Mapping Modern Mahayana: Chinese Buddhism and Migration in the Age of Global Modernity 9783110690156, 9783110689983

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Jens Reinke Mapping Modern Mahayana

Dialectics of the Global

Edited by Matthias Middell

Volume 11

Jens Reinke

Mapping Modern Mahayana Chinese Buddhism and Migration in the Age of Global Modernity

Funded with help of the DFG, a product of SFB 1199.

ISBN 978-3-11-068998-3 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-069015-6 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-069020-0 ISSN 2570-2289 Library of Congress Control Number: 2020950012 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Cover image: Fo Guang Shan Nan Hua Temple in Bronkhorstspruit, South Africa, Photo by Jens Reinke, 11 May 2017. Typesetting: Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com

On the Series Ever since the 1990s, “globalization” has been a dominant idea and, indeed, ideology. The metanarratives of Cold War victory by the West, the expansion of the market economy, and the boost in productivity through internationalization, digitization and the increasing dominance of the finance industry became associated with the promise of a global trickle-down effect that would lead to greater prosperity for ever more people worldwide. Any criticism of this viewpoint was countered with the argument that there was no alternative; globalization was too powerful and thus irreversible. Today, the ideology of “globalization” meets with growing scepticism. An era of exaggerated optimism for global integration has been replaced by an era of doubt and a quest for a return to particularistic sovereignty. However, processes of global integration have not dissipated and the rejection of “globalization” as ideology has not diminished the need to make sense both of the actually existing high level of interdependence and the ideology that gave meaning and justification to it. The following three dialectics of the global are in the focus of this series: Multiplicity and Co-Presence: “Globalization” is neither a natural occurrence nor a singular process; on the contrary, there are competing projects of globalization, which must be explained in their own right and compared in order to examine their layering and their interactive composition. Integration and Fragmentation: Global processes result in de- as well as reterritorialization. They go hand in hand with the dissolution of boundaries, while also producing a respatialization of the world. Universalism and Particularism: Globalization projects are justified and legitimized through universal claims of validity; however, at the same time they reflect the worldview and/or interests of particular actors.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110690156-202

Dedicated to the memory of Yeh Wu Su-Zhu 葉吳素珠

Contents On the Series

V

Acknowledgements Abstract

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Mapping Modern Mahayana 1 Following Fo Guang Shan 7 The Field Sites: Hsi Lai, Nan Hua, Da Jue

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The Many Transnationalisms of Renjian Buddhism 21 Buddhist Border-Crossings during the Age of Colonial Modernity Shifting the Centre of Modern Chinese Mahayana 33 The Globalization Project of Fo Guang Shan 35 Migrating Bodhisattvas and Fo Guang Shan Religious Mobility Layers of Ethnic Chinese Migration 47 Manoeuvring Diasporic Diversity 53 Chineseness Globalized 63 Spaces of Buddhist Leisure 64 Deterritorializing Nationalized Tradition The Move to the Mainland 76

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Generating Global Pure Lands 81 Global Outposts of Renjian Buddhist Education Cosmopolitan Goodness 90

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Purifying the Multitude 98 The Religious Ecology of Fo Guang Shan 99 Modernist Buddhist Communalism and its Western Other Fo Guang Shan and Global China as a Spatial Order 117 Multiple Modern Buddhist Religiosities in the Age of Global Modernity 121 The Future of Fo Guang Shan’s Transnationalism 130

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Contents

List of Abbreviations List of Figures Bibliography Index

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135 137

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Acknowledgements It would be impossible to name all those who have supported me during the process of writing this book, but let me nevertheless list some who have been particularly important in making it happen. First and foremost, I am grateful to Fo Guang Shan for permitting me to conduct in-depth ethnographic research at the order’s temples and practice centres in Taiwan, the USA, South Africa, and the PRC. I am indebted to all the order’s monastics and lay supporters who so generously offered me their valuable insights into the order’s global development. I owe too many of them a debt of gratitude and it would be impossible to name them all. I am particularly grateful to Ven. Huifang 慧昉法師, Ven. Huidong 慧東法師, Ven Miaoguang 妙光法師, Ven. Miaoshiang 妙祥法師, Ven. Miaoyi 妙益法師, Ven. Miaomin 妙憫法師, and Matt Orsborne. I also want to express my gratitude to Jane Iwamura, Victor Gabriel, and Vanessa Karam at the University of the West for their invaluable advice and encouragement. This book is based on my doctoral thesis written at the Collaborative Research Centre (SFB) 1199: “Processes of Spatialization under the Global Condition” at Leipzig University. I would especially like to thank the centre for so generously providing the funding for the research for this book, which allowed me to carry out fieldwork on four continents. Most of all, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my advisor Philip Clart, without whose continuous support I would have not been able to complete this book. I am very grateful for his invaluable advice and feedback. His patient guidance has helped me not only through the process of writing up but also during my time in the field. His kind and ever constructive attitude towards all his students is a quality I would like to emulate in the future. Furthermore, I would like to express the deepest appreciation to my second advisor André Laliberté. His singular perspective, which examines modern Taiwanese Buddhism within the broader political and societal context of East Asia, had been a source of inspiration long before I met him in person. I benefited immensely from our conversations during his time in Leipzig. If it were not for the training I received at the Graduate Institute of Religious Studies at National Chengchi University 國立政治大學宗教研究所, I would never have been able to properly research Taiwanese religiosities. A special thank you goes to my MA advisor Li Yu-chen 李玉珍, who taught me not only most of what I know about Chinese Buddhism but also even more importantly the subtleties of conducting ethnographic research in the field. A sincere thank you goes to my MA dissertation committee members Chen Chien-huang 陳劍鍠 and Hsieh Shuwei 謝世維 for their invaluable advice on my thesis, but also for all I have learned from them about the history of Chinese religions. I very much regret that the late Tsai Yan-zen 蔡彥仁 did not live to see this book completed; he was a https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110690156-205

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wonderful teacher. I am also very grateful to Tsai Yuan-lin 蔡源林, who taught one of the first classes I took at National Chengchi University. His class on religion and globalization was inspirational, and I am still in the field. While at Chengchi University, I also had the opportunity to meet Miriam Levering and her late partner Mary E. Donovan. I miss our excursions into the culinary worlds of northern Taiwan. Furthermore, I want to express my deep thanks to Huang Houmin 黃厚銘 from the Sociology Department at National Chengchi University 政治 大學社會學系, who, through his demanding yet inspirational teaching style, conveyed to me the foundations of sociological theory. Besides my teachers, there are many other scholars who have advised and supported me in the process of writing this book and who make the study of Buddhist border-crossings an exciting field. The encouragement and guidance provided by Chen Wei-yi 鄭維儀 and Lai Rongdao 賴融道 in particular have been indispensable to me and I am deeply grateful to them. Likewise, I wish to express my deepest gratitude to Huang Wei-shan 黃維珊, Jack Chia 謝明達, and Chiu Tzu-Lung 邱子倫. I am also thankful to all my colleagues at the SFB 1199, especially my coresearcher, Nikolas Broy. Jessica Steinman, and Diana Ayeh have been good colleagues and friends to me at Leipzig University. Although they are in different fields, I have learned a lot from them during the many hours spent with each, discussing the ups and downs of conducting multi-sited ethnographic research. My deepest gratitude goes to Yeh Fei-shen 葉翡紳 for his support in Taiwan. Were it not for his selfless assistance in looking up information for me on the ground, sending me books, and replenishing my supply of Oolong teas, I would never have been able to complete this book. I also want to thank Darren Davies. He has provided me with strength and encouragement when it was most needed. I am furthermore very grateful to Helen Jackson. Special thanks also go to Michael Yeh 葉建緯, Su Yinrui 蘇胤睿, and Mario Prütz. Finally, I owe the deepest debt of gratitude to my parents, who have supported me with their love and encouragement no matter where in the world I have chosen to live. Without them. I would not be the person I am today.

Abstract This book presents a multi-sited ethnographic study of the global development of the Taiwanese Buddhist order Fo Guang Shan. It explores the order’s modern Buddhist social engagements by examining three globally dispersed field sites: Los Angeles in the United States of America, Bronkhorstspruit in South Africa, and Yixing in the People’s Republic of China. The data collected at these field sites is embedded within the context of broader theoretical discussions on Buddhism, modernity, globalization, and the nation-state. By examining how one particular modern Buddhist religiosity that developed in a specific place moves into a global context, the book provides a fresh view of what constitutes both modern and contemporary Buddhism while also exploring the social, cultural, and religious fabrics that underlie the spatial configurations of globalization.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110690156-206

Mapping Modern Mahayana The Fo Guang Ancestral Da Jue Temple (Foguang zuting dajue si 佛光祖庭大覺寺) is located just outside of the city of Yixing (義興), southern Jiangsu (江蘇) Province, in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The newly reconstructed temple complex is a half-hour drive away from the city, which is primarily known for its traditional Yixing clay teapots. Nestled in the bamboo forested hillside at the rear of the temple complex stands a 108-metre tall structure, the Fragrant Forest Abundant Treasure White Pagoda (Xianglin duobao baita 香林多寶白塔). At night, the ivory-coloured pagoda with its dark yellow tiered eaves is aglitter with so many lights that it looks almost as if the building were made of pure gold and silver (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Fragrant Forest Abundant Treasure White Pagoda, Da Jue Temple, PRC.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110690156-001

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It is the last evening of my field stay at the temple. I am participating in a small gathering held in a medium-sized assembly hall on the first floor of the pagoda. There are about 50 people in the room. At its centre sits Venerable Hsing Yun (Xingyun 星雲), or Grand Master (dashi 大師), as he is respectfully known to his followers.1 Hsing Yun is the founder of the modernist Taiwanese Buddhist order, Fo Guang Shan (佛光山, English: Buddha’s Light Mountain). The monk, who is already in his nineties, is attended by some very senior Fo Guang Shan monastics from Taiwan (Republic of China, ROC). Around them sit a small group of distinguished guests as well as the Chinese female monastics and volunteers living at the temple. The guests include such notable visitors as the head of the Jiangsu province State Bureau of Religious Affairs, a highranking mainland Chinese monk, and a famous Taiwanese Pop singer. The evening serves as a small farewell function for Hsing Yun, who is about to return to Taiwan after having spent some time at his ancestral temple. The ethnographic extract above describes the only occasion during my research that I had the chance to meet Fo Guang Shan’s founder in person. In fact, it was pure good fortune that I happened to be at Da Jue Temple at the same time as Hsing Yun. Before moving into the temple for a week, I had already spent a month in Yixing and paid regular visits to Da Jue. And while Hsing Yun was about to return to Taiwan on the next day, I would go on to visit the order’s other facilities in the People’s Republic of China. Hsing Yun was born in China in 1927. In 1949, like many other Buddhist monastics who feared the anti-religious politics of the CCP, he followed the KMT troops on their retreat to Taiwan. In the immediate post-war years, Taiwan was not an easy place for Buddhist monastics from China. However, after enduring years of hardship, Hsing Yun established a following and moved to the south of the island, where he founded Fo Guang Shan in 1967. Only a decade later, Hsing Yun made his first attempts to develop the order beyond the shores of the small island. The second half of the twentieth century had brought significant global change and restructuring. Political, economic, and societal transformations in Asia as well as changing migration policies in Western countries facilitated the emergence of new globalized spatial orders that interlinked the countries of Asia with the rest of the world in multiple new ways. In the course of this reordering, a new generation of affluent and highly educated ethnic

1 “Venerable” is the common English translation for fashi 法師 (literal meaning: Dharma teacher), the Chinese title of respect for Buddhist monastics. “Grand Master” is the English translation for dashi most commonly used at Fo Guang Shan. Another common translation is “Venerable Master”. However, for the sake of readability, I will refer to Buddhist monastics solely by their Dharma name (e.g., Hsing Yun instead of Venerable, or Grand Master Hsing Yun).

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Chinese transnational migrants left their home countries and settled all over the world. Hsing Yun utilized these emerging conditions and developed his temple located in what was then considered Taiwan’s hinterlands into today’s Fo Guang Shan’s global network. Da Jue Temple and the order’s other facilities in the People’s Republic of China represent the most recent addition to the order’s globalization project. By bringing renjian Buddhism back to its birthplace, Hsing Yun completes the circle of the order’s transnational development. Fo Guang Shan is the leading contemporary order in the modernist reformation movement of the Chinese Mahayana tradition (hanchuan fojiao 漢傳佛教) that has taken place over the past century. The order’s socially-engaged approach to the Buddhist tradition is called renjian Buddhism (renjian fojiao 人間佛教), or, in English, Buddhism of the human realm.2 Having emerged in response to the process of building China as a modern nation-state, the development of this modern Buddhist religiosity represents a successful attempt to secure a space for the Buddhist tradition within modernizing Chinese societies. According to Buddhist doctrine, our world is subdivided into six realms: the realm of the gods, asuras (or half-gods), humans, animals, hungry ghosts, and the hells. For renjian Buddhists such as Hsing Yun, the Chinese Mahayana of the past had been overly preoccupied with ghosts and death. By shifting the emphasis to the human realm, he and other Buddhist modernizers instead stress that it is the world of the living – and thus society – that constitutes the central space for Buddhist practice. Fo Guang Shan, besides its religious undertakings, is known for its countless cultural, educational, and charity engagements in secular society. Together these engagements form the core of the order’s modernist Buddhist religiosity. I use the term religiosity when speaking of a non-Western tradition such as Buddhism not because I am unaware of the Eurocentric connotations of the term religion, but because renjian Buddhism has emerged in reference to the globalization of the Western idea of religion that took place during the era of colonialism. Furthermore, the term religiosity is helpful because it stresses that there are many ways to practice, live, and think about one particular tradition. Fo Guang Shan’s approach to renjian Buddhism represents one of multiple Chinese and non-Chinese modern Buddhist religiosities, one that has developed in a particular local context – Republican Era China and postwar Taiwan – but that has in its further course expanded into significant parts of the globe. The aim of this book is to explore the conditions and dynamics that have facilitated the order’s global development and the way they continue to

2 Renjian fojiao is often translated by its adherents as “Humanistic Buddhism”. However, in English, the term “humanistic” contains strong connotations of Renaissance humanism. In order to clarify the distinction between the two, I have adopted the romanized Chinese term.

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shape its trajectory to this day. In other words, it is an attempt to map the globalization of the modern Chinese Mahayana. The initial question of this book is very simple: Why has Fo Guang Shan’s globalization project been so successful? Fo Guang Shan is not the only order in the Chinese Mahayana tradition that has attempted to develop transnationally. There are other orders, such as Dharma Drum Mountain (Fagu shan 法鼓山) and Chung Tai Shan (Zhongtai shan 中台山) from Taiwan, and most recently, Long Quan Temple (Longquan si 龍泉寺) from the People’s Republic, that are also developing a global presence. In addition, there are many smaller temples and temple networks that are attempting to achieve this goal. Of these, however, Fo Guang Shan is inarguably the most successful so far. The order maintains around 200 temples and practice centres in addition to a range of affiliated facilities worldwide.3 The only other organization whose globalization project has met with comparable success is the Taiwanese Buddhist charity Tzu Chi (Ciji gongde hui 慈濟功德會). Despite being founded by a Buddhist nun, Tzu Chi is not a Buddhist order in the conventional sense, but a registered charity. Thus, Fo Guang Shan, with its worldwide net of temples, is definitely the most visible representative of Chinese Mahayana Buddhism on the global stage. I call Fo Guang Shan’s transnational development a globalization project not only because renjian Buddhists who had in the past primarily stayed within China’s borders are now actively taking part in and taking advantage of a world that is increasingly integrated on a global scale, but also to emphasize that globalization is a dynamic meta-order that is generated through the border-crossing activities of multiple actors at a myriad of locations. Globalization, as I understand it, is not a single monolithic enterprise undertaken by Western states or faceless neoliberal multinational companies who aim to standardize the world after a Western image, but instead a highly complex and multifaceted process that is generated by a multitude of actors from all over the world. Fo Guang Shan and its globalization project represents one such actor, one that originates from Taiwan and that aims at globalizing its modern Buddhist religiosity. In pursuing this objective, the order is not merely taking advantage of a globalized world, but through its countless Buddhist social engagements all over the globe, is simultaneously involved in the very production of the world’s global condition. This book is by no means the first study on Fo Guang Shan. In addition to a seminal monograph on the order by religious studies scholar Stuart Chandler, a significant body of research exists in Chinese, English, and several other

3 Shi Yongdong 釋永東, Renjian fojiao shijie zhanwang 人間佛教世界展望, Taipei: Lantai 蘭臺, 2016, p. 6.

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languages.4 This book builds on existing research, while shifting focus to the transnational border-crossings and linkages that facilitated the emergence of renjian Buddhism and continue to shape the order’s global development to this day. It is situated at the crossroads of three academic discussions: First, by placing Fo Guang Shan’s global trajectory in the context of transnationalism and ethnic Chinese migration, this book provides a fresh angle to the study of Chinese religions. Second, by examining how one particular modern Buddhist religiosity that developed in a specific place moves into a global context, it contributes to ongoing debates of what constitutes modern and contemporary Buddhism. Finally, as a multi-sited field study on a religious globalization project that has originated from Taiwan, this book explores the social, cultural, and religious fabrics that underlie the spatial configurations of globalization. The book is structured into three parts: To provide a broader context, the second chapter of this book first “zooms

4 S. Chandler, Establishing a Pure Land on Earth: The Foguang Buddhist Perspective on Modernization and Globalization, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2004; R. Madsen, Democracy’s Dharma: Religious Renaissance and Political Development in Taiwan, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007; C.-T. Kuo, Religion and Democracy in Taiwan, Albany: SUNY Press, 2008, pp. 21–25; A. Laliberté, The Politics of Buddhist Organizations in Taiwan, 1989–2003: Safeguarding the Faith, Building a Pure Land, Helping the Poor, London: Routledge, 2014, pp. 66–85; Shi Yongdong, Renjian fojiao shijie zhanwang; Lu K. 陸 鏗 and Ma X. 馬西屏, “Xingyun dashi yu renjian fojiao quanqiuhua fazhan zhi yanjiu” 星雲大師與人間佛教全球化發展之研究, Pumen xuebao 普門學報 40 (2007), pp. 1–30; Shi Manju 釋滿具, “Renjian fojiao quanqiu honghua wenti lüelun – yi Meiguo weili” 人間佛教全球弘化問題略論 – 以美國爲例, in: Cheng G. 程恭讓 and Shi Miaofan釋妙凡 (eds.), 2013 Xingyun dashi renjian fojiao – lilun shijian yanjiu (xia) 2013 星 雲大師人間佛教理論實踐研究(下), Kaohsiung: Foguang wenhua 佛光文化, 2013, pp. 482–498; Shi Miaoyi 釋妙益, “Cong Xingyun dashi bentuhua linian kan Foguang quanqiu hongfa zhi wenhua shiying ji chengxiao – yi Helan Hehua Si weili” 從星雲大師本土化理念看佛光全球弘法之文 化適應及成效 – 以荷蘭荷華寺爲例, in: Cheng and Shi Miaofan (eds.), 2013 Xingyun dashi renjian fojiao – lilun shijian yanjiu (xia), pp. 500–539; Shi Miaoyi 釋妙益, “Cong ‘Bolin Foguangshan dewen zu’ kan Deguo hongfa chengxiao ji fojiao bentuhua” 從「柏林佛光山德文組」看德國弘法 成效及佛教本土化, in: Cheng and Shi Miaofan (eds.), Renjian fojiao gaofeng luntan – renjian fojiao zongyao 人間佛教高峰論壇 – 人間佛教宗要, Kaohsiung: Foguang wenhua, 2014, pp. 640–666; D. Wong and P. Levitt, “Travelling Faiths and Migrant Religions: The Case of Circulating Models of Da’wa among the Tablighi Jamaat and Foguangshan in Malaysia”, Global Networks 14 (2014) 3, pp. 348–362; J. M.-T. Chia, “Toward a Modern Buddhist Hagiography: Telling the Life of Hsing Yun in Popular Media”, Asian Ethnology 74 (2015) 1, pp. 141–165; X. Yu, “Re-Creation of Rituals in Humanistic Buddhism: A Case Study of Fo Guang Shan”, Asian Philosophy 23 (2013) 4, pp. 350–364; J. Yu, “Promoting Buddhism through Modern Sports: The Case Study of Fo Guang Shan in Taiwan”, Physical Culture and Sport: Studies and Research 53 (2011) 1, pp. 28–38; Shi Miaoguang, “Issues of Acculturation and Globalization Faced by the Fo Guang Shan Buddhist Order”, in: Cheng and Shi Miaofan (eds.), 2013 Xingyun dashi renjian fojiao – lilun shijian yanjiu (xia), pp. 541–576.

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out” providing an overview of the history of renjian Buddhism, a history characterized by countless border-crossings and transnational entanglements. The chapter discusses the specific conditions, dynamics, and transnational linkages that shaped the emergence of a modernist Buddhist religiosity during China’s Republican Era. It then goes on to explore the changes that took place in the second half of the last century that resulted in the establishment of renjian Buddhism in Taiwan. The chapter concludes with an overview of the order’s globalization project. In the following four ethnographic chapters, I will turn to some key issues of this project in greater detail. To do so I will “zoom in” to a selection of temple spaces and facilities in the US, South Africa, and the PRC. Chapter three discusses the people involved in Fo Guang Shan’s globalization project. Of whom are we speaking when we say Fo Guang Shan’s global trajectory is linked to a new generation of ethnic Chinese migrants? The global ethnic Chinese diaspora is far from being a homogenous entity. To what degree do issues such as social class, language and dialect, national and regional origin, and intergenerational dynamics shape the order’s transnational development? Who, besides first generation ethnic Chinese migrants, is involved in the order’s globalization project, how are they involved, and why? The following three chapters deal with to the content of Fo Guang Shan’s globalization project. This relates to the order’s socially-engaged Buddhist practices in the fields of culture, charity, education, and religious cultivation. How do these practices and discourses play out in a diasporic setting? What is different in the PRC? Do the same kind of engagements have the same function irrespective of location? In what way do Buddhist social engagements link the temple back to the core Asian nations of the global sinosphere? How do they link a particular temple to its new host society? What kind of engagements connect what kind of people? Finally, in the concluding chapter I will further explore some issues that relate to the spatial dimension of Fo Guang Shan’s globalization project. What does the globalization project of a religious actor from the periphery of the sinosphere such as Fo Guang Shan tell us about the very fabric and spatiality of globalization? Furthermore, by examining how the order’s modernist approach to the Buddhist tradition that was developed in a particular time and place, Republican Era China and post-war Taiwan, plays out in a global setting, what conclusions can we draw regarding the relationship between modern Buddhism and the conditions of globalization? I will discuss how exploring the order’s transnational development points to the way globalization as a spatial configuration is comprised of various secondary spatial orders, each of which is associated with their own ideas of what constitutes a modern Buddhist religiosity. How does Fo Guang Shan negotiate potential tensions between differing ideas on how to practice modern Buddhism? The book closes with a brief discussion of some of the key issues that may impact the order’s global development in the future.

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Following Fo Guang Shan How does one undertake an ethnographic study of a phenomenon that is taking place not just within the confines of a clearly demarcated space but instead in different parts of the globe? Traditionally, ethnographic researchers often focus on a bounded space where they spend an extended period of time conducting indepth research.5 While this time-tested approach has produced many valuable insights, it is not necessarily well-suited to the study of mobile phenomena. If, for example, research on Fo Guang Shan transnationalism were conducted exclusively at the Order’s headquarters in Kaohsiung (Gaoxiong 高雄), one would risk overemphasizing the role of the centre. Instead of detecting how the dynamics and forces that drive Fo Guang Shan’s global spread play out “on the ground”, the researcher would learn more about the conscious intentions of the centre with respect to its global development. This approach would tend to portray the centre as the sole creator of the order’s transnational spread. At the same time, if instead one were to pick a single overseas facility as a field site, while one would indeed get a better understanding of the situation on the ground, one would also risk generalizing whatever can be found at that particular place and projecting it on Fo Guang Shan’s globalization project as a whole. Thus, to get a more comprehensive picture and understand the conditions and dynamics that link the different overseas temples and thereby generate Fo Guang Shan’s global success, the field needs to be expanded. The researcher of mobile phenomena needs to be as mobile as the phenomena to be researched, or, as anthropologist George Marcus puts it, he or she needs to follow the movements of people, of things, and so on.6 In other words, in the context of this study, if we want to understand Fo Guang Shan’s transnational trajectory, we need to “follow Fo Guang Shan”. Considering the sheer number of Fo Guang Shan’s overseas facilities, it would be impossible to conduct research at every single one of them.7 In addition to the order’s headquarters, I have therefore chosen a sample of the order’s overseas temples and facilities for this study. During the foundational phase of my research in Taiwan, it very soon became obvious that the order’s global spread is entwined with the dynamics of post-1965 ethnic Chinese migration. For example,

5 G. E. Marcus, “Ethnography in/of the World System: The Emergence of Multi-Sited Ethnography”, Annual Review of Anthropology 24 (1995) 1, p. 95. 6 Ibid., p. 106. 7 In fact, Hsing Yun biographer Fu Zhiying has calculated that if a researcher were to spend ten days, including travel time, at each of Fo Guang Shan’s overseas temples, he or she would need more than three years to study them all. Fu Z., Bright Star, Luminous Cloud: The Life of a Simple Monk, Hacienda Heights, CA: Buddha’s Light Publishing, 2008, p. 137.

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Hsi Lai Temple (Xilai si 西來寺) in the US, the order’s first and most important overseas temple, is not coincidentally located at the heart of one of the most flourishing overseas Chinese communities worldwide. Similarly, the dynamic demographic composition of the Buddha’s Light International Association’s (Guoji foguang hui 國際佛光會, hereafter BLIA) membership – and temple visitors in general – is linked to the shifting internal composition of the global Chinese diaspora. While Taiwanese constituted the main group of ethnic Chinese frequenting Fo Guang Shan’s overseas temples in the early days, over time there has been an increase in ethnic Chinese visitors from Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, and, most recently, the PRC. Something that has also become evident is the importance of social engagement in Fo Guang Shan transnationalism. Social engagement at Fo Guang Shan is not limited to philanthropy: it also takes place in the fields of culture, charity, education, and religious cultivation. All of the order’s temples are extremely busy and organise a plethora of activities. In fact, during my fieldwork at Hsi Lai Temple, it was impossible for me to participate in all the temple’s activities because the schedule was often so full that two, three, or even more events took place at the same time. As the centre of Fo Guang Shan’s globalization project, Hsi Lai Temple was thus a natural candidate for this study. In order to get a more balanced picture, I also selected a temple located in a less affluent area, Nan Hua Temple (南華寺) in South Africa. Finally, the most recent development of Fo Guang Shan’s globalization project – the shift towards the PRC – could not be ignored. Thus, the field site sample for this study consists of three Fo Guang Shan overseas temples that are located in three very distinct regions: Hsi Lai Temple in Los Angeles County, USA; Nan Hua Temple in Bronkhorstspruit, South Africa; and the recently (re)constructed Fo Guang Ancestral Da Jue Temple in Yixing, Jiangsu province, PRC. The physical temple space lies at the heart of this ethnography because it is the starting point as well as the central arena for the order’s transnationalism. Overseas temples such as Hsi Lai or Nan Hua serve a wide range of social functions: Most obviously, the temple constitutes a ritual space and provides a place for religious cultivation. Yet people also visit the temple to take part in recreational and leisure activities. In addition, it functions as a school where children as well as adults can take Chinese classes or classes on Buddhism. Some temples’ dining halls are popular places for people who work or live in the neighborhood to eat a vegetarian lunch. Most temples also operate a branch of the order’s Water Drop (Dishuifang 滴水坊) teahouse chain, where guests can enjoy a snack and cup of tea or coffee. Visitors can visit an exhibition in one of the temple galleries or take part in traditional holiday festivities. The temple is not exclusively a space for Buddhist cultivation, but also provides ample opportunities to experience Chinese culture. First-generation Chinese migrants may come to the

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temple to meet fellow Buddhists and also socialize with other Chinese speakers. Or they might just shop at the temple store for the newest Dharma book, a bag of Taiwanese Oolong Tea, or some Buddhist paraphernalia. If visitors wish to become more involved, they can become members of the BLIA, attend meetings and study groups, or become volunteers. Some of Fo Guang Shan’s charitable activities, or at least their coordination, take place at the temple. The temple is also where the monastics and the temple’s long-term volunteers live, and where most of the interactions between the monastics and the laity take place. Conducting multi-sited ethnography at three of the order’s major overseas temples makes it possible to identify the linkages and practices of Fo Guang Shan that span geographically dispersed places. At the same time, it also makes it possible to recognize the similarities and differences between multiple localities.8 Examining Fo Guang Shan’s transnationalism at multiple field sites thus sheds light on the importance of ethnic Chinese migration and a sociallyengaged modern Buddhist religiosity for the order’s global development. It also allows us to examine to what degree Fo Guang Shan’s religious transnationalism plays out differently under differing local circumstances. The order’s overseas temples in the US and South Africa, for example, are targeting diasporic communities while its facilities in the PRC are frequented by Buddhists belonging to mainstream Chinese society. In shifting the focus from the order’s centre in Taiwan to its overseas temples and the dynamics that link these places, this book also stresses the importance of transnational dynamics over that of strategy. Thus, rather than confer agency for Fo Guang Shan’s globalization project exclusively on the order’s founder, despite the undeniably important role he plays, or on the order as a whole, thereby portraying it as a homogenous entity, but instead examining the issue through a spatial lens, the importance of a variety of dynamics and actors that have shaped the order’s global trajectory can be more clearly seen. Fo Guang Shan is a large-scale order with about 1300 monastics and an enormous lay following. Despite the order’s centralist and hierarchical structure, different Fo Guang Shan Buddhists, monastic and lay, who live in different localities, with different backgrounds and life circumstances, have different needs and views. The layers and complexities of a global ethnic Chinese diaspora – in particular with regard to factors such as socioeconomic class and national origin – and the way Fo Guang Shan’s socially-engaged Buddhist religiosity resonates with it, all constitute important forces driving this particular globalization project.

8 A. Amelina and T. Faist, “De-Naturalizing the National in Research Methodologies: Key Concepts of Transnational Studies in Migration”, Ethnic and Racial Studies 35 (2012) 10, p. 2.

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Another important aspect of multi-sited ethnography as a research method is that it uses a sample of field sites in order to escape the dichotomy of a “life world” and “system” that is often invoked in single-site ethnographic studies. Within this approach, the local (the life worlds of people) is studied through ethnography while the global or the world system that surrounds them (e.g., globalization, the nation, capitalism, etc.) has to be called into play through other methods, often by referring to the work of macro theorists.9 Multi-sited ethnography, on the other hand, examines how the world system generates itself through the connections between multiple local field sites. Marcus notes: “Although multi-sited ethnography is an exercise in mapping terrain, its goal is not holistic representation, an ethnographic portrayal of the world system as a totality. Rather it claims that any ethnography of a cultural formation in the world system is also an ethnography of the system [. . .].”10 For our case, this means that Fo Guang Shan’s facilities, which are dispersed over significant parts of the globe, in their connectivity form a particular transnational formation; the globalization project of Fo Guang Shan. At the same time, through this very connectivity, Fo Guang Shan takes part in the makings of globalization. Tracing this connectivity through ethnographic fieldwork undertaken at multiple sites not only allows us to better understand how the order has achieved its global expansion but also provides an ethnographic account of globalization. It is important to add here that the notion of “Chinese” when used in this study, does not refer to a single nation-state, be it the PRC or ROC, or other localities such as Hong Kong, Singapore, and the diasporas of Southeast Asia, but to an association with and a cultural and linguistic literacy in a social space that is comprised of links to certain geographic localities, one or more languages (e.g., Mandarin, Taiwanese, Cantonese, etc.), cultural symbols (e.g., Chinese characters), social practices (e.g., the Mid-Autumn Festival or Lunar New Year), and discourses (e.g., filial piety). I thus understand Chineseness as a relational concept. The term “Chinese” is used in this book as an umbrella term that will be further specified when needed (PRC Chinese, Taiwanese, Hong Kongese, SEA Chinese, second-generation Chinese American, etc.). Yet it is equally important to stress that although from the etic perspective of this study an essentialist understanding of “Chineseness” as a fixed ethnic entity is avoided, this might not be the case for some of the actors in the field.11 While for this research the socially-constructed, “relational” character of Chineseness 9 Marcus, “Ethnography in/of the World System”, p. 96. 10 Ibid., p. 99. 11 G. Baumann, “Nation, Ethnicity and Community”, in: K. Knott and S. McLoughlin (eds.), Diasporas: Concepts, Intersections, Identities, London: Zed, 2010, p. 46.

The Field Sites: Hsi Lai, Nan Hua, Da Jue

11

is considered in order to overcome the oversimplifying dichotomy of Chinese and non-Chinese (or “Western”, “African”, etc.) and thereby do justice to the more complex, layered, and fractured relationships that occur within the overseas temple space, it is important to note that, to many, though not all, of the people I talked to in my fieldwork, Chineseness does feel primordial. In fact, as I will show in this book, Fo Guang Shan plays an active role in the production of global yet multivalent renderings of Chineseness; some more open and cosmopolitan, others more ethno-parochial. In addition to holding grand cultural activities compatible with global tourism and event culture that are open to everyone regardless of their ethnic background, Fo Guang Shan also provides many programmes for the second and later generations that are intended to foster both their Chinese language ability and their ethno-cultural identity. Within this context it is important to note that the majority of Fo Guang Shan Buddhists overseas are first generation migrants. During my fieldwork, I have encountered a multiplicity of self-identifications, yet it is of significance that within the Fo Guang Shan overseas temple space, the parlance of “we Chinese” is the most common.12 This study considers the complex and layered character of the ethnic Chinese diaspora while at the same time taking seriously emic claims of a common sense of Chineseness. Anthropologist Nina Glick-Schiller reminds us that, besides giving attention to the within-group variation, another way to avoid the danger of the “ethnic lens,” the risk of reifying ethnicity by overlooking the internal differences of ethnic groups and possible more complex forms of national and ethnic identity, is to enter the analysis spatially. Instead of taking for granted that ethnicity is the master organizing identity for a particular group, she recommends researchers to start with small scale spatial units.13 Accordingly, this research has taken the physical spaces of three overseas temples, Nan Hua Temple in South Africa, Hsi Lai Temple in the USA, and Da Jue Ancestral Temple in the PRC as the main units of analysis for Fo Guang Shan’s globalization project.

The Field Sites: Hsi Lai, Nan Hua, Da Jue Hsi Lai Temple is the flagship overseas temple of Fo Guang Shan. Although it is not the biggest in size, it has the longest history and is probably the most

12 While some prefer huaren 華人, most people I spoke to used the expression Zhongguo ren 中國人. 13 N. Glick-Schiller, A. Çaglar, and T. C. Guldbrandsen, “Beyond the Ethnic Lens: Locality, Globality, and Born-Again Incorporation”, American Ethnologist 33 (2006) 4, p. 613.

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Mapping Modern Mahayana

industrious.14 Hsi Lai Temple – besides a whole range of temple activities, too many to be listed here – runs a publishing company, a columbarium, and even a liberal arts university. The temple is also where the main office of the BLIA is located. The reason for the temple’s prosperity and importance within the order’s global temple network is location. Hsi Lai Temple is located in Hacienda Heights, an unincorporated suburban community of Los Angeles that is part of the earliest suburban Chinese neighbourhood, or ethnoburb, in the United States.15 Today, the BLIA Los Angeles local chapter (xiehui 協會) has 23 subchapters. The Los Angeles local chapter includes LA County, Orange County, and San Bernardino County. Most of the subchapters are formed based on geographic locality, but some are based on special characteristics such as language. In total, the LA chapter has about 1800 members. In the beginning, most devotees were from Taiwan, but over time more and more ethnic Chinese from Southeast Asia and Hong Kong migrated to LA. These changes, which were caused by the changing US immigration regulations for specific countries, are also reflected in the BLIA membership. The membership of several of the subchapters consists mostly of Southeast Asian ethnic Chinese who speak Cantonese. Many of them are Sino-Vietnamese. There is also a more recent rise in PRC Chinese. Although most of the BLIA’s leadership originate from Taiwan or Southeast Asia, some of the presidents and vice-presidents of subchapters from the more affluent South Bay area come from the PRC. The PRC Chinese are even better represented in the youth groups. The Hsi Lai Temple runs two youth groups or Fo Guang Shan Young Adult Divisions (YAD). One particularly serves foreign exchange students, the majority of which comes from the People’s Republic. The other youth group targets second and later generations of ethnic Chinese migrants. Many of their parents come from Taiwan. Another subchapter is an English language chapter with many non-Chinese members. Some of its members are of European descent and some are Asian Americans. There are also several members with a South- or Central-American background, which reflects the demographics in the neighbourhoods that surround the temple. The backgrounds of the visitors who visit the temple every day are very diverse. The temple provides docents who give temple tours for those visitors who want to learn more about Buddhism. Other visitors come to Hsi Lai Temple to enjoy the traditional Chinese architecture or to have lunch at the dining hall.

14 All information in the following section, unless otherwise referenced, is based on fieldwork data. 15 The concept of the “ethnoburb” was developed by US geographer Wei Li. It will be discussed in more detail in chapter three. W. Li, Ethnoburb: The New Ethnic Community in Urban America, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2011.

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Some, mostly but not exclusively Asian Americans, come to the temple to pray or to partake in one of the many religious activities. On an average weekend day there are up to 100 volunteers who help out. Fo Guang Shan’s global development began in the USA. Hsing Yun first visited the country with a monastic delegation in 1976 to participate in the USA’s bicentennial festivities. During this time, Hsing Yun and his travel companions visited several lay as well as monastic representatives of the ethnic Chinese community.16 Shortly after the visit, one of the overseas Chinese he had met invited Hsing Yun to establish a temple. Although Hsing Yun sent two of his nuns over, in the end the project was unsuccessful. Despite its failure, Hsing Yun decided that Fo Guang Shan should try to develop a presence in the US anyway and flew over himself. After some back and forth, he decided to take out a loan to buy a church building they could use. This building became the first Hsi Lai Temple.17 The project turned out to be quite successful and attracted many followers. But the temple’s lack of cooking facilities quickly became an issue, as devotees visiting a Mahayana temple often expect to be given a free vegetarian lunch after the Dharma assembly. They therefore bought another, larger, former church building with a kitchen. Hsing Yun called it White Pagoda Temple (Baita si 白塔寺).18 White Pagoda Temple turned out to be an even greater success, though it too soon became too small for their needs. Hsing Yun therefore decided to build a new temple complex from scratch.19 They purchased a suitable plot of land in Hacienda Heights and construction began. Fo Guang Shan encountered considerable opposition to construction. Some locals were suspicious of the foreign temple architecture, though the official line was that they feared traffic and pollution problems. At the same time, other TaiwaneseAmerican religious groups, Buddhists as well as Christians, also tried to prevent construction.20 However, in the end Fo Guang Shan succeeded and the new temple was inaugurated in 1988.21 The temple is built on a hillside and its characteristically Chinese temple architecture is widely visible from afar. The buildings of the complex are arranged in the shape of a leaf of the Bodhi tree, the tree under which the historical Buddha is said to have reached awakening (see Figure 2). Several of the houses that surround

16 Hsing Yun, Bai nian foyuan 百年佛緣, vol. 10, Kaohsiung: Foguang chubanshe, 2013, pp. 19–29. 17 Ibid., pp. 31–38. 18 Ibid., pp. 40–41. 19 Ibid., p. 43. 20 Ibid., pp. 46–49. 21 Ibid., p. 50.

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Mapping Modern Mahayana

Figure 2: Map of Hsi Lai Temple, Hsi Lai Temple, USA.

the temple belong to Fo Guang Shan or are inhabited by devotees. There is a big parking lot behind the main gate right in front of the temple to accommodate the visitors. The first row of buildings houses the Buddha’s Light Hsi Lai School, the BLIA office, and, in the centre, the Bodhisattva Hall (Wusheng dian 五聖殿). To enter the temple complex, visitors have to first pass through the Bodhisattva Hall. Behind the hall lies the main courtyard of Hsi Lai Temple. To the right of the courtyard lie a small conference room, the Avalokitesvara Garden, an assembly hall, another meeting hall, and the auditorium. To the left are the information centre, the so-called Harmony Hall where the Hsi Lai orchestra has its rehearsals, the Arhat Garden, the main conference room, the Hsi Lai Art Gallery, and a teahouse with a bookstore. On the other side of the yard, across from the Bodhisattva Hall and above the dining hall is the main shrine. Behind the main shrine are the meditation hall and a memorial pagoda. Hsi Lai is the busiest of all the order’s overseas temples. Activities range from cultural festivities on traditional Chinese and American holidays, to religious activities such as Dharma assemblies and meditation, to charity and educational endeavours.

