Based on the environmental discourse of Taiwanese Buddhism, this thesis attempts to interpret the environmental belief and practice carried out by Dharma Drum Mountain (DDM), and to indicate their significant features and influences. DDM takes “To uplift the character of humanity and build a pure land on earth” as a vision and mission to spread the Dharma to the world. DDM also regards four kinds of environmentalism as the basic method to solve the spiritual and external environmental crisis of modern people. Through the connection of Buddhism and ecology, DDM concurrently faces the problem of modernization of Buddhism and purity of the land in Taiwan. The Huan-Bao ideal can also achieve the goal of “spreading the Dharma to the world” and “Buddhistical human Realm “. The protection of the spiritual environment refers to the mind, which is the essence of the Buddhadharma. According to Buddhism, a person’s body and mind are direct karmic retribution and the environment she lives in is circumstantial retribution. Direct and circumstantial retribution forms one’s place of practice. Every person uses her direct retribution to practice within her circumstantial retribution. Thus one must care for the environment just as she would care for her own body. Thus the fundamental essence of the four kinds of environmentalism is “Protecting the Spiritual Environment”. When our mind is pure, our natural environment, living environment and social environment would be pure as well. Among four kinds of environmentalism, Social Environment Protecting is actually the main practice intension. Though it might fail to get an instant result in natural environmental protection, but the brief life etiquette and custom have even more latent energy to make new social culture and to produce the qualitative change than natural environmental protection instead. The environmental protection ideal of DDM includes three major key elements , they are religion, education and environmental protection. These three elements circulate each other inside. Furthermore, they possess the specialty of localization and modernized . The environmental protection (or “Huan-Bao”) movement of DDM is Venerable Master Sheng Yen’s main approach to modernize Buddhism. We believe that continuous promotion of DDM’s ideal and practice may substantiate environmental ethics for local social culture and religious intelligence intension and make a great contribution for the environmental issue for our global village in the future.
