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Luke's Notes

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Luke’s General Notes:

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    \n
  1. R’s model of assimilation assumes that there is a Madhyamika system which understood to greater and lesser degrees by figures in China. He tries to track assimilation by use of metaphors, allusions, literary style, logical figures, etc.
      \n
    1. On my reading, the model is far too binary, and assumes as well a Madhyamika-triumphalist position. That is, he does not take seriously the possibility of hybridity (not merely between “native Chinese” and “Indian” ideas, but also between different kinds of “Indian” ideas).
      2. \n
    2. It moreover assumes that if, for instance, HY does not employ Madh concepts that he must merely not have “understood” them or the Madh problematiques. This does not allow for the possibility that HY’s thought, even where it differed from Madh, might be worth taking seriously in its own right, or that HY may simply not have found Madh worth taking seriously.
      3. \n
    2. \n
  2. R thinks that formal logic is a major part of the true Madhyamika system, and that its deployment would show real understanding of that system.
      \n
    1. I think that R gets himself into trouble almost every time he tries to use Aristotelian logic to explain either Nagarjuna or Seng Jiao. There are several cases where his translations of the Indian or Chinese original into a logical proposition loses more than just the rhetoric. Logic as such was not a recognized field in China at this time; if there was something analogous in India, then R should have used that system to explain N, rather than Aristotle’s.
      2. \n
    3. \n
  3. R is constantly concerned with the question of whether the thinkers he considers were “mystics” who cultivated “trances” or whether they were philosophers. In the end he seems to want to say that SR and SJ were both, using philosophy to get at a mystical conclusion.
      \n
    1. If I am not reading too much into it, R seems to hope that his figures will be philosophers rather than mystics, or that at least they will adhere to logical argument and ‘rationality’.
      2. \n
    2. But there was no such distinction recognized in medieval China—and it isn’t even possible to express the dichotomy in classical Chinese. As such, the question probably isn’t salient, and I think does more to distort the material than would approaching it on its own terms.
      3. \n
    4. \n
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Questions and Method: A sampler of R's intellectual positions

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  1. 3: We now understand  Madhyamika, but it is still alien to the modern mind, and we need to preserve a sense of that alienness.
    2. \n
  2. 5: Pivotal problem of the book is the introduction of Madhyamika thought to China by Kumarajiva and his disciples. \"To what degree and in what way did fifth-century Chinese Buddhists understand the Madhyamika teaching that K introduced? Did they accept it as a philosophical system or as a mystical teaching? In what respects was the Buddhism of K's disciples Indian, and in what respects was it Chinese?
    3. \n
  3. 7: 3 models of assimilation of \"Indian\" Buddhism in China:
      \n
    1. Hu Shi's \"organic\" model whereby Chinese culture is an organism that ingests extraneous materials, incorporates and restructures some, and eliminates others.
      2. \n
    2. Liebenthal's \"stimulus response\" model, whereby mere knowledge of an other encourages an internal development of matching concepts, e.g. the development of Cherokee script.
      3. \n
    3. Arthur Link's \"amalgamation\" model, which sees Chinese Buddhism as a synthesis of Indian thought and Chinese ideals, allowing for syntheses while preserving the primacy of selection and rejection as factors in cultural assimilation.
      4. \n
    4. \n
  4. Structuring assumptions of the work:
      \n
    1. No need to discuss either individual worldview or holistic view of culture is necessary: \"Consistency and homogeneity within the cultural behavior of individuals and groups may of course be discovered, but should not be presupposed.\"
      2. \n
    2. Degree and manner in which different individuals participate in one culture differ greatly. Any individual or time period will likely master or use only parts of a larger tradition, which for any individual is only gradually and gropingly discovered.
      3. \n
    3. Persisting biases of cultural community are transmitted through its institutions of learning, so we have to understand these institutions.
        \n
      1. 9: Minds of fourth and fifth century Chinese were preconditioned by early education in the secular tradition, a highly conservative and mundane school that failed to prepare them for systematic thinking about abstract subjects.
        2. \n
      4. \n
    4. 12: R does not postulate either compatibility or incompatibility between rational thought and mystical ideas, but wants to find the answer to this question in the material he studies. However, there are certain things that need to be said about what rational thought and mysticism are:
        \n
      1. Rational thought is essentially logical, however we should not assume that logic actually describes the way the world works or the way that we should think about it.
        2. \n
      2. It cannot be asserted a priori that the mystical domain is less describable or analyzable than any other. In any event, we do not have mystical experience as datum, but rather mystical discourse.
        3. \n
      5. \n
    5. 14-5: R provides a model of progressive assimilation
        \n
      1. 1. acquaintance; 2. adoption of certain ideas; 3. adoption of structure; 4. complete acceptance (exclusion of incompatible systems and correct manipulation); 5. critical assessment and transcendence (where deviation from the model means not imperfect understanding or acceptance, but rather an understanding that sees its object too clearly to accept it as given).
          \n
        1. LB's note: However persuasive this model is, it stacks the deck to the now-canonical view of the process of assimilation of Buddhism in China.
          2. \n
        2. \n
      6. \n
    5. \n
  5. Robinson's \"theory of meaning\"
      \n
    1. 15: We can only imperfectly read the texts, and even more imperfectly make out the mental events that accompanied their composition. We ask what the texts 'mean', but it cannot be answered in terms of mentalist \"meaning.\" Meaning must therefore be inferred rather than perceived; the meaning of a piece of language is the set of collocations in which it occurs. Predictions from this limited set to another collocation are to be worked out as a problem of probabilities. Therefore this inquiry need not assume that words have an isolate true meaning.
      2. \n
    2. Moreover, though the complete single text is a given piece for analysis, it is not postulated that a whole text is a whole or that it is a discrete unit.
      3. \n
    3. The previous Chinese meanings of technical terms in Madhyamika texts is irrelevant if the technical system is set up correctly and the reader understands it; if one of these conditions isn't filled, then that previous meaning may lead to misunderstandings, however.
        \n
      1. LB's note: This would seem to be an oversimplification of a very difficult problem.
        2. \n
      4. \n
    6. \n
  6. Assumptions about comparative method:
      \n
    1. 18: The primary object of description is the complete text attributed to one writer. The description abstracts structures from the text and then abstracts systems from these structures. These systems are then related and one overall system is derived from them.
      2. \n
    2. R's system is an abstraction from the Madh system, which in turn describe the views of their Hinayanam Tirthika, and Chinese opponents, which systems in turn refer to the world. R's exposition is therefore quaternary and the Madh texts are tertiary. Each system is an abstraction from its domain of reference rather than a property of it.
      3. \n
    3. One-system descriptions are prior to multi-system comparisons.
        \n
      1. NB: this study excludes the comparison of Indian or Chinese Madh systems with Neo-Taoist systems, on grounds of convenience and arbitrary choice.
        2. \n
      4. \n
    4. Descriptive systems are non-unique and non-exhaustive: this study is one account, not the account.
      5. \n
    7. \n
  7. Will only treat in passing a distinction between a historical account of a text and treating a text as an entry into a conversation of philosophia perennis.
      \n
    1. LB's note: This mention is extremely terse, but my sense is that he means that of course Mad deserves to be considered as part of philosophia perennis.
      2. \n
    8. \n
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II: Early Indian Madhyamika

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    \n
  1. Kumarajiva's pupils drew an analogy between China before K and India before Nagarjuna: both teachers were saviors from bewilderment and contending views.
    2. \n
  2. Details of Nagarjuna's life are obscure and overlaid with legend, but there is no good reason to doubt that he was a real person. All things considered, he seems to have been alive in the 3rd C. AD.
    3. \n
  3. There are divergent traditions about the number of works N composed. The same is true of his “disciple” Aryadeva.
    4. \n
  4. 29: In China, Madhyamika was known as the Four Treatise School or the Three Treatise School, depending on whether the fourth of the treatises translated by K was accorded primary status. These four texts (The Middle Treatise, The Twelve Topic Treatise, The Hundred Treatise, and The Great Perfection of Wisdom Treatise) represent the state of the Madhyamika tradition before Buddhapalita and Bhaviveka reshaped it and founded the Prasangika and Svatantrika schools.
      \n
    1. A long discussion of the authenticity and authorship of each of these texts follows.
      2. \n
    5. \n
  5. 39: The early Madhyamika writings differ somewhat in subject matter but hardly at all in the system they represent. The exposition of N’s teaching given here, however, is based primarily on the Middle Stanzas.
    6. \n
  6. Nagarjuna’s system:
      \n
    1. 48: Outlines three groups of structures: dependent co-arising; personality; and nirvana. These differ somewhat in reference, but not at all in pattern. A fundamental structure can be abstracted from them: “If a function has two terms, then they are either identical or different. You cannot admit that they are identical, but cause of your axiom that the two terms of a function are not identical. You cannot admit that they are different, beause of your axiom that real entities are not dependent on another. But if two entities are not in a relation of dependence, then they cannot be the terms of a function. If you assert that the two terms are both identical and different, then you contradict your axiom that identity is indivisible. Likewise if you assert that the two terms are neither identical nor different.”
        \n
      1. Take own-being as an example: The necessary properties of own-being are intrinsic, individuating characteristic (own-mark), non-contingency, indivisibility, and immutability. Everything that exists has extension and succession, and thus has components and changes. What exists therefore cannot have own-being. Neither can what does not exist, for it too would have extension and succession (?). Therefore N is left with a world view in which there are no essences, and with a vocabulary every item in which implies an essence to some hearer or other.
        2. \n
      2. \n
    2. 49: N’s descriptive system uses the terms of ‘worldly, conventional, or expressional truth’ (i.e. language and verbal thought) and ‘absolute truth’ (which is inexpressible and inconceivable). Yet realization of this distinction itself depends on comprehension of merely conventional truth. Moreover, emptiness characterizes every term in the system of conventional truths, including the terms of emptiness and absolute truths themselves. “Those who would hypostatize emptiness are confusing the symbol system with the fact system. No metaphysical fact whatever can be established from the facts of language.”
      3. \n
    3. “That an entity is empty means that own-being is absent from it. When the entities are pieces of language, it means that they are symbols empty of object-content.” Language works only metaphorically, and there is no such thing as a literal statement. Once this is granted, the functional value of language (i.e. the language of the Buddha) is admitted.
      4. \n
    7. \n
  7. The forms of Nagarjuna’s logic:
      \n
    1. N had adapted systems of formal reasoning from the Tirthikas.
      2. \n
    2. He assumes the law of the excluded middle, unlike other Indian thinkers. Nowhere does he acknowledge a third mode of judgment other than affirmation and negation, and nowhere does he refrain from negating a proposition that has been shown to have a problem.
      3. \n
    3. 54: “It is a striking feature of the Stanzas that all predicates seem to be asserted totally of the whole subject. Existential quantifications are denied because the discussion is concerned, not with the denial or affirmation of commonsense assertions such as, “some fuel is burning, and some is not,” but with the concepts of own-being and essence. What pertains to part of an essence must of course pertain to the whole essence.”
      4. \n
    4. Madhyamika makes use of the tetralemma as a pedagogical tool, and form an ascending series in which each lemma except the first is a counteragent to the one before it, leading to the fourth lemma, which is supposed to dispose of all views.
        \n
      1. e.g. in Middle Treatise, where “everything is real” insofar as they all enter absolute truth; “everything is unreal” insofar as they only exist because of the combination of many conditions; “everything is both real and unreal” is therefore the view of people of middle intelligence; and “everything is not real and not unreal” was propounded by the Buddhas to refute “everything is real and unreal.”
        2. \n
      2. Candrakirti’s interpretation is somewhat different: the Buddha speaks of phenomena as real in order to lead beings to venerate his omniscience. Next he teaches that phenomena are unreal because the undergo modifications. Third, he teaches some hearers that phenomena are both real and unreal—real from the point of view of normal people and unreal from the point of view of saints. To those who are practically free from passions and wrong views, he declares that phenomena are neither real nor unreal, in the same way that one denies that the son of a barren woman is white or that he is black.
        3. \n
      5. \n
    8. \n
  8. 58: In K’s time, there was a belief in China that N had been a mystic of high attainment. However, the Stanzas contain no discussion of contemplative techniques or of the trances and absorptions.
      \n
    1. 59: The bodhisattva course and bodhi are only mentioned in passing as goals desirable to the opponent. The content of enlightenment is stated with equal concision: “He who sees dependent co-arising sees suffering, arising, cessation, and the path.” If one asks how philosophical reasoning conduces to this end, N’s answer is: “When the sphere of thought has ceased, the nameable ceases; Dharma-nature is like nirvana, unarising and unceasing.
      2. \n
    2. The Great Perfection of Wisdom Treatise discusses the three samadhis of emptiness, wishlessness, and marklessness. The first pertains to ontology, the second to the affective and “hence the strictly religious sphere”, and the third to the domain of epistemology. The Stanzas have little to say about the affective problem; The GPoWT says merely that it will be solved by understanding the other two.
      3. \n
    3. 60: “The three samadhis, the gates to nirvana, are manifestly psychological states in which the esoteric meaning of a gnosis reveals itself. The goal of the intricately patterned and rigorously rational argumentation of the Stanzas is thus avowedly an ecstasy in which determinate objects of thought are absent, where objects of designation are not apprehended, and where unarising and unceasing dharma nature is realized. It is difficult to imagine the psychological content of such an experience, but the texts are remarkably explicit about its intellectual content. However mystical the cessation of misconceptions, of views of own-being, N and his disciples talk about it in intellectual terms, in discourse whose structure is compatible with the logic of ordinary discourse.”
      4. \n
    4. The Stanzas do not discuss whether the “cultivation of trances” is essential to the solution of so eminently intellectual a riddle, but the GPoWT insists that samadhi is indispensable to prajna.
      5. \n
    5. The emphasis has seemed so far to be on the phase of withdrawal in the contemplative path, but the GPoWT occasionally stresses that this withdrawal is so that one can return to the world and save all beings through skillful means.
      6. \n
    9. \n
  9. N and the Prajna Paramita sutras:
      \n
    1. Tradition holds that N systematized the teaching of the pp, but there is disagreement about his precise relationship to the sutras. R thinks that since the Astahasrika was translated into Chinese in 172, it was around before N, but N’s influence may perhaps be felt in the Pancavimsati. In any event, many of the major terms in the Astasahasrika do not occur in the Middle Stanzas.
      2. \n
    10. \n
  10. The argumentative context of early Madhyamika
      \n
    1. Robinson gives a long account of the various schools in India that N was arguing against. However, Indian heretics were different from Chinese heretics, and moreover, in China there were no entrenched Hinayana sects when Sunyavada was introduced. This made for serious difficulties in understanding the content of the Madh texts.
      2. \n
    2. K studied Tirthika treatises, but his Chinese disciples did not. They drew their only knowledge of N’s opponents from piecemeal quotation in the very texts that refuted them. Thus what had been part of a live intellectual tradition as far abroad as Central Asia was for the Chinese only a museum collection of curious foreign ‘wrong views.’
      3. \n
    11. \n
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III Kumarajiva:

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    \n
  1. K (344-413) was the son of an emigrant Indian aristocrat and a Kuchean princess.
    2. \n
  2. Kucha was not a Mahayana area during K’s lifetime, but rather an established Sarvastivadin stronghold, and he studied abroad first in the Sarvastivadin centers in North India and Kashgar.
    3. \n
  3. K was first acquainted with Mahayana by a prince of Yarkand. He returned to Kucha and took Sarvastivadin ordination, but sometime later found the Pancavimsati in an old palace beside the monastery, after which he spent two years studying the Mahayana sutras and sastras.
    4. \n
  4. In 383, when K was about, 40, a Chinese expeditionary force seized Kucha, and carried him away captive. He was held at the court of Later Liang, where he learned Chinese, for almost two decades. When Later Qin conquered Liang, he was escorted to Chang’an in 401. There he enjoyed the favor and support of Yao Hsing, King of Qin, and spent the rest of his life in Chang’an instructing an illustrious group of disciples and translating a large quantity of scriptures.
    5. \n
  5. By 7th C, more than 100 works were attributed to K; early 6 C lists had only about 35; now there exist 52. Most of the doubtful works are small minor sutras, but the central corpus is well-attested.
      \n
    1. Among his translation, very few Agama texts. Largest bulk are Sunyavada. Five treatises on meditation. Translated the Saravastivadin Vinaya. Besides the Four Treatises, translated three other sastras, one attributed to N, one to Vasubandu, and one to Harivarman.
      2. \n
    2. The composition of this corpus shows that his main interest was in the Sunyavadin sutras, particularly the pp texts, and the Madhyamika treatises, but that his interests were broad enough to encompass pietist and miscellaneous sutras, vinaya, dhyana, etc. There is no evidence that K practiced dhyana other than in a ritual fashion.
      3. \n
    3. Sixteen of his translations had been previously translated by Dharmaraksa. It seems that K was expected to produce a complete set of the most important sutras, whether they had previously been translated or not.
      4. \n
    4. Most of his translations are stated to have been translated to satisfy the request of specific people, often his disciples.
      5. \n
    6. \n
  6. K’s translation methods:
      \n
    1. Dao’an had given an account of the five ways it was acceptable to change the texts in translation (inverting syntax, rhetorical flourish, excising repetitious passages, fixing what seems like disorder, deleting repetition on ancillary topics), and the three difficulties. These became the principles for K’s translations.
      2. \n
    2. K often changed the terminologies that had been used previously to express certain Sanskrit terms. Also, he sometimes changed texts to accord with his understanding of them. Moreover, he seriously abridged texts, e.g. the GPoWT, of which K only translated about a quarter of the original text. But he does not seem to have abridged texts that were considered Buddhavacana.
      3. \n
    3. 87: After a long comparison of the Sanskrit text of the Middle Stanzas with K’s translation, R concludes: “The Chinese is often more explicit than the Sanskirt… [it is also] clearer. It sometimes supplies explanatory phrases… [But] there are several lexical mistakes and a number of renderings that misrepresent the meaning of the original. … The worst defect is in the handling of the logical operators… This confusion of the existential, the modal, the logical, and the epistemological prevents anyone who does not know the Sanskrit from grasping the subtler points of the text. [However] I do not think that the misrepresentations prevent the reader from understanding the Madhyamika system in the aggregate. … He will be more likely to miss right ideas than to conceive wrong ones.”
      4. \n
    7. \n
  7. Kumarajiva’s thought:
      \n
    1. Most important evidence is contained in his commentary on Vimalakirti and in his correspondence with Huiyuan. R will only focus on the latter.
      2. \n
    2. K expresses no syncratic or heretic views, but is an orthodox Sunyavadin and Madhyamika. His thought is mostly drawn from the GPoWT. He rejects the authority of Abhidharma and interprets the Agamas in a Mahayana way, holds that the Buddhas statements are purely pragmatic and do not imply any real entities, and denies that real entities arise. He maintains that reality transcends the four modes of the tetralemma, and holds Nagarjuna’s concept of negation (namely that the negative of a term is an absence with the same locus), which shows a high degree of assimilation.
      3. \n
    3. K did not set out to found a school of thought, and his interests were catholic. For him, Madhyamika was simply the Mahayana in sastra form.
      4. \n
    8. \n
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IV Hui Yuan

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    \n
  1. Chinese sangha at the time of K’s arrival was disordered and unruly, and though there were some 50,000 monks, probably only a few hundreds were intellectuals who could have participated in the debates of the times.
    2. \n
  2. As a youth, HY had studied Prajna Sutras with Dao’an, and was acquainted with Sarvastivadin Abhidharma. Moreover was the leader of a cult of “pietist dhyana.” As leader of Chinese sangha immediately before K’s arrival, HY’s pre-GPoWT thought (which was translated when Hui Yuan was already 72) is considered indicative of the highest achievements of Chinese Buddhist thought before the introduction of Madh.
    3. \n
  3. While K was translating the Pancavimsati and the GPoWT, HY wrote The Spirit Does Not Perish, of which R gives a useful paraphrase/translation. The text is considered to deviate substantially from “fundamental Buddhist principles.”
    4. \n
  4. 105-6: R thinks it unlikely that HY really maintained such a gross and elemental heresy as atmavada, especially since he never mentions it in his correspondence with K; rather, he adapted his doctrine to the malady of the listener on good Buddhist principle. HY was trying to convince Huan Xin that “the life of religion is directed towards a real and valid goal; that it is more important to mankind than the affairs of the state and the secular world… that the monk is engaged in a task so important that the government should accept him as a burden on the national economy.” Moreover, it is not clear that HY’s idea of ‘spirit’ in this doctrine is actually equivalent to atman; perhaps, then, the doctrine can be seen as restructuring Neo-Daoist terms into a system that is equivalent but not homophonous with the teaching of the 12 nidanas, in keeping with his lifelong project of showing that the Chinese tradition was merely upaya that prepared for the introduction of the true doctrine.
      \n
    1. In the end, R thinks that for HY spirit is “nirvana that wanders in samsara” or another in a long list of terms for the absolute. The weakness here is not the concept of spirit, but HY’s failure to define the relation between samsara and nirvana, between the relative world and the absolute. “Spirit is at once absolute and entangled in transmigration. Yet the state of the transmigrating spirit and that of the free spirit are both described in terms of a commonsense epistemology. At this time HY evidently did not realize the importance of epistemology and of the doctrine of the Two Truths.”
      2. \n
    5. \n
  5. HY corresponded with K when preparing an abridgment of the (already abridged) GPoWT. The correspondence makes clear that HY “had not acquired any idea of what the Pp sutras mean.” He was also having trouble reconciling Abhidarma with Sunyavada, seems to have persistently overlooked the importance of epistemology (many of his questions are “realist”, about “physics rather than metaphysics”), and not to have understood the distinction between Hinayana and Mahayana, which K stressed in his responses.
    6. \n
  6. HY understood Madh better after correspondence w/ K, but his preface to his abridged GPoWT still shows that he has misunderstood crucial points. 113-4: Specifically, he does not clearly distinguish between conventional and absolute statements, and his vision of a cycle of destiny, of existence and inexistence alternating, along with his view of emptiness as “the matrix of dependent co-arising, from which things emerge and to which they revert”, show that he has not understood “the emptiness of emptiness”, making emptiness a term in the object-system rather than in the descriptive-system. He is still constructing a “physics” of what is out there, as opposed to a “metaphysics” that took epistemology into serious enough account. He ended up then a Mahayanist in spirit, but Hinayana in philosophy.
    7. \n
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Seng Rui

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    \n
  1. SR was 50 when K arrived in Chang’an, and came to K to ask him to translate materials on the practice of dhyana. He had been a student of Dao’an and was a teacher in his own right; he was acquainted w/ the cults of Maitreya and Amitabha, having spent some time under Dao’an and also at Lushan with HY. After K died, he moved to Jiankang and began to lecture there to men of the highest circles.
    2. \n
  2. SR was K’s “chief disciple”. He wrote many of the prefaces to K’s translations, and served as main editor of many. He grasped K’s teaching and the Madh system better than most disciples.
    3. \n
  3. SR’s doctrinal positions can be glimpsed from his prefaces. Though the prefaces are full of both Buddhist and xuanxue terms, this only indicates that he was trying to say different things to different readers. His understanding of K’s system seems to have been extensive and orthodox. (Useful restatements of preface to Middle Treatise and Twelve Topic Treatise on 118-9)
      \n
    1. Esteemed N as destroying wrong doctrine and revealing right doctrine.
      2. \n
    2. Accepted the Madh critique of Hinayana
      3. \n
    3. Esteemed the teaching he’d received from Dao’an, but held that it was merely preparatory to K’s explanations of Sunyavada
      4. \n
    4. Condemned geyi (R translates as “matching-concepts”)
      5. \n
    5. Considered the Pp sutras and the Lotus as the two complementary mainstays of the sutrapitaka
      6. \n
    6. Was personally interested in Madh texts, and accorded a high place to them.
      7. \n
    7. Maintained the identity of nirvana and samsara, of holy and profane, and assigned a key function to understanding “existent” and “nonexistent”
      8. \n
    8. Considered emptiness as the expeller of views which in its turn must not be held as a view.
      9. \n
    4. \n
\n

 

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Seng Jiao

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    \n
  1. SJ is the crucial figure in transmission of K’s teaching in China. His three essays (Prajna has no knowing; The emptiness of the non-absolute; and Things do not shift [also wrote Nirvana is nameless, which R does not discuss]) were formative in the thinking of the New Three Treatise Sect during 6th C, and make up the largest surviving set of docs on the earliest Chinese Madh thought.
    2. \n
  2. SJ was born near Chang’an; worked as a copyist and so absorbed Chinese canon; was converted when he read the Vimalakirti.
    3. \n
  3. R gives very useful paraphrases of three of SJ’s essays:
    4. \n
  4. Prajna has no knowing:
      \n
    1. Received K’s approval, and was circulated at Lushan, winning great admiration.
      2. \n
    2. Written in the form of a disputation or conversation.
      3. \n
    3. 127: Theme of the essay is the contrast of the Holy Man’s cognitive processes with those of ordinary men. The Holy man is endowed with numen by means of Holy Knowledge; keeps his mind empty and intuits with non-apprehending Prajna the markless Absolute Truth; does not have marklessness as an attribute, since it would thus be a mark; dwells in existence yet is not existent; resides in inexistence yet is not inexistent; apprehends neither the existent nor the inexistent yet does not leave them; is devoid of action yet is devoid of non-action; has a mind without thoughts; responds with a non-responding response; has void-nothing as his essence, so neither arises nor ceases; and exercises the distinct functions of knowing the Absolute Truth and being the Absolute Truth while remaining essentially undifferentiated.
      4. \n
    4. Rhetorical structure of the essay is complex, but the logical structure is rudimentary. He has assimilated logic faultily, and shows no knowledge of the tetralemma.
      5. \n
    5. When SJ wrote the essay, he was thoroughly familiar with Sutra Sunyavada; his concepts are metaphysical rather than cosmological, and he thus successfully made the transition HY never made.
      6. \n
    5. \n
  5. Letter to Liu Yimin:
      \n
    1. After reading Prajna has no knowing, Liu Yimin of Lushan wrote to SJ with a series of questions, to which SJ replied.
      2. \n
    2. R is interested in the letter insofar as it furnishes evidence of SJ’s use of tetralemma. R thinks that his understanding can make sense if all unquantified terms are to be taken as if they are quantified universally; therefore, the 3rd thesis of the tetralemma means Some X is not A, and some X is A. By this I think he means X is partially A, and partially not A.
      3. \n
    6. \n
  6. Commentary to Vimalakirti
      \n
    1. SJ sometimes used Madh resources to explain the sutra.
      2. \n
    2. E.g. his view of the samadhi of the dharmakaya is that it is a super-sensuous mode of illumination, devoid of discursive symbolisms and conception. It is not a mere trance state experienced by a human being sitting under a tree, and is not purely subjective, but affects one’s whole mode of being. This is essentially the same doctrine of samadhi that is found in the GPoWT.
      3. \n
    7. \n
  7. Emptiness of the Non-Absolute:
      \n
    1. Written some time after 409, in the form of an exposition.
      2. \n
    2. Compared with Prajna has no knowing, there is less emphasis on epistemology and soteriology, and more on ontology.
      3. \n
    3. Theme of the essay is emptiness and the conception of the Two Truths, this time called Absolute Truth and Popular Truth. SJ asserts that names do not match things that match actuals, but are rather borrowed to designate things and actuals, and thus do not succeed in designating what is true.
      4. \n
    4. Formal reasoning, though bad, is better than in Prajna has no knowing. Shows greater familiarity with Madh literature and deeper grasp of concepts such as Two Truths.
      5. \n
    8. \n
  8. Things do not shift
      \n
    1. Main thesis is the momentariness of time and the isolation of past and present. Each event pertains to one and only one moment of occurrence.
      2. \n
    2. SJ is able to understand Tathagata’s pervading power in a way HY never could because he has assimilated the Madh conception of cause and effect. Because Tathagata is identical with emptiness, he pervades everything, and does not have to move in order to respond.
      3. \n
    3. Contra Lebenthal, who argued that whereas N’s treatises merely seek to refute conventional truth, SJ is trying to demonstrate the existence of an absolute reality, R argues that SJ is merely switching back and forth between the two senses of his terms. His conception is thus fully orthodox Madh.
      4. \n
    4. This essay is closer to Middle Stanzas, shows SJ mastered the Madh conception of dependent co-arising and momentariness, and the connection between these and the doctrine of the Two Truths.
      5. \n
    9. \n
  9. General conclusions about SJ:
      \n
    1. In essays, is an accomplished metaphysician, and passes muster as a Sunyavadin.
      2. \n
    2. SJ shows greater reliance on logical demonstration than others in this study, though his logic is often bad. He was therefore not anti-rational; he provides a philosophy of mysticism, not a psychology or a “case book”. There is no evidence he cultivated dhyana or “trances”; nonetheless, this does not preclude his having experienced samadhis, which according to the GPoWT, are noetic, consisting of intuition into emptiness, wishlessness, and marklessness.
      3. \n
    10. \n
\n

