Buddhism’s Success in China, Research Paper Example

Historical Overview

It is not easy for a Western mind to assimilate the fact that Buddhism was never indigenous to the Chinese people, at least partially because most aspects of Western cultures do not extend as far into the past as do their Eastern counterparts. We have different conceptions of what is very old, or even original, and the fact that Buddhism first made its appearance in China in the first century CE strikes the Western sensibility as being so ancient as to render it a faith inherent to the Chinese.

Nonetheless, China’s history had encompassed many centuries wherein belief systems and religions arose and proliferated long before Buddhism’s advent. Tibet,  long an immense power base in central Asia, subscribed to theologies not dissimilar from those being embraced in Europe before the Christian Era. That is to say, Tibetan, and other Chinese faiths, were largely mythological in nature and reliant upon conceptions of divinity residing within the person of the ruler. Moreover, Tibetan practices, as well as most others prevailing in ancient China, were harsh and primitive: “Bon was an animistic religion in which shamans performed rituals to honor and appease its many gods and demons” (Goldstein, Brown-Foster 120). While cases of actual human sacrifice throughout China remain apocryphal, animal sacrifice was most certainly common.

There were, however, strong indications of Buddhist influences in China during these early periods. “Even before Buddhism entered China, frugality and restraint in the use of objects were important ideals in Chinese thought…” (Kieschnick 9). Buddhist tracts and teachings were making their way from India, in fact, nearly a thousand years before the faith would begin to have a national influence, and Buddhist teachings were infused into the prevailing Confucian and Taoist disciplines long before they were actually acknowledged as such.

Chinese Religion Within the Culture

It is crucial to note, as we see the extended and gradual seeping in of Buddhism into Chinese life, how differently Chinese people traditionally view religion. In Western life, adherence to a faith has long been a distinctly separate precept from the society as a whole, even within those European nations where religion and government were virtually synonymous; in China, then and now, religion is far more integrated into all the elements of the society. It is ideology combined with faith, rather than a strict and devout worship removed from daily existence.

That Chinese cultures take so expansive a view of religion, seeing it as a guiding force in all personal and societal activities, is a pivotal element in how Buddhism could then be adopted by the Chinese. Of Indian origin, the tenets of Buddhism are similarly focused less on actual worship or observance of divinity, and more on how faith and belief must be incorporated into the being of the disciple. Buddhism is very much a faith which wears many hats, one built upon authentic concepts of living life as human beings on an earthly plain. It is worth noting that this very “non-religious” aspect of it may well account for the rising popularity of Buddhism in the United States and other Western nations long dissatisfied with modes of religion which do not address practical concerns.

Rise and Success in China

From the first recorded evidences of the introduction of Buddhism into China from India in the first centuries of the Christian Era, a lengthy trajectory and infusion was set into motion. “Buddhist cave temples and shrines can be traced from northwest India following the trade routes to Kizil, Kucha, and Bazaklik…in modern Xinjiang, to Dunhuang in Gansu” (Cook 102).

This commercial aspect, possibly more so than any other single factor, was both responsible for the eventual success of Buddhism as well as for its slow and steady infusion into Chinese cultures. Brought in through Buddhist missionaries accompanying merchants, there was no revolutionary component to Buddhism, unlike the often violent Protestant uprisings Europe would confront a thousand years later. This was, over the first two to eight centuries of the Christian era, a faith quite literally brought in on horseback, and along with sacks of grain. Anywhere trade was occurring, Buddhism went with it. So non-explosive a mode of presentation did not hamper its chances of success; the gradual and innocuous introduction served, in fact, to render the faith even more attractive.

Then, another major cause of Buddhism’s rise in China was due to its intrinsic pacific qualities, which translated to adaptability. There are many distinct forms of Buddhist worship today, and all of these are merely evolved from the slow merging of the old faith with the new. Mahayanan is the most widely espoused Chinese Buddhism, and that the name itself is defined as “great vehicle” says much about its power: “Mayahana Buddhism is progressive. It encourages missionary enterprise and was a secret of the remarkable spread of Buddhism over Asia” (Hodus 24). Major sects in China include the Tantric, or Tibetan, form of Buddhism, which carries within it strong traces of Tibet’s ancient Bon worship. The Tiantai sect is a far simpler mode of worship and the most widely embraced form of Chinese Buddhism. Virtually all Chinese sects, however, fall under the Mahayanan mantle.

