[ { "id": 204283, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1961", "page_number": 51, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nORASHKB and author\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\n47\n\nA: They look for a child who was born some time after the death of the last incarnation. The monks -- perhaps it is the administrative monks or some other lama from the monastery -- will go out and conduct a search quietly. They ask in villages whether any children have been born who have shown exceptional precocity or skill, and then they go through them carefully. If they find one they think is right, they conduct tests, during which he is supposed to pick out some property that belonged to him in his previous life. With some of the lesser lamas they are not so strict about the tests. They simply like to find somebody who is precocious. Sometimes, just as in India, they find children who say that they remember being born before in a certain place. Since they don't go about these tests until the child is 3, 3½ or 4, they can really see whether he has exceptional characteristics.\n\nQ: What is the difference between the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama?\n\nA: That's one of those terribly complicated affairs. Let us start with this: Tibetans believe that the superior deity, if you can put it that way, is Adibuddha, who projects himself in the form of five Dhyani-Buddhas. They are the Buddhas of Contemplation and they live on the plane of the spiritual. The Dhyani-Buddhas project themselves in the form of five Dhyani-Bodhisattvas. The Dalai Lama in theory represents one of these Bodhisattvas, Avalokita-Chenrezig. The Panchen Lama in theory represents one of the Dhyani-Buddhas, Amitabha-Hod-dpag-med. You may have heard the view that the Panchen Lama is more spiritual than the Dalai Lama. The fifth Dalai Lama had a very learned teacher, and when he died the fifth Dalai Lama said: \"My teacher must have been an incarnation, and as he was so learned, he must have been the incarnation of my spiritual, my Dhyani teacher.\" That is why some people say that the Panchen Lama is superior spiritually to the Dalai Lama. But the Tibetans have an answer to everything — which may be rather metaphysical hairsplitting — and the answer is this: that as the Panchen Lama represents the world of contemplation, he is untrue to his nature if he takes any part in temporal activities. The Dalai Lama, being an incarnation of the Dhyani-Bodhisattva, who works on the worldly plane to redeem and to teach, is allowed to do what he likes.\n\nQ: How do the Tibetans make tea?\n\nA: You know what Tibetan tea looks like in the brick — it's very coarse and full of twigs and great thick leaves. They just take a chunk off that and put it into a long tube-like funnel, pour in hot water, and break it down a bit. Then they start pounding it into a pulp. That goes on for quite a long time,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205147, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1966", "page_number": 103, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "98\n\nHOLMES WELCH\n\n43 Reichelt quotes a warning by the late Ming monk, Hsi-ming, against \"being deceived into joining the Catholic church or some other outside sect,” and states that it was often reprinted (Truth and Tradition in Chinese Buddhism, Shanghai, 1927, pp. 157-158).\n\n44 It was in 1920 that Reichelt first proposed an \"institute for special work among the Buddhists.\" He wanted to make contact with monks whose hearts were filled with bitterness towards Christianity because some Christians were \"so fatally lacking in a sympathetic and gentle attitude towards others.\" It was to be \"a half-way house\" with many of the features of a Buddhist monastery, including a wandering monks' hall, a meditation hall, a bell tower, a crematorium, and a hall for the aged. See K. L. Reichelt, \"Special Work among Chinese Buddhists\" Chinese Recorder 51.7 (July 1920), 491-497. When it finally went into operation, under the name of the \"Christian Mission to the Buddhists,\" in the autumn of 1922, it had only a \"very small, semi-foreign house.\" After a year and a half, it moved to somewhat larger quarters which included a dining room, where vegetarian meals were served, and the all-important \"pilgrims hall\" where monks were allowed to put up for three days (as they would be at a Buddhist temple) and stay longer if they were interested in serious study. The layout was \"just as in monasteries with two long platforms where they can spread their bedding, and, above them, shelves where they can place their things. Between the two platforms, there is an altar with an incense burner and two candlesticks and above all an impressive crucifix.\" Even more significant was the arrangement of the chapel, to which they were summoned for worship twice a day (as they would be in a monastery) by \"a Chinese bell with deep tones.