Buddhist philosophy, Chinese
DAN LUSTHAUS
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When Buddhism first
entered China from India and Central Asia two thousand years ago, Chinese
favourably disposed towards it tended to view it as a part or companion
school of the native Chinese Huang–Lao Daoist tradition, a form of Daoism
rooted in texts and practices attributed to Huangdi (the Yellow Emperor)
and Laozi. Others, less accepting of this ‘foreign’ incursion from the
‘barbarous’ Western Countries, viewed Buddhism as an exotic and dangerous
challenge to the social and ethical Chinese civil order. For several
centuries, these two attitudes formed the crucible within which the
Chinese understanding of Buddhism was fashioned, even as more and more
missionaries arrived (predominantly from Central Asia) bringing additional
texts, concepts, rituals, meditative disciplines and other practices.
Buddhists and Daoists borrowed ideas, terminology, disciplines,
cosmologies, institutional structures, literary genres and soteric models
from each other, sometimes so profusely that today it can be difficult if
not impossible at times to determine who was first to introduce a certain
idea. Simultaneously, polemical and political attacks from hostile Chinese
quarters forced Buddhists to respond with apologia and ultimately reshape
Buddhism into something the Chinese would find not only inoffensive, but
attractive.
In the fifth century ad,
Buddhism began to extricate itself from its quasi-Daoist pigeonhole by
clarifying definitive differences between Buddhist and Daoist thought,
shedding Daoist vocabulary and literary styles while developing new
distinctively Buddhist terminology and genres. Curiously, despite the fact
that Mahāyāna Buddhism had few adherents in Central Asia and was
outnumbered by other Buddhist schools in India as well, in China Mahāyāna
became the dominant form of Buddhism, so much so that few pejoratives were
as stinging to a fellow Buddhist as labelling him ‘Hīnayāna’ (literally
‘Little Vehicle,’ a polemical term for non-Mahāyānic forms of Buddhism).
By the sixth century, the Chinese had been introduced to a vast array of
Buddhist theories and practices representing a wide range of Indian
Buddhist schools. As the Chinese struggled to master these doctrines it
became evident that, despite the fact that these schools were all supposed
to express the One Dharma (Buddha’s Teaching), their teachings were not
homogenous, and were frequently incommensurate.
By the end of the sixth
century, the most pressing issue facing Chinese Buddhists was how to
harmonize the disparities between the various teachings. Responses to this
issue produced the Sinitic Mahāyāna schools, that is, Buddhist schools
that originated in China rather than India. The four Sinitic schools are
Tiantai, Huayan, Chan and Pure Land (Jingtu). Issues these schools share
in common include Buddha-nature, mind, emptiness, tathāgatagarbha,
expedient means (upāya), overcoming birth and death (saṃsāra), and
enlightenment. (^)
1
Historical overview
The development of Chinese
Buddhist philosophy can be divided roughly into four periods: (1) the
early introduction of Indian and Central Asian Buddhism (first–fourth
centuries ad); (2) the formative development of Chinese versions of Indian
and Central Asian Schools (fifth–seventh centuries); (3) the emergence of
distinctively Sinitic Buddhist schools (seventh–twelfth centuries); and
(4) the continuance of Chinese Buddhism into the present day (thirteenth
century onwards).
From the fourth through
the seventh centuries, Buddhists periodically realized that the positions
being engendered in China were at variance with their Indian antecedents,
and attempted to correct the problem, either through the introduction of
additional translations or by clarifying differences between Buddhist and
native Chinese ideas. By the eighth century, the Chinese had apparently
become satisfied with the types of Buddhism they had developed, since from
then on they lost interest in Indian commentaries and treatises and
instead turned their attention toward Chinese commentaries on the Buddhist
scriptures – such as the Lotus Sutra and Huayan Sutra – that had assumed
importance for Chinese Buddhist traditions. Moreover, even though
missionaries continued to arrive in China and new translations continued
to be produced through the thirteenth century, none of the significant
developments in Indian Buddhism (such as Buddhist syllogistic logic) from
the seventh century onwards had any lasting impact on Chinese Buddhism,
and many important texts and thinkers (for example, Dharmakīrti,
Candrakīrti, Śāntarakṣita) remained virtually unknown in East Asia until
modern times (see Buddhist philosophy, Indian).
(^)
2
Earliest developments
The first undisputed
reference to Buddhism in China is an edict by Emperor Ming to Liu Ying,
king of Qu, in the year ad 65, which mentions sacrifices performed by the
king to Buddha as well as favourable treatment for Buddhist monks and
laymen; the edict also identifies King Liu Ying as a follower of Huang–Lao
Daoism. For the next few centuries, the Chinese continued to view Buddhist
texts and practices as a part of or supplement to Daoism. Buddhism seemed
to share important issues with the types of Daoism practised in this
period, including the metaphysical primacy of emptiness, meditation
techniques, dietary and behavioural disciplines, afterlife theories
connected to moral and behavioural discipline, expansive pantheons and
cosmologies, striving for the soteriological transformation of the
ordinary human condition, rigorous and subtle intellectual traditions, and
magical and yogic powers. These affinities, however, were more apparent
than real, since the Buddhist approaches to these issues usually differed
sharply from their Daoist counterparts, though Buddhists did not assert
their distinctiveness until the fifth century.
Buddhist monks and
businessmen representing a variety of Buddhist schools and disciplines
continued to arrive in China, establishing Buddhist communities in Loyang
and elsewhere. It took several centuries for the Chinese to notice how
disparate the various forms of Buddhism really were. Initially the Chinese
were most interested in Buddhist meditation techniques, including chanting
and visualizations, which they adopted as supplements to Daoistic
techniques. Daoism held out the promise that one could become a sage or
perfected person, or even an immortal, but the exact details of how to
accomplish this transformation remained elusive and vague. In comparison
to many of the Daoist texts which were esoteric, hard to find, and
frequently obscure in presentation, Buddhist texts seemed systematic and
detailed, providing step-by-step procedures for practitioners.
Along with meditation
manuals, the earliest Buddhist texts to become popular in China were
Āvadana materials (legends of the Buddha and Buddhist heroes) and the
Perfection of Wisdom Scriptures (Prajñāpāramitā Sutras). About half a
dozen schools formed around varying interpretations of the Perfection of
Wisdom Scriptures, mixing ideas found in these and other Buddhist texts
with concepts prominent among Chinese intelligentsia. One Prajñāschool,
called the Original Nothingness school (Benwu), adopted a neo-Daoist
cosmology: everything has emerged from a primordial, original emptiness,
and everything returns to that void. This was a thorough misconstrual of
Buddhist emptiness (see Buddhist concept of emptiness). Another school,
called the Mind Empty school (Xinwu), equated the primordial Nothing with
the nature of mind (see Zhi Dun). Each of the Prajñāschools managed either
to promote a metaphysical substantialized emptiness which they opposed to
form, or smuggle an eternal self or spirit into their formulations,
despite Buddhism’s emphatic rejection of the notion of permanent selfhood.
