MBI Unit 105/7

                                            New Dimensions 

Since the beginning in Lesson one the course had led precisely to this point. All the words and phrases, all the teachings of Buddha, all the history is but the planted seed, for at this point with the generation of the understanding of Consciousness only the experiences of Buddha become understandable and furthermore when we see their complexity and the difficulty of realization we can see why he considered not teaching the path to the truth and then revised his original thoughts and provided the gradual path with options to advance into the transcendental.

The last two chapters were indeed philosophical in nature but remember that the philosophical theories did not arise as hypothesis, but were used to explain the direct experiences of the primordial state.  We now take another change of direction and see how the new ideas of Maitreya, Asanga, Visubandhu took root in soil far from where they rose and how they were modified by the spiritual milleu in which they then developed.  

 Lesson 7                                      New Dimensions:  China

The fertile soil

Buddhism in china did not simply grow from the Indian seeda. It was in fact a precious hybrid. While Indian sages were advancing China was not a wilderness.

From the roots of the early Dynasties Xia, Shang and Zhou finally arose a host of different ideas and thoughts with an abstract richness which rivalled India. In fact so  many different philosophies were generated during the late Spring and Autumn Dynasties between 256 and 476 and the early Warring States period between 475 to 221 that the era has been given the label “ the Hundred Schools of Thought Period”.

Many of the thinkers were intellectuals who had taken up a wandering life just like their Indian counterparts. They had their own disciples and many, showing the Chinese penchant for practicality were employed as advisers various state rulers generating philosophical ideas on state management, government and warfare.

The ideas that took root with the greatest force  was that of the School of Literati, called in retrospect the Early Confucian school, whose written legacy was embodied within Confucian Classics . Kong Fu Zi  (Master Kong Fu)  who lived between 551-479 B.C., searched not for individual solutions, but an ideal social and political order. Perhaps he may be considered as the first Utopian thinker. His ideal of the perfect human was the “junzi” , the natural and true son of a ruler, which came to be accepted as a synonym for a cultivated or superior man.

But each person had their place in his scheme and each had to behave according to prescribed relationships. His theme was simply "Let the ruler be a ruler and the subject a subject," but both rulers and the people he insisted must be supported by ethical values.These ethical values were clearly to be derived by superior intellect and there was no idea that there existed a true nature which was superior to intellect.

Meng Zi (Mencius 372-289 B.C.), was a Confucian disciple who came cloer to the Budha Dharma in declaring that by nature man was “good” . He expressed a rather new idea and that was that a ruler should not govern without the consent of the people. Despotic and tyrannical rule he proposed resulted in the loss of the "mandate of heaven."  Thus between Confucius and Mencius there arose a base for social growth and development on one hand and spiritual values on the other.

Xun Zi (Master Xun 300-237 B.C. ) another student of Confucious proposed a diametrically opposed view). He declared that that man is innately selfish and evil and that goodness is attainable only through education and conduct. He also opposed the democratic idea and believed in authoritarian, but wise, control, in which the ruler was not requires to convince the people nor use ethical or moral persuasion.

The School of Law then developed through the work of Han Fei Zi (d. 233 B.C.) and Li Si (d. 208 B.C.), who supported completely the idea that man was innately  selfish and that this incorrigible state was his nature. Law then was the only thing which kept the “beast” at bay.

Mark this difference for later we shall see in the discussion of Alaya consciosness such an idea and its antithesis also arose.

 The Legalists exalted the state above the people and yet did not lay the claim that the state embodied the people.  Legalism became the philosophic basis for the imperial form of government. These ideas dominated life in the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 220), even while Taoism developed during the Zhou period under the sage Lao Zi (Old Master). He as said to predate Confucius (369-286 B.C.). Taoism took another approach entirely and emphasized the individual nature not the state.

It held then, and still holds,  that the human goal of life is to find one's own personal adjustment to the rhythm of the natural world, to follow the Way (Tao) of the universe.

In a strange way Taoism actually complimented Confusionism, for many ordered their daily lives, but in leasure and retirement sought the harmony and balance of the natural way. This clear compromise between the social Identity and the natural is in no way coincident with Buddha dharma ideas.

The school of yin-yang and the five elements also arose in the Warring States Period. The theories of this school attempted to explain the universe in terms of basic forces in nature, the complementary agents of yin (dark, cold, female, negative) and yang (light, hot, male, positive) and the five elements (water, fire, wood, metal, and earth). In later periods these theories came to have importance both in philosophy and in popular belief.

The Bodhisattva idea was not without its counterpart in China also, for Mo Zi (Master Mo 470-391 B.C.) presented the idea that  "all men are equal before Heaven" and that mankind should follow heaven by practicing universal love. Advocating that all action must be utilitarian, Mo Zi condemned the Confucian emphasis on ritual and music. He regarded warfare as wasteful and advocated pacificism. Mo Zi also believed that unity of thought and action were necessary to achieve social goals. He maintained that the people should obey their leaders and that the leaders should follow the will of heaven.

and Zhuang Zi (

period

BUDDHISM

The Seeds (25-317 CE)

This was the heritage which Buddhists met when as immigrants from India,  Persia and Central Asia they slowly introduced Buddhism into China. This occurred during the period from the dawn of the later Han dynasty (25-220 CE), through the Three Kindgoms Period (220-265 CE)  to the fall of the Western Chin dynasty (265-317 CE)

Buddhist monks and merchants with enduring Buddhist practice and ideas arrived in China, establishing Buddhist communities and an edict by Emperor Ming to Liu Ying, king of Qu, in the year ad 65 mentions the necessity of giving favourable treatment to Buddhist monks and laymen; so we must conclude  Buddhism had by that time clearly entered china with at least limited success. King Liu Ying  was a follower of Huang–Lao Taoism but was sufficiently flexible in his beliefs to make sacrifices to Buddha as well.

By the second century translators like An Shih-kao (d. 160 BC) began translating Indian Buddhist texts using mostly Taoist terminology. It was therefore ignored at first as an insignificant new Taoist cult as it was explained in terms of Taoism. It drew adepts who were attracted to its Indian character and it was viewed as a part of the native Chinese Huang–Lao Taoist tradition, a form of Taoism rooted in texts and practices attributed to Huangdi (the Yellow Emperor) and the great Lao tzu. Those that did not see this synthesis at least at this time considered Buddha Dharma a companion foreign thesis.

Why did Buddhism find its foothold in China?. It was most likely due to the Chinese  interest in Buddhist meditation techniques, including chanting and visualizations, more than philosophical considerations. techniques. Taoism had held out the promise that one could become a sage or perfected person, or even an immortal, but the texts and Masters never explained how to accomplish this transformation. In comparison with Taoist meditation texts which were rare and vague in their presentations Buddhist texts seemed straightforward and provided clear procedures and ideas. They therefore adopted texts and meditation methods as supplements to the Taoist systems.

Gradual increasing popularity of this ‘foreign’ incursion from the ‘barbarous’ Western Countries, was viewed as an exotic Indian challenge and dangerous anarchical movement which threatened both the social and ethical civil order of China..

After the fall to the Huns the Chinese withdrew South to Nanking and established the Eastern Chin dynasty, which plagued by weak governments. The conquered North was occupied and conflict and strife divided the region. The gap between North and South was not soon breached and separate 'North and South Dynasties' arose in the period between 317 and 581..

In the South there arose an academic interest in Buddhism by the aristocracy and upper classes who were immersed in a New Taoist rebirth.  In the North the Buddhist advance was adopted and generated by many of the occupying dynasties and the benevolent eye  of the state bought it respect and popularity and through the Southern Sanghas the embrio of Chinese Buddhist theology germinated..

Meanwhile in 401 CE Kumarajiva, a Mahāyāna Buddhist from Kucha in Central Asia, arrived in Changan, the Chinese capital, and established under patronage of the ruler the first Imperial translation bureau in the North. He began by translating numerous important works with the help of hundreds of skilled assistants who not only translated but adopted Buddhist ideas. Seng Chao (384-414) and Tao Sheng (360-434) were two of his most exhemplary students who advanced Buddhist thought.. Works, such as the Lotus Sutra, Vimalakīrti Sutra and Diamond Sutra, quickly became classics.

His translations of Madhyamaka-kārikās, the Twelve Gate Treatise and  One Hundred Verse Treatise introduced the emptiness philosophy of Nāgārjuna’s Madhyamaka thought, which came to be called the Three Treatise School (Sanlun) after these three Madhyamaka texts.

This set the stage for the unification of Northern and Southern Budhhist traditions at the end of the Sui Dynasty (518-618) when  North and South were finally politically joined.

The golden age of Chinese Buddhism existed from the age of the Three Kingdoms including  a large part of the new  Tang dynasty (618-907), when a series of dedicated Chinese Buddhist masters emerged establishing the major Chinese schools.

