasters … If China’s (aside from the mainland’s) clerics don’t improve, and don’t break through Buddhism’s present superstitions and bad habits, and resurrect Śākyamuni’s original spirit, one cannot bear to think of the future! Don’t those monastics who see things clearly today think in the same way as me?117

In the next chapter we will see how Yinshun in fact not only agreed with much of the spirit of Gong’s historical analysis, but also his assessment of contemporary Buddhism. What was important for him was not how specific forms of Buddhism arose, but that the fundamental message of Buddhism remained intact—that of the capacity to reach nirvana, enlightenment, and its ethical and moral injunctions. But for the moment, let us return to Gong’s 1963 critique of Yinshun. In fact, it was the historical approach employed by a Catholic priest we shall cover in the next chapter, Du Erwei, which Gong defended in his essay published that year.118 Du had serialized his research in the Catholic periodical, Constantinian Magazine (Hengyi shuangyuekan). Like Gong, he employed historical methods, but he arrived at more damaging conclusions, 116 Yinshun, Jingtu xinlun (Hong Kong: Zhengwen xueshe, 1952), 7. 117 Gong, Fojiaoxue yanjiu, 134-135. 118 Gong Tianmin, “Kan fashi yu shenfu zhi zheng,” Jidujiao yanjiu 1, no. 1 (1963): 59-65, 69. In this same issue that appeared another essay which mentioned slavery; this was an essay Yinshun also referred to in his argument that Christianity advocated slavery.

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since Du aimed at directly demonstrating the historicity of specific Buddhist concepts. Gong wrote that “from looking at the critical essays of Masters Mingben [the editor of the magazine Chinese Buddhist, or Zhongguo Fojiao], Yinshun, and Shengyan etc., what Buddhists are most annoyed about, and feel most shameful and humiliated about, is that Father Du is more intelligent than these monks wearing black cassocks, and that he has the audacity to topple over the ‘truth’ of enlightenment that Śākyamuni has laboriously acquired.”119 Gong himself did not share Du’s own certainty about his findings, but rather respected the fact that he had his own perspective and urged Buddhists to respond. In other words, like Yinshun, Gong had faith in the illuminating power of history, such that it would reveal the underlying truth of Buddhism. It was only their conclusions, and their implications, that differed.

Conclusion Gong Tianmin tried to show that Buddhism was a product of history rather than Buddhist enlightenment. And while monastics including Yinshun and Shengyan could accept history as a valid approach to analyzing Buddhism, they could not accept that the core Buddhist message developed historically—only that the specif ic, expedient forms in which it was preached did. Meanwhile, this true Buddhism accorded with Chinese culture, the origins of which were located in a different set of values. In the next chapter, we will see how the Catholic scholar and priest, Du Erwei, attacked a more fundamental element of Buddhism: nirvana. Since nirvana could not be described as a form of expedient means—it was the end goal of Buddhist practice and was dealt with in the earliest Buddhist texts, if a Christian scholar could successfully show that it too developed from religious precursors in India, this would remove legitimacy from the goal of Buddhist practice. What is notable about Yinshun’s anti-Christian writing, as well as the articles and essays of other Buddhists from this period, is that Christianity’s foreignness underlay their criticisms. For them, Christianity could not be reconciled with the teachings of China’s Confucian and Daoist sages, as Buddhism could. It did not form part of the Chinese tradition and should either adapt to Chinese circumstances, or be rejected altogether. In this sense, Buddhist arguments against Christianity paralleled those of Cohen’s 119 Ibid., 59.

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anti-Christian tradition. And yet, even though they were fiercely critical of Christianity, their own presentations of Buddhism were formed in response to it. They presented Buddhism as embodying modernity, but also as “Chinese”—an approach that paralleled the KMT’s own political stance. Buddhists were therefore decoupling Western modernity from its association with Christianity, and redefining not just Buddhism, but China’s elite religico-philosophical canon as more aligned with these values.

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Buddhism and Modernity Abstract The academic research of the Catholic priest Du Erwei generated strong responses from Buddhists. Du claimed that Buddhism was descended from earlier lunar religion—and thus, implicitly, that it embodied a “primitive” stage of religious thought. As an anthropologist and scholar affiliated with National Taiwan University, Du drew from voluminous academic sources, meaning that his theory demanded a rigorous Buddhist response. This chapter discusses Yinshun’s writings from the period, which aimed at showing how fundamental Buddhist beliefs transcended history and that Christianity itself was, as Du Erwei had claimed about Buddhism, historically-derived. Modern historiographical forms thus increasingly paralleled the appeal to values, showing their importance for identity formation and as a standard for religious “truth”. Keywords: Du Erwei, lunar religion, Pure Land, Amitābha, Moses

The Buddha said to Ānanda, “You and others like you still listen to the Dharma with conditioned minds, and therefore you fail to understand its real nature. Consider this example: suppose someone is pointing to the moon to show it to another person. That other person, guided by the pointing finger, should now look at the moon. But if he looks instead at the finger, taking it to be the moon, not only does he fail to see the moon, but he is mistaken, too, about the finger.1

The Buddha was born into a world replete with deific figures. Long before, Indo-Europeans had moved into northern India, beginning in 1500 BCE. By the time of the Buddha’s appearance in the middle of the f irst millennium BCE, an extensive body of orally-transmitted texts, called the Vedas, had developed. These dealt with the relationship between human 1 Ronald Epstein and David Rounds (eds.), The Surangama Sutra: A New Translation (Ukia, Calif: Buddhist Text Translation Society, 2009).

Pacey, S. Buddhist Responses to Christianity in Postwar Taiwan: Awakening the World. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020. doi: 10.5117/9789463724111_ch03

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beings and a polytheistic cosmos. To this textual body was later added the Brāhmaṇas, the Āraṇyakas and the Upaniṣads. And thus, while early Indo-European belief centered on sacrifice, by the time the Buddha was born in the sixth century BCE, new religious developments had taken place. Among these was a belief in reincarnation—that after death, rather than head to the “World of the Fathers” or the “House of Clay,” the soul migrates into different bodies depending on one’s conduct during life. Even deities were subject to death and rebirth. An ascetic preoccupation of the Buddha’s time was how to bring cessation to this constant cycle of transmigration. 2 Ascetics devoted their time to seeking a particular realization: unity between the soul, or ātman, and Brahman—an “entity” that “fills all space and time.”3 The Buddha, however, was critical of this worldview. He taught the doctrine of nirvana—that the highest religious goal was not the realization of unity with Brahman, but the undefined absence of causes and conditions— the extinction of karma. And that the notion of dependent origination holds all phenomena to be interdependent—that they are in a constant state of flux. As such, phenomena are without beginning or end, and there is no God—no omnipresent, omnipotent deity and creator of all things—in Buddhism. Moreover, the Buddha discovered the path to ultimate liberation from the cycle of rebirth; he did not bestow enlightenment on followers in a manner akin to Jesus. While Pure Land Buddhism later developed ideas of faith, ultimately, enlightenment depended on practice and the volitional actions of adherents. This is a different conception of deity than we find in Christianity, where God is immutable and the absolute source of salvation, and where faith in Jesus leads to eternal life. In the context of republican China and later in the ROC on Taiwan, where science was upheld as the key to modernization, theistic religion was subjected to particular critique by public intellectuals. One of them was Hu Shi (1891-1962)—a vocal member of China’s anti-religion camp. In 1956, a collection of his essays was published in Taiwan. Hu was a major f igure there, having already been famous on the mainland, and then becoming president of the respected public research institute, Academia Sinica (Zhongyang Yanjiuyuan), in 1957. His pragmatism, inherited from his teacher John Dewey, and which advocated positivism and an experimental approach to learning, had been a major intellectual force in China since the 2 Basham, A.L., The Wonder that was India: A Survey of the History and Culture of the Indian Sub-continent before the Coming of the Muslims (Calcutta: Rupa and Co., 1986 [1954]), 244-46. 3 Ibid., 252.

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May Fourth movement in 1919. 4 Hu felt that science could replace religious functions—specifically, that theistic beliefs should give way to a belief in humanity and the creation of an ideal society on earth. Elsewhere, he stated that social service could be a “religion,” while the individual could attain immortality through participation in society.5 Shengyan responded to Hu’s views in 1959. His essay, “On Religious Belief in Hu Shi’s Thought,” was published in the periodical Contemporary Buddhism (Jinri Fojiao).6 In it, he cites Hu’s piece “On Social Immortality,” which was published in 1919 in New Youth (Xin qingnian), where Hu explained that real immortality was of social and historical nature; in other words, that human beings lived on through their deeds. Another of Hu’s essays cited by Shengyan stated that science had caused three trends in contemporary religion: rationalization (lizhihua), humanization (renhua) and socialized ethics (shehuihua de daode). As a militant defender of the Dharma, Shengyan claimed that Buddhism did not, in fact, conflict with these trends, while at the same time affirming the value of human life with its doctrine of karma.7 Put differently, Buddhism had long embodied ideas such as these, and therefore had always been a modern religion. On the other hand, while Buddhists had long argued against the notion of a creator deity, this was fundamental to Christianity. They took a different tack, contrasting their relatively austere religious cosmos with the vast and complex world of Buddhism, charging it with being “superstitious,” pointing to their religious imagery and the numerous buddhas and bodhisattvas that were objects of devotion or veneration. Christians considered this akin to polytheism, which they considered a lower stage on a scale of religious evolution. In response, Buddhists such as Taixu tried to de-emphasize the supernatural features of Buddhism so as to focus on the “human world” (renjian). Or, they interpreted these celestial beings in a way that removed their supernatural qualities—since they were implicated in the cycle of rebirth known as samsara, they were not “gods” as such, but rather different types of living entities. In other words, for Buddhists, the mythological nature 4 Yang Chengbin, “Hu Shi,” in Zhongguo lidai sixiangjia (24): Hu Shi. Liang Shuming. Qian Mu., ed. Wang Shounan and the Zhonghua wenhua fuxing yundong zonghui (Taipei: Taiwan shangwu yinshuguan gufen youxian gongsi, 1999), 39-46. 5 Ibid. 6 Shengyan, “Guanyu Hu Shi sixiang de zongjiao Xinyang,” ed. Leguan, Pi hu shuoji (n.p.: Lianhua Fojiao sengjiahui, 1960), 91. Available at: http://buddhistinformatics.ddbc.edu.tw/ taiwanbuddhism/tb/jb/bk/i026.htm (accessed February 17, 2018). This was originally published in Jinri Fojiao 2:11 (1959). 7 Ibid.

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of Buddhism was a problem—it opened them to critique from Christians and anti-religion Chinese intellectuals. We can see this by considering essays by Gong Tianmin, whom we encountered in the last chapter, written in the 1960s and early 1970s. For example, in 1968, he explained that although God created the universe, he is not subject to causality and in fact transcends it.8 In 1969, he wrote that the Buddhist theory of causality “seems logical, but has a big problem. Where is the first cause of all things? What conditions led to this first cause? What was the first cause that led to the formation of the moon?”9 The moon, Gong argued, came from God. We shall return to Earth’s satellite when, later in this chapter, we contrast how another Christian, Du Erwei, and his Buddhist opponent, Yinshun, explained the importance of celestial bodies, including the lunar sphere. Gong, however, felt no need to dismiss or reinterpret Christian theism. Instead, he painted God as the highest form of theistic belief. This is illustrated in his book, entitled A Comparison of Christianity and Buddhism (Jidujiao yu Fojiao de bijiao) and first published in 1970. He describes God’s qualities as having “awareness” (you zijue), “self-determination” (zijue), and “freedom” (ziyou). God speaks, meaning that he has a real existence. He is the “creator of all things” (chuangzao wanwu zhe), and is “omnipotent” (quannengzhe), “omnipresent” (bianzaizhe), and “unchanging” (bubianzhe). He has personal qualities, being “benevolent” (liangshande), “almighty” (weidade), and “merciful” (lianminde). And he acted in the universe, being “the administrator of the natural world” (ziranjie de guanxiazhe).10 Meanwhile, the supernatural claims of Christianity were inviolably true: God, the Holy Spirit and Jesus are one in the Holy Trinity; Jesus himself “was resurrected, then ascended to heaven, and will come again into the world to judge the living and the dead.”11 The Christian God stood in contrast to the crowded Buddhist universe, replete with buddhas and bodhisattvas, all of whom could be turned into idols and worshipped.12 The Buddha, noted Gong, had taught an atheistic doctrine. But he gradually became deified over time. Besides Śākyamuni Buddha—the buddha of our world who was born in Lumbinī—there were numerous other 8 Gong Tianmin, Gong Tianmin xin wenji sanshi pian (Taipei: Xiaoyuan shufang chubanshe, 1993), 32. 9 Ibid., 46. 10 Gong Tianmin, Zhenli ziming: Jidujiao yu Fojiao de bijiao (Taipei: Jidu ganlan wenhua, 2003), 12. 11 Ibid., 14. 12 Ibid., 46-47.

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buddhas, bodhisattvas, and celestial beings who were revered or the object of worship. Therefore, Gong claimed that Buddhism was effectively akin to polytheism in terms of its practical belief. He asked, rhetorically, if the deviation from the Buddha’s original teachings represented the “degeneration” (duoluo) or advancement (jinbu) of the religion.13 Gong’s insinuation was that Buddhism and Christianity were both theistic—but Christianity’s theism was more rational, and stood above Buddhism in a religious hierarchy. He did not share the view held by some Christians, which we learned about in the previous chapter, that Christianity needed to be changed or “sinicized”. So in in a 1973 essay, he did not side with those calling for a Chinese theology, or more distinct form of Chinese Christianity, or who asserted that the high deity Shangdi, mentioned in ancient Chinese texts, was the same as the biblical God.14 Instead, he warned that such attempts may obfuscate the Christian message, which should center on Jesus. The project to find equivalencies between the Christian God and other deities or figures (such as the Buddha) would only lead to distortion.15 Instead, Christians continued to focus on values. For example, Gong’s criticisms of Buddhism reflected those of Confucians from when Buddhism was newly-arrived in China—that the Buddhist monastic ideal precluded marriage and the family—the underpinnings of the Chinese social order.16 In contrast, Christianity upheld the value of the family—an emphasis that extended into modern times. In 1966 he wrote that Christianity essentially led converted Buddhists to even become better citizens of the ROC: Those Chinese Buddhists who have become Christians can be said to have shed the fetters of many superstitions and vulgar customs, and attained freedom … They struggle hard in society, founding their own businesses, are law-abiding citizens, respecting God, loving the country, loving other people, establishing families, and living the happy lives of normal people.17

For Gong, then, God and Jesus were central to his belief, but this did not mean Christianity did not cohere with KMT values. In fact, Christianity promoted activities that were beneficial to the state and contributed to social 13 Ibid, 21. 14 Gong, Gong Tianmin sanshi pian, 57. 15 Ibid., 59-62. 16 Ibid., 34. 17 Ibid., 75.

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stability. He did not try to reduce or rationalize the theistic component of Christianity because it was central to the Christian hope for salvation and eternal life. But he did implicitly aim to show that it could complement the values many people already held in Taiwan. Buddhists, however, did try to reinterpret the supernatural aspect of their tradition, believing this would make it more acceptable to intellectuals. In this chapter, we will see how important this project was to them, and other Buddhists in Taiwan, by examining reactions to the research of a Catholic priest, Du Erwei, who aimed at deconstructing Buddhist concepts and showing them to be human constructions lacking trans-historical truth. We will see that even though Buddhists were willing, in some cases, to reinterpret their faith, there were limits to how far this could go. The chapter will also discuss the continued importance of religious history in exchanges between Buddhists and Christians. History was polemical in these cases. As an example, consider an essay by Shengyan from 1959. In this, he suggested an Indian influence on the biblical God.18 Referring to Ernest Renan’s Life of Jesus, he explained that the Middle East was religiously diverse. Hence, since “India’s Aryans [Indo-Europeans] came from this area or a nearby area,” it was therefore “impossible that their religious beliefs were not influenced by this area.”19 Thus, “we can see that the Indian Aryan’s production of the Lord Brahma concept occurred in the late Vedic period, around the time of Moses. This Brahma concept, and the realm of Brahma, is in reality the equivalent of Yahweh in Judaism.”20 In making this comment—by juxtaposing Brahma with the biblical God, Shengyan opened Christianity up to traditional Buddhist critiques of eternal, omnipotent gods. But in the 1960s, providing academic justification for claims about the value of Christianity or Buddhism became increasingly important in a debate that had thus far focused on questions of culture and notions of tradition and modernity. Zhuyun and others rejected Christianity because it did not accord either with traditional Chinese values or KMT thought. In the sense of rejecting Christianity because it was not “Chinese,” the twentieth century Buddhists did not differ from their seventeenth-century forebears. But in modern Taiwan, appealing to modern standards of positivism and objectivity was crucial, since these values were firmly integrated into the KMT’s modernist vision. We can see these themes emerge in the case of Du Erwei, a Catholic priest and professor at National Taiwan University. Du’s Buddhist essays up 18 Xingshi Jiangjun [Shengyan], “Lun Fojiao yu Jidujiao de tongyi,” Zhongguo Fojiao 3:2 (1959): 4. 19 Ibid., 5. 20 Ibid.

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to 1963—published in Christian magazines and then collected into books, argued that Buddhism was derived from ancient Indian lunar worship. By implication, Buddhism was a form of primitive religion, beneath Christianity on an imagined religious hierarchy. This argument, more than those by any other writers, created discomfort among Taiwan’s Buddhists. Du’s studies were challenging because they were so fiercely polemical and dealt with specific aspects of Buddhist belief. By dissecting particular Buddhist concepts, arguing that they were derived from lunar mythology, Du aimed at undermining the whole of Buddhism, and showing it to be a product of history rather than trans-historical enlightenment. The first Buddhist to issue a serious response to Du was Yinshun, who tried to show that while Buddhism’s central concepts, like emptiness (kong) and nirvana, were rational products of enlightenment and therefore true, Christianity had emerged from a process of historical development and thus was founded on culture and history. The debate between Du and Yinshun showed that the academic study of religion had become a weapon in the effort to demonstrate religious superiority, and that the discussion was no longer simply a question of which religion was more suited to Chinese culture. But on a practical level, exposure to the religious training of Gong and Du alerted Buddhists to the need for an institutional basis from which to train modern Buddhists like the modern Christian seminary—a theme that will be picked up in the next chapter.

Pointing at the moon Who was Du Erwei, and why did he provoke such a strong reaction among Buddhists? Born in 1913 in Hubei Province in China, Du studied in the Department of Chinese (guowen xi) at the Catholic Fu Jen University in Beijing. After two years of graduate study in anthropology, in 1949, he studied at the University of Innsbruck in Austria, and at then the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, obtaining his doctoral degree in 1953. He was associated with the Society for the Vienna School of Anthropology, and affiliated with National Taiwan University in 1955 in the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology.21 21 See Chen Rongfu and Hong Yongshan, eds., Dangdai Zhongguo shehui kexue xuezhe dacidian (Hangzhou: Zhejiang daxue chubanshe, 1990), 726-727; see also the biographical note in Agehananda Bharati, ed., The Realm of the Extra-Human: Agents and Audiences (The Hague: Mouton Publishers, 1976), 540.

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From his writings, one gets a sense of him being an obsessive individual, and he does seem to have been a stern teacher. A magazine article from 1964 features an interview with a former student at Fu Jen, Sun Zhishen. Sun described an incident that occurred in a class Du was teaching entitled “The History of Human Culture.” A student raised his hand and publicly took issue with Du’s attacks on Buddhism. Du invited him to come to the front of the class and present his views in full. The student stated that all religions have a mythological aspect (shenhua de chengfen), presumably implying that Christianity did, too. Suddenly, Du struck the student in the face, drawing blood and startling the class.22 Despite this alarming incident, according to Sun, Du was “an enthusiastic, straightforward, simple and honest (hanhou) person—someone who laughed and joked all day.”23 Never having heard of him hitting any other students,24 the story caused disbelief when Sun heard it. Du, then, seems to have been a complex character. The Vienna School, to which Du owed much of his approach, existed within the lager German school of diffusionism—which was “dominated by members of the Catholic clergy” and who “were responsible for one last grandiose attempt to reconcile anthropological prehistory and cultural evolution with the Book of Genesis.”25 The school, which was criticized in its day,26 centered on “culture circles” and held that cultural groups diffused out of particular geographic areas.27 Its principal architect was Wilhelm Schmidt (1868-1954)—a Catholic priest who taught at the University of Freiburg between 1939 and 1951. Schmidt held that “the history of religion started with a primeval monotheism and morality. … In this way he explained animism, polytheism and magic as later imaginary accretions which could impose themselves on the original monotheistic belief and spread out according to the ‘laws’ of culture 22 See page 27 of Meng Xiangke, “Cong yi ba zhang kan Furen daxue,” Wenxing 79 (1964): 27-32. 23 Ibid., 27. 24 Ibid., 28. 25 Marvin Harris, The Rise of Anthropological Theory: A History of Theories of Culture (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968), 379. 26 Ernest Brandewie, Wilhelm Schmidt and the Origin of the Idea of God (Lanham: University Press of America, 1983), 11-12. For a biography of Schmidt, see Ernest Brandewie, When Giants Walked the Earth: The Life and Times of Wilhelm Schmidt (SVD, Fribourg: University Press, 1990). See also Suzanne Marchand, “Priests among the Pygmies: Wilhelm Schmidt and the Counter-Reformation in Austrian Ethnology,” in Worldly Provincialism: German Anthropology in the Age of Empire, ed. H. Glenn Penny and Matti Bunzi (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003). 27 Mike Morris, Concise Dictionary of Social and Cultural Anthropology (Malden, Mass.: WileyBlackwell, 2012), 144.

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cycles.”28 This view is explicated in his 12-volume work, The Origin of the Idea of God, which was published in German between 1912 and 1955. In this, Schmidt assimilated ethnographic data with the intention of showing that primitive peoples possessed the idea of a supreme deity, and that while later cultural divergences overshadowed this primitive monotheism, traces of it could be retrieved through the work of culture-history. Du adhered to Schmidt’s basic approach—that of analyzing past and present cultural forms with the aim of uncovering earlier belief. It is on display in his 1963 collection of studies entitled Elucidating Buddhism’s Original Meaning (Fojiao yuanyi de faming).29 But Du’s work was unique for another reason. Scholars writing in Chinese had already written about nature deities by 1963,30 but Du had a particular focus on one aspect of this field, regarding lunar mythology as the origin for a range of religious beliefs throughout the world, including Buddhism. His emphasis on the moon probably came to him through the Vienna School; Schmidt held that there were three subclasses of primitive cultures (food-gatherers), namely, central, southern and arctic primitives. Similarly there are three primary cultures (food-producers), namely, the matrilineal and agricultural, the patrilineal and totemic, and the patriarchal and nomadic. Various typical animistic forms of religious belief are closely associated with each of the three primary types—lunar worship and mythology with matrilineal agrarian culture, sun worship and mythology with patrilineal totemic culture, and the sky-god with patriarchal cattle-breeding culture.31

In showing that Indian and Chinese religion stemmed from earlier lunar precursors, Du verified the Vienna School’s approach through Schmidt. But he focused on lunar mythology to the exclusion of all other kinds, which 28 Jacques Wardenburg, Classical Approaches to the Study of Religion: Aims, Methods and Theories of Research (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1999), 264-265. 29 Du Erwei, Fojiao yuanyi de faming (Taipei: Huaming shuju, 1963). As Du indicates in his introduction (p. 4), the chapters of this book had already appeared in other venues: Shantao Catholic Weekly (Shandao zhoukan), Modern Scholar (Xiandai xueren), and Constantinian Monthly (Hengyi yuekan). 30 For an example a study of nature deities in the Classic of Mountains and Seas, see Zheng Dequn, “‘Shanhai jing’ jiqi shenhua,” in Zhongguo shenhuaxue: bainian wenlun xuan, ed. Ma Changyi, vol. 1 of 2 (Xi’an: Shanxi shifan daxue chuban zongshe youxian gongsi, 2013). This was originally printed in 1932 in Shixue nianbao. 31 David Bidney, “The Ethnology of Religion and the Problem of Human Evolution,” American Anthropologist 56: 1 (1954): 7.

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seems to have been a unique hallmark of Du’s anthropological orientation and investigative method. He provided an introduction to this approach in his 1960 study on the Classic of Mountains and Seas (Shanhai jing)—a Chinese work that collects fantastical accounts of faraway lands dating from between the third century BCE and the second century CE.32 In his introduction, Du explained how he came to emphasize the moon in his research. He wrote that when he was in West Germany, he had the idea of applying the theoretical tools of anthropology to ancient Chinese texts as a way of understanding them. Thereupon, his friend and classmate, Liu Xutang, sent a copy of the Classic of Mountains and Seas from Hong Kong; I hoped that I could explain it. Anthropology contains various moon-myths, and I wondered if the secrets of the Classic of Mountains and Seas could be uncovered using these myths. Was this a delusional idea? When the book arrived, I could not help but look through it a few times. But I could not find what I was hoping for. What about searching through some other sources? … At the time I lived in a forest in West Germany. It was near Christmas, and a heavy snow had fallen. But inside there was a gas stove, making it warm like spring. It was a good opportunity to carefully read the Classic of Mountains and Seas. And yet, I could not find any traces of lunar mythology. I kept reading for a few days, but in the end had lost hope. In my head, though, I thought: “I can’t turn the Classic of Mountains and Seas into a lunar myth by myself. Since I’m in Germany, I should collate some German resources.33

The Taiwanese scholar of mythology, Wang Xiaolian, notes that Du clearly had the idea of searching for evidence of lunar mythology in this Chinese text before actually reading it. He then identified a similarity between the names of certain mountains in the work, which connoted luminosity, and the names of other mountains around the world that had names associated with the moon. The stage was thus set for Du to embark on a career in which he took lunar mythology as the basis for his analysis of Chinese philosophy and religion, as well as Buddhism.34 In his own 1963 book, Du noted that India had solar myths as well as lunar ones, but that “most apparently came after the lunar myths, or became 32 For Du’s study, see Shanhai jing shenhua xitong (Taipei: Huaming, 1960). 33 This citation is reproduced in Wang’s book. See Wang Xiaolian, Zhongguo de shenhua yu chuanshuo (Taipei: Lianjing chuban shiye gongsi, 1977), 321-322. 34 See Zhongguo de shenhua yu chuanshuo, 323.

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related to the lunar myths.”35 He explained that a “lunar deity” was “originally a combination of an (individualized) high god with the moon.”36 Du often referred to the Indologist Max Müller (1823-1900);37 drawing from his work, Du marshalled linguistic evidence to mount his case that the root of the term “Brahman” (denoting the Vedic cosmic principle) had connotations meaning “to grow, to come forth, to spread.”38 Du took this as evidence that the original meaning of “Brahma” and “Brahman” was related to the moon, which changed shape as it moved through its phases.39 He applied this philological approach to a range of core Buddhist concepts, arguing that “nirvana”;40 the term denoting final nirvana, or the complete extinction that occurs at death after enlightenment has been reached (parinirvāṇa); 41 and “karma” all pointed to the origins of Buddhism in lunar religion. According to Du, “ancient people considered the fate of the moon (the crescent moon; yuexing)—with its disappearance and reappearance—to be the fate of human beings. Integrated with the human body, then, throughout the disappearance and reappearance of the moon it did not lose its strength—this was like the reappearance of human beings after they died.”42 Reincarnation, then, was a process like that of waxing and waning. Further evidence that the doctrine of reincarnation came from earlier lunar mythology was provided by Müller. In Müller’s account, the ātman (or soul) proceeded along the “path of the fathers” or the “path of the gods”—depending on one’s conduct and wisdom—after death. The path of the fathers leads on to smoke, night, the waning moon, the waning year, the world of the fathers, the ether, and lastly the moon. In the moon the departed souls remain for a long time enjoying the rewards of their good deeds, 35 Du, Fojiao yuanyi de faming, 27. 36 Ibid., 56-57. 37 Müller held that “mythopoeic man constructed his pantheon around the sun, the dawn, and the sky,” which could be shown through philology. The mythological prevalence of the sun could be found beyond Indo-Europeans, and indeed all around the world. See Richard M. Dorson, “The Eclipse of Solar Mythology,” The Journal of American Folklore 68:270 (1955): 393-416, 398, 404. For more detail on this hypothesis, see Michael P. Carroll, “Some Third Thoughts on Max Müller and Solar Mythology,” European Journal of Sociology 26:02 (1985): 262 – 290. 38 For Müller’s original discussion of this, see The Six Systems of Indian Philosophy, London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1919, 54. See Fojiao yuanyi de faming, 31. 39 Ibid., 32. 40 Ibid., 34-35. 41 See Digital Dictionary of Buddhism, s.v. “perfect extinction,” accessed April 12, 2017, http:// www.buddhism-dict.net/cgi-bin/xpr-ddb.pl?q=%E5%9C%93%E5%AF%82. Du, Fojiao yuanyi de faming, 35. 42 Ibid., 72.

