[PDF] Buddhism Under Mao eBook

Author : Holmes Welch
Publisher : Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press
Page : 696 pages
File Size : 44,34 MB
Release : 1972
Category : History
ISBN :

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Buddhism under Mao shows what kind of a problem Buddhism presented to the Chinese Communists and how they solved it. Relying largely on materials from the Mainland press, Holmes Welch has made what is probably the most detailed study so far available of the fate of a world religion in a Communist country. He describes how Buddhist institutions were controlled, protected, utilized, and suppressed; and explains why the larger needs of foreign and domestic policy dictated the Communists' approach to the institutions. Over eighty photographs illustrate the activities of monks, laymen, and foreign visitors. Welch worked for over a decade on the trilogy here completed. The preceding volumes, The Practice of Chinese Buddhism, 1900-1950 and The Buddhist Revival in China, dealt with Buddhism in the years before the Communist victory. Buddhism under Mao ends with a discussion of the possibility of the survival of certain elements of Buddhism in new forms.

Author : Ji Zhe
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
Page : 365 pages
File Size : 10,53 MB
Release : 2020-02-29
Category : Religion
ISBN : 0824880242

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With well over 100 million adherents, Buddhism emerged from near-annihilation during the Cultural Revolution to become the largest religion in China today. Despite this, Buddhism’s rise has received relatively little scholarly attention. The present volume, with contributions by leading scholars in sociology, anthropology, political science, and religious studies, explores the evolution of Chinese Buddhism in the post-Mao period with a depth not seen before in a single study. Chapters critically analyze the effects of state policies on the evolution of Buddhist institutions; the challenge of rebuilding temples under the watchful eye of the state; efforts to rebuild monastic lineages and schools left broken in the aftermath of Mao’s rule; and the development of new lay Buddhist spaces, both at temple sites and online. Through its multidisciplinary perspectives, the book provides both an extensive overview of the social and political conditions under which Buddhism has grown as well as discussions of the individual projects of both monastic and lay entrepreneurs who dynamically and creatively carve out spaces for Buddhist growth in contemporary Chinese society. As a wide-ranging study that illuminates many facets of China’s Buddhist revival, Buddhism after Mao will be required reading for scholars of Chinese Buddhism and of Buddhism and modernity more broadly. Its detailed case studies examining the intersections among religion, state, and contemporary Chinese society will be welcomed by sociologists and anthropologists of China, political scientists focusing on the role of religion in state formation in Asian societies, and all those interested in the relationship between religion and social change.

Author : Holmes Welch
Publisher : Cambridge : Harvard University Press
Page : 426 pages
File Size : 26,49 MB
Release : 1968
Category : History
ISBN : 9780674085701

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Of all the world's major religions, Chinese Buddhism has probably experienced the most traumatic modernization. Less than forty years have separated the self-contained Manchu Empire from the establishment of a Communist state. The consequences are described in this book. Holmes Welch offers the first detailed account of the careers of recent Buddhist leaders and of the diverse organization they started. Eighteen Chinese Buddhist associations are identified as the author traces the struggle for national leadership. The role of T'ai-hsii, the leader best known to Western readers but not, it is shown, among Buddhists, is given a controversial reassessment. After examining the main features of the revival, Welch puts them into a larger political framework. In the process, he offers copious evidence that our picture of Chinese Buddhism has been distorted. What has been termed a "revival" was actually a secular reorientation. The author's conclusion is that this secularization, vigorous as it was, in reality foreshadowed the decline of Chinese Buddhism as a living religion.

Author : Holmes Welch
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 600 pages
File Size : 10,47 MB
Release : 1967
Category : Foreign Language Study
ISBN : 9780674697003

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Based partly on unpublished documents and oral information obtained from monks who headed major monasteries on mainland China, Holmes Welch presents a detailed description of the modern practice of Chinese Buddhism. Focusing on the actual rather than the theoretical observances of the religion, he gives an exhaustive account of the monastic system and the style of life of both monk and layman. His study makes new information available for the Western reader and calls into question the whole concept of the moribund state of Chinese Buddhism.