At the end of this period in about 845 persecution of Buddhism was begun by the Taoist emperor Wu-Tsung and continued throughout the Five Dynasties period (907-960).

What is especially interesting is the reason for this persecution. Buddha Dharma had become so popular that the state saw that too many of the population wanted to be BUDDHIST MONKS. Such popularity threatened the state and the social system which was regimented and ordered.

Ch'an and Ching t'u survived and slowly emerged as the two major schools of Chinese Buddhism and shared ideas and monasteries to such an extent that gradually Pure Land was absorbed by Chan.

                                         Dharmayana Schools

1.      Abhidharma-kosa School.

Introduced to China from India by Shuan-chuang. His disciples were Yu-kuang and Fa-pau

2.      Chen-se or Satysiddhi or School.

Translated into Chinese by Kumarajiva (5th century).

 TRANFORMED INDIAN MAHAYANA SCHOOLS

              3. Lu School ( Vinaya School of discipline).

             Tao-shuan promoted the Vinaya and founded this school in the T'ang Dynasty.

4.       San-lun School (Three Sastra School)

            Jizang (Chi-tsang) revived  the Sanlun school in China, It disappeared as    an independent school immediatly after Jizang’s death.

5. Ch'u-en School or Fa-siang School ( Dharmalaksana School)

 Shuan-chuang established this school Wuei -chi, Hui-chau, and Chih-chou succeeded him

THE FOUR SINITIC SCHOOLS

These four schools share concepts of Buddha-nature, consciousness, vacuity,  tathāgata-garbha, expedient means (upāya) and awakening.

6. Ch'an School (Dhyana School)

Bodhidharma in the Liang Dynasty established the school  in about the year 480 C.E. but it became firmly established with the 6th Patriarch Hui-neng (638-713)

Shenhui (Shen-hui) emerged after the death of claiming Hui-neng's  lineage and established the Southern school of the Chan in opposition to                   who started a Northern Buddism which was depreciated and ridiculed by Shen-hui

7. Hua-yen School  (The Avatamsaka or Garland School which absorbed the Dasab-humika School and the Samparigraha-sastra school).

 Zhiyan (Chih-yen) laid down the groundwork for the Huayen school.

 Founded by Tu-shun in the T'ang Dynasty It was expanded by Fa-tsang (643-712) 

             8. Ching-t'u or Sukhavati School (Pure-land School) The school was established by Hui Yuan. (334-416) in 402 C.E. , but it was Shandao (Shan-tao) who popularized the school

             9. T'ien-t'ai or Fa-hua School, (The Lotus School absorbed the Nirvana school).

            It was founded by Chih -che (Zhi Yi  538-597 C.E.)

             10. Chen-yien School (The esoteric  Mantra School

             Introduced during the T'ang Dynasty by Subhakarasirnha, Vajramati and Amogha.

Xuanzang (Hsuan-tsang) would return from his pilgramage to India and organize the last, and greatest, of the Chinese translation bureaus. His disciple Kuiji (Kuei-chi) then  establish a new Yogacaran sect, the Fa-xiang school

EARLY CHINESE CONCEPTS REGARDING  PRAJNAPARAMITA

Along with meditation manuals, the earliest Buddhist texts to become popular in China were Āvadana materials (legends of the Buddha and Buddhist heroes) and the Perfection of Wisdom Scriptures (Prajñāpāramitā Sutras). About half a dozen schools formed around varying interpretations of the Perfection of Wisdom Scriptures, mixing ideas found in these and other Buddhist texts with concepts prominent among Chinese intelligentsia.

 One Prajñā school, called the Original Nothingness school (Benwu), adopted a neo-Taoist cosmology: everything has emerged from a primordial, original emptiness, and everything returns to that void. While this ts not an adequate presentation of the Emptiness projected by the Prajnaparamita in terms of the illusion of perception it may have validity in terms of the basic energy involved in the life force and the dissolution of Karmic formations.

Another school called the Mind Empty school (Xinwu), equated the primordial emptiness with the nature of mind (see Zhi Dun). Each of the Prajñāschools managed either to promote a metaphysical substantialized emptiness which they opposed to form, or smuggle an eternal self or spirit into their formulations, despite Buddhism’s emphatic rejection of the notion of permanent selfhood.

Dao’an (ad 312–85) criticized the Prajñā schools, challenging their faithfulness to authentic Buddhist positions as well as the translation methodologies behind the texts they and other Chinese Buddhists had come to rely on. In particular, he criticized the practice of ‘matching the meanings’ (geyi), by which translators seeking Chinese equivalents for Indian Buddhist technical terms and concepts borrowed heavily from Daoist literature. This ‘matching of meanings’ was a mixed blessing. Packaging Buddhist ideas in familiar terms made them amenable and understandable, but the ‘matches’ were often less than perfect, distorting or misrepresenting Buddhism. For instance, early translators chose a well-known Daoist and Confucian term, wuwei (non-deliberative activity), to translate nirvāna. Arguably, wuwei and nirvāna represent the teloi of Daoism and Buddhism, respectively, but it is not obvious that they denote the same telos).

THE ISSUE OF THE INCORRIGIBLE BEING (THE ICCHANTIKA)

Second, in 418 Fa-xian (the first Chinese monk successfully to return to China with scriptures from pilgrimage to India) and Buddhabhadra produced a partial translation of the Mahāyāna Nirvāna Sutra. One of the topics it discusses is the icchantika, incorrigible beings lacking the requisites for achieving enlightenment. Daosheng (c.360–434), a disciple of Huiyuan, convinced that all beings, including icchantikas, must possess Buddha-nature and hence are capable of enlightenment, insisted that the Nirvāṇa Sutra be understood in that light. Since that violated the obvious meaning of the text, Daosheng was unanimously rebuked, whereupon he left the capital in disgrace. In ad 421, a new translation by Dharmakṣema of the Nirvāṇa Sutra based on a Central Asian original appeared containing sections absent from the previous version. The twenty-third chapter of Dharmakṣema’s version contained passages declaring that Buddha-nature was indeed universal, and that even icchantikas possessed it and could thus reach the goal. Daosheng’s detractors in the capital were humbled, suddenly impressed at his prescience. The lesson was never forgotten, so that two centuries later, when Xuan Zang (600–64) translated Indian texts that once again declared that icchantikas lacked the requisite qualities to attain enlightenment, his school was attacked from all quarters as promoting a less than ‘Mahāyānic’ doctrine. However, it should be noted that there is no clear precedent or term in Indian Buddhism for ‘Buddha-nature’; the notion probably either arose in China through a certain degree of license taken by translators when rendering terms like buddhatva (‘Buddhahood’, an accomplishment, not a primordial ontological ground), or it developed from nascent forms of the theory possibly constructed in Central Asia. However, from this moment on, Buddha-nature become one of the foundational tenets of virtually all forms of East Asian Buddhism.

GREAT MIRROR COGNITION  OR PURE MIND

The two positions are quite opposed, though they bear little import on meditations.

 One position declares that  ālaya-vijñāna being defiled as consciousness was itself defiled and needed to be eliminated in order to reach enlightenment. Thus consciousness needed to be eliminated and replaced with Great mirror Cognition.

Their opponents declared that the  alaya-vijnana was essencially pure and that impurities were laid upon it. Thus the task was to eliminate th impurities.

According to classical Yogācāra texts, the mind (that is, ālaya-vijñāna and the mental events associated with it) is the problem, and enlightenment results from bringing this consciousness to an end, replacing it with the Great Mirror Cognition (ādarśa-jñāna); instead of discriminating consciousness, one has direct immediate cognition of things just as they are, as impartially and comprehensively as a mirror. This type of enlightenment occurs during the eighth stage according to the Dilun and other texts.

The term rulaizang derives from rulai a Chinese epithet of the Buddha, meaning either ‘thus come’ or ‘thus gone’.  Tathagatagharbha was translated not as as the embrio which is its essential meaning, but as  zang, which means  ‘repository’. In its earliest appearances in Buddhist texts, tathāgatagarbha (repository of buddhahood) signified the inherent capacity of humans (and sometimes other sentient beings) to achieve buddhahood.

Over time the concept expanded and came to signify the original pristine pure ontological Buddha-ness intrinsic in all things, a pure nature that is obscured or covered over by defilements (Sanskrit, kleśa; Chinese fannao), that is, mental, cognitive, psychological, moral and emotional obstructions. It was treated as a synonym for Buddha-nature, though Buddha-nature dynamically understood as engaged in a struggle against defilements and impurities.

 In Chinese Buddhism especially, the soteriological goal consisted in a return to or recovering of that original nature by overcoming or eliminating the defilements.