The Field Sites: Hsi Lai, Nan Hua, Da Jue

15

Fo Guang Shan maintains eight facilities on the African continent.22 Six of them including Nan Hua Temple, the order’s African headquarters, are situated in South Africa.23 The other two centres are located in Lesotho and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Accordingly, the BLIA runs eight local chapters attached to these temples and practice centres. BLIA South Africa has about 1000 adult members in total and runs a youth group, which was founded in 1997. Nan Hua Temple’s extensive complex is located in Bronkhorstspruit, a small town about 50 km from Pretoria, one of South Africa’s three capitals and the seat of the administrative branch of the national government. Despite the temple’s role as the order’s most important facility in Africa today, Fo Guang Shan’s development in South Africa did not begin in Bronkhorstspruit. Prior to the construction of Nan Hua Temple in 1992, the order had already settled in Newcastle.24 Taiwanese had already begun to migrate to South Africa in the 1970s. While the first group of migrants consisting of Taiwanese industrialists settled in rural areas, the so-called “homelands”, Taiwanese communities were subsequently established in cities like Newcastle, Bloemfontein, Durban, and Ladybrand.25 To this day these cities are still home to Taiwanese communities and Fo Guang Shan practice centres. Bronkhorstspruit on the other hand, though situated not far from Pretoria and Johannesburg, did not host a Taiwanese community prior to the construction of Nan Hua Temple. Seeking to attract Taiwanese investment, the local government donated a 12-hectare parcel of land to Fo Guang Shan.26 In exchange for the land, Hsing Yun agreed to assist in attracting 550 Taiwanese investors into the country. The investors could buy a small plot on which to build a family home, and after four years of residence, they and their families would be granted permanent residency. The idea was to develop a suburban Taiwanese residential area, or “Platteland Chinatown”. South Africa would benefit from an influx of investment, the Taiwanese could live in a newly developed residential area with clean air and low living costs, and the temple would be integrated into a Taiwanese community. However, matters did not turn out as planned. The end of Apartheid brought a new government that wanted to 22 The section on Nan Hua Temple has been previously published in J. Reinke, “The Buddha in Bronkhorstspruit: The Transnational Spread of the Taiwanese Buddhist Order Fo Guang Shan to South Africa”, Contemporary Buddhism 3 (2020) 2, pp. 1–18. 23 All information in the following section, unless otherwise referenced, is based on fieldwork data. 24 Hsing Yun, Bai nian foyuan, vol. 10, p. 260. 25 Y. J. Park, “Recent Chinese Migrations to South Africa: New Intersections of Race, Class and Ethnicity”, in: T. Rahimy (ed.), Representation, Expression and Identity: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2009, p. 155. 26 Hsing Yun, Bai nian foyuan, vol. 10, p. 262.

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renegotiate the conditions for the Taiwanese investors, and eventually, when South Africa terminated its diplomatic relations with Taiwan in favour for the People’s Republic of China, plans for the development of the Taiwanese suburb were abandoned.27 Thus today, although traditionally designed Chinese gates mark the entrances to the area and the streets still bear Chinese names, it is members of the new black South African middle class instead of Taiwanese families that inhabit many of the buildings around the temple complex. Despite the setbacks, the development of Fo Guang Shan in South Africa continued. In 1993, a year after construction work on Nan Hua Temple began, Fo Guang Shan’s first meditation centre, the Newcastle Meditation Centre, was completed. In addition, the first preparatory BLIA meeting in South Africa took place. Centre constructions and BLIA preparatory meetings in Bloemfontein, Johannesburg, Durban, and Cape Town followed shortly after.28 Meanwhile in Bronkhorstspruit the construction of Nan Hua Temple continued. The Nan Hua Temple Guest House (Chaoshan huiguan 朝山會館, sometimes also translated as “Pilgrimage Lodge”) was completed in 1994 and a year later construction of the main shrine began. Ten years later, in 2005, the shrine was formally inaugurated by a leading Fo Guang Shan monastic.29 Today, the temple proper together with the Nan Hua Temple Guest House constitute the heart of the temple complex. The guest house is a round, twostory building built around a circular courtyard. The first floor hosts a reception area, a gift shop, an exhibition space, office spaces, a dining hall, a kitchen, and a meditation hall. On the second floor are a teahouse, the living quarters of the monastics and of some of the temple’s long-term volunteers, guestrooms, a library, and a shrine room devoted to the bodhisattva Manjushri. The shrine room is also where the daily morning services are held. Located right next to the Nan Hua Guest House is Nan Hua Village (Nanhua cun 南華村), which consists of a group of bungalows. Some of these house long-term volunteers, while others serve as guestrooms when the temple hosts big events, such as Dharma assemblies or meditation retreats. The Nan Hua Temple Guest House and Village are surrounded by a wall with a guarded gate facing the road. Located on the same road are several more buildings that belong to the temple: the temple proper with the main shrine, the Nan Hua Academy (Nanhua jiaoxue zhongxin 南華教學中心), and the school building used by the Nan Hua Performing 27 Chandler, Establishing a Pure Land on Earth, pp. 294–295. 28 Hsing Yun, Bai nian foyuan, vol. 10, p. 267. 29 Foguangshan zongwu weiyuanhui 佛光山宗務委員會 (ed.), Foguangshan kaishan sishi zhounian jinian tekan 佛光山開山四十週年紀念特刊, vol. 8, Kaohsiung: Foguang wenhua, 2008, p. 203.

The Field Sites: Hsi Lai, Nan Hua, Da Jue

17

Arts Group (Tianlong dui 天龍隊). A little further down the road are dormitories for the Nan Hua Performing Arts Group students and non-Chinese temple staff, beyond which lies a meditation centre currently not in use. While the school building, Nan Hua Academy, Nan Hua Village bungalows and dorms are simple and functional in style, the architectural style of the two biggest buildings – the Nan Hua Temple Guest House and the temple proper (see Figure 3) – is clearly Chinese. Yet there are also some scattered African design elements to be found. The most obvious one is the “African Lapa”, a small, round building that emulates the traditional local architecture and serves as a practice space for the Nan Hua Performing Arts Group. The outer walls of the building are adorned with paintings of South African animals and also depict scenes of black African Buddhist monks meditating, practicing martial arts, or receiving their ordination. The other building that contains South African design features is the main shrine of the temple proper. While the temple design follows the common pattern of Chinese Buddhist temple architecture, the shrine hall also incorporates local design elements such as African geometric patterns on the ceiling, warrior figurines that form part of the walls, and thatched roof elements above the three main Buddhas on the altar. Another feature that stands out is the design of the three Buddha statues. As is common in many Fo Guang Shan temples,

Figure 3: Main Shrine, Nan Hua Temple, South Africa.

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Mapping Modern Mahayana

the three Buddha statues in the main shrine are the Buddha Amitabha, Buddha Shakyamuni, and the Medicine Buddha. Yet what is different about the Buddha statues at the Nan Hua Temple is their colour. The statues are made of a dark wood and only the hair and the robes are coloured. This gives the impression of dark brown skin, which, as a monastic told me, was intentional in order to make them appear like black African Buddhas. Besides organizing religious activities, like meditation retreats or Dharma assemblies, Fo Guang Shan is involved in a variety of charity, educational, and cultural endeavours in South Africa. Some target the Taiwanese and rapidly growing PRC Chinese communities, while others aim to address the country’s diverse middle class consisting of black, coloured, white, Indian, and Chinese South Africans. And finally, still further activities are meant to provide support for the inhabitants of the more rural, tribal, and often impoverished regions of the country. These diverse social engagements generate Nan Hua Temple’s complex entanglements with South Africa’s ethnically pluralistic host society, including the country’s increasingly diverse Chinese diaspora communities. At present, there are two main projects at the Nan Hua Temple designed to address the third of the above-mentioned demographics: the Nan Hua Academy and Nan Hua Performing Arts Group. The Nan Hua Academy is an educational institution that provides free three-month computer and Mandarin language courses for unemployed residents of neighbouring townships. The goal is to provide an education that will be beneficial in their search for employment. The Nan Hua Performing Arts Group is a performing-arts boarding school for young women who live in underdeveloped and rural areas. Both institutions will be further discussed in chapter five of this book. Besides the students of the Nan Hua Performing Arts Group, there are about a dozen monastics from Taiwan, over a dozen long-term volunteers from Taiwan and the PRC, and some staff who live at the temple. Additionally, there are more than 30 locals working as manual labourers, kitchen helpers, and cleaning staff at the temple during the daytime. The last of the primary field sites is Fo Guang Shan Ancestral Da Jue Temple in Yixing city in Jiangsu province in the People’s Republic of China. Fo Guang Shan’s development in the People’s Republic represents the most recent stage of the order’s global development. Today, Fo Guang Shan operates nine facilities across the country. The most important of these is the order’s Ancestral Temple in Yixing. Seven of Fo Guang Shan’s other facilities are also located in the Jiangnan area. Fo Guang Shan runs two enterprises in Shanghai: a publishing company (Shanghai dajue wenhua chuanbo 上海大覺文化傳播) and a cultural centre (Xingyun wenjiao guan 星雲文教館). In Suzhou, the order operates the Jiaying Assembly Hall (Jiaying huiguan 嘉應會館), a traditional house that serves

The Field Sites: Hsi Lai, Nan Hua, Da Jue

19

as a space for exhibitions and cultural classes. Fo Guang Shan also maintains a library (Jianzhen tushu guan 鑒真圖書館) in Yangzhou (揚州) and a branch of its Water Drop teahouse chain in Wuxi (無錫). In Nanjing, the order has the Flower Rain Abode (Yuhua jingshe 雨花精舍) and, at the time of writing this book, is reconstructing the Tianlong Temple (Tianlong si 天龍寺). Finally, the order runs a cultural centre (Guangzhong wenjiao guan 光中文教館) in Beijing. As is the case in most Buddhist temples, there are lay volunteers in the PRC who donate their time and labour to Fo Guang Shan’s facilities. Many lay Buddhists serve as volunteers, particularly at Da Jue Temple. However, these volunteers are not members of a bigger institution, since the BLIA does not exist in the People’s Republic of China. Da Jue Temple has a long history dating back to the Southern Song. The temple was first constructed between 1265 and 1274 under the Linji (臨濟) lineage of Chan (禪) Buddhism.30 Hsing Yun had stayed at Da Jue Temple – the ancestral temple of his tonsure master Shikai – for a short time prior to leaving for Taiwan in 1949. It was only in the 1980s that Hsing Yun began to reconnect with the Buddhist world of the PRC. In 1986, at the sixtieth birthday celebrations of Thailand’s King Bhumibol Adulyadej (1927–2016), he met Zhao Puchu (趙樸初, 1907–2000), who was at that time President of the Buddhist Association of China (Zhongguo fojiao xiehui 中國佛教協會).31 Two years later, Fo Guang Shan organized the sixteenth World Fellowship of Buddhists meeting at Hsi Lai Temple to which Buddhist representatives from both China and Taiwan were invited.32 In 1989, Hsing Yun made his first visit to the mainland in 40 years.33 It was on this trip that he finally had the chance to visit his ancestral temple again. When he saw the state of the buildings, he vowed that one day he would rebuild the temple.34 Yet, events in the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests delayed the realization of his vow. Hsing Yun had welcomed Xu Jiatun (許家屯 1916–2016) into residence at the Hsi Lai Temple. Xu was a former high-ranking Chinese politician who became a dissident after he voiced support for the student protests. The incident caused Hsing Yun to be banned from visiting the People’s Republic.35 Interactions between Fo Guang Shan and the PRC Buddhist world did not resume until the 2000s, a decade later. Most notably, between 2002 and 2004 several

30 Shi Miaopu, Foguang zuting dajue 10 nian: 2005–2015 佛光祖庭大覺10年: 2005–2015, Yixing: Dajue si, 2015, p. 4. 31 Fu, Bright Star, Luminous Cloud, pp. 273–274. 32 Ibid., pp. 274–275. 33 Ibid., p. 276. 34 Shi Miaopu, Foguang zuting dajue 10 nian, p. 21. 35 Chandler, Establishing a Pure Land on Earth, pp. 256–258.

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exchanges took place between the two sides.36 Hsing Yun managed to establish good relations not just with Buddhists, but also with PRC political circles. He has met four PRC presidents in person, namely Yang Shangkun (楊尚昆), Jiang Zemin (江澤民), Hu Jintao (胡錦濤), and the current president Xi Jinping (習近平). Xi Jinping and Hsing Yun met have met in person on four occasions: in 2006, 2013, 2014, and 2015.37 Hsing Yun’s good connections paid off when, in 2004, Yixing’s local government finally agreed to rebuild Da Jue Temple on the shore of Hengshan reservoir Hengshan shuiku (橫山水庫) on the outskirts of Yixing. Construction began in October 2005 and in March 2007 the temple was officially awarded religious site status by the Bureau of Religious Affairs Zongjiao bu (宗教部). The first phase of construction took place from 2005 to 2007, when the Guanyin Hall, an art museum, the teahouse, a guesthouse, and the dining hall were built. Meanwhile, the local government built streets to connect the temple with the city. During the second building phase, from 2007 to 2011, the main gate, the Park of the 18 Arhats, and the main shrine flanked by two buildings were constructed. In the third construction phase, from 2012 to 2015, the Fragrant Forest Abundant Treasure White Pagoda was added, housing a teahouse, a museum, office spaces, VIP accommodation, and Hsing Yun’s private apartment. In the fourth phase, which was still underway during my fieldwork, and which started in 2015, problems with Guanyin Hall’s foundations were discovered. As a result, Fo Guang Shan had to rebuild it. The new complex will be bigger than the original and contain a sutra repository, a museum for religious history and arts, an auditorium, a pilgrimage lodge, and other facilities.38

36 Fu, Bright Star, Luminous Cloud, pp. 270–271. 37 Shi Miaopu, Foguang zuting dajue 10 nian, p. 53. 38 Ibid., p. 21.

The Many Transnationalisms of Renjian Buddhism Catholics and Protestants have built churches all around the world, so why can’t Foguangshan?1 Hsing Yun

Buddhist history is characterized by mobilities and border-crossings. After emerging in South Asia, Buddhism entered China via Central and Southeast Asia, from where it spread further into other parts of East Asia. It is thus no surprise that the modern Chinese Buddhist reform movement of renjian Buddhism continues to be a very mobile tradition. Yet what differentiates renjian Buddhist mobilities from their predecessors is the centrality of the category of the nation-state. Renjian Buddhist mobilities are highly transnational in their nature. In contrast to other terms, such as the translocal or the transregional, the notion of transnationalism emphasises border-crossings while also maintaining the importance of the nation-state. Transnationalism is furthermore different from “the international” in that the letter applies to the relationships between states and governments, while the former refers to the border-crossings of non-state actors and the resulting continuous interconnections and exchanges.2 Renjian Buddhism has its roots in the turbulent and highly transnational era that stretches from the first Opium War (1839–1842) to the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949. This period, which in Chinese scholarship is considered to represent the beginning of modern China (jindai 近代), is marked by a complex net of multifaceted, multidirectional transnational entanglements that link China, Japan, the countries of the West and their colonial spheres of influence in Southeast Asia and elsewhere. During the nineteenth century, Chinese society experienced a series of crises – some external, caused by the political, economic, missionary, and military globalization projects of Western imperialism3; others internal, such as the Taiping (1851–1864) and other rebellions4 – in the aftermath of which the Qing Dynasty collapsed and the Republic was founded. China’s encounter with the Western powers, which, to use a Chinese expression, threatened to slice up the country like a melon,5 resulted in an infusion of Western ideas and people that challenged many viewpoints held by the

1 Chandler, Establishing a Pure Land on Earth, p. 275. 2 S. Vertovec, Transnationalism, Key Ideas, London: Routledge, 2009, p. 3. 3 J. D. Spence, The Search for Modern China, New York: Norton, 1991, chapter 7. 4 Ibid., chapter 8. 5 Ibid., p. 231. For the history of the metaphor, see R. G. Wagner, “‘Dividing up the [Chinese] Melon, guafen 瓜分’: The Fate of a Transcultural Metaphor in the Formation of National Myth”, Journal of Transcultural Studies 8 (2017) 1, pp. 9–122. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110690156-002

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The Many Transnationalisms of Renjian Buddhism

Chinese.6 The resulting attempt to socially, intellectually, institutionally, and politically reconstruct China as a modern nation-state had many repercussions for religious life. New Western concepts reflected in Japanese neologisms such as “religion” (zongjiao 宗教) and “superstition” (mixin 迷信) were introduced into the Chinese language. These concepts remodelled the space for religion within society, by taking the Christian-secular model as point of reference.7 Religion was understood in a Western “post-reformation” sense of a system of doctrine organized as a church that contributes to the society of a modern nation-state. It was thereby differentiated from another imported concept, namely superstition.8 The state developed new religious policies that reordered the religious field by applying a complex blend of repression, disregard, and cooperation. Those traditions and practices that were classified as superstition were suppressed.9 Others that were labelled as religions had to contribute to the transformation of the country into a modern nation-state.10 The main area for religious traditions to become engaged in this process were education and welfare. In China, religious traditions had of course been involved in welfare long before the nineteenth century.11 Throughout history, a variety of actors – state, religious, and independent – were involved in a multitude of charitable activities. During the late Ming and early Qing, for example, benevolent societies became widespread, supplementing existing forms of charity provided by the state, Buddhist temples, and local shrines.12 Similarly, folk religious groups that formed around spirit mediums, whose revelations were sometimes collected and

6 Spence, The Search for Modern China, chapter 13; J. K. Fairbank and M. Goldman, China: A New History, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006, chapter 13. 7 V. Goossaert and D. A. Palmer, The Religious Question in Modern China, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011, p. 68. 8 Ibid., pp. 50–51. 9 For a study on the anti-superstition campaigns in Jiangsu during the Nanjing decade, see R. Nedostup, Superstitious Regimes: Religion and the Politics of Chinese Modernity, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009. 10 Goossaert and Palmer, The Religious Question in Modern China, p. 67. 11 Parts of the following section have also been published in J. Reinke, “Generating Global Pure Lands: Renjian Buddhist Civic Engagement Within and Beyond Chinese Diaspora Communities Worldwide”, in: P. Clart and A. Jones (eds.), Transnational Religious Spaces: Religious Organizations and Interactions in Africa, East Asia, and Beyond, Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2020, pp. 283–303. 12 J. F. Handlin Smith, “Benevolent Societies: The Reshaping of Charity During the Late Ming and Early Ch’ing”, The Journal of Asian Studies 46 2 (1987) 2, pp. 309–310.

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published in morality books, were involved in charity work.13 Traditional Buddhist social work included offering shelter and care for pilgrims, providing relief to the disadvantaged and the needy, but also accepting reformed criminals as monastics or taking in orphans to ordain them as novices.14 Yet from the nineteenth century on, with the growing presence of Europeans and Americans in China, new modes of social engagement developed. They represented a departure from late imperial Chinese forms of religiosity in that they merged foreign and native elements and linked religion to the goal of transforming China into a modern nation-state.15 Charitable institutions based on Confucian ideals, for example, merged with ideas and practices associated with nineteenth- and twentieth-century conceptions of globalized capitalist modernity.16 Established Chinese traditions were remodelled by these highly transnational processes into modern religions that contributed to the modernization of the country.

Buddhist Border-Crossings during the Age of Colonial Modernity Buddhist actors responded to the situation in a variety of ways.17 One way was the modernization of Buddhist education. The lay Buddhist Yang Wenhui (楊文會 1837–1911) reimported many scriptures from Japan that had been lost during the anti-Buddhist devastations of the Taiping Rebellion. He also founded the Jinling Sutra Publishing House (Jinling kejing chu 金陵刻經處) and the first modern Buddhist educational institution, the Jetavana Hermitage (Zhihuan jingshe 祗洹精舍). Although Yang’s Jetavana Hermitage had to close down after only one academic year, it had a lasting influence on the history of modern Chinese Buddhism in China.18 Many of the students of the Jetavana Hermitage became important figures in the history of the modernization of Chinese Mahayana.

13 P. Clart, “The Ritual Context of Morality Books: A Case Study of Taiwanese Spirit-Writing Cult”, Ph.D. thesis, University of British Columbia, 1997, p. 41. 14 H. Welch, The Buddhist Revival in China, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970, pp. 129–130. 15 P. Duara, “Religion and Citizenship in China and the Diaspora”, in M. M.-H. Yang (ed.), Chinese Religiosities: Afflictions of Modernity and State Formation, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008, pp. 46–47. 16 V. Shue, “The Quality of Mercy”, Modern China 32 (2006) 4, p. 451. 17 For an overview on the state of Buddhism during this era, see H. Welch, The Practice of Chinese Buddhism, 1900–1950, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967. 18 Welch, The Buddhist Revival in China, pp. 2–10. For a comprehensive study on Yang’s life and influence on modern Chinese Buddhism, see G. Goldfuss, Vers un bouddhisme du XXe

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The two most prominent alumni of the school are probably the layman Ouyang Jingwu (歐陽竟無 1871–1943)19 and the monastic Taixu (太虛 1890–1947).20 Yang Wenhui is noteworthy not only because of his famous students but also for his contributions to the revival of Buddhist printing culture. His work can be seen as antecedent to the flourishing of commercial Buddhist printing culture that occurred some decades later in the Republican Era. The spread of the commercial press at that time facilitated the emergence of a new medium, the modern Buddhist periodical. These periodicals became an important tool for Buddhists to engage both with their own community and with the public at large.21 Through print culture, Buddhists participated in many of the debates of the time. One particular important discourse at the time centres on the claim that Buddhism is compatible with modern science and is thus a religion that is able to contribute to the modern nation-state.22 Buddhists developed many new ideas and practices that had repercussions on their own modes of religiosity, including but not limited to the fields of music and food.23 In urban areas such as Shanghai, elite lay

sìecle: Yang Wenhui (1837–1911), réformateur laïque et imprimeur, Paris: Collège de France, Institut des Hautes Études Chinoises, 2001. 19 For a study on Ouyang’s important contribution to the revival of Yogacara, see E. Aviv, “Differentiating the Pearl from the Fish Eye: Ouyang Jingwu (1871–1943) and the Revival of Scholastic Buddhism”, Ph.D. thesis, Harvard University, 2008. 20 For a study on Taixu’s life, see D. A. Pittman, Toward a Modern Chinese Buddhism: Taixu’s Reforms, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2001. Regarding Taixu’s time at the Jetavana Hermitage, see pp. 44–45. For the collected works of the reformer, see Taixu, Taixu dashi quanshu 太虛大師全書, ed. by Yinshun, Taipei: Shandao si fojing liutongchu 善導寺佛經流通處, 1998. 21 G. A. Scott, “A Revolution of Ink: Chinese Buddhist Periodicals in the Early Republic”, in: J. Kiely and J. Brooks Jessup (eds.), Recovering Buddhism in Modern China, New York: Columbia University Press, p. 112, 132. See also G. A. Scott, “Conversion by the Book: Buddhist Print Culture in Early Republican China”, Ph.D. thesis, Columbia University, 2013. 22 For a study on Buddhist discussions about the relationship between science and religion during the 1920s and 30s, see E. J. Hammerstrom, The Science of Chinese Buddhism: Early Twentieth-Century Engagements, New York: Columbia University Press, 2015; for a study on Buddhist participation in the so called “science and philosophy of life debates”, see E. J. Hammerstrom, “Buddhism and the Modern Epistemic Space: Buddhist Intellectuals in the Science and Philosophy of Life Debates”, in: Kiely and Jessup (eds.), Recovering Buddhism in Modern China, pp. 79–110. 23 P. Clart and G. A. Scott, “Introduction: Print Culture and Religion in Chinese History”, in: Clart and Scott (eds.), Religious Publishing and Print Culture in Modern China: 1800–2012, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015, pp. 1–2. For a study on the cultural practices of Buddhists during the modern era, including print culture, music, and vegetarianism, see F. Tarocco, The Cultural Practices of Modern Chinese Buddhism: Attuning the Dharma, London: Routledge, 2010.

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Buddhists began to establish new lay Buddhist organizations that combined modern Western as well as Chinese religious discourses and practices.24 Yet despite the new developments, Buddhism was also a target of criticism. Some modernist intellectuals made “traditional Chinese culture” – particularly Confucianism, but also Buddhism, Daoism, and folk religion – responsible for the country’s inability to resist foreign domination.25 Although Confucianism was found to be the main culprit, and some parts of Buddhist doctrine, particularly Yogacara philosophy (weishi xuepai 唯識學派), even experienced a revival in Chinese intellectual circles, institutional Buddhism was heavily criticized.26 The monastic sangha was perceived by its critics as being backward, corrupt, and indifferent towards the goal of strengthening the nation.27 Meanwhile, Christianity expanded its field of influence in China. Supported by Western forces, Protestant missionaries proselytized aggressively during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.28 They also criticized Buddhism as superstitious and escapist.29 Most of the missionaries were openly hostile towards Buddhism and held an exclusivist theological attitude.30 Yet the relationship with Christianity was not entirely one of hostility and competition. Christian – and in particular Protestant – civic practices and ideas that were introduced to China by Westerners also constituted an important point of reference for the developers of a modern Chinese Buddhist religiosity. Protestant missionaries in China presented their religion as intrinsically modern. They emphasized how Protestantism, through engagement in the fields of charity and education, contributed to the construction of China as a modern nation-state.31 In addition to such public criticism, institutional Buddhism was threatened by government policies. As early as the 1890s, the government began to confiscate

24 Jessup calls this approach “ambivalent modernity”. See J. Brooks Jessup, “Buddhist Activism, Urban Space, and Ambivalent Modernity in 1920s Shanghai”, in: Kiely and Jessup (eds.), Recovering Buddhism in Modern China, p. 71. See also J. Brooks Jessup, “The Householder Elite: Buddhist Activism in Shanghai, 1920–1956”, Ph.D. thesis, University of California, 2010. 25 Pittman, Toward a Modern Chinese Buddhism. 26 J. Makeham, “Introduction”, in: Makeham (ed.), Transforming Consciousness: Yogācāra Thought in Modern China, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014, p. 1. 27 Pittman, Toward a Modern Chinese Buddhism, p. 28. 28 T. D. DuBois, Religion and the Making of Modern East Asia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011, pp. 142–151. 29 G. Fisher, “Buddhism in China and Taiwan”, in: D. L. McMahan (ed.), Buddhism in the Modern World, New York: Routledge, 2012, p. 70. 30 Pittman, Toward a Modern Chinese Buddhism, pp. 37–40. 31 Goossaert and Palmer, The Religious Question in Modern China, p. 77.

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temple property in order to finance the foundation of modern schools.32 While the potential seizure of temple property by authorities was an ongoing danger to Buddhism during this era, new government policies together with the response of the Buddhist reform movements also facilitated the space for Buddhism as a modern religion in Chinese society.33 Yet it was not only those Buddhists who would be later classified as progressives or modernizers: all Buddhist monastics, whether modernist or conservative, had to adapt to the new times. In fact, the line between the two factions is not always that clear. Modernists such as Taixu were particularly receptive to the idea of incorporating Christian civic practices such as establishing hospitals, orphanages, and schools into his project of a modernized Buddhism.34 Yet the more conservative Buddhist mainstream likewise took on what Goossaert and Palmer call the “Christian model” of religiosity. They too drew up plans (albeit not always realising them) for the foundation of schools, Buddhist universities, research institutes, welfare programmes, presses and journals, and a corps of missionaries who were supposed to spread the Dharma in the military, in prisons, in hospitals, and abroad.35 Yet although Buddhists emulated some Protestant practices and ideas, they also distanced themselves from others. Furthermore, even in those areas where there appear to be similarities, the links are not all that clear. Some of the similarities between renjian Buddhist and Christian social involvements represent analogous developments that occurred due to similar circumstances.36 Thus, for Chinese Buddhists, the role of Christianity was more that of a general reference point for a modern religiosity than merely a model to replicate. Christians served as an important example particularly in regard to their contributions to education and charity. By 1914, Christians were running 11,545 elementary schools and 542 universities in China.37 Buddhists tried to catch up and became involved in education, too. Yet they did so on a much smaller scale. They modernized the education system of the monastic sangha, and

32 Ibid., p. 44. 33 Y. Ashiwa, “Positioning Religion in Modernity: State and Buddhism in China”, in: Y. Ashiwa and D. L. Wank (eds.), Making Religion, Making the State: The Politics of Religion in Modern China, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009, pp. 43–73. 34 D. Long, “An Interfaith Dialogue between the Chinese Buddhist Leader Taixu and Christians”, Buddhist-Christian Studies 20 (2000), p. 184. 35 Goossaert and Palmer, The Religious Question in Modern China, p. 82. 36 Y. Yao and R. Gombrich, “Christianity as Model and Analogue in the Formation of the ‘Humanistic’ Buddhism of Tài Xū and Hsīng Yún”, Buddhist Studies Review 34 (2017) 2, p. 205. 37 Goossaert and Palmer, The Religious Question in Modern China, p. 77.

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some temples also established local community schools.38 But because of political restrictions imposed by the KMT and later by the CCP, Buddhists had greater difficulty founding universities. Even today, there are still no Buddhist universities in the PRC. In Taiwan, it would take Chinese Buddhists until the late 1980s to succeed in establishing their own universities. In fact, Fo Guang Shan was one of the first Buddhist organizations that received permission from the Taiwanese state to realize this aim.39 Another way of contributing to society was through charity. Early twentieth-century Buddhists established charities such as orphanages, prison visiting programmes, and small-scale clinics. Holmes Welch identifies a variety of motivations for these new developments in Republican-Era Buddhism, ranging from traditional ones rooted in Buddhist and Confucian values, to more practical ones like the avoidance of confiscation of temple property by the government, to considerations relating to the importance of education for the building of the modern nation-state. However, he also mentions legal obligations: new laws introduced in 1929 and strengthened in 1935 forced monasteries to contribute a certain portion of their income to charitable enterprises.40 Although Buddhists from all backgrounds and factions were involved in the adaptation of their tradition to the changing times, one monastic came to be perceived as the embodiment of the modernist Buddhist monk: Hsing Yun’s teacher, Taixu.41 Taixu, together with a new generation of monastics, aimed to thoroughly reform Chinese Mahayana by promoting a big array of reforms. Today, there exists a constantly growing body of scholarship on different aspects of the complex and multifaceted life and thought of this modernist monastic. Each study foregrounds different aspects, for example his role as a reformer of modern monastic education and the sangha, or as a political activist and utopian thinker who merged socialist, anarchist, and later nationalist theory with Buddhist doctrine and practice.42 It is important to emphasise that

38 For a thorough examination of the modernization of monastic education, see R. Lai, “Praying for the Republic: Buddhist Education, Student-Monks, and Citizenship in Modern China (1911–1949)”, Ph.D. thesis, McGill University, 2013. 39 Jiang C. 江燦騰, Renshi Taiwan bentu fojiao 認識臺灣本土佛教, Taipei: Taiwan shangwu 台灣商務, 2012, p. 110. 40 Welch, The Buddhist Revival in China, chapter 7. 41 Despite being influenced by the modernizer’s ideas during his time studying at the Buddhist Institute at Jiaoshan, Hsing Yun had only very limited direct contact with Taixu. Nevertheless, Taixu’s ideas had a strong influence on him. D. Long, “Humanistic Buddhism from Venerable Tai Xu to Grand Master Hsing Yun”, Hsi Lai Journal of Humanistic Buddhism 1 (2000), pp. 66–67. 42 The following examples only represent a small selection of the studies on the reformer. For a comprehensive study on the life and thought of Taixu, see Pittman, Toward a Modern Chinese Buddhism. On Taixu’s educational reforms and a newly emerging generation of

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Taixu did not just passively accept Christian or Western ideas, but instead incorporated them into his Buddhist worldview. For example, he reinvented the Maitreya cult by merging traditional Buddhist ritual practices linked to the goal of rebirth in Maitreya’s Tusita heaven with activist engagement within the secular world.43 One of the key concepts that Taixu developed in the context of his reform project is the “pure land in the human realm” (renjian jingtu 人間淨土) or Pure Land on Earth, as it is commonly translated by his students. The concept combines notions of the pure lands in the Chinese Buddhist canon – the popular western pure land of the Buddha Amitabha, but also Maitreya’s abode in the Tusita Heaven – with many utopian elements, including socialist, Marxist, and anarchist ones that were popular at the time. Deemphasizing the understanding of a pure land as a place to seek rebirth in after death, renjian Buddhists taught that the actual world at hand ought to be transformed into a pure land. The concept continues to be an important tenet of renjian Buddhism today. Together with his student, the scholar monk Yinshun (印順 1906–2005),44 Taixu is commonly portrayed as the creator of renjian Buddhism, or, in English,

student monks, see R. Lai, “Praying for the Republic” and R. Lai, “The Wuchang Ideal: Buddhist Education and Identity Production in Republican China”, Studies in Chinese Religions 3 (2017) 1, pp. 55–70; for a study on the relationship between Taixu and Yuanying, the leader of the conservative faction of the Buddhist sangha, and their influence on the Buddhist world in Taiwan, see Shi Huiyan 釋慧嚴, “Taixu, Yuanying er dashi yu Taiwan fojiaojie” 太虛、圓瑛二大師與臺灣佛教界, Chung-Hwa Buddhist Journal 17 (2004), pp. 215–242; for Taixu and renjian Buddhism, see E. Goodell, “Taixu’s (1890–1947) Creation of Humanistic Buddhism”, Ph.D. thesis, University of Virginia, 2012; for Taixu’s merging of Buddhism with radical political thought, see J. Ritzinger, Anarchy in the Pure Land: Reinventing the Cult of Maitreya in Modern Chinese Buddhism, New York: Oxford University Press, 2017; for Taixu and nationalism, see X. Yu, Buddhism, War and Nationalism: Chinese Monks in the Struggle against Japanese Aggressions, 1931–1945, London: Routledge, 2009, pp. 177–187. 43 Ritzinger, Anarchy in the Pure Land, p. 123. 44 There is just as much scholarship on Yinshun as exists on Taixu. For a comprehensive study on his life and thought, see M. Bingenheimer, “Der Mönchsgelehrte Yinshun und seine Bedeutung für den Chinesisch-Taiwanesischen Buddhismus des 20. Jahrhunderts”, Ph.D. thesis, Julius Maximilians Universität, 2004. For a study on Yinshun’s influence on the development of Buddhist studies in Taiwan, see Y.-C. Li, “In Pursuit of Buddhahood: Master Yinshun and the Buddhist Study in Postwar Taiwan”, in: Xu, Chen, and Meeks (eds.), Development and Practice of Humanitarian Buddhism: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Hualien: Tzu Chi University Press, 2007, pp. 173–96; for studies on the doctrinal thought of Yinshun, see S. Travagnin, “The Madhyamika Dimension of Yinshun: A Restatement of the School of Nagarjuna in 20th Century Chinese Buddhism”, Ph.D. thesis, SOAS University of London, 2009, and S. Travagnin, “Yinshun’s Recovery of Shizhu Piposha Lun 十住毗婆沙論: A Madhyamaka-Based Pure Land Practice in Twentieth-Century Taiwan”, Contemporary Buddhism 14 (2013) 2, pp. 320–343; see also W. Chu, “A Buddha-Shaped Hole: Yinshun’s (1906–2005): Critical Buddhology and the Theological Crisis in

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Buddhism of the human realm.45 According to Buddhist doctrine, our world is subdivided into six realms: the realm of the gods, asuras (or half-gods in Sanskrit), humans, animals, hungry ghosts, and hells. For Taixu and the Buddhist reformers, Buddhism in the past had been overly preoccupied with ghosts and death. By calling their reform project Buddhism of the human realm, the modernizers instead emphasized that it is the realm of the humans, and thereby society, that constitutes the most crucial space for Buddhist practice.46 Another term used by Taixu and his disciples is “human life Buddhism” (rensheng fojiao 人生佛教). Similar to renjian Buddhism, the term emphasizes the importance Buddhism for the living. Although Taixu used both terms in his writings, in Taiwanese scholarship, rensheng Buddhism is mostly associated with Taixu, while the term renjian Buddhism is attributed to his student Yinshun.47 Today, the contemporary heirs of the movement prevailingly use renjian Buddhism. But no matter which of the two terms is applied, the main characteristic of this modern Buddhist religiosity is its new emphasis on involvement in, and contribution to, the society of the modern nation-state. In other words, what makes renjian Buddhism modern is that it constitutes a socially-engaged Buddhist religiosity. In the context of Western Buddhist studies, the term socially-engaged Buddhism is often applied to contemporary Buddhists who promote socially progressive causes such as environmentalism, pacifism, social justice, etc. Typical examples are the Vietnamese monastic Thich Nhat Hanh, the Dalai Lama, and the Thai Buddhist intellectual Sulak Sivaraksa.48 Within this context, socially-engaged Buddhism is often used as a normative term. However, Jessica Main and Lai Rongdao argue for a more descriptive, and thus analytical, Modern Chinese Buddhism”, Ph.D. thesis, UCLA, 2006; S. Hurley, “The Doctrinal Transformation of Twentieth-Century Chinese Buddhism: Master Yinshun’s Interpretation of the Tathagatagarbha Doctrine”, Contemporary Buddhism 5 (2004) 1, pp. 29–46. 45 S. Pacey, “A Buddhism for the Human World: Interpretations of Renjian Fojiao in Contemporary Taiwan”, Asian Studies Review 29 (2005) 4, p. 447. 46 That is why renjian Buddhism is also often referred to as “Buddhism that enters the world” rushi fojiao 入世佛教. However, it is important to note that the modernizers did not deny the existence of the other realms. 47 M. Bingenheimer, “Some Remarks on the Usage of Renjian Fojiao and the Contribution of Venerable Yinshun to Chinese Buddhist Modernism”, in Xu, Chen, and Meeks (eds.), Development and Practice of Humanitarian Buddhism, pp. 145–151. For a discussion of the terms in Taiwanese Buddhism, see Yang H. 楊惠南, “Cong rensheng fojiao dao renjian fojiao” 從人生佛教到人間佛教, in: Yang H. (ed.), Dangdai fojiao sixiang zhanwang 當代佛教思想展望, Taipei: Dongda 東大, 2006, pp. 75–125. 48 C. S. Queen and S. B. King (eds.), Engaged Buddhism: Buddhist Liberation Movements in Asia, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996; S. B. King, Socially Engaged Buddhism, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2009.

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application of “Socially Engaged Buddhism” as a term.49 They note that the current normative usage says more about the moral presuppositions of the specific labeller than the characteristics of the movement. It thereby fails to acknowledge the many historic continuities and linkages of socially-engaged Buddhist movements in Asia in the first and second half of the twentieth century.50 For preSecond World War socially-engaged Buddhists in Asia, nationalism was one of the most central tenets of their Buddhist reform movements. The Vietnamese monastic Thich Nhat Hanh for example, who had introduced the term “engaged Buddhism” into the English language during the 1960s, became famous for his pacifist agenda. However, less attention is paid to the fact that he himself was influenced by his reading of Taixu. He even sees his socially-engaged Buddhist movement as a continuation of earlier forms of Vietnamese Buddhist nationalism.51 The issue becomes even clearer when it comes to Taixu himself. While the younger Taixu was influenced by utopian and leftist ideas, over time the reformer became closely associated with the Nationalist movement.52 Yet no matter on which side of the political spectrum he was situated at any given time of his life, social engagement was always a key tenet of his modernist Buddhism. As is pointed out by Prasenjit Duara, the notion of modernization is strongly linked to the idea of the nation as the sovereign subject of history.53 Yet Duara also emphasizes the plurality of nationalisms. There is never just one form of nationalism, instead nationalism “rather marks the site where different representations of the nation contest and negotiate with each other”.54 Different nationalisms thus result from different views held within the same nation on what constitutes (or should constitute) that nation.55 An enormous variety of Chinese nationalist worldviews has existed ever since the Republican Era. There are significant differences between the evolving views on the nation held by Republican-Era Buddhists such as Taixu, the nationalisms of political parties such as the KMT at different stages of the twentieth century, or the Chinese Dream (Zhongguo meng 中國夢) espoused by Xi Jinping today. Yet what they have in common is that they are each linked to a vision of China as a modern nation-state. Early

49 J. L. Main and R. Lai, “Reformulating ‘Socially Engaged Buddhism’ as an Analytical Category”, The Eastern Buddhist 44 (2013) 2, pp. 1–34. 50 Ibid., p. 3. 51 Ibid., p. 13. 52 Ritzinger, Anarchy in the Pure Land, p. 119. 53 P. Duara, Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995, p. 4. 54 Ibid., p. 8. 55 Ibid., p. 10.

