Dharma Drum Mountain

In 1989, the foundation for his late work was laid with the founding of Dharma Drum Mountain, whose maxim was to Uplift the Character of Humanity and Build a Pure Land on Earth. According to Chiang Tsan-teng¹¹⁴, education played a crucial role in the

establishment of Dharma Drum. In comparison to Tzu Chi (慈濟) and Foguangshan (佛 光山), Dharma Drum developed relatively late. To ensure its access to the religious market in Taiwan, Sheng Yen singled out the field of education as DDM’s unique

characteristic. Sheng Yen adopted the reputation he earned by receiving his PhD from an overseas university to promote the establishment of Dharma Drum College of Humanities and Social Science (法鼓文化社會大學). If Chinese Buddhism wanted to prosper it had to improve the education of the laity and the sangha. Thus, Sheng Yen successfully

113 Yu, “A Tentative Exploration,” 11.

114 Jiang Canteng, Renshi taiwan bentu fojiao (Taibei: Taiwan shangwu, 2012), 110.

linked the future destiny of Buddhism with the development of his own organization.

This strategy turned out to be immensely effective, especially from 1989 to 1992.

Unfortunately, when the Ministry of Education in 1992 granted four Buddhist institutions the right to establish colleges, DDM wasn’t one of them.¹¹⁵ It took another six years, and in 1998, the Ministry of Education approved the application to establish the Dharma Drum College of Humanities and Social Science.¹¹⁶ Today, in 2014 the College is finally under construction.

Besides promoting the enhancement of Buddhist education, Sheng Yen developed the concept of Spiritual Environmentalism (心靈環保) to advocate the Establishment of a Pure Land on Earth. Therefor he promoted the implementation of Chan meditation to the life style of the new emerging class of Taiwanese urban business people.¹¹⁷ One way to do so was to hold meditation classes and retreats aimed at the Taiwanese social elite (e.g.

精英禪三). These persons, high ranking politicians, doctors, lawyers and representatives of the media and cultural institutions, were meant to serve as multipliers for Sheng Yen’s vision. ¹¹⁸

Thus, the following decades of Sheng Yen’s work in Taiwan were characterized by the development of Dharma Drum Mountain, its public outreach campaigns, and its

educational endeavors. In 1992, Sheng Yen proposed that the core of DDM’s vision should be Protecting the Spiritual Environment. Based on this vision, Sheng Yen went on to launch several other campaigns during the 1990s and 2000s. Some of these campaigns,

115 Canteng, Renshi taiwan bentu fojiao, 110.

116 Hu, Sharing Dharma Drum Mountain, 181.

117 Jiang Canteng, Zhanhou taiwan hanchuan fojiao shi (Taibei: Wunan, 2011), 116.

118 Jiang Canteng, Taiwan jindai fojiao de biange yu fansi (Taibei: Dongda, 2003), 116.

such as the Fivefold Spiritual Renaissance campaign (心四五運動) and the Six Ethics of the Mind campaign (心六論) are discussed in detail in chapter 4.

In 1996 the construction of Dharma Drum’s extensive building complex in Jinshan province in Northern Taiwan was completed and the new headquarters’ inauguration took place. The presence of many high-ranking officials and celebrities at this occasion once again demonstrates Sheng Yen’s interconnectedness with the leading class of the country.¹¹⁹

In addition to his efforts in Taiwan, Sheng Yen continued to be active in the West, mainly in the US. In 1997, Sheng Yen set up the Dharma Drum Retreat Center in Pine Bush, New York.¹²⁰ Finally, in 2001, after over a decade of effort promoting Buddhist education in Taiwan, he established the Dharma Drum Sangha University in Jinshan, followed by Dharma Drum Buddhist College in 2007. In 2006, he established his own Buddhist school, the Dharma Drum lineage (中華禪法鼓宗).¹²¹ In his earlier writings, Sheng Yen was critical of Buddhist sectarianism and promoted Buddhism as a whole based on the Agamas.¹²² Nevertheless, towards the end of his life he founded his own Buddhist school. According to Jimmy Yu, Sheng Yen did so as a response to a perceived crisis in Chinese Buddhism. For him “zong was a vehicle for the preservation,

reformulation, and institutionalization of what he perceived as being the most useful aspects of Chinese Buddhism for modern society”¹²³. Similarly, Lin Chihsien stresses

