[
    {
        "id": 205138,
        "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": 94,
        "title": "RAS-1966",
        "content_text": "FOREIGN RELATIONS OF BUDDHISM\n\n89\n\nbeen told by one eminent abbot that those Christians who are militantly anti-Buddhist and call the dharma \"nothing but lies\" will be reborn in hell and punished by Yen-lo Wang. Even persons sympathetic towards Buddhism do not escape censure. Dr. K. L. Reichelt, the Norwegian missionary, found much to admire, particularly in Pure Land devotion, and he incorporated Buddhist motifs - even the burning of incense in the altar arrangements of his Christian Mission to the Buddhists, first in Nanking and later in Hong Kong. The architect for its buildings in Hong Kong was no less a person than J. Prip-Møller, who designed it in the pattern of the Buddhist monasteries he had spent four years studying. There was a refectory, library, and a wandering monks hall, where pilgrims could stay in the usual manner. Gradually they were introduced to Christian doctrines and diverted with swimming, games, and language instruction. Many of them became converts, some even Christian pastors. The ingenuity of all this has seemed Machiavellian to some Chinese Buddhists. One abbot bitterly called it \"that place that specializes in destroying Buddhism.\"44\n\nChristian Converts to Buddhism\n\nThe humiliation that Chinese Buddhists had suffered vis-à-vis Christianity, when added to the humiliation they felt as Chinese vis-à-vis the West, made it very sweet for them to find that a few Western Christians had been converted to Buddhism. They gave a handsome welcome to B. L. Broughton, the vice president of the Maha Bodhi Society of London, who spent six weeks touring Chinese Buddhist institutions in 1933 and was the first Englishman to receive the bodhisattva ordination.45 They also welcomed Dwight Goddard from Santa Barbara, who came soon afterwards to get help with translations; M.W. Anthony, the first American to receive the bodhisattva ordination (on May 26, 1936); John Blofeld, who stayed at many monasteries in the late 1930's; and Miss Ananda Jennings, who went to study meditation at the Nan-hua Szu in 1949. Probably the most famous Christian convert was Trebitch-Lincoln, born Ignatz Trebitsch in 1879. The son of a rich Jewish grain dealer near Budapest, he received an orthodox education, but thereafter his curriculum vitae probably has no parallel in modern times:",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811",
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    },
    {
        "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
    }
]