Substantialistic Nondual Prajnaparamita
This is the base of the Chan contemplations of the Awareness of Awareness
世高 An Shigao (An Shih Kao) 148-170
A Parthian prince who had renounced his father's throne to become a Buddhist monk. Gathering a number of foreign monks together, he formed a centre in Lo-yang for the translation of sutras and texts into Chinese.
Since the linguistic idiom and structure as well as the traditional modes of Chinese classical thought were utterly different from Sanskrit and Prakritic derivatives and Indian philosophical dialectic, the problem of translation presented enormous hurdles for the missionaries. An Shih-kao focussed entirely on texts which elucidated dhyana, the path of concentration and meditation. An Shih-kao declared, "Dhyana is the rudder of the ship of the Mahayana, the way leading past the barrier to nirvana."
智禅 Zhichan (Chih Chan) 147-200
A Scythian monk who had a deep knowledge of the prajnaparamita texts. He joined An Shih Kao. Although the fundamental ideas of karma and reincarnation were readily grasped by people who understood Taoist philosophy, they found it difficult to put them together with the Buddhist teaching of non-self. Eventually, a resolution to the difficulty was achieved through the development of the concept of shen-ling.
Shen-ling was seen as an abiding centre of life and intelligence which could not be characterized by any qualities belonging to the realm of phenomenal existence but which passed from incarnation to incarnation. We can imagine that as the antecedent idea for the inherited Buddha nature.
Dharmaraksha 竺法護 Zhu Fahu (Chu Fa Hu) 200-291
Went from India to China in the Period of Disunity and was proficient in 36 languages when he travelled. He became known as known as Tun-huang Bodhisattva and with a group of 12 translators, translated 175 scriptures of 354 fascicles, including:
Avatamsaka Sutra
Agama Sutra
Vaipulya Sutra
Lotus Sutra
Nirvana Sutra
Panchavimshati Sahasrika Prajnaparamita Sutra
Lalitavistara
Ullambana Sutra
佛圖 澄 Fotu Deng (Fo-tu Teng) 232-348
A monk of Central Asian origin who pursued his main interest in Buddhist sacred texts, especially those provided by An Shih-kao. He arrived in Lo-yang a year before its fall to the Hsiung-nu. Seeing that the city would be destroyed and that the political order was about to change, he allied himself with Shih Lo, who eventually became emperor. He was a zealous missionary who gathered a number of exceptional students about himself, including Tao-an. Upon the death of Shih Hu, Fo-t'u-teng foresaw bloody internecine war, and he began making arrangements for his disciples to leave the doomed capital of the dynasty. Fo-T'u-Teng founded the Buddhist order of nuns (317).
Waiting data
A disciple of Tao-an, teaching at Jiankan
止頓道 林 Zhidun Daolin (Chih-tun Tao-lin) 314-366
A monk of south China during the Eastern Chin dynasty. He was primarily a student of Perfection of Insight (prajñā-pāramitā) literature, but interacted with the Neo-Taoist movement all his life.
He used Buddhist ideas to correct what he perceived as mistakes in the Taoist view of the world, and was famous for writing a commentary on a chapter in the Taoist classic Chuang-tzu.
In it, he argued that people were not prisoners of their own destiny, and that happiness was thus not to be found in simply following one's own inclinations, but in perfecting oneself through active cultivation.
He is also said to have made an image of Amitabha and to have vowed to seek rebirth in his own vision of Pure Land and, but he had no discernible impact on the development of Pure Land Buddha Dharma in China.
道安 Dao'an (Tao An) 312-385
He was a native Chinese Buddhist monk of major importance. He inspired his disciples to seek the word of the Buddha in the best translations of texts from India and to interpret them in a critical, almost "scientific," spirit. His family name was Wei, a traditionally Confucian family who lived in what is now southern Hopei Province. He was born in a period of constant bloody warfare and seems to have been orphaned at an early age. He became a Buddhist novice at the age of 11, slowly distinguishing himself by his phenomenal intelligence, although his appearance was extremely unprepossessing. As was the custom, he left his monastery after ordination to wander from place to place seeking instruction from different masters, studying sometime after 335 with Fo-t'u-teng in Yeh (northern Honan).