Author : Ian Johnson
Publisher : Pantheon
Page : 480 pages
File Size : 35,62 MB
Release : 2017
Category : History
ISBN : 1101870052

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From the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist: a revelatory portrait of religion in China today, its history, the spiritual traditions of its Eastern and Western faiths, and the ways in which it is influencing China's future. Following a century of violent antireligious campaigns, China is now awash with new temples, churches, and mosques as well as cults, sects, and politicians trying to harness religion for their own ends. Driving this explosion of faith is uncertainty over what it means to be Chinese, and how to live an ethical life in a country that discarded traditional morality a century ago and is still searching for new guideposts. Ian Johnson lived for extended periods with underground church members, rural Daoists, and Buddhist pilgrims. He has distilled these experiences into a cycle of festivals, births, deaths, detentions, and struggle a great awakening of faith that is shaping the soul of the world s newest superpower. (With black-and-white illustrations throughout).

Author : Natasha Heller
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 496 pages
File Size : 46,64 MB
Release : 2020-05-11
Category : Religion
ISBN : 1684175437

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A groundbreaking monograph on Yuan dynasty Buddhism, Illusory Abiding offers a cultural history of Buddhism through a case study of the eminent Chan master Zhongfeng Mingben. Natasha Heller demonstrates that Mingben, and other monks of his stature, developed a range of cultural competencies through which they navigated social and intellectual relationships. They mastered repertoires internal to their tradition—for example, guidelines for monastic life—as well as those that allowed them to interact with broader elite audiences, such as the ability to compose verses on plum blossoms. These cultural exchanges took place within local, religious, and social networks—and at the same time, they comprised some of the very forces that formed these networks in the first place. This monograph contributes to a more robust account of Chinese Buddhism in late imperial China, and demonstrates the importance of situating monks as actors within broader sociocultural fields of practice and exchange.

Author : Sem Vermeersch
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 536 pages
File Size : 29,91 MB
Release : 2008
Category : History
ISBN :

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Buddhism in medieval Korea is characterized as "State Protection Buddhism," a religion whose primary purpose was to rally support (supernatural and popular) for and legitimate the state. This study is an attempt to specify Buddhism's place in Koryo and to ascertain to what extent and in what areas Buddhism functioned as a state religion.

Author :
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 711 pages
File Size : 17,25 MB
Release : 2020-09-07
Category : History
ISBN : 9004433244

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Conflicting Memories is a study of historical rewriting about Tibetans' encounter with the Chinese state during the Maoist era. Combining case studies with translated documents, it traces how that experience has been reimagined by Chinese and Tibetan authors and artists since the late 1970s.

Author : Sarah Cook
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 140 pages
File Size : 46,32 MB
Release : 2017-05-16
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1538106116

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The Battle for China’s Spirit is the first comprehensive analysis of its kind, focusing on seven major religious groups in China that together account for over 350 million believers: Chinese Buddhism, Taoism, Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam, Tibetan Buddhism, and Falun Gong. The study examines the evolution of the Communist Party’s policies of religious control, how they are applied differently to diverse faith communities, and how citizens are responding to these policies. The study—which draws on hundreds of official documents and interviews with religious leaders, lay believers, and scholars—finds that Chinese government controls over religion have intensified since November 2012, seeping into new areas of daily life. Yet millions of religious believers defy official restrictions or engage in some form of direct protest, at times scoring significant victories. The report explores how these dynamics affect China’s overall social, political, and economic environment, while offering recommendations to both the Chinese government and international actors for how to increase the space for peaceful religious practice in a country where spirituality has been deeply embedded in its culture for millennia.

Author : Jan Kiely
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Page : 452 pages
File Size : 31,7 MB
Release : 2016-03-29
Category : History
ISBN : 0231541104

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Modern Chinese history told from a Buddhist perspective restores the vibrant, creative role of religion in postimperial China. It shows how urban Buddhist elites jockeyed for cultural dominance in the early Republican era, how Buddhist intellectuals reckoned with science, and how Buddhist media contributed to modern print cultures. It recognizes the political importance of sacred Buddhist relics and the complex processes through which Buddhists both participated in and experienced religious suppression under Communist rule. Today, urban and rural communities alike engage with Buddhist practices to renegotiate class, gender, and kinship relations in post-Mao China. This volume vividly portrays these events and more, recasting Buddhism as a critical factor in China's twentieth-century development. Each chapter connects a moment in Buddhist history to a significant theme in Chinese history, creating new narratives of Buddhism's involvement in the emergence of urban modernity, the practice of international diplomacy, the mobilization for total war, and other transformations of state, society, and culture. Working across an extraordinary thematic range, this book reincorporates Buddhism into the formative processes and distinctive character of Chinese history.