Dao’an (ad 312–85)
criticized the Prajñāschools, challenging their faithfulness to authentic
Buddhist positions as well as the translation methodologies behind the
texts they and other Chinese Buddhists had come to rely on. In particular,
he criticized the practice of ‘matching the meanings’ (geyi), by which
translators seeking Chinese equivalents for Indian Buddhist technical
terms and concepts borrowed heavily from Daoist literature. This ‘matching
of meanings’ was a mixed blessing. Packaging Buddhist ideas in familiar
terms made them amenable and understandable, but the ‘matches’ were often
less than perfect, distorting or misrepresenting Buddhism. For instance,
early translators chose a well-known Daoist and Confucian term, wuwei
(nondeliberative activity), to translate nirvāṇa. Arguably, wuwei and
nirvāṇa represent the teloi of Daoism and Buddhism, respectively, but it
is not obvious that they denote the same telos (see Daoist philosophy §6;
Nirvāṇa). Later, to emphasize the uniqueness of Buddhist nirvāṇa,
translators dropped wuwei in favour of a transliteration, niepan. Wuwei
was retained to render another important Buddhist notion, asaṃskṛta
(unconditioned). The semantic connotations of Daoist wuwei and Buddhist
wuwei, while possibly overlapping in some senses, were nonetheless quite
distinct: for Daoists it meant a mode of interacting effortlessly and
naturally with the world, while for Buddhists it denoted something
unaffected by causes and conditions, that neither arose nor ceased.
Chinese readers inevitably came to conflate the semantic ranges of such
terms, which over the centuries led to some distinctively Chinese Buddhist
concepts. After Dao’an, Chinese Buddhism asserted its distinctiveness from
native Chinese traditions and Buddhists adopted increasingly critical
hermeneutic approaches to translation.
(^)
3 Indian
transplants: Madhyamaka and icchantikas
In the critical
environment that followed Dao’an, two sets of events moved Chinese
Buddhism in new directions. First, Kumārajīva, a Mahāyāna Buddhist from
Kucha in Central Asia, was brought to Changan, the Chinese capital, in
401. Under the auspices of the ruler, he began translating numerous
important works with the help of hundreds of assistants, including some of
the brightest minds of his day. Some works, such as the Lotus Sutra,
Vimalakīrti Sutra and Diamond Sutra, quickly became popular classics. He
also introduced the emptiness philosophy of Nāgārjuna’s Madhyamaka thought
(see Buddhism, Mādhyamika: India and Tibet; Nāgārjuna), which in China
came to be called the Three Treatise School (Sanlun) after the three
Madhyamaka texts he translated: the Madhyamaka-kārikās, the Twelve Gate
Treatise and Āryadeva’s One Hundred Verse Treatise. In a series of famous
letters exchanged with a disciple of Dao’an, Huiyuan (344–416), who had
mastered most of the Buddhist theory and practice known in China up to
that time, Kumārajīva attacked the shortcomings of the current Chinese
Buddhist theories and argued persuasively for the preeminence of
Madhyamaka in matters of both theory and practice. His leading disciple,
Seng Zhao (384–414), further popularized Madhyamaka thought by packaging
it in an exquisite adoption of the literary style of Laozi (see Daodejing)
and Zhuangzi, both of whom were extremely popular amongst literati at that
time. Sanlun thought continued to spread through the fifth through seventh
centuries, greatly influencing other Buddhist schools. After Jizang
(549–623), who attempted to synthesize Madhyamakan emptiness with the
Buddha-nature and tathāgatagarbha thought gaining prominence at his time,
the Sanlun school declined, its most important ideas absorbed by other
schools.
Second, in 418 Faxian
(the first Chinese monk successfully to return to China with scriptures
from pilgrimage to India) and Buddhabhadra produced a partial translation
of the Mahāyāna Nirvāṇa Sutra. One of the topics it discusses is the
icchantika, incorrigible beings lacking the requisites for achieving
enlightenment. Daosheng (c.360–434), a disciple of Huiyuan, convinced that
all beings, including icchantikas, must possess Buddha-nature and hence
are capable of enlightenment, insisted that the Nirvāṇa Sutra be
understood in that light. Since that violated the obvious meaning of the
text, Daosheng was unanimously rebuked, whereupon he left the capital in
disgrace. In ad 421, a new translation by Dharmakṣema of the Nirvāṇa Sutra
based on a Central Asian original appeared containing sections absent from
the previous version. The twenty-third chapter of Dharmakṣema’s version
contained passages declaring that Buddha-nature was indeed universal, and
that even icchantikas possessed it and could thus reach the goal.
Daosheng’s detractors in the capital were humbled, suddenly impressed at
his prescience. The lesson was never forgotten, so that two centuries
later, when Xuan Zang (600–64) translated Indian texts that once again
declared that icchantikas lacked the requisite qualities to attain
enlightenment, his school was attacked from all quarters as promoting a
less than ‘Mahāyānic’ doctrine. However, it should be noted that there is
no clear precedent or term in Indian Buddhism for ‘Buddha-nature’; the
notion probably either arose in China through a certain degree of license
taken by translators when rendering terms like buddhatva (‘Buddhahood’, an
accomplishment, not a primordial ontological ground), or it developed from
nascent forms of the theory possibly constructed in Central Asia. However,
from this moment on, Buddha-nature become one of the foundational tenets
of virtually all forms of East Asian Buddhism.
(^)
4 Indian
transplants: tathāgatagarbha and Yogācāra
A dispute at the start of
the sixth century presaged a conflict that would take the Chinese
Buddhists more than two centuries to settle. Two Indian monks collaborated
on a translation of Vasubandhu’s Daśabhūmikasūutra śāstra (Treatise on the
Ten Stages Sutra; in Chinese, Shidijing lun, or Dilun for short). The
Dilun described the ten stages through which a bodhisattva proceeded on
the way to nirvāṇa, and Vasubandhu’s exposition of it highlighted aspects
most in accord with the tenets of the Yogācāra school (see Buddhism,
Yogācāra school of; Vasubandhu). While translating, an irreconcilable
difference of interpretation broke out between the two translators,
Bodhiruci and Ratnamati. Bodhiruci’s reading followed a relatively
orthodox Yogācāra line, while Ratnamati’s interpretation leaned heavily
toward a Buddhist ideology only beginning to receive attention in China,
tathāgatagarbha thought. Bodhiruci went on to translate roughly forty
additional texts, and was later embraced by both the Huayan and Pure Land
traditions as one of their early influences (see §§8, 10). Ratnamati later
collaborated with several other translators on a number of other texts.
Both sides attempted to ground their positions on interpretations of key
texts, especially the Dilun. The Yogācāra versus Yogācāra-tathāgatagarbha
conflict became one of the critical debates amongst sixth and seventh
century Chinese Buddhists.
Yogācāra focused on the
mind and distinguished eight types of consciousness: five sensory
consciousnesses; an empirical organizer of sensory data (mano-vijñāna); a
self-absorbed, appropriative consciousness (manas); and the eighth, a
warehouse consciousness (ālaya-vijñāna) that retained the karmic
impressions of past experiences and coloured new experiences on the basis
of that previous conditioning. The eighth consciousness was also the
fundamental consciousness. Each individual is constituted by the karmic
stream of one’s own ālaya-vijñāna, that is, one’s karmic conditioning.
