Coming to Terms with Chinese Buddhism: A Reading of the Treasure Store Treatise. By Robert H. Sharf. Studies in East Asian Buddhism, no. 14. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2002. 408 pp. $47.00 (cloth).

2003 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 257-258
Author(s):  
Ding-hwa E. Hsieh
Keyword(s):  
East Asian ◽  
Chinese Buddhism ◽  
University Of Hawai'i

Treatise on Awakening Mahāyāna Faith

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Jorgensen ◽  
Dan Lusthaus ◽  
John Makeham ◽  
Mark Strange
Keyword(s):  
Sustained Attention ◽  
East Asian ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Chinese Buddhism ◽  
Pure Land ◽  
Shared Resource ◽  
Conceptual Structures ◽  
Mahāyāna Buddhism ◽  
Annotated Translation ◽  
Mahayana Buddhist

Drawing on the historical and intellectual contexts of the Treatise on Awakening Mahāyāna Faith’s composition and paying sustained attention to its interpretation in early commentaries, this new annotated translation of the classic makes its ideas available to English readers like never before. The introduction orients the reader with the main topics taken up in the Treatise and also provides a scholarly resource for students, teachers, and researchers. The Treatise succinctly addresses many of the doctrines of greatest importance to Buddhists in China between the fifth and seventh centuries, in an attempt to reconcile seemingly contradictory ideas in Buddhist texts introduced from India. One reason for the popularity of the Treatise is its compelling vision of how to realize why we are deluded and then follow a path to actualize our inherent buddhahood. “Awakening Mahāyāna Faith” refers to having the initial faith or trust that the Mahāyāna Buddhist path will work and is worth pursuing. It also provides a concise restatement of the complexities of the ten-stage path of bodhisattva (enlightened being) practice in Mahāyāna Buddhism. The Treatise quickly became a foundational text for East Asian Buddhism when it appeared in sixth-century China. It profoundly shaped the doctrines and practices of the major schools of Chinese Buddhism: Chan, Tiantai, Huayan, and to a lesser extent Pure Land. Conceptual structures derived from the Treatise became a shared resource for East Asian philosophers and religious theorists over centuries.

The Politics of Buddhist Organisations in Taiwan: 1989–2003. Safeguarding the Faith, Building a Pure Land, Helping the Poor. By ANDRÉ LALIBERTÉ . [London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004. xii+178 pp. ISBN 0-415-32235-9.] Establishing a Pure Land on Earth. The Foguang Buddhist Perspective on Modernization and Globalization. By STUART CHANDLER. [Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2004. xvii+371 pp. ISBN 0-8248-2746-5.]

2005 ◽  
Vol 181 ◽  
pp. 195-197
Author(s):  
Francesca Tarocco
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Chinese Buddhism ◽  
Chinese History ◽  
Pure Land ◽  
Mainland Chinese ◽  
International Visibility ◽  
The Republic ◽  
University Of Hawai'i ◽  
Funding Opportunities

In open contrast to the abundance of studies concerning the first millennium of Chinese history, many aspects of the institutional, intellectual and cultural history of Chinese Buddhism during the past one thousand years remain, with some notable exceptions, largely unstudied. In particular, Western language scholarly accounts of Chinese Buddhism since the end of the 19th century are still rare and, with regards to the first part of the 20th century, largely limited to the efforts of one individual, the late American scholar, Holmes Welch (1921–1981). During the last ten or 15 years, however, there have been signs of a reversal of this tendency as an increasing number of researchers began to devote themselves to the study of modern and contemporary Chinese Buddhism. The lion's share of this emerging scholarly trend belongs to studies of Taiwanese rather than mainland Chinese Buddhism. This choice can partly be attributed to the increasing international visibility of Taiwanese Buddhist associations, but I also suspect that funding opportunities and a comparatively more welcoming research environment may have something to do with it!The two books under review are also concerned with contemporary Taiwanese Buddhism. Their authors adopt different but somehow complementary approaches. Whereas André Laliberté's instructive study of the attitudes towards the active political participation of Taiwanese Buddhist organizations focuses on the activities of the three main Taiwanese Buddhist organizations, namely the Buddha Light Mountain (or Foguangshan) monastic order, the Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Association (or Ciji gongdehui), and the Buddhist Association of the Republic of China (Zhongguo fojiaohui), Stuart Chandler's engaging study focuses on Foguangshan and the views of its founder and charismatic leader, Ven. Xingyun.

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