The Origins of Buddhist Monastic Codes in China: An Annotated Translation and Study of the Chanyuan Qinggui (review) (original) (raw)
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Brill, 2023
This volume explores the role played by monastic discipline in the emergence and evolution of modern Chinese Buddhism. A central feature of the Buddhist tradition, monastic discipline has received growing attention in the contemporary Buddhist world, but little from scholars. Adopting a diachronic perspective and a multidisciplinary approach, contributions by leading scholars investigate relevant Vinaya-related practices in twentieth and twenty-first centuries China and Taiwan, including issues of monastic identity and authenticity, updated ordination procedures, recent variations of Mahāyāna precepts and rules, and original perspectives on body movement and related sport activities. The restoration and renewal of Vinaya practices and standards within Chinese Buddhist practices shed new light on the response of Buddhist leaders and communities to the challenges of modernity. Contributors are: Ester Bianchi, Raoul Birnbaum, Daniela Campo, Tzu-Lung Chiu, Ann Heirman, Zhe Ji, Yu-chen Li, Pei-ying Lin, and Jiang Wu.
2023
This volume explores the role played by monastic discipline in the emergence and evolution of modern Chinese Buddhism. A central feature of the Buddhist tradition, monastic discipline has received growing attention in the contemporary Buddhist world, but little from scholars. Adopting a diachronic perspective and a multidisciplinary approach, contributions by leading scholars investigate relevant Vinaya-related practices in twentieth and twenty-first centuries China and Taiwan, including issues of monastic identity and authenticity, updated ordination procedures, recent variations of Mahāyāna precepts and rules, and original perspectives on body movement and related sport activities. The restoration and renewal of Vinaya practices and standards within Chinese Buddhist practices shed new light on the response of Buddhist leaders and communities to the challenges of modernity. Contributors are: Ester Bianchi, Raoul Birnbaum, Daniela Campo, Tzu-Lung Chiu, Ann Heirman, Zhe Ji, Yu-chen Li, Pei-ying Lin, and Jiang Wu.
University of Arizona (MA Thesis), 2024
This study examines the Fo yijiao jing (The Sutra of the Buddha’s Last Instruction佛遺教經), a pivotal Buddhist scripture that warrants more scholarly attention. Following the translation of the Fo yijiao jing, Chinese Buddhist monks and scholars promptly set about annotating the sutra and advocating for its wider dissemination among Buddhist practitioners. Over the course of Chinese Buddhist history, the text has undergone many annotations, each with its own characteristics. Although considered apocryphal by some scholars, the Fo yijiao jing remains a required text for novice Buddhist monks and nuns. Today, many Buddhist teachers still base their teachings on the contents of this sutra. This research scrutinizes the origin of the Fo yijiao jing, its significance to pre-modern Chinese Buddhists, and its evolving classification between Mahayana and Hinayana. The focus is on the commentary composed by the eminent late Ming dynasty monk, Yunqi Zhuhong 雲棲袾宏 (1535-1615). Employing primarily textual study and historical analysis, this research aims to illuminate the development history of the Fo yijiao jing, its fluctuating reception and interpretation, as well as how Zhuhong used the text as a means to revive the Vinaya in late imperial China.
translating Buddhist texts into Chinese language, metaphor, and patterns of behavious which the Chinese could understand and adopt. There were two important translators at the period of Han Dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE), An Shigao (period of 148-170) who translated texts related to Abhidharma and meditation methods, and Lokaksema (period of 168-188) who translated part of Astahasrika-prajnaparamita sutra. After the collapse of the traditional Confucian thought when the Han Dynasty ended, the freedom of thoughts became prevalent during the period of the Three Kingdoms (220-265). Then Buddhism flourished in Western Jin (265-317) due to political stability and prosperity. Dharmaraksa, the Indo-Scythian monk, translated more than 150 sutras. 3 At the Period of Preparation, the Chinese could not accept the sramana way of life (as monks and nuns) well since the existing religion, Confucianism and Daoism were in contradiction to Indian Buddhist doctrines. Buddhism started in Indian as a religion advocating departure from household life and abandonment of family but the Chinese praised the virtue of filial piety and family. 4
ABSTRACT In contemporary China, Buddhism is thriving in many forms and various milieus, a phenomenon that can be compared to the status of Buddhism during the Republican period. The resurgence of monastic discipline jielü/vinaya) is one of the many common features characterizing these two movements. The present paper aims to shed light on modern and contemporary Chinese Buddhism by analysing the conception and practice of jielü in the strict sense of the word (i.e. the śrāvaka or hīnayāna vinaya, as well as the bodhisattva or mahāyāna vinaya); the codes and rules of the so-called ‘Chinese vinaya’ will be referred to only occasionally. The istinguishing features characterizing the modern vinaya revivals will be presented, focusing on their continuity throughout the twentieth century. Similarly to the recoveries of monastic discipline in the past, these modern processes of vinaya revival are based on the idea that since vinaya is the very foundation of the Buddhist dharma, it may help Buddhism to egenerate during an age of decadence.
