1 Introduction: Repositioning Buddhism

Since the late Qing, Buddhist clerics and the laity started framing Buddhism and Buddhist practice within a new set of conceptual categories, especially analytical ideas imported from the West or via Japan, and also through revisited and redefined Chinese (and Buddhist) endogenous ideas. Buddhists worked to reposition themselves and their tradition in the new cultural and political time; they updated Buddhist taxonomy and vocabulary and articulated new semantics of traditional terminologies. This process was unfolding in a wider social and intellectual milieu of challenges and paradigm shifts, a milieu that involved other groups and patterns, with whom Buddhists acted in parallel but also intersected. Certainly, this scenario was not confined to the Chinese soil; as Krämer writes in his contribution to this volume, the Japanese were facing a similar atmosphere, and experiencing the process to reposition Buddhism within a new set of values.

In this chapter, I will explore the new ways Chinese and Taiwanese Buddhists understood and used the specific term xin 信 and the compound xinyang 信仰 in the first half of the twentieth century, and will assess how the reconfiguration of the idea of xin was a reflection of the overall intellectual and religious background, but at the same time also actively contributed to the shaping of that framework. In fact, the direct and indirect debates on xin also developed in dialogue with non-Buddhist and non-religious agencies, and may have affected these in turn. Certainly, given the complexity of the environment within which these debates have been conducted, I will show that the character xin assumed various meanings, and thus translations, in these decades, and question whether there was a rupture or a continuity with xin’s conception in pre-modern Chinese Buddhism.¹

Unlike other chapters in this volume, I am not much concerned with the concept of “belief” or “faith” and the plurality of their Chinese translations, which included—but are not limited to—the character xin. Instead, I will specifically address the character xin, and related compounds, and unpack the spectrum of meanings that these terms embedded. It will appear that the semantic scale of xin includes concepts that we may translate in English with terms like faith or belief, intended in the sense of unconditional confidence in—and reliance on—specific doctrines, but also as a preliminary and necessary step in the path of cultivation and practice towards the ultimate religious and spiritual realization. In the several compounds that will be explored in this chapter, xin assumes qualitative nuances as, for instance, right or wrong, positive or negative, rational or irrational, secular or spiritual. Finally, Buddhist discussions on xin associate this term with other expressions and ideas, like the call for saving the country (jiuguo 救國), that further specify contextual meanings of xin.²

I have based this xin(yang) research mostly on articles published in Bud- dhist journals in the first half of the twentieth century, and will reveal the debates Buddhists developed around this concept, diachronically and synchronically, and how those debates were embedded within social and political discourses. In fact, some of these Buddhist-authored works were not just concerned with Buddhism’s status quo, but also mirrored and reframed the political thoughts of rulers such as Sun Yat-sen 孫中山 (1866–1925) and Chiang Kai-shek 蔣介石 (1887–1975); the role that these non-religious figures assigned to the concept of xin(yang) becomes a crucial addition to rather Buddhadharma-based argumentations.

Finally, my research draws on intellectual debates that animated Taiwan in those same decades, i.e., during the Japanese occupation of the island, given the relevance of Buddhist and otherwise intellectual exchanges between China and Taiwan in those years, and how intellectual movements in China affected—or interacted with—Taiwan, too. In other words, we may want not to think of Republican China and Japan-ruled Taiwan as distant entities, but should rather recognize their interconnection, and revalue East Asia’s role as a macro-area with common underlying narratives. In fact, a study of Taiwan would also shed light on the debates in Japan from the Meiji through the Taishō and the beginning of the Shōwa eras,³ and thus contextualize Chinese perspectives within the wider East Asian region.

In Chinese Buddhism, the semantics of xin(yang) intersects with several domains, in fact recurring in discussions about practice, doctrine, and institutions. In this chapter, I will then group and analyze modern Buddhist semantics of xin under four headings. In Part 2, I will explore systems of classification of xin proposed by several well-known, but also other less-known, Buddhist monastics and laypeople, via careful attention to the binaries zhengxin 正信 vis-à-vis mixin 迷信, 信 xin vis-à-vis kexue 科學, and 迷信 mixin vis-à-vis kexue. In this section, it will already become evident that the idea of xin often appeared in conversation with the character xiu 修, and so the idea of cultivation/practice. In Part 3, I will focus on how Buddhist leaders from the Republican period made xin instrumental to the process of “rescuing the nation” and the building of the new China; here, xin is moved out of the exclusive domains of doctrine and practice, and engages with institutional and political discourses. Part 4 will still concern the political and official milieu, but from a different perspective: rather than looking at how officials and intellectuals used or defined xin, I will focus on how Buddhists perceived those non-Buddhist views, and put them in a constructive dialogue with Buddhist narratives. In Part 5, I will look at xin’s “institutionalization,” namely at how the concept of xin was used to label lay Buddhist associations, in China and Taiwan, and thus its concretization in social (and secular) domains. The conclusion will also include a brief overview of the legacy of these early twentieth-century positions.