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Chinese Buddhist nationalism was transnational because it was linked to nationbuilding efforts which were the premise for participating in the global modern system of nation-states. But it was also transnational because from the beginning it was linked to the idea of a transnational pan-Buddhist movement. Taixu had sent some of his students overseas to study in the southern or Theravada tradition,56 and also had ambitions to establish a World Buddhist Association (Shijie fojiao lianhe hui 世界佛教聯合會).57 To this end the reformer travelled to Japan, Europe, and even the US,58 and some years later also journeyed to South and Southeast Asia. However, although his attempts ultimately failed, Taixu’s promotion of Buddhist contributions to nation-state building, his proximity to the Nationalist party, as well as his vision of a transnational pan-Buddhist association, all demonstrate the importance of a multifaceted transnationalism for the development of early renjian Buddhism. Ashiwa and Wank note that the relationship between religion and the state in China is not a dichotomous one where the state acts as a homogenous entity by exercising control over religion as a passive object. Instead they stress the multiplicity of actors and political processes that together form modern religion in China and emphasize the active role of the non-Western religious elites in the transformation of their religion.59 They make a similar point to Main and Lai when they argue for a revised definition of socially-engaged Buddhism. Socially-engaged Buddhism is not just a form of Buddhism that agrees with contemporary Western forms of liberal and leftist activism, but instead constitutes a response to the Western notion of secularization – a response that returns agency to Buddhists who feared to be expelled from the public sphere. Main and Lai argue that socially-engaged Buddhists reject secularization because it disempowers religion by relegating it to the private sphere.60 Referring to Talal Asad, they note that secularization is not simply a universal process, but that the notion of the secular itself is linked to the specific spatial and historical context of Europe.61 Renjian Buddhism as a socially-engaged modern religiosity emerged out of this transnational reorganization of China. 56 J. Ritzinger, “Original Buddhism and Its Discontents: The Chinese Buddhist Exchange Monks and the Search for the Pure Dharma in Ceylon”, Journal of Chinese Religions 44 (2016) 2, pp. 149–173. 57 Pittman, Toward a Modern Chinese Buddhism, p. 106. 58 Ibid., pp. 118–129. 59 Y. Ashiwa and D. L. Wank, “Introduction”, in: Ashiwa and Wank (eds.), Making Religion, Making the State, pp. 3–5, 7. 60 Main and Lai, “Reformulating ‘Socially Engaged Buddhism’ as an Analytical Category”, p. 4. 61 Ibid., p. 19.

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Social engagement as religious practice in the early period thus served a double purpose: it protected Buddhism from encroachment by the state, while at the same time extending the space of Buddhism in society by expanding into the newly established secular sphere. Renjian Buddhism is intrinsically modern not because it is necessarily socially progressive or because it is linked to modern forms of Buddhist religiosities as they are practiced in the West,62 but because it emerges out of the multifaceted transnational linkages and exchanges between China and the West that in their totality form China as a modern nation-state. Renjian Buddhism is not the only modern Buddhist religiosity that has emerged out of this configuration. Other examples are the Republican Era revival of Yogacara philosophy among Chinese intellectuals63 and the related modern transnationalism of Avatamsaka or Huayan (華嚴) Buddhism,64 the development and prevalence of new forms of Chinese lay Buddhism,65 but also more recent phenomena such as the reinvention of esoteric Buddhism.66 The key tenets of early renjian Buddhism – the promotion of Buddhist civic engagements such as education in order to contribute to the nation-state, panBuddhist visions, the renegotiation of the secular-religious divide – all emerged from multifaceted transnational linkages and exchanges that mark the era of colonial modernity. It is the transnationalism of colonial modernity, which was initiated by the globalization project of European colonialism that is both a prerequisite for and also inherent in early renjian Buddhism. Yet, compared to the contemporary transnationalism of Fo Guang Shan, early renjian Buddhist transnationalism was less characterized by actual border-crossings of its adherents (although they did take place) and mainly played out within the borders of China.

62 Main and Lai, in a footnote, describe Buddhism as private spirituality and the focus on scientific verifiability of the effects of meditation of the mindfulness movement as two more Western examples of modern Buddhist religiosities. Ibid., p. 5, footnote 10. 63 Makeham, “Introduction”, p. 1. 64 E. J. Hammerstrom, “Avataṃsaka 華嚴: Transnationalism in Modern Sinitic Buddhism”, Journal of Global Buddhism 17 (2016), p. 65. 65 Jessup, “Buddhist Activism, Urban Space, and Ambivalent Modernity in 1920s Shanghai”. 66 C. Bahir, “Buddhist Master Wuguang’s (1918–2000) Taiwanese Web of the Colonial, Exilic and Han”, The e-Journal of East and Central Asian Religions 1 (2013), pp. 81–93; C. Bahir, “Replanting the Bodhi Tree: Buddhist Sectarianism and Zhenyan Revivalism”, Pacific World 20 (2018), pp. 95–129.

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Shifting the Centre of Modern Chinese Mahayana Taixu passed away in 1947, two years before the foundation of the People’s Republic. During the first years of the PRC, progressive Buddhists continued to use core concepts of renjian Buddhism in order to reconcile their tradition with the new political climate.67 However, the following decades were to become the most challenging period for Buddhism in the modern history of China.68 It would take until the end of the Mao period for Buddhism to begin to recover in the PRC.69 Renjian Buddhism, albeit understood quite differently than in Taiwan, was to become an important concept on the mainland again. Reinvented by long-time president of the Buddhist Association of China Zhao Puchu, renjian Buddhism gained a Marxist meaning linked to the political ideology of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).70 Foreseeing difficulties, many of the monastics who had strived for the modernization of Buddhism during the Republican Era followed the retreating KMT troops to Taiwan. The island, which was governed by the Chinese Nationalist party until its democratization in the 1990s, was to become the centre of the next phase of renjian Buddhism. Buddhism on the island has a very complex and multifaceted history. Its two most remarkable characteristics are the vitality 67 X. Yu, “Buddhist Efforts for the Reconciliation of Buddhism and Marxism in the Early Years of the People’s Republic of China”, in: Kiely and Jessup (eds.), Recovering Buddhism in Modern China, p. 194; 199. For a study on Buddhism in China during the Mao Era, see H. Welch, Buddhism under Mao, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972. 68 See for example, J. Kiely, “The Communist Dismantling of Temple and Monastic Buddhism in Suzhou”, in: Kiely and Jessup (eds.), Recovering Buddhism in Modern China, pp. 79–110; Yu, “Buddhist Efforts for the Reconciliation of Buddhism and Marxism”. 69 For studies on contemporary Buddhism in the PRC, see R. Birnbaum, “Buddhist China at the Century’s Turn”, The China Quarterly 174 (2003), pp. 428–450; Ji Z., “Secularization as Religious Restructuring: Statist Institutionalization of Chinese Buddhism and Its Paradoxes”, in: Yang (ed.), Chinese Religiosities, pp. 233–260; G. Fisher, “Morality Books and the Regrowth of Buddhism in China”, in: A. Y. Chau (ed.), Religion in Contemporary China: Revitalization and Innovation, pp. 53–80; Ji Z., “Buddhism in the Reform Era: A Secularized Revival?”, ibid., pp. 32–52; G. Fisher, From Comrades to Bodhisattvas: Moral Dimensions of Lay Buddhist Practice in Contemporary China, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2014; G. Fisher, “Mapping Religious Difference: Lay Buddhist Textual Communities in the Post-Mao Period”, in: Kiely and Jessup (eds.), Recovering Buddhism in Modern China, pp. 257–290; N. T.-C. Cheung, “‘Receiving Prayer Beads’: A Lay-Buddhist Ritual Performed by Menopausal Women in Ninghua, Western Fujian”, ibid., pp. 291–332; B. Vermander, L. Hingley, and L. Zhang, Shanghai Sacred: The Religious Landscape of a Global City, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2018; Z. Ji, G. Fisher, and A. Laliberté (eds.), Buddhism after Mao: Negotiations, Continuities, and Reinventions, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2019. 70 Z. Ji, “Zhao Puchu and His Renjian Buddhism”, The Eastern Buddhist 44 (2013) 2, p. 42.

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of the female sangha and the emergence of renjian Buddhist mass organizations such as Dharma Drum Mountain, Tzu Chi, and Fo Guang Shan. Although these groups are far from being the only Buddhist organizations in Taiwan, they are surely the most visible. They are involved in many aspects of society, ranging from the media, charity, and education, to politics.71 Stefania Travagnin suggests a taxonomy of principles and practices of Taiwanese renjian Buddhism: They include the development of modern Buddhist seminaries; enhanced involvement in the public sphere; enhanced interaction between laity and monastics; the use of modern communication technology; a pan-Buddhist and inter-religious perspective; transnationalism; and the importance of the above-mentioned doctrinal notion of a pure land on earth.72 I would add the introduction of modern methods for managing the sangha to that list. The point of most interest for this study is the new mode of transnationalism of the Buddhist mass organizations. These organizations are not only active in Taiwan but have spread around the globe. This is true of Tzu Chi and Fo Guang Shan in particular, which despite their different approaches – Tzu Chi is a religious charity and Fo Guang Shan is a Buddhist order in a more customary sense – maintain a high degree of transnationalism.73 Transnational development was not a new phenomenon in Chinese Buddhism. In the second half of the nineteenth century many Chinese emigrated to Southeast Asia and later to North America. After a time some of them invited Buddhist monastics to follow them.74 The first Buddhist linked to the renjian Buddhist reform project in Southeast Asia was Cihang (慈航, 1893–1954), who settled in Malaysia for some

71 For their involvement in politics and charity undertakings, see Laliberté, The Politics of Buddhist Organizations in Taiwan; A. Laliberté, “Religious Philanthropy in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong”, Asian Journal of Social Science 43 (2015) 4, pp. 435–465. 72 S. Travagnin, “Genealogy and Taxonomy of the ‘Twentieth-century Renjian Fojiao 人間佛教’: Mapping a Famen 法門 from Mainland China and Taiwan to Europe”, Renjian fojiao xuebao yiwen 人間佛教學報藝文 9 (2017), pp. 182–183. 73 On Tzu Chi, see C. J. Huang, “The Compassion Relief Diaspora”, in: L. Learman (ed.), Buddhist Missionaries in the Era of Globalization, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2005, pp. 185–209; W. Huang, “Buddhists in Action: Transnational Migration and Religious Cosmopolitanism”, Encounters 4 (2011), pp. 215–239; W. Huang, “The Discourse and Practice of a Buddhist Cosmopolitanism: Transnational Migrants and Tzu Chi Movement”, in: M. Rovisco and S. C. H. Kim (eds.), Cosmopolitanism, Religion and the Public Sphere, London: Routledge, 2014, pp. 15–31; A. Laliberté, “The Growth of a Taiwanese Buddhist Association in China: Soft Power and Institutional Learning”, China Information 27 (2013) 1, pp. 81–105. 74 Y. Ashiwa and D. L. Wank, “The Globalization of Chinese Buddhism: Clergy and Devotee Networks in the Twentieth Century”, International Journal of Asian Studies 2 (2005) 2, p. 223.

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years in the 1940s before moving to Taiwan.75 Another important figure of the movement, Yen Pei 演培 (1917–1996), moved from Taiwan to Singapore in 1964,76 where he became a key figure in the reformation of Buddhism in the city state.77 The transnationalism of the big renjian Buddhist groups differs from these earlier examples. The global success of Taiwanese renjian Buddhist groups such as Fo Guang Shan and Tzu Chi is connected to the dynamics of post-1965 ethnic Chinese migration.

The Globalization Project of Fo Guang Shan Fo Guang Shan founder Hsing Yun was born Li Guoshen (李國深) in Jiangsu Province, China in 1927.78 He grew up in a small town during the turmoil of the Republican Era. In 1938, he was tonsured at Qixia Temple (Qixia si 棲霞寺) under the monastic Zhikai (志開 1911–1979) and received the Dharma names Wuche (悟徹) and Jinjue (今覺). After relocating to Taiwan, he chose the name Hsing Yun, and is known by that name today. In 1941, Hsing Yun received full ordination. Three years later, Hsing Yun began studying at Tianning Temple (Tianning si 天寧寺) in Changzhou (常州). One year later, he transferred to Jiaoshan Seminary (Jiaoshan foxueyuan 焦山佛學院), where he first encountered Taixu’s modernist Buddhist thought. In 1947, Hsing Yun spent a short period of time at the ancestral temple of his master – Da Jue Temple, the temple that is also a part of this ethnographic study – where he served as the principal of an elementary school and also became involved in writing and publishing. In 1949, he followed the KMT troops with a monastic relief group to Keelung (Jilong 基隆) in Taiwan. After his arrival, he found shelter at Yuanguang Temple (Yuanguang si 圓光寺) in Taoyuan (桃園). The temple and its associated Buddhist seminary, the first one in Taiwan, were under the leadership of the abovementioned Cihang. Cihang was another student of Taixu who had studied at the famous Minnan Buddhist seminary (Minnan foxue yuan 閩南佛學院).79 After his 75 J. M.-T. Chia, Monks in Motion: Buddhism and Modernity Across the South China Sea, New York: Oxford University Press, 2020, p. 63. 76 Ibid., p. 149. 77 Ibid., chapter 4. 78 The following brief biography of Hsing Yun is based on Shi Ruchang 釋如常, Shi Miaoguang 釋妙廣, and Shi Manyi 釋滿義 (eds.), Yunshui Sanqian – Xingyun dashi hongfa 50 nian jinian yingxiang zhuanji 雲水三千 – 星雲大師弘法50年紀念影像專輯, Kaohsiung: Foguangshan wenjiao jijinhui 佛光山文教基金會, 2003, pp. 632–633. 79 C. B. Jones, Buddhism in Taiwan: Religion and the State, 1660–1990, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1999, pp. 102–105.

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arrival in Taiwan, Hsing Yun also resumed his writing and publishing activities. In 1951, he relocated to Yilan (宜蘭), where he began to accept monastic disciples. In the following years, he would attract many more followers with his charisma and creative modes of Dharma propagation. In 1963, Hsing Yun went on his first overseas tour as part of an official Buddhist delegation to Southeast Asia. In the mid1960s, Hsing Yun left northern Taiwan, the centre of the island’s Buddhist establishment at the time. He moved to the southern county of Kaohsiung, where he founded Fo Guang Shan in 1967. When founding his order, Hsing Yun stated its four main directives, known as the Four Guidelines of Fo Guang Shan (Foguangshan de zongzhi 佛光山的宗旨), which refer to the order’s four main fields of engagement: cultural activities, education, charity, and religious cultivation.80 To this day, these directives are reflected in the order’s internal bureaucratic structure and describe the main areas of involvement of Fo Guang Shan. Since its founding in the 1960s, Fo Guang Shan has developed into one of the biggest Buddhist orders in Taiwan. Dedicated to its ideal of bringing Buddhism into the world, the order has become involved in many areas of society. In addition to Fo Guang Shan, Hsing Yun also founded the Buddha’s Light International Association (BLIA). Not long after its establishment in Taiwan, the BLIA’s headquarters moved to Hsi Lai Temple in the US.81 The BLIA, now a UN-registered NGO, is often referred to by its members as the lay wing of Fo Guang Shan.82 The majority of the organization’s membership are indeed lay members, but membership is also open to monastics. BLIA members pay an annual fee and pledge allegiance to the BLIA articles. They are also expected to participate regularly in the organization’s activities, in exchange for which they receive certain privileges, such as the right to request the presence of a monastic for a chanting service on certain occasions or the right to stay at one of the order’s dormitories.83 It is important to keep in mind that the development of associations with committed memberships is a modern phenomenon in Chinese Buddhism. Besides the deep commitment of BLIA membership, there are also more traditional ways to be engaged at Fo Guang Shan. Some people just come as casual temple visitors, while others may take refuge in the three jewels at Fo Guang Shan or participate in one

80 Foguangshan zongwu weiyuanhua (ed.), Foguangshan kaishan sishi zhounian jinian tekan, vol. 1, p. 13. 81 Chandler, Establishing a Pure Land on Earth, p. 192. 82 Laliberté, The Politics of Buddhist Organizations in Taiwan, p. 143, footnote 27. 83 Chandler, Establishing a Pure Land on Earth, p. 193.

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of the many activities. They may even become benefactors (gongdezhu 功德主) by contributing to the temple through outstanding deeds or regular donations.84 The following section will discuss some key issues that are connected to Fo Guang Shan’s globalization project. Although Fo Guang Shan might be the most visible, the order is not the only Chinese Mahayana Buddhist organization that has developed transnationally. Other examples of Chinese Buddhist transnationalism are Tiantai (天台) lineage networks that predate or parallel the global development of Fo Guang Shan. These groups are characterized by a more decentralized and fluid pattern of transnationalism that is based on the religious kinship relationships of multiple lineage holders.85 In contrast, Fo Guang Shan’s transnationalism is characterised by the order’s hierarchical and centralised structure, the incorporation of modern management methods, a highly developed collective identity, and the systematic and institutionalized incorporation of the laity. As of 2015, Fo Guang Shan maintained 199 temples and practice centres worldwide, 75 of which were located in Taiwan.86 In addition, the order maintained 48 temples and practice centres in other Asian countries, six of which were in Japan, one in South Korea, 20 in Malaysia, one in Singapore, five in the Philippines, two in Thailand, two in India, three in Hong Kong, and eight in the People’s Republic of China. Due to the latter’s restrictive policies towards religious organizations, most of the Fo Guang Shan facilities in the PRC are cultural centres. Six of all overseas temples and practice centres in Asia were constructed in the 1980s, 23 in the 1990s, and 18 since 2000. All eight facilities of the order in the PRC were constructed after 2007.87 The order runs 40 temples and practice centres in the Americas, the majority of which are in the North America (including Central America). Twenty-five are located in the USA, six in Canada, one in Costa Rica, four in Brazil, two in Paraguay, one in Argentina, and one in Chile. Of these, 6 were constructed in the 1980s, 23 in the 1990s, and eleven in the 2000s. Of the most recent batch of temples, almost all were built in the early 2000s, apart from the Bodhi Temple (Puti si 菩提寺) in Sacramento, which was built in 2009.88 In Europe, the order maintains 14 temples and practice centres in ten countries. Nine of them were constructed in the 1990s and

84 Ibid., p. 192. 85 Ashiwa and Wank, “The Globalization of Chinese Buddhism,” pp. 226–234; R. Lai, “Tiantai Transnationalism: Mobility, Identity, and Lineage Networks in Modern Chinese Buddhism”, in: Clart and Jones (eds.), Transnational Religious Spaces, pp. 222–223. 86 Shi Yongdong, Renjian fojiao shijie zhanwang, p. 79. 87 Ibid., pp. 169–172. 88 Ibid., pp. 174–176.

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five since 2000. Two are located in France, two in Germany, two in the UK, two in Switzerland, one in Sweden, one in the Netherlands, one in Belgium, one in Austria, one in Spain, and one in Portugal.89 In Oceania, Fo Guang Shan has 14 temples and practice centres, including eleven in Australia, two in New Zealand, and one in Papua New Guinea. The first one was built in 1989, ten in the 1990s, and three since 2000.90 Finally, the order runs eight temples and practice centres in Africa, six of which are located in South Africa. The others are in Lesotho and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The South African temples and centres were all built in the 1990s, the remaining two in the 2000s.91 Fo Guang Shan’s overseas development began in the US. Although, as discussed in the previous chapter, Hsing Yun’s earliest efforts to develop a presence in the US date back to the 1970s, we can see from the list above that Fo Guang Shan’s transnational spread did not really gather pace until the late 1980s and reached its peak in the 1990s. Construction of 71 of the order’s 124 overseas temples and practice centres was completed in the 1990s. The country with the most overseas temples is the USA (25 temples), followed by Malaysia (20 temples).92 These numbers correspond with Chandler’s observation that wherever there is a sizable Taiwanese diaspora community we can find a Fo Guang Shan temple.93 As we will see in the next chapter, the late 1980s and the 1990s were also the time when large numbers of Taiwanese emigrated and their most popular destination was the USA. However, since the turn of the millennium this situation has changed. Temple construction has continued, but the focus for new development has shifted back to Asia, where it is the People’s Republic of China that has become the new centre of the order’s overseas development. Yet if we compare the situation at the order’s facilities in the PRC with those in other overseas countries, we can see a significant difference. The majority of people, monastic and lay, one encounters at most overseas Fo Guang Shan temples are Taiwanese. In the PRC, however, despite the existence of a large overseas Taiwanese community, Fo Guang Shan facilities target the local population (see Figure 4).94 This new attention given to the PRC also corresponds with enhanced attempts to attract a steadily growing PRC overseas community in the diaspora.

89 Ibid., pp. 177–178. 90 Ibid., pp. 179–180. 91 Ibid., p. 181. 92 For a study on Fo Guang Shan in Malaysia, see Wong and Levitt, “Travelling Faiths and Migrant Religions”, particularly pp. 356–358. 93 S. Chandler, “Spreading Buddha’s Light: The Internationalization of Foguang Shan”, in: Learman (ed.), Buddhist Missionaries in the Era of Globalization, p. 165. 94 Observation based on ethnographic fieldwork.

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Figure 4: Chinese Participating in a Great Compassion Repentance, Main Shrine of Da Jue Temple, PRC.

How does Fo Guang Shan finance its vast global net of temples and practice centres? Fo Guang Shan temples are expected to be financially independent and not rely on central funding. In practice, however, that is not always possible. If a temple struggles financially, the headquarters may step in or initiate donation campaigns to organize support. In addition, regional headquarters sometimes have to support associated local temples and practice centres in order to contribute to the spread of the Dharma. Conventionally, most Buddhist temples in Taiwan rely for their income on money or real estate donations, Dharma assemblies, the sale of Buddhist paraphernalia, funeral related services, and chanting services. Fo Guang Shan has diversified its sources of revenue. In addition to the above, the order runs two publishing companies, a number of museums and arts centres, a TV station, a daily newspaper, child care centres, a travel agency, a chain of teahouses, lodging for pilgrims, hotels, the massive Fo Guang Shan Buddha Museum complex with its many restaurants and shops, and a trust fund. Furthermore, it can count on a free labour force of about 1300 monastics and countless volunteers.95 Compared to those in 95 Shi Yongdong, Renjian fojiao shijie zhanwang, p. 104.

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Taiwan, the order’s overseas temples have to rely on a more limited range of temple revenues, such as financial or real estate donations as previously mentioned, Dharma assemblies, the sale of Buddhist paraphernalia, funeral related services, chanting services, and membership fees. Yet there are other sources of revenue, such as the Buddha’s Light Publishing Company at Hsi Lai Temple, several museums, Chinese language schools, child care centres, overseas branches of the order’s chain of teahouses, lodgings for pilgrims, and renting out plots of land. Most of these target members of the ethnic Chinese overseas communities, who represent the vast majority of those involved at the temples. The order also generates income through English language activities, such as meditation classes for a fee or donations.96 As is the case in Taiwan, Fo Guang Shan temples overseas can rely on a labour force comprising monastics and volunteers, albeit to a lesser degree. When it comes to levels of involvement at overseas temples, how should membership numbers be best assessed? The question is difficult to answer, since it depends on how one defines membership. One option would be to define temple membership as being a member of the BLIA. As of 2013, the BLIA claims 200 chapters and over a thousand subchapters with a total membership of over two million.97 As will be discussed in the next chapter, the majority of its members overseas are ethnic Chinese from Taiwan, Southeast Asia, and Hong Kong, and increasingly the PRC. However, many regions also run a locallanguage BLIA subchapter. The situation is different in the PRC, since the BLIA is not allowed to operate in the country. Furthermore, it is important to keep in mind that membership at Fo Guang Shan is not necessarily exclusive.98 In some places, such as South Africa, many members of Fo Guang Shan also support Tzu Chi or the Amitofo Care Centre (Amituofo guanhuai zhongxin 阿彌陀佛 關懷中心), a charity founded by a former Fo Guang Shan monastic who has left the order. In Taiwan or places with big overseas Taiwanese communities, people tend to choose to be involved in one group. However, this applies only to full BLIA members who strongly identify with Fo Guang Shan. Many people also participate in temple activities without being formal members. In fact, membership, although appreciated, is not required for participation in most if not all of the order’s activities. Thus, the vast majority of daily temple visitors are not BLIA members.

96 Ibid., pp. 213–214. 97 Shi Miaoguang, “Issues of Acculturation and Globalization Faced by the Fo Guang Shan Buddhist Order”, p. 546. 98 The following information is based on fieldwork data.

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One of the main assets facilitating the order’s global development are its roughly 1300 monastics. Fo Guang Shan’s education system has specifically adjusted to its global trajectory. The order founded an English-language Buddhist seminary as early as 1976.99 In 1989, Fo Guang Shan also established a Japaneselanguage Buddhist seminary100 and in 1994, it established a class specifically for monastics with a foreign nationality.101 Over the years, ethnic Chinese from places such Malaysia, Indonesia, and Hong Kong have joined the order.102 Many of them have excellent English skills and are therefore stationed overseas. The “human resources office” (Chuandeng hui 傳燈會) at the headquarters suggests work locations for the monastics based on the needs of the order and the interests and skills of the particular monastic. In theory, monastics are supposed to rotate their posts after a period of three years. However, overseas this practice turned out to be impracticable. Because of their language abilities, and also due to the visa laws and regulations of specific countries, monastics who are stationed overseas tend to rotate significantly less. As will be discussed in the following chapter in more detail, Fo Guang Shan’s global trajectory is inextricably linked to the patterns of post-1965 ethnic Chinese migration. However, the order has always aimed to attract non-ethnic Chinese. At most overseas temples, we can find meditation groups conducted in English or the local language. At Fo Guang Shan, the Chinese term for internationalisation (guojihua 國際化) is sometimes used to describe the order’s global trajectory. This is then juxtaposed with the concept of localisation (bentuhua 本土化) to describe the order’s efforts in cross-cultural proselytization. Bentuhua is sometimes also used to describe the development of renjian Buddhism in Taiwan. Within this usage it refers to the process of Chinese Buddhism adapting to the society and culture of Taiwan.103 In 2001, when the third global meeting of BLIA members (Guoji foguanghui sanjie diyici lishi huiyi 國際佛光會第三屆第一次理事會議) was convened at Nan Hua Temple, Hsing Yun emphasized the need for Fo Guang Shan to localise overseas. He offered a long-term perspective for this goal and elaborated on four relevant aspects of this endeavour.104 Elsewhere, we find 99 Foguangshan zongwu weiyuanhui (ed.), Foguangshan kaishan sishi zhounian jinian tekan, vol. 3, p. 78. 100 Ibid., p. 80. 101 Ibid., p. 82. 102 The data presented in the following section is based on fieldwork data. 103 Laliberté and Travagnin, “Epistemic Communities of Buddhist Scholarship in Modern China”, in: Laliberté and Travagnin (eds.), Concepts and Methods for the Study of Chinese Religions, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019, p. 123. 104 Shi Miaoyi, “Cong Xingyun dashi bentuhua linian kan Foguang quanqiu hongfa zhi wenhua shiying ji chengxiao”, pp. 506–508.

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Hsing Yun’s thought on localisation condensed into five main points.105 However, whether divided into four or five points, the content is very similar. Hsing Yun stresses openness and cultural flexibility, the use of local languages, the idea to add on options instead of restraints, and the long-term goal to have non-Chinese local monastics and even abbots to take over. Yet his plan seems difficult to accomplish on the ground. Although overseas temples make some adjustments to accommodate non-ethnic Chinese temple visitors – Fo Guang Shan, for example, does not expect non-Chinese who want to become more involved with the temple to reject their original religion or do full prostrations when entering the Buddha hall – non-ethnic Chinese Fo Guang Shan Buddhists represent a small minority, and there are just a handful of non-ethnic Chinese monastics in the order. With one exception – a New Zealander who served as one of four vice-abbots at the headquarters – so far no non-Chinese has served as an abbot at a Fo Guang Shan temple. A series of articles written by senior nuns who have served overseas for many years, if not decades, discuss the issue in more depth. According to their observations, one of the main reasons for the slow development of cross-cultural proselytization are language issues and cultural differences.106 The present study adopts an alternative framework to the dichotomy of internationalisation and localisation to examine the order’s globalization project. By examining Fo Guang Shan’s global trajectory through a spatial lens that considers the particularities of one specific example of a modern Buddhist religiosity, I want to avoid an oversimplifying bifurcation between Chinese and non-Chinese. Instead I aim to highlight the internal complexity and many overlaps that exist between the different groups, ethnic Chinese and others, who are involved at Fo Guang Shan’s temples overseas. Thus, though the main focus of this study is on first-generation ethnic Chinese migrants, this group is far from being homogenous. It is important not only to acknowledge the layers and fractures within the Chinese diaspora, comprising for example national and geographic origin, socio-economic class and gender, etc., but also to take into consideration the dynamics of second and third generation migrants who

105 The five points are: (1) native born abbot for native temple; (2) the legitimacy of paying equal devotion to two religious beliefs; (3) additional options are better than reduced choice; (4) teach what is new to locals in their language; (5) incorporating the spirit of respect, tolerance, peace, and equality. See Shi Miaoguang, “Issues of Acculturation and Globalization Faced by the Fo Guang Shan Buddhist Order”, pp. 547–558. 106 See, for example Shi Manju, “Renjian fojiao quanqiu honghua wenti lüelun”, pp. 491–493; Shi Miaoyi, “Cong Xingyun dashi bentuhua linian kan Foguang quanqiu hongfa zhi wenhua shiying ji chengxiao”, pp. 533–535; Shi Miaoyi, “Cong ‘Bolin Foguangshan dewen zu’ kan Deguo hongfa chengxiao ji fojiao bentuhua”, p. 665.

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might possess multiple, hybrid, or even non-Chinese ethnic identities. These issues touch on the question of who or what is “Chinese” and the meaning of “Chineseness” in general. Can we still think of first-generation migrants as “Chinese”, when some of them have lived in their new home country since the late 1970s and, though still fluent in Mandarin, are culturally in many ways more, for example, American than Chinese? What about those who have emigrated from Taiwan and who might identify, for example, not as Chinese but as Taiwanese American? What about the second generation? Are they, in the South African case, to be considered African, African Born Chinese, Hong Kongese African, or all of the above? Furthermore, the societies that ethnic Chinese are migrating into are far from being culturally homogenous and static. Countries such as the US, South Africa, Australia, or the countries of Europe are undergoing significant transformations in their ethnic composition bringing increased diversity into their cultures. It is thus important to be careful not to hastily reify ethnicity as a category of research but instead to be attentive of the complexity of the dynamics that play out on the ground.

Migrating Bodhisattvas and Fo Guang Shan Religious Mobility The ethnic Chinese who migrated to the US in the past had a very low status in society, the majority of them belonging to the working class. But our overseas compatriots have managed to slowly but surely advance from being restaurant and laundry owners to the point that now there are professors, industrialists, and politicians among them. From this we can see that the status of ethnic Chinese in society has been continuously on the rise.1 Hsing Yun With Hsi Lai Temple in America as starting point, Humanistic Buddhism thus began to spread to the West and the rest of the Five Continents. Considerable gratitude goes to the Chinese immigrants and local governments in various parts of the world.2 Hsing Yun

In 2017, a report published by the UN counted an estimated 258 million transnational migrants globally.3 Comparing emigration countries in 2010 and again 2017, another UN report shows that China was one of the five biggest migration sending countries worldwide in both years.4 According to a 2009 estimate, the worldwide population of overseas Chinese numbered between 40 and 45 million.5 Southeast Asia was once the most popular destination for Chinese migrants. In 1955, for example, the vast majority of overseas Chinese (96.7%) were still located in Asia. Yet this changed significantly in the decades that followed.6 Numbers in Asia began to decline, while in the US on the other hand, the Chinese overseas population almost doubled in every decade from the 1960s to the 1990s.7 By 2009, only 75.2% of the globally dispersed Chinese overseas population was still

1 Quoted from Chinese, own translation: “過去華人移民在美國沒有甚麼地位，大多都是勞工 階級、僑胞們職業從餐廳、洗衣店, 慢慢得到現在也有教授、企業家及政治人物等，因此, 華人 在社會的地位也不斷在提升.” Hsing Yun, Bai nian foyuan, vol. 10, p. 29. 2 Hsing Yun, Humanistic Buddhism: Holding True to the Original Intents of Buddha, Kaohsiung: Foguang Cultural Enterprise, 2016, p. 309. 3 International Migration Report 2017, http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/ migration/publications/migrationreport/docs/MigrationReport2017.pdf, p. 17. The report refers to the PRC, there is no mention whether Taiwan is included or not. 4 International Migration Report 2017: Highlights, http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/ population/migration/publications/migrationreport/docs/MigrationReport2017_Highlights. pdf, p. 13. 5 C.-B. Tan, “Introduction”, in: Tan (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of the Chinese Diaspora, London: Routledge, 2012, p. 4. 6 P. S. Li and E. X. Li, “The Chinese Overseas Population”, in: Tan (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of the Chinese Diaspora, p. 21. 7 Li, Ethnoburb, p. 61. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110690156-003

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located in Asia; meanwhile the US already hosted 18.5% (compared to only 2.3% in 1955).8 Thus, although the majority of overseas Chinese are still in Asia, there has been a clear shift in distribution from Asian to non-Asian countries. In his seminal work on modern Chinese emigration, China historian Philip A. Kuhn argues that the present era of ethnic Chinese mobility, beginning with the 1960s, has been shaped by four historic events: The first event was the abandonment of race-based exclusion by the immigration countries of North America and Australasia; the second event was the economic opening up of the People’s Republic; the third was the reconfiguration of Europe after the Cold War; and last, changing PRC emigration policies.9 To these four events we might add the economic, political, and societal changes that occurred in the ROC on Taiwan and the transfer of Hong Kong to the PRC in the late 1990s. As a result of these changes, there was a significant shift in the socio-economic status of the Chinese diaspora outside of Asia. Chinese migration during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was characterized by the relocation of large numbers of Chinese workers from the southern coastal provinces to Southeast Asia, as well as to the Americas, Australia, and Africa.10 Most of these migrants were impoverished and uneducated. In contrast to their predecessors, the new generation of ethnic Chinese migrants, which after 1965 settled in the US and all over the world, were significantly more affluent, better educated, and more urbanized. Since the 1960s, ethnic Chinese from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao, Singapore, Southeast Asia, etc., have left their places of origin and moved to countries of the West. Migrants from Taiwan and Hong Kong were the first to take advantage of the repeal of race-based immigration policies of immigration countries such as the United States in the 1960s. They represent the vanguard of a new generation of ethnic Chinese migrants. It was these “pioneers” from Taiwan who facilitated the establishment of Fo Guang Shan’s first overseas temples. The Taiwanese who could afford to move abroad mostly belonged to the middle and above socioeconomic strata of Taiwanese society. They often went to study overseas and decided to settle permanently after receiving their degrees and finding employment.11 In the years that followed, their high educational background and resulting high socio-economic status enabled them to invite monastics over from Taiwan, and to found and support Buddhist temples. China historian Wang

8 Li and Li, “The Chinese Overseas Population”, p. 21. 9 P. A. Kuhn, Chinese among Others: Emigration in Modern Times, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2009, p. 321. 10 Li and Li, “The Chinese Overseas Population”, p. 16. 11 S. L. Chang, “Causes of Brain Drain and Solutions: The Taiwan Experience”, Studies in Comparative International Development 27 (1992) 1, p. 28.

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Gungwu has famously called the phenomenon of the new, wealthy, and highly educated Chinese migrant “upgrading the migrant”.12 To this day, many if not most of the first generation migrants that one encounters at a Fo Guang Shan overseas temple belong to the upper-middle and upper classes.13 It is members of these particular segments of society that are attracted to the order’s modern Buddhist religiosity. Fo Guang Shan has adapted to the new affluence of Chinese societies by presenting Buddhism in a way that is compatible with the conveniences of a modern lifestyle. An introduction to the principles of Fo Guang Shan puts it as follows: After many years of effort, there have been positive results in the development of humanistic Buddhism. For example, conservative, traditional Buddhist practices placed an emphasis on asceticism. Today's magnificent modern temples, with air-conditioning, carpeting, electronic equipment, and a comfortable environment, are seemingly contradictory to Buddhist tradition and practice. However, in the extremely blissful world of which the Buddha teaches, the ground is paved with gold, there are seven rows of fences, seven rows of trees, and eight virtuous waters, all magnificent and wonderful.14

Hsing Yun refers to the imagery of the pure land sutras here in order to legitimize the modernization of the Fo Guang Shan’s temples. Many of the order’s temples, particularly those that were built most recently, use high quality materials for construction and maintain teahouses, bookstores, exhibition spaces, and conference rooms. Their architecture and design aim to be visually appealing to the visitor and create a welcoming and comfortable environment. The remarkable global development of Fo Guang Shan’s temples and practice centres unfolded over just a couple of decades. It was made possible by this very generation of affluent and highly educated ethnic Chinese migrants. During the early phase of the order’s globalization project, Taiwanese migrants attended Fo Guang Shan’s first Dharma assemblies in an old church building in the greater Los Angeles area in such great numbers that the order had to purchase another, bigger church building and eventually constructed the Hsi Lai Temple building complex. Today, ethnic Chinese migrants of different national and regional origins – from Taiwan, Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, and increasingly the PRC – visit the order’s overseas temples to pray, to celebrate holidays, 12 G. Wang, “Upgrading the Migrant: Neither Huaqiao nor Huaren”, in: E. Sinn (ed.), The Last Half Century of Chinese Overseas, Aberdeen, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1998, pp. 15–34. 13 I. Lin, “Journey to the Far West: Chinese Buddhism in America”, Amerasia Journal 22 (1996) 1, pp. 132, footnote 58. 14 Hsing Yun, Understanding the Buddha’s Light Philosophy, Hacienda Heights, CA: Buddha’s Light Publications, 2002, p. 12.

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and become members of the BLIA. It is they who, through their donations of money, time, and manpower, sustain the order’s overseas temples and many other undertakings.

Layers of Ethnic Chinese Migration After over half a century of refusing to allow Chinese to relocate to the US, the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1943 and later passing of the Immigration and Nationality Act in 1965 finally allowed Chinese migration to resume while at the same time giving Chinese immigrants resident in the US the right to become naturalized citizens and own properties and businesses. These changes had a significant impact on the shifting demographics of Chinese migration. Besides laying down quotas for family reunification and some low-skilled professional migrants in areas where there were labour shortages, the new laws primarily provided immigration opportunities for high-skilled professionals. The same is true of the 1990 Immigration Act, which, in addition to the previously mentioned high-skilled professionals and family sponsored migrants, also aimed to attract wealthy migrants that would invest money and thereby create employment for local Americans.15 Similar developments occurred in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand around the same time.16 These changing conditions for Chinese migration not only changed the fabric of the overseas communities but also had repercussions for previous Chinese migration routes. Earlier migration patterns were characterized by kin relations, shared place of origin, and focused on destinations in Southeast Asia. The new Chinese migrants – whether from the PRC, Hong Kong, Southeast Asia, or Taiwan – on the other hand, favoured the countries of the West, were urbanized, often wealthy and had a high educational background. For them, overseas study became a very important new migration channel.17 In addition, other opportunities to migrate were based on business and tourism.18 New patterns of transnational ethnic Chinese migration also generated new modes of settlement. The earlier migrants had moved to inner-city Chinatowns, often described by scholars as ethnic enclaves.19 Being founded mostly by labour

15 Li, Ethnoburb, pp. 35–38. 16 Kuhn, Chinese among Others, pp. 325–326. 17 Ibid., p. 356. 18 Ibid., pp. 335–339. 19 See for example J. Lin, Reconstructing Chinatown: Ethnic Enclaves and Global Change, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998; M. Zhou, Chinatown: The Socioeconomic Potential of an Urban Enclave, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2010.

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migrants from Guangdong, the population of the Chinatowns spoke Cantonese and tended to be poor and little educated. Over time, some of the inhabitants of the Chinatowns would move upward on the social ladder and relocate to the suburbs, where as a small minority they were expected to assimilate into mainstream culture. However, because of their higher socio-economic background, the post1965 migrants could afford to bypass Chinatown and move directly into the suburbs. The result of this large influx of ethnic Chinese in a relatively short period of time was the emergence of large Chinese residential and business clusters in the suburbs.20 In her study of neighbourhoods in the Los Angeles San Gabriel Valley, the US geographer Wei Li has dubbed this new pattern of settlement the “ethnoburb”.21 Over recent decades, the San Gabriel Valley ethnoburb has continuously evolved. Taiwanese were the first Asians to settle in the formerly majority European American neighbourhoods. They were followed by Hong Kongese and Southeast Asian Chinese. Most recently, especially from the 1990s and 2000s onward, a growing number of inhabitants of the “626”, as the valley is known colloquially after its area code, originate from the People’s Republic of China. It is therefore no coincidence that Fo Guang Shan’s North American headquarters and first overseas temple, Hsi Lai Temple, is located in the Los Angeles ethnoburb. The large number of highly educated and affluent Chinese of all regional and national backgrounds in the valley generate the ideal conditions for the order’s globalization project. As Hsing Yun states in the quote at the beginning of this chapter, Hsi Lai Temple represents the starting point of Fo Guang Shan’s transnational trajectory. But Los Angeles is not the only city with a Chinese ethnoburb; ethnoburbs exist in many localities that have experienced a large influx of Chinese migrants, including Houston, the San Francisco Bay Area, the suburban New York/New Jersey region, as well as in Australia, and New Zealand.22 Not surprisingly, many of these ethnoburbs also host a Fo Guang Shan temple or have one close by. There are many similarities but also some differences between the histories of Chinese migration to South Africa and to the United States of America.23 The South African Chinese diaspora consists, as in the US, of ethnic Chinese of a variety of regional and national backgrounds who arrived in the country at different times and under very different circumstances. The earliest wave of

20 Kuhn, Chinese among Others, p. 361. 21 Li, Ethnoburb, p. 1. 22 Ibid., p. 174. 23 An earlier version of the following section was published in Reinke, “The Buddha in Bronkhorstspruit”.

