Traditions of Meditation in Chinese Buddhism

During the past two decades there has been a steady profileration of books in the West on Buddhist meditation. This trend reflects a growing interest in Buddhism both as a viable religious alternative and as an academic field of study. But this broader interest in Buddhism is also very much an outgrowth of our fascination with Buddhist meditation. For it is on the theory and practice of meditation that Buddhism may have the most to offer us, whether we are interested in it for personal reasons (as a vehicle for our own spiritual growth) or for more academic ones (for gaining a broader understanding of the nature of religion). In the course of its long and varied development, Buddhism has produced a veritable treasury of reflection on meditation, one whose extensiveness and subtlety cannot be matched by any of the other great religions. W hether it is practiced or not, meditation remains central to the tradition as a whole, and without appreciating its importance one simply cannot begin to understand Buddhism.

The wealth of English language books on Buddhist meditation ranges from translations of classical texts, academic studies, and personal accounts by Westerners to expositions by modern masters. Many are excellent, and some have even achieved the status of classics in their own right, contributing not just to our deeper understanding of Buddhism but also, in many instances, to our personal insight as well. Most, however, deal with either the Theravada or Tibetan Buddhist tradition, whether in classical or contemporary guise. Very few deal with the kinds of meditation typical of the East Asian Buddhist traditions. The outstanding exception, of course, is Zen; most bookstores that trade in Buddhism even have a separate section reserved exclusively for Zen. Yet the majority of books written about Zen meditation tend to treat it in isolation from the larger Buddhist historical and cultural context of which it is a part. Zen meditation, zazen, is often discussed or recommended as a

spiritual technique free of the usual cultural and doctrinal impediments that discourage all but the most dogged or those specially drawn to the exotic. Such a representation is, undoubtedly, the result of a number of factors: the increasingly pyschological orientation of educated Americans; an American penchant for the practical and experiential accompanied by an impatience with the theoretical; the apologetic and missionary character of some publications; the lack of familiarity with Zen's Buddhist legacy on the part of many Western enthusiasts, and so forth. But it is also very much a reflection of Zen's own professed stance, its disdain for traditional Buddhist doctrine and its insistence on cutting through to the ultimate with a single thrust of the sword. But such a stance is itself the result of a long and complex historical evolution, one in which Zen came to define itself as the Sudden Teaching in contrast to the other more textually oriented traditions within Chinese Buddhism-a teaching, that is, that dispensed with the usual compromises suited to the less spiritually adept in order to grasp the ultimate directly. Zen claims to represent a special mind-to-mind transmission outside of the textual tradition, a transmission that ultimately traces back to the enlightenment experience of the historical Buddha. Zen's stance is thus related to its emergence as a distinct tradition within the sectarian arena of Chinese Buddhism. As the chapters by Bernard Faure and Carl Bielefeldt well demonstrate, Zen's public attitude toward meditation is deeply colored by its own sectarian claims and the kind of rhetorical posture they entailed.

W hile clear presentations of the techniques and psychology of Zen meditation are valuable, Western familiarity with Zen has now reached a point where an understanding of the larger historical context within which Zen articulated itself is also necessary. Such an understanding is important not only for a more balanced academic view, but also for a more serious appraisal of the meaning of Zen practice for contemporary American life. The radical character of Zen emerged as part of a complex dialectic within Buddhism, and we cannot understand Zen until we understand what it is critiquing. If we take its statements out of their Buddhist context and interpret them instead within our own cultural context, they are apt to mean something quite different, particularly in the realm of ethics. Zen's iconoclasm had a different meaning within a cultural context where Buddhist moral teachings were widely affirmed than it does today to contemporary Americans who lack any such background and who are probably already suffering from an excess of moral relativism. Philip Kapleau records the shock that he and a fellow seeker experienced when they first witnessed the unabashed religiosity of a modern Japanese roshi bowing before an enshrined image of his temple founder. Recalling the stories of the great T'ang Dynasty Chinese Ch'an masters

