Thought Can Sea Master Of Wisdom

Dharma-teacher Nenghai (1887～1967) was one of the most famous eminent monks in the history of modern Chinese Buddhism, and the core of his thoughts was Prajna thought. This paper is written to explore his Prajna thought.Prajna thought, as Buddhism result for some basic phylosophy propositions, is an important component of Buddhism theory system. It once was the center of Buddhism scholar’s studying object in Chinese Buddhism in the Wei and Jin Dynasty. However when the Chinese Buddhism sects springed up in the Sui and Tang Dynasty, the pomp of studying Prajna thought was gone. Since then Prajna thought has been marginalized. Till modern times, Dharma-teacher Nenghai advocated Prajna thought again as the kernel of his dharma teaching, and called his sect " the Great Prajna Sect", which should be paid attention to as a significative event in the history of both Buddhism and Chinese phylosophy.This dissertation is mainly about Dharma-teacher Nenghai’s Prajna thought, which is scattered in his books and the notes of his interpretation of the teachings. It discusses how he combined "Ornament of Clear Realization" and "Madhyamika-sastra" to interpret "Prajnaparamita-sutra", how the way of his understanding made him go beyond the comprehension of traditional Buddhism to put Prajna thought in the central position of the thought of his sect, how he treated problems caused by the extremely complicated schism status of the thought of Buddism, and how he established the system of learning and practice, of managing the group of monks and of building the Buddhism. The Prajna thought, which was illuminated by Dharma-teacher Nenghai, a modern monk with wide vision, is quite academically valuable at the crossing period that connected a new era and an old one as an all-around understanding of Buddhism.The main body of the dissertation contains four parts. In the first part I’d like to summarize all Dharma-teacher Nenghai’s life and his thoughts, outline the process of the spread of Prajna thought in India and China, and make a short analysis of the reason why the Prajna thought rised and declined in Chinese Buddhism. The second part discusses how Dharma-teacher Nenghai evaluated the "Prajnaparamita-sutra" in a completely new perspective, and dug out the connotation, the theoretial originality and theoretical influences of his Prajna thought. The third part expounds his thought of integrating Prajna and practice, and the theoretical foundation of the necessity of practice that never had been provided before. The last part comes to a discussion about the status of practicing the religion, emphasizing observing precepts, teaching and writing, etc. The epilogue summarizes and appraises Dharma-teacher Nenghai’s Prajna thought.Though Prajna thought is the kernel of Dharma-teacher Nenghai’s thoughts, he didn’t write a monograph on his Prajna thought, thereby this dissertation tries to distill the correlative thought by the way of interpreting and demonstrating, find out the threoretical base of some conclusions which wasn’t demonstrated, clarify some implied viewpoint by means of deduction at the same time, and to outline his whole thoughts. It also exhibits the feature of his thoughts through a theoretical comparison between his Prajna thought and that of traditional Buddhism, and uncovers the latent defects of the Prajna thought of traditional Buddhism.The conclusion is that the Prajna thought elucidated by Dharma-teacher Nenghai was not only his thinking about how the Buddhism should be built, but also his resolution of how the Buddhism responded to the alteration of the society and how it performed the function of preaching Buddha’s thought and moralizing the people.