A dispute at the start of the sixth century presaged a conflict that would take the Chinese Buddhists more than two centuries to settle. Two Indian monks collaborated on a translation of Vasubandhu’s Daśabhūmikasūutra śāstra (Treatise on the Ten Stages Sutra; in Chinese, Shidijing lun, or Dilun for short). The Dilun described the ten stages through which a bodhisattva proceeded on the way to nirvāna, and Vasubandhu’s exposition of it highlighted aspects most in accord with the tenets of the Yogācāra school.

 While translating, an irreconcilable difference of interpretation broke out between the two translators, Bodhiruci and Ratnamati. Bodhiruci’s reading followed a relatively orthodox Yogācāra line, while Ratnamati’s interpretation leaned heavily toward a Buddhist ideology only beginning to receive attention in China, tathāgatagarbha thought. Bodhiruci went on to translate roughly forty additional texts, and was later embraced by both the Huayan and Pure Land traditions as one of their early influences (see §§8, 10). Ratnamati later collaborated with several other translators on a number of other texts. Both sides attempted to ground their positions on interpretations of key texts, especially the Dilun. The Yogācāra versus Yogācāra-tathāgatagarbha conflict became one of the critical debates amongst sixth and seventh century Chinese Buddhists.

Yogācāra focused on the mind and distinguished eight types of consciousness: five sensory consciousnesses; an empirical organizer of sensory data (mano-vijñāna); a self-absorbed, appropriative consciousness (manas); and the eighth, a warehouse consciousness (ālaya-vijñāna) that retained the karmic impressions of past experiences and coloured new experiences on the basis of that previous conditioning. The eighth consciousness was also the fundamental consciousness. Each individual is constituted by the karmic stream of one’s own ālaya-vijñāna, that is, one’s karmic conditioning. Since, like a stream, the ālaya-vijñāna is reconfigured each moment in response to constantly changing conditions, it is not a permanent self, although, being nothing more than a sequential chain of causes and effects, it provides sufficient stability for an individual to maintain a sense of continuity.

In their classical formulations the ālaya-vijñāna and tathāgatagarbha were distinct items differing from each other in important ways – for instance, enlightenment entailed bringing the ālaya-vijñāna to an end, while it meant actualizing the tathāgatagarbha; the ālaya-vijñāna functioned as the karmic mechanism par excellence, while tathāgatagarbha was considered the antipode to all karmic defilements. Nonetheless some Buddhist texts, such as the Lankāvatāra Sūtra, conflated the two. Those identifying the two argued that the ālaya-vijñāna, like tathāgatagarbha, was pure and its purity became permanently established after enlightenment. Those opposing the conflation countered that the ālaya-vijñāna was itself defiled and needed to be eliminated in order to reach enlightenment. For the conflators, tathāgatagarbha was identified with Buddha-nature and with mind (xin) (see Xin). Mind was considered pure, eternal, and the ontological ground of reality (Dharma-dhātu), while defiled thought-instants (nian) that engaged in delusionary false discriminations had to be eliminated. Once nian were eliminated, the true, pure nature of the mind would brilliantly shine forth, like the sun coming out from behind the clouds.

A third view was added when Paramārtha, another Indian translator with his own unique interpretation of Yogācāra, arrived in the middle of the sixth century. For his followers the most important of his translations was the She dasheng lun (Sanskrit title, Mahāyānasaṃgraha), or Shelun, a quasi-systematic exposition of Yogācāra theory by one its founders, Asaṅga. In some of his translations he added a ninth consciousness beyond the usual eight, a ‘pure consciousness’ that would pervade unhindered once the defiled ālaya-vijñāna was destroyed. His translations, which sometimes took liberties with the Sanskrit originals, offered a more sophisticated version of the conflation theory.

ONE MIND: TWO ASPECTS

These debates and their ramifications dominated Chinese Buddhist thought in the sixth century. On one side was a substantialistic nondual metaphysic whose eternalistic ground was variously called Buddha-nature, mind, tathāgatagarbha, Dharma-dhātu and suchness (tathatā; in Chinese, rulai). On the other side was an anti-substantialist critique that eschewed any form of metaphysical reification, emphasizing emptiness as the absence of permanent selfhood or independent essence in anything. To the anti-substantialists the tathāgatagarbha position sounded dangerously close to the notion of eternalistic, reified selfhood that Buddha had rejected. Mahāyāna texts had declared that there were four conceptual perversions or reversals behind human delusion: (1) seeing a self in what lacks self; (2) seeing permanence in the impermanent; (3) seeing happiness in what is suffering; and (4) seeing purity in the impure. Yet starting with the earliest tathāgatagarbha texts – such as The Lion’s Roar of Queen Śrīmāla – tathāgatagarbha was brazenly defined as ‘self, eternal, happiness and pure’. In the face of these and other disparities, the Chinese asked how, if there is only one dharma (teaching), there can be such incommensurate variety.

The Awakening of Faith in Mahāyāna, a Chinese composition purporting to be a translation by Parāmartha of an Indian text, became an instant classic by offering a masterly synthesis of Buddhist teachings that seemed to resolve many of the disparities (see Awakening of Faith in Mahāyāna). Its central tenet is that there is one Mind that has two aspects. One aspect is suchness and the other is saṃsāra, the cycle of birth and death, arising and ceasing. Suchness also has two aspects, emptiness and non-empty. Emptiness in this text means suchness is beyond predication, neither one nor many, neither the same nor different. Non-empty means it is endowed with all the marvellous qualities and merits of a Buddha, ‘as numerous as the sands along the banks of the Ganges’. The link between suchness and the realm of arising and ceasing is tathāgatagarbha in association with the ālaya-vijñāna. Ignorance, enlightenment and pursuit of the Path are all on the arising and ceasing side.

In a pivotal passage that would become foundational for most forms of Chinese, Korean and Japanese Buddhism, the Awakening of Faith in Mahāyāna states that on the basis of Original Enlightenment there is non-enlightenment; on the basis of non-enlightenment there is initial enlightenment; and on the basis of initial enlightenment there is final enlightenment, which is the full realization of original enlightenment. Beyond the problem of theodicy that it raises (the text does not offer a clear explanation for why or how non-enlightenment arises), several issues emerge. First, suddenly there is no longer simply one enlightenment that is achieved at the culmination of a spiritual path, but instead several enlightenments, one of which (original enlightenment) precedes even entering the path. What the text calls initial enlightenment had been termed bodhicitta or cittotpāda (arousing the aspiration for enlightenment) in previous Buddhist literature. Arousing this aspiration is what the title Awakening of Faith in Mahāyāna signifies. Now, rather than marking a singular, ultimate achievement, the term ‘enlightenment’ referred to several things: an atemporal originary ground upon which everything else plays out, including non-enlightenment; one’s initial resolve or insight that leads one to begin pursuing the path; the final achievement at the end of the path, an achievement that is not only anticlimactic, but is little more than an unravelling of the intersection of original and initial enlightenment. This reinforced the conviction of Chinese Buddhists that the conflationist approach, with its emphasis on Buddha-nature or mind as ground, was the correct view.

One of the first to recognize the importance of the Awakening of Faith in Mahāyāna was a Korean monk named Wônhyo. He wrote a commentary on the text that reached China, where it influenced Fazang, a foundational thinker of the Huayan school, who used its ideas as a major cornerstone for his thinking. Since the Dilun, originally an independent text, had eventually been incorporated into the Huayan Sutra as one of its chapters, and that scripture became the basic text of the Huayan school, many of the issues that had emerged from the debates on the Dilun were absorbed and reconfigured by the Huayan thinkers. In a sense, it was ultimately Ratnamati’s interpretation that prevailed after two centuries of debate. The Awakening of Faith in Mahāyāna became pivotal for Chinese Buddhism, is still one of the foundations of Korean Buddhism and, though it has been eclipsed in Japan by other texts such as the Lotus Sutra, many of its ideas, such as the idea of original enlightenment (hongaku), still exert a profound influence. This text set the stage for the development of distinctively East Asian forms of Buddhism. 12

EMPTINESS

Before Buddhism entered China Daoists had already embraced a notion of emptiness which it took Buddhists several centuries to realize was significantly different from their own (see Daoist philosophy). Laozi had contrasted the empty or open (xu) with the solid. What made a wheel functional was its empty hub; what made a vessel or room functional was its open space. Hence emptiness (or openness) is not worthless but rather the key to functionality and usefulness (see Daodejing). Later Daoists contrasted existents (you) with nonexistence (wu), and claimed that all existence emerges from nonexistence and ultimately returns to nonexistence (see You–wu). Some Chinese metaphysicians, such as Wang Bi, wrote about primordial nonexistence (yuan wu, benwu) as the metaphysical source, destination and substratum for all existent things. Thus form and emptiness were opposed, contrasting poles, and emptiness had primacy.

