A Study On The Inner Transcendence Of Huineng Zen

In 1960 s, Mou Zongsan, a very famous modern philosopher of China, definitely come up with the concept of “transcendent but immanent”, and his main purpose is to deal with the immanent and transcendent of China Confucianism, which were treated as the measures to confront with the suppression from the western Christian and philosophy, so he put up with the realm philosophy of “transcendent but immanent” in terms of the western religion belief of “extrinsic transcendence”.Obviously, “transcendent but immanent” and “extrinsic transcendence” are very different, which not only make a distinction between western thoughts and China culture, but also briefly define the China traditional philosophy as a realm philosophy of “transcendent but immanent”. Although there still are some controversies about it, this concept has already been accepted widely, and the concept is also used to explain the thoughts of Confucianism and Taoism.Hui-neng, the sixth founder, was the actual creator of China Zen, the Zen thoughts of Hui-neng lay the foundation of China Zen, the method of “sudden enlightenment” made a great influence on the concepts of “Buddhist nature”, “enlightenment”,etc.Hui-neng’s thoughts was established because he inherited and developed the thoughts of early five founder, and traditional thoughts of Confucianism and Taoism of China. Besides, we can find the character of “transcendental but immanent”. This article try to discuss the character of “transcendentalbut immanent ” of Zen of thoughts of Hui-neng. First, we must return to the classical text, namely Altar Sutra, and tease and summarize his thoughts; second,although Mou zongsan had ever the definition of “transcendental but immanent”, as for the Zen thoughts of Hui-neng, which is very different after all. So,we need to make a new discussion and annotation based on Mou zongsan’s thoughts; third,we can make a deep and systematic discussion about the nature of “transcendental butimmanent” of Hui-neng accord to the summary of Hui-neng’s thoughts and the definition and annotation of the character of “transcendental but immanent”. Final,although Hui-neng’s thoughts actually has the character of “transcendental but immanent”, he adopt the view the inner mind, and the method of “sudden enlightenment” is his premise of thoughts. However, “sudden enlightenment” is not the goal that all people can accomplish accord to the fact. Therefore, we need to ascertain the necessity of “sudden enlightenment”, at the same time, we need to do gradual experience of Zen. More, the sixth founder of Zen, Hui-neng, insisted on the idea that inner mind is the source of “find one’s nature self”,“enlightenment”, which put the inner mind on a high position, the subjective nature of one become very obvious, on the contrary, we has ignored the objective criteria from the outer. Then,we ought to establish a outer and objective standard to cope with the thoughts defect of Hui-neng who pay more attention to the inner subjectivity, we can entitle it as the belief of “extrinsic transcendence”.