Reported by Liao Li-chu, Life News Agency / Yilan

The College of Buddhist Studies at Fo Guang University concluded its fifth “2026 Introductory Training Workshop on Temple Gazetteer Writing” on July 30. A total of 34 participants completed the 18-hour training program and received certificates of completion.

Professor Kan Cheng-tsung, Director of the Department of Buddhist Studies at Fo Guang University and principal investigator of the project, encouraged participants to help expand the work of compiling temple gazetteers and bring greater public attention to their importance. He expressed the hope that everyone could contribute what they could and, through these efforts, make a meaningful contribution to Buddhism in Taiwan.

Kan noted that, as both a Buddhist scholar and practitioner, he seeks to support Buddhism through academic research. In the past, he often worked independently, but today more people are becoming involved, making it possible to collaborate as a team. Through collective efforts, historical materials on Taiwanese Buddhism can become increasingly comprehensive, providing richer resources and greater support for future researchers.

 

Over three days of intensive study, participants attended a carefully structured series of courses, including “Theory and Practice of Temple Gazetteer Writing,” “The Art of Buddhist Images in China,” “An Introduction to Historical Records of Buddhist Temples and Pagodas before the Tang Dynasty,” “Methods and Practical Applications of Oral History,” “An Overview of Temple Gazetteers and Epigraphic Sources from the Ming and Qing Dynasties,” and “Locating and Utilizing Historical Sources on Taiwanese Buddhism.” Participants gained considerably from this systematic program of study.

In his concluding remarks, Kan identified four major contributions of oral memoirs: filling gaps in the historical record, providing concrete source materials, verifying and uncovering the authenticity of documentary sources, and offering multiple perspectives. Diverse interviews documenting the experiences of the fourfold Buddhist community—monks, nuns, laymen, and laywomen—can thus become irreplaceable “living historical sources.

 

He further emphasized that no reference work can ever be completely exhaustive. Researchers must make flexible use of journals, oral histories, biographies, academic studies, and other sources, combined with rigorous fieldwork. Only by employing multiple approaches can scholars gradually reconstruct a comprehensive and authentic picture of the history of contemporary Taiwanese Buddhism.

The participants’ reflections at the end of the workshop provided some of its most heartwarming moments. Venerable Jingzhi, a participant from Vietnam, shared reflections on the history of Vietnamese Buddhism. The workshop made him realize that, because he had previously been occupied with exchange activities, he had overlooked the importance of documentary materials. He consequently began paying greater attention to valuable historical sources, including French-language documents preserved at his ancestral monastery, documents associated with the ancient Kingdom of Champa held by ancestral monasteries in central Vietnam, and correspondence between his grandmaster and disciples.

 

Kan’s words—“If you do not write your own history, who will write it for you?”—deeply moved him. He therefore decided to begin documenting the history of his own monastery.

Wang Yao-ming, currently a graduate student at the Institute of Religion and Humanities at Tzu Chi University, said that his deeper engagement with Buddhism had been inspired by an academic paper on Master Yin Shun written by Professor Hou Kun-hung of the Department of Religion and Culture at Hsuan Chuang University. He found the workshop theoretically comprehensive, and the professors’ guidance on important methodological considerations was particularly helpful for his own fieldwork-based research. What impressed him most was that history must be grounded in authenticity and traceable sources, enabling scholarly arguments to be made with greater precision.

 

Chen Li-ru, who works at the National Education Radio station in Taitung, is also a member of the Fo Guang community and regularly visits Ri Guang Temple. Encouraged by her friend Zhou Li-ling, she rekindled her “journalistic spirit” with the hope of compiling temple gazetteers for Buddhist temples in Hualien and Taitung.

Having participated in the training program for two consecutive years, Chen appreciated the professors’ clear and accessible teaching. She was especially moved by Kan’s statement, “One should do something for Buddhism in one’s lifetime.” She deeply treasures the opportunity to study together in a learning community that brings together participants of all ages.

Source: Life News Agency https://www.lnanews.com/news/179292