The Opinion And Influence About Hanyu's Opposition To Buddhism

Hanyu (768A.D.-824A.D.), was born after the Rebellion of An and Shi in late Tang Dynasty, and has significant influence on Chinese philosophy about the prosperity of Buddhism and the revival of neo-confucianism。The study of Hanyu' s opinion and influence on Buddhism could help us to understand his crucial position in Chinese ideological history completely and objectively. This paper would be discussed this aspect in three parts:Section I: A brief introduction to Hanyu' s lifetime. In this section, simply introduce Hanyu' s growing circumstance,his age and main social contradictions occurred at his age combines with source material about Hanyu and his own literature. Depending on this point, to summarize the primary reasons why Hanyu goes against Buddhsim.SectionII: Hanyu's opinions against Buddhism and its characteristics. This section mainly depends on the source materials which includes Hanyu's poetry and some historical recordations, to educe that Hanyu's opinions against Buddhism mostly from the following three aspects: the distinguish between Yi and Xia,corrupted public morals and disturbed national compendium and law-and-order situation. All his life, Hanyu goes against Buddhism, even regardless of his life and family. But he still lived at his age, and it is hard to refuse the whole social thought which impacted on him, therefore, his opinions that against Buddhism are still incompletely.SectionIII: The impacts that Hanyu's opinion has made. Discussing this as the following four ways: firstly, on the position of maintaining Confucian traditions, he persists with opposition to Buddhism and greatly advocates to rise Confucianism. Secondly, the definition of Confucian Orthodoxy and its impacts on aftertime. In the process of opposition to Buddhism, Hanyu has developed his Confucian Orthodoxy , and advocated Confucian Orthodoxy. After this, neo-confucianism oppose to Buddhism and Taoism, and on the way of developing Confucianism, they insist on Hanyu' s Confucian Orthodoxy. Modem neo-confucianism that come down in one continuous line hold their ground of Hanyu' s theory, revive and progress Confucianism further.Thirdly, impelled Confucian to discuss on the problem of mind and human nature. Buddhism is good at discussing the Theory of Mind and Human nature, on the contrary, it is Confucianism's weakness. If Hanyu would oppose to Buddhism thoroughly, he should pay great efforts on the issue of mind and human nature, but regretfully, Hanyu' s Theory of Mind and Human nature is the republication of Confucius, Mencius and Dong Zhongshu' s. After Hanyu, based on Buddhism' s Theory of Mind and Human nature, Li' ao has established his unique theory of mind and human nature, also it deeply influenced neo-confucianism and modem Chinese Philosophy. Fourthly, impelled Confucianism's ethic amalgamate with Buddhism's more further. The main reason that Confucianism oppose against Buddhism is the ethical differences between them. On the purpose of blending into China, Buddhism will attach itself to Confucian ethic more further, and illustrates that Buddhism and Confucianism are the same.The last part is Epilogue. Make a short and simple conclusion. There was an opening and comprehensive social surroundings which provided combination and development to various cultures with enough space in the early Tang dynasty. Under the combinatorial trend of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism, Hanyu's opposition to Buddhism only can carry out on the surface. From this point, we can get a apocalypse: as for foreign cultures, we neither accept all of them without choice nor reject them blindly. And in order to accelerate the development of our traditional culture, the best attitude toward foreign cultures should be that choose their distillations and discard their draff.