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Chinese migration to South Africa was linked to European colonialism. The first Chinese arrived as early as in the seventeenth century; however, the Chinese did not arrive in larger numbers until the nineteenth century, when they were brought over by the Dutch East India Company. Some came as convicts or company slaves, others as contract workers and artisans and later as contract miners. As is the case in the US, most of these early migrants originated from Guangdong and were Cantonese or Hakka.24 During my fieldwork I was told that in terms of religion, the majority of the descendants of these early Chinese migrants have converted to Christianity and by now do not speak Mandarin or any other Chinese language. Not surprisingly, and similar to the situation at Hsi Lai, these so called “local Chinese” are the least represented group of ethnic Chinese at Fo Guang Shan’s South African temples and practice centres. As with Hsi Lai Temple, it was Taiwanese migrants who generated the conditions for the establishment of Fo Guang Shan in South Africa. In the 1970s, the USA had cut diplomatic ties with the Republic of China on Taiwan and established diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China. As a result, Taiwan became isolated on the international stage and began to search for new allies. It turned to South Africa, which because of its Apartheid policies was in a similar situation. The two countries then began to strengthen their economic cooperation and in 1976 officially established diplomatic relations.25 The earliest Taiwanese to arrive in South Africa came in the 1970s and 80s. They were a small group of Taiwanese industrialists whose aim was to invest. Throughout the late 1980s and into the 1990s, the numbers of these industrialists continued to grow and in the 1990s there was a second wave of Chinese immigration from Taiwan and Hong Kong. This second wave of Taiwanese migrating to South Africa consisted of entrepreneurs who opened import/export firms, restaurants, and other smaller businesses. Another group arrived in South Africa as overseas students, but eventually settled. Over time, Taiwanese became important members of South African society. As of 2009, there were many prominent business people and even four members of the South African parliament amongst the Taiwanese South Africans.26 The fact that many of the Taiwanese that migrated to South Africa belonged to the higher end of the socio-economic spectrum of Taiwanese society also came up during one of my interviews. A leading South African BLIA member told me that in the 1990s interests on bank deposits in South Africa were very high, which allowed more wealthy Taiwanese to 24 K. L. Harris, “The Chinese in South Africa: Five Centuries, Five Trajectories”, in: Tan (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of the Chinese Diaspora, pp. 176–183. 25 Ibid., pp. 185–186. 26 Park, “Recent Chinese Migrations to South Africa”, pp. 154–155; 157.

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transfer their retirement funds to the country and spend their retirement living off the interest. She added that this was also true of another group – wealthy migrants from Hong Kong. Many of this second group moved to South Africa during the 1990s because they were concerned about the transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong to the PRC. Being retirees, many of these well-off migrants from Taiwan and Hong Kong not only had the financial means to support a temple, but also the time to get involved and volunteer. The two cases discussed above – the United States and South Africa – show the important role of educated and affluent Taiwanese (and to a lesser degree Hong Kongese) migrants in creating the basic conditions for the earliest stage of Fo Guang Shan’s globalization project. Yet from the 1990s on, the demographics of ethnic Chinese migration became even more complex. Today, it is migrants from the People’s Republic of China who represent the majority of ethnic Chinese in many of the diaspora communities worldwide. During the 1990s, ethnic Chinese from the People’s Republic began to emigrate in increasing numbers. As was the case with the Taiwanese, many of the earliest migrants from the PRC were students who settled in their new home countries after receiving their degrees and securing employment. Over time, an increasing number of entrepreneurial elites and middle-class migrants took advantage of the new immigration laws and settled in countries such as the US.27 The changing internal composition of the global Chinese diaspora had repercussions for Fo Guang Shan’s overseas temples. While Taiwanese represented the vast majority of those who were involved in the Hsi Lai Temple in its early days, since then the situation has diversified significantly.28 Over time, Sino-Vietnamese and Hong Kongese Americans came to represent a considerable portion of the BLIA Los Angeles membership. Many of the Vietnamese who migrated to the greater Los Angeles area were SinoVietnamese who were forced to leave Vietnam after relations between Hanoi and Peking worsened in 1978. These Sino-Vietnamese constitute an important sub-group at Hsi Lai. But during the 1990s the situation changed yet again with the arrival of the most recent group of Chinese immigrants from the People’s Republic. In order to reach out to this demographic, the temple invites representatives from the overseas communities of both countries, the ROC as well as the PRC, to its activities.29 As a result, BLIA membership is further diversifying. Although many of the leading positions within the BLIA subchapters are still 27 Y. W. Chan and S. Y. Koh, “Introduction”, in: Chan and Koh (eds.), New Chinese Migrations: Mobility, Home, and Inspirations, London: Routledge, 2018, pp. 2–3. 28 The following section is based on fieldwork data. 29 Lin, “Journey to the Far West”, p. 113.

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held by Taiwanese Americans, a significant number are held by Southeast Asian Chinese. Most recently, some BLIA subchapters, particularly those in the highly affluent coastal neighbourhoods, already have first generation migrants from the PRC in leading positions. Furthermore, the abbot of Hsi Lai Temple is one of the few fully ordained Fo Guang Shan monastics from the PRC and the only abbot of PRC Chinese origin who serves at a Fo Guang Shan temple outside of the PRC. As mentioned above, Hsi Lai Temple maintains two youth groups or Young Adult Divisions (YAD 1+2): the first is composed of second and later generation American Chinese, many of whose parents originate from Taiwan, while the second group consists of exchange students from Asia, the majority of which originate from the PRC. Thus, we can see that the changing internal demographics of the global Chinese diaspora are also reflected in the Hsi Lai temple space. Overall, we can detect similar developments in South Africa, despite some differences due to the particularities of the country’s history and politics. The new South African government that came into power after the end of Apartheid decided to break off diplomatic relations with Taiwan and instead establish relations with the PRC. This resulted in an influx of migrants from the People’s Republic.30 Immigration of PRC Chinese to South Africa occurred in three waves. The earliest occurred in the late 1980s, followed by a second in the mid-to-late 1990s. Many of the second wave of migrants came from the wealthy Chinese provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang. The last and current wave of Chinese immigrants started to arrive after the turn of the millennium, mostly consisting of small traders and peasants who primarily originate from Fujian province.31 Compared to their predecessors from Taiwan and Hong Kong, the Chinese who migrated from the People’s Republic to South Africa have a more diverse class background. Some of them also are entrepreneurs who operate factories in the country; others are the highly educated personnel of PRC state-owned companies, such as engineers. But many more are workers in Chinese-owned factories. Hsing Yun states that there were about 30,000 Taiwanese in the country when Fo Guang Shan began to develop in South Africa.32 Almost thirty years later, according to one of my interview partners, the number of Taiwanese had decreased to 7,000 compared to 500,000 (including undocumented) PRC Chinese. Sino-African relations scholar Yoon Jung Park’s numbers differ slightly; she estimates that as of 2009 there were about 10,000 local Chinese, 6,000 Taiwanese,

30 Harris, “The Chinese in South Africa”, pp. 186–187. 31 Park, “Recent Chinese Migrations to South Africa”, pp. 156–157. 32 Hsing Yun, Bai nian foyuan, p. 263.

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and about 200,000 to 350,000 migrants from the PRC in the country.33 Like Hsi Lai Temple, Nan Hua Temple has reacted to those changes by trying to diversify its following. A former abbess of the temple continues to put great effort into reaching out to the PRC Chinese community. The order also regularly announces its activities in the local PRC Chinese media and, like Hsi Lai Temple, invites official representatives of both countries, the ROC on Taiwan and the PRC to its activities. I was told during my interviews that until the early 2000s the average BLIA South Africa member was Taiwanese, as were the average board member and president of the local chapters. But in recent years the situation has changed significantly. While the Fo Guang Shan monastics and the directors of the seven local South African BLIA chapters during the time of my fieldwork in fall 2017 were all still Taiwanese, 50 percent of the BLIA board members of the Johannesburg chapter already originated from the PRC. Furthermore, according to one of my interviewees, as much as 50 to 80 per cent of the ordinary BLIA members in the whole country, depending on the local chapter, are PRC Chinese. But numbers are, of course, not everything. Besides looking at membership numbers, one also has to consider the degree of involvement of members in order to assess the impact the changing composition of the global Chinese diaspora has on Fo Guang Shan’s overseas temples. When I attended the 2017 BLIA World Headquarters Africa Fellowship Meeting (Guoji foguang hui shijie zonghui feizhou lianyi hui 國際佛光會世界總會非洲聯誼會) at Nan Hua Temple, for example, the majority of the participants were Taiwanese. I made similar observations at BLIA activities at Hsi Lai Temple. This shows that for the moment, Taiwanese still continue to be the most involved group at the order’s overseas temples. There are several possible explanations. One is that as an order that originates from Taiwan, Fo Guang Shan is still better linked to the overseas Taiwanese community. But there is another explanation too. The Africa Fellowship Meeting began on a Tuesday and ended on the weekend. Asked for the reason for the discrepancy between membership numbers and the degree of involvement, one of my interviewees gave the following explanation: She noted that one reason for the lower presence of PRC Chinese is the fact that most of them have arrived in the country only quite recently and thus they were busy working. They can’t just leave work on a weekday to participate in a weeklong activity at the temple. Many overseas Taiwanese on the other hand are well-off financially, professionally well-established, and often already retired. As a result, they have the money but also the time to support a Buddhist temple. The situation is different if one considers regular temple visitors who are not BLIA members and who

33 Park, “Recent Chinese Migrations to South Africa”, p. 157.

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come to the temple to pray or to just enjoy the surroundings. Within this group, the number of non-Taiwanese, including Chinese from the People’s Republic, but also non-Chinese in general, is significantly higher.

Manoeuvring Diasporic Diversity In 2018, Bodhi Day, the day Chinese Mahayana Buddhists commemorate the day the historical Buddha Shakyamuni is supposed to have experienced enlightenment, fell on a Wednesday.34 In accordance with Chinese tradition, the day is celebrated on the eighth day of the twelfth month of the lunar calendar. As is customary, Fo Guang Shan temples worldwide celebrate the occasion by distributing at no charge the traditional food to be enjoyed on this day, Eight Treasure Congee laba zhou 臘八粥. At Hsi Lai Temple, the morning of this auspicious day begins with a big Dharma assembly. Morning services during the week are usually only attended by handful of people. Yet despite Bodhi Day falling on a Wednesday this year, there are about 20 monastics and 40 lay people taking part in the ritual. In addition to this morning’s Dharma assembly and free distribution of Eight Treasure Congee, the temple holds festivities on the Sundays immediately before and after the actual day. Festivities are often moved to the weekends at Fo Guang Shan in order to accommodate people who have to work during the week. Hsi Lai Temple holds English and Mandarin language activities to celebrate the occasion. The English language festivity takes place on the morning of the first Sunday. The Chinese celebrations take place on the afternoon of the same day and all day the following Sunday. The following section is an ethnographic extract of both activities. I will discuss the Mandarin language celebrations first. On the first Sunday, the Mandarin language Bodhi Day celebration begins at 1:30 p.m. and ends at 4 p.m. The auditorium of the temple is packed. Besides a small group of members of YAD 2, the Young Adult Division for exchange students, most people in the room are aged over 50. About two thirds of them are women. The average age of the participants is around 60 and many of them are of retirement age. Everybody except me is ethnic Chinese. As is common for BLIA activities, everybody is wearing their yellow BLIA westes (see Figure 5). Some people wear a similar weste in maroon, which signifies that they are Hsi Lai Temple volunteers. People sit in groups with fellow members of their BLIA subchapter. As is customary at Fo Guang Shan and BLIA activities, most

34 The following ethnographic report is based on fieldwork data.

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Figure 5: Mandarin Language Dharma Day, Auditorium of Hsi Lai Temple, USA.

participants wait in their seats for the activity to begin. As the special guests make their entrance, everybody stands up and the guests are introduced one by one by the host of the celebration. Today the special guests include the abbot, a group of senior monastics, and the president of the BLIA Los Angeles chapter. After being introduced, they walk to their seats in the first row. The opening ceremony of the celebration begins. It consists of a short welcome and, as is customary at BLIA activities, the singing of the “Homage to the Triple Gem”, a Buddhist hymn in Mandarin. The lyrics of the song which was written by Hsing Yun evoke Protestant hymns. In English the lyrics go as follows: “Namo Buddha-Ya / Namo Dharma-Ya / Namo Sangha-Ya / You are our redeemer / You are the truth / You are Our Master / You are the bearer of light / I seek refuge in Thee / I believe in Thee / I venerate Thee.”35 The format of the celebration this afternoon resembles another Fo Guang Shan activity, the book club. Members of the BLIA subchapters meet at regular book club group meetings, where they read and discuss Buddhists texts. Similarly, 35 “南無佛陀耶 / 南無達摩耶 / 南無僧伽耶 / 南無佛法僧/您是我們的救主 / 您是我們的真理 / 您是我們的導師 / 您是我們的光明 / 我皈依您 / 我信仰您 / 我尊敬您”. English translation as provided by Fo Guang Shan. Note that there are several slightly different English translations of the song circulating at Fo Guang Shan.

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attendants today come to the front of the room where they have a certain amount of time to do a short presentation on something they have read and relate it to their life. The topics discussed range from practical applications of Buddhism to everyday life problems to more elaborate contemplations on the subtleties of the Buddhist doctrine. Most people who present have applied beforehand, but some also come up spontaneously. The atmosphere is very relaxed and lively and time passes quickly. After a little over two hours everybody says their goodbyes. The Mandarin language Dharma Day resumes the following Sunday. The second day is the main day of the celebration and the activity takes longer than the week before. Registration takes place from 8:30 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Again, everybody in the audience is ethnic Chinese and wears the BLIA weste. At the temple, I hear a lot of different Chinese dialects and languages including some from the PRC, as well as a lot of Cantonese being spoken by Hong Kongese and many Sino-Vietnamese. However, the majority of the participants speak Mandarin as it is spoken in Taiwan. As on the afternoon of the previous Sunday, most people are around the age of 60 and women outnumber men. But there are younger people too. An elegantly dressed woman in her late thirties who has moved to the US from the PRC and lives in one of the very affluent coastal neighbourhoods of Los Angeles hosts the day’s events. She introduces the special guests, which, in addition to the abbot, a group of high-ranking monastics from Hsi Lai and from Taiwan, and the President of BLIA Los Angeles, today include some very senior lay Dharma teachers who have been associated with Fo Guang Shan from its beginning. The VIPs take their seats on the stage facing the audience. After the opening ceremony, which like the previous week consists of a short welcome and the singing of the “Homage to the Triple Gem”, everybody files silently into the dining hall turned class room and sits down in accordance with his or her BLIA subchapter. From 9:15 am to 10:00 am, the annual Fo Guang Shan Buddhist study exam takes place. The exam consists of a four-page multiple choice test in Chinese. The questions cover doctrinal topics that range from the broader Chinese Mahayana tradition to issues related to Fo Guang Shan renjian Buddhism. They are picked from the study material distributed to every subchapter beforehand and have been studied at book club meetings over the past months. While some of the study material is very advanced and touches on complex doctrinal issues, the average participant can easily answer most of the exam questions. At 10 a.m., everybody takes a half hour break and from 10:30 a.m. to 12 p.m. the Dharma Day continues. As on the first Mandarin Dharma Day the week before, the rest of the morning is given over to BLIA members sharing short stories about how they apply Buddhism to their life. Among the speakers is the wife of a pilot, an elderly gentleman, a Sino-Vietnamese middle-aged man, and a younger woman in her

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thirties. The majority of the presenters are female, middle-aged and above, and judging by their pronunciation of Mandarin, originate from Taiwan. At 12 p.m. sharp it is time for our lunch break. Everybody gets up and we walk in single file to a big conference room on the opposite side of the main yard where vegetarian lunch boxes are handed out. At 12:45 p.m. the afternoon session commences. From 12:45 p.m. to 2:30 p.m., five Fo Guang Shan lay Dharma teachers give lectures. Compared to the morning, the topics covered by the lay Dharma teachers are significantly more doctrinal in nature. They ponder issues such as the relationship between Buddhist social engagement and Buddhist motivated withdrawal from society (chushi/rushi 出世/入世), or the relationship between relying on one’s own effort for liberation (zili 自力) as opposed to seeking deliverance through faith in Amitabha’s vows (tali 他力). Other lectures discuss the Surangama Sutra (lengyan jing 楞嚴經), the Dunhuang caves, and reflect on the Buddhist thought of Fo Guang Shan founder Hsing Yun. After a half an hour afternoon tea break, the final lecture of the day is given by a very senior monastic who had been a professor before her retirement. As a former professor she is a very good public speaker. Despite the style and content of her presentation being quite academic, she is very skilled in making her speech comprehensible to everybody in the audience. She inserts many jokes and her lecture is very well-received by the assembly. The subject of her lecture is Buddhism and print culture. She begins by delving into the beginnings of writing and written characters in China. Then she goes on by elaborating on how Chinese writing culture relates to different historical moments in the canonization of the Buddhist scripture. She closes with an overview of all the different print and media endeavours of Fo Guang Shan. The whole talk is an entertaining yet intellectually demanding mixture of academic lecture on the history of the Chinese Buddhist canon, celebration of “traditional Chinese culture”, and Dharma talk. She concludes her lecture at 4.30 p.m. and after a short fifteen-minute break the closing ceremony begins. Finally, the test results are announced and those who did best receive a certificate. At 5.30 p.m. the Dharma Day is brought to an end. The ethnographic report above shows the importance of communality for Fo Guang Shan renjian Buddhist religiosity. Ethnic Chinese members of the BLIA of all national origins all wear the same yellow BLIA westes and sit with the comembers of their subchapters. Many of the participants exhibit a strong group identity that is linked to their common Fo Guang Shan membership. During my fieldwork at different Fo Guang Shan facilities worldwide, I noticed that many BLIA members speak of each other not as regular Buddhists, or even Humanistic Buddhists, but as Fo Guang People (foguang ren 佛光人). They thereby evince a sense of exclusive belonging to a particular Buddhist organization instead of a loose identification with Chinese Mahayana in general as is the case for more

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traditional Chinese Mahayana Buddhists. Interestingly this sense seemed stronger and more exclusive in places such as Taiwan or Los Angeles, where the order has a very strong presence. In contrast, in South Africa, many of the Fo Guang Shan BLIA members were at the same time involved with other Taiwanese Buddhist groups such Tzu Chi or Amitofo Care Centre. When I talked about the issue with some of the people who maintained multiple memberships, they noted that their situation differs to that in Taiwan. Since the Taiwanese Buddhist community in South Africa is so small, all Taiwanese support each other. I will return to this issue in chapter six and discuss the communal character of Fo Guang Shan renjian Buddhist religiosity in more detail. It is also interesting to note that although participants of the Mandarin Dharma Day were from many different regional and even national backgrounds, everybody was ethnic Chinese and almost all were first generation migrants. One of the reasons therefore is, of course, language. Although many of the lay Buddhists had lived in the US for many decades and spoke English fluently, the same was not necessarily true of all the monastics. Many of them had moved around between different Fo Guang Shan temples and not all monastics stationed at an overseas temple possess knowledge of the local language. This applies even more to smaller temples that are not located in English-speaking countries. Using Mandarin not only ensures easy communication between monastics and laity, it also instils a sense of shared Chineseness in the audience. At some other smaller overseas Chinese temples I visited during my fieldwork that are not part of the Fo Guang Shan network, people often speak in local languages and dialects such as Taiwanese, Cantonese, Hakka, or one of the Jiangsu dialects. At these temples, temple visitors tend to share a similar regional background. However, at Fo Guang Shan’s overseas temples, many people make an effort to speak in Mandarin, the version of Chinese that is understood by the majority of ethnic Chinese today. During my research people also often used the expression “we Chinese”, thereby stressing a common identity that transcends their different regional and national origins. The composition of the global Chinese diaspora community is complex and layered. Ethnic Chinese from different origins have emigrated in waves, which is also reflected at the order’s overseas temples. The first and most important group at the temple continue to be the Taiwanese, since Taiwanese constituted the earliest subgroup amongst post-1965 ethnic Chinese migrants, the order was founded in Taiwan, and most of the order’s monastics are Taiwanese. The next layer consists of Hong Kongese and other ethnic Chinese from Southeast Asia, who not only constitute a substantial portion of the laity but also a portion of the monastic sangha. In particular, some of the younger monastics originate from places such as Malaysia and to a lesser degree Hong Kong. The

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monastics who are born in Malaysia and Hong Kong tend not only to be younger, but also known for their good English skills. The reason for this lies in the more advanced English language education available in their countries of origin. Many of them are therefore stationed at the order’s overseas temples. The final, most recent layer is comprised of the current wave of migrants from the PRC. While many of the Taiwanese migrants have already reached retirement age, this last group is younger. Attracting this group is thus important in ensuring the future development of Fo Guang Shan overseas. In addition, the temple also aims to reach out to the second and later Generations. However, many who belong to this group prefer to communicate in the language of the country they grew up in. In order to better understand the issue, the following section presents an ethnographic report of the English language Dharma Day celebrations of the week before. The English language Dharma Day takes place on the morning of the first Sunday. Celebrations start at 10 a.m. and end just in time for lunch at 12.30 p.m. The auditorium is slightly less filled than it was during the Mandarin celebrations. Most people attending are not wearing BLIA westes and there is some coming and going during the activities. Many of the participants are parents of the children who attend classes at the temple’s Dharma School for Youth or the Dharma School for Children. Most are ethnic Chinese, but there are also some mixed families present. At the front of the auditorium sit some members of the Young Adult Division. In the back half of the room are about 50 students from a nearby college. These students happen to be participating in a seven-day retreat that the temple organizes annually. The language of today’s celebration is English. At 10 a.m., the host of the celebration asks everybody to stand up. Then the special guests are introduced one by one as they make their entrance. As in the afternoon, this morning’s special guests include the abbot, a group of senior monastics, and the president of BLIA Los Angeles. After a short welcome, everybody stands up and we begin to sing the “Homage to the Triple Gem”. On most occasions, in accordance with the audience, the hymn is sung in Mandarin. Although the majority of those who participate in the English language Dharma Day are ethnic Chinese, the younger participants in particular prefer to speak English. Thus, on this morning we sing the hymn in English. In contrast to the Mandarin language celebrations, the English language Dharma Day takes place in the format of a talent or variety show. Most people who perform are second or later generation ethnic Chinese children or children from mixed couples. But there are also some adults, ethnic Chinese as well as Latino and non-Latino whites, who take part in the performances. The show starts with a group of young children who sing a song together. After the first song, five teenagers, who are students at the Dharma School for Youth, enter the stage. They have prepared a speech on how to withstand peer

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pressure, which they share with the audience. After them, a young boy from the Dharma School for Kids sits down at a piano and performs a piece of popular music called the “Carol of the Bells”. His performance is followed by a dance performed by members of one of the YADs. Next, the college students who are participants at the annual retreat, most of them non-ethnic Chinese, sing a song called the “Dharma Song”. Next, one of the former YAD presidents gets on stage. He talks about how he applies the Buddhist teachings to his life. His speech is followed by a short musical piece about the story of a rich, dying man and his four wives. It is performed by a group of thirty-something to middle-aged women, all but one Chinese Americans. After they finish their performance, two youths from the Dharma School for Youth get on stage, one is Chinese American and the other European American. They share stories with the audience about how Buddhism has been of help to them in their life. They also report on the activities they have organized for the Dharma School for Youth, such as inviting guest speakers from companies such as Google. After them, a European American woman with a Chinese-sounding family name gets on stage and sings a song in English. The next performance is given by another group of the retreat participants. They share poems and spoken word reflections about the hardships they have had to deal with in their lives. They are followed by a Latina from the English language BLIA subchapter who reads a poem. After her, two YAD members present excerpts of an English language chanting service. This presentation is followed by an older European American BLIA member who presents quotes from a translation of Hsing Yun’s last book on Humanistic Buddhism and shares quirky stories about his wisdom freezer magnets. After him, a teenager sits down at the piano again and gives a very impressive performance of a Rachmaninov piece. He is followed by another young Chinese American who shares her thoughts on some quotes from Hsing Yun. The activity concludes with a hip-hop dance and rap performance by seven male college retreat participants. The ethnographic report reveals the diverse backgrounds of the English speakers involved in Fo Guang Shan’s English language activities at Hsi Lai Temple. There are several different groups that participate in this morning. The first group are the second plus generation ethnic Chinese children and their (sometimes mixed) parents and families. They constitute an important demographic at the temple. Many of them attend the Chinese language classes provided by Hsi Lai and most of the order’s overseas temples. Another group are the members of YAD 1, the temple’s youth group for college kids. The majority of these are children of the first generation of Taiwanese migrants. The next demographic are the mostly non-Chinese college students who are participating in the retreat. What is interesting is the contrast between the performances of the guest college students and the young Chinese Americans. The performances of the

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college students included, for example, a rap piece which was presented in a very emotional “confession-like manner” and touched on issues such as running away from home, teen pregnancy, and Marijuana consumption. Their performances stood in stark contrast to those of the Chinese-American youth, such as that of the young boy who impressed the audience with his piano skills. This contrast also reflects the high socio-economic status of Taiwanese migrants and their families in general and the adherents of Fo Guang Shan’s overseas temples. Yet another important group consists of the members of the English language BLIA whose membership is mostly composed of Latino- and European Americans and descendants of earlier Chinese migrants. Although many of them are very involved in the BLIA and in the temple and even wear their BLIA westes, they are also somewhat isolated from the majority of the BLIA members due to their lack of Chinese language knowledge. This group also is significantly smaller in number; in total there are well over 20 members in the English language BLIA subchapter compared to almost 2000 BLIA members in the other subchapters in the Los Angeles area. Though small, the Hsi Lai Temple English subchapter is very engaged. They meet regularly at their book club meetings and participate in all of the temple’s activities. The situation at other temples is similar to the situation in Los Angeles. Most overseas temples host a local or English language group. In many of the temples the activities of this group centre on meditation. I will come back to the issue of the centrality of meditation for non-Chinese Buddhists in chapter six. As can be seen from the ethnographic report above, ethnic Chinese of all generations are represented at the order’s overseas temples. The temple provides classes and activities for second generation ethnic Chinese of any age, from kindergarten to college, university, and graduate school level. For big celebrations such as Dharma Day or Lunar New Year, young parents also come to the temple with their children. Sociologist Lan Pei-chia has shown that middle class and above Chinese migrants in the US have developed two different parenting strategies to ensure a sense of cultural confidence in their offspring. One strategy consists of organizing “Americanized” extracurricular activities for their children in order to enhance their social skills and cultural competency in mainstream society. The other strategy consists in mobilizing homeland culture and cultivating their children’s transnational competence.36 It is the latter group and their children that can primarily be found at the temple. The language and cultural classes, children and youth camps, and the Youth Adult Divisions all create linkages

36 P.-C. Lan, Raising Global Families: Parenting, Immigration, and Class in Taiwan and the US, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2018, p. 139.

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with their parents’ culture of origin and thereby enhance the transnational skills of the second and later generations. However, in terms of numbers and degree of involvement, the middle-aged and above participants of the Mandarin celebrations undoubtedly represent the biggest demographic at the temple. This gap in representation is not unique to Fo Guang Shan’s overseas temples. Many diasporic Chinese Buddhist temples struggle to attract the second generation.37 In fact, compared to smaller temples or temples in countries with a smaller Taiwanese community, larger temples such as Hsi Lai and Nan Hua are still doing well. Both temples run very active YADs. Yet if we compare the general membership numbers of the BLIAs in South Africa and Los Angeles with those of their associated Young Adult Divisions, we can detect a significant discrepancy. The BLIA in South Africa has a total membership of about 1000 members, compared to about 40 core members of the YAD, most of whom are second generation. The situation is similar in Los Angeles. BLIA Los Angeles has over 1800 members in total and both YADs together have about 120 members, almost two thirds of them exchange students. The second generation of ethnic Chinese migrants in non-majority Chinese countries – maybe with the exception of places such as Malaysia, which more closely resembles Taiwan in that it has a very strong youth involvement – grow up under very different circumstances than their parents. They identify as least as much if not more with the culture of the country they were born and grew up in than with the culture of their parents. In addition, Asian Americans are the ethnic or racial group in the US with the highest ratio of mixed-race marriages.38 As seen above, several of the families of the English language Dharma Day celebrations had mixed race parents. It is very probable that mixed race families tend to raise their children more “Americanized” than families where both parents are ethnic Chinese. Furthermore, although studies show that for many second generation migrants becoming American means becoming more religious,39 this mainly applies to monotheistic religions and is only slightly the case for Buddhism.40 Additionally, the second generation often mistrusts religious authority and instead favours modes of religiosity that are characterized by an individualistic and

37 C. Chen, Getting Saved in America: Taiwanese Immigration and Religious Experience, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008, p. 36. 38 C. Chen and R. Jeung, Sustaining Faith Traditions: Race, Ethnicity, and Religion among the Latino and Asian American Second Generation, New York: New York University Press, 2012, p. 71. 39 Ibid., p. 19. 40 Ibid., p. 10.

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therapeutic approach to spirituality.41 Many of them therefore might prefer to get involved in more Westernized forms of Buddhism than in the Buddhism of their parents. Thus, although Fo Guang Shan puts great effort into attracting the second and later generations, the order also aims at further diversifying its following. In order to ensure its successful overseas development in the future, Fo Guang Shan has managed to attract the latest, ongoing wave of ethnic Chinese migrants; Chinese from the People’s Republic. Many of them are younger since they have migrated only recently. Integrating exchange students into the order’s Young Adult Divisions constitutes yet another means to achieve this goal. Chinese from the People’s Republic thereby not only become an important demographic for the order overseas, but those who eventually return to China may also choose to stay involved with Fo Guang Shan in their homeland. One important tool for Fo Guang Shan to create linkages with the overseas Chinese communities, whether they are from the People’s Republic, from Taiwan or Southeast Asia, or the second and later generations, is to deploy and maintain a sense of Chineseness. The next chapter discusses the important function of discourses and practices linked to “traditional Chinese culture” for Fo Guang Shan’s global trajectory. Culture as understood at Fo Guang Shan not only serves as a means to spread a modernist renjian Buddhism; the order also presents itself as a preserver and transmitter of Chinese tradition worldwide.

41 Ibid., p. 20.

Chineseness Globalized To propagate Buddhist teachings through cultural activities.1

Hsing Yun

Hsing Yun’s order Fo Guang Shan not only spread Chinese Buddhism to every corner of this world, it also presented the culture of China as a gift to the world.2 Li Silong, Professor of Beijing University

The two quotes above exemplify the two modes in which Fo Guang Shan deploys culture in a global context. The first one – to propagate Buddhist teachings through cultural activities – is the first of four sentences that together form the founding maxim of the order. It calls on Fo Guang Shan Buddhists to spread the Dharma by engaging with society through the arts, through music, and by holding grand and spectacular festivities. Culture is here understood as the results of human material, aesthetic, or intellectual production that can be used to spark people’s interest in becoming involved with the temple and learning about the Buddhist Dharma. Anyone, irrespective of his or her background, can visit a Fo Guang Shan temple to see an exhibition, maybe take an art class, or take part in the celebrations of a Chinese festival. This mode generates the Buddhist temple as an open, accessible space that renders Chinese Buddhist culture in a way that is compatible with tourism and global event culture. By not overly focusing on discipline and obligation it invites people to engage with the Dharma in an undemanding and inclusive way. In Taiwan as well as overseas, Fo Guang Shan’s temples hold a huge spectrum of cultural activities that are meant to attract people to Buddhism. Exhibitions of Hsing Yun’s calligraphy at the order’s museums and exhibition spaces, flower arrangement or tea culture classes open to the public, regular book club meetings for BLIA members, as well as mass events such as the Lunar New Year’s celebrations are only some examples of this approach. The second quote, however, shows a different, more parochial meaning of culture. It refers to the promotion of a set of cultural values and practices that are understood to form “traditional Chinese culture”, or, in another word, Chineseness. The second quote does not understand culture as a vehicle to proselytize a modern Buddhist 1 Foguangshan zongwu weiyuanhui (ed.), Foguangshan kaishan sishi zhounian jinian tekan, vol. 1, p. 13. 2 Original in Chinese, own translation. “他所創建的佛光山事業，把中國佛教帶到了世界各地, 把中國文化餽贈給世界人民.” Li S. 李四龍, “Lun Xingyun dashi dui Zhongguo fojiao de zhuoyue gongxian” 論星雲大師對中國佛教的卓越貢獻, in: Cheng G. and Shi Miaofan (eds.), 2015 Xingyun dashi renjian fojiao – lilun shijian yanjiu (xia) 2015 星雲大師人間佛教 – 理論實踐研究 (下), Kaohsiung: Foguang wenhua, 2015, p. 254. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110690156-004

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religiosity, but instead it refers to the order’s role as a preserver of Chinese tradition in the age of global modernity. In this chapter I draw on ethnographic data collected at Fo Guang Shan’s overseas temples in the US and the PRC in addition to the writings of Hsing Yun to demonstrate how Fo Guang Shan generate multivalent and ambiguous renderings of Chineseness by adopting multiple and diverse discourses and practices linked to “culture”. These renderings range from cosmopolitan, hybrid, and inclusive presentations of Chinese culture that are rooted in global consumer culture and that present Fo Guang Shan as an accessible modern Buddhist order in the Mahayana tradition, to more parochial or ethno-cultural notions of Chineseness that have emerged during the process of Chinese nation-state building on the mainland and in Taiwan, and that are currently experiencing a renaissance in the PRC. I argue that it is this multivalent rendering of Chineseness that constitutes one reason for the order’s global success by creating points of reference not only for the internally diverse Chinese diaspora communities, but also for non-Chinese members of the respective host societies, as well as the current PRC government.

Spaces of Buddhist Leisure Lunar New Year’s Eve, 2018, fell on 15 February of that year.3 At that time I was about to enter the last week of my stay at Hsi Lai Temple before moving on to visit further Fo Guang Shan temples in the US. Below I provide an ethnographic extract from my field stay at Hsi Lai. Preparations for the New Year were being made long before the festivities had officially begun. The temple was embellished and beautified with all kinds of decorations. At Hsi Lai, the New Year’s festivities merge seamlessly with the Lantern Festival, and so big, colourful lanterns were hanging everywhere. The lanterns were in all different shapes and forms, including a dragon, a cute cartoon monk, and, as the coming year would be the Chinese Year of the Dog, a huge, cheerfully smiling dog. In addition, countless smaller red lanterns were hung up all over the temple, causing the whole temple to be ablaze with red light (see Figure 6). As is customary, the temple had to be given a thorough cleaning before the New Year. On Temple Spring Cleaning Day (chupo jieyuan ri 出坡結緣日), a week before the beginning of the festivities, members of all local BLIA subchapters gathered at the temple with rags, ladders, and brooms for this year’s major

3 The following ethnographic report is based on fieldwork observations.

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Figure 6: Lunar New Year’s Decoration, Main Shrine of Hsi Lai Temple, USA.

clean-up.4 In the course of one afternoon, every corner of the temple – including the myriad little Buddha statues that fill the walls of the main shrine up to the ceiling – was freed of the dust and dirt that had accumulated over the course of the past year. During my weeks at the temple, I had followed different BLIA subchapters, so I was a little unsure as to which group I should join, since every group was assigned a specific task. In the end I decided to help my new friends from the Rosemead subchapter, a group consisting mainly of Cantonese speakers, many of them first generation Sino-Vietnamese Americans. Our job was to clean the Bodhisattva Hall, the shrine that marked the entrance to the temple complex. But cleaning the temple was not the only job that had to be done in preparation for this major occasion. In the weeks previously, groups were formed to deal with a wide range of tasks that would come up during the festivities, including directing traffic, preparing and selling food, managing the garbage, and welcoming guests. I was assigned to two groups: on the first day I was responsible for the recycling station in the dining hall. On subsequent days

4 The English translations of activities provided in this ethnographic report are official Fo Guang Shan translations.

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I would be part of the traffic team directing the stream of cars to the different parking sites. About 150,000 visitors were expected within the first week of the celebrations alone. Since Hsi Lai Temple is located in Los Angeles, a city with a very underdeveloped public transport system, the vast majority of visitors were arriving by car. As in past years, the temple cooperated with the local police and the California Highway Patrol to manage the never-ending stream of vehicles. To accommodate the extra vehicles, the temple had rented two extra parking lots from neighbouring strip malls: one for the many volunteers who were helping out with the temple festivities, and another, larger one, for the multitude of visitors. Shuttle buses drove back and forth between the temple and the parking lot to transfer the guests. The festivities began on Lunar New Year’s Eve with a New Year’s Life Prolonging Universal Buddha Dharma Assembly (Chuxi yansheng pufo fahui 除夕延生普佛法會). But the celebrations did not reach their climax until the following day, the first day of the New Year. Early that morning, at five o’clock, people were gathering at the temple gate down the hill. Their aim was to participate in the Chinese New Year’s Pilgrimage (xinchun chaoshan 新春朝山). Walking up the hill, they did a full prostration every three steps, while ceaselessly chanting the name of the Buddha Shakyamuni. Following the completion of the pilgrimage, the Homage to Thousand Buddhas Dharma Assembly (Li qian fo fahui 禮千佛 法會) was held at the main shrine. More recreational activities were scheduled to follow this solemn start to the day. From the first day, daily performances were held in the large courtyard in front of the main shrine. In addition, an international candy exhibition had opened its doors to the children, and the dining hall of the temple had been transformed into an indoor night market selling vegetarian snacks. The daily performances were organized by different subchapters, who had prepared them during the previous weeks. On the second evening of the New Year, for example, members of the two Young Adult Division chapters and I performed a dragon dance in the courtyard in front of the main shrine. The audience on that particular evening consisted mostly of Asian Americans. Whole families, often three generations together, came to the temple to pray, grab some food, and enjoy the performances. It was not only people with a Chinese background who attended the festivities. Other Asian Americans also came to the temple to participate. One monastic told me that about fifty percent of the visitors on this most important holiday of the year are Vietnamese Americans. Many of them dressed in traditional gowns and had their picture taken in front of one of the attractions. They incorporate Hsi Lai Temple into their annual Lunar New Year temple circuit. Each year they try to visit as many temples as possible, in order to secure good luck for the coming year. In addition, visitors who have no Chinese or Asian background, and therefore have no direct

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cultural connection with the Lunar New Year holiday, come to Hsi Lai just to enjoy the spectacle and the festive atmosphere. The festival is easily the biggest of all Fo Guang Shan’s activities each year. The weekends in particular see a never-ending stream of visitors stopping by at the temple. Not even the biggest of the Buddhist rituals held at Hsi Lai, the Water Land Dharma Assembly (Shuilu fahui 水陸法會), attracts such a big crowd. The scene above shows that a temple such as Hsi Lai does not only function as a religious site, but also constitutes an important cultural space. During this time of the year, the delineation between the cultural and religious functions of the temple becomes more blurred than ever. Although many people who go to the temple during the New Year’s celebrations do so for religious reasons, such as to pray for a good year, they also stroll around the temple grounds to enjoy the bright and colourful lanterns, grab a snack at the dining hall night market, or watch one of the countless cultural performances. The temple as a cultural space is thus not only generated by Fo Guang Shan monastics and BLIA members, but by a much bigger and internally diverse public. And while people of all kinds of backgrounds – Buddhist and non-Buddhist alike – also visit Fo Guang Shan temples during the holidays in Taiwan, the cultural character of the festivities becomes even more obvious within the context of a non-majority Chinese society. Within the diasporic context, the temple is not just any cultural space, but a culturally Chinese space. Yet a culturally Chinese space that attracts ethnic Chinese as well as non-Chinese. That people go to a Buddhist temple to enjoy themselves is, of course, not a modern phenomenon. Buddhist temples have never exclusively served religious purposes, instead they have always had multiple functions. Throughout Chinese history Buddhist temples have been popular sites to visit on holidays, serving as spaces for leisure and recreation.5 Fo Guang Shan has remained faithful to this tradition since its early days. The establishment of the order’s main temple in Kaohsiung coincided with Taiwan’s post-war economic development. At the time, the socio-economic structures of the country were in a transition period, with Taiwan transforming from an agricultural into an industrial society. When Hsing Yun moved from Yilan to Kaohsiung, export processing zones were springing up all over the south. As a result, many of the recently urbanized young workers came to the temple regularly to enjoy their free time.6 Then, as today, the order’s grand temple sites provided a bright and colourful space for leisure and relaxation. They constitute leisure spaces that are imbued with Chinese Buddhist culture.