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in company with the Pitris, and then descend again, supported by the remnant of unrewarded merit due to their good works, to the ether, wind, smoke, cloud, rain, and plants. 43

The next stage was that of seed, which led to pregnancy. Since the moon was the place to which souls returned, and since the moon was identified with mokṣa and Brahman, for Du, this indicated that “reincarnation originally was a lunar myth.”44

Open letters to Du This brief sample from Du’s work shows that it was not well-developed, and there were clearly leaps in his logic. However, he did supply a vast quantity of material to support his claims, most of it drawn from studies that were completely outside the area of expertise of his Buddhist opponents. For Buddhists whose experience of scholarship had been limited to exegesis, rather than academic religious studies, Du’s work must have appeared imposing. His studies were typically dense and included numerous references, and therefore could not simply be dismissed out of hand. However, early responses to Du, in the form of letters to magazines, showed that this was precisely what Taiwan’s Buddhist world did. Let us take, as our f irst example, an open letter to Du from the layBuddhist Zhao Liangjie. Zhao, born in 1913 in Shandong, had taken refuge under the famed Buddhist monastic Danxu in 1942, 45 published books on subjects such as the bodhisattva Kṣitigarbha; the sixth patriarch of Chan, Huineng; the Vimalakīrtinirdeśa Sutra; and “perfection of wisdom” literature. Apparently referencing the impenetrability of his work, he complained that Du made too heavy a use of foreign terms, effectively avoiding criticism since neither Westerners nor Chinese were capable of reading them in their entirety. Claiming that Du was making use of a Chinese sense of inferiority (zibeigan), Zhao charged that his opponents would not be willing to engage with him, fearing they had not understood Du’s meaning, and thus coming off looking like a “country bumpkin” (tubaozi).46 In other words, Du did not 43 Ibid., 80, from Müller, The Six Systems of Indian Philosophy, 176-177. 44 Du, Fojiao yuanyi de faming, 80. 45 Foguang dacidian, s.v. “Zhao Liangjie,” accessed February 17, 2018, https://www.fgs.org.tw/ fgs_book/fgs_drser.aspx. 46 Zhao Liangjie, “Zhi Du Erwei xiansheng yi feng gongkai xin,” Zhongguo Fojiao 8:1 (1963): 17-18.

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want his studies to be subjected to critique, and thus built a protective wall of complexity around them. Zhao also charged that Du was selective when drawing evidence from the Buddhist canon, 47 and represented Buddhism in a deliberately skewed fashion, claiming there was no evidence that a lunar deity had ever existed in India. It was not, for example, mentioned among the non-Buddhist teachings at the time of the Buddha. 48 And, that the term “nirvana,” conceptually, at least, did not in any way signify something connected to lunar religion. 49 Zhao later proposed that a formal debate be established between Du and his Buddhist opponents.50 The topic of discussion would be limited to Mahayana Buddhism (rather than the Hinayana Buddhism found in South-east Asia, or Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism), and asked that sources be taken from the Mahayana canon. Zhao also wanted to first argue on the basis of theory without the burden of proof—to discuss contemporary Mahayana in its received form, rather than delve into the archaeology of its concepts. There was also a request to make sure all sources were in Chinese. Zhao therefore apparently wanted to prevent the debate from becoming academic—thus keeping it safely within the realm of exegesis and “theology.” One of Zhao’s more curious demands was that Du formally submit his arguments first, so a response could then be issued to them. Victory would be based on performance in three topics (the best out of three), and should Zhao have emerged victorious, Du would have had to burn his books; publish an apology to “Buddhism” in the pages of the Central Daily News (Zhongyang ribao); and provide funds for the debate’s texts to be published. Conversely, should Du have won, Zhao would have had to do the same. (Presumably, this meant apologizing to “Christianity”.) This attempt to limit the academic process was apparently rejected by Du. Other responses to Du were more personal. Yuanxiang, who frequently wrote for various Buddhist magazines, remarked that he is just a hypocrite who hangs up a sheep’s head to sell dog-meat. It’s not worth caring about. Looking at his articles, it would seem that Du Erwei 47 Ibid., 18. 48 Ibid. 49 Ibid. 50 Zhao Liangjie, “Zai zhi Du Erwei xiansheng yi feng gongkai xin,” Zhongguo Fojiao 8: 3 (1963): 21.

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is just a nameless nobody. Later I heard that he was a professor. I was so surprised. … On Du’s ‘great works’ ( jiezuo), I’ve just read a few lines, and discovered that he’s somebody completely lacking in rationality.51

These types of ad hominem attacks were de rigeur against Du, but the letter contained some arguments from religious history that presaged the turn the debate would take in coming years, when he claimed that “people like this [Du]” were “afraid of history and evidence. At the mention of evidence they become so miserable they cannot speak. Originally, Jehovah—“God”—was an idol created by Moses. … Twenty centuries ago, their Bible was compiled from absurd folk legends. Go ask Mr. Du if he’s willing to use textual research methods to refute these three great facts.”52 The attempt to refer to religious history from outside the Buddhist canon was becoming the new standard by which the debate would be carried out, even if the attempt to engage in this type of argument here was off-hand. Another response referred to Du’s role as a university teacher, and parodied his insistence on the roundness of certain concepts as evidence of lunar religion: When you eat rice, note that your bowl is round. When you pick up vegetables, note that your serving plate is round. When you wash your face after dinner, note that your wash-basin is round. When you lift your tea-cup to drink tea, note that your tea-cup is round. When you smoke, note that your cigarette is round. When you get a lift to class, note that the vehicle’s wheels are round. When you mount the stage and pick up some chalk, note the chalk is round. When you turn to face the students, note their heads are round. … Why don’t you write a probing article all about round things, and say that they are all developed from lunar myths?53

This was a rejection of Du’s philological approach, founded on locating similarities between the moon’s features and words in particular languages. Besides his discussions of nirvana, another example can be found in a book of his essays (which are reprinted from other sources), first published in 1965, entitled Uncovering the Original Meaning of Buddhist Sutras (Jieshi 51 Yuanxiang, “Wo dui ‘Zhong-Fo’ yu ‘Hengyi’ bizhan de kanfa,” Zhongguo Fojiao 8:4 (1963): 19. 52 Ibid. 53 Xin Wu, “‘Fanbo Duzhe Fojiao Yuanyi faming jiqi xuzuo’ duhou gan,” Zhongguo Fojiao 8:5 (1964): 21.

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fojing yuanyi). This includes an essay on the Buddha’s body, which includes thirty-two major, and eighty minor, signs of his buddhahood. Du wrote that not only is [his] body round, [his] shoulders are also round, [his] elbows are round, [his] heels are round, [his] fleshy tuft [of hair] is round. Additionally, “wheels [lun]” can describe roundness. [His] wide and great tongue “covers his round face [mianlun]”; [regarding] the wheels under his feet, the hub and rim are also round. … Those with thirty-two marks have round bodies and are golden—we can only call this the shape of the moon.54

Du’s analysis is more complex than would seem from this excerpt, and he mobilizes much evidence in support of his claim. But from this brief example, we can get an indication of his reasoning, which in addition to philology, also sought physical similarities with the moon and lunar mythology so as to prove providence. Reactions to Du’s work in magazines also included attempts to highlight inconsistencies in the Bible. Another writer, Bao Ruowang, responded after being sent copies of Constantinian Monthly in which Du’s work had featured. Bao tried to poke holes in Genesis, writing an imaginary dialogue with Du, referred to as a “Western monk” (Yang heshang): In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was waste and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep: and the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. Critique: What is “in the beginning”? Western monk: The meaning of “in the beginning” is, when the universe was first created. Critique: This “creation” was there at the very beginning? Before this “creation,” was there no another “creation”? Western monk: We don’t know. Critique: If you don’t know, why do you believe this book, which can’t resolve your doubts? And why do you want to propagate this religion, with its pages of doubts and heterodox teachings, among ordinary Chinese folk? If you don’t know how God was created, how do you even know if your God, or Heavenly Father, exists?55 54 Du Erwei, Jieshi fojing yuanyi (Taipei: Taiwan shangwu, 1996), 34-35. 55 Bao Ruowang, “Xin-jiuyue pipan: you ming Yesu bu hui jieshi zhenli,” Zhongguo Fojiao 7:5 (1963): 15. On this page, Du is referred to as “Western monk Du.” The Bible quote is from Ge 1:1-2. Later, the Christian pastor Gong Tianmin criticized Bao for making arguments of this nature,

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The writer also took to ridiculing Christianity: Genesis chapter 28: And Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put under his head, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it. And he called the name of that place Beth-el ... and this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, shall be God’s house …56 Criticism: Please, readers—look. These disciples of the Western religion, these self-proclaimed sons and daughters of God, worshipped a stone, and want others to worship a stone like them. Is this stone the dwelling place of your God, disciples of the Western religion? Does your God hide in this stone? You’re really idol-worshippers! Genesis chapter 30: And God remembered Rachel, and God hearkened to her, and opened her womb. And she conceived, and bare a son: and said, God hath taken away my reproach …57 Criticism: Your God can really be called a great gynecologist ( funü zhuanke) or authority in sexology. He can cause people to become pregnant, and bear children.58

Besides responses aimed at demonstrating that Christianity was founded on primitive religious belief, others sought to explain Mahayana Buddhism in its own terms, without reference to academic religious studies, as a way of showing that concepts like nirvana and reincarnation had nothing to do with the moon whatsoever. What is evident from this short survey is the absence of any informed, scholarly response; none of the above writers were able to convincingly show that Du’s conclusions, or methods, were flawed. This points to the relative lack of academic training in Buddhist studies or religious studies among clerics and lay-people in Taiwan at that time.

The science of Śākyamuni In 1963, in response to these various Buddhist letter-writers, Du published his own open letter in the pages of Constantinian Monthly. He cast doubt on his and responded with his own examples aimed at ridiculing Buddhism. However, he thought very poorly of such a strategy. See Gong Tianmin, “Kan fashi yu shenfu zhi zheng,” Jidujiao yanjiu 1:1 (1963): 63-65. 56 These quotes are from Ge 28:18-22. 57 This quote is from Ge 30:22-23. 58 Bao Ruowang, “Xin-jiuyue pipan: san xu,” Zhongguo Fojiao 7:10 (1963): 15.

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opponents’ understanding of his arguments,59 and challenged them to refute his claims about reincarnation and nirvana with academic evidence.60 The first cogent response came from Yinshun, who, like Du, had an appreciation for academic studies of religious history. As explained in the last chapter, Yinshun believed that the Buddha’s original teachings had become obscured by historical accretions over time.61 These accretions were cases in which expedient means, designed to teach this message, were either mistaken for the underlying truth itself, or were later developments and not part of the Buddha’s original teachings. His own critiques of Chinese Buddhism were intended to restore the original teachings to prominence. For Yinshun, these were rational and could withstand modern scrutiny, and therefore, could save Buddhism from the attacks of non-Buddhists like Du. Du and Yinshun agreed that historical processes played a role in the development of religious concepts. In fact, ten years before, Yinshun had already written two famous essays in which he applied this academic approach to the deconstruction of Buddhist Pure Land belief. The first essay in which he did this was composed in 1951, and was called New Treatise on the Pure Land (Jingtu xinlun);62 the second was actually a speech given in 1953, entitled A Primer on the Recitation of the Names of Buddhas (Nianfo qianshuo). In these, Yinshun mounted evidence to show that the celestial beings and realms of Buddhism were expedient teachings, and should not to be considered literally true. Both texts had subsequently been burned by Buddhists in Taiwan who disagreed with him, showing that not all believers accepted such liberal interpretations of their doctrines.63 In New Treatise on the Pure Land, Yinshun applied a type of philological analysis to Buddhism that was similar to Du’s. The main focus of his analysis was Amitābha (also referred to as Amitāyus)—the buddha who presides over the Western Pure Land of Sukhāvatī; Yinshun dissected the buddha’s name in an effort to show that Amitābha was a metaphorical construct.64 Yinshun explained that in Sanskrit, these names meant “limitless light” and “limitless life” respectively. Meanwhile, the setting sun—in the west, lying in the same 59 Du Erwei, “‘Zhi Du Erwei xiansheng yifeng gongkai xin’ duhougan,” Hengyi (Nov. 01, 1963): 33. 60 Ibid., 31-33. 61 Yinshun, “Qili qiji zhi renjian Fojiao,” in Youxin fahai liushi nian, qili qiji zhi renjian Fojiao hekan (Xinzhu: Zhengwen chubanshe, 2006 [1989]), 83-84. 62 I have benefited from the analysis of this text already provided by Charles Jones. See his Buddhism in Taiwan, 124-133. 63 Yang, “Taiwan Fojiao de ‘chu shi’ xingge yu paixi fenzheng,” 22-23. 64 See Yinshun, Jingtu xinlun (Hong Kong: Zhengwen xueshe, 1952).

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direction as Amitābha’s Pure Land Sukhāvatī—was akin to nirvana, and light symbolized the all-pervading extent of the Buddha’s wisdom.65 The combined figure of Amitābha-Amitāyus was intended to lead adherents to more fundamental Buddhist truths by appealing to solar-worship practices in India and generalized hopes for eternal life. Similarly, the practice of reciting a buddha’s name in the hope of gaining rebirth in a Pure Land (nianfo)—typically Amitābha’s Pure Land of Sukhāvatī—was an accommodation to people who could not understand more fundamental teachings on emptiness. As evidence of this, Yinshun cited the late-Jin dynasty (265-420) Record of Foreign Kingdoms (Waiguoji). This stated that although the Parthians were ignorant of the Dharma, they did practice nianfo.66 According to Yinshun, while this approach contained the buddhadharma, it neglected Buddhism’s philosophical content.67 Like Du, then, Yinshun showed an appreciation for academic history, and he was not afraid to critique his own tradition on this basis. But as we shall see, Yinshun felt that, if applied equally, Buddhism was more able to withstand historical scrutiny than Christianity. In 1962, he gave a speech at the Huiri Lecture Hall in Taipei in response to Du, called The Symbolism of the Eastern Pure Land (Dongfang jingtu fawei).68 This was later printed in the magazine Tidal Roar;69 in the speech, he presented Pure Land belief as a form of allegory. For example, he explained that the Buddha had “used worldly astronomical phenomena” to “symbolize sages who had attained wisdom and apprehended truth.”70 Two bodhisattvas who typically flank the Medicine Tathagata (Yaoshi Rulai)—Sūryaprabha (Riguang bianzhao) and Candraprabha (Yueguang bianzhao)—incorporated the terms for “sunlight” (riguang) and “moonlight” (yueguang) in their names. This imagery 65 Ibid. 66 This text can be accessed in the Taishō Tripiṭaka. See “Di shiqi Amituofo huazuo yingwu niao yinqi Anxiguo ganying,” T2084 vol. 51 of 100 page 831 lines c 09-22, available at: http://21dzk.l.utokyo.ac.jp/SAT/ddb-sat2.php?mode=detail&mode2=1&num1=2084&num2=&vol=51&page=831 (accessed February 16, 2018). 67 Yinshun, Jingtu xinlun, 46-47. As Charles Jones has pointed out, Yinshun’s ideas concerning the Persian influence on Sukhāvatī-belief had already been proposed by Western scholars such as Marie-Thérèse de Mallmann. See Jones, Buddhism in Taiwan, 229 (note 11), and Marie-Thérèse de Mallmann, Introduction a l’étude d’Avalokiteçvara (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1967), 90. 68 Shengyan, Shengyan fashi xuesi licheng, 81. 69 See Yinshun, “Dongfang jingtu fawei,” Haichao yin 44:3 (1963): 2-4; Yinshun, “Dongfang jingtu fawei: xia,” Haichao yin 44:4 (1963): 4-7. For the year and location of the talk, see http:// www.yinshun.org.tw/write_history.htm (accessed February 17, 2018). 70 Yinshun, “Dongfang jingtu fawei,” 4.

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symbolized wisdom (represented by the sun) and compassion (represented by the moon).71 Aside from them, the Eastern Pure Land had eight other bodhisattvas, which Yinshun identified with the eight planets aside from earth.72 It was also home to twelve Yakṣa Generals who had seven thousand attendants each;73 Yinshun explained these as stars.74 Meanwhile, a light-flooded space was itself a metaphor for nirvana. He explained that according to modern knowledge, there are f ixed stars (hengxing), planets (xingxing), and satellites (weixing). The light from the eight great planets and the moon comes from the sun. However, ancient people thought that light from the sun, moon and stars originated in the realm of space (xukongjie), and thus that space (kongjie) was bright and pure.75

The resplendence of space therefore served as a metaphor for nirvana,76 meaning that the Pure Lands were cosmographs embodying Mahayana doctrine. Yinshun therefore took a similar approach to Du, explaining various aspects of Buddhist cosmology as deriving from celestial imagery. Although he did not employ scores of secular academic sources like Du did, he approached the Dharma critically, and articulated a new view of Buddhism focused on its philosophical aspects.77 By accepting the historical nature of Buddhism, Yinshun could therefore acknowledge Du’s approach, while negating the charge, implicit in Du’s scholarship, that Buddhism was entirely the product of history and devoid of trans-historical truth. Instead, he indirectly claimed that the astronomical elements of Buddhism did not stem from earlier lunar worship, but were in fact expedient means designed to impart rational ideas. 71 Ibid. 72 When Yinshun wrote this essay, Pluto was still classed as a “planet”; it lost this status in 2006. 73 Ibid. 74 Ibid. 75 Yinshun, “Dongfang jingtu fawei: xia,” 4. 76 Ibid., 4. 77 Scholars had previously identified deities with planets. See J. Edward Wright, The Early History of Heaven (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 41, 58-61. However, W. Randolph Kloetzli’s survey of the literature indicates there is little to suggest that the devas of the Brahmaloka were connected with planets. For more on this topic, and the link between gods and stars in ancient India, See W. Randolph Kloetzli, Buddhist Cosmology: Science and Theology in the Images of Motion and Light (Dehli: Montilal Banarsidass Publishers, 1989), 17, 47-48.

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Meanwhile, Christian theism meant that it should be placed at a lower level in a hierarchy of religious evolution. At the bottom of this scale, Yinshun wrote that people worshipped deities based on animals, geographic features, and astronomical phenomena.78 As knowledge progressed, these were regarded as superstitions, and were replaced by the worship of more abstract beings, which eventually would be shown to be false.79 Believers in theistic religion “did not realize that deities were the objectification of the self’s volitions, which were then imagined [in the form of] a universal dictator … They do not understand that ideal realms can only be realized by purifying the self.”80 Only “higher religions” surpassed theistic belief and offered “the fulfilment of wisdom, compassion, and ability,” and “only Buddhism clearly expresses [this], not retaining any of the flavor of ignorant, theistic religion.”81 Du’s research could be disregarded, then—but if we set aside the question of history and just considered the theological content of Buddhism and Christianity, this would, according to Yinshun’s scheme, show Buddhism (in its true, demythologized form) to be superior and in accordance with the scientific, rational criteria of modernity.

God and Gotama As can be seen, although he upheld the ideal of scholarly detachment, Yinshun’s studies of Buddhism were in fact polemical. He aimed to show that the Buddhism intellectuals, such as Du, derided as superstitious was not, in fact, the real Buddhism. But recall that one of the reasons Yinshun rejected Christianity before embracing the Dharma was that he suspected it was a form of cultural imperialism. Thus, when he dismissed Du’s theory on Buddhism and lunar religion,82 he also characterized it as research with the intention to make “Jehovah replace the Buddha, and control the will of Chinese people.”83 He instead retorted that “whatever the basis of its development,” nirvana was a fundamentally different concept to what was found in theistic religion.84 78 Yinshun, “Dongfang jingtu fawei,” 2. 79 Ibid. 80 Ibid., 3. 81 Ibid. 82 Ibid., 2. 83 Yinshun, “Dongfang jingtu fawei: xia,” 5. 84 Ibid.

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But what if he were to apply the history of religions approach to the Bible, in the same way that Du had done for Buddhism? He did this towards the end of 1963, when he wrote “Between God and Yahweh” (Shangdi yu Yehehua zhijian), after Gong Tianmin and Wu Enpu issued their responses to his first essay, “God Loves the People of the Earth.” The essay can be read as a retort to Du, since he intended to dismantle biblical belief by showing its historical roots, as Du had tried to do with Buddhism. His intention here was to deconstruct Christianity, and show it not only to be a product of human culture, but also a form of superstition that was unsuited to the modern age. His first step in doing this was to undermine the monotheistic claims of Christianity by showing that Genesis mentioned two separate deities. He explained that Christian monotheism was a late, historical development. He wrote that although “the Israelites had originally believed in God,” there was another deity called Yahweh, who was “the Savior newly promoted among the Israelites by Moses. The unification of Yahweh and God … established the new religion of Moses’s time.”85 Here, Yinshun picked up on two translations of “God” in Chinese, “Shangdi” or “Shen”, and “Yehehua,” taking them to refer to different deities; from this point, much of his analysis accords with ideas then current regarding the providence of Yahweh.86 Accordingly, he explained that before Moses, the name “Yahweh” was unknown to the Israelites, citing passages from Genesis (Ge. 4:26 and Ge. 12.8) as proof that Abraham did not know Yahweh’s name. He continued to add that before Moses there were no written records, only a few orally transmitted folk-stories. There were some creation myths and legends of the flood. Moses (it is said to be Moses—we are waiting for the results of research) gathered these stories and compiled the book of Genesis. Therefore, the Yahweh spoken of in the book of Genesis was a later addition and not a contemporary, real thing—because at that time, they did not know Yahweh’s name.87

He concluded that Yahweh was “Moses’s new discovery, a new [doctrine] which he disseminated” for the purpose of uniting the Israelites.88 The biblical God was therefore an artif icial construction—the product of 85 Yinshun, “Shangdi yu Yehehua zhijian,” Haichao yin 44:10 (1963): 6. 86 See Otto Eissfeldt, “El and Yahweh,” Journal of Semitic Studies 1:1 (1956): 25-37. 87 Yinshun, “Shangdi yu Yehehua zhijian,” 6. 88 Ibid.

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folk-stories, used for a political purpose. Yinshun was trying to show that God was a concept that emerged in history—thereby challenging Christianity’s claim to trans-historical truth and religious legitimacy. Yinshun also explained that Yahweh was originally a nature deity, and thus far down on the scale of religious evolution compared to Buddhism with its more abstract, philosophical teachings. Originally, Yahweh was the god of Mount Horeb, 89 where his appearance was associated with fire and smoke.90 To support this claim, he cited passages from Exodus and Deuteronomy (Ex. 19:9, Ex. 19:16-18, Dt. 4:11) mentioning Yahweh’s association with smoke, flames, and tremors. He thus concluded that Mount Horeb “occasionally emitted flames” and that storms, thunder, lightning, and ground movements would have produced the phenomena described in these passages.91 He concluded that Yahweh was originally a mountain deity, which Moses then combined with the deity of the early Israelites—“God [Shangdi] (alternatively translated as ‘Shen’)”.92 As he had done with Yahweh, Yinshun discredited this deity, this time claiming that God was a calf. He cited the story of Aaron’s (Ex. 32: 12-43) and Jeroboam’s (1Ki. 12:28-29) crafting of golden calves as evidence;93 Yinshun therefore surmised that when Moses saw the golden calf fashioned by Aaron, he was angry because the Israelites had fashioned an image in the likeness of God.94 Yinshun therefore portrayed the biblical God as the product of a mistaken understanding of the natural world—thus painting a portrait of Christianity using the terms missionaries had employed to describe Buddhism.

Yinshun’s sources Yinshun did not indicate his sources for these ideas, but a range of studies, translated into Chinese, could have furnished him with the necessary 89 Ibid. 90 Yinshun, “Shangdi yu Yehehua zhijian,” 7. 91 Ibid. 92 Ibid, 6. The text in parentheses is contained in the original Chinese. 93 Ibid. This view can be found in the following article: Leroy Waterman, “Bull-Worship in Israel,” The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures 31:4 (1915): 229-55. For the view that the calf in fact did not represent Yahweh but other gods, see Robert H. Pfeiffer, “Images of Yahweh,” Journal of Biblical Literature 45:3/4 (1926): 211-22. 94 Yinshun, “Shangdi yu Yehehua zhijian,” 8. In the context of Yahweh-worship, the fashioning of images was forbidden.

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information. A 1909 essay by the Canadian Semitologist George Aaron Barton summarized the range of contemporary scholarly views in the following way: It seems therefore that the view that the name Yahweh originated in Arabia and was carried thence by some slight migrations to Babylonia; that it was the name employed by the Kenites to designate their god; that the Kenites probably attributed to him volcanic activity; that wandering into the peninsula of Sinai they added to him the qualities of a storm god; that Yahweh was then adopted by the Israelites.95

The scholarly consensus from Barton’s time reflected many of Yinshun’s views, meaning that a range of academic works could have provided him with this information.96 In other ways, his theory was unique. In particular, he theorized that this irrational belief in a deity associated with bulls came from early contact between the Israelites and “Aryans.” He stated that the Aryans, who founded Indian civilization, migrated from the West. Due to their migration Westward into Europe, and because they lived together with peoples who had settled in Iran and so on, their language, religious deities, and sacred objects all have consistent or similar forms. This is a modern and commonly accepted theory. Abraham’s lineage stemmed from Chaldea in Mesopotamia. Babel, where, according to the Old Testament, humanity began to disperse from, was here. In living there, there was a possibility of them having lived with the forebears of the Indian Aryans.97

Yinshun thus traced the origins of the biblical God to India. He explained that in the Ṛg Veda, there is Dyaus (which is compatible with the Latin “Deus”), who was called a bull. He was represented, metaphorically, by a thunderous bull. Moreover, his appearance resembled a bull. The highest deity in India’s ancient scriptures resembled a bull, just like the Hebrew God. 95 George Aaron Barton, “Yahweh Before Moses,” in Studies in the History of Religions, ed. David Gordon Lyon and George Foot Moore (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1912), 203. 96 See A. H. Keane, “Ea; Yahveh: Dyaus; ZeyΣ; Jupiter,” The Jewish Quarterly Review 15:4 (1903): 559-82. 97 Yinshun, “Shangdi yu Yehehua zhijian,” 9.

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The ancient Indian Dyaus could also be called a bull, and thus could also be called Gotama. India’s highest god, and the Hebrew God, all have this “go” sound, and have the meaning of a bull. Moreover, they are said to resemble a bull. What a clear consistency! I think the theologians of Judaism, Catholicism, and Christianity should really pay attention to this consistency!98

Although not a common view, the Indian origins of Yahweh had been theorized before. The British biblical scholar Thomas Tyler wrote that the root of the name “Yahweh” (Jehovah, in Tyler’s text) could be found in the Indian deity Dyaus. His theory appeared in an essay in Religious Systems of the World, where he explained that the name Yahweh “most probably came to the Hebrews through traffic with India, by way of Chaldea and the Persian Gulf.”99 Yinshun might have encountered this idea when reading translated scholarly works. Yinshun’s turn to academic sources was, in part, inspired by Du’s scholarship. His provision of voluminous philological evidence for the Buddhist link to lunar religion demanded a robust Buddhist response—not the ad hominem attacks that appeared in Buddhist magazines of the period. Since Buddhist-Christian debate, when focused on culture and values, had been inconclusive, and given the critiques of scholars like Hu Shi, which were based in positivism, Yinshun needed something more irrefutable and ironclad—something that would demonstrate the fallacy of Christianity once and for all. Others had searched for such evidence. One of the respondents to Du’s scholarship who did engage seriously with his arguments in the pages of Buddhist magazines was the monastic Mingben (the then-editor of Chinese Buddhism, writing under the name Pianzhou).100 While most others reiterated Buddhist understandings of the concepts Du studied, or levelled personal attacks against Du himself, Mingben directly dealt with arguments such as the etymological history of the term “nirvana.” He tried to show that philological analysis of the term, showing it to have roots in lunar religion, was unacceptable because “nirvana is a Buddhist technical term” that transcended any linguistic heritage it might have.101 Mingben was, of course, 98 Ibid. 99 Thomas Tyler, “The Religion of the Hittites,” in Religious Systems of the World: A Contribution to the Study of Comparative Religion (London: Swan Sonnenschein and Co., 1892), 11. 100 Here, Du indicates that Pianzhou was Mingben’s nom de plume. See Du Erwei, “San da ‘Zhongguo Fojiao’ Pianzhou jun xuwen,” Jidujiao yanjiu 1:2 (1963): 53. 101 Pianzhou, “Du ‘guanyu Fojiao xiexie ba’ zhihou (2),” Zhongguo Fojiao 7:7 (1963), 16.

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mistaken about this; philology depends on dissecting words into their etymological structures. But his point seems to have been to show that “nirvana” was more than the sum of its parts. His etymology represented an attempt to engage with Du on his own terms—something that Yinshun would also attempt later. When Yinshun’s essay was reprinted in My Religious Views, it omitted the brief passage, already cited above, in which he explained that the word “God” had a similar pronunciation to the Indian word “Gotama.”102 Perhaps already realizing the inadequacy of this argument, he wrote, unfortunately, my academic training is weak. I’ve focused on the buddhadharma, and have not had time to engage in the study of mythology, comparative linguistics or other fields. If there was a National Taiwan University professor, as learned as the scholar of “deity” typologies Mr. Du Erwei, who could work on the idea that the Hebrew God was a bull from the perspective of comparative linguistics, there would certainly be an objective conclusion—certainly not one that is less than the lunar mythology [theory]. These sacred genealogies of Hebrew religion, Professor Du should spend a bit of energy writing on. After all, this is your God!103

What is important is that Yinshun was attempting the same type of philological reasoning that Du pursued when linking Buddhist concepts like nirvana to lunar religion. And, the fact that the argument was edited out of subsequent reprintings of the essay shows that he later realized it did not hold up. Yet although both Du and Yinshun were religious professionals, the academic foundations of their polemics indicates that modern, disciplinarian considerations had become essential for the verification of religious truth through history—and that truth itself was def ined by the intellectual demands of their age.

Conclusion Yinshun’s efforts at re-conceptualizing Buddhism as a philosophical tradition, de-emphasizing its supernatural content so as to bolster its modern credentials, are not unique. The Taiwanese Buddhologist Lin Chen-kuo has suggested that Yinshun engaged in a similar process of rationalization to the 102 Yinshun, “Shangdi yu Yehehua zhijian,” 9. 103 Ibid.

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German theologian, Rudolph Bultmann (1884 – 1976), who held that “there is nothing specifically Christian in the mythical view of the world as such. It is simply the cosmology of a pre-scientific age.”104 But scientific knowledge, according to Bultmann, forced theologians to demythologize Christianity while retaining the New Testament message—that is, re-understanding Christian mythical events “not cosmologically, but anthropologically, or better still, existentially,” and as being meaningful for life in the here and now.105 Both Yinshun and Bultmann, as Lin points out, reacted against modernity by returning to their respective core scriptures, but interpreted these in ways that actually resonated with modernity itself. Lin shows how Yinshun, from the 1940s through to the early 1960s, also pursued a process of demythologization in Buddhism. His claim was that it incorporated non-Buddhist practices and placed too much emphasis on the supernatural. Like Taixu, Yinshun advocated a human-centered Buddhism to correct this historical aberration.106 For Yinshun, the Pure Lands, in the eyes of many practitioners, were no different to the heavens of theistic religion, and the act of seeking assistance from buddhas and bodhisattvas was akin to theism itself. Instead, he explained that the Pure Lands, and Amitābha, had a historical basis,107 and that they did not reflect core Buddhist teachings. This re-imagination of Buddhist history, conveniently placing all supernatural and otherworldly elements to one side, enabled him to claim Buddhism was a philosophical, rational religion that accorded with the intellectual demands of modernity. Likewise, while he appreciated detached and scholarly textual research, and Western methods of historiography,108 he wondered if Buddhist research conducted by Christians could be objective. His own beliefs about history and Buddhist rationality meant he expected impartial historiography to reveal the Dharma’s veracity, and biblical theology to be shown to be false. In a 1967 essay, he wrote that “if Western theists announced their separation of belief, thought and theology—and engaged in objective theological research—then theism’s day of judgement [i.e. the realization that theistic religion was false] would be 104 Rudolph Bultmann, “New Testament and Mythology,” in Kerygma and Myth: A Theological Debate, ed. Hans Werner Bartsch (New York: Harper and Row, 1961), 3. 105 Bultmann, “New Testament and Mythology,” 10. 106 Lin Zhenguo, “Buteman yu Yinshun de jie shenhua quanshixue,” in Kongxing yu fangfa: kua wenhua Fojiao zhexue shisi lun (Taipei: Zhengda chubanshe, 2012), 210-211. 107 Lin, “Buteman yu Yinshun de jie shenhua quanshixue,” 218. 108 Yinshun, “Tan rushi yu Foxue,” in Wu jing zhi bian (Zhubei: Caituan faren Yinshun wenjiao jijinhui, 2003 [1967]), 238. For the date of this essay, see Yinshun, Pingfan de yi sheng (chongding ben), 161.

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near!”109 Buddhist academic research, pursued by non-Buddhists, would not be “ideal” because they would not be able to accept the fundamental truths of Buddhism.110 Thus, Yinshun was not truly objective, and used academic methods to advance an aim that was fundamentally apologetic. His ideal model for Buddhist religious studies could be found in Japan. He wrote that scholars there used Western academic methods, but because they “had grown up in a country with Buddhism,” they “understood Buddhism easily” and so they had attained “more and better results.”111 For Yinshun, “the buddhadharma is the buddhadharma. Buddhist studies, and the study of Buddhism, ultimately of course should trace back to the Buddha [himself].”112 This meant that the Buddha’s teachings were unique and should be judged by their own standards. As Yinshun sought to show in his essays, while Christianity was “mythological” in the sense that these myths were judged to be literally true, Buddhism was mythological only insofar that these myths pointed to rational, philosophical, and hence “non-mythological” truths. In this way, Yinshun was engaging in a response to academic studies like Du’s that removed any sense of religiosity from Buddhism, and reanimating it by approaching Buddhist doctrine in a new, demythologized way. Du Erwei also used the academic study of religion for his own purposes, drawing from the Vienna School. This position was marginal within the world of anthropology, and Du’s own position on lunar religion was itself certainly flawed. But his academic training, familiarity with theory, and facility with foreign languages meant that his studies were difficult for Buddhists to respond to effectively, since seminaries did not typically offer this type of academic training. However, the exchange between Du and Yinshun expanded this instance of Buddhist-Christian interfaith competition beyond the question of values and political acceptability, to engage with the question of religious truth itself. Both Du and Yinshun hoped to show that either Buddhism, or Christianity, was either an aberration or a direct presentation of truth that could be verified through history. As Marcus Bingenheimer has suggested, Yinshun merged traditional and modern forms of historiography, employing a Buddhist perspective of history in the form of academic monographs and studies.113 However, as 109 Yinshun, “Tan rushi yu Foxue,” 239. 110 Ibid., 240. 111 Ibid., 239. 112 Ibid., 246. 113 See Marcus Bingenheimer, “Writing History of Buddhist Thought in the Twentieth Century: Yinshun (1906-2005) in the Context of Chinese Buddhist Historiography,” Journal of Global Buddhism 10 (2009): 274.

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we have seen, although Yinshun attempted to produce academic studies in his debates with Christians, his inability to engage with the most recent scholarship meant that a longer-term solution needed to be found. In the next chapter we will examine how Shengyan integrated secular scholarship into Chinese Buddhism by writing his own academic studies of religion and Christianity. These were also premised on an evolutionary theory of religious development that placed Buddhism at the apex. Shengyan himself gained a PhD from Rissho University in Tokyo, and later commenced efforts to establish a Buddhist university in Taiwan. His activities can be read as a response to, and an influence by, the Christian model of universities and academic religious studies, and as further evidence of the role Buddhist-Christian interfaith competition played in shaping Buddhist self-conceptualizations in contemporary Taiwan.

4

Decline and Revitalization Abstract The General who Awakens the World had, by the 1960s, left the military and resumed his monastic life as Shengyan. Like Yinshun, he would become one of the most significant Chinese Buddhists of the twentieth century. Shengyan’s scholarship on religious history aimed to show how belief systems fit into a scheme of religious evolution, according to which Buddhism—using academic evidence—was judged as more “advanced” than other traditions, including Christianity. Using two of Shengyan’s academic works, this chapter shows how his Buddhist apologetics represented an elaboration of Yinshun’s scholarly approach to upholding notions of Buddhist superiority. Buddhists had lamented what they saw as the decline of their tradition in the twentieth century; Shengyan’s scholarship was also an attempt to restore “true” Buddhism, which would be seen as thoroughly compatible with the modern world. Keywords: revival, history, Shengyan, “Comparative Religion”, “Research into Christianity”

According to the canon, the Buddha knew his teachings wouldn’t last.1 The religion he founded incorporates the notion that the Dharma would decline over time, meaning it would become progressively more difficult for beings to attain enlightenment. This narrative ran parallel to abstract notions of Buddhist history—past and future—in which the universe progressed through a cycle of emergence, existence and destruction. Buddhas like Śākyamuni appeared in the world one after another, passing through more or less the same biographical process. The idea that Buddhism is presently, inexorably losing its capacity to bring enlightenment is therefore a definitive part of the tradition—and the transience of his wisdom in the world is a part of the Buddha’s identity. 1 David Wellington Chappell, “Early Forebodings of the Death of Buddhism,” Numen 27:1(June, 1980): 122-154.

Pacey, S. Buddhist Responses to Christianity in Postwar Taiwan: Awakening the World. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020. doi: 10.5117/9789463724111_ch04

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This narrative of decline became especially important in the sixth and seventh centuries in China, and later in the twelfth and fourteenth centuries in Japan, reflecting an anxiety about the capacity for liberation in an age so far removed from the Buddha’s. Various time-spans came to be attributed to the stages in this scheme. In the first, the Dharma proliferates, and full awakening remains possible with the proper degree of effort and practice. In the second, the Buddha’s teachings are not transmitted in full—it becomes harder to attain enlightenment. And in the third, the Dharma has become corrupted; it is exceedingly hard to access the Buddha’s authentic teachings, and therefore to realize his universal truth.2 The notion that we are currently in the third and final stage had a direct influence on the development of Buddhism in East Asia, as practitioners thought about how to deal with the problem of praxis in the age of the Dharma’s decline. In the twentieth century, the idea of Buddhist degeneration arose in a new way. As we have seen, in the context of the modernization, anti-superstition and anti-religion movements, Buddhism came under sustained attack. Modernizing intellectuals and government officials in the Republic considered that religion should benefit the state. In this context, the Christian normative model of religious practice, which emphasized charity and education, was compelling. Some Buddhists agreed with critical voices from this period— claiming that they neglected society, were superstitious, unmodern, and ignorant of their own traditions. But while they agreed this was an accurate depiction of the current reality, they did not see it as representative of authentic Buddhism. Instead of abandoning the Dharma, they tried to understand how it had declined to its present, fallen state. They did not do so with recourse to an ancient metaphysical model, but through the study of history. Buddhists like Taixu and Yinshun devised schemes showing how, and why, Buddhism had deviated from its founder’s intentions. In 1940, Taixu explained that early in his career, he saw all schools of Buddhism as viable paths to enlightenment.3 Like the prominent Gandharan Buddhist Vasubandhu (fifth–fourth century CE), he thought the Dharma could be understood either through direct realization (zhengfa) or the study of doctrine ( jiaofa). He also upheld the Ming-era (1368-1644) division of the Buddhist paths into Chan; Tiantai, and the teachings of Fazang (643-712) 2 See chapter four of Jan Nattier’s Once Upon a Future Time: Studies in a Buddhist Prophecy of Decline (Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press, 1992). See also Robert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr. (eds.), “mofa,” The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), 545. 3 Taixu, “Wo zenyang panshe yiqie fofa,” Haichao yin 21:10 (1940): 4-8.

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and Ci’en (6th century); as well as the precepts; the Pure Land teachings; and esoteric Buddhism. Later, his stance shifted slightly—he came to see the entirety of the Buddha’s teachings as encapsulated within the schools of Mahayana Buddhism, towards which the Hinayana vehicle was but a stepping-stone. And later still, he broadened this approach so that he did not distinguish between Mahayana or Hinayana, or the different schools, and saw the entirety of Buddhist teachings as of “one flavor” (yi wei). Taixu drew on established time-spans when he delineated his Buddhist history. He upheld a span of one thousand years for the first period, when practitioners directly practiced the Buddha’s teachings to attain enlightenment. 4 The second period, when enlightenment was more difficult, saw esoteric teachings and Pure Land thought proliferate. This stage had lasted for a thousand years. According to Taixu, the world had entered the third period, which will last for ten thousand years. During this time, the former two vehicles were no longer appropriate—the first was too “pessimistic and world-renouncing,” and the second, “superstitious”. The most appropriate approach was instead the “human vehicle”—Taixu’s presentation of Buddhism that stressed its applicability to human life in the here and now.5 It was at this level that Taixu drew the most explicit parallels with Confucianism, bringing it into his Buddhist worldview to become the foundation of practice. In doing so, he was implicitly refuting a public intellectual at the time, the philosopher Liang Shuming (1893-1988), who in 1921 famously argued that Confucianism, rather than Buddhism or any other philosophy, should guide modern China. Liang saw in the traditional Chinese adaptation of desires to economic and social necessities a superior form of humanism, in opposition to their exacerbation which characterized, according to him, Western civilization, and by opposition to the excessive introspection which he felt typified the Indian world in which the traditions aimed at the negation of the self and the abolition of desire.6

Liang had grown increasingly drawn to Confucianism for what he claimed was its greater worldly focus—in contrast to Buddhism’s other-worldly 4 Taixu, “Zenyang lai jianshe renjian Fojiao,” in Taixu dashi quanshu (CD-ROM), ed. Yinshun, vol. 24 of 35 (Xinzhu: Caituan faren Yinshun wenjiao jijinhui, 2005 [1933]), 433-34. 5 See Taixu, “Wo zenyang panshe yiqie fofa.” 6 Jacques Gernet, Le monde chinois. Tome 3. L’époque contemporaine (Paris: Armand Collin, 2005), 73.

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orientation7—and claimed that Buddhism could not be a suitable worldview until one had attained material (represented by Western culture) and mental (represented by Chinese culture) perfection.8 Until such a time, Buddhism would be impractical. But Taixu, on the other hand, while accepting that this was a difficult age in which to attain enlightenment, felt that the human vehicle could facilitate it.9 Confucian ethics therefore needed to be incorporated into a Buddhist framework, and be directed towards Buddhist goals, for their ultimate usefulness to be realized. Not only did the human vehicle serve an important Buddhist role, it was compatible with the Three Principles of the People. Taixu thus wrote that: China formerly took a Confucian standpoint. Today, if proponents of the Three Principles of the People can extract the Chinese people’s five thousand years of culture, and the essence of the modern world’s scientific culture to establish a Three Principles of the People culture, then it can replace this. Thus, Buddhism should, on this basis, link to Mahayana’s ten stages of faith of bodhisattva practice,10 and establish a Buddhism for human life that leads from the human to the bodhisattva to buddhahood.11

In short, he saw Sun’s ideology as able to encompass the best of China’s past Confucian culture, and twentieth-century scientific culture, in a way that complemented the human vehicle and led towards enlightenment—an approach that met the demands of this particular period in the age of degenerate Dharma. Yinshun, on the other hand, more forcefully promoted a critical narrative of Buddhist decline.12 He recalled reading in the canon that buddhahood was 7 See Deng Dahua, “Liang Shuming,” in Zhongguo lidai sixiangjia (24) Hushi • Liang Shuming • Qian Mu, ed. Zhonghua wenhua fuxing yundong zonghui and Wang Shounan (Taipei: Taiwan Shangwu, 1999). 8 See chapter 4, and especially page 119 of Guy S. Alitto, The Last Confucian: Liang Shu-ming and the Chinese Dilemma of Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979). 9 See Yang Huinan, “Taixu zhi ‘rensheng Fojiao’ he Liang Shuming zhi ‘rensheng san luxiang,” 127-171, in Yang Huinan, Dangdai Fojiao sixiang zhanwang (Taipei: Dongda tushu gufen youxian gongsi, 1991). 10 See Digital Dictionary of Buddhism, s.v. “ten stages of faith,” available at: http://www. buddhism-dict.net/cgi-bin/xpr-ddb.pl?53.xml+id(%27b5341-4fe1%27) (accessed February 25, 2018). 11 Taixu, cited in Yang, Dangdai Fojiao sixiang zhanwang, 143. 12 Charts concerning Yinshun’s doctrinal classification are summarized in the appendices of the following paper: Stefania Travagnin, “Il Nuovo ‘Buddhismo per l’Umanità’ (renjian fojiao) a Taiwan : Una nota sulla classificazione degli insegnamenti (panjiao) secondo il Maestro Yinshun,” Cina 29 (2001): 65-102; Marcus Bingenheimer, “Chinese Buddhism Unbound—Rebuilding and

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attained in the world of human beings rather than the heavens.13 Decline was marked by deviation away from a focus on humanity towards increasing deification.14 And in the first stage of the Buddha’s teachings, the focus was on those who accessed the Buddha’s teachings more directly (due to the short span of time after his death)—and the conduct of laypeople. However, in the second phase of Buddhist development, five hundred years after the Buddha’s decease, the balance shifted to laypeople rather than both monastics and laypeople; meanwhile, the supernatural (guishen) aspect of Buddhism was emphasized more than before. Finally, esoteric Buddhism became prominent, which led to an emphasis on celestial beings and less rational, more mysterious teachings.15 It was precisely this emphasis on the supernatural that Yinshun looked down on. When he was making his initial investigations into Buddhism in Zhejiang province, he lamented the focus on funerary rituals, on seeking rebirth in the Pure Land, and on entreating buddhas and bodhisattvas for desired outcomes in the present life. Refusing to believe that this was authentic Buddhism, and prioritizing its more philosophical aspects, he stated that Buddhists should focus on “the teachings and precepts of Śākyamuni, the world honored one, [and] the sutras compiled during the early period—the Āgama sutras and the Vinaya.”16 These represented teachings from early in the Buddha’s career, before he considered the Dharma to have been warped through an emphasis on theistic elements. He also emphasized early Mahayana, when exegetes such as Nāgārjuna had discussed emptiness—which for Yinshun was the Buddha’s core philosophical message.17 In other words, according to both Taixu and Yinshun, Buddhism’s supernatural elements should be deemphasized or reinterpreted in favor of a more practical, philosophical and rational approach that would, at the same time, be impervious to critique from modernizers. Redefining Chinese Buddhism on Taiwan,” in Buddhism in Global Perspective, ed. Kalpakam Sankarnarayan (Mumbai: Somaiya Publications, 2003), 122-146, available at http://mbingenheimer. net/publications/bingenheimer.chineseBuddhismUnbound.html#_ftnref35 (accessed April 15, 2019). 13 See Yinshun cited in Yang Huinan, “Fo zai renjian: Yinshun daoshi zhi ‘renjian Fojiao’ de fenxi,” in Yang Huinan, Dangdai Fojiao sixiang zhanwang (Taipei: Dongda tushu gufen youxian gongsi, 1991), 174. 14 See Yinshun, “Qili qiji zhi renjian Fojiao,” in Huayu ji di si ce (Xinzhu: Zhengwen chubanshe, 1989 [2006]), 83. 15 See Yang, Dangdai Fojiao sixiang zhanwang, 194-198. 16 Yinshun, “Qili qiji zhi renjian Fojiao,” 83. 17 Ibid., 87.

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Perceiving the decline Was there ever really a decline of Buddhism—not in the traditionally accepted sense, but in the historical sense that Taixu and Yinshun believed? Such sentiments, concerning Buddhism’s fall from a more authentic past state, were common in the late Qing and republican periods. Erik Schicketanz argues that references to this decline served a rhetorical purpose; that is, providing impetus to reform Buddhism in the context of the modernizing Chinese state. However, he also argues there was an influence from Japanese sectarian scholarship. Building on the Japanese monastic Gyōnen’s (1240-1321) division of Chinese Buddhism into thirteen historical sects that eventually disappeared, later Japanese scholars in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries typically asserted that Chinese Buddhism had been in decline since the Sui and Tang dynasties. As Schicketanz argues, “it was precisely just such a narrative of Chinese Buddhist history, one predicated on the taxonomy of thirteen distinct sectarian entities reflecting Japanese assumptions about Buddhism, that was transmitted to China beginning in the late nineteenth century and which shaped the historical imagination of Buddhists and intellectuals there.”18 This scholarly argument paralleled Christian criticisms of Buddhism, which held it to be superstitious, socially disengaged and unmodern. According to Holmes Welch’s study of republican Buddhism, the reality was not as simple as these Buddhists (and their critics) believed. He cited evidence showing that the clergy had in fact expanded since the early Qing dynasty, and that scriptures were being printed, rather than left unread by illiterate monastics. Buddhism was therefore not “all but dead” before “the spread of European civilization over the East” as the Christian critics of Buddhism claimed,19 and in contrast to the claims of missionaries, Buddhist practice itself was alive and well. Welch did find that while monastics failed to proselytize or perform social work in the Christian fashion during the Qing, they made their teachings available, and performed welfarepromoting activities in ways that were appropriate for, and stemmed from, their tradition;20 monasteries took on roles, for example, “provided in the 18 Erik Schicketanz, “Narratives of Buddhist Decline and the Concept of the Sect (Zong) in Modern Chinese Buddhist Thought,” Studies in Chinese Religions 3:3 (2017). 19 Charles Francis Aiken, “Buddhism,” in The Catholic Encyclopedia [encyclopedia on-line] (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1908). Accessed January 29 2009, available from , internet. 20 See Welch, The Buddhist Revival in China, 222-253.

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West by three very different secular institutions: the park, the hostel, and the sanatorium.”21 Yet, Welch did speak of a “revival”. This was an effort by laymen to reprint the scriptures destroyed in the Taiping Rebellion. It gathered momentum as the discovery of Western Buddhist scholarship stimulated the need for Chinese Buddhist scholarship, and as the invasion of China by Christian evangelists and missionaries led to the idea of training Buddhist evangelists and sending missionaries to India and the West. … [I]n the last decade of the Ch’ing [Qing] dynasty, when moves were made to confiscate their property for use in secular education, the monks began to organize schools and social welfare enterprises as a means of self-defense. They too began to be aware of the need to counter the denigration of Buddhism, to which Christian missionaries had added a new dimension.22

Buddhists thus began to organize themselves on a national level, while laypeople founded numerous associations of their own. J. Brooks Jessup provides an example of this in Shanghai, where during the republican period, Buddhists organized themselves in associations and engaged in proselytization.23 However, despite evidence that Buddhism was not, in fact, in a degenerate state, the narrative of decline continued to have currency among missionaries. Consider, for example, the following excerpt from a 1910 issue of The Chinese Recorder—a missionary journal:24 In the long run, it is true, no reorganization can save Chinese or other Buddhism from falling to pieces. It is a religion which has had its day. The more it is brought under the full light of an objective and scholarly investigation, the more its weak points will show. Its modern adherents, indeed, in Japan, in Ceylon and even in Europe and America, are fond of asserting that it will be the religion of the future as the really “scientific religion.” But everybody who studies it more closely will soon notice that 21 Ibid., 271. 22 Ibid., 259. 23 J. Brooks Jessup, “Buddhist Activism, Urban Space, and Ambivalent Modernity in 1920s Shanghai,” in Recovering Buddhism in Modern China, ed. Jan Kiely and J. Brooks Jessup (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016). 24 H. Hackmann, “Chinese Buddhism and Buddhist China,” The Chinese Recorder 12 (December, 1910): 779-780.

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its most fundamental “truths” (metempsychosis, the law of retribution, the pessimistic view of life, the eight-fold path leading to salvation) have nothing to do with science … There is absolute sterility in the Buddhist ideas which renders them powerless and ineffective to modern man. … Mankind longs for a religion that gives positive hope, that helps to strengthen the good faculties in us and to grasp a little at least of the deep and hidden sense of the universe. If this be the aspiration of Buddhism it must undergo a great change so as to give up more than half of its true self and borrow the most essential contents from a religion which the modern Buddhist likes to speak of as very inferior—Christianity.

These comments reflect a view that Chinese religion had hindered China’s modernization—and that Buddhism’s fallen state was holding it back. According to Eric Reinders, missionaries typically saw meditation as reflecting the “stunted” Chinese intellect, 25 while “images of opium addiction resonated with the dominant image of Chinese religious life”. Both were described as “dark, grimy, dim, dusty, and shabby, fading away in the gloom of the shrine; faces devoid of expression, helpless, wailing, sad, hopeless, lazy, unbelieving, and indifferent.”26 Against the narratives of modernizers and missionaries, and bearing in mind Buddhist notions of decline, Buddhists themselves called for reforms aimed at preventing their tradition’s disappearance in the face of Western modernity and Christian expansion. In 1908, the public intellectuals Zhang Taiyan (1868 –1936) and Su Manshu (1884–1918) wrote an influential essay entitled “A Warning to Buddhists of the Ten Directions”.27 In this, they claimed that Chinese Buddhism had been in decline since the Song dynasty (960-1279). The causes of this fall had included monastics living near secular society, which corrupted them and subsequently gave Buddhism a bad reputation; monastics not studying religious texts, instead spending their time performing rituals for paying customers; and their inability to read the original languages in which canonical texts were composed (the Indian languages of Sanskrit and Pali). According to Zhang and Su, many monks 25 Eric Reinders, Borrowed Gods, Foreign Bodies: Christian Missionaries Imagine Chinese Religion (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 48. 26 Ibid., 51. 27 According to Taixu, this essay was by Zhang Taiyan. However, Xie Yingning has located it in Su Manshu’s complete works. There, the essay is attributed to Su Manshu and Modi (Zhang’s pen-name). Xie concludes it was were written by Zhang, both because of its content, and because of Taixu’s original attribution. Xie Yingning, Zhang Taiyan nianpu zhiyi (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 1987), 44-47.

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could not even read Chinese.28 This meant they were unfamiliar with the finer points of their tradition’s philosophy. They called on them to study European philosophy,29 and, citing the example of the Salvation Army, implored them to perform charitable works.30 Some of their suggestions saw implementation. The most well-known institute to have taught Buddhism alongside other non-Buddhist subjects was the Jetavana Hermitage (where Taixu studied), which the layman Yang Wenhui operated in 1908 and 1909.31 Revolutionary for its time, Yang’s curriculum included subjects such as English and Chinese literature.32 While this effort to found new methods of Buddhist education was partly a response to the movement to transform temples into schools (which we learned about in the introduction),33 Yang was, according to Whalen Lai, also influenced by the “Christian model” of religious education he had observed while working in Chinese missions in London and Paris, where religious and secular subjects were studied side-by-side.34 In the case of China and Taiwan, the invigoration of Buddhism was not just as an expression of how Buddhists saw their own tradition, and therefore, what it meant to be Buddhist, but also, what it meant to be Chinese. Welch wrote that amidst Christian missionary activity in the republican period, To choose Buddhism in the search for religious identity meant that one was choosing to be Chinese. It was an expression of cultural loyalism, a denial that things Chinese were inferior. … It helped to bring about the revival of interest in Dharmalaksana [Yogacara Buddhism],35 the birth of Buddhist scientism, and participation in modern, Western forms of 28 Su Manshu and Modi, “Jinggao shifang Fo dizi qi,” edited by Wen Gongzhi, Manshu dashi quanji (Jiulong: Wenyuan shudian, 1934), 126. 29 Ibid., 128 30 Ibid., 126. 31 According to Gabriele Goldfuss, the Jetavana Hermitage opened in November or December of 1908, before closing in the summer of 1909. See Gabriele Goldfuss, Vers un bouddhisme du XXe siècle: Yang Wenhui (1837-1911), réformateur laïque et imprimeur (Paris: Collège de France, Institut des Hautes Études Chinoises, 2001), 188 (n. 65). 32 Taixu, “Taixu zizhuan,” in Taixu dashi quanshu (CD-ROM), edited by Yinshun, vol. 29 of 35 (Xinzhu: Caituan faren Yinshun wenjiao jijinhui, 2005 [1940]), 196. 33 Pan-chiu Lai, “The Buddhist-Christian Encounter in Modern China and the Globalization of Culture,” 272-293, in Globalization and the Making of Religious Modernity in China: Transnational Religions, Local Agents, and the Study of Religion, 1800-Present, edited by Thomas Jansen, Thoralf Klein and Christian Meyer (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 275. 34 Ibid., 276. 35 On the interest in this school in the republic, see John Makeham (ed.), Transforming Consciousness: Yogacara Thought in Modern China (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).

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social welfare. It accentuated the fear of superstition and accelerated the shift from practice to study and from religion to philosophy.36

Welch, therefore, did not consider Buddhist activity in the Republic a “revival,” but rather a “revitalization,” because the reconceptualization of Buddhism in light of Christianity and Western modernity did lead to new forms of practice and organization.37 As we will see in the next chapter, they became increasingly mainstream in Taiwan. Zhuyun, Dongchu, Yinshun and Shengyan were key players in this movement, along with other monastics and Buddhist laypeople. For them, to talk of a revival meant to return to Buddhism as it was practiced before it had declined—that is, to before Buddhism became “superstitious,” focused on ritual, socially disengaged, and anti-intellectual. And while they all asserted that true Buddhism was the opposite of what its critics claimed it to be—what was needed was a convincing demonstration of this. Buddhism had to be juxtaposed with other religions in a systematic way, so its true form could be made apparent. A narrative of this kind would be integral to the reconceptualization of a Chinese Buddhist identity—as modern, positive, and progressive. In short, a historical narrative was needed that could provide legitimacy to this emerging mode of self-conceptualization and presentation. According to the sociologist D.P. McAdams, Narrative identity is an internalized and evolving story of the self that provides a person’s life with some semblance of unity, purpose, and meaning. Complete with setting, scenes, characters, plots, and themes, narrative identity combines a person’s reconstruction of his or her personal past with an imagined future in order to provide a subjective historical account of one’s own development, an instrumental explanation of a person’s most important commitments in the realms of work and love, and a moral justification of who a person was, is, and will be.38

Thus, an articulation of Buddhist history that would make sense of Buddhism’s perceived decline, and lay the foundations for its renewal through 36 Welch, The Buddhist Revival in China, 261. 37 Ibid., 262. 38 D.P. McAdams, “Narrative Identity,” in Handbook of Identity Theory and Research, Vol. 1 of 2, Structures and Processes, edited by Seth J. Schwartz, Koen Luyckx, and Vivian L. Vignoles (New York: Springer, 2011), 100.

