Paramārtha’s Ultimate Truth and the Development of Chinese Buddhism’s Ultimate Truth

This paper discusses the development of ideas of the ultimate in the thought of Chinese Buddhism in the Northern and Southern Dynasties. The concept of ultimate truth is, along with that of conventional truth, a core concept in Mahāyāna Buddhism. During the Sui Dynasty, Chinese Buddhism developed the unique perspective of the Three Truths, the foundation for which was formed during the Southern and Northern Dynasties. This begins with Jie jie Jing 解節經 (in full, Foshuo Jiejie Jing 佛說解節經) by Paramārtha (499–569), which is a partial translation of Saṃdhinirmocanasūtra and presents the theory of ultimate truth (paramārtha) to Chinese Buddhists. Through a comparison of Jiejie Jing with other Chinese and Tibetan translations of Saṃdhinirmocana-sūtra, we establish Paramārtha’s thoughts on the ultimate. The relationship between Paramārtha’s thought on the ultimate and the development of the Three Truths is evaluated in a comparison of Paramārtha’s thoughts on ultimate truth with the thinking of nearly contemporary Chinese monks.

From China to Japan and Back Again: An Energetic Example of Bidirectional Sino-Japanese Esoteric Buddhist Transmission

Sino-Japanese religious discourse, more often than not, is treated as a unidirectional phenomenon. Academic treatments of pre-modern East Asian religion usually portray Japan as the passive recipient of Chinese Buddhist traditions, while explorations of Buddhist modernization efforts focus on how Chinese Buddhists utilized Japanese adoptions of Western understandings of religion. This paper explores a case where Japan was simultaneously the receptor and agent by exploring the Chinese revival of Tang-dynasty Zhenyan. This revival—which I refer to as Neo-Zhenyan—was actualized by Chinese Buddhist who received empowerment (Skt. abhiṣeka) under Shingon priests in Japan in order to claim the authority to found “Zhenyan” centers in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, and even the USA. Moreover, in addition to utilizing Japanese Buddhist sectarianism to root their lineage in the past, the first known architect of Neo-Zhenyan, Wuguang (1918–2000), used energeticism, the thermodynamic theory propagated by the German chemist Freidrich Wilhelm Ostwald (1853–1932; 1919 Nobel Prize for Chemistry) that was popular among early Japanese Buddhist modernists, such as Inoue Enryō (1858–1919), to portray his resurrected form of Zhenyan as the most suitable form of Buddhism for the future. Based upon the circular nature of esoteric transmission from China to Japan and back to the greater Sinosphere and the use of energeticism within Neo-Zhenyan doctrine, this paper reveals the sometimes cyclical nature of Sino-Japanese religious influence. Data were gathered by closely analyzing the writings of prominent Zhenyan leaders alongside onsite fieldwork conducted in Taiwan from 2011–2019.

Epidemics and Plague in Premodern Chinese Buddhism

Buddhist scriptures describe the rise of epidemics as a cosmological inevitability and prescribe a variety of methods for preventing and treating epidemic diseases, which focus mainly on purifying negative karma and exorcizing the supernatural beings responsible for their spread. As these ideas were transmitted to China, Chinese Buddhists assimilated them to indigenous beliefs that also portrayed epidemics as retribution for nonvirtuous behavior, enacted by ghostly agents.

China in medieval Indian imagination: “China”-inspired images in medieval South Asia

Cross-cultural exchanges between India and China during the first millennium are often understood through a Buddhist lens; by investigating the impact of Indian Buddhist sources, be they literary, doctrinal, or artistic, to receiving Chinese communities. In these cultural transactions, instigated by traveling pilgrim-monks and enacted by imperial power players in China, India emerges as a remote, idealized, and perhaps “hollow” center. Imagined or real, the importance of images of India in medieval Chinese Buddhist landscape has been established beyond doubt. What seems to be missing in this unidirectional looking is the impact of these cultural communications in India. What were the Indian responses to Chinese Buddhists' demands and their physical presence? How was China imagined and translated in medieval India? This essay proposes to locate the activities of Chinese monks in India and the iconographies of China-inspired Indian Buddhist images within the larger historical context of shifting cultural and political geography of the medieval Buddhist world. By exploring different types of evidence from borderlands, vis-à-vis the monolithic concepts of China and India, the essay also complicates the China–India studies' comparative model.