5 Welch, The Buddhist Revival in China, p. 131. 6 Jiang C. 江燦騰, Taiwan fojiao shi 台灣佛教史, Taipei: Wunan 五南, 2009, p. 388.

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Fo Guang Shan’s large and impressive temple structures, visible from afar like the order’s large-scale events, are all intended to draw attention and therefore constitute ways to attract people to the Dharma.7 The order’s large regional headquarters in different parts of the globe as well as the enormous complex housing the Fo Guang Shan Buddha Museum (Foguangshan fotuo jinian tang 佛光山佛陀紀念堂) adjacent to the order’s headquarters in Kaohsiung, all exemplify this approach.8 Accordingly, Fo Guang Shan temples at home and abroad are popular tourist sites that attract a very diverse crowd. People may come to the temple purely to enjoy themselves, or they may also participate in religious activities. Some visit the temple as tourists who just want to enjoy the surroundings; some may identify with Chinese religiosity in the broadest sense and pray or make some offerings without getting further involved with the temple. Others are Buddhists and participate in an occasional retreat or a dharma assembly; still others become fullyfledged members of the BLIA. The motivations for their visits may be religious as well as recreational. As unambiguously religious sites, yet sites that are exuberantly decorated and that offer many activities to take part in, Fo Guang Shan temples constitute renjian Buddhist spaces of leisure. In a study on Buddhist theme parks, museums, and monuments, religious studies scholar Justin McDaniel argues that Buddhist leisure sites break down the strict binary of the secular and the religious, since people visit these sites for religious as well as for recreational reasons.9 The same applies to Fo Guang Shan’s temples. Although the order’s overseas temples are branch temples that are integrated into a hierarchically structured global temple net, as cultural spaces in the context of the diaspora the temples also constitute (and are explicitly intended to do so) ecumenical Chinese spaces. As discussed in the previous chapter, Fo Guang Shan’s overseas temples attract ethnic Chinese of all national and regional origins as well as immigrants and their descendants. This is even more the case on occasions such as Lunar New Year. Chinese culture as it is rendered and displayed at Fo Guang Shan temples is not tied to any political entity, be it the ROC or the PRC, but instead consists of a globally recognizable set of Chinese symbols, cultural practices, and discourses, such as traditional architecture, the celebration of traditional festivals, Chinese foods and beverages, or the promotion of the notion of filial piety. It thereby generates the greatest possible intersection of attraction and resonates with both Chinese from all kinds of national origins and

7 Chandler, “Spreading Buddha’s Light”, pp. 175–176. 8 Shi Miaoguang, “Modern Religious Tourism in Taiwan: A Case Study of Fo Guang Shan Buddha Memorial Center”, Renjian fojiao xuebao yiwen 人間佛教學報藝文3 (2016), p. 13. 9 J. McDaniel, Architects of Buddhist Leisure: Socially Disengaged Buddhism in Asia’s Museums, Monuments, and Amusement Parks, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2017, p. 7.

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non-Chinese alike. When I asked ethnic Chinese visitors at different Fo Guang Shan temples why they came to the temple, they most often replied by describing the temple in terms such as bright, colourful and welcoming. With modern technology such as air conditioning, easy accessibility, and without focusing overtly on discipline and obligations, Fo Guang Shan’s overseas temple spaces cater to the needs of an emerging transnational ethnic Chinese middle class. In their function as cultural spaces and sites of leisure and recreation they represent one more aspect of Buddhist social engagement. Social engagement does not just mean contributions to charity or education, but also includes a wide range of other activities, such as cultural activities, leisure, and festivals. Particularly within a nonmajority Chinese society, the temple as Chinese Buddhist leisure site provides an important space for (but not exclusively) the diaspora and their descendants. The overseas temple is not just an ethnic enclave or a China outside of China; instead it constitutes a culturally imbued transnational religious space that generates a variety of linkages with its host society. By engendering itself as an easily accessible yet recognizably Chinese space through a set of Chinese symbols, cultural practices, languages and discourses, the temple produces linkages with a complex Chinese diaspora community as well as with non-Chinese locals.10 Most cultural activities one can participate in at the temple are unambiguously Chinese activities. The architecture of most of Fo Gang Shan’s overseas temples is characteristically Chinese and the people speak mostly Mandarin in the temple precincts. The teahouse serves Taiwanese Oolong Tea and snacks, and the restaurant serves Chinese vegetarian cuisine. And, besides some English language titles, the bookstore sells Chinese language books. The temple thereby generates a social space where first generation ethnic Chinese migrants of all origins can chat in Mandarin (although they might also use the language of the host country or another Chinese language), celebrate Chinese festivals, and mingle with people who share a similar cultural background and or a similar personal history of migration. People support each other and offer advice on how to adjust to a new life in a new country. During my time at Hsi Lai Temple, for example, the temple had invited a guest speaker to give a talk about a recent tax cut in order to provide Chinese language advice in financial affairs. The temple also helps first generation migrants introduce their culture of origin, or at least one version of it, to their children. The Buddha’s Light Hsi Lai School (Foguang xilai xuexiao 佛光西來學校) at Hsi Lai Temple, for example, provides almost daily Mandarin language and pronunciation classes and after-school programmes. In addition, the temple, like most other Fo Guang Shan overseas temples (at least those that have the capacity),

10 The following section is based on fieldwork data.

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holds regular spring and summer camps for the young. In a 1996 article on Hsi Lai Temple, Irene Lin argues that in addition to its religious function, the temple serves as a Chinese community centre. The free services provided by the temple include assistance with finding jobs and seminars on American laws, customs, the educational system, and the job market. She adds that besides language classes, the temple also offers special classes on Chinese culture such as courses in the Chinese arts, Tai Chi, and Chinese cooking.11 She notes that Fo Guang Shan’s goal for the classes – particularly for the one point five and second generation – is to “preserve, strengthen, or at times create the Chinese identity of its members”.12 At the same time, the temple’s distinctive yet accessible rendering of Chineseness makes it also attractive to non-Chinese visitors. Many non-Chinese visitors come to the temple to experience Chinese culture. For many of them, visiting a Fo Guang Shan temple is less about getting involved in religious activities or celebrating a traditional holiday, but about spending a leisurely afternoon and experiencing something new. Instead of flying to the other side of the globe, they can get a taste of China just a drive away from their home. At Nan Hua Temple in South Africa, for example, one monastic told me that the numbers of visitors had increased significantly after a group of martial arts performers from the Shaolin Temple in the PRC had given a performance in Cape Town. Non-Chinese locals came to the temple explicitly to see Buddhist monastics in a Chinese temple setting. Similarly, one European American member of the English language BLIA Los Angeles that I interviewed told me that she decided to join the organization precisely because its Chineseness had attracted her. But not all of the non-Chinese at the temple I have talked to hold a similar perspective on the issue; in fact, some hope for the temple to engage more in the mainstream culture. These different assessments of the temple’s Chineseness correspond with an observation I made when I attended the end-of-year gathering of the BLIA English language subchapter at Hsi Lai Temple. The gathering was held on a Saturday evening in the temple’s Assembly Hall. There were about 30 people present, sitting around five tables. At each table was one monastic. The group was quite mixed in terms of age but also in terms of ethnicity: some people were Chinese American, some had a Hispanic background, while others were European American. During the conversation at my table, while everybody was enjoying a cup of tea and some vegetarian snacks, the topic of localisation came up. It very soon became clear that while some people hoped

11 Lin, “Journey to the Far West”, pp. 112–113. 12 Ibid., p. 213.

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that the temple would make more effort to shake off its Chineseness, others insisted that, just like the interviewee mentioned above, they come to the temple because of and not despite its Chineseness. Similarly, many of the Vietnamese visitors mentioned above who incorporated the temple in their Lunar New Year temple visit circuit, come to the temple because it is a Chinese Buddhist temple and therefore maintains a cultural proximity to Vietnamese Buddhism. Most of them are not Sino-Vietnamese and the temple even puts up Vietnamese language signs to accommodate their needs. Vietnamese also constitute an important demographic at other Fo Guang Shan overseas temples. At a smaller temple like the Fo Guang Shan temple in Berlin, for example, one monastic told me that particularly in the early days it was Vietnamese who had provided support. Due to their cultural and religious proximity to the Vietnamese Mahayana, many Vietnamese Buddhists recognize the Fo Guang Shan temples as related to their own tradition. Thus, Fo Guang Shan’s insistence on its Chineseness may not necessarily be seen as an obstacle to interaction with the non-Chinese majority society. Through its exhibited Chineseness, the temple functions as an ambassador of Chinese culture in a diasporic setting. Comparing Chinese Christians with Chinese Buddhists in the Los Angeles San Gabriel valley, Carolyn Chen states that the latter’s status as religious and cultural others leads them to higher engagement in inter-religious and inter-cultural dialogue.13 Lin too mentions that Hsi Lai Temple operates as a cultural centre that fosters cross-cultural understanding between Chinese migrants and the European American mainstream society. She states that during her research, while the majority of individual visitors were predominantly Chinese Americans, those who attended group visits sponsored by the temple had up to two thirds European ancestry.14 Although I do not have access to official numbers, her observations roughly correspond with those I made about two decades later, with the exception that I noticed that a significant portion of the non-Chinese group consists of Hispanic Americans. This may be caused by the recent increase in residents with a Hispanic background in the San Gabriel Valley. Lin did not specify the national origin of the Chinese Americans at the temple, but I did notice that at the time of my fieldwork, based on the particular Mandarin spoken, many of the Chinese casual temple visitors originated from the PRC.

13 C. Chen, “The Religious Varieties of Ethnic Presence: A Comparison between a Taiwanese Immigrant Buddhist Temple and an Evangelical Christian Church”, Sociology of Religion 63 (2002) 2, pp. 230–231. 14 Lin, “Journey to the Far West”, p. 114.

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Deterritorializing Nationalized Tradition Anthropologist Pnina Werbner points out that late modern diasporic discourses are multiple and rather than fuse, they intersect and can even be contradictory.15 They are characterized by a dual orientation towards the region of origin and the place of settlement, thus often being “both ethnic-parochial and cosmopolitan”.16 This complex entwinement of discourses and practices that links the dynamics of diaspora with those of the nation-state can also be detected when considering the globalization project of Fo Guang Shan. The spectacular Lunar New Year’s festivities and other cultural activities show how Fo Guang Shan engenders Chineseness through the deployment of culture in a way that is congruent with tourism and global event culture. They link a diasporic community consisting predominantly of members of a globally minded middle class with the mainstream culture of their host society. Within this context, the temple constitutes a Buddhist space permeated with “traditional Chinese culture” that is welcoming and easily accessible for people of all backgrounds. Yet besides this open and cosmopolitan rendering we can also encounter more parochial representations of Chineseness at Fo Guang Shan. In some conversations with Fo Guang Shan Buddhists, particularly those of a certain age, but also in the founder’s publications, I encountered tropes that merge notions of Chinese culture with the modern concept of ethnicity. An article written by Hsing Yun may serve as an example for the second approach. The title of the article, which was published in the opinion section of the China Times during the 2018 Taiwanese local election period, is “I am a Taiwanese Chinese”.17 In the article Hsing Yun explains his identity as a Taiwanese Chinese. He begins the article by noting that although he has lived on the island for most of his life – born in Jiangsu, he left mainland China at the age of 24 and, at the time of writing the article had lived in Taiwan for 68 years – he still feels that people often do not perceive him as Taiwanese. Conversely, on visits to China, such as on his first visit to the People’s Republic in 1989, he is referred to as a Taiwanese monk. For this reason, he identifies himself as a Taiwanese Chinese (Taiwan Zhongguo ren 台灣中國人). Later in the article, he also calls himself a global citizen or global person (diqiu ren 地球人), as he has done on several other occasions. He goes on to further specify his self-identity by adding that he is a culturally Chinese

15 P. Werbner, “Complex Diasporas”, in: Knott and McLoughlin (eds.), Diasporas, p. 74. 16 Ibid., p. 75. 17 Hsing Yun, “Wo Shi Taiwan Zhongguo Ren 我是台灣中國人”, Zhongshi dianzi bao 中時電子報, 11 December 2018, https://www.chinatimes.com/opinion/20181211003852-262105?chdtv.

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global person (zhonghua diqiu ren 中華地球人). He reports that when he travels the world and meets with overseas Chinese, people resonate with his selfdescription. Hsing Yun argues that despite being physically separated from China, in regard to their blood line and race, overseas Chinese are still Chinese. He continues by expressing his strong bond with Taiwan, describing his long history on the island, including the hardships he had to endure while spreading the Buddhist Dharma. In the last part of the article, Hsing Yun turns to the election. Hsing Yun finds it most troubling that Chinese culture, a national consciousness, and the origin of the family have been ignored and forgotten during the election campaign. Many people had abandoned their own traditions and forgotten their roots. He continues by depicting China as a country “pregnant with 5000 years of glorious Chinese culture, the cultural China, the China of all people, the people of one flesh and one blood, the unchangeable Chinese nation. [. . .] I am frankly and sincerely telling everybody, we all are the descendants of Yan Di and Huang Di. That is an unchangeable historical fact.”18 Hsing Yun then posits the question of whether there is any ancestor of the Taiwanese who is not Chinese, and claims that those who advocate to use Taiwanese instead of Mandarin overlook the fact that Taiwanese originates from the Chinese province Fujian. Hsing Yun claims that it is in Taiwan that Chinese culture is best preserved and that Taiwanese all celebrate the Chinese New Year, Mid-Autumn Festival, Dragon Boat Festival, and TombSweeping Festival. The text continues by quoting a proverb about appreciating one’s roots. Hsing Yun then quotes the PRC president Xi Jinping as saying that “the two sides of the Taiwan Strait are one family (liang’an yi jiaqin 兩岸一家親)” and asks, in rhetorical fashion, if it were possible to deny the common roots and origins of the people in Taiwan and China. He closes the article by stating his love for China and Taiwan and expressing his hope that Taiwanese will not discriminate against their fellow Taiwanese who are born on the mainland. Lastly, he poses the question that, if both sides of the Taiwan Strait would have compassion towards each other and come together to Taiwan’s rescue by deploying Chinese culture, and if both sides of the political spectrum in Taiwan (DPP and KMT) would be equally compassionate towards each other, who would fear that there was no hope for the future? If we compare the way Chineseness is evoked in Hsing Yun’s article to how it is presented through the order’s cultural activities, we can see that the former displays a more parochial understanding of Chinese culture. The article merges

18 “這裡我們所說的中國，是五千年中華文化孕育的歷史中國、文化中國、全民中國，是民族 血肉相連、不能改變的中華民族。(. . .) 所以，坦誠地告訴大家，我們都是炎黃子孫，這是無 法改變的歷史事實。”

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historical notions of Chineseness (descendants of Yan Di and Huang Di Yan Huang zisun 炎黃子孫) with modern ones (the people of one flesh and one blood minzu xierou xianglian 民族血肉相連). Similarly, the concept zhonghua minzu 中華民族, which in the text is characterized as an unchangeable or eternal entity (bu neng gaibian de zhonghua minzu 不能改變的中華民族), is a modern expression that merges the notion of the nation with ideas about race and ethnicity and was coined by Liang Qichao (梁啟超 1873–1929).19 Hsing Yun goes on to invoke another modern conception that relates ethnicity to bloodline (xueyuan 血源). Yet by arguing that the celebration of traditional cultural festivities is evidence of the Chineseness of the Taiwanese, he simultaneously employs a more culturalist approach. Furthermore, the more parochial language is embedded into globalist, cosmopolitan imagery, when he describes himself, as he has done frequently in the past, as a global person. In order to better understand the specific combination of discourses Hsing Yun is deploying in this article, it may be beneficial to consider the context in which he founded Fo Guang Shan and wrote “to propagate Buddhist teachings through cultural activities” as the first sentence of its maxim. Hsing Yun established Fo Guang Shan in the same year that the KMT began to promote its Cultural Renaissance Movement (Wenhua fuxing yundong 文化復興運動) in Taiwan, which was its response to the Cultural Revolution in the PRC.20 The movement was successor to the pre-1949 New Life Movement (Xin shenghuo yundong 新生活運動) on the mainland. Yet compared to the more futuristic New Life Movement, the Cultural Renaissance Movement was decidedly preservationist.21 After relocating to Taiwan, the KMT had transformed its earlier approach to nationalism as a “revolutionary agent of sociopolitical change”22 into a “cultural nationalism”.23 This new rendering of its views on the nation state had already begun with the Glorious Restoration (guangfu 光復) period (1945–1967), was further developed during the Cultural Renaissance Movement, and continued until 1977.24 Culture within this context did not just refer to the arts but to an “invented tradition” in a Hobsbawmian sense serving as a means for the construction of a new

19 C.-T. Kuo, “Introduction”, in: Kuo (ed.), Religion and Nationalism in Chinese Societies, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017, p. 16. 20 D. Roy, Taiwan: A Political History, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003, p. 144. 21 M. Clinton, Revolutionary Nativism: Fascism and Culture in China, 1925–1937, Durham: Duke University Press, 2017, p. 198. 22 A. J. U. L. Chun, Forget Chineseness: On the Geopolitics of Cultural Identification, Albany: State University of New York Press, 2017, p. 21. 23 Ibid., p. 22. 24 Ibid., pp. 22–23.

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consciousness that was instrumental to the KMT’s project of transforming Taiwan into a modern Chinese nation-state.25 The open and accessible formation of Chineseness engendered through global event culture as described in the first half of this chapter is not in tension with the more ethno-cultural discourse of Chineseness; instead, it represents one possible current expression. Both renderings of Chineseness are historically linked. Anthropologist Allen Chun has called the deployment of “traditional Chinese culture” by the postwar KMT government a first measure to commodify culture.26 The KMT government by means of selection constructed a particular set of “traditional Chinese culture” for its goals of nation-state building. A complex history was abbreviated within this process in order to be made applicable to a specific goal. The temple as a cultural Chinese space can be seen as a globalized extension of the earlier commodified deployment of “traditional Chinese culture” for KMT nation-state building processes on Taiwan, albeit with a different goal. The goal now is to spread Fo Guang Shan renjian Buddhism and perpetuate a deterritorialized Chinese cultural identity. This is to be achieved not within a particular Chinese nation-state (such as the PRC or the ROC), but in a global context. Hsing Yun presents the post-war trope of an ethno-cultural rendering of Chineseness within the contemporary context of cross-strait relations and Chinese diaspora. Adapting to this new context, he also added a new theme: that of a culturally Chinese yet global person. I argue that it is this multivalent intertwinement of ethno-cultural parochialism and global cosmopolitanism that has accelerated the order’s impressive transnational development. While the Chinese Mahayana Buddhist tradition is thought of by its followers as universal, it does not follow that it completely transcends national identity. As can be seen from the article above, the notion of national (Chinese) identity retains importance in Hsing Yun’s thought. Many first-generation migrants, particularly those who grew up and went to school in martial law-era Taiwan, are very familiar with this particular rendering of Chineseness.27 The same KMT discourses on Chineseness have similarly influenced the overseas Southeast Asian community, albeit to a lesser degree.28 It is this particular multivalent rendering of Chineseness, one that creates a nexus between a post-war cultural nationalist discourse and a globalist cosmopolitan imagery that resonates with many first-generation migrants in the

25 E. J. Hobsbawm (ed.), The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. 26 Chun, Forget Chineseness, p. 24. 27 Chun, Forget Chineseness, p. 23. 28 Goossaert and Palmer, The Religious Question in Modern China, p. 206.

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diaspora. Today, this very discourse also resonates with many who belong to the most recent wave of Chinese migration from the PRC. As a response to the Tiananmen incident in 1989, views that link ethnoculturalism with the nation-state have become increasingly popular on the mainland during the last three decades.29 The new ethno-cultural nationalist project, which substituted earlier anti-imperialist views on the nation-state, was further promoted through Xi Jinping’s “China Dream” campaign.30 The replacement of earlier Maoist ideology with a new emphasis on “traditional Chinese culture” generated new points of reference for Buddhists and other religious actors in the diaspora. Concurrently, the CCP had realized that cooperating with Taiwanese Buddhists might be of help for their project of unification with Taiwan.31 Hsing Yun, as a long-time supporter of the KMT who has formerly served as an advisor to the party, member of the KMT’s Central Committee, and commissioner for the Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission, has himself always been an outspoken supporter of unification.32 It is thus not farfetched to assume that the particular amalgamation of the two distinct renderings of Chineseness at Fo Guang Shan has not only attracted PRC new migrants overseas, but has also facilitated the order’s recent access to the People’s Republic.

The Move to the Mainland I have discussed the significance of the overseas Fo Guang Shan temple as a Chinese cultural space within the context of a majority non-Chinese society. Yet over the last two decades, Fo Guang Shan has also extended its global development to the People’s Republic of China. At the time of my fieldwork, the order maintained one temple in the PRC, with a second in the process of reconstruction. Fo Guang Shan’s other facilities include a restaurant, a publishing house, a library, and several cultural centres. Because of the restrictions imposed on religious activity by the CCP government, culture constitutes the order’s main

29 K. Mühlhahn, Making China Modern: From the Great Qing to Xi Jinping, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2019, pp. 541, 145; C. R. Hughes, Chinese Nationalism in the Global Era, London: Routledge, 2006, p. 18; B. Vermander, “Sinicizing Religions, Sinicizing Religious Studies”, Religions 10 (2019) 2, p. 8. 30 Mühlhahn, Making China Modern, p. 564. 31 A. Laliberté, “Buddhist Revival under State Watch”, Journal of Current Chinese Affairs 40 (2011) 2, p. 123. 32 Laliberté, The Politics of Buddhist Organizations in Taiwan, p. 71.

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field of social involvement in the People’s Republic. The biggest of the order’s cultural activities in the PRC is the annual Yixing Vegetarian Culture and Green Living Product Exhibition (Zhongguo Yixing ji sushi wenhua ji lüse shenghuopin bolan 中國義興際素食文化暨綠色生活品博覽). Similar to the situation at Hsi Lai, big cultural festivities at the Ancestral Da Jue Temple attract significantly more people than do religious activities, such as the regular Dharma assemblies. The following section is an ethnographic extract from my fieldwork at Da Jue. On the Saturday morning of the first weekend in May 2018, I take a bus from my hotel situated in Yixing’s city centre, a county-level city under the prefecturelevel city of Wuxi in the southern Jiangsu province, to the nearby Hengshan Reservoir. Right next to the reservoir lies the impressive temple complex of the recently reconstructed Fo Guang Shan Ancestral Da Jue Temple. The city of Yixing is mainly famous for its clay teapots and a nearby 120 square kilometre bamboo forest, the Sea of Bamboo Scenic Area (Yixing zhuhai fengjing qu 宜興竹海風景區). But for the seventh year in a row now, Yixing has been hosting a new tourist attraction: the annual Vegetarian Culture and Green Living Product Exhibition at the Fo Guang Shan Ancestral Da Jue Temple. From the morning of 28 April to the afternoon of 1 May, over 100 booths are set up on the temple grounds selling foods and products related to vegetarianism, healthy living, and tea culture. As I stroll through the main stage, the temple complex is already crowded with people. When I arrive at the stage, the opening ceremony had just started. Several local officials are present at the ceremony that morning, including the mayor of the city of Yixing, the deputy mayor of the city of Wuxi, representatives of the China Tourism Association (Zhongguo lüyou xiehui 中國旅遊協會), the Jiangsu Tourism Association (Jiangsu sheng lüyou xiehui 江蘇省旅遊協會), the Wuxi City Bureau of Ethnic and Religious Affairs (Wuxi shi minzu zongjiao shiwu ju 無錫市 民族宗教事務局), among others. They are accompanied by a group of very highranking Fo Guang Shan monastics. In his opening speech, the mayor of Yixing praises the efforts of Hsing Yun in spreading vegetarian culture and a green lifestyle and his contributions to making healthy living part of mainstream culture. Noting that the previous six exhibitions had attracted a total of over two million visitors, he also stresses the exhibition’s benefits to the development of the Yixing tourist industry. This year is the first year to hold a display of tea culture, the Tea Zen Culture and Art Festival, as part of the larger exhibition. Many of the exhibitors attending the Tea Zen Culture and Art Festival are representatives of the local tea industry. Together with their Taiwanese counterparts they not only present their products but also participate in a contest about which tea table designs best encompassed the spirit of Buddhist tea culture (Liangan chachan wenhua jiaoliu luntan ji chaxi sheji bisai 兩岸茶禪文化交流論壇暨茶席設計比賽). The

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following day a panel discussion is to be held at which an award is handed out to the winner. The exhibition is subdivided into three sections: located at the centre is a market selling vegetarian snacks, around the main shrine visitors can purchase products related to a green Buddhist lifestyle, and right in front of the Fragrant Forest Abundant Treasure White Pagoda is the main stage and the tea and Chan culture area where the tea table designs are exhibited. All the exhibitors in the food and lifestyle section are from Taiwan. They sell a huge variety of snacks and products, ranging from the famous Taiwanese stinky tofu to Buddha statues, to more unconventional products like alcohol-free red wine. The whole event is extremely well-patronized, and the temple grounds are filled with people. Yet the food section is definitely the section that is the most popular with the crowds. People enjoy tasting the vegetarian versions of typical Taiwanese night market snacks or take a sip of bubble tea. The exhibition takes place over four days, all equally well attended. The Fo Guang Shan Vegetarian Culture and Green Living Product Exhibition constitutes one more example of how Fo Guang Shan successfully deploys culture and spectacle in a manner that conforms to global consumer culture with the aim of attracting people to the temple. While the Da Jue Temple does of course hold Lunar New Year’s festivities too, this example is particularly interesting because it is promoting vegetarianism and a healthy lifestyle. It is thus explicitly linked to Buddhist culture, yet in a way that produces no tension with the CCP political agenda. Not only does it promote a green lifestyle and boost local tourism in the area, it also encourages cross-strait cultural exchange. The Vegetarian Culture and Green Living Product Exhibition above can be seen as one more example of how local PRC government officials have supported the development of Buddhist temples as tourist sites since the 1990s.33 Similar to the Asian Buddhist leisure sites that McDaniel has researched, a culture of spectacle also constitutes a central element in the merging of Buddhism and the tourist industry in the PRC. The example of Da Jue Temple shows how Fo Guang Shan is taking part in this newly emerging global culture of Buddhist leisure. What differs from the situation in California is, of course, the context. As a Taiwanese temple in the People’s Republic, it does not constitute a Chinese diasporic space in a non-Chinese majority society, but a Buddhist space within a Chinese society. The temple is therefore not required to function as a Chinese community centre here. But culture does play an important role. Because religion is highly regulated within the PRC, most of the order’s facilities on the mainland are cultural centres. The order’s smaller facilities possess

33 Ji, “Buddhism in the Reform Era”, p. 40.

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weaker linkages with tourism, but function as spaces for people to learn about or engage with “traditional Chinese culture”. During my last week in the PRC, for example, I attended a flower arranging class at the Fo Guang Shan Suzhou Jiaying Assembly Hall, a beautifully renovated traditional building with a little shop in the entrance area and several exhibition spaces (see Figure 7). The following fragment is a brief ethnographic extract of my field visit to the Jiaying Assembly Hall. On the second floor of the building is a classroom that oversees the courtyard. I am one of 70 people who attend the class, most of whom are women. The majority are university students in their 20s but there are also some attendees in their 30s and 40s. Based on the way they dress and the full-size executive model cars they arrived in, those who are a little older appear to be middle class or above. The teacher is a florist who is flown in from Taiwan. His class goes on for two hours and is repeated in the afternoon for a different group of participants.

Figure 7: Flower Arranging, Jiaying Assembly Hall, PRC.

This chapter has argued that culture represents one important field of Fo Guang Shan’s social engagement. Culture, mainly understood as Chinese culture, is deployed within the context of the order’s global trajectory in a multivalent way: The overseas Buddhist temple generates an accessible, open Buddhist and Chinese space that holds cultural activities in ways that are compatible with global event

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culture. At the same time, this global and cosmopolitan deployment of Chinese culture is underpinned by an ongoing twentieth-century ethno-cultural discourse of Chineseness. The multivalent entwinement of both renderings of Chineseness contributes to the order’s successful development overseas, including its recent development in the People’s Republic of China. But its exhibited Chineseness also creates points of reference with many non-Chinese who visit the temple because of its role as an ambassador of Chinese culture.

Generating Global Pure Lands Americans founded many Christian universities in China, and so looking at the issue from a perspective of cultural exchange, we should repay the United States and build a University in the US as a gift to express our gratitude.1 Hsing Yun

Socially-engaged activities in the fields of charity and education as Buddhist contributions to society have their roots in the process of adapting Buddhism to the Republican Era nation-state building project.2 As with the cultural engagements described in the previous chapter, engagements in the field of charity and education transcend the particularities of an internally diverse diaspora. Like engagements in the field of culture, civic engagements link the diaspora temple with the mainstream culture. However, this is achieved not by a rearward motion that links the community back to an “imagined” China, but through active involvement in the betterment of their new home societies. Contributions overseas also produce effects back in Taiwan. The order’s civic engagements anywhere in the world are communicated globally through the order’s media complex, thereby reassuring the adherent’s sense of Buddhism’s universal goodness while also helping the order to attract continuing donations. Furthermore, Fo Guang Shan’s civic engagements are also noticed in broader Asian Buddhist circles. The engagements discussed in this chapter, particularly those in the field of charity, exhibit many similarities to Tzu Chi’s transnational philanthropic work. This is not surprising, since both organizations identify as renjian Buddhist, originate from Taiwan and developed around the same time. But there are significant differences too. Fo Guang Shan is a religious order in a more customary sense. Its understanding of Buddhist social engagement is much broader than that of Tzu Chi in that it also includes the fields of education, culture and religious practice. As a result, there are many overlaps between the different modes of Fo Guang Shan social engagement and the line between them cannot always be clearly drawn: a class on Buddhist tea culture is as much linked to education as it is linked to culture; financing a university that has low tuition fees and provides many scholarships can be seen as charitable act or a contribution to education; and providing free chanting services for deceased family members of overseas Chinese is a way of providing charity but is also linked to religious cultivation.

1 “那時候我有一個想法, 我認為美國人在中國興辦了很多教會大學, 站在文化交流的立場, 我們 也可以回饋美國, 在美國班一所大學以示酬謝.” Hsing Yun, Bai nian foyuan, vol. 5, pp. 142–143. 2 An earlier version of this chapter was published as “Generating Global Pure Lands: Renjian Buddhist Civic Engagement within and beyond Chinese Diaspora Communities Worldwide”, in: Clart and Jones (eds.), Transnational Religious Spaces, pp. 283–303. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110690156-005

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This chapter provides a picture of the role of Fo Guang Shan civic engagements by mainly focusing on its undertakings in the USA and in South Africa. As a religious order, Fo Guang Shan’s space for civic engagement within the PRC is limited. This is another thing that differentiates it from Tzu Chi. Tzu Chi as a humanitarian NGO can operate differently in the PRC.3 This chapter first examines the order’s engagements in education by looking at University of the West and the Nan Hua Performance Group. The second half of the chapter discusses different modes of charity within and beyond the Chinese diaspora community.

Global Outposts of Renjian Buddhist Education One of the main objectives of the Buddhist reformers at the beginning of the last century was to modernize Buddhism through education. Not surprisingly, education continues to play a key role at Fo Guang Shan today. At Fo Guang Shan, education has three separate but overlapping meanings. It refers to the religious and secular education of the monastic sangha; to religious education of the laity; and to the involvement of Buddhist actors in secular education. Fo Guang Shan has made contributions to all three fields. The first, the enhancement of the education of the monastic sangha, was particularly relevant for the development of modern Chinese Buddhism. Very early on, Fo Guang Shan began to establish foreign language training for its monastics. The order also runs Buddhist seminaries overseas, yet they tend to be short-term programmes. The complete Buddhist monastic training takes place at the main seminary at the order’s headquarters in Taiwan.4 The training here not only includes standard training in Buddhist scripture, liturgy, and monastic conduct, but also modern temple management and foreign languages. During my fieldwork in Taiwan at Fo Guang Shan and other Buddhist temples, I often heard people praising the standard of monastic education at Fo Guang Shan. The second meaning, to provide religious education for the laity, represents one way of enhancing Buddhist knowledge and spreading the Buddhist Dharma for Fo Guang Shan.5 Religious education here is to be understood in the broadest sense. It not only includes preparation for doctrinal examinations but also

3 For a case study on the development of Tzu Chi in the PRC, see Laliberté, “The Growth of a Taiwanese Buddhist Association in China”. 4 For an examination of the order’s monastic education, see Chandler, Establishing a Pure Land on Earth, pp. 118–124. 5 See also ibid., pp. 124–131.

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learning ways to apply Buddhism to one’s daily life.6 Besides classes on sutras or different modes of religious practice, Fo Guang Shan’s courses for lay Buddhists cover topics such as calligraphy, flower arrangement, tea culture, and traditional Chinese musical instruments, to mention just a few. Many of these classes could have been discussed in the previous chapter too since they also function as preservers of traditional Chinese culture. In Taiwan, Fo Guang Shan has founded several institutions with this goal. The Srimala Buddhist Institute (Shengman shuyuan 勝鬘書院), for example, is an institute that aims specifically at young women for whom it organizes domestic and international study trips. In 1992, Fo Guang Shan founded a community college, which since 2005 has operated under its current name “Fo Guang Shan Open University”, (renjian daxue 人間大學, English: Human Realm University), with branches in every Taiwanese county. Fo Guang Shan also operates an eLearning Buddhist College that gives its adherents the opportunity for online study. Fo Guang Shan also organizes book club meetings for the same purposes.7 During the regular club meetings, Fo Guang Shan adherents read and discuss a text together. What kind of text they read depends on the proficiency in Buddhist doctrine of that particular group. The readings can range from a song or poem written by Hsing Yun to more difficult texts, such as Buddhist scriptures. The acquired knowledge is then tested on a regular basis through Buddhist studies exams. This practice is maintained not only in Taiwan but also at some temples overseas. As described in the ethnographic report in the previous chapter, all subchapters of BLIA Los Angeles gathered at the temple on a weekend before the 2018 Lunar New Year celebrations to take the annual Buddhist studies exam together. However, though this is already a staple of Fo Guang Shan religiosity in Taiwan and in the US, the order has only recently begun to promote the practice in South Africa. The next chapter provides an ethnographic report of this effort that took place during the evenings of a big repentance Dharma assembly. Fo Guang Shan is also well-known for its many media enterprises. Fo Guang Shan’s media undertakings include a daily newspaper, several academic periodicals, countless books and online presences, and even a television station.8 Hsing Yun had already appeared on public TV in Taiwan as early as the 1960s. In 1997, the order then established its own TV station for the purpose of distributing accessible

6 The following data is based on: Foguangshan zongwu weiyuanhui (ed.), Foguangshan kaishan sishi zhounian jinian tekan, vol. 3, chapter 3 and 4. 7 The following section is based on fieldwork observations. 8 Fu, Bright Star, Luminous Cloud, pp. 224–229.

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knowledge about Buddhism.9 Fo Guang Shan’s adoption of modern media for the dissemination of Buddhism can be only noted in passing here, since it would require an entire study in itself to examine its full scope. The third meaning of education refers to the contributions of Buddhists to the secular education of society.10 Of the three fields of education Fo Guang Shan is involved in, it is secular education, together with charity, that constitutes a mode of civic engagement, since it directly aims at enhancing the greater good of society. In addition to several kindergartens, child education centres, elementary and middle schools Fo Guang Shan operates in Taiwan, the order also operates five universities. Two of them are located on the island: Nan Hua University (Nanhua daxue 南華大學) in Chiayi (Jiayi 嘉義) and Fo Guang University (Foguang Daxue 佛光大學) in Yilan; the remaining three are abroad: the University of the West in the US, Guang Ming College in Manila in the Philippines,11 and its most recent addition, the Nan Tien Institute in Wollongong, Australia.12 Of Fo Guang Shan’s higher institutes of education, the University of the West was established first. Its campus is located in Rosemead in the Los Angeles San Gabriel Valley, only a 20-minute drive from Hsi Lai Temple. Like the temple, the university is located in the San Gabriel Valley ethnoburb. After construction of Hsi Lai Temple was completed, Hsing Yun began to consider founding a liberal arts university in the US. The quote at the beginning of this chapter originates from this time period. Hsing Yun thought that since Americans had established many Christian universities in China, the order should establish a university in the US.13 The university was initially established on temple grounds. But over time the project grew and in 1991 the temple and the university became officially separate.14 The University of the West, which was originally called Hsi Lai University, adopted its current name in April 2004. It is a private, non-profit, non-sectarian,

9 Foguangshan zongwu weiyuanhui (ed.), Foguangshan kaishan sishi zhounian jinian tekan, vol. 10, pp. 79–81. 10 See also Chandler, Establishing a Pure Land on Earth, pp. 131–134. 11 The following data is based on: Foguangshan zongwu weiyuanhui (ed.), Foguangshan kaishan sishi zhounian jinian tekan, vol. 3, chapter 3 and 4. 12 Fo Guang Shan, Nan Tian Institute, “Nan Tien Institute”, https://www.nantien.edu.au/ about-us. 13 “那時候我有一個想法, 我認為美國人在中國興辦了很多教會大學, 站在文化交流的立場, 我們 也可以回饋美國, 在美國班一所大學以示酬謝.” Hsing Yun, Bai nian foyuan, vol. 5, pp. 142–143. 14 If not otherwise referenced, the following information is taken from: T. Storch, BuddhistBased Universities in the United States: Searching for a New Model in Higher Education, London: Lexington Books, 2015, pp. 11–20.

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co-educational institution that is organized under the Non-Profit Public Benefit Corporation Law. In 2006, the University of the West became accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC). At the time of this research it maintains four undergraduate programmes – Business Administration, English, Liberal Arts, and Psychology – and four graduate programmes – Buddhist Chaplaincy, Business Administration, Psychology, and Religious Studies.15 In addition, it runs certificate programmes that include Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), an Undergraduate Certificate in Business Administration, a Graduate Certificate in Business Administration, and a Post-MBA Certificate in Business Administration. Despite being founded by a Buddhist order, the University of the West is a secular university that does not require its faculty or students to be Buddhist.16 However, the values and mission of the school are defined in Buddhist terms.17 There are classes that teach the books of Fo Gang Shan’s founder Hsing Yun, and sometimes a monastic gives classes on certain Buddhism-related topics, such as renjian Buddhism and management. Furthermore, the business programme has a learning through service component, and all the students enrolled in undergraduate programmes are required to take at least one course in religious studies. However, these courses focus more on general life education than on Buddhist doctrine or on the academic study of religion. The university contributes to the community by providing an affordable education. As one of the faculty members told me, it has the lowest tuition fees for a private university in the state of California and provides many scholarships for its students.18 Although the school is an independent organization, it still maintains a close connection to the temple. The presidents of the University of the West and Fo Guang Shan’s Taiwanese universities meet regularly, and the school maintains regular exchanges with the order’s educational institutes in the Philippines and Australia. Because of its affordable fees and many scholarship opportunities, the school is not completely self-financed. In fact, Fo Guang Shan provides most of the university’s financial support. In addition, the temple also provides 15 Fo Guang Shan, University of the West, Academics University of the West, http://www. uwest.edu/academics/. 16 If not otherwise indicated, the following section is based on data collected during my fieldwork at Hsi Lai Temple in the spring of 2018. 17 “Our Mission. The mission of University of the West is to provide a whole-person education in a context informed by Buddhist wisdom and values, and to facilitate cultural understanding and appreciation between East and West.” Fo Guang Shan, University of the West, Mission, University of the West, https://www.uwest.edu/about-uwest/our-mission/. 18 President’s Scholarship, Dean’s Scholarship, and UWest Scholarship, Lotus Scholarship, Bridge Scholarship, IBEF International Buddhist Education Foundation Scholarship for monastics.

