ABSTRACT
At the end of the 1970s, Buddhism began to recover from three decades of violent suppression in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), when the policy of “reform and opening up” was carried out in the country. From then on, Buddhism has progressively regained favor among the people, and it has even thrived in the past ten years or so. According to the Chinese government and some researchers, Buddhism has become the largest institutionalized religion in China, with at least 100 million believers and practitioners.1 It is in fact impossible to estimate accurately the number of Buddhists because the Buddhist conversion (guiyi) is much less formal than the Christian one, and the religious identity of the Chinese is not exclusivistic. Nevertheless, all observers of Buddhism in contemporary China confirm that it has entered a period of revival in contrast to its state before 1980,2 which is incontestably proved by the reopening and reconstruction of monasteries on a large scale and the continuing increase of the number of clerics3 and lay believers. These facts seem irrefutable. However, there are some questions relating to these changes that are worth investigating. How can we reconstruct the history of the Buddhist revival? How can we understand properly the dynamic mechanisms of this revival? And how has Buddhism changed as a result? To seek pertinent answers to these interrelated questions, it is not enough to merely observe the expansion of Buddhism in its institutional framework. In fact, the revival of Buddhism in contemporary China has meant not only the reconstruction of the monastic tradition and the reorganization of lay Buddhists, but also a reflourishing of Buddhist symbols in the enlarged and diversified secular cultural and social spaces of the reform era, such as in literature, art, bodily practice, the human sciences, tourism, and even political mobilization (Ji 2006). These expressions of Buddhism may be diffuse, vicarious, fragmentary, and non-systematic and not necessarily related to religious faith or practice as such, yet they constitute a significant arena for the social influence of Buddhism and a tangible aspect of its revitalization. In this process, the production, circulation, and utilization of Buddhist symbols have engaged not only monastic authorities and other Buddhist communities, but also actors, movements, and institutions outside of the Buddhist field.4 In the Chinese political context, it is precisely through the exchanges between the Buddhists and these non-religious forces that Buddhism
has found several important avenues of legitimate expression and to which some of its revival must be owed. This chapter will explore how aspects of popular culture, the revival of Buddhist Studies, and an engagement by local and central governments with Buddhist institutions and ideas have each contributed to the proliferation of Buddhist symbols in secular society. It will examine how, at the same time, the interaction of monastic authorities with each of these forces has shaped the character of Buddhist revival in the reform era and changed the manner in which Chinese Buddhism has been imagined and expressed both within the sangha (Buddhist community) and in society at large.