Some early Chinese Buddhists interpreted Buddhist emptiness in the same fashion, especially in the Prajñāschools. Eventually Buddhists realized, as the Heart Sutra says, that form and emptiness are not opposed to each other, but that ‘form itself is emptiness, emptiness itself is form, form is not different from emptiness, emptiness is not different from form.’ In other words, Buddhist ‘emptiness’ did not mean ‘open’ or ‘nonexistence’. Emptiness (śūnyatā) signified the absence of an eternal, independent, self-causing, invariant, essential self-nature (svabhāva) or selfhood (ātman) in any thing or person. Whatever existed did so by virtue of a perpetually changing web of causes and conditions that themselves were products of other causes and conditions. Stated simplistically, emptiness does not mean that a table is unreal or nonexistent, or that its solid texture or colour are unreal; it does mean that the concept of tableness is unreal, and that the abstractions ‘solidity’ and ‘colour’ are unreal apart from the discrete and particular sensations one has at specific moments due to specific causes and conditions. Buddhist emptiness is not a primal void, but the absence of self-essence (see Buddhist concept of emptiness). To avoid being confused with Daoist concepts of emptiness, the Buddhists eventually chose a new term, kong, to render their ‘emptiness’.

Emptiness is neither the origin nor terminus for forms; forms themselves at any moment are emptiness. Since everything is causally connected with everything else, and there are no independent identities beyond or behind such causes and conditions, everything, according to Huayan, mutually interpenetrates and conditions everything else. Every thing defines and is defined by every other thing.

THE TEN SCHOOLS

1. Abhidharma-kosa School: The foundation text was the Abhidharma-kosa-sastra by Vasubandhu. The Sastra was translated and introduced to China from India by Shuan-chuang. His disciples Yu-kuang and Fa-pau who wrote these and other commentaries on the Sastra propagated this school which became popular  in China during the T'ang Dynasty (5th and 6th Century)

 The Sastra classifies all phenomena of the cosmos under seventy-five categories. A student o this school learns the way of liberating oneself from the passions and attains subsequent annihilation of suffering. He bases his learning on the Four Noble Truths, viz, 1. Suffering. 2. Cause of suffering. 3. Cessation of Suffering. 4. The Noble Eightfold Path. This school teaches Theravadin Buddhism.

2. Satysiddhi School: Based upon the Satyasiddhi Sastra by Harivarman (4th century A.D.) was translated into Chinese by Kumarajiva (5th century). This School flourished during the six -Dynasty and T'ang Dynasty (5th & 6th century). It taught one to look upon the cosmos in realms: the worldly realm and the supreme realm. A student is to meditate on the unreality of self and the unreality of things in order to enter Nirvana.

3. Vinaya School: Based on the monastic rules laid down by the Buddha. The rules had five divisions. Theravada and Mahayana have separate sets of monastic rules. These rules are the basic moral code of the Buddha. Tao-shuan promoted the Four-division Vinaya and founded this school in the T'ang Dynasty. He wrote several treatises and volumes of commentaries on the Vinaya. The essence of this school is to do good and cease to do evil. One must follow strictly the code of ethics so as to free oneself from the ocean of misery and prepare oneself for Buddhahood. After Master Ling-chi of Sung Dynasty and Master Yuan -chau of Yuan Dynasty, this school was dormant in China for nearly seven hundred years until the revival of this school by the late Master Hong-it

4.  San Lun School (Three Sastra School): Based its tenets on the Madhyamika Sastra, Nagarjuna (second century) and the Dvadasanikaya Sastra believed to have also been written by Nagarjuna and the Sata Sastra attributed to  Aryadeva. These three Sastras were translated by Kurnarajiva (5th century).

 In a series of famous letters exchanged with a disciple of Dao’an, Huiyuan (344–416), who had mastered most of the Buddhist theory and practice known in China up to that time, Kumārajīva attacked the shortcomings of the current Chinese Buddhist theories and argued persuasively for the preeminence of Madhyamaka in matters of both theory and practice.

 His leading disciple, Seng Zhao (384–414), further popularized Madhyamaka thought by packaging it in an exquisite adoption of the literary style of Laozi and Zhuangzi, both of whom were extremely popular amongst literate at that time.

 Sanlun thought continued to spread through the fifth through seventh centuries, greatly influencing other Buddhist schools. After Jizang (549–623), who attempted to synthesize Madhyamakan emptiness with the Buddha-nature and tathāgatagarbha thought gaining prominence at his time, the Sanlun school declined, its most important ideas being absorbed by other schools.

It emphasized the notion of shunyata (emptiness) and wu (nonbeing). So rigorous was the teaching that it declared that the elements constituting perceived objects, when examined, are really no more than mental phenonena and have no true existence.

 It teaches one to dispose of the Eight Misleading Ideas (birth, death, end, permanence, identity, difference, coming, and going) and establish correct thinking. One will discover the truth between the relative sense and the absolute sense, for the truth lies between them. Rev. Yin -sun propagates this school, and has published a modern commentary on the Madhyamika.

7. Dharmalaksana School (Yogacara): The foundation works are the Sandhi-nirmocana Sutra , Abhidharma Sutra, Yogacaryabhumi Sastra , and the Vijnaptimatrasiddhi Sastra. This school aims at studying the nature in relation to the phenomenal expression of the cosmic existence. It was advocated by Maitreya and succeeded by Asanga, Vasubandhu, Dharmaplala Silabhadre in India. Shuan -chuang studied this school from Silabhadre at Nalanda Emperor. There were several thousand people including government officials engaged in translating the Buddhist Scriptures into Chinese and thus Shuan-chuang was helped to established this school in China. Wuei -chi, Hui-chau, and Chih-chou succeeded him.

 It maintains that the three planes of existence are merely the manifestation of the conscious mind and that all phenomena are the reflection of the sub -conscious mind. This mind-evolution teaching is a profound philosophy and it is radical in the modern Buddhistic thoughts among the Chinese.

 In order to grasp the gist, one has to spend a considerable amount of time in solid research. The late Ven. Me-an, Tau-kie, Yuen-ying and Hui-ch'uang, Yan-wen-san of Fu-chien Province especially the Ven. Vai-she were the modern exponents of this school. There are many notable successors such as the Ven. Ch'ang -sing, Ou-ysngu of Nanking and Han-ching-ching of Peking.

6. The Chan School:

480 China: Indian Master Bodhidharma travels as a Buddhist missionary to China, as follower of the Lanka School he is considered the forefather of Ch'an and Zen.

• Ch'an Its name is derived from the Sanskrit term dhyana (meditation), this lineage emphasises meditation as the only means to a spiritual awakening beyond words or thought, dispensing almost entirely with the teachings and practices of traditional Buddhism. Ch'an is thought to have been brought to China by the enigmatic South Indian monk Bodhidharma

 Bodhidharma in the Liang Dynasty established it in China (in about the year 500 C.E.

). This school does not rely on the use of letters. It points directly to the mind and sees into one's own nature. This special transmission outside the scripture was succeeded by Hui-k'o, Shen-ch'an, Tao-sin, Hong-jen, and Hui-neng, the 6th Patriarch. After the 6th Patriarch this school expanded into five and later seven schools.

9 The Chinese Buddhist Schools: Chan

Better known in the West by its Japanese pronunciation, Zen, Chan emerged as a reaction against the increasing scholastic complexities of the Tiantai and Huayan schools and their voluminous, hairsplitting literature, which, some Chan practitioners believed, could be more of an obstacle than an aid to enlightenment. The Pāli term for meditative absorption, jhāna (Sanskrit, dhyāna), was transliterated into Chinese as Channa, and then shortened to Chan. Until the early Tang Dynasty, chanshi (Chan master) meant a monk adept at meditation, though it did not specify what sorts of meditation he was practising. Some monks were called dharma masters (fashi), some were called scriptural masters (zangshi), some were called disciplinary masters (lushi) and some were meditation masters. These titles could be applied to a monk (or nun) of any school, since they denoted one’s methodological focus rather than one’s ideological leanings.

Chan begins to denote a specific doctrinal and meditative ideology around the time of Huineng (638–713). Although Chan tradition describes a transmission by five patriarchs culminating in Huineng as the sixth patriarch, as noted above, that transmission is more fiction than fact. Huineng’s followers established the Southern School of Chan, which unleashed a polemical tirade against the Northern School. Since the Northern School disappeared about a thousand years ago, our only source of information on these schools was the prejudiced accounts of the Southern School, until the discovery at Dunhuang early this century of Northern School documents. We now know that many different versions of lineage histories were circulated, and, more importantly, that the positions attributed to the Northerners by their Southern rivals were grossly inaccurate and unfair. In fact, the Northern School had initially been the more successful of the two, but its success led to its ultimate ruin, since its growing dependence on Imperial patronage made it a vulnerable target during times of Imperial persecution of Buddhism. The Southern School, because it had taken root in remote areas less affected by actions of the Central government, survived the persecutions relatively intact.