\" The altar was of red lacquer \"in a true Chinese style,\" adorned with gilt designs that included the following: \"the lotus lily symbolizing the purity, the fire, and the water of the cleansing spirit” (but also, of course, symbolizing the Buddha Amitabha and his Pure Land), \"the swastika of peace and cosmic union\" (but also one of the Buddha's sacred marks and a general symbol for Buddhism), and the cross over a lotus, which was the Mission's emblem.\n\nJust as in a Chinese temple, plaques with parallel inscriptions were hung on the walls. One bore a quotation from the Gospel according to St. John: \"The true light that enlightens every man has come into the world.\" The other legend was more Buddhist in flavour than Christian: \"[Join in] the great vow compassionately to help people across to the other shore\" (ta-yüan tz'u-hang).\n\nThese efforts to make Buddhist monks feel at home attracted a large number of them as visitors (about a thousand annually) but in the first four and a half years of operation, only seventeen male Chinese were converted and baptized. See Notto Normann Thelle \"The Christian Mission to the Buddhists,\" Chinese Recorder (September 1927), 571-575. A photograph of four of the Buddhist and Taoist novices, whom Thelle says were enrolled in the boys' school opened by the Mission, appears in the Chinese Recorder 54.11 (November 1923), facing p. 671. When the permanent headquarters of the Mission were constructed at Tao-fung Shan in the New Territories of Hong Kong during the 1930s, the approximation of a Buddhist monastery became almost as close as Dr. Reichelt had originally envisaged it. Some missionaries were afraid that he was being too broad-minded in his use of Buddhist motifs and even that he might be fostering a kind of Buddho-Christian syncretism. He and his colleagues maintained, however, that their only purpose was to \"lead these people into a living faith in Jesus Christ.\" (Thelle, p. 571).\n\n45 Maha Bodhi, 41.3.4 (March-April 1933), 133,\n\n46 Most of the information on Chao-k'ung up to this point is taken from David Lampe and Laszlo Szenasi, The Self-made Villain, London, 1961.\n\n47 Victor Purcell, The Chinese in Southeast Asia, London, 1951, p. 47.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208731, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1979", "page_number": 188, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "CHINESE RELIGION REDISCUSSED\n\n161\n\npresent day Taiwan, I may point out the cult of the Golden Mother of the Jade Pool and the cult of Kuan Ti focussing on divinatory writing and the publication of morality books.\n\nHaving discussed the great variety of temples according to the first criterium: religious affiliation, the other two criteria mentioned (nature of deities enshrined, and ownership) do not need much attention, since they have already been co-discussed. However, the second criterium needs some elaboration: distinction of temples according to the nature of the deities enshrined. In a few cases there can be no mistaken identity although this criterion by itself is insufficient to determine the temple type. The clearest cases are when the Buddhist Holy Ones are the main objects of worship; Buddhas Sakyamuni, Amitabha or Amita, the Buddha of Healing (rather than 'Medical Buddha' as Baity calls him on p. 126), bodhisattvas Kuan-yin (Avalokitesvara), P'u-hsien (Samantabhadra), Maitreya, Wen-shu (Manjusri), to name the principal ones. In most instances these temples are essentially Buddhist. However, one has to be very careful: the mutual absorption of cult objects by various religions has often blurred the origins; in many Matsu temples (community temples of the folk religion) there is a secondary shrine behind the central hall, in which Kuan-yin is enthroned on the central altar. However, the iconography has been changed: this Kuan-yin does not have the appearance of traditional Buddhist sculpture but appears as another deity of the folk religion. Therefore such temples are still essentially folk religious temples, and the dissonant appearance of Kuan-yin should not deceive the observer.\n\nThe same principal applies to the cult of Ti-tsang (Ksitigarbha). Although originally a bodhisattva, his cult has become so popular that he has been absorbed into the folk religion: his image can be found in many community temples throughout Taiwan, mostly on a secondary altar in the central hall. But once again he has lost the typically Buddhist iconographic appearance.