Abstract
Following the Wei-Jin Dynasties, Confucian and Buddhist thinkers began to take each other’s philosophy more and more seriously, and the relationship between them, sometimes antagonistic and sometimes mutually creative but that almost always played out in scenes of dispute and debate, developed into one of the most important relationships in the intellectual history of China.
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Notes
- 1.
Yu Yingshi argues: “Although the idea of ‘rectifying the mind and being sincere in the thought’ is also one of the foundations for it, the Buddhist idea of ‘harnessing the mind’ is aimed at abandoning this world, while for the Daxue it is a preparation for entering and managing the world. Han Yu took the idea of ‘harnessing the mind’ as the starting point to revive Confucianism—he entered the house of Buddhism and took up his arms” (Yu 2003, p. 420).
- 2.
There are different understandings concerning whether or not the secular way of life is the basis of the Buddhist way of life, and Qian Mu said, “The Dao and its virtue (dao de) have the same origin, which Mencius called ‘that of which my mind approves.’ In the first paragraph of the Quan Shu 劝书 (Book of Persuasion), Qisong said: ‘The mind is the root of the Dao and the righteousness of the Sages,’ and ‘The Buddhist way is assisted by the secular way.’ None of this, however, is to say that the Buddhist Dao is good at explaining the mind, which is why the secular way depends on it as its root” (Qian 2004, p.37). However, Qian’s comments do not take account of Qisong’s following claim, that “the secular Dao takes the Buddhist Dao as its root.” The term “secular” 资 (zi) means “to finance,” but used passively it means “to be assisted” or “to depend on,” and this is inconsistent with “the root.” In this reading, Buddha is one who apprehended before all others the ultimate standards of the human mind and taught them to the world, and this confirms Qisong’s theory of the identical mind of Confucianism and Buddhism.
- 3.
Fang Litian writes, “Most Chinese Buddhist scholars thought that genuine mind is human mind, and that it is the foundation of becoming a Buddha, as well as the origin of all the beings. Therefore they value most the genuine mind. A series of concepts in Chan Sect, such as own-mind, original mind, ordinary mind, and Buddha mind, are all variations of genuine mind” (Fang 2002, p. 270). In face of all these concepts, Buddhism stresses “a return to Appearance and Nature in the practice of deliverance so as to master the absolute root-body. To achieve this is to realize the perfect fusion of Nature and Appearance and acquire the absolute truth of ‘all but the one mind’” (Ibid., p. 340).
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- 5.
Yu Yingshi decided that Lu Jiuyuan, a major Neo-Confucian thinker of the Song Dynasty who made the proposition “mind is principle” absolutely central to his thought, received the proposition “directly from the Chan Sect (Qisong). Therefore, adopting the viewpoint that ‘mind is principle,’ it is easy to fall into the realm of Chan” (Yu 2003, p.427).
- 6.
Qian Mu said, “Here he argues ‘to harness the mind’ at the same time with ‘mind is principle,’ which shows that he did not argue that that mind dominates exclusively. Later, Lu Jiuyuan and Wang Yangming did make that argument, and this was one of their relative shortcomings” (Qian 2004, p. 48). This means that, for Qisong, the mind is under control, unlike Lu and Wang, who believed that the mind functions everywhere and dominates. Of course, Lu and Wang still paid attention to the need to harness the mind.
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Xiang, S. (2017). Early Engagements with Buddhism and the Rise of the Neo-confucians. In: Yao, X. (eds) Reconceptualizing Confucian Philosophy in the 21st Century. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-4000-9_22
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