The Study Of The "pre-understanding" Of The Monks In The Tang Dynasty

The generating transformation of Buddhism in China is the traditional topic in Chinese academic world.The predecessor scholars had many research products.But new questions appear continuously with further studies on this topic.And because of the development of methodologies,this topic at the same time develops constantly.My dissertation use philosophical hermeneutics to study the biographies of monks of Tang Dynasty in order to restudy Chinese Buddhism.The previous studies focus on the interaction between Buddhism and traditional Chinese culture.They admit a precondition tacitly that the Chinese Buddhism is a fusion of Buddhism and traditional Chinese culture.And they tend to study the changes of Buddhism by the impact from Chinese culture.Localization is an inevitable phenomenon of intercultural communication,and the other correlational studies are based on this phenomenon,such as the studies of Chinese Buddhism.It's the common sense.But the questions are always appeared in the common sense,such as the generating transformation of Buddhism in China.We always see the changes of Buddhism in China.Localization is the inevitable phenomenon of the intercultural communication.But the phenomenon itself hides the questions.I think there are at least two questions in the generating transformation of Buddhism in China.The first one is that why there are inevitable changes of Buddhism in China,and Chinese people understand Buddhism through Chinese culture,the Chinese culture is the tool to the Buddhism.Why Chinese people cannot understand Buddhism directly?The second one is based on the first question;it is the legality of Chinese Buddhism.In comparison to Buddhism in ancient India,Chinese Buddhism changed a lot.Buddhism in china can be called Buddhism?I think studying these two questions can help us to look into the process of the formation of Chinese Buddhism deeply.And we can also know clearly why the Chinese Buddhism must be this form and not the others.On this basis we can make the further study about the legality of Chinese Buddhism.My dissertation is trying to solve these two questions.I use the Philosophical Hermeneutics from Gadamer as the theoretical perspective to study biographies of Buddhist monks in Tang Dynasty.The generating transformation of Buddhism in China can be restored in two basic philosophical questions.The first one is how the Chinese understand the Buddhism?It is the epistemological question that how to understand.The second one is the legality of the Chinese Buddhism.It is the ontological question that what the standard of the truths.Talking about these two basic questions can help us to look into the generating transformation of Buddhism in China clearly.The dissertation is divided into four chapters.The first part is introduction of my dissertation;mainly discuss why I chose Buddhism monks of Tang Dynasty as the object of study and why I use Gadamer's Hermeneutics as perspective.And I also introduce status about this study in this part.The second part mainly discuss Gadamer's view of truth,the structure of non-science truth is the fusion of horizons,the truth is always unfold by the understanding of people,so the pre-understanding of different people decide the different forms of truth,but core elements in truth keep intrinsic consistency of the truth.So the diversification of non-science truth cannot change the legality of truth.The third part mainly discusses Confucian pre-understanding of monks;involve the Confucian background of monks,filial piety of monks,their royalism,and the Confucian spiritual realm they have when they understand the Buddhism.Based on this,I discuss Confucian pre-understanding as the main one form the Chinese monks' horizon,and when they try to understand Buddhism,they cannot step over their horizon.So Chinese Buddhism has the unique form.The last part is the improvement in theory,I mainly discuss the Chinese form of Buddhism is the fusion of horizons between the monks'Confucian pre-understanding and the Buddhism's core theory of leaving the world.So the Chinese form of Buddhism is that people get liberation by the Confucian way that with positive spirit to the world affairs.At the same time,reexamine the wording of the generating transformation of Buddhism in China;don't equal the Buddhism to Indian Buddhism.Go back to Buddhism itself,and keep its openness.