Huineng is depicted in the Platform Sutra (authored by his leading follower and promoter, Shenhui) as an illiterate seller of firewood who experiences sudden enlightenment while overhearing someone reciting the Diamond Sutra. He joins a monastery where, without any official training in scriptures or meditation, he demonstrates that his enlightenment is more profound than all the monks who had been practising for years. Hence sudden enlightenment is one of the main tenets of the Platform Sutra (and subsequently for all forms of Chan). Another is ‘direct pointing at mind’, which, similar to the Tiantai approach, means that what is important is to observe one’s own mind, to recognize that the nature of one’s mind is Buddha-nature itself (see Platform Sutra).

While some Buddhists had argued that the goal was wisdom, and meditation was merely a means to that goal, Huineng argued for the inseparability of meditation and wisdom. Using an analytic device probably introduced by the so-called neo-Daoist Wang Bi (226–49), the tiyong model (see Ti and yong), Huineng claimed that meditation is the essence (ti) of wisdom, and wisdom is the function (yong) of meditation. Wisdom does not produce meditation, nor does meditation produce wisdom; nor are meditation and wisdom different from each other. He drew an analogy to a lamp: the lamp is the ti, while its light is the yong. Wherever there is a (lit) lamp, there is light; wherever there is lamplight, there is a lamp. Lamp and light are different in name but identical in substance (ti), hence nondual.

Huineng’s style of Chan was still sober, calm, rational, and rooted in commonly accepted Buddhist tenets. New and more radical elements were soon incorporated into Chan, some iconoclastically renouncing meditation and practice as well as scholasticism, and others trying earnestly to work out a rational system by which Chan could be syncretized with the other schools. Zongmi (780–841) considered a patriarch of both the Chan and Huayan schools, attempted just such a synthesis, but his sober approach was soon overshadowed in China by more abrupt, startling forms of Chan.

Of the ‘Five Houses of Chan’, only the Linji school survives today in China, Taiwan and Korea. Based on the teachings of Linji (d. 867), this school possibly provided Buddhism with its most ‘Chinese’ voice. Chan literature of the Linji and related schools were among the first texts ever written in vernacular as opposed to classical Chinese. Daoist elements also began to appear prominently. Zhuangzi’s ‘true man’ becomes Linji’s ‘true man of no rank’ who is going in and out of each person’s face this very moment, and is always right here before one. The anecdotal humour associated with Zhuangzi’s stories and the irreverent exploits of the Bamboo Sages of the Six Dynasties period clearly infused the style of Chan anecdotes. Rather than indulge in elaborate, complicated theoretical abstractions, Chan focused on experience as lived, in terms familiar to anyone immersed in Chinese culture (though often exotic to Western students, which has led to the common misconception that Chan is nonsensical or obscurantist).

Teaching techniques began to overshadow doctrinal content. At the heart of Chan training are the exchanges between teacher and student. Records, called gongan, were compiled of classic encounters, and even these eventually became part of the teaching techniques, as they were presented to students as riddles to concentrate on during meditation. To disrupt the sort of idle or pernicious speculation that could prove a hindrance to enlightenment, abrupt and shocking techniques were employed, from radical statements such as, ‘If you meet Buddha on the road, kill him!’, to exchanges punctuated by blows and shouts (all the more startling in the subdued monastic atmosphere in which they would unexpectedly occur). Linji’s methods were designed to make students confront and overcome their mental and emotional habits and crutches, so as to become truly free and independent. Even dependency on Buddhism could be such a crutch. Linji summarized his teaching with the phrase: ‘Don’t be deceived.’

Ven. Shu -yun, the one hundred and twenty years old monk who passed away in 1959, could stay in meditation for ten to twenty days at one stretch. The Ven. Lai-kuo of Kau-wen Temple in Yang-chou, Chiang-su Province has attained identical level of achievement.

. Founding of Ch'an school by 6th Patriarch Hui-neng (638-713

1.       713 onwards China: sub-division in Ch'an schools; most important Lin-Ch'i with sudden awakening and use of koans, and Tsao-t'ung school of "just sitting" and gradual enlightenment. Notably, Ch'an only became an independent school with own monastic rules at the time of Pochang Huai-hai (720-814).

5. Hua-yen school   Avatamsaka School: Founded by Tu-shun in the T'ang Dynasty (7th century). The central txt is the Garland Sutra. This school was expanded by, Fa-tsang, Ch'en-kuan, Chung-mi Chih -yien and other patriarchs.

expanded by Fa-tsang (643-712)

XUAN ZANG YOGA CARA

In the seventh century the famous Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang (600–64) spent sixteen years travelling in Central Asia and India. He returned to China in 645 and translated seventy-four works. Due in part to his accomplishments as a traveller and translator, and in part to the eminent favour bestowed on him by the Chinese emperor upon his return, Xuanzang became the most prominent East Asian Buddhist of his generation. He promoted an orthodox form of Yogācāra as it was then being practised in India, and students flocked to him from Japan and Korea as well as China. Not everyone was enamoured of the Buddhist ideology he had brought back.

HUAYAN

Zhiyan (602–68), who would later be considered one of the patriarchs of the Huayan school, was openly critical of Xuanzang’s teachings, and Fazang had joined Xuanzang’s translation committee late in Xuanzang’s life, only to quit in disgust at Xuanzang’s ‘distorted’ views. While in India, Xuanzang had discovered how far Chinese Buddhism had deviated from its Indian source, and his translations and teachings were deliberate attempts to bring Chinese Buddhism back in line with Indian teachings. The ideas he opposed (primarily but not exclusively those that had been promoted by Paramārtha’s school) were already deeply entrenched in Chinese Buddhist thinking. While he was alive his pre-eminence made him unassailable, but once he died his detractors attacked his successor, Kuiji (632–82), and successfully returned Chinese and East Asian Buddhism to the trajectory established by the conflationists. (Wônch’ūk, a Korean student of Xuanzang, was a rival of Kuiji who fared better with the revivalists since he attempted to harmonize the teachings of Paramārtha and Xuanzang.) The underlying ideology of this resurgence, which reached its intellectual apex over the course of the Tang and Song Dynasties (sixth–twelfth centuries), was neatly summarized by the label ‘dharma-nature’ (faxing), that is, the metaphysical ground of Buddha-nature qua dharma-dhātu qua mind-nature quatathāgatagarbha. Fazang argued that orthodox Yogācāra only understood dharma characteristics (faxiang), that is, phenomenal appearances, but not the deeper underlying metaphysical reality, ‘dharma-nature’. After Fazang, all the Sinitic Buddhist schools considered themselves dharma-nature schools; Yogācāra and sometimes Sanlun were considered merely dharma characteristics schools.

Four dharma-nature schools emerged. Each school eventually compiled a list of its patriarchs through whom its teachings were believed to have been transmitted. Modern scholarship in Japan and the West has shown that these lineages were usually forged long after the fact, and frequently were erroneous or distorted the actual historical events. For instance, while Huiyuan was an active promoter of the Sarvāstivādin teachings introduced during his time by Sanghadeva and Buddhabhadra, the later Pure Land schools dubbed him their initial Chinese patriarch on the basis of his alleged participation in Amitābha rituals, allegations that were probably first concocted during the Tang Dynasty. Similarly, the lineage of six Chan patriarchs from Bodhidharma to Huineng is unlikely; the Huayan lineage (Du Shun to Zhiyan to Fazang to Chengguan) was largely an invention of the ‘fourth’ patriarch, Chengguan: his predecessors were unaware that they were starting a new lineage and rather thought that they were reviving the true old-time religion of Paramārtha.

 It was also during the Tang dynasty that Tantra briefly passed through China, from whence it was brought to Japan and became firmly established as the Shingon school.

8 The Chinese Buddhist Schools: Huayan

(as his basis, classified the other Buddhist sūtras into five periods and eight types of teachings; he discussed the theory of perfect interpenetration of the triple truth and taught the rapid attainment of Buddhahood through the practice of observing the mind. The Chinese line of transmission starts with Huiwen of the Northern Chi and follows with Huisi. Next Zhiyi explained the three great scriptures of the school emphasizing both scriptural study and practice. The sixth patriarch, Jingqi also popularized the sect through his commentaries on these three scriptures. )

Drawing on a panjiao similar to that of Zhiyi, the Huayan school chose the Huayan Sutra (Sanskrit title Avataṃsaka Sutra, Chinese Huayan jing) for its foundational scripture. What immediately differentiates Huayan from typically Indian approaches is that instead of concentrating on a diagnosis of the human problem, and exhorting and prescribing solutions for it, Huayan immediately begins from the point of view of enlightenment. In other words, its discourse represents a nirvanic perspective rather than a samsaric perspective. Instead of detailing the steps that would lead one from ignorance to enlightenment, Huayan immediately endeavours to describe how everything looks through enlightened eyes.