 

\n

General Conclusions:

\n
    \n
  1. K was most decisive factor in spread of Madh. He was not an original thinker, but was thoroughly versed in the tradition that he represented. It was through him and his translations that generations of Chinese thinkers were introduced to Madh.
    2. \n
  2. There is no intrinsic reason why his translations should not have been fully satisfactory, for Chinese is capable of completely and unambiguously translating Sanskrit originals. But there are many errors and mistranslations that confuse the epistemological, ontological and logical levels, and prevent the Chinese reader from grasping the formal precision of the original. This materially hindered the assimilation of Madh in China.
    3. \n
  3. HY was too old and too bound to native Chinese thought to assimilate Madh when K arrived. He continued thinking too much about the origin of things rather than causation, was confused about the Two Truths, and misconstrued emptiness as a sort of cosmic matrix. His rhetoric shows no Madh influence.
    4. \n
  4. SR was more amenable to Madh and seems to have assimilated it. Also, he was a systematic practitioner of dhyana and seems to have thought there was no incompatibility between the exercise of reason and the attainment of insight, but rather that one acted as an aid to the other.
    5. \n
  5. SJ’s epistemology, ontology, and theory of language are thoroughly Madh. He affirmed that reason is a means toward illumination, though he also claimed that language could not adequately convey his meaning. “He attempted to be rational, he aimed at a mystical goal, and he did not assert that there is any incompatibility between these two alternatives.”
    6. \n
  6. However, he displays no awareness of logical rules, and seems not to have realized the full value of logic.
    7. \n
  7. Certain Indian elements are visible in SJ (e.g. use of logic, ontology), though not in HY.
    8. \n
  8. However, Indian literary forms (especially sastra) were not adopted in China, to the detriment of understanding Madh. Chinese Buddhists would have benefitted from trying to write the kinds of long detailed treatises that Indian Buddhists wrote.
    9. \n
  9. A more serious failure in translation was the loss of the Indian philosophical problematic (i.e. issues of cause and effect, time and the temporal series, and marks of the conditioned). “It is natural for people in different ages and places to have different problems, but it is difficult to understand and assimilate a foreign philosophy if it answers questions that one has never asked.”
    10. \n
\n

R translates several documents in full:

\n
    \n
  1. Astasahasrika passages that parallel the Middle Stanzas
    2. \n
  2. The chief ideas of the Mahayana
    3. \n
  3. Spirit does not perish
    4. \n
  4. Preface to the Abridged Great Perfection of Wisdom Treatise
    5. \n
  5. Preface to the Middle Treatise
    6. \n
  6. Preface to the Twelve Topic Treatise
    7. \n
  7. Preface to the Hundred Treatise
    8. \n
  8. Prajna has no knowing
    9. \n
  9. Emptiness of the Non-absolute
    10. \n
  10. Things do not shift
    11. \n
\n

 

\n

 

\n

 

\n

 

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11/12 notes

\n

Hirai Shune is the man to read on Chinese Madhyamika.

\n

Tsukamoto is the classic on Seng Jiao; has the Zhaolun in totally annotated, translated form.

\n

Liebenthal's translation of Seng Jiao is total crap.

\n

Not much work has been done on talking about how Madh gets folded into the Chan tradition.

\n

Back in the day, it was a big thing to show that Buddhist philosophers were on a par with, and talking about the same things as, Western philosophers like Kant and Leibniz.

\n

Robson says: What Swanson is acknowledging is that what is in the Chinese is not merely a translation of what happens in India. But the big problem is that he has this idea that Zhiyi got it right and others got it wrong. If he hadn't made that, it would have been a more useful book.

\n

Robson: Zhiyi has been built up into something he was not; Huisi says that Zhiyi doesn't really get it all; there was a whole tiantai tradition that was going on; also, there is other work saying that Zhiyi was ripping off Jizang, etc.

\n

Robson: Swanson's argument is that you and wu are problematic terms because you and wu are a polarity, they always exist in terms of each other.

\n

R: Swanson is really just focusing on one problem, Zhiyi's three truths' relation to Madh two truths. This approach is a really Japanese methodology. But Yogacara stuff is huge at Zhiyi's time, ever since the Nirvana sutra was translated. Huge change in the ontological conception of Buddha nature

\n

David Chapel has a good translation of a Tang Dy text that was meant to explain the major tenets of Tiantai buddhism An outline of the fourfold teachings.  If you want to get a good grasp of tiantai doctrinal classification.

\n

Garba in tathagatagarba means 'womb', and in China they take it seriously, they start to say that we all have this essence, like Mencius' sprouts; if you get rid of your defilements, then your tathagatagarba will flourish.

\n

The idea of the Middle plays out in the 'follow your thoughts' meditation practice that Huisi outlines.

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Gregory, Tsung-Mi Notes

\n

 

\n

INTRODUCTION

\n

A 'New Buddhism' in the Tang. In the 5th/6th centuries, Buddhism turned away from Neo-Daoist Xuanxue interpretations of the sutras for a return to the Indian scholastic traditions and exegesis, emphasizing encyclopedic detail and technical arcana. However confidence grows in a domestic Chinese authority for interpreting the material on its own terms, and in the Tang there is a rejection of the Indian scholastic tradition in favor of doctrines which turn to the word of Buddha himself as found in the sutras directly. The sutras are only a starting point however, as the Chinese drew from parables and metaphors or peripheral topics to build doctrine more relevant to their current religious concerns. For instance, the Buddha-Nature is embraced in Chinese Buddhism, resonanting with native Chinese concerns for human nature, etc., and answering Madhyamaka teaching of emptiness for a more affirmative perspective of life in this world.

\n

Goes through each of the five Patriarchs for Huayan, showing how they helped to develop the school. The main argument of the early Huayan school = \"Each and every phenomenon is not only seen to contain each and every other phenomenon, but all phenomena are also seen to contain the totality of the unobstructed interprenetration of all phenomena.\" Gregory has a bone to pick with the traditional view that Fazang soldified Huayan as a school as such, and the subsequent minimalization of later thinkers additions and deviations from the (supposed) orthodoxy. Such a crystalization of a religious school ignores changing historical contexts and is too ideological to appreciate religion as a living historical tradition. Zongmi comes to delete the vision of unobstructed interpenetration of phenomena, what Fazang considered the essence of the Huayan school. This was a response to his Chan sympathies. Zongmi's work as uniquely important to getting at Pre-Song reconstructions of Tang 'Chan', a field which is just now growing (utilizing Dunhuang manuscripts too, though Gregory says they are too partisan and thus of little value). He is cautious about the antinomian implications of Baotang and Hangzhou lines of Chan which see the transmission of 'no-thought' and other teachings are releasing them from other traditional Buddhist ethical practices and ritual observances. Thus he cuts away the Huayan Sutra for the Awakening of Faith.

\n

\"Tsung-mi's adaptation of the cosmogony he derived from the Awakening of Faith thus served to establish a clear linkage between the ontological basis of reality and ethical behavior and thereby to check the antinomian dangers that he perceived in the Pao-t'ang and Hung-chou teachings.\"

\n

Zongmi also criticized for his broad writings on things other than just Huayan and Chan, esp since Chan supposedly rejected scriptural studies. But Gregory arguing that this was a Song Chan conception, and that Zongmi shows Chan is rooted in the Tang in scriptural study, repentance ritual, and seated meditation.

\n

Zongmi's breadth calling into question any sectarian affiliation, or the appropriateness of such thinking about sects generally.

\n

圭峰宗密 Guifeng Zongmi (780-841), fifth patriarch of the Huayan 華嚴 school and Heze 荷澤  tradition of Southern Chan.

\n

Huayan and Heze are two forms of Buddhism, along with Pure Land and Tiantai, that consist of the 'new Buddhism of the Sui and Tang'.

\n

This is a period when the fully mature Chinese Buddhism comes about.

\n

What is new about these (Huayan and Heze) and what was Zongmi's role? Need first to sketch the state of Buddhism beforehand:

\n

Xuanxue Neo-Daoist interpretations of Buddhism set aside, wanted to master Buddhism on its own terms, looked West for inspiration. Yogacara treatises epistemological study of the mind as one such source.

\n

Encyclopedic detail and technical arcana of Buddhist learning for this period (5th and 6th centuries).

\n

BUT---->

\n

4 \"The new traditions that emerged during the Sui and T'ang can be seen in part as a reaction against the mounting weight of Chinese Buddhist scholasticism.\"

\n

The previous forms of Buddhism also didn't seem to address the relevant religious concerns of the day:

\n

\"In times when the very existence of the religion was threatened, as many felt it had been by the Northern Chou persecution (574-577), Chinese Buddhists' anxiety was not assuaged by the dismaying prospect of the bodhisattva career that the Indian treatises portrayed as requiring three incalculable eons... In an effort to make Buddhism speak to mor eimmediate spiritual needs, the Sui-T'ang innovators discarded foreign models of the path, rejecting the authority of the Indian scholastic tradition in favor of a return to those texts believed to contain the word of the Buddha, the sutras.\"

\n

The beginning of a Chinese confidence in being able to interpret the authority via their own experience.

\n

 

\n

The Indian scholastic tradition laid down definitive rules, which were inflexible and the Chinese could interpret around them to make them relevant to their current concerns. The sutras however used parables and metaphors which were highly flexible, so they turned back to them.

\n

 

\n

Thus rejection of Indian authority, discard scholastic literature for the sutras.

\n

This is also why the Chinese built a patriarchate.

\n

 

\n

Huayan 1st patriarch = Dushun 杜順, who wrote Fajieguanmen (Discernments of the Dharmadhatu).

\n

Known less for his exegesis but for his thaumaturgical practices out in the countryside, curing the sick by reciting the Huayanjing (Avatamasaka Sutra).

\n

 

\n

6 \"The progression of Tu-shun's three discernments reflects typically Chinese reservations about the negative conative implications of the teaching of emptiness.\"

\n

Moving away from the Madhyamaka negations

\n

Replaces 'emptiness' with 'principle' and 'form' with 'phenomenon' -> a shift toward an affirmation of the phenomenal world.

\n

The conclusion = 7 \"Each and every phenomenon is not only seen to contain each and every other phenomenon, but all phenomena are also seen to contain the totality of the unobstructed interprenetration of all phenomena.\"

\n

 

\n

 

\n

The 'ten gates' is taken from this text by later Patriarchs to be the content of the Buddha's enlightenment which is the unobstructed interpenetration of phenomena.

\n

 

\n

The Fajieguanmen as different in style from typical Buddhist exegesis, no chapter/verse explications, paraphrasing, efinitions, etc. It is rather \"the distillation of the essential meaning of the Hua-yen Sutra within the light of his own meditative experience.\" 8

\n

His points aren't to be measured by reason, but realized through practice and meditation.

\n

 

\n

Fajie 法界 = Dharmadhatu -> a term that plays a large role in the Huayan Sutra, but is also a loaded term from earlier Buddhism.

\n

 

\n

Huayan Sutra as the longest of all Mahayana scriptures, really a compendium of other works which might have been sutras in their own right, compiled in the 5th cen and brought to China form Khotan, translated by Buddhabhadra (418-422). Another better translation by Siksananda (695-699). The total actual doctrine in the text actually of less concern, as the Huayan tradition merely found in the text justification for ideas and metaphors it selectively elaborated upon.

\n

 

\n

 

\n

Zhiyan 智儼 as the 2nd patriarch.

\n

Taken by Dushun, he was educated by leading scholars in the capital, but \"perplexed over their [the teachings] lack of unanimity, Chih-yen then decided, in a gesture emblematic of the spirit of the new Buddhism, to reject the scholastic tradition and turn to the scriptures for the resolution of his doubts.\" 10

\n

He picked up the Huayan Sutra, had a vision of a monk who told him to meditate on the six aspects (六相) of all dharmas in the chapter on the ten bodhisattva stages.

\n

Same trope of this New Buddhism -> reject scholastic Buddhism and turn to the word of the Buddha to resolve doubts, reliance on meditational experience.

\n

Also using only a peripheral mention in the Huayan Sutra (the six aspects) to expound new doctrine, also a common move by New Buddhism.

\n

 

\n

Zhiyan writes the Sou-hsuan chi early on, then later the Wu-shih yao wen-ta and the K'ung-mu chang.

\n

The return of Zhiyan to the public life and his writing these two later works as a direct result of Xuanzang returning to China and defending the 'new Buddhism' against his yogacara and new views (for instance XZ asserts that there is a class of being who can't achieve enlightenment, which goes against Huayan notion that everyone can via their Buddha nature or 'tathagatagarbha').

\n

XZ's teaching (known as Faxiang), though of the Tang period, is actually more characteristic of earlier 5th/6th century Indian scholastic traditions.

\n

 

\n

Buddha nature = 12/13 \"Meaning both the 'embryo' or 'womb of the Tathagata', this doctrine referred ot the potentiality for Buddhahood that existed embryonically within all sentient beings a swell as the pure principle of Buddhahood that appeared enwombed within defiled sentient existence.

\n

 

\n

13 \"This doctrine [of the Buddha-nature] resonated with some of the perennial preoccupations of indigenous Chinese thought, such as its attempt to define human nautre, clarify the sources of ethical action, and uncover the underlying ontological matrix from which the phenomenal world evolves. Chinese Buddhists not only valued the tathagatagarbha doctrine for providing a basis for faith in the universal accessibility of enlightenment but also found within it a rationale for qualifying the radical aophasis of the Madhyamaka teaching of empitiness and thus developing a vision of Buddhism that affirmed life in this world.\"

\n

See for instance the Ta-sheng ch'i-hsin lun (Awakening of Faith in Mahayana).

\n

 

\n

The Buddha-nature doctrine applying to earlier Yogacara tradition, one ground Zhiyan attacks Xuanzang's Faxiang school on.

\n

 

\n

Fazang 法藏 (643-712) = 3rd Patriarch

\n

Studied under Zhiyan in the capital, imperial patronage by Empress Wu, credited with bringing Huayan thought to its final culmination, thus contributions by later figures like Ch'eng-kuan and Tsung-mi frequently tend to be overlooked.

\n

\n

13 \"But such a picture of the tradition ignores the dynamic and many-faceted character of Hua-yen thoguht by slighting the importance of the changing historicla context in which Hua-yen ideas evolved and changed throughout the course of hte T'ang dynasty. It also presupposed a standard of orthodoxy that is based on a static and one-dimensional understanding of the nature of a religious tradition.\"

\n

\n

14 \"A study of Tsung-mi's thoguht is thus valuable for clarifying the extent to which Hua-yen changed during the eighth and early ninth centuries.\"

\n

 

\n

\"Later chapters will tkae Fa-tsang's formulation of Hua-yen as a base from which to gauge the scope of such change by comparing his hierarchical classification of Buddhist teachings wiht that of Tsung-mi. Such a comparison shows that Tsung-mi's revalorization of Hua-yen thought extended to some of hte most fundamental orientations of the tradition.\" 14

\n

He deletes Fazang's vision of unobstructed interpenetration of phenomena which earlier Huayan deemed as the defining characteristic of its thought.

\n

He essentially displaces the Huayan Sutra in favor of the Awakening of Faith.

\n

 

\n

This is a response to the rise of Chan

\n

Zongmi also affiliated with Chan, wrote the Preface to the Collected Writings on the Source of Ch'an and the Chart of the Master-Disciple Succession of the Ch'an Gate that Transmits the Mind Ground in China.

\n

Important works as they \"offer a contemporary account of Ch'an during the late T'ang and so provide a corrective to the traditional picture of Ch'an that only assumed its definitive form during the Sung...\" 15

\n

Modern historians using Zongmi and Dunhuang material to reconstruct early Chan traditions which were lost by the Song rewriting of the history of Chan.

\n

 

\n

Traditional history of Chan -> Bodhidharma brings Chan to China, a special type of transmission independent of doctrinal teachings which does not rely on written word but directly points to the human mind, enabling man to see his nature and realize his Buddhahood.

\n

Mind to mind transmission.

\n

Song historians looking back to Tang as a golden age, celebrating the sayings/doings of great masters in late 8th and 9th century, implying that there was a fall of grace since then.

\n

 

\n

This however is a myth that tells us more about Song ideals and self-conceptions of Chan than it does about actual Chan practices and history in the Tang.

\n

Dunhuang as one avenue being explored to aid in this reconstruction.

\n

\n

Yet, 16 \"scholarship is still framed by preconceptions implicit in Sung Ch'an historiography. As such it assumes a notion of 'Ch'an' for which there is little evidence in the T'ang sources; nor has it yet succeeded in freeing itself form value judgments based on Ch'an theology of a mind-to-mind transmission and mythical notions of a 'pure' Ch'an from which the later tradition fell.\"

\n

\n

Dunhaung 'Ch'an histories' like Ch'uan fa-pao chi, Leng-ch'ieh shih-tzu chi or Li-tai fa-pao chi chronicle dharma succession and teachings, but only of specific traditions and thus are partisan.

\n

17 \"Tsung-mi's work is unique in that it attempts a synthetic overview of hte various Ch'an traditions of his day\" and thus is uniquely important for understanding Chan landscape in Tang pre-Song

\n

 

\n

Zongmi's work shows that Chan in the late Tang was still relatively amorphous, both in terms of school of thought or institution.

\n

 

\n

17 \"What seems to emerge as unique is a new rhetoric expressing a heightened sensitivity to the danger of dualistic formulations that was occasioned by Shen-hui's attack on the Northern tradition associated with Shen-hsiu and his followers.\"

\n

Shenxiu's patronage by Empress Wu marking the beginnings of Chan as a national movement. Dongshan tradition.

\n

Heze Shenhui a rival to Shenxiu (from whom Zongmi claims descendency).

\n

Shenhui claims that Shenxiu did not receive the transmission, but Huineng did (the Platform Sutra, claiming Huineng the 6th patriarch), proven by his possesion of Bodhidharma's robe.

\n

He also claimed that Shenxiu's understanding of Chan was defective -> SX taught gradualistic approach to meditation that was fundamentally dualistic, while HN taught sudden teaching of no-though (wu-nian).

\n

This led to rivalry btwn Northern (Gradual) and Southern (Sudden) Chan schools in the 8th century.

\n

 

\n

An Lushan rebellion, Chinese political situation deteriorates so patronage changes, Chan splits into regional schools.

\n

 

\n

Sichuan is where the school of Chan developed that would later be orthodox in the Song, the Baotang 保唐 school which Zongmi is critical of.

\n

His critique is that the Baotang tradition interpreted 'no-thought' teaching of Shenhui to entail the rejection of all forms of traditional Buddhist ehticla practice and ritual observance.

\n

Similar critique of the Hung-chou line of Chan and the religious paradigm associated with the Huayan Sutra, seeing their argument of \"entrusting oneself to act freely according ot the nature of one's feelings' as having dangerous antinomian implications. 19

\n

\"I shall argue that Tsung-mi saw a similarity int he ethical import of the Hung-chou line of Cha'n and the religious paradigm associated with the Hua-yen Sutra, which helps explain why he displaced the text in favor of the Awakening of Faith in his systematic evaluation of Buddhist teachings.\" 19

\n

 

\n

Zongmi looks to Awakening of Faith for an ontological basis and rational for Chan practice -> it is a cosmogony that provides a map for Buddhist practice.

\n

 

\n

\"Tsung-mi's adaptation of hte cosmogony he derived form the Awakening of Faith thus served to establish a clear linkage between the ontologicla basis of reality and ethical behavior and thereby to check the antinomian dangers that he perceived in the Pao-t'ang and Hung-chou teachings.\" 19

\n

 

\n

This ethical tenor also point to Confucian upbringing.

\n

Also laid the foundation for Neo-Confucian critique of Buddhism in the Song.

\n

20 \"The last chapter of this sutdy will accordingly show how Chu Hsi' scritique of the Buddhist understanding of human nature paralleled Tsung-mi's critique of the Hung-chou tradition.\"

\n

 

\n

Why is the book called Sinification of Buddhism?

\n

20 \"An examination of hte lif eand thought of Tsung-mi therefore offers a pivotal vantag epoint for understanding how the Chinese adapted Buddhism to their own religious and philosophical concerns as well as clarifying the ways in which Buddhism expanded the realm of discourse in which those concerns were conceived.\"

\n

 

\n

Zongmi wrote on a broad range of topics, far beyond just Huayan and Chan. Criticized for this point, especially since true Chan was said to reject scriptual authority (so why study it?).

\n

\"Yet one must not be so naive as to take [this claim] at face value. Protestations to the contrary, Ch'an was based on the kinds of doctrinal innovations effected by the new Buddhist of the Sui and T'ang, and a study of Tsung-mi's thought helps to clarify the doctrinal foundaiton on which Ch'an was predicated. When one lays aside the historiographical presumptions of Sung Ch'an, the evidenc esuggest that scriptural study, repentance ritual, and seated meditation all formed an important part of 'Cha'an' practice during the T'ang.\" 22

\n

 

\n

Zongmi attacking the partiality of each of the different sects, creating a framework for all the traditions to be incorporated and validated within.

\n

 

\n

This integration pushing beyond Buddhism, but to Daoism and Confucianism too, an important milestone in the theory of the essential unity of the three traditions, which was important in Song discourse and culminated in the Ming.

\n

 

\n

Gregory argues that Zongmi's thought had little influence bc he affiliated with Heze sect, located in Chang'an, which perished during the persecution by Wuzan after Zongmi's death.

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Yet still passed down and commented upon, ultimately taken up by the Song in the 'many-branched family tree' lamp histories.

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Also much long term influence in Korea, cornerstone of Chinul's Son practice (12th-13th cen).

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--- --- --- --- ---

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PART ONE,  TSUNG-MI'S LIFE

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Ch.2 - Biography of Tsung-mi

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Skimming through this chapter, won't take detailed notes. Only the main points:

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An Lushan Rebellion (755-763) throws the political structure of the Tang into chaos, forms of patronage change, emphasis on regional centers. Kamata Shigeo argues that this new system of patronage favored practice-oriented Buddhist sects as opposed to philosophical ones.

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The death of Zongmi's parents drive him towards Buddhism, he meets Daoyuan. Gregory goes through the lineage Daoyuan is associated with, argues that Nanyin (Daoyuan's master) studied under two different Shenhuis, creates a Shengshou school which become the Jingzhong school.

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Zongmi's is influence by the Jingzhong school on three accounts:

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1.) Both Jingzhong and Shengshou subtraditions were powerful institutions in Sichuan, closely associated with politicla and military power-holders. This helps explains why Zongmi was associated with prominent literary and poltical figures around Changan (which he was later criticized for).

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2.) Nothing distinctively 'Chan' about the practice or institutional life of these subtraditions, the temples for both fairly conventional, same ordination ceremonies according to vinyana, etc. This explains Zongmi's opposition to antinominian interpretations of Chan.

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3.) Shenhui's teaching of 'no thought' was extremely important to both subtraditions, but not taken as a rejection of Buddhist practice (like Baotang). Most likely Awakening of Faith provided the philosophical framework.

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Zongmi comes to enlightenment after reading a frew passages from the Scripture of Perfect Enlightenment, interesting bc it is sudden enlightenment, but not through meditation or other means, but by reading scripture.

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He actually points to this text as superior to the Huayan Sutra (at least for novices) due to its shorter size.

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Perfect Enlightenment based in part on Awakening of Faith.

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The role of apocryphal sutras, especially in Chan -> allowing Chinese authors to create scripture that addressed their unique religious needs.

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\"It is the Awakening of Faith's highly sinified appropriation fo the tathagatagarbha doctrine that provides the context in which Tsung-mi interprets the Scripture of Perfect Enlightenment. That the central scripture for Tsung-mi was apocryphal, and that his interpretation of it was based on yet another apocryphal text, is a good index of how thoroughly sinified his understnad of Buddhism was.\" 58

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Karmically fated encounter with Ling-Feng, where he received Ch'eng-kaun's sub/commentary to the Huayan Sutra in 810. Then wrote letters and began study under Ch'eng-Kuan, who was well-liked and important in the capital and court.

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CK having some trainign in Chan - 65 \"Whereas Ch'eng-kuan appropriated Ch'an from the perspective of Hua-yen, Tsung-mi appropriated Hua-yen from the perspective of Ch'an.\"

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Also CK excorciated those who held the three religions were the same, coming to the Chinese classics at a late date, while ZMi was the opposite.

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Cheng-kuan's chief contribution = theory of fourfold dharmadhatu (fajie).

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In Zongmi's scholarship, particularly sub/commentary to Perfect Enlightenment, he never mentions Fazang's scholarship, and seems only to have cared about Cheng-kuan and the earlier Dushun.

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This is a threshold in his career, honored at court for his work, shifts from exegesis to more popular works (such as on Chan and the Origins of Man essay). Makes connections with a bunch of literati at court.

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Last years of his life, involved in the 'Sweet Dew Incident', an aborted attempt to oust the eunuchs. Li Xun is part of the plot to kill the eunuchs, it fails, he flees to Zongmi's temple in Mount Chung-nan, but is forced out. Zongmi later punished for giving him temporary reprieve, but he was pardoned.

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--- --- --- --- ---

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PART TWO: DOCTRINAL CLASSIFICATION

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Doctrinal classification as one of the most striking features of Chinese Buddhism.

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The hermeneutical problem to which this is a response =

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Buddha taught to a large and varied audience, his words were often contradictory and meaning uncertain. Upon his death no successor was appointed, and though a council was help to establish an orthodox understanding its authority was minimal. As the canon grew and changed, different version of Buddha's words spread, with different interpretations, and moreover monastic life became institutionalized creating unanticipated problems in the original sermons which came to take the forefront.

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One early hermenuetical technique to deal with conflicting statements was a different btwn teachings where the meaning was explicitedly stated (nitattha) and those where it required interpretation (neyattha).

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Two levels of teaching, which came to be influential on the formation of Mahayan Buddhism, with two levels of truth (ultimate and conventional, paramartha and samvrti-satya). Using the latter to get to the former, IE expedient means, upaya.

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Abhidharma texts seeking to systematize the Buddha's teachings from these various sect divisions into a coherent whole.

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An attempt to translate the conventional speech often used in the sutras into ultimate speech to create an impersonal language to account for experience without recourse to the notion of self presumed in conventional discourse.

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Mahayan arises, hermeneutical technique was expedient means. Earlier teachings relegated to an inferior status but also subsuming them within the greater vehicle.

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Hinayana texts as conventional wisdom for lesser beings that prepared the way for the ultimate truth in Mahayana texts.

