Short answers, pulled from the story.
Humanistic Buddhism is a modern philosophy that emphasizes integrating Buddhist practices into everyday life and shifting ritual focus from the dead to the living. It originated in China at the beginning of the 20th century, driven by the reformer Taixu, and later became most widely practiced in Taiwan.
Taixu, a Buddhist modernist activist and thinker, is credited with founding the movement. He criticized Chinese Buddhism of the late Qing dynasty and early Republican period for its emphasis on spirits, ghosts, and funeral services for the dead, arguing that practice should serve the living.
The six core concepts are humanism, altruism, spiritual practices as part of daily life, joyfulness, timeliness, and the universality of saving all beings. These principles together aim to reconnect Buddhist practice with ordinary human life and the material world.
The Four Great Mountains are Fo Guang Shan, Dharma Drum Mountain, Chung Tai Shan, and Tzu Chi. They are headed respectively by Hsing Yun, Sheng-yen, Wei Chueh, and Cheng Yen, collectively known as the Four Heavenly Kings of Taiwanese Buddhism.
Hsing Yun (1927-2023) was widely considered a contemporary leader in the humanistic Buddhist movement and founded Fo Guang Shan in the 1960s. He wrote 'Rites for Funerals' and 'The Etiquettes and Rules,' reforming ritual practice to place emphasis on the living rather than the dead.
Humanistic Buddhism took root in Taiwan because Yin Shun and other disciples of Taixu relocated there following the Nationalist government's defeat by the Chinese Communist Party in the Chinese Civil War. Religious leaders who had originally come from China made Taiwan the movement's institutional home.