The Religious Philosophy of Liang Shuming: The Hidden Buddhist. By Thierry Meynard. Brill Academic Publishers, October 29, 2010. 226 pages. ISBN-10: 9004171517 ISBN-13: 978-9004171510
摘要
Meynard accomplishes two things in this appropriately titled book: 1) He successfully argues that Liang Shuming, dubbed the “Last Confucian” by Guy Alitto (1986), was a life‐long Buddhist as evidenced not only by his own admission in the final years of his life, but also in his religious philosophy and his personal commitments; and 2) he presents a lucid account of Liang's uniquely Chinese religious philosophy framed by the question of religion in modern China and his relationship with contemporary thinkers such as Ouyang Jingwu and Taixu. In addition to philosophy, the book includes a sympathetic biographical portrait of Liang and his acts of heroic defiance during the Maoist period. While Buddhologists will find discussions that could have been enriched by reference to other scholarship (e.g., on Indo‐Tibetan prāmaṇa and Tantric traditions), these gaps take little away from an otherwise rich presentation. Of particular note is Liang's understanding of Buddhism as a world‐renouncing tradition and rejection of modernist reformers advocating humanistic forms of Buddhism, which leads him to advocate an engaged form of Confucianism for a world in need of social action. This book is essential reading for those interested in modern Chinese religious thought and is of value not only to Sinologists, Asianists, and Buddhologists, but also to theorists of religion interested in a Chinese perspective.
