Morality, Meditation, and Magic: The Changing Face of Lay Buddhism in China Today

Prof Gareth Fisher (Syracuse)

Abstract

This presentation will draw from two decades of ethnographic fieldwork to explore different faces of lay Buddhist practice in China today. It will explore this diversity by analyzing the experiences of three lay practitioners: Wang Xuan, a middle-aged resident of Beijing, who shifted between three Buddhist teachers in search of moral guidance on ideal family relations; Huang Xitao, a native of Hebei province, who converted to a Taiwanese Buddhist meditation movement while studying overseas in the United States; and Li Chaoyang, an entrepreneur in Shandong province who became interested in Tibetan Buddhism as an efficacious system for material success in life, and who sponsored a temple-building project on land that he managed. After discussing the journeys of each practitioner in detail, the presentation will conclude by drawing on these stories to consider how lay Buddhism in China has changed, both since pre-modern times and over more recent decades.

Bio

Gareth Fisher received his PhD in socio-cultural anthropology from the University of Virginia. He is currently Associate Professor of Religion at Syracuse University. His research concerns the revival of Buddhism in 21st century China, focusing on two main projects. The first of these explores how laid-off workers in China’s capital Beijing during the early 2000s converted to Buddhism to gain new moral purpose in society. The second focuses on how urban-based lay practitioners and monastics construct new temples throughout the country as places to enact their moral visions for social reform. Fisher’s From Comrades to Bodhisattvas: Moral Dimensions of Lay Buddhist Revival in Contemporary China (University of Hawaii Press, 2014) is the first book length study of Han Chinese Buddhism in the post-Mao period.

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