Imposing the rules: reform and rebellion at Gushan Yongquan Monastery in the 1930s

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe aim of this study is to highlight the role played by a time-honoured yet creative pattern of monastic reform in the transition of Chinese Buddhism to modernity: this is the renewal of Buddhist monastic discipline (Vinaya, jielü 戒律) in Republican China (1912–1949). This paper analyses the code of rules composed in 1930 by Chan master Xuyun (ca. 1864–1959) for the Yongquan Monastery of Gushan in Fujian, both within the broadest framework of Xuyun’s reform at Gushan, and in its historical context. By exploring the standards of orthodoxy on which monastic decline was determined and reform conducted in the first half of the twentieth century, as well as the main actors in this process, I intend to demonstrate that the renewal of Vinaya was a long-established practice that bound together religious and political elites around a shared monastic ideal of purity. I will endeavour to demonstrate, at the same time, how this practice could be adapted to counter specific problems of different monastic communities and how it could creatively integrate Buddhist institutional innovations. As the case of the Yongquan monastery shows, the re-establishment of monastic discipline is an important, though overlooked, component of the widespread phenomenon of religious regeneration that took place during the Republican era.