Since, like a stream, the ālaya-vijñāna is reconfigured each moment in
response to constantly changing conditions, it is not a permanent self,
although, being nothing more than a sequential chain of causes and
effects, it provides sufficient stability for an individual to maintain a
sense of continuity. According to classical Yogācāra texts, the mind (that
is, ālaya-vijñāna and the mental events associated with it) is the
problem, and enlightenment results from bringing this consciousness to an
end, replacing it with the Great Mirror Cognition (ādarśa-jñāna); instead
of discriminating consciousness, one has direct immediate cognition of
things just as they are, as impartially and comprehensively as a mirror.
This type of enlightenment occurs during the eighth stage according to the
Dilun and other texts.
The term tathāgatagarbha
(in Chinese, rulaizang) derives from two words: tathāgata (Chinese, rulai)
is an epithet of the Buddha, meaning either ‘thus come’ or ‘thus gone’;
garbha means embryo, womb or matrix, and was translated into Chinese as
zang, meaning ‘repository’. In its earliest appearances in Buddhist texts,
tathāgatagarbha (repository of buddhahood) signified the inherent capacity
of humans (and sometimes other sentient beings) to achieve buddhahood.
Over time the concept expanded and came to signify the original pristine
pure ontological Buddha-ness intrinsic in all things, a pure nature that
is obscured or covered over by defilements (Sanskrit, kleśa; Chinese
fannao), that is, mental, cognitive, psychological, moral and emotional
obstructions. It was treated as a synonym for Buddha-nature, though
Buddha-nature dynamically understood as engaged in a struggle against
defilements and impurities. In Chinese Buddhism especially, the
soteriological goal consisted in a return to or recovering of that
original nature by overcoming or eliminating the defilements. The battle
between the pure and impure, light and dark, enlightenment and ignorance,
good and evil and so on, took on such epic proportions in Chinese Buddhist
literature that some scholars have compared it to Zoroastrian or Manichean
themes, though evidence for the influence of those religions on Buddhist
thought has been more suggestive than definitive (see Manicheism;
Zoroastrianism).
In their classical
formulations the ālaya-vijñāna and tathāgatagarbha were distinct items
differing from each other in important ways – for instance, enlightenment
entailed bringing the ālaya-vijñāna to an end, while it meant actualizing
the tathāgatagarbha; the ālaya-vijñāna functioned as the karmic mechanism
par excellence, while tathāgatagarbha was considered the antipode to all
karmic defilements. Nonetheless some Buddhist texts, such as the
Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra, conflated the two. Those identifying the two argued
that the ālaya-vijñāna, like tathāgatagarbha, was pure and its purity
became permanently established after enlightenment. Those opposing the
conflation countered that the ālaya-vijñāna was itself defiled and needed
to be eliminated in order to reach enlightenment. For the conflators,
tathāgatagarbha was identified with Buddha-nature and with mind (xin) (see
Xin). Mind was considered pure, eternal, and the ontological ground of
reality (Dharma-dhātu), while defiled thought-instants (nian) that engaged
in delusionary false discriminations had to be eliminated. Once nian were
eliminated, the true, pure nature of the mind would brilliantly shine
forth, like the sun coming out from behind the clouds.
A third view was added
when Paramārtha, another Indian translator with his own unique
interpretation of Yogācāra, arrived in the middle of the sixth century.
For his followers the most important of his translations was the She
dasheng lun (Sanskrit title, Mahāyānasaṃgraha), or Shelun, a
quasi-systematic exposition of Yogācāra theory by one its founders,
Asaṅga. In some of his translations he added a ninth consciousness beyond
the usual eight, a ‘pure consciousness’ that would pervade unhindered once
the defiled ālaya-vijñāna was destroyed. His translations, which sometimes
took liberties with the Sanskrit originals, offered a more sophisticated
version of the conflation theory.
(^)
5 The Awakening of Faith
in Mahāyāna
These debates and their
ramifications dominated Chinese Buddhist thought in the sixth century. On
one side was a substantialistic nondual metaphysic whose eternalistic
ground was variously called Buddha-nature, mind, tathāgatagarbha,
Dharma-dhātu and suchness (tathatā; in Chinese, rulai). On the other side
was an anti-substantialist critique that eschewed any form of metaphysical
reification, emphasizing emptiness as the absence of permanent selfhood or
independent essence in anything. To the anti-substantialists the
tathāgatagarbha position sounded dangerously close to the notion of
eternalistic, reified selfhood that Buddha had rejected. Mahāyāna texts
had declared that there were four conceptual perversions or reversals
behind human delusion: (1) seeing a self in what lacks self; (2) seeing
permanence in the impermanent; (3) seeing happiness in what is suffering;
and (4) seeing purity in the impure. Yet starting with the earliest
tathāgatagarbha texts – such as The Lion’s Roar of Queen Śrīmāla –
tathāgatagarbha was brazenly defined as ‘self, eternal, happiness and
pure’. In the face of these and other disparities, the Chinese asked how,
if there is only one dharma (teaching), there can be such incommensurate
variety.
The Awakening of Faith in
Mahāyāna, a Chinese composition purporting to be a translation by
Parāmartha of an Indian text, became an instant classic by offering a
masterly synthesis of Buddhist teachings that seemed to resolve many of
the disparities (see Awakening of Faith in Mahāyāna). Its central tenet is
that there is one Mind that has two aspects. One aspect is suchness and
the other is saṃsāra, the cycle of birth and death, arising and ceasing.
Suchness also has two aspects, emptiness and non-empty. Emptiness in this
text means suchness is beyond predication, neither one nor many, neither
the same nor different. Non-empty means it is endowed with all the
marvellous qualities and merits of a Buddha, ‘as numerous as the sands
along the banks of the Ganges’. The link between suchness and the realm of
arising and ceasing is tathāgatagarbha in association with the
ālaya-vijñāna. Ignorance, enlightenment and pursuit of the Path are all on
the arising and ceasing side.
In a pivotal passage that
would become foundational for most forms of Chinese, Korean and Japanese
Buddhism, the Awakening of Faith in Mahāyāna states that on the basis of
Original Enlightenment there is non-enlightenment; on the basis of
non-enlightenment there is initial enlightenment; and on the basis of
initial enlightenment there is final enlightenment, which is the full
realization of original enlightenment. Beyond the problem of theodicy that
it raises (the text does not offer a clear explanation for why or how
non-enlightenment arises), several issues emerge. First, suddenly there is
no longer simply one enlightenment that is achieved at the culmination of
a spiritual path, but instead several enlightenments, one of which
(original enlightenment) precedes even entering the path. What the text
calls initial enlightenment had been termed bodhicitta or cittotpāda
(arousing the aspiration for enlightenment) in previous Buddhist
literature. Arousing this aspiration is what the title Awakening of Faith
in Mahāyāna signifies. Now, rather than marking a singular, ultimate
achievement, the term ‘enlightenment’ referred to several things: an
atemporal originary ground upon which everything else plays out, including
non-enlightenment; one’s initial resolve or insight that leads one to
begin pursuing the path; the final achievement at the end of the path, an
achievement that is not only anticlimactic, but is little more than an
unravelling of the intersection of original and initial enlightenment.
