A Study On Contemporary Lay Buddhism

After the failure of The Opium War, China was gradually reduced to a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society and lost in the increasingly serious social crisis since modern times. The introduction of western civilization also constantly hit the Chinese nation’s traditional belief system with Confucianism as its main part, which leads to people’s belief confusion, belief crisis or even beliefs vacuum. After the Sino-Japanese War, the Chinese society was faced with more serious society and belief crisis. According to this situation, a batch of advanced intellectuals especially the Lay Buddhist started the great historical practice of saving heart of salvation with the Buddhism. They acted actively, promoted the renewal of modern Buddhism, and brought the vigorous development of modern Lay Buddhism in terms of theory, social practice and ideology. Finally, they took Lay Buddhism to new ways, Humanistic Buddhism and Neo-Confucianism.The paper has six parts.The first part is introduction, which interpreted the motivation and significance of the topic, reviewed the domestic outcome, stated the methodology and basic line; Chapter one generally introduced the situation of modern Buddhism, analysed the decline of traditional Buddhism and the thriving of Lay Buddhism; The second chapter mainly analysis the developing reasons of Lay Buddhism; Chapter Three utterly explains the declining reasons of the Lay Buddhism; In chapter four, the characters of the Lay Buddhism was discussed. The last part is the conclusion.The paper discussed Lay Buddhism at three periods in the modern times historical background:thriving, development and decline; With the dual methodology of Intellectual History and Social History, every developing period was closely connected with social ideology at that time. The declining reasons of Lay Buddhism was interpreted at belief perspective. The paper pointed out the development of modern Lay Buddhism is also an ideological liberation movement. Furthermore, the Lay Buddhist culture has become a unique scenery in thoughts, and has been an important part of ideology and culture in modern China, makes the ideological preparation for a unified China, and play an important role in the study of History of Thoughts in Modern China.