An Inquiry Into The Buddhist Thoughts Of Master Tzu-po Chen-k'o

The present paper primarily studies the Buddhist thoughts of Master Tzu-po Chen-k'o in late Ming Dynasty. Tzu-po Chen-k'o, Han-shan Te-ch'ing ,Lian-chi Qi-hong and Ou-yi Zhi-xu were called Four Masters together in late Ming Dynasty .Among the four masters, Master Tzu-po had the shortest life and the least works, which drew less attention to the posterity. But, his frank personality and heroic spirit of sticking to the scripture and salvation had hardly been seen in Chinese Buddhist history.The paper makes an inquiry into something connected with the Buddhist thoughts of Tzu-po from six aspects. The first one discusses the mind-nature theory as the theoretical basis in Tzu-po's Buddhist thoughts. The second one studies the thoughts of Literary Ch'an and the essence of Ch'an, regarded as the center of his Ch'an skills by the author of the article. The third one particularly discusses his thoughts about the mind-only philosophy because of his great impetus to the renaissance of the mind-nature theory in late Ming Dynasty. The fourth one ascertains that Tzu-po's Pure Land ideas belonged to the pure land of liberation through one's own power advocated by the Ch'an School.The fifth one inquires into his interfusing thoughts of nature sect and phenomenon sect, Ch'an and doctrine among Buddhist schools and of Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism. And the last one comes to some conclusions, the emphasis of which is the characteristics of integration and salvation in his Buddhist teachings.