A Study Of San-Xu's Buddhist Thoughts

Learning from our history,it would provide a lot of precious references for the Chinese Buddhism by studying the Buddhist thoughts of the three masters:Tai-Xu,Xu-Yun and Tan-Xu,so-called as San-Xu.It assists us in finding out a better path for the development of Chinese Buddhism.The era of San-Xu was just like an era which had been hollowed out.In the fear of the new trend of thoughts and the tradition was disrespected,everybody seems like holding a lantern in the daylight,losing all their direction.They all anticipated to find out a new road for the Chinese Buddhism.The chaotic situation of the traditional culture was put right in front of our eyes,innovation was required to be implemented in all perspectives.Whoever had a sense of mission and was dare to shoulder up the responsibility and voice for their own times,the history was rewritten by these kinds of people.In term of program execution,Tai-Xu was full of creativity and was running ahead of his time.But due to hasty decision and implementation,the Buddhist reforms failed in the end.However,it became the lamp post for the Chinese Buddhism and paved the road for the future development of Humanistic Buddhism.Comparatively speaking,Xu-Yun and Tan-Xu behaved in low profile.They were the followers of traditional Buddhism and would like to adopt their teachings methods.They worked for the Chinese Buddhism silently and maintained the status quo of the traditional system for Abbot succession.Their contributions were huge and enormous.China is an ancient civilization with profound cultural resources.Viewing from the history of the evolution of human civilization,the confrontation of all cultures provides a good opportunity for one's own culture to reflect on oneself,absorb the others,and then grow,transform and elevate to a higher level at the end.The arrival of Buddhism in China provides such a great chance.In sum,we can briefly describe the main points of this research paper.In Chapter One,"Times and Responses",there is a brief description of the rise and fall of Buddhism in the Chinese culture.The understanding of the historical development of Chinese Buddhism allows us to pinpoint some ideological deviations during the process of "Sinofication" ofBuddhism in China.During that time,there were many problems in the development of Buddhism in China which included the monastic system,the management of theSangha property,the alternation of the dynasties,and lack of capable personnel in the succession of Buddhist sects.These issues were complex which correlated with one another;but the critical factor which indeed dominated the survival of Buddhism was lack of talented monks during that time.In the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China,there was the appearance of three renowned monks at this critical moment when Chinese Buddhism was about to collapse.The three masters were:Tai-Xu,who advocated the campaign of uniting the thoughts of eight different Buddhist sects,but personally,he was fond of talking about Vijnanavada;Xu-Yun,a great master of five different Zen sects and Tan-Xu,who inherited the forty-fourth Abbot of the Tian-tai sect.In the modern history of Chinese Buddhism,they were regarded as "San Xu",the three great masters.For the sake of convenience,they will be called as "San-Xu" to represent them in this thesis.Being the leaders,they had their personal charm and ability to inspire their followers to adopt their patterns of behaviors and thoughts in religious activities.To be the masters of their generation,it depended on whether they could see the needs of the times,make appropriate responses to the changing environment,articulate their thoughts and put them into action,and then formulate concrete and feasible policies in the end.In Chapters Two,Three and Four,each of the Masters was given a brief but concise analysis individually,which outlined the characteristics of their thoughts,a brief history of their growth,the formation and transformation of religious thoughts so that we could comprehend of their major thoughts.Possessed with personal endowments and religious compassion,they could walk their talk and rebuild Chinese Buddhism from the brink of collapse.In the modern Buddhist communities in China,they are called "San-Xu",they are given substantial affirmation and high appraisal for their contribution.Sometimes,it may be just a historical accident that they were all monks and shared the same Chinese character "Xu" in their name.What was particularly interesting was that this character "Xu",which had an implication of"delusion" in this virtual reality,fully shaded with Taoist colour with intrinsic features of Chinese culture in Buddhism.In addition,the three great masters were born almost in the same period of the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China,and they were active in more or less similar geographical regions.They had met each other before,caused ripples which spread across their times and made significant contribution to Buddhism.Although they were called "San-Xu",they were labelled differently as radical or conservative types of persons.In the retrospect,China was facing challenges from different directions:such as contradictions between the East and the West,traditional and modern,conservative and radical thoughts as well.During that time,Tai-Xu's responses to the social situation were often found radical but with reconciliation,and conservative but with revolutionary changes.Actually,they were trying to look for compromise from contradiction,hoping to seek consensus by constant interaction with the realistic world.In this respect,we can clearly see that there were constant alterations in Tai-Xu's reforms in order to cope with the