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Lotus Sutra as key text for this position, the burning house parable, using three carts (goat-, deer-, and bull-drawn) to lure sons out of a house.

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These representing the vehicles of the sravaka, pratyekabuddha, and bodhisattva -> three discrete spiritual paths.

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The first (shengwen) is those who hear the Buddha's voice, and follow his instruction into arhatship. They attain liberation, but are inferior to the Buddha who did not need a teacher and opened up the path to others. Some argue they attain enlightenment through the Four Noble Truths.

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The second are those who attain nirvana on their own w/out recourse to Buddhas instruction but do not remain to preach salvation for others. Some argue they attain enlightenment through the teacing of conditioned origination (IE that the cycle of rebirth depends on a series of conditions, and that the release in reverse order of these conditions eliminates the prior condition and ultimately brings one to nirvana).

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THESE are two inferior vehicles (Hinayana), arhatship but not the level of Buddha.

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The third is the greater vehicle (Mahayana), path of the bodhisattva, it is greater bc of its goal of universal salvation (ferrying over everyone, not just limited groups), six perfections. This comes to be reinterpreted as the One vehicle, something above and beyond the three vehicles.

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A contradiction in the Lotus Sutra, led to arguments about the relationship of the third Bodhisattva vehicle and the one vehicle. Leading to two interpretations, the so-called 3 vehicle and 4 vehicle answers. Huayan falls on the 4 vehicle interpretation, that they are ultimately different.

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Highlights a problematic for Chinese exegetes: \"What is the relationship between expedient means an dthe goal toward which they lead?\" 103 If the three vehicles as false expedient means towards an ultimate truth of the one vehicle, why not just have the one vehicle?

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Relationship btwn conventional and ultimate truth.

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Madhyamaka tradition = the primary meaning of samvrti (conventional truth) as conceling the truth, thus negative concept in realm of falsehood. IE we must transcend samvrti to get to ultimate truth.

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Yogacara tradition = the primary meaning of samvrti as manifesting the truth. Positive concept in realm of truth. IE samvrti is in a continuum with ultimate truth, thus it is the means to ultimate truth.

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Thus a split too btwn sudden and gradual enlightenment, sudden rejecting expedient means as falsehoods to come immediately to ultimate truth, while gradual works through the expedient means to arrive eventually at ultimate truth.

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For Chinese doctrinal classification, expedient means are the key, with each teaching serving as an expedient measure surpassing former teachings while pointing to another superior teaching that would surpass itself.

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Why is doctrinal classification so important in China but not India?

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Buddhism as an alien religion, often its institutional practices went again indigenous Chinese norms (IE celibacy) and world-view (IE this-worldly orientation). Thus Chinese Buddhists had a unique task of sinifying the religion (that is, justifying against the background of indigenous beliefs) not found in an Indian context.

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Moreover, the hermeneutical problem was exacerbated in China, Buddhism in China was not part of an organic tradition as it was in India, but brought over haphazardly, divested of its original context, and thus harder to understand. This opened the door for Chinese to offer their own genius in defining Buddhism.

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110 \"Indeed, the history of Chinese Buddhism can be represented in terms of the development of the increasingly sophisticated hermeneutical frameworks that were devised to understand a religion that was in its origin as foreign conceptually as it was distant geographically. This hermeneutical process, by which Chinese Buddhists gradually came to assimilate Buddhism into their own cultural modalities, could also be characterized in terms of successive phases of 'sinification'.\"

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Phase One: (Zurcher) 3rd-4th centuries, Chinese try to understand newly imported Buddhism via indigenous cultural and intellectual frames of reference already available, notably that of Neo-Taoist Xuanxue. Daoan and Huiyuan at end of 4th century become aware of the distorting lens this places on the texts, and moreover that a wider variety of texts arrive in China to show them the diversity of the material.

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Phase Two: 5th cent. arrival of Kumarajiva in Chang'an. Turn to foreign authority and sources to interpret Buddhism on its own terms. A 'scholastic turn', with exegetical schools. Goes through 6th cent. A number of Yogacara scriptures are translated laying a foundation for the new Buddhism of the Sui and Tang. First doctrinal classification schemes in early 5th cent to deal with the expanse of Buddhist teachings, such as that by Hui-kuan and Hui-kuang.

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Phase Three: The 'New Buddhism' of Sui and Tang.

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114 Classification schemes as not neutral, need to rank teachings and order them. \"The following chapters will therefore examine the changes within the classification schemes within the Hua-yen tradition as a means of evaluating shifts within Hua-yen doctrine. Such an approach will highlight most clearly the character and scope fo Tsung-mi's revision of Hua-yen; it should also clarify what it was that Tsung-mi found of vlaue in Hua-yen thought.\"

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CH. 4 Doctrinal Classification in the Hua-Yen Tradition

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The hermeneutical and sectarian functions of doctrinal classification often emphasized in scholarship, but there is also a third function, namely soteriology.

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\"That is, it organized into a coherent and internally consistent doctrinal framework the diverse corpus of sacred scriptures to which Chinese Buddhists were heir; it legitimated the claims of different Chinese Buddhist traditions to represent the supreme, orthodox, or most relevant teaching of the Buddha; and it provided a map of the Buddhist path.\" 115

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Obviously all three are integrated at once, but...

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Zhiyan's doctrinal classification -> mostly hermeneutical, trying to place Buddhism into a rational framework so its various parts may be better understood as a whole.

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Fazang -> mostly sectarian use, takes one of Zhiyan's multiple schemes and sets it on top, this scheme favors Huayan Sutra.

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Zongmi -> Soteriological, the doct. class. is a logic through which one may advance to higher and higher levels of understanding.

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All of them reflect their historical context...

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Zhiyan -> Rephrasing the complex heritag eof Six Dynasties scholasticism in terms of the new rleigious agenda by Dushun.

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Fazang -> Sectarian concerns stemming from his imperial patronage

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Zongmi -> Response to the emergence of Chan in 8th cent and its formative influence on his thought.

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The rest of the chapter looks at Zhiyan's and Fazang's doctrinal classifications, which I won't take notes on in detail.

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Differences btwn Zongmi's classification scheme and Fazang's =

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FZ:

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1 Hinayana

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2. Elementary Mahayana

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2a. Faxiang/Yogacara

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2b. Madhyamaka

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3 Advanced Mahayana

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4 Sudden (Lotus)

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5 Perfect (Huayan)

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ZM:

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1 Men and Gods

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2 Hinayana (FZ 1)

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3 Analysis of phenomenal appearances (FZ 2a)

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4 Negation of phenomenal appearances (FZ 2b)

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5 Reveals the nature (FZ 3)

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Zongmi adds a lower, initial teaching of the Men and Gods which is a teaching of karmic retribution aimed to the laity. -> probably due to growing importance of lay religious societies in post-An Lushan patronage scheme.

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He omits sudden and perfect teachings. Why would he, a patriarch in the tradition of Huineng and the Heze tradition, eliminate sudden teaching? Also his connections to Huayan sutra and its association with perfect teaching, why eliminate it too?

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CH.5 Sudden Teaching

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Sudden teaching was an issue. Zhiyan classified Huayan Sutra as a type of sudden teaching, Fazang disengaged it from sudden teaching altogether, but made it the sole perfect teaching, causing a rift btwn the two.

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This as a problem for the later tradition, with Huiyuan criticizing Fazang for even including a sudden teaching and creating a fourfold classification that cut it out entirely. Ch'eng-kuan criticizing Huiyuan in turn are including it again, but this time with a new meaning attached to Chan. Zongmi couldn't let Huayan be subordinated to Chan in this way, so \"he went on to argue that 'sudden' did not refer to a specific teaching of the Buddha so much as it did a particular way in which the Buddha had taught.\" 136 Thus he omits it from his scheme entirely.

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Fazang's approach to sudden teaching =

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\"In the sudden teaching all words and explanations are suddenly cut off, the nature of hte truth is suddenly revealed, understanding and practice are suddenly perfected, and Buddhahood [is attained] upon the non-production of a single moment of thought.\"

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Vimalakirti's resounding silence -> the ultimate nature of reality cannot be verbalized, words lead to distinctions.

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In terms of doctrinal content then, sudden teaching is the same as the advanced teaching for FZ, only sudden is not verbalized.

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Another aspect of FZ's approach is that this enlightenment can then, in terms of practice, happen instantaneously in one moment. IE like words may be transcended, practice may be transcended.

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P.141 for canonical support to this.

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Both sides of this view of sudden teaching however are based on the Awakening of Faith.

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Huiyuan challenging Fazang's inclusion of a sudden teaching. He aruges that a teaching must have content, and to have content it must be expressed, therefore words are always necessary or else it's not really a teaching at all. Moreover, if the content of sudden teaching does transcend words and is inexpressible, then it cannot differ from eithe rthe advanced or perfect teaching, thus no reason to establish it as a separate teaching.

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IE sticking to a taxonomy of teachings based on their content, and Huiyuan saying that sudden teaching, if possible, must have the same content as perfect/advanced.

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Ch'eng-kuan, according to Gregory, only offers a lame rebuttal of Huiyuan's criticism in his revival of sudden teaching. Rather he sidesteps the question of content, and merely equates sudden teaching with Chan. Huiyuan's critique then about content holds, but it doesn't equate over to practice, namely the fact that it can transmit a truth (perhaps the same truth/content if we follow Huiyuan as perfect/advanced teachings), but do so in a different manner (namely, instantly in a moment).

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Redefinition to Chan pointing to the growing influence of Chan at that time.

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Zongmi does not establish sudden teaching in the taxonomy, nor does he equate it to Chan. He was writing in a time when Chan had diversified (split btwn north and south), and could not be easily placed under a single blanket category like 'sudden teaching'. Also cannot identify sudden with Chan, as this would subordinate Chan to Huayan, which Zongmi would dislike (he approached the teachings from the other way around).

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Zongmi did not see a fundamental divide btwn the teachings of Chan and more scholastic traditions (jiao). Their content was not different, just their applications of the teachings to religious practice.

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Zongmi therefore takes sudden and gradual to mean methods by which the Buddha taught, not separate teachings. His doctrinal classification was via content, so it would not make sense to include different categories based on method.

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Two types of sudden teaching ->

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1.) A teaching expounded to beings of superior capacity = highest type of Chan teaching for the Heze tradition, when sudden enlightenment is followed by gradual cultivation (like wind ceasing and waves then dying down).

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2.) Method of exposition, when Buddha suddenly taught on one occasion the Huayan Sutra to those who were able to get it. This is considered inferior by Zongmi, who has soteriological concerns for the unenlightened of today.

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Zongmi seeing two tracts or path to Buddhahood then, one gradual for inferior beings who through successive expedient means come to realize the truth. Those of superior capability can hear the truth immediately through sudden teaching, but then must go back and use the gradual practices to remove defilements preventing them from fully integrating this insight of their intrinsic Buddha-nature into their behavior. 153 \"The gradual practices thus played a necessary role in the postenlightenment actualization of the insight afforded by the sudden teaching to beings of superior capacity.\"

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CH.6 The Perfect Teaching

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Not only does Zongmi take out sudden teaching from his classification scheme, but also drops the Huayan Sutra as being of a perfect teaching.

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FZ affiliates Huayan Sutra with perfect teaching bc he believes the Buddha uniquely preached this sutra alone in the moments after his enlightenment while still under the Bodhi tree absorbed in the samadhi of oceanic reflection. IE it is closest to his moment of enlightenment before he began preaching to the capacities of others -> the separate teaching of the one vehicle.

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This is the vision of harmonious and dynamic interrelation of all phenomena simultaneously perceived, as if reflected on the surface of the ocean.

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The conditioned origination of the dharmadhatu - like reflections in mirrors facing mirrors

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Two paradigms for the Samadhi of Oceanic Reflection =

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1) Later called shishiwuai, mystical vision in which harmonious interrelation of all thigns is seen as if reflected on a vast ocean. The phenomenology of enlightenment, conditioned origination of the dharmadhatu. Fazang sees this as the perfect teaching of Huayan Sutra.

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2) Later called lishi wuai, metaphor of the mind like water, wind of ignorance causing waves of discriminating thoguht. The water retains its reflective power of enlightenment, but the reflections are disjointed in a way that causing a delude illusion. We need to quiet the winds, to calm the waves, to bring the mind-water back to a tranquility where its reflective capacity for enlightenment might reflect the true reality, not its disjointed illusion. (161). Ontological basis of reality, nature origination. Thought to be Advanced teaching, associated with Awakening of Faith, and tathagatagrabha

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Shift from 1 -> 2

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Ch'eng-kuan emphasizing that 2 gives ontological basis for 1. 163 \"Tsung-mi's supplanting of the perfect teaching (i.e., 事事無礙 shih-shih wu-ai) with that of the tathagatagarbha (i.e., 理事無礙 li-shih wu-ai) in his classification of Buddhist teachings can thus be seen as an extension of a trend already evidenced by his teacher Ch'eng-kuan.\"

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Zongmi goes a step further and excludes the perfect teaching altogether,  slightly mentioning the ten profundities, and not talking in terms of li and shi.

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The teaching that reveals the nature = Zongmi gives the top spot in his classification scheme to teaching of the tathagatgarbha. Central to Chan, Zongmi buys it, that the Buddhas enlightenment consisted of the realization that all sentient beings already fully posses the enlightened wisdom of the Buddha, are thus identical with Buddha, and just need to uncover this original enlightenment from the defilements which happen to obscure it.

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Huayan as one of a number of important scriptures then (all the Advanced Teachings of Fazang that 'Reveal the Nature') whose main point is to expound on tathagatagarbha. Scripture of Perfect Enlightenment as another.

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Conclusion: 170 \"Tsung-mi's discussion of the sudden teaching shows that its content is identical to that of the advanced teaching. His teaching tha treveals the nature thus also includes that which Fa-tsang had listed, under a separate category, as the sudden teaching. His claim that the Scripture of Perfect Enlightenment contains part of what was taught in the Hua-yen Sutra, moreover, indicates that hte teaching that reveals the nature also partially includes the perfect teaching. Finally, Tsung-mi regarded that aspect of the perfect teaching - shih-shih wu-ai - that was not included within the teaching tha treveals the nature as of so little significance as not to merit the status of a separate category in his classification system. Since this aspect was that which the previous tradition ha dclaimed epitomized the most profound teaching of the Buddha, Tsung-mi's revalorization of Hua-yen teachings marks a radical shift in Hua-yen hermeneutics, a point tha tbelies the claim of one authority on the dharmadhatu theory in the Hua-yen tradition that 'it is difficult to find any new development' in Tsung-mi's idea of the dharmadhatu.\"

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--- --- --- --- ---

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PART THREE: THE GROUND OF PRACTICE

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CH.7 Cosmogonic Map for Buddhist Practice

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Zongmi supplants perfect teaching for teaching that reveals the nature, and in doing so displaces the Huayan Sutra in favor of the Awakening of Faith. This points to the influence of Chan in Zongmi's understanding of Huayan metaphysics.

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173 \"As I shall argue in the next three chapters, Tsung-mi's revision of Hua-yen doctrine can be best understood as part of his attempt to articulate the ontological basis and philosophical rationale for Ch'an practice, and for this purpose the Awakening of Faith provided a far more suitable model than the Hua-yen Sutra.\"

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This chapter showing how Zongmi found a cosmogonic model in Awakening to lay the ground for a systematic theory of the path and ultimately his doctrinal classification.

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Five Stages of Phenomenal Evolution

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174 \"Explains how the world of delusion and defilement, the world in terms of which unenlightened beings experience themselves, evolves out of a unitary ontological ground that is both intrinsically enlightened and pure. Beings' suffering in delusion is a function of the epistemologicla dualism out of which the world of their experience is constructed. Religious practice thus entails the recovery of a primordial state of perfection before the bifurcation fo consciousness into subject and object... His underlying cosmogonic model is one that has deep resonances with indigneous Chinese models. Such models presume that the world is generated through a process by which an originally undifferentiated whole divides into a primordial polarity, through whose interaction the world of differentiated phenomena is then generated.\"

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Similar idea to the earlier twelve-link chain of conditioned origination, where the 'cosmos' are continually generated by beings construction of it, we ensnare ourselves in self-reinforcing patterns of thought and behavior that bind us to a relentless wheel of birth and death.

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177 \"Tsung-mi's five-stage cosmogony stands on the same premise as the twelve-link chain of conditioned origination: that it is only through insight into the complex process of conditioning by which beings become ever more deeply bound in self-reinforcing patterns of thought and behavior that they can begin to deconstruct the process, thereby freeing themselves form bondage.\"

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First Stage: The One Mind

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The ultimate source of all pure and impure dharmas, transcending all dualities. It is the underlying nature from which all conditioned phenomena arise, and thus the ontological ground for conditioned origination.

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Zongmi equates the one mind of the Awakening with the wondrous mind of perfect enlightenment in the Perfect Enlightenment with the one true dharmadhatu of the Huayan Sutra. All are the tathagatagarbha.

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Goal is to return to this original source.

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Second Stage: The Two Aspects of the One Mind

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First = mind of suchness, that which neither is born nor dies.

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Second = mind subject to birth and death, fusing of tathagatagrabha with that which is subject to birth-and-death. (This is where the wind and waves metaphor comes into play)

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181 Gregory brings up the problem of the origin of ignorance, but I don't think he gives a sufficient answer here.

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Third Stage: The Two Modes of the Alayavijnana

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The intermixed alayavijnana consciousness has two modes, through which is embraces and gives rise to all dharma. One is enlightened, and the other unenlightened, for former giving rise to pure dharma and the latter to impure dharma.

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Fourth Stage: The Three Subtle Phenomenal Appearances

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Activation or activity of ignorance -> the first subtle activity of thought by the unenlightened alayavijnana that stirs the tranquility of the one mind, creating...

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Perceiving subject

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Perceived object

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Fifth Stage: The Six Coarse Phenomenal Appearances

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Discrimination -> distingusihes between perceptual objects creating likes and dislikes

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Continuation -> awareness of pleasure and pain leads to a continuation to more thoughts

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Attachment -> from this continuation, objectification of perceptual objects, attachment grows

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Conceptual Elaboration -> deluded attachments led to distinguishing among them in terms of provisional concepts

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Generating Karma -> one therefore categorizes, forming attachment and commiting action (karma)

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Suffering of Karmic Bondage -> based on these actions, one experiences consequences, and thus is no longer free.

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So we have:

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Ultimate source -> One mind

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Two aspects -> Mind as suchness and mind subject to birth-and death

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Two modes (in Mind subject...) -> Enlightened and unenlightened

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Three subtle phen. app. (in unenlightened) -> (a) Activiation, (b) Subject, (c) Object

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Six coarse phen. app. (still in unenlightened) -> Discrimination; continuation; attachment; conceptual elaboration; generating karma; suffering of karmic bondage.

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Uses this soteriological hierarchy to fit in teachings to the stages they overcome.

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God and men = last two coarse phen. app. of generating karma and suffering karmic bondage.

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Hinayana = third and forth coarse phen app of attachment and conceptual elaboration (overcoming attachment to self)

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Mahayana = first and second coarse phen app (overcoming attachment to dharma and refuted by teaching of emptiness of all dharma)

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Yogacara = three subtle phen. app.

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First three stages then = Sudden and advanced teachings, as found in Perfect Enlightenment, Awakening of Faith, etc.

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Reveals differing readings of Awakening of Faith by Fazang and Zongmi:

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187 \"For Fa-tsang the Awakening of Faith was important because its teaching of the interrelation of the absolute and phenomenal (li-shih wu-ai) provided the theoretical basis on which he elaborated the interpenetration (hsiang-ju) and mutural determination (xiang-chi) of all phenomena embodied in the perfect teaching. His interest was primarily metaphysical. Tsung-mi's was more 'practical'. For Tsung-mi the Awakening of Faith's teaching of the interrelationship of the absolute and phenomenal was important because its teaching of how the mind of suchness accorded with conditions provided an ontologicla basis for Buddhist practice.\"

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Nature Origination and Conditioned Origination

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Zongmi places Nature Origination as the foundation to Conditioned Origination, that is Lishi wuai is the foundation for shishi wuai.

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190 \"Whereas nature origination derives form the alayavijnana's connection with suchness, conditioned origination derives form its two modes.\"

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Gregory gives an outline of conditioned origination which =

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I. Impure conditioned origination

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A. Beginningless ignorance

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i. deluded about the true

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ii. clinging to the false

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B. Evolved branches

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i. defilements

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ii. generating karma

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iii. experiencing the results

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2. Pure conditioned origination

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A. Partially pure

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i. Sravaka

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ii. Pratyekabuddha

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iii. Novice bodhisattva

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B. Perfectly pure

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i. Sudden enlightenment

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ii. Gradual cultivation

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a. removing faults

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b. perfecting virtues

\n

 

\n

Zongmi's account is psychological in orientation, thus similar to the twelve-link chain of conditioned arising, but here it is thoroughly Mahayana based on a Yogacara understanding of the mind.

\n

And because it's based on nature origination, it is cosmogonic in a way that the 12 link is not, it posits an ultimate ontological ground for the entire process.

\n

 

\n

Sudden enlightenment followed by gradual cultivation, sudden enlightenment does not obviate practice, it is rather the foundation of practice. Wind ceasing but waves continuing is one common analogy.

\n

Sudden enlightenment as the insight of one's true nature, that is natur eorigination and the one mind.

\n

Why do we need to do gradual cultivation afterward? Karmic residue lingering on us, we need to integrate our insight into our habits and practice, our personality.

\n

 

\n

A more advanced ten-stage model is later argued by Zongmi, see p.198-9 for a full description.

\n

 

\n

One goes from their original intrinsic enlightenment through a series of steps that bring about delusion (culminating in the experience of karmic consequences), and it is be going back and breaking down these steps that one can come to have sudden enlightenment (which is really just an awareness of the same state as intrinsic enlightenment).

\n

None of this affects the one mind, the reality, as the defilements are just accidents and don't affect the reality of the one mind. Attaining enlightenment is realizing that intrinsic enlightenment is not just the first of a series of steps, but the very ontological ground upon which everything else is just epiphenomenal.

\n

 

\n

CH. 8 Role of Emptiness

\n

 

\n

206 \"Tsung-mi valued the tathagatagarbha doctrine because it not only provided an ontological ground for Buddhist practice but also offered a rationale by which the radical apophasis of Madhyamaka could be subordinated to a more kataphatic mode of discourse.\"

\n

IE wanting to overcome the negative conative implications of emptiness for something more affirmative.

\n

 

\n

Afraid of the antinomian implications of emptiness, IE throwing out Buddhist practice as it too is empty, a trend that developed in Chan with no-thought.

\n

 

\n

Teaching of gods and men as the simplest teaching -> moral rules about karmic retribution, you can gain a better rebirth.

\n

But these teachings are naive in their assumption that there is something which is reborn.

\n

Thus Hinayana enters the picture, teaches about no-self in terms of a psychological vocabularly of dharmas.

\n

Yet this teaching talks as if the dharmas are real.

\n

Thus Yogacara (the Faxiang brought in by Xuanzang) teaches about the phenomenal aspect of dharmas, how they are nothing but mental constructions. It demonstrates that since the conceptions of both self and the dharmas are merely the projections for an underlying consciousness (the alayavijnana), they are therefore equally unreal.

\n

Yet this teaching does not reveal the basis for how delusion arises, that is it teaches the phenomenal appearance of dharmas but fails to discern that the projecting consicousness and the projected objects are interdependent and hence equally unreal.

\n

Thus a fourth level of teaching is needed to determine what the ultimate reality is not (namely hte projected consicousness/projected objects).

\n

We get to the final teaching, the tathagatagarbha, which reveals what the ultimate source is.

\n

 

\n

Men and Gods = 10. Experiencing the Consequences and 9. Generating Karma

\n

Lesser vehicle = 8. defilements and 7. attachment to self

\n

Phenomenal appearances = 6. attachment ot dharmas, 5. manifestation of perceived objects, 4. arising of perceiving subject, and 3. arising of thoughts.

\n

Refutation of phenomenal appearances = 2. unenlightenment

\n

Revelation of the nature = 1. intrinsic enlightenment

\n

 

\n

213 \"The teaching of emptiness overcomes deluded attachments so that the true nature can be perceived as it is in reality: pur eand immutable... the teaching of emptiness thus serves a sthe crucial turning point that enables one to move form attachment to phenomenal appearances to a realization fo their underlying nature. It can, however, do no more than intimate... the nature and must therefore be superseded by the teachign that is able to reveal it directly.\"

\n

 

\n

Theory of religious language -> come to an understanding of words as empty and not reflecting a reality, that is when they are no longer mistaken for essences in themselves, then they are freed to reveal the true essence directly.

\n

Thus unlike Chan belief that only negative statements are true, Zongmi argues for a kataphatic over an apophatic mode of language, the final word then being 'awareness' (Zhi) - a synonym for tathagatagarbha.

\n

 

\n

Tathagatagarbha doctrine > Madhyamaka emptiness

\n

Tt provides an ontological basis for Buddhist practice, and undermines Madhyamaka by equating the wisdom of emptiness with the tathagatagarbha -> Madhyamaka only sees how tathagatagarbha is empty of defilement, but does not recognize how it is not-empty of aspects of the absolute or of all Buddha-dharmas.

\n

 

\n

CH.9 Tsung-mi's Critique of Ch'an

\n

 

\n

224 \"[I] will go on to claim that Tsung-mi's critique of the Hung-chou tradition furnishes the key for understanding his revision of Hua-yen and will empahsize the importance of his reaction to the antinomian interpretation of Ch'an practice adopted by the P'ao-t'ang tradition as providing the context for assessing his critique of Hung-chou Ch'an. It will conclude by proposing that Tsung-mi saw in the Hung-chou teaching a parallel to the Hua-yen paradigm represented by the unobstructed interpenetration of phenomena (shih-shih wu-ai).\"

\n

 

\n

Zongmi correlates Northern line of Chan with 'Negation of objects by means of consciousness' (which is parallel to Yogacara); Ox-head line with 'Hidden intent that negates phenomenal appearances in order to reveal the nature' (which is parallel to Madhyamaka); and Southern line with 'Direct revelation that mind is the nature' (which is parallel to the Tathagatagarbha teachings).

\n

 

\n

Wants to bridge between doctrinal scholars/textual exegetes on the one hand and Chan practitioners on the other.

\n

Also wants to bridge btwn the different sects of Chan themselves.

\n

 

\n

He sees the scripture as the Buddha's words and Chan as the Buddha's intent, and thus argues that there is no contradiction btwn the two.

\n

The unity of Buddha's mouth and mind were gradually lost over time, esp in China, which prompted Bodhidharma to want \"to make them aware that the moon did not lie in the finger that pointed to it.\"

\n

But this is not to say that Bodhidharma taught that liberation was separate from written words, the scriptures have the same content as Chan practice.

\n

 

\n

Zongmi is thus able to validate Chan practice, and bind it to the sutras and scriptures keeping antinomian impulses at bay (Chan enlightenment must be measured against the scriptures).

\n

 

\n

One must both study the scriptures and meditate.

\n

 

\n

Zongmi can thus associate individual Chan sects/practices with certain teachings found in doctrinal traditions. In doing so though, he critiques each line of Chan via its placement in the hierarhcy of doctrinal traditions.