\n\nWhat is the difference between Taoist and popular deities? The most distinctively Taoist Holy Ones are those one does not often see in the temples: their images, painted on scrolls, are in the possession of Taoist priests and brought to the temples or temporary roadside shrines by them for special occasions: such as rituals for the dead or the great chiao festival. Besides those there", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209800, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1983", "page_number": 59, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "37\n\nhas apparent existence because of the apparent union of countless dust particles. Aside from the dust particles, there is no world. Similarly, according to modern scientific view, the world is made up of atoms. Aside from the atoms, there is no world.23\n\nThe third argument is that since the Buddha's teaching is the truth, it must contain all the knowledge ever discovered by science. However, the Buddha's words do not contain every detail of science, but they do contain the principles from which science is derived. One writer puts it: \"Although Buddhism is not science, it is science and philosophy on a higher level.\"24 Another writer puts it: \"Buddhism is the philosophy from which science is derived.”26 Since Buddhism is super science, it fulfills the a priori conditions of not getting into conflict with science.\n\nThe fourth kind of argument is the reconciliation of apparent contradictions between science and Buddhist teaching. One problem discussed is the existence of Amitabha's western paradise. The conviction that the world is a globe spinning round the sun has rendered the interpretation of the term \"west\" rather problematical. Two essays have been written to solve this problem and I leave the reader to reconstruct the arguments for themselves.20\n\nIV. The Self-perception of the Monks\n\nAt the outset of this paper, the observation was made that the monk's self-perception changes in relation to his perception of the reality around him. At whatever point in time, monkhood must maintain its sense of purpose. The monk must find his own life attractive and his sense of value adjusted to his perception of reality, which cannot be totally cut off from the community's perception of it. Hong Kong has experienced a lot of changes in recent decades and these changes posed challenges to the sangha and I have documented some of its major responses. Here I shall discuss the monks' self-perception in terms of these responses.\n\nDuring the last two or three decades, monks in Hong Kong have experienced great changes in material conditions. There have been great fluctuations in the numbers of monks when immigrant monks came from mainland China and later dispersed", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214233, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1998", "page_number": 91, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "54\n\nfirms that the majority of deities in these two temples are Deva. The categorization of the Twenty-eight Immortals as Deva was arrived at by comparing the Sanskrit identities of the twenty-eight images and the list of the Twenty Deva provided by Soothill. The minor variation in inclusion and omission between the Twenty Deva listed by Soothill, the Twenty-two Deva in the Ta Pei Ssu and the Twenty-five in the Pi-yun Ssu cannot be explained.\n\nIn some temples the Deva have been equated with the Asuras. This is incorrect as the Asuras are those who are not only not Deva but are, according to some writings, the greatest enemies of the Deva and, in others, it is written that the Asuras are anti-gods and not, as claimed so often in English, demons.\n\nIt would not have been possible to identify any one of the images of the Deva without its Sinicised Sanskrit title on the tablet before it apart, that is, from the three fundamentally Chinese deities with their Chinese titles included within the Deva groups, Wei T'o and the four T'ien Wang Guardians.\n\nImages within the Two Temples in the Western Hills\n\nWithin the main hall of both temples, apart from the images of the Deva lining the side walls, stands the popular and well-known Buddhist bodhisattva, the Goddess of Mercy, Kuan Yin adapted from images brought from India where he [a male deity at that time] was the Brahmanist deity Avalokitesvara. In the Ta Pei Ssu she is alone whereas in the Pi-yun Ssu she is sitting crossed-legged and is flanked by two pairs of secondary bodhisattva. The first pair is Wen Shu and P'u-Hsien, whose Sanskrit titles are Manjusri and Samatabhadra respectively. They were two of the twelve divine Buddhist teachers. They in turn are flanked by another pair of bodhisattvas, Ti-tsang Wang, the Saviour of the Underworld and Ta-shih Chih. The latter is one of the members of the retinue of Amitabha [O-mi-t'u Fu] known in Sanskrit as Kshitigarbha and Mahasthama respectively. Mahasthama is believed to be the deified Maudgalyayana, the right hand disciple of the Buddha, Gautama.