Buddhism, one of the world’s largest religions with a notable amount of believers, originated in ancient Nepal and was introduced to China, which was an astonishing great empire, in the Common Era. It was deemed orthodox for approximately twenty centuries in the tradition of Yellow River Civilization, though unappreciated by a minority and damaged in the twentieth century. According to statistics by Phoenix New Media in 2013, the number of Buddhists in China today, which has been boosted by China’s Reform and Open Policy since the epilogue of the last century, reached an unprecedented 100 million followers. Of these, over 80% are, according to the same statistics, not officially recorded since Buddhists do not worship at church like Catholics nor fast like Muslims-- the governments might do censuses in churches and other religious gatherings. In the Islamic world, where children are born in circumstances with a common religious education and nurturing, it should be a piece of cake for people to understand why there are a great percentage of religious believers in the Islamic world. However, as a native Chinese, I have not seen religious education going on in public schools nor in families. Therefore, a question should be asked: “Why does Buddhism have influences so profound and so deep in Chinese people’s minds despite practically no religious education or nurturing taking place in China?”

Before rushing into a discussion of the question, I would like to depict my personal experience on Putuo Mountain, one of the four famous holy places for Buddhism in China, which could probably provide a brief impression of how much impact  Buddhism exerts on Chinese culture.

During a Christmas time break which I spent with my father in Ningbo, Zhejiang province, father suggested paying a visit to Putuo Mountain in Zhoushan, a city right next to Ningbo. In the two hours we travelled by car to get there, my father chattered continuously, and taught me the basic concepts of Buddhism. We then boraded a boat and approached Putuo Mountain, which stands alone on a tiny separated piece of land, and as we did I observed several vacant seats and came to realize that only a minority of people in China get some time off for Christmas- as there would not be any vacant spots during Chinese holidays. As I gave the crowd a glance, I caught mostly old people in my sight. They were chatting in their own dialects, which filled the cabin with noise. Later, as I stepped into the yard which contains dozens of temples, we were stilled by the silent surrounding. The old people who were pouring sentences out like water tap fell into silence as well. Honestly, since I don’t really follow religion or religious ideas, when we got to the mountain, I just stood outside the temples while my father was worshiping to dozens of Gods praying for various blessings. However, I did notice some interesting details.

In front of every temple was a censer, which, in size, matched the size of temples— the larger thetemple, the larger the censer. Worshipers buy incense in stores near the temples, spending at least 99 RMB (about 16 dollars) for a round of worship per person. 298 RMB (about 50 U.S. dollars) would also be a common expenditure. Censers were filled with ash transformed from burned incense. When I looked inside the censer, bunches of incense were still burning inundated with hills of ash. A Buddhist told me that he has just emptied the censers that morning. After doing a simple calculation, I dare say the stores (actually the Putuo Mountain complex), earn a 100,000 RMB per day at minimum. At the same time, I also noticed there hung signs on the trees alongside the main road on Putuo Mountain. On those signs were people’s names and how much money they donate for these trees. This also happens in Shintoism in Japan— people donated money to stone streetlights around the shrines and stick paper to those lights with their names and wishes on the paper. That way, at least from those people’s perspectives, the Gods would be happier to bless them with richness, and bless them and their relatives with health if they donate more money to the temples. This kind of actions resembles an investment—“I invest money in the Gods, and the Gods will pay me back with good fortune.” It is hard to say what percentage of “Chinese Buddhism followers” venerates Buddhist for these kinds of reasons. However, Buddhist doctrines rained profound influences upon Chinese traditional culture, which is one of the reasons why the majority of religious people in China follow Buddhism.

When it comes to Buddhist core ideas and traditional Chinese cultural ideas, people find they each resemble the other and cannot tell the origin of some notions—whether from Buddhist teachings or traditional Chinese culture. “The Sky”, the space above ground or above the space which human beings live, is deemed to surpass and exceed everything else. Similar to the notion in Western Christianity which states that God created the world, this Chinese thought states that it was the “Sky” who created various creatures and has always been supervising human behavior. A Buddhist cultural notion, similarly, states that Sakyamuni, the founder of the Buddhist religion, enlightened human beings and all kinds of wild creatures which basically created the harmonious nature of the world. Therefore, Buddhist ideas, as well as traditional Chinese ideas, have been stalwartly agreed upon and generally went along with each. If seniors would say that's “ancient Chinese theory” rather than saying exactly whether it’s from a Buddhist notion or ancient main stream notion.

There are further examples proving that vast similarities exist between Chinese Buddhist culture and traditional Chinese culture. However, it is important to the point out that at the base of that similarity, Buddhism, in the ideological level, is more advanced and sublimated. Metempsychosis, a well-known Buddhist theory, relating to the transmigration of the soul, states that human beings are living “a cycle of life”. (A transmigration of soul basically means the process of a soul moving into a new body) This means people would be reincarnated after death-- in other words, given a new body with the same soul whose memories have been erased. Almost every Chinese believes in this theory, or, at least they did in ancient times. Traditional Chinese culture guides people to obey the rules of nature, behave in a civilized manner and live in a world which repeats this cycle. However, Buddhist doctrine regards this cycle as a painful as well as an endless journey, and encourages and even enables human beings to escape from this cycle. Once people get rid of this cycle they will become immortal like the Gods and live in a place like heaven, which I think sounds pretty ridiculous today. As a religious theory, of metempsychosis was invented with an intention by various governors to control and to quell people. Thus, in order to get out of the cycle of metempsychosis, people have to be virtuous, which means they commit no crimes throughout their whole lives and treat everyone they meet amiably. With the economic betterment that many people have in the 21st century, people naturally seek advancement in this modern era because of their desire to break through the limit of life. If, in certain conditions when the ideas of metempsychosis go in an adverse direction against a more traditional Chinese “cycle of life” theory, there may not be so many people who would believe in Buddhism for the betterment of their lives. Therefore, it could be argued that psychological sublimation at the base of Buddhist theory attracted a great deal of people to follow Buddhism.

For another reason, a notable percentage of Chinese people believe in Buddhism. Due to the lack of spiritual sustenance, an increasing number of people struggle for something to believe in, or to rely on. Thus they regard Buddhism as form of a miracle, and wish for the power of Buddha to satiate them (though some of them seldom count on the Buddha to do anything practical). My father, by suggesting that “Everyone demands spiritual sustenance”, probably ought to belong to this category. These types of people are aware of the weakness of human beings, but at the same time have goals they are eager to complete. With such limited power, these people could only go to worship the Gods for blessings. “I hope my father’s illness will take a favorable turn” would be a typical wish of such people. Though they receive no religious education or may not even know anything about Buddhism (some of them do, however) they simply pin their hope on the Gods to turn the situation around. In addition, many people who try to find spiritual sustenance in Buddhism are aged—they are simply and easily lost after a long journey of dozens of years and are too aged to alter the situation themselves, so they seek an outside solution.
Flourishing since Sui Dynasty, Chinese Buddhism has exerted profound influences in shaping traditional Chinese culture and has laid root in every individual Chinese mind. It is impractical to measure how significant each category of believers is to the development of Buddhism, and it is also impractical to comprehensively analyze all the reasons that Chinese people to follow Buddhism, but this article presents some simple personal speculation regarding these ideas.

An article in “zgfj.cn” (pinyin for Chinese Buddhism) illustrates one way China views Buddhism and Chinese culture by contemplating that: “Buddhism for China resembles condiment for a dish”. With this “condiment”, Chinese people think the way the way they do today. Without this “condiment”, Chinese culture would essentially be the same thing, but “taste” fairly different.