Sea Ideological Research

During the times of the Republic of China, the Chinese Buddhist monks, lacking of discipline, gave a bad image. Most of them mumbled prayers as their work, knowing and noticing neither practice nor study of Buddhism. Combining with the turbulence of the society, the variance of the current political situation and the introduction of foreign culture and so on, the disaster of "Make temples into schools" has appeared. A few clearheaded people in Buddhism circle, such as TaiXu, YinShun, put forward a slogan of "Life Buddhism" and "Human Buddhism", and do their utmost to run and appeal for Buddhism reform.After more than 1,000 years of development, Chinese Buddhism had differentiated from that of ancient Indian and turned into Chinese style mostly at that time. Because of adjoining India, a large number of ancient Indian Buddhism books and records had been kept in Tibet where Buddhism had basically maintained original appearance, so the Buddhist monks in Chinese district decided to learn from Tibet.Regardless of hardships and the danger of losing his life, NengHai of Mianzhu county of Sichuan, the firs Chinese monk who entered into Tibet, walked to Tibet to learnt the Tibetan Buddha dharma and set up temples in Sichuan and Shanxi and established a new Buddha school named Great Prajna after he came back. Owing to his contribution, he and FaZun were called "FaZun, translator of Buddhism. NengHai, the sower"Just like what professor Xing DongFeng of Ai university in Japan has said, the people engaged in humanities now thinks that even older things in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Tang and Song Dynasty are valuable, and worth studying, but they don't know that the things of times of the Republic of China are not very near from us, and the study on that era should cause the attention too.As the great world-famous monk who learnt and spreaded Tibet Buddhism in China's modern history, NengHai, his story and ideology haven't caused enough attention of the academia, article and work about him are too rare,. I gave out this essay just to arouse others'further research on NengHai. NengHai's contribution to mikkya in Tibet is here.Firstly, he adhered to the traditional Tibetan mikkya and also synthesized the manifest and hidden, the Tibetan and Chinese Buddhism, and made distinguished contribution to the communication between the Tibetan and Chinese Buddhism.Secondly, he established pure and authentic temples of Tibetan mikkya, corrected the fallacy and rumors, spread authentic Tibetan Buddhism abroad.Thirdly, he revitalized the precepts to regulate and solidify the monks, brought up an admirable monk group.Fourthly, he held Buddhist education strongly and trained a large number of personnel engaged in the communication Tibetan with Chinese.At last, he translated a great deal of Tibetan Buddhism classics, offered Powerful evidence for people to understand Tibetan Buddhism.Besides, he had his own opinions on Tibetan mikkya too. He regards its final grade is the same as Zen, and the weak point of Chinese Buddhism lies in the justice of the empty talk and defiance of practice, lack of rule, law, pattern, norm, tradition, etc. So he propagates Tibetan Buddhism with the characteristic of "combine Greater vehicle Buddhism with lesser vehicle Buddhism, the manifest with hidden Buddhism".