This reinforced the conviction of Chinese Buddhists that the conflationist
approach, with its emphasis on Buddha-nature or mind as ground, was the
correct view.
One of the first to
recognize the importance of the Awakening of Faith in Mahāyāna was a
Korean monk named Wônhyo. He wrote a commentary on the text that reached
China, where it influenced Fazang, a foundational thinker of the Huayan
school, who used its ideas as a major cornerstone for his thinking. Since
the Dilun, originally an independent text, had eventually been
incorporated into the Huayan Sutra as one of its chapters, and that
scripture became the basic text of the Huayan school, many of the issues
that had emerged from the debates on the Dilun were absorbed and
reconfigured by the Huayan thinkers. In a sense, it was ultimately
Ratnamati’s interpretation that prevailed after two centuries of debate.
The Awakening of Faith in Mahāyāna became pivotal for Chinese Buddhism, is
still one of the foundations of Korean Buddhism and, though it has been
eclipsed in Japan by other texts such as the Lotus Sutra, many of its
ideas, such as the idea of original enlightenment (hongaku), still exert a
profound influence. This text set the stage for the development of
distinctively East Asian forms of Buddhism.
(^)
6 The Chinese Buddhist Schools
Although the ideas and
literature of many different forms of Buddhism reached China – including
Sarvāstivāda, Mahīśāsika, Saṃmitīya, Dharmaguptaka, Sautrāntika and others
– only Madhyamaka and Yogācāra developed Chinese schools and lineages.
Madhyamaka disappeared as an independent school after Jizang, but its
influence and the preeminence of Nāgārjuna never abated. The sixth century
was basically a battleground of competing Yogācāric theories.
In the seventh century
the famous Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang (600–64) spent sixteen years
travelling in Central Asia and India. He returned to China in 645 and
translated seventy-four works. Due in part to his accomplishments as a
traveller and translator, and in part to the eminent favour bestowed on
him by the Chinese emperor upon his return, Xuanzang became the most
prominent East Asian Buddhist of his generation. He promoted an orthodox
form of Yogācāra as it was then being practised in India, and students
flocked to him from Japan and Korea as well as China. Not everyone was
enamoured of the Buddhist ideology he had brought back. Zhiyan (602–68),
who would later be considered one of the patriarchs of the Huayan school,
was openly critical of Xuanzang’s teachings, and Fazang had joined
Xuanzang’s translation committee late in Xuanzang’s life, only to quit in
disgust at Xuanzang’s ‘distorted’ views. While in India, Xuanzang had
discovered how far Chinese Buddhism had deviated from its Indian source,
and his translations and teachings were deliberate attempts to bring
Chinese Buddhism back in line with Indian teachings. The ideas he opposed
(primarily but not exclusively those that had been promoted by
Paramārtha’s school) were already deeply entrenched in Chinese Buddhist
thinking. While he was alive his pre-eminence made him unassailable, but
once he died his detractors attacked his successor, Kuiji (632–82), and
successfully returned Chinese and East Asian Buddhism to the trajectory
established by the conflationists. (Wônch’ūk, a Korean student of
Xuanzang, was a rival of Kuiji who fared better with the revivalists since
he attempted to harmonize the teachings of Paramārtha and Xuanzang.) The
underlying ideology of this resurgence, which reached its intellectual
apex over the course of the Tang and Song Dynasties (sixth–twelfth
centuries), was neatly summarized by the label ‘dharma-nature’ (faxing),
that is, the metaphysical ground of Buddha-nature qua dharma-dhātu qua
mind-nature qua tathāgatagarbha. Fazang argued that orthodox Yogācāra only
understood dharma characteristics (faxiang), that is, phenomenal
appearances, but not the deeper underlying metaphysical reality,
‘dharma-nature’. After Fazang, all the Sinitic Buddhist schools considered
themselves dharma-nature schools; Yogācāra and sometimes Sanlun were
considered merely dharma characteristics schools.
Four dharma-nature
schools emerged. Each school eventually compiled a list of its patriarchs
through whom its teachings were believed to have been transmitted. Modern
scholarship in Japan and the West has shown that these lineages were
usually forged long after the fact, and frequently were erroneous or
distorted the actual historical events. For instance, while Huiyuan was an
active promoter of the Sarvāstivādin teachings introduced during his time
by Sanghadeva and Buddhabhadra, the later Pure Land schools dubbed him
their initial Chinese patriarch on the basis of his alleged participation
in Amitābha rituals, allegations that were probably first concocted during
the Tang Dynasty. Similarly, the lineage of six Chan patriarchs from
Bodhidharma to Huineng is unlikely; the Huayan lineage (Du Shun to Zhiyan
to Fazang to Chengguan) was largely an invention of the ‘fourth’
patriarch, Chengguan: his predecessors were unaware that they were
starting a new lineage and rather thought that they were reviving the true
old-time religion of Paramārtha. It was also during the Tang dynasty that
Tantra briefly passed through China, from whence it was brought to Japan
and became firmly established as the Shingon school.
(^)
7 The Chinese Buddhist
Schools: Tiantai
Though considered its
third patriarch, the intellectual founder of the Tiantai school was Zhiyi
(538–97). Responding to the proliferation of different Buddhist theories
and practices, he proposed a masterly, detailed synthesis that
definitively set Chinese Buddhism in its own direction. To the question of
why there was an abundance of incommensurate teachings despite the fact
that there could only be one dharma, Zhiyi replied that all the different
vehicles of Buddhism were ultimately one vehicle (eka-yāna), an idea
championed by the Lotus Sutra. More specifically, he offered a panjiao, or
classificatory scheme of teachings, to explain the discrepancies. His
panjiao was complex and brilliant (and further refined much later by
Chegwan, a Korean Tiantai monk in China), but in simple form it can be
summarized as follows.
