The Fahua Sect And Sui-Tang Literature

Founded during the transitional period linking the Chen state and the Sui Dynasty, the Fahua Buddhist Sect, also called "the Tiantai Sect", was the earliest, most developed Buddhist sect that had been domesticated in China. The title of "the Tiantai Sect" itself already denotes very obviously the region in which it prevailed, but in the course of the Chinese history two branches of the philosophy of Li (the ultimate reality) —the Hengyang and the Jingzhou branch—have had enormous influence on literature. It was formally brought forward by Hao Ran in the middle of the Tang Dynasty, prior to whose designation people called it "the Fahua Sect". In addition, the gist of Fahua Scripture was the logical basis for the philosophy of Li to articulate conceptions and to develop. Meanwhile, the outstanding literary accomplishments of Fahua Scripture located it in a position that in every sense shows how closely related it was with the Sui-Tang literature, so this thesis gives a general title to this sect, "the Fahua Buddhist Sect".To study the relations of Buddhism to literature, one must of necessity do a meticulous investigation of the core of the former, so that a precise comprehension of the relations can be attained. Therefore, the first section of this paper focuses on the ideological roots and the realm of "reality" of the Fahua Sect, the literariness of the scripture itself being another point of attention. The Fahua Sect has the notion of "mean is truth" as its core. The aesthetic, always present in this system of philosophical thoughts, is manifested in the concept of "realm of reality". The realm...