trend.He changed his ideas repeatedly and hoped to look for reconciliation in every aspect.We can see that there were obvious contradictions in different stages of his thoughts.That is why he was even criticized by the western scholar as a "children's play" reformer.In the later discussion of Tai-Xu's reform in Sangha system,he made corresponding adjustments according to the change of status quo.We have detailed explanation in this thesis.Although the three masters were called "San-Xu" as a group,their contributions and influences were not necessarily equal.In fact,they were somewhat unparallel in terms of their fame,but this did not affect their personal efforts and contribution to Buddhism.rIn Chapter Five,we compare the similarities and differences of San-Xu's thoughts in order to highlight the uniqueness of the three great masters.In Chapter Six,we point out the personal limitations of the three masters and their deficiencies in Buddhist thoughts.The deficiencies were mainly due to the restrictions of their epoch and the failure in succession in Buddhist thoughts in different sects.Then,we examine succession issues from generation to generation and discuss them in different sects.In this manner,we can trace the development in Chinese Buddhism and explore the phenomenon of cultural distortions.We can find out the reasons behind them in order to analyze and discuss the development of the above-mentioned thoughts in terms of contexts,historical derivation and other issues.In Chapter Seven,we talk about San-Xu's contribution to the Buddhist world,and see how we should pave the road for the future development of San-Xu's Buddhist thoughts in the modern world.How we can inherit the traditional Chinese Buddhist resources and reintegrate them into Chinese Buddhism in such a secular and multicultural world,Then,we can find a new road for Buddhism which suits the modern people.This thesis uses a wider perspective over the development of Chinese Buddhism.In doing so,it helps us understand much better some key turning points in Chinese Buddhism.The formation of new Buddhist ideas was closely related to the problems arising from the background of the era.Therefore,understanding the background of the era will be an important key to unraveling some of the historical issues of Chinese Buddhism.Having these knowledges,we put our focus on the Buddhist thoughts of San-Xu,compare their similarities and differences in Buddhist ideas,find out their contributions to the Buddhist society and points out their deficits.In the last Chapter,it reveals that there were some deviations when Buddhism was in the process of entering China.The origin of this problem was pinpointed by Ji Xian-lin in the first chapter.It was found that the earliest translators of China Buddhism had "not completely faithfully" interpreted Buddhism according to the theory of the sunya(emptiness)in India.Buddhism originally explored the truth of of the existence of nature.The discussion should be based on epistemological issues.The "Xin"(heart)was just a form of mindset in a subordinate level,which was not the root of the matter.However,the interpretation of the sentence "to be framed as a mind not believing in anything" in "Diamond Sutra" understood by the Sixth Patriarch Huineng was changed fundamentally.In that case,there was the second revolution in Chinese Buddhism which changed the discussion from the "heart outside the Buddha"to the "heart inside Buddha" as illustrated by Ma Tianxiang.The Prajna view,which was originally to observe the reality through mind activity had been turned into a Tathagatagarbha system with a deeper meaning to find the root cause.So,this "heart"was not only a heart with a moral conscience,but it also possessed a sense of mastery which could create everything.It coped with the discussion on the theories of mind in the Chinese culture on morality.Hu Shi was often criticized as a layman of Buddhism and his researches on Buddhism had not received adequate attention from the Buddhist community.But in fact,he did a lot of researches on the classical sutras of the Buddhism,especially on the Zen sutras.He found that the Sixth Patriarch,Huineng or the Seventh Patriarch,Shenhui interpreted the sutras on a "purpose".The discovery of these materials provided valuable evidence to identify the shifting of the interpretation in the Buddhist sutras.His contribution to Buddhist philology was enormous.In addition,Taiwanese scholar Xiaozheng studied the Sanskrit script compiled by Max Muller as a circumstantial evidence and he found that the meaning of the original text was only asking the practitioners not to be attached to any physical objects,and the main idea was not obsessed with the objects of "six-senses".This discovery cited that Zen Buddhism had undergone transformation in the Buddhist thoughts as indicated by the scholars,Hu Shi and Ma Tianxiang.This thesis would like to find a new direction for Chinese Buddhism on the basis of their thoughts of the three Masters.Basically,they all agreed that Buddhism was a rational religion and did not promote superstitious thinking.Although there might have different approaches in practicing Buddhism,the rational character of Buddhism is particularly important to this new age of globalization.On this new road for Buddhism,this thesis has established some directions.It is suggested that Chinese Buddhism should go back to a more rational and upright path.Morality is of its first priority and the spirit of equality and fraternity should be reinforced.The Buddhist ideal world in the past are far away from the other side of the world,but Buddhism nowadays put more focus on average people.Humanistic Buddhism will be the dominant point of global Buddhism in the 21st century.