As this chapter will show, it is quite difficult to arrange these debates and different arguments into a single narrative, or to discuss the topic via an official history. The complexity of voices, however, shared one common feature: the need to reposition conceptual semantics of Buddhism within the reconstruction process of the new China.

2 Categorizing xin 信: zhengxin 正信 vis-à-vis mixin 迷信

As explained briefly in the Introduction, the character xin has been charged with different values via the addition of qualitative prefixes that added nuances to its root meaning of “trust,” “belief,” or its reference, in relational way, to “ethical values.” Several written discussions on xin, for example, developed around the particular dichotomy of zheng-xin (correct belief) and mi-xin (superstitious belief), or in other words, within the categorization of a positive xin and a negative xin. Zhengxin is often identified with the basic refuge in the three jewels, namely Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, and thus with a faith that brings awakening (wuxin 悟信), while mixin is often identified with faith in (and reliance on) polytheism and spirits, a worship often labeled as xiejiao 邪教 (heretic cults). The former is highly valued in the Buddhist community, in both China and Taiwan, while the latter is defined as a cause of worries and instability, and became synonymous with the religion of the dark ages.⁴

As we will see in this section, the opposite categories of zhengxin and mixin have been debated within the context of different schools’ doctrines and practices, in relation to the historical development of the Buddhadharma from India to China, and in parallel with the new pressing challenge of scientism and secularism. Some publications included both these categories explicitly, while others discussed one with implicit reference to the other. Often, this categorization associated the character xin with the newly reconsidered term zongjiao 宗教,⁵ and cross-referred to the categories of science and secularity as well.

The concept of a correct xin is frequently associated with a specific school or even a specific figure within one school; this is certainly in line with the sectarian nature of pre-modern Chinese Buddhism, and when it comes to Taiwan it is also the effect of the relevance of sectarianism in Japanese Buddhism. Moreover, debate on a correct xin also embraces other interconnected concepts such as xiuxing 修行 (practice) and xiuyang 修養 (cultivation), and even here, the sectarian discourse of mainstream Chinese Buddhism frames the argument. A careful reading of Republican sources clearly shows that Buddhists retrieved the definition of the correct belief in Buddhism from canonical scriptures and writings of ancient patriarchs, which are cited repeatedly.⁶ Given that Mahāyāna is the tradition mostly spread and followed by (Han) Buddhists, it is unsurprising that discussion on the correct belief has also been associated with the Mahāyāna cross-sectarian practice of the six pāramitās.⁷ The influential monk Fazun 法尊 (1902–1980), an important educator in the Republican period and particularly active in the Sino-Tibetan Buddhist Institute (Hanzang jiaoliyuan 漢藏教理院), discussed xin according to similar criteria. Fazun wrote two short articles on xin, which he analyzed within the domains of doctrine and practice. He began the first with a quotation from a Buddhist scripture, the Avataṃsaka Sūtra, that said that xin is the mother of all virtues, and nurtures all good roots.⁸ This is why, Fazun argued, it is important for Buddhists to cultivate xin at the early stage of their practice. But what should Buddhists believe (xin) in? A correct xin has four objects, Fazun continued, and these are the Buddha (xin fo 信佛), the Dharma (xin fa 信法), the Sangha (xin seng 信僧), and the discipline (xin jie 信戒).⁹

The value and virtue of (the positive) religious/Buddhist xin (faith) lie in the fact that it exceeds the power of materiality and science, that it can in fact address situations that would otherwise remain unexplored or unexplained within the framework of material culture or science. In this perspective, some Buddhists have argued that in a world and time dominated by materiality and scientific development, and where and when everything is judged and categorized according to scientific criteria, there is still a strong need to recognize that the power of xin/xinyang (faith) overcomes material culture/material science. Faith does have its inner value, then, and it is defined as a spiritual culture (jingshen wenhua 精神文化) that can serve in support of (and sometimes counteract) the science-oriented material culture.¹⁰ Moreover, correct xin (faith) can have global impact, as it can contribute to the purification (jinghua 淨化) of this entire world.¹¹ And again, of course, correct xin(yang) in these articles¹² is synonymous with the correct practice of the Buddhadharma that can lead to achieving Buddhahood (fo zhi dao 佛之道).¹³

