Chinese Buddhist Encyclopedia

Buddhism is a religion or philosophy based on the teachings of Gautama Buddha

Chinese Buddhist encyclopedia

Chinese Buddhist encyclopedia means to fill that emptiness what we have in internet about China and Buddhism.

The same time it gives possibility to gather all materials together on one website and gives people a chance to find easily materials what they need to study or just simply read them.

Author of this project is Vello Vaartnou who has carried such idea for many years and finally the work or project has started but it's a long way to go because encyclopedia will be both an English and Chinese.

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Benefits of an online Buddhist Encyclopedia of China

By Vello Väärtnõu

Buddhism in China

Chinese Buddhism (simplified Chinese: 汉传佛教; traditional Chinese: 漢傳佛敎; pinyin: Hànchuán Fójiào) refers collectively to the various schools of Buddhism that have flourished in China since ancient times. Buddhism has played an enormous role in shaping the mindset of the Chinese people, affecting their aesthetics, politics, literature, philosophy and medicine. For over a thousand years Buddhism dominated religious life in China, having both a profound impact on China and Buddhism and producing a great body of literature and art. China was the conduit through which Buddhism reached Korea, Japan and Vietnam. The Buddhism found in China is almost exclusively Mahayana. Buddhism is regarded as the largest religion in China today, with 100 million followers, or about 8 percent of the Chinese population, including Tibetans, Mongolians and a few other ethnic minorities like the Dai. There is roughly around the same number of Christians and Muslims. According to the State Administration for Religious Affairs there are about 13,000 Buddhist temples and about 200,000 Buddhist monks and nuns. Over the centuries as Buddhism developed it splintered into many schools and sects, each with its own distinctive traditions, doctrines and practices. Sub-sects—representing lineages of disciples that split off from the main schools often over minor doctrinal differences—and cults—that conducted special observances and rituals often focused on a particular sutra and kept alive by a lineage of masters—also developed. This has created a situation where China currently has vast amount of different Buddhist materials, including texts, Chronicles, commentaries from practitioners, sutras, tantras, paintings, sculptures, temples, shrines, monasteries, etc. In modern China numerous different Buddhist traditions are practiced, for example of Chan, Tibetan Buddhism, etc. , which results even more variety in available Buddhist materials in China.

We can say that China, with all its available information sources on Buddhism is richest in the world.

For a beginner on Buddhist path, the vast amount of different sources on Buddhism might be confusing. Also the most qualitative and informative materials might not be available for everyone, due to the expense of books, or they simply might not have access to the materials. At the same time it has become common in China that we hear news about fake monks and charlatans, who wear the monk robes and pretend to be educated monks, which often misguides people. Nowadays, when we have internet and available resources to publish and print books, everyone can write about Buddhism and express their opinion. As a result, such a large amount of materials are published, that the genuine and most profound Buddhist materials are amongst piles of opinions and expressions made by people, who are not always educated Buddhist.

This creates a great risk to the tradition of Buddhism, as the younger generation of Buddhists and people interested in Buddhism might reject or build their understanding of Buddhism based on others mis-conceptions.

China, with the biggest population of Buddhists in the world and the large and increasing global influence has the biggest potential to preserve and develop Buddhist tradition, influencing the course of development for Buddhism globally. Therefore, Venerable Vello Vaartnou has presented the following idea and project- On-Line Buddhist Encyclopedia of China. An encyclopedia (also spelled encyclopaedia or encyclopædia) is a type of reference work, a compendium holding a summary of information from either all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge. Encyclopedias are divided into articles or entries, which are usually accessed alphabetically by article name. Encyclopedia entries are longer and more detailed than those in most dictionaries. Generally speaking, unlike dictionary entries, which focus on linguistic information about words, encyclopedia articles focus on factual information to cover the thing or concept for which the article name stands. The word encyclopaedia comes from the Koine Greek ἐγκυκλοπαιδεία, from Greek ἐγκύκλιος παιδεία, transliterated enkyklios paideia, meaning "general education": enkyklios, meaning "circular, recurrent, required regularly, general", + paideia (παιδεία), meaning "education, rearing of a child". But it was reduced to a single word due to an error by copyists of Latin manuscripts. Together, the phrase literally translates as "complete instruction" or "complete knowledge". The planned “Buddhist Encyclopedia of China” web environment will be in two languages- Chinese Mandarin and English, maximizing the impact on more Buddhist readers around the globe. This will also influence the view of English speaking Buddhist, present in an opinion on Buddhism from Chinese side. The main emphasis of the Encyclopedia would be Chinese Buddhism, but it would not exclude any Buddhist materials which are not directly related to China. To fulfill such enormous work will take generations and even then the encyclopedia can be enriched by new movements in a tradition with history of 2600 years. Buddhism has continuously been around since Buddha Shakyamuni, in China Buddhism has been present for nearly two millenniums. The Encyclopedia would gather all the historic materials; information on all current Buddhist activates and would lay a foundation of highly educative Buddhist information for future generations.

