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lineage of the Sangha. The influence of this reform in Thailand and beyond has resulted in the gradual decline of many of the older esoteric traditions and practices of South-East Asian Theraväda associated with the Mahänikäya lineage and documented in the works of Francois Bizot.6 These traditions flourished until most recently in Cambodia, but the fanatical activities of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge between 1975 and 1978, when perhaps a million Cambodians died, involved the murder of many monks and the forced disrobing of the rest. This means that little is left on the ground.
China, Korea, and Japan: East Asian Buddhism
The Buddhism of China, Korea, and Japan constitutes a unity that can be referred to as East Asian or Eastern Buddhism because it shares a common basis in the scriptural resource of the Chinese Tripitaka and because Korean and Japanese forms and schools derive directly from Chinese forms and schools, although they subsequently developed distinctive local traditions. Buddhism began entering China during the Han dynasty (206 bce-220 ce), probably in the first century bce or ce, principally via the ancient silk routes through central Asia. From China Buddhism entered the Korean peninsula (fourth century) and thence Japan (sixth century).
Significant in the establishment of Buddhism as a part of Chinese life in the following centuries was the appeal of Buddhist ideas and meditation practices to the followers of neo-Taoism (Hstian Hstieh), although the growing popular acceptance of this 'foreign' doctrine also prompted periodic opposition from both Confucian and Taoist circles.7 The T'ang dynasty (618-907) witnessed the greatest flourishing of Buddhism in China. Buddhism continued to flourish until the end of the thirteenth century under the Sung, but the period from the fifteenth century is generally regarded as one of relative decline. Yet in the first half of the twentieth century Buddhism was still the most significant religious force in China.8 The Communist take-over of 1949 and especially the 'Cultural Revolution' of 1966-72 brought with them a
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widespread government suppression of Buddhism, which, in the more recent period, has given way to a more tolerant attitude.9 The traditions of Chinese Buddhism also continue in Taiwan and Hong Kong.
The development of the Chinese canon
When Buddhism began entering China the Mahayana was still in its early stages of development; the writings of Nagarjuna, Asahga, and Vasubandhu were still to come. The most important early centre of Buddhism in China seems to have been at Lo-yang and it is here, from the middle of the second century, that foreign monks such as An Shih-kao and Lokaksema (Chih Lou-chia-ch'an) began the work of translating Indian Buddhist texts into Chinese; these first translations included texts on meditation (such as the non-Mahayana Anapana-smrti Sutra or 'Discourse on Mindfulness of Breathing' and the proto-Mahayana Pratyutpanna-buddha-sammukhavasthita-samddhi Sutra or 'Discourse on the Samadhi of Direct Encounter with the Buddhas of the Present') and portions of the Perfection of Wisdom in 8,000 Lines (Asta-sdhasrika Prajhaparamita).10
The manner of these early translations is characteristic of the whole process of translation of Indian Buddhist texts into Chinese. The Indian canonical collections were never translated into Chinese en bloc. The Chinese Tripitaka (San-tsang) or 'Great Treasury of Sutras' (Ta-tsang-ching) evolved over a period of over a thousand years.11 Rather than a strictly defined canon, the Chinese Tripitaka represents a library containing all the Chinese translations of Buddhist sutras and sastras made over the centuries, as well as a variety of indigenous Chinese treatises relating to Buddhism. The oldest surviving catalogue of Chinese Buddhist texts dates from the sixth century and details over 2,000 works; the first printed edition, produced from 130,000 wooden blocks and completed in 983, contained 1,076 works. Subsequent catalogues and editions, produced in Korea and Japan as well as China, show some divergence both in the arrangement of the canon and in its contents. The modern standard is the Taisho edition, produced in Japan between 1924 and 1932. Its fifty-five volumes,
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each some 1,000 pages in length, contain 2,184 works: volumes 1 to 32 consist of translations of ancient Indian works (1,692 texts); volumes 33 to 54 of works by Chinese monks (452 texts); volume 55 of ancient catalogues (40 texts). The whole is supplemented by a further 45 volumes containing works of Japanese origin, and other ancillary material.12
The Taisho edition groups texts on more or less historical principles. A more traditional arrangement is reflected by an important catalogue produced at the end of the nineteenth century by the Japanese scholar Bunyiu Nanjio.13 This is basically a catalogue of an edition of the Chinese Tripitaka produced in the early seventeenth century at the end of the Ming dynasty which contains a total of 1,662 works and provides the easiest way for gaining an impression of the range and scope of the Chinese canon. The three traditional divisions of Sutra (ching), Vinaya (lit), and Treatise (lun) are each subdivided according to the categories of 'Mahayana' and 'Hrnayana', and finally supplemented by a fourth division. The Sutra collection is the largest (1,081 texts); although largely taken up by the vast corpus of Mahayana sutras, it also contains the Chinese Agamas corresponding to the Pali Nikayas. The Vinaya section (85 texts) contains translations of the Vinayas of various Indian schools and related works. The third division (154 texts) is devoted to treatises; this section includes the canonical Abhidharma texts of the Sarvastivadins, as well as other Abhidharma, Madhyamaka, and Yogacara treatises and commentaries. These three divisions of translations of Indian Buddhist materials are supplemented by a miscellaneous collection of writings (342 texts) by Indian and Chinese Buddhist masters.