\n

 

\n

Northern Chan = Like his critique of Faxiang Yogacara, they recognize the unchanging character of hte absolute mind, they ignore its conditioned character, IE there is no connection btwn tathagatagarbha and alayavijnana, the mind as suchness and the mind subject to birth-and-death. They do not see how suchness is conditioned. 232 \"It is this conditioned aspect of suchness that Tsung-mi refers to as nature origination (hsing-ch'i), a term that emphasizes the dynamic quality of his understanding of the fundamental nature of the mind.\"

\n

Nature origination is important because it \"bridges this gap [btwn suchness and alayavijnana] by affirming tha tall phenomenal appearans (hsiang) are nothing but a manifestation (yung) of the nature (hsing) that is their very essence (t'i).\" 233

\n

\"As Tsung-mi's criticism of Fa-hsiang applies to Northern Ch'an, the fault lies with its practice directed toward removing the impurities that obscure the intrinsic purity of hte mind. Such a practice is based on a fundamentla misconception because it does not realize that the impurities themselves are empty...they are nothign but a manifestation of the intrinsically pure mind as it accords with conditions...their impurity lies in the dualistic misapprehension of htem as impure - in other words, the failure to see through them ot the intrinsically pure nature that is their essence and of which they are an expression.\"

\n

It lacks the sudden experience of insight that the fundamental identity of sentient beings and Buddhas, samsara and nirvana.

\n

 

\n

Ox-Head Line = One-sided understanding of emptiness, in that it does not recognize the nonempty aspect of the mind.

\n

It does not reveal the nature.

\n

 

\n

Hung-chou Line = The opposite of the Northern line, which sees everything as false. HC line sees everything as true. While the Northern line is guilty of dualism btwn ti essence and yong function, the HC line collapses ti and yong into radical nondualism. \"Act freely according to the nature of one's feelings.\" Activities good and bad, enlightened or deluded are 'the functioning of the entire essence of the Buddha-nature'. While Zongmi argues that ti and yong are aspects of the same reality, they are nevertheless different and you can't collapse them commpletely.

\n

 

\n

238 \"Tsung-mi insists that while ultimately the natur etranscends all dualistic categories, there is nevertheless a difference betweene nlightenment and delusion as far as sentient beings are concerned. And it is the tension betweent he diiference between enlightenement and delusion that vivifies practice.\"

\n

 

\n

Ti and yong - 238-9 \"Their inseparability is what makes religious cultivation possible, and their difference is what makes religious cultivation necessary.\"

\n

\n

Zongmi helps to define this point of the duality and non-duality of essence and function by talking about two types of function, that which is ever-present awareness and that which is responsive functioning, the former based on intrinsic functioning of self-naturewhile the second is in accordance with conditions. HC line mistakenly settles for the latter, which never gets to the former and thus might led one to unethical activity.

\n

 

\n

IE there is the absolute aspect of mind and the conditioned aspect. Both have an essence and functioning, not just the one absolute mind.

\n

 

\n

The bronze mirror analogy: Material substance of a bronze mirror = essence of self-nature. It's luminous reflectivity (ming) of the bronze is the functioning of self-nature. The images reflected are the functioning-in-accord-with-conditions. The images are reflected in direct response to conditions. While the reflections may have thousands of variations, the luminous reflectivity is the ever-present luminous reflectivity of the self-nature.

\n

 

\n

HC line mistakes the reflections in the mirror for its luminous reflectivity, that is to say, the everychanging phenomenal appearances of the nature fo rthe nature itself.

\n

This is the same mistake that Zongmi sees implicitly in the Huayan shishi wuai, which is why he subordinates it to lishi wuai.

\n

 

\n

247 \"While Tsung-mi is noted for his infusion of Ch'an into Hua-yen, it might be more accurate to characterize him as a conservative Ch'an figure who adapted Hua-yen thought as a hedge against more extreme Ch'an movements of the late eighth and early ninth centuries\"

\n

 

\n

252 \"While Tsung-mi's more ontologicla point of view did not prevail within Ch'an, it did, ironically, survive within Neo-Confucianism. Chu Hsi's criticism of the Buddhist understanding of 'nature' (hsing), for instance, merely recapitulates Tsung-mi's criticism of the Hung-chou line, a point to which I shall return in the final chapter.\"

\n

 

\n

 

\n

--- --- --- --- ---

\n

 

\n

PART FOUR: THE BROADER INTELLECTUAL TRADITION

\n

 

\n

Places Confucianism as the lowest of teachings in his hierarchy, but not because its moral vision is wrong, but rather because it fails to rationalize them. The karmic explanation does this for Buddhist teachings. Zongmi believes however that given the workings of karma, the Confucian moral teachings are just as effective in securing a good rebirth.

\n

 

\n

Buddha, Laozi and Confucius as each being a consummate sage, it's just that they laid down different paths, limited by the historical circumstance sin which each lived and taught.

\n

This is fairly innovative, as most Huayan followers before did not want to equate or associate the three religions.

\n

 

\n

Zongmi including the two teachings in a rubric to synthesize them within a Buddhist vision, and as such makes them inferior, but not worthless.

\n

 

\n

Two main critiques: One is the problem of theodicy, the relationship of the Dao or Tian as the ultimate basis of phenomenal reality to the evident inequalities that pertain in the world.

\n

Second is the problem of qi dispersing after death.

\n

Both are tied to an ignorance of karmic rebirth, and single an understanding limited to this single moment of existence and body.

\n

 

\n

Critique of spontaneity as being acausal. If things do not depend on causes and conditions, anything could be produced anywhere and anytime.

\n

 

\n

...

\n

 

\n

279 \"What is especially significant about Tsung-mi's critique of Confucianism and Taoism is that it is carried out within the framework of the moral vision of Confucianism. This moral vision itself is not challenged; it is only the ability of Confucianism and Taoism to provide a coherent ontologicla basis for that vision that is disputed. It is in this context that the teaching of men and gods takes on importance as its teaching of karmic retribution provides a way in which the Confucian moral vision can b epreserved, for it is precsiely the teaching of karmic retribution that is needed to explain the apparent cases of injustice in the world.\"

\n

 

\n

Uses teaching of God and Men, namely karmic retribution, to solve the problem of theodicy, which preserved the Confucian moral practices.

\n

 

\n

Five Buddhist precepts are equate to the five Confucian values =

\n

Not to take life -> ren

\n

Not to take what is not given -> yi

\n

Not to engage in illict sex -> li

\n

Not to drink -> zhi

\n

Not to lie -> xin

\n

 

\n

Also makes similar comparison with Daoist terminology and Buddhist metaphysics.

\n

287 \"What is even more interesting is the fundamental assumption that underlies Tsung-mi's approach: that both must be describing the same process...\"

\n

 

\n

294 \"One can think of different systems of thought, just as one can think of different personality types, as involving strategies for reconciling the tension between the discordant claims of different systems of value. One way to deal with this problem is to adopt an exclusivist approach that holds that there is only one true teaching. Conflicting traditions can thus be either rejected or ignored… A second approach would be to compartmentalize the conflicting values and claims of different traditions… The third approach is one in which conflicting traditions are genuinely integrated with one another, in which they actually inform one another, and in which they are interpreted in terms of one another.”

\n

Gregory saying Zongmi is this third type.

\n

 

\n

CH.11 Tsung-Mi and Neo-Confucianism

\n

 

\n

295 “The revisions that Tsung-mi makes in Hua-yen theory (such as his deletion of the prefect teaching as a separate ategory in his p’an-chiao, his displacement of the Hua-yen Sutra in favor of the Awakening of Faith, his emphasis on nature origination over conditioned origination, or his preference for li-shih wu-ai over shih-shih wu-ai) can all be understood as part of his effort to provide an ontological basis for Buddhist practice. His revalorization of Hua-yen thought, in turn, points back to his involvement with, and reaction to, various developments that had taken place within Ch’an. The iconoclastic rhetoric of the radical movements that had gained currency within Chinese Ch’an during the latter part of the T’ang could easily be misinterpreted in antinomian ways that denied the need for spiritual cultivation nd moral discipline.”

\n

Also his internalization of the Confucian moral vision.

\n

 

\n

Native Chinese concerns that human nature lacked any inherent moral direction, stemming back to Mencius arguing against this. Thus tathagatagarbha was something Indian Buddhism did not pick up on, but Chinese Buddhism quickly latched onto.

\n

Revealing one way in which Buddhism was sinified.

\n

 

\n

Zongmi showing a central theme in the sinification of Buddhism, and laying down a framework for dialogue later appropriated by the Neo-Confucians.

\n

 

\n

Zhu Xi’s critique of the Buddhist understanding of nature =

\n

Buddhism challenging Confucian norms, Neo-Confucians needed to provide an ontological basis to reaffirm their moral values. Zhu Xi’s theory of human nature being the locus of moral principle is where ontology and ethics thus converge -> ethical norms are not relative arbitrary cultural products but an integral part of cosmic order.

\n

 

\n

Zhu Xi argues that what Buddhists call nature is only what Confucians call the xin mind. They polish away the dust of the mind, and think they are seeing nature, but this is not the case.

\n

 

\n

See note above, 301 Gregory claiming that Zhu Xi criticizes Buddhists for only knowing the renxin, not the daoxin, this is the same critique of Zongmi on the HC line of Chan.

\n

301 “Hence, for Chu His the nature cannot be described as function (yung). Rather, he characterizes the nature as the essence (t’i) and the feelings as its functioning (yung).”

\n

 

\n

Another charge is that the Buddhists mistake the psycho-physical functions for the nature

\n

 

\n

305 “Chu His’s reaction to Buddhism likewise seems to hav sprung form a similar ethical concern to clarify the ultimate basis of morality. Like Tsung-mi, he is pushed to elaborate his metaphysics of principle in order to provide an ontological basis for Confucian moral cultivation. Not only do both figures seem to operate out of the same ethical problematic, but they both also seemt o have evolved ‘solutions’ that are remarkably similar in important respects.”

\n

 

\n

Zhu Xi splits nature into a universal ontological ground for morality (tianming zhi xing) and the individual instantiation (qizhi zhi xing) ‘conditioned’ by the individuals allotment of ‘qi’ material.  This is the ontological correlate to the moral duality of a daoxin and a renxin.

\n

THIS IS THE SAME DISTINCTION at the crux of the tathagatagarbha debate -> from the ultimate perspective of an enlightened Buddha, the tathag. Is fully endowed with all the infinite excellent qualities of Buddhahood. But from the perspective of sentient beings, it is covered by their defilements.

\n

“The fact that the Awakening of Faith identified the tathagatagarbha in its true nature with the one mind meant that there was a singular ontological principle on which religious and moral cultivation could be based. On the other hand, the fact that this immutable one mind also accorded with conditions allowed for its operation in a less than perfect mode.” 310

\n

Renxin/Daoxin as parallel then to the alayavijnana, being that it is both enlightened and unenlightened.

\n

 

\n

Conclusion: Zongmi articulated the same system as Neo-Confucianism long before Zhu Xi. Both figures were responding to a problem how to root morality in an ontological foundation. This problem was part of the native Chinese religious concern going back to Pre-Qin times, and as such came to be the lens through which Buddhism was sinified upon its arrival and maturation in China.

\n

 

\n

311 “Thus, one of the ways in which Buddhism was able to survive in Chinese thought was by becoming invisible. Having so thoroughly permeated Chinese associations and modes of thought, it was no longer necessary for it to maintain its pretense as a separate intellectual tradition.”

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General notes:

\n
    \n
  1. General thesis is that Buddhism, \"a great religion\", conquers China, \"a great culture\",  by which Zurcher means that it overcomes traditional chinese thought to develop its own autonomy, specifically Buddhist. It does this through the work, primarily, of Dao'an, Huiyuan, and Kumarajiva, who strove to overcome the native Chinese categories through which Buddhism had been misunderstood or resisted previously.
    2. \n
  2. One major problem all the way through is Zurcher's assumption that Buddhism can be defined as an entity apart from its spread in China. According to him, it's \"Conquest\" of China consists of the Chinese gradually coming to understand this reified \"Buddhism\" and to throw off their earlier \"misunderstandings\" of the doctrine. But of course Buddhism should not be thought of as such a static set of doctrines, nor (as Teiser points out in the introduction) should China be reified as something other than Buddhism, which had to be conquered by it.
    3. \n
\n

Chapter One

\n
    \n
  1. 1: Religion is not pure theory but rather a way of life, and cannot therefore be studied as a \"history of ideas\" pure and simple; one has to pay attention to cultural and social factors before you can understand \"purely doctrinal\" issues.
    2. \n
  2. 1: To the Chinese, Buddhism has always remained a doctrine of monks.
    3. \n
  3. 2: From the beginning, foreign doctrine was reduced to those elements that corresponded to pre-existing Chinese notions.
    4. \n
  4. 2: Early sources were written by and for small group of literati (gentry and educated monks) exclusively, so they do not represent \"Buddhism\" as a whole. We know almost nothing of popular Buddhism in the period.
    5. \n
  5. 4: This text confined to discussing development of Buddhism in the South. Buddhism in the North looked very different, and \"sinicization\" there was less complete.
    6. \n
  6. 8: The most famous and influential monks came from gentry families, but most of the time monks did not come from the elite. The cultured clergy was relatively free from class discrimination, so the monastery was attractive to talented members of lower classes, for it allowed them to get a literary education usually reserved for elite.
    7. \n
  7. 11: Buddhist apologetics were different in China than in India: in India, notions like karma, rebirth, etc. were taken for granted by everybody; in China, they had to be argued for. Moreover, there were misunderstandings of doctrine, such as misunderstanding of non-existence of permanent self, which Chinese Buddhists took to mean that the spirit was immortal.
    8. \n
  8. 12: Dao'an and Huiyuan consciously used categories of indigenous philosophy to explain Buddhism in order to express their ideas to \"scholars of distinguished families.\"
    9. \n
\n

Chapter Two

\n
    \n
  1. 19: Accounts of the introduction of Buddhism to China are definitely legendary. Earliest reliable mention of Buddhism is in 65 AD (two of them), so it must have infiltrated from the North-West between 50 BC and 50 AD. But it remained for the most part a religion of foreigners until at least the end of the Han.
    2. \n
  2. First traces of a Buddhist monastery are at Pengcheng in Chu, where a king was mentioned as pursuing Buddhist and Daoist practices of immortality in 65 AD. But Z disagrees with Maspero that Buddhism came to Luoyang from Pengcheng, since Luoyang was on the way from Central Asia.
    3. \n
  3. In second century AD, translations begin in earnest in Luoyang, with missionaries from various places supported by Chinese laymen.
      \n
    1. Earliest and most famous missionary was Parthian prince An Shigao, who arrived in 168, and seems to have taught mainly about dhyana (anapanasmrti 安般) and numerological categories such as the five skhanda 五陰, six ayatana 六入, etc. Translations were  of the poorest quality, usually free paraphrase.
      2. \n
    2. An Xuan (arrives 181) and Yan Fotiao (the first known Chinese monk) translate the first Mahayana sutra.
      3. \n
    3. Indoscythian (Yuezhi) Lokaksema arrives some 20 years after An Shigao; collaborates with an Indian and three Chinese laymen; is commonly credited with the introduction of Mahayana Buddhism to China. His partial translation of the Astasahasrikaprajnaparamita sutra was important for the spread of Mahayana ideas (such as emptiness) in the upper classes; Hinayana practices like dyana remained mostly in the monasteries.
      4. \n
    4. \n
  4. 45: When Han begins to collapse, domination of Confucianism crumbles, and various schools of thought strove to replace or modify the \"doctrine that had failed.\" But Cao Cao's \"legalism\" similarly failed, and with the rise of the Sima clan in the north, Confucianism becomes dominant again, though this time it is not \"cosmological\" Confucianism.This leaves room for the metaphysical speculations of Xuanxue, the philosophy of a refined leisure class whose interest has turned from practical business to gnostic and ontological problems, and whose focus on emptiness and non-being was a big factor in the development of Chinese gentry Buddhism. (None of this would be taken seriously nowadays.)
    5. \n
  5. Buddhism in the state of Wu (3 kingdoms period):
      \n
    1. 48: Zhi Qian, layman of Indo-scythian family, settles at Luoyang in late 2nd century, around 220 goes to South, where he begins translating (mostly Mahayana, including Vimalakirti and Sukhyavativyuha [Amituo jing]), and became tutor to the crown prince.
      2. \n
    2. 51: Kang Senghui, Sogdian monk, arrives in Jianye in 247. Is said to have defended Buddhism against persecution by the court, though this is likely apocryphal.
      3. \n
    3. 54: list of most important scriptures in the south around the middle of the 3rd C.
      4. \n
    6. \n
  6. Buddhism in Wei, 220-265:
      \n
    1. Source material is lacking, and very few translations are attributed to this period. No reliable evidence of contact between Buddhist church in Luoyang and the cultured upper classes there, and the stories of the Cao family's involvement with Buddhism are probably apocryphal.
      2. \n
    7. \n
  7. The Western Jin (265-317):
      \n
    1. Buddhism flourishes in Northern China between 265-300 due to the close relations between the court and the Buddhist coutnries of Central Asia, and even ruling Sima family becomes Buddhist. In 300, war blocks the roads West, and \"hybrid high-class Buddhism\" gets transplanted to former domain of Wu. Buddhism remains very influential in the North (is state-sponsored in many cases) even after the \"barbarians\" take over.
      2. \n
    2. In around 260, Zhu Shixing goes to Khotan (probably the \"stronghold of Mahayana in Central Asia\") to obtain scriptures--the first such journey in Chinese history--and gets the Sanskrit text of the 25000 sloka Prajnaparamita sutra. This text was translated a few times as the Fangguang jing 放光經, and it was this text that was to become one of the two most important texts for the formation of schools in China (the other was Lokaksema's 道行經, both were to be replaced by Kumarajiva's translations in the 5th C).
      3. \n
    3. Indo-scythian Dharmaraksa, born 230 at Dunhuang, also set out through Central Asia to gather texts; Dao'an lists 154 works translated by him. Seems to have traveled extensively between Buddhist centers. Translated the first complete Saddharmapundarika, and made new translations of Vimalakirtinirdesa, Suramgamasamadhisutra, Sukhavativyuha, and 25000 pp.
      4. \n
    8. \n
  8. 71: In late 3rd and early 4th C, intellectual clerical elite propagate completely sinicized Buddhist doctrine which from that time onward starts to penetrate into the Chinese upper classes, beginning at about the turn of the 4th C. \"Emptiness and Saintly wisdom,\" \"the retribution of sins\" and \"the immortality of the soul\" were the Buddhist doctrines that appear to have attracted the most attention at the time.
    9. \n
  9. It is in Eastern Jin (4th C) that extensive contacts between church and elite begin; monks take part in qingtan, write poems, commentaries on Chinese texts such as Laozi and Zhuangzi, etc. 
      \n
    1. Bo Yuan 帛遠 was from an elite family, did some translating and commenting, and had extensive connections with elite families, including a powerful member of the royal house. 77-9 lists several other Buddhists of this period who were influential.
      2. \n
    10. \n
\n

Buddhism at Jiankang and in the South-East, Ca. 320-420

\n
    \n
  1. Two trends of thought play a dominating role in the intellectual life of the cultured classes: Mingjiao (primarily related to practical problems of government, stressing that function should correspond to name) and Xuanxue (the quest for a permanent substrate underlying the world of change, stressing that there was something beyond name and function--i.e., non-being).
    2. \n
  2. The question of whether words correspond to realities, present in both Mingjiao and Xuanxue, was coupled with the idea of Confucius using expedient teachings; and this concept of \"hidden saintliness\" and the expedient character of the canonical teachings was amalgamated with upaya.
    3. \n
  3. Discussion of Xiang Xiu/Guo Xiang commentary to the Zhuangzi as the peak of Xuanxue. Commentary rejects the idea of non-being creating being; rather, being creates itself spontaneously. However, this cannot explain why certain things are created high and others low; and this lacuna was to be filled with the Buddhist concept of karma.
    4. \n
  4. Qingtan was much en vogue among the cultured upper classes since the third century AD, and Buddhist monks began to participate.
    5. \n
  5. 310-346
      \n
    1. Wang clan was supreme, included many lay devotees and two monks, and supported the church extensively. Under their influence, emperors Yuan and Ming had contacts with Buddhist clergy.
      2. \n
    2. Shi Dabao was a younger brother of Wang Dao (the prime minister) who became a monk. He combined the ideas of the wandering ascetic who goes forth into the houseless state with that of the retired gentry-scholar who prefers the hidden life of study and artistic pleasure..
      3. \n
    3. More important was his cousan, Zhu Daoqian (brother of Wang Dun, a major general). Was the most prominent priest and propigator of the faith at the court and among aristocracy, greatly honored by emperors Yuan and Ming. When the last of his protectors died and the anti-Buddhist Yu Bing came to dominate power, Zhu went with his disciples into the mountains of Shan.
      4. \n
    4. Zhi Mindu's contacts with aristocracy relatively unknown. Made synoptic editions of Vimalakirti and Suramgam, and is known as the founder of one of the so-called schools of Chinese Buddhism, the idea of the \"Non-existence of the Mind\", about which we know little. Nonetheless, Zurcher thinks that Zhi Mindu did not understand non-duality, and was arguing that emptiness is a state of mind, rather than an ontological fact--rupa has existence, but the sage responds to it out of emptiness, very similar to Guo Xiang's Xuanxue. The idea lasted until it was swept away by the texts revealed by Kumarajiva in the early fifth C.
      5. \n
    5. Srimitra was a Kuchean prince who had become a monk, came to the South during the Yongjia troubles. Didn't speak Chinese, but participated in qingtan through a translator and moved in very high circles. When he died, emperor Cheng had a caitya built--the first instance of such an act of devotion by a reigning emperor.
      6. \n
    6. When Wang Dao and Yu Liang had died, Yu Bing came to power and persecuted Buddhism as associated with the Wang clan. He took issue with the fact that the church claimed the right not to pay homage to the temporal ruler. He said that people could practice the religion privately, but that it could not be practiced by the state and at the court. He Chong and his partisans argued against these edicts, and He Chong eventually won power against the Yu. However, it was during this time that Zhu Daoqian and Zhi Dun (then only in his 20s) went to the mountains of the outer provinces, where they and their disciples found an admirer there in the future emperor Jianwen.
      7. \n
    7. He Chong was a serious devotee of Buddhism, and had monasteries built on magnificent scale and founded the first nunnery. Empress Dowager Chu founded the second.
      8. \n
    6. \n
  6. 346-402
      \n
    1. When in 379 the Tibetan (?) ruler Fu Jian ordered Dao'an to come from the captured city of Xiangyang to Chang'an, it begins a period in the North of renewed influx of missionaries, scriptures, and ideas from Central Asia and India, state-sponsored translation projects, and the emergence of a body of scriptural and scholastic literature together with a new method of exegesis and a new translation technique. Around 416, political conditions caused the disintegration of the Buddhist community in Chang'an, and a mass exodus of monks to the South took place, resulting in a complete re-orientation of Southern Buddhism and, eventually, the rise of Chinese schools.
      2. \n
    2. Zhi Dun was in the capital til 362 and was in close contact with the faction of Xie An, but also founded two monasteries in Shan mountains and was close with future emperor Jianwen when the latter was king of Kuaiji. Was the founder of another \"school\" of early Chinese Buddhism, the claim of which was that matter (and by extension the rest of the five skandhas, exists \"as such\", i.e. it lacks any permanent substrate or sustaining or creative principle which \"causes matter to be matter\". Emptiness is not anything apart from \"matter\", a substrate of which matter would be a manifestation.This is, Zurcher says, a Buddhist elaboration of Guo Xiang's idea of ziran, and is closer to Hinayana ideas than to the Mahayana conception of emptiness, which reduces all phenomena and notions, including conditionality and causality. For this Zhi Dun was criticized later by Sengzhao.
      3. \n
    3. Zhi Dun also wrote a \"Preface to a synoptic extract of the larger and smaller versions of the pp\". Here too he is merely giving a Buddhist transformation of Xuanxue ideas, and his preface is a clear hybridization wherein the Buddhist pattern of prajna versus upaya has merged with the Chinese distinction of the immutable inner mind of the sage and his ever-varying precepts and teachings. The sage stands beyond th world of change, responding to it automatically (for he has \"no mind\"= absence of mentation, obliteration of the spirit) according to the Truth (li). Nonetheless, Zhi Dun wrote a commentary disagreeing with the Guo Xiang/Xiang Xiu commentary on Zhuangzi's Xiaoyaoyou, in which he claimed that people should not merely follow their spontaneous nature, but that they can attain to the saintliness of the Buddha.
      4. \n
    4. Zhi Dun marks the  first time that the term li , originally meaning the natural pattern or order of the world, has been merged with the Buddhist notion of transcendental Truth (tathata). This is a major development in medieval thought, interpreting being and non-being not as a pair of correlates, one being the function or manifestation of the other, but as two aspects of the same arcanum that embraces and transcends both. 127: Zurcher claims that this marks the beginnings of metaphysical thought in China, which could never have happened if philosophical speculation remained the province of the elite only, since they were always concerned with the potential implications in governance. Only the autonomous sangha could have detached speculation from the problems of secular thought and stressed spiritual values and religious experience in this way.
      5. \n
    5. Zhi Dun probably primarily intellectually engaged by Buddhism, but also seems to have been the first person to have made a vow to be reborn in the pure land and commissioned a painting of Amitabha.
      6. \n
    6. Sun Chuo was a follower and friend of Zhi Dun, and wrote a psuedo-Buddhist treatise called the Yu dao lun in which he two mixed Xuanxue and Buddhism, and ends with the conclusion that \"The duke of Zhou and Confucius are identical with the Buddha.\" The traces of the sages may be different, but that which made the traces was the same: the fact of their being \"awakened\". Then Sun argues that Buddhism is the highest manifestation of filial piety.
      7. \n
    7. Xi Chao, the powerful confidant of Huan Wen, was the most important of Zhi Dun's lay followers, came from a Buddho-Daoist family tradition, and wrote a considerable number of pieces on Buddhism, including the Fengfa yao 奉法要, a kind of catechism, showing what laypeople of the time understood and \"misunderstood\" of Buddhism.
      8. \n
    8. 141: Yuanhua monastery in Shan mountains was a third center of gentry Buddhism to go with Zhu Daoqian and Zhi Dun. Was founded by Yu Falan and his disciples Yu Fakai and Yu Daosui. Falan and Daosui tried to go to India (first as far as we know) but died on the way. Yu Fakai was famous as a medicine man, and developed his own \"theory\" (called \"School of Stored [Impressions of[ Consciousness\") that conflicted with Zhi Dun's and led to vehement debates between the masters and their adherents. Whereas Zhi Dun emphasized the idea that the absolute is to be found in phenomena as such, Fakai emphasized the utterly illusory nature of all dharmas. But they agreed on the idea of the existence of a permanent spiritual principle in man 神, which is to be purified and liberated from the fetters of the body, but not extinguished or eliminated. This idea only very slowly yielded to the more \"correct\" Buddhist views expounded by Kumarajiva and later teachers.
      9. \n
    9. 144: Zhu Daoyi was active at Huqiu Shan and Ruoye Shan, two other centers of Buddhism east of the capital. He developed a t\"theory\" called the \"School of Illusion\", which apparently claimed that all dharmas are empty, but the spirit 神 is not empty but rather the principle of the highest truth, for without the spirit there was nothing that could become enlightened.
      10. \n
    10. In this period several monks came from the north and settled in the capital, such as Zhu Sengfu, who propounded a theory that the spirit has a form but that its substance is just more 妙 than other things. This seems to have influenced Zhu Fatai's (who studied in the north with Dao'an, and came to the capital attended by Huiyuan) theory of the \"Fudamental non-being\". Daosheng later studied with him.
      11. \n
    11. Emperor Jianwen patronized Buddhism, but his interest was primarily philosophical; the greatest court success would come under Xiaowu, who in 381 officially accepted the lay precepts and established a vihara within the palace, upon which some Buddhist scriptures began to find their way into the imperial library. In the last years of Xuanwu's and the first years of An's reign, the court was dominated by the ardent Buddhist Sima Daozi, whose apparent profligacy Zurcher blames for Huan Xiuan's later anti-Buddhist policy.
      12. \n
    7. \n
  7. 402-420
      \n
    1. During Huan Xuan's coup in 403-4, he pursued an anti Buddhist policy, again with the justifaction that the church did not pay enough homage to the temporal rulers.
      2. \n
    8. \n
  8. Concluding remarks
      \n
    1. No reliable evidence of contacts between Buddhist clergy and imperial family before 300, but after that date, B was successfully propagated at court by a relatively small number of culture Chinese monks who themselves partly belonged to gentry families. Emperors Yuan and Ming stimulated these activities; then there is a 40 year period where center moves to Kuaiji, and then a spectacular revival of court B at the beginning of Ai's reign, after which Buddhist cult forms an integral part of court life.
      2. \n
    9. \n
\n