Chanyuan qinggui and Other “Rules of Purity” in Chinese Buddhism
Oxford University Press eBooks, 2004
The Chanyuan qinggui (Rules of purity for Chan monasteries) was compiled in the second year of the Chongning era (1103) by Changlu Zongze (1107?), abbot of the Hongji Chan Cloister, a public monastery in Zhending Prefecture. In the world of Song-dynasty Chinese Buddhism, abbots had considerable leeway and authority to establish or change the organizational principles and ritual procedures used within their own monasteries. Zongze's stated intent in compiling the Chanyuan qinggui, however, was not simply to regulate his own cloister but also to provide a set of shared guidelines that would help to standardize the organization and operation of all Chan monasteries. From our standpoint today, almost exactly nine centuries later, we can say that Zongze's project was successful beyond anything that he himself could have imagined or hoped for. In the first hundred years after its initial publication, the Chanyuan qinggui circulated widely and did indeed become a standard not only for Chan monasteries but also for all public monasteries in China. 1 The Chanyuan qinggui represents an important milestone in the history of Chinese Buddhism, for it was the first indigenous set of monastic rules to attain a status roughly equivalent to that of the Vinaya, which had been translated into Chinese (in various recensions) from Indic languages, and was traditionally regarded as the word of Ś ākyamuni Buddha. It is also the oldest text we have that bears the phrase "rules of purity" (qinggui) in its title, a phrase that subsequently came to refer to an entire class of Chan and Zen monastic rules. When Japanese monks such as Eisai (1141-1215), Dōgen (1200
The subject of our seminar this term will be the Lotus Sutra (Saddharmapuṇḍarīka, 妙法蓮華經). We shall begin by exploring the content and structure of the scripture with especial attention to the translation into Chinese by Kumārajīva (Jiumoluoshi 鳩摩羅什, 344-413 or 350-409). In addition to a close reading of the scripture we shall discuss the influence of its ideas on the practice and doctrine of East Asian religions from medieval times (e.g., Tiantai/Tendai 天台, devotional practices, self-immolation) to the present (e.g., Japanese New Religions). We shall also consider artistic representations of the Lotus Sutra, especially those from Dunhuang. Students will be introduced to the use of specialised research tools for the study of East Asian religions such as dictionaries, concordances, indices and databases.
Vajrayana Buddhism in Russia: Relevant History and Sociocultural Analytics, 2020
This conference paper discusses the esoteric practices of Vinaya monks in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. Probing Shengyan’s argument that the revived Vinaya school had ‘a strong esoteric flavour’, this research examines the biographies in the eighteenth-century Lüzong dengpu 律宗燈譜 (Genealogy of the Lamp of the Vinaya School). The findings of research show that there are mainly two esoteric practices explicitly mentioned in the biographies, i.e., the recitation of Ucchuṣma mantra and feeding hungry ghosts. The latter, apart from performing the rites (known as flame-mouth (yankou 燄口), also includes the composition of relevant ritual manuals. However, the cases of esoteric practice among Vinaya monks are few and loosely connected with each other.
“A different Buddhist revival: the promotion of Vinaya (jielü 戒律) in Republican China”
Journal Of Global Buddhism, vol. 18: Special Issue on Buddhists and the Making of Modern Chinese Societies edited by Francesca Tarocco, 129-154, 2017
The aim of this exploratory study is to provide an outline of the Vinaya renewal in China in the first half of the twentieth century, and to point to its meanings and effects in the context of the Buddhist revival of the Republican period. Based on a preliminary investigation of monastic codes compiled by four influential Buddhist leaders in the 1930s and 1940s, my paper draws attention to their endeavor to promote Chinese monastic discipline in practice and in discourse. I argue that, during the Republican period, Chinese Vinaya represented the benchmark for both molding religious regeneration and setting the limit for Buddhist institutional innovation. The promotion of Vinaya was a long-standing, indigenous, pattern for the revitalization of the Buddhist tradition, and it also played a fundamental role in the modern evolution of Chinese Buddhism by helping the monastic community strengthen its religious authority and political legitimation. I hope to show that a deeper analysis of this phenomenon may in the future help balance current visions on Chinese modernism, dominated by Western categories, theories and dichotomies related to modernity and secularism.