Some other articles address only mixin, still in terms of “wrong faith” (cuowu de xinyang 錯誤的信仰), but also as an unavoidable step in the historical development of the Dharma and the secular world. Thus, a specific faith that is defined as correct in one historical period can be labeled as superstitious and negative in a subsequent moment, in order to adapt to the altered surrounding cultural parameters.¹⁴ Some of these arguments, published in Taiwan in the journal Nanying fojiao/Nan’e Bukkyō 南瀛佛教,¹⁵ are written by Japanese Buddhists, and also reveal contemporary Japanese understanding of—and musings on—mixin.¹⁶

Others insisted on the opposition between mixin and kexue, stating that mixin develops especially when and where kexue has not flourished yet. These articles refer to the concept of a positive and “correct” xin, even if mostly implicitly; see, for instance, the explicit statement that the overall idea of zongjiao, here taken in connection to a positive xin, can be “good” for individuals and surrounding societies.¹⁷ Yet the correlation between mixin and kexue is quite multifaceted, implying both a distance and an overlap between the two concepts.

And some Buddhists debated the binary zhengxin – mixin within two main contexts: the overall development of Buddhism,¹⁸ and the overall Chinese (Han) cultural sphere.

3 Legitimizing xin 信 in the Public Discourse: Benefiting Society and Rescuing the Nation

This section will propose views on xin from Buddhist figures who have often been recognized as the leaders of crucial networks in Republican China; moreover, they were often protagonists of several exchanges and negotiations with the political powers. Although these voices and arguments are not exhaustive of the Buddhist landscape, they become crucial because they delineate the official discourse of xin in a public and secular sphere too. The claim of a certain Buddhist xin as instrumental in the making of the new China gave then new values to xin and religion.

The layman Fan Gunong 范古農 (1881–1951) was influential in the Chinese Buddhist sphere as editor of Buddhist books and journal; he also gave lectures on the philosophy of the Only-Consciousness School, and authored works on the foundations of Buddhism. His writings include the article “Xin fo zhi tiaojian 信佛之條件” (1928), where he listed thirty-six conditions for a proper belief in Buddhism.³⁹ These thirty-six conditions, he argued, are the basis of the correct faith and practice of Buddhism, and thus thirty-six factors that can distinguish a correct Buddhist practice from an incorrect one. Correct faith in Buddhism (which Fan Gunong called zhenzheng xin fo 真正信佛, or zhenzheng xinyang 真正信仰) is rooted in the figure of Śākyamuni Buddha as the teacher, takes Buddha’s canonical scriptures (fojing 佛經) as the guiding teachings, and is strengthened by respect for the five precepts (jie 戒) of the laity. An important element that is stressed in several of those thirty-six points is the distinction between Buddhas and bodhisattvas on the one hand, and divine spirits and ghosts (tianxian shengui 天仙神鬼) on the other. Belief in Buddha is then a correct faith (zhengxin) and not a superstitious belief, while belief in other forms of deities falls under the category of superstition. Unlike other Buddhists, Fan Gunong included Pure Land practice in the category of correct faiths. Furthermore, this correct belief in the Buddha (or in other words, adhering to Buddhism rather than to other beliefs) can also bring peace and have political and social value, an element that is recurrent in all the voices analyzed in this Part 3.⁴⁰

