Humanistic Buddhism

Humanistic Buddhism () is a modern philosophy practiced by Buddhist groups originating from Chinese Buddhism which places an emphasis on integrating Buddhist practices into everyday life and shifting the focus of ritual from the dead to the living. Taixu, a Buddhist modernist activist and thinker who advocated the reform and renewal of Chinese Buddhism, used the term Buddhism for Human Life (). The first two characters, "human" and "life", indicating his criticism of several aspects of late Qing dynasty and early Republican Chinese Buddhism that he wished to correct, namely, an emphasis on spirits and ghosts ("human") and funeral services and rites ("life"). His disciples continued this emphasis. Taixu also used the term Buddhism for the Human World, or popularly humanistic Buddhism (). It appears that at first the two terms were largely interchangeable. One of Taixu's disciples, Yin Shun, used the term humanistic Buddhism to indicate a criticism against the "deification" of Buddhism, which was another common feature of much of Chinese Buddhism, in his articles and books. It was Yin Shun and other disciples of Taixu who brought both of these two terms to Taiwan in the wake of the Nationalist government defeat during the Chinese Civil War by the Chinese Communist Party. It was in Taiwan that the term humanistic Buddhism became the most commonly used term, particularly amongst the religious leaders who originally hailed from China. Humanistic Buddhism integrates Buddhist practices into everyday life based on the nature of Sakyamuni Buddha achieving Buddhahood while bound in an earthly form. Humanistic Buddhism is based on six core concepts, namely humanism, altruism, spiritual practices as part of daily life, joyfulness, timeliness and the universality of saving all beings. From these principles, the aim of humanistic Buddhism is to reconnect Buddhist practice with the ordinary and places emphasis on caring for the material world, not solely concerned with achieving delivery from it.