Waiting for the Lotus to Blossom on the Water

Abstract

The admirable book by Holmes Welsh: The Practice of Chinese Buddhism 1900–1950 was already obsolete in some respects when we wrote our book Chinese Buddhism Today, and we did not cover issues such as ordination, the main features of a career in the Sangha, or the reactions of individuals both clerical and lay to the facts that we were reporting. Indian monks who are joining the humanistic Buddhist movement not only give us a new angle on the Buddhist experience but also reconfigure the whole map of how and why Buddhism is developing in the present century. The happy chance of acquiring a recent Chinese book, nearly 500 pages long, on recent developments involving both Taiwan and India has stimulated us to document novel information about the humanistic Buddhist movement which has wider implications, and also has provided fieldwork material which would not otherwise be easy to garner. Keywords: Fo Guang Shan, seminary, triple ordination, missionary ambitions, gratitude