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the elaboration of its authentic teachings, was necessary. It could not simply appeal to notions of Chinese culture and values, and would need to be bolstered by a positivistic approach and academic methodologies, as Gong’s and Du’s work was. And, it would need to compare Buddhism to other religions. This would not only show how original Buddhism accorded with modern values, but how it surpassed other traditions on a hierarchy of religious evolution.

History as polemic The composition of such a narrative was a task Shengyan took up in the mid-1960s. After he returned to monastic life in 1959-60, his first task was to edit the magazine Humanity. Founded by his master Dongchu in 1949, this aimed at making Buddhism applicable to the lives of laypeople, taking it out of the confines of the monastery and into society.39 However, Shengyan soon yearned to devote himself to more monastic concerns. Between 1963 and 1968, he undertook periods of intensive solitary retreat. 40 By the end of the decade he had produced two major apologetic works: the first was the book Research into Christianity (Jidujiao zhi yanjiu), which appeared in 1967, and the second was Comparative Religious Studies (Bijiao zongjiaoxue), which was published in 1968. In both volumes (chapters of which first appeared in Buddhist periodicals), Shengyan placed Buddhism in a scheme of world religions, and provided a way to understand religion from a Buddhist perspective. In the 1960s, the importance of academic training for Buddhist monastics had already become apparent. In our discussion thus far, we have seen Buddhists acknowledge the value of academia, but bristle when Buddhism was treated in a critical fashion. For example, Yinshun upheld “Western” methods of historiography,41 but believed that Buddhism should be studied from its own perspective.42 He made use of Japanese buddhological research, believing that although Japanese scholars employed Western academic standards and methods, they respected the buddhadharma and would 39 Shengyan, Shengyan fashi xuesi licheng (Taipei: Zhengzhong shuju, 1993), 56. 40 Ibid, 94-95. See also pages 8-11 of the introduction, “Introduction to Master Sheng-yen” by Dan Stevenson, in Sheng-yen Chang with Dan Stevenson, Hoofprint of the Ox: Principles of the Chan Buddhist Path as Taught by a Modern Chinese Master (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); and the timeline at http://www.dharmadrum.org/content/about/about2.aspx?sn=44 (accessed February 25, 2018). 41 Yinshun, “Tan rushi yu Foxue,” 237. 42 Ibid., 238.

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not subject it to critique as Christian scholars had done. Shengyan’s own contribution to the ongoing debate with Christians was to begin applying the academic format Yinshun advocated—that is, using secular academic works and providing full references—to his own studies of Christianity and world religions. This approach, like Yinshun’s, was founded on the belief that elucidating on the original, authentic Buddhism would allow the trend of decline to be reversed, and the fallacy of Christian teachings to be recognized. After returning to the clergy, although no longer writing as the “General Who Awakens the World,” he retained his basic aim of defending Buddhism against Christian critique. In a 1963 essay published in Chinese Buddhist, he wrote that true Christians would in fact refrain from critiquing the Dharma, and that both religions should be able to exist side-by-side. But Shengyan remained doubtful that this could work in practice, because priests and pastors who consider themselves to be researching Buddhism cannot truly, and modestly, research Buddhism. Their so-called research on Buddhism only aims at hopefully destroying Buddhism. The starting point for this kind of research is malevolent. They are like spies from enemy countries, coming to this country to visit, examine, and research—not upholding the academic approach of absorbing positive characteristics. Rather, they collect information for intelligence reports, furthering their destructive aims. This is a deceptive tactic, 43 and a political scheme. For a great religionist with the ideal of saving people, and saving the world, this is a disgrace!44

Although Shengyan then claimed to be withdrawing from intimate involvement in the debate, feeling that Buddhism could withstand criticism on its own, over the next five years he would contribute to it in important ways. In his subsequent publications, academic history became a tool showing that while the truth of Buddhism might not be manifest in Taiwan, it still existed above Christianity on the hierarchy of religions. The first chapter of Comparative Religion—on “primitive religion” (yuanshi zongjiao)—laid the basis for such an evolutionary view.45 Shengyan himself included categories 43 In a later essay, the pastor Gong Tianmin remarked that if Christians could be considered spies for collecting information on Buddhism, then Buddhists writing on Christianity could also be said to be spies. See Gong Tianmin, “Du ‘dui Ye Fo zhi zheng de wojian’ hou you gan,” Jidujiao yanjiu 1:2 (1963): 47. 44 Shengyan, “Dui Ye Fo zhi zheng zhi wojian,” Zhongguo Fojiao 7:12 (1963): 13. 45 According to the religious studies scholar Jonathan Z. Smith, theories of religious evolution “conceded no historical dimensions to those being classified but rather froze each ethnic unit

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similar to those employed by past generations of Western scholars of religion, who conceived of categories like “natural” and “world religions,” in his overview of religious studies. 46 This approach was mirrored in the early history of religious studies as a discipline in China, where it began in missionary-run colleges and universities in the late nineteenth century; “even deeply into the 1920s it was taught almost exclusively by Western (missionary) teachers.”47 Introductory religious studies works before this were mainly intended to be used in missionary-run schools. During the anti-religion movement in the 1920s, translations of Western secular works appeared, but following this, as Christian Meyer points out, the anti-religious climate at the time militated against religious studies courses being offered at secular institutions. 48 In 1927, the KMT ceased “to recognize any kind of ‘religious curricula’,”49 and as a result, Christian universities continued offering their courses in different departments.50 In these cases, Christianity “had the advantage of being able to portray itself as a modern, progressive religion.”51 Shengyan’s aim in presenting a Buddhist study of religion, then, was to use the approach and methods of Western, academic religious studies, to present Buddhism, rather than Christianity, as the “modern, progressive religion”. He went on to define “comparative religious studies” (bijiao zongjiaoxue) as simply “comparative research on the founders, tenets, teachings and history of different religions, as well as the objective introduction of them.”52 But he noted that the modern study of religion (zongjiaoxue) was more than this; it was scientific and objective,53 drawing from fields such as philology, anthropology, archaeology, and history. Employing a scientific discipline to a particular ‘stage of development’ of the totality of human religious thought and activity.” See Jonathan Z. Smith, “Religion, Religions, Religious,” in Critical Terms for Religious Studies, edited by Mark C. Taylor (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1998): 277. 46 See ibid. 47 Christian Meyer, “How the ‘Science of Religion’ (zongjiaoxue) as a Discipline Globalized ‘Religion’ in Late Qing and Republican China, 1890–1949—Global Concepts, Knowledge Transfer, and Local Discourses,” in Globalization and the Making of Religious Modernity in China: Transnational Religions, Local Agents, and the Study of Religion, 1800-Present, edited by Thomas Jansen, Thoralf Klein and Christian Meyer (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 308. 48 See ibid. 49 Ibid., 324. 50 Ibid. 51 Ibid., 331. 52 Shengyan, Bijiao zongjiaoxue (Taipei: Taiwan Zhonghua shuju yinshuachang, 1968), 1. 53 Ibid.

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would lend his analysis an irrefutable weight, and finally establish Buddhism as being at the pinnacle of religious development. Shengyan employed a variety of sources in his study. One of them was a work by the Japanese scholar Antei Hiyane.54 Hiyane presented his scheme of religious typologies in the 1926 book History of World Religions (Sekai shūkyōshi), in which he summarized the views of figures including E.B. Tylor, Albert Réville, Hegel, and Eduard von Hartmann,55 and divided religions into different categories. These were included early in Shengyan’s study. The first type consisted of “primitive natural religions,” which included nature-worship, totemism and polytheism. The second type consisted of “ethical religions” such as Brahmanism, Islam, Zoroastrianism and Judaism. And finally, there were the “widespread religions” (pubian de zongjiao). Membership of these extended beyond particular national or ethnic groups, and included Christianity and Buddhism.56 In Comparative Religions, Shengyan agreed that there were different religious types, which could be discerned through a “science of religion”; he used these to devise a history of religious evolution, placing Christianity at a level below Buddhism. A second source was Lin Huixiang’s Cultural Anthropology (Wenhua renleixue). This was first published in 1934 in Shanghai, but reprinted in the 1960s in Taiwan. The fifth chapter of Lin’s book was entitled “Primitive Religion” (yuanshi zongjiao)—which was also the title of the first chapter in Shengyan’s own study. After majoring in sociology at Xiamen University, Lin studied under the American anthropologist Henry Otley Beyer (18831966).57 He was subsequently affiliated with Academia Sinica (before this institution was re-established in Taiwan after the KMT’s loss in the civil war), and joined Xiamen University in 1931.58 Lin held that some religions were more advanced than others, such as “Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, etc.,”59 while others were “low-level religions without any philosophical meaning,” which embodied “superstitions and 54 See ibid., 3. 55 Shengyan only provides the romanization for Tylor, while Hiyane only provides the Kanji for each name. I’ve estimated the others based on possible romanizations and the stages Hiyane provides, as replicated by Shengyan. See ibid., 3-4. 56 Ibid., 4. 57 Gregory Eliyu Guldin, The Saga of Anthropology in China: From Malinowski to Moscow to Mao (Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 1994), 37-39. 58 Yuan Yushu, “Lin Huixiang,” in 20 shiji Zhongguo xueshu dadian: kaoguxue, bowuguanxue, edited by Li Xueqin (Fuzhou: Fujian jiaoyu chubanshe, 2007), 477. 59 See Lin Huixiang, Wenhua renleixue (Beijing: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1991), 217.

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magic,” and were found in the “cultures of backward peoples.”60 The value for cultural anthropologists, Lin stated, in studying primitive religions was that since they were less developed than high-level religions, they could serve as case studies when researching the “essential factors and origins of religions.”61 The view that “primitive religions” could inform our understanding of religions more generally is evident in Shengyan’s own studies. Similar perspectives were evident in other works available to Shengyan. Consider, for example, a book entitled Childhood of the World, by Edward Clodd—published in Chinese translation under the title Shijie youzhi shidai. Clodd was an English amateur folklorist, as well as “London bank official and outspoken rationalist”.62 Childhood of the World was first published in 1872, and an expanded edition appeared in 1914. Shengyan did not explicitly reference Clodd, but the content from his first chapter in Comparative Religions evinces some familiarity with the type of categorization he employed. This included polytheism, dualism, and monotheism; Shengyan incorporated a similar scheme in the first two chapters of Comparative Religious Studies, on primitive religion and “the religions of uncivilized peoples” (wei kaihua minzu de zongjiao). If we summarize Shengyan’s approach, then, we can see that from Yinshun, he took the idea that the Dharma should be studied on its own terms—that is, employing academic methodologies, but respecting its integrity as a religious concept. From various academic studies of religion, he took the view that there were different religious types, and notions of historical development. And underlying his scholarship was the belief that religious studies, as a discipline, was scientific. While for secular scholars, this positivistic approach was a way to assess the historical and conceptual links between religions, for Shengyan, it was essentially a way to investigate questions of religious truth, and to establish a firmer foundation on which to assert the superiority of Buddhism over Christianity.

From the temple to the ivory tower And yet, when Shengyan commenced his book on Christianity, he did return to the question of values. He explained that there had been a rupture 60 Ibid. 61 Ibid., 217-18. 62 Richard M. Dorson, “The Great Team of English Folklorists,” The Journal of American Folklore 64:251 (1951): 2.

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between the notion of God and the fields of science and philosophy since the Renaissance.63 As we saw before, Shengyan argued that the Church was actually antagonistic toward the production of new knowledge; Western missionaries were therefore conveying ideas that, historically, they had been critical of. And he touched on the question of culture, claiming that missionaries used the allure of modernity to attract potential converts. Echoing Zhang Chunyi’s comments in chapter two, Shengyan explained that while this missionizing strategy had worked in Africa, it would not work in the Chinese world: China and Africa are different. China’s cultural background has already lasted for 5,000 years. It already has its own set of thoughts, customs and beliefs. To introduce a vastly different form of belief will naturally produce opposition. If Christian missionaries could be like the early monastics who introduced Buddhism to China, and make an effort to understand Chinese culture, and cater to Chinese culture, and hence produce a Chinese form of religious belief, it would be welcomed by Chinese people.64

Shengyan was not the only Buddhist to voice this opinion; it harks back to Cohen’s anti-Christian tradition, which held that Christianity should be rejected because it did not accord with the teachings of China’s past sages. In 1972, Chen Yongzheng wrote in Tidal Roar that Christians “don’t seek to save the souls of Chinese people, but rather want, through a ‘superior’ culture, to ‘transform’ our views and behavior, attaining the great powers’ aim of dominating this [i.e. our] ancient civilisation.” Chen thought that Christianity should be like Confucianism and Buddhism, which both accept the possibility of the individual to attain sagehood or buddhahood.65 In fact, according to Chen, Christians were using a clever strategy of weakening the Chinese people’s “self-respect” (zizunxin) through a program of social work (such as schools, hospitals and so on) that made them more receptive to the Christian message. The Christian faith was appealing to those who sought economic aid—the so-called “rice Christians” (mi Jidutu) seeking donated food and clothing, or educational opportunities. Chen pointed to the “Chinese traitors” (Han jian) during the Second Sino-Japanese War as evidence of how Christian charity had weakened the Chinese spirit.66 63 Shengyan, Jidujiao zhi yanjiu (Gaoxiong: Jueshe xunkan she, 1967), 11. 64 Ibid., 19. 65 Chen Yongzheng, “Lun Jidujiao de ‘pingdeng’,” Haichao yin 53:9 (1972): 7. 66 Chen Yongzheng, “Lun Jidujiao de ‘fuli gongzuo’,” Haichao yin 53:12 (1972): 9.

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Thus, even quite late in the intensive phase of Buddhist-Christian debate in Taiwan, we still find Christianity associated with various ulterior, political motives in China. And yet, the “sinif ication” of Christianity continued to be actively discussed by Christians. For example, in a 1963 issue of A Quarterly for the Study of Christianity (Jidujiao yanjiu), Xie Fuya remarked that Christianity’s spread throughout the world had been helped by its adaptations to local contexts; by “uniting with Greek philosophy, Roman law and organization, it produced Western-style Christianity.”67 According to this argument, a Chinese Christianity, adapted to local conditions and reflecting local culture, was needed for Christianity to appeal to Chinese people, and to avoid the criticism that it was not Chinese. But for Shengyan, whether this was desirable or not was another matter. For him, many aspects of Christianity stemmed from primitive types of religious belief and did not accord with the modern world. Part of his strategy in showing this was to directly critique biblical figures themselves. Rather than revered figures from antiquity, he argued they were flawed human beings with unoriginal ideas that drew from surrounding religions. He advised his readers not to “believe that Moses was a great lawmaker. I’m telling you, he was nothing more than a fanatical nationalist. He had no talent for establishing laws.”68 He explained that Bible itself was a relatively late document when compared with India’s Ṛg Veda or the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi, and that Moses copied some of the Ten Commandments from the latter while in Egypt, embellishing them with Egyptian and Babylonian myths.69 He attempted to situate Jews in a context of pre-modern superstition— and thus as unable to produce great religious works. He wrote that they were a “boastful, narrow-minded, conservative people. Their civilisation was more than 3,000 years behind the Egyptians and Babylonians.”70 The Hebrew script was “childish,” which had led to difficulties in understanding their scriptures.71 In stating that in fact the Old Testament was a relatively 67 Xie Fuya, “Zenyang zuo yi ge Zhongguo Jidutu,” Jidujiao yanjiu 1:1 (1963): 11. 68 Shengyan, Jidujiao zhi yanjiu, 72. 69 Ibid., 72-73. Shengyan later states that the Ten Commandments were similar to those developed by the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten, who worshipped the monotheistic deity Aton. This was in fact a theory attributed to Sigmund Freud in his book Moses and Monotheism. See Peter Schäfer, “The Triumph of Pure Spirituality: Sigmund Freud’s Moses and Monotheism.” In New Perspectives on Freud’s Moses and Monotheism, 19-43. Edited by Ruth Ginsburg and Ilana Pardes. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2006. 70 Shengyan, Jidujiao zhi yanjiu, 80. 71 Ibid., 80-81.

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recent document, he removed antiquity and uniqueness as sources of prestige and legitimacy from the Bible and its authors. But more importantly, he was presenting the origins of Christian belief as mired in superstition, and reflecting a low stage of religious evolution. This is reflected in the biblical belief in God. As shown in the last chapter, rejection of belief in a creator deity was fundamental to Buddhism, and the doctrines of emptiness and interdependence had long been used to discredit it. But Shengyan’s aim was to show that Buddhism sat atop a hierarchy of religions, through objective academic research. In fact, he drew from Yinshun’s Catholic opponent, Du Erwei. As we have seen, Du argued that key Buddhist concepts like nirvana and reincarnation derived from earlier lunar religion. Although Shengyan disagreed with this view in the case of Buddhism, he asserted that Yahweh’s origins partly lay in lunar myths: Before, when I saw the scene of Mount Sinai in the Old Testament, with its flames, thunderbolts and dark clouds, I guessed that it was related to mythology related to volcanoes. Now, using the perspective of Du Erwei and his philological explanations, we can be sure it is a lunar myth …72

Shengyan thus turned Du’s own lunar arguments against him. But what was his evidence? He argued that during his forty day sojourn atop Sinai, Moses communed with a moon deity; he explained that the root of the word “Sinai” is “Sin,” which means “moon” in Akkadian,73 and that moonlight shining through the clouds would have produced a mysterious atmosphere.74 In this context, Moses “turned the moon deity of Sinai into Yahweh.”75 Thus, while Shengyan did not engage directly with Du’s arguments, he did follow Du in ascribing lunar origins to religious ideas.76 However, Shengyan did not just focus on the moon—he attributed multiple sources for the idea 72 Ibid., 75. 73 For confirmation, see: Akkadian Dictionary, s.v. “Sîn,” available at: http://www.assyrianlanguages.org/akkadian/dosearch.php?searchkey=518&language=id (accessed July 19, 2016). 74 Shengyan, Jidujiao zhi yanjiu, 73. 75 Ibid., 75. 76 There is, in fact, precedent for Shengyan’s assertion. Before him, the semitologist George Aaron Barton had indicated in a 1909 essay that Yahweh was considered a moon-god by a number of scholars, “and that the home of Yahweh was at Sinai, which was apparently named from the Babylonian moon god Sin.” Therefore, Shengyan was in fact presenting an idea that had currency in Western scholarship in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but using it to establish Christianity as developing from earlier religion. See Barton, “Yahweh Before Moses,” 194.

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of God to show that it was historically derived. These included, like Yinshun, the argument that another important origin for God lay in India, and as justification, he offered a philological argument akin to Du’s. He charged that the Indian god Dyaus was sometimes represented as an ox;77 and that his name was etymologically related to Yahweh’s.78 He continued to add that God’s name was also similar to that of Yama, the Indian god of death. Moreover, both “Yahweh” and “Yama” had similar pronunciations, and “their duties are also about the same.”79 He concluded that Yahweh “originally was an Indian deity.”80 He linked Yahweh’s roots to totemism,81 and explained that the varieties of God’s name indicated that he was a composite of many possible sources, meaning that it should not be regarded as deriving from religious insight. Instead, God was a human creation. Therefore, while Research into Christianity was presented as an introductory handbook for the interested reader, it was in fact a very polemical work. One can imagine people approaching the book hoping for a general introduction to Christian teachings in the context of its Taiwanese expansion, only to find a fiercely critical presentation of Christian history. It not only aimed to show that Christianity was derived from traditions that ranked lower on an imagined scale of religious evolution, but also at removing Christianity’s association with modernity—a claim he bolstered with reference to academic studies. His subsequent publication emerged from a course Shengyan taught in 1966 at the Shoushan Buddhist Institute in Gaoxiong.82 Published in 1968, Comparative Religions provided further, detailed examples to show how Christianity shared much in common with “primitive” beliefs. For example, he explained that Christian prayer was further evidence of Christianity’s basis in primitive religion and psychology. He wrote that After people acquired language, the earliest words [that could be considered a form of] prayer were probably the cry “mother, come help me!” … The deities imagined by primitive peoples are fearsome things. When begging the deity to not harm them, they [adherents] make heartfelt appeals in their prayers. For example, Yahweh, in the early Judaism of the Old Testament, is a fierce deity. Followers have no option but to pray to 77 Shengyan, Jidujiao zhi yanjiu, 78-79. 78 Ibid. 79 Ibid., 79. 80 Ibid. 81 Ibid., 75. 82 See page 1 of the introduction in Shengyan, Bijiao zongjiaoxue.

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it. … We can say that apart from prayer, there is no spiritual cultivation in Christianity. This is a special feature of primitive religion.83

He lamented that the “authors of the Old Testament” lacked “a historical mind. So, they considered myths and legends to be historical facts. They also tried to use myths to explain legends and things they were not clear about. And, they treated periods and the names of people that really occurred in history in a disorderly way. Thus, it is difficult to really consider the Old Testament as a historical record. In addition, the compliers of the Old Testament did not proceed in a historical sequence.”84 This characterization continued Shengyan’s portrayal of biblical doctrines as confused—by implication, in contrast to Buddhism. In fact, even though the Pentateuch was believed by Jews and Christians to have been authored by Moses, “Actually, apart from Moses’s Ten Commandments, Moses himself didn’t write any books. According to scholarly investigations, the Five Books of Moses were all written by later people, and are based on legends.” And the content of these books was derivative, since “according to [H.G.] Wells’s Outline of History, (chapter 19, section 3): “most of the story of the world’s creation, and the Flood, as well as Moses and Samson, were taken from Babylon. When they returned to Jerusalem, only [the Old Testament’s] first five scriptures had come together in the form of a book.”85 It can be seen that Moses did not write the Five Books of Moses, and that the stories in the five books were taken mostly from Babylonian legends. …”86 Here we can see Shengyan emphasizing that the Bible was not the product of religious inspiration or revelation—it was the product of a primitive, ignorant society. He was less critical when it came to Buddhism, which we can see by considering some of his portrayals of the Buddha and the environment from which he emerged. He wrote of the Buddha’s home that “it was not a powerful state, so it was often attacked by its neighbor Kośala. In the end, Kośala extinguished it, but she contributed a great, great guide to the 83 Ibid., 36-37. 84 Ibid., 211. 85 This is translated from Shengyan’s Chinese quote. For the original text, see H. G. Wells, The Outline of History: Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind, vol. 1 of 2 (London: The Waverly Book Company, 1920), 144. Shengyan’s presentation of Christianity as deriving most importantly from Egyptian and Babylonian religion variously draws from H.G. Wells’s Outline of History (1920), as well as Hendrik Willem Van Loon’s The Story of the Bible (1923). Chinese translations of Wells’s work appeared in 1935, and Van Loon’s, in 1963. 86 Shengyan, Bijiao zongjiaoxue, 212.

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people of the world. This is the founder of Buddhism, Śākyamuni.”87 This type of language cannot be seen in the sections on other religions. Soon after this, Shengyan remarked that, at the start of the Buddha’s career, he was “awakened to the secrets of the universe and human life. He attained the way to rescue beings from their various sufferings.”88 Such quotes show that Shengyan would not deal with Buddhist teachings critically, in the way he did with other religions. His juxtaposition of Buddhism with Christianity also shows how he placed it at the apex of a religious hierarchy. He wrote that “in Śākyamuni’s life, regardless of what kind of situation he was in, he was always benevolent and lenient. He always transformed people with his profound wisdom, and always moved people with his character. He never spoke out of passion, and he never did anything out of emotion. Compared with the teachers of other religions, Śākyamuni was a great teacher—[the one] who could most express the solemnity of humanity, and a great teacher who was most able to emit the brilliance of human nature. This is unlike monotheists … who stifle the light of human nature.”89 These statements hark back to his earlier criticisms of Jesus from the 1950s. He presented Buddhism as a set of teachings founded in real life, rather than abstract theological ideas. So, “the Buddha’s way of saving the world is simple and clear, practical and straightforward. He didn’t parade unfathomable notions, and especially didn’t like superstitious mysteries. … The basic teachings that he promoted, and which are based on this spirit, are the four truths, the twelvefold chain of dependent origination, the three seals of the Dharma, and the eightfold path.”90 He presented Buddhism as a trans-historical set of teachings—the product of the Buddha’s enlightenment rather than particular historical or socio-cultural conditions. While the Buddha’s teachings shared similarities with the pre-Buddhist environment, they were superior to India’s religious predecessors. In its original and authentic form, it gave us a window directly into the truth. Shengyan presented the growth of Mahayana Buddhism, which occurred after the Buddha’s death, as the exemplification of the Buddha’s original teachings. In this, he followed on from Taixu, who classified the Dharma into five different pathways to enlightenment—the vehicles of human beings, devas (gods), śrāvakas (those who directly hear the teachings of a 87 88 89 90

Ibid., 294. Ibid., 297. Ibid., 299. Ibid., 302.

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buddha), pratyekabuddhas (those who discover the Dharma independently), and bodhisattvas. Likewise, some of the Buddha’s teachings were common to all five vehicles, some only to three (śrāvakas, pratyekabuddhas and bodhisattvas), and some to Mahayana only: “Teaching people how to become good—this is the common aspiration of all ethical [systems]. Teaching people how to ascend to heaven is the common aim of all religions. So, it is considered important in Buddhism and indeed is thought of as a basic kind of cultivation, and is called the Dharma common to the five vehicles. Teaching people how to surpass humans and devas and enter nirvana—that is Buddhism’s special quality.”91 Shengyan’s use of Taixu’s scheme is a rationalized reading of Buddhist history that attributes all Buddhist teachings to the Buddha himself, meaning that while particular expressions of those teachings may be historicallyderived, the intent behind them is trans-historical. This is also the case for the development of the Chinese Buddhist schools—according to Shengyan, their appearance was due to “different kinds of environments, times, and figures. Therefore, with the views of particular places, times, and people, there were different angles and different ways of absorbing and developing the singular flavor of the Buddha’s teachings. This is the inevitable outcome of free thought, advanced thinking, and democratic thinking.”92 Not only, then, were the different schools of Buddhism merely interpretations of the Buddha’s teachings, rather than representative of new religious developments, they in fact exemplified a spirit of modernity associated with Enlightenment ideals. This belief that authentic (and timeless) Buddhist teachings, when understood and correctly applied, would see Buddhism play a proactive and beneficial role in society is evident in much of the discussion taking place in Buddhist magazines of the period. Numerous articles emphasized that Buddhism was not a negative or pessimistic religion—and that the modern spirit of Buddhism was present in the Buddha’s earliest teachings. One writer in Hong Kong Buddhist, for example, explained that when we look at Buddhist sutras, or Chinese history, we can see traces of the founder of Buddhism, Śākyamuni. From these, we can know that this person is not illusory or pretend—and that there really was this person, and that these things really did happen. If we carefully read about the Buddha’s deeds, and his achievements in life, we can know that regardless of wherever you stand, he was worthy of people’s reverence and veneration. 91 Ibid., 314. 92 Ibid, 327-28.

