Engaging the Secular: Conceptions of the Future in Modern Chinese Buddhism (Ming-Feng Wu)

CERES Forschungskol­lo­qui­um

This study explores how mod­ern Chi­nese Bud­dhism craft­ed its vision of the future in the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry by reimag­in­ing the sec­u­lar realm. Instead of view­ing the sec­u­lar as a fixed enti­ty to be accept­ed or reject­ed, the Chi­nese Bud­dhist com­mu­ni­ty rede­fined its sig­nif­i­cance through its engage­ment with the “mun­dane world.” The research exam­ines three con­cur­rent dimen­sions of this rede­f­i­n­i­tion: first, the trans­for­ma­tion of the mun­dane realm from a place of suf­fer­ing into a space of poten­tial lib­er­a­tion and mean­ing; sec­ond, Chi­nese Bud­dhist reflec­tions on the First World War, which reshaped their under­stand­ing of Buddhism’s world­ly role; and third, the emer­gence of social move­ments and transna­tion­al net­works that embod­ied these evolv­ing inter­pre­ta­tions. Togeth­er, these dimen­sions reveal that Chi­nese Buddhism’s vision of the future arose from active­ly redefin­ing the secular’s bound­aries and mean­ings, posi­tion­ing it as the foun­da­tion for Bud­dhist ful­fill­ment and shap­ing a dis­tinc­tive vision of the future.