Buddha offered different
teachings to different audiences based on the differing capacities of
audiences to comprehend what he preached. According to the basic
narrative, which became the way all Chinese Buddhists thought of Buddha’s
teaching career, upon reaching enlightenment under the Bodhi Tree, Buddha,
enraptured by his new vision, began to describe that vision in immediate
and exuberant terms. This became the Huayan Sutra. (In reality, this
‘sutra’ is a collection of disparate texts – none probably composed
earlier than the third century ad – that were gradually compiled together
over several more centuries.) When he finished (it took two or three
weeks) he realized that no one had understood the sublime meaning of his
words, and immediately began to teach a simplified, preparatory teaching
which became the Hīnayāna teachings. After twenty years of preparatory
teachings, he introduced the next level, beginners’ Mahāyāna (basically
Yogācāra and Madhyamaka). In the next period he introduced advanced
Mahāyāna (the Vaipūlya Sutras), and finally in his last days, having now
trained many advanced students, he preached the Lotus Sutra and the
Nirvāṇa Sutra. In effect this panjiao asserts that the two highest sutras
offered by Buddha were the Huayan and Lotus; but whereas the Huayan was
too sublime to be understood by any save the most advanced or enlightened
students, the Lotus represented Buddha’s most comprehensive, cumulative,
mature and accessible teaching, every bit as sublime as the Huayan, but
now presented in a pedagogically effective manner. For that reason, Zhiyi
made the Lotus Sutra the foundational text of Tiantai. As for the
remaining teachings, as the Lotus itself explains, different ‘truths’ can
be superseded once they have served their task of raising one to a higher
level where a different ‘truth’ holds sway. Buddhism, according to the
Lotus and Tiantai, is a system of expedient means (upāya) leading one with
partial truths to ever greater, more comprehensive truths. Tiantai
teachings are ‘Round Teachings’, meaning that they encircle or encompass
everything and, lacking sharp edges, are therefore Perfect. Other forms of
Buddhism are not ‘wrong’, but are only partial visions of the One Vehicle
that Tiantai most perfectly and completely embodies.
Zhiyi, based on an
exhaustive exposition of a verse from Nāgārjuna’s Madhyamaka-kārikās (24:
18), devised a theory of three truths: provisional, empty and middle. The
first two are mirror images of each other, two ways of speaking about
causes and conditions. A table can provisionally be called a table, since
its perceptible form has arisen through causes and conditions, and it only
exists provisionally on the basis of those temporary conditions. The table
is empty because, being the product of causes and conditions, it lacks its
own intrinsic, independent nature. It is ‘middle’ because neither the
provisional nor the empty truth about the table fully captures its
reality. It is both provisional and empty, and simultaneously neither
provisional nor empty. As Zhiyi put it, ‘wondrous being is identical to
true emptiness’. Zhiyi sought many ways to express the nondual middle
truth. For instance, rejecting the obvious dualism of the distinction most
of his contemporaries made between pure mind (xin) and deluded
thought-instants (nian), Zhiyi declared that every deluded thought-instant
was identical to three thousand chilicosms. The details of the formulas he
used to arrive at the number three thousand is less important than fact
that it is meant to encompass the full extent of Buddhist cosmological
metaphysics. The whole universe in all its dimensions is entailed in every
moment of thought. Rather than attempt to eliminate deluded thinking to
reach a purified mind, Zhiyi claimed each moment of deluded thinking was
already identical to enlightenment. One merely has to see the mind and its
operations as they are. This idea was later taken over by the Chan (Zen)
school, which expressed it in sayings such as ‘Zen mind is everyday mind’.
The middle approach is
also evident in the Tiantai notion of three gates, or three methods of
access to enlightened vision: the Buddha-gate, the gate of sentient beings
and the mind-gate. The Buddha-gate was considered too difficult, too
abstruse, too remote; one had to be a Buddha already to fully comprehend
it. The sentient-being gate (the various methods taught and practised by
any sort of being) was also too difficult because there are too many
different types of sentient beings all with their own types of delusions,
so that this gate is a confusing cacophony of disparate methods, some
which may not be appropriate for some beings. The easiest and hence
preferable gate was the mind-gate. It is no more remote than this very
moment of cognition, its diversity can be observed in every
thought-instant, and nothing could ever be more appropriately suited for
an individual than to observe one’s own mind. Tiantai cultivated many
types of meditation for that purpose.
(^)
8 The Chinese Buddhist
Schools: Huayan
Drawing on a panjiao
similar to that of Zhiyi, the Huayan school chose the Huayan Sutra
(Sanskrit title Avataṃsaka Sutra, Chinese Huayan jing) for its
foundational scripture. What immediately differentiates Huayan from
typically Indian approaches is that instead of concentrating on a
diagnosis of the human problem, and exhorting and prescribing solutions
for it, Huayan immediately begins from the point of view of enlightenment.
In other words, its discourse represents a nirvanic perspective rather
than a samsaric perspective. Instead of detailing the steps that would
lead one from ignorance to enlightenment, Huayan immediately endeavours to
describe how everything looks through enlightened eyes.
Like Tiantai, Huayan
offers a totalistic, encompassing ‘round’ view. A lived world as
constituted through a form of life experience is called a dharma-dhātu.
Chengguan, the ‘fourth’ Huayan patriarch, described four types of
dharma-dhātus, each successively encompassing its predecessors. The first
is shi, which means ‘event’, ‘affair’ or ‘thing’. This is the realm where
things are experienced as discrete individual items. The second is called
li (principle), which in Chinese usage usually implies the principal
metaphysical order that subtends events as well as the rational principles
that explicate that order. Often li is used by Buddhists as a synonym for
emptiness. The first sustained analysis based on the relation of li and
shi was undertaken by the Korean monk Wônhyo in his commentary on the
Awakening of Faith in Mahāyāna, which influenced early Huayan thinkers
like Fazang. The li–shi model went on to become an important analytic tool
for all sorts of East Asian philosophers, not just Buddhists. In the realm
of li, one clearly sees the principles that relate shi to each other, but
the principles are more important than the individual events. In the third
realm, one sees the mutual interpenetration or ‘non-obstruction’ of li and
shi (lishi wu’ai). Rather than seeing events while being oblivious to
principle, or concentrating on principle while ignoring events, in this
realm events are seen as instantiations of principle, and principle is
nothing more than the order by which events relate to each other.
In the fourth and
culminating dharma-dhātu, one sees the mutual interpenetration and
non-obstruction of all events (shishi wu’ai). In this realm, everything is
causally related to everything else. Huayan illustrates this with the
image of Indra’s net, a vast net that encompasses the universe. A special
jewel is found at the intersection of every horizontal and vertical weave
in the net, special because each jewel reflects every other jewel in the
net, so that looking into any one jewel, one sees them all. Every event or
thing can disclose the whole universe because all mutually interpenetrate
each other without barriers or obstruction.
This form of nondualism
is not monistic because shishi wu’ai does not obliterate the distinctions
between things, but rather insists that everything is connected to
everything else without losing distinctiveness. Identity and difference,
in this view, are merely two sides of the same coin, which, though a
single coin, still has two distinct sides that should not be confused for
each other. Mutual interpenetration is temporal as well as spatial; past,
present and future mutually interpenetrate. Hence according to Huayan, to
enter the path towards final enlightenment is, in an important sense, to
have already arrived at that destination.
(^)
9 The Chinese Buddhist
Schools: Chan
Better known in the West
by its Japanese pronunciation, Zen, Chan emerged as a reaction against the
increasing scholastic complexities of the Tiantai and Huayan schools and
their voluminous, hairsplitting literature, which, some Chan practitioners
believed, could be more of an obstacle than an aid to enlightenment. The
Pāli term for meditative absorption, jhāna (Sanskrit, dhyāna), was
transliterated into Chinese as Channa, and then shortened to Chan. Until
the early Tang Dynasty, chanshi (Chan master) meant a monk adept at
meditation, though it did not specify what sorts of meditation he was
practising. Some monks were called dharma masters (fashi), some were
called scriptural masters (zangshi), some were called disciplinary masters
(lushi) and some were meditation masters. These titles could be applied to
a monk (or nun) of any school, since they denoted one’s methodological
focus rather than one’s ideological leanings.