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His holy virtues—all of the teachings he conveyed—far surpassed those of other people. Because he surpassed the wisdom of others, and because of his spirit—fearless of hardship—he realized the truth of human life and the universe, and led human beings to have a clear understanding [of them]. This realization is difficult to attain, and precious.93

Writing in Hong Kong Buddhist, the monastic Nengxue explained that because of concepts like emptiness (kong) and impermanence (wuchang), people assumed that Buddhism was negative and pessimistic.94 But, as he pointed out, Buddhism also embodied the aspiration to enlighten sentient beings and rendering them benevolent aid (daci dabei jiudu zhongsheng). Thus, were one to understand Buddhism in its entirety, one would not say it was negative. And in any case, he wrote that the Buddha was simply speaking the truth when it came to concepts like nonself and emptiness, which some considered negative. He asserted that Buddhism had positive aspects too—such as valuing human life as a state of rebirth in which one could be exposed to, and learn, the Dharma; the active aspects of practice that brought one closer to the goal of enlightenment; and the emphasis on benevolence and rendering aid to others.95 Again in Hong Kong Buddhist, another writer explained that Beginning when the Manchus invaded the central plains of the empire, the country, like Buddhism, declined day by day, and things became more difficult for the people day by day. The reason is that there was no reform or construction—only knowledge about how to oppress the Han and expand their own private desires.96 … Buddhism at that time drifted aimlessly along with the country, with no way to rise. The reason is that monastics lacked organization. They were a sheet of loose sand;97 everyone was concerned only with sweeping the snow from their own doorway, and was unconcerned with the frost on the roof-tiles of others. Monastics just muddled through, living day by day, knowing nothing about reforms or construction, or of liaising with other people, remaining 93 Kang Cuiling, “Fojiao shi zhengxin er fei mixin,” Xianggang Fojiao 35 (1963): 37. 94 Information on Nengxue can be found here: Nengxue, “Nengxue fashi,” Fojiao renwu, available at: http://buddhism.lib.ntu.edu.tw/museum/formosa/people/1-neng-xue.html (accessed July 29, 2019). 95 Nengxue, “Fojiao shi xiaoji ma?” Xianggang Fojiao 29 (1962): 32. 96 Yunmiao, “Fojiao de zhidu zenyang shiying jinbu de shidai,” Xianggang Fojiao 84 (1967): 14. 97 This is how Sun Yat-sen characterized the Chinese nation itself, hence the need for nationalism.

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disconnected from society. For this reason, the country’s educators saw monastics as like parasites—as separate, negative elements, and useless things. They wanted to get rid of monastics, to occupy temples, to set up schools. And then Taixu appeared with his reforms. But it’s impossible to clap with one hand, so he fell by the wayside. Still, Taixu caused a stir for a time, and yet after he died, Buddhism on the mainland was still extinguished. One can see that Buddhism has largely disappeared from China, with only a little remaining outside [of China], such as in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and among monastics abroad.98

The writer places the blame for the decline of Buddhism with the weakness of the state during the Qing dynasty and the unwillingness of monastics to organize themselves. To adapt to the times, Chinese Buddhists needed to pursue education, to modernize monastic clothing, to establish associations that could strengthen the clergy, to promote the Dharma, and to mobilize Buddhist youth and engage in charitable projects (such as orphanages and hospitals).99 What we see here is the conviction that while Buddhism as an institutional religion needed reform, Buddhist teachings themselves were beyond criticism. This small sample of articles is but a snapshot of an ongoing discussion that stretched back to the early phases of Taixu’s career, and the milieu of socially-engaged monastics from which he emerged. The belief that authentic Buddhism could, and should, make a positive contribution to human life—and that Buddhism’s true teachings were misunderstood, maligned by historical circumstance, and in need of clarif ication and promotion—drove their efforts at reform. Many twentieth century Buddhists, then, assessed their tradition as being in a degenerated state that led critics to misunderstand it and assume it to be corrupt and superstitious. But Buddhist notions of decline took on special importance when placed in the context of religious persecution under Mao on the mainland, and the expansion of Christianity in Taiwan. It became important to show that “authentic” Buddhism was unlike what its critics charged it to be—that not only did it embody modernity more fully than other religious traditions, but it was, itself, beyond history, reflecting timeless truths that placed it at the peak of a religious hierarchy. As our writer in the Buddhist periodical Hong Kong Buddhist suggested above, one way that Chinese Buddhism could enhance its social role was 98 Ibid. 99 Ibid., 15-16.

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through education. At the end of Comparative Religions, Shengyan lamented the fact that nowhere in China (and here Shengyan was presumably referring to the ROC) could there be found a Buddhist university.100 This was clearly important to him, perhaps because it meant that Chinese Buddhism could not produce scholars able to defend the Dharma from critique using academic methods. Despite disagreeing with his scholarly opponents, in his memoirs, he opined that when they issued their critiques of Buddhism in the 1950s, “those in the Buddhist world who could write articles of such a standard, and read so many scriptures and commentaries, were few.”101 His most direct attempt to wade into the academic discipline of religious studies—his 1968 book Comparative Religious Studies—still left him “unsatisfied.” Aside from the fact that he felt it was too historical and not comparative enough, he lamented his inability to access reference works in languages other than Chinese and Japanese.102 It was perhaps this feeling of being unable to engage sufficiently well with the discipline that led him to pursue advanced studies in Japan. Not all of his monastic colleagues supported this decision. Since Japanese monks were permitted to marry, drink alcohol and eat meat—unlike their counterparts in China—they feared that Shengyan would eventually return to the laity under their influence.103 Nevertheless, he pressed ahead and chose to study at Rissho University—a Buddhist institution in Tokyo that was aligned with the Nichiren School. There, he would gain a master’s degree (written on Tiantai meditation), and a PhD (written on the Chinese monastic, Ouyi Zhixu).104 After arriving in Japan, he published reports on his time there for readers in Chinese. In Hong Kong Buddhist, he wrote that my [ultimate] reason for coming to Japan is not to gain a master’s or a PhD degree, but rather to see what methods and environment they use to ensure that Buddhist culture does not decline, and [to see] how they produce so many national, and even international, Buddhist talents. I hope that Chinese Buddhism can directly keep pace with cultural trends in the global era. … I thus f ind opportunities to visit many Buddhist centers, and Buddhist schools.105 100 Shengyan, Bijiao zongjiaoxue, 341. 101 Shengyan, Shengyan fashi xuesi licheng, 80. 102 Ibid., 87-88. 103 Shengyan, “Liuxue Riben yi zhou nian,” Putishu 208 (1970): 15-19. 104 Jimmy Yu, “A Tentative Exploration into the Development of Master Sheng Yen’s Chan Teachings,” Chung-Hwa Buddhist Journal 23 (2010): 8. Shengyan’s first doctoral supervisor was Sakamoto Yukio, who died in the second year of his studies. 105 Shengyan, “Dongjing de Fojiao daxue,” Xianggang Fojiao 113 (1969): 5.

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He was clearly inspired by the way in which sectarian universities in Japan had implemented the modern university system in a Buddhist context. He remarked that Komazawa University, which he toured, had a famous baseball team and was well-known throughout the country; he reported that students in the School of Buddhist Studies had to do Zen meditation, and that students residing in dormitories lived monastic lifestyles. He was impressed with their library, with its extensive resources on Zen,106 and its pursuit of modern academic disciplines and areas of study. In the Buddhist Studies program, students studied subjects like Western philosophy, psychology, and other religions. The synergy of secular education and monastic concerns seems to have left an impression on him.107 It was not just the university system itself that led Shengyan to Japan. We have already seen the esteem in which Yinshun and Shengyan held Japanese scholarship on Buddhism. It is not surprising that Shengyan would choose to go to Japan to learn more about their approach to research—Japan already had well-established circles of academic religious studies, with Anesaki Masaharu having become the first professor in the science of religion at Tokyo Imperial University in 1905.108 Private Buddhist universities had existed for some time there before Shengyan’s visit.109 By the time Shengyan commenced his studies in Tokyo, there were already well-developed secular and sectarian models for the study of Buddhism using academic methods. It was this context that provided Shengyan with the opportunity to touch upon the question of religious comparisons one last time, before his career took a turn in the late 1970s and he devoted himself to teaching meditation. For his doctoral thesis, Shengyan wrote on a figure we encountered in the first chapter—Ouyi Zhixu. It is pertinent that Shengyan chose to research Ouyi, because he was one of the most well-known opponents of Jesuit missionaries in the seventeenth century. Although mainly an overview of Ouyi’s oeuvre, Shengyan devoted some time to describing the period in which he lived, and his criticisms of Christianity. But the lasting legacy of his time in Japan was Shengyan’s exposure to the academic system. It would seem that the strength of this encouraged Shengyan to later pursue the establishment of his own Buddhist university in Taiwan, thus providing a platform for the 106 Ibid., 7. 107 Ibid., 8. 108 Suzuki, “Nobuta Kishimoto and the Beginnings of the Scientific Study of Religion in Modern Japan,” 159. 109 See Makoto Hayashi, “Religious Studies and Religiously Affiliated Universities,” in Modern Buddhism in Japan, edited by Makoto Hayashi, Eiichi Otani and Paul L. Swanson (Nagoya: Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture, 2014).

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study of Buddhism which, unlike the Christian studies he had encountered, would refrain from critiquing its own core suppositions.

Conclusion If we consider Shengyan’s scholarship overall, we can see that his aims were not strictly academic, nor did he apply these same standards of academic inquiry to his discussions of Buddhism as he did to Christianity. His intention was to show how Christianity, as a historically-derived religion, was inferior to the rational and trans-historical teachings of Buddhism. And yet, the ethnocentrism and cultural essentialism, so prominent in the early phases of the debate, retained a presence. According to Shengyan, “later generations of Jews loudly proclaimed that Yahweh was the god of their ancestors. This can be explained [through the study of religious history]. But for today’s yellow-skinned Easterners to also proclaim that Yahweh is the god of their ancestors—they don’t know what they’re talking about!”110 Nationalism, ethnic identity and cultural loyalty animated his writings, just as his Buddhist beliefs did. At the same time, his exposure to the arguments of his Christian opponents alerted him to the importance of academic training in religious studies and Buddhist apologetics. Arguments founded in values could not resolve the question of which religion was “greater”. Yinshun and Shengyan began to employ Western historiographical methods and arguments, through works translated into Chinese or in Japanese, against Christianity. But both asserted the superiority of Buddhism while removing it from the framework of historiography, considering it to embody trans-historical truths that had been expressed in different ways throughout history. Thus, secular scholarship enabled them to achieve their apologetic aims. Finally, at the center of their work was the question of Buddhism’s historical decline versus its trans-historical truth. As we have seen, writers throughout the twentieth century considered that true Buddhism had, for various historical reasons, fallen into a state of degeneration. Their understanding of this fall reflected their internalization of the Christian normative model, and the critical views of Christians and modernist intellectuals. While notions of decline are built in to Buddhism, in the twentieth century, various figures sought more concrete historical reasons for this, believing that if true, authentic Buddhism could be recovered, Buddhism 110 Shengyan, Jidujiao zhi yanjiu, 82.

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itself would be shown impervious to critique. Meanwhile, since previous debates with Christians on the question of values and culture had failed to yield a conclusion to the debate, the question of history, which lent itself to positivistic analysis, was embraced as a tool for demonstrating Buddhism’s religious superiority. Shengyan became the most important figure, of the period, to attempt such a demonstration. At the same time, there was, amidst these discussions, an optimism that when true Buddhism was finally revived and properly explained, it would make positive contributions to society. In the next chapter, we will see how this belief manifested outside of the pages of magazines, books, and pamphlets, on the ground.

5

Sermons Among Mountains Abstract The f igures covered in this volume were Buddhist elites—they were associated with major monastic institutions, publishing ventures, or the BAROC. This chapter discusses a range of Buddhist groups emerging in the 1960s, or thereafter, that cited an influence from Christianity, but which did not contribute to the discussion covered here. It also covers the transition to more positive forms of dialogue, which were paralleled by the decline of KMT power, the complexification of Taiwanese identity, and the slowed growth of Christianity. At the same time, the Christian influence on later groups is clear, pointing to the complex relationship Buddhism had with Christianity in Taiwan. Keywords: Dongchu, Fagu Shan, Tzu Chi, Foguang Shan, Lingjiu Shan, Zhongtai Chan

In the last chapter, we saw how Shengyan used the academic study of religion to place Buddhism at the apex of a religious hierarchy above Christianity. He gestured towards the notion that true Buddhism was misunderstood—and that if its truth was realized, modern intellectuals would be incapable of criticizing it. By the 1970s, though, the heated interfaith competition between Taixu’s followers and Christians in Taiwan had cooled. As the number of Christians on the island plateaued, they no longer regarded it as such a serious religious contender. At the same time, as we shall see, a number of increasingly high-profile Buddhist groups emerged on the island; these carried out activities that formerly, Christian missionaries charged Buddhists with not doing—that is, establishing schools, universities and hospitals. They encouraged lay-people to study and practice the Dharma, asserting its relevance as a kind of philosophy for living rather than an object of religious belief. But there was still one important matter to be dealt with. As we heard in the introduction, in the 1950s and 1960s, Buddhists continued to assert that their tradition accorded with the Three Principles of the People, just as

Pacey, S. Buddhist Responses to Christianity in Postwar Taiwan: Awakening the World. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020. doi: 10.5117/9789463724111_ch05

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Taixu had done. But as we know, Chiang Kai-shek was a Methodist, and Sun Yat-sen—the originator of the three principles—was a Unitarian. After he died in 1975, Dongchu redefined Chiang in Buddhist terms. And so, around the time Shengyan was finishing his PhD, his mentor, Dongchu, published a tract called President Chiang and Buddhism (Jiang zongtong yu Fojiao). Dongchu’s aim was to establish Chiang as someone who, deep down, had beliefs that went beyond Christianity, and which accorded with Buddhism. But this was not an easy argument to make. In reality, Chiang saw Christianity as complementing Confucianism; he also prayed each day and attended church regularly.1 Nevertheless, it could not have been lost on nationalistic Buddhists—in competition with Christianity and asserting the compatibility of KMT ideology with their tradition—that Chiang’s Christian identity weakened their position. To resolve this conundrum, Dongchu drew from Zhang Chunyi—who we encountered in the second chapter—to say that Buddhism encompassed Christian teachings. This allowed him to claim that Chiang had essentially remained sympathetic to Buddhism throughout his life. He explained that “President Chiang was born into a Buddhist family,” but that “on December 1, 1927, after Chiang Kai-shek and his wife were married, he started to also believe in Jesus.”2 Thus, Chiang only delved into Christianity as a way of gaining acceptance from Song Meiling’s family, which was Christian. His language implies that while Chiang took to the Bible, he did not do so to the exclusion of Buddhism. He wrote that since “Chiang’s mother, Madame Wang, originally was a pious Buddhist believer. President Chiang therefore simultaneously believed in Christianity. People never spoke about it, but now that Chiang Kai-shek has died, there is a need to confirm this.”3 He implied that although Chiang incorporated Christianity into his identity, he was a trans-religious figure, but one who essentially remained a Buddhist. We receive verification of this stance from one of Chiang’s close associates, namely the former KMT propagandist and Christian, Hollington Tong, who we encountered in the preface in this volume, claiming that Taiwan would, in the near future, be Christianized. Dongchu quoted him as saying that Before Chiang Kai-shek married, because Mother Song held that Chiang should become a Christian, Chiang first promised, [saying that] “I’m 1 See Loh, “The Ideological Persuasion of Chiang Kai-Shek.” 2 Dongchu, “Minzhu shiji de Fojiao—Fojiao wenhua zhi zhongxin—Jiang zongtong yu Fojiao,” Dongchu laoren quanji vol. 5 of 7 (Taipei: Dongchu chubanshe, 1986), 624-625. The text of this essay is available online: http://dongchu.dila.edu.tw/web/No2/DonChun2.html (accessed October 28, 2019). 3 Ibid., 624-625.

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willing to look into it [Jesus],” and f inally in 1930, was baptized as a Christian. From then, although Chiang also respected Jesus, he did not forget his Buddhist beliefs for even a moment, such as his compassionate mother’s wish to oversee service to the country, and the rescuing of the people, with the mind of a buddha. 4

Even though Tong ascribed Christian beliefs to Chiang, he did not claim that Chiang had completely abandoned Buddhism. According to Dongchu, the mere fact that Chiang was raised in a Buddhist household, in Zhejiang, which had produced numerous Confucian and Buddhist thinkers and temples, essentially meant that Buddhism could not have but influenced him. In any case, according to Dongchu, people in the ROC and around the world saw Chiang as a kind of trans-religious figure. He explained that this characteristic was well-recognized; after Chiang’s death, civilians and soldiers across the country, the realms of industry and commerce, as well as monks, nuns, priests, pastors, and even compatriots living abroad and people from friendly states—all of them cried mournfully, with sorrow, and from the heart. Long ago, they felt in their hearts that President Chiang was not simply the leader of one country or one people, or the disciple of one religion or one teaching, but that he was superhuman (chaoren), a star (tianxing) descended to the world of mortals, a great deity (shenren) who saved people and saved the world. … We will eternally remember Chiang Kai-shek’s great grace and virtue when protecting Buddhism.5

We can imagine that during the previous two decades, for nationalistic Buddhists, there must have been a genuine sense of anxiety and disbelief that the exemplar of Chinese nationalism did not follow a “Chinese” religion. Dongchu’s portrait of Chiang re-established him as somehow more Buddhist, and as a salvific, sage-like figure. With this reclamation of President Chiang, the true compatibility between Buddhism and the KMT had thus been restored. Recall that it was only six years later that speakers at the BAROC conference turned their attention to Sun Yat-sen, presenting him, too, as a protector of Buddhism, and his ideology as aligned with the Dharma. It was also not uncommon for writers to assert links between Sun Yatsen, Chiang Kai-shek and Buddhism. We might consider, for example, an 4 5

Ibid., 625. Ibid., 693.

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article in the Buddhist magazine Ci Ming that printed a short description of a vision Sun had while visiting Putuo Mountain, east of Shanghai—an island that is home to numerous Buddhist temples. The author claimed this was composed of motifs found in the Buddhist canon, which only a person with the requisite karmic roots, or a bodhisattva, would be able to see— In the Buddhist sutras, the Buddha has been called an excellent physician [wushang yiwang], who liberates sentient beings. The Father of the Nation [Sun Yat-sen] also often said that “a great doctor heals the nation” [dayi yiguo]; the Father of the Nation was also a doctor,6 and established the Republic of China, saving innumerable sentient beings! With a heart like the Buddha’s, with “great compassion and great benevolence,” he saved people, the nation, and saved the whole world. Thus, the Buddha did not hesitate to manifest himself, and welcome him.7

We also might also turn to a 1975 piece in Hong Kong Buddhist, intended to supplement Dongchu’s text, which stated that “President Chiang’s greatness was like the heavens and the earth, the sun and the moon … It cannot be measured with the theories of any particular religion.” The author noted that Chiang’s “state funeral was a Christian ceremony,” but that it should be understood that “President Chiang was an inheritor of the Confucian orthodoxy of the Chinese people’s Emperor Wen, Duke of Zhou,8 Confucius, and the Father of the Nation [Sun Yat-sen’s honorific].” For Buddhists, according to the author, he was a bodhisattva.9 On the mainland, Taixu had taken a similar tack in the republican period. He met Chiang Kai-shek for the f irst time in 1927—before Chiang had converted to Christianity.10 He celebrated Chiang’s fiftieth birthday in 1936 (after his conversion to Christianity) by writing: Heaven and earth are roused like a tempest; This generation’s might could move Mt. Tai.11 Yearning for a sage who will uphold the Confucian orthodoxy [daotong]; 6 Sun Yat-sen trained as a physician. 7 Hui Shi, “Guofu Sun Zhongshan Xiansheng yu Fojiao zhi guanxi,” Ci Ming 3:11 (1964), 7. 8 Emperor Wen (12th – 11th century BCE) founded the Zhou dynasty (1046–256 BCE). The Duke of Zhou (fl. 11th century BCE) consolidated the Zhou. Both are celebrated Chinese rulers. 9 Shi Touseng, “Jiang Gong gu zongtong yu Fojiao: bushu,” Xianggang Fojiao 181 (1975), 21. 10 Hou Kunhong, “1930 niandai de Fojiao yu zhengzhi: Taixu fashi he Jiang Jieshi,” Sichuan shifan daxue xuebao (shehui kexue ban) 33:5 (2006), 127. 11 One of China’s five sacred mountains.

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How only the military administration [ junzheng] exhibits talent! Desiring restoration of the country’s righteousness; The nation has vowed to reverse the decline. All across the land celebrate this fiftieth [birthday]; With the indestructible Dharma [ jingang buhuai], looking up to the tathagata [rulai]!12

Taixu’s poem is an expression of devotion; he places himself in a position of subservience beneath Chiang as a protector of the Dharma and one who upholds the way of the ancients. With this example, set against Taixu’s broader identification of Buddhism with the KMT’s political ideology, we see that under the party there was a willingness, at least among some Buddhists, to see Chiang as a figure who could restore China to greatness and protect Buddhism.13 Such texts established a rationale for viewing Sun and Chiang as either Buddhists or as exceeding religious categorization. Dongchu’s 1975 tract located the KMT value system firmly within Chinese tradition; while not negating Christian values, he presented them as irrelevant for understanding Chiang’s position, which could be understood using Chinese cultural and Buddhist reference-points. By sidelining Christianity in this way, Dongchu placed Buddhism at the heart of China’s modernization, marking it as tradition that was politically acceptable, since it was aligned with the values of their age. By the time Dongchu penned his text, though, KMT ideology had become weaker as a socializing force. The island’s modernization process had created a society that was becoming increasingly complex. In the 1970s, not only was there a burgeoning democracy movement, but the rise of a Taiwanese (rather than Chinese) identity that was emerging from the grassroots level. New forms of art, music and literature gave voice to these sentiments. This meant that expressions of “Chinese” identity, either as a form of political expediency or an expression of genuinely-held belief, were becoming less likely. As notions of Taiwanese identity become pluralized, corresponding notions concerning the values Buddhists should aspire to also diversified. When the KMT withdrew to Taiwan in 1949, the island had just emerged from half a century of Japanese rule that lasted between 1895 and 1945. It 12 Cited in ibid., 129. For the original, see Taixu, “Zhu Jiang gong wushi shouchen,” in Taixu dashi quanshu, vol. 20 of 35 (CD-ROM), edited by Yinshun, 181, Xinzhu: Caituan faren Yinshun wenjiao jijinhui, 2005 [1936], 181. 13 On Taixu and Chiang, see pages 16-19 of Wang Qiyuan, “Cong wanming guan wanqing: sanbai nian jian liang ci Fojiao fuxing,” in Ji Zhe, Tian Shuijing and Wang Qiyuan (eds), 3-24, Ershi shiji Zhongguo Fojiao de liang ci fuxing, Shanghai: Fudan Daxue chubanshe, 2016.

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immediately began a program of sinification, integrating the island into the “imagined community” of the Republic of China which included the mainland, by then under Communist rule.14 But as time passed and the possibility of the ROC being re-established on the mainland faded; with the increasing integration of mainlanders and native Taiwanese, and as cultural production increasingly began to stress Taiwanese rather than Chinese themes, a localized identity emerged.15 At the same time, the period following the publication of Dongchu’s pro-Chiang tract saw Taiwan’s democratization movement gain pace. The Gaoxiong Incident in 1979 saw a violent clash between democracy activists and police take place at a demonstration on International Human Rights Day. Those who were arrested and imprisoned became important figures in Taiwan’s democratic, post-martial law era. Chiang Kai-shek’s successor and son, Chiang Ching-kuo, subsequently legalized political opposition parties. After his death in 1988, Lee Teng-hui assumed the presidency, and further critical examination of Taiwanese history became possible.16 And in 2000, the Democratic Progressive Party’s candidate Chen Shuibian (who earlier defended Gaoxiong Incident activists in court) won the presidential election, ending half a century of KMT rule. In short, notions of identity changed in Taiwan as KMT values promoted were replaced by a more complex discourse.17 With democratization, the party no longer held ideological authority. Thus, the associated framework of normativity was weakened, and patriotism, national identity, and modernity were no longer tied exclusively to the party. Questions about the relevance and meaning behind these ideas were raised amidst discussions of Taiwanese history and identity. It made less sense to rigidly map Buddhism onto them. Meanwhile, the BAROC (and its associated notions of Buddhist loyalty to the party-state) declined in importance. As Charles Jones has observed in 1996, a “criticism that one commonly hears in Taiwan even today is that the BAROC is too closely allied with conservative KMT politics, and so cannot represent the interests of all Buddhists in Taiwan, in particular the 14 On “imagined communities,” see Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 2016). 15 June Teufel Dreyer, “Taiwan’s Evolving Identity,” Asia Program Special Report 114 (August, 2003), 4-10. Available at https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/asia_rpt114.pdf. 16 Ibid. 17 For quantitative evidence of this, see the chart showing the rise of an exclusively Taiwanese identity since 1992, available at “Taiwanese / Chinese Identity(1992/06~2019/06),” Election Study Center, National Chengchi University, available at: https://esc.nccu.edu.tw/app/news. php?Sn=166# (accessed July 29, 2019).

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native Taiwanese.”18 Describing the general stagnation of the association, Jones explains that in looking through BAROC publications from the 1950s through the 1990s, one finds the same names appearing in every office, commission, or committee, and this group of names does not change and does not exceed about twenty. That the BAROC leadership is such a closed shop may explain why energetic younger monks such as Shengyan and Xingyun eventually became inactive in the organization and began building their own enterprises.19

These new organizations were led by charismatic leaders who referred to their own modern visions instead of the KMT’s. At the same time, these visions were founded in the view that Buddhism was inherently “modern,” and that it was not inferior to Christianity. And yet, in the cases examined below, the Christian influence was not far away. Below, we will examine some of these groups—what have been called the “four great mountain tops” (si da shantou): Foguang Shan (Buddha-Light Mountain), Tzu Chi, Dharma Drum Mountain (Fagu Shan), and Zhongtai Chansi. They are called as such due to the influence they have within Taiwan’s Buddhist world;20 we will also consider a fifth: Lingjiu Shan (Vulture Peak).

Dharma Drum Mountain In the same year that Dongchu’s tract was published and Chiang Kai-shek died, his student Shengyan graduated with his PhD from Rissho University in Japan. He was then invited to New York by the founder of the Buddhist Association of the United States (Meiguo Fojiaohui), Chen Jiazhen. He remained there, as a resident of the Dajue Temple, for two years, ministering to local devotees and studying English;21 he soon began holding retreats.22 18 Charles Brewer Jones, “Buddhism in Taiwan: A Historical Survey,” unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Virginia, 1996, 322. Available at http://buddhism.lib.ntu.edu.tw/museum/ TAIWAN/md/bit/bit-246.htm (accessed October 28, 2019). 19 Jones, “Buddhism in Taiwan: A Historical Survey,” 324. 20 Jiang Canteng, Taiwan dangdai Fojiao (Taipei: Nantian shuju youxian gongsi, 2000), 106-09. 21 Shengyan, Shengyan fashi xuesi licheng, 153. 22 See the short history of the Chan Meditation Centre in New York, which Shengyan founded: “CMC History,” Chan Meditation Center, available at: http://chancenter.org/cmc/about/cmchistory/ (accessed October 10, 2016).

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His youthful nationalism had by this time waned, and with his militaristic persona and pseudonym relegated to the past, he instead spoke about peace, the environment, and social harmony. This transition may seem surprising. As we learned before, in the 1950s, Shengyan served in the military and lived in an authoritarian and nationalistic environment. Much of his time in the 1960s was also spent in retreat, in isolated conditions. But in Tokyo and New York—where one of his objectives was to meet people and observe new institutions—he seems to have gained a more liberal outlook. When viewing photos of Shengyan in the US, one is struck by the warm reception he seems to have received. In one such photo, Shengyan stands in front of American students in a park. Both he, and his audience, seem warmly engaged with one another.23 His experiences must have led him to view the West through a different lens to his ethnocentric perspective in the 1950s and 1960s. As he had done in Japan, Shengyan used his time in the United States to explore the country’s academic environment: In Japan, I learned the methods of scholarly research and came in contact with the fresh air of modern education and modern academia. While I was teaching Chan in America, I took the opportunity to lecture at over sixty universities in both the US and Europe. There, I saw the campuses, educational facilities, and academic customs of prominent universities. In addition, I had the chance to befriend many leading scholars who helped me broaden my vision and perspective.24

He would soon have an opportunity to develop his own institute for the study of Buddhism in Taiwan. After Dongchu’s death in 1977, Shengyan returned to Taipei and became abbot of the Nongchan Temple, where Dongchu had established the Chung-Hwa Institute of Buddhist Culture in 1955. 25 He eventually set up a successor institute,26 which offered a scholarly program 23 See the photo on pages 12 and 13 of Hu Ligui, Fenxiang Fagushan: xingfu baipishu (Taipei: Fagu wenhua), 2005. 24 See “The 20th Anniversary of Chung-Hwa Institute of Buddhist Studies,” Chung-Hwa Institute of Buddhist Studies, available at http://www.chibs.edu.tw/ch_html/CHIBS20/en/englishT.HTM (accessed June 21, 2016). 25 See “Buddhism in Taiwan: A Historical Survey,” 414, referring to Shengyan’s discussion in Shengyan, Shengyan Fashi Xuesi Licheng (Taipei: Zhengzhong Shuju, 1993), 150-158. 26 Shengyan, Shengyan fashi xuesi licheng, 158-59. See also “The 20th Anniversary of Chung-Hwa Institute of Buddhist Studies” and Fagu Shan’s historical overview of the Chung-Hwa Institute of Buddhist Studies at “About,” Dharma Drum Mountain, available at: http://www.Dharmadrum. org/content/about/about2.aspx?sn=50 (accessed June 21, 2016).