Introduction

(masters who did not hesitate to use a carved image of the Buddha as firewood to keep warm), Kapleau's friend could barely hold back his dis­ dain. When the roshi asked them if they would also like to offer incense, the friend asked the roshi why he didn't spit on the statue instead. To this, the roshi replied: "If you want to spit you spit; I prefer to bow."' Like Kapleau's friend, it is easy for us to be misled by Zen rhetoric. We would do well to pay attention to the overall context within which Zen's radicalism evolved: the highly regimented monastic lifestyle of disciplined training and prescribed ritual that structures the details of the monk's daily life and defines the larger rhythms of his year. Like Zen's radical pronouncements, meditation-itself originally a structured activity within an institutionalized lifestyle intended to exemplify the Buddhist ideal-is also related to the ethical realm. In the Platform Siltra the Sixth Patriarch does not abrogate seated meditation when he criticizes the Northern School's practice of "sitting without moving" by alluding to Vimalakirti's upbraiding of Sariputra for his mistaking "meditation" for its ritualized posture. 2 Like Vimalakirti, he redefines a prescribed practice in completely internalized and formless terms, terms that lack convenient handles onto which one might grasp. This move, of course, is only another aspect the Platform Siltra's emphasis on nonabiding (wu-chu). When he defines seated meditation (tso-ch 'an, zazen), the Sixth Patriarch does so in a way that makes no reference to any physical activity: sitting {!so) means not activating thoughts in regard to external objects, and meditation (ch 'an) means seeing one's original nature and not being confused.' While this may be a more profound way to talk about meditation, it also leaves open the question of what one actually does when one meditates. How, for instance, might one go about realizing a state in which one does not activate thoughts in regard to external objects? What must one do to see one's original nature? Hu Shih is surely wrong when he says, playing on the meaning of ch 'an as dhyana (here loosely meaning meditation), that the Southern Ch'an denunciation of Northern Ch'an meditation practices was "a revolutionary pronouncement of a new Ch'an which renounces ch'an itself and is therefore no ch 'an at all."4 The Sixth Patriarch's criticism of the formal practice of meditation in the Platform Siltra only makes sense within the context of the daily regimen of the Ch'an or Zen monk, where seated meditation was an integral part of his practice, if not the major focus of his life. But it is important to note how easily Zen rhetoric allows Hu Shih to come to this conclusion. And Hu was not alone; many Buddhists also came to this same conclusion, as David Chappell makes clear in his chapter on Pure Land criticism of Ch'an. It even seems that some of the schools of Ch'an that developed in the eighth century took Zen rhetoric quite literally, if Tsung-mi's account of the Pao-t'ang

School in Szechwan can be given any credence. 5 The problematic of the radical character of Zen rhetoric about meditation versus the actual practice of meditation within the Zen School is sensitively explored by Carl Bielefeldt in his chapter on the first Ch'an meditation manual, Tsungtse's Tso-ch 'an i. But this book is not about Zen per se, although Zen (or, more properly speaking, Ch'an) is the central focus of three of its chapters. Rather, it deals with the matrix of Chinese Buddhist practices and concepts of which Zen was a part, and should thus help to fill out our understanding of the historical and doctrinal context from which Zen emerged. By treating the larger context of Chinese Buddhist meditation theory and practice, it should also fill a significant gap in our knowledge and understanding of Buddhist meditation: the lack of any readily available and trustworthy discussion of those forms of Buddhist meditation developed and practiced in East Asia. It thereby seeks to balance our acquaintance with Zen meditation-which, because it is the only East Asian practice with which many Westerners are familiar, is often held up as the archetypal form of East Asian Buddhist meditation-by placing it alongside other, equally representative and important forms of meditation: the invocation of the Buddha's name (nien-fo) in Pure Land; visualization (as exemplified by Hsiian-tsang's visualization of Maitreya); and Chih-i's monumental T'ien-t'ai synthesis of Buddhist ritual, cultic, and meditation practices. By exploring the characteristic forms of East Asian Buddhist meditation, the present volume should also contribute further to delineating the distinctive features of East Asian Buddhism. Alan Sponberg, in the opening chapter on "Meditation in Fa-hsiang Buddhism;' raises the hermeneutical problem of how we, as contemporary Westerners doubly distanced from the East Asian Buddhist meditation traditions, should properly interpret them. Not only are they the products of a different time and culture, they are also based on a world view that is fundamentally different from ours in its structure and orientation. He points out, for example, that, although we use a word like "meditation" without a second thought in our discussions of Buddhism, our word does not correspond to any specific term or general concept within Buddhism. Sponberg's discussion of the range of traditional Buddhist terms encompassed by our word "meditation" provides a useful basis for approaching the various kinds of meditation discussed throughout this book and at the same time helps us clarify our own assumptions about the use of meditation as a general category in the study of religion. His more general point is also one we would do well to heed: we must become aware of the presuppositions behind the categories with which we interpret Buddhist meditation as a first step toward gaining some understanding of it. The hermeneutical issue, of course, not only confronts us as contemporary Westerners-it also confronted medieval Chinese Buddhists.