119 Jiang Canteng, Taiwan fojiao shi (Taibei, Wunan, 2009), 116.

120 Hu, Sharing Dharma Drum Mountain, 180.

121 Jimmy Yu, “Revisiting the Notion of Zong: Contextualizing the Dharma Drum

Lineage of Modern Chan Buddhism”, Chung-Hwa Buddhist Journal 26 (2013): 113-151.

122 Yu, “Revisiting the Notion of Zong,” 73.

123 Yu, “Revisiting the Notion of Zong,” 144.

that Sheng Yen’s school differs from those of the past. It may take Chan at the center but actually combines the different schools of Chinese Buddhism.¹²⁴

Only three years later, in 2009, Sheng Yen passed away at the age of 79.

As can be surmised from the above, Pure Land has not received that much attention in Sheng Yen’s work: no fewer than 24 of 102 of Sheng Yen’s collected works concentrate on Chan, compared to only one book explicitly about Pure Land;¹²⁵ but neither can it be said that Sheng Yen rejected Pure Land. As early as 1960, long before his career as a Chan teacher started, Sheng Yen conducted a retreat in reciting the Buddha’s name, while in 1982, his founding of the Merit and Wisdom Chanting Society and the commencement of annual nianfo retreats also demonstrate the importance of Pure Land, if not in Sheng Yen’s thinking, then at least in his approach to practice. Even today, almost every branch of DDM in Taiwan conducts weekly group nianfo practice. This might be a reflection of the demographic situation of Buddhism in Taiwan, where today Pure Land is still the one of the most popular Buddhist practices,¹²⁶ but it also reveals Sheng Yen’s ecumenical approach regarding the different Chinese Buddhist schools. Unlike, for example, Yinshun, who was highly critical of devotional Pure Land practices, Sheng Yen incorporated Pure Land into his endeavor to reform Chinese Buddhism. In fact, Sheng Yen considered Yinguang as one of the four great contemporary Buddhist masters, together with Hongyi (弘一), Xuyun (虛雲) and Taixu.¹²⁷ Just like Ouyi Zhixu, the

124 Lin, “Shengyan fashi renjian jingtu sixiang,” 196.

125 Yu Junfang, “Shengyan fashi yu dangdai hanchuan fojiao,” Shengyan yanjiu diyi ji (Taibei: Fagu wenhua, 2010), 40.

126 Jones, Buddhism in Taiwan, 115.

127 Shengyan fashi, Shengyan fashi xuesi licheng (Taibei: Fagu wenhua, 2014), 161.

Ming dynasty master who was the subject of his doctoral thesis, Sheng Yen tried to integrate the diverse traditions of Chinese Buddhism.

Sheng Yen’s debt to Pure Land is more obvious in one other respect: in Dharma Drum Mountain’s motto Building a Pure Land on Earth. Sheng Yen relates the establishment of Dharma Drum Mountain and its goal to build a Pure Land on Earth explicitly to the discourse of Rensheng/Renjian Buddhism (人間佛教/人生佛教). He sees his work as a continuation of a line from Yang Wenhui, through Taixu and Yinshun, to Dongchu. Yang distributed Buddhist literature, Taixu promoted rensheng Buddhism, Yinshun elaborated on it, Dongchu published the periodical Rensheng, and Sheng Yen founded DDM to establish a Pure Land on earth.¹²⁸

As we can see, Sheng Yen aimed to implement a Pure Land on earth through the

establishment of DDM. The means to reach this ambitious end is through education in a very broad sense. In order to provide a background for the understanding of Pure Land at DDM the next chapter turns first to the history of the concept in Chinese Buddhism.

128 Sheng Yen quoted in: Pittman, Toward a Modern Chinese Buddhism, 283-284.