When Fo-t'u-teng died shortly thereafter, Tao-an began a wandering life at the age of twenty-seven which lasted sixteen years. During this period he drew together a number of his former co-disciples and a large band of converts. Renouncing concern with magic, he began to lay the foundations of a permanent Buddhist presence in China.
Dao-an soon led his own disciples in various monasteries in the North, being joined by his most famous dharma heir, Hui-yüan, on Mt. Heng in northern China.
For Dao-an, prajnaparamita, the perfection of wisdom and the root of reality, consists of three intimately related conceptions: tathata, dharmakaya and bhutakoti.
Tathata is being such-as-it-is, which is such-as-it-is from beginning to end, and nothing can cause it to be otherwise than it is. Buddhas may arise and disappear, but tathata remains as it is in all eternity, everlasting and without support.
Dharmakaya is the One. It is eternally pure. In it being and non-being are together purified and it is never affected by what has names (Tao Te Ching 1). It is the eternal Way.
Bhutakoti, the Absolute, is free from all attachment. It is unmoving like a moored boat (Tao Te Ching 20). . . . It is non-activity and universal activity (Tao Te Ching 37). The myriad dharmas are all active, but this dharma is steeped in abysmal silence, and so it is said to be exempt from being. It is the one dharma which is real.
慧 遠 Huiyuan (Hui Yuan) 337-417
Huiyuan was a Dharma heir of Dao-an of Yen-man, in northern Shansicursus honorum leading to a respectable position in the administrative aristocracy. His brilliance, poise and gracious manner were such that by the time he was an adolescent, he was considered knowledgeable in the Confucian "Six Classics" and an emerging master of the tao chia, the way of Dao, as taught by Lao Tzu and Chuang-Tzu.
Despite his intention of becoming a respected Confucian scholar, he found that goal almost too easily attained, and he was drawn ever more deeply into hsuan hsueh, 'the dark learning' archetypally exemplified in the first chapter of the Tao Te Ching. Hui-yuan joined a number of scholars of his day in doubting the efficacy of li chiao – the quintessence of propriety and the key to the Confucian state in the absence of close attention to noumenal reality.
He discovered, however, that one implication of the dark learning pointed to withdrawal from the world and its frenetic activity, and he found that appealing.
Although the idea of the life of a retired scholar and contemplative deeply affected Huiyuan, he found that the seemingly endless warfare between northern and southern Chinese kingdoms and principalities prevented him from returning directly to his home, Instead of unduly risking his life, he made his way northward to the T'ai-hang mountains, a relatively serene refuge for monks and scholars who had fled Lo-yang and Yeh.
Accompanied by, his younger brother, he planned to travel along the mountain range to a point near Yen-man and from there take the short route to his homeland. Dao-an had built a monastery on Mount Heng in the Dai-hang range, and Hui-yuan followed the route to it, for it offered a haven of safety on a risky journey. Once there, it was natural for him to listen to a discourse of Dao-an, a monk who had adopted a foreign religion and its equally alien practices. The effect on Hui-yuan was stunning and decisive. According to his biographer,
"As soon as Hui-yuan had seen Dao-an, he was filled with reverence, thinking, 'He is truly my Master!' Later, when he heard Tao-an discourse on the prajnaparamita, suddenly awakened to the Truth, he said with a sigh, "Confucianism, Taoism and the others of the Nine Schools of philosophy are no more than chaff." Then, together with his younger brother, he threw away his hairpin and dropped his hair-lace, entrusting his life to Buddha and becoming a disciple."
