YINSHUN

Widely considered to be the primary successor of the reform legacy of his teacher Taixu (1890–1947), Yinshun Shengzheng (1906–) is an influential Buddhist scholar in modern Chinese Buddhist academe and a key architect of the Chinese Buddhist reform movement. He reformulated and added academic sophistication to the content of his late teacher's rallying rhetoric of "Buddhism for Human Life" (Rensheng fojiao) and coined the new slogan "Humanistic Buddhism" (Renjian fojiao) to promote his refined version of a modern "engaged" form of Buddhism.

In his writings, Yinshun proposed various periodization schemes outlining Buddhist doctrinal evolution, and polemically assessed the relevance of the different periods to modern Buddhist spirituality, as well as to what he considered to be the central, defining tenets of Buddhism. His positions challenged deeply cherished beliefs of Chinese Buddhists: his unsympathetic treatment of both the "transcendentalized" tathĀgatagarbha or buddha-nature tradition, and the "vulgarized" popular Chinese schools like Pure Land and Chan.

No less impassioned and idealistic than his teacher Taixu in advancing his version of the bodhisattva path, Yinshun's copious works have left an indelible mark on the academic and religious discourse of modern Chinese Buddhist communities. Most of these works are collected in the massive Miaoyun ji (Anthology of the Wondrous Clouds) and the Huayu ji (Anthology of the Flower Rains). Other stand-alone volumes contain groundbreaking research on the Sarvāstivāda treatises and the Chinese Samyuktāgama.

See also:China; Engaged Buddhism

Bibliography

Pittman, Don A. Toward a Modern Chinese Buddhism: Taixu's Reforms. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2001.

Qiu Minjie. Yinshun daoshi de foxue sixiang. Taipei: Fajie, 1990.

William Chu