Fo Guang Shan

Fo Guang Shan (lit. “Buddha Light Mountain”) is a Buddhist organization headquartered in Taiwan. It originated in a monastery founded in 1967 by the monk Hsing Yun (d. 1927) in southern Taiwan and has since grown into one of the largest and most visible Buddhist associations on the island and beyond. Inspired by the reformist teachings of the monk Taixu (1890–1947), Hsing Yun espouses humanistic Buddhism—that is, a Buddhism concerned with social issues rather than exclusively focused on monastic cultivation. He advocates social action as the creation of “pure lands” in the here and now, thus moving the focus of attention from the “pure land” as a feature of the afterlife to a utopian ideal in this world. His organization pursues this aim through the ...