The Buddha in Bronkhorstspruit: The Transnational Spread of the Taiwanese Buddhist Order Fo Guang Shan to South Africa

Abstract

ABSTRACT Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this article discusses how the Fo Guang Shan Nan Hua Temple in South Africa constitutes a transnational religious space linking a ‘Global China’ and the dynamic interplay of its constituent parts (ROC/Taiwan, the Peoples Republic of China/PRC, Hong Kong, Singapore and the Chinese diasporas in South East Asia and worldwide) with the South African host society. It does so by looking at the complex processes of Chinese migration and diaspora building that generate the conditions for Fo Guang Shan’s developmental trajectory in South Africa, but also takes into consideration how Fo Guang Shan’s renjian Buddhism, and therefore socially engaged approach to the Dharma, generates multiple linkages and entanglements with South Africa’s host society. It aims to shed light on these dynamics, by examining the many different groups that are involved in the Nan Hua Temple. I argue that it is the ‘modernness’ of Fo Guang Shan renjian Buddhism (i.e. Buddhism for the human world) which, through a multitude of social, cultural, religious, charity and educational engagements, generates complex and diverse dynamics that link the Nan Hua temple space with the South African host society, a society that itself consists of people from a variety of backgrounds.