Buddhism in Taiwan: Religion and the State 1660-1990

About this book

Buddhism in Taiwan is the first work in a Western language to examine the institutional and political history of Chinese Buddhism in Taiwan. Tracing Buddhisms development on the island from Qing times through the late 1980s it seeks to shed light on the ways in which changing social circumstances have impacted Buddhist thought and practice. It looks in particular at a number of significant changes that modernization has brought: the decline in clerical ordinations the increasing prominence of nuns within the monastic order the enhanced role of the laity alterations in the content of lay precepts the abandonment of funerals as a major source of income the monastic orders loss of special recognition from the government and the founding of large international organizations.