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in Buddhist philosophy, history and languages.27 And in 1989 he set up another organization—Fagu Shan (Dharma Drum Mountain)—which was devoted to spreading Chan throughout society among lay-people. Purchasing land at Jinshan in northern Taiwan,28 he planned to build a monastic and educational headquarters. The Chung-Hwa Institute of Buddhist Studies relocated there in 2001.29 That year, he also founded the Dharma Drum Sangha University. Employing academic staff who teach Buddhist philosophy, history and languages, the curriculum is geared towards preparing monastics for a life of Buddhist praxis and pastoral duties.30 In setting up this institution, we can perhaps see the influence of his time in higher education in Japan, but also his exposure to Christian and Western academia in the 1950s and 1960s. In a marked change from his earlier anti-Christian writings, Shengyan also took a more liberal approach to his engagement with other religions. In 2000, he spoke at the “Millennium World Peace Summit of Religious and Spiritual Leaders,” held at the United Nations, about a scheme which encapsulated his philosophy called “Spiritual Environmentalism” (xinling huanbao). He told his audience that with “wisdom,” it would be possible to “transform hell into paradise.”31 Addressing his religiously diverse audience, he told them of Dharma Drum’s mission to “build God’s paradise and the Buddha’s Pure Land on earth. If we can endeavor to carry out the construction of the earthly paradise or earthly Pure Land, then no matter when we die, we will surely be blessed by the grace of God and be taken by the Buddha into his embrace.”32 Likewise, speaking at the “International Conference on Religious Cooperation” (Shijie zongjiao hezuo huiyi) held in 2001 in Taipei, Shengyan cited similarities between Buddhism, Christianity and Islam. He remarked that: Cooperation among religions does not mean leaders of various religions coming together to discuss doctrine to find out who is superior or inferior, higher or lower, greater or lesser, better or worse. This will only lead to conflict, deepen disagreement, increase enmity, and create opposition. 27 Jones, “Buddhism in Taiwan: A Historical Survey,” 415-416. 28 Shengyan, Shengyan fashi xuesi licheng, 172. 29 Hu Ligui, Fenxiang Fagu Shan, 130-31. 30 While Shengyan also wanted to establish an academic basis for Buddhist Studies beyond monastic communities, his plans for Dharma Drum University remained unfulfilled by the time of his death in 2009. 31 The Office of Master Sheng Yen, Master Sheng Yen (Taipei: Dharma Drum Mountain, 2004), 37. 32 Ibid., 39.

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If we can follow the principle of mutual respect, then we can all interact peacefully. Especially in our religiously pluralistic modern age, one has only to leave one’s country, one’s ethnic group, or even one’s home, to come into contact with followers of different religions. In an open society, one may find several different faiths even within a family. We must respect, even support, each other’s choices with an attitude of appreciation, and should never criticize other faiths based on our own subjective standpoint. We should cooperate to create a harmonious, peaceful, happy and warm community in which to live.33

In 2002 he joined the first meeting of the World Council of Religious Leaders in Bangkok;34 the next year he took part in a trip to Israel and Palestine as part of the Council, meeting Israeli and Palestinian leaders to discuss religion and peace.35 His words and deeds indicate a rather different approach to that taken when he wrote under the nom de plume, the General Who Awakens the World. In a 1983 note added to a reprint of his 1956 tract written against Wu Enpu, he cast it as one of his earlier pieces, and wrote that “regardless of the viewpoints or content, it can still be regarded as having commemorative value.”36 Despite reprinting this text, his comment indicates that he was distancing himself from his earlier stance. Indeed, Shengyan often engaged in interfaith dialogue—rather than interfaith competition—later in his career. Examples are included in a volume entitled Master Shengyan and Interfaith Dialogue (Shengyan fashi yu zongjiao duihua);37 this includes discussions with various Christians, including the priests Wang Jinghong and George Martinson [Ding Songyun—an American Jesuit missionary in Taiwan], and the pastor Lu Junyi, as well as with other religious representatives and scholars of religion. Martinson wrote: Each time I talk with Master Shengyan, I feel that I’m facing not only a teacher or religious guide who is rich in wisdom, but my own brother, 33 See the chronology at: “2001—da hao nian,” Fagu Shan, available at: https://www.ddm.org. tw/event/motif/page2001.htm (accessed July 29, 2019). For the text of the speech, see Sheng Yen [Shengyan], “International Development,” available at: http://www.shengyen.org/eng/id-01-03. html (accessed July 29, 2019). 34 See “Master Sheng Yen,” Chan Meditation Center, available at: http://chancenter.org/cmc/ bios-2/ (accessed July 29, 2019). 35 See http://www.chancenter.org/chanctr/newscap/20031230.html (accessed October 28, 2019). 36 Shengyan, Jidujiao zhi yanjiu [2008], 244. 37 Shengyan, Shengyan fashi yu zongjiao duihua (Taipei: Fagu wenhua, 2001).

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or a spiritual counterpart. … Once Master Shengyan said to me: “Based on my understanding of the problems of human life, we are mostly the same, with just small differences. It’s just that when we reach the end of human life, you expect to go to heaven, and I want to go to the Pure Land. Apart from this, our views do not differ very much.” These words from Master Shengyan without a doubt reveal his open heart. He always manages to find the positive qualities in people, and to find a common starting-point amidst difference.38

These remarks evince the dialogue-driven approach to fostering interfaith relations that Shengyan later undertook. He wrote in his introduction to this book that In this age of knowledge diversification, to promote the buddhadharma, to popularize the buddhadharma, one must meet with professionals from all manner of different fields. Only after this contact, dialogue, exchange, and understanding can one help people in society to know the buddhadharma, to acknowledge the buddhadharma, and to accept the buddhadharma, or to at least not reject the buddhadharma.39

This signifies the second phase of Shengyan’s career, when, as leader of Dharma Drum Mountain, he engaged with academia and conversed with various intellectuals on the public stage, travelling the world and promoting Chan. If we return to the earlier phase of his career, in the 1960s, we find that other monastic figures were founding movements that would, in time, dominate Taiwan’s Buddhist landscape. Dharma Drum Mountain eventually counted over 1 million followers worldwide;40 but the following two groups we will examine below were comparably large. While they did not frame their practice in terms of “KMT modernity,” they did engage with modernity in a variety of different ways, using it to uphold their traditional Buddhist visions. Before embarking on this discussion, however, we should pause to remind ourselves of precisely what Christians were doing on the island when these groups were established. According to Allen J. Swanson, Protestant Christian groups of various denominations had by 1979 opened 12 hospitals, 18 schools, 16 orphanages and 15 social service centers, for a total of 208 institutions 38 See ibid., 9-10. 39 Shengyan, Shengyan fashi yu zongjiao duihua, 3. 40 Dharma Drum Mountain, Master Sheng Yen (Taipei: Dharma Drum Mountain, 2004), 22.

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in all. 41 There were 3 Protestant universities on the island. Meanwhile, Catholics had 3 colleges or universities, 27 middle schools, 24 hospitals, 2 orphanages and 2 retirement homes (among other projects). 42 And while Buddhists had also founded schools in Taiwan,43 and while China had a clear historical tradition of charity, it is also evident from the debates examined here that Buddhists understood there to be a particular association between Christianity and charity. It was, in fact, this model of religious organization and practice—Goossaert and Palmer’s Christian normative model—that provided direct inspiration for a modern Buddhist identity at the practical level.

Tzu Chi During my first visit to Taiwan as an undergraduate in 2001, my landlord presented me with a magazine published by an organization known as “Tzu Chi” (Ciji). In the magazine was a photo of the organization’s founder—the nun Zhengyan (1937-)—touring an urban area damaged by the 921 earthquake that struck the island in 1999, in which more than two thousand people died. 44 As I learned later, the construction project she was inspecting was part of a larger initiative called “Project Hope,” which saw Tzu Chi build 51 schools that were damaged in the disaster. In the aftermath of the earthquake, the organization had famously provided immediate emergency assistance such as food, water and temporary shelter. 45 This led to the group attaining a new level of prominence in the public’s consciousness. Project Hope was not the only occasion on which Tzu Chi volunteers had, by that stage, performed charity work. In 1986, the group established their first hospital in the eastern city of Hualian, and they subsequently expanded this initiative into an extensive and well-developed medical 41 See Swanson, The Church in Taiwan, 83. 42 Ibid., 63. 43 Zheng, “Taiwan zongjiao tuantide jiaoyu shiye.” 44 This photo, and other photos from the series, can be seen in the following article: Juan I-jong, “Stepping into the New Century: Juan I-jong’s Photographic Notes on Project Hope,” translated by Teresa Chang, Tzu Chi Quarterly 8:2 (2001). The article can be viewed online at: https://web. archive.org/web/20170315011116/http://enquarterly.tzuchiculture.org.tw/tzquart/2001su/qs7. htm (accessed October 28, 2019). 45 See “Xiwang gongcheng,” Ciji, available at: http://web.archive.org/web/20130601043711/ http://www2.tzuchi.org.tw/921/hope/index.htm (accessed: July 29, 2019).

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system.46 And by 2000, they had established a complete system comprising “a kindergarten, a primary school, a high school, and a university extending through to graduate studies.”47 Meanwhile, Tzu Chi volunteers aided victims of disasters in various countries. 48 We can see, then, that Tzu Chi’s material efforts parallel those of earlier missionary groups; the organization’s history shows that even as elite Buddhists were engaged in textual debates with Christians, Buddhists on the ground were influenced by the Christian normative model, devising forms of practice that were inspired by Christian examples. To understand this, we must look to Tzu Chi’s founder, Zhengyan, and the early history of the organization. According to the oft-repeated story, Zhengyan was born in 1937 in the town of Qingshui in Taizhong County. Her initial attempt to seek official registration as a nun with the BAROC in 1962 failed because she lacked a tonsure master. Since she had been told that by reading Taixu’s works “one could gain an overview of nearly the entirety of the buddhadharma,”49 she decided to buy them and return to her temple in the eastern city of Hualian. On her trip she encountered Taixu’s former student Yinshun, who agreed be her tonsure master,50 and implored her to do “everything for Buddhism, everything for sentient beings.” She could thus return to Taipei to receive ordination,51 and henceforth regarded Yinshun as her teacher. His instructions to her provided the basis for the establishment of her charitable organization. Other experiences laid the foundation for the establishment of Tzu Chi as well. When Zhengyan and some disciples went to a clinic in Hualian to visit a follower, she saw a spot of blood on the floor. She was told that a pregnant aboriginal woman, who could not afford to pay the hospital deposit fee, had 46 See “Ciji yiliao zhiye jincheng,” Ciji, available at: www2.tzuchi.org.tw/medical/index.htm (accessed May 7, 2009). 47 See “Da she wu qiu: Ciji jiaoyu zhiyu jianjie,” Ciji quanqiu zixin wang, 29 July (2009), available at: www.tzuchi.org.tw/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=205 %3A2008-11-06-02-51-48&catid=44%3Aeducation-about&Itemid=313&lang=zh (accessed November 24, 2009). 48 See “Ciji guoji zhenzai,” Ciji, available at: http://www.tzuchi.org.tw/index.php?option=com_ content&view=article&id=350:2009-01-09-00-33-26&catid=54:international-reliefabout&Itemid=308&lang=zh (accessed April 13, 2010). 49 Yinshun, cited in Pan Xuan, “Sishier nian qian de liuge zi: wei Fojiao, wei zhongsheng,” Ciji yuekan 463 (June 2005), available at: http://taipei.tzuchi.org.tw/monthly/463/463c3-1.HTM (accessed September 26, 2008). 50 Yinshun, cited in ibid. 51 Yunjing, Qianshou Foxin: Zhengyan fashi (Taipei: Daqian wenhua chuban shiye gongsi, 1995), 301-02.

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been turned away by a doctor and had subsequently miscarried.52 Zhengyan resolved to raise money to help the poor pay their medical expenses.53 Later, she was visited by three Catholic nuns from a junior high school in Hualian. They pointed out that Christians were engaged in numerous charitable projects, and that although Buddhists emphasized compassion, there were no comparable examples of Buddhist charity. While the nuns failed to convert Zhengyan to Christianity, she agreed with their criticism, and thus resolved to create an organization that could mobilize Buddhists to perform charitable work.54 She also recalled hearing, as a youth, about a Christian hospital in Zhanghua City in western Taiwan: In the hospital, [there was a] Doctor Lan and his wife. They truly had loving hearts. In order to treat a child’s burns, Mrs. Lan donated some of her own skin so that Doctor Lan could perform a transplant operation on the patient. This happened over thirty years ago. At the time, when I heard this, I thought it was incredible; it really moved me! This spirit of self-sacrifice made a deep impression on me.55

Zhengyan has also directly stated that she “was motivated to found the Tzu Chi Hospital because I was also moved by the spirit of Christianity.”56 In addition, she has reportedly kept a picture of Mother Teresa in her room.57 And Christianity still seems to serve as an example, at the institutional level. In a documentary on Tzu Chi for the “Discovery” channel, the superintendent of Dalin Tzu Chi Hospital, Lin Chin-Lon, remarked that “the Catholic church have, now, over six thousand hospitals worldwide. Six thousand. You can imagine, the size. And, given time, Tzu Chi will be like that too.”58 52 The family of the doctor who rejected the pregnant woman sued Zhengyan for defamation in 2003, claiming the story as told by Zhengyan was untrue. The court case centered around whether the NT$8000 was a “deposit” or not. Zhengyan lost the civil case and was ordered to pay damages. Although she considered making an appeal, she did not. For a view on this case from Ciji, see King-pong Liu, “How to Answer a Lawsuit,” Tzu Chi Quarterly 10:4 (2003); available at: http://taipei.tzuchi.org.tw/tzquart/2003wi/qw1.htm (accessed May 18, 2009). 53 Peter Faun, The Miracle World of Compassion (Taipei: Tzu-Chi Cultural and Volitional Center, 1991), 11. 54 Fojiao Ciji jijinhui, Daai sa renjian: Zhengyan fashi de Ciji shijie (Taipei: Fojiao Ciji jijinhui, 2002). 55 Zhengyan, You peng zi yuanfang lai: yu Zhengyan fashi duihua (Taipei: Tianxia yuanjian chuban gufen youxian gongsi, 2000), 193-94. 56 Ibid., 193. 57 He Qiyu, “Shanyi yin ta er huiji: Zhengyan fashi,” Tianxia zazhi 200 (January 1 1998): 311. 58 See 17.57 of “Dharma Master Cheng Yen—Discovery Channel Documentary,” YouTube video, posted by MusicandCulture on March 01, 2014, available at: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=SHsDjv5JqbU (accessed May 26, 2016).

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To be sure, other experiences that led Zhengyan to found Tzu Chi did not have a Christian aspect and, like her experience in the hospital in Hualian, were of a medical and more singularly Buddhist nature. Notably, in 1952, her mother required surgery for a stomach illness; Zhengyan prayed to the bodhisattva Guanyin, and promised that should her mother recover, she would become a vegetarian and shorten her life by twelve years. She later dreamed on three consecutive nights that a woman clothed in white came into a Buddhist temple and gave her some medicine, which she then administered to her mother.59 Her mother’s illness subsequently disappeared.60 The death of Zhengyan’s father in 1960 also led her to frequent a local Buddhist temple, which would be instrumental in her journey to eventual ordination.61 Like other modern Buddhists, however, Zhengyan does not see her activities as deriving from Christianity—but rather as reflecting the original teachings of the Buddha. She explains stated that “Buddhism was originally worldly; however, it went through a stage in which it was derailed. By doing Tzu Chi,62 many people assume that I am ‘innovating.’ Actually, I’m only ‘going back’ to the spirit of the Buddha’s age.”63 Other statements indicate that she sees Buddhism in modern terms—that is, in accordance with science and in opposition to notions of “superstition”. She explains that in my eyes, the Buddha was not a god, but a living sage. Since he was a person, his life was like that of normal people. Only his thought was different from that of the average person. He had an expansive heart, and cared for all sentient beings in the land. Because he lamented the state of the universe and pitied people, he abandoned his wealth and rank, and went in search of the truth of human life.64

Although she accepts that “unavoidably, there are supernormal powers in the sutras,” her approach is to affirm that “the Buddha was a human … Therefore, I have cast aside mythological deeds, allowing the Buddha’s spirit 59 Although the scriptural Guanyin (Avalokiteśvara) is referred to in masculine terms, since the tenth century in China he has commonly been depicted as a female. See Yü, Kuan-yin: the Chinese transformation of Avalokiteśvara, 182. 60 In addition, her father later died from an aneurism after she transported him home on a bumpy road from work. His death left her with a strong sense of guilt. See Yunjing, Qianshou Foxin: Zhengyan fashi (Taipei: Daqian wenhua chuban shiye gongsi, 1995). 61 See Yunjing, Qianshou Foxin. 62 Ciji members often refer to Ciji as something to be done. One can thus “do Ciji” (zuo Ciji). 63 Zhengyan, You peng zi yuanfang lai, 209. 64 Ibid., 219.

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to return to the human world”.65 According to Zhengyan, it was only after the process of translation, scholasticism, and the influence of Daoism that Buddhism took on a theistic appearance.66 She interprets the figure of the bodhisattva in a similar way. In a 1985 speech, Zhengyan expressed her hope that “everyone can be Guanyin, and each of us can be Amitābha.”67 She implored her followers to make “the spirit of the bodhisattva Guanyin our spirit,”68 and to make “the heart of the bodhisattva Guanyin our heart.”69 She explained that before I had first started doing Tzu Chi work, I had already started to think in this way. Then, I still didn’t really understand the buddhadharma. I often heard people refer to the one thousand hands and one thousand eyes of Guanyin.70 In my heart, I asked myself: “is there really a person with a thousand hands and a thousand eyes?” When I realized the truth of Buddhism, I completely understood. What this means is that if people have the bodhisattva Guanyin’s spirit, it is the same as [having] two of the bodhisattva Guanyin’s eyes—benevolent eyes looking at sentient beings. If one has a merciful heart, the sight of suffering sentient beings will be unbearable and give rise to sorrow. … Everyone can have two of the bodhisattva Guanyin’s hands. For example, if we gather five hundred people together, there will be one thousand eyes, and one thousand hands. This is also a bodhisattva Guanyin, with one thousand eyes and one thousand hands.71

When Zhengyan gave this speech, Tzu Chi was still a relatively small organization. Nevertheless, in 1985 she hoped that Tzu Chi’s 70,000 members “could all be the bodhisattva Guanyin”; there would then be “70,000 bodhisattvas,”72 and the human world could thus become “perfect, blissful.”73 Ordinary people could therefore perform Guanyin’s deeds themselves, showing that Zhengyan saw the Pure Land as a model for earthly society that could be actualized through charitable work. 65 Ibid., 221. 66 Ibid., 241-42. 67 Zhengyan, Ciji de xunxi (di yi ji) (Taipei: Fojiao Ciji jijinhui, 1987), 131. 68 Ibid. 69 Ibid. 70 Guanyin is often represented as having one thousand eyes and one thousand hands, which facilitate the rendering of aid to distressed beings. 71 Zhengyan, Ciji de xunxi (di yi ji), 131-32. 72 Ibid., 132. 73 Ibid., 132-33.

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Zhengyan also takes a more liberal attitude toward Christianity than her mentor, Yinshun.74 She explains that “one only needs to have correct religious views and deep belief. Then, the religious tenets ought to be the same.”75 The central feature of all religions, Zhengyan claims, is love: “Christianity and Catholicism also discuss fraternal love. True fraternal love has no borders and no ethnic or religious divisions. When one’s belief is thorough, the spirit is the same.”76 Christianity and Buddhism can therefore share in their ultimate religious truth. While removing this doctrinal uniqueness from Christianity, Zhengyan is also able to express it in Buddhist and Confucian terms. For example, she holds that with love as the basis of action, one can influence society in a way that clearly resonates with the Confucian overtones we earlier heard expressed in the “Great Learning”: “if one’s thoughts are inclined towards goodness, one can transform oneself, and found a happy family. With a good family organization, society will then be happy.”77 Thus, while Tzu Chi has drawn from the Christian normative model, she has articulated it in terms that resonate within the “Chinese” context. There are numerous examples of Tzu Chi’s interfaith engagement. Some of them are listed in a devotional volume celebrating Tzu Chi’s thirtieth anniversary; this includes work by Tzu Chi volunteers at one of Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity, in Xizhi in New Taipei City, providing aid to the elderly and disabled people. The book remarks that “Tzu Chi people [Ciji ren] and Mother Theresa’s nuns have differences of belief, but their spirit of religious education, and the philosophy of serving others, are the same.”78 The entry remarks that Zhengyan herself visited nuns from the facility in 1988. On another occasion, in 1993, a delegation from the Vatican visited Tzu Chi’s hospital in Hualian. Zhengyan remarked on the occasion that “although the fraternal love (boai) spoken of in Catholicism, and the compassion (cibei) spoken of in Buddhism have different names, the aim of love is the same.”79 74 For a discussion of Zhengyan in relation to Yinshun, see Stefania Travagnin, “Master Yinshun and Buddhist Nuns in/for the Human Realm. Shift and Continuity from Theory to Practice of renjian fojiao in Contemporary Taiwan,” 83-100, in The Margins of Becoming: Identity and Culture in Taiwan, ed. Carsten Storm and Mark Harrison (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2007). 75 Zhengyan, You peng zi yuanfang lai, 190. 76 Ibid., 190-91. 77 Ibid., 217. 78 Wang Duanzhen (ed.), Xinlian wanrui: Ciji yingxiang sanshi nian (Taipei: Fojiao Ciji cishan shiye jijinhui, 2007), 210. 79 Ibid.

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Similarly, the book tells of Tzu Chi volunteers at the Catholic Mater Private Hospital in Brisbane. According to the book, besides volunteering at the hospital, they raised money to buy equipment for it. This led the Catholic nun, Sister Angela Mary Doyle, to visit Zhengyan in Hualian to thank her. The book notes that despite their differences, both Zhengyan and Sister Angela are engaged in the common mission of charity. An article on Tzu Chi’s website describes how the two remained in contact over subsequent years, again stressing their similarities. It explains that In recognition of the volunteers’ spirit of devotion, the Mater Hospital has since 1994 declared the first Sunday of every July as Tzu Chi Day. On November 16, 2000, the hospital set a Tzu Chi Room in a 120-year-old building; it includes Master Cheng Yen’s photo, Tzu Chi’s history and an image of the Buddha treating the sick. The building is a historic monument and protected by the government.80

It likewise quotes Zhengyan as saying that “no matter whether the water is in a well, stream or river, it is always water. It is the same with religions, including Christianity, Buddhism and Catholicism. They all begin with love.”81 In fact, Tzu Chi has often collaborated with Catholics; for example, another article on Tzu Chi’s website, published after a Vatican delegation visited Zhengyan in Hualian seeking “Tzu Chi’s active participation and cooperation for the possibility of holding an international Inter-Religious Dialogue in Taiwan”.82 During the meeting, Zhengyan mentioned some recent projects to rebuild Catholic institutions after disasters. After Typhoon Haiyan devastated the Philippines in 2013, Tzu Chi worked with Catholic churches to provide immediately disaster relief and long-term rebuilding and recovery. Considering that the Philippines is a Catholic country and the survivors needed a strong faith to get them 80 “Sister Angela Mary Doyle Has Gift For Master Cheng Yen,” Tzu Chi (2012), available at: http://tw.tzuchi.org/en/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=946%3Asisterangela-mary-doyle-has-gift-for-master-cheng-yen-&catid=1%3Ataiwan&Itemid=263&lang= en (accessed July 29, 2019). 81 Ibid. 82 “A Permanent and Constant Dialogue In Between Tzu Chi and Vatican,” Tzu Chi, March 4, 2016, available at: http://tw.tzuchi.org/en/index.php?option=com_ content&view=article&id=1367%3Aa-permanent-and-constant-dialogue-in-between-tzuchi-and-vatican&catid=1%3Ataiwan&Itemid=263&lang=es (accessed July 29, 2019).

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through the difficult times, Tzu Chi voluntarily repaired and rebuilt the heavily damaged Santo Nino Church in Tacloban City. … In Haiti, another Catholic country, after the powerful 2010 earthquake, Tzu Chi saw the needs for development. After the disaster relief ended, Tzu Chi also rebuilt three schools for Sisters of St. Ann Congregation.83

From these examples we can see that Zhengyan has had a long-standing engagement with Christianity, seeing it not as a religious competitor, but rather a partner in the common mission of delivering charity.84

Buddha-Light Mountain Xingyun is another monastic, inspired by Taixu, whose own organization, Foguang Shan (Buddha-Light Mountain), bears the imprint of its Christian influence. Born in 1927 in the town of Jiangdu in Jiangsu province,85 he received full ordination in 1941, and arrived in Taiwan in 1949 as part of the “Sangha Ambulance Corps,”86 or a medical unit comprised of monastics— one of the ways they avoided being drafted into combat units towards the end of the civil war. He subsequently remained at the Yuanguang Temple for two years, where he wrote and edited the Buddhist magazine Humanity.87 He also took to actively promoting Buddhism around the island. In 1967, he acquired a Christian poorhouse and used it to care for the needy. That year, he opened a temple complex in Gaoxiong, which he called Buddha-Light Mountain. Xingyun has made his Christian influence clear in comments such as the following, made in 1976: These days, apart from running hospitals and schools, Christianity proselytizes in prisons and disseminates their doctrine via television. Not only does this not bother me, but I thank them from the bottom of 83 Ibid. 84 For further discussion of this, see a Tzu Chi-based account at Shi Defu, “Cong Ciji ‘da ai wu guojie’ zhi shijian tan renjian Fojiao,” Ciji (2008), available at: http://www.tzuchi-org.tw/index. php?option=com_content&view=article&id=158%3A2008-11-11-06-29-25&catid=38%3Areadtips&Itemid=560&lang=zh (accessed July 29, 2019). 85 Fu Zhiying, Chuandeng: Xingyun dashi zhuan (Taipei: Tianxia wenhua chuban gufen youxian gongsi, 1995), 15-16; Pittman, Toward a Modern Chinese Buddhism, 270. 86 Ibid., 40-41. 87 Ibid., 58.

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my heart. In recent decades, the Buddhist world has been like a sleeping lion that is slowly awakening. Gradually, it has begun to engage in radio broadcasting, the provision of winter relief, the founding of hospitals, the establishment of educational institutes, the dissemination of [Buddhist] teachings, and other social enterprises. This is all due to the contributions of Christians. If we were not stimulated by Christianity, people in the Buddhist world would still just be old monks sitting in meditation, and no one would have thought of doing social welfare work!88

As was the case for Zhengyan, then, the Christian normative model of religious activity helped inspire Xingyun to pursue his own modern form of Buddhist practice. And yet, like Zhengyan, he considers these activities as an expression of the Buddha’s original teachings. Xingyun has claimed that Buddhism had always been socially engaged, and always “modern,” both in India and in China. This meant that it “represented progress, adaptation, success, light, freedom, and democracy.”89 In a 1982 speech, he explained that “according to excavated remains in India, monasteries in which the Buddha had resided had all attained a state of ‘modernization’ for that period, in terms of sanitation, ventilation, or other types of facilities.”90 Meanwhile, Buddhist establishments in China had always engaged in charitable work—such as, for example, in the Northern Wei (386-535) dynasty during famines. In the Tang dynasty (618-907), monastics rescued orphans and established institutes for the poor, clinics, and provided medicine. Xingyun thus argued that the “modernization” of Buddhism was actually a return to its origins.91 Buddha-Light Mountain is not as devoted to aid-work as Tzu Chi; it devotes more energy to the popularization of Buddhism. Yet in doing so, it also emulates the Christian normative model, which spread the gospel through

88 See Xingyun, “Cong hequn zhong guangjie renyuan, available at: https://web.archive. org/web/20131223191445/http://www.fgs.org.tw/master/masterA/books/delectus/buddhistbook/04-04.htm (accessed June 28, 2016). 89 Xingyun, “Renjian Fojiao de jiben sixiang,” in “Fojiao” congshu zhi shi: renjian Fojiao vol. 10 of 10, edited by Xingyun (Gaoxiong: Foguang chubanshe, 1995), 415. 90 Xingyun, “Fojiao xiandaihua,” speech delivered at Foguang Shan, February 1982, available at https://web.archive.org/web/20080919105806/http://www.fgs.org.tw/master/masterA/library/31/3-1-b-26.htm (accessed June 28, 2016). 91 Xingyun, “Fojiao xiandaihua.”

