Monastic education; Ming; Buddhism; monastic reform; Yang Renshan; Taixu
摘要
This paper compares Chinese Buddhist monastic education in two periods, namely the late Ming period (mid-sixteenth and mid-seventeenth centuries) and the modern period (1890s–1930s). Comparison between these periods can shed valuable light on Buddhism’s enduring power of renewal and transformation in response to evolving social and political contexts. In studying monastic education during these two periods, we also notice some important continuities between the late Ming and modern times. Monastic education reforms in both periods emphasized the alignment of monks’ educational degrees with their monastic responsibilities. The two periods also possessed the same openness of spirit in response to the need for reform. We also notice that, as compared with previous educational systems, modern monastic educational institutions were far less attached to other monasteries. In contrast to Ming monastic education, in which monastic schools were established for their own students, modern monastic educational institutes recruited students from across the nation and provided a wider range of subjects to compete with secular education.
