- Buddhism in China
- Andrew Skilton
During the 1st century CE.
It came from the west, from Central Asia, with merchants and Central Asian Buddhists.
Unlike South-east Asia and Tibet, it was not to function as the vehicle for higher
culture, since China had already acquired a high degree of literate civilization. China
also had its own indigenous religions, well established in society and which, each in
their own way, had some influence on the character that Buddhism was to take in their
homeland. The older of these religions was Taoism, associated with a founder Lao-Tzu
(b.604BCE), which was primarily concerned with the extension of life through alchemy and
the worship of a pantheon of deities. The second of the indigenous systems was that of
Confucianism, itself based on the ‘sayings’ of Confucius (551-497BCE), which
stressed the ideals of social utility, the veneration of elders, and learning.
Confucianism particularly encouraged a view of cultural superiority on the part of the
Chinese, seeing no virtue whatsoever in the import of a ‘barbarian’ religion
from the west, ie. India.
The first phase of
Buddhist contact, up to the 4th century, made little impact upon Chinese religious life.
The activities of the Buddhists, the majority being non-Chinese Central Asians, revolved
largely around the translation and study of a miscellaneous stream of Buddhist texts that
were imported via the western trade routes. Up to 220CE this activity was centered on a
monastery in Lo Yang, where meditation manuals, complied by the meditation masters of
Kashmir and north-western India and largely concerned with the meditation practices
typical of the non-Mahayana schools, were thought to resonate with the indigenous. Taoist
interest in mental and physical alchemical techniques. The first sutra to be translated at
this period was the Sutra in Forty-Two Sections. Foremost among those involved in this
work was An Shih-kao, a Parthian, who arrived in Lo Yang c.148, and worked with a team of
non-Mahayana monks. However, he did have contemporaries who were engaged in translating
Mahayana sutras, notably An-hsuan, another Parthian, and Lokaksema, an Indo-scythian
(post-168), eleven of whose translations have survived. Translations from this early
period all suggest a minority interest, perhaps from amongst some fringe cult groups, and
in which there was probably no clear differentiation between lay and ordained. After the
fall of the Han dynasty in 220, the situation changed and many more translations were
made, including those of numerous Mahayana sutras. However, little is known of Buddhism in
this period other than that it was not the interest of the educated Chinese upper classes.
Less still is known of the early Buddhist centers at Peng Cheng (on the lower Yangtze
River) in east China, and at Chiao Chou in southern China (now in North Vietnam). There is
little doubt that the latter must have been initiated through sea trade contact with
southern Asia, and it is possible that the same source accounts for the eastern centre
too.
A second phase of
development was initiated by the collapse of the northern part of the Chinese empire under
the hands of Hun invaders, c.320. The Chinese court fled to the south, and until the end
of the 6th century China was divided between numerous unstable regimes. In the contrasting
atmospheres of these two regions Buddhism made great advances. In the northern region,
ruled by various foreign dynasties, Buddhism, itself a foreign religion, could oppose the
pro-Chinese Confucianism, and so had considerable appeal. As a result it received royal
encouragement (albeit with the usual attendant problems of close association with the
state). For this reason, in the northern region, the foreignness of Buddhism was less
problematic, and the translation and study of Indian source materials continued, even
though this emphasized the non-Chinese origins of Buddhism. This was facilitated by the
proximity of Central Asia, which still functioned as the main route for the introduction
of Buddhism to China. By the 5th century 30,000 monasteries were recorded, housing
2,000,000 monks. Particularly notable was the arrival in Chang-an of the Kuchean monk
Kumarajiva, the first translator competent in all the necessary languages, who organized a
large and prolific translation bureau and introduced Indian Madhyamaka Buddhism to China.
In the south, however, a
brilliant indigenous cultural life, a downturn in the fortunes of Confucianism, and the
growth of interest in Taoism, combined with the physical suffering caused by the political
situation, stimulated a vibrant and open-minded intellectual life in which Buddhism became
attractive to the educated Chinese upper class for the first time. This was helped by the
physical isolation from contacts with the west via Central Asia, which discouraged any
emphasis upon the Indian origins of Buddhism (something less acceptable in the
Chinese-ruled south), and resulted in forms of Buddhism in which Buddhist doctrines had
been more thoroughly integrated with Chinese ideas. For the first time indigenous forms of
Chinese Buddhism had begun to appear. An interesting consequence of the lack of direct
contact with Indian Buddhism was that Chinese Buddhists, reading the chapter on
meat-eating from the Lankavatara Sutra, understood strict vegetarianism to be part of the
Vinaya rule. By c.400 there were almost 2,000 monasteries in the south, and for the first
time Buddhism began to become the target of bitter Confucian attempts to have the
‘barbarian’ religion expelled from the country. The high point of Buddhist
popularity in the south was marked by the emperor Wu (502-549CE) who became a Buddhist
layman, banned Taoism, and forbade animal sacrifice. It was also during this period that
the Indian monk Bodhidharma, the founder of the Chan school, came to China.
