Dear list members,

Our next seminar will be held on Friday 30th October at 6.00 pm at University of Sydney in the Rogers Room, Woolley Building.  Please refer to Map (Ref 12E) for details.

Our presenter will be Scott Pacey (ANU)

We do hope you can attend
AABS Executive

Scott Pacey - Making the Dharma Modern: Chinese Buddhism in the Twentieth Century and Today
During the twentieth century, China’s intellectual landscape posed unprecedented challenges for Buddhists. The intelligentsia, influenced by science and Western religious categories, maintained a complex and critical relationship with the Dharma. Often, it was considered to be a superstitious relic of the ancient world, unsuited to a modernising China. In the Republican era, monastics such as Taixu and Yinshun set out to challenge this view. Later, Yinshun, and figures such as Xingyun, Zhengyan, and Shengyan, continued to align Buddhism with the philosophical and social environment of post-1949 Taiwan.

Their presentations of the Buddha’s teachings were aimed at showing how they were compatible with “modern” thought, unlike other religious views. However, they were also intended to demonstrate the Dharma’s superiority over the non-Buddhist ideas that were also competing for intellectual attention. They instead argued that if intellectuals were interested in science, Western ideologies, and the worldly approach of Confucianism, they should investigate the teachings of Śākyamuni, which completed and surpassed each of them.

This paper will examine the responses of monastics to the conditions of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. In particular, it will focus on their efforts to present Buddhism as anthropocentric, scientific, rational, and able to contribute to social progress through the provision of models for the ideal society and individual. After analysing various attempts to align Buddhism with these trends, the presentation will conclude with some thoughts on present discussions in Buddhist China, how these relate to the prominent themes of the last century, and ultimately, what they mean for the continued evolution of the Dharma in the Sinitic world.