Bodies and Structures 2.0: Deep-Mapping Modern East Asian History

The Lingquan Temple: Taiwanese Buddhism

Under Shanhui's leadership, the Lingquan Temple quickly became one of the most important Buddhist institutions in Taiwan. One reason for its prominence was that it was one of the very few places that trained and ordained monks in the colony, which gave it tremendous influence over the Buddhist teachings learned by Taiwanese monks. Shanhui also promoted the temple as the apex of a regional Buddhist triangle that held China and Japan as its other vertices. In 1918, he joined with the Sōdō sect's Sōjiji temple, recently rebuilt in Yokohama, to organize a month-long Patriotic Buddhism Training Course (Aikoku Bukkyō kōshūkai) at the Lingquan, which was expressly designed to promote the skills and patriotic fervor of Buddhist monks and missionaries in Taiwan. However, he brought most of the speakers over from Fujian Province, a fact that highlighted his efforts to fuse Buddhist traditions into a new Taiwanese tradition. Shanhui made multiple trips to China to train and ordain monks ion the 1910s and 1920s, and went to Japan in 1912 and 1925 to pay his respects to Sōdō sect leaders, and to contribute to an East Asia Buddhist Conference (Tōa Bukkyō taikai). In addition to building these regional ties, Shanhui proselytized for the Lingquan through an island-wide youth group, and through organization called the Southern Ocean Buddhist Association (Nan'ei Bukkyōkai) that he established with a Taiwanese monk from Danshui and  the religious scholar and bureaucrat Marui Keijirō. The deep, frequently reinforced connections to parent institutions in China and Japan, and the active proselytizing, recruitment, and training across Taiwan, lent credence to the Lingquan's status as a fusion of Buddhist traditions into a new branch of Taiwanese Buddhism with its own sacred terrain.
 

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