If our language frequently seems ill equipped to deal with the subtle psychological and epistemological distinctions found in the great Indian Buddhist meditation manuals, classical Chinese was even less well suited to the task. One could argue that the Chinese were culturally even further distanced from the world view embodied in the Buddhism they received from India than are we (who share, at least, a language with the same Indo-European roots and who also have more sophisticated hermeneutical tools at our disposal). One can outline the chronological development of Chinese Buddhism in terms of an increasingly sophisticated series of hermeneutical frameworks devised to understand a religion as alien conceptually as it was geographically. The hermeneutical issue of the Chinese understanding of Buddhism raises the whole question of "sinification" -how the Chinese adapted Buddhism within their own conceptual framework and how Buddhism, in turn, irrevocably transformed that framework. Our awareness of the hermeneutical problems that framed the context in which the Chinese appropriated Buddhism should remind us, as the modern interpreters, that, while we must be sensitive to how our own assumptions affect our understanding of Buddhism, we must be open to how our understanding of Buddhism may also transform those assumptions. Understanding is a process of hermeneutical engagement. And here again, Buddhist meditation-as a systematic methodology for uncovering and transforming the basis of our understanding of the world-can be seen as an essentially hermeneutical enterprise and may have yet something further to offer us. Although these more general hermeneutical issues are not the focus of this book, they are inevitably raised by our consideration of Buddhist meditation within its cultural and historical context. It is hoped that, with the further understanding toward which studies such as those collected here will contribute, such issues will become not only more sharply focused but the subject of more detailed exploration in their own right. The question of sinification, in addition to its hermeneutical ramifications, is also important for clarifying those general features that distinguish East Asian Buddhist meditation from that of South or Southeast Asian Buddhism, as well as from that of Tibet. The major traditions discussed in the chapters that follow (T'ien-t'ai, Ch'an/Zen, and Pure Land) are all products of what Yuki Reimon has characterized as the New Buddhism of the Sui/T'ang Period. In other words, they are examples of thoroughly assimilated forms of Chinese Buddhist thought and practice, forms that are at once genuinely Buddhist and uniquely Chinese. They thus offer a convenient base of comparison with the meditation traditions characteristic of other, more widely known forms of Buddhist practice. The only tradition of Buddhism discussed in this book that does not neatly fit into Yuki's rubric is that of Fa-hsiang. Though it had its incep-

tion in the early years of the T'ang Dynasty, this Chinese form of Yogacara in many ways represents a far less "sinified" form of Buddhism, one that self-consciously rejected, in favor of a more purely Indian model, those new forms of Chinese Buddhism that were taking shape during the sixth and seventh centuries. Fa-hsiang thus can be seen as offering a bridge between more Indian forms of Buddhist practice and those more typically Chinese forms discussed in the other chapters of this book. At the same time, K'uei-chi's five-level discernment of vijflaptimlitratli (discussed in Alan Sponberg's chapter on Fa-hsiang meditation), can also be seen as a deliberate response to those new forms of Chinese Buddhist thought. If, as Sponberg suggests, K'uei-chi's five-level discernment can be seen as an attempt "to co-opt or preempt ... some of the distinctive analytical structures of the new Chinese Buddhism of the sixth century, seeking thereby to appropriate the vitality of these new developments while remaining true to his own, more conservative tradition," it also represents a distinctly Chinese twist to the more Indian teachings of Hsiiantsang.

