ABSTRACT
This chapter historicizes the conditions that made Sheng Yen an emerging Chan master in the 1990s, working with Americans in New York and at the same time responding to non-Han Buddhist traditions (vipassanā and Tibetan Buddhism) and popular folk religions that were spreading in Taiwan. This historical context of intra- and interreligious competition allowed Sheng Yen to articulate his “orthodox Buddhism” and institute the Dharma Drum Lineage of Chan. Placing his teaching in this socioreligious context helps us to understand why he taught the way he did and the significance of the Dharma Drum Lineage. This chapter also analyzes his understanding of the Chan “lineage” as an imagined community or invented tradition. Creating a new lineage not only synthesized the two existing Chan Buddhist lineages to which he was heir but also provided the means to circumscribe an ethnocentric form of the Han transmission of Chinese Buddhism.
