What is in a transmission? Identity and lineage networks in modern Chinese Buddhism

This lecture examines the revival, identity formation, and circulation of the Tiantai lineage network in the twentieth century – a fluid yet global network in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Southeast Asia, and North America. 

Current scholarship on modern Chinese Buddhism primarily focuses on reformist, Humanistic Buddhist organizations that emerged in Taiwan in the last few decades. These church-like groups, with their strong corporate identities and centralized management of assets and personnel, are relatively new developments. Little is known about the vast array of other Buddhist networks that followed different expansion paradigms in forming transnational connections.  

By looking at the multifaceted global forms of circulation and interaction in the making of religious modernity in Chinese societies, I hope to complicate the narrative on Buddhist modernism and shed light on the intersection between modern Chinese Buddhist institutions, diasporic ethnic consciousness, and transnational spatial imagination. 

Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation Lecture Series in Chinese Buddhism

About the Speaker

Rongdao Lai is assistant professor of Religious Studies and East Asian Studies at McGill University, Canada. She was formerly assistant professor at the University of Southern California, postdoctoral fellow at the Asia Research Institute (National University of Singapore), and research fellow in the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Program in Buddhist Studies. 

Her research focuses primarily on the changing landscape and identity production in modern Chinese Buddhism. Her monograph Citizen Bodhisattvas: Education, Student-Monks, and Citizenship in Modern Chinese Buddhism is forthcoming by Brill. Her other on-going projects include historical production, lineage networks, transnational movements, and monastic economy in twentieth-century Chinese Buddhism.   

Attending the event

This event is free and open to all. 

• Organiser: Centre of Buddhist Studies
• This event is made possible by the generous support of The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation