TÀI XŪ’S ENGAGED BUDDHISM AND THE PURE LAND HORIZON

Abstract

At a time when Chinese Buddhism was considered by popular culture to be reserved for the dead and ghosts, Master Tai Xū, drawing on the flowing elements of Mahāyāna Buddhism and the Christianity of the Social Gospel movement, constructed an interrelational network with a new identity established through engagement in political and social actions to "establish the Pure Land in the realm of humans." Spanning the two-century transition, this network of new principles, which was called engaged Buddhism, branched out into various new cultural movements and reached several countries around the world, but not without resistance, as many critics suggested the ineffectiveness of actions aimed at changing material social conditions. From the perspective of the contemporary hermeneutic philosophy of Interrelational Network Theory, we analyze the issue through two important concepts that serve as axes in Mahāyāna Buddhism: bodhicitta (the determination to achieve full enlightenment as an individual) and buddhakṣetra (the determination to realize the model of society within the Pure Land horizon, both socially and materially). In this way, we hope to contribute to a less reductionist analysis of the effectiveness of the actions carried out by the Engaged Buddhism movement.