Master Sheng Yen; Buddhist decline narrative; Buddhist revival
摘要
Since Holmes Welch published The Buddhist Revival in China in 1968, the idea of “Buddhist revival” has affected the relative scholarships. Even though Welch himself said at the very beginning that what we conveniently call “revival” was merely Buddhists reacted to the incidents they encountered, it is questionable whether these actions were followed by a Buddhist decline. Yet critical scholarships of nowadays still think “revival” a problematic term, and so is “decline”. For Schicketanz, these are rhetoric terms for Buddhist figures to justify the changes of practices they needed to adapt, especially in the intellectual milieu of Chinese Buddhism. Thus the roles played by “revival” and “decline” should be a focus of scholarly concern in the study of modern Chinese Buddhism.
Given this, this article inspects master Sheng Yen’s usage of “Han Buddhist revival” and argues that the terms were adopted in a rather unique socio-religious context in contemporary times. He might inherit the decline narrative from his predecessors, yet especially after 2000, his “Han Buddhist revival” was on a large part related to other Buddhist traditions in the world. That is, in a global context in which Buddhist institutions internationalized, Han Buddhism must find its own authority, characteristics and ways to develop. In addition to contemplating on what Sheng Yen had meant by “revival,” this article tends to borrow the existing theory of religious revival from socio-religious studies in order to provide another perspective on the issue.