The Centers at Xiangyang, Jiangling and Lu Shan and the Influence of Northern Buddhism

\n
    \n
  1. Most important fact concerning these three centers is their northern origin, which creates contrasts with the xuanxue Buddhism of the previous chapter, specifically a focus on dhyana, a devotional tendency marked by the use of icons, and an \"heroic effort to become free from the entaglement of Chinese traditional thought in order to understand the real message of Buddhism.\"
    2. \n
  2. Buddhism in the north to Xiangyang (Dao'an):
      \n
    1. Fotudeng was a magician who gained the reverence of Shi Le and Shi Hu, and was probably very instrumental in the propagation of Buddhism among the masses. He probably also introduced a more complete set of monastic rules, and seems to have taken the initiative in establishing the order of nuns on Chinese soil. Dao'an was his student.
      2. \n
    2. During the period referred to as the \"troubles of the Shi clan\", the most prominent monks abandoned Luoyang and went to Huoze, where Dao'an soon established himself as the leader. But they stayed in Huoye only a short time, after which Dao'an began a period of sixteen years of peregrinations, followed by an ever increasing number of disciples. On one of these trips he met and converted the future Huiyuan. He seems also to have been the first person to do line-by-line commentaries, instead of just general comments on scriptures; we don't know much about these commentaries, but he was apparently \"constantly afraid\" that his commentaries would not exactly agree with the actual intention of the scriptures, testifying to his conscious desire to find the \"original meaning of the doctrine, obscured by the influence of traditional Chinese thought.\"
      3. \n
    3. Dao'an was gifted with a monastery at Xiangyang called Tanqisi around 365, and he brought with him several hundred disciples. Because they lacked vinaya texts, Dao'an formulated his own rules. He also encouraged contact with the southern elite and specifically with the rulers, but his monastery, being far from Jiankang, seems to have remained outside of the political intrigues and troubles of the time.
      4. \n
    4. At Xiangyang, Dao'an's interest seems to have switched from dhyana to pp (Zurcher says, roughly Hinayana to Mahayana)--and in this switch, we notice the influence of southern xuanxue. He is credited with starting the school of \"Fundamental nonbeing\" 本無, about which very little is known, but it seems to have certain \"Daoist\" elements. Nonetheless, later exegetes say that Dao'an came the closest to the real meaning of the pp as revealed by Kumarajiva, despite the fact that he \"fails to realize the absolute identity of emptiness and phenomena, a truth which only dawned upon the Chinese exegetes after the introduction of the Madhyamika treatises by Kumarajiva.\"
      5. \n
    5. Dao'an exegesis was rather traditional, his stress on the devotional aspects of B, especially on the cult of Maitreya (who was the patron saint of exegetes), are more surprising.
      6. \n
    6. Dao'an and his disciples also compiled and classified scriptures, producing one of the earliest catalogues of Buddhist texts in 374.
      7. \n
    7. The community at Xiangyang was dispersed during the seige of the city by Fu Jian in 378. Several disciples went to Jiangling, such as Zhu Sengfu and Shi Fayu. They kept up the cult of Maitreya and added to it worship of Dao'an himself as \"The Bodhisattva with the sealed hand\". After a stay at Jiangling, Huiyuan was to go to Lu Shan and have a monastery built there in 367. Dao'an himself remained for a while in Xiangyang, and then went with a few disciples to Chang'an, where he had close relations with the rulers of the Former Qin (i.e. Fu Jian and his family), the biggest empire of the time, and participated in international relations, campaigns to the West, a renewed influx of foreign Buddhist missionaries from Central Asia and Northern India, and extensive translation activities.
      8. \n
    8. 380-5 was characterized by an influx of foreign missionaries and the translation of several important scriptures. Abhidarma specialists from the Sarvastivada school arrived in 381, Vinaya master, agama specialist, and abidharma specialist also came, mostly knowing little Chinese when they arrived. They were assisted in translation by Chinese monk Zhu Fonian, who was well versed in Sanskrit and Central Asian languages, who did most of the translation, and overseen by Dao'an.
      9. \n
    9. These translations disclosed three important sections of Buddhist literature: vinaya, abhidharma of Sarvastivada school, and two of the agamas.
      10. \n
    3. \n
  3. Shi Huiyuan:
      \n
    1. Huiyuan's life and that of his clerical and lay followers are representative of early Chinese gentry Bud in its fully developed form. Dao'an's sense of the difference between Buddhism and traditional Chinese thought was coupled in Huiyuan with the urge to make the doctrine accessible to the cultured Chinese pubic. Therefore at Lu Shan we find not only the elements of southern gentry B in their most characteristic form, but also the appearance of a well-defined devotional creed which is basically Buddhist and not directly connected with or superimposed upon existing Chinese ideas and practices. He also was invited by Huan Xuan twice to discuss the raison-d'etre of the clergy and in so doing became the greatest defender of the faith in the history of early Chinese Buddhism. Finally, he was in close contact with Kumarajiva and by studying and expounding his translations was the first to spread this newly disclosed knowledge in southern China.
      2. \n
    2. Lu Shan had been the site of famous daoist hermits, and still had such \"supernatural\" cults when Huiyuan started his monastery there--this may have been one of the reasons that Huiyuan decided to found the Donglinsi 東林寺 there. Probably about 100 disciples lived there permanently, but more than 3000 stayed for a few years under the practice called \"travelling for study.\"
      3. \n
    3. Huiyuan never left Lu Shan during the last decades of his life, but the world came to him: some of his disciples were from the highest clan families, and he entertained contacts with both the court at Jiankang and the court of the \"barbarian\" empire in Northern China at Chang'an. However, due to Lu Shan being in the domain of Huan Xuan, Huiyuan had no contacts with the Jin court before the coup in 402, when Huan Xuan had him debate the place of the clergy. Huiyuan also had contacts with the rebel Lu Xun and others out of favor with the central government, but he was excused by Liu Yu and others because of his being \"a man beyond this world.\" Huiyuan maintained such an impartial and non-committal attitude throughout his life. This ideal of neutral reclusion no doubt appealed to the gentry of the turbulent southern dynasties.
      4. \n
    4. Huiyuan wrote an exposition on the Rites, and was respected as a master of ritual, which led to some people coming to Lu Shan to study Confucianism.
      5. \n
    5. On Sept 11, 402, Huiyuan assembled the monks and laymen of his community before an image of Amitabha and had them all make the vow to be reborn in Sukhavati. This has been taken in later times to mark the beginning of the Pure Land sect, considered as a continuation of the \"White Lotus Society\" founded on this occasion by Huiyuan, who thereby becomes the first patriarch of this school. This view is not justified, as there is no direct relation (no direct lineage of masters).
      6. \n
    6. The urge to have a concrete object of worship, perceptible to the senses, characterizes the Buddhism of Lu Shan. Visualization became a major part of practice, as did the use of icons. Huiyuan was also interested in the Buddha's \"Body of the Dharma\", speculations about which are not found in early Chinese Buddhism before the late 4th C. The sudden interest in the dharmakaya was the result of Kumarajiva's translations of scholastic literature (especially Madhyamika, which came largely through the Da zhidu lun 大智度論, an immense commentary on 25000 pp). Huiyuan sent several letters to Kumarajiva asking for explanation of doctrinal points, and Kumarajiva's answers seem to have been largely based on the Da zhidu lun, to which his answers, still preserved, can serve as a sort of commentary. But the two masters did not seem to understand each other. What Huiyuan really wanted to know, according to Zurcher, is what concrete stuff the dharmakaya is made from.
      7. \n
    7. Unlike Dao'an, Huiyuan did not write commentaries for \"internal use\", but rather a great number of propagandistic or apologetic treatises and letters. He did however compile a series of catalogues of translated scriptures, but they are now lost.
      8. \n
    8. 231 on: a detailed description of the debate of 402-4 on the status of the clergy with respect to the state, of which some 20 documents are preserved, largely an exchange between Huan Xuan and Wang Mi (who defended the independence of the clergy). Huan Xuan was not convinced by Wang Mi's \"somewhat confused and wavering arguments\", and so he submitted the whole affair to the judgment of Huiyuan, who replied that Buddhist laymen still have to pay homage to the ruler, but monks \"dwell in the world like strangers\", and are therefore not to be subjected to the authority of the world with whcih they have severed all connections. Huiyuan then gave a personal plea that Huan Xuan's policy would destroy Buddhism in China. It is not clear why Huan Xuan eventually gave in.
      9. \n
    9. It was during the three month reign of Huan Xuan as Emperor of Chu that Huiyuan wrote 紗門不敬王者論. In that document, Huiyuan again asserts that monks do not have to pay reverence to the ruler because they have left the world. He claims that the ruler is like Heaven and Earth, which can make people live but cannot make them not die. He also says that the Chinese sages were actually expedient manifestations of the Buddha. He then ends by claiming that the Spirit is an extremely subtle, immaterial, and everlasting principle in man that cannot be defined, but responds to the things of the outer world. It cannot be eliminated, because though responding to things it is no thing, and therefore, though the things are subject to change, it does not perish. As long as the emotions keep it bound to existence it will move from one body to another, like the flame in firewood leaping from one piece of wood to another.
      10. \n
    4. \n
\n

In Defense of the Faith

\n
    \n
    1. \n
    1. In China, there had never been before Buddhism a clergy or priesthood that existed as a distinct social group, and the native Chinese conception of governmental authority was incompatible with the existence of such an asocial, improductive, and autonomous body. But anti-clericalism must have only existed among the upper classes, and Buddhism must have spread considerably among the illiterate population (255 statitistics on the size of the church in various regions).
      2. \n
    2. There were basically 4 kinds of anti-clerical arguments made:
        \n
      1. the activities of the church are detrimental to the authority of the government and to the stability and prosperity of the state.
        2. \n
      2. the monastic life does not yield any concrete results in this world, and is therefore useless and unproductive.
        3. \n
      3. Buddhism is a \"barbarian\" creed, suited to the needs of uncivilized foreigners only.
        4. \n
      4. The monastic life means an unnatural violation of the sacred canons of social behavior; it is therefore asocial and highly immoral.
        5. \n
      3. \n
    3. The Buddhist defenders of the faith argued that:
        \n
      1. Monks are not disloyal, but rather help ensure lasting peace and prosperity;
        2. \n
      2. that the monastic life is not useless though the profit which it yields is not of this world
        3. \n
      3. That the foreign origin of Buddhism cannot be a reason to reject it; or that Buddhism is indeed very old in China, having been known since the time of Asoka; or that China actually wasn't the center of the universe; or that in the past \"barbarian\" influences had been beneficially absorbed by China.
        4. \n
      4. that there is no fundamental difference between the virtues propagated by the Church and the basic principles of Confucianism; Buddhism is the highest perfection of both Buddhism and Daoism.
        5. \n
      4. \n
    4. This argument was not merely a conflict between Church and State on a purely political and social plane; it is a conflict between two ideologies.
      5. \n
    5. Huiyuan was the first to truly defend the autonomy of the church. He says that the monk must remain free: submission to temporal authority would draw him into the web of the world and prevent him from working out his own salvation and that of all beings. More interestingly, he says that the clergy has its own rites 禮, that it is a world in itself, not even Chinese, and it must maintain its isolation, for any contimation between the two worlds is undesirable.
      6. \n
    6. 260: Anti-clericalists north and south were concerned that the number of people becoming monks was having a deleterious effect on the economy, and they were also concerned because monks were often more or less nomadic.
      7. \n
    7. Anti-clericalism became more vehement through the 5th C., in proportion to the increasing economic power of the Church.
      8. \n
    8. Some defenders of B felt the need to claim that Buddhism was legitimate because it was not an innovation at all, either because
        \n
      1. B was indeed mentioned by ancient Chinese sages
        2. \n
      2. B was known even long before Confucius
        3. \n
      3. China was converted to B under Asoka
        4. \n
      4. Confucius and Laozi are either disciples or manifestations of the Buddha
        5. \n
      9. \n
    9. Zong Bing, e.g. thought that the lacunose records of ancient China could not prove that there had not been Buddhism then, and that certain passages seemed to indicate that there had been.
      10. \n
    10. The Shanhai jing, which was thought to have been written by Yu and Bo Yi, talks about countries named Chaoxian and Tiandu, on a sea coast, full of kind love towards all men; Buddhist defenders claimed that Tiandu was India, and the loving kindness Buddhist compassion.
      11. \n
    11. There was a passage in the Zuozhuan that said that the night was bright in 686 BC, and this was taken as the time of the Buddha's birth.
      12. \n
    12. There was another tradition which put the Buddha's birth in 958 BC, which said that Kings Zhuang and Mu saw signs of his birth and death, and that the coming of his doctrine to China 1000 years later was prophesized at that time.
      13. \n
    13. There was also a passage in the Liezi where Confucius declined the title of sage for himself and the previous rulers of China, but said that there was a sage in the west. (However, the presence of Buddhist elements in the Liei is not merely a possibility but a proven fact, according to Zurcher.)
      14. \n
    14. People also thought that since China was part of Jambudvipa, and since Asoka had distributed the relics of the Buddha all over the continent, that relics would be found in China. And indeed no less than 19 sites was found, and a great number of basements of stupas, ancient statues with our without inscriptions, and Buddha-relics were excavated.
      15. \n
    15. Conclusion: The opposition of the gentry (with their traditional Chinese ideology) against the monastic way of life and all it implied may have been the primary reason of the remarkably slow rate at which the spread of Buddhism proceeded in these circles. The penetration of Buddhism into the life and thought of the gentry virtually begins 3 centuries after its introduction to China, when the leaders of the Buddhist Church have become Chinese literati of the purest allow, able to defend and preach the doctrine in an adapted version with universally understood and acknowledged (i.e. Chinese) arguments.
      16. \n
    2. \n
\n

The Conversion of the Barbarians: the early history of Buddho-Daoist conflict

\n
    \n
  1. Use of the term \"Daoism\" here denotes vast conglomeration of religious and eubiotic practices and beliefs which profess to go back to Huangdi, Pengzu, Xiwangmu, Laozi and a great number of other mythical or semi-mythical personalities. As an organized religious movement, Daoism originated in Later Han times; its basic aim was to acquire bodily immortality through the use of drugs, exercises, meditation, confession of sins and practice of social virtues, and frequent mass-ceremonies of an ecstatic and probably orgiastic nature. The innumerable deities of the Daoist pantheon formed an immense hierarchical organization which was believed to have an exact replica within the body. The doctrine, contained in a great variety of scriptures, was said to have been periodically revealed by Teachers who in most cases were avatars of Laozi. The Daodejing was still of fundamental importance, though it was interpreted in a most \"phantastic\" way.
    2. \n
  2. It would be a mistake to associate Daoism per se with the lower strata of society: its leaders were often from the upper classes and its influence was strong at the court of the Wei and Jin dynasties.
    3. \n
  3. The 化胡 theory, which states that Buddha was merely Laozi after he went off to the west, must have originated in the latter half of the 2nd c, but in later times it was used as a weapon against the Buddhist church (though it was probably not intended as such from the beginning, when it might have been welcome to both the Daoists and the Buddhists). After 300, the legend gets put to use in polemics, and it was argued that the foreign doctrine was merely a diluted and debased form of Daoism, adapted to the needs of an uncivilized people (or even aiming at their destruction!)
    4. \n
  4. According to various sources (although there are some puzzles here Z cannot work out precisely), the Daoist Wang Fu 王浮 at that time fabricated the Huahu jing after having been repeatedly defeated in debate by the Chinese monk Bo Yuan (Fazu). The Huahu jing was then constantly subjected to expansion and modification over the following centuries, and several versions of the legend developed. The text, however, disappeared when Buddhists convinced the Mongol emperors to ban and destroy it--all we have left are a few chapters and strange versions discovered at Dunhuang.
    5. \n
  5. Z identifies two fragments as being likely Wang Fu's. The first story goes that an Indian king did not believe Laozi's teachings, so Laozi subdued him with his spiritual power. The king repented and shaved his head, and Laozi, taking pity on him, gave him the expedient teaching that all the barbarians should do so, that they should behave morally because they were all inately evil, and that they should abstain from sexual intercourse in order to put an end to their rebellious seed. There are also stories of Laozi having a companion in this work, Yin Xi, who went west from China with him and became a Buddha as well, or alternately that Yin Xi was Laozi's subordinate, and he became the Buddha Gautama.
    6. \n
  6. Tang Yongtong thinks that the Huahu legend changes the traditional attitude of China towards Indai: whereas in the earliest sources, the inhabitants of India are qualified as a friendly, if somewhat effeminate, people, but in the 4th and 5th c.s the characterization has worsened radically.
    7. \n
  7. A second fragment of the \"original\" Huahu jing blames the acceptance of Buddhism in China for floods, wars, and all varieties of natural disasters.
    8. \n
  8. In other versions of this kind of literature, Daoism is called Yang and Buddhism Yin; and moreover, Yang creates Yin, so Daoism is more basic.
    9. \n
  9. Buddhists responded to the Huahu theory in two basic ways: 1. (beginning about the 6th C.) demonstrating the obvious absurdity of the Daoist tenets. 2. Writing apocrypha containing various Buddhist theories concerning Laozi's relation to the Buddha, the buddhist origin of Confucianism and Daoism, and the story of the Three Saints (Laozi, Confucius, and Yan Hui) going East, or legends about the mythical sages of great antiquity also being Buddhist saints.
    10. \n
  10. First glimpse of an anti-huahu theory probably dates from the middle of the 4th c., in the anonymous Zhengwu lun. Here there are quotes from a text called the Huahu jing that seem to actually seem to make Laozi a disciple of the Buddha, specifically Mahakasyapai (they may be a Buddhist interpretation of, or interpolations into, a Daoist text).
    11. \n
  11. In these apocrypha, Laozi is always identified as Kasyapa, but the identifications of Confucius and Yan Hui shift.
    12. \n
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Harrison discusses the extant translations of Lokaksema (支婁迦讖, in Luoyang actively translating 168-189 CE), who is credited for the introduction of Mahayana literature into China. Nine different translations are identified in detail. Harrison's project is to discover themes in the doctrinal content of these pieces, so as to better understand the stage of development Mahayana was in at this period and the social milieu to which it was addressed.
He identifies themes such as the doctrine of emptiness, the illusory nature of the historical Buddha, a more nuanced cosmology expanded to more Buddha-fields in the present,the self-justification of texts and worship of the sacred word, a focus on 'household bodhisattvas' and practical application of the teachings among supernatural imagery, a focus on giving, and others. Harrison concludes that the works Lokaksema is translating represent an earlier, but not a nascent or initial, stage of Mahayana - IE it already had well established features. The works were aimed at a lay audience.



INTRODUCTION

[136]
\"My concern in this paper is with the very beginnings of this process [IE transmission of Buddhism into China]...we do have some material relating ot the latter half of the second century C.E., when the religion, which must initially have been confined to merchants, envoys and other foreigners resident in China, had acquired native converts in sufficient numbers to make the translation of its sacred texts into Chinese a worthwhile proposition.\"

Dozen translators, mostly Parthians, Sogdians, Indians and Indo-Scythians.
An Shigao 安世高 as the foremost translator (Luoyang, 148-170ish CE).

[137]
Focus for the paper however is on:
Lokaksema 支婁迦讖 (Zhi Loujiachen, an Indo-Scythian)

Not much is known of Lokaksema, subject of the Kusana Empire, arrived in Luoyang during the reign of Emperor Huan 桓 (146-168 CE), translations under Emperor Ling 靈 (168-189 CE).

Translation of Buddhist texts into China at this point were done as collaborative group efforts.

Looks at the Chusanzang jiji 出三藏記集 (515 CE) for Lokaksema's translations, total of fourteen listed. Only eight or nine are still extant.

Unlike An Shigao, who worked with only mainstream Buddhist material, Lokaksema translated sutras which appear to be Mahayana, thus credited with the introduction of Mahayana into China.

Other early Mahayana sutra translations our extant in China, but cannot accurately date them, only Lokaksema's are reliable in this regard.

[138]
Little scholarly attention had been given to the Later Han translations of Buddhist sutras.

Zurcher, \"Late Han Vernacular Elements in the Earliest Buddhist Translations\" (1977) and \"A New Look at the Earliest Chinese Buddhist Texts\" (1991) = study of An Shigao, Lokaksema and others, argues that we should not look to doctrinal content of the texts, but should focus on their linguistic aspects as clues to their intended audience, socio-cultural status, etc.
IE they were written for a semi-literate public, to be understood when recited, free of 文言, close to the vernacular, etc.

[139]
\"The present paper, however, is somewhat different in scope and intention, being concerned exclusively with Lokaksema's translations of Mahayana sutras, and directed towards an eventual delineation of their content, doctrinal and otherwise, not so much for what that may tell us about the preoccupations of nascent Chinese Buddhism... but rather for what it may tell us about the milieu in which the sutras were composed in the first place.\"

Questions re: the origin and early development of Mahayana Buddhism.

Problem of chronology, \"we have no clear idea of when the Mahayana arose, and the only basis we have for dating any given item from its enormous corpus of sutra-literature is the date of its first translation into Chinese.\"

But we can't assumed Lokaksema's sutras were the first to be translated, nor can we assume these were the first Mahayana texts to be written more generally.

[140]
Judging by the form and content of these translations, it actually seems that Mahayana arrived in China at a later stage of development - \"in full bloom, with perhaps several centuries of growth behind it, while the texts... represent a fairly advanced stage in a long literary tradition.\"

Looking at Lokaksema's translations to \"give us some idea of what stage of development the Mahayana had reached by the middle of the second century C.E., what practices it had incorporated and what doctrines it was enunciating by the time.\"

One can take this as an initial step in drawing wider comparisions with other sutras translated by Lokaksema's contemporaries, thereby determining \"certain internal relationships... to pinpoint doctrinal developments and shifts of emphasis.\"

[141]
Basing his arguments for the authenticity of the material from Zurcher, \"A New Look\", pp.298-300
One exception is that he takes the Drumakinnararajapariprccha as being undoubtedly a work of Lokaksema, and that we must qualify Lokaksema's association with the Pratyutpannasamadhi and Aksobhyavyuha..



EXTANT TRANSLATIONS BY LOKAKSEMA
Each is introduced in some detail, followed by related Chinese translations with brief blurbs, then Sanskrit and Tibetan versions. He does not look at Japanese, Mongolian, or other versions.

[141-145]
#1. Astasahasrikaprajnaparamitasutra; The Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Lines
(T224 道行(般若)經)

Only unproblematic attribution to Lokaksema, unanimous agreement in the bibilographies back to Dao An 道安, homogeneous style, uniform terminology.
*May be used as a touchstone for determining the authenticity of all other works*
[CF: Harrison never expands on what exactly Lokaksema's style   entails, with the exception that he tends to favor prose over verse, as well as a few terms he prefers to transliterate - see #9]

Colophon dates it to Oct. 26, 179 CE, worked on the translation with Zhu Foshuo (竺仏朔) who brought the text from India, and a team of Chinese assistant scribes.

The oldest of the Prajnaparamita text, devoted to explicating nature and practical application of the 'perfection of wisdom'.
Emphasis is on wisdom prajna - the faculty which realises the true nature of phenomenal existence, though the other perfections are mentioned (giving dana, morality sila, patient acceptance ksanti, vigour virya, meditation dhyana)
Realization of 'emptiness' of objects of our experience, which can only be grasped by perfect wisdom, leading to awakening.

Lancaster, \"The Oldest Mahayana Sutra: Its Significance for the Study of Buddhist Development,\" (1975)
Looks at the doctrinal development of the Mahayana via comparison of Lakasema's translation with other translations, finds \"that in its earelier forms the sutra appeared to be much closer to the Mainstream position on various aspects of doctrine.\" [144]
Hesitant to adopt this position however, as it relies on ex silentio, requires a comparison with Lokaksema's translations (the point of this article), and lacks a determination of the first three Chinese versions of the text.

Other extant Chinese versions = T225, T226, T227, T220, T228.
Does not detail other versions, but points to another work (Conze, The Prajnaparamita Literature).


[145-150]
#2. Pratyutpannabuddhasammukhavasthitasamadhisutra; The Samadhi of Direct Encounter with the Buddhas of the Present (T418 般舟三昧經)

Dao An attributes this translation to Lokaksema without any doubts, and the Chusanzang has a colophon dating it to Oct.26, 179. Same procedure with #1, with Zhu Fuoshuo reciting to Lokaksema, who translates and dictates to assistants (here named Meng Fu 孟福 and Zhang Lian 張蓮).
However some doubt that the extant text (titled 般舟三昧經) is the same one mentioned in the catalog.

The Buddha explains to the householder-bodhisattva Bhadrapala the state of meditative concentration (samadhi) through which one focuses their mental powers and transports to other Buddha-fields to hear the Dharma of other particular Buddhas.
Emphasis is that this is not a physical transportation, but a dream-like state, though the reality of this experience (as well as dreams, etc.) is not denied.
Emptiness shows up again.

A long digression mid-text re: social behavior, moral attitudes, etc. for ordained Mahayana males and females.

Buddha Amitabha is also mentioned, earliest datable reference to the cult of Amitabha (which lead to 'Pure Land' sects).

Other extant Chinese versions = T417, T419, T416, and as citations in T1521, T1509.


[150-152]
#3. Drumakinnararajapariprcchasutra; The Questions of Druma, King of the Kinnaras
(T624 伅真陀羅所問如來三昧經)

Attribution to Lokaksema supported by Zhi Mindu 支敏度 in introduction to the Sutramgamasamadhisutra (can be seen in Chusanzang) which dates to about 301. Moreover style is consistent, though evidence of revision is apparent.

Text discusses the career of the Bodhisattva Devamauli, exposition on the correct way for bodhisattvas to practice the six perfections (with the addition of upayakausalyaparamita 'perfection of skill in the use of stratagems' as an additional seventh).
Concept of emptiness again, and the nature of all dharmas.

Other extant Chinese versions = T625


[152-157]
#4.Ajatasatrukaukrtyavinodanasutra; The Dispelling of Ajatasatru's Remorse
(T626 阿闍世王經]

Dao An gives a tentative attribution, Zhi Mindu confirms.

The text itself seems to be a patchwork of other loosely related elements.

Principle theme is the glorification of wisdom (prajna), via Bodhisattva Manjusri as the incarnation of the perfection of wisdom. Manjusri displays his superiority and magical powers to Sariputra and Mahamaudgalyayana as representatives of Hinayana. Core of the sutra as conversations with King Ajatasatru, where Majusri consoles Ajatasatru who feels guilty at causing the death of his father, Majusri convinces him that all dharmas are empty, thus their retribution is empty, and cannot affect an enlightened mind that see things as such. Ajatasatru rises to Buddhahood when he realizes that he has no self to receive retribution.

Other extant Chinese versions = T627, T628, T629


[157-159]
#5. Part of the Avatamsakasutra
(T280 兜沙經)

Not determined yet what word 'dousha' is a transliteration for, so cannot know the original title of this sutra.

