Adapting the Rules: Buddhist Monastic Regulations in Contemporary China
par Daniela Campo, Maître de conférences, Université de Strasbourg
This lecture will provide an overview of the regulations that are nowadays in use in Chan and Tiantai public monasteries in the People’s Republic of China. Pointing to new features, new typologies and new contents of contemporary Buddhist regulations as compared to Imperial Rules of Purity and Republican codes of rules, it will emphasize how monastic codes have accompanied the recent transformations of Chinese Buddhism, while remaining strongly anchored in the received tradition.
Thanks to their greater flexibility compared to other disciplinary regulations such as prātimokṣa rules and Bodhisattva precepts, monastic codes represent the device by which Chinese Vinaya can quickly respond to social, political and economic changes. Since they conveniently reflect both the internal transformations of Buddhist institutional practices and the external socio-political demands to which Buddhism is subjected and reacts, monastic regulations remain a fundamental resource to understand the evolution of Chinese Buddhism since the beginning of the post-Mao religious reconstruction.
