Chan Buddhism

Discourse of early and middle Ch’an and its prajñāpāramitā predecessors state prajñā, or wisdom, is derived from dialectic investigation of phenomenon. This investigation, referred to as śūnyatā, is principally deconstructive. Following the negation of phenomena, a phenomenological experience of ‘neither beingness nor voidness’ results, that is principally without qualification and considered Absolute. This ‘no-mind’ is discussed extensively by Ch’an masters, and elicits paradoxical soteriological impetuses and paths to its attainder. In this manner, I aim to present the function of śūnyatā as a linguistic and rhetorical device that characterizes Ch’an discourse.1 Just how this rhetoric functions will be observed in key, representative texts below. Finally, the rhetoric of śūnyatā reflects current scholarly discussions about the historical development of the Ch’an tradition and this will provide insight into the question of why traditions (retrospectively) incorporate preceding philosophical ideals into their discourse and texts.

The Yuanduan Guanxin Shifajietu (Illustration of the Ten Realms of Mind Comnemplation in the Perfect and Immediate Teaching), drawn by the Northern Song Tendai priest Ciyun Zunshi 慈雲遵式 was the source for the Kumano Kanjin Jikkai Mandara 熊野観心十界曼荼羅 handed in Japan. This diagram is a schematic of the ten realms, with the heart character 心 in the center, and ranging from the Buddha realm to the realm of hell. This mandala was to be used to reflect on one's own heart.
In this article, we first examine and compare the iconography and text of Zunshi's Yuanduan Guanxin Shifajietu and Khara-khoto work, then we compare the Khara-khoto work and the mural painting from Bezeklik cave, Turfan.

Historically, a number of Chan masters are regarded as advocates of sutra learning as a supplement to Chan. Despite this commonality, they all have different approaches and demonstrate varying degrees of reliance on sutra teachings. This article aims at understanding Chan Master Hanyue’s 漢月 (1573–1635) attitude toward sutra teachings in the late Ming. Hanyue’s work, Guiding Words on the Zhizheng zhuan, represents a mature and confident attitude towards sutra teachings on the part of a Chan master during this late stage of development in imperial China.

This article explores the ways in which the imagery at work within the poetry of Wang Wei (王維 699-761) expresses Mahāyāna Buddhist notions of emptiness. I initially provide an overview of the Buddhist philosophical heritage from which Wang Wei drew inspiration, and then describe the relationship between poetry and Chan Buddhism in Tang-dynasty literary circles, thereby introducing the religious and literary milieus from which Wang Wei’s poetic impulse sprang. Finally, I offer a reading of Wang Wei’s poems, arguing that the Chan emphasis on a transmission outside of explicit teachings led Wang Wei to eschew the exposition of doctrine in favor of a poetry which, in its simplicity and silence, embodies the very absence of the poet himself. I address this article not primarily to specialists of Chinese literature, but to those interested in the interplay of literature, religion, and philosophy generally, as Wang Wei offers an enthralling instance of the attempt to meld the literary and the religio-philosophical impulses in poetic form. In formulating my argument, I draw upon Western literary and phenomenological theorists in a bid to partially enact an integration of methodologies akin to the fusion of referents so subtly embodied in the imagery of Wang Wei.

This is a study on the meanings of the term qíng 情 in Medieval Chán Buddhist texts, with a focus on the phrase wúqíng shuō fǎ 無情說法 'Non-sentients expound the Dharma', as well as the discussion of "Buddha Nature" (佛性) in medieval China. One focus is one the monk Huìzhōng 慧忠 and the presentation of the doctrine of wúqíng shuō fǎ in the Zǔtáng jí 祖堂集.