Dao An attributed this piece to Lokaksema mainly due to the style, and Harrison concurs.

Content is mainly \"a lesson in Mahayana cosmology\" [158]
Buddha reveals other Buddha-fields to his retinue, from which bodhisattvas arrive with additional followers, including Manjusri, who tells of even more Buddhas and their worlds. Final portion Buddha emits a light, revealing of the universe and placing it under his dominion.
Listing of names, important re: transliterated proper names.

Other extant Chinese versions = T278, T279


[159-161]
#6. Lokanuvartanasutra; Conformity With the Way of the World
(T807 内藏百玉經)

Again style confirms Dao An's affiliation of the text to Lokaksema. This translation is in prose, but it was probably in its original in verse (the Tibetan version hints at this).

The Buddha explains to Manjusri the true nature of his appearance, via upayakausalya 'use of stratagems' he conceals his powers and conforms to the way of the world.

No other extant Chinese versions, but a Tibeta version.


[161-162]
#7. The Sutra of Manjusri's Questions Concerning the Bodhisattva Career (skt. unknown)
(T458 文殊師利問菩薩署經)

Attribution based on style alone.

The title seems to come from a remark made early on in the text, but interestingly Manjusri is only mentioned twice (and only in the third person) and he never asks questions.

Also curious that no bodhisattva takes part in the narrative and only Manjusri is present (with the two references).
Buddha expounds on the career of the Tathagata, bodhisattva-vow, and the Mahayana, to his disciples and brahmans from Sravasti.
\"This may indicate that T 458 is one of the most primitive Mahayana sutras which we possess.\" [161-162]
[CF: Not sure I get why this is]

Zurcher argues that text is presented in terms of 'emptiness' again, in a paradoxical mode characteristic of Prajnaparamita literature.
Similarities to Vimalakirtinirdesa.

No other versions known.


[162-166]
#8. Kasyapaparivarta; The Kasyapa Section
(T350 遺曰摩尼寳經)

Style and terminology lead to Lokaksema affiliation, though confusion in the bibiliographies about who the translator was.

One of the more influential of the sutras translated by Lokaksema into Chinese.

Talk a bit about the setting of the text in Jetavana, Sravasti, and also Lokaksema's excision of verse portions (as seen via comparison with Sanskrit version).
Distinctive feature is an 'emphasis on ethics', but Harrison doesn't go into detail, rather referring to other scholars extensive work on the sutra

Other extant Chinese versions = T351, T310, T659, T323 also affinities with T458, same setting as T350.
Tibetan version
Sanskrit version exists, and has been translated into German, English and Japanese


[166-168]
#9. Aksobhyatathagatasyavyuhasutra; The Magnificence of the Tathagata Aksobhya
(T313 阿閦仏國經)

The attribution to Lokaksema is questionable, as the style is not that consistent. Perhaps been revised later, or was a work of a disciple.
Compares it to T418 in this regard, namely is uses translations where Lokaksema generally transliterates (轉輪王  for cakravartin, 如來 for tathagata, 緣一覺 for pratyekabuddha, 衆生 for sattva and 善本 for kusalamula, etc.)

Also uncharacteristic in content: no long explications on the doctrine of emptiness. Instead the text discusses the awakening of Buddha Aksobhya and his Buddha-field, making it have a closer affinity with the Sukhavativyuhasutra.

Other extant Chinese versions = T310
Also a Tibetan version



LOST TRANSLATIONS BY LOKAKSEMA
Two other works which are no longer extant are mentioned in specific by Harrison: Suramgamasamadhisutra, and 光明三昧經 (Skt. unknown).

Also is said to be affiliated with 胡般泥洹經 and 孛本經 by Dao An, but nothing is known of these works.



THE CONTENT OF LOKAKSEMA'S WORKS
(A more detailed description of the common themes in Lokaksema's translations can be found in Harrison, \"Who Gets to Ride in the Great Vehicle?\")

[169-170]
Although these works reflect an early stage of Mahayana, it is not a primitive or initial phase.
\"The overall content and presentation of the sutras indicate that by the mid-second century C.E. the movement had already come some distance, and one may point out many well-developed features.\"

Themes:

Sakyamuni is represented as an illusory manifestation of a grander (transcendental?) figure, focusing on his 'omniscient cognition' and body of truths. -> relation to 'body of dharmas' mentioned in Lokaksema's works?
Also important is the anubhava 'might' or 'authority' of the Buddha which allows him and his followers to perform miraculous acts.[170]

A profusion of Buddhas of the present, each residing in their own Buddha-field, especially describing specific fields -> expansion of cosmology here.[171]

Career of Bodhisattvas. The theory of ten stages appears to be absent, focuses on bodhicittotpada (initial thought of awakening), anutpattikadharmaksanti (realizaiton that dharmas are not produced), avaivartika (stage of non-regression), and the vyakarana (prediction) - usually with a formulaic series of events with the Buddha emitting a ray from his face, etc. [171-172]


\"In the way these sutras treat of the bodhisattva we find what may seem to us to be a strange blend of the mythic and the mundane.\"[172]
IE supernatural powers of the bodhisattvas, right alongside more practical prescriptions for daily activities
Distinction between 'renunciant bodhisattvas' and 'householder bodhisattvas'

\"There is a strong emphasis in some of the sutras on the importance of the householder-bodhisattva, and when one considers that in the early period of Chinese Buddhism the native following would have been a predominantly lay one, it becomes quite understandable why the first missionaries selected these texts for translations.\" [173]

The moral tone of rules of conduct found in these texts, emphasis on dana 'giving' (as well as the six perfections more generally).
\"This no doubt reflects - at least in part - the economic basis of the Buddhist Order... the householders give alms... to the bhiksus and bhiksunis... the frequency of these passages illuminates the social configurations of the Mahayana, as well as of Mainstream Buddhism, which was its matrix.\" [173/174]

Ambivalence towards women, looks at contributions of lay women to the upkeep of the Order, but also associates women as a troublesome source of temptation.

Worship of relics and texts enshrined in stupas, construction of images of the Buddha, cults (like Amitabha), cultivation of meditiations.
Veneration of the sacred word, including the 'preacher of the Dharma'. [175]

Self-justificaiton and self-glorification of the texts:
\"These sutras are indeed the true teachings of the Buddha, despite all appearances and claims to the contrary, and at every step one is reminded of the great merit to be derived from reading, reciting, copying, preserving and imparting the texts to others.\" [175]

Relationship of Mahayana to Mainstream Buddhism =
Hinayana rarely occurs in Lokaksema's translations, though still a sense of inferiority (depicting chief disciples in embarassing ways, for instance). [176]
But 'Hearers' do have a part to play, and all of the Order are respected.

Doctrine of emptiness.
Disparages the 'false views' of opponents, especially that of existence of a person or self, independent existence of dharmas.

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What is Geyi, After All? Foster

\n

INTRODUCTION

In introductory and general overviews of the history of Buddhism, 格義 'matching concepts' plays a large role in the transmission and translation of Indian Buddhism: yet there is next to no historical evidence for this.

\"In this chapter, it will be shown that geyi, as now understood, is a thoroughly modern construction. The first thing that must be done is to gather all of the available references to geyi, both inside and outside the Buddhist canon, then translate and annotate each one of these references in context. From this investigation, it emerges clearly that geyi had nothing whatsover to do with translation, but that it was instead a highly ephemeral and not-very-successful attempt on the part of a small number of Chinese teachers to cope with the flood of numbered lists of categories, ideas, and so forth...\" 227

\"A secondary aspect of this inquiry is to demonstrate how what was originally an exegetical technique of circumscribed application and limited duration developed into a key element of Chinese Buddhist historiography. It will be possible to trace the growth of geyi from an inefficacious interpretive strategy into a supposed translational method and philosophical approach that occurred during the course of the last century.\" 227-8


FUNDAMENTAL SEMANTICS

Ironically, the English 'matching concepts' as a poor translation for 格義, particularly the 'matching'.

Looks at the etymology of '格', wood laid out in a lattice, it usage in various modern dictionaries.
Closer translation would be 'categorization'. (228)

\"We must conclude, therefore, that 'matching' is simply an ad hoc, unsubstantiated rendering of the graph devised by modern scholars perplexed by its occurrence in the shadowy expression geyi.\" 229


PRIMARY EVIDENCE (or rather \"Lack of Primary Evidence\")

\"In the whole of the Buddhist canon, the term geyi occurs fewer than two dozen times, and many of these instances are repetitions of each other. Thus far, I have not been able to find a single instance of geyi anywhere in the Daoist canon... Nor is geyi to be found anywhere in the massive twenty-five official histories... there are no independent instances of geyi in the enormous Siku quanshu or in the comprehensive CHANT...\" 230

Also not mentioned in the Shishuo xinyu, which you think it would if geyi was a feature of Eastern Jin intellectual life.

Primary and most important record of geyi is the biography of Zhu Faya.
(Mair translates this in its entirety)

Focuses on the term 事數 'enumeration of items' as a point of confusion to interpretatio of the biography.
Shishuo xinyu contains a passage which explicates the meaning of this term as Buddhist numerical categories, such as the three realms, four dogmas, five regions, six paths, etc.

\"Since shishu unmistakably means the enumeration of items or matters pertaining to Buddhist doctrine, then we may conclude that geyi... was not a translation technique at all but an exegetical method, and that it was by no means restricted exclusively to drawing upon Daoist texts for its non-Buddhist... comparanada.\" 232

\"In short, geyi's fundamental purpose was the correlation of lists of enumerated Buddhist concepts with prsumably comparable lists of notions extracted from non-Buddhist works.\" 233

The inherent fallacy that there were numerous such lists in Buddhist literature, yet only a limited amount in native Chinese literature.

Thus geyi is just a short-lived, abortive project by Zhu Faya and his associates to grapple with listed terminology.
Refuted a generation later by Dao'An.

Huiyuan's reference to Zhuangzi often drawn into conversations on geyi:
Him citing 莊子義 to teach a disciple re: the concept of ultimate reality, Dao'an then encouraging Huiyuan to continue studying secular writings for pedagogical purposes.

No reason to bring in this story for discussions of geyi, especially since story is said to occur (357) after Dao'an's repudiation of geyi.

Dao'an's conversation with Sengxian (349), where he argues that geyi is \"at odds with Buddhist principles.\"

Similar rejection of geyi by Sengrui (352-436).

\"It is evident that, approximately a century after its rise and demise, the opposition to geyi had been cemented among the most important Buddhist exponents of the age.\" 236

Yuyilun, by Huirui, often cited too, though geyi only appears in the Ming edition of the text and Mair argues that the earlier version with yuyi is more appropriate because of the parallel language in the text.
Moreover, even if the late variant stands, it is still disaproving of geyi and written two centuries after the practice was taking place.

Sengyou's (445-518) biography of Kumarajiva stating that the translations by Zhu Fahu were plagued by \"stagnant wording and categorized concepts.\"
Mair thinks 'ge' here was actually probably meant to mean 'obstruct' because of the parallelism with zhi 滯.
Even if not, it still has a sense of 'to compartmentalize'.
Mair also argues that Sengyou did not understand what geyi originally was (which is why he attributes it to a translation practice), but rather was drawing from Sengzhao's Weimojie, which has a similar critique of the translators, with the zhiwen but without the geyi wording.

Sengyou's criticism is then repeated verbatim by Daolang, Huixiang, Daoshi, Zhisheng and Yuanzhao.(E. Jin - 8th cent.)
None of the above add anything of substance to our understanding of geyi.

Daoxuan (596-667) mentions geyi twice in the context of textual obfuscation.

Jizang (549-623) likewise repeats the same phrase in critiquing geyi: \"Categorized concepts were pedantic and went against the fundament; the Six Schools were biased and off the mark.\"

Shenqing (d.820) recounts the story of Zhu Faya using geyi, and adds interesting modifications:
Instead of 事數 he puts in 儒書, and writes that it was to instruct students 學 not disciples 徒.

Daocheng (11th cen.) badly garbling the original biography of Zhu Faya, glosses over 事數 and insteads explains Zhu Faya's practice as 擬書, where Faya, excelling at Buddhist and non-Buddhist studies, matched the Buddhist concepts with the non-Buddhist literature to provide lively explications, calling them 'striking concepts' 挌義.

\"Perhaps the best light we can put on this corrupted passage is that Daocheng was intentionally attempting to emend (and thus [in his mind] to improve) the original wording of the latter phrase.\" 240

Finally a Ming monk Rujin (fl 1470-1489) quotes the Sengxian passage but without elaboration.

\n

Thus geyi was merely an abortive exegetical method, trying to cope with Indian numerical lists, not a vital translation technique or philosophical principle. The reason we know about it is mainly because of Dao'an's critique.

\n

 

\n

SECONDARY EVOLUTION

Key figures who in the twentieth century have incorrectly defined geyi and raised it into a key term for Buddhist studies:

Chen Yinke as the first moderns scholar to resurrect geyi, established the basic discourse on this term and asserts its profound influence on Buddhist thought, and even the basis for N. Song Neo-Confucianism.

Tang Yongtong takes up geyi in an article translated into English by M.C. Rogers.

The rise of kakugi bukkyo, \"geyi Buddhism\", among Japanese scholars, IE Tsukamoto Zenryu.
\"Here we have the reification of a hypothetical construct that never existed in historical reality, but one that - once born - takes on a life of its own and becomes a cornerstone in studies of the history and thought of Chinese Buddhism.\" 243

\"Tsukamoto and othe radvocates of geyi  as a vital factor in the early development of Chinese Buddhism connect the 'Dark/Abstruse/Mysterious/Metaphysical Learning' (xuanxue) of the Wei-Jin period with prajna studies, asserting that th elatter were carried out under the aegis of the former. Quite the contrary, it might much more forcefully be argued (in terms of chronology and content) that it was Buddhism (in particular prajna and abhidharma studies) that provided the new leaven in the batter of existing Chinese thought (chiefly Confucian and Daoist philosophy [not yet fully elaborated religions]) that led to the ferment which resulted in xuanxue.\" 243

Feng Yulan's A History of Chinese Philosophy introducing geyi to the American academy (who draws from Chen Yinke).

Following Feng is Kung-chuan Hsiao, who associates the practice with citing Zhuangzi specifically.

Arthur Link, Arthur Wright, Wing-tsit Chan, Kenneth Ch'en, Robert Shih, Hurvitz, etc. are all taken to task for erroneous definitions of the term.

Praises Zurcher for recognizing the role of numerical categories, but still faults him for falling back on 'matching the meanings' as his definition.

Hurvitz documenting the Buddhist use of terminology from Laozi, Zhuangzi, and the Yijing, but presumes a connection to geyi which is not demonstrated.

In short, these scholars take geyi to be the matching of Indian Buddhist philosophical concepts with Chinese philosophical concepts, and presume a connection with Laozi/Zhuangzi/Yijing as their terminology is often employed by Buddhists, which further suggest a connection to xuanxue. But this initial understanding of geyi is incorrect, there is no connection of geyi to the citations from Laozi/Zhuangzi/Yijing, and thus further no affiliation with xuanxue.

Mair commends Robert Sharf for his critical approach to the concept, calling it a 'red herring'.
Jan Nattier looking at 'Chinese cultural calques' in early translations practices, going against the geyi model.

Modern scholars point to Lokaksema and Zhi Qian using '本無' as a geyi-esque term for tathatha 'thusness', drawing from Laozi and Zhuangzi, but it never appears in the Laozi and is not a technical term in the Zhuangzi, but rather only is found in sentences 'originally there was no X'.
Might as well assert that this was an original term invented by the translators, not a Daoist technical term already in use.
Moreover, there's no association with this term and geyi!

\"What this sample of Buddhist terminology shows unmistakably is that early translators of Indian texts into Chinese creatively used the entire inventory of Literary Sinitic (LS), picking and choosing from what was available to convey as best they could the ideas and images of this alien religion.\" 249


CONCLUSION

Geyi as just a brief insignificant episode in Buddhist history, as opposed to a cardinal principle of early Buddho-Daoist interaction.

Definitely not a mechanism for the transmission of Buddhism from India into China.

As opposed to Buddhism arriving in China in the E.Han and drawing from Daoism for technical terminology, quite the opposite happened.
Buddhism arrived a mature religion, while Daoist religion was just starting to take shape at this time, and actually the reification of Daoism as a formal, organized religion was likely a response to the advent of Buddhism.

'Geyi Buddhism' as a modern construction, erroneously projected back two thousand years.

Geyiism run amoke: \"From a failed exegetical technique of little consequence, geyi has mushroomed into a colossal, chimerical congeries of Daoistic Buddhisms premised on a nebulous 'philosophy of dao-li 道理'.\" 251

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Luke's Notes

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\n
    \n
  1. Mair makes a few fair points:
      \n
    1. He may be right to say that there is not enough evidence to suggest that the term geyi would have been understood by most translators or interpreters of the time as 'matching concepts'. It is also possible that, as he says, the term may have originally applied to the exegetical techniques of a small group of people, and later may have been used in different senses (what he calls 'misinterpretations of the term') to refer to activities that are different from those original exegetical techniques.
      2. \n
    2. He may, moreover, be correct in his assertion that translators made no more use of \"Daoist\" terms than of other terms in the lexicon of classical Chinese. But he does not provide any evidence of that--this is a dai kao.
      3. \n
    3. And he may be correct that religious Daoism learned more from Buddhism than vice versa. This is again a dai kao.
      4. \n
    2. \n
  2. However, his interpretation of the meaning of the term geyi is itself potentially flawed:
      \n
    1. His interpretation of the term is based on one and only one passage, and that furthermore based on a reading of the term 事數 from a single passage in the shishuo xinyu. Yet he can cite no other passages in which shishu has the technical meaning posited in that one passage. It is, however, a relatively common combination of terms: affairs and techniques. If this is the meaning it has (which I suggest is at least a strong possibility), then the traditional interpretation of geyi would seem to be correct.
      2. \n
    2. There are various other translation problems, but more damning is the fact that Mair simply ignores all evidence that might contradict his point. E.g. the Tang paraphrase of his passage, which clearly interprets geyi as modern interpreters do, he says is simply due to the mistake of the copyist, who clearly couldn't understand the meaning of the original passage. Moreover, he is confident enough to say that even Sengyou misunderstood the term. This is pretty ridiculous.
      3. \n
    3. He does not cite all of the relevant texts (239). The fragment of one of these texts that he does cite would seem to imperil his conclusion.
      4. \n
    3. \n
  3. More importantly, he seems to be misunderstanding the scholars he is attacking:
      \n
    1. Scholars have focused on the term geyi not because they thought it was the technical term used throughout the period to denote a particular practice, but rather because they think the term, the few times it is used, retrospectively denotes a practice that may not previously have had a term to describe it. They argue that what they understand as \"matching concepts\" is what the translators did, whether or not they knew they were doing that. Even if the term were to be shown to have had a different meaning originally, it would not substantially affect the points they are making.
      2. \n
    2. Picking on the use of the term geyi is thus fundamentally wrongheaded: the issue is to what degree \"Buddhist\" ideas were changed when they had to be expressed in a Buddhist lexicon, and what means were employed to preserve the native character of those ideas when translating into Chinese. And Mair provides no useful information about this process.
      3. \n
    4. \n
  4. Parenthetically, I suggest:
      \n
    1. Having not done a thorough study of geyi, it seems possible that the passage in which Dao'an famously attacks geyi has been read too strongly. Instead of saying 'geyi is bad', it seems to be saying 'those old geyi are bad', which might leave space for saying that we need new geyi. (The passage itself is replete with Zhuangzi terms, which might serve to show how integral they were to the very language of classical Chinese itself.) Several of the passages cited in the article would seem to allow for this possibility, though admittedly not all of them.
      2. \n
    5. \n
\n

 

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10/22 Notes

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\n

Weinstein seems close to methodology of Arthur Wright. In the chronological organization.

\n

Weinstein has a vision of stratefied schools, especially Tantra and Pure Land; also a history of 'great man' Buddhism. Gives evidence of lineages of monks and teachers, but does it necessarily mean that there were schools?

\n

 

\n

With regard to Gernet: the question is whether religion was ever pure? Once you have this idea of purity, then the vision of decline is easy to sustain. But Gregory Schopen has started to rewrite the history of Indian monasticism, in which they are also doing moneylending, whorehouses, etc.Moreover, it is arguable that religion is always implicitly bound up with economic incentive, that this isn't just a problem in Tang Buddhism, and that therefore the problem does not really explain a 'decline' that may in fact not have happened.

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Notes for Paul L. Swanson, Foundations of T’ien-T’ai Philosophy

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\n

\n

FOREWORD by David Chappell

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\n

First comprehensive study in English of the teaching of the Threefold Truth of Tiantai Buddhism, one of the most major schools in Chinese Buddhism, against which later developments of the religion would define themselves against.

\n

 

\n

Why did the Sanlun theories of Madhyamika vanish after their period of flourishing in the 5th/6th centuries?

\n

“The present study provides part of the answer in arguing that Madhyamika did not in fact die in China but only ceased to exist as a distinct, sociologically discernible entity because it had become absorbed into the foundations for a new breed of indigenous Buddhist schools. First among these new schools, as the author shows, was T’ien-t’ai.” Vii

\n

 

\n

Zhiyi as the first major figure (538-597), Lotus Sutra as the definitive sacred text.

\n

 

\n

Tiantai as neglected by Western scholarship, so comprehensive and multidimensional in scope that it is often difficult to understand.

\n

 

\n

Leon Hurvitz, Neal Donner, H. Kern, Senchu Murano, Kato Bunno, William Soothill, Paul Groner, etc.

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\n

 

\n

PREFACE

\n

\n

Tiantai typically introduced as the “Five Teachings and Eight Periods” doctrinal classification system -> used to clarify the entire corpus of the Buddhist teachings into the various types of teachings which were supposedly revealed by the Buddha at various stages of his career.

\n

 

\n

While this is one major aspect of Tiantai thought, it is not solely this scholastic classification system:

\n

“A shift of perspective on T’ien-t’ai Buddhism, I wish to argue here, opens up an intricate and all-encompassing synthesis of Buddhist teachings and practice based on a consistent principle that brings T’ien-t’ai Buddhism to life and makes it more accessible to men and women in our day. This principle, the key to T’ien-t’ai Buddhism, is Chih-I’s concept of the ‘Threefold Truth’: Emptiness, Conventional Existence, and the Middle.” Ix

\n

 

\n

Zhiyi accomplishes a synthesis of the doctrine and practice of all that had come before him into a unified Chinese Buddhism, centering on the Threefold Truth.

\n

 

\n

“In a first chapter I have attempted to outline the background to the Threefold Truth as an extension of the Madhyamika idea of the two truths – mundane worldly truth and supreme truth – and to show how this threefold pattern runs through various aspects of T’ien-t’ai Buddhism. This first chapter serves as both an introduction dn asummary of what I am attempting to present in this study.” X

\n

 

\n

Drawing from his experience with Japanese Buddhism, in which Tendai plays a large role, Swanson suspects a similar phenomenon may be at play in the Chinese context, and suggests that Chan Buddhism might itself have grown more out of Tiantai then from the legendary Bodhidharma.

\n

 

\n

 

\n

CHAPTER ONE: TRUTH IN T’IEN-T’AI PHILOSOPHY

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\n

The ultimate question of a divide between a sacred and mundane world of experience. What is the nature of reality and existence? Is the pure realm of the sacred only an ‘ideal’, separate from our ordinary lives, and if so how are they related and interconnected?

\n

 

\n

Nagarjuna discusses these points, mainly in the Mulamadhyamakakarika, with the Two Truth teaching of the Madhyamika philosophy, that of a mundane conventional or worldly truth (samvrtisatya) and that of a supreme truth (paramarthasatya).

\n

 

\n

Worldly truth = “The ordinary, common-sensical, acceptance of the everyday phenomenal world as experienced and interpreted through our senses.” 2

\n

It is the ‘covering’ of our mistaken understanding of the phenomenal world; identical with the mutual co-arising of all phenomena as interdependent (the basic Buddhist causality theory); and the realm of social convention and ordinary language.

\n

 

\n

Zhiyi draws from Mulamadhyamakakarika to build off of the Two Truths (explicitly taught in verses eight, nine, and twenty-four of that text however), but turns instead to verse eighteen which discusses the ‘Middle Path’.

\n

 

\n

Interpretations of this verse vary, from the Middle Path as “the identity of the two truths, emptiness… and co-arising or conventional designation…” or as Kumarajiva’s translation would have it, taking “the Middle Path as a third component in a single unity” with these other two. 3

\n

 

\n

Swanson then gives a close reading of Kumarajiva’s interpretation for this verse:

\n

1. All things which arise through conditioned co-arising =

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Buddhist teaching of causality, all conditioned things (phenomenal world) arise dependent on a host of causes and conditions.

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\n

2. I explain as emptiness =

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Lack of substantial Being, not only the absence of anything which exists in and of itself and never changes, but also an eternal essence. Not nihilism, just a denial of own-being.

\n

 

\n

3. Again, it is a conventional designation =

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The act of naming or discussing with language things and experiences whose reality is ultimately beyond such verbal expressions. The temporary reality we construct for the phenomenal world as but a ‘conventional’ designation.

\n

 

\n

4. Again, it is the meaning of the Middle Path =

\n

The Middle Path is to take a course between two extremes, the affirmation of substantial Being on the one hand (‘eternalism’) and the nihilistic denial of all existence on the other (‘annihilationism’). The teaching of emptiness denies the former, while the teaching of conventional designations denies the latter.

\n

 

\n

These four are just four different ways of expressing the same teaching, and one reality.

\n

“Co-arising, emptiness, conventional existence, and the Middle are not four realities, four separate existences, or four independent doctrines, but four ways to express the same one reality, the Buddha-dharma, which is samsara to us common ignorant mortals and nirvana to a Buddha.” 5-6

\n

 

\n

Zhiyi’s Threefold Truth posits a single unity with three integrated aspects:

\n

“First, emptiness (sunyata 空), or absence of substantial Being, often identified with the ultimate truth (paramarthasatya). Second, conventional existence 假, the temporary existence of the phenomenal world as co-arising, often identified with the worldly truth (samvrtisatya). Third, the Middle 中, a simultaneous affirmation of both emptiness and conventional existence as aspects of a single integrated reality.” 6

\n

 

\n

Different objections to Zhiyi’s misinterpretation of the verse, other ways of dividing up reality, but the ultimate point (and one that Zhiyi successfully picks up on) is that no matter how you divide your understanding of this verse (whether it be between a twofold, threefold or even fourfold truth), there are all but one integrated reality explained in different ways.

\n

 

\n

Zhiyi’s Threefold Truth system as the foundation of his entire philosophy =

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“In this study I will examine Chih-I’s T’ien-t’ai philosophy from the perspective of this threefold truth concept and show that it provides a pattern with which the numerous Buddhist concepts and technical terms are organized and interrelated.” 8

\n

Look at Chart 1 which visualizes the relationship between the Threefold Truth and other concepts like: the four noble truths, the Fourfold Teachings, the ten realms of existence, the two truths, and the final reduction of all into the concept of a single integrated reality which is beyond verbalization and conceptual understanding.

