In the late Qing and early Republic, Buddhism in China was in a poor position, mocked as a business of funeral rites and spirits, or as retreat into the mountains — monasteries living off ritual services, monks regarded as men who had opted out of society. Humanistic Buddhism is the answer to that situation.
Today therefore differs from the preceding days. Instead of sūtras and treatises, it reads three modern monks arguing a case, together with the one canonical passage all of them return to.
From the Platform Sūtra: the teaching is in the world, and awakening is not apart from the world; seeking awakening apart from the world is like looking for the horns of a hare.
Everything turns on "not apart from." It does not recommend attachment to worldly life; it says that the site of awakening can only be the world — there is nowhere to work on awakening except among afflictions, as there is nowhere to see water except in waves.
A further line goes past that: strike down both wrong and right — even the thought of transcending the world is one more thing held on to.
Taixu opened the ground. Facing decline he proposed three reforms: of doctrine (against superstition, toward human life), of institution (reorganizing the monastic order), and of property (turning temple wealth toward education and charity). His compressed slogan: the completion of a person is the completion of a Buddha — buddhahood is not achieved by discarding one's humanity but by bringing it to fullness. Most of his organizational reforms failed in his lifetime; the ideas took root.
Yinshun supplied the theory, as Taixu's student. From the Āgamas he drew the fundamental proof text that Buddhas appear among human beings, giving the movement a canonical basis rather than only a practical rationale. His formula is true to the principle, fitted to the occasion: teaching must accord with the truth and with the condition of its hearers — the first alone leaves you unheard, the second alone leaves you pandering. On that basis he criticized the later tendency to deify, a position that provoked lasting argument.
Hsing Yun carried it into practice. Founding Fo Guang Shan in 1967, he built humanistic Buddhism into a system spanning five continents, with universities, museums, a television station, clinics, and disaster relief. His four-part definition is the plainest available: what the Buddha taught, what people need, what purifies, what is good and beautiful.
With an organization on that scale, how does it avoid becoming religion as enterprise? Hsing Yun's answer: conduct worldly work in a world-transcending spirit — do concrete, visible things with a mind free of self-interest.
That line serves as the day's conclusion and also as a measure: doing the work is not the hard part; the hard part is whether that spirit is still present while the work is done.
The wisdom chapter of the Platform Sūtra — the canonical basis.
Taixu, How to Build Humanistic Buddhism — the vision and the three reforms.
Yinshun, The Buddha Is Among Humans — the theory and its canonical grounding.
Hsing Yun, A Blueprint for Humanistic Buddhism — practice at scale, with four aims dividing the work into culture, education, charity, and shared practice.
These four lines of the Formless Verse are the single most-cited scriptural basis of the twentieth-century Humanistic Buddhism movement. Reversing the popular notion of "renouncing the world to seek a pure land elsewhere," Huineng nails awakening firmly to the ground of "the world": bodhi is not beyond the mountains and clouds, but right here, in this moment among people and affairs.
Everything hinges on "not apart." It does not urge attachment to the world, but insists the site of awakening can only be the world—apart from affliction there is no place to polish bodhi, just as apart from waves there is no seeing water. Taixu, Yinshun, and Hsing Yun all trace their Humanistic Buddhism back to this one line.
"Strike away both wrong and right" goes further: even the thought "I must transcend the world" is a clinging. True freedom is to act within the world yet not be bound by its gains and losses—the most practical key Chan hands the modern person.
With embodied cognition: "Awakening not apart from the world" resonates with the core claim of embodied cognition—mind is not disembodied computation but arises only through the body's interaction with its environment. Awakening does not happen in a vacuum "apart from the world," just as cognition does not happen in a bodiless brain. Clinging to either pole—"transcendent" or "worldly"—mistakes an emergence-in-relation for an isolated entity.
Traditional context: Chan holds that "carrying water and chopping wood are none other than the wondrous Way"—the practitioner investigates within daily chores, not waiting to enter meditative absorption to seek elsewhere.
Modern application: Treat your desk, meetings, and childcare as your training ground, not obstacles to practice. Next time you think "I'll practice once I'm through this rush, once the kids are older," let Huineng remind you: that "pure land later" is precisely the rabbit's horns. The chance to awaken is only in the very task in your hands now.
Taixu is the founder of "Humanistic Buddhism" (his early term was "Buddhism for human life," later merged with "humanistic"). Facing a late-Qing/early-Republic Buddhism derided as "funeral rites, gods and ghosts, and world-fleeing recluses," he proposed the church-shaking "three revolutions": of doctrine (break superstition, center human life), of institution (reform the monastic order), and of property (turn temple assets to education and charity).
"When the person is complete, buddhahood is complete" distills his thought: becoming a buddha requires no abandonment of being human—it is completed precisely in perfecting one's personhood. This pulls the distant fruit of buddhahood back into each person's present cultivation of character, a modern restatement of Huineng's "Dharma within the world."