The first phase in the
development of Chinese Buddhism coincides with the reunification of northern and southern
regions under the Sui And Tang dynasties, from the 6th to the 10th centuries. At this
point the two tendencies identified in the second phase of development began to
intermingle. Unification also meant that Central Asia could once more act as a corridor
for the transmission of Buddhist ideas from the west to the heart of China, which it
continued to do until this route was cut by Muslim incursions in the mid-7th century.
Overland access encouraged a resurgence of Chinese pilgrims journeying to India, including
Hsuan-tsang (629-645CE). Once the overland route was cut, such journeys were made by sea,
via South-east Asia, as did I-Tsing (635-713CE). Whilst the end of the period was marked
by a severe repression of Buddhism by resurgent Confucian and Taoist forces, it is
generally regarded as the high water mark of Buddhism in China, during which it exercised
its deepest degree of influence upon Chinese culture, and received the greatest amount of
patronage within society. It was during this period that a number of Chinese Buddhist
schools appeared. Generally speaking, these fell into two main groupings. There were those
based around the teachings (which usually meant the texts) of Indian Buddhist schools and
teachers, and there were those that were the product of native Chinese genius.
INDIAN SCHOOLS IN
CHINA
Various Indian Buddhist
schools, familiar from our discussion of Indian Buddhism, were transplanted to China in
more ore less the same form as they had acquired in India. These included the San-lun
tsung, literally, ‘Three Treatise School’, founded by Kumarajiva and based on
three Madhyamaka treatises by Nagarjuna and Aryadeva, and the Fa-hsiang tsung or Yogacarin
School, founded by Hsuan-tsang in 645 on his return from India with the Trimsika or
‘Treatise in Thirty Verses’ of Vasubandhu. Less significant were the Chu-she
tsung or ‘(Abhidharma-)Kosa School’, founded after, and concerned with, the
exposition of the translation of Paramartha, c.565, of the Abhidharmakosa, and the Lu
tsung or ‘Disciplinary School’, founded by Tao-hsuan in the 7th century and
concerned with the exposition of the monastic Vinaya. The Tantra was also introduced into
China by three Indian monks in the 8th century, though it was not influential, and thought
to be indecent by the Chinese on account of the sexual imagery of the higher tantras.
INDIGENOUS CHINESE
BUDDHIST SCHOOLS
One of the unique problems
facing Chinese Buddhists was the enormous influx of textual material from all periods of
Buddhist development, all claiming to represent the true, ultimate teaching of Sakyamuni
Buddha. Clearly there was an urgent need to assimilate this diverse material, to reconcile
the varying and sometimes apparently contradictory teachings it contained, and identify
the one basic truth taught by the Buddha. Unlike Tibet, China did not directly benefit
from the systematizing activities of the great monastic universities of the Pala period
(c.760 onward), since overland access to northern India was cut in the 7th century,
significantly reducing the contact it was possible for China to have with the Indian
mainstream. Moreover, unlike their Pala counterparts, the Chinese monks worked under the
disadvantage of using translations, rather than texts composed in their native tongue. The
characteristic Chinese response to this challenge tended to take one of two forms. On the
one hand, some teachers founded schools based on the teaching of a single sutra, which was
regarded as proclaiming the ultimate truth, with all the other teachings of the Buddha,
regarded as upaya, graded into a hierarchy beneath this in a schema known as a pan chiao.
This response paralleled that of the mainstream Indian schools, in that, like them, these
Chinese schools grew out of the exposition of particular sutras. On the other hand, and in
contrast to the first approach, there was the teaching of a direct path to Enlightenment
which transcended doctrinal debates and represented a radical rejection of the value of
scholasticism. The former tendency gave rise to the main scholastic schools of Chines
Buddhism, such as the Hua-yen and Tien-tai, whilst the latter is exemplified by Chan, and
perhaps to a lesser extent by Ching-tu.
TIEN-TAI
This school was named
after the abode, Mount Tien-tai, of its founder Chih-i (538-597CE). As the result of his
pioneering pan chiao work, Chih-i came to the conclusion that the Lotus Sutra was the
final, ultimate teaching of the Buddha. All sutras, he said, were propounded by the Buddha
in one of five chronological stages. The first stage was that of the preaching of the
Avatamsaka Sutra, which lasted three weeks, the second was that of the Agamas, which
lasted twelve years, the third was that of the Vaipulya sutras, which lasted eight years,
the fourth, that of the Perfection of Wisdom sutras, lasted twenty-two years, and the
fifth stage was that of the Lotus and Mahaparinirvana Sutras, which were the final
utterances of the Buddha before his parinirvana. The inclusion of the Mahaparinirvana
Sutra with the Lotus Sutra was necessary because it was by definition and by tradition the
discourse delivered immediately before the Buddha’s parinirvana.