\n

 

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Each line of the verse relates in turn to one of the four noble truths (suffering, the cause of suffering, extinction of suffering, and the path);

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The four noble truths may then be viewed in four different ways (original to Zhiyi)– ‘arising and perishing 生滅’, ‘not arising and perishing 不生滅’, ‘immeasurable 無量’ and ‘spontaneous 無作’

\n

Arising and perishing = Standpoint emphasizing everything in flux, the realm of change,

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Not arising and perishing = Emphasizes emptiness,

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Immeasurable = Emphasizes that while things lack substantial Being, there are immeasurable aspects to temporary conventional existence, the innumerable distinctions between phenomena in conventional designation,

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Spontaneous = Expression of an ultimate reality beyond conceptualization and such verbal distinctions;

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Fourfold Teaching: Tripitaka (Hinayana Buddhism, literal interpretation of the four noble truths); Shared (both Hinayana and Mahayana, emphasizes emptiness, lack of substantial Being); Distinct (bodhisattva teaching, recognition of conventional existence and immeasurable phenomena, thus returns to the mundane world); Perfect (truth as it is – the Middle Path, insight into reality as both lacking substantial Being yet conventionally existent);

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Ten realms or destinies, or ten different experiences and states of existence in one reality: hell, preta, beast, asura, man, gods, sravaka, pratyekabuddha, bodhisattva, and Buddha;

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Ten ‘Such-as-it-is’ 如是characteristics to each being: appearance, nature, essence, power, activity, causes, conditions, results, retribution, and ‘ultimate identity of beginning and end’;

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All of these divisions are placed within a hierarchy that matches the four sentences given in verse 18.

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“In other words, those in the six lower destinies perceive the world in its arising and perishing as the interplay of interdependent causes and conditions. Sravakas and pratyekabuddhas perceive the world as empty of substantial Being and thus to be characterized as neither arising nor perishing. The bodhisattvas go a step further and perceive the immeasurable conditioned phenomena of this world as provisionally existent, albeit having existence merely as conventional designation. The Buddha, in his perfect wisdom, spontaneously perceives the world as it truly is, uncreated, beyond description, beyond conceptual discrimination, subtle, the Middle Path.” 12

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Thus Zhiyi’s final conclusion that all of reality is an integrated, interdependent unity, everything containing everything else, one small thought contains a dharma realm, which in turn contains all the other dharma realms, and so forth.

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Zhiyi’s Threefold Truth concept (and its connection to the Two Truths and ultimately their final reduction to one truth or ‘no truth’) stemming from the Yingloching or Jenwangching: The truth of existence; the truth of non-Being; the supreme truth of the Middle Path.

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[Translation of Zhiyi’s commentary to Vimalakirtinirdesa Sutra]

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Truth of existence = “reality as perceived in the mind of [ordinary] worldly people; this is called… ‘the mundane truth’.” -> Line three of verse 18 to Mulamadhyamakakarika

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Truth of non-Being = “reality as perceived in the mind of people who have transcended the world… ‘the real truth’.” -> Line one and two of verse 18

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Supreme truth of the Middle Path = “reality as perceived by all Buddhas and bodhisattvas… ‘the one real truth’.” -> Line four of verse 18

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It seems that Zhiyi is confusing Sanskrit terms here for the various truths, and thus Indian philosophers would argue that he is misrepresenting Nagarjuna, yet in the Chinese context the terms of the Two Truths were interpreted as ‘無’, ‘有’, and not being in the Sanskrit were endowed with ambiguity:

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“The ambiguity of these terms, such that yu could be interpreted negatively as substantial Being or positively as conventional existence, and wu interpreted positively a s adenial of substantial Being and negatively as nihilistic nothingness, as well as the strong ontological implications of these terms, caused much confusion concerning this issue.” 14

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Zhiyi’s Fahuahsuani, interpretation of the Lotus Sutra, focusing on the term 妙 ‘subtle’:

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“In other words, all of the above categories of the various characteristics of existence and the world of co-arising causes and conditions is progressively summarized as the four noble truths, then as the two truths of samvrtisatya and paramarthasatya, then as the threefold truth of emptiness, conventional existence, and the Middle Path, and finally as the one truth of reality as a perfectly integrated unity. In the end even this One Truth is reduced to the term ‘no truth’ 無諦, for the concept of a single reality, though it stretches the limits of language, is still a conceptualization which is inadequate to describe reality itself. One is left with the definition in the introduction to the Fa hua hsuan I that ‘That which is beyond conceptualization is called subtle’. Reality cannot be grasped conceptually; truth is beyond words.” 15

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OUTLINE OF THE BOOK:

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“The purpose of this study is to examine Chih-I’s concept of the threefold truth as providing the structure for the T’ien-t’ai interpretation of the Buddha-dharma. I will examine the history of the development of this topic in China, beginning with Kumarajiva and his disciple Seng-chao (chapter 2), the early reference to ‘three truths’ in the Chinese apocryphal Sutras of the Jen wang ching and the Ying lo ching (chapter 3), the two truths controversy in China before Chih-I (e.g. the Liang period) as found in the few extant sources available to us such as the Kuang hung ming chi (chapter 4), the Ta ch’eng I chang (chapter 5), the contributions of the ‘Ch’eng shih lun scholars’ as seen in secondary sources (chapter 6), and the critiques and analysis of Chi-tsang and the Sanlun teachings (chapter 7). I will examine the section on the ‘subtlety of objects’ in Chih-I’s Fa hua hsuan I … as my root text to discuss the T’ien-t’ai threefold truth concept, though I will refer also to other works by Chih-I (chapter 8). An annotated translation of this text will be added as an appendix.” 16

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CONCLUSIONS:

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1.) Zhiyi’s interpretation of the Mulamadhyamakakarika ch.24, v.8, in terms of the Threefold Truth is not a misunderstanding or deviance from the original intent of Nagarjuna’s writings or Madhyamika philosophy, but actually helps to explicate to the Two Truths and Madhyamika philosophy more generally.

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2.) The Threefold Truth theory arose in the context of the Two Truth’s controversy in China, which was complicated by the ambiguous use of terms such as ‘無’ and ‘有’, which were based on indigenous Chinese traditions. The Middle Path was a means for Zhiyi to transcend this duality and its confusions.

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3.) Tiantai Threefold Truth as an approach heir to the Madhyamika ontology, as much or more so than the Sanlun tradition.

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4.) The Threefold Truth theory serves as the structure for Zhiyi’s thought and practice, and is a better model for understanding Tiantai than the typical ‘Five Periods and Eight Teachings” system.

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5.)The Threefold Truth theory is Zhiyi’s answer to the religious questions posed at the beginning of the chapter, IE is there a sacred vs. mundane world and what is the relationship between them.

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CHAPTER TWO: EARLY MAHYAMIKA IN CHINA

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Kumarajiva as marking the beginning of the Two Truth controversy and Madhyamika philosophy in China. His translations came to be the authoritative texts for Chinese and Japanese Buddhism generally, and for Zhiyi in specific. Kumarajiva argues for differing levels of truth, and moreover that the Buddha also offers different teachings to people based on their capacities. He seems to recognize emptiness, but also does not fall then into complete nihilism and as such also recognizes conventional existence. Yet the problem of how to harmonize these two viewpoints was not raised during Kumarajiva’s time.

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\n

Swanson turns to the Dazhidulun 大智度論 to explicate these points. First he looks at how Kumarajiva solves the problem of how a Buddhist can deny the existence of a  substantial self and yet still refer to oneself with the personal pronoun of ‘I’. In short, while one should deny any substantial self, one should also not grow attached to this vision, and realize that language is a necessary tool for describing the otherwise indescribable. This is precisely the position which Zhiyi will later adopt.

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\n

Next Swanson discusses the passages presenting the four siddhanta, as they provide the longest discussion of the Two Truths in the treatise. Siddhanta is a ‘point of view’ or ‘method of teaching’, and represent different ways of perceiving reality and preaching this perception to others. They are: a worldly point of view; an individual point of view; the therapeutic point of view; and the supreme point of view.  One additional point to note here is the discussion on p.29 about the problem of whether, according to Madhyamikan philosophy, one could affirm their own doctrine over others, or if by nature of their beliefs they must deny all doctrines. This dilemma eventually forced a split of the tradition into Candrakirti and Bhavaviveka in India. In the Dazhidulun it seems that positively affirming doctrine is an acceptable practice.

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Finally Swanson collects the other scattered references to the Two Truths found in the treatise, and characterizes them in the following pattern:  “There are two ways of viewing one reality, or (1) there are two truths, but (2) they are not contradictory. (3) There are conventional differences between the two truths, but (4) they are mutually dependant, that is, they are identical or ultimately one” (p.30). This is to say, Kumarajiva asserts that there are Two Truths – the worldly and the supreme – which solves the problem of why the Buddha preaches seemingly contradictory lessons. Yet these truths are not contradictory to one another, but are in ultimate conformity with one another. The differences between the Two Truths, and there are differences, but only in a conventional sense.

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CONCLUSION:

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“The Ta chih tu lun utilizes all three meanings of samvrtisatya (as illusion, as identical with pratityasamutpada, and as language or skillful means) in its interpretation of the meaning of ‘the worldly truth’. It offers some positive though technical and abstruse statements concerning the content of the supreme truth. It points out the differences between the two truths, but is careful to affirm that they are mutually dependent and ultimately one. Its teachings can thus be considered ‘orthodox’ Madhyamikan philosophy with a more positive slant than the Mulamadhyamakakarika, and its positive approach ahd a great influence on the development of Madhyamkikan philosophy in China.” 33

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\n

Seng-Chao and the Two Truths

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\n

Seng Jiao’s major work dealing with the Two Truths is his essay on sunyata (“emptiness”), the 不真空論. This essay breaks down previous interpretations of the concept into three trends: (1) as mental negation, where one does not reflect upon things, but not necessarily that things do not exist; (2) as identical with form, which is empty bc it is not form ‘in itself’, but rather depends upon other things for its existence; and (3) as the original non-being, an original state of nothingness from which all things derive their existence. After denying these positions, Seng Jiao argues for his own, namely the Two Truth formulation and the notion that language cannot adequately describe reality. His primary thesis = “That though existent they inexist is what ‘non-existent’ means. That though inexistent they exist is what ‘not inexistent’ means” (p.35). That is to say, as things cannot be spoken of as having substantial Being in the eternalist view, only the negation of this point is true, and similarly as things cannot be spoken of in terms of annihilationism, so only the negation of this point is true. Thus we are left with 非有非無. The real truth is something beyond this dualism of Being and non-existence – the dichotomy of these two is in itself part of the conventional illusory world.

\n

 

\n

Note that it is here that Swanson points out again the ambiguity of the terms ‘有’ and ‘無’, and how they might be taken in either positive or negative senses (see above), and how this gap would come to afflict Chinese Buddhism for centuries.

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CONCLUSION:

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“We can make the following observations concerning Seng-chao’s understanding of the two truths. First, the real truth… is beyond common language and cannot be adequately verbalized. Second, the content of the real truth can nevertheless be described negatively as neither substantial Being nor complete nothingness because all dharmas are a complex of causes and conditions… Finally, Seng-chao can be credited with pointing out the ultimate unity of the two truths and for clarifying the difference between traditional Chinese interpretations of wu 無 as primordial nothingness and the interpretation of sunyata in the traditional Buddhist prajna tradition. On the other hand… he left an unfortunate legacy of discussing the two truths in terms of yu (meaning substantive Being when it was denied, and conventional existence when it was affirmed) and wu (meaning non-Being when it was affirmed, and non-existence when it was denied)… He clearly did not mean to identify the conventional truth with yu and the supreme truth with wu, since he explicitly defined the supreme truth as beyond this duality, but the habit of discussing the issue in terms of yu and wu dominated the subsequent controversy… This led to Chih-I’s solution of the problem with his threefold truth concept wherein the misleading dichotomy of yu and wu was resolved utilizing the concepts of emptiness and conventional designation instead of yu and wu, and the ‘third’ truth of the Middle.” 36-37

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CHAPTER THREE: EARLY CHINESE APOCRYPHAL SUTRAS

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Three-Truths Pattern in the Ren Wang Jing and Ying Luo Jing

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Zhiyi looks for canonical support to his theory from these two apocryphal texts, dating perhaps to the 5th century (between the time of Seng Jiao and the Two Truth debate in the Liang Period 502-557). There is some discussion about whether or not there was a threefold division of truth in India, or if this was purely a Chinese invention. Besides the two texts above, scholars had pointed to two others from the Indian tradition which seem to have such a threefold division (the Outline of the Four Agamas and Bodhisattva-bhumi), but upon analysis  Swanson concludes that neither formulations in these two texts were influential in the Chinese context.

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Swanson affirms the value of using apocryphal sutras, as not only the Buddha’s ‘authentic’ words were of religious import for the Buddhist church in China, and moreover these texts themselves were perhaps the most intimate response to the Chinese context. He looks through the catalogs to demonstrate just how prevalent such apocryphal sutras were in China. “I have wandered from my main topic to discuss this subject not only because of the importance of apocryphal texts for Chinese Buddhism in general and Chih-I’s philosophy in particular, but also because I wanted to avoid the impression that apocryphal texts are to be viewed negatively. Chih-I himself does not reveal an awareness of the fact that many of the texts he quoted for scriptural support were apocryphal Chinese compositions…”

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Next Swanson turns to look at the Ren Wang Jing and Ying Luo Jing, beginning with the former. The RWJ is considered as one of the three great sutras for the Tiantai tradition, along with the Lotus Sutra and the Suvarnaprabhasa Sutra. He gives a brief overview of the text’s content, extant editions, and the arguments for its apocryphal nature. Sato argues that it should be date to the mid-5th century, in part because it offers a prophesy of Buddhist persecution reminiscent of that which took place in 446, and also because it draws from a variety of sutras also seemingly translated in the early 5th century, while its appearance in the Chusanzang marks a TAQ at 515. Moreover the text uses the terms ‘real truth’ 真諦 and ‘truth of supreme meaning’ 第一義諦, in addition to the ‘three truths’ 三諦 [CF: which apparently dates it to this period?].

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“If this text is a Chinese composition form the mid-fifth century A.D. as Sato concludes, then it is a valuable work which can teach us something about the Buddhism in China around that time. It shows, for one thing, that the Chinese were attempting to deal with the implications of the two truths concept and beginning to favor a threefold structure to solve the tension which they saw inherent in the two truths. It serves, then, as documentation for understanding the interpretation of the two truths in China during the one hundred years between the time of Seng-chao and the Liang Period.” 48

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In the text, the worldly truth is defined as perception of ordinary sentient beings, as the world either existing or not existing, and associated with notions of conventional existence, deceptive appearances and illusions. The supreme truth is defined as eternal quiescence, a wisdom thoroughly penetrating the nature of reality, something beyond dualities, referring neither to the world of transformations or a world without transformations. In the fourth chapter, which as the most major discussion of the two truths, the texts affirms that the two truths are in fact two, and posits a third truth which transcends these two. There is a rusty explanation of the three truths then as emptiness, form and mind, but this is later supplements with a discussion of them as the worldly truth, real truth and truth of the supreme meaning. In short, Swanson sees the division as the first two truths belonging to samvrtisatya (IE the worldly truth of duality and conventional existence AND the real truth that denies such duality and conventional existence), while the last third truth transcends either the affirmation or denial of either of these two positions.

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Swanson now turns to the Ying Luo Jing. Again he looks to the catalogs, and examines other evidence (given mainly by Sato) as to why this is an apocrypha dating to the end of the 5th century, composed after the RWJ and greatly influenced by it. Assuming this to be the case, Swanson looks at the formulation of the three truths found in this text. They are mentioned briefly in one passage as being that of existence 有, non-Being 無, and the supreme truth of the Middle Path. A later passage explicates this point, and curiously argues that the first truth of existence is that of the worldly truth of being, while the second refers to emptiness, which goes against the philosophy of the Mulamadhyamakakarika as it would never admit the validity of a worldly truth positing Being and non-emptiness. Worldly truth for the Mul is merely the false perception of Being, the illusion. Again, an instance of confusion surrounding the positive and negative interpretations of the term 有 and 無.  Another confusion is also addressed surrounding the exchange of 無 and 空 in this text as well. Regardless, Swanson is frustrated with the text, and notes that later scholars, including Zhiyi, simply take the names of the three truths from the text and ignore its explanations. This is the real innovation of the text -> changing the terms of the RWJ to ‘truth of non-Being’, ‘truth of existence’ and ‘supreme truth of the Middle Path’, thereby reinterpreting the conversation in light of the terms ‘wu’ and ‘you’. “The Ying lo ching, however, does not provide any explanation as to how this Middle Path solves the duality between existence and non-existence, or Being and non-Being, nor the precise meaning or content of the supreme truth itself. It does not discuss whether these ‘truths’ are referring to ontological realities with objective existence, or whether they are merely different ways of viewing one reality, and the relative worth of validity of each truth.” 55

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In short, instead of developing the Madhyamikan Two Truth theory from ch.24 of the Mulamadhyamakakarika directly, Zhiyi seems to draw from a tradition already present in China between Kumarajiva and the Liang period that voiced a threefold division, as evidenced by these two apocryphal sutras.

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CHAPTER FOUR                : THE LIANG PERIOD (502-557)

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Meaning of Two Truths a topic of hot debate in the 5th and 6th centuries, though few extant documents have details. Mentions in the Gaosengzhuan of various figures such as Daosheng 道生 , Sengdao 僧導  and Zhilin 智林 are said to have written treatises on the topic, but they don’t survive. The Guanghongmingji by Daoxuan does have one early treatise, On the Meaning of the Two Truths, which records in two parts (1) the Prince Zhaoming of the Liang’s introductory essay and (2) a discussion on the two truths by various participants. The text supposedly dates to about 520.

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Swanson looks at both parts of the text. In the prince’s introduction, he equates the names ‘real truth’ with the ‘truth of supreme meaning’ and ‘mundane truth’ with ‘worldly truth’. ‘Real’ and ‘mundane’ refer to the content of the teaching, whereas ‘supreme’ and ‘worldly’ are merely statements suggesting a hierarchical relationship between the two. He affirms that the mundane and real are not separate existences, but rather are two ways of viewing one reality. “The ‘real’ refers to the true meaning or content of reality as undifferentiated dharmas. The ‘mundane’ refers to the world of accumulated suffering, the perception of the world as phenomena which arise” (p.60).

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The real is free of the duality of existence (IE you and wu) and the mundane is not. Later, the Prince will go on to equate the ‘real’ with the ‘Middle Path’, as a transcendence from ‘you’ and ‘wu’.

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“The identification of the wordly truth with the dualistic realm of existence and non-existence, and then positing the supreme and real truth as identical to the Middle Path which transcends the dualities of existence and non-existence, set the stage for Chih-I’s threefold truth of emptiness (=non-Being), conventional existence, and the Middle Path, the difference being that for Chih-I the Middle did not transcend the ‘duality’ of emptiness and conventional existence but affirmed both as an integrated reality” (p.61).

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Swanson criticizes the Prince’s introduction, for while it affirms the unity of the two truths he does not clarify their relationship, he fails to move past the ambiguities of ‘you’ and ‘wu’, and does some strange exegesis (such as including an arthimetic device where the duality of the mundane and the unity of the real add up to three, and also his isolation of the term ‘meaning’ in the term ‘truth of supreme meaning’ as being significant in some sense).

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BUT he does affirm the unity of the two truths as two perceptions of one reality, which is an important step.

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Swanson then examines the Q and A portion of this text, taking each of the first few questions in turn then jumping around a bit after. I’m going to pass through the specifics of most of the questions, but they touch upon notions such as differing perceptions, movement, the unity and difference of the two truths, the value judgments in the names adopted for each truth, the reality of phenomena, the relationship of wisdom to these two truths, and so forth.

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Of note is Seng-min’s suggestion of a third truth, though his formulation is similar to the Sanfadulun discarded before (see above, ch.3 for the Indian treatises with hints of the threefold division). Here he argues that there is a need for a level of truth for those who have gone beyond the ordinary perception of the world but haven’t attained perfect wisdom, IE they deny the mundane but don’t grasp the real yet.

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CONCLUSION:

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“Prince Chao-ming’s essay and the accompanying questions and answers provide a glimpse into possible ways that the two truths were being interpreted by the scholars and lay believers of Buddhism during the Liang period… the content is ambiguous and often sidetracks to peripheral subjects. It is hindered by reliance on discussing the two truths in terms of yu and wu, and sometimes comes close to admitting the idea of the two truths as two separate ontological entities. Nevertheless the  Prince clearly and often reiterates the ultimate unity of the two truths as two ways of perceiving one reality… and Seng-min’s proposal for a third truth indicates that this may have been a popular method to solve the apparent tension between the two truths. In short, it is of interest as an example of various thoughts and interpretations concerning the two truths among the monks and gentry of the Liang period, but provides little in the sense of doctrinal development or influence on later, more capable, thinkers and interpretations of the two truths.” 68-69

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CHAPTER FIVE: HUI-YUAN’S ENCYCLOPEDIA OF MAHAYANA BUDDHISM

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Huiyuan’s Dachengyizhang as another source for interpretation on the Two Truths before Zhiyi.  Swanson gives a quick biographical sketch for Huiyuan, through the persecutions of Emperor Wu and into the Sui with the revival of Buddhism under Emperor Wen. The text seems to be of his later works, and reflects the state of Buddhist scholarship in the 6th century of N. China.

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Swanson addresses Huiyuan’s ban-jiao ‘four school’ classification system, the first two being Hinyana and the second two beging Mahayana. They are not really schools in the sense of lineages, but rather philosophical trends: (1) the school which established essential natures and conditioned co-arising, teaching that all dharmas have an essential nature arising from various causes and conditions – Abhidharma; (2) the school teaching the destruction of essential nature, the school of conventional designation, which states that all dharma are empty without an essential nature, but have temporary existence – Chengshilun; (3) the school which teaches the destruction of marks, or the school of the unreal, which argues that the conventional existence of 2 has no substantial Being; (4) the school which manifests reality, the school of the real, the profound teaching of Mahayana that all dharmas do have existence as illusory conceptions, illusory concepts which have no essential reality but depend for their arising on the ‘real’ which is identified with the tathagatha-garbha Buddha-dharma. “This is the true nature of interdependent causality which included both the samsaric cycle of life and death and the complete cessation of nirvana. In other words, samsara and nirvana are one and real” (p.78).

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In regards to Huiyuan’s understanding of the Two Truths, Swanson goes through the various arguments that Huiyuan presents and especially how they relate to his understanding of the ‘four school’ classification system.  In short:

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“Ultimate reality is identified with the tathagatha-garbha, which is identified with this world of dependent co-arising. He thus avoids the simple identification of yu with samvrtisatya and wu with paramarthastya. Instead he identifies the perception of existence as delusion and complete non-existence with samvrtisatya, and the perception of wu as quiescence and yu as true reality, or the tathagatha-garbha, as paramarthasatya… Thus Hui-yuan, though he is encumbered with the ambiguous and ontologically misleading tendency to discuss the two truths in terms of yu and wu, presents the two truths as ultimately of one positive reality, and his analysis in many ways approraches that of Chih-i… it is also possible to point out a close correspondence between Hui-yuan’s classification scheme and the Mulamadhyamakakarika 24:18 verse… thus the first school which establishes ‘essential natures’ corresponds to the first line on causation…. The second school which teaches the ‘destruction of essential natures’ corresponds to the third line on conventional designation… the third school which teaches the ‘destruction of characteristics’ corresponds to the second line on emptiness… and the fourth school which teaches the ‘manifestation of reality’ corresponds, with a little effort, to the fourth line on the ultimate identity of them all as the Middle… Nevertheless it was the contribution of Chih-I to perceive this correspondence, avoid the tendency to discuss the two truths in terms of yu and wu, and instead utilize the insight in this verse to formulate an integrated threefold truth concept.” 81

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CHAPTER SIX: THE CH’ENG SHIH LUN SCHOLARS

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Swanson begins the chapter with a brief overview and a summary of what’s to come:

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“In previous chapters we have examined how the topic of the two truths was a popular subject in both north and south China in the 5th and 6th centuries A.D. The issue was discussed in terms of the relationship between the two truths, and in terms of yu (Being or existence) and wu (non-Being or nothingness), which often involved a negative assessment of samvrti, as something ‘unreal’ which should be denied or overcome in favor of a ‘real’ paramarthasatya. Another significant approach to the problem was the attempt to draw out the positive meaning of emptiness by affirming conventional existence 假 (chia). This was the approach favored by the scholars of the Ch’eng shih lun such as Chih-tsang 智藏 and Seng-min 僧旻. These scholars and their conclusions were attacked by the scholars of the San-lun tradition, notably Chi-tsang, and dismissed as ‘Hinayanistic’, but their theories and positive eattitude toward this phenomenal world was an important influence on the philosophy of Chih-I and his development of the threefold truth concept.” 82

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The chapter takes a look at the Chengshilun’s philosophical stance generally, as well as those positions argued by two representative scholars, Zhizang and Sengmin, both late 5th-early 6th cen Dharma masters, two of the ‘three great Dharma-masters of the Liang period.

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Sengmin (467-527), beyond the dialogue with Prince Zhaoming, touched on before, Sengmin’s ideas are only known through the lens of Chizang, his critic.

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“It is always dangerous to judge a man merely on the basis of his critic’s assessment, for Chi-tsang may be setting up a straw man. Nevertheless Seng-min appears to posit two separate realms, the mundane which has name and form and can be verbalized, in contrast to the real which is beyond name and form. Somehow, according to Seng-min, these two truths are identical and undifferentiated. If the two truths are identical, however, then we must search elsewhere for a clearer definition of their identity. The few fragments of Seng-min’s thoughts which are available to us are insufficient on their own to draw any significant conclusions.” 89

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Zhizang (458-522), again we need to rely on quotes of his scholarship by other authors, namely Chizang, a critic.

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Unlike Sengmin, Zhizang affirms the unity of the two truths as the final expression of a single reality, avoiding identification of the two truths with two separate realms.  The real truth is beyond verbalization, though the worldly truth (what he terms as the ‘fruit of Buddhahood’) is not beyond verbalization. This position, like Sengmin’s, falls victim to Chizang’s argument that both the real and mundane truths are beyond verbal explanation and conceptual understanding. While drawing once more on 有 and 無 to depict the truths, he goes beyond this dichotomy by asserting a Middle Path with their unity, yet it is not considered a third element outside of the two truths, but an integrating factor revealing the unity of them. Swanson gives an extended discussion of different formulations presented by Chizang in his critic of Zhizang for the essence of the two truths.

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Ultimately Zhizang adopts the Middle Path as the essence, which he expands into a theory of three kinds of Middle Path: that of the worldly truth, the real truth and the harmony of the two truths. The first of these has three points itself: It is “not nothingness (wu) because it contains the potential causes for realizing the fruit of Buddhahood and the principle of reality… [and] not substantial Being (yu) because there is no substantial fruit which is attained… it is thus the middle in the sense of denying the duality… of yu and wu” (p.94); moreover it is “not eternal because dharmas are constantly perishing… it is not nihilistic or completely annihilated because there is continuity… it is the middle in the sense of denying the duality… of eternalism and annihilationism” (p.94); and finally “the worldly truth as the Middle Path of relativity… middle in the sense of denying the duality… of unity and differentiation.” As for the second, the Middle Path of the real truth, it refers simply to the real truth as neither existence nor non-existence. The final Middle Path of the harmony of the two truths is the last realization that the Two Truths are neither merely the real truth nor the mundane truth.

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95 “In this theory of the three kinds of Middle Path, Chih-tsang has neatly incorporated the three kinds of conventional existence from the Ch’eng shih lun with the Middle Path doctrine and the two truths to provide an explanation of the unity of the two truths in one reality which is not adequately described by the contrasting duality of existence and non-existence or non-Being and nothingness. He makes many fo the same point sas in Chih-I’s threefold truth, such as the harmony of the two truths in the Middle Path and the unity of the two truths in a proper understanding of the meaning of convetional existence and emptiness. Chih-tsang’s positive emphasis on conventional existence (chia), not as illusory phenomena which needs to be denied but as a positive interpretation of the meaning of emptiness which is to be incorporated into the Middle Path, makes him a worthy precursor to Chih-I and the development of the threefold truth.”