Like Tiantai, Huayan offers a totalistic, encompassing ‘round’ view. A lived world as constituted through a form of life experience is called a dharma-dhātu. Chengguan, the ‘fourth’ Huayan patriarch, described four types of dharma-dhātus, each successively encompassing its predecessors. The first is shi, which means ‘event’, ‘affair’ or ‘thing’. This is the realm where things are experienced as discrete individual items. The second is called li (principle), which in Chinese usage usually implies the principal metaphysical order that subtends events as well as the rational principles that explicate that order. Often li is used by Buddhists as a synonym for emptiness. The first sustained analysis based on the relation of li and shi was undertaken by the Korean monk Wônhyo in his commentary on the Awakening of Faith in Mahāyāna, which influenced early Huayan thinkers like Fazang. The li–shi model went on to become an important analytic tool for all sorts of East Asian philosophers, not just Buddhists. In the realm of li, one clearly sees the principles that relate shi to each other, but the principles are more important than the individual events. In the third realm, one sees the mutual interpenetration or ‘non-obstruction’ of li and shi (lishi wu’ai). Rather than seeing events while being oblivious to principle, or concentrating on principle while ignoring events, in this realm events are seen as instantiations of principle, and principle is nothing more than the order by which events relate to each other.

In the fourth and culminating dharma-dhātu, one sees the mutual interpenetration and non-obstruction of all events (shishi wu’ai). In this realm, everything is causally related to everything else. Huayan illustrates this with the image of Indra’s net, a vast net that encompasses the universe. A special jewel is found at the intersection of every horizontal and vertical weave in the net, special because each jewel reflects every other jewel in the net, so that looking into any one jewel, one sees them all. Every event or thing can disclose the whole universe because all mutually interpenetrate each other without barriers or obstruction.

This form of nondualism is not monistic because shishi wu’ai does not obliterate the distinctions between things, but rather insists that everything is connected to everything else without losing distinctiveness. Identity and difference, in this view, are merely two sides of the same coin, which, though a single coin, still has two distinct sides that should not be confused for each other. Mutual interpenetration is temporal as well as spatial; past, present and future mutually interpenetrate. Hence according to Huayan, to enter the path towards final enlightenment is, in an important sense, to have already arrived at that destination.

Basic to this lineage is the assertion that all particulars are merely manifestations of the absolute mind and are therefore fundamentally the same.

 It treats Buddhism in five schools (Theravada, Proto-mahayana, Mahayana, the Intuitive, and the Perfect). These five are differentiated into ten schools of thoughts. It presents ten Metaphysical propositions and six characteristics of things for meditation. To meditate on the fundamental nature of the universe is the door to enlightenment. The theory is profound. It is said that one will not appreciate the richness in Buddhism until one has studied the Garland Sutra. The late Ven. Yue-shia founded the Hua-yen College in Shanghai. The Ven. Ying-ch'ih, Win-chow, Chi-shong are the modern expounders of this school.

10. The Pure-land School: Based on the Sukhavati Vyuha Sutra, the Great Sukhavati Vyuha Sutra, the Small Sukhavati Vyuha Sutra. This school was established by Hui-yuan in 4502 C.E.of the Chin Dynasty (4th century).

• Pure Land (of Amitabha) Based on the Sukhavati Vyuha ("Pure Land Sutra"), this school was founded in 402 C.E. by Hui Yuan. 334-416 China: Founder of the White Lotus Movement and of Pure Land Buddhism in China. 10 The Chinese Buddhist Schools: Pure Land

All forms of Chinese Buddhism, including Chan, contain devotional elements and rituals, but for Pure Land Buddhists devotionalism is the essence. The origins of Pure Land Buddhism are somewhat unclear. While undoubtedly devotional practices were imported to China by monks and laity (and these were blended with native Chinese forms of devotionalism), there does not seem to be a distinct school in India devoted to rebirth in Amitābha’s Pure Land. As noted earlier, the traditional lineages are not very helpful for reconstructing the school’s history. According to tradition, early contributors to Pure Land thought and practice include Tanluan (476–542), Dao Chuo (562–645) and his student Shandao (613–81). The term ‘Pure Land’ (jingtu) may itself be largely a product of certain license taken by translators. The term jingtu appears in Kumārajīva’s translation of the Vimalakīrti Sutra where the Tibetan version simply has ‘Buddha lands’ (the Sanskrit version is no longer extant). Apparently, Xuanzang was the first explicitly to associate Sukhāvati (Amitābha’s Paradise) with the term ‘pure land’. The main scriptures for Pure Land practice were the Larger and Smaller Sukhāvati-vyuha Sutras and the Guan Wuliangshuofo jing.

At the beginning of the Tang Dynasty, several forms of Buddhist devotionalism were popular, including cults devoted to Mañjuśrī(Bodhisattva of Wisdom), Guanyin (Bodhisattva of Compassion, at that time particularly popular as a patron saint and protector of travellers), Maitreya (the future Buddha) and Amita (a conflation of Amitābha and Amitāyus whose names mean ‘Infinite Light’ and ‘Infinite Life’ respectively, and are possibly deities of Central Asian origin). Arguably the most popular form of devotionalism was the Maitreya cult. The Empress Wu (r. 683–705), a great patron of Buddhism but generally reviled in Chinese history as an unscrupulous usurper, considered herself an incarnation of Maitreya. Due to her unpopularity once dethroned, people wanted to distance themselves from her and anything associated with her. Unfortunately this effectively extinguished Maitreya worship in China. Worshippers of Amita filled the void.

Pure Land theology maintained that people were living in the age of degenerate dharma, when study and personal effort were insufficient for making progress on the path to liberation. Relying on one’s own efforts was in fact deemed a form of self-theory, or the selfishness and arrogance that comes from erroneous views of self. Rather than indulge in egoistic fantasies, one ought to rely on the power and grace of Amita. Amita was a buddha (whether he was an earlier incarnation of the historical Buddha or another person altogether is answered differently by different Pure Land sources) who, while still a bodhisattva, vowed to help sentient beings once he became a buddha. He has the power to transfer to anyone he deems worthy sufficient merit to enable them to be born in his Pure Land, the Western Paradise. In the earliest forms of Pure Land devotionalism a variety of practices were cultivated, but these were eventually pared down to chanting the nianfo, literally ‘remembrance of Buddhas’ (in Sanskrit, buddhānusmṛti), which in Chinese is ‘Na-mu A-mi-to Fo’ (Hail Amita Buddha).

 The Pure Land lineage held that the spiritual quality of the world has been in decline since its height during the lifetime of the Buddha and taught followers to cultivate through prayer and devotion a sincere intent to be reborn in the heavenly paradise of the Buddha Amitabha.

He set up the Lotus Society at Chiang-si Province. There were one hundred twenty -three distinguished members including the notable poets Vau-yen-ming and Liu -wei-min. This organisation greatly incited the zeal of studying Buddhism among the Chinese. San-tau and Kuang-ming of T'ang Dynasty undertook to popularise this school and were succeeded in spreading it to almost every household. It teaches one to set the mind solely on Amitabha, to recite the holy name and to recite the holy name repeatedly, and one may gain salvation to the Pure -land of Amitabha. The method employed is simple thus it is suited to everyone who has faith in Amitabha, and who resolves to be reborn in the Pureland. The late Ven. Yin-kuang greatly promoted this school. He persuaded people to do good at the same time so as merits may be brought to the Pure-land, the ideal final resort.

The T'ien -t'ai school also known as Fa-hua, or Lotus school:

. This name is attributed to the Tien-tai Mountain in Chechiang on which the founder Zhi Yi resided.

It is also called the .Lotus school because its chief text is the Lotus Sutra (the Flower of the Law Sutra Others are the Commentary on the Prajnaparamita Sutra, the Mahaparinirvana Sutra , etc. The Chinese Buddhist Schools: Tiantai

Zhiyi (智顗 Wade-Giles: Chih-i) (538 - 597) is traditionally listed as the fourth patriarch, but actually is the founder of the Tiantai sect of Buddhism in China. Zhiyi is famous for being the first in the history of Chinese Buddhism to elaborate a complete, critical and systematic classification of the Buddhist teachings, in order to explain the seemingly contradictory doctrines of Buddhism. He is also regarded as the first major figure to make a significant break from the Indian tradition, to form an indigenous Chinese system

Though considered its third patriarch, the intellectual founder of the Tiantai school was Zhiyi (538–97). Responding to the proliferation of different Buddhist theories and practices, he proposed a masterly, detailed synthesis that definitively set Chinese Buddhism in its own direction. To the question of why there was an abundance of incommensurate teachings despite the fact that there could only be one dharma, Zhiyi replied that all the different vehicles of Buddhism were ultimately one vehicle (eka-yāna), an idea championed by the Lotus Sutra. More specifically, he offered a panjiao, or classificatory scheme of teachings, to explain the discrepancies. His panjiao was complex and brilliant (and further refined much later by Chegwan, a Korean Tiantai monk in China), but in simple form it can be summarized as follows.