This is a philological approach to the manuscript versions of the famous Platform Sūtra  of the Sixth Patriarch 六祖壇經. The paper consists of three parts, the first part consisting of an overview on previous scholarship on the text; the second part deals with the textual features of the various manuscripts; the third part tries to contextualize the scripture within popular "Platform congregations" for administering the precepts. As one of the main results, I argue for a radical reinterpretation of the long title of the Dunhuang version of the Platform sutra, showing that "jing 經 (sūtra)" in the title originally referred to the Diamond sutra (central in the text itself and in the context of congregations during which the precepts were conferred), and not to the scripture itself. As such, the "Platform sutra" probably was a sermon delivered during one of these congregations; only in the course of time the reference of "sūtra" gradually shifted from external reference (to the Diamond sūtra) to "internal" reference of the scripture itself.

"In this dissertation, interdisciplinary research demonstrates how Chinese people affiliated with different religions and ideologies of the Song period (960- 1279 CE) utilized artistic, literary and visual representations to merge the natural world with the human body. This fusion of natural and human worlds in representation appears in a variety of contexts, including paintings of famous Song landscape artists, writings of literati thinkers, architectural developments of Neo- Confucian scholars, body charts recorded in the Daoist Canon, and artwork connected to Chinese Buddhism. Traditionally, scholarship within the field of religious studies relies heavily upon textual sources, and material objects are often seen as accessory to the findings related to these sources. When found within the context of religion, art objects are in this same vein often described as representational as opposed to foundational of religious experience or its aspects.

This thesis asserts that Song Chinese people used art and other material objects not only for the purpose of representing the world in which they lived, but also as a means of expressing, developing and empowering their religions and ideologies. So powerful were these material representations, in fact, that in certain cases they may have acted as a primary conduit through which the religion was experienced. As the dissertation will show, the interaction between the non-material activity of visualization, or how people create images in their minds, and representation, or how people create material objects to reify the images in their minds, is often pivotal, as opposed to accessory, to some of the later ideological developments of the Chinese people.

This thesis also examines sacred space of the Song period, theorizing that an important spatial synergy took place between physical representations and the religions of medieval China: images had become intertwined with how different groups of people visualized their bodies, as well as how these groups represented a human relationship at work with the natural world. In essence, Song representations of mountains, landscape and other natural formations act as material records of how people visualized their own bodies in microcosmic and macrocosmic form."

Chán Buddhism in Dūnhuáng and Beyond: A Study of Manuscripts, Texts, and Contexts in Memory of John R. McRae is dedicated to the memory of the eminent Chán scholar John McRae and investigates the spread of early Chán in a historical, multi-lingual, and interreligious context. Combining the expertise of scholars of Chinese, Tibetan, Uighur, and Tangut Buddhism, the edited volume is based on a thorough study of manuscripts from Dūnhuáng, Turfan, and Karakhoto, tracing the particular features of Chán in the Northwestern and Northern regions of late medieval China.

ISSN 0169-8834
ISBN 978-90-04-43191-1 (hardback)
ISBN 978-90-04-43924-5 (e-book)

In this paper I develop an alternative to the thesis that Heidegger’s hermeneutical phenomenology and Chan Buddhist bodily, linguistic, and ritual practices lead to a domain of pure experience beyond entanglement in words, things, and others, and that they, directly or indirectly, provide a basis for the reenchantment of life. In contrast to the reification of pure intuitive experience or the mystification of the sacred articulated in several interpretations of Heidegger and Buddhism, I trace moments in Heidegger and Hongzhou/Linji Chan Buddhism involving an interruptive and transformative enactment of emptying. Practices of emptying and formalization break with the everyday absorption in ordinary life – while not, however, transcending and abandoning it – through aporetic and paradoxical encounters with nothingness and emptiness. Through such interruptive and reorienting strategies, which are reinforced in Chan Buddhism as ritual practices, the repetition of everydayness becomes the immanent occasion for authenticity and mindfulness.

A Chinese translation of my Japanese paper on the Chan bencao, published in Foxue yanjiu vol.23 (2014). Translated by LI Jian and with editing help from ZHANG Dewei. Note that the English title provided in the table of contents of vol.23 (not included here) is not mine. I prefer, “The Chan bencao and Yuan Zhongdao’s Chanmen bencao bu: Considering the original text of the Chan bencao and its confusion with the latter text during the Qing dynasty.”

The first book in English devoted exclusively to modern Korean Buddhism, this work provides a comprehensive exploration for scholars, students, and serious readers. Makers of Modern Korean Buddhism focuses on three key areas: Buddhist reform, Zen revival, and the interrelationship of religion, history, and politics. In Korea, the modern period in Buddhism begins in earnest in the late nineteenth century, during the closing years of the Choson dynasty, which was characterized by a repressive brand of neo-Confucianism. Buddhist reformers arose to seek change in both Buddhism and Korean society at large. The work begins with a look at five of these reformers and their thought and work. The Zen revival that began at the end of the nineteenth century is covered from that period to contemporary times through an exploration of the life and thought of important Zen masters. The influence of Japanese Buddhist missionaries, the emergence of Korean engaged Buddhism, known as Minjung Buddhism, and the formation of modern Buddhist scholarship in Korea are discussed as well.

A sample chapter from Wang Fengyi's magnum opus: Records of Words and Deeds of the Sage.
It is based on his healing system considering the Heart [Emotions] to be at the root of all illness and dis-ease.
It could be regarded as a type of Chinese philosophical and practical psychology.

This paper aims to bring out an alternative perspective on the life and work of the alleged founder of the Sanjiejiao 三階教 school, Xinxing. The current study discusses a different aspect of Xinxing's influence, namely, his impact as a chan master. As the prominent Chan School went through different phases of development, the influence of Xinxing's meditational teaching waxed and waned in the Chan cycle. Focusing on the texts titled Duigen qixingfa 對根起行法 and Zhizhongshi zhufa 制眾事諸法, I will explore the connotation of sanmei 三昧 (samādhi) in his teaching. In particular, I will explore the term "formless samādhi" (wuxiang sanmei 無相三昧) in Xinxing's work and in other contemporary texts on meditation by meditation masters, such as Huisi 慧思 (515-577). In this way, this study situates Xinxing in the larger context of meditation teachings which emerged during the sixth century.

In Buddhism, but especially in Chan/Zen, it is not hard to find views on the relationship between language and enlightenment that are primarily negative. Language is taken not only to fail to allow us to say how things really are, but it necessarily obscures reality from us. In this context, enlightenment is often conceived of as the cultivation of a certain kind of experience, one that is ineffable, and thereby free of concepts and linguistic conventions, discriminations, and valuations. However, with works such as Hee-Jin Kim’s “‘The Reason of Words and Letters’: Dōgen and Kōan Language,” Dale S. Wright’s, “Re-Thinking Transcendence: The Role of Language in Zen Experience,” and much of Steven Heine’s work, early and late, such views became increasingly more challenged in Anglo-American scholarship.

The authors in this special issue continue the important but difficult work of further clarifying the relationship between language, concepts, and Zen practice and experience. Their papers address such questions as:
What is the relationship between meditation practice and enlightened activity off the cushion, particularly in regard to language use and conceptualization? While one might break through to special experiential states in the context of meditation (or elsewhere), those states cannot, presumably, be maintained off of the cushion in the course of daily life, as one must interact with “others” and discriminate/differentiate, make judgments, etc., which would seem to require language/concepts.

Thus, what is the most fruitful/skillful/correct (?) way to view the relationship between enlightenment and language/concepts? That is, for example, is it that concepts are transcended on the cushion, upon entering special states of consciousness, but then those concepts are taken back up when relating the experience on the cushion to negotiating the Way in the nitty gritty of real life (monastery included)? Or might any achieved state of consciousness on the cushion itself implicate or otherwise require language/concepts? And if they did, would they implicate language in the same way on and off the cushion?

Gao Xingjian offers a way beyond the currently prevalent ideologies that seem to dominate literature and literary criticism. He does this by creating major works that offer an aesthetic based on a return to the humanist traditions of literary art and the infusion of Buddhist and Taoist Ways to Enlightenment. His achievement is to blend Eastern and Western perspectives or perceptions that enrich each other and so make possible truly original art. This essay discusses Gao’s views on art by arguing that once another, better, way to think and create can be enunciated, we may recognize the passing of what is currently often touted as the only correct or valid way to read and write literature in our universities and in the literary market. If it is possible to be original and cogent in expressing such an alternative, then perhaps we may re-shift our focus back onto the ways we have been writing before the advent of Postmodernist and Poststructuralist ideologies. In so doing, we may also r...

Table of contents
PREFACE IX
CONTRIBUTORS XIII

CHRISTOPH ANDERL: Chán Rhetoric: An Introduction
JENS BRAARVIG: Rhetoric of Emptiness
BART DESSEIN:‘Thus Have I Heard’ and Other Claims to Authenticity: Development of Rhetorical Devices in the Sarvāstivāda Ṣaṭpādābhidharma Text
CHRISTOPH HARBSMEIER: Reading the One Hundred Parables Sūtra: The Dialogue Preface and the Gāthā Postface
CHRISTOPH ANDERL: Coming to Terms with Terms: The Rhetorical Function of Technical Terms in Chán Buddhist Texts
HALVOR EIFRING: Beyond Perfection: The Rhetoric of Chán Poetry in Wáng Wéi’s Wǎng Stream Collection
CHRISTIAN WITTERN: Some Preliminary Remarks to a Study of Rhetorical Devices in Chán Yǔlù 禪語錄 Encounter Dialogues
WILLIAM M. BODIFORD: The Rhetoric of Chinese Language in Japanese Zen
STEVEN HEINE: Dōgen’s Appropriation of Chinese Chán Sources: Sectarian and Non-Sectarian Rhetorical Perspectives
ROBERT BUSWELL: Pojo Chinul 普照知訥 and Kanhwa Sǒn 看話禪: Reconciling the Language of Moderate and Radical Subitism
JÖRG PLASSEN: From Apologetics to Subversion: Some Initial Observations on Sŏlcham’s 雪岑 Chodong owi yohae 曹洞五位要解
JONGMYUNG KIM: Hyujŏng’s Sŏn’ga kwigam and its Historical Setting and Soteriological Strategies
VLADIMIR TIKHONOV: Manhae Han Yongun’s Attempt at Producing an All-Inclusive Modern Buddhist Compendium – Pulgyo Taejŏn
THERESE SOLLIEN: Sermons by Xū Yún – A Special Transmission Within the Scriptures

INDEX

Enlightenment in Dispute is the first comprehensive study of the revival of Chan Buddhism in seventeenth-century China. Focusing on the evolution of a series of controversies about Chan enlightenment, Jiang Wu describes the process by which Chan reemerged as the most prominent Buddhist establishment of the time.  He argues that the revival of Chan Buddhism depended upon reinventions of previous Chan ideals, which had been largely lost after the Song dynasty.
Wu investigates the development of Chan Buddhism in the seventeenth century, focusing on controversies involving issues such as correct practice and lines of lineage.  In this way, he shows how the Chan revival reshaped Chinese Buddhism in late imperial China.  Situating these controversies alongside major events of the fateful Ming-Qing transition, Wu shows how the rise and fall of Chan Buddhism was conditioned by social changes in the seventeenth century.
Examining the role of textual practice and the implication of dharma transmission in rebuilding Chan institutions, Wu argues that the Chan revival has been synchronized with the transformation of Chinese culture and society. His study concludes by bringing the Chan revival to a larger historical context and reflecting on its legacies, ultimately establishing a general pattern of past Buddhist revivals.

This essay is an analysis of the concluding paragraph of "Shushogi," a late nineteenth-century Sōtō Zen compilation of some of the key teachings of Zen master Dōgen, tersely encapsulated in thirty-one paragraphs and five sections, and carefully compiled over a period of three years for use by both lay and monastic practitioners. Paragraph 31 focuses on the relation between Buddha and mind.

Buddhism and Postmodernity is a response to some of the questions that have emerged in the process of Buddhism's encounters with modernity and the West. Jin Y. Park broadly outlines these questions as follows: first, why are the interpretations and evaluations of Buddhism so different in Europe (in the nineteenth century), in the United States (in the twentieth century), and in traditional Asia; second, why does Zen Buddhism, which offers a radically egalitarian vision, maintain a strongly authoritarian leadership; and third, what ethical paradigm can be drawn from the Buddhist-postmodern form of philosophy? Park argues that, as unrelated as these questions may seem, the issues that have generated them are related to perennial philosophical themes of identity, institutional power, and ethics, respectively. Each of these themes constitutes one section of Buddhism and Postmodernity. Park discusses the three issues in the book through the exploration of the Buddhist concepts of self and others, language and thinking, and universality and particularities. Most of this discussion is drawn from the East Asian Buddhist traditions of Zen and Huayan Buddhism in connection with the Continental philosophies of postmodernism, hermeneutics, and deconstruction. Self-critical from both the Buddhist and Western philosophical perspectives, Buddhism and Postmodernity points the reader toward a new understanding of Buddhist philosophy and offers a Buddhist-postmodern ethical paradigm that challenges normative ethics of metaphysical traditions.

Notes on the collection of variant characters of the Zǔtáng jí 祖堂集 (K.1503) and the referencing system used for the Database of Medieval Chinese Texts (Ghent University & DILA 法鼓文理學院). Variants are collected from an original print of the Goryeo 高麗 edition of the ZTJ which is stored at the Library of the Institute for Research in Humanities 人文科学研究所図書室 of Kyōto University 京都大學, Japan.

The papers collected in this volume aim to address various aspects of Chán studies that have so far not received sufficient scholarly attention. The focus is on developments of Chán in (from the angle of the center of the Chinese Empire) peripheral regions, and the role of Buddhist centers in these areas in preserving, defining and spreading Chán texts and ideas. To address these issues, the publication mainly aims to introduce and analyze manuscript material from Dūnhuáng, Turfan, and Karakhoto. The publication also includes high-quality reproductions of hitherto unpublished material (see for example the paper by Kirill Solonin in this volume), critical editions, and translations. Through these case studies and the thorough investigation of a selection of extant manuscript material we hope to contribute to a better understanding of the complex processes of interactions between Buddhists of different ethnical origins and active in different areas, and the transformations which took place in the Northwestern regions during medieval times.

This book investigates the intellectual, social, and religious background of Chinese Zen master Yinyuan’s move to Japan in 1654 and the founding of Manpukuji in 1661. Fully immersed in the Late Ming Buddhist revival, Yinyuan followed a syncretic Buddhist practice but claimed to inherit the authentic transmission from the Linji sect. He arrived in Japan during the Ming-Qing transition and was quickly installed by the bakufu as  symbol for representing China in a Japan-centered world order. His presence in Edo Japan engendered various responses from Japanese Buddhists and intellectuals who sought the meaning of authenticity from Yinyuan. However, the image of his authenticity was questioned and the symbolic presence of Chinese monks was disrupted during the early eighteenth century when China and Japan tightened their control over the Nagasaki trade. Situating Yinyuan and the religious events related to him in a broad understanding of the “seventeenth-century crisis” in early Modern East Asia, this book explains the success and fall of Yinyuan and his tradition in terms of the Authenticity Crisis, meaning that Yinyuan’s claim of religious, political, and cultural authenticity was facing challenges at the wake of a rising Japan-centered identity in Edo Japan. Through the case of Yinyuan, this study seeks to interpret the intellectual and cultural transformation in early modern East Asia as manifestations of the Authenticity Crisis. This book provides new perspectives for rethinking the symbolic role of Buddhist monks in the process of intellectual, political, and social transformation.