Fostering Education Beyond the Classroom

Examples from Republican Buddhism and their Legacy Today

Authors

  • Stefania Travagnin SOAS University of London Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15239/ycjcb.01.01.04

Keywords:

Dharma teaching to the army (jundui hongfa 軍隊弘法), Dharma teaching in prison (jianyu hongfa 監獄弘法), Wang Enyang 王恩洋 (1897–1964), Monk Cihang 慈航法師 (1893–1954), Chinese Prison Dharma Propagation Society (Zhongguo jianyu hongfa she 中國監獄弘法社), Humanistic Buddhism (renjian fojiao 人間佛教), Buddhist education (fojiao jiaoyu 佛教教育), Republican Buddhism (minguo fojiao 民國佛教 )

Abstract

This research explores how Buddhist “education within/for lay society” translated in the Chinese context. In both the Imperial and Republican eras, Buddhist monastics and lay intellectuals did more than simply preach the laity. Trusting that Buddhist ethics could offer positive guidance to the community, central and local governments requested that Buddhist monastics lecture in other less usual venues, like military camps or prisons, or open their temple premises to soldiers and inmates. Besides formal lecturing, Chinese monastics often inspired by example, and facilitated the development of the surrounding community through their charisma, leadership, and practical initiatives. This article starts with a historical overview of education in China, and the interlinked development of religious (Buddhist and Daoist) and secular (Confucian) learning in the premodern era. The second and third parts focus on continuation and developments in the Republican era, addressing intellectual arguments and debates, as well as concrete examples of Buddho-Confucian educational initiatives outside the classroom. The study ends with reflections on the contribution of Buddhism to for global society.

Author Biography

  • Stefania Travagnin, SOAS University of London

    Stefania Travagnin is Reader in Chinese Buddhism at SOAS, University of London. She has a MA in Chinese Studies from Ca’Foscari University (Italy) and a PhD in the Study of Religion from SOAS. Travagnin was a visiting professor at Sichuan University and is co-director of the multiyear project “Mapping Religious Diversity in Modern Sichuan”; within this project, she is exploring Han Buddhist local micro-histories, female communities, patterns of Sangha education, and the spatial ecology of religious sites, focusing especially on the time from the late Qing to the end of the Republican era. Travagnin has also done field research among Buddhist communities in Taiwan for more than twenty years, studying Buddhist women, the phenomenon of Humanistic Buddhism (renjian fojiao 人間佛教), the figure of the monk Yinshun 印順 (1906–2005), and the intersection between religion and media. In Taiwan, she was visiting scholar at Academia Sinica, National Cheng Chi University, Tung Hai University, the Center of Chinese Studies at the National Central Library of Taipei, and currently she is a research fellow at the Center for the Study of Buddhism in Taiwan at Hsuan-Chuang University. Travagnin has edited or co-edited several volumes, including Religion and Media in China: Insights and Case Studies from the Mainland, Taiwan, and Hong Kong (Routledge, 2016), the three-volume publication Concepts and Methods for the Study of Chinese Religions (De Gruyter, 2019–2020), the collection Buddhism and International Humanitarian Law (Routledge, 2023). She is editor-in-chief of the journal Review of Religion and Chinese Society, and co-editor of the journal Contemporary Buddhism.

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Published

2024-03-26

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Articles