Hui-yuan's interest in the dark learning had prepared him for the teachings of Tao-an. These pointed simultaneously to the highest noumenal realities and to the fundamental importance of meditation as the method par excellence for the alchemy of realization. Hui-yuan, along with his brother, entered the monastic community when he was twenty-one years old, and he remained the faultless disciple and faithful companion of Tao-an for twenty-five years.
Though poor, he devoted himself to study day and night, so impressing other disciples that they were moved to look after his basic needs. When T'an-yi provided Hui-yuan with candles for his nightly studies, Tao-an remarked, "You really know a man's worth." Within a year Hui-yuan was allowed to discourse on the scriptures, and Tao-an was once heard to say, "Whether the Path is to be transmitted in the Eastern land – that depends on Hui-yuan."
In 364 Dao-an moved his large body of disciples away from Mount Heng to Tortoise Mountain, attracting monks and novices and receiving generous support from patrons. Huiyuan became the head of the community and undertook religious and diplomatic missions for his teacher. Tao-an's concern for accurate translations of the scriptures was matched by his dedication to establishing a proper and enduring monastic community.
The large T'an-ch'i ssu Monastery at Tortoise Mountain afforded him the opportunity to do so, and Hui-yuan was his chief aide in carrying out this aspect of his mission.
He oversaw the daily affairs of the monastic community, looked after the monks and refined the rituals which were practised there.
Because the wars in the region threatened the safety of the place, when it became clear that a community of several hundred monks could neither settle nor find refuge in the midst of this conflict, Tao-an sent different groups to far-flung areas to spread Buddha's doctrines. He himself eventually settled in Hsiang-yang, a strategic point on the road from Lo-yang to Ch'ang-an. There he built a monastery at the foot of (?)
Hui-yuan was constantly at Dao-an's side for sixteen years in Hsiang-yang. During this period Dao-an recited the Fang kuang po-jo ching, a Prajnaparamita scripture, and discoursed on it twice a year. Hui-yuan assimilated every aspect of this intensive study and also pursued a rigorous course in dhyana, meditation. He partook of the famous vow before Maitreya and saw that Dao-an's monastic principles were practised.
They agreed that the ko-i method of translation, in which Buddhist conceptions were expressed in Confucian and Taoist terms, was inadequate and undesirable, but Hui-yuan drew upon his deep knowledge of the Taoist texts to illustrate points of doctrine and practice when discoursing to those for whom the Teachings of Buddha were unfamiliar.
Once when Hui-yuan was giving a discourse on the Prajnaparamita, a listener challenged his views. After a series of polite but rigorous exchanges failed to produce a philosophical reconciliation, Hui-yuan drew an analogy from the writings of Chuang-Tzu, and his opponent immediately understood and accepted Hui-yuan's view. From that time on, Tao-an allowed Hui-yuan to use the Chinese classics to support Buddhist doctrines.
Although ko-i was abandoned, comparative philosophy was accepted as an aid to understanding. Given Tao-an's conviction that Buddhist thought had to be expressed in language strictly suited to the expression of its subtleties, this concession revealed his complete confidence in Hui-yuan's insight and capacity to teach others.
Hui-yuan followed his teacher in fusing the Hinayana emphasis on meditation (dhyana) with the Mahayana emphasis on transcendental wisdom (prajnaparamita). Whilst Tao-an did not distinguish between the two great schools, Hui-yuan did. He taught that the realization of ultimate Reality could not be achieved by intellectual or ethical effort alone, or even by combining them.
Rather, its realization was the result of persistent dhyana, which when pursued rigorously gradually transformed the nature of the intellectual quest and gave deeper meaning to the ethical life. For Hui-yuan, Hinayana exemplified the cardinal method for achieving the end expounded in Mahayana scriptures. He followed the great Hinayana master An Shih-kao, who declared, "Dhyana is the rudder of the ship of the Mahayana, the way leading past the barrier to nirvana," just as he later followed the doctrines of the Mahayana teacher Kumarajiva.