We cannot easily detach the practice of meditation from its doctrinal context.T he various Buddhist meditation techniques are deeply embedded in a larger world view. Buddhist meditation puts into practice the Buddhist understanding of the world.I t involves a sophisticated epistemology based on an analysis of the psychological process by which we "construct" our experience of the world, and it has a definite soteriological orientation. The distinction between theory and practice, like that between form and content, breaks down when applied to meditation. Although it may seem obvious, this point is well worth stressing within the context of East Asian Buddhism, where the Zen practice of zazen is often taken as the reigning model.E ven those forms of Buddhist meditation that involve nondiscursive modes of awareness are set within the larger soteriological context of the Buddhist understanding of the world. Buddhist meditation practice is inextricably linked with Buddhist meditation theory. The practice exemplifies the theory; the theory is informed by the practice. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the traditional Buddhist practice of vipasyana (P. vipassanli), discernment or insight into the true nature of existence. As Winston King remarks in his recent study of Theravada meditation, "Vipassana is the methodological embodiment of the Buddhist (Theravada) world view ."6 Vipasyana entails the experiential internalization of Buddhist categories-a practice in which the adept systematically applies Buddhist categories to his own experience so that his own experience becomes the living exemplification of the reality of those categories. In the case of Theravada Buddhism, "vipassana is the total, supersaturated, existentializing of the Theravada world view that all existence in personal and individual modes of being, intrinsically and ineradicably embodies impermanence [[[anicca]]], pain [[[dukkha]]], and im­ personality [[[anatta]]]."' In the case of the the Chinese Fa-hsiang tradition of Buddhism, K'uei-chi's five-level discernment of vijfiaptimatrata embodies the systematic and progressive understanding of the central Yogacara teaching that our notion of self and external objects "are nothing but cognitive constructions." In Chih-i's comprehensive systematization ofT'ien-t'ai meditative practice (as it is laid out in detail in the chapter by Daniel Stevenson), discernment ultimately involves insight into the emptiness of all forms. While these various examples of vipasyana all illustrate how this central Buddhist practice relates to the Buddhist understanding of the world, they also suggest how that understanding of the world differs according to different traditions of Buddhism. Given the intimate interrelationship in Buddhism between the theory and practice of meditation, this last point further suggests that the kind of experience that one might have as a result of practicing different kinds of meditation would vary not just according to the kind of technique involved, but also according to the doctrinal setting in terms of which that technique is framed. By way of illustration, we might well consider the modern form of Theravada vipassana, or "insight meditation," that has become popular in both Southeast Asia and the United States. Often referred to as the practice of "bare awareness," this form of vipassana is based on the traditional practice of mindfulness (P. sati) as taught in the Mahasatipaf!hana-sutta. As elaborated by such modern advocates as Nyanaponika Thera in The Heart of Buddhist Meditation, the mindful attention it cultivates often seems barely distinguishable from the T'ien-t'ai practice of sui-tzu-i ("cultivating samadhi wherever mind is directed") or the Ch'an practice of one-practice samadhi (i-hsing san-mei). All involve concentrating one's total attention on whatever one happens to be experiencing in the moment. The immediate content of one's consciousness itself becomes the "object" of the meditation. From the bare descriptions of the techniques involved, one would be hard pressed to determine how the practices differ, and we might well suppose that the experience of practicing the modern Theravada form of insight meditation would be similar to the experience of practicing T'ien-t'ai sui-tzu-i samadhi or Ch'an onepractice samadhi. It is because the techniques seem so strikingly similar that we must pay particular attention to their doctrinal contexts. In the Theravada practice, vipassana is a method for realizing the true nature of all existents as being impermanent (anicca), entailing suffering (dukkha), and lacking any abiding self (anatta). Vipassana thus involves insight into the so-called three marks of existence, which came to express the core of the Theravada world view. To these was often added a fourth term, impurity (asubha). The opposite of these four-permanence (nicca), bliss (sukha),

