The Way to Buddhahood: Instructions from a Modern Chinese Master
Taiwan · 1998
Y
Yinshun
Yinshun
1906 CE–2005 CE · Modern · Haining
1906–2005 CE
Yinshun (1906–2005 CE) was the foremost Buddhist scholar-monk of the modern Chinese tradition and the chief theorist of Humanistic Buddhism (renjian fojiao). Born in Haining, Zhejiang, and a student of Taixu, he produced a vast body of historical and doctrinal scholarship—drawing on critical study of the early texts and Madhyamaka—and argued for a Buddhism engaged with the human world rather than focused on gods or the afterlife. Living mostly in Taiwan after 1949, he deeply shaped the island's Buddhist revival and mentored Cheng Yen of the Tzu Chi Foundation. His life and work are well documented.
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Stop 1 of 2Born
Haining
What they did here
DOCUMENTED ORIGIN: born in Haining; ordained in 1930 and became a student of the reformer Taixu.
About Haining
Haining, in Zhejiang province, China, was the birthplace of two leading figures of modern Chinese Buddhism: the reformer Taixu (born 1890), founder of the Wuchang Buddhist Institute and an advocate of 'humanistic Buddhism,' and his disciple the scholar-monk Yinshun, who later became a major Buddhist intellectual in Taiwan.
In Haining at the same time
In the same place & time
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Sages whose lives overlapped with Yinshun’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
In the same tradition
The world in their lifetime
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Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Yinshun’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.