Ashin Jinarakkhita

Chapter 4 situates Ashin Jinarakkhita’s life, ideas, and networks in the broader history of South China Sea Buddhism. The chapter argues that Ashin Jinarakkhita’s attempt to make Buddhism less Chinese was a calculated strategy to ensure the survival of Buddhism as a minority religion in the world’s largest Muslim nation. Unlike his contemporaries in Malaysia and Singapore who sought to spread ideas of Buddhist modernism among the Chinese community, Ashin Jinarakkhita’s vision of Buddhist modernism was to shatter the image of Buddhism as a religion and culture of the Chinese population in Indonesia. As this chapter reveals, Ashin Jinarakkhita founded the Buddhayāna movement that promoted nonsectarian doctrines and practices to be in line with the national discourse of “Unity in Diversity.” What emerged was a form of Indonesian Buddhism (agama Buddha Indonesia) for the modern Indonesian state.

Coda

The preceding chapters have explored the histories of Chinese Buddhist migration, settlement, integration, and networks in the twentieth century. As noted in the introduction, there are two main themes to this study. The first concerns the attempt to write a connected history of Buddhist communities in China and Southeast Asia. The other explores the role of Chinese diasporic monks in the making of Buddhist modernism in the Malay Archipelagic states of Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore. This concluding chapter weaves together the threads of each theme and offers some directions for future research.

Migrants, Monks, and Monasteries

Chapter 1 provides the historical background to Chinese migration and the spread of Buddhism to maritime Southeast Asia between the nineteenth century and the 1940s to set the stage for the discussion of the three monks in this study. In rough chronological order, this chapter tells the history of Chinese migration to colonial Southeast Asian states, arrival of Chinese Buddhism, and the South China Sea Buddhist networks that connected China and Southeast Asia. During this period, Buddhist monks came to the Malay Archipelago and propagated ideas of Buddhist modernism to the overseas Chinese communities. By the end of the 1940s, communist victory in the Chinese civil war led to the establishment of the People’s Republic of China and the evacuation of the Kuomintang government to Taiwan; this period also marked the beginning of decolonization in maritime Southeast Asia.

Yen Pei

Chapter 3 uses Yen Pei’s life and career as a window into the larger and more complex dynamics of migration and transregional Buddhist circulations in the South China Sea during the second half of the twentieth century. The chapter draws on the case of Yen Pei to reveal that, first, migrant monks were significant actors in connecting the Buddhist communities in China and Southeast Asia, and second, Singapore’s so-called reformist Buddhist movement can be better understood by contextualizing it within the broader history of South China Sea Buddhism in the twentieth century. The first half of this chapter discusses Yen Pei’s decade-long career in Taiwan between 1952 and 1964 and his three missionary trips to Southeast Asia in 1958, 1961, and 1964. The second half of the chapter focuses on his religious career in Singapore from 1964 to his death in 1996.

Chuk Mor

Chapter 2 examines the transnational life and career of Chuk Mor during the second half of the twentieth century. The chapter argues that Chuk Mor redefined the basis of “being Buddhist” in Malaysia by drawing on Taixu’s modernist ideas of Human Life Buddhism. As this chapter demonstrates, migratory circulations expanded, corrected, and modified understandings of Buddhist modernism and significantly transformed the religious landscape in postcolonial Malaysia. Chuk Mor encouraged intrareligious conversion by advocating a Malaysian Chinese Buddhist identity that emphasized this-worldly practice of Buddhism, promoted a vision of Buddhist orthodoxy (zhengxin fojiao), and established new Buddhist spaces for the promotion of religious education. By examining the Malaysian context with the idea of South China Sea Buddhism in mind, this chapter highlights the connected history of Buddhist communities in China and maritime Southeast Asia.

Introduction

The introduction sets out the purpose of the book, which is to study Chinese Buddhist migration in the twentieth century, highlighting the connected history of Buddhist communities in China and maritime Southeast Asia. This chapter introduces the term “South China Sea Buddhism,” referring to the forms of Buddhism in maritime Southeast Asia—which use Mandarin Chinese, Southern Chinese dialects, and Southeast Asian languages in their liturgy and scriptures—that have emerged out of Buddhist connections across the South China Sea. It challenges the conventional categories of “Chinese Buddhism” and “Southeast Asian Buddhism” by focusing on the lesser-known Chinese Buddhist communities of maritime Southeast Asia. Finally, the chapter discusses the sources and outline of the book.