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CONCLUSION:

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What is the contribution of the Chengshilun and the Chengshilun scholars to the two truth controversy of this period (5th and 6th cent.)?

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Championed the positive interpretation of emptiness and the emphasis on samvrtisatya and conventional existence -> aided in the development of Mahayana Buddhism in China.

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Although Chizang criticizes them for positing two separate realms, or interpreting the two truths re: essence and function or 有 and 無, calling them Hinayanists, but Zhizang’s discussion of the three Middle Path’s does much to move away from this and transcend such dualities:

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96 “These elements include the ideas of the ultimate integration of the two truths in the Middle Path, the positive evaluation of conventional existence, and transcendence of the duality and false paradox of yu and wu… to show that the mundane truth was not merely something to be negated in light of ‘emptiness’ which is the real truth, but is a necessary counterbalance to the mere negation of phenomenal reality as ‘Being’.”

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CHAPTER SEVEN: THE SANLUN CRITIQUES

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Zhiyi’s philosophy is set against a background of the debates between the Chengshilun scholars and the Sanlun scholars, he went to Jinling and met and studied with scholars such as Falang, the master of Chizang. In retiring to Tiantai, his lectures must have been partly in response to such debates, and in response to the Sanlun tradition in specific.

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Chizang was a younger contemporary of Zhiyi, and they would have occasional correspondence towards the end of Zhiyi’s life. Chizang would come to systematize the Sanlun tradition into the ‘New Sanlun School’.

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For his discussion on earlier pre-Chizang trends in interpreting the two truths, Swanson uses Chizang’s Zhongguanlunshu, including a commentary by a Japanese monk Ancho. Swanson’s analysis then focuses on the four levels of the two truths as representative of Sanlun teachings, drawing from the same work, as well as the Erdiyi and Dachengxuanlun.

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Pre-Chizang interpretations of two truths presented in this work in three groups: the three schools 三家; the seven trends 七宗 or six schools 六家; and the Treatise on Three Theses 三宗論 by a layman named Zhouyong 周顒.

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The Three Schools = school of original non-being, the school of emptiness identical with form, and the school of mental non-existence (note these are the same as those mentioned by Sengchao before in his essay on sunyata).

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Seven trends = the Three Schools, plus:  only consciousness; magical illusions; and confluence of conditions.

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Three theses = conventional names are not empty 不空假名; the emptying of conventional names 空假名; and conventional names are emptiness 假名空.

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[Passing over the specific details for each of these schools, trends, and theses. Swanson gives the following summary on their import]

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“I have examined these positions here to highlight the background or milieu in which Chih-I developed his threefold truth. We can see once again that the two truths were discussed in terms of yu and wu, although there was a growing awareness that emptiness is a more valid concept with which to resolve the issue. The earlier ‘Seven Trends’ show a stronger obsession with yu and wu, sometimes utilizing the Chinese concept of the original primordial nothingness, sometimes flirthing with mental idealism, sometimes approaching the classic Mahayan Buddhist doctrine of the identity of emptiness and form. The three theses outlined by Chou Yung contain a triple dialectical pattern which anticipates Chih-I’s threefold truth to a certain extent and includes the insightful recognition of the identity of convetional phenomena and emptiness. This was fruitful ground on which Chih-I could construct a syncretic and comprehensive Chinese Madhyamikan philosophical system.” 111

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Chizang’s theory of the four levels of the two truths

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In the Erdiyi 二諦義  Chizang expound a theory of ‘three levels of two truths’, but this expands to four levels in both the Zhongguanlunshu and Dachengxuanlun. He looks specifically at two passages for this latter works.

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Why are the levels necessary? Because different people have different faculties, and while the sharp my find enlightenment with just the first level, those who are duller might need all four levels. In this understanding, the two truths are merely a teaching designed to lead one to the correct way, and not descriptions of principles of reality. “Thus the four levels of the two truths are progressively sophisticated teachings concerning reality, not the principle of reality itself” (p.112).

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Level 1 = “Being (yu) corresponds to the worldly truth (samvrtisatya) and emptiness correspond to the real truth, or truth of supreme meaning (paramarthasatya).” Designed for those who are stuck in a naïve realism and accept the substantial existence of phenomena, or are stuck on the nihilism attached to emptiness.

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Level 2 = “The duality of both Being and emptiness from the first level is samvrtisatya, and the denial of this duality, ‘neither Being nor emptiness’, is paramarthasatya” (p.113).

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Level 3 = “The duality of all the above, both the affirmation and denial of the duality of Being and emptiness, corresponds to samvrtisatya, and the denial or transcendence of all dualities corresponds to paramarthasatya… at this level the transcendence of all dualities, even the idea of duality itself, is taught.”

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Level 4 = “All of the above levels of Being and emptiness, of dualities and non-dualities, all of the teaching sof the first three levels of the two truths, in fact all verbal teachings, are relegated to the realm of samvrtisatya. That which is ‘beyond verbalization and conceptualization’ is paramarthasatya” (p.113).

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Main point -> “That paramarthasatya is not a description of the principle of reality but refers to that which is beyond verbalization and conceptualization” thereby transcending the trap of you and wu or some combination thereof.

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Zhiyi criticizes this position as ‘an endless exercise’ in piling up negations.

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CHAPTER EIGHT: CHIH-I’S THREEFOLD TRUTH

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Discussion draws on the “Subtlety of Objective Reality 境妙” section to the Fahuaxuanyi, which is Zhiyi’s most direct and lengthy exposition on this topic.

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Swanson first briefly looks at the biography of Huiwen, the first patriarch for Tiantai and the teacher of Zhiyi’s master, Huisi.

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Little is known of Huiwen. First reference in the Mohezhiguan, where he may be assumed as a proponent of the Fazhidulun. The only other details come from the Fozutongji, a 13th century work.

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In this biography it is said that Huiwen came to verse 24:8 of the Mulamadhyamakakarika and obtained a spontaneous great awakening.

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“Thus tradition has it that Hui-wen’s awakening is based on the same verse which was the basis for Chih-I’s threefold truth formulation… illustrat[ing] the central importance of this Mulamadhyamakakarika verse for T’ien-t’ai philosophy” (p.116).

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Zhiyi’s concept of the threefold contemplation 三觀 (which actually includes the threefold cessation 三止), the practical counterpart to the threefold truth.

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“The threefold truth 三諦 refers, inadequately but with validity, to the reality of the objective realm. Threefold contemplation 三觀 refers to a general pattern of practice which allows one to attain insight into the true nature of reality” (p.116).

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While the former is major theme of the doctrinal Fahuaxuanyi, the latter is a major theme of the Mohezhiguan.

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The Three Cessations =

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(1) Cessation as Insight into the True Essence of Reality – advancing beyond naïve realism where one learns the emptiness of all things and lack of any substantive Being;

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(2) Cessation as Insight into Expedient Conditions – contemplation of and insight into reality as the convetional existence of all thigns which arise through conditioned co-arising, the ‘non-emptiness of emptiness’ 空非空, IE the emptiness of all things does = nothingness, but rather they have a conventional existence as interdependent entities which is real;

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(3) Cessation as an End to both Discriminatory Extremes – the contemplation of and insight into the synonymous nature of both emptiness and conventional existence. “One must realize that both ‘emptiness’ and ‘conventional existence’ refer to the same thing, and that reality is simultaneously empty of substantial Being and conventionally existent” (p.118).

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Three Contemplations =

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(1) Entering emptiness from conventional existence = “’Conventional existence’ refers to the ordinary, mistaken perception fo phenomena as existing substantially… and ‘entering emptiness’ means to negate the existence of independent substantial Being in these phenomena” (119).

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The practice and attainment of the two vehicles and the bodhisattvas of the Shared Teaching.

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(2) Entering conventional existence from emptiness = “’Conventional existence’ refers to a correct understanding and positive acceptance of objective phenomena as interdependently and conditionally co-arisen. Emptiness here refers to a mistaken attachment to the concept of emptiness, or a misunderstanding of emptiness as merely a nihilistic nothingness” (119).

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The first stage leads one to a state where a disciple “perceives the two truths but is one-sidedly concerned with emptiness and cannot utilize or see the reality of conventional existence.” This is the corrective.

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The practice and attainment of the bodhisattvas of the Distinct Teaching

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(3) The contemplation of the Middle Path of supreme meaning = “the highest level of contemplation wherein one simultaneously and correctly perceives the validity of both emptiness and conventional existence” (120).

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The practice and attainment of the Buddha (of the Perfect Teaching)

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The threefold cessations/contemplations are present in every thought, breaking down false conceptions and gaining insights into the true of features of reality.

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“It is clear that threefold cessation, threefold contemplation, and the threefold truth follow the same pattern of emptiness, conventional existence, and the Middle. In this sense the contents of Mo ho chih kuan and the Fa hua hsuan I both follow the same pattern and conceptual framework, with the Mo ho chih kuan presenting the practical application of this framework ina  detailed and concrete explication fo the theory of Buddhist practice, and the Fa hua hsuan I presenting the doctrinal implications of this framework in the explication of the Buddha Dharma.” 123

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Turns then to a study of the Fahuaxuanyi

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Only a terse explicit discussion of the threefolds truth here actually, so it “must be understood as an adjunct to its preceding discussion of the two truths, four noble truths, twelvefold conditioned co-arising, and so forth, and in the context of the Fa hua hsuan I as a whole” (p.123).

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Swanson gives a brief outline for the structure of the Fahuaxuanyi. The section that he is looking at discusses the notion of 境妙 ‘subtle objects’, which is part of an explanation for 妙法 as the first two characters of the title to the Lotus Sutra.

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Zhiyi’s basic thesis = “The spontaneous unity and diversity of reality, that it is ‘one yet many, many yet one’. Reality is one in that all is lacking in substantial Being; its nature is that of emptiness. However, this emptiness is not a complete nothingness but consists of the conventional existence of things which arise and perish interdependently according to causes and conditions. These aspects of emptiness and conventional existence are not contradictory opposites, but are synonymous and integrated. In T’ien-t’ai terminology this is called the ‘Middle Path’. Thus all of reality is empty – it is one. All of reality has conventional existence – it is many. Reality is simultaneously empty and conventionally existent – it is the mIddle Path. This threefold truth is implicit in the unity and diversity of the Buddha’s teaching, Buddhist practice, and reality itself.” 125

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Zhiyi criticizes Fayun’s (467-529) commentary to the Lotus Sutra, uses this as a foundation for his own re-interpretation. Swanson gives some brief biographical info, one of the ‘Three Great Scholars of the Liang Period.”

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For instance, he attacks Fayan’s assertion that ‘past’ teachings are not worthy of being called subtle. If by ‘past’ Fayan meant Hinayana, then this is acceptable, but if he meant pre-Lotus Sutra, then this knocks out a bunch of Mahayan Sutras with subtle elements in them.

\n

“The gist of Chih-I’s standpoint is that the term ‘subtle’ refers to any teaching, doctrin, practice, and so forth, which includes the concept of unity or integration. This is explained in the T’ien-t’ai classification of the four categories of oneness  四一… the oneness of teaching 教一, that all teachings of the Buddha are ultimately noncontradictory and lead to the one goal of Buddhahood; the oneness of practice 行一, that true practice is ultimately one and for the purpose of the one goal of Buddhahood; the oneness of persons 人一, the non-duality of the eternal Buddha and that all people ultimately will attain Buddhahood; and the oneness of reality 理一, that reality is one.” 127

\n

 

\n

The correct interpretation of ‘subtle dharma’

\n

“For Chih-I, the ‘subtle dharma’ refers to the way reality truly is. It is synonymous with such terms as ‘the true aspects of reality’ 實相, ‘true reality’ 真實, the Middle Path 中道, ... and can only be described as inexpressible… beyond conceptual understanding… and subtle.” 128

\n

 

\n

The Fahuaxuanyi, before going into details on his interpretation of the subtle dharma, explicates the causes and results of Buddhahood, the classification of the five flavors, contemplating the mind, the six identities, and four categories of oneness. The last topic is mentioned above, the others I’m going to skip putting their details in here.

\n

 

\n

Once Zhiyi turns to a detailed interpretation of the dharma, he notes that there are three categories, that of sentient beings, Buddha, and the mind.

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Sentient beings = “the diversity of realms which the subject experiences, from that of hell to Buddhahood.” 129-30

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Mind = “the perceiver of objects… and the subject which needs to be perfected in order to attain enlightenment.” 129

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Buddha = “the subject perfected, the realm of enlightenment in which reality is correctly perceived.” 130

\n

 

\n

Huisi interprets these three dharma as follows:

\n

“The fist is that, first, sentient beings have the potential to attain Buddhahood or, in technical terms, they inherently possess the Buddha-eye. They are thus integrated with Buddhahood, and are worthy of being called ‘subtle’. Second, the attainment of the Buddha – the state of perfect enlightenment – is beyond conceptual understanding, incalculable, and can be comprehended only by another Buddha. Thus the Buddha is ‘subtle’. Third, the mind is also empty of substantial being. However… the liberation of Buddhahood is to be sought in the mind…. Finally…. ‘there is no distinction between the mind, Buddha, and sentient beings’. All aspects of reality are interpenetrating and integrated.” 130

\n

 

\n

Zhiyi expands on this positions. He argues that reality can be classified in any number of ways, and points to the ‘ten suchlike characteristics’ ‘如是X’ as one example. Yet each of the ten suchlike characteristics may, according to him, be read in one of the three ways, following the pattern of threefold truth, IE with a lens towards emptiness, conventional existence, or the middle path.  Thus, 如 in each term name =emptiness of all things, the characteristics (the third character in each name, X) = conventional existence, while 是 is ‘likeness’ and speaks to the middleness of all dharma of being simultaneously both empty and conventionally existent.

\n

 

\n

In regards to sentient beings, the discussion continues with the ten dharma realms, and the levels of attainment between them.  I’ve skipped them all except for the Buddha realm:

\n

“The section on the characteristics of the Buddha realm is the longest. The first three characteristics of the appearance, nature, and essence of the Buddha are described in terms of the threefold Buddha-nature and the three ‘tracts’ of reality… This classification into three parallel aspect of Buddha-nature and the way reality ‘works’ is another feature of T’ien-t’ai philosophy.” 133

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Buddha nature as (1) conditional causes of Buddhahood referring to the inherent potential and propensity for Buddhahood within all sentient beings… one’s inherent disposition, if not obstructed by sundry passions and delusions, to perform the deeds required to realize the wisdom of a Buddha; (2) the complete cause of Buddhahood referring to the inherent potential for wisdom in all sentient beings… the illumination of wisdom which destroys delusions and reveals the true nature of reality;  (3) as direct cause of Buddhahood referring to the fact that all being sare inherently endowed with ‘the reality of true thusness’ in that they all participate in the true nature of reality. (133-134)

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In regards to the Buddha,

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“In this section he emphasizes the unity or integration of the Buddha-realm with all other aspects of reality… in other words, the Buddha is not a separate and detached realm from that of our world of passionate illusions, but an integrated and involved part of it. The difference is that only a Buddha truly understands and perceives reality as it truly is. Understanding this vast reality requires a vast and penetrating wisdom. Both objective reality and the wisdom of the Buddha are thus ‘inconceivable’, beyond conceptual understanding. In short, the dharma of the Buddha is ‘subtle’.” 135

\n

 

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In regards to the Mind,

\n

The mind (as one’s thoughts) is the most accessible of the three dharmas, and should be the focus of contemplation and meditation.

\n

And as the Buddha, objects, sentient beings, etc. are all part of one reality, they are all included in even one simple thought should one concentrate on it.

\n

 

\n

Swanson continues his analysis of the Fahuaxuanyi, which looks further at the concept of subtlety. A distinction is made between relative subtlety (IE that which is subtle compared to that which is crude, like Mahayana to Hinayana, a point Zhiyi criticizes Fayun for adopting), and absolute subtlety, which is explained via the Fourfold Teachings.

\n

Next a look at the thirty categories of subtlety Zhiyi gives, mainly the ten devoted to the dharma of sentient beings.

\n

 

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Twelvefold Conditioned Co-arising

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Twelve links of dependent origination which consist of ignorance, volitional activity, consciousness, name-and-form, the six senses, contact, experience, passion, attachment, existence, rebirth, and decay-and-death.

\n

Four categories for how these twelve are understood by the Four Teachings:

\n

(1) Conceptually understood as arising and perishing (Tripitaka): “the basic teaching of the law of cause and effect in which good deeds lead to good effects, and evil deeds lead to evil effects… the teaching that phenomena are constrantly arising and perishing and that nothing remains the same from one instant to the next” (138). Meant to counteract beliefs in a creator God or in spontaneous arising.

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(2) Conceptually understood as neither arising nor perishing (Shared): standpoint of emptiness. “There is no thing which either rarises or perishes. All twelve links of conditioned co-arising, from ignorance to decay-and-death, are without substantial being”  (139).

\n

(3) As beyond conceptual understanding yet as arising and perishing (Distinct): standpoint of conventional existence. Level of the bodhisattva and Buddha’s involvement in the world, which “is not that of this samsaric world which involves karmic deeds and passionate attachments, but is pure and free of defilements such as delusions and passions” (139).

\n

Not well defined in Zhiyi’s work, meant to explain the attainment of the Arhat, who transcends the ordinary realm but does not yet have perfect understanding.

\n

(4) As beyond conceptual understanding and as neither arising nor perishing (Perfect): “the perfect integration fo reality and phenomenal appearances. Enlightenment is identical with passions: this is the meaning of Buddha-nature as the complete cause of Buddhahood… at this highest level of the Perfect Teaching, the threefold path of ignorance (passions, karmic deeds, and suffering) is identical to the three virtuous qualities (prajna-wisdom, liberation, and the Dharma Body) of the Buddha. This last understanding of conditioned co-arising is the one which is truly ‘subtle’” (140).

\n

 

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The early teachings are all expedient means to arrive at the later subtle teaching.

\n

 

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Four Noble Truths (truth of suffering, causes of suffering, extinction of suffering, and the Path) – Ch.1 has Zhiyi’s fourfold classification of these Four Noble Truth as found in the Mohezhiguan, here Swanson tackles their presentation in the Fahuaxuanyi.

\n

Again, Zhiyi breaks down this teaching but looking at how all four as together understood in ways that differ according to the Four Teachings.

\n

His definition of noble truth, noble refers to non-heretical teachings, and truth is defined in three senses: ontological, existential, and practical.

\n

 

\n

(1) As arising and perishing = “the understanding held by those who are still strongly deluded concerning the real truth because they understand the four truths in terms fo the arising and perishing, cause and effect, of phenomenal appearances. Passionate and deluded karmic deeds cause suffering; the cultivation of the Path leads to an extinction of this suffering…” (142).

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(2) As neither arising nor perishing = “the understanding of those who are only lightly deluded concerning the real truth because they understand it in terms of the emptiness of reality… they understand that suffering, its causes and extinction, and the Path, have no eternal, substantial Being” (143).

\n

(3) As immeasurable = “the understanding of those who are strongly deluded concerning the integrated nature of all things, or the Middle… because they understand it in terms of phenomenal appearances. This refers to the fact that, despite their emptiness, there is an infinite variety of delusions… on the conventional  level” (143). Essentially the teaching of conventional existence of reality.

\n

(4) As spontaneous = “The understanding of those who are lightly deluded concerning the integrated nature of all things because they understand it in accordance with reality… it is still verbalized, and the perfect and complete insight into reality is beyond words and conceptualization… one understand the identity of samsara and nirvana, of enlightenment and passions” (143).

\n

 

\n

Throughout Zhiyi categorizes all of these concepts in regards to the Fourfold Teachings and the five flavors.

\n

Another theme that Zhiyi emphasizes is how everything exists in the mind in one thought, so that we have access to everything (enlightenment essentially) in every small instance of thought, and thus  if we contemplate on our thinking we can come to a perfect wisdom.

\n

 

\n

The Two Truths:

\n

“Chih-I transcends the tendency of his predecessors in China to discuss the two truths merely in terms of yu and wu. He avoids the simple identification of yu with samvrtisatya and wu with paramarthasatya, and the accompanying assumption of two planes of reality. Instead he interprets the two truths in terms of the integrated nature of a single reality which is simultaneously empty of substantial Being yet conventionally existent as dharmas which conditionally co-arise” (144).

\n

 

\n

He categorizes all valid understandings of the Two Truths in seven categories, which in turn relate to levels corresponding once again to the Fourfold Teachings.

\n

 

\n

Zhiyi first summarizes previous positions, for instance criticizing Sengmin for positing a third reality of Buddhahood as transcending the two truths, “the two truths and phenomenal reality are not a completely illusory realm to be transcended in order to attain a ‘separate’ reality in Buddhahood, but all of reality and the two truths is an integrated, single reality which is perfectly understood and perceived only by a Buddha” (145).

\n

The Chengshilun scholars interpreting to two truths in regards to name, function and essence. Zhiyi criticizes them for relying on only one text and mistakenly rejecting others.

\n

Zhiyi’s ultimate project though is not to reject teachings, he regards most as valid, merely he gathers them together into an integrated whole where each finds a level of understanding closer or further away from the perfect understanding. “He recognizes that the Buddha offers various explanations at different itmes and circumstances in accordance iwht the listener’s ability to understand” (145). Even low level teachings as expedient means.

\n

 

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Zhiyi’s ‘correct classification of the two truths’ = Defines real truth as ‘the sign o fthe nature of reality’; mundane truth as ‘the twelvefold conditioned co-arising of ignorance’. But this is only sufficient for sentient beings with crude comprehension. More refined understanding must fall somewhere on the seven levels, discussed in six sections – numbering based on sections then level:

\n

(1-1a) “The mundane truth refers to real existence, and the real truth refers to the extinction of this ‘real existence’” (Tripitaka) = “All senses, sense organs, and their objects are truly real” (147). The Hinayana teaching that individual dharmas are substantial, as opposed to Mahayana teaching of emptiness of dharmas.

\n

Here real truth is extinguishing mundane realm of ‘real dharmas’

\n

(2-1b) “The mundane truth refers to real existence, and the real truth refers to the extinction of this ‘real existence’” (Shared) = “Denies the substantial reality of individual dharmas and posits the emptiness of dharmas along with the emptiness of the self” (147). Mundane truth is reality as immeasurable and varied phenomena, while real truth is reality as it truly is, empty of substantial Being

\n

[Following three levels are all posited as varying responses to the phrase ‘neither with outflows nor without outflows’]

\n

(3a-2) “The mundane truth refers to illusory existence, and the rela truth refers to identifying this illusory existence as empty of substantial Being” (Shared) = “the two truths are still understood in contrast to each other… [a] one-sided emphasis on emptiness as an understanding of the two truths… denies the substantial reality of existence, but does not realize the positive value of conventional existence and ‘the emptiness of emptiness’” (148).

\n

(3b-3) “The mundane truth refers to illusory existence, and the real truth refers to identifying this illusory existence as both empty and not empty” (Shared -> Distinct) = The middle reality is the real truth. An understanding of the two truths via denial of the duality, a realization of non-emptiness, but still posits a distinct rather than integrated middle reality.

\n

(3c-4) “The mundane truth refers to illusory existence, and the real truth refers to the identity of illusory existence with both emptiness and on-emptiness; that all dharmas are both empty and not empty” (Shared -> Perfect) = Beyond the negativism of (3a), and transcending dualities via a distinct third reality (3b), by recognizing positive reality integrating both dualities of you and wu. Reality is the Middle.

\n

(4-5) “The mundane truth refers to both illusory existence and the identity of illusory existence with emptiness, and the real truth refers to ‘neither existence nor emptiness’” (Distinct) = recognition of conventional existence. IE if you perceive you and wu as dualistic, then this is mundane truth; if you perceive their non-duality, this is the real truth.

\n

(5-6) “The mundane truth refers to both illusory existence and the identity of illusory existence with emptiness, and the real truth refers to ‘neither existence nor emptiness’; that all reality is included in ‘neither existence nor emptiness” (Distinct -> Perfect) = “A person of the Distinct Teaching recognizes only ‘non-emptiness’ as reality… those of the Perfect Teaching spontaneously realize the truth concerning all of reality, just as it is, upon hearing of ‘non-emptiness’” (149).

\n

(6-7) “The mundane truth refers to both illusory existence and the identity of illusory existence with emptiness, and the real truth refers to the fact that ‘reality includes existence, includes emptiness, and includes neither existence nor emptiness’” – threefold truth (Perfect) = “The direct exposition fo the two truths which are beyond conceptual understanding” (149). All of reality has conventional existence, emptiness and includes the Middle.

\n

 

\n

Threefold Truth:

\n

Zhiyi does not offer much at this point, as all that could be said has been said, and little can be said of the Threefold Truth.

\n

“Its ultimate and subtle meaning can only be described as indescribable. Its meaning and importance are revealed as it provides a pattern or basis for clarifying other doctrines such as twelvefold conditioned co-arising, the four noble truths, or the two truths” (150).

\n

All sutras contain the meaning of the threefold truth, even if they don’t explicitly state it.

\n

Classifies the threefold truth into five categories, following the same pattern and content of the seven categories to the twofold given above, just minus the first two which do not have the meaning of the Middle.

\n

(1) Shared -> Distinct understanding of two truths, but the middle = separate, or different, from ‘emptiness’ and does not include all dharma.

\n

(2) Shared -> Perfect, middle = not only integrates the two truths, but includes all dharma, dharma are both empty and conventionally existent

\n

(3) Distinct, middle = in opposition to real truth

\n

(4) Distinct -> Perfect, middle = integrated with real, both real and middle are included in Buddha-Dharma

\n

(5) Perfect, “it is not only the Middle Path which completely includes the Buddha-Dharma, but also the real and the mundane [truths]. This threefold truth is perfectly integrated; one in three and three in one” (152).

\n

 

\n

Other definitions of threefold given in the Ssu chiao I, truth of existence, truth of non-Being, supreme truth of the Middle Path (152-153).

\n

 

\n

“We have seen that the threefold truth concept, though it is not in itself discussed in detail by Chih-I, provided the hidden structure behind Chih-I’s philosophy.” (154).

\n

 

\n

The One Truth

\n

The final realization already explained above in the threefold truths that their reality is of one.

\n

 

\n

Swanson points out the tension in Zhiyi’s philosophy between wanting to assert that reality and truth are beyond language and rational concepts, yet needing to express this truth in words and realizing that some explanations are in fact more valid than others.

\n

 

\n

Summary:

\n

Threefold truth as an expansion of Madhyamikan teaching of the two truths based on Nagarjuna’s Mulamadhyamaka-karika 24:18 with inspiration from certain apocryphal texts.

\n

Developed in response to Chinese attempts to understand Buddhist theory in terms of ‘you’ and ‘wu’, transcending the false dichotomy.

\n

 

\n

“It point to a Middle Path beyond the contrasting ontological standpoints of eternalism (Being) and annihilationism (nothingness) and beyond practical extremes of hedonism and asceticism, to a synthesis and harmonious tension of emptiness and conventional existence, of the sacred and profane… of nirvana and samsara…” (156).

\n

 

\n

Other  avenues for understanding Tiantai are via its organization based on Four Teachings and five flavors, or re: threefold contemplations in the Mohezhiguan and influence on Chan tradition.

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Read Gregory's Intro, Demieville, Gomez, Donner, McRae, Gregory, Buzzwell, skip Stein, skip Cahill--Read Griffith Foulk's review of this book.

\n

Kamata Shigeo is the guy who talks about Huayan and Tiantai; Gimello's dissertation is on Huayan.

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Articles in \"Reflecting Mirrors\" Hamar, Kimura's article.

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