Events
Reforming Buddhism to Save China? Cai Yuanpei and the Search for a Chinese National Religion
4 Oct 2019
19:30-21:30
LT6, 2/F, Yasumoto International Academic Park, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Professor Douglas GildowAssistant Professor, Department of Cultural and Religious Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Douglas M. Gildow, originally from the United States (Ohio), completed his PhD from Princeton University in religious studies in 2016. Before coming to CUHK in 2018, he held the Sheng Yen postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Religion, Florida State University. Gildow’s research interests center on modern and contemporary Chinese Buddhism and extend to the late imperial period and to Chinese popular religion. He has published on topics such as relic worship, Buddhist mummification, Chan historiography, ritual performance, Buddhist monasticism, and the intellectual history of elite Chinese assessments of Buddhism. Articles on these topics have been published in journals including Asia Major, Journal of Chinese Religions, Journal of Chinese Buddhist Studies, Foxue Yanjiu 佛學研究, and Review of Religion and Chinese Society (forthcoming). He has also presented on monastic education and vinaya studies, as well as translated two books on Buddhism from Chinese into English. His current project on Buddhist education examines a historically new institution, the Buddhist seminary.
Website: http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/arts/cshb/
Tel: (852) 3943 5938
Email: cshb@cuhk.edu.hk
Add: Rm 204, Fung King Hey Building, CUHK, Shatin, Hong Kong
Toward the end of the Qing empire (1644-1911), Buddhism’s status in the eyes of Chinese intellectuals, particularly their hopes for its role in the political sphere, was arguably higher than it has ever been since that time. Influential figures including Tan Sitong 譚嗣同 (1865-1898), Zhang Taiyan 章太炎 (1868-1936), and Liang Qichao 梁啟超 (1873-1929) even advocated Buddhism to help reform or overthrow the Qing empire. In contrast, Cai Yuanpei 蔡元培 (1868-1940), probably the most important Chinese educator in the first half of the twentieth century, is known for arguing in 1917 that religions were outdated and that their useful functions could be replaced by education in aesthetics. Less well known is that previously, in 1900, Cai had also advocated Buddhism to save China. Scholarship on Cai’s views of Buddhism, however, is sometimes mistaken or misleading. In this talk I will trace the evolution of Cai’s views of religion and Buddhism. I will clarify how this generally secularist leader could have once advocated Buddhism and why he changed his mind. In short, like other Chinese intellectuals who advocated Buddhism, Cai was fearful of Christianity, disenchanted with Confucianism, and captivated by modern Japanese Buddhism. But later, secular philosophies and historical events modified his opinions. How Buddhism should develop and relate to the state remain contentious within Chinese societies. Reexamining Cai Yuanpei’s ideas about Buddhism highlights challenges Buddhism faces and opportunities it may reconsider.