Tian Tai thus became proverbially broad, able to absorb and give rise to other movements within Buddhism. It also took up a principle of threefold truth derived from Nagarjuna Nagarjuna (150-250 ?) was an Indian philosopher, the founder of the Madhyamika school of Mahayana Buddhism, and arguably the most influential Indian Buddhist thinker after the Buddha himself. He was born in South India, probably near the town of Nagarjunikonda. He was initially a scholar of Brahmanistic texts, but later converted to Buddhism. He first studied the various Shravakayana (Nikaya)

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All things are void and without essential reality.

All things have a provisional reality.

All things are both absolutely unreal and provisionally real at once.

The transient world of phenomena is thus seen as one with the unchanging, undifferentiated ground of existence. This doctrine was elaborated in a complex cosmology of 3,000 interpenetrating realms of existence.

Buddha offered different teachings to different audiences based on the differing capacities of audiences to comprehend what he preached. According to the basic narrative, which became the way all Chinese Buddhists thought of Buddha’s teaching career, upon reaching enlightenment under the Bodhi Tree, Buddha, enraptured by his new vision, began to describe that vision in immediate and exuberant terms. This became the Huayan Sutra. (In reality, this ‘sutra’ is a collection of disparate texts – none probably composed earlier than the third century ad – that were gradually compiled together over several more centuries.) When he finished (it took two or three weeks) he realized that no one had understood the sublime meaning of his words, and immediately began to teach a simplified, preparatory teaching which became the Hīnayāna teachings. After twenty years of preparatory teachings, he introduced the next level, beginners’ Mahāyāna (basically Yogācāra and Madhyamaka). In the next period he introduced advanced Mahāyāna (the Vaipūlya Sutras), and finally in his last days, having now trained many advanced students, he preached the Lotus Sutra and the Nirvāṇa Sutra. In effect this panjiao asserts that the two highest sutras offered by Buddha were the Huayan and Lotus; but whereas the Huayan was too sublime to be understood by any save the most advanced or enlightened students, the Lotus represented Buddha’s most comprehensive, cumulative, mature and accessible teaching, every bit as sublime as the Huayan, but now presented in a pedagogically effective manner. For that reason, Zhiyi made the Lotus Sutra the foundational text of Tiantai. As for the remaining teachings, as the Lotus itself explains, different ‘truths’ can be superseded once they have served their task of raising one to a higher level where a different ‘truth’ holds sway. Buddhism, according to the Lotus and Tiantai, is a system of expedient means (upāya) leading one with partial truths to ever greater, more comprehensive truths. Tiantai teachings are ‘Round Teachings’, meaning that they encircle or encompass everything and, lacking sharp edges, are therefore Perfect. Other forms of Buddhism are not ‘wrong’, but are only partial visions of the One Vehicle that Tiantai most perfectly and completely embodies.

Zhiyi, based on an exhaustive exposition of a verse from Nāgārjuna’s Madhyamaka-kārikās (24: 18), devised a theory of three truths: provisional, empty and middle. The first two are mirror images of each other, two ways of speaking about causes and conditions. A table can provisionally be called a table, since its perceptible form has arisen through causes and conditions, and it only exists provisionally on the basis of those temporary conditions. The table is empty because, being the product of causes and conditions, it lacks its own intrinsic, independent nature. It is ‘middle’ because neither the provisional nor the empty truth about the table fully captures its reality. It is both provisional and empty, and simultaneously neither provisional nor empty. As Zhiyi put it, ‘wondrous being is identical to true emptiness’. Zhiyi sought many ways to express the nondual middle truth. For instance, rejecting the obvious dualism of the distinction most of his contemporaries made between pure mind (xin) and deluded thought-instants (nian), Zhiyi declared that every deluded thought-instant was identical to three thousand chilicosms. The details of the formulas he used to arrive at the number three thousand is less important than fact that it is meant to encompass the full extent of Buddhist cosmological metaphysics. The whole universe in all its dimensions is entailed in every moment of thought. Rather than attempt to eliminate deluded thinking to reach a purified mind, Zhiyi claimed each moment of deluded thinking was already identical to enlightenment. One merely has to see the mind and its operations as they are. This idea was later taken over by the Chan (Zen) school, which expressed it in sayings such as ‘Zen mind is everyday mind’.

The middle approach is also evident in the Tiantai notion of three gates, or three methods of access to enlightened vision: the Buddha-gate, the gate of sentient beings and the mind-gate. The Buddha-gate was considered too difficult, too abstruse, too remote; one had to be a Buddha already to fully comprehend it. The sentient-being gate (the various methods taught and practised by any sort of being) was also too difficult because there are too many different types of sentient beings all with their own types of delusions, so that this gate is a confusing cacophony of disparate methods, some which may not be appropriate for some beings. The easiest and hence preferable gate was the mind-gate. It is no more remote than this very moment of cognition, its diversity can be observed in every thought-instant, and nothing could ever be more appropriately suited for an individual than to observe one’s own mind. Tiantai cultivated many types of meditation for that purpose.

this lineage is based on a scheme of classification intended to integrate and harmonize the vast array of Buddhist scriptures and doctrines. This scheme of classification is based on the Buddhist doctrine of upaya ("skilful means"). The most important form of Buddhism for this lineage is the Mahayana devotionalism found in the Lotus Sutra.

This school divides each of the ten realms of existence (hells, ghosts, animals, asuras, men, devas, sravakas, pratyeka-buddhas, bodhisattvas, and buddhas) into ten divisions and each division has ten qualities making a total of one thousand qualities. These qualities are further multiplied by three (past, present, and future) making a total of three thousand qualities. This school teaches one to visualise these three thousand qualities in an instant.

The hundred divisions of realms and the thousand qualities form the sphere of visualisation. It teaches one to rest the physical body in three aspects and to gain a clear insight into truth from three views. Chih -che also divided the gospel of Buddha into five periods and the doctrine into eight kinds. The late Ven. T'isien and Shing -ch'e propagate this school.

8. Esoteric School:

713-741 China: The T'ang Dynasty Esoteric School was introduced by the three Mahasattvas Subhakarasimha, Vajrabodhi and Amoghavajra

 Based on the Vairocana Sutra, the Diamond Apex Sutra and Susiddhi Sutra. This school was introduced to China during the T'ang Dynasty by Subhakarasirnha, Vajramati and Amogha. The fundamental concepts are the six elements (earth, water, fire, air, space, and cognition) and four magic circles (pagoda, jewel, lotus and sword) which symbolise the power of the Buddhas and the Bodhisauvas. One is to attain self -realisation by the three mystic things of body (its posture and signs), mouth (its voice), and mind (meditation). (The mystic body is associated with earth, water and fire; the words from the mouth with wind space; the mind with cognition). It maintains that there are two aspects of the cosmos: the phenomenal or material and the absolute or spiritual. After the T'ang Dynasty, it was debased in China proper. It passed to Tibet and is known as the Tibetan Esoteric School. It also passed to Japan as the Shingon School. The ceremonies and services of this school are very complicated. One can hardly learn about it without a teacher.

This is the kind of Buddhism predominant in the Himalayan nations of Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, and also Mongolia. It is known as Vajrayana because of the ritual use of the vajra, a symbol of imperishable diamond, of thunder and lightning. At the center of Tibetan Buddhism is the religious figure called the lama, Tibetan for "guru"," source of another of its names, Lamaism. Several major lineages of lamas developed, beginning in the ninth century with the Nyingma-pa. Two centuries later, Sarma-pa divided into the Sakya-pa and the Kagyu-pa. Three hundred years later, one of Tibet's revered lamas, Tsong-kha-pa, founded the reforming Gelug-pa.

JAPAN

JAPAN

710 Japan: capital moved to Nara; development of the 6 Nara-schools which were highly politisized, leaving them open to corruption.

