Buddhism and Chinese Culture

The Buddhists covered in this volume also presented their tradition as compatible with Chinese culture, contrasting it with Christianity. This chapter focuses on the well-known Buddhist Yinshun, who argued that biblical belief conflicted with Chinese cultural values, and introduces Gong Tianmin, a Christian, whose academic study of Buddhism aimed at showing it to be historically derived. Gong’s approach is contrasted with Yinshun’s, who, within his own scheme of Buddhist history, took core beliefs to be fundamentally “true”. The chapter will show that the Buddhist writers, covered here, displayed a preoccupation with Western values such as freedom, democracy and egalitarianism, but also with defining these as Chinese—and hence, as Buddhist.