selfhood (attii), and purity (subha)-constituted the four upside-down views. These upside-down views were considered the constituents of ignorance (avijjii), which, in turn, was the basis for our continual suffering in an endless round of births. As such they also served as a doctrinal litmus test for determining the truth of any teaching: any teaching that held that the true nature of existence could be characterized as permanent, blissful, having a self, or pure was to be rejected as false. The corresponding Chinese practices were based on an entirely different understanding of the ultimate nature of all existents, a Mahayana view that saw all forms of existence not only as ultimately empty of any defilement, but also as manifestations of an intrinsically pure nature. Such a perspective offered a vision in which the phenomenal world of everyday experience could be revalidated in light of an understanding of emptiness (silnyatii; k 'ung), especially as that understanding was qualified by the tathiigatagarbha doctrine. The Chinese inherited this doctrine from Indian Mahayana, but developed it further in texts such as the Awakening of Faith, and it assumed a centrality for the tradition as a whole that it never had in India and never was to enjoy in Tibet. The doctrine was important for Chinese Buddhists because it explained how Principle (li) interpenetrated with phenomena (shih) without obstruction, thus providing an ontological ground for an affirmation of the realm of phenomenal activity.' The understanding of emptiness within the tathiigatagarbha tradition differs from that found within Madhyamika: ultimate reality is empty of all defilement but also full (literally, "not empty"; asilnya) of infinite Buddha-dharmas. This understanding enabled Chinese Buddhists to interpret Buddhism in more ontological terms, terms that could be used to make positive ascriptions about the ultimate nature of reality -that is, to say what it was as well as what it was not. In such representative texts as the Nirviit:za Sutra, SrTmiilii Siltra, Ratnagotravibhiiga, and Awakening of Faith, the four upside-down views were turned upsidedown and were thereby made the marks of true discernment into the ultimate nature of absolute reality. Whereas the ignorant ordinary person mistakes what is impermanent for what is permanent, what causes suffering for what is blissful, what lacks self for what has self, and what is impure for what is pure, the Hinayana disciples were correct in realizing the impermanent to be impermanent, and so forth. Their understanding was limited and partial, however, for they did not yet realize what was truly permanent, what was truly blissful, what was truly endowed with self, and what was truly pure. Such Buddha-knowledge was only available to advanced bodhisattvas. The tathiigatagarbha was thus said to represent the perfection of permanence, bliss, self, and purity. • The chapters that follow underline the importance that the tathiigatagarbha doctrine had for Ch'an. Bernard Faure discusses the important

role in seventh- and eighth-century Ch'an of the Awakening of Faith and its ontological interpretation of one-practice samadhi. Carl Bielefeldt notes that the theory of how wisdom is related to the practice of seated meditation in Tsung-tse's ch 'an manual is based on "the model of the pure, enlightened mind covered by discursive thinking." As both these chapters point out, the tathagatagarbha doctrine was especially prominent in the teaching of Tao-hsin and Hung-jen, the fourth and fifth Ch'an patriarchs. Although the more radical teaching of Hui-neng and Shen-hui, which came to define the orthodox Southern Ch'an position, moved away from such explicit identification with the tathagatagarbha doctrine, it did not reject it altogether, as evidenced by the characteristically Southern Ch'an emphasis on "seeing the Nature" (Ch. chien-hsing; J. kensho). The crucial role of this doctrine in providing an ontological undergirding for Ch'an practice was reemphasized by the great Ch'an theoretician and historian of the early ninth century Tsung-mi, who adapted Hua-yen metaphysics as a buttress against the more radical interpretations of the Southern position that he witnessed in the burgeoning Ch'an movements of his day. Tsung-mi's theory of the ontological basis of Ch'an practice later became the cornerstone around which Chinul laid the foundation for Korean Ch'an (Son) in his masterful synthesis of Chinese Buddhist theory and practice, as Robert Buswell amply documents in his closing chapter. Buswell's discussion of the practice of "tracing back the radiance of the mind" is particularly interesting for showing how the tathagatagarbha doctrine was applied to Ch'an prac­ tice. Indeed, the tathagatagarbha doctrine was central to all of the schools of the New Buddhism of the Sui/T'ang Period because it provided the basis on which they affirmed the universal accessibility of Buddhahood. Although it was especially pronounced in Hua-yen and Ch'an, it also figured in Pure Land and T'ien-t'ai. The doctrine occupied a prominent position in the thought of Hui-ssu, but played a more qualified role in that of Hui-ssu's disciple Chih-i. Chih-i was careful to dissociate his use of the doctrine from the more ontological interpretations of the Ti-lun and She-lun traditions. Nevertheless, he frequently referred to it, and the understanding of the nature of consciousness that underlay his systematization of Buddhist practice was based on a tathagatagarbha model. Chan-jan, the great eighth-century reviver of the T'ien-t'ai tradition, reemphasized the importance of the tathagatagarbha within T'ient'ai doctrine. His incorporation of the Awakening of Faith's analysis of mind can be seen as an attempt to accommodate the metaphysics of his major scholastic rival, Hua-yen, as well as a reflection of his close rela­ tionship to the Northern School of Ch'an. This version of T'ien-t'ai became the basis for the so-called hongaku shiso ("theory of intrinsic enlightenment") that was the hallmark of medieval Japanese Tendai and

served as the watershed from which emerged the great medieval reform movements of Pure Land, Zen, and Nichiren. Although all of the new schools of Buddhism drew upon the tathligatagarbha's teaching of an intrinsically pure, enlightened mind, this doctrine was notably absent from the Fa-hsiang tradition. For this reason Hua-yen thinkers such as Chih-yen and Fa-tsang classified Fa-hsiang as only a quasi-Mahayana teaching within their hierarchy of Buddhist teachings. As the chapte_rs in this volume make clear, this doctrine underlay much of the typically Chinese theory of meditation practice and was a characteristic feature of the sinified forms of Buddhism that emerged during the Sui and T'ang dynasties. Thus it must be considered in any attempt to assess the major features that distinguish Chinese Buddhism, and more broadly East Asian Buddhism, from that of other areas of Asia. Not only can we not detach the practice of meditation from its theory (or doctrinal setting), we also cannot separate meditation from various ritual, cultic, and devotional practices, as Daniel Stevenson so well illustrates in his chapter on "The Four Kinds of Samadhi in Early T'ient'ai Buddhism." In Chih-i's systematic synthesis of Chinese Buddhist meditative practices, careful prescriptions for purification, the preparation of offerings, the enshrinement of holy images, the solicitation of auspicious dreams, prostrations, circumambulation, repentance, prayer,

the making of vows, the recitation of sacred texts, the incantation of dharal)fs, the invocation of the Buddha's name, and the performance of intricate visualizations are all harmoniously integrated within a thoroughgoing discernment of the emptiness of all phenomenal forms. The means by which these various practices are balanced with one another and incorporated within a larger and more penetrating understanding of the nature of the mind and the noetic act itself can be found in Chih-i's understanding of upliya, the "skillfull means" by which the Buddha devised a panoply of practices and teachings suited to the varying capacities and diverse levels of experience of different beings. Chih-i draws upon a crucial distinction within Chinese Buddhism in his treatment of upliya: that of li (Principle) and shih (phenomenal activities). The various phenomenal means (shih) encompassed within the four kinds of samadhi are all necessary as upliya and, as they become suffused with the discernment of Principle (li-kuan), lead to the realization of the ultimate emptiness of all phenomenal forms. As Stevenson points out, Chih-i's system thus contains two distinct approaches to meditation: a radical one (based on /i) that takes ultimate reality itself as its "object" and an expedient one (based on shih) that relies on the mediation of various phenomenal forms. These two approaches, exemplified by Chih-i's treatment of one-practice samadhi, were already apparent in the Wen-shu shuo ching passage he cites for

scriptural authority for that practice. The importance of this passage for the Chinese traditions discussed in this book reverberates throughout four of the chapters. While Chih-i held these two approaches together in a creative tension in his comprehensive framework, they became separately embodied in the Ch'an and Pure Land interpretations of the practice, as Bernard Faure argues. While Ch'an emphasizes the direct apprehension of ultimate reality (the Dharmadhatu), Pure Land stresses the importance of visualizing the ideal form of a particular Buddha or calling upon his name (nien-jo). Faure goes on to show how these approaches, based on their different emphases on li and shih, relate to other sets of polarities within the discourse of T'ang Buddhism, one of the most important being that of sudden (tun) and gradual (chien). Chih-i's disciple Kuan-ting, in his preface to the Mo-ho chih-kuan, had defined the "perfect sudden" (yuan-tun) practice as that which directly took ultimate reality as its "object". In its rejection of all forms and expedients, Ch'an could thus at once proclaim itself as the Sudden Teaching and put down other teachings (such as Pure Land) as inferior forms of gradualistic practice because they relied on expedient approaches. T he lilshih polarity, insofar as it was conceptually related to the Chinese Buddhist understanding of upaya, thus became inextricably bound up with the "sudden/gradual" discourse as well. In the section of his chapter discussing sui-tzu-i samadhi, Stevenson notes a tension inherent in Chih-i's treatment of the discernment of Principle. Since the ultimate success of all the various forms of meditation Chih-i discusses under the rubric "four kinds of samadhi" depend on the discernment of Principle, the question naturally arises, why can't they simply be dispensed with altogether in favor of the practice of sui-tzu-i, which does not depend on any phenomenal form but constitutes the very discernment of Principle that is the essence of the other practices? Chih-i, of course, draws back from such a radical conclusion and is careful to hedge in sui-tzu-i with a series of accessory practices and cautions.