Taixu's institutional reforms largely failed in his lifetime (the conservative establishment was vast), but the ideas had been sown—his student Yinshun and follower Hsing Yun would later grow that seed into a great tree.
With organizational change: The "three revolutions" were a classic top-down institutional redesign, and their failure confirms an insight of organization theory—reform that changes only ideas (software) but cannot move entrenched interests in property and headcount (hardware) is easily devoured by path dependence. Taixu failed at property and institution, the two "hardest" layers.
With leadership: Taixu illustrates the gap between "visionary leader" and "execution": a great idea needs an organizer to inherit the baton (Hsing Yun) before it can scale. Vision and institution-building are two different talents.
Traditional context: Taixu founded the Wuchang Buddhist Institute and the Sino-Tibetan Buddhist Institute, training clergy through a modern curriculum in place of the traditional master-disciple transmission.
Modern application: For anyone pursuing the "super-individual," Taixu offers a caution: however lofty the goal, it must rest on the foundation of "completed personhood." Don't suspend "becoming an AI super-individual" as an external myth—first ask whether, in honesty, patience, and responsibility, you have become one measure more "a complete person" today. Person complete, then work complete.
Yinshun, Taixu's student, is Humanistic Buddhism's most rigorous theoretical architect. With deep textual scholarship he unearthed from the Āgamas the root proof-text "all Buddhas appear in the human realm," giving the movement an unassailable canonical basis—no longer merely a responsive slogan.
He proposed the famous principle "according with truth and according with capacity" (qìlǐ qìjī): propagation must both accord with truth (not violate the right Dharma of dependent-arising and emptiness) and accord with the age's capacities (answer the modern condition). Lacking either—truth alone stays too lofty for anyone to hear; capacity alone panders and loses authenticity.
He further used this to appraise Buddhist history, criticizing the later "heavenization and deification" trend (worshiping buddhas and bodhisattvas as fortune-granting gods) and urging return to the Buddha's original "human" character—a sharp stance that sparked lasting debate within the tradition and is a key coordinate for understanding modern Chinese Buddhism.
With textual scholarship: Yinshun's method—proving meaning by scripture, layer by layer collating the Āgamas against later Mahāyāna—is structurally akin to historical philology's "return to the earliest textual stratum": strip away later accretions to approach the original form of the teaching. It is a kind of Buddhism-internal "archaeology."
With the communication of ideas: "Truth and capacity" maps precisely onto the dual constraint of any transmission of thought—the truth-value of content (truth) and fit to the audience (capacity). A model (an AI included) satisfying only one is either correct but unheard, or popular but distorted.
Traditional context: Yinshun's lifetime output approached seven million words; "learning for the sake of the Dharma, for the sake of Buddhism," he modeled "scholarship as practice."
Modern application: Take "truth and capacity" as the yardstick for your own expression and collaboration. Next time you write a proposal, teach a child, or lead a team, ask twice: Is this "correct" (truth)? Can this person, at this moment, take it in (capacity)? Only-correct slides into preaching; only-agreeable loses principle—holding both is real communication.
If Taixu was the idea and Yinshun the theory, Hsing Yun was the practitioner at scale. Founding Fo Guang Shan in 1967, he turned Humanistic Buddhism from books into a global propagation system spanning five continents—universities, art museums, a television station, free clinics, and disaster relief.
The four phrases "what the Buddha taught, what people need, what purifies, what is wholesome and good" are the plainest yet most precise definition of Humanistic Buddhism—translating profound doctrine into the everyday language of happiness people can feel, the very acme of "according with capacity." The Four Objectives then break propagation into four operable, institutionalized channels: culture, education, charity, communal cultivation.
Hsing Yun also faced the controversy head-on: with an organization this vast, how does one avoid the worldliness of "running religion as a business"? His answer was "With a transcendent spirit, do the world's work"—handling tangible, formed affairs with a selfless, altruistic heart. This line is the landing point of all four texts.
With distributed organizations: Fo Guang Shan's worldwide network of temples resembles a "distributed system"—a unified set of objectives and teachings as a shared protocol, while local branch temples self-govern and adapt to local conditions, holding scaled consistency through values rather than pure hierarchical command.
With platform thinking: Splitting the Dharma into four "interfaces"—culture, education, charity, communal cultivation—lets people of different dispositions enter through different doors, lowering the threshold and widening reach: a kind of "platform thinking."
Traditional context: Fo Guang members practice the "Three Acts of Goodness" (do good deeds, speak good words, keep a good heart) and the "Four Givings" (give others confidence, joy, hope, and convenience), landing practice in everyday dealings.
Modern application: Take "with a transcendent spirit, do the world's work" as your work ethos: do the work all-out, refining it to excellence (the world's work), while the intention is altruistic and selfless, not for private name (the transcendent spirit). Next time you take on a big project, first calibrate the intention slot—do the work beautifully, yet let the heart not be bound by success or failure.