Chan begins to denote a
specific doctrinal and meditative ideology around the time of Huineng
(638–713). Although Chan tradition describes a transmission by five
patriarchs culminating in Huineng as the sixth patriarch, as noted above,
that transmission is more fiction than fact. Huineng’s followers
established the Southern School of Chan, which unleashed a polemical
tirade against the Northern School. Since the Northern School disappeared
about a thousand years ago, our only source of information on these
schools was the prejudiced accounts of the Southern School, until the
discovery at Dunhuang early this century of Northern School documents. We
now know that many different versions of lineage histories were
circulated, and, more importantly, that the positions attributed to the
Northerners by their Southern rivals were grossly inaccurate and unfair.
In fact, the Northern School had initially been the more successful of the
two, but its success led to its ultimate ruin, since its growing
dependence on Imperial patronage made it a vulnerable target during times
of Imperial persecution of Buddhism. The Southern School, because it had
taken root in remote areas less affected by actions of the Central
government, survived the persecutions relatively intact.
Huineng is depicted in
the Platform Sutra (authored by his leading follower and promoter,
Shenhui) as an illiterate seller of firewood who experiences sudden
enlightenment while overhearing someone reciting the Diamond Sutra. He
joins a monastery where, without any official training in scriptures or
meditation, he demonstrates that his enlightenment is more profound than
all the monks who had been practising for years. Hence sudden
enlightenment is one of the main tenets of the Platform Sutra (and
subsequently for all forms of Chan). Another is ‘direct pointing at mind’,
which, similar to the Tiantai approach, means that what is important is to
observe one’s own mind, to recognize that the nature of one’s mind is
Buddha-nature itself (see Platform Sutra).
While some Buddhists had
argued that the goal was wisdom, and meditation was merely a means to that
goal, Huineng argued for the inseparability of meditation and wisdom.
Using an analytic device probably introduced by the so-called neo-Daoist
Wang Bi (226–49), the tiyong model (see Ti and yong), Huineng claimed that
meditation is the essence (ti) of wisdom, and wisdom is the function
(yong) of meditation. Wisdom does not produce meditation, nor does
meditation produce wisdom; nor are meditation and wisdom different from
each other. He drew an analogy to a lamp: the lamp is the ti, while its
light is the yong. Wherever there is a (lit) lamp, there is light;
wherever there is lamplight, there is a lamp. Lamp and light are different
in name but identical in substance (ti), hence nondual.
Huineng’s style of Chan
was still sober, calm, rational, and rooted in commonly accepted Buddhist
tenets. New and more radical elements were soon incorporated into Chan,
some iconoclastically renouncing meditation and practice as well as
scholasticism, and others trying earnestly to work out a rational system
by which Chan could be syncretized with the other schools. Zongmi
(780–841) considered a patriarch of both the Chan and Huayan schools,
attempted just such a synthesis, but his sober approach was soon
overshadowed in China by more abrupt, startling forms of Chan.
Of the ‘Five Houses of
Chan’, only the Linji school survives today in China, Taiwan and Korea.
Based on the teachings of Linji (d. 867), this school possibly provided
Buddhism with its most ‘Chinese’ voice. Chan literature of the Linji and
related schools were among the first texts ever written in vernacular as
opposed to classical Chinese. Daoist elements also began to appear
prominently. Zhuangzi’s ‘true man’ becomes Linji’s ‘true man of no rank’
who is going in and out of each person’s face this very moment, and is
always right here before one. The anecdotal humour associated with
Zhuangzi’s stories and the irreverent exploits of the Bamboo Sages of the
Six Dynasties period clearly infused the style of Chan anecdotes. Rather
than indulge in elaborate, complicated theoretical abstractions, Chan
focused on experience as lived, in terms familiar to anyone immersed in
Chinese culture (though often exotic to Western students, which has led to
the common misconception that Chan is nonsensical or obscurantist).
Teaching techniques began
to overshadow doctrinal content. At the heart of Chan training are the
exchanges between teacher and student. Records, called gongan, were
compiled of classic encounters, and even these eventually became part of
the teaching techniques, as they were presented to students as riddles to
concentrate on during meditation. To disrupt the sort of idle or
pernicious speculation that could prove a hindrance to enlightenment,
abrupt and shocking techniques were employed, from radical statements such
as, ‘If you meet Buddha on the road, kill him!’, to exchanges punctuated
by blows and shouts (all the more startling in the subdued monastic
atmosphere in which they would unexpectedly occur). Linji’s methods were
designed to make students confront and overcome their mental and emotional
habits and crutches, so as to become truly free and independent. Even
dependency on Buddhism could be such a crutch. Linji summarized his
teaching with the phrase: ‘Don’t be deceived.’
(^)
10 The Chinese
Buddhist Schools: Pure Land
All forms of Chinese
Buddhism, including Chan, contain devotional elements and rituals, but for
Pure Land Buddhists devotionalism is the essence. The origins of Pure Land
Buddhism are somewhat unclear. While undoubtedly devotional practices were
imported to China by monks and laity (and these were blended with native
Chinese forms of devotionalism), there does not seem to be a distinct
school in India devoted to rebirth in Amitābha’s Pure Land. As noted
earlier, the traditional lineages are not very helpful for reconstructing
the school’s history. According to tradition, early contributors to Pure
Land thought and practice include Tanluan (476–542), Dao Chuo (562–645)
and his student Shandao (613–81). The term ‘Pure Land’ (jingtu) may itself
be largely a product of certain license taken by translators. The term
jingtu appears in Kumārajīva’s translation of the Vimalakīrti Sutra where
the Tibetan version simply has ‘Buddha lands’ (the Sanskrit version is no
longer extant). Apparently, Xuanzang was the first explicitly to associate
Sukhāvati (Amitābha’s Paradise) with the term ‘pure land’. The main
scriptures for Pure Land practice were the Larger and Smaller
Sukhāvati-vyuha Sutras and the Guan Wuliangshuofo jing.
At the beginning of the
Tang Dynasty, several forms of Buddhist devotionalism were popular,
including cults devoted to Mañjuśrī(Bodhisattva of Wisdom), Guanyin
(Bodhisattva of Compassion, at that time particularly popular as a patron
saint and protector of travellers), Maitreya (the future Buddha) and Amita
(a conflation of Amitābha and Amitāyus whose names mean ‘Infinite Light’
and ‘Infinite Life’ respectively, and are possibly deities of Central
Asian origin). Arguably the most popular form of devotionalism was the
Maitreya cult. The Empress Wu (r. 683–705), a great patron of Buddhism but
generally reviled in Chinese history as an unscrupulous usurper,
considered herself an incarnation of Maitreya. Due to her unpopularity
once dethroned, people wanted to distance themselves from her and anything
associated with her. Unfortunately this effectively extinguished Maitreya
worship in China. Worshippers of Amita filled the void.
