Introduction

Good morning everybody, today I will give you a presentation and the topic of my presentation is The Hybridization of Buddhism and Chinese Culture. And in this presentation Ill focus on the process of hybridization of Buddhism in China in relation to the idea of Glocalization

In this term, we have learnt a text from the Morris. And from her article we knew that local cultures have resiliency to resist foreign cultures and have the ability to absorb external cultural elements to reformulate the deep values. So in todays presentation, Ill introduce a religion, Buddhism, which is a typically external culture in China and Ill explain how Buddhism hybridized with Chinese culture and then become one of the most important parts of it.

I divide my presentation into 4 parts. Firstly, Ill introduce some background about Buddhism and how it comes to China. Secondly, Ill introduce the philosophy of Indian Buddhism. And then Ill explain the process of hybridization of Buddhism and Chinese Culture. And at last, Ill do a conclusion.

Background
OK, lets move onto background. So, where does Buddhism come from? Buddhism is one of the major religions in the world and originated in India in 5th century BC by Siddhartha Gautama . He was born in the small kingdom of Kapilavastu. After his enlightenment, he changed his name to budda and shared his new understanding with five holy men. They understood immediately and became his disciples. This marked the beginning of the Buddhist community. However, the transmission of Buddhism to China started at the 1st century B.C when China is Han dynasty. AS China extended its power to central Asia and begins the cultural exchanges, the Buddhism also came to China through the Silk Road. Look at this picture, here is the born place of Buddhism. Through the north Silk Road, it came to China.

Body
So, after Buddhism came to China, how did it hybridize with Chinese culture? Before I talk about the hybridization of Buddhism and Chinese culture, I want to mention what the philosophy of Indian Buddhism is first. In broad term, we can say that the philosophy of Indian Buddhism is that people need to eliminate some unnecessary emotions or desires in order to understand the human nature.

Now, lets move on to the hybridization of Buddhism and Chinese culture. The process of hybridization of Buddhism and Chinese culture is a long history within various problems and difficulties.

When Buddhism first came to China, it found that it is hard to be accepted by Chinese local cultures. At the beginning, in order to make Chinese understand Buddhism better, Buddhist monks borrowed Daoism terminologies when the Buddhist texts were first translated into Chinese. But Buddhism soon was found unsuitable to Chinese society because the fundamental philosophy and the practice of Buddhism was against the ideology of Confucianism, which build the basic morality of Chinese culture and is the most authoritative teaching in the court. While Confucianism promotes social stability, emphasizes the relation between people, family, and their country, as I mentioned before, Buddhism regards these as unnecessary things. Therefore, Buddhism was seen as a barbaric exotic and dangerous challenge to the social and ethical Chinese civil order.

Because of this, Buddhism suffers much suppression from the government in 4th, 5th century, the order was direct sent by the ruler of the state. The reason of the suppression, sometimes is because the emperor is a Taoist, but mostly, because the development of Buddhism directly or indirectly shaked the stability of the society. One of the anti-Buddhism orders, in the 5th century, destroyed the most schools of Buddhism existed in China and gave Buddhists a lessonif you want to expend in our state, you have to change.

So, because of the suppression, Buddhism tried to alter Indian Buddhist theosophy into the one which fits Chinese social and cultural need. Buddhists and Taoists began to borrow ideas, disciplines, cosmologies, institutional structures, literary genres and esoteric models from each other. Its rigorous philosophy, hybridized with Taoist, not only attracted the elites of Chinese society, but also improved the development of local philosophy. Its ideologies become useful to help Chinese government to build the rule of society.

As a result, with the time goes on, Buddhism becomes a religion which has traditional Chinese identity and reaches its highest social statue in the Tang dynasty (6 ~ 7th centuries). During Tang dynasty, there appeared 2 schools (Chan, pure land) of Buddhism and spread it to Japan. Furthermore, the flourish of Buddhist arts, such as the Dunhuang caves, proves that the hybridization of Buddhism and Chinese cultures was quite successful. We can say that Buddhism became an influential and important religion that's comparable to Confucianism and Daoism. For example, although some Confucius scholars, which usually at the same time are officials of governments, does not believe the religion or even resist Buddhism, also respect

and study Buddhist philosophy. Not only in real life, also in myths, do Buddhisms and Taoisms gods usually exist together in the heaven.

Conclusion
The process of hybridization of Buddhism and Chinese cultures proves Morris concept of glocalization. This helps us to understand that the resiliency of local cultures can be very strong and may force external culture to change itself to survive in local circumstance. In conclusion, the hybridized Buddhism is a significant contribution to the development of China and makes the philosophy in China become more advanced during the later hundreds of years.