The schools of East Asian Buddhism
The schools (tsung) of Chinese Buddhism divide into two main categories: those which have a more or less direct Indian counterpart and those which are native to China. The principal schools of the former category are the Vinaya, the Kosa, the Madhyamaka, the Yogacara, and the Mantrayana; of the latter category, Ch'an, Pure Land, T'ien-t'ai, and Hua-yen. In principle these are also
the schools of Korean and Japanese Buddhism. In practice certain of the schools developed more significant local traditions than others. In Korea special mention should be made of the Son (Ch'an) teaching of Chinul (1158-1210).14 In Japan Tendai (T'ien-t'ai), Zen (Ch'an), Shingon (Mantrayana), Pure Land, along with the distinctively Japanese tradition of Nichiren have been of special importance.
Chinese Buddhist monks eventually came to be ordained according to the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya, and Chinese Buddhist schools do not constitute separate ordination lineages, but focus on a lineage of teaching and interpretation of Buddhist thought and practice. Movement between the schools seems to have been normal. But early attempts to establish the norms of Buddhist monastic practice in China were felt to be hampered by a lack of knowledge of the Vinaya. It was this that prompted Fa-hsien, at the age of almost 60, to set out in 399 on a journey to India and Sri Lanka that was to last fourteen years. Subsequently the Vinaya School (Lii-tsung) of Chinese Buddhism was founded in the early seventh century by Tao-hsilan (596-667) as a focus for Chinese Vinaya studies..
The great translator Kumarajlva (344-413), a central Asian monk who had studied in Kashmir, arrived in China in 383; his translation of two works by Nagarjuna and a third by Aryadeva marks the beginning of the Chinese Madhyamaka or 'Three Treatise School' (San-lun-tsung).15 The development in China of the other great Indian Mahayana system, the Yogacara, is associated with the work of the Indian monk Paramartha, who arrived in Canton in 546, and Hsiian-tsang, who, as mentioned above, visited India in the seventh century and returned to China to found the 'Characteristics of Dharmas' (Fa-hsiang) school. Ancillary to this school was the Chu-she or (Abhidharma-)Kosa school.
The form of Mahayana Buddhist practice known as 'the vehicle of protective spells' (mantra-ydna) or tantra is most widespread within Tibetan Buddhism (see below), but a tradition of esoteric practice was introduced into China early in the eighth century by the Indians Subhakarasimha (637-735) and Vajrabodhi
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(671-741) and the Sri Lankan Amoghavajra (705-74). The principal text was the Mahdvairocana and Vajrasekhara Sutras, associated with the practice of the garbha-kosa-dhatu and vajra-dhatu mandalas respectively. A mandala is a diagram (usually based on a square and/or circle orientated to the'four directions) of the cosmos in the form of a vision of a set of buddhas and bodhisattvas which then acts as a basis for visualization and meditation for those who have been initiated into its practice by an accomplished master. Chinese Mantrayana or 'True Word' (Chen Yen) flourished only briefly, although it enjoyed a limited revival in the twentieth century, partly because of Tibetan and Japanese influence. The school was, however, early on introduced to Japan by one of the great geniuses of Japanese culture, Kukai or Kobo Daishi (774-835), who in 804 travelled to China in search of instruction. Shingon remains a significant school of Japanese Buddhism today.16
Ch'an Buddhism
The term ch'an (Japanese zeri) derives from the Sanskrit dhyana, which, as we have seen, is used in Indian Buddhist theory to designate the attainment of a deep state of peace by the means of calm meditation. The term comes to refer to one of the important schools of East Asian Buddhism. Ch'an tradition looks to the legendary figure of the Indian monk Bodhidharma, who is said to have come east in the fifth or sixth century ce, as its first 'patriarch', but it is likely that the roots of Ch'an lie further back in Chinese Buddhist history with the interest shown in meditation practice by such figures as Tao-an (312-85), Hui-yuan (334-416), and Tao-sheng (360-434).
Ch'an tradition has it that, beginning with Bodhidharma, the lineage of teaching and the title of 'patriarch' passed from master to pupil. The transmission to the sixth patriarch, however, became the object of dispute. Originally it was assumed to have passed to Shen-hsiu (600-706), but in 734 this succession was challenged by a southern monk named Shen-hui (670-762), who claimed that in fact Hui-neng (638-713) had been the true sixth
patriarch. Shen-hui and his 'southern' school of Ch'an were the effective winners of the dispute, with Hui-neng now looked upon as a second founder of Ch'an.