In viewing how Buddhism became so central to Chinese culture, and how it achieved its preeminent status in that nation, it is essential to emphasize the journey it took. Any faith brought in slowly, over many centuries, and thoroughly integrated in the business of living in each province in which it appears, does not overtake. It does not subjugate and then eliminate faiths adhered to prior to its advent. The people, rather, have the time and the freedom to mold it to their liking. Older and established elements of ancient religions are not all discarded, but fused into the new Buddhism, thus accounting for the variety within the approximately ten major sects currently dominant in China.

Confucian and Taoist ideals, and even rituals, remain in evidence in the particular sects in which they have melded into Buddhism. This is no small achievement for Buddhism as a whole, for the two great Chinese faiths were and are strikingly dissimilar. Confucianism exalted adherence to prescribed behaviors, while Taoism was marked by a rejection of the same. In one sense Taoism more reflected Indian Buddhism in that its focus was directed to a pursuit of real, spiritual happiness and enlightenment. It could be said that Confucianism was “old school”, composed chiefly of doctrines requiring strict observance of behavioral standards, while Taoism was the rebel faith, seeking to dismiss all material considerations. Yet both embraced Buddhism over time as the greater goal, or the better avenue to the common goal. It is vastly to Buddhism’s credit as a deeply attractive ideology, if not religion, that it could successfully encompass creeds calling for opposing manifestations of belief.

The Asian Factor and Christian Missionaries

Viewing Chinese Buddhism as an alien element, a faith foreign to its people and gradually espoused by them, is both necessary but not absolutely correct. It is of course true, as we have seen, that China was under the sway of several ancient faiths for thousands of years, before the first evidences of Buddhism made their appearance. Nor can it be dismissed that India, original home to Siddhartha Buddha himself and consequently the wellspring of what would become a global faith, was a distinctly separate nation or kingdom from China.

The question arises, nonetheless, of how great a role Asia itself plays in this enormous equation. The peoples of India and China are of course not the same, yet parallels in societies and cultures commonly are drawn between territories existing on the same continent. If there are, as we may safely suppose, fundamental ideological differences between those of the West and the East, may we not also then speculate as to how a single common ground, and one as immense as Asia, can be instrumental in uniting separate nations? Those things which we associate with ethnicity, belief systems and cultural practices, do not arise sui generis; very often, the land itself is a huge factor in the shaping of the people. In other words, the success of Chinese Buddhism is not so extraordinary because it was never so essentially alien an introduction to begin with.

This fundamental and territorially-based form of communion also partially explains why Christian influences never fully succeeded in China. Examining the Ming Dynasty, which roughly coincided with the Middle Ages and the Renaissance of Europe, we find that the sophistication of the Chinese under Ming rule welcomed Christian teachings, but more as specimens of science and culture new to them. Buddhist principles of peace, and a genuine fascination with all evidences of a new world,  encouraged visiting Western theologians and monks to believe that the Chinese would come to Christianity. Yet what actually occurred was a final rejection, when the visitors made manifest their true religious intent. As Ming Confucian ideologies embraced Buddhism, they outright rejected Christianity as at utter variance with their principles. As Buddhism and Christianity espouse greatly similar creeds of behavior born from humility and service, this reaction was almost certainly fueled by an Asian sense of mistrust of what was so very alien to their land.

Summary

The rise of Buddhism in China was neither quick, nor necessarily easy. Much of it was politically motivated, as much of it created schisms and wars within the country. Yet over many centuries, and through a natural process of accommodation and editing, Buddhism in a variety of forms has been embraced by the Chinese to such an extent that it is a byword for most of its people. By virtue of its own expansive and intrinsically open ideologies, it has yielded to its predecessors, permitted itself to adapt in whatever manner needed, and ultimately emerge as the single, predominant faith of an enormous nation.

Works Cited

Cook, T. The New Cultural Atlas of China. Tarrytown, NY: Marshall Cavendish Corporation, 2010. Print.

Goldstein, N., and Brown-Foster, W. Global Issues: Religion and the State. New York, NY: Infobase Publishing, 2010. Print.

Hodus, L. Buddhists and Buddhism in China. New York, NY: BiblioBazaar, LLC, 2008. Print.

Kieschnick, J. The Impact of Buddhism on Chinese Material Culture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003. Print.