The Buddhist Revival Movement: An Investigation into the Mutual Relationship between Chinese Buddhism and the Chinese Government
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.47611/jsrhs.v11i1.2262Keywords:
Chinese Chan Buddhism, Buddhist Revival Movement, Collective Memories, Cultural RevolutionAbstract
It has been four decades since the Buddhist revival started. To comprehensively document the process, I divide the paper into three sections. The first section summarizes the history of the revival movement and the Chinese government’s policies before 1978. The second section analyzes three categories of policies in the 21st century: support, suppress, and distort Chinese Buddhism. In the final section, I examine the case of one particular temple, the Xingsheng temple in Baita village, China. Because it is among the temples reconstructed in the recent decade, the paper investigates how this temple was successfully rebuilt while others were not. Unlike the previous section, the primary supporting evidence are interviews with abbot Huiren – the builder of Xingsheng temple – government officials, and villagers
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