As a symbol of Buddhist wisdom, the Chinese Buddhist canon, highly voluminous and expensive, was only accessible to a limited number of Buddhists for over one thousand years before the appearance of its digital version in the late 1990s. However, it wasn't until 2015 that reading the canon became an organized and structured activity open to all as part of the "Mass canon reading" movement. Based on fieldwork, this presentation first highlights the intellectual and social contexts of this movement as well as the projects of its founders. It then examines the collective canon reading practice and its ritualization. In this regard, the author argues that the movement constitutes a reaction to the disenchantment and fragmentation of Buddhism caused by modernist "Buddhist Studies". Infused with an anti-elitist nature in a network society, this movement was paradoxically initiated by some Buddhist elites to reconstruct Dharma's sacredness, integrity, and orthodoxy from the grassroots.