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opportunities not only for internships and voluntary work, but also meditation retreats. Some of the university’s students have even found jobs at the temple after their graduation. The University of the West has a highly diverse student body. About half of the students are international students. The ratio is roughly even in all four main tracks, with psychology attracting slightly more domestic students and the MBA programme on the other hand attracting more international students. The school’s biggest programme is Business Administration, while chaplaincy and religious studies are relatively small programmes. The school aims to have a fifty-fifty balance of undergraduate and graduate students, but at the time of my research it had slightly more graduate students. In recent years, the school has registered a rise in the number of Hispanic Americans in its undergraduate programmes, which reflects recent demographic developments in the San Gabriel Valley. Most of the international students who are enrolled at the University of the West come from Asia. There are significantly more students from Asia than there are Asian American students. Of the overseas students from Asia, the majority comes from Chinese-speaking countries, particularly from Taiwan and the PRC. To enhance its appeal to local non-Chinese students, in 2004 the university abandoned its original Chinese name and renamed itself the University of the West. At the same time, international students prefer to receive a diploma from a university with an English name. The name change has led to an overall increase in student numbers. The University of the West also has a high number of Buddhist monastics amongst its student body. The school has managed to develop a reputation in high-ranking Buddhist monastic circles in Asia. Its Religious Studies and Chaplaincy departments especially attract elite Buddhist monastics from different Asian countries, including, but not limited to, the PRC and Thailand. Hsing Yun’s establishment of the University of the West can thus be seen as the fulfilment of his teacher’s Taixu’s unsuccessful efforts to establish a pan-Buddhist university in Republican-Era China. As mentioned in this chapter’s introduction, the line between charity and education is not always clear and there is often an overlap. The second example of Fo Guang Shan Buddhist civic engagement, the Nan Hua Performing Arts Group, a performance arts boarding school for young South African women from rural areas based at Nan Hua Temple in South Africa, represents such a case where education and charity combine.19 While the University of the West and the Nan Hua Performing Arts Group both represent Fo Guang Shan undertakings that are

19 The following section is based on data collected during my fieldwork at the Nan Hua Temple in late 2017.

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directed towards the society of their host country in general, the latter is much more closely integrated into temple life. The Nan Hua Performing Arts Group is a performing-arts boarding school for rural South African women that is integrated into the physical building complex of Nan Hua Temple. While the founding of the University of the West in some ways represents the fulfilment of an ambition that dates back to the Republican Era, the founding of the Nan Hua Performing Arts Group on the other hand is a response to a more contemporary social issue. When I interviewed one of the monastics at Nan Hua Temple about the motivation for establishing the programme, he told me that only a single-digit percentage of black women in South Africa have a university degree. He also stated that after finishing high school, many young women get married, have children, and do not continue their education. The temple therefore decided to do something in response to the issue. Fo Guang Shan’s aim was to provide learning opportunities for those young women who live in underdeveloped and rural areas and who otherwise have a limited chance of establishing a professional career. In 2013, the Nan Hua Performing Arts Group was founded, and student enrolment began shortly afterwards in 2014. The group represents one of the most current attempts by the temple to contribute to South African society. Its other efforts include the Nan Hua Academy, an educational institution that provides free three-month computer and Mandarin language courses for unemployed people in the neighbouring townships in order to assist them in finding employment, and a scout programme the temple has initiated in order to provide recreational activities for under-privileged children from neighbouring townships. An earlier example of such efforts is an African Buddhist seminary once operated by the temple.20 The Nan Hua Performance Art Group offers a three-year programme. It is free of charge, includes free board and lodging, and covers the travelling expenses for its performance tours. Students who have proven themselves to be responsible and diligent enough have the option to continue for a further two years during which they can serve as teaching assistants. In December 2017, the first round of students received their degrees. Some of the graduates decided to stay at the temple to work as teaching assistants. Occasionally, the students also help out with the scout programme. The background of the young women is quite diverse. They come from different South African ethnic groups and different parts of the country. New students often come from the same groups as current ones, having heard about the programme from their friends. But Fo Guang Shan also advertises the programme in

20 Chandler, Establishing a Pure Land on Earth, pp. 296–298.

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local newspapers. A prerequisite for enrolment is that students have to be female, 18 to 25 years old, and unmarried. An interview is conducted at the temple to see if they are a good fit for the programme. So far, 131 young black South African women have been enrolled in the programme. However, many of these did not persevere. The current 30 were selected from a group of 200. There are several possible reasons for them giving up: some of the women are unable to adjust to the vegetarian food, while others have problems getting used to strict temple life. Others again may just have difficulties with the content of the classes and do not pass the exams that are held regularly. The classes designed for the young women include computer courses and Mandarin language classes, but the main focus is on performing arts. Traditional Chinese and African drumming, traditional African dancing, African marimba xylophone playing, modern dance, Chinese martial arts, and traditional dances, are all part of the curriculum. The classes are taught by local South African as well as Taiwanese teachers. During the first year, students begin by studying African performance arts taught by local teachers. From the second year, they are also taught by Taiwanese teachers flown in from Taipei. The Taiwanese teachers normally stay for about four weeks at a time and teach intensive classes in Chinese drum, dance, and performance. The overall artistic quality of the young performers, particularly the senior students, is so impressive that the temple was even approached by a TV station and asked to participate in the popular TV show “South Africa’s Got Talent”. After a period of consideration, the temple decided to give it a try and let the young women of the second and third year of the Nan Hua Performing Arts Group participate. The process happened to take place during my fieldwork period at the temple. The group turned out to be quite successful and even made it to the semi-finals. In addition, the group also performs regularly at different venues in Gauteng Province, often at events that are organized by the local Taiwanese and PRC Chinese communities. But the young women of the Nan Hua Performing Arts Group also perform internationally. Once a year the second- and third-year students go on tour and perform at different Fo Guang Shan temples in Asia. So far, they have travelled to Taiwan, the PRC, Malaysia, and the Philippines. One monastic told me that the audiences, mostly consisting of ethnic Chinese, are very touched to see young African women perform traditional Chinese arts at such a high professional level. Thus, the Nan Hua Performing Arts Group not only constitutes a form of civic engagement in the context of South African society but also has positive repercussions for Fo Guang Shan back in Asia. It enhances the profile of the order as a contributor to a global civil society. The temple plans to further professionalize the training by expanding its cooperation with other Chinese and Taiwanese groups.

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The young women live on the temple grounds and are fully integrated in the daily life of the temple. Three times per day, they eat together with the monastics, the long-time volunteers, and the temple staff. Although the temple does hope to convey Fo Guang Shan Buddhist values, students are not required to become Buddhists or even to participate in the daily morning service that is conducted in one of the shrine halls. In fact, none of the students during my time of fieldwork was Buddhist; one student was a Muslim and all others were Christians. I had the opportunity to teach two classes to the students and learn more about the students’ perspective on temple life. The first class, which was given to the whole student body focused on the methods, advantages, and pitfalls of Mandarin language learning. The second one was specifically for first-year students focusing on Taiwanese culture and renjian Buddhism in general. During the discussion time of the classes students vividly discussed their experiences at the temple, shared their perspective on Fo Guang Shan Buddhism, but also opened up about their lives in the programme. The students reported how the Chinese Buddhist iconography at the temple (in particular the statue of the thousand-armed Avalokitesvara) had irritated them in the beginning, but added how they had got used to it over time. They were very impressed by the disciplined way the volunteers at the temple practice Buddhism. While most also reported that they had little problem adjusting to the vegetarian cuisine – they particularly liked the Buddhist mock meat dishes – several students found the temple too quiet and noted that there were too many rules. While there are surely cultural differences between Taiwan and the black South African communities the students originated from – including the food, and the way people talk and socialize – some of these issues might be less related to cultural differences and more to the fact that Nan Hua Performing Arts Group is integrated into a Temple. A temple is of course not any kind of Taiwanese space but a religious space that has many rules and regulations. A Buddhist temple, even one as industrious as the renjian Buddhist temples of Fo Guang Shan, is a space of Buddhist practice (xiuxing 修行). The students of the Nan Hua Performance Group on the other hand are young women at an age when people tend to be more interested in having fun or going to the movies than living the quiet life of a monastic. Thus, some students leave the programme after a while. But those who have stayed have adjusted to the somewhat strict environment remarkably well. The young women in the Nan Hua Performing Arts Group are an integral part of temple life. Although it is the temple that sets the basic rules, Nan Hua Temple has also adapted to the situation. Compared to Fo Guang Shan’s other overseas temples, the atmosphere at Nan Hua is much livelier and many rules are not enforced as strictly.

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The global civic engagement of Nan Hua Temple and University of the West constitute means of contributing to the societies of South Africa and the USA. But at the same time, they also represent an effort to spread renjian Buddhism to the local non-Chinese population. It does not matter that the students of the University of the West or the young women of the Nan Hua Performance Arts Group, like the vast majority of non-Chinese beneficiaries of Fo Guang Shan’s educational and charity engagement worldwide, do not immediately convert to Buddhism. Compared to the strong missionary zeal of some Christian groups, Fo Guang Shan takes a soft approach to proselytization. When I asked him about the relationship between a renjian Buddhist religiosity and the order’s civic engagement in South Africa, the abbot of Nan Hua noted: We organize many activities for Buddhism to develop roots in Africa. We need to train talent for the localisation of Buddhism in the future. That is very important. What we can do is encourage the South African Chinese to donate and invest in the training of local talent for the future development of Buddhism in Africa. That is what is important to do and what we are able to do. That is why we have to be open, so when people ask why we spend so much money on charity, on the Nan Hua Academy for example, and how is that related to Buddhism, I respond that training Buddhist talent cannot be achieved overnight. It is about planting a seed. Humanistic Buddhism means to do what the Buddha said, what humans need, to do that which purifies and beautifies (佛説的, 人要的, 淨化的, 善美的). It is about contributing to society!21

Through its local performances and television appearances the Nan Hua Performing Arts Group functions as what one BLIA member has called “cultural ambassadors” for the temple. But the reach of the group also exceeds the borders of South Africa. In March 2018, the Nan Hua Performing Arts Group was even invited to participate in the conference of the UN Women’s Commission on the Status of Women held in New York. Furthermore, by touring other Fo Guang Shan temples in Taiwan and Southeast Asia and by appearing in Fo Guang Shan media, the Nan Hua Performance group, just like the University of the West, represents a successful example of Fo Guang Shan’s transnational civic engagement and thereby helps to attract donations and generate revenue.

Cosmopolitan Goodness Much like the global charity engagements of Tzu Chi, Fo Guang Shan’s civic engagements are linked to what Weller, Huang, Wu, and Fan call “civic selving”, a

21 Interview conducted in Chinese, own translation; Nan Hua Temple, South Africa; fall 2017.

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modern generation of selfhood of an individual who “chooses to become an active volunteer, who accepts the wider authority of a religious organization and discipline, who seeks cultivation and fulfilment through a broader civic responsibility to society and humanity, who sees herself cosmopolitan even though she may never have left home, and who achieves this end by accepting new forms of embodied action”.22 Fo Guang Shan volunteers are involved in charitable causes all over the globe. In Taiwan, Fo Guang Shan maintains a wide range of charity endeavours.23 The order organizes regular children’s camps, and maintains a children’s home, an educational centre for elementary and middle school children, four senior citizens’ homes, two clinics and a mobile clinic, and a columbarium. In addition, Fo Guang Shan runs prison visit programmes, a drug addiction rehabilitation programme, disaster relief programmes, reconstruction programmes for earthquake victims, memorial services for the victims of natural disasters, winter relief programmes for the poor, community service programmes, a hospice, environmental protection programmes, blood donation campaigns, and various training programmes for volunteers. Overseas, Fo Guang Shan engages in philanthropic work in Asia, the Americas, Africa, Oceania, and, on a smaller scale, Europe. In the People’s Republic of China, the order has provided disaster relief aid and constructed an elementary school and a clinic.24 It runs prison visit programmes and charity programmes for the needy and elderly in Hong Kong. In Japan, Fo Guang Shan provided disaster relief work after the Kobe earthquake in 1995 and operates visit programmes to senior citizens’ homes. In Malaysia, the Philippines, India, and Sri Lanka it runs several charity and disaster relief programmes. To Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Myanmar it has donated wheelchairs and other goods. It has constructed a junior high school in Myanmar and provided free medical services in Northern Thailand and Indonesia. In Indonesia, the order operates several charity and disaster relief programmes. Fo Guang Shan has also provided donations to Iraq. After the 2004 tsunami, a US$ 500,000 emergency fund was created by the order’s headquarters, and a variety of local BLIA chapters worldwide provided further donations and disaster relief and reconstruction programmes for the victims. Furthermore, Fo Guang Shan has performed several memorial services to ensure a good rebirth for the deceased and thereby alleviate the suffering of the bereaved.

22 R. P. Weller et al., Religion and Charity: The Social Life of Goodness in Chinese Societies, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018, pp. 125–126. 23 The following data is based on: Foguangshan zongwu weiyuanhui (ed.), Foguangshan kaishan sishi zhounian jinian tekan, vol. 5, chapter 2. 24 Ibid., pp. 130–171.

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Fo Guang Shan is also very active in the Americas.25 In the USA, the order operates a vast range of programmes, including winter relief, disaster aid, medical services, bone marrow donations, computer donations, academic scholarships, charity programmes for the elderly and homeless, and environmental programmes such as recycling activities and community clean-ups. Fo Guang Shan even runs two columbaria in the country: one in L.A. and another in Houston. In Canada too, the order operates several charity programmes. In Brazil, the order provides medical services and runs educational and professional training programmes for local children and youths. It has even formed a football team for children from a disadvantaged background. In Paraguay, it has constructed a clinic and operates several donation and charity programmes, including sponsoring of the construction of two pedestrian overpasses. Fo Guang Shan has donated wheelchairs to Chile and provided a winter relief programme there. On the African continent the order runs a small branch centre in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and was in the past involved in charities in Malawi. However, Fo Guang Shan’s main site of activity is South Africa, where it runs several donation and charity programmes.26 Fo Guang Shan’s African headquarters, Nan Hua Temple, runs the above-mentioned scout programme for children from disadvantaged backgrounds and Nan Hua Academy, which provides free professional skills training to underprivileged communities of the Kungwini Local Municipality. The school’s programmes include lessons in accounting software, word processor and other software, and Mandarin. In Australia and New Zealand, Fo Guang Shan operates community service and several donation and charity programmes. In Papua New Guinea, the order maintains a free kindergarten and runs several donation and charity programmes.27 Finally, in Europe, it has donated wheelchairs in France and organizes community services such as clean-up days in London.28 This list, which is not exhaustive, shows that overseas Fo Guang Shan’s civic engagement is geographically linked to Taiwanese migration. Fo Guang Shan is particularly involved in areas of the world where there is a large overseas Taiwanese community, such as Southeast Asia or the United States of America. Whether at home or overseas, renjian Buddhist charity as provided by Fo Guang Shan or Tzu Chi, represents a specific mode of “religious philanthropy characterized by notions of a universal good, embodied through cosmopolitan volunteers driven by generalized feelings of love, and institutionalized 25 26 27 28

Ibid., pp. 172–191. Ibid., pp. 192–198. Ibid., pp. 199–202. Ibid., p. 203.

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to be large scale, accountable, and rationalized”.29 What differentiates contemporary renjian Buddhist civic engagements from earlier efforts in the past, is that former modes of religious civic engagement that were once linked to the specific nation-state projects of China and Taiwan, facilitated by the global flows of post-1965 Chinese migration, have been deterritorialized and expanded over the globe. What has changed in this process are the recipients of the benefactions. Outside of Taiwan, and in contrast to the situation back home, Fo Guang Shan’s overseas civic engagements primarily target a non-Chinese audience. Thus, within a global context, Fo Guang Shan’s civic engagements represent a cross-cultural move out of the temple space into the mainstream non-Chinese society. They create new kinds of linkages that connect the temple, the diaspora community, and the non-Chinese mainstream of the new host society. Just as the temple is a cultural Chinese space that also functions as a sightseeing hotspot, Fo Guang Shan’s transnational civic engagement produces spaces of cross-cultural interaction. Post-1965 ethnic Chinese migrants have developed an array of voluntary associations that are organized around functional life needs in an urban diasporic setting. Philip Kuhn calls the new migrant organizations “despatialized, nonparticularistic groupings”, because, in contrast to earlier forms of organizing such as the hometown organizations, new migrant associations transcend the particularities of national and regional origin. They provide a huge variety of services that include job training and placement, senior citizen services, English lessons, housing development, assistance with negotiating language-intensive and bureaucratic tasks, as well as weekend Chinese schools and religious services.30 Many of these new voluntary associations also reach out into the larger non-Chinese community. New migrant associations, like Fo Guang Shan, for example, invite local American politicians to their events and participate in local community through a range of economic, political, social, and cultural activities.31 Fo Guang Shan can be seen as a Buddhist variant of such a new migrant association. Instead of just protecting the migrant from discrimination by mainstream society, new associations such as Fo Guang Shan create links to it. Through charity and educational endeavours, the order contributes to the nonChinese mainstream society. It links Chinese with non-Chinese but also, by transcending particularistic identities, bridges the intra-cultural divides within 29 Weller et al., Religion and Charity, p. 12. 30 Ibid., p. 362. 31 H.-S. Chen, Chinatown No More: Taiwan Immigrants in Contemporary New York, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992, p. 56.

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the internally diverse Chinese diasporic community. Through charity and education Fo Guang Shan establishes itself as a civic actor in the host society while at the same time generating spaces of intra- and cross-cultural interaction. The cross-cultural interactions are in some cases limited in degree, particularly those of the order’s charity endeavours that take the form of non-recurring contributions (e.g., donations). Others, such as the educational undertakings discussed above, create stronger linkages. Furthermore, all Fo Guang Shan’s civic involvements enhance the order’s visibility in the mainstream culture of its host societies. Below, I provide two ethnographic extracts that exemplify the order’s charity projects. The first is a typical example of modern religious charity – providing relief to the poor – while the second is somewhat different in that it is directed towards their own community and blurs the line between charity and religious cultivation. During my fieldwork at Hsi Lai Temple in California, I participate in an event that is organized by the English-language Dharma book club.32 Once a year, the temple cooperates with St. John Vianney Catholic Church to provide food for some of the many homeless people in Los Angeles.33 The Fo Guang Shan activity is attended not only by members of the English-language book club but also by members of several other BLIA subchapters. Around 5:30 p.m. about 40 people, some with a Hispanic background, some non-Hispanic whites, and many Chinese Americans, gather at the church. Led by a monastic, we bring trays packed with vegetarian food and about 100 sleeping bags to hand out to the needy. The church hall is already packed with people sitting around tables. Most people in the room are European Americans, Hispanic Americans, and African Americans. Some people are already in an adjacent room, where camp beds are provided for people to spend the night. Others are at the back of the building taking advantage of one of the mobile showers installed for the occasion. However, most sit around the round tables of the church hall and wait for their food. In the meantime, Fo Guang Shan volunteers heat up the vegetarian food that had been prepared at the temple beforehand in a small kitchen. Right before dinner, the Catholic priest and a Fo Guang Shan nun welcome the guests with a speech and a little prayer. Temple volunteers and I who act as waiters then serve the food.

32 The following ethnographic report is based on fieldwork data. 33 According to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) there were about 55,000 people living on the streets in 2017. USC Neighborhood Data for Social Change, “Homeless people L.A.”. https://usc.data.socrata.com/stories/s/Homelessness-in-2018-ASnapshot-of-Los-Angeles-Cou/g8ge-um6u/ (accessed 11 November 2018).

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The scene shows how Fo Guang Shan’s civic engagement is rooted in early twentieth-century renjian Buddhist religiosity that has developed in reference to Christian modes of philanthropy. Chinese Buddhist civil engagement was informed by Western ideas and practices conveyed by European American Protestant missionaries. In Chinese diasporic communities today, the situation seems to have flipped. Now it is Buddhists who are more involved in philanthropy. Chinese Christians in the diaspora tend to limit their charitable engagement to their own group. Comparing a Taiwanese Protestant Church with a Buddhist temple in Southern California, Carolyn Chen concludes that while the church limits its outreach to the ethnic Chinese community and mainly focuses on proselytization, the temple is heavily involved in charity work and has extended its public mission beyond the ethnic Chinese community.34 Kenneth J. Guest, too, notes that many Chinese Christian churches focus on providing services for the diaspora community and assisting immigrants in adapting to their new lives.35 Yang Fenggang makes similar observations about Chinese American Christianity. He traces the reluctance of Chinese American Christians to get involved in society as a whole through political participation or social service to their evangelical faith and Confucian cultural heritage.36 Interestingly enough, several of the Fo Guang Shan adherents with whom I had informal conversations about the issue particularly made reference to Confucianism in order to legitimize their religion’s high degree of involvement in society. Likewise, Taiwanese scholar Yang Huinan argues that renjian Buddhist social engagement is less rooted in a reevaluation of Indian Mahayana sutras, as some reformers argue, but is instead linked to Confucian practice and discourse.37 Providing food for the homeless is a way of contributing to society common for religious organizations today. But by relocating it in the context of a nonmajority Chinese country, it adds some complexity not only in terms of crosscultural but also cross-class dynamics. While the Fo Guang Shan volunteers are a mixed group, the majority of them are ethnic Chinese belonging to the middle and upper strata of society. Although the recipients of the charitable work too were of a variety of backgrounds, not one of these recipients appeared to have

34 Chen, “The Religious Varieties of Ethnic Presence”, p. 215. 35 K. J. Guest, God in Chinatown: Religion and Survival in New York’s Evolving Immigrant Community, New York: New York University Press, 2003, pp. 195–196. 36 F. Yang, Chinese Christians in America: Conversion, Assimilation, and Adhesive Identities, University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999, p. 191. 37 Yang H. 楊惠南, “‘Renjian fojiao’ de jingdian quanshi: shi ‘yuan ru fo’ huo huigu Yindu?” 「人間佛教」的經典詮釋 – 是「援儒入佛」或是回歸印度？ Chung-Hwa Buddhist Journal (2000) 13, p. 479.

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a Chinese background. We encounter a similar situation in South Africa where relatively well-off ethnic Chinese volunteers hand out goods to the local non-Chinese needy. Through their global civic engagements, Fo Guang Shan Buddhists refute the old anti-Chinese stereotype of Chinese migrants as sojourners who keep only to themselves, instead presenting themselves as responsible members of their new society. While giving away actual capital, they are at the same time increasing the cultural capital of their community, not only within their new home countries but also back in Taiwan. But the fact that Fo Guang Shan’s overseas temples reach out to mainstream society does not mean that they contribute nothing to the local Chinese community. The services they provide to the diaspora community differ from those that target mainstream society. They focus less on alleviating the consequences of poverty and more on providing religious and funeral services to the diaspora. As mentioned above, Hsi Lai Temple operates a columbarium in the area and provides chanting services for the deceased. During my fieldwork at the temple, I had the chance to participate in one of the chanting services. The following fragment is a brief ethnographic extract from my temple stay at Hsi Lai. On a Sunday in the spring of 2018, a group of ten volunteers and two female monastics pick me up from a side entrance of Hsi Lai temple’s main shrine. We drive to a big cemetery located not far off from the temple. Together, the monastics, lay volunteers, and I are on a mission to conduct a funeral service. A Fo Guang Shan Buddhist funeral service consists of a solemn ritual and chanting assistance for the family of the deceased. A particularly important element of the ritual is to chant the name of the Buddha Amitabha to assure rebirth of the deceased in the Western Pure Land of Sukhavati. When we arrive at the Buddhist chapel, everything is already decorated with lavish flower arrangements and the atmosphere is calm and dignified. The funeral congregation is small and consists mainly of the family of the deceased and our group of Fo Guang Shan volunteers. After the service our group proceeds to the graveyard for the burial of the deceased (see Figure 8). The deceased was not a member of the BLIA, and normally the temple is not able to provide this service to non-members in Los Angeles. There are just too many people in the LA area and the BLIA lacks the manpower to provide the service to everybody. But today is an exception. Providing a Buddhist funeral is not only a service to the diasporic community, but also represents a possibility to spread the Dharma. During my fieldwork at Nan Hua Temple in Bronkhorstspruit, South Africa, I interviewed a leading BLIA Johannesburg member, a very elegant, elderly Taiwanese lady, who told me that she had only joined the BLIA after Nan Hua Temple had offered chanting assistance for her deceased parent. Before that she had not even identified herself as a Buddhist. The generous offer and solemn ritual

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Figure 8: Fo Guang Shan Funeral, Los Angeles County, USA.

conducted by the temple had moved her so much that she began to get involved with Nan Hua Temple. This example shows that certain ritual services when offered for free can constitute a form of Buddhist charity. At the same time, they are, of course, a mode of religious cultivation and can even function as opportunities for proselytization. As a Buddhist order, religious cultivation lies at the heart of Fo Guang Shan religiosity. The following chapter examines how religious cultivation is practiced at Fo Guang Shan. Renjian Buddhism is not practiced as an individual, in solitude withdrawn from society, but in a social and communal fashion that links the individual to the group.

Purifying the Multitude Yet why is Shakyamuni Buddha only found inside the monasteries or mountain forests instead of in families and society? The only path to the righteous faith is for all Buddhists to establish their faith in the founder – the great Buddha. Stemming from such thoughts, I therefore vowed to bring Buddhism out of the mountains and into society, to ensure that monastics interact with lay Buddhists, and to take Buddhism from temples into homes. I also pledged to shift a faith which focused on meaningless metaphysical discussions to one that is devoted to serving society. It is also vital to alter Buddhism’s focus on monastic cultivations of chanting, meditation, and reciting Buddha’s name to being open to all Buddhists for collective cultivation, fellowship and interchange.1 Hsing Yun A Fo Guang Shan Buddhist should not be like a solitary flower in love with its own fraHsing Yun grance.2

One of the key tenets of renjian Buddhism from its inception was to make the Buddhist teachings relevant for the modern world. For Hsing Yun, Buddhism is not to be practiced by monastics in secluded mountain caves but has to be brought into society and into the homes of everyday people. The two quotes from Hsing Yun both illustrate the importance of communality in Fo Guang Shan renjian Buddhist religiosity. While the previous two chapters have shed light on Fo Guang Shan’s many social engagements in the fields of culture, charity, and education, this chapter takes seriously the religious dimension in renjian Buddhist religiosity and therefore examines how overseas Fo Guang Shan Buddhists practice their tradition on an intrinsically religious level. Much like the order’s involvement in culture, education, and charity, religious cultivation at Fo Guang Shan is meant to be yet another form of social engagement. Regardless of whether they convey a sense of Chineseness to the overseas community, contribute to the temple’s host society through civic engagement, or take part in Buddhist cultivation, Fo Guang Shan Buddhists practice their religion as part of a group. When it comes to Buddhist doctrine, practice, and cosmology, Fo Guang Shan is deeply rooted in the mainstream Chinese Mahayana tradition. Fo Guang Shan’s particular approach to renjian Buddhism is to promote these doctrines and practices by enhancing their accessibility and applicability for ordinary members of society. To achieve this goal, Fo Guang Shan emphasizes the importance of a communal approach to the religious practice of the Buddhist tradition.

1 Hsing Yun, Humanistic Buddhism, p. 326. 2 Original in Chinese. “佛光人不能孤芳自賞”, quoted from Shi Manyi 釋滿義, Xingyun moshi de renjian fojiao 星雲模式的人間佛教, Taipei: Tianxia wenhua, 2005, p. 231. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110690156-006

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The Religious Ecology of Fo Guang Shan Fo Guang Shan is in many ways a typical order in the Chinese Mahayana tradition. The nuns and monks of the order wear the customary robe of Chinese monastics. The daily schedule of a Fo Guang Shan temple is structured around morning and evening services, where excerpts of the standard Chinese Mahayana scriptures are chanted. Dharma assemblies, followed by Buddha’s name recitation and Chan meditation, are the most popular forms of religious cultivation practiced by the order’s adherents. As a renjian Buddhist order, however, Fo Guang Shan puts a special emphasis on making Buddhist teachings and practices relevant to contemporary society. Over the years, Fo Guang Shan has proclaimed several sets of directives that together constitute the religious philosophy (zongmen sixiang 宗門思想) of the order.3 The Spirit of Fo Guang Shan (foguang ren de jingshen 佛光人的精神), for example, describes the ideal spirit of Fo Guang Shan adherents. Its four points all stress the importance of altruism and putting the community before the individual.4 Other directives too consist of practical instructions; the Future Direction of Fo Guang Shan (foguang daochang fazhan de fangxiang 佛光道場發展方向) contains four goals: (1) harmony between modernity and tradition; (2) equality between monastics and laity; (3) the equal importance of wisdom and practice; and (4) the promotion of Buddhism through the arts and humanities.5 The second set, the Four Guidelines of Fo Guang Shan, constitutes one of the order’s best known group of directives. The Four Guidelines are also reflected in the structure of this study. They declare cultural activities, education, charity, and religious cultivation as the order’s four main fields of engagement.6 Hsing Yun first set out these directives when he founded Fo Guang Shan in 1967. It is also the only group of directives mentioned on the global English language webpage of the order.7 Another set, the Core Ideas of Fo Guang Shan (Foguang shan de linian 佛光山的理念), calls for attributing honour to the Buddha, attributing achievements to the multitude,

3 Foguangshan zongwu weiyuanhui (ed.), Foguangshan kaishan sishi zhounian jinian tekan, vol. 1, pp. 12–13. 4 “佛教第一，自己第二 Buddhism comes before me; 常住第一，自己第二 The monastery comes before me; 大眾第一，自己第二 The multitude comes before me; 信徒第一，自己第二 Devotees come before me”. Semicolons added by the author. Foguangshan zongwu weiyuanhui (ed.), Foguangshan kaishan sishi zhounian jinian tekan, vol. 1, pp. 12–13. 5 “傳統與現代融合”, “僧眾與信眾共有”, “修持於慈解並重”, “佛教與藝文合一”. 6 Foguangshan zongwu weiyuanhui (ed.), Foguangshan kaishan sishi zhounian jinian tekan, vol. 1, p. 13. 7 https://www.fgs.org.tw/en/#.

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attributing benefits to the monastery, and attributing merit to the devotees.8 It expresses the ideal mind-set of a Fo Guang Shan adherent. Based on this mindset, the Characteristics of Fo Guang Shan (Foguang shan de xingge 佛光山的性格) lists eight codes of behaviour recommended for Fo Guang Shan adherents. The eight codes are: be humanistic and joyful, emphasize teamwork and harmony, educate through the arts and humanities, resolve problems like a Bodhisattva, be compassionate, skilfully render service to others, respect people of different nationalities, and focus on universality and equality.9 The directives above were published as a complete set on the occasion of the order’s 40th anniversary as part of a ten-volume publication. But they are not the only ones to have been published by the order. In fact, over time Fo Guang Shan has developed a variety of directives and maxims. On its global Chinese language webpage, for example, Fo Guang Shan provides a slightly different set. The Characteristics, Core Ideas, and Future Direction are missing, while three more sets are provided instead: the Religious Style of Fo Guang Shan (Foguang shan de zongfeng 佛光山的宗風); the Fo Guang Shan Tenets (Foguang shan de xintiao 佛光演的信條); and the Objectives of Fo Guang Shan (Foguang shan de mubiao 佛光山的目標).10 Like the directives previously discussed, most of these are very practical nature. Of the total of eight points that together comprise the religious style of Fo Guang Shan, for example, only the first directly refers to Chinese Mahayana doctrine, and even then only in passing. It calls on Fo Guang Shan monastics and laity to spread the eight traditional schools of Chinese Buddhism together. The following seven, like the tenets and objectives, emphasize the modernist world-affirming and sociallyengaged character of the tradition. Fo Guang Shan’s directives are thus not doctrinal abstractions but rather are meant to be put into practice. They stress the importance of culture and education in spreading the Dharma, claim the equality of the sangha and the laity at Fo Guang Shan, profess the merging of modern and traditional elements for the enhancement of Buddhism, and put a very strong emphasis on ethical behaviour and altruism. They are designed to make Buddhism serviceable to contemporary society and help the individual to become part of a harmonious group.

8 “光榮歸於佛陀,” “成就歸於大眾,” “利益歸於常住,” “功德歸於檀那.” Foguangshan zongwu weiyuanhui (ed.), Foguangshan kaishan sishi zhounian jinian tekan, vol. 1, pp. 12–13. 9 “人間的喜樂性格; 大眾的融合性格”, “藝文的教化性格”, “菩薩的發心性格”, “慈悲的根本 性格”, “方便的行事性格”, “國際的共尊性格”, “普世的平等性格”, Foguangshan zongwu weiyuanhui (ed.), Foguangshan kaishan sishi zhounian jinian tekan, pp. 12–13. 10 Fo Guang Shan, introduction, https://www.fgs.org.tw/introduction.aspx. English translations provided by the author.

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Not surprisingly, the language that is chosen therefore stresses accessibility and applicability. Instead of using complex Buddhist terminology or directly referring to Buddhist sutras or doctrine, most directives are meant to provide clear and applicable guidelines for the disciple’s behaviour. During my fieldwork, it was yet another set of directives, the Three Acts of Goodness (sanhao 三好; “do good deeds, speak good words, think good thoughts” zuo haoshi, shuo haohua, cun haoxin 做好事, 說好話, 存好心) that came up most often. Not only are the Three Acts of Goodness to be found on most of the order’s websites and social media, they are also physically inscribed in many places, such as on the Hsing Yun statue at the Ancestral Da Jue Temple in Yixing. In addition, they were also often quoted during my interviews and during the many informal conversations I had with Fo Guang Shan Buddhists. Some of the elderly female volunteers at the temples in particular stated that they appreciated the simple wording and applicability of the Three Acts of Goodness. Following a similar line of reasoning, one of the leading YAD members at Hsi Lai Temple noted during an interview: One of our biggest activities over the year is the summer camp for children. We invite children from six to ten to participate. We run activities with them and teach them knowledge and skills that are strongly related to Humanistic Buddhism. But they have to be able to understand. Therefore, we teach things such as our Three Acts of Goodness. That is easier to understand for them than impermanence or causes and conditions. (Interview with the President of YAD; conversation conducted in English; Hsi Lai Temple, Los Angeles, USA; spring 2018)

This quote demonstrates how the simple wording of doctrine at Fo Guang Shan is intended to enhance the accessibility and applicability of Buddhist thought to people of all backgrounds. The Buddhism taught at Fo Guang Shan temples is supposed to help modern day Buddhists to act in harmony with the communities they are a part of, be it the family, the temple, the workplace, or the whole of society. In contrast to many modern Buddhist religiosities that have developed in the West and that express a strong emphasis on individuality, Fo Guang Shan’s renjian Buddhists see Buddhism as a tool to create harmony between themselves and the group.11 For them it is the “traditional Buddhism” of the past with its ideal of practicing in the solitude of the mountains that is overly individualistic. The modernization of Buddhism intended to move temples into urban centres and make Buddhism relevant for our contemporary times. For renjian Buddhists, modernity, communality, and religious cultivation are inextricably entwined.

11 On modern Western Buddhism and individualism, see D. L. McMahan, The Making of Buddhist Modernism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, pp. 195–199.

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Buddhism at Fo Guang Shan is presented in a way that makes it approachable and convenient. Volunteers at Fo Guang Shan temples are welcoming and kind. The temples are bright and colourful and the meditation halls are equipped with air-conditioning. This accessibility is further enhanced by the simple wording of the order’s maxims and directives. They can be easily understood and applied by Buddhists in Taiwan as well as overseas. Fo Guang Shan is of course not the only Taiwanese Buddhist order that uses easily understandable everyday language to express its main directives. Other Buddhist orders such as Dharma Drum promote similarly understandable and applicable maxims.12 However, while Dharma Drum Mountain’s founder Sheng Yen (Shengyan 聖嚴) has also published academic books and articles, Hsing Yun’s strength lies particularly in his ability to popularize the Buddhist Dharma. Fo Guang Shan’s renjian Buddhism is to be understood and practiced with ease in daily life by people of all backgrounds. To achieve this goal, the order provides many ways to engage in religious cultivation. According to Fo Guang Shan, Buddhism is not to be practiced by monastics in the solitude of a secluded mountain monastery but rather has to move into the urban spaces of modern society, where it can be practiced by monastics and laity together. Fo Guang Shan Buddhists can therefore choose from a broad range of religious practices to engage in. Most forms of cultivation at Fo Guang Shan are communal practices that take place in a group setting. Since the order is a highly centralized organization, all practices and proceedings are standardized and follow the same format. Thus, wherever on the globe a disciple steps into a Fo Guang Shan facility, they will have a similar experience. For example, most Dharma assemblies at Fo Guang Shan temples worldwide have been adjusted to suit the contemporary lifestyle of today’s lay Buddhists. Instead of following the lunar calendar as is customary, most activities take place at the weekend. Ritual procedures are standardized and follow a standard chanting guide. The recitation language at almost all temples is Mandarin.13 Most rituals last about two hours, though on some occasions more elaborate rituals are conducted that can spread over days. As is generally the case in the Chinese Mahayana, the most popular forms of religious cultivation at Fo Guang Shan are practices in the customary Chinese Buddhist ritual format of the Dharma assembly (fahui 法會). These practices include the regular morning and evening services, different Dharma assemblies

12 Dharma Drum, About, http://www.dharmadrum.org/content/about/about2.aspx?sn=46. 13 With the exception of Hsi Lai Temple, where chanting at Dharma assemblies is occasionally conducted in English. During my fieldwork I was told that at Zu Lai Temple (Rulai Si 如來寺) in Brazil, the chanting is occasionally conducted in Portuguese.

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based on particular texts, as well as repentance ceremonies.14 In addition to these long-established ceremonies, Fo Guang Shan has also developed new rituals such as the Baby Blessing Ceremony (Foguang baobao zhufu li 佛光寶寶祝福禮) or the Ceremony of Light and Peace. Other practices held at Fo Guang Shan facilities are the one-day Eight Precepts Retreat (ba guan zhaijie 八關齋戒), short-term monastic programmes such as the English language Fo Guang Shan Tsung Lin University’s 2-Month Monastic Program or the International Youth Seminar on Life and Ch’an (guoji qingnian shengming chanxue ying 國際青年生命禪學營), the sutra study and book clubs, sutra copying (chaojing 抄經), and the spectacular Chan and Pure Land Dual Practice Blessing Dharma Assembly (Chanjing gongxiu–qifu fahui 禪淨共修－祈福法會), a massive combination of dharma assembly, light show, and stage performance held in huge sports arenas in Taiwan.15 In addition, other popular forms of Chinese Buddhist cultivation, such as the recitation of Buddha Amitabha’s name (nianfo 念佛) and Chan meditation (chanxiu 禪修) can of course also be practiced at Fo Guang Shan. At most temples, Fo Guang Shan Buddhists are invited to come to the temple for a weekly group meditation or recitation (chanzuo/nianfo gongxiu 禪坐/念佛共修) or to participate in longer retreats. Most of these modes of religious cultivation are not exclusively practiced at Fo Guang Shan (although some, such as the Baby Blessing Ceremony, are); the majority are adopted from the common pool of religious practices associated with the Chinese Mahayana. However, the order’s size, manpower, and ability to organize large-scale events enable it to provide the full range of practices, even outside of Taiwan. At Hsi Lai, for example, there are numerous activities held on most days of the week that cover almost the full range of Fo Guang Shan’s religious practices and ceremonies. Though slightly less busy, the situation is similar at Nan Hua in Bronkhorstspruit. Despite its rural location, there is always something going on at the temple. Regular activities held at Nan Hua include weekly communal cultivation, bi-weekly meditation classes, and biannual large-scale Dharma assemblies.

14 M. Günzel, Die Morgen- und Abendliturgie der chinesischen Buddhisten, Göttingen: Seminar für Indologie und Buddhismuskunde, 1994; D. Gildow, “The Chinese Buddhist Ritual Field: Common Public Rituals in PRC Monasteries Today”, Journal of Chinese Buddhist Studies 27 (2014), pp. 59–127. 15 For a list of Dharma assemblies at Hsi Lai Temple, see for example http://www.hsilai.org/ tc/cal/df.php. For the Chan and Pure Land Dual Practice performed in Kaohsiung during my fieldwork in February 2017, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vyr6O9ho57A.

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Modernist Buddhist Communalism and its Western Other Communality constitutes an important element of religious cultivation as practiced at Fo Guang Shan. In fact, Hsing Yun argues that practicing in a group is more effective than engaging in cultivation in solitude. He states: The difference between solitary and communal cultivation lies in the following: If one practices alone, one’s powers are limited. It is just like hitting someone with one finger does not hurt. Communal practice on the other hand is like making a fist, it creates a strong force. By igniting one piece of wood, one only creates a small flame, but if one ignites a whole of pile of wood, one creates a blazing fire. Communal cultivation enhances the practice of every single practitioner.16

The institutional framework for communal practice at Fo Guang Shan is the BLIA. Next to the monastic order, the BLIA is at the organizational centre of Fo Guang Shan. By joining the organization, people become integrated into the Fo Guang Shan system. In addition, the BLIA also provides instructions for the conduct for its members. There are many detailed guidelines for BLIA members advising them how to act, how to pray, how to speak, how to organize meetings, what to wear during those meetings, and so on.17 These rules and regulations ensure the smooth operation of Fo Guang Shan’s many undertakings, many of which require the manpower of BLIA members. BLIA members come to the temple not only for religious practice in the narrowest sense but also to volunteer. In fact, as with the civic engagements and cultural endeavours described in the two previous chapters, volunteering at Fo Guang Shan is understood as a form of religious cultivation. For Fo Guang Shan Buddhists, the workspace of the volunteer constitutes a space for Buddhist practice, even more than the meditation hall. In the social setting of a volunteer unit the adherent can practice mental flexibility, equanimity, and compassion, all of which are necessary for developing a practical realization of the Buddhist Dharma. There are many opportunities to serve as a volunteer at a Fo Guang Shan temple besides welcoming visitors and taking care of the shrine halls. Hsi Lai, for example, operates a publishing house, book shop, welcome centre, dining hall, teahouse, a variety of schools for the young, an orchestra, funeral services and columbarium for the ashes of the deceased. 16 “自修與共修的不同，在於一個人修行，力量有限，好比用一根手指頭打人不痛，共修就如 五根手指握成一個拳頭，可以產生力量。用火點燃一根木材，火力有限，好多的木材就能產生 熊熊的火焰，共修可以助長彼此修行的力量.” Hsing Yun, “Di shisi jiang. Jihui gongxiu” 第十 四講. 集會共修. http://www.masterhsingyun.org/article/article.jsp?index=13&item= 16&bookid=2c907d494c10e2f0014cefa6ce570032&ch=14&se=0&f=1. 17 Hsing Yun, The Buddha’s Light Philosophy, Hacienda Heights, CA: Buddha’s Light Publishing, 2010, chapter 10.

