The Economics of Salvation: Toward a Theory of Exchange in Chinese Buddhism

This essay theorizes the material implications of Chinese Buddhist merit as a transaction exchange mechanism. Over the last two and a half millennia, merit has necessitated an institutionalized paradigm: from the position of both the donor and recipient, you must expend that which you have (land, harvest, money, labor, and time) in order to gain that which you feel you need (a more lucrative lifestyle, a more desirable existence, social recognition, and salvation after death). To gain one must give; or more accurately, to receive one must first bestow. Without this exchange process, it is unlikely that Buddhism would have survived. This exchange formed the foundation of the Buddhist monastic economy in China. I further lay out some key terms for studying the history of Buddhist merit as a transaction of religious exchange and offer them as potentially useful categories of exploration in other fields. Although I take Song dynasty (960–1276 CE) Chinese Buddhist monastic culture as my point of departure, the discussion extends its focus toward the broader impact of merit exchange arguing that the exchange of goods for merit was (and is) the defining social mechanism of Chinese Buddhism.