The Study Of Buddhist Education In The Republic Of China

The Religion is an old and common social cultural phenomenon in the human history, which affects all the aspects of the society directly or indirectly. In the sharp transitional time, any religion should update itself to survive. Buddhism, as one of the three major religions, also faced the same challenge. In the modern history,though Buddhism seemed to have revived as an"underground stream", it basically existed among layman Buddhists. The temples and abbeys were not as prosperous as before. Buddhism has so-called"three treasures"of the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. And the respectability of Buddha and the promotion of the Dharma are both dependent on the Sangha. So if the Buddhism wanted to develop, the first step was to pay attention to the Buddhist education. When in the Republic of China, the Buddhist education had been the most important task.The Buddhist education in the Republic of China differed from the traditional"Bush System". It was a new type of"School Education"to response to the need of the period. There were about four causes: the education initiation with temple property was the external cause; the Christian preached in the China was the challenge; the abolition of the traditional education system and the rise of new school education system aroused the Buddhist; and the critique and irony for the Buddhism defects stimulated the innovation of Buddhist education. So the development of Buddhist education had the time marking.In the late Qing dynasty, Yang Wenhui firstly founded the"Di Huan Jishe", which was the bedding of Buddhist education in the republic of China. From then on, there were two Buddhist educational models, one was the"Shina Nei Institute", which was established by Ou Yangjian, the other was the"Wu Chang Buddhist College", which was established by Taixu. In the two to three decades of the twenty century, there were so many Buddhist colleges founded and Buddhist education was prosperous. But it was interrupted by the war of resistance against Japan. Hence the wars didn't stop and the Buddhist education, as well as the Buddhism innovation movement, gradually went downhill.The development of the Buddhist education in the Republic of China mainly reflected the Buddhist educational thought and the prosperity of practice—hundreds of Buddhist schools were founded for Buddhist and society. Ou yangjian, Yuexia, Dixian, Taixu, Yuanying and their students and so on were the main driving forces for the Buddhist education. As they had distinct sect faith, their Buddhist educational thoughts were different, which were especially reflected in the booming of the Consciousness-only theory.Shina Nei Institute, Wu Chang Buddhist College and Qingdao Zhanshan Buddhist School were three representative Buddhist schools. The first was founded by lay Buddhist, the second was the preaching base of Taixu, and the third reflected Tanxu's Buddhist educational thought. So through the study of the three schools wound help to hold the development of Buddhist schools in the Republic of China.The female Buddhist education was an important part of the Buddhist education, but was easily ignored. This article wanted to show this female Buddhist education through the study of the causes of female Buddhist education, the nun's education, and the Upāsikā's education. Among them, the Upāsikā's Buddhist educational thoughts of Taixu and Zhang Shenghui were the representativenesses, which contained the new develop factors.During the Republic of China, artistic education became an indispensable part of the Buddhism education, but almost no one studied it. Buddhism artistic education included three parts—literature education, music education and art education. The literature education stressed three abilities: learning to read, reading and writing. Many young Buddhists can learn some common music as well as the Buddhist Singing in the Buddhism school. The Buddhism artistic education consisted of painting and craft. The famous Picture Album for Protecting Animals had an important effect for doing missionary work.The achievements of the Buddhist education also included a large number of Buddhism journals'publication. In particular the new established Buddha colleges published many their own journals about their education process, which reflected and spread their education policy. The journal The Sound of Wave which was considered as Taixu's propaganda position reflected Taixu's Buddhism educational thoughts and achievements in practice. Researching the journals of Buddhism colleges was not only in favor of analyzing the focus and achievement of Buddhist education, but also beneficial for adding to lots of new data, which can deepen the study of Buddhist education.Overall, in the Republic of China, when was a special time, Buddhist education was very different from the past in the aspects of educational purposes, perspective of teachers and students and so on. The reform of Buddhist education has both gains and losses. Standing on the different points of view, the evaluations were also different. The present Buddhist education is the continuous development of Buddhist reform movement in the Republic of China. And Buddhist education in the Republic of China left a valuable lesson for the present Buddhist education, which included not only the organizational forms, the setting of study system and curriculum, but also the spirit of advance with the times and saving the world dauntlessly.