1. Historical Overview

It is not easy for a Western mind to assimilate the fact that Buddhism was never indigenous to the Chinese people, at least partially because most aspects of Western cultures do not extend as far into the past as do their Eastern counterparts. We have different conceptions of what is very old, or even original, and the fact that Buddhism first made its appearance in China in the first century CE strikes the Western sensibility as being so ancient as to render it a faith inherent to the Chinese.

Nonetheless, China’s history had encompassed many centuries wherein belief systems and religions arose and proliferated long before Buddhism’s advent. Tibet,  long an immense power base in central Asia, subscribed to theologies not dissimilar from those being embraced in Europe before the Christian Era. That is to say, Tibetan, and other Chinese faiths, were largely mythological in nature and reliant upon conceptions of divinity residing within the person of the ruler. Moreover, Tibetan practices, as well as most others prevailing in ancient China, were harsh and primitive: “Bon was an animistic religion in which shamans performed rituals to honor and appease its many gods and demons” (Goldstein, Brown-Foster 120). While cases of actual human sacrifice throughout China remain apocryphal, animal sacrifice was most certainly common.

There were, however, strong indications of Buddhist influences in China during these early periods. “Even before Buddhism entered China, frugality and restraint in the use of objects were important ideals in Chinese thought…” (Kieschnick 9). Buddhist tracts and teachings were making their way from India, in fact, nearly a thousand years before the faith would begin to have a national influence, and Buddhist teachings were infused into the prevailing Confucian and Taoist disciplines long before they were actually acknowledged as such.

2. Chinese Religion within the Culture

It is crucial to note, as we see the extended and gradual seeping in of Buddhism into Chinese life, how differently Chinese people traditionally view religion. In Western life, adherence to a faith has long been a distinctly separate precept from the society as a whole, even within those European nations where religion and government were virtually synonymous; in China, then and now, religion is far more integrated into all the elements of the society. It is ideology combined with faith, rather than a strict and devout worship removed from daily existence.

That Chinese cultures take so expansive a view of religion, seeing it as a guiding force in all personal and societal activities, is a pivotal element in how Buddhism could then be adopted by the Chinese. Of Indian origin, the tenets of Buddhism are similarly focused less on actual worship or observance of divinity, and more on how faith and belief must be incorporated into the being of the disciple. Buddhism is very much a faith which wears many hats, one built upon authentic concepts of living life as human beings on an earthly plain. It is worth noting that this very “non-religious” aspect of it may well account for the rising popularity of Buddhism in the United States and other Western nations long dissatisfied with modes of religion which do not address practical concerns.