No Nature, No Culture

Most studies of Buddhist environmentalism proceed from the prescriptive statements found in Buddhist scriptures and texts. This study of living Chinese Buddhism in a society that has undergone radical state secularization in the past century, proceeds from fieldwork in rural Wenzhou on the southeast China coast. Actual contemporary Buddhist practice and sentiments showed a preference and trend towards vegetarianism, in observance of Buddhist strictures against killing. A compassion for the suffering of nonhuman sentient beings is shown in the sharing in social media of videos of animal suffering to raise concern, the resurgence of ‘animal-releasing rituals’ and Buddhist volunteers to help abandoned pets and local initiatives against the trade and slighter of dogs for meat. The Buddhist doctrine of transmigration (reincarnation) is alive and well, and together with the notion of kinship across human and nonhuman species, it contributes to an alternative ontology for the Age of the Anthropocene.