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All these endeavours require manpower and support from the laity. While the situation is similar at almost all Fo Guang Shan temples worldwide, it is important to note that the situation in the PRC is slightly different. The very strict regulation of religion by the state prevents the BLIA from operating in the country. Nevertheless, although the BLIA as an institution is not active on the mainland, a big temple complex such as Da Jue Temple does of course engage numerous lay volunteers in order to deal with the many tasks that occur every day. Fo Guang Shan has also developed its own phraseology (yongyu 用語) over time. When seeing each other, most Chinese Buddhists fold their hands in front of their chest and call on the Buddha Amitabha (Amituofo 阿彌陀佛) as a customary greeting.18 While this was also common practice for Fo Guang Shan Buddhists in the early days of the order, they have now developed their own mode of greeting. When seeing each other they form a mudra with their hand by touching the thumb with their ring finger and say “jixiang” (吉祥), which is the Chinese term for lucky or auspicious.19 Most people I have asked regarding the reason for this change told me that “Amituofo” sounds too religious and is too related to Chinese funeral culture.20 It may therefore sound off-putting to non-Buddhists who visit the temple. However, one monastic also noted that these changes can be seen as an early attempt to build a new school of Buddhism. Other big Taiwanese renjian Buddhist groups such as Tzu Chi and Dharma Drum Mountain already established new Buddhist schools (zong 宗) in the early 2000s.21 The monastic I talked to noted that Fo Guang Shan, too, might develop into a school and establishing a particular phraseology constitutes a key element in this process. However, he was also quick to add that it would be for future generations to fully realize this goal. All of the above elements, the communal approach to Buddhist cultivation, standardization of cultivation practices and proceedings, membership of the BLIA, as well as the development of a new phraseology facilitate a strong group identity. Fo Guang Shan Buddhists often refer to themselves not just as Buddhists, but as Fo Guang People. A well-developed group identity that transcends national origins is a key ingredient of the success of Fo Guang Shan’s renjian Buddhist religiosity

18 Chinese translation of the name of the Buddha Amitabha. 19 According to Fo Guang Shan, the lotus mudra Lianhua shouyin 蓮花手印 symbolizes selfless acceptance, boundless welcoming, supreme reception, unobstructed exchange, and untainted tranquillity. 20 Many Chinese recite the Buddha Amitabha’s name to gain rebirth in his Western Paradise. It is particularly advisable to do recitations at the moment of death. 21 See J. Yu, “Revisiting the Notion of Zong: Contextualizing the Dharma Drum Lineage of Modern Chan Buddhism”, Chung-Hwa Buddhist Journal 26 (2013), pp. 1–39.

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overseas. Particularly for first generation migrants, the Fo Guang Shan community and temple space provide comfort and security, but also an ongoing connection to their culture of origin. Although some minor adaptations may be made to specific local circumstances (e.g., at Hsi Lai Temple visitors are not requested to take off their shoes when entering the main shrine), due to a high degree of standardization, Fo Guang Shan’s renjian Buddhist religiosity is practiced in the same way at all of the order’s temples worldwide. The ethnographic report in the following section attempts to further illustrate how religious cultivation and communal practice are entwined at Fo Guang Shan’s overseas temples. The following section presents an ethnographic report of a regional BLIA meeting, the 2017 BLIA World Headquarters Africa Fellowship Meeting. The BLIA meeting took place at Nan Hua Temple and was combined with an Emperor Liang Dharma Assembly (Lianghuang fahui 梁皇法會). Repentance rituals such as the Emperor Liang Dharma Assembly constitute a key practice of Chinese Buddhism that linked the monastic sangha and laity and the Chinese Mahayana with wider Chinese society long before the development of modern renjian Buddhism.22 Today, repentance rituals continue to be among the most popular forms of religious cultivation at Fo Guang Shan. At Nan Hua Temple, the Emperor Liang Dharma Assembly is held twice a year, once in the fall and again in the spring around the time of the Qingming Festival (qingming jie 清明節), when Chinese families visit the tombs of the deceased in order to clean the gravesites, pray to their ancestors, and make ritual offerings. The Emperor Liang Dharma Assembly takes about one week. In the fall of 2017, it began on a Tuesday and ended on the following Sunday evening. The repentance ritual was temporarily suspended for the whole of Saturday and Sunday morning, so that the 2017 BLIA World Headquarters Africa Fellowship Meeting could be held. On most occasions the Emperor Liang Dharma assembly ends with a Yogacara Flaming Mouth Dharma Assembly (Yuqie yankou fahui 瑜伽焰口法會). This time, however, to ensure enough time for the BLIA Africa Meeting, the repentance was instead completed by a triple communal recitation of the Amitabha sutra (san shi nianfo 三時念佛), which was conducted on the last Sunday afternoon. Tuesday is arrival day.23 A steady stream of cars carrying Chinese South Africans with Taiwanese, PRC, and in smaller numbers, Hong Kong and Southeast Asian backgrounds arrive at the temple. Most of the cars are full-size executive

22 D. W. Chappell, “Repentance and Confession”, in: R. E. Buswell (ed.), Encyclopedia of Buddhism, New York: Macmillan, 2004, p. 723; Welch, The Practice of Chinese Buddhism, p. 188. 23 The following ethnographic report is based on fieldwork data collected at Nan Hua Temple in the fall of 2017.

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models or SUVs, many of them produced by German car manufacturers. Participants register at the front desk and settle into one of the bungalows in Nan Hua village, which are all booked out for the occasion. Most of the bungalows have two bedrooms, and so two people are having to share one room to accommodate the large number of participants. In addition to those living in South Africa, a VIP delegation, consisting of a group of lay people and monastics from Australia and Taiwan, has flown in from overseas. They are being accommodated at the main guest house. The participation of the VIP visitors shows the connectedness and interaction between the different Fo Guang Shan overseas temples. Stronger centres such as the temples in Australia support weaker centres in the periphery. As at most other Fo Guang Shan overseas activities discussed in this book, the majority of participants are middle aged and above. About two thirds are women. The average participation on most days during the week is a hundred plus people, however, on the first evening and last day, participation increases to 200. During the first evening discussion, a monastic asks the participants how many of them are attending the repentance for the first time. 45 persons present raise their hand. However, not all those that attended during the day are attending the first evening session. Some are exhausted after a long day and have retired early. The language spoken during the repentance is Mandarin. Although some of the participants are from the PRC and there is an even smaller group from Hong Kong, the majority originates from Taiwan. The demographics of the repentance reflect the history of Chinese migration to South Africa. Migrants from the PRC tend to be younger and have to work during the week, in contrast to the Taiwanese who moved to South Africa earlier and have by now already reached retirement age. Thus, Taiwanese, although representing a significantly smaller number within the South African Chinese diaspora community and by now even within the BLIA, represent the majority at the ritual. The repentance is a major occasion at the temple and preparations go on for days before the actual start. The dining hall and the main shrine in particular have to be prepared. Many people have donated money to have paper plaques for both living and deceased relatives placed at the main shrine. The merit that is accumulated during the repentance is supposed to benefit those named on the plaques. Dinner, which in accordance with Chinese Mahayana custom is termed “medicine” (yaoshi 藥石), since Buddhist monastic regulations technically prohibit the consumption of food after noon, takes place at 5 p.m. at the dining hall. Since space is limited, the dining hall is reserved for the participants of the Dharma assembly. The regular lodgers of the temple – long-term volunteers, staff, students, teachers, workers and I – eat in one of the classrooms. The monastics and VIPs take their dinner in a separate room next to the dining

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hall. At 7 p.m., after finishing dinner, everybody puts on a Chinese ritual gown (haiqing 海青) and moves to the main shrine. The shrine hall is packed with about 200 people. Besides me, only one other non-Chinese person is attending the ritual, a coloured South African who is accompanying his ethnic Chinese girlfriend. However, they only participate in the first evening and do not come back. The actual repentance is due to begin the next morning. This evening a purification ritual is conducted first. The assembly has gathered in the main shrine hall and faces the altar. With the women standing on the left and the men on the right, everybody begins to chant the Dharani of Great Compassion (dabei zhou 大悲咒). After a while we begin to circumambulate the rows of the main shrine in a serpentine fashion while continuing to chant in unison. Sometime later, the assembly steps out of the main shrine hall and continues to walk single file in a long line along the inside of the outer walls of the main temple, the men in front and the women following. Monastics are placed at certain points, who sprinkle great compassion water (dabei shui 大悲水) on the passing line of participants. By the time the assembly reaches the shrine of the Bodhisattva Ksitigarbha (dizang dian 地藏殿) at the rear of the temple, they have already moved on to chant the name of the Buddha Amitabha. Now everybody takes triple refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha (guiyi 皈依), chants some more short scriptures, and then the group files back into the main shrine hall, where everybody finally returns to his or her original place. Now it is time for the Dharma talk. The abbot sits on a platform below the big Buddha statues in front of everyone and begins to speak in a solemn voice. He encourages everybody to be strong while facing whatever vexations one may encounter during the following days and to persevere in repentance. Around 10 p.m. the ritual ends and everybody is excused to go to bed. The next three days follow the same basic structure. The Emperor Liang Repentance Dharma Assembly mainly consists of the recitation of the complete Gold Mountain Emperor Liang Jewel Repentance (Jinshan yuzhi lianghuang bao chan 金山御製梁皇寶懺). Monastics are at the front; they play the Dharma instruments and lead the chanting. The lay assembly faces the Buddha statues. Men stand on the right, women on the left. The space in between them is kept free for the abbot and monastics to formally enter and exit the main shrine, and for the abbot to do his prostrations. Since women outnumber men, some women also stand on the right-hand side behind the men. The first row is reserved for the main benefactors. Behind them are the other participants. Almost all participants are wearing their black ritual gowns, which at Fo Guang Shan is worn by all those who have officially taken the triple refuge. Those who have additionally taken the five precepts wear another piece of clothing, the

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manyi (曼衣), on top of the haiqing. During the day, passers-by sometimes take part in the repentance. They join the last row in their street clothes and participate in the chanting for some time before going on with their days. In the days that follow, the participants chant while alternately standing, kneeling, or doing prostrations. Every day of the Emperor Liang Dharma Assembly is subdivided into different time slots. Each time slot takes between 50 and 70 minutes and is called a stick of incense in accordance with the time it supposedly takes to burn one incense stick. The first time slot of the day begins at 6 a.m. It is reserved for the morning service which continues until 6:50 a.m. From 7:00 to 7:50 a.m. breakfast is served back at the main guest house. After breakfast, participants have an hour to rest. From 9 to 12 p.m., there are three fifty-minute slots, each followed by a short 10-minute break. During this break participants have the opportunity to eat a cracker, drink some water, or go to the bathroom. Lunch is served from 12 to 12:50 p.m., followed by an hour’s rest. In the afternoon, there are three more time slots from 2 to 5:30 p.m. At 6 p.m., after a thirty-minute rest everybody meets for dinner. The evening time slot at Chinese Buddhist retreats is the time that is customarily set aside for the daily Dharma talk. However, this time, instead of a Dharma talk, the senior and high-ranking monastics who have specifically flown in from overseas for the event, use the evenings to promote the Fo Guang Shan book club format. As mentioned above, the book club format is already a staple of religious cultivation at Hsi Lai Temple. Members of a BLIA chapter meet on a regular basis to read and discuss a text as a group. The text of choice varies and may range from a simple poem or song text written by Hsing Yun to a sophisticated Buddhist scripture. The book club format constitutes a way of studying Fo Guang Shan’s renjian Buddhism and also encourages people to become involved with the BLIA. At the time of my fieldwork the format is new to South Africa. From 7:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. everybody meets in one of the classrooms. On the first evening, monastics and participants get to know each other, and the atmosphere is relaxed and light-hearted. On the two following evenings, the book club format is introduced and practiced. At the beginning of the second evening, pink papers with a song text written by Hsing Yun are placed on the table in front of each seat. Music is playing in the background. Encouraged by one of the monastics, we begin to sing the song together. On the previous day, a participant had cheekily mentioned that the only book people read nowadays is Facebook. The song serves as an example that one is not required to read a whole book. A simple text such as a song can also be discussed at the book club. After we finish singing, we begin to discuss the content of the song. Key words and key phrases of the song are identified and the participants are asked for their interpretations. The song is about how to act when one encounters

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difficulties in life and how those difficulties can be resolved. People share personal stories about the financial problems, visa problems, and other difficulties they had to endure after deciding to emigrate to a new country. On one evening one of the participants relates their conversion story: the husband of the secretary of a local BLIA chapter who had had a gambling problem in the past, has managed to turn his life around since getting involved with Fo Guang Shan. Shortly after 9 p.m., the day draws to a close and everybody goes to bed. This routine is maintained for three days, from Wednesday to Friday. At the weekend, the 2017 BLIA World Headquarters Africa Fellowship Meeting takes up the whole of Saturday and Sunday morning. Registration begins on Saturday morning after breakfast. Everybody exchanges their black ritual gowns for yellow or maroon BLIA polo shirts and bright yellow BLIA westes. The Meeting begins at 8:30 a.m. sharp. Everybody takes a seat in a conference room next to the dining hall. The participants stand up when the monastics and VIP guests enter the room and take to the stage. Other VIPs and benefactors sit in the front row. The VIPs present include senior and high-ranking monastics, a representative from the Taipei Liaison Office in the Republic of South Africa and several leading lay and monastic members of local and international BLIA chapters. Amongst the lay VIPs are the presidents of the local BLIA chapters, several Taiwanese and Taiwanese South African entrepreneurs, one Taiwanese-Australian industrialist from overseas, and a successful businesswoman and former Member of Parliament of Taiwanese descent. Some of the lay VIPs also serve as lay Dharma teachers and will give lectures during the meeting. The occasion begins, as is customary at Fo Guang Shan, with everyone standing up and singing the “Homage to the Triple Gem”. After the song, participants bow to the triple gem and a welcoming speech given by a very senior and high-ranking nun is shown on a video screen. The speech is followed by more words of welcome from the abbot, as well as some of the senior monastics and BLIA lay representatives. The following day and a half is filled with lectures with titles such as “Faith in Humanistic Buddhism” (renjian fojiao de xinyang 人間佛教的信仰), “Ways Our Chapters Can Flourish” (fazhan foguang de miao jinnang 發展佛光會的妙錦囊), “Dharma Lecture Demonstration” (nanfei bujiao shifan, 南非布教示範), or “Forum: Turning Points” (shengming de zhuanwanzhu luntan 生命的轉彎處- 論壇).24 The goal of the talks is to generate a sense of inspiration. The lay dharma lecturers present personal stories of how they came in contact with Fo Guang Shan and the Buddhist Dharma and how it helped them to, as one lecturer put it, come to a “correct outlook on life” (zhengque de rensheng guan 正確的人生觀), achieve

24 English translations as provided by Fo Guang Shan.

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a “successful business” (chenggong de shiye 成功的事業), create a “happy family” (xingfu de jiating 幸福的家庭), and build an altogether “happy and satisfactory life” (meiman de rensheng 美滿的人生). The lay lecturer goes on to report how his businesses had flourished after he became a Buddhist. However, one night there was an accident and his factory burned down. Thankfully, in the end the story took a good turn. Due to a favourable insurance policy he was able to rebuild the factory so that it was even bigger, better, and more modern than before. The story, which he illustrated with an on-screen presentation, relates how the Dharma has helped him to face impermanence and blessed him with success in business. Other talks, such as the “Dharma Lecture Demonstration” are given by monastics in which they present ideas on how to effectively spread the Dharma. On Saturday afternoon the assembly splits into smaller discussion groups. Three groups are formed to discuss the following issues: “Protection of the environment and the protection of the mind” (huanbao yu xinbao 環保與心保); “to inherit and to pass on faith” (xinyang chuancheng 信仰傳承); and “localization”.25 The latter topic is discussed by the smallest group and is the only meeting conducted in English, since it is especially designed for the English language BLIA chapter. It is led by three monastics and attended by nine lay followers – one local Chinese, the others black, coloured, and white. A couple of youth group members also attend the meeting. The two other groups, which are also led by monastics, are significantly larger and take place in Mandarin. Each group has 75 minutes to discuss its assigned topic. At the end everybody reunites in the big classroom and a representative of each group presents a summary of the discussion on stage. On Saturday evening after dinner, the “Fo Guang Night” (foguang zhi ye 佛光之夜) is celebrated in the inner courtyard of the guest house. The evening consists of a variety show with each South African BLIA chapter giving a performance in front of the assembly. It ends with a ritual “light offering and prayer (xiandeng qifu 獻燈祈福)” where everyone presents a candle to a statue of the Buddha. At 9:30 p.m. everybody retires. The following morning the BLIA meeting continues for two more hours. At 10:30 a.m., the Emperor Liang Repentance Dharma Assembly resumes and by noon is completed and all the paper plaques burned (see Figure 9). After lunch, all the collective merit accumulated by participating in the repentance is ritually transferred to all sentient beings. Finally, a triple communal recitation of the Amitabha sutra, which takes about four hours, completes the whole activity.

25 English translations as provided by Fo Guang Shan.

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Figure 9: Closing Ceremony of Triple Communal Recitation of the Amitabha Sutra, Nan Hua Temple, South Africa.

There are several elements that stand out in the ethnographic report about the Emperor Liang Repentance Dharma Assembly. First and foremost is the way religious cultivation is interwoven with involvement in the BLIA. A Dharma assembly is of course itself a communal form of practice, after all it consists of people chanting in a group. However, by weaving the ritual into the structures of the Buddha’s Light Association meeting, its communal aspect is greatly enhanced. The constituent parts of the whole event – the repentance ritual during the day, the BLIA book club promotion in the evening, the BLIA Africa meeting on Saturday and the morning of Sunday, and the Fo Guang Night – were, in terms of organization and scheduling, almost inextricably interwoven. Technically a participant could just make an appearance at the repentance and spend the rest of the time in his or her room. But that would be difficult to accomplish, since all activities take place at the same venue and the repentance is only fully completed after the BLIA meeting. In addition, on the first evening, when many people chose to stay in their rooms instead of attending the evening session – probably due to exhaustion after a long day of chanting, kneeling and prostrating – they were kindly yet firmly requested to participate in all the sessions of the programme. The activity as a whole was designed to be a coherent communal experience, communal in a sense that goes beyond just chanting in a group.

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Most people did not just participate in the repentance as individuals, but as part of a particular unit, their local BLIA chapter. Similarly, the book club promotion in the evening facilitated engagement with the BLIA much more than a “traditional” Dharma talk would have. At a regular Dharma talk, the audience passively listens to a lecture by a monastic. The book club format on the other hand is more interactive. During the evenings, newcomers had a chance to get to know the group and the different local chapters. BLIA members reported on their chapter’s activities and planned how they would conduct book clubs in the future. Participants on the retreat were all encouraged to contribute. The same is even more true of the BLIA meeting on Saturday and Sunday morning. By wearing the same westes and polo shirts, which is a common practice at all BLIA meetings around in the world, people express a strong sense of belonging. This communality was also expressed at the Fo Guang Night, when representatives from each local chapter presented a performance in front of the whole group. Those who had made it above the status of an ordinary BLIA member seemed to identify even more strongly with the group. They also had key roles at the meeting. They served as Dharma teachers on stage, kept the time, and had to contribute in several other ways. Some even jokingly referred to them as “monastics with hair” (you toufa de chujia ren 有頭髮的出家人). A repentance at Fo Guang Shan constitutes a means to reduce negative karma, generate merit, or practice filial piety – which is of course its main function – but it also offers a chance to socialize with like-minded people. The social aspects become particularly important in a diasporic setting. It allows first generation migrants to chat in Mandarin (and occasionally in Taiwanese), eat Chinese vegetarian food together, and meet people with a similar cultural and socioeconomic background. At the book club in the evenings people shared their immigration stories and discussed how Fo Guang Shan’s renjian Buddhist religiosity helped them to overcome their hardships. While many forms of religious cultivation are conducted in group settings, participation in the BLIA institutionalizes the social aspects of religious cultivation. While communality constitutes the modernist core of Fo Guang Shan’s renjian Buddhist religiosity, in the West, modern Buddhism is practiced in a highly individualist fashion. In non-Asian (and particularly Western) settings, Buddhism is almost solely equated with meditation.26 Therefore it is not surprising that it is the meditation classes at Fo Guang Shan’s overseas temples that attract the biggest number of non-Chinese. Fo Guang Shan’s overseas temples have adjusted to the situation. Temples located in an urban setting, such as the Berlin Fo Guang Shan

26 McMahan, The Making of Buddhist Modernism, p. 183.

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temple or Hsi Lai Temple in Los Angeles, often run a weekly meditation group. Others, such as Nan Hua Temple, which due to its rural location is more difficult to reach, regularly run weekend or longer retreats. The backgrounds of the participants of these mediation activities depend, of course, on the particular location of the temple. While participants at Nan Hua are white, coloured, Indian, or black South Africans, classes at Hsi Lai Temple are attended primarily by Americans of European and Central or South American ancestry. What they have in common is that first generation ethnic Chinese migrants tend not to attend meditation activities conducted in the local language. To illustrate this situation, the following section provides an ethnographic report on the meditation retreats held at Nan Hua Temple. Every fortnight, Nan Hua Temple holds an English language retreat. Most are beginner, but some are advanced level retreats. The beginner retreats are particularly popular and book out months in advance. Each retreat is attended by up to 30 participants. The retreat I am joining this weekend is an advanced retreat. The retreatants are mostly middle-class South Africans whose backgrounds reflect the country’s ethnic and cultural diversity. Amongst them are many white South Africans of Dutch origin, the so-called Afrikaners, some socalled coloured South Africans, some Indian South Africans, but also a few from the Zulu speaking black community. Members of the temple’s youth group sit at the front desk and help check in the retreatants. Some of the non-Chinese BLIA members serve as volunteers. They welcome new arrivals, give them an introduction to the retreat, and even lead some activities such as the tea meditation or the Qi Gong classes. The Chan meditation and the Dharma talk on the other hand are led by monastics. In most cases the abbot fulfils this role, and since his language skills are excellent, he instructs the participants in English. However, not all monastics are fluent in the language, so the leading monastic who is filling in today is accompanied by a translator, an alumnus of the African Buddhist seminary. The situation at Nan Hua Temple is somewhat special in that discipline on the retreat is not as strict as at Fo Guang Shan’s meditation activities in Taiwan or the US. There are many breaks, and silence is not strictly enforced. One monastic explained to me that to maintain the popularity of the retreat, they had to adapt to the local situation. The retreat timetable is therefore designed with the needs of people who have little or no experience with meditation in mind. Classical sitting meditation is only practiced for one session per day. Other activities at the retreat include meditating fully stretched out on the floor with music in the background and so-called tea meditation. The latter introduces to retreatants the Chinese art of brewing and drinking tea. They sit on their meditation mats with a Chinese tea set and one serving of Taiwanese Oolong tea leaves in front of them,

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while the instructor teaches them how to brew and enjoy their tea. Qigong classes, sutra calligraphy, and a temple tour complete the retreat. Meditation retreats at Nan Hua therefore not only provide an opportunity to learn Chan meditation, but also function as a general introduction to Fo Guang Shan and Chinese Buddhist cultural practices for the broader South African public. The retreat is a typical example of Fo Guang Shan’s overseas meditation activities. While at Chinese language meditation retreats and classes, the majority of participants have a Chinese background, at the meditation activities conducted in the local language almost no Chinese participate. And those who do attend are mostly the so-called local Chinese, the descendants of earlier Chinese migrants, who do not speak Mandarin. This stands in stark contrast to all other activities held at the temple. As can be seen from the ethnographic sections in this thesis, the overwhelming majority of participants in Fo Guang Shan’s activities are Chinese speakers. After participating in the retreat at Nan Hua, I was curious to know why Chinese speakers did not attend the weekend retreats. I asked one of the long-term volunteers, an elderly Taiwanese lady who lived at the temple, why she or any of the other long-term volunteers never attended. She replied: “The locals are only interested in meditation. They hope to achieve some mystical experience. We are here for a very different reason. We Chinese come to the temple to study Buddhism.”27 Interestingly, I received similar answers to the same question during my fieldwork stays at other Fo Guang Shan overseas temples. The answers imply that ethnic Chinese and non-Asians have different understandings of what constitutes Buddhism. As mentioned above, non-Asian Buddhists tend to completely equate Buddhism with meditation. At the same time, they often prefer individualistic approaches to Buddhist practice. On the other hand, from a renjian Buddhist perspective it is particularly a socially engaged and communal Buddhism that does not simply focus on solitary meditation that represents a modern approach to the Dharma. Within the context of Chinese Buddhism, meditation is only one of many religious practices. Chinese Buddhists at Fo Guang Shan meditate too. According to those I interviewed, the majority of retreatants on the annual seven-day retreats held at Nan Hua Temple are ethnic Chinese. The seven-day retreats are not only significantly longer and more demanding, discipline is also strictly enforced. The situation at Hsi Lai Temple is similar: the weekly English language meditation class is a beginner’s class, while the Chinese language meditation class is an advanced class.

27 Informal conversation conducted in Chinese, own translation. Bronkhorstspruit, South Africa, Fall 2017.

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Thus, we can see that while at Fo Guang Shan overseas temples religious cultivation is able to transcend the particularities of origin of different groups of ethnic Chinese, the same does not apply to non-Chinese. In distinction to the cultural and social engagements discussed in the previous chapters, it is in the field of religious cultivation that two independent tracks have developed. The reason for this lies not so much in linguistic and cultural differences, since those also apply to Fo Guang Shan’s other social engagements, but in the different understandings of what constitutes modern Buddhism. The aim of this chapter was to take a serious look at the religious dimension of renjian Buddhist religiosity and to show how at Fo Guang Shan religious cultivation and communality are inextricably entwined. Not only is social engagement in the fields of culture, education, and charity perceived as a form of religious practice, as has been discussed in the previous chapters, but religious cultivation itself constitutes a form of social engagement. While Fo Guang Shan in terms of doctrine and cosmology is still deeply embedded in the mainstream Chinese Mahayana, it is this particular entwinement of social engagement, communality, and religious cultivation that constitutes the modernity of Fo Guang Shan’s renjian Buddhist religiosity. At the same time, this form of modern Buddhist religiosity represents in many ways the opposite of what is associated with modern Buddhism in a non-Asian setting. Thus, while the communityoriented modes of religious cultivation manage to transcend the particularities of a highly diverse and layered Chinese diaspora community, this very communality has caused the emergence of a “second track” of cultivation for non-Chinese.

Fo Guang Shan and Global China as a Spatial Order The initial task that I set out when I began the research for this book was to understand how the Taiwanese Buddhist order Fo Guang Shan has in just a few decades managed to develop from a small temple in post-war southern Taiwan into the leading global Buddhist order in the Chinese Mahayana tradition. The aim was to trace the order’s transnational trajectory, not so much as the mere result of strategy, but by taking into consideration the underlying conditions and dynamics that continue to shape it to this day. To achieve this task, I brought into dialogue data collected through a multi-sited ethnography at the order’s headquarters and several of its overseas facilities, with research on modern and contemporary Chinese religions and studies on ethnic Chinese migration. One of the conclusions to be drawn from this effort is that Fo Guang Shan’s success would not have been possible without the global economic and political restructuring that began in the second half of the last century and the subsequent emergence of a globally minded Asian middle class. In the last chapter of this book I will discuss how studying Fo Guang Shan’s modern Buddhist religiosity within the wider context of this global restructuring also enhances our understanding of the workings and fabric of globalization itself. Globalization, or the increasing integration of the world in the age of global modernity, as I understand it, is not an abstract process concerted by faceless multinational companies that descends upon individuals, organizations, and societies in order to remake the world after a Western image. Instead, considering the example of Fo Guang Shan suggests that globalization is a dynamic spatial configuration or meta-order that is comprised of and constantly reproduced through complex and multifaceted bordercrossing involvements of a myriad of actors – individuals, networks, organizations, nation-states, etc. – from a multitude of places, and their mutual interactions. It does not follow that all actors involved in this process have identical starting conditions and that there exists a level playing field. Individual globalization projects are not completely autonomous but grouped and ordered in a multitude of ways in convergence with the changing global power equilibrium. Globalization as a higher order spatial configuration is comprised of several suborders. One of them, one that has been formative for the globalization project of Fo Guang Shan, could be called Global China. The term Global China is of course a reference to Yang Fenggang’s notion of the Global East. Both notions, Global China, as well as the Global East challenge oversimplifying spatial divisions of the world into the Global South and Global North or “the West and the rest”, by directing attention to

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globalizing spatial orders that do not easily fall into the dichotomy of developed and undeveloped.1 Global China in this sense does not just depict the global expansion of the People’s Republic of China or even the post-1965 increase of ethnic Chinese migration movements worldwide. The term does not refer to a fixed geographic locality, but instead represents a globally dispersed social configuration. It is a complex, open, contested, and dynamic spatial order whose roots go back to the colonial era and that involves anyone and anything who interacts with it.2 As social space it is comprised of internally diverse, dynamic and interrelated clusters of actors and their individual globalization projects, all of which are linked to another, albeit to different degrees, by a certain cultural, social, and linguistic proximity. Global China therefore includes the governments, transnational organizations, and mobile citizens of the PRC and the ROC, overseas Chinese diaspora communities and their host societies in Southeast Asia and worldwide, as well as the trade routes, mediascapes, and transnational networks that link these entities. The border-crossing activities of all the actors involved produce their own globalization projects, most of which are interconnected, overlap, and are, in a number of ways entangled. Yet despite their many commonalities, the relationship amongst them is not necessarily a harmonious one. In fact, the relationship may be characterized by intense competition and even conflict, the most well-known example being the cross-strait tensions between the PRC and Taiwan. At the same time, Global China is not a clearly separate entity. As a social space it does not constitute a self-contained system, but is instead a dynamic spatial configuration that has co-existed, and continues to co-exist, overlap, and sometimes compete with other spatial orders such as the Western and Japanese imperialism of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, the socialist bloc, the Global South, ASEAN, and the West. All these globalizing spatial orders are social configurations that are entangled and overlap in complex and multiple ways, sometimes conflicting, sometimes harmonious, and everything in between, such that in their totality they produce the global condition of our world. It follows that Global China is not exclusively comprised of ethnic Chinese. Nonethnic Chinese businessmen involved in doing business with Chinese companies,

1 F. Yang, “Afterword”, in: M. A. Lamport (ed.), Encyclopedia of Christianity in the Global South, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018, p. 957. 2 The term “spatial order” refers to the theoretical framework of the Collaborative Research Consortium (SFB 1199). However, there are some minor differences in the application of terminology. For the usage of the SFB heuristic repertoire, see: M. Middell, “Category of Spatial Formats: To What End?”, in: S: Marung and M. Middell (eds.), Spatial Formats under the Global Condition, Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2019, pp. 15–47.

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or non-ethnic Chinese students, academics, and language teachers who may live in Nanjing (南京), Singapore, or Tainan (台南), for example, equally are all parts of this spatial order. What is Chinese about Global China is not ethnicity alone nor a connection to the localities inhabited by ethnic Chinese, but rather the prevalence of Chinese languages (particularly, but not exclusively, Mandarin), and certain cultural practices and discourses within the context of this order. Fo Guang Shan’s renjian Buddhist religiosity represents one Buddhist example of such discourses and practices. Globalization as a meta-order not only provides the conditions for Fo Guang Shan’s global development, it is concurrently navigated as well as (re) produced by the order. The transnational development of Fo Guang Shan constitutes a religious example of a non-Western globalization project. One that has consolidated into a global network of temples, practice centres, and other associated facilities. The majority of the order’s overseas temples, including those discussed in this book, feature traditional Chinese architecture, which makes them physical markers of the spatial order Global China. Nan Hua Temple for example is clearly visible from the highway that links O.R. Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg with the country’s most popular tourist attraction, Kruger National Park, and is surrounded by streets that bear Chinese street names (see Figure 10). Yet Fo Guang Shan does not just build temples all over the world, it globally promotes renjian Buddhist practices and discourses. Fo Guang Shan is a Buddhist organization that originates from Taiwan, and that carries with it embedded ideas of what constitutes a modernist Buddhist religiosity as they have developed in Republican Era China. These ideas emerged during the European colonial era with its multitude of border-crossings and mobilities. They had their significant implications for the colonized and semi-colonized societies of the globe. One such implication was the invention of native language neologisms for terms such as “religion”, “superstition”, and “the secular”, but also the creation of the term Buddhism as a generic category and the idea of Buddhism as one of several world religions.3 Renjian Buddhism represents one particular Chinese Buddhist response that emerged out of such transnational dynamics, which had linked China with Japan, and the West and its colonial spheres of influence in Southeast Asia and elsewhere. Although colonialism had set off the

3 On the term Buddhism as a generic category, see G. Obeyesekere, “Buddhism”, in: M. Juergensmeyer (ed.), Global Religions: An Introduction, New York: Oxford University Press, 2003, p. 64. On Buddhism as a world religion, see T. Masuzawa, The Invention of World Religions: Or, How European Universalism was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005, p. 12.

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Figure 10: Street Sign in Bronkhorstspruit, South Africa.

enterprise of Buddhist reformation, renjian Buddhists were far from being just passive recipients of Western ideas and practices. They rejected some aspects and accepted others. They translated foreign ideas into their religious, cultural, and social contexts by merging them with native discourses and practices, thereby consciously transforming the Chinese Mahayana tradition of late imperial times into a modern Chinese Buddhist religiosity. As discussed in this book, during the Republican Era, notions of modernity and modernization were inextricably linked to the idea of the nation-state and a modern religion was expected to take part in its construction. Thus, for early renjian Buddhists, to ensure the survival of their religion meant to reformulate it in a way that made it beneficial to modern society. The orientation of the renjian Buddhist reform project was therefore an explicitly modernist one; to make their tradition fit modernity as understood in Republican China. Half a century later, big Taiwanese Buddhist mass organizations such as Fo Guang Shan began to put into practice many of the modernist dreams of the earlier renjian Buddhists. One of the dreams was the global dissemination of renjian Buddhism. But by moving one particular modern Buddhist religiosity, one that developed in a specific place, into a global context, renjian Buddhists also had to negotiate multiple understandings of what constitutes a modern Buddhist religiosity.

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Multiple Modern Buddhist Religiosities in the Age of Global Modernity A whole tradition of scholarship has thought of modernity as something that was initiated in Europe and that will eventually spread over the whole globe. This view proposes a dichotomy of traditional and modern, where Europe or the West represents the apex of what it means to be modern, while the rest of the world is still caught in tradition. According to this teleological understanding of modernity, the non-Western parts of the world lag behind and need to catch up; to be modern is to be Western. In this narrative, as so famously proposed by Max Weber, a key role is reserved for Protestantism as the facilitator for modern capitalism and, thus, Protestantism is understood by many to be the modern religion par excellence. From this classical perspective, modernization necessarily leads to secularization, or the disenchantment of the world, and thus for a religion to be modern means either to be “Protestantized” or to be secularized. Both ideas have been applied to Buddhism, either by stressing the Protestant character of modern Buddhism in South Asia or by taking Western, more secular forms of Buddhism as the model for Buddhist modernism.4 This book takes a different approach by considering a spatial perspective on modernity, and thus modern Buddhism, a perspective that takes into account the immense transformations non-Western societies underwent during the Colonial Era. China historian Tani E. Barlow has criticized the narrative sketched above. She particularly disagrees with the idea that modernity is a thing in itself that is understood as being prior to colonialism. Instead, she argues that “the modernity of non-European colonies is as indisputable as the colonial core of European modernity”.5 Her notion of “colonial modernity” does not approach history through positively defined units, e.g., nation-states, stages of development, or civilizations, but instead sees it as “a complex field of relationships or threads of material that connect [and] multiply in space-time and can be surveyed from specific sites”.6 China, although never completely colonized, was still multifariously linked to this “complex field of relationships or threads” through the actions of Western and Japanese colonial powers. According to Barlow, the perspective of colonial modernity allows us to see contemporary

4 For Protestant Buddhism, see R. F. Gombrich and G. Obeyesekere, Buddhism Transformed: Religious Change in Sri Lanka, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988; for Buddhist modernism, see McMahan, The Making of Buddhist Modernism. 5 T. E. Barlow, “Introduction”, in: Barlow (ed.), Formations of Colonial Modernity in East Asia, Durham: Duke University Press, 1997, p. 1. 6 Ibid., p. 6.

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Asian modernities that have been obstructed by the older dichotomy of modern and traditional, or, in our case, to recognize the obvious modern disposition of renjian Buddhism from the beginning of the last century in China. Renjian Buddhism’s modern disposition is one that was shaped during the colonial stage of modernity. At the time it was mainly confined to the countries of East Asia; but today, in what some scholars call the era of global modernity, renjian Buddhists have expanded their sphere of influence over large parts of the globe, in the process encountering differing understandings of what constitutes a modern Buddhist religiosity.7 By exploring how Fo Guang Shan’s globalization project navigates different actualizations of modernity and their associated ideas of what constitutes modern Buddhism we can see that modernity is not one all-encompassing entity producing one fixed universal form of modern Buddhism, but rather something that occurs in plural. Thinking of “modernities” allows us then to incorporate the many diverse developments that occurred outside of the West and is therefore more suitable for empirical research. The idea of multiple modernities is, of course, associated with sociologist Shmuel N. Eisenstadt. Eisenstadt argues that although modern societies, Western as well as non-Western ones, all tend to develop towards structural differentiation, a multiplicity of institutional and ideological patterns emerge from these processes.8 According to his understanding, modernity and Westernization are not identical. Similarly, Anthropologists Aihwa Ong and Donald Nonini do not think of non-Western modernities as reactive to the West but construe them as “cultural forms that are organically produced in relation to other regional forces in the polycentric world of late capitalism; forces with new cultural ecumenes independent of older centers of power have arisen.”9 It follows that there are not just multiple modernities each of which is attached to one particular place, such as Europe, Asia, Africa, or the USA, but multiple modernities can exist and interact even within one spatial configuration. Within the Chinese context, for example, Ong identifies two competing modernities: national discourses of modernity emphasizing essentialism, territoriality, and fixity, which she associates with the PRC, and discourses linked to the entrepreneurial capitalism of the Chinese diaspora

7 See, for example, A. Dirlik, Global Modernity: Modernity in the Age of Global Capitalism, Boulder: Paradigm, 2007; P. Duara, The Crisis of Global Modernity: Asian Traditions and a Sustainable Future, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. 8 S. N. Eisenstadt, “Multiple Modernities”, Daedalus 129 (2000) 1, pp. 1–2. 9 Ong and Nonini, “Introduction”, p. 15.

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that are marked by hybridity, deterritorialization, and fluidity.10 I am further complicating the picture by adding that both logics of Chinese modernity, statecentred and diasporic, play a role within the PRC as well as in the diaspora, albeit to different degrees. There is a difference between Beijing’s statist views and the more transnational perspectives prevalent, at least until recently, in the mega cities of China’s south, such as Guangdong (廣東), Shenzhen (深圳), and Hong Kong. Diaspora communities on the other hand are not just marked by hybridity, deterritorialization, and fluidity but are themselves part of nation-states with their own territorially bounded discourses and practices of modernity. The case of Taiwan even further convolutes the matter because the island is in many ways situated in between the PRC and the diaspora. Statist forms of modernity such as views that merge notions of ethnicity, culture, and territory have played a very formative role in the post-war history of Taiwan. However, the country is likewise shaped by its transformation into a democratic society with an open market economy and its most recent turn towards the “New Southbound Policy” with its subsequent shift towards neoliberal multiculturalism.11 Thus we can see that state-centred and diasporic Chinese modernities in several distinct renderings are shaping the matrix of Global China as a spatial order. They produce multiple views (and associated practices) on the nature of modernity, what defines a modern nation-state, the way in the state is situated within the global, and what constitutes a modern religion or modern Buddhism in this context. Fo Guang Shan’s renjian Buddhism represents one of multiple possible modern Buddhist religiosities, one that is neither Protestant nor secular, but that has managed to successfully navigate this matrix. The order has adapted to the diasporic experience of the many overseas Chinese communities worldwide and their interactions with their respective host countries. Fo Guang Shan’s renjian Buddhist religiosity resonates within the diaspora because of overlapping histories and shared cultural roots but also because of a similar views on the space a modern religion should occupy within society. Thus in most countries where the order maintains overseas temples, just as it does in Taiwan, Fo Guang Shan interacts with its surrounding society on many levels and in many ways. Fo Guang Shan even flourishes in the PRC, despite the many restrictions on religious organizations imposed by the state.

10 A. Ong, “Chinese Modernities: Narratives of Nation and Capitalism”, in: Ong and Nonini (eds.), Ungrounded Empires, p. 172. 11 P.-C. Lan, “From Reproductive Assimilation to Neoliberal Multiculturalism: Framing and Regulating Immigrant Mothers and Children in Taiwan”, Journal of Intercultural Studies 40 (2019) 3, pp. 318–333, at 318.

