From the mid-nineteenth century, many people in Asia strove to revive and strengthen Buddhism in their country in order to answer the challenges and crises brought by modernization and imperialism, and in Chinese Buddhism, Master Taixu 太虚大師 (1890-1947) is considered to be the pre-eminent modern reformer. In Vietnam, the Buddhist Revival of the 1920s-50s called Chan Hung Phat Giao (振興佛教) saw reform and developments in institutional Buddhism as well as the rise of lay groups such as Cao Dai, Hoa Hao, and the Tinh do cu si. ([1]) From the 1920s, Vietnamese Buddhist reformers revitalized their religion, inspired in great part by Taixu’s blueprint to modernize and systematize sangha education and temple administration, and by his ideas on renjian fojiao (人間佛教, [nhan gian phat giao ], “Buddhism for this world”), emphasizing the centrality of education, modern publishing, social work, and Buddhist lay groups to Buddhism’s future in the modern world.However, the precise details of the Buddhist Revival in Vietnam have yet to be fully studied, and so far no scholar has undertaken a specific study of Taixu’s influence upon Vietnamese Buddhism in the 1920s-50s. The Taixu-Vietnam link is briefly mentioned in Woodside (1976), Marr (1981), Do (1999), and McHale (2004), but in the Chinese language, scholars in Taiwan are unaware of Taixu’s influence upon Vietnam and I have not yet seen works from China that mention the link. This article, utilizing both Chinese and Vietnamese sources, aims to shed light on this important part of modern transnational Buddhist history. The article first discusses the Chinese Buddhist revival and then relates the activities of Buddhist reformers in Vietnam, and the flows of Buddhist personnel and materials between Vietnam and China. The article then traces the influence of Taixu upon Buddhism in Vietnam, primarily in two ways: First, the article gives the first account in English of Taixu’s two visits to Vietnam in 1928 and 1940 and points to the importance of the overseas Chinese community in the propagation of transnational Buddhism in modern times. However, by the time Taixu visited Vietnam, his name, his ideas, and the activities of the Chinese Buddhist reform movement were already well-known there via Taixu’s writings and his disciples’ propagation, the focus of the next section. This part also explores how renjian fojiao, “Buddhism for this world,” was interpreted and realized in Vietnam, especially its influence upon Thich Nhat Hanh as he developed his ideas on “Engaged Buddhism.”It is remarkable to see how the revival of Buddhism in Sri Lanka, Burma, India, China, Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Japan (whether state-directed, state-approved, or from below) was seen as the way to assert each nation’s “authentic” identity; towards the goal of unifying and strengthening the nation in the face of the Western onslaught, whether colonialism or modernization or both. However, in addition to nation-centered histories of Buddhism we need more transnational studies, for Buddhism has been undergoing a process of globalization for over a century. Ashiwa and Wank (2005) have made a good start in this direction in their article about two-way transnational networks of Buddhist clergy, devotees, and resources in China, North America, and Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines in the modern era. Unfortunately, they did not mention the age-old history of Buddhist exchanges between China and Vietnam, including trade, Chinese immigration to Vietnam, and Buddhist interactions. In particular, Chinese Buddhist thought, institutions, practices, and material culture have influenced Vietnam for nearly two millennia. This article argues for the importance of these exchanges in modern times as well because these interactions helped establish the conceptual foundation for Vietnamese Engaged Buddhism’s remarkable developments in the 1960s-70s, as well as mainstream Vietnamese Buddhism’s institutional growth and influence from the 1940s to the present.
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