Here it should be pointed out that the terms, Chinese Buddhism and Buddhism in China, are not necessarily synonymous. Thus there were cer-tain schools of Buddhism which confined themselves to the religious and philosophical tradition of India, and made no contact with those of China. An example is the school known by the Chinese as the Hsiang Isung or Wei-shih tsung (School of Subjective Idealism), which was introduced by the famous Chinese pilgrim to India, Hsuan-tsang (596-664). Schools like this may be called Buddhism in China. Their influence was confined to re-stricted groups of people and limited periods. They did not and could not reach the thought of every intellectual, and therefore played little or no part in the development of what may be called the Chinese mind.
On the other hand, Chinese Buddhism is the form of Buddhism that has made contact with Chinese thought and thus has developed in conjunc-tion with Chinese philosophical tradition. In later pages we will see that the Middle Path school of Buddhism bears some similarity to philosophical Tao-ism. Its interaction with the latter resulted in the Ch an or Zen school, which though Buddhist, is at the same time Chinese. Although a school of Buddhism, its influence on Chinese philosophy, literature, and art has been far reaching.
General Concepts of Buddhism
Following the introduction of Buddhism into China, tremendous efforts were made to translate the Buddhist texts into Chinese. Texts of both the Hi-nayana (Small Vehicle) and Mahayana (Great Vehicle) divisions of Buddhism were translated, but only the latter gained a permanent place in Chinese Buddhism.
398 . THE FOUNDATION OF CHINESE BUDDHISM
On the whole, the way in which Mahayana Buddhism most influenced the Chinese has been in its concept of the Universal Mind, and in what may be called its negative method of metaphysics. Before going into a discussion of these, we must first survey some of the general concepts of Buddhism.
Although there are many schools of Buddhism, each with something differ-ent to offer, all generally agree in their belief in the theory of Karma (trans-lated in Chinese as Yeh). Karma or Yeh is usually rendered in English as deed or action, but its actual meaning is much wider than that, for what it covers is not merely confined to overt action, but also includes what an indi-vidual sentient being speaks and thinks. According to Buddhism, all the phenomena of the universe, or, to be more exact, of the universe of an indi-vidual sentient being, are the manifestations of his mind. Whenever he acts, speaks, or even thinks, his mind is doing something, and that something must produce its results, no matter how far in the future. This result is the retribution of the Karma. The Karma is the cause and its retribution is the effect. The being of an individual is made up of a chain of causes and ef-fects.
The present life of a sentient being is only one aspect in this whole pro-cess. Death is not the end of his being, but is only another aspect of the process. What an individual is in this life, comes as a result of what he did in the past, and what he does in the present will determine what he will be in the future. Hence what he does now will bear its fruits in a future life, and what he will do then will again bear its fruits in yet another future life, and so on ad infinitum. This chain of causation is what is called Samsara, the Wheel of Birth and Death. It is the main source from which come the sufferings of individual sentient beings.
According to Buddhism, all these sufferings arise from the individual s fundamental Ignorance of the nature of things. All things in the universe are the manifestations of the mind and therefore are illusory and impermanent, yet the individual ignorantly craves for and cleaves to them. This fundamen-tal Ignorance is called Avidya, which in Chinese is translated as Wu-ming, non-enlightenment. From Ignorance come the craving for and cleaving to life, because of which the individual is bound to the elernal Wheel of Birth and Death, from which he can never escape.
The only hope for escape lies in replacing Ignorance with Enlightenment, which in Sanskrit is called Bodhi. All the teachings and practices of the various Buddhist schools are attempts to contribute something to the Bodhi. From them the individual, in the course of many rebirths, may accumulate Karma which does not crave for and cleave to things, but avoids craving and cleaving. The result is an emancipation of the individual possessing this Kar-ma from the Wheel of Birth and Death. And this emancipation is called JVir-vana.
What, exactly, does the state of Nirvana signify? It may be said to be the identification of the individual with the Universal Mind, or with what is
4OO THE FOUNDATION OF CHINESE BUDDHISM
called the Buddha-nature; or it is the realization or self-consciousness of the individual's original identification with the Universal Mind. He is the Uni-versal Mind, but formerly he did not realize it, or was not self—conscious of it. The school of Mahayana Buddhism known by the Chinese as the Hsing tsung or School of Universal Mind expounded this theory. (For this school, hsing or nature and hsin or mind are the same.) In expounding it, the school introduced the idea of Universal Mind into Chinese thought.