In championing itself as the Sudden Teaching, however, the Southern School of Ch'an took the step against which Chih-i warned. This move led to a tension within the tradition regarding such mundane but allimportant matters as the actual technique of meditation. Given its ideological identification as the Sudden Teaching, the tradition could say nothing at all about the very practice from which it took its name. The resulting paradox is perceptively explored in the chapter by Carl Bielefeldt. In his chapter on the Pure Land response to Ch'an, David Chappell discusses the two different approaches to practice found in one-practice samadhi in terms of the Perfection of Wisdom dialectic so important for both Pure Land and Ch'an. He notes how in the eighth century Fei-hsi sought to reconcile the split that had taken place between these two

forms of Chinese Buddhist practice by resorting to the lilshih paradigm. This paradigm thus provided the conceptual basis for the dual cultivation of Pure Land and Ch'an characteristic of later Chinese Buddhism. Such a resolution was possible, as Chappell indicates, because li and shih off erred Chinese Buddhists a convenient framework in which to interpret the Indian Buddhist doctrine of the two truths. Indeed, the theme of li and shih runs as a leitmotif throughout this volume. It can even be found in K'uei-chi's five-level discernment of vijfiaptimatrata. These terms, drawn from the indigenous Chinese philosophical vocabulary, provided Chinese Buddhists with one of their most convenient tools for adapting Buddhism to forms that were both more

comprehensible and more compatible with their own religious and philosophical preoccupations. The terms are thus also a part of the unique conceptual framework that distinguishes the Buddhism of China in particular and East Asia in general from that of other areas of Asia. As a conclusion to this volume, the chapter by Robert Buswell on the great Korean Buddhist figure Chinul is both appropriate and welcome. It is appropriate because Chinul can be seen as operating within the same doctrinal problematic as the Chinese Ch'an and Hua-yen traditions he inherited. His thought is thus a fitting extension of Chinese Buddhist thought. It is welcome because it shows how the Chinese Buddhist tradition carried over into other East Asian countries to become the matrix for East Asian Buddhism as a whole. Buswell's chapter also illustrates how, in forging a new synthesis of Chinese Buddhist theory and meditation practice, Chinul helped to define a distinctively Korean form of Buddhism. Indeed, Chinul's achievement can in many ways be compared to Chih-i's. Not only did both figures succeed in creating an impressive synthesis of a broad range of practices within a comprehensive vision of the path, but both also occupied similar positions in the development of unique forms of Buddhism that served as watersheds for all that followed.

Notes

I. The Three Pillars of Zen (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967), pp. 211-212.
2. See Philip Yampolsky, The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967), p. 137.
3. Ibid., p. 140.
4. "Ch'an (Zen) Buddhism in China: Its History and Method," Philosophy East and West, vol. 3 (1953), p. 7.
5. See Yiian-chiieh ching ta-shu ch'ao, ZZI/14/3.278c-d; see also Yanagida Seizan, "The Li-tai fa-pao chi and the Ch'an Doctrine of Sudden Awakening," translated by Carl Bielefeldt, in Whalen Lai and Lewis R. Lancaster, eds., Early Ch'an in China and Tibet (Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press, 1983), pp. 31-32.
Introduction 13
6. Theravada Meditation: The Buddhist Transformation of Yoga (University
Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1980), p. 16.
7. Ibid., p. 94.
8. These points are discussed more fully in my article "Chinese Buddhist Hermeneutics: The Case of Hua-yen," Journal of the American Academy of Religion, vol. 51 (1983), pp. 231-249.
9. See, for example, Sheng-man shih-tzu-hou i-sheng ta-fang-pien fang-kuang ching, Tl2.222a18-25; translation by Alex and Hideko Wayman, The Lion's Roar of Queen SrTmalii (New York: Columbia University Press,
1974), pp. 101-102. Cf. Ta-sheng ch'i-hsin fun, D2.579a14-20; translation by Yoshito S. Hakeda, The Awakening of Faith (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967), p. 65.