現代臺灣佛教與印順法師──五大本山與人間佛教的背景一探

Contemporary Taiwanese Buddhism and Venerable Yin Shun: Introducing the Five Great Mountain Monasteries and the Background of Humanistic Buddhism Thought

In the present there are five main Buddhist mountain monasteries in Taiwan, those are established by Ven. Master Hsing Yun, Ven. Sheng Yan, Ven. Wei Chueh and Ven. Hsin Tao, in late 20th century. Except Ven. Wei Chueh, all these monks were influenced by Ven. Master Taixu or Ven. Master Yinshun. Ven. Yinshun came from China to Taiwan during the civil war between the Communist Party and the Nationalist Party after the Second World War.
While a youth in mainland China he had read the Tripitaka, the complete Buddhist canon, and he come to recognize the importance of Early Buddhism. We can suspect that he came to know this and declared the idea that Buddhism should be activity among human beings. This idea was a little different from that of Ven. Taixu. It is said that Ven. Yinshun valued the purity of early Buddhism, the practice and thought of early Mahāyāna Buddhism, and the consciousness only and Tathāgatagarbha thought of late Mahāyāna Buddhism. He became a leader of Taiwanese Buddhism. We should know that he was influenced by the ideas of both Early Buddhism and Mahāyāna Buddhism, and if we were to say what was his greatest influencing factor, it was probably the Saṃyukta Āgama.
At the end of the this paper, I indicate several characteristics of Taiwanese Buddhism. Those are that nuns outnumber monks and that they made new developments in terms of practices which were accepted.