There were other schools of Mahayana Buddhism, however, such as that known by the Chinese as the K ung tsung or School of Emptiness, also known as the School of the Middle Path, which would not describe Nirvana in this way. Their method of approach is what I call the negative method.
The Theory of Double Truth 1
i
This School of the Middle Path proposed what it called the theory of dou— j
ble truth: truth in the common sense and truth in the higher sense. Further— |
more, it maintained, not only are there these two kinds of truth, but they <
both exist on varying levels. Thus what, on the lower level, is truth in the j
higher sense, becomes, on the higher level, merely truth in the common '
sense. One of the great Chinese Masters of this school, Chi-tsang (549-623), j
describes this theory as including the three following levels of double truth: !
(1) The common people take all things as really yu (having being, existent) j and know nothing about wu (having no being, non-existent). Therefore the ■ Buddhas have told them that actually all things are wu and empty. On this level, to say that all things are yu is the common sense truth, and to say that ? all things are wu is the higher sense truth. j
(2) To say that all things are yu is one-sided, but to say that all things are wu is also one-sided. They are both one-sided, because they give people the wrong impression that wu or non-existence only results from the absence or removal of yu or existence. Yet in actual fact, what is yu is simultaneously what is wu. For instance, the table standing before us need not be destroyed in order to show that it is ceasing to exist. In actual fact it is ceasing to exist all the time. The reason for this is that when one starts to destroy the table, the table which one thus intends to destroy has already ceased to exist. The table of this actual moment is no longer the table of the preceding moment. It only looks like that of the preceding moment. Therefore on the second lev-el of double truth, to say that all things are yu and to say that all things are wu are both equally common sense truth. What one ought to say is that the
not—one—sided middle path consists in understanding that things are nei-ther yu nor wu. This is the higher sense truth.
(3) But to say that the middle truth consists in what is not one—sided (i.e., what is neither yu nor wu), means to make distinctions. And all distinctions are themselves one-sided. Therefore on the third level, to say that things are neither yu nor wu, and that herein lies the not-one-sided middle path, is
4O2. THE FOUNDATION OF CHINESE BUDDHISM
merely common sense truth. The higher truth consists in saying that things are neither yu nor wu, neither not—yu nor not—wu, and that the middle path is neither one-sided nor not-one-sided. (Erh-ti Chang or Chapter on the Double Truth, sec. I.)
In this passage 1 have retained the Chinese words yu and wu, because in their use the Chinese thinkers of the time saw or felt a similarity between the central problem discussed by Buddhism and lhal discussed by Taoism, in which the same words arc prominent. Though deeper analysis shows that the similarity is in some respects superficial, nevertheless, when the Taoists spoke of Wu as transcending shapes and features, and the Buddhists spoke of Wu as "not-not," there is a real similarity.
Still another real similarity between the Buddhists of this particular school and the Taoists is their method of approach and the final results achieved by this method. The method is to make use of different levels of discourse. What is said in one level is to be immediately denied by a saying on a high-er level. As we have seen in chapter ten, this is also the method used in the Ch i Wu Lun or "Equality of Things in the Chuang-tzu, and it is the method that has just been discussed above.
When all is denied, including the denial of the denial of all, one arrives at the same situation as found in the philosophy of Chuang Tzu, in which all is forgotten, including the fact that one has forgotten all. This state is described by Chuang Tzu as "sitting in forgetfulness," and by the Buddhists as Nir-vana. One cannot ask this school of Buddhism what, exactly, the state of Nir-vana is, because, according to it, when one reaches the third level of truth, one cannot affirm anything.
Philosophy of Seng-chao
One of the great teachers of this same school in China in the fifth century was Kumarajiva, who was an Indian but was born in a state in the present Chinese Turkistan. He came to Ch ang —an (the present Sian in Shensi province) in 4OI, and lived there until his death in 4*3- During these thirteen years, he translated many Buddhist texts into Chinese and taught many dis-ciples, among them some who became very famous and influential. In this chapter I shall mention two of them, Seng—chao and Tao—sheng.
