During The Period Of The Republic Of China Of Guanyin Belief Research

Guanyin belief is a very mature faith form which widely exists in China andcontains rich cultural connotations. Some scholars had divided this faith form intothree categories: the Chinese Buddhism Guanyin belief, the folk Guanyin belief and theTibetan Buddhism Guanyin belief. In this I’d like to dissertate living conditions andoperating status of the former two in the Republic of China.In spite of its short history of30years, The Republic of China has a very specialplace in Chinese history. And just because of this special place，It has a distinctivesocial situation: on the one hand，A series of natural and manmade disasters led tocontinuous social miseries. on the other hand，The collapse of tradition and thespread of western culture brought a high degree of social freedom. Guanyin faith-thelegacy of this traditional Chinese society, in such a state of society, met withunprecedented challenges, and of course, there are opportunities. Too many peoplehave dissertated upon the challenges. I’d like to focus on the opportunities. In fact, ifwe carefully analyze the big environment of society and the small environment ofBuddhism, We will find that the living condition of Guanyin belief in this period was notas bad as imagined. Firstly, a lot of people needed such a super-human idol to givethem spiritual comforting. Secondly, the majority of Chinese people’s psychologicalconditions were still very traditional in spite of many years of propaganda aboutscience. And again, Buddhist activities of promoting were getting more advanced.They instructed Guanyin classics, organized Guanyin societies, published theGuanyin newspapers and filmed Guanyin movie and so on. Because of these threereasons, we see that all of the activities about Guanyin belief were carried outsuccessfully.Take a look at the Chinese Buddhism Guanyin belief firstly: All the Buddhist believethat the total karma was the reason of the various disasters and the way to relief wasin Guanyin belief. That is why they spared no effort to promote the belief in Guanyin. Inorder to practice and carry forward the Guanyin belief, they recited the holy name, pilgrimaged to the holy land, and preached Guanyin classics. Monks and laymanBuddhist cooperated with very well throughout the process. In order to more effectivelypromote the Belief, they organized various forms of Guanyin community. Followers arealso showed high enthusiasm.As for the folk Guanyin belief, it is very different from the Buddhism Guanyin beliefwhich is theoretical、practical and systematic. The folk Guanyin belief is secular andbanausic.” All requests will be granted” is perfect state. All kinds of Guanyin-folk-custom are its form of expression. In addition, we also found a very specialGuanyin belief type-the Guanyin belief in secret societies, this type is different fromthe strict system of Buddhism, is also different from the folk of freedom, it seems inbetween.To further understand the implications of Guanyin belief, I selected several similarbeliefs to compare: Cihang-Taoist belief、Bixiayuanjun belief and the Christian Marybelief, at last. We would find that there are many similarities which are the commonbeyond the Eastern and Western civilization differences. Perhaps we can use Oedipuscomplex to explain this phenomenon.