Shen-hui was an advocate of the doctrine of 'sudden awakening', and one of the things that he charged Shen-hsiu with was teaching a doctrine of 'gradual awakening'. This dispute over whether awakening should be regarded as a gradual process or a sudden event was not confined to Ch'an circles, but was a question that preoccupied Chinese Buddhism from an early date.17 To some extent the problem reflects the old Abhidharma discussion over the question of whether, at the time of awakening, the four noble truths are seen gradually (as the Sarvastivadins argued) or in a single instant (as the Theravadins, amongst others, argued): ultimate truth is not something one can see part of; one either sees it complete, or not at all. Yet the account of the bodhisattva path the Chinese inherited from India details various stages with definite attainments and points of no return. After Shen-hui, Ch'an became very much associated with a sudden awakening view.
Bodhidharma is said to have emphasized the teachings of the Lahkavatara Sutra, and the theoretical basis of Ch'an centres on the notions of the tathagatagarbha and 'emptiness' as pointing beyond all conceptual forms of thought. Our innermost nature is simply the Buddha-nature (fo-hsing) which is to be realized in a direct and sudden experience of inner awakening (wu/satori), Ch'an tradition has a marked tendency to be critical of conventional theory and discursive philosophy, which it sees as cluttering the mind and creating obstacles to direct experience. Emphasis is put on just sitting in meditation (tso ch'an/zazen), the carrying out of ordinary routine tasks and the all-important instruction of the Ch'an master. Ch'an's own considerable literary and intellectual tradition centres on the stories of the sayings and deeds of these Ch'an masters, who may be portrayed as behaving in unexpected and spontaneous ways and responding to questions with apparent non-sequiturs and riddles (kung-an/kdan) in order to jolt their pupils from their habitual patterns of thought and prompt in them an awakening experience.
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Question: 'If a man has his head shaved, wears a monk's robe, and takes the shelter Buddha gives, why then should he not be recognized as one who is aware of Buddha?' Master: 'It is not as good to have something as to have nothing.'18
Although as many as five different Ch'an schools had emerged by the ninth century, only two of these remained important after the government suppression of Buddhist monasticism in 842-5: the Lin Chi (Japanese Rinzai) and Ts'ao Tung (Japanese Soto). The former placed particular emphasis on the paradoxical riddle of the kung-an, and the master's bizarre behaviour; the latter placed more emphasis on formal sitting meditation; in Japan it is associated with the important figure of Dogen (1200-53).
Pure Land Buddhism
As we saw in the opening chapter, the Buddha has always been seen as possessor of incomparable powers and as the incomparable teacher of the Dharma. For earliest Buddhism the actual person of the Buddha is no longer directly accessible after his final parinirvana, and devotion to the Buddha centred on the worship of his relics, the recollection of his qualities (buddhanusmrti/ buddhanussati), and perhaps also visualization. Such practices clearly were felt to bring one in some sense closer to the presence of the Buddha. Early Buddhism also knew of Maitreya/ Metteyya, the next buddha, who at present waits in the Tusita heaven; the aspiration to be reborn at the time when Maitreya will teach the Dharma may have become part of Buddhist practice early on. With the rise of the Mahayana came the idea that buddhas are at present teaching in other parts of the universe in their own special 'buddha fields' or 'pure lands' where the conditions for the practice of the Dharma are extremely favourable. With this came the aspiration to be reborn in these pure lands. The inspiration for Chinese and Japanese 'Pure Land' Buddhism is provided by three sutras: the larger and the smaller Sukhavafi-vyuha ('Vision of the Realm of Happiness') and the Amitayurd-hydna ('Meditation on the Buddha of Boundless Life'). The two former are of Indian origin, while the last may have been
composed in central Asia or China. These sutras tell of the pure land of the Buddha Amitabha (Boundless Light) or Amitayus, known in Japanese as Amida. The particular focus of East Asian Pure Land Buddhism became the vow of Amitabha in the Sukhavatl-vyuha to bring to his pure land after death any one who sincerely calls on his name. The characteristic practice of Pure Land Buddhism, advocated in the writings of such masters as T'an-luan (476-542), Tao-cho (562-645), and Shan-tao (613-81), is known as nien-fo (Japanese nembutsu), calling on or uttering the name of the Buddha. Also associated with the school is a preoccupation with the old Indian idea that the practice of the Buddha's teaching must pass through successive periods of decline and eventually disappear.19 This led to an emphasis on the futility of expecting to be able, by one's own efforts, to develop the good conduct and meditation necessary for awakening in the final days of the Dharma (mo fa/mappo); better to aspire to rebirth in Amitabha's pure land. The eventual development in Japan was a doctrine of grace associated above all with the figure of Shinran (1173-1262), founder of the 'True Pure Land School' (Jodo Shinshu): it is not 'one's own power' (jiriki) but the 'power of the other' (tariki)—the grace of Amitