Buddhism in China 25.07.2006. Outline 1. The Ten Principal Buddhist Schools in China 2. The Lotus School 3. The Flower Garland School 4. The Pure School

Buddhism in China

25.07.2006

Outline

1. The Ten Principal Buddhist Schools in China

2. The Lotus School 3. The Flower Garland School 4. The Pure School 5. The Meditation School

1. The Ten Principal Buddhist Schools in China

These schools can be divided into: schools of Being, schools of Nonbeing.

Such distinction depends on whether they affirmed or denied the self-nature of dharmas/ “elements of existence” and the ego.

1.1 Buddhist Schools in China for a Short Time

Hinayana (Lesser Vehicle) schools:

– 1. The Cheng-shih/ “Establishment of Truth”: both dharmas and the ego are unreal. It is not certain whether the school ever existed in India. It was popular in the 5th-6th centuries and was absorbed into the Middle Doctrine School by the 8th century.

– 2. The Chu-she: both dharmas and the ego exist. It was active in the 6th-7th centuries.

– 3. The Disciplinary: hardly existed as an independent sect in China. The discipline included 250 “prohibitive precepts” for monks and 348 for nuns.

1.1 Buddhist Schools in China for a Short Time

Mahayana schools: 1. The Three-Treatise school: reducing everything to

Emptiness 2. The Conscious-Only school: reducing everything t

o Consciousness

The Three-Treatise school, the Conscious-Only school, the Cheng-shih, and the Chu-she taught one-sided philosophies.

Representing such extreme positions, they did not suit the temper of the Chinese.

1.2 Important Buddhist Schools in China

All belonged to Mahayana (Greater Vehicle) schools:– 1. The Lotus/ Tian-tai school 天台宗– 2. The Flower Garland/ Hua-yan school 華嚴宗– 3. The Pure Land school 淨土宗– 4. The Meditation school 禪宗

1.3 The Remaining School (also Mahayana schools):

Chen-yan/ “True Word”: the universe consists of the “three mysteries” of action, speech, and thought.

All such phenomena are manifestations of the Great Sun Buddha, which is the universe itself.

Through secret language, e.g. “mystical verse,” “true words,” the truth of the Buddha can be communicated to human beings.

Popular in the 8th century and rapidly declined in China. Its influence: Tibet, Japan.

2. The Lotus School/ Tian-tai Syncretism

From the philosophical standpoint, and in terms of its influence on other schools in China, Japan, this school is of major importance.

Distinctively Chinese. Basic scripture: Lotus of the Wonderful Law, from No

rth India/ Central Asia.

The school is founded upon the interpretation given this text by a great Chinese monk (Chih-kai, 538-597 A.D.)


Its name indicates the place of geographical origin, the Tian-tai (“Heavenly Terrace”) Mountain of Chekiang Province, where Chih-kai taught.

From this Grand Master of the Tian-tai, the Lotus, one of the most popular of Mahayana sutras, was not merely a theological document but also a guide to religious salvation through practice.


Chih-kai lectured for years on its written text, minutely examining every detail of language and subtlety of meaning, and giving special attention to the methods of religious practice embodied in the Lotus.

His works: – 1. “The Words and Phrases of the Lotus”/ Fa-hua wen-chu – 2. Profound Meaning of the Lotus/ Fa-hua hsuan-I– 3. Great Concentration and Insight/ Mo-ho chih-kuan


At Chih-kai’s time, Buddhist thought in South China was distinctly intellectual in character; in the north Buddhists were developing a religion of faith and discipline.

Himself a product of the South. His teacher, Hui-ssu, a northerner. Chih-kai: the contemplative and intellectual approach

es were both important. Tian-tai school: a strong philosophical content a

nd a strong emphasis on mediatative practice.


The Perfectly Harmonious Threefold Truth:– 1. all things or dharmas are empty because they

are produce through causation and therefore have no self-nature.

– 2. they do have temporary existence– 3. being both Empty and Temporary is the nature

of dharmas and is the Mean


Emptiness, Temporariness, the Mean involve one another, i.e., one is three and three is one, the relative thus being identified with the absolute.


In the world of Temporariness, 10 realms of existence:

Buddhas, bodhisattvas, buddhas-for-themselves, direct disciples of the Buddha, heavenly beings, spirits, human beings, departed beings, beasts, and depraved men.

Each shares the characteristics of the other, making one hundred realms.

Each of the 100 realms is characterized by ten thusnesses or such-likeness through which the true nature is manifested in phenomena.


E.g. such-like character, such-like nature, such-like substance, such-like power, such-like retributions, such-like beginning-and-end-ultimate.

This makes 1000 realms of existence. In turn, each realm consists of the three divisi

ons of living beings, of space, and of the aggregates which constitute dharmas, making 3000 realms of aspects of reality.


These realms are so interwoven and interpenetrated: they may be considered “immanent in a single instant of thought.”

This does not mean that they are produced by the thought of man or Buddha (as taught as some Mahayana schools), but that in every thought-moment, all the possible worlds are involved.


The great emphasis: on concentration and insight as a means of perceiving the ultimate truth embodied in such a thought-moment.

This is a philosophy of One-in-All and All-in-One. Every dharma is thus an embodiment of the real ess

ence of the Ultimate Emptiness/ True Thusness. The great message of the Locus: *“All beings have the Buddha-nature in them and

can be saved.”*


The school claims that the Lotus is the most complete doctrine among all Buddhist teachings.

Buddhism is classified into 5 periods/Vehicles: 1-4. : represented by the literature of various

schools, are regarded as exploratory/ temporary 5.: The Lotus is final.


Thus a measure of truth is seen in the teachings of other schools, which in certain respects are mutually contradictory.

Yet, the Lotus is seen as fulfilling and reconciling them in a final synthesis.

It is an attempt to replace the Three Vehicles by One Vehicle.

In its all-inclusiveness the Tian-tai points again to the doctrine of universal salvation, the outstanding movement of Mahayana movement.

3. The Flower Garland/ The Hua-yen School

In Chinese, the name is rendered “Hua-yan”/ “Hua-yen.”

This school never existed in India. Hsien-shou (643-712 A.D.) was considered t

he real founder.


The main tenet of the school: the Universal causation of the Realm of Law (Dharmadhatu).

Meaning that the entire universe arises simultaneously.

All dharmas have the characteristics of universality, speciality, similarity, diversity, integration, differentiation.

All dharmas are in the state of Thusness.


In its static aspect, Thusness is the Void, the realm of Principle.

In its dynamic aspect, Thusness is manifestation, the phenomenon, the realm of facts.

The 2 realms are so interpenetrated and interdependent that the entire universe arises through reciprocal causation.

This concept resembles the Tian-tai’s idea of “all 3000 realms immanent in an instant of thought,” so much that sometimes, two schools are indistinguishable.

3. The Flower Garland School: 5 Vehicles

Similar to Tian-tai, the Hue-yan school classifies Buddhist sects into 5 Vehicles:– 1. the Small Vehicle/Hinayana: includes the Chu-s

he school and advocates individual salvation.– 2. the Elementary Great Vehicle: embracing the T

hree Treatise and Conscious-Only schools, teach universal salvation.


2. the Elementary Great Vehicle: …It assures humans with some exceptions, all will cross the sea of suffering in a Great Vehicle to the Other Store.

3. the Final Great Vehicle, that of Tian-tai, which teaches that without any exception all beings, including the depraved, will be saved.

4. the Abrupt Doctrine of the Great Vehicle, identifies with the Meditative school, which teaches that salvation can be achieved through abrupt enlightenment.


5. the Perfect Doctrine of the Great Vehicle, that of the Hua-yen, which combines all the other vehicles.

The underlying spirit, as in the case of the Tian-tai, is syncretic.

Because of this, the two schools have been able to serve as the philosophical foundation of Chinese Buddhism in general.

4. The Pure Land School/ Ching-tu

The Pure land is the sphere believed by Mahayana Buddhists to be ruled over by the Buddha Amitabha/ Amita/ Amytayus.

Indian Mahayana conceived of the universe as consisting of an infinite number of spheres and s going through an infinite number of cosmic periods.

Among its advantages is that it is free of the temptations and defilements which characterize the world inhabited by mortals (e.g., the presence of women).

4. The Pure Land School

In the Pure Land Sutra, one of the principal scripture bases of Pure Land salvationism, Amita, while yet a bodhisattva under the name of Dharmakara, took 48 vows which were instrumental in his attainment of buddha-hood.

The 18th of these is the most important: – “If, O Blessed One, when I have attained enlightenment, whatever

beings in other worlds, having conceived a desire for right, perfect enlightenment, and having heard my name, with favorable intent think upon me, if when the time and moment of death are upon them, I surrounded by and at the head of my community of mendicants, do not stand before them to keep them from frustration, may I not, on that account, attain to unexcelled, right, perfect enlightenment.”


Since, according to believers in this scripture, the bodhisattva Dharmakara did in fact become a Buddha (Amita), the efficacy of his vows is proved, and anyone who mediates or calls upon his name in good faith will be reborn in his Buddha-world.

Hence the simple invocation of Amita’s name (A-mi-to-fu in Chinese) became the most common of all religious practices in China.

Nor was it simply a sectarian devotion.


The meditation upon Amita and his Pure Land became a widespread practice in the temples and monasteries of other sects as well.

In religious painting and sculpture too, Amita, seated on a lotus throne in his Western paradise, and flanked by his attendant bodhisattvas (e.g. Kian-yin, the so-called “Godess of Mercy”) was a favorite theme.

5. The Meditation School/ Chan

The Meditation school, called Chan in Chinese, is better known to the west by the Japanese pronunciation Zen.

As a religious practice, meditation was not peculiar to Chan, for it is a standing fixture in all forms of Buddhism from earliest time.

Yet no other school attached the exclusive importance Chan did to meditation.

Mediatation is not only as a mean/method for intuiting Ultimate Truth, but as an end of itself, as the Truth realized in action.

5. The Meditation School

Nor was any other school prepared to dispense as freely as Chan with scriptural studies or philosophical discussion in favor of a purely intuitive approach to enlightenment.

From its distaste for book-learning Chan became known as the doctrine “not found on words or scriptures.”

It was a teaching “transmitted from mind to mind,” i.e., from one master directly to his disciples, without any rational arguments.


In some ways, Chan tends to be strongly individualistic and irreverent with respect to tradition.

It is also highly authoritative and insistent upon the finest discipline.

Chan is above all a religious discipline, and one requires complete submission to the will of the Master, who alone can guide with authority and insure the correct transmission of the Truth.


Chan teaches “directly pointing to the human mind” and “becoming a Buddha just as you are.”

Believing Buddha-nature is inherent in all human beings and that through meditative introspection this nature can readily be seen.

By the Buddha-nature is meant the Buddha-mind in its highest attributes and true essence, which transcends all distinctions of any specific character.


To penetrate the Buddha-mind, the meditation-masters advocated “absence of thought,” in the sense that the mind should be freed from the influence of the external world.

They taught “ignoring one’s feelings” so as to eliminate all attachments.

They also taught “letting the mind take its course” unhindered among phenomena.


The fundamental method: meditation 1. Tathagata Meditation, involves deliberations of the

intellect. 2. Patriarchal Meditation, requires no intellectual effo

rt but direct intuition of the Buddha-mind. The result of meditation: enlightenment Major tradition: “sudden enlightenment preceding gra

dual cultivation,” cultivation of the religious life must be gradual and guided by Perfect Wisdom.

The Truth/Wisdom: everywhere


To intuit Wisdom: the mind must be emancipated from old habits, prejudices, restrictive thought processes and even ordinary thought.

Horizon: uplifted; Perspective: broadened; Aim: directed toward Ultimate Truth

There are special methods to throw off intellection and imagination, and allow the pure mind to make its own discovery.

Methods: travel (to offer new experience), manual labor, working with nature, etc.


The most common method: “public case,” i.e., question-and-answer, answers to a disciple’s question include scolding, beating, strange and illogical utterance.

Purpose: to wake up, shock, sensitize the questioner’s mind.


Chan attributes its mystic beginning to the Buddha himself, who according to tradition, transmitted the doctrine to his pupil Kashyapa by merely holding up a flower and smiling.

Its founding in China has been attributed to Bodhidharma, the First Patriarch. (such a person was believed to be in China during 420-479)

By the time, the meditation doctrine had been widely accepted and practiced.

The doctrine of sudden enlightenment was advanced earlier and had aroused considerable controversy.

Documents

Buddhism in China 25.07.2006. Outline 1. The Ten Principal Buddhist Schools in China 2. The Lotus School 3. The Flower Garland School 4. The Pure School