Chih-i reasoned that,
since the Lotus Sutra was too sublime for the understanding of some disciples, the Buddha
had also provided the Mahaparinirvana Sutra. The association of these two sutras meant
that something of the latter’s Tathagatagarbha doctrine was assimilated to the
principal teachings of the Lotus Sutra, along with classic Yogacara teachings, including a
version of the trisvabhava doctrine known as the ‘threefold truth’. Particularly
characteristic of the Tien-tai synthesis was the teaching of the interpenetration of all
existent things in all the different realms. This is so because all things partake of a
single organic unity, which is the One Mind - in its defiled state producing the phenomena
of the mundane world, in its pure state Buddhahood. The ultimate conclusion to which this
trend leads was reached by the Ninth Patriarch of the Tien-tai School, Chan-jan
(711-782CE), who taught that since everything was a manifestation of the one absolute
mind, all things, even dust grains an blade of grass, contain the Buddha-nature.
HUA-YEN
The Hua-Yen School has as founder Fa-tsang (643-712CE), who like Chih-i
propounded a pan chiao schema, but in which the final, ultimate teaching of the Buddha was
the Avatamsaka Sutra. The basic teachings of the Hua-yen School are set out in a treatise
composed by Fa-tsang, entitled Essay on the Golden Lion. This title refers to an incident
in which summoned by the empress Tse-tien to explain the teachings of the Avatamsaka
Sutra, Fa-tsang used a statuette of a golden lion to demonstrate the fundamental
principles of the sutra. The gold, he explained, is like the li, or noumenon (also
identified with Buddha-nature), which is the inherently pure, complete, luminous essence
which is mind, while the form of the lion is like the shih, or phenomenon (dharma).
Fa-tsang was himself influenced by a text called the Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana,
and seems to have understood the ultimate teaching to be something very similar to the
Tathagatargarbha doctrine expounded there. The li has no particular form of its own. It is
empty of own-nature (savbhava), though it always takes some form, in accordance with
conditions, and it is these forms that are shih or ‘phenomena’ (dharmas). This
means that all phenomena (dharmas), whilst remaining distinct, are the full and perfect
expression of the noumenon (Buddha-nature). Moreover, all phenomena (dharmas) are
therefore mutually identified and interpenetrated by all other phenomena because, as all
phenomena are noumenon (which is single and indivisible), it means that each phenomenon is
all phenomena, because each phenomenon is a part of something which is indivisible. Since
this is so hard to grasp, Fa-tsang illustrated this principle with the example of a Buddha
image placed between ten inward facing mirrors. The image is reflected in the mirrors, as
are those reflections, and the reflections of the reflections, and so on, revealing an
infinite, mutually interconnected web of identity.
Because Hua-yen teaches
that Buddha-nature is already present in all beings, and furthermore that, through the
interpenetration and identity of all things, Buddhahood is present right from the start of
one’s spiritual career, it also taught sudden Enlightenment. Enlightenment already
exists, and is not caused by cumulative spiritual practice. This does not mean that
spiritual practice was abandoned by followers of Hua-yen, but more that it was seen as a
provisional expedient which helped to uncover what was really there. Because of this
advocacy of sudden Awakening, Hua-yen is sometimes seen as the philosophical underpinning
of Chan.
CHAN
Chan is the Chinese
pronunciation of the Indian word dhyana/jhana, ‘meditative absorption’, and the
Chan School was oriented around the practice of meditation. Whilst its inception is
attributed to an Indian monk called Bodhidharma (c.470-520CE), it traces back from him a
lineage of masters, each Enlightened by a direct, mind to mind transmission derived from
Kahakasyapa, who, according to legend, reaching Awakening when he saw Sakyamuni silently
holding up a flower. Bodhidharma is counted as the First Chinese Patriarch. The Sixth
Patriarch was the famous Hui Neng (638-713CE), who story and teachings are contained in
the Platform Sutra, complied c.820. His status as Patriarch was disputed, and it appears
that Chan divided into several lineage’s or transmissions during the Tang dynasty.