Seng-chao (384-414) came from the vicinity of the above-mentioned city of Ch'ang-an. He first studied Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu, but later became a disciple of Kumarajiva. He wrote several essays which have been collected as the Chao Lun, or Essays of Seng-chao. One of them, titled "There Is No Real Unreality," says: "All things have that in them which makes them not be yu [having being, existent] and also have that in them which makes them not be wu [having no being, non-existent]. Because of the former, they are yu and yet not yu. Because of the latter, they are wu and yet not wu....Why is this so? Suppose the yu is really yu, then it should be yu for all time and
404 THE FOUNDATION OF CHINESE BUDDHISM
should not owe its yu to the convergence of causes. [According to Buddhism, the existence of anything is due to the convergence of a number of causes] Suppose the wu is really wu, then it should be wu for all time and should not owe its wu to the dissolution of causes. If the yu owes its yu to causation, then the yu is not really yu....But if all things are wu, then nothing would come about. If something comes about, it cannot be altogether nothing.... If we want to affirm that things are yu, yet there is no real existence of this yu. If we want to affirm that they are wu, yet they have their shapes and fea-tures. To have shapes and features is not the same as wu, and to be not real-ly yu is not the same as yu. This being so, the principle of no real unreali-ty' is clear." (Chao-Lun, ch. 1.)
In another essay, titled "On the Immutability of Things," Seng-chao says: Most men s idea of mutability is that things in the past do not come down to the present. They therefore say that there is mutability and no immutabil-ity. My idea of immutability is also that things of the past do not come down to the present. Therefore I on the contrary say that there is immutability and no mutability. That there is mutability and no immutability is because things of the past do not come down to the present. That there is immutability and no mutability is because things of the past do not vanish away with the past [i.e., though they do not exist today, they did exist in the past]...If we search for past things in the past, they were not wu in the past. If we search for these past things in the present, they are not yu in the present....That is to say, past things are in the past, and are not things that have receded from the present. Likewise present things are in the present, and are not some-thing that have come down from the past....The effect is not the cause, but because of the cause there is the effect. That the effect is not the cause shows that the cause does not come down to the present. And that, there be-ing the cause, there is therefore the effect, shows that causes do not vanish in the past. The cause has neither come down nor has it vanished. Thus the theory of immutability is clear." (Chan Lun, ch. I.)
The idea here is that things undergo constant change at every moment. Anything existing at any given moment is actually a new thing of that mo-ment and not the same as the thing that has existed in the past. In the same essay Seng-chao says: "[There was a man by the mane of] Fan-chih who, having become a monk in his early years, returned home when his hair was white. On seeing him the neighbors exclaimed at seeing a man of the past who was still alive. Fan-chih said: 'I look like the man of the past, but I am not he.' "At every moment there has been a Fan-chih. The Fan-chih of this moment is not a Fan-chih who has come down from the past, and the Fan-chih of the past was not a Fan-chih of the present who receded into the past. Juding from the fact that everything changes at every moment, we say that there is change but no permanence. And judging from the fact that ev-erything at every moment remains with that moment, we say that there is permanence but no change.
406 THE FOUNDATION OF CHINESE BUDDHISM
This is Seng—chao s theory to substantiate the double truth on the second level. On this level, to say that things are yu and permanent, and to say that things are wu and mutable, arc both common sense truth. To say that things are neither yu nor wu, neither permanent nor mutable, is the higher sense truth.
Seng—chao also gives arguments to substanliate the double truth on the third or highest level. This he does in an essay titled "On Prqjna [i.e., Wis-dom of the Buddha] Not Being Knowledge." Prajna is described by Seng-chao as Sage—knowledge, but, he says, this Sage—knowledge is really not knowledge. For knowledge of a thing consists in selecting a quality of that thing and taking that quality as the object of knowledge. But Sage-knowl-edge consists in knowing about what is called Wu (Non—being), and this Wu transcends shapes and features and has no qualities; hence it can never be the object of knowledge. To have knowledge of Wu is to be one with it. This state of identification with Wu is called Nirvana. Nirvana and Prajna are two aspects of one and the same state of affairs. As Nirvana is not some-thing to be known, so Prajna is knowledge which is not knowledge. (Chat) Lun, ch. 3.) Hence, on the third level of truth, nothing can be said and one must remain silent.
