In China Buddhism flourished during the Liang Dyansty (502–587) due in large part to Emperor Wu, who personally met with Bodhidharma, the 28th Indian patriarch from Shakyamuni Buddha. Legend has it that Emperor Wu’s first wife died prematurely and fell into the lower realms. In order to rescue her and to help her spirit ascend to the heavens, Emperor Wu, a great patron of Buddhism, had Chan Master Baozhi compose a repentance ceremony on her behalf. The resulting repentance text was so successful and popular that it is still used in monasteries today. Repentance Dharma of Kindness and Compassion in the Bodhimanda is a complete English translation of what is popularly known as “The Jeweled Repentance of the Emperor of Liang.” It was translated over a period of 15 years by the monks, nuns and laity of the Buddhist Text Translation Society (BTTS). BTTS was founded in 1970 in San Francisco by Tripitaka Master Hsuan Hua as part of the Dharma Realm Buddhist Association. BTTS publishes sutra translations, instructional handbooks, biographies, children’s books, and introductory material on Buddhism.

The goal of this book is to study the ways in which Chinese Buddhists expressed their religious faiths and how Chinese Buddhists interacted with society at large since the Northern and Southern dynasties (386-589), through the Ming (1368-1644) and the Qing (1644-1911), up to the Republican era (1912-1949). The book aims to summarize and present the historical trajectory of the Sinification of Buddhism in a new light, revealing the symbiotic relationship between Buddhist faith and Chinese culture. The book examines cases such as repentance, vegetarianism, charity, scriptural lecture, the act of releasing captive animals, the Bodhisattva faith, and mountain worship, from multiple perspectives such as textual evidence, historical circumstances, social life, as well as the intellectual background at the time.

This book is the first comprehensive introduction to the Tangut language and culture. Five of the fisteen chapters survey the history of Western Xia and the evolution of Tangut Studies, including new advancements in the field, such as research on the recently decoded Tangut cursive writings found in Khara-Khoto documents. The other ten chapters provide an introduction to the Tangut language: its origins, script, characters, grammars, translations, textual and contextual readings. In this synthesis of historical narratives and linguistic analysis, the renowned Tangutologist Shi Jinbo offers a guided access to the mysterious civilisation of the ‘Great State White and High’ to both a specialized and a general audience.

The early Chinese text Master Zhuang (Zhuangzi) is well known for its relativistic philosophy and colorful anecdotes. In the work, Zhuang Zhou ca. 300 B.C.E.) dreams that he is a butterfly and wonders, upon awaking, if he in fact dreamed that he was a butterfly or if the butterfly is now dreaming that it is Zhuang Zhou. The text also recounts Master Zhuang's encounter with a skull, which praises the pleasures of death over the toil of living. This anecdote became popular with Chinese poets of the second and third century C.E. and found renewed significance with the founders of Quanzhen Daoism in the twelfth century. The Quanzhen masters transformed the skull into a skeleton and treated the object as a metonym for death and a symbol of the refusal of enlightenment. Later preachers made further revisions, adding Master Zhuang's resurrection of the skeleton, a series of accusations made by the skeleton against the philosopher, and the enlightenment of the magistrate who judges their case. The legend of the skeleton was widely popular throughout the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), and the fiction writer Lu Xun (1881–1936) reimagined it in the modern era. The first book in English to trace the development of the legend and its relationship to centuries of change in Chinese philosophy and culture, The Resurrected Skeleton translates and contextualizes the story's major adaptations and draws parallels with the Muslim legend of Jesus's encounter with a skull and the European tradition of the Dance of Death. Translated works include versions of the legend in the form of popular ballads and plays, together with Lu Xun's short story of the 1930s, underlining the continuity between traditional and modern Chinese culture.

In its role as a scriptural charter, vinaya has justified widely dissimilar approaches to religious life as Buddhist orders in different times and places have interpreted it in contradictory ways. In the resulting tension between scripture and practice, certain kinds of ceremonial issues (such as those involving lineage, seniority, initiation, purification, repentance, visualization, vows, ordination) acquire profound social, psychological, doctrinal, and soteriological significance in Buddhism. Going Forth focuses on these issues over a wide sweep of history - from early fifth-century China to modern Japan - to provide readers with a rich overview of the intersection of doctrinal, ritual, and institutional concerns in the development of East Asian Buddhist practices. Despite the crucial importance of vinaya, especially for understanding Buddhism in East Asia, very little scholarship in Western languages exists on this fascinating topic. The essays presented here, written by senior scholars in the field, go beyond the timeworn method of relying on prescriptive accounts in the scriptures to describe what imaginary Buddhists must have done (or do). Rather, they address how actual peo

This edition, comprising a sound recording, transcription, and English translation, provides a record of the Liberation Rite of Water and Land as a resource for the study, analysis, and further exploration of both the Medicine Buddha Sutra and the accompanying liturgical service. The editor created it at the invitation of Fo Guang Shan monastery, and it outlines both the textual and musical elements of the service. Designed as a chantbook, it is intended to be a tool for all those who wish to participate in the vocal elements of the service, from the uninitiated monastery visitor to musical ensembles that might use these musical fragments as inspiration for appropriately staged performances. It is especially conceived for non-Chinese speaking monastics in the Buddhist college and/or those who have experience reading Western musical notation.

This special issue includes 11 articles from the Inaugural Conference of the East Asian Society for the Scientific Study of Religion. It offers theoretical and methodological reflections, and covers various religions in different East Asian societies and diasporic communities.