The Practise Mode Of Buddhism In Modern Society

Buddhism has produced profound impact to China's society, policy and culture since it was introduced to China for more than two thousand years. Buddhism in China had made a great transformation particularly when Shitaixu not only implemented Buddhism revolution of teachings, policy and possessions but also advocated the development of Engaged-Buddhism. In recent 20 years, the development of Engaged-Buddhism has caused the rise of China's layman Buddhist and many sorts of relatively independent Buddhism group started to emerge.After China's opening-up policy was carried out, new economic pattern began to appear, therefore a new social class called"boss"started to emerge. Some of them chose Buddhism as their belief and became pious Buddhist. As these bosses control the majority of economic, social and cultural resources, so there appeared a belief practice quite different compared with normal Buddhists. That is they are not satisfied with the pattern of self-blessing, which became the reason that they build up Buddhism organization such as Buddhism fund, Zen Party, company Dojo through various activities such as Buddhist gatherings, studies, teachings sharing etc. What's more, they build their companies into a kind of bridge to carry forward Buddha ideas which were used to cultivate corporate culture and make use of Buddhism principles to educate and train their staff. So that their companies carry Buddhism feature and these may be called faith-based enterprises. Boss Buddhist enterprises emphasize the philosophy of"Discipline while practicing, enlightenment while living."They lead their staff to participate in public beneficial and charitable activities in order to inspire more Buddhism social participation function. Some bosses even set up enterprises fully for the reason of practicing Buddhism. We can say that, the unique characteristic of boss Buddhist practice is turning enterprise into a sacred Dojo.This paper provides a deep illustration of three distinctive religious group which consists of boss Buddhists and a Buddhist enterprise through participative observation and interview. In particular, the study background of this paper is set up in the macro background of China's social transition and Buddhism system transformation. We hope that we could investigate how they develop belief practice pattern from individual to group even to a much wide socialization through investigation of boss Buddhists belief practice. Furthermore, we could discover the epoch and social feature of China's present Buddhism.Buddhism belief in today's China still carries private features. China's social structure is based on kinship and territory ties and interpersonal relationship between acquaintances. All this social behaviors are still reflected in Buddhism practice. The mainstream of Chinese belief practice still obtains the characteristics of"self-blessing, spirit conscious"and believers do not necessarily attached themselves to any organizations that emphasis social living and regularization.As the development of Engaged-Buddhism, the belief practice of today's China has gradually visualized civility feature. First of all, Buddhism moral contains abundant civil spirit, such as mercy, equality, justice, industrious and thrifty and so on.Secondly, the spirit of"Great mercy and pity to all beings"is highly consistent with that of volunteers'thus arousing and cultivating the community sense of society citizen.Thirdly, the belief of community sense provides the majority an opportunity of public communication. So Buddhists composing of these majorities get a sense of belonging sense and social bond of same belief. What's more, it also plays an important role to develop the society member's capability of mutual trust, helps to build up a kind and interpersonal relationship. That's why Buddhism community can be trusted as complete society structure participating in the construction of China's civil society.This paper's study objective is the Boss-Buddhist in Shanghai. Consequently, the specialty of this paper material and the relative conclusions reflect some special features since it is a case study based on participative observation and interview. Despite of this, I still hope this paper could provide an inspiration to explain the related problems of inner contact between Buddhism belief and social structure construction in today's China.