\n\nIn the Pi-yun Ssu, the bodhisattva Saviour of the Underworld, Ti-tsang Wang, is depicted in his modern standard form, sitting side-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216040, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2002", "page_number": 339, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "273\n\nsince sought his assistance to calm storms. In yet another legend Yan Gong is claimed to have saved the life of the first emperor of the Ming during a crossing of the Yangzi; and Werner, after relating a complicated story about the presence of a mythical creature being found, noted that Ming Hong Wu, having realized that he had been saved by a spirit called Yan, bestowed the title of Marshal of the Metropolis upon him and ordered a temple to be built in his honour.\n\nImages of Yan Gong have been only noted on altars in the area of Nanchang in Jiangxi, and in the southern maritime provinces of China including Taiwan and Hong Kong, but not within Chinese communities in South-east Asia.\n\nJiang Shen, literally the spirit of the river, is the generic title for a nameless deity on the Yangzi about whom little is known. She is said to have taken on human form and been bathing in the nude when she was stranded by the low tide. A fisherman caught and raped her, and died! The image of the deity seen in the temple near Wuhan on the Yangzi was that of a fish.\n\nJin Shan Si\n\nThe Song emperor Zhen Cong [998-1022] first gave the name of Longyou Dao, the Island of the Imperial Swim, to Jin Shan island after he had had a dream that he had been swimming in the Yangzi from it and then some ten years later gave permission to the monastery on the island to take the name Longyou Chan Si, which indicates that the temple was of the Buddhist Amitabha School of Meditation. It was restored to prominence and imperial patronage in about 1323 following several annual religious congresses.\n\nVisitors nowadays see a hillock, Jin Shan, Gold or Golden Hill, on which the temple stands with its tall octagonal pagoda with galleries marking each of the seven storeys outlined against the sky. This pagoda crowns the buildings and dominates the River and for a small gratuity permission to ascend the spiral staircase may be obtained. Today's pagoda, known as the Cishou Ta, was built in 1900, though according to historical texts there used to be two pagodas. These stood one at each end of the temple, and were first built during the Tang, though reconstructed several times down the centuries.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216316, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2003", "page_number": 75, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "24\n\nas seated, holding a long-stemmed lotus flower with a small temple perched on the blossom, and has a third eye in the centre of his forehead. Wei Tuo Pusa is represented by a golden statue in which he poses wearing armor and holding a drawn sword. Wei Tuo is the protector of all Buddhist temples.\n\nOn the other side of the Tian Wang Dian is the third courtyard, on the far side of which is the Hall of the Great Hero (Da Xiong Bao Dian). This hall's origins date to an 1878-1879 reconstruction, when it was rebuilt to replace an earlier structure destroyed during the Taiping rebels' attacks on Shanghai in 1860-1862. The hall was closed for a massive reconstruction and renovation in November 2002, but had been reopened by January 2004. The interior is now nothing less than spectacular. Three large Buddhas (San Fo) are placed in the centre. Sakyamuni Buddha stands in the centre, flanked on the left by the bodhisattva Samantabhadra (Pu Xian) seated on an elephant, and on the right by the bodhisattva Manjusri (Wen Shu) seated on a blue lion. Overhead the hall's ceiling is pierced by a massive wooden dome that spirals upward, looking much like the wooden domes (Zao Jing) often found over traditional Peking Opera stages (Xiju Wutai). Behind the San Fo facing out the rear exit is a large Guanyin statue in front of a floor-to-ceiling landscaped rockery covered with smaller figurines depicting the Buddhist heaven and hell. Along the side walls stand 36 quite expressive human statues of the Buddhist saints, 18 on each side of the hall. This is an unusual number, which seems to include 16 Arhats (Luohan) and 20 Devas (Zhu Tian), and an assortment that includes such non-Buddhist figures from Chinese tradition as Confucius (Kong Fu Zi), the War God (Guan Di), the God of Literature (Wen Chang), and the Kitchen God; Hindu gods such as Brahma, Indra, and Yama (Yen Lo); as well as Buddhist deities such as the Four Heavenly Kings (Si Tian Wang) and the bodhisattva Wei Tuo as well. The hall also houses one of Longhua's three bronze bells, this one dating from 1586.\n\nOn the other side of the Da Xiong Bao Dian is a fourth courtyard. On the far side of this fourth courtyard is the Hall of the Three Gods (San Sheng Dian). This hall is dominated by enormous floor-to-ceiling golden statues of three Buddhas (San Fo) who appear side by side in an unusual standing position with golden flames rising up behind them. In the centre is Amitabha Buddha (O Mi Tuo Fo), to your left is the bodhisattva Da Shi Zhi, and on your right is the bodhisattva Guan Shi Yin.\n\nPage 75\n\nPage 76", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]