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bureaucratic associations that transcended individual, localized religious establishments. According to their website, By compiling and printing the canon, publishing different kinds of books, distributing newspapers and magazines, providing paintings and calligraphy, audio/video cassettes, records, audio/visual CDs, and so on, we have taken up the responsibility of transmitting the sound of the Dharma to the masses.92

Many of these materials may be found at the temple’s bookshop in Gaoxiong. There, one will see annotated versions of popular sutras; biographies of wellknown Buddhists in graphic novel format; books on Buddhism directed at the popular market; CDs and DVDs; and other forms of Buddhist paraphernalia. Buddha-Light Mountain has also established a number of educational institutions including seminaries, universities, and schools.93 Therefore, while Xingyun promotes a worldly form of Buddhism that draws from Taixu, the expression of Buddhism in this way—that is, his embrace of proselytization across a range of media platforms and throughout the world, as well his promotion of education and charity—seems to have been inspired by the Christian example in China and Taiwan. Buddha-Light Mountain has also pursued dialogue with Catholics— Xingyun himself has met popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI.94 His temple complex in Gaoxiong holds an annual “‘When Buddha Meets the Gods’ event”. This “is held on 25th December every year”; Regarding one such event, the website of the Fo Guang Shan Buddha Museum wrote that “last year, numerous representatives from various religions including Taoism, Catholicism, and Confucianism, from home and abroad, joined the event to celebrate religious harmony and world peace.”95 In 2015, Xingyun also founded the Association of Traditional Chinese Religions (Zhonghua chuantong zongjiao 92 See “Renshi Foguang Shan,” Foguang Shan, available at: www.fgs.org.tw/fgs_introduction. html (accessed September 24, 2008). 93 Foguang Shan apparently also had plans to establish a university in China’s Hubei province; this was to be called Hongdao University. However, nothing seems to have come of this. See Xingyun, ed., Foguang jiaokeshu vol. 11 of 12 (Sanchong: Foguang wenhua shiye youxian gongsi, 1999), 188. 94 Ryan Drillsma, “Fo Guang Shan monks in southern Taiwan pledge Notre Dame assistance,” Taiwan News, April 19 (2019), available at: https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3683621 (accessed July 30, 2019). 95 “Embracing Religious Beauty,” Foguang Shan Buddha Museum, available at: http://www. fgsbmc.org.tw/en/ennews.aspx?NID=201701004 (accessed July 30, 2019).

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zonghui).96 Regarding this, a report explains that “after the Buddha and Jesus founded their religions, they gathered more than one billion believers. The gods of Taiwan have many believers. … The Master hopes that Taiwanese traditional beliefs can be internationalized, and attain an equal status to that of the Buddha and Jesus”.97 Here, then, Xingyun sees Buddhism and Christianity as equals, but has turned his attention not just to Christianity, but also traditional folk belief in Taiwan.

Lingjiu Shan and Zhongtai Chansi If we consider another of the large Buddhist organizations in Taiwan, Zhongtai Chansi, we do not f ind such an express effort at interfaith engagement. The group began when the founder, Weijue (1928-2016), built his f irst monastery in 1987, and then commenced plans to build the Zhongtai Chan Temple in 1992. This f inally opened in 2001.98 Since then, Zhongtai Chan has focused on promoting and teaching Chan, with centers in Taiwan and around the world.99 Yet we can see evidence of an internalized model of normative religious practice and organization, originating in the republican period, present in the group’s modern form. Nearby is an elementary, a junior and a senior high school, established by the organization; the group has also engaged in charitable activities, stating on its website that Based on the Buddhist spirit of equality and liberation of all beings, the Grand Master has led the Sangha and lay disciples in various relief efforts to help those impacted by the devastation of natural disasters, such as the severe 1999 earthquake in central Taiwan, the South Asian tsunami disaster in 2004, the Sichuan 512 earthquake in 2008, and the 2009 Taiwan flood. Chung Tai [Zhongtai] also provides hospice and funeral 96 Gao Huiping (2015), “Zhonghua chuantong zongjiao zonghui chengli,” Renjian fubao, available at: http://www.merit-times.com.tw/NewsPage.aspx?unid=403148 (accessed July 30, 2019). 97 Renjian fubao, Renjian she and bianji bu (2015), “Zhonghua chuantong zongjiao zonghui zai Foguang Shan chengli: Wang Jinping ren zonghuizhang, Xu Tiancai, Yang Qiuxing deng ren fu zonghuizhang,” Qiao damo, available at: http://www.fgsbmc.org.tw/GauD.aspx?PNO=2015020005 (accessed July 30, 2019). 98 “Establishment of the Monastery,” Chung Tai Chan Monastery, available at: https://www. ctworld.org.tw/english-96/html/index.htm (accessed July 30, 2019). 99 “Special Features of the Monastery,” Chung Tai Chan Monastery, available at: https://www. ctworld.org.tw/english-96/html/a5Special%20Features%20of%20the%20Monastery.htm (accessed July 30, 2019).

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services, offers dedications to the deceased, establishes education funds for aborigines, and makes donations to schools, public services and communities. This reflects the spirit of “bodhisattva practice in this world.”100

Among a range of other cultural activities held by the group, in 2002, it held a “World Religions and Cultural Exchange Symposium,” which aimed at discussing the role of religion in the twenty-first century.101 The group also established a museum in 2016, called the “Zhong Tai World Museum,” which focuses on Buddhist art and artefacts.102 As Cheng-tian Kuo notes, while the founder, Weijue, was not a disciple of Taixu, his worldly approach to engaging with secular society does bear some similarity to Taixu’s.103 And yet, if we are to find another group that makes interfaith dialogue a principle mission, we must turn to a different organization. This group is Lingjiu Shan, or Vulture Peak—the name of the organization is taken from one of the sites at which the Buddha is said to have preached. It was founded by Xindao, who was born in Myanmar in 1948, and arrived in Taiwan in 1961. He later received ordination as a monastic from Xingyun at Buddha-Light Mountain. After a period of retreat, in 1984, “he established the Wusheng Monastery on the mountain in order to propagate the Dharma and help relieve suffering in the world, at the same time advancing the cause of world peace through interreligious dialogue.”104 Xindao claims to teach from the traditions of Hinayana, Mahayana and Vajrayana (Tibetan Buddhism),105 but he has taken an active role in facilitating inter-faith dialogue in Taiwan as well. Perhaps the most significant statement of this is the group’s Museum of World Religions in Taipei, which opened in 2001. The museum’s website indicates that near its entrance is a quotation from the Chan patriarch Daoxin (580-651): “one hundred thousand dharma-gates, all are entered through a square inch”; it explains that a broad, inter-religious translation can be given to this quote: that 100 “Threefold Education,” Chung Tai Chan Monastery, available at: https://www.ctworld.org. tw/english-96/html/a7Threefold-SOCIAL.htm (accessed July 30, 2019). 101 “Wenhua jiaoliu,” Zhongtai shijie, available at: https://www.ctworld.org.tw/activities/ culture/index.htm (accessed July 30, 2019). 102 Chung Tai World Museum, available at: https://www.ctwm.org.tw/en/index.html (accessed July 30, 2019). 103 See Kuo, Religion and Democracy in Taiwan, 31. 104 “Founder,” Master Hsin Tao, available at: https://www.hsintao.org/en/about.html (accessed July 30, 2019); “Founder,” Museum of World Religions, available at: https://www.mwr.org.tw/ mwr_en/xmdoc/cont?xsmsid=0I052375433868891650 (accessed July 30, 2019). 105 “Lineages,” Master Hsin Tao, available at: https://www.hsintao.org/en/about/lineages.html (accessed July 29, 2019).

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“the doors to goodness, wisdom and compassion are opened by keys of the heart.”106 The museum also includes a “water curtain” that is intended to be a point at which to ponder the message from Daoxin, since water holds a special significance in various religions, including baptism in Christianity and purification in Buddhism.107 Immediately, we can see an effort made to provide a practical example of a concept, materially represented, on which different religions can find common ground. Meanwhile, a Buddhist quotation has been given an inclusive meaning that can be taken as an invitation to interfaith dialogue. According to the website, along the “Pilgrim’s Way,” one hears voices in various languages asking different religious questions in an effort to show how these are common to all faiths.108 One is then invited to leave a handprint on a heat-sensitive wall; again, like the water-curtain, the hand represents a common feature of ritual in various religions.109 The museum thus asks visitors to directly participate in “dialogue” through the laying of hands on the wall. Finally, one arrives at the Golden Lobby, where it is written “Love is our shared truth—Peace is our eternal hope”. This is “the founding inspiration of the Museum of World Religions”; the website explains that “the ceiling of the Golden Lobby represents sacred heaven, and when light from the 12 star signs on the ceiling is projected on the floor, the symbolic bridge between heaven and earth is built.” Meanwhile, on the floor of the Golden Lobby there is a ‘Cosmograph’ representing the three dimensions of the cosmos—Heaven, Earth and humankind. It combines traditional images, colors, materials and motifs of the world’s various religions. The labyrinthine pattern of the Cosmograph resembles the maze on the floor of the Chartres Cathedral, France, which has been slightly altered to include colors and animal images symbolizing the

106 “Elevator Entrance,” Museum of World Religions, available at: https://www.mwr.org.tw/ mwr_en/xcpmtexhi/cont?xsmsid=0I052391577771211747&sid=0I057581912116671591 (accessed July 29, 2019). 107 “Water Curtain,” Museum of World Religions, available at: https://www.mwr.org.tw/mwr_en/ xcpmtexhi/cont?xsmsid=0I052391577771211747&sid=0I057585854272670075 (accessed July 29, 2019). 108 “Pilgrim’s Way,” Museum of World Religions, available at: https://www.mwr.org.tw/mwr_en/ xcpmtexhi/cont?xsmsid=0I052391577771211747&sid=0I057591125688557674 (accessed July 29, 2019). 109 “Handprints,” Museum of World Religions, available at: https://www.mwr.org.tw/mwr_en/ xcpmtexhi/cont?xsmsid=0I052391577771211747&sid=0I057592847566718214 (accessed July 29, 2019).

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world’s major religions, and adjusted to lie in harmony with the four main compass points on which the MWR [Museum of World Religions] lies.”110

Beyond these initial displays, setting out the general philosophy of the museum, lie the exhibitions themselves. These include the Hall of Life’s Journey, which “makes use of film and multimedia interactive technology, allowing visitors to operate computer screens personally to gain an understanding of various religions’ similarities and differences in outlook towards human life,”111 as well as a meditation gallery, showing the contemplative practices of different faiths, models of sacred buildings, and displays outlining the beliefs of different religions. From the Museum of World Religions in Taipei, we can see the importance of interfaith dialogue to Lingjiu Shan. One does not have a sense of competition emanating from it, but rather an attempt to find points of commonality between different traditions. Again, this turn towards dialogue, rather than competition, reflects social and political changes in Taiwan, where democratization and the rise of civil society have provided opportunities for inter-religious engagement outside of political frameworks. A statement on Pope Francis’s website gives another example of interfaith dialogue involving Lingjiu Shan. This explains that: The Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue of the Holy See, in cooperation with the Chinese Regional Bishops Conference (CRBC), and Ling Jiou [Lingjiu] Mountain Buddhist Society, organized the Sixth Buddhist-Christian Colloquium from 13-15 November 2017 at Ling Jiou [Lingjiu] Buddhist Monastery, and, on the following day, the Closing Ceremony at the Museum of World Religions, Taipei. The general theme was Buddhists and Christians Walking Together on the Path of Nonviolence. The Tzu Chi Foundation, Fo Guang Shan [Buddha-Light Mountain] and the Buddhist Association of New Taipei City were also actively involved in organizing this Colloquium.112

110 “Golden Lobby,” Museum of World Religions, available at: https://www.mwr.org.tw/mwr_en/ xcpmtexhi/cont?xsmsid=0I052391577771211747&sid=0I057594125552404726 (accessed July 29, 2019). 111 “Hall of Life’s Journey,” Museum of World Religions, available at: https://www.mwr.org.tw/ mwr_en/xcpmtexhi/cont?xsmsid=0I052391577771211747&sid=0I057612803752905496 (accessed July 29, 2019). 112 “Sixth Buddhist-Christian Colloquium Report,” Pope Francis Daily, available at: http:// popefrancisdaily.com/sixth-buddhist-christian-colloquium-report/ (accessed July 29, 2019).

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The conference also included representatives from “the Federation of Asian Bishops Conferences (FABC), the World Council of Churches (WCC), and Monastic Interreligious Dialogue.”113 Participants agreed that on the basis of their respective religious convictions they need to bring new hope to a shattered world by speaking of the love of Jesus and the compassion of the Buddha. This task includes speaking out in defense of the powerless and voiceless, standing up for justice, mending broken hearts and polarized societies, distancing themselves from sectarianism, and halting the building of walls that separate religions and cultures.114

During the meeting, Xindao led a meditation session. The report on Lingjiu Shan’s website states that Among the people who attended the Chan Meditation session are many Catholic guests. Master Hsin Tao [Xindao] has a special connection to Catholics. They opened up and began talking to other religions earlier. They’re the ones who showed us how to engage with other religions and to start a dialogue. The dialogue that we have is looking at the Bible, Koran, Sutras and finding what we have to offer to society with it, what we can give to people with it, and the answer is morality and compassion—that is what our religions have in common.115

Here we see that, again, Xindao has actively sought dialogue with Christians, and is able to engage with them positively. Such engagement is a marked change from the type of competition we saw earlier in the post-war period, in the years immediately following the KMT’s retreat to the island of Taiwan.

Conclusion From these examples, we can see how the era of overt interfaith competition has ended. In the beginning of the chapter, we saw how Dongchu and Taixu wrote effusively of Chiang Kai-shek. Dongchu wrote in the period of martial 113 Ibid. 114 Ibid. 115 “Master Hsin Tao Leads Colloquium in Buddhist Meditation,” Ling Jiou Mountain Buddhist Society, available at: https://web.archive.org/web/20180717233802/http://www.093ljm.org/ indexdetail.asp?id=559 (accessed July 29, 2019).

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law, and as someone closely aligned with BAROC. Whether they had ulterior motives in praising Chiang in this way is something that we cannot know, but neither did they remain quiet. The fact that both monastics actively wrote in such a way—Taixu even linking his philosophy of Buddhist reform directly to KMT ideology—suggests that for them, Sanminzhuyi really was a political philosophy that paralleled Buddhism in the religious sphere. At the same time, Chiang, as the representative of this philosophy, in turn became a protector of the Dharma—a leader who could save Buddhism from atheistic communism, and who could provide the social and political conditions for Buddhism to flourish. The fact that he was Christian was conveniently ignored or reinterpreted, thereby drawing Buddhism closer to the KMT and enhancing its political legitimacy through its loyalty. In this way, Buddhism could claim to be modern, just as Christianity was already assumed to be so, having already provided a model for religious activity, practice and belief in the republican period. But just as the intensive phase of Buddhist competition with Christians was winding down in the mid to late 1960s, other Buddhists besides those we have focused on throughout most of this volume were themselves applying aspects of this model. We heard in chapter one that missionaries themselves theorized that as Taiwan’s economy improved, the social aid Christians provided was less needed. Potential converts hence remained with, or returned to, traditional Chinese religions. At the same time, we have also seen that Zhengyan, inspired by Christianity, herself emulated various features of the Christian aid model, embodied in the Catholic nuns who tried to convert her. Xingyun, too, credits Christianity with inspiring his own Buddhist activities. As these groups grew, they did not compete with Christians as Zhuyun, Dongchu, Yinshun and Shengyan did in the intellectual or “theological” sphere. We see a gradual movement to more positive forms of dialogue rather than overt, at least, competition. Instead, Zhengyan and Xingyun—both inspired by Taixu like the other monastics covered in this volume—praise Christianity, while asserting no fundamental difference in religious spirit. Shengyan, too, transformed his approach. In this sense, we can divide his career into two phases—one dominated by his time in the army and before his studies in Japan, when he was nationalistic, ethnocentric, and fiercely critical of Christianity, and another, during his Dharma Drum Mountain phase, in which he pursued dialogue and saw points of commonality with Christianity. Later, the Lingjiu Shan organization made interfaith dialogue one of its prime objectives through the establishment of the Museum of World Religions. In other words, later in the post-war period, we see both

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an application of specific features of the Christian normative model in Taiwan, and active interfaith dialogue. Meanwhile, the circumstances contributing to the earlier period of interfaith competition faded. The authority of the KMT’s modern vision, and its promotion of a “Chinese” identity, declined. While some modern Buddhists, like Xingyun and Weijue, retained close relations with the KMT,116 in an era of democratization, with the increasing expression of Taiwanese identity, and with the diversification of the Buddhist market through the expansion of groups like those covered in this chapter—and the consequent reduction of the BAROC as a Buddhist force—it was not necessarily as profitable to align oneself so closely with the KMT’s modernist vision. There were competing versions of identity in Taiwan in an increasingly complex society. Thus, the decline of Christian growth, and of the KMT’s ideological authority, along with the diversification of Taiwanese identity brought about by the nativization movement and democratization, meant the circumstances for interfaith competition driving Buddhists like Zhuyun, Dongchu, Yinshun and Shengyan (earlier in his career) to engage critically with Christianity were gone.

116 See Kuo, Religion and Democracy in Taiwan, 32.

Conclusion Abstract The conclusion sets out the main contributions of this study. First, it shows that a cohort of well-known, elite Buddhists engaged in intense competition with Christians in the postwar period, seeking to align themselves with the contemporary socio-political context. Second, it shows that the type of modernity matters when discussing religion in the modern world. In this case, the study showed that Buddhists identified with the broad set of values that flourished in the postwar period under the KMT, and that they competed with Christians on the basis of these. Finally, the study shows that identity itself is not simply the product of internal religious resources (beliefs, modes of practice, authorities), but also emerges through engagement or competition with external value sets (such as political ideologies or other religions). Keywords: Protestant Buddhism, modern Buddhism, interfaith, dialogue, competition

This study makes three main contributions to the field of religious studies, and the existing literature on Taiwan’s religious history. First is its identification of Taiwan as a site for continued Buddhist-Christian engagement, in the Chinese context, after 1949—a topic that has not received sustained scholarly attention. Second is the importance of how we define “modernity” when discussing religion in the modern world. In this case, I have argued against understanding modernity in a singular or unvaried manner, instead proposing “KMT modernity” as a particular type of modernity to which Buddhists sought adaptation. Third, it has suggested that we need to take the role of interfaith competition into account when thinking about religious identity, along with the context in which this competition takes place. This conclusion will summarize these findings, and suggest directions for future research—specifically how Christianity itself adapted to the context of KMT modernity, and the attitudes of Buddhists beyond the parameters of this particular microhistory.

Pacey, S. Buddhist Responses to Christianity in Postwar Taiwan: Awakening the World. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020. doi: 10.5117/9789463724111_conc

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Religious inter-connectivity To begin with, this study covers an aspect of Taiwan’s religious history that has not been the subject of focused scholarly research. Monographs on Buddhist history in Taiwan, such as those by Jiang Canteng, 1 Yang Huinan,2 Chen Bing and Deng Zimei,3 Charles Jones or André Laliberté, 4 focus on the activities of Buddhists themselves, rather than their interactions with members of different faiths. Moreover, the time-period under discussion—mainly the 1950s through to the 1970s—has not received much scholarly attention, with most works focusing on the republican period on the mainland, or more recent decades in Taiwan. Works in this category include those by Don A. Pitmann,5 on Taixu; Justin Ritzinger’s study,6 on Taixu and the Maitreya cult in the Republic; Erik Hammerstrom’s volume on Buddhism and science in the Republic;7 Cheng-tien Kuo’s work on religion and democracy in Taiwan; 8 and Richard Madsen’s study of religion and civil society on the island.9 Likewise, research focusing on Chinese Christianity, such as Chloë Starr’s work on Chinese theology, or Gerda Wielander’s volume on Christian values in China, concentrate on Christianity, whereas the present study places Buddhists and Christians alongside one another.10 This book also alerts us to an important moment in Chinese religious history—one that is connected to events on the mainland as well. It reminds us that religions do not exist in isolation—they engage with each other, and with broader social and political contexts. By tracing the interaction of two faiths, with each other and with their political context, rather than treating them separately, we can understand Taiwan’s religious landscape from a unique angle. 1 For example, see Jiang Canteng, Taiwan dangdai Fojiao, Taipei: Nantian shuju youxian gongsi, 2000. 2 Yang Huinan, Dangdai Fojiao sixiang zhanwang, Taipei: Dongda tushu gufen youxian gongsi, 1991. 3 Chen Bing and Deng Zimei, Ershi shiji Zhongguo Fojiao, Beijing: Minzu chubanshe, 2000. 4 Jones, Buddhism in Taiwan, Laliberté, The Politics of Buddhist Organizations in Taiwan. 5 Pittman, Toward a Modern Chinese Buddhism. 6 Justin Ritzinger, Anarchy in the Pure Land: Reinventing the Cult of Maitreya in Modern Chinese Buddhism, New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. 7 Hammerstrom, The Science of Chinese Buddhism. 8 Kuo, Religion and Democracy in Taiwan. 9 Madsen, Democracy’s Dharma. 10 Chloë Starr, Chinese Theology: Text and Context, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2016; Gerda Wielander, Christian Values in Communist China, Abingdon: Routledge, 2013.

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Interfaith competition in Taiwan after 1949 Second, this study alerts us to the continued engagement of Buddhists and Christians in Taiwan after 1949. As we learned in the introduction, and following the work of scholars such as Welch, Goossaert and Palmer, we know that Christianity exerted an influence over Chinese religion through a model of religious normativity. We also learned about the dialogue between Buddhists and Christians that was undertaken by monastics such as Taixu. Other scholars, such as Fenggang Yang,11 have explored the development of Christianity in the years following the establishment of the PRC—what this shows is that genuine interfaith dialogue after this time was constrained by the imposition of Marxism as an ideological framework for religious practice. This cut off the continued development of the Buddhist-Christian engagement that unfolded during the republic on the mainland. This does not mean, however, that it did not continue—as this study shows, it shifted location to Taiwan. It was to there that missionaries turned their attention after atheistic communists took power in 1949, and where the engagement that commenced on the mainland reached a climactic phase. The particular example we cover in this volume was stimulated by specific circumstances—Zhuyun’s anti-Christian talks, and the resulting tract prompting responses from Wu Enpu and Shengyan. What followed was a period during which Buddhists critiqued Christianity in various ways. On the one hand, Buddhists tried to assert the superiority of their tradition by framing it as aligned with values that proliferated under the KMT. But on the other, as we saw in the last chapter, the Christian normative model of religious organization and activity was influential on Buddhists at the grassroots level. Moreover, in the years that followed, we saw more positive forms of interfaith engagement take root. These stressed the similarities of Buddhism and Christianity, along with other faiths. This competition between Buddhists and Christians in Taiwan is, in some ways, not unique. We already know from previous scholarship that Christianity provoked reinterpretations of doctrine elsewhere in the Buddhist world. These other examples add strength to the argument that Christianity, as a vector for modernity, also had an influence in Taiwan and that Buddhists responded to it. We might note that the groups we discussed in the last chapter especially share similarities with what Richard Gombrich and Gananath Obeyesekere 11 Fenggang Yang, Religion in China: Survival and Revival under Communist Rule, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.

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have called “Protestant Buddhism”—a form of Buddhism that arose in Ceylon between 1860 and 1865, consisting of a response by lay-people to the criticisms of missionaries and contact with the West. Protestant Buddhism was a movement among the laity to study the Dharma by themselves, without clerical leadership.12 It gained further momentum when the layman Dharmapāla portrayed Buddhism as a rational, intellectual, and modern philosophy.13 Besides promoting missionary work,14 and founding Buddhist schools,15 he also founded the Maha Bodhi Society, which aimed at restoring Buddhism in India and focused on demonstrating the similarities between the Dharma and modern ideas. There are, in fact, several direct connections between Protestant Buddhism and Taixu’s Buddhism for the human world. First, Dharmapāla was an associate of Yang Wenhui,16 who would eventually teach Taixu and was instrumental in the lay-Buddhist movement in China in the early twentieth century. Aside from the overlap in their plans for Buddhist education, dissemination of the Dharma, and the involvement of the laity, we have already heard how Taixu was interested in promoting Buddhism by outlining similarities between it and modern ideas from the West. Moreover, we know that Taixu’s own Buddhist rejuvenation efforts were in part inspired by the Christian normative model. Following on from this, Protestant Buddhist activities outwardly resembled those of our Taiwanese groups. Their emphasis on the laity, the popularization of the Dharma, and in framing Buddhism in terms that de-emphasized its “religious” aspects were all points they shared in common. And a climate of criticism and contact with the West were also formative influences on both the Taiwanese and Ceylonese movements. It was therefore not only in Ceylon that Christianity stimulated a reconsideration of Buddhist tradition in light of modernity. As Whalen Lai writes, Christian activities “impressed all Buddhists—so much so that all modern Buddhist leaders, from Dharmapāla in Sri Lanka, through Buddhadasa and Sulak Sivaraksa in Thailand, to the movers of the New Religions in Japan, all copied the Christians and set up counterparts of the YMCA (called the 12 Richard Gombrich and Gananath Obeyesekere, Buddhism Transformed: Religious Change in Sri Lanka (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 215-16. 13 Gananath Obeyesekere, “Religious Symbolism and Political Change in Ceylon,” Modern Ceylon Studies 1, no. 1 (1970): 47. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid., 46. 16 See Yinshun, Taixu dashi nianpu, in Yinshun fashi Foxue zhuzuoji (CD-ROM), vol. 13 (Xinzhu: Caituan faren Yinshun wenjiao jijinhui, 2006), 38.

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YMBA, in fact), the Christian colleges, and the church hospitals”.17 The Christian association with modernity meant that Buddhists had access to a ready-made model for being religious and modern at the same time. The Buddhologist Donald Lopez has meanwhile identified a wider variety of features, comprising what he calls “modern Buddhism”—something which “seems to have begun, at least in part, as a response to Western modernity, as perceived by certain Asian Buddhists, especially those who had encountered colonialism.”18 Lopez adds that “these modern Buddhists were very much products of modernity, with the rise of the middle class, the power of the printing press, [and] the ease of international travel” contributing to their emergence.19 Therefore, while modern Buddhism was a reaction to modernity, modernity also helped shape it. Like the Taiwanese groups in the previous chapter—and to an extent, the other figures we have examined in this study—modern Buddhism “rejects many of the ritual and magical elements of previous forms of Buddhism, it stresses equality over hierarchy, the universal over the local, and often exalts the individual over the community.”20 It furthermore “does not see itself as the culmination of a long process of evolution, but rather as a return to the origin, to the Buddhism of the Buddha himself. There is certainly a criticism of the past, but that critique is directed not at the most distant Buddhism, but at the most recent.”21 Despite this, it is ancient Buddhism, and especially the enlightenment of the Buddha 2,500 years ago, that is seen as most modern, as most compatible with the ideals of the European Enlightenment that occurred so many centuries later, ideals embodied in such concepts as reason, empiricism, science, universalism, individualism, tolerance, freedom and the rejection of religious orthodoxy. Indeed, for modern Buddhists, the Buddha knew long ago what Europe would only discover much later.22

Modern Buddhists asserted that while the Buddha’s teachings were degraded by later erroneous and superstitious additions, these could be removed to 17 Whalen Lai, “Chinese Buddhist and Christian Charities: A Comparative History,” BuddhistChristian Studies 12 (1992), 5. 18 Donald S. Lopez Jr., Modern Buddhism: Readings for the Unenlightened (London: Penguin Books, 2002), xli. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid., xi. 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid., xi-xii.

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reveal an ancient world religion that embodied modernity. Buddhism thus became a religion emphasizing philosophy and meditation rather than ritual—which, at the same time, was “a world religion, fully the equal of Christianity in antiquity, geographical expanse, membership and philosophical profundity, with its own founder, sacred scriptures and fixed body of doctrine.”23 Therefore, we can see that the dynamics unfolding in Taiwan were representative of a broader, more global Buddhist response to Christianity. We have seen in this study how Zhuyun, Shengyan, Dongchu and Yinshun presented Buddhism in terms that matched the framework of Lopez’s “modern Buddhism,” articulating a Buddhist identity that was scientific, engaged with current ideological or intellectual trends and realities, and yet culturally Chinese—all the while discrediting Christianity as being misaligned with those values. Like their counterparts outside Taiwan, they appropriated modernity, reinterpreting and rearticulating what it meant to be Buddhist, and presented this version of Buddhism as a rational, and modern, religious choice.

KMT modernity Protestant Buddhism points to the role played by Christianity in the articulation of a modern Buddhist identity. And in the case of the circle of Buddhists studied here, it was the Christian normative model, and the Christian critiques of Buddhism, that stimulated the Buddhist engagement with modernity itself. These Buddhists engaged directly in the types of activities for which Christians had previously been known—establishing schools, universities and hospitals. Others argued vociferously against the idea that Buddhism was a form of “idolatry” or superstition, asserting that it surpassed other religions in a religious hierarchy. The features of this identity emerged during the Buddhist engagement with Christians—their religious opponents—during a time of Christian expansion, as the viability of Buddhism was threatened on the mainland. Lopez’s “modern Buddhism” sets out the range of values that Buddhists appropriated in their engagement with modernity. But as we have seen in this study, the figures we have examined had a specific understanding of modernity—one comprised of values that proliferated under the KMT. Even Yinshun, who did not directly refer to KMT ideology in his 23 Ibid., xiii.

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attacks on Christianity, nevertheless drew from the values flourishing in republican-era China and which were later promoted in Taiwan—values such as nationalism, anti-communism, democracy, science, and loyalty to traditional Chinese culture.24 Therefore, while this particular circle of Buddhists was undoubtedly modern in the sense identified by Lopez,25 and responded to the Christian association with modernity in the way identified by Gombrich and Obeyesekere, in our case, it is clear we are dealing with a very specific form of modernity. The type of modernity Buddhists engage with should therefore be taken into account when we discuss modern Buddhism. S. N. Eisenstadt writes that even though Marx, Durkheim and Weber assumed, even if only implicitly, that the cultural program of modernity as it developed in modern Europe and the basic international constellations that emerged there would ultimately take over in all modernizing and modern societies; with the expansion of modernity, they would prevail throughout the world. … [T]he reality that emerged after the so-called beginnings of modernity, and especially after World War II, failed to bear out these assumptions.26

The proliferation of critical alternatives to capitalist, or “Western,” modernity that subsequently emerged shows that modernity itself is not fixed, static, or singular—but open to interpretation and contestation. Weberian secularization theory itself held that as society became more modern, religion would decline. Instead,27 religion has flourished within the framework of modern values. According to Eisenstadt, non-Western religious movements seem to engage in a much more intensive selective denial of at least some of these premises. … Their confrontation with the West does not take the form of wishing to become incorporated into a new hegemonic civilization, but to appropriate the new international global scene and modernity for themselves, celebrating their traditions and “civilizations.” These have 24 Yinshun claimed that he was not a nationalist—he emphasized early Indian Buddhism, rather than the Chinese schools. But a reading of his biblical critiques evinces shows that he was motivated by strong belief in Chinese cultural values. 25 Lopez includes Taixu and Zhengyan in his collection of modern Buddhist readings. 26 S. N. Eisenstadt, “Multiple Modernities,” Daedalus 129:1 (2000), 1. 27 William H. Swatos, Jr. and Kevin J. Christiano, “Introduction—Secularization Theory: The Course of a Concept,” Sociology of Religion 60, no. 3 (1999): 209-28.

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attempted to dissociate Westernization from modernity, denying the Western monopoly on modernity, rejecting the Western cultural program as the epitome of modernity.28

Therefore, in addition to the multiplicity of modernity, modernity itself is engaged with, and appropriated, in a variety of ways. Taixu and his followers were not alone in appropriating aspects of modernity to preserve tradition. At the same time, there were two models from which Buddhists could draw in the redefining their own tradition. On the one hand, there was KMT modernity, which itself was an attempt to save Chinese tradition through the selective appropriation of Western modernity. Taixu’s own Buddhist rejuvenation effort mirrored the KMT’s approach in this sense—he combined Buddhist tradition and KMT modernity in such a way as to counter Christianity. Those who claimed intellectual inspiration from him continued in this vein, their values intensifying as they competed with Christians in the context of Taiwan’s martial law period. On the other, Christianity in Taiwan itself gave Buddhists a model for combining religiosity with modernity. Taixu himself noted that his efforts at reframing Buddhism were inspired by Christian activity in China. Ultimately, although he engaged in dialogue with Christians, and other, secular intellectuals, Taixu felt that Buddhism cohered with the modern politics, science and philosophy of his age, seeing Christianity as having been discredited by science. In a 1933 speech he noted, for example, the spread of Buddhism in Europe. This marked a dramatic change, since originally European peoples believed in God, and their ethics and morals all depended on God. But after the development of scientific, modern civilization, the ethics and morals based on God have been obliterated. Nowadays in Europe and in the whole world, which has received European civilisation, people and countries are killing and seizing one another. If we wish to avoid this kind of suffering, [we must ask]: from among all things ancient and modern, is there a new morality which can be established and that is in accordance with scientific thought? This is the reason they have accepted Buddhist doctrines.29

In other words, Taixu marked out a Buddhist identity that was modern, but could cure the ills of modernity. He saw the moral vacuum created by 28 Eisenstadt, “Multiple Modernities,” 22. 29 Taixu, “Zenyang lai jianshe renjian Fojiao,” 454.

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what he saw as the decline of Christianity, and proposed his rearticulated Buddhism as able to rescue society from a crisis caused by the conflict between science and religion. What was needed was for the true vitality and worldliness of Buddhism to become manifest. Zhuyun also connected Christianity with violence, although he located the source of this in Christianity itself. Like Taixu, though, he framed Christianity as discordant with modernity. It would lead citizens of the ROC to cease being patriotic, and to become distant from the Confucian underpinnings of Chinese culture then promoted by the state. Zhuyun carved out an identity for Buddhists that placed them firmly at the center of the political culture of the ROC. Rather than any actual Christian expansion or genuine threat to Buddhism, it was the sense of crisis embodied in Zhuyun’s speeches in 1955, and the resulting tract, that led to the period of interfaith competition we have covered in this volume. Shengyan also asserted a link between the Three Principles of the People—the central ideological principle of the KMT—and Chinese culture. Like Zhuyun, he styled himself as a defender of the Buddhist faith against Christian critique. His perspectives, like Zhuyun’s, embodied his early nationalistic and culturalist tendencies; he rejected Christianity not simply for “theological” reasons, but because he considered it to run counter to Chinese and Confucian values. Shengyan eventually developed a typology of religion, presenting Buddhism as trans-historical, based on verifiable truths. It was therefore superior to other religions like Christianity, which he, through his “science of religion,” attempted to show had developed though historically and culturally-determined circumstances. This application of the academic method was intended to add weight to Shengyan’s placement of Christianity below Buddhism on a hierarchy of religious development. His approach mirrored that of Yinshun, who was influenced by the idea that Christianity was a form of cultural imperialism. He decided to become a Buddhist monk instead of pursuing Christianity, being tonsured in 1930. He engaged in analysis of the Bible in an effort to discredit it, using academic work in the development of his anti-Christian polemics while developing a de-mythologized understanding of Buddhism. And he attempted to show that Christianity was in fact antithetical to modernity, while Buddhism, on the other hand, was aligned with Chinese culture, which in turn cohered with modern values such as democracy and egalitarianism. Unlike Christianity, Buddhism fostered the search for knowledge and encouraged human progress. As Shengyan had done, he tried to show that the core insights of Buddhism (which had been neglected due to theistic historical accretions) were trans-historical in nature.

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The political nature of their Buddhist frameworks is evident throughout, although this is less overtly the case with Yinshun. Taixu, and the speakers at the BAROC conference in 1981, had aligned Buddhism with the Three Principles of the People. He praised Chiang Kai-shek as a protector of the Dharma. And the 1981 speakers extolled the insight of Sun Yat-sen; for them, the KMT had protected Taiwan from the communists, thus allowing Buddhism to thrive. In a similar way, Shengyan’s teacher Dongchu cited an aff inity between Christianity and communism, later also praising Chiang Kai-shek as a trans-religious figure of great spiritual insight. These descriptions, of course, bypassed the fact that Chiang and Sun were both Christians, but they were an attempt to situate Buddhism firmly within the KMT’s constellation of values while citing a close affinity with them, thereby pushing Christianity to the periphery of the ROC’s religious world.

Interfaith competition and identity This microhistory covered Buddhist responses both to Christian writers and, indirectly, to the political context which consisted of a particular framework of normativity. Previous work on identity formation shows that “dialogue” is a crucial part of how this happens. Besides the dialogue in which identity is articulated and formed, identity-formation also occurs in a context of power relationships. This study illustrates how an overarching, external framework of values forms a reference point for the construction of religious identity, and thus that religious identity grows not only out of religious values and beliefs, but within a context of interfaith competition, power-relations, and the aspiration towards external value-sets. To be sure, the engagement we have covered here was less about genuine dialogue than it was about competition. Interfaith dialogue is usually characterized as an attempt to f ind points of common ground in the interest of furthering ecumenical understanding. In their volume Buddhist-Christian Dialogue: Mutual Renewal and Transformation, Paul O. Ingram and Frederick J. Streng themselves write that interreligious dialogue is characterised by (1) a sense of urgency to provide insights and a conceptual framework for authentic living today, (2) a conviction that exponents of Christianity and Buddhism can contribute to resolving some basic ills in modern self-consciousness, and (3) a readiness to explore both the difficulties

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and the possibilities of religious renewal and creative transformation which arise from the serious engagement with another ultimate claim.30

In this study, Buddhists actively sought socio-political legitimacy by critiquing Christianity. But over time, and indeed during the period of debate covered in this volume, other Buddhists such as Zhengyan and, later, Shengyan, drew from the Christian normative model of religiosity and Buddhist tradition to found movements that eventually came to have a significant presence on Taiwan’s religious landscape, turning competition into dialogue. Yet there are many questions still remaining, and future research might consider some of the issues discussed here in more detail. This might include investigating other examples of Buddhist-Christian engagement during the martial law era to determine if similar dynamics of identity-formation were at play. Other periods, such as during the Republic in mainland China or the contemporary PRC, could also be explored. The present study has also focused on Buddhist elites—future work might turn to the attitudes of everyday believers, and may also expand to include not only Buddhists and Christians, but relations between other faiths as well. More specifically, the question of how Christians themselves adapted to the socio-political context created by the KMT party-state is deserving of more investigation. The interaction between different religions also requires more attention in the Chinese and Taiwanese contexts. The specific engagement we have examined in this book ended as the intellectual, social and political world fostered by the KMT declined, and as Taiwan’s economic success (and the rise of Buddhist groups like Dharma Drum Mountain, Tzu Chi, Buddha-Light Mountain, Lingjiu Shan and Zhongtai Chansi) loosened Christianity’s association with modernity. But today, although the specific arguments that emerged during the period of competition and debate have faded into history, the Buddhist groups that loom large on Taiwan’s religious landscape bear the imprint of their encounter with Christianity more generally. The story of modern Taiwanese Buddhism, therefore, should include a chapter on Christianity, and a discussion of the modernity, variously interpreted, that helped shape it.

30 Paul O. Ingram and Frederick J. Streng (eds.), Buddhist-Christian Dialogue: Mutual Renewal and Transformation (Eugene: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1986), 3-4.



List of Chinese Characters

Ai Beiping Puti Xueyuan Bianzaizhe Bijiao zongjiaoxue Bilou Bo [to extend] Bo [to peel] Bo “Fojiao yu Jidujiao de bijiao” Boai Bu sheng bu mie Bubianzhe Cankui Caodong Chan Chaoren Chen Duxiu Chen Huijian Chen Jiazhen Chen Shuibian Chen Yongzheng Chiang Ching-kuo [Jiang Jingguo] Chiang Kai-shek [Jiang Jieshi] Chou Lien-hua [Zhou Lianhua] Chuangzao wanwu zhe Chumin Ci Ming Ci’en Cibei Ciji Ciji ren Confucius [Kongzi] daci dabei jiudu zhongsheng Dai Jitao Dai Zhongjun Dangdai qingnian Danxu Dao Daodejing

愛 北平菩提學院 遍在者 比較宗教學 鄙陋 博 剝 駁佛教與基督教的比較 博愛 不生不滅 不變者 慚愧 曹洞 禪 超人 陳獨秀 陳慧劍 沈家楨 陳水扁 陳永崢 蔣經國 蔣介石 周聯華 創造萬物者 初民 慈明 慈恩 慈悲 慈濟 慈濟人 孔子 大慈大悲救度眾生 戴季陶 戴重鈞 當代青年 倓虛 道 道德經

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Buddhist Responses to Christianit y in Post war Taiwan

Daofeng Shan Daotong Daoyuan Datong Daxue Dayi yiguo Ding Songyun Dong Zhongshu Dongchu Dongfang jingtu fawei Du Erwei Duoluo Fagu Shan fan gong kang E Fazang Fazhi guojia Fofa gailun Foguang Shan Fohua Jidujiao Fojiao qingnian zazhishe Fojiao shengjing Fojiao wenhua Fojiao yu Jidujiao de bijiao Fojiao yuanyi de faming Fojiaoxue yanjiu Gong Tianmin Gongchandang Gongyang Guangzhou Shengjing Xueyuan Guanyin Guishen Guofu Guomin liyi fanli Guomin shenghuo xuzhi Guomindang Guowen xi Haichao yin Han jian Hanhou He

道風山 道統 道院 大同 大學 大醫醫國 丁松筠 董仲舒 東初 東方淨土發微 杜而未 墮落 法鼓山 反共抗俄 法藏 法治國家 佛法概論 佛光山 佛化基督教 佛教青年雜誌社 佛教聖經 佛教文化 佛教與基督教的比較 佛敎原義的發明 佛教學研究 龔天民 共產黨 供養 廣州聖經學院 觀音 鬼神 國父 國民禮儀範例 國民生活須知 國民黨 國文系 海潮音 漢奸 憨厚 和

219

List of Chinese Char acters

Heheben Hengxing Hengyi shuangyuekan Hong Weibing Hong Xiuquan Hongyi Hu Shi Huai’en Tang Huashen Hui ju Huineng Huo Shi Jiaohui Jiang zongtong yu Fojiao Jiaofa Jiduhua Jidujiao yanjiu Jidujiao yu Fojiao de bijiao Jidujiao zhi yanjiu Jieshi fojing yuanyi Jiezuo Jinbu Jingang buhuai Jingtu xinlun Jinri Fojiao Jueshe congshu Jueshe Junzheng Kaizheng Kang Youwei Kong Kongjie Laozi Lee Teng-hui [Li Denghui] Li Li Guoshen Li Shiqian Liang Shuming Liang zhi liang neng Liangneng Liangshande

和合本 恆星 恆毅雙月刊 紅衛兵 洪秀全 弘一 胡適 懷恩堂 化身 慧炬 惠能 活石教會 蔣總統與佛教 教法 基督化 基督教研究 基督教與佛教的比較 基督教之研究 揭示佛經原義 傑作 進步 金剛不壞 淨土新論 今日佛教 覺社叢書 覺社 軍政 開證 康有為 空 空界 老子 李登輝 釐 李国琛 李士謙 梁漱溟 良知良能 良能 良善的

220 

Liangxin Liangzhi Lianminde Liji Lin Huixiang Lingjiu Shan Linji Liu Renbin Liu zu tan jing Lizhihua Longdao Lu Junyi Lun Mao Zedong Meiguo Fojiaohui Mencius [Mengzi] Mi Jidutu Mianlun mie gong fu jiao Mingben Minshengzhuyi Minzuxing Minzuzhuyi Mixin Mogui Mouzi lihuo lun Moxing Mozhang Mozi Muzha Muzha Bianyili jiaohui Neng yan shan bian Nianfa Nianfo Nianfo qianshuo Ouyi Zhixu Pianzhou Ping Poxie ji Pubian de zongjiao

Buddhist Responses to Christianit y in Post war Taiwan

良心 良知 憐憫的 禮記 林惠祥 靈鷲山 臨濟 劉仁斌 六祖壇經 理智化 隆道 盧俊義 輪 毛澤東 美國佛教會 孟子 米基督徒 面輪 滅共復教 明本 民生主義 民族性 民族主義 迷信 魔鬼 牟子理惑論 魔性 魔障 墨子 木柵 木柵便以利教會 能言善辯 念法 念佛 念佛淺說 藕益智旭 扁舟 平 破邪集 普遍的宗教

221

List of Chinese Char acters

Puti shu Qing Qingdu Quannengzhe Ren Renhua Renjian Renjian Fojiao Rensheng Fojiao Rensheng zazhi Rensheng Renxing Riguang Riguang bianzhao Rulai Sanfozhuyi Sanjiao Sanminzhuyi Shangdi Shangdi ai shiren Shangdi yu Yehehua zhijian Shanhai jing Shehuihua de daode Shen Shengkai Shengming shuangyuekan Shengyan fashi yu zongjiao duihua Shengyan Shenhua de chengfen Shenjiaotu gai fanxing le! Shenren Shenxiu Shifei zhi xin Shijie youzhi shidai Shijie zongjiao hezuo huiyi Shizi hou Shun Si da shantou Song Meiling Su Manshu

菩提樹 清 清度 全能者 仁 人化 人間 人間佛教 人生佛教 人生雜誌 人生 人性 日光 日光遍照 如來 三佛主義 三教 三民主義 上帝 上帝愛世人 上帝與耶和華之間 山海經 社會化的道德 神 聖開 生命雙月刊 聖嚴法師與宗教對話 聖嚴 神化的成分 神教徒該反省了！ 神人 神秀 是非之心 世界幼稚時代 世界宗教合作會議 獅子吼 舜 四大山頭 宋美齡 蘇曼殊

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Sun Yat-sen [Sun Zhongshan] Sun Zhishen Taiwan Fojiao Taiwan gaoseng Taixu Tan Sitong Tian Tianlun zhi le Tiantai Tiantang Lu Tianxing Tongxinlian Tubaozi Tushen Tzu Chi Waiguoji Wang Jinghong Wei kaihua minzu de zongjiao Weidade Weishenlun Weixing Wen Wenhua fuxing yundong Wenhua renleixue Wu Wu Enpu Wuchang Wushang yiwang Wuwei Wuyi Wuzong Xiantian Xiao Xiaoqun Xiaoyuan Shudian Xiejiao Xin Xin qingnian Xin shenghuo yundong Xin sixiang

孫中山 孫智燊 臺灣佛教 台灣高僧 太虛 譚嗣同 天 天倫之樂 天台 天堂路 天性 通信連 土包子 土神 慈濟 外國記 王敬弘 未開化民族的宗教 偉大的 唯神論 衛星 文 文化復興運動 文化人類學 武 吳恩溥 無常 無上醫王 無為 悟一 武宗 先天 孝 小群 校園書店 邪教 信 新青年 新生活運動 新思想

223

List of Chinese Char acters

Xindao Xingshi Jiangjun Xingxing Xingyun Xinling huanbao Xiong shi Xiu e zhi xin Xiuchi xin Xuanzang Xukongjie Xuyun Yalianren Yang heshang Yang Wenhui Yang Xiuhe Yangshen Yao Yaoshi Rulai Yehehua Yejiao Yi Yi wei Yihetuan Yindu zhi Fojiao Yinguang Yinshun You zijue Youtai Yuanshi zongjiao Yuanxiang Yueguang Yueguang bianzhao Yuexing Zhang Baokang Zhang Chengji Zhang Chunyi Zhang Jian Zhang Junmai Zhang Taiyan Zhang Tingrong

心道 醒世將軍 行星 星雲 心靈環保 雄獅 羞惡之心 羞恥心 玄奘 虛空界 虛雲 雅利安人 洋和尚 楊文會 楊秀鶴 洋神 堯 藥師如來 耶和華 耶教 義 一味 義和團 印度之佛教 印光 印順 有自覺 猶太 原始宗教 圓香 月光 月光遍照 月形 張保康 張澄基 張純一 張謇 張君勱 章太炎 張廷榮

224 

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Zhang Xianzhong Zhang Zhidong Zhao Liangjie Zhen Yesu Jiaohui Zhengfa Zhengfu Zhengjiao Zhengyan Zhenli Tang Zhong Zhongguan jinlun Zhongguo Fojiao Zhongguo Fojiao Hui Zhongguo Fojiao jindaishi Zhonghua chuantong zongjiao zonghui Zhonghua Fojiao wenhuaguan Zhonghua Fuyin Shenxueyuan Zhonghua Minguo guohui quoqi fa Zhonghua minzu Zhonghua wenhua fuxing yundong Zhonghua xueshuyuan Zhongtai Chansi Zhongyang ribao Zhongyang Yanjiuyuan Zhongzu Zhou Gong Zhuangzi Zhuyun Zibeigan Zijue Ziranjie de guanxiazhe Ziyou Zizunxin

張獻忠 張之洞 趙亮杰 真耶穌教會 證法 征服 正教 證嚴 真理堂 忠 中觀今論 中國佛教 中國佛教會 中國佛教近代史 中華傳統宗教總會 中華佛教文化館 中華福音神學院 中華民國國徽國旗法 中華民族 中華文化復興運動 中華學術院 中台禪寺 中央日報 中央研究院 種族 周公 莊子 煮雲 自卑感 自決 自然界的管轄者 自由 自尊心

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Index Abraham 101, 141, 143 Adam and Eve 95, 107, 113 Amitābha 33, 64n25, 146, 192 and Gong Tianmin 116-17 and Yinshun 137-38 Anti-Semitism 53, 85-87, 94, 99 Aryans 87, 98, 115, 117, 126, 143 Babel 111, 143 Bales, James D. 74-75 Bhikkhu Upaya (Frank Newton) 74-75 Boxers 36, 65 Buddha 47, 66, 110, 121-22, 133, 138, 140, 147, 149, 168, 179-80, 185, 191, 194, 202, 209 and Gong Tianmin 114-16, 124-25 and Hong Kong Buddhist 170-71 and Jesus 83-86 and Xingyun 196-98 and Zhang Chunyi 90-91 Buddha-Light Mountain (Foguang Shan) 14, 53, 183, 195-99, 201, 215 Buddhism for human life 46, 48, 152 Buddhism for the human world 47n137, 103, 208 Buddhist Association of the Republic of China (BAROC) 17, 19, 23-24, 45, 49, 63, 70, 94, 177, 179, 182-83, 189, 203-04, 214 Chan (Zen) 32-33, 47, 74, 87, 132, 150, 174, 184-85, 187, 198-99, 202 Charity 14, 38-39, 150, 164, 188, 190, 193-94, 195, 197 Chiang Kai-shek 11, 15, 17, 20-21, 29, 52, 54-55, 66, 82, 93-94, 178-83, 202-03, 214 and modernity 43-44 Chinese Buddhist Association 40 Christian normative model 15, 26, 38, 42, 50, 59, 70, 150, 175, 188-89, 193, 196, 204, 207-08, 210, 215 Christianity 18, 24, 26, 29-30, 46, 49-55, 58-63, 79, 118-20, 130, 146-50, 152, 172, 174-76, 183, 185, 200-01, 203-04 and Dongchu 177-81 and Shengyan 80-88, 160-69, 186-87 and theism 122-28 and Tzu Chi 193-95 and Wu Enpu 71-77 and Xingyun 195-98 and Yinshun 140-42, 144 and Zhuyun 63-71 in China 33-42 Taiwanese presence 11-15 Classic of Mountains and Seas (Shanhai jing) 129n30, 130 Communism 12, 18-19, 24, 41, 45, 48-49, 61, 69-70, 77, 79, 88, 94-96, 98-99, 101, 104, 107, 109, 112, 182, 203, 211, 214-15

Confucianism 21, 27-30, 32, 34-35, 45, 60-61, 66, 68-69, 73, 95, 99, 103, 107, 110, 151, 164, 178, 197 Cultural Renaissance Movement 44-45, 93 Cultural Revolution 12, 44, 66, 93 Culturalism 21, 99 Daofeng Shan 81 Daoism 27, 29-30, 32, 95, 103, 110, 192 Dharma Drum Mountain (Fagu Shan) 14, 53, 183-85, 187, 203, 215 Dharmapāla 208 Dongchu 45, 48, 51, 63, 79-80, 95-96, 158-59, 178-79, 181, 184, 202-04, 210, 214 Du Erwei 54, 118-19, 121, 124, 126, 131-36, 137-41, 144-45, 147, 166 Eden 106-07 Filial piety 28, 32, 44 Flag 60-63, 66, 83 Gaoxiong Incident 182 General who Awakens the World 80, 149, 160, 186 Genesis 112-13, 128, 135-36, 141 God 13, 33n66, 34n67, 35, 60n12, 69, 74, 81-82, 86, 90, 92, 95, 97, 100-02, 122, 124-26, 128-29, 131, 164, 166-67, 175, 185, 212 and Buddhist critiques of Du Erwei 134-36 and Yinshun 104-09, 111-13, 140-45 Gotama 140, 144-45 Guanyin [Avalokiteśvara] 191-92 Hong Kong 58n2, 65, 70-71, 81, 98, 113-14, 130, 172 Hu Shi 40, 122, 144 Hualian 188-91, 193-94 Humanity (Rensheng) 48, 78-79, 95, 159, 195 Identity 12, 14-15, 19-27, 40, 44, 46, 48-50, 52-55 Idolatry 60, 62, 172, 210 India 32-33, 75, 90-91, 99, 103, 114, 116-17, 119, 121-22, 126-27, 129-30, 133, 138, 143-44, 151, 155-56, 167, 196, 208, 211n24 Japan 11, 20, 24, 33, 36, 57-58, 60, 66, 114-17, 147, 150, 154-55, 159, 162, 164, 173-75, 181, 183-85, 203, 208 Jesuits 34-35, 174, 186 Jesus 33n66, 36, 65-66, 68, 80, 95-96, 99-100, 105-06, 108, 111, 122, 124-25, 169, 178-79, 198, 202 and Shengyan 83-87 and Zhang Chunyi 89-91 and Zhuyun 73-74 KMT (Nationalists) 11-12, 14, 17-20, 22-26, 29, 59-63, 66-71, 77, 79-80, 83, 88, 91, 93-94, 96, 99-100, 120, 125-26, 161-62, 178-79, 181-83, 187, 202-05, 207, 210, 212-15 and modernity 41-45

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Buddhist Responses to Christianit y in Post war Taiwan

Lingjiu Shan 53, 183, 198-99, 201-03, 215 Liu Renbin 61-63 Marx, Karl 94, 96-98, 211 Marxism 96-97, 207 Microhistory 51 Missionaries 11, 34, 36-38, 41, 62-64, 72-73, 80, 83, 90-91, 99, 102-03, 110, 142, 154-56, 164, 174, 177, 203, 207-08 Modern Buddhism 14, 209-11 Modernity 12, 14, 20, 22, 26, 36, 38, 40, 52, 54-55, 68, 73, 75, 77, 90n3, 91, 94, 106, 109, 120-121, 126, 140, 146, 156, 158, 164, 167, 170, 172, 182, 187, 205, 215 Moon 121, 124, 127, 129-32, 135-36, 139, 166, 180 Morrison, Robert 73n61 Moses 72, 94, 126, 134, 141-42, 165-66, 168 Mother Teresa 190, 193 Müller, Max 131 Museum of World Religions 199-201, 203 Nāgārjuna 91, 103-04, 115-16, 153 New Life Movement 66 Nirvana 30, 118-19, 122, 127, 131, 133-34, 136-40, 144-45, 166, 170 Opium War 34, 36 Ouyi Zhixu 34n67, 35, 173-74 Pope Francis 201 Protestant Buddhism 208, 210 Pure Land 18, 32, 33n64, 64n25, 90n3, 98, 116-17, 122, 137-39, 151, 153, 185, 187, 192 Renan, Ernest 85-87, 126 Russell, Bertrand 97-98 Śākyamuni 118-19, 124, 136, 149, 153, 169 Schmidt, Wilhelm 128-29 Shengyan 23, 48, 51, 54, 62n17, 90n6, 91-92, 95, 97-98, 119, 123, 126, 138, 148-49, 177-78, 203-04, 207, 210, 213-15 and Dharma Drum Mountain 183-87 in Japan 173-75

Sinicization 34, 60, 125, 165, 182 Slavery 76, 106, 109, 112, 118n188 Social gospel 39, 50 Sun Yat-sen 11, 18, 21, 23, 26, 29, 43-45, 47, 49, 54-55, 60-62, 66, 69, 73, 82, 94, 117n97, 178-81, 214 Superstition 38, 47, 50, 54, 62, 71-73, 76, 83, 92, 100, 102, 115, 123, 140-41, 150-51, 154, 158, 165-66, 169, 172, 191, 209-10 Taiping Rebellion 36, 37n85, 39, 65, 155 Taixu 19-20, 39, 46-50, 50, 52, 60, 77, 80, 89-90, 94, 102-03, 110-11, 123, 146, 150-54, 156n27, 157, 169-70, 172, 177-78, 180-81, 189, 195, 197, 199, 202-03, 206-08, 211n25, 212-14 Three Principles of the People (Sanminzhuyi) 17-18, 23, 29, 43-47, 49-50, 59-60, 67, 69, 71, 82-83, 94, 152, 177, 203, 213-14 Three Teachings 27, 32, 99 Tong, Hollington 11, 62, 178-79 Tree of knowledge of good and evil 95, 107, 113 Tzu Chi (Ciji) 14, 53, 183, 188-96, 201, 215 Vienna School 127-29, 147 Weijue 198-99, 204 Wu Enpu 52, 54, 59, 70-77, 82-83, 85-88, 93, 101, 109, 111-13, 141, 186, 207 Xindao 199, 202 Xingyun 48, 183, 195-99, 203-04 Yang Xiuhe 58-59 Yellow Emperor 99 Yinshun 23, 48, 51, 54, 79-80, 88, 93-96, 98, 101-14, 116-19, 124, 127, 137-48, 150-54, 158-59, 163, 167, 174-75, 189, 193, 203-04, 210, 211n24, 213-14 Zhang Chunyi 89-92, 164, 178 Zhengyan 188-96, 203, 215 Zhongtai Chansi 53, 183, 198, 215