Benefits of an On-Line Buddhist Encyclopedia

1. The encyclopedia creates an opportunity for the public to access a vast amount of collected, sorted and categorized materials about Buddhism. The service will be provided free of charge, the only condition and need would be a computer with internet access.
2. The encyclopedia collective will gather all available relevant materials on Buddhism in China and elsewhere, anayise their origin, properties, authors and position, then correct and set them into logical and chronological order. There are vast resources of available materials, accumulated over thousands of years in history of Chinese Buddhism, which will be published in the encyclopedia, adding new layers of cultural movements which have occurred in China over centuries.
3. Academic approach and methods of work will provide the opportunity to handle the materials and information scientifically, providing new means how to obtain the knowledge in Buddhism. The scientific/academic approach is often more acceptable for the members of modern society.
4. The people involved in the encyclopedia project will be highly educated in Buddhism, which for China results a large group of specialists in fields of Buddhism and Oriental Science. The project will also result large quantity of qualified and well educated Chinese translators for Buddhist terminology.
5. Chinese Buddhism has a very rich and colorful history and presence. The goal and aim for the encyclopedia project would be establishing complete and in-depth overview of all the different aspects of Buddhism in China.
6. It is very possible that during the research and development of the encyclopedia, new materials about Chinese Buddhism will be found which have not been available for the public so far (for example Buddhist text, Chronicles, Commentaries, etc)
7. The encyclopedia gives China an opportunity to become a leader in Buddhist and Oriental studies globally.
8. The Encyclopedia can be used by universities, schools, monasteries and other institutions as a source of qualified information and materials.
9. The encyclopedia can be used by Buddhist monks to extend and improve their knowledge about Buddhism
10. The encyclopedia project enables to influence and interact on other countries where Buddhism is practiced.
11. The encyclopedia project provides opportunity for Chinese and overseas readers to further understand the history of China and the cultural heritage of China, reaching back for over 5000 years.
12. The on-line encyclopedia is an opportunity for people in the modern, 21th century to obtain old and new ethical and cultural values.
13. The Project will result vast amount of knowledgeable historical materials, which otherwise are threatened to be lost in history.
14. With the technology of modern 21th century, it will be easy to collect, maintain and publish large amount of materials.
15. The Encyclopedia will have strong emphasis on audio-visual materials in order to provide the best opportunities available for the readers. The encyclopedia will contain all available relevant audio-visual files, which are combined with the content. Artists and designers will be involved in the project, who will be in charge of gathering and composing audio-visual materials.
16. It is important that to make this encyclopedia, the processing and publishing of information would take place in a politically free and uninfluenced environment, which provides free and perfect development of the encyclopedia.
17. The on-line database will provide highly informative source of information and knowledge, which is independent from any personal, political, religious views. The working collective for the encyclopedia will have the same condition; they have to be independent and un-influenced from any personal or third party opinions.
18. The Encyclopedia is a lifelong project, which means over the coming decades, the structure of the encyclopedia might change, as well as the working collective will be replaced with a younger generation, which if guided properly can benefit the project and the impact of the project. We have to be aware that the encyclopedia carries key value for the following generations, who will read, use and further develop the encyclopedia and the field of Buddhist knowledge.
19. The key people involved in the encyclopedia will take part of all major scientific and religious Buddhist conferences, which result better opportunities and new ideas and networks on how to develop the encyclopedia. Participating such events gives excellent opportunity to improve the overview of different aspects of Buddhism.
20. Specialists from other fields of professions will be involved to maximize the quality result of the encyclopedia. For example- IT-specialists, designers, artists, photographers, translators, etc. To give the Encyclopedia a material foundation, sponsors are required.
21. There is large number of materials available which have already been translated into Chinese, which will be used. For example the Tripitaka
22. There are numerous materials on Buddhism available in English, Russian, Tibetan, Mongolian, Sanskrit, Pali, Thai, Burmese, which are not available in Chinese at the moment. The purpose of the Encyclopedia would be translating all relevant materials from any language into Chinese and English, which are the two most common languages in the world.
23. The purpose of the encyclopedia is to create an in-depth and complete data-base about materials related Buddhism, with main emphasis on Chinese Buddhism.
24. One of the conditions of the encyclopedia would be that used materials would not lose their religious value and that published materials would not insult anyone’s religious beliefs or values.
25. In the organizing committee, the key emphasis and importance should be given to educated Buddhists, who would supervise and help in understanding the handled materials correctly from a Buddhist point of view.
26. There are many different traditions in Buddhism. Specialists from different traditions will be involved in the project, who will assist in gathering and composing materials about the history, texts, sutras, etc. relevant to the Buddhist tradition they belong to
27. The published articles will have academic prologue. In case of traditional Buddhist texts, Chinese, Sanskrit, Pali, Tibetan, Mongolian terminology will be used. The meanings of the terminology will be explained in Chinese and English.
28. The work will be carried out in two forms- one would be traditional Buddhist concept and other academic view of the matter.
29. According to the Buddhist practice in some traditions, some texts should never be published. The committee of the Project should be aware of such conditions and never breach them.
30. The aim and goal of the encyclopedia is to gather all available relevant and qualitative materials on Buddhism, publish those materials and preserve them for the following generations.
31. The Project will involve IT specialist, who will create a large database, which is able to contain, maintain, manage, preserve and publish a large volume of content.

The Buddhist Encyclopedia of China is a lifelong project, which carries value to millions of Buddhist’s around the globe, giving free access to vast amount of Buddhist materials.

The usage of all available technological solutions in the 21th century will be utilized in collecting, gathering, structuring all traditional and available materials and also in creating new solutions. The project will be led by specialist from different fields, whose co-operation can maximize the effect and benefits of the encyclopedia. The working collective will be led by an organizing committee, who in majority will be educated Buddhist. The committee will review the work of the collective and guide the overall activities related to the Project. The committee will be led by a leader, who can have free and independent views and opinions from the rest of the committee.

Currently the leader of the Project is Ven Vello Väärtnõu, author of the Idea of the Buddhist Encyclopedia of China.