The duals zhengxin and mixin recurred in the writings of the eminent monk Yuanying 圓瑛 (1878–1953). Yuanying was president of the Chinese Buddhist Association during the Republican period (Zhongguo fojiao hui 中國佛教會) from 1928 to 1937, and of the Buddhist Association of China (Zhongguo fojiao xiehui 中國佛教協會) in 1953, albeit only briefly. He was an eminent meditation and Pure Land teacher, an innovator for Sangha and lay education, but also well-known for not sharing most of the reforms proposed by Taixu. Yuanying discussed xin within the context of Buddhist cultivation and also in its relation to society and social demands. As for the latter, Yuanying wrote that xinxin 信心⁴¹ should be cultivated as the vow preliminary to the nianfo 念佛 practice.⁴² In a different talk, Yuanying discussed “correct” Buddhism as a positive xinyang, which brings benefits (liyi 利益) to society. He made a distinction between Buddhism as zhengxin and the wrong understanding and practice of the Dharma that made some practice of Buddhism resembling a mixin. In other words, Yuanying perceived the danger of turning Buddhism into a mixin, and stressed that only the correct practice of Buddhism was the faith (xinyang) that the nation needed to foster.⁴³ Yuanying then proposed that zongjiao (religion) was a positive concept to counteract mixin; he also drew a parallel to Confucius (Kongzi 孔子) and Confucianism (rujiao 儒教).⁴⁴ Yuanying repeated this idea in other pieces and, as in other monks’ writings, discussed the—apparently logical—law of cause and effect (yinguo 因果) as proof of zhengxin.⁴⁵

In those same years, the monk Taixu 太虛 (1890–1947), who is probably the best known—and one of the most radical—reformist of the Republican period, defined correct faith in Buddhism as not just beneficial to the people and the nation, but also as the country’s savior. Some remarks along these lines were published under the title “Zhengxin jiu guo 正信救國” (1933);⁴⁶ this is just one of the several lectures that Taixu gave in the late 1920s and the 1930s and in which he explained that patriotism was an inner teaching of Buddhism. Buddhists, Taixu reasoned, should take the nation’s suffering as their own and actively use Buddhist compassion (cibei xin 慈悲心) to solve their social and national responsibilities. This was the way to merge the Mahāyāna Buddhist practice of compassion (cibei 慈悲) and skillful means (fangbian 方便), and the understanding of the Dharma as teaching that could liberate sentient beings from suffering, with Sun Yat-sen’s call for a national sense of the public. Therefore, patriotism and rescuing the nation were conceived as intersecting with Buddhist practice and mission, and among Buddhists’ national duties.⁴⁷ The next step, Taixu believed, was to go beyond protecting the nation, and, in light with the global essence and value of Buddhism, move towards saving the entire world.⁴⁸

Another influential Buddhist leader in the first half of the twentieth- century was the monk Cihang 慈航 (1893–1954). Cihang lived in China in the Republican period; he engaged in all the major debates that animated the Buddhist (or otherwise intellectual) circles in the 1930s, and proposed arguments that resonated—but did not fully coincide—with Taixu’s positions. The close connection between Taixu and Cihang has also been stressed by recent scholarship that labeled the latter as part of Taixu’s legacy.⁴⁹ Cihang moved to Taiwan in the late 1940s, thus becoming one of those clerics who bridged China with Taiwan, and worked on the “rebirth” in the post-colonial Taiwan of the kind of new Buddhism that had developed in the early twentieth century China. Cihang’s oeuvre is vast and varied; he wrote commentaries on the most popular Buddhist texts in early twentieth-century China, but also debated the questions of education, Sangha reforms, and the role of nuns in the Buddhist and wider communities. Cihang also wrote extensively on the significance and implication of the term zongjiao, what mixin was, how to define fojiao 佛教 within this renewed analytical vocabulary, and, like Yuanying and Taixu, how fojiao could be effective in the mission of “rescuing the nation” (jiuguo 救國). As for the xin/mixin debate, Cihang first listed the major arguments that had been put forward in those years to define how a teaching or a belief could be defined as a mixin, and thereafter confuted most of them. Cihang noticed that worship practices (libai 禮拜) have been said to be a defining element of mixin, ceremonies and ceremonial etiquette (yishi 儀式) have been considered as another key features, and devotion to other-worldly spirits and deities (shen 神) has also been labeled as mixin.⁵⁰ This latter point resonates with what other less influential Buddhists wrote in the Republican period (see Part 2 of this chapter). Cihang also reported that another very curious feature put forward for mixin is that it was related to something that we could not see (kan bu jian de dongxi 看不見的東西). This meant that what could not be seen did not exist either, and any belief in something that could not be seen was then mixin. The point was, in other words, that you could not believe in (xiangxin 相信) what you could not see, because what you could not see could not be real. This final issue was debated and confuted by Cihang in quite a few lectures,⁵¹ in which he explained why that criterion could not serve to define something as mixin.⁵² One of these talks focused on the law of cause and effect (yinguo 因果), which is seen as a key mark of Buddhism; in this lecture, Cihang questioned whether believing in that was mixin too, since the law of cause and effect is not something that can be seen. Most of the discussions on Buddhism as mixin were also related to the debate on whether Buddhism could rescue the nation. Cihang argued that mixin could not accomplish that mission; moreover, it could constitute a problem for the safety of the nation. However, Buddhism, which he did not categorize as mixin, could very well facilitate that. To strengthen his argument, Cihang listed Buddhism as one of the three main religions available in China,⁵³ and also categorized it as a form of national education (guojia de jiaoyu 國家的教育); it is the latter that gives Buddhism the ability to “rescue the nation,” Cihang argued. Buddhism, Christianity, the Three Principles of the People, Confucianism (kongjiao 孔教)—these were all forms of education, and as education they could rescue the nation.⁵⁴ Cihang explained that there were three types of education: the education given within the household (jiating jiaoyu 家庭 教育), the education given at school (xuexiao jiaoyu 學校教育), and the education given within society (shehui jiaoyu 社會教育). Since religion (zongjiao), and especially Buddhism, offered guidance to society, it belonged to the third type of education, and as such had the ability to rescue the nation.⁵⁵ Finally, in Cihang’s writings Buddhism is then conceived mostly in terms of jiaoyu or zongjiao, while the terms xin or xinyang do not appear equally often.

The intersecting of narratives between the religious sphere and the political domain reveals parallels, associations, and ideological borrowing and merging. For instance, the call for “rescuing the nation” (jiuguo) was raised not only by the Buddhist/religious community, but, as Klein explains in his chapter, was a core tenet in Sun Yat-sen’s politics and the KMT government. Another example from the process of borrowing and unifying terminology concerns the relations that both domains, the Buddhist and the political (KMT), had with Confucianism and governing principles. For instance, Confucian ideals, like the datong 大同 (Great Unity), are embraced and adopted by both spheres.⁵⁶ Furthermore, while the theologian Wang Zhixin 王治心 (1881–1968) drew parallels between the Three Principles of the People and Christianity (see his Yesu zhuyi 耶穌主義),⁵⁷ Taixu not only stressed the strong similarities between those principles and his rensheng fojiao, but also stipulated parallel Buddhist Principles (San Fo zhuyi 三佛主義).

Taixu’s second principle (Fohua zhuyi 佛化主義) aimed to “Buddhicize” the surrounding (lay) society.⁵⁸ The two characters fohua 佛化 became cardinal in the so-called “Buddhicization movement” (fohua yundong 佛化運動); members of the “modernizers’ network” used the term fohua, rather than fojiao 佛教 or fofa 佛法 to express the plan to actively influence, and especially reshape, societal and other non-Buddhist spheres with the correct xin. The overall movement of reform and innovation eventually intersected with this call for a “Buddhicization.” Many aspects, from education to family life,⁵⁹ from socialism to the three principles of the people,⁶⁰ were encouraged to go through a fohua process so to reflect the correct xin; several periodicals were also established to discuss the Buddhicization plans,⁶¹ and many articles were published also elsewhere on the topic.⁶² The lay scholars Jiang Tesheng 蔣特生 and Tang Dayuan 唐大圓 (1885–1941), both part of the “Taixu-centered network,” were two of the main protagonists in the description of the Buddhicization process. Tang Dayuan’s “Xin fohua zhi biaozhun 新佛化之 標準,” originally written in 1922 and published in 1924, lists the core doctrine of the new Buddhism, citing key Mahāyāna scriptures and teachings; the article also merges traditional Mahāyāna with features of rensheng fojiao 人生佛教, such as the combination of acting in the world (shijian 世間) with the otherworldly spiritual essence (chushi 出世) of the Buddhadharma, and the purpose to benefit and purify (jingyi 淨益) society at large.

In other words, the relations between the religious and the political at that time were more complex than a mere opposition or pure collaboration. I will explore other patterns of this interplay in Part 4.

4 Politicizing xin 信: a Buddhist Reading of Sun Yat-sen’s and Chiang Kai-shek’s Views on xin(yang) 信仰

While Klein’s chapter in this volume explores political use of the concepts of “belief” and “trust” in the Republican period, I will address how the viewpoints of the same political protagonists were perceived by the Buddhist community. A good reference for this research are the writings of the monk and historian Dongchu 東初 (1908–1977), a native of China who then fled to Taiwan in the mid-twentieth century. Although a graduate from Taixu’s innovative institutes for Sangha’s education, Dongchu adopted an ambivalent position towards tradition and reform, showing less enthusiasm for the secularization of Sangha education than his own teacher.