Pure Land theology
maintained that people were living in the age of degenerate dharma, when
study and personal effort were insufficient for making progress on the
path to liberation. Relying on one’s own efforts was in fact deemed a form
of self-theory, or the selfishness and arrogance that comes from erroneous
views of self. Rather than indulge in egoistic fantasies, one ought to
rely on the power and grace of Amita. Amita was a buddha (whether he was
an earlier incarnation of the historical Buddha or another person
altogether is answered differently by different Pure Land sources) who,
while still a bodhisattva, vowed to help sentient beings once he became a
buddha. He has the power to transfer to anyone he deems worthy sufficient
merit to enable them to be born in his Pure Land, the Western Paradise. In
the earliest forms of Pure Land devotionalism a variety of practices were
cultivated, but these were eventually pared down to chanting the nianfo,
literally ‘remembrance of Buddhas’ (in Sanskrit, buddhānusmṛti), which in
Chinese is ‘Na-mu A-mi-to Fo’ (Hail Amita Buddha).
(^)
11 Sinicizing Buddhist concepts
Since the time of Mencius,
the ultimate ontological issue in China was the question of human nature
and mind (which Mencius and most Chinese thinkers treated as synonyms).
Pre-Han Chinese philosophers had debated whether human nature was
originally good, bad or neutral. The written Chinese character for
‘nature’, xing, consists of two parts: the left side means ‘mind’ and the
right side means ‘birth’, which led Chinese thinkers to debate whether
human nature was determined by what one is born with, namely appetites and
desires, or whether it reflects the nature of one’s mind, which in Chinese
thought invariably carried an onto-ethical rather than strictly cognitive
connotation. The word xin literally means ‘heart’, indicating that –
unlike Western conceptions that draw a sharp line between the head and the
heart – for the Chinese, thinking and feeling originated in the same
bodily locus. Feeling empathy or compassion as well as rationally
abstracting principles and formulating ethical codes were all activities
of xin, heart-and-mind (see Xin; Xing).
Indian Buddhism had
little to say about human nature, with many forms of Buddhism rejecting
the very concept of essential nature. Some of the early polemics against
Buddhism in China explicitly attacked it for neglecting to address the
question of human nature. The notion of Buddha-nature was developed, in
part, to redress that failing. Since Indian Buddhists were deeply
interested in the mind in terms of cognitive processes such as perception,
thinking, attention and so on (see Mind, Indian philosophy of; Sense
perception, Indian views of), it was a natural step for the Chinese to
read these initially in the light of the Chinese discourse on mind, and to
further develop interpretations of this material in line with Chinese
concerns. Hence passages that in Sanskrit dealt primarily with
epistemology or cognitive conditions often became, in their Chinese
renderings, psycho-moral descriptions. The Sanskrit term ekacitta, a mind
with singular focus (but literally meaning ‘one mind’) becomes the
metaphysical one mind of the Awakening of Faith in Mahāyāna. Similarly,
Indian and Chinese philosophers had developed very different types of
causal theories. Indian Buddhists accepted only efficient causes as real,
while Chinese Buddhists tended to interpret Buddhist causal theories as
examples of formal causes.
(^)
12 Sinicizing
Buddhist concepts: emptiness
Before Buddhism entered
China Daoists had already embraced a notion of emptiness which it took
Buddhists several centuries to realize was significantly different from
their own (see Daoist philosophy). Laozi had contrasted the empty or open
(xu) with the solid. What made a wheel functional was its empty hub; what
made a vessel or room functional was its open space. Hence emptiness (or
openness) is not worthless but rather the key to functionality and
usefulness (see Daodejing). Later Daoists contrasted existents (you) with
nonexistence (wu), and claimed that all existence emerges from
nonexistence and ultimately returns to nonexistence (see You–wu). Some
Chinese metaphysicians, such as Wang Bi, wrote about primordial
nonexistence (yuan wu, benwu) as the metaphysical source, destination and
substratum for all existent things. Thus form and emptiness were opposed,
contrasting poles, and emptiness had primacy.
Some early Chinese
Buddhists interpreted Buddhist emptiness in the same fashion, especially
in the Prajñāschools. Eventually Buddhists realized, as the Heart Sutra
says, that form and emptiness are not opposed to each other, but that
‘form itself is emptiness, emptiness itself is form, form is not different
from emptiness, emptiness is not different from form.’ In other words,
Buddhist ‘emptiness’ did not mean ‘open’ or ‘nonexistence’. Emptiness
(śūnyatā) signified the absence of an eternal, independent, self-causing,
invariant, essential self-nature (svabhāva) or selfhood (ātman) in any
thing or person. Whatever existed did so by virtue of a perpetually
changing web of causes and conditions that themselves were products of
other causes and conditions. Stated simplistically, emptiness does not
mean that a table is unreal or nonexistent, or that its solid texture or
colour are unreal; it does mean that the concept of tableness is unreal,
and that the abstractions ‘solidity’ and ‘colour’ are unreal apart from
the discrete and particular sensations one has at specific moments due to
specific causes and conditions. Buddhist emptiness is not a primal void,
but the absence of self-essence (see Buddhist concept of emptiness). To
avoid being confused with Daoist concepts of emptiness, the Buddhists
eventually chose a new term, kong, to render their ‘emptiness’.
Emptiness is neither the
origin nor terminus for forms; forms themselves at any moment are
emptiness. Since everything is causally connected with everything else,
and there are no independent identities beyond or behind such causes and
conditions, everything, according to Huayan, mutually interpenetrates and
conditions everything else. Every thing defines and is defined by every
other thing. (^)
13
Sinicizing Buddhist concepts: suffering and ignorance
For all forms of Indian
Buddhism, the fundamental fact with which Buddhism begins, and the problem
it attempts to solve, is the problem of suffering (duḥkha). The first of
the Four Noble Truths is: ‘All is suffering.’ Suffering does not mean
simply pain. Buddhism does not deny joy, pleasure, delight and so on; but
it claims that all is impermanent, so that whatever the source of a
particular pleasure, that pleasure can never be permanent. The more
pleasure one feels, the greater becomes one’s attachment to the presumed
source. The greater the attachment, the greater the pain at the loss of
that pleasure. Since everything is impermanent, such loss is inevitable.
So, ironically, pleasure itself is ‘suffering’. Suffering is the affective
reaction to impermanence. According to general Buddhist causal analysis,
the causes of suffering are desire and ignorance. We desire permanent
pleasures because we are ignorant of the fact that all is impermanent,
empty of eternal selfhood. As the Four Noble Truths state, these causes of
suffering can be eliminated, and Buddhism is the method or path for
eliminating those causes. The purpose of Buddhism, then, is the
elimination of suffering.
