Editing Taiwan (section)

== Buddhism in Taiwan ==

Chinese Buddhism arrived in Taiwan with Han Chinese settlers from Fujian province after the Qing court took control of the island in 1683. Monastic ordination lineages traced their authority back to Gushan Yongquan Temple (鼓山湧泉寺) near Fuzhou, and this mainland connection persisted, largely uninterrupted, into the twentieth century.<ref name="lin2020-p6">Lin, Pei-ying (2020). "A Survey of the Japanese Influence on Buddhist Education in Taiwan during the Japanese Colonial Period (1895–1945)". ''Religions'' 11.2: 61, p. 6.</ref> Alongside this "orthodox" monastic Buddhism, much of the island's popular Buddhist religiosity took the form of lay vegetarian sects (''zhaijiao'', 齋教) — chiefly the Longhua (龍華), Jinchuang (金幢), and Xiantian (先天) sects — which descended from the Ming-dynasty Luo Teaching (羅教) and combined Buddhist, Daoist, Confucian, and folk elements around a mythology of a creator-goddess, the "Unborn Venerable Mother." Organized around vegetarian halls (''zhaitang'') rather than monasteries and led by lay masters rather than tonsured clergy, these sects considered themselves authentically Buddhist, even as outside observers, Qing and Japanese alike, classed them separately.<ref name="jones1999-zhaijiao">Jones (1999), ''Buddhism in Taiwan'', pp. 13–19.</ref>

Japan's acquisition of Taiwan after the First Sino-Japanese War (1895) brought a second wave of institution-building, as Japanese Buddhist sects arrived alongside the colonial administration. The Sōtō (曹洞宗) lineage was first to establish a foothold, conferring precepts and founding the Taiwan Buddhist Middle School (1916) in Taipei; the Rinzai (臨濟宗) lineage's Myōshinji branch made Kaiyuan Temple (開元寺) in Tainan its southern headquarters after 1915, following the suppression of the anti-colonial Xilai'an Incident; and the Jōdo and Jōdo Shinshū Pure Land lineages eventually built thirty-seven branches across the island, emphasizing lay education, youth programs, and missionary work among Taiwan's aboriginal population.<ref name="lin2020-overview">Lin (2020), "Japanese Influence," pp. 2–9.</ref> In 1921–1922 the colonial government sponsored the island-wide South Seas Buddhist Association (南瀛佛教會, SSBA) as a liaison body between Japanese and Taiwanese Buddhists, which ran lecture programs aimed at eliminating "superstitious" practice.<ref>Lin (2020), "Japanese Influence," pp. 2–3.</ref> A growing number of Taiwanese monastics, and eventually nuns as well, were sent to study in Japan, most prominently at the Sōtō-affiliated Komazawa University under the modernist scholar-priest Nukariya Kaiten (忽滑谷快天), producing a generation of reform-minded clergy that included Lin Qiuwu.<ref>Lin (2020), "Japanese Influence," pp. 9–10.</ref> After the 1937 Marco Polo Bridge Incident, the Japanization (''kōminka'') movement and an accompanying Temple Rectification Movement intensified pressure on local religious practice, folding many remaining Taiwanese temples directly into Japanese sectarian structures.<ref>Lin (2020), "Japanese Influence," pp. 3–4.</ref>

Taiwan's retrocession to Chinese rule in 1945, and especially the Nationalist government's retreat to the island in 1949, brought a third reconfiguration. Two waves of mainland clergy arrived: ordinary refugee monks and nuns, and a smaller group of well-connected mainland BAROC (Buddhist Association of the Republic of China, 中國佛教會) functionaries who quickly took over confiscated Japanese temple properties and reconstituted the BAROC as the sole officially sanctioned Buddhist body, marginalizing native Taiwanese clergy in the process.<ref>Jones (1999), ''Buddhism in Taiwan'', pp. xvi–xvii, 137ff.</ref> Under martial law (1949–1987), the BAROC's conservative, traditionalist leadership held a near-monopoly on ordination and religious legitimacy; a 1953–1954 controversy over the reformist scholar-monk Yinshun (印順, 1906–2005), whose critical study of Pure Land practice drew organized condemnation from BAROC branches, illustrates the limits placed on doctrinal or institutional dissent during this period.<ref>Jones (1999), ''Buddhism in Taiwan'', pp. 132–133.</ref> Despite this, Yinshun's reformulation of [[Taixu]]'s "Buddhism for Human Life" as "Buddhism in the Human Realm" (人間佛教, ''renjian fojiao'') — a this-worldly, welfare-oriented Buddhism focused on the affairs of the living rather than funerary ritual or postmortem rebirth — gradually gained wide acceptance and became the dominant idiom of mainstream Taiwanese Buddhism.<ref name="jones1999-renjian">Jones (1999), ''Buddhism in Taiwan'', pp. 133–135.</ref>

Large-scale Buddhist organizations independent of BAROC control had in fact begun to form somewhat earlier, notably the Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Foundation (慈濟, founded by the nun Zhengyan 證嚴 in 1966) and Fo Guang Shan (佛光山, founded by Xingyun 星雲 in 1967), joined later by Dharma Drum Mountain (法鼓山, founded by Shengyan 聖嚴).<ref>Jones (1999), ''Buddhism in Taiwan'', ch. 6.</ref> It was only after the 1987 lifting of martial law, however, that these organizations were able to expand freely and come to dominate Taiwanese Buddhism's public profile. International in reach and oriented toward education, disaster relief, and social welfare under the banner of ''renjian fojiao'', they have generally kept a deliberate distance from politics; Tzu Chi in particular discourages its members from political activity.