In his Zhongguo fojiao jindai shi 中國佛教近代史 (1974), Dongchu offered a detailed account of the political and social concerns on xinyang in China during the first decades of the twentieth century, looking beyond the domain of doctrine and practice, and focusing also on the public (and political) spheres. Among the topics that Dongchu addressed there are the debate on religion in 1920s, the consequent new politics and policies on religion issued and implemented by the new Nationalist regime, the effects of those policies on freedom of belief (xinyang ziyou 信仰自由), and the attacks that Buddhism became subject to in those years. According to Dongchu, however, Buddhism was not a superstitious belief (mixin de zongjiao 迷信的宗教).⁶³ Dongchu also stressed the social and national usefulness of the Buddhist xinyang as monks joined the national army in the late 1930s.⁶⁴

In his Jiang zongtong yu fojiao 蔣總統與佛教 (1975), Dongchu wrote more specifically about the perspective of the political leaders Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek on xinyang, or better his Buddhist take on these view- points. Chiang Kai-shek was not just a politician (zhengzhijia 政治家), Dongchu argued, but also an expert on religion (zongjiaojia 宗教家).⁶⁵ Dongchu reported Chiang Kai-shek’s statement, “There is no human life without religious belief (zongjiao de xinyang 宗教的信仰).”⁶⁶ In addition, science (kexue) and medicine (yixue 醫學) could not always heal humans’ mental illnesses (jingshen bing 精神病), although psychologists had claimed otherwise. In fact, Chiang Kai-shek argued, it was only via the teachings of a religious xinyang and a humanistic philosophy (rensheng zhexue 人生哲學) that human beings could find inner stability (anding li 安定力).⁶⁷ Decades earlier, Dongchu reported, Sun Yat-sen had already given relevance to religious xinyang, and thus Buddhist xinyang as well (especially Mahāyāna Buddhism), as a benevolent value that could contribute to “rescuing the nation”; Buddhist xinyang is, then, in line with the Three Principles of the People. In fact, the fourth article of the Principle of Nationalism (minzu zhuyi 民族主義) says: “Buddhism can compensate for science.”⁶⁸

This reading of Sun Yat-sen’s and Chiang Kai-shek’s positions helped to ground the legitimacy of the arguments proposed by those Buddhist leaders who had stressed Buddhism as a socially and politically useful “belief” (and “religion”).

5 Institutionalizing xin 信: the Buddhist Right Faith Society Fojiao zhengxin hui 佛教正信會 (China) and the Right Faith Society Zhengxin hui 正信會 (Taiwan)

The concept of a “correct faith” was not only extrapolated to interpret scriptures and practices, or to provide authority to the discursive narrative on the role of Buddhism in the public domain. Quite soon, in the 1920s, it also became the name of lay associations, in China and Taiwan. The Buddhist Right Faith Society (Fojiao zhengxin hui 佛教正信會)⁶⁹ in China, and the Right Faith Society (Zhengxin hui 正信會)⁷⁰ in Taiwan are two good case-studies in this respect.

The Hankou fojiaohui 漢口佛教會 was established in 1920, in Hubei 湖北, and changed its name to Fojiao zhengxin hui in 1928. This is one of the many lay Buddhist associations that were founded in the early twentieth century; it focused on a wide range of charity activities, from taking care of the poor to running education programs for the less fortunate. Instituted and run by Bud- dhist laymen like, for instance, Chen Yuanbai 陳元白, Li Yinchen 李隱塵, and Wang Senfu 王森甫, this association was strongly connected with Taixu, and so part of the so-called “Taixu network.” For instance, there was a close relation with the Wuchang Institute of Buddhist Studies (Wuchang foxueyuan 武昌佛學院); second, the majority of the lay leaders were all disciples of Taixu himself; third, Taixu came to serve as “guiding master” (daoshi 導師) of the association. Taixu was also behind the association’s name change, and the selection of the expression “correct faith” as a new label for the group; zhengxin, he explained, expressed refuge in the three gems (Buddha, Dharma, Sangha), while those who were not following the three gems were not practicing a correct faith.⁷¹ The strong relation with Taixu and his network may explain the societal focus of the activities run by the association; those activities were the concretization of the idea of Buddhist xin as beneficial to, and savior of, the nation.⁷² This form of social engagement was, certainly, also in line with Taixu’s rensheng fojiao 人生佛教 and, a few decades later, became a key aspect of certain streams of renjian fojiao 人間佛教 as well. After the foundation of the society in Hubei, other branches, with similar aims and activities, were opened in the 1920s and 1930s in several provinces like Hunan 湖南⁷³ and Sichuan 四川.⁷⁴

The lay leadership of this organization reflects crucial changes that had happened in the contemporary Buddhist context, where the laity had assumed a major role and were no longer subordinate to the Sangha; on a certain level, the laity had become an alternative to the Sangha, and acted in parallel to the monastic community.⁷⁵

Although there is no evidence of direct connections between this lay association and Japan, we should notice that those were the years when “new religions” (shin shūkyō 信宗教) began to appear and flourish in Japan. Groups like Sōka Gakkai 創価学会 and Risshō Kōseikai 立正佼成会 were, like the Buddhist Right Faith Society, run by lay Buddhists, strongly rooted in sectarian teachings and teachers from the past, and highly engaged in humanitarian action, social welfare, and education activities. Furthermore, from the perspective of the cultural and religious milieu that characterized late Qing and Republican China, these “socially engaged” associations resembled—and may have been inspired by—Christian groups that were active at that time and challenged local traditions by their social commitment and popularity.

In 1934, just a few years after the creation of The Buddhist Right Faith Society, a similar society was founded in Taiwan. It was established in Taizhong, within the Taizhong Buddhist Association (Taizhong fojiaohui 台中佛教會) by, among others, Lin Delin 林德林 (1890–1951). Lin was a prominent figure in colonial Taiwan, a reformer who earned the name “Martin Luther of Taiwan” (Taiwan Mading Lude 台灣馬丁路德).⁷⁶ The foundation of this group was an accomplishment of the Taiwanese movement for the “right Buddhist faith” (Taiwan zhengxin fojiao yundong 台灣「正信佛教」運動), and it initially counted between twenty and thirty members, including four women. As Lin Delin explained, this group was created to discuss the question of the “Buddhist faith” in Taiwan (Taiwan fojiao xinyang wenti 台灣佛教信仰問題), within the overall context of the “faith question” (xinyang wenti 信仰問題) that not only Taiwan, but also China, Japan,⁷⁷ and all the world were debating at that time.⁷⁸ Specifically about Taiwan, those were the years in which several articles, authored by either Japanese or Taiwanese Buddhists and published in Nanying fojiao/Nan’e Bukkyō 南瀛佛教,⁷⁹ debated local folk beliefs in Taiwan,⁸⁰ and the clash between proper traditional Buddhism and popular Buddhism.⁸¹ The concern for a proper Buddhism was not only shared by Taiwanese Buddhists, but was also urged by the Japanese government, and Japanese Buddhist groups on the island.⁸² The main role of this Society, then, was not to provide material support to the community, or to be involved in any form of humanitarian activities; it was an intellectual circle, where views on xin were debated and lectures on “proper” Buddhism were delivered regularly.

The Chinese Right Faith Buddhist Society and the Taiwanese Right Faith Society were established in the same years; they shared the common concern for reviving a proper Buddhist faith, and overcoming the other beliefs which were called mixin. At the same time, however, these two groups were the outcomes and manifestations of two different local histories, and were facing two different forms of colonization. China was rebuilding her own nation and identity, “rescuing” it from the challenges of Western ideologies and a traditional—often perceived as backward—local past, embracing exogenous concepts and reshaping endogenous ones. On the other hand, Taiwan was writing her own history of occupation and Japanese “domestication” of culture, drawing distinction between categories of beliefs (some more mixin than others), and questioning the Chinese and Japanese identities of “proper” Buddhism.

6 Conclusion: Continuities and Ruptures in the Late Twentieth and Early Twenty-First Centuries

From the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, in both China and Taiwan, the character xin functioned as key word in several debates either initiated or joined by the Buddhist communities. Some of these debated related to the atmosphere of reconsideration of religion at the time of the May Fourth Movement and other contemporary campaigns, and the context of opposition to—or domestication of—scientific thinking, secularization, and foreign ideologies. Other debates are just legacies from premodern conceptions, and textual and doctrinal interpretations, of xin in the (Chinese) Buddhadharma.⁸³ Often, the character xin assumed semantic distinctions and variations through the compounds it was part of.