Chinese Buddhist texts do
occasionally mention suffering, but usually in passing. Instead the root
problem became ignorance. Discussions of the dialectical conflict between
ignorance and enlightenment grew so pervasive that suffering was all but
forgotten. This shift helped reinforce the emphasis on mind and
mind-nature. Enlightenment was no longer defined as awakening to the
causes of suffering, but instead denoted seeing the nature of the mind
itself (see Suffering, Buddhist views of origination of).
(^)
14 Sinicizing Buddhist concepts: is Buddha-nature good or evil?
The pre-Han debate about whether
human nature is good, evil or neutral was echoed in debates between
Chinese Buddhists about Buddha-nature. Huayan contended that Buddha-nature
and tathāgatagarbha were pristinely pure and good, filled with infinite
good merits and qualities. In the fully realized perfection of
Buddha-nature all evil, impurities and delusions have been eradicated.
This position was opposed
by Tiantai, which argued that some evil (that is, some ignorance) remains
in Buddha-nature. Following the Daoist sense of nonduality, in which good
and evil or pure and impure are complimentary opposites as impossible to
separate from each other as East from West, Tiantai accused Huayan of
dualistic extremism. From the Tiantai perspective, Huayan’s ‘obsession’
with purity and goodness was one-sided and dualistic. Moreover, Tiantai
insisted that it is necessary for Buddha-nature to retain some traces of
evil and delusion in order to understand and empathize with the plight of
ordinary sentient beings. If one becomes too rarefied, too transcendent,
one loses touch with the everyday reality in which people wander
deludedly, and thus one becomes incapable of effectively saving such
people. Buddhahood, for Tiantai, was not simply a matter of correctly
seeing or understanding in a ‘pure’ way, but was at its core salvific;
Buddhahood is the active liberation of sentient beings from ignorance.
The debate on
Buddha-nature heated up during the Song Dynasty. Heterodox forms of
Tiantai tinged with Huayan’s ‘purity obsession’ appeared, and these were
challenged sharply by the orthodox Tiantai thinkers from their
headquarters on Tiantai mountain (from which the school took its name).
The heterodox schools were labeled the Off-Mountain groups, while the
orthodoxy styled itself the On-Mountain group. Zhili (959–1028), one of
the On-Mountain leaders, had a keen intellect alert to the subtlest hints
of Huayan-like thinking lurking in the rhetoric of Off-Mountain thinkers;
his writings systematically ferret out and refute those implications with
a logical sophistication rarely equalled amongst Chinese Buddhist
philosophers.
These debates gain
additional importance when viewed in the larger context of Chinese
intellectual history. In the pre-Han period, Mencius’ contention that
human nature is originally good did not prove persuasive. Others argued
that human nature was essentially neutral and subject to the influence of
external conditions. Another early Confucian, Xunzi, had argued that human
nature was basically selfish and greedy, which is why human society needs
sages such as Confucius to guide them beyond the baseness of their own
nature (see Xing). Han Confucians sided with Xunzi rather Mencius. The
Tiantai position, by insisting that some evil and ignorance exists even in
Buddha-nature, was close to some readings of Xunzi’s position, while the
idealistic optimism of the Huayan view clearly showed parallels with
Mencius. Between the Han and Song Dynasties (third through tenth
centuries), Confucianism was by and large intellectually stagnant. It
found new vitality in the Song in part by reabsorbing back into itself the
elements it had ‘lent’ to the Buddhists (and to some extent Daoists as
well). The elements they took back had been modified and expanded by the
Buddhists, and given metaphysical foundations that the neo-Confucians
retained and continued to rework. Neo-Confucian thinkers, especially after
Zhu Xi (1130–1200), rediscovered Mencius and unanimously embraced his view
of the original goodness of human nature. Looked at another way,
neo-Confucianism adopted Huayan’s metaphysics of nature. Zhu Xi’s famous
dialectic of principle (li) and ‘material-energy’ (qi) owed more than a
little to Huayan’s li and shi metaphysics (see Li; Qi).
(^)
Bibliography
References and further reading
References and further reading
Buswell, R. (ed.) (1990) Chinese Buddhist Apocrypha, Honolulu, HI:
University of Hawaii Press. (An important collection of essays detailing
the impact of apocryphal texts – Chinese creations purporting to represent
Indian originals – on the development of Chinese Buddhism.)
Ch’en, K. (1964) Buddhism in China, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press. (Though somewhat dated, still a classic overview of the early
history of Buddhism in China.)
Ch’en, K. (1973) The Chinese Transformation of Buddhism, Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press. (Another dated classic.)
Cook, F. (1977) Hua-yen Buddhism: The Jewel Net of Indra, University Park,
PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. (A good introduction to basic
Huayan doctrine.)
Gimello, R. (1976) ‘Chih-yen (602–668) and the Foundations of Hua-yen
Buddhism’, Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University. (Though unpublished,
this remains the best historical analysis available in English of Chinese
Buddhism in the sixth and seventh centuries.)
Gregory, P. (1995) Inquiry Into the Origin of Humanity: An Annotated
Translation of Tsung-mi’s Yüan-jen lun with a Modern Commentary, Honolulu,
HI: Kuroda Institute and University of Hawaii Press. (A translation of an
important Chinese text, richly annotated by Gregory, who intends this book
as a survey and primer of Chinese Buddhist thought for intermediate
students.)
Hurvitz, L. (1960–2) Chih-I (538–597): An Introduction to the Life and
Ideas of a Chinese Buddhist Monk, Mélanges chinois et bouddhiques vol. 12.
(A thorough overview of the foundational Tiantai thinker, Zhiyi.)
Liu Ming-wood (1994) Madhyamaka Thought in China, Leiden: Brill. (Useful
discussion of the key developments in Chinese Madhyamaka, especially Liu’s
treatment of Jizang.)
Robinson, R. (1967) Early Mādhyamika in India and China, Madison, WI:
University of Wisconsin Press. (Classic work, detailing the efforts of
Kumārajīva and his contemporaries.)
Swanson, P. (1989) The Philosophy of T’ien-t’ai, Berkeley, CA: Asian
Humanities Press. (Important historical overview of the texts and issues
that lead to Zhiyi’s distinctive philosophy, with a partial translation of
one of Zhiyi’s discussions of the Lotus Sutra that serves as a good
example of the dense textual style of this form of Buddhism.)
Wright, A. (1990) Studies in Chinese Buddhism, ed. R. Somers, New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press. (Essays dealing with important people and
issues during the formative years of Buddhism in China.)
Yampolsky, P. (1967) The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch, New York:
Columbia University Press. (Yampolsky’s translation of this Chan sutra is
somewhat problematic, but his introductory essays demonstrate the
importance of critical historical methods for approaching this material.)
Zürcher, E. (1959) The Buddhist Conquest of China, Leiden: Brill, 2 vols.
(Another classic, dealing with the formative periods of Chinese Buddhism.)
(^)
__________________
Source: LUSTHAUS, DAN (1998).
Buddhist philosophy, Chinese. In E. Craig (Ed.), Routledge
Encyclopedia of Philosophy. London: Routledge. Retrieved June 09,
2003, from
http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/G002SECT14
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Update: 01-07-2003