730 Japan: introduction of Chinese Hua-yen school, known as Kegon in Japanese.

552 Japan: Buddhism enters from China (possibly via Korea?).

730 Japan: introduction of Chinese Hua-yen school, known as Kegon in Japanese.

552 Japan: Buddhism enters from China (possibly via Korea?).

805 Japan: The Tendai School (from the Chinese T'ien T'ai) officially founded by Master Saicho (Dengyo Daishi).

9th Century Japan: Shingon ("True Word") Buddhism (tantric) established by Master Kukai (Kobo Daishi) derived from Chinese Chen-yen. A fusion of tantric Buddhism and indigenous Shinto became known as Ryobu-Shinto, which was remarkably separated again some 1000 years later into Buddhism and Shinto.

13th Century Japan: Founding of Jodo (Pure Land) school in Japan by Honen (1133-1212).

Founding of Zen sub-schools: Master Dogen (1200-1235) founds the Soto-shu (Chinese Ts'ao-tung) school. Master Eisai (1141-1251) founds the Rinzai-shu (Chinese Lin-Ch'I) school.

Master Nichiren Daishi (1222-1282) founds Nichiren Buddhism.

Founding of Zen sub-schools: Master Dogen (1200-1235) founds the Soto-shu (Chinese Ts'ao-tung) school. Master Eisai (1141-1251) founds the Rinzai-shu (Chinese Lin-Ch'I) school.

Master Nichiren Daishi (1222-1282) founds Nichiren Buddhism.

16th Century Japan: Master Ingen (1592-1673) founds the Obaku-shu zen school.

Tendai (T'ien Tai, Chinese): Founded in Japan by Saicho (d. 822 C.E.), this lineage quickly rose to prominence as the most important lineage in Japanese Buddhism. The basic doctrine of this lineage and the Chinese T'ien Tai are the same, as in their reverence for the Lotus Sutra, but Tendai differs in its emphasis on the mystical and esoteric aspects of Buddhism. The four primary categories of this lineage are (1) morality, (2) monastic discipline, (3) esoteric practices, and (4) meditation.

• Shingon: Founded by Kukai (d. 835 C.E), this lineage grew to rival the Tendai lineage as early as the late ninth century. The Shingon belief system was tantric and taught that through mantras (short, repetitive incantations), meditation and the performance of hand gesture one can gain access to the power of the Buddhas and bodhisattvas.

• Jodo or Pure Land: Began at the time of the publication of the treatise of Honen (d. 1212 C.E) entitled Senchaku-shu, this lineage traces its scriptural heritage to the Pure Land Sutra (Sukhavati Vyuha), which prescribes loving devotion to the Buddha Amida as a means of being reborn in the Pure Land, or the paradise over which he presides. Pure Land prayer centres on the repetition on the phrase namu amida butsu ("Homage to Amida Buddha") and became one of the most popular forms of Buddhism in Japan.

• Joho Shinshu or True Pure Land: Founded by Shinran (d. 1262 C.E), this lineage takes Pure Land teaching one step further, claiming that humility and faith in Amida's love are in themselves true signs that the redeeming grace of the Buddha has already been bestowed. Amida Buddha seeks and saves without first requiring faith and good works. These spring up spontaneously from Amida's spiritual presence in the heart.

• Nichiren: Named after its founder Nichiren (d. 1282 C.E), this lineage was founded on the Lotus Sutra and taught that the mere repetition of the title of that sutra Nam-myoho-renge-kyo ("Homage to the Lotus Sutra") was sufficient to gain one access to paradise.

• Zen (Soto and Rinzai Sects): The monk Eisai (d. 1215 C.E) is usually considered the first proponent of Zen in Japan, although Ch'an had existed since the early sixth century and probably existed also in Japan before Eisai's time. The earliest forms of Zen generally avoided intellectualism and de-emphasized scriptures, doctrines and ceremonial. Eisai, whose form of Zen took on the name of Rinzai (Lin-chi, Ch.) affirmed the authority of the traditional Buddhist scriptures and used the koan or meditational riddle as a means of transcending linear thinking.

 Soto Zen (Ts'ao-tung, Ch.), tracing its roots back to Dogen (d. 1253 C.E), also affirmed the validity of the Buddhist scriptures but de-emphasized the use of koans and focused solely on extended, silent meditation.

SRI LANKA

240 BCE Sri Lanka: Ven. Mahinda establishes the Mahavihara (Great Monastery) of Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka. The Vibhajjavadin community living there becomes known as the Theravadins. Mahinda's sister, Ven. Sanghamitta, arrives in Sri Lanka with a cutting from the original Bo tree, and establishes the bhikkhuni-sangha (nuns) in Sri Lanka.

35 BCE Sri Lanka (or 100BCE?): King Vattagamani orders the Buddhist teachings (Theravada canon) to be committed to writing. Division between Mahavira and Abhayagiri vihara in Sri Lanka.

4th Century Sri lanka: King Mahasena introduces Mahayana monks.

425 Sri Lanka: Buddhaghosa composes the Visuddhimagga (The Path of Purity) which eventually becomes the classic Sri Lankan textbook on the Buddha's teachings

1050 Sri Lanka: disruption of sangha by Tamil Nadu invaders. Lineage of nuns ordination dies out.

1070 Shri Lanka: reinstatement of monks ordination

11th and 12th Century Thailand: introduction of Mahayana due to Cambodian rule.

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1164 Sri Lanka: Polonnaruwa destroyed by foreign invasion. With the guidance of two monks from a forest branch of the Mahavihara sect -- Vens. Mahakassapa and Sariputta -- King Parakramabahu reunites all bhikkhus in Sri Lanka into the Mahavihara sect. and abolishes schools other than Mahavira.

1070 Shri Lanka: reinstatement of monks ordination

11th and 12th Century Thailand: introduction of Mahayana due to Cambodian rule.

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1164 Sri Lanka: Polonnaruwa destroyed by foreign invasion. With the guidance of two monks from a forest branch of the Mahavihara sect -- Vens. Mahakassapa and Sariputta -- King Parakramabahu reunites all bhikkhus in Sri Lanka into the Mahavihara sect. and abolishes schools other than Mahavira.

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TAI BURMA CAMB VN

2nd Century Vietnam: First introduction from China, followed by more missions, both Mahayana and non-Mahayana in 3rd century

5th Century Cambodia: mixture of Hindu Shivaism and Mahayana, lasting until the 11th century. Non-Mahayana schools were also present, but less prominent.

7th Century Cambodia: repression of Buddhism, followed by later strong support

12th Century Cambodia: revival of Mahayana, but later mainly Theravada influence.

13th Century Laos: introduction of Theravada..

            372 Korea: First arrival of Buddhism on the peninsula from China.

550-664 Korea: Buddhism is state religion.

6th and 7th Century Korea: introduction of many Chinese schools

14th Century Korea: Decline of Buddhism with the assumption to the throne of the Chosun or Yi Dynasty and their adoption of Neo-Confucianism.

5th Century Java, Sumatra, Borneo and Burma; Mahayana Buddhism was introduced, mainly by Indian immigrants.

719 Thailand: introduction of Buddhism

. 1st Cent CE Thailand and Burma: monks from Sri Lanka establish Theravada.

15th Century Thailand: monks were sent to Sri Lanka to establish a new ordination lineage

c.1279 Burma: last nunnery mentioned in historic records.

15th Century Indonesia: Eradication of Budhism by Islamic rebellion.

THERAVADIN

16th Century: Sri Lanka; persecution and virtual eradication of Buddhism.

17th Century Sri Lanka: reintroduction of Dharma twice from Burma (same as original tradition).

1753 Sri Lanka: reinstatement of monks ordination from Thailand - the Siyam Nikaya lineage

1777 Thailand: standardisation of Thai translation of the Theravada Tripitaka

COUNCILS

247 (308?) BCE : 3rd Buddhist Council, convened by King Asoka at Pataliputra (Patan?) India. Disputes on points of doctrine lead to further schisms, spawning the Sarvastivadin and Vibhajjavadin sects. The two Pitakas are enlarged to include the Abidhamma, forming the Tripitaka (three baskets.)The Abhidhamma Pitaka is recited at the Council. The modern Pali Tipitaka is now essentially complete, although some scholars have suggested that at least two parts of the extant Canon -- the Parivara in the Vinaya, and the Apadana in the Sutta -- may date from a later period. Asoka sends missionaries to Sri Lanka ( his son Mahindra), Kanara, Karnataka, Kashmir, Himalaya region, Burma, Afghanistan and even Egypt, Macedonia and Cyrene.

94 BC Shri Lanka: 4th Buddhist Council (acc. to Theravadins) at Cave Aloka in Malaya district - see also 2nd Century India for another '4th Council'.

2nd Century India: 4th Buddhist Council in Jalandhar, India under royal patron Kaniska.

1868 or 1871? Burma: 5th Buddhist Council in Mandalay. The Pali scriptures were inscribed in marble.

            1954-56 Burma: 6th Buddhist Council in Mahapasana Great Cave,