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The reason for Fo Guang Shan’s success can be found in the way the order defines Buddhist social engagements. One field of Buddhist social engagement as understood by Fo Guang Shan is culture. For Fo Guang Shan, culture first and foremost serves as a tool to attract people to the Buddhist Dharma. Yet within the context of the order’s global trajectory, culture takes on a more complex meaning: The overseas Buddhist temple generates an accessible, open Buddhist and Chinese space that holds cultural activities in ways that are compatible with global event culture. The exhibited Chineseness of the order’s overseas temples also attracts many non-Chinese who visit the temple particularly because of its role as a global ambassador of Chinese culture. At the same time, such a global and cosmopolitan deployment of Chinese culture is underpinned by an ongoing twentieth-century ethno-cultural discourse of Chineseness. This multivalent entwinement of differing renderings of Chineseness has contributed to the order’s successful development overseas because it transcends the particularities of national origin amongst overseas Chinese by retrospectively linking the community back to an “imagined” China. But the prominent role that notions of Chineseness play in Fo Guang Shan’s renjian Buddhism has also facilitated the establishment of connections with the People’s Republic of China and facilitated its development there in recent years. Engagements in the fields of charity and education constitute another important aspect characterizing Fo Guang Shan’s modern Buddhist religiosity. Like the order’s involvement in culture, civic engagement transcends particularistic identities within the diverse Chinese diasporic community, but is achieved in a different way. Within a global context, Fo Guang Shan’s countless educational and charity undertakings represent a cross-cultural move, from out of the temple space into the mainstream non-Chinese society. The order creates new kinds of linkages that connect the temple, the diaspora community, and the non-Chinese mainstream of the host society. It establishes itself as a civic actor in its new homeland while at the same time generating spaces for intra- and cross-cultural interaction. In addition, the order’s contributions to societies overseas also produces an effect back in Taiwan. Its global civic engagements are communicated back through the order’s media, thereby reassuring adherents’ sense of the order’s universal goodness and helping it attract further donations. Here the situation differs from the People’s Republic, however, where the activities of religious actors are highly regulated and mainly confined to official religious sites such as the temple space. Finally, at Fo Guang Shan religious cultivation constitutes a form of social engagement in itself. Through the Buddha’s Light International Association, religious cultivation and communality are inextricably entwined. While the order’s doctrinal outlook is still deeply embedded in the mainstream Chinese

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Mahayana, the order deemphasizes delving into doctrinal abstractions. At Fo Guang Shan, the Dharma is meant to be put into practice. A very strong emphasis is put on ethical behavior and altruism. Buddhism should serve contemporary society by helping the individual to become a harmonious part of a group, be it one’s family, workplace, country, or the whole of the globe. Yet it does not follow that renjian Buddhism is simply a secularized form of Buddhism. Rituals such as Dharma assemblies play an important role at the order’s temples. According to Buddhist doctrine, although every form of religious cultivation produces merit for the practitioner, each has its specific purpose. The motive for participating in the Emperor Liang Dharma Assembly described in the previous chapter is to repent one’s past wrongdoings and vow to adjust one’s future behaviour. The practitioner thereby eradicates bad karma and creates positive merit for him or herself, and also for deceased family members. The Chinese language website of Hsi Lai Temple states: What should be taken into consideration when participating in a repentance? First of all, the practitioner must understand the content of the repentance text and the procedures of the ritual. She or he has to sincerely vow to not to repeat the committed offence. The practitioner has to firmly believe in the ability of the power of the Buddha to provide support and to purify the practitioner’s heart. Furthermore, in order to generate a correlative resonance with the Buddha and to create infinite merit, it is very important to chant mindfully.12

As we can see from the quote, it is not enough just to feel some remorse, resolve to do better, and thus exhibit the right state of mind. In order to acquire the desired merit and extinguish one’s negative karma, the participant needs to have faith in the power of the Buddha, she or he needs to correctly understand the content of the scripture (orthodoxy) to be recited, and the elements and structure (orthopraxy) of the ritual. Thus, repentance rituals and other Dharma assemblies at Fo Guang Shan do not only constitute secularized modes of religious cultivation that, for example, are supposed to work only on the psychological level. They are thought of as efficacious means to reduce negative karma and generate merit for oneself, one’s deceased family members, and all sentient beings. Modes of religious cultivation such as repentance rituals and other Dharma assemblies lie at the heart of Fo Guang Shan’s renjian Buddhist religiosity. If one were to only want to practice renjian Buddhism through

12 “拜懺時要注意什麼呢？首先要了解懺文內容及拜懺程序，並真誠發露懺悔不復再犯外，更 要信願佛力的攝受加持，激發內心的清淨。另外也需心觀、口唱，才能與佛心感應道交，產生 不可思議功德.” http://www.hsilai.org/tc/cal/df.php.

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philanthropy, one could choose to become involved in a Buddhist charity such as Tzu Chi, which is of course a choice that is made by many. But many of those people I talked to during my fieldwork told me that they chose to become “Fo Guang People” specifically because they were looking for a more intrinsically religious approach to renjian Buddhism. Western scholarship on renjian Buddhism sometimes highlights the secularized aspects of renjian Buddhism. Chandler for example writes: The exhortations to experience Chan in daily life and to establish a pure land in the human realm underscore a defining characteristic shaping all interpretations of Humanistic Buddhism: the secularization of Buddhist practice. In other words, the divisions between supramundane and mundane and between monastic and lay life are blurred. The otherness of buddhas as sacred beings and of pure lands as radically different is minimized in favor of accentuating the possibility of enlightenment for all and the accessibility of purity even in our saha world. Secularization also incorporates an element of laicization; that is to say, lay and monastic spheres of performance merge. Clerics are urged to return their focus to this mundane world, primarily by instructing lay devotees how to bring an element of the sacred into their lives. The holy life of the monastics is secularized while the secular life of laity is sacralized.13

Chandler presents two arguments here. The first one is a buddhological one: by emphasizing the applicability of Chan and Pure Land to one’s life in a modern world, renjian Buddhist organizations such as Fo Guang Shan merge the spheres of the sacred and the profane and thereby diminish the sacred otherness of the buddhas and pure lands in favour of “the possibility of enlightenment for all and the accessibility of purity even in our saha world”. His second argument operates on a more sociological level: By focusing on what renjian Buddhists call “going into the world”, the line between monastics and laity becomes more porous, which on the monastic side leads to a laicization of the sangha. However, doctrinal claims about the interpenetration of the sacred and the profane are a staple of mainstream Chinese Mahayana, particularly in the Chan tradition. Surely, the notion of a pure land on earth has a strong secular connotation. It reflects the discourse of renjian Buddhism, advocated by Taixu, his student Yinshun, and others. At the end of the nineteenth century, many Buddhists perceived their own tradition as in decline. The reformers thought that over the centuries it had been corrupted by elements of Chinese folk religion, which supposedly caused the sangha to be overly concerned with supernatural beings and practices like chanting for the dead. The reformers response was to promote a Buddhism that

13 S. Chandler, “Buddhism in China and Taiwan: The Dimensions of Contemporary Chinese Buddhism”, in S. C. Berkwitz (ed.), Buddhism in World Cultures: Comparative Perspectives, Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2006, p. 188.

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focuses more on the living and makes a positive contribution to society. They therefore absorbed the popular concept of a Buddhist pure land into the notion of the pure land on earth, a concept that deemphasizes otherworldly elements within Chinese Buddhism in favour of a modernist version of the religion that is more affirmative of worldly matters. However, it does not follow that the notion of a pure land on earth is completely secularized. Doctrinally it is linked to mindonly (weixin 維心) ideas that do not stress the pure land as a physical place independent of the mind, but instead relate it to its purification.14 If one’s mind is purified than the world will be purified too. This idea is based on a concept from the Vimalakirti Sutra (weimo jing 維摩經): “When the mind is purified, the Buddha lands will be purified.”15 Historically, equating a pure land with a purified mind is a Chan approach to resolving doctrinal tensions between Chan and Pure Land systems of thought.16 Renjian Buddhists add a modernist twist to this complexity by expanding the mind-only understanding of a pure land from the individual to society as a whole. Renjian Buddhists responded to a modernizing world by reconfiguring the relationship between the Buddhist temple and its surrounding society. By enhancing the interaction between the sangha and the laity, and through its countless cultural, civic, and religious engagements Fo Guang Shan erase the demarcations between the sacred space of the temple and the secular space of society. The order therefore not only cause its monastics “to return their focus to this mundane world” but, as Chandler himself rightfully notes, “sacralizes” the secular life of the laity. Thus, although on the surface, renjian Buddhists seem to have secularized Buddhism through their extensive involvement in the secular sphere of society, by radically expanding the idea of the interpenetration of the sacred and the profane to today’s urbanized and globalized world, they are actually reclaiming secular society itself as a sacred space. That is why Main and Lai claim socially-engaged Buddhism to be a response or “mirror image” of secularization.17 Subsequently, it is the particular entwinement of communality, culture, civic engagement, and religious cultivation that lies at the core of the modern disposition of Fo Guang Shan’s renjian Buddhist religiosity. By expanding its particular modern Buddhist religiosity over a large portion of the globe, Fo Guang Shan has to navigate not only the various Chinese modernities with their associated ideas on the role of a modern Buddhist religiosity, but also non-Chinese modernities. Global China might be the order’s formative space

14 H.-C. Shih, The Syncretism of Ch’an and Pure Land Buddhism, New York: Lang, 1992, p. 146. 15 “隨其心淨，則佛土淨”, Vimalakīrti Nirdeśa Sūtra Weimojie suoshuo jing 維摩詰所說經, T 475, 14.537a04–557b26, https://21dzk.l.u-tokyo.ac.jp/SAT/satdb2015.php (accessed 11 November 2018). 16 Shih, The Syncretism of Ch’an and Pure Land Buddhism, pp. 146–147. 17 Main and Lai, “Reformulating ‘Socially Engaged Buddhism’ as an Analytical Category”, p. 4.

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of engagement but it is not its only one. It overlaps and interplays with several other spatial orders, their associated notions of modernity, and the role religious traditions are supposed to play in this narrative. The spatial order that is of course the globally dominant one is what we call the West. Although Western notions of modernity have a long history of influence in the non-Western regions of the world, Western ideas of what constitutes modern and modernist approaches to Buddhism have so far produced only limited impact in Asia.18 Modern Buddhism’s sparring partner in Asia continues to be evangelical Christianity because of the latter’s ever increasing engagement on the continent. Yet in the diaspora communities outside of Asia renjian Buddhists also encounter modern Buddhism in its Western form. California, the home of Hsi Lai Temple, which is geographically located within the periphery of Global China, simultaneously lies in the heartland of the West. The state is not only home to Hollywood and the Silicon Valley, but also hosts a thriving local Buddhist scene, one that holds very different ideas on what constitutes a modern Buddhist religiosity. The development of what I call a twotrack model of religious cultivation at Fo Guang Shan’s overseas temples described in the previous chapter is a response to such a differing Western understanding of modern Buddhism. While the temple’s cultural and civic engagements produce cross-cultural linkages – non-Chinese visiting the temple to experience the Lunar New Year festivities, eat Buddhist vegetarian food at the Water Drop Tea House, or receive an education by going to one of the order’s educational institutions – religious activities often remain separated along lines of language and ethnicity. This results precisely from different understandings of what constitutes a modern Buddhist religiosity in Asia and in the West. In the West, Buddhism is equated with meditation. In its modern form Buddhism is imagined as secularist, individualistic, consistent with science, and leans towards psychological interpretations of key Buddhist doctrines. Yet Western Buddhism too is highly transnational. North American ideas and notions of what constitutes modern Buddhism are transmitted globally via global English-language mediascapes and the transnational circuits of US Dharma teachers, with the result that outside of Asia it is the Western understanding that sets the standard for Buddhist modernism. The textbook example for this approach is the mindfulness movement, which supposedly represents the uni-

18 Which is not to say that they have not had an impact. On the influence of Western Buddhism in Asia, see R. B. Joo, “Countercurrents from the West: ‘Blue-Eyed’ Zen Masters, Vipassanā Meditation, and Buddhist Psychotherapy in Contemporary Korea”, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 79 (2011), 3, pp. 614–638.

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versal essence of Buddhism stripped of its “cultural baggage” from Asia.19 In this context, the Buddhism of European Americans, so-called convert Buddhism, becomes universalized. Buddhist modernism becomes a positively defined entity that is unaware of its spatial particularity and claims an ahistorical universalism. The distinctive Americanness of the mindfulness movement, for example, consisting of the promotion of “the narrative of scientific progress, the belief in the individual as the sole nexus of meaning, [and] an entrepreneurial ethos” is completely hidden in this picture.20 The Other of Western Buddhist modernism is tradition as understood from a Western Christian perspective. Since the West has only a very short native Buddhist tradition, tradition or traditional Buddhism often becomes a signifier for the many Buddhist traditions from Asia. Within this bifurcated picture, a modernist Western Buddhism is dichotomized with a supposedly traditional Asian Buddhism. All Buddhist traditions practiced by Asians, no matter which meta-tradition, specific country or region, modernist or traditionalist orientation, etc., they belong to, become merged into one. Within a Western Buddhism understood this way, Asians may play a role as an oriental monk and teacher such as the Dalai Lama or Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche.21 But a Buddhist organization, the majority of whose adherents are of Asian origin, no matter how modernist the branch of Buddhism they practice, can by default only represent “traditional Buddhism”. But as shown in this book, renjian Buddhism undoubtedly represents a modernist approach to the Buddhist tradition. The difference is that the Other of renjian Buddhist modernism is not some sort of (racialized) tradition, but a Buddhism that is seen as tainted by folk beliefs and practices and a mode of practice that takes place somewhere up in the mountains completely detached from modern society. I argue that modern Buddhism, like modernity, is something that occurs in plural. Through the notion of multiple modern Buddhist religiosities we can avoid the problematic dichotomy of modern Western Buddhism and a supposedly traditional Asian Buddhism. By understanding modern Buddhism not as one universal entity marked by positively defined attributes but instead taking into consideration the many specific modern and space-bound Buddhist histories, it becomes possible to acknowledge the diversity of multiple modern Buddhist religiosities in the age of global modernity.

19 R. Purser, McMindfulness, London: Repeater Books, 2019, p. 14. 20 Ibid., p. 73. 21 On the image of the oriental monk, see J. N. Iwamura, Virtual Orientalism: Asian Religions and American Popular Culture, New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.

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The Future of Fo Guang Shan’s Transnationalism The aim of ethnography is to scientifically describe peoples and cultures with their customs, habits, and mutual differences. Ethnography is no predictive science and the ethnographer is no prophet. However, before concluding this book I will briefly discuss some key issues that will most likely influence the order’s further global development. The first matter concernes the demographic the order is targeting to ensure its future success. There are three issues that relate to this point: The first is the current and future waves of ethnic Chinese migration; second, the ongoing development of Fo Guang Shan’s renjian Buddhism in the People’s Republic of China; and, finally, the role of second and later generations of ethnic Chinese migrants. All three matters are intertwined. The main driving force of Fo Guang Shan’s globalization project, particularly in the early days, were first generation Taiwanese migrants, many of whom belonged to the middle and upper classes of their country of origin. It is they who, through their generous donations and tireless voluntary work, provided the foundation for the order’s global success. Yet Taiwanese migration peaked in the 1980s and 1990s, and by now many first generation Taiwanese migrants have reached retirement age. Thus, if the order wants to ensure its further development it needs to diversify its following. Fo Gung Shan has long recognized the issue and has already begun to develop strategies in response. One response to the challenge has been to attract the most recent wave of ethnic Chinese migrants from the PRC. The understanding of renjian Buddhism at Fo Guang Shan may differ from that of the Buddhist Association of China, the official supervisory organ of Buddhism in the People’s Republic of China. But despite the differences, shared roots in the history, doctrines, and cosmology of Chinese Mahayana make Fo Guang Shan’s renjian Buddhism very accessible to PRC Chinese. Some PRC migrants may have encountered the order as overseas students, some after relocating permanently to their new home countries; others visit the order’s temples and cultural centres in the People’s Republic. Those who find their way to Fo Guang Shan overseas may continue to stay involved after their return to the PRC. In fact, several of the people I spoke to at Fo Guang Shan facilities in the PRC have told me that it was during their time overseas that they first encountered the order. Thus the popularity of Fo Guang Shan in the diaspora also has an impact on its popularity in China. Yet the future of Fo Guang Shan’s renjian Buddhism in the People’s Republic is difficult to predict. The space religion occupies within Chinese society may have recovered from the devastation of the Cultural Revolution, but it nevertheless remains a very vulnerable one. At the time of writing, it appears that the PRC may yet again be entering a phase of increasing religious restrictions. Furthermore, the dynamics that shape cross-strait relations between the PRC and Taiwan are even harder to

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foresee. However, it seems safe to assume that they will influence the order’s future development on the mainland. The third factor that comes into play is the promotion of renjian Buddhism to the second and later generations of ethnic Chinese migrants. This too is a strategy that Fo Guang Shan has already pursued for some decades. Temples such as Hsi Lai and Nan Hua regularly organize activities for children and youths and have very active Young Adult Divisions. The children and grandchildren of Taiwanese, Sino-Vietnamese, PRC Chinese who have migrated to new lands possess valuable cultural and linguistic literacy in both the culture of their parents and grandparents and the culture of the new home countries. They constitute an important demographic for the future development of the order in themselves, but are also one of the order’s most valuable assets for the possible further advancement of renjian Buddhism’s interactions with non-Chinese mainstream societies. The second and later generations have different religious needs to their parents and attracting them requires different strategies than those that target first-generation ethnic Chinese or even overseas students. Use of the local language as well as an interest in and openness for the culture they grow up in will be of importance in further developing activities and services that attract this demographic. This is crucial, because even if Fo Guang Shan focuses on the next wave of overseas Chinese migration, their children too will one day make a decision about whether to go to the temple. Fo Guang Shan is of course a very big organization, whose members, monastic and lay, young and old, have a variety of inclinations in regard to how to advance its future global development. Some of the people I have talked to see the future of the order in increased localisation, while others stress its importance for future generations of ethnic Chinese migrants. At the moment it seems that of the discussed strategies, the order is most successful in targeting the current and ongoing wave of ethnic Chinese migrants from the PRC. But it is still reasonable to assume that the order will continue in its attempts to attract a variety of people, be they first generation migrants in a dynamically changing global Chinese diaspora, second and later generation ethnic Chinese migrants, or non-Chinese. The degree to which they succeed in attracting each group depends on the local conditions. In the course of this book I have tried to avoid an oversimplifying bifurcation of Chinese and non-Chinese, such as Chinese and African, and Chinese and Western, etc. There exist many cultural differences between the various Chinese societies in Asia. By attracting overseas Chinese who originate from the People’s Republic, Vietnam, Malaysia, etc., into the order’s temples, spaces that some three or four decades ago were almost exclusively frequented by the Taiwanese diaspora, Fo Guang Shan is already involved in cross-cultural engagements. At the same time, the societies at the points of departure for ethnic Chinese migrants

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are, like those at the points of arrival, not stagnant but in constant flux. The ethnic fabric of countries such as the US and Australia as well as the countries of Europe will continue to diversify in the decades to come. Equally, in response to the problem of an aging society, Asian countries such as Taiwan have begun to promote foreign immigration, which increasingly challenges the former system of jus sanguinis citizenship still so common in East Asia.22 Finally, no matter what the future brings, Fo Guang Shan’s particular model of Buddhist transnationalism already has a life beyond the organiztion itself. The order’s model of monastic education is very influential not only in Taiwan, but also in the PRC, and even more so in Southeast Asia. Fo Guang Shan is particularly famous for its emphasis on modern management skills and foreign language learning. Many abbots of small and medium-sized temples in Taiwan received their monastic education at Fo Guang Shan and some are involved in their own globalization projects, even if on a much smaller scale. In addition, Chinese Mahayana orders in the PRC have been closely following Fo Guang Shan’s success over the last decades. They find inspiration in the order’s modernist Buddhist religiosity and have tried to imitate many of its elements. Student camps at Buddhist temples organized in a very similar fashion to those at Fo Guang Shan are increasingly popular on the mainland. An even more striking example of the order’s impact is the transnational development of the Longquan Temple (龍泉寺) from the outskirts of Beijing and its associated nunnery in China’s south. Longquan Temple has launched its own, very similar, globalization project and while it does not yet created a global temple net as vast as that of Fo Guang Shan, it already runs temples all over the world, including in Africa, Europe, and the US. Furthermore, as in Taiwan and the People’s Republic, there are also many smaller Chinese Mahayana temples in Southeast Asia that are also attempting to globalize. And while the impact of Fo Guang Shan on the transnationalism of other Buddhist orders and temples has yet to be examined in more detail, one thing seems to be clear, at least for the time being: Fo Guang Shan’s mode of transnationalism is here to stay.

22 Lan, “From Reproductive Assimilation to Neoliberal Multiculturalism”, p. 320.

List of Abbreviations BLIA CCP DPP KMT PRC ROC YAD

Buddha’s Light International Association Chinese Communist Party Democratic Progressive Party Kuomintang People’s Republic of China Republic of China Young Adult Division

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110690156-008

List of Figures Figure 1

Fragrant Forest Abundant Treasure White Pagoda, Da Jue Temple, PRC. Photograph by Jens Reinke, 3 May 2018 1 Figure 2 Map of Hsi Lai Temple, Hsi Lai Temple, USA. Photograph by Jens Reinke, 10 January 2018 14 Figure 3 Main Shrine, Nan Hua Temple, South Africa. Photograph by Jens Reinke, 15 October 2017 17 Figure 4 Chinese Participating in a Great Compassion Repentance, Main Shrine of Da Jue Temple, PRC. Photograph by Jens Reinke, 21 April 2018 39 Figure 5 Mandarin Language Dharma Day, Auditorium of Hsi Lai Temple, USA. Photograph by Jens Reinke, 10 March 2018 54 Figure 6 Lunar New Year’s Decoration, Main Shrine of Hsi Lai Temple, USA. Photograph by Jens Reinke, 14 February 2018 65 Figure 7 Flower Arranging, Jiaying Assembly Hall, PRC. Photograph by Jens Reinke, 27 May 2018 79 Figure 8 Fo Guang Shan Funeral, Los Angeles County, USA. Photograph by Jens Reinke, 8 February 2018 97 Figure 9 Closing Ceremony of Triple Communal Recitation of the Amitabha Sutra, Nan Hua Temple, South Africa. Photograph by Jens Reinke, 5 November 2017 112 Figure 10 Street Sign in Bronkhorstspruit, South Africa. Photograph by Jens Reinke, 27 November 2017 120

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110690156-009

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Index Amitofo Care Centre 40, 57, 105 Apartheid 15, 49, 51 Asad, Talal 31 Ashiwa, Yoshiko 31 Asia – East 21, 122, 132 – South 21, 121 – Southeast 8, 10, 12, 21, 31, 34, 36, 40, 44–48, 51, 57, 62, 75, 90, 92, 106, 118, 119, 132 Asian Americans 10, 12, 13, 43, 50, 51, 59–61, 65, 66, 70, 71, 86, 94, 95 Australia 38, 43, 45, 47, 48, 92, 107, 132 – Nan Tien Institute 84, 85 Avalokitesvara 14, 89 Barlow, Tany E. 121 Beijing 19, 123, 132 Bhumibol Adulyadej (1927–2016) 19 BLIA 8, 9, 14–16, 19, 36, 40, 41, 47, 49–61, 63–65, 67, 68, 90, 91, 94, 104–107, 109–114 – Los Angeles 12, 50, 54, 55, 58, 61, 70, 83 – South Africa 15, 52, 57, 61, 96, 111 BLIA World Headquarters Africa Fellowship Meeting (Guoji foguang hui shijie zonghui feizhou lianyi hui 國際佛光會世 界總會非洲聯誼會) 52, 106, 110 Bloemfontein 15, 16 border-crossing 4–6, 21, 32, 119 Brazil 37, 92, 102 Bronkhorstspruit 8, 15, 16, 96, 103, 115. See also Nan Hua Temple Buddha 13, 17, 46, 90, 99, 111, 125, 127 – Amitabha 18, 28, 56, 96, 103, 105, 108 – Maitreya 28 – Medicine 18 – Shakyamuni 18, 53, 66, 98 Buddha’s Light International Association (Guoji foguang hui 國際佛光會). See BLIA Buddhism of the human realm 3, 29. See also renjian Buddhism Buddhism, institutional 25

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110690156-011

Buddhism, modernized 23, 26, 27, 29, 30, 33, 46, 82, 101, 120, 121, 127 Buddhism, propagation of 21, 26, 34, 36, 39, 44, 62, 63, 73–75, 82, 90, 96, 100, 111 Buddhism, socially engaged 3, 6, 9, 29–31, 81, 115, 127 Buddhist Association of China (Zhongguo fojiao xiehui 中國佛教協會) 19, 33, 130 Buddhist studies 29, 83 Cantonese. See languages Cape Town 16, 70 capitalism 10, 23, 121, 122 CCP. See Communist Party, Chinese Chan Buddhism 19, 78, 99, 103, 114, 115, 126, 127. See also meditation Chandler, Stuart 4, 38, 126, 127 chaplaincy 85, 86 charity 3, 4, 6, 8, 14, 23, 25–27, 34, 36, 40, 69, 81, 84, 86, 90–95, 98, 99, 116, 124, 126. See also education – different modes of 18, 22, 82, 91, 97 Chen, Carolyn 71, 95 China 2, 3, 19, 21, 22, 26, 30–33, 35, 44, 56, 62, 63, 70, 72, 73, 77, 81, 84, 93, 119, 121, 122, 130. See also People’s Republic of China; Republican Era China; Republic of China – as modern nation-state 3, 22–25, 27, 30, 75 – Global China 117–119, 123, 127, 128 – modern China jindai 近代 21 Chinatowns 15, 47, 48 Chinese Exclusion Act (1943) 47 Chinese, ethnic 8, 9, 12, 40–45, 48–50, 53, 55–61, 67–69, 88, 95, 96, 108, 114–119, 131 See also diaspora; migration Chinese, non-ethnic 41, 42, 59, 119 Chineseness 10, 11, 43, 57, 62–64, 70–76, 80, 98, 124 Christianity 25, 26, 49, 95, 128 Cihang 慈航 (1893–1954) 34 colonialism 3, 32, 49, 119, 121

148

Index

communality 56, 98, 101, 104, 113, 116, 124, 127 Communist Party, Chinese (CCP) 2, 27, 33, 76, 78 communities, overseas 38, 40, 47, 50, 98 community service programmes 91, 92 confiscation of temple property 25, 27 Confucianism 25, 95 Congo, DR, Nan Hua branch 15 consumer culture, global 64, 78 cultivation, religious 6, 8, 36, 81, 94, 97–99, 101–103, 104, 106, 109, 112, 113, 116, 124, 125, 127, 128 Cultural Revolution 74, 130 culture, traditional Chinese 25, 56, 62, 63, 72, 75, 76, 79, 83 Da Jue Temple (Foguang zuting dajue si 佛光 祖庭大覺寺). See Foguang Ancestral Da Jue Temple Dalai Lama 29, 129 Daoism 25 Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) 73 destinations for migrants 38, 44, 47 deterritorialization 123 Dharma 9, 26, 35, 36, 63, 68, 73, 82, 94, 96, 100, 104, 108, 113–115, 124, 125, 128 – assemblies 13, 14, 16, 18, 39, 40, 46, 53, 66–68, 77, 83, 99, 102, 103, 106–112, 125 Dharma Day 55–58, 60, 61 Dharma Drum Mountain (Fagu shan 法鼓山) 4, 34, 102, 105 Dharma School for Youth 58, 59 diaspora 68, 69, 72, 76, 81, 95, 96, 122, 130 – communities 18, 38, 64, 82, 93, 107, 116, 118, 123, 124, 128 – global ethnic Chinese 6, 8–11, 42, 45, 48, 50–52, 57, 75, 131 disaster relief aid 91 donations 37, 39, 40, 47, 81, 90–92, 94, 124, 130 DPP. See Democratic Progressive Party Duara, Prasenjit 30 Durban 15, 16

education 6, 8, 18, 23, 25–27, 32, 34, 36, 58, 69, 81, 85, 87, 94, 98–100, 116, 124, 128 – secular 82, 84 – monastic 27, 82, 132 education system 26, 41 Eisenstadt, Shmuel N. 122 Emperor Liang Repentance Dharma Assembly (Lianghuang fahui 梁皇法會) 108, 111, 112 engagement, civic 32, 81, 82, 84, 86, 88, 90, 92, 93, 95, 96, 98, 104, 124, 127, 128 engagement, social 4, 6, 8, 18, 23, 30, 32, 56, 69, 79, 81, 95, 98, 116, 124 essentialism 10, 122 ethnic lens 11 ethnicity 11, 43, 70, 72, 74, 119, 123, 128. See also Chineseness ethnoburb 12, 48, 84 event culture, global 11, 63, 72, 75, 124 family reunification 47 filial piety 10, 68, 113 flexibility, cultural 42, 104 Flower Rain Abode (Yuhua jingshe 雨花精舍) 19 Fo Guang Shan Buddha Museum (Foguangshan fotuo jinian tang 佛光山 佛陀紀念堂) 68 Fo Guang Shan Open University (renjian daxue 人間大學, Human Realm University) 83 Fo Guang Shan, globalization project of 3–11, 37, 42, 46, 48, 50, 72, 117–119, 122, 130, 132 Fo Guang University (Foguang Daxue 佛光大學) 84 Foguang Ancestral Da Jue Temple (Foguang zuting dajue si 佛光祖庭大覺寺) 1–4, 8, 18–20, 35, 77, 78, 101, 105 folk religion 22, 25, 126 Four Guidelines of Fo Guang Shan (Foguangshan de zongzhi 佛光山 的宗旨) 36

Index

149

Fragrant Forest Abundant Treasure White Pagoda (Xianglin duobao baita 香林多寶 白塔) 1, 20, 78 funeral service 39, 40, 96, 104, 105

Jinling Sutra Publishing House (Jinling kejing chu 金凌刻經處) 23 Johannesburg 15, 16, 52, 96, 119 jus sanguinis 132

Glick-Schiller, Nina 11 Goossaert, Vincent 26 Guest, Kenneth J. 95

Kaohsiung Gaoxiong 高雄 7, 67, 68 kindergarten 60, 84, 92 KMT. See Kuomintang Kuhn, Philip A. 45, 93 Kuomintang 2, 27, 30, 33, 35, 73–76. See also Taiwan; Republic of China

Hacienda Heights 12, 13 Hong Kong 8, 10, 37, 45, 50, 57, 58, 91, 106, 107, 123 – migration from 12, 40, 41, 45–51 host country 69, 87, 123 Hsi Lai Temple 西來寺 8, 11–14, 19, 36, 40, 44, 46, 48–53, 55, 59–61, 64, 66, 67, 69–71, 77, 84, 94, 96, 101, 103, 104, 106, 109, 114, 115, 125, 128, 131 Hsi Lai University 84. See also University of the West Hsing Yun Xingyun 星雲, Grand Master dashi 大師 2, 3, 7, 13, 15, 19, 20, 27, 35, 36, 38, 41, 42, 46, 48, 51, 54, 56, 59, 63, 64, 67, 76, 77, 83–86, 98, 99, 101, 104, 109 – “I am a Taiwanese Chinese” 72–75 Hu, Jintao 胡錦濤 20 hybridity 43, 64, 123 hymns 54, 58 identity, ethnic 11, 43 identity, national 75 Immigration Act (1990) 47 Immigration and Nationality Act (1965) 47 immigration policies, race-based 45 imperialism 21, 118 interaction, cross-cultural 41, 42, 71, 93, 94, 124, 128, 131 internationalisation ( guojihua 國際化) 41, 42 Japan 21, 23, 31, 37, 91, 118, 119, 121 Jetavana Hermitage (Zhihuan jingshe 祗洹精舍) 23 Jiang Zemin 江澤民 20 Jiangsu 江蘇 province 1, 2, 8, 18, 35, 51, 72, 77

Lai, Rongdao 127 laity 37, 82, 100, 102, 105, 106, 126, 127. See also lay – interaction with monastics 9, 34, 57, 99 Lan, Pei-chia 60 language training, Chinese 8, 59, 60, 69, 70, 88 language training, foreign 82, 132 languages 42, 47, 58, 74, 128 – Cantonese 10, 12, 48, 55, 57, 65 – Chinese 11, 22, 40, 49, 55, 59, 60, 69, 115, 119 – local 42, 57, 114, 115, 131 – Mandarin 10, 18, 43, 49, 53–58, 61, 69, 71, 73, 87–89, 92, 102, 107, 111, 113, 115, 119 – Taiwanese 10, 57 – Vietnamese 71 lay 9, 13, 19, 23–25, 32, 36, 38, 53, 55–57, 83, 96, 98, 102, 105, 107, 108, 110, 111, 126, 131 leisure sites, Buddhist 68, 69, 78 Lesotho, Nan Hua branch 15 Liang, Qichao (梁啟超 1873–1929) 74 lifestyle 46, 77, 78, 102 Lin, Irene 70, 71 localisation (bentuhua 本土化) 41, 42, 70, 90, 131 Longquan Temple (龍泉寺) 4, 132 Lunar New Year 10, 60, 63–68, 71, 72, 78, 83, 128 Lunar New Year’s Life Prolonging Universal Buddha Dharma Assembly (Chuxi yansheng pufo fahui 除夕延生普 佛法會) 66

150

Index

Macao 45 Mahayana sutras, Indian 95 Mahayana tradition, Chinese (hanchuan fojiao 漢傳佛教) 3, 27, 55, 57, 64, 75, 98–100, 117, 120 Mahayana 13 – Chinese 4, 23, 37, 53, 56, 102, 103, 106, 107, 116, 125, 126, 130, 132 – Vietnamese 71 Main, Jessica 29, 31, 127 mainstream society 60, 71, 93, 95, 96 Maitreya’s Tusita heaven 28 Malaysia 34, 58, 88, 91, 131 – migration from 41, 57, 61 – temples in 37, 38 Mandarin. See languages Marcus, George 7, 10 martial arts 17, 70, 88 McDaniel, Justin 68, 78 mediascape 118, 128 medical services 91, 92 meditation 14, 16–18, 40, 41, 60, 86, 98, 99, 102–104, 113–115, 128 migrant associations 93 migrants, first generation 6, 8, 11, 42, 43, 46, 51, 57, 59, 65, 69, 75, 106, 113, 114, 130, 131 migrants, second generation 10, 43, 58, 60, 61, 70 migrants, transnational 3, 43 migration policies 2, 45 migration, ethnic Chinese 5, 6, 9, 45, 46–48, 50, 57, 61, 62, 69, 93, 117, 130, 131 migration, post-1965 7, 35, 41, 93, 118 modernities, Chinese 123, 127 modernities, multiple 122 modernity, global 31, 64, 117, 122, 129 modernization 30, 46, 120, 121 – of Buddhism 23, 33, 82, 101 – of Chinese Mahayana 23 monastics 2, 9, 16, 18, 23, 26, 27, 33, 34, 36, 39, 40–42, 45, 51–55, 57, 58, 67, 70, 77, 82, 86, 87, 89, 96, 98–100, 102, 107–111, 114, 126, 127. See also laity multi-sited ethnography 5, 9, 10, 117

Nan Hua Academy (Nanhua jiaoxue zhongxin 南華教學中心) 16–18, 87, 90, 92 Nan Hua Performing Arts Group 17, 18, 86–90 Nan Hua Temple 南華寺 8, 15, 16, 96, 103, 120 Nanjing 19, 119 nationalism 74 – Buddhist 30, 31 nation-state 10, 21, 31, 32, 72, 76, 93, 117, 120, 123 nation-state building 75 – Buddhist contributions to 31, 64, 81 Netherlands 38 New York 48, 90 New Zealand 38, 42, 47, 48, 92 Newcastle, South Africa 15, 16 Nonini, Donald 122 North America 34, 37, 45, 48, 128. See also USA Oceania 38, 91 Ong, Aihwa 122 Opium War (1839–1842) 21 orphanages 23, 26, 27 Ouyang, Jingwu 歐陽竟無 (1871–1943) 24 overseas temples. See temples pacifism 29, 30 Palmer, David 26 Papua New Guinea 38, 92 People’s Republic of China (PRC) 1–3, 6, 8–10, 12, 16, 18–20, 27, 33, 37, 38, 40, 48–51, 64, 68, 75, 76, 78–80, 82, 86, 88, 91, 105, 118, 122–124, 130, 132 – Cultural Revolution 74 – emigration policies 45 – migration from 45–47, 50–52, 58, 76, 107, 130, 131 – temples 11, 70, 76 periodicals, Buddhist 24, 83 philanthropy, religious 8, 92, 95, 126 Philippines 37, 84, 85, 88, 91 pilgrims 23, 39, 40 PRC. See People’s Republic of China

Index

Pretoria 15 prison visit programmes 27, 91 professional skills training 92 proselytization 41, 42, 90, 95, 97 Protestantism 25, 121 – missionaries 25, 95 Pure Land 96, 103, 127 pure land on earth (renjian jingtu 人間淨土) 28, 34, 126, 127 pure land sutras 46 Qing Dynasty 21, 22 realms, Buddhist 3, 29 religion (zongjiao 宗教) 22, 119 religion 22–27, 31, 42, 49, 78, 85, 105, 120, 121, 123, 127, 130 religions, Chinese 5, 25, 117, 126 religiosity, Fo Guang Shan renjian Buddhist 46, 56, 57, 90, 95, 98, 105, 106, 113, 116, 117, 123–125, 132 religiosity, modern Buddhist 3–6, 9, 25, 29, 32, 42, 101, 116, 117, 119, 120, 122, 123, 127–129 renjian Buddhism (renjian fojiao 人間佛教), “Buddhism of the human realm” 3–6, 21, 26, 28, 29, 31–35, 41, 55–57, 62, 68, 75, 81, 85, 89, 90, 92, 93, 95, 97–99, 101, 102, 105, 106, 109, 113, 115, 116, 119, 120, 122–131 rensheng Buddhism (rensheng fojiao 人生佛教), “human life Buddhism” 29 Republic of China (ROC) 2, 10, 45, 49, 50, 52, 68, 75, 118 Republican Era China 3, 6, 24, 27, 30, 32, 33, 35, 81, 86, 87, 119, 120 ROC. See Republic of China rushi 入世, “going into the world” 29, 56 Sacramento 37 sangha 25–27, 34, 57, 82, 100, 106, 108, 126, 127 secularization 31, 121, 126, 127 settlement 47, 48, 72. See also Chinatowns; ethnoburb Sheng, Yen (Shengyan 聖嚴) 102

151

Singapore 10, 35, 37, 45, 91, 119 sinosphere, global 6 Sivaraksa, Sulak 29 South Africa 6, 8, 9, 11, 15–18, 38, 40, 43, 57, 61, 70, 82, 83, 86–90, 92, 96 – migration to 48–52, 107, 109, 110 spaces, religious 69, 89 spatial order 2, 6, 118, 128 – Global China as 119, 123 Srimala Buddhist Institute (Shengman shuyuan 勝鬘書院) 83 suburbs 12, 15, 16, 48 superstition (mixin 迷信) 22, 119 Taiping Rebellion (1851–1864) 21, 23 Taiwan 2–7, 9, 12, 16, 18, 19, 27, 33–35, 37, 39–41, 43, 49, 51, 52, 55, 56, 57, 61–64, 67, 76, 78, 79, 81, 83, 84, 86, 88, 89, 91, 93, 96, 102, 103, 107, 114, 117, 119, 123, 124. See also Republic of China; Kuomintang – Cultural Renaissance Movement 74 – Fo Guang Shan headquarters 7, 68, 82 – Fo Guang Shan temples 39, 40, 90, 132 – Kuomintang government 73–75 – migration from 45–47, 49–51 – relationship to PRC 27, 118, 130 Taixu 太虛 (1890–1947) 24, 26–31, 33, 35, 86, 126 tea culture, Buddhist 63, 77, 81, 83 temple architecture 13, 17 temple space 6, 8, 11, 51, 69, 93, 106, 124 Temple Spring Cleaning Day (chupo jieyuan ri 出坡結緣日) 64 temples, Fo Guang Shan overseas 7–9, 11, 14, 37, 38, 40–42, 45–47, 50, 52, 57–61, 64, 68, 69, 71, 89, 96, 106, 107, 113, 115, 116, 119, 123, 124, 128 temples as cultural spaces 67, 75, 79, 93, 124 temples as ecumenical Chinese spaces 68 temples, global network of 4, 12, 119 territoriality 122 Thich Nhat Hanh 29, 30 tourism 11, 47, 63, 72, 77–79 tradition, Chinese 53, 62, 64

152

Index

transnational linkages 6, 32 transnationalism 5, 7–9, 21, 31–35, 37, 132 Travagnin, Stefania 34 Tzu Chi (Ciji 慈濟) 4, 34, 35, 40, 57, 81, 82, 90, 92, 105, 126

Werbner, Pnina 72 Westernization 122 White Pagoda Temple (Baita si 白塔寺) 13 World Buddhist Association (Shijie fojiao lianhe hui 世界佛教聯合會) 31

universities, Buddhist 26, 27, 86 University of the West, USA 82, 84–87, 90 USA 8, 11, 13, 36, 37, 38, 48, 49, 82, 90, 92, 122

Xi, Jinping 習近平 20, 30, 73

vegetarianism 8, 13, 56, 66, 69, 70, 77, 78, 88, 89, 94, 113, 128 Vietnam 29, 30, 66, 71, 91 – Sino-Vietnamese 12, 50, 55, 65, 71, 131 volunteers 2, 9, 13, 16, 18, 19, 39, 40, 50, 53, 66, 89, 91, 92, 94–96, 101, 102, 104, 105, 107, 114, 115 Wang, Gungwu 45 Wank, David 31 Water Drop Teahouse (Dishuifang 滴水防) 8, 19, 128 Water Land Dharma Assembly (Shuilu fahui 水陸法會) 67 Weber, Max 121 Welch, Holmes 27 Weller, Robert P. 90

YAD. See Young Adult Division Yang, Fenggang 95, 117 Yang, Huinan 95 Yang, Shangkun 楊尚昆 20 Yang, Wenhui 楊文會 (1837–1911) 23, 24 Yinshun 印順 (1906–2005) 28, 29, 126 Yixing 義興, PRC 1, 2, 8, 18, 20, 101 Yixing Vegetarian Culture and Green Living Product Exhibition (Zhongguo Yixing ji sushi wenhua ji lüse shenghuopin bolan 中國義興際素食文化暨綠色生活 品博覽) 77 Yogacara philosophy (weishi xuepai 唯識學派) 24, 25, 32, 106 Young Adult Division (YAD, qingnian tuan 青年團) 12, 51, 53, 58, 59, 61, 62, 66, 101, 131 Zhao Puchu 趙樸初 (1907–2000) 19, 33