A Study On The Commercialization Of Buddhism In Contemporary China

In recent years, with the gradual development of China’s economy and the great wealth of material life,more and more people begin to turn their attention toward the spiritual life.Then our religious activities become to be flourishing.Five major religions have made tremendous development and play increasingly important roles in the social and cultural life.The Seventeenth Party Congress report also proposed "fully implement the Party’s basic policy on religion and encourage religious personages and believers to play positive roles in promoting economic and social development."The general program of new constitution also mentioned that "unite religious people for contribution to economic to social development. " This fully demonstrates the CPC Central Committee puts ahigh value on religion, religious, religious work, especially the great influence of religion in promoting positive development, and it also reflects the important status and role of religion in social life of the country.Indeed, religions play a huge social and economic role in promoting social economy, and their economy and management thinking, culture and tourism resources are great unexplored treasures. However, we should not forget that religions’transcendent and non-utilitarian nature, and should not ignore or hurt the religious feelings of religious people even damage purity of religions. With the continuous development of religion and religious and social and economic interactions.there also had a lot of problems, " commercialization of religion"is the most important one of them, while it is mainly manifested as "commercialization of buddhis吗" and " commercialization of Taoism", which determined by their special circumstances. Taoism is China’s indigenous religion, and Buddhism, although a foreign one, form unique Buddhism with chinese characteristics after the fusion with Chinese traditional culture. These two religions have broad mass base and historical heritage,especially the Mahayana thought and simple practice from Zen and Pure Land, making Buddhism have the most number of religious believers. Meanwhile the Buddhist and Taoist temples often locate in among the famous mountains, mostly scenic spots and historic sites, having tourism advantages. The other three religions, Islam, Catholicism, Christianity are much lower commercialized compared to Buddhism and Taoism.Firstly, this article precisely defines the "commercialization of Buddhism" Although commercialization of Buddhism is the current hot topic, but the lack of scientific definition making it impossible to accurately describe the phenomena and find a way to solve the problem appropriately. It distincts the difference between Buddhism economy and economic Buddhism, points out the reasonable aspects of commercialization of Buddhism have existed in history and contemporary days。But we should realize that when we talk about commercialization of Buddhism in this article, it only implys an over-commercialization of Buddhism, specifically Buddhist-profit organizations and individuals as well as over-exploitation of resources of Buddhism.Then we classify the phenomenon of Buddhism commercialization into the commercialization of temple construction, commercialization of Buddhist culture services and commercialization of Buddhist culture product.Temple construction commercialization mainliy manifest as commercial contracting temple,or the government, enterprises funded the construction of various temples which do not have religious qualifications. The main reason is the current status of China’s long management Buddhist monasteries。Buddhist cultural services refers to a variety of Buddhist spiritual services, which are often of artificially high prices, but the quality of service it is difficult to be guaranteed。Buddhist culture product commercialization, is a variety of related tangible products which Buddhism does not have product patents。Buddhist elements but must be monitored at all levels of the religious administration, to avoid false advertising and fraud cases.On the one hand,Buddhist monasteries should vigorously carry out such activities, but engaging in such business activities not equals to the commercialization, because its purpose is profit.It then describes the impact of the commercialization of Buddhism which includes damaging the purity and image of Buddhism, disturbing the order of Buddhist daily activities and tourism market, hurting the feelings of religious people, endangering people’s health and easily breeding cult. So we can see the abominable effects of the commercialization of Buddhism,and the state and government agencies must give commercialization of Buddhism problems enough attention.Otherwise,the complexity of religious issues coupled with the influence of Buddhism commercialization will produce so many unsolvable problems.Finally, we raised some views on how to address these issues.Mainly from the legal system and the Buddhism internal management two aspects, namely macroeconomic management and micro-management aspects.In macroscopic, the goverment must complete the relevant religious law as soon as possible, especially on religious property and management authority. Meanwhile, the government should improve administrative efficiency to provide better management of Buddhism bussiness.In microcosmic,Buddhism should strengthen religious discipline and precepts construction, improve the level of training and knowledge monks, carry out all reasonable business activities.Also, religion should carry out extensive areas of general education, raise awareness of religion among the masses, prevent the commercialization of Buddhism from the source.This study aims to solve the commercialization of Buddhism problem, make appropriate contributions to healthy development of Buddhism and China’s economic construction.