The Religious Perfectionism Scale: A Cross-cultural Psychometric Evaluation Among Christians in the United States

The Religious Perfectionism Scale (RPS) was first developed among Chinese Buddhists, Christians, and Muslims. It consists of the following two subscales: Zealous Religious Dedication and Religious Self-Criticism. In this study, a cross-cultural psychometric evaluation of RPS was performed in a US Christian sample ( N = 233). The confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) results presented a strong data-to-model fit statistics for the two-factor oblique model (CFI = .977, SRMR = .051, RMSEA = .034) in the US sample. The measurement of invariance between US and Chinese samples was examined by multiple-group CFA. The results indicated that the RPS fulfilled invariance for factor loadings and residual variances, but intercepts were partially invariant. The internal consistency reliability coefficients for the two subscales were adequate (above .70). The construct validity test results confirmed our hypotheses that the ZRD was positively correlated with Religious Commitment ( r = .56), and the RSC was positively correlated with Scrupulosity ( r = .58). Overall results suggest that the RPS is a promising measure of religious perfectionism for Christians in the United States. The implications of this were discussed.

Loyalitas Konsumen dalam Penggunaan Jasa Rumah Duka (Studi Kasus pada Rumah Duka Jelambar)

This study discusses consumer loyalty in the use of funeral home services. The theory used in this research is the theory of consumer loyalty, word of mouth theory, promotion theory, and service theory. This research uses a case study method with a qualitative descriptive research approach. The data in this study were obtained from 1 staff member and 5 (five) users of funeral home services. Funeral home services are usually used by Chinese Buddhists, Confucians, Christians and Catholics. Funeral homes don't really do marketing promotions, such as price discounts, advertisements, social media activations, and so on. Initially people know and can use the funeral home services through word of mouth. In addition, the area where they live is also close to the location of the funeral home. After using a funeral home service, they are satisfied with the service provided, so they will use the same funeral home service if needed. Because of the use of more than 1 (one) time, consumers can be said to be loyal or loyal. Consumer loyalty can be seen from their willingness to give recommendations (word of mouth) of funeral homes that they use to others. The conclusion of this study, one form of consumer loyalty is in the form of word of mouth. The location and services provided are some of the considerations underlying the funeral home consumer loyalty in this study. Penelitian ini membahas mengenai loyalitas konsumen dalam penggunaan jasa rumah duka. Teori yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah teori loyalitas konsumen, teori word of mouth, teori promosi, dan teori service atau pelayanan. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode studi kasus dengan pendekatan penelitian deskriptif kualitatif. Data dalam penelitian ini diperoleh dari 1 satu orang staf dan 5 (lima) orang pengguna jasa rumah duka. Jasa rumah duka biasanya digunakan oleh masyarakat Tionghoa beragama Buddha, Konghucu, Kristen, dan Katolik. Rumah duka tidak terlalu melakukan promosi pemasaran, seperti potongan harga, memasang iklan, pengaktifan sosial media, dan lainnya. Awalnya orang mengetahui dan dapat menggunakan jasa rumah duka melalui word of mouth. Selain itu, daerah tempat tinggal mereka juga dekat dengan lokasi rumah duka. Setelah menggunakan jasa rumah duka, mereka merasa puas akan service atau pelayanan yang diberikan sehingga mereka akan menggunakan jasa rumah duka yang sama apabila membutuhkan. Karena penggunaan lebih dari 1 (satu) kali, konsumen dapat dikatakan setia atau loyal. Loyalitas konsumen dapat dilihat dari kesediaan mereka akan memberikan rekomendasi (word of mouth) rumah duka yang mereka gunakan kepada orang lain. Kesimpulan dari penelitian ini, salah satu bentuk loyalitas konsumen adalah dalam bentuk word of mouth. Lokasi dan pelayanan yang diberikan merupakan beberapa pertimbangan yang melatarbelakangi loyalitas konsumen rumah duka pada penelitian ini.

The Wheel of Time

Previous research suggests that both patterns in orthography and cultural-specific associations of space-time affect how people map space onto time. In the current study, we focused on Chinese Buddhists, an understudied population, investigating how religious experiences influence their mental representations of time. Results showed that Chinese Buddhists could represent time spatially corresponding to left-to-right, right-to-left and top-to-bottom orientations in their religious scripts. Specifically, they associated earlier events with the starting point of the reading and later times with the endpoint. We also found that Chinese Buddhists were more likely to represent time in a clockwise way than Chinese atheists. This is because Buddhism regards time as cyclic and consisting of repeating ages (i.e. Wheel of Time). Taken together, we provide first psychological evidence that Chinese Buddhists’ spatial representations of time are different from atheists’, due to their religious experiences, namely, both the reading direction in Buddhist texts and Buddhist concepts of time.

A Brief History of Buddhist Transnational Connections

This chapter elaborates on the historical connection between Malaya and the larger Buddhist world. Chinese Buddhism’s roots in Malaya started when the immigrant communities that arrived as laborers in tin mining and rubber plantations brought their religious beliefs. Burmese and Sinhalese brought the Theravada traditions that influenced Chinese Buddhists, while the Chinese inherited a loosely defined Mahayana Buddhism mixed with Chinese customs and popular religions. The idea of modern religion was brought by religious leaders of various traditions to revitalize Buddhism.