President Xi Jinping visited Mount Huangbo as Governor of Fujian (1999-2002) 习近平总书记任职福建期间曾造访视察福清黄檗山万福寺

I found online a photo of President Xi Jinping's 习近平 visit to Wanfu monastery at Mount Huangbo 黄檗山万福寺 when he was the governor of Fujian (1999-2002). It is no wonder that he mentioned Yinyuan when he gave a speech during Nikai Toshihiro's 二階俊博 visit in 2015.

http://www.chubun.com/modules/article/view.article.php/c12/164086

New Edition of the Chronological Biography of Ven. Sheng Yen 聖嚴法師年譜

With gratitude, I received a copy of the new Chronological Biography of Ven. Sheng Yen 聖嚴法師年譜 from Sheng Yen Educational Foundation in Taibei. I turned to vol. 5, page 1636 and found the record of Ven. Sheng Yen's visit of Mount Huangbo 黃檗山 in Fuqing 福清 on Oct. 13, 2002, where is Master Yinyuan's home monastery. I wrote a blog before for this event. Click here.

The Holmes Welch Collection at University of Wisconsin Madison

While I was at University of Wisconsin Madison two weeks ago, I visited their Chinese collection and came across the Holmes Welch collection. Holmes Welch (Chinese name: Yuchi Han 尉遲酣)  is an influential scholar in the field of Chinese Buddhism and people can feel the impact of his works even today. Here is his obituary in New York Time. John Fairbanks also wrote one at Journal of Asian Studies. His major work includes:

The Parting of the Way: Lao Tzu and the Taoist Movement. 1957.
The Practice of Chinese Buddhism: 1900 - 1950. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967.
The Buddhist Revival in China. With a section of photos by Henri Cartier-Bresson. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968.
Taoism: The Parting of the Way. 1971.
Buddhism Under Mao. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972.
Facets of Taoism: Essays in Chinese Religion. 1979.

Below is a short introduction from the website of the Holmes Welch collection.
Holmes Hinkley Welch (1924-1981) was a scholar of Daoism and Chinese Buddhism, educated at Harvard. During World War II, Welch served in the Russian sector of the State Department's Office of European Affairs. He moved to Hong Kong in 1957, where he served as a political officer in the office of the consulate general until 1959. Welch wrote and edited five more books on Daoism and Chinese Buddhism and taught at Harvard and Yale.

His photos are also digitized and available online. See descriptions below.

Holmes Hinkley Welch (1921-1981) was a twentieth century eminent scholar on modern Chinese religions, especially Buddhism. After Welch's death, his family donated his library collection to Memorial Library, the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This collection includes different materials and media, among which are hundreds of photographs, where most have never been published or circulated. In an effort to make these photographs more accessible, a digitization project of selected photographs is underway.

The collection of digitized photographs is mostly about religious life in China and Hong Kong, between the 1930s and 1960s. The images capture different aspects of the Chinese Buddhist monastic life as well as Chinese Buddhist architecture.

The other images in this collection portray village and city lives, street scenes, and Chinese architecture.

Presentation at University of Wisconsin-Madison: The Fracturing of a Textual Double: Religious Transformations and the Authenticity Crisis in Early Modern East Asia

Just returned from Wisconsin-Madison and presented a paper in which I used Yinyuan as an example of the authenticity crisis in early modern East Asia.

Global Reformations: Religion and the Making of the Modern World
May 6 & 7
8:30 am - 5:00 pm
University Club Building
​University of Wisconsin-Madison

Jiang Wu, University of Arizona

The Fracturing of a Textual Double: Religious Transformations and the Authenticity Crisis in Early Modern East Asia

Abstract: This paper investigates religious transformations in early modern East Asia by examining how East Asia’s religious and intellectual traditions, notably Confucianism and Buddhism, coped with what I have characterized in my previous studies as the seventeenth-century “authenticity crisis.” In order to reinterpret the profound changes that led to the emergence of East Asian modernities, I will focus on a common approach of religious revival within these early-modern East Asian traditions, which is to project the future onto the past by resurrecting a “textual double,” an imagined reality based on constantly reinterpreting an enormous mass of Sinographic literature in order to deal with contemporary issues in the real world. Although this “textual double” had been reestablished as the ideal of authenticity in early modern East Asia, the inherent contradictions within it precipitated its fracturing and eventual collapse amid the massive “invasion” of Western knowledge in the late nineteenth century. Cases from religious and intellectual traditions in China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam and Ryukyu Kingdom will be discussed in this paper.

Feiyin Tongrong's 费隐通容 Calligraphy from He Chuangshi 何创时 Foundation

http://www.epochtimes.com/gb/3/8/8/n355585p.htm

http://bbs.artron.net/forum.php?mod=viewthread&action=printable&tid=3446522

I came across a piece of calligraphy by Yinyuan's teacher Feiyin Tongrong 费隐通容. Apparently it belongs to the collection of Mr. He Chuangshi 何创时 Foundation.

行草七言诗条幅
凌霄峰下住茅庵。
笑月昑风不等闲。
款─径山客
印─费隐客 径山老人
费隐通容（一五九三～一六六一），福建福清县人，俗家姓何，十四岁出家，号费隐，法名容。
费隐和尚自幼即英异绝伦，博通经论。历参无明慧经、湛然圆澄诸师。明天启三年参谒密云圆悟，遂顿释知见，并嗣其法。之后历住黄檗山万福寺、莲峰寺、浙江天宁寺、江苏超果寺、福严禅寺、万寿禅寺、维摩寺、尧峰山兴福寺等诸刹。皆能复兴古刹、传扬圆悟之法道、大振临济宗风。
崇祯六年主黄檗，延隐元入西堂，三年后退隐，由隐元隆琦承继法嗣；其法嗣计有隐元隆琦等六十四人。
费隐和尚在明朝灭亡之际，因战乱被贼兵伤及右腕，因此改用左手来书写，书法多为奔放的行草，亦能写端正的楷书。清顺治十四年（一六五七）再任嘉兴福严寺住持，十八年（一六六一）三月圆寂，世寿六十九。着有＜灯严统＞二十五卷、＜五灯严统解惑编＞一卷、＜祖庭钳锤录＞二卷等；另其法嗣隐元隆琦等编＞费隐禅师语录＞十四卷（或十六卷），明崇祯十六年（一六四三）刊行，内容包括＜上堂＞、＜小参＞、＜入堂＞、＜法语＞、＜偈＞、＜书问＞、＜问答机录＞、＜拈古＞、＜颂古＞、＜赞＞、＜杂着＞、＜小佛事＞等。

《赏析》
此书或为禅师左手所书写，字用狂草，恣肆奔放，气劫惊绝。
禅师为临济宗高僧，隐元隆琦为其法嗣。＜万法归心录＞称临济宗风为“势如山崩，机似电卷”，则禅师之书风实本自于宗风，是以禅入书者，其后之隐元、木庵、即非之黄蘗书风皆受其影响而开发。（钟弘年）

转载何创时书法艺术基金会