The discursive narrative of xin penetrated the private sphere of practice, where it meant a specific stage or approach to the Dharma cultivation; it also contributed to the public sphere, where it defined Buddhist ways to intervene in the “salvation” and construction of the (new) nation.

The early and mid-twentieth century was also a time of renewed interest for the text Dasheng qixin lun 大乘起信論 (The Treatise on the Mahāyāna Awakening of Faith) by Japanese and Chinese Buddhist scholars,⁸⁴ as well as by Western Christians.⁸⁵ Even here, the meaning of the character xin was often debated or even instrumentalized.

Some of the debates and arguments about xin that informed the Buddhist sphere in the first half of the twentieth century have continued to pervade Chinese and Taiwanese communities to this day. For instance, as Weishan Huang explains in her chapter about Tzu Chi followers in China, the dichotomy zhengxin and mixin is still relevant in the contemporary narrative. Furthermore, the connection between “belief” and “practice” is stressed today as well; in fact, according to Huang’s study, it is the concept of “practice” (xing 行), rather than that of “belief” (xin), that recurs often in conversations with Tzu Chi members, yet xing is to be intended as manifestation of xin. And the concept of xinxin 信心, so dear to the monk Yuanying, for instance, in Republican China, is a key term in contemporary Chinese Buddhist circles, although it has also assumed a second semantic connotation.⁸⁶

These signs of continuity in the understanding and usage of the term xin, naturally with adjustments due to a different historical and political climate, may be explained through the role xin has played within the all history of Buddhism,⁸⁷ and also, in the specific case of China and Taiwan, through the role played by Buddhists who had been educated in the Republican period and were then active in post-Mao China or post-colonial Taiwan. The late monks Yinshun (1906–2005) and Dongchu (1908–1977), and the living Xingyun 星雲 (b. 1927), who grew up in the atmosphere of the Republican China and then concretized their Buddhist ideologies mostly in the second half of the twentieth century, are good examples of these “bridging figures.”

It is especially Yinshun, master and reference figure for the nun Zhengyan and so Tzu Chi, the case study explored by Huang in her chapter, who deserves our attention. Monastics and laity alike consider Yinshun’s book Xue fo sanyao 學佛三要 the best guidance in the practice of Buddhism; the text lists xinyuan 信願 (believing and vowing),⁸⁸ cibei 慈悲 (compassion and mercy), and zhihui 智慧 (wisdom) as the three essential elements in Buddhist practice. The book was published in 1971, in Taiwan, but its various chapters are previous public lectures that Yinshun gave between 1953 and 1958, also in Taiwan. Although this is then a post-Republican text, Yinshun spent his formative years 1930 to 1940 in Mainland China, under the guidance of leading monastics such as Taixu, Fazun, and Changxing, whose debates of xin in the Republican period have been examined in this chapter.

In contemporary writings, xinyuan 信願 is often intended as the merging of xinyang 信仰 and fayuan 發願, and as embodying a consequential process from xinyang to fayuan.⁸⁹ In this context, Yinshun relates xin to putixin 菩提心, and the crucial importance of vowing to develop Bodhicitta. Yinshun expands his discussion with a cross-tradition parallel involving Christianity and also Confucianism: For instance, if Buddhism has xinyuan 信願, cibei 慈悲, and zhihui 智慧 as key markers, then Christianity has xin 信 and ai 愛 playing the same role. According to Yinshun, xinyang includes both zhengxin and mixin. The difference between the two is identified in the object and in the aims of xinyang: a belief/reliance/faith in Buddha is a zhengxin, but belief/reliance/faith in deities/spirits (shen) is mixin. A xinyang that originated from knowledge and awareness is zhengxin (and zhixin 智信), while the blind following of certain ideas (in order to, for instance, imitate parents or friends) is mixin.⁹⁰ This is in line with many of the Chinese and Taiwanese debates from the first half of the twentieth century that this chapter has explored.

Yinshun’s framing of xin, then, takes some distance from the political and societal discussions carried out in the Republican period (see arguments analyzed in Parts 3 to 5 of this chapter), while it shows continuity with the xin narrative in the sphere of Buddhist practice, and within the dichotomy zhengxin – mixin (see especially Part 2 of the chapter). At the same time, this take on xin has formed the background of contemporary Buddhist movements, like Tzu Chi, and the context wherein the interviews conducted by Huang can be positioned.