The most important of these transmissions were the Lin-chi, which emphasizes sudden
Awakening and the use of kung-an (Japanese, koan), and the Tsao-tung, which advocated
‘just sitting’ meditation and a gradual path to Enlightenment. The kung-an, or
‘public record’, is an account of an historical dialogue between an Awakened
master and a disciple which led to that disciple’s Awakening. Often these are highly
paradoxical. In practice they are assigned to individual students for contemplation by
their master. If skillfully chosen such contemplation can lead the student to an
experience of Awakening. The Chan schools developed a distinctive monastic rule over and
above the Vinaya, which particularly emphasized work as an integral part of the
monks’ daily life. The emphasis in Chan is on personal Awakening, less stress being
placed on the Bodhisattva ideal. Despite the emphasis on meditative experience unmediated
by intellect and learning, the Perfection of Wisdom sutras are particularly important for
the Chan schools, though the Lankavatara, Surangama, and Vimalakirti-nirdesa Sutras are
also widely used and respected, and a connection is often made between Chan and Hua-yen.
CHING-TU
Whilst the Chan traditions
stressed the personal effort or ‘self power’ required to gain Enlightenment,
Ching-tu stressed its opposite, ‘other power’. The ‘other power’
referred to here is the effort made by the Buddha Amitabha. Ching-tu means ‘the field
which purifies’ and is the Chinese translation of Pure Land. Ching-tu is the school
of Pure Land Buddhism, based upon the Sukhavati-vyuha Sutras. Its roots go back to the
earliest transmission of Buddhism to China in the 2nd century, and the practice of the
worship of Amitabha is by no means restricted to Ching-tu, but its foundation as a school
is attributed to its First Patriarch, Tan-luan (476-542CE), who was converted from Taoism
by the Buddhist monk Bodhiruci in 530. His treatises on the worship of Amitabha form the
core of Ching-tu doctrine. The goal of this school is to gain rebirth in Sukhavati, the
Pure Land of the Buddha Amitabha, so all practices are oriented towards this end. These
include prostration, nien fo, reflection upon Sukhavati and Amitabha, making the
resolution to be reborn in Sukhavati, and the transference to others of merit gained. Nien
fo, the ‘invocation of the Buddha’ involves the repetition of the phrase nan-mo
a mi-to fo, ‘Homage to Amitabha Buddha’. Attention was also concentrated on
Avalokitesvara, as the Bodhisattva emanation of Amitabha, whose name was translated as
Kuan Yin, ‘The Hearer of Sounds’. By a popular confusion with his Tantric
consort, Pandaravasini, who is depicted clad in white, Kuan Yin came to be depicted as a
white clad female figure.
THE FINAL PHASE OF
CHINESE BUDDHISM
The final phase of
development of Chinese Buddhism was initiated by the vigorous persecution under the Taoist
emperor Wu-tsung in 845. Neither the Tien-tai nor the Hua-yen schools survived, probably
because of their dependence on monastic specialists who bore the brunt of the persecution.
Chan and Ching-tu, with their more popular followings, survived and slowly recuperated,
finding their place in an increasingly Confucianized society, in the company of
Confucianism and Taoism, and at the popular level in a fusion of all three. During a short
period of Mongol rule (1215-1368) Tantric Tibetan Buddhism was introduced to the former
Chin (northern) and Sung (southern) courts, where it continued to be patronized (during
the Ching dynasty) after the Mongol influence had ceased, largely for the sake of
political claims towards Tibet and Mongolia. The Ming dynasty (1368-1662), initiated by
Chu Yuan-chang, who linked the new imperial dynasty with the arrival of the next Buddha,
Maitreya, gave some support to Chan and Chung-tu, and their popularization. The early
Ching dynasty (1662-1911) patronized the Tibetan Buddhism of the dGe-lugs Order,
originally introduced during the Mongol period although it remained the cult of the
Imperial court. The Tai-ping or ‘Great Peace’ rebellion of 1851-64 in southern
China, which espoused a form of Protestant Christian theism was virulently anti-Manchu
(the ruling Ching dynasty), and as a result disastrously persecuted all Buddhist
institutions within the territory that it seized, with the consequence that Buddhism had
to be reintroduced from Japan. The late 19th century saw a revival of Chinese Buddhism,
led by Tai-hsu (1899-1947), in reaction to contacts with modern industrial powers and
Christian missions to China.
From an early period,
beginning with Tao-an in 347, the Chinese had catalogued the Buddhist texts that had been
translated into Chinese. Eighteen such catalogues survive to the present day. The Chinese
Tripitaka is enormous, since, where there were several translations of a single sutra, all
would be included - unlike Tibet, where variant translations were standardized and
duplications survive by accident rather than design. The Chinese invented printing in the
8th century, and this was used for the reproduction of sutras. The oldest known printed
book in the world is a copy of the Diamond Sutra or Vajracchedika. The first complete
printed edition of the Tripitaka was produced towards the end of the 9th century. Texts of
different classes are arranged together in the Chinese Tripitaka, the sutras (early and
Mahayana) coming first, but no definitive organizational principle was devised for the
Chinese canon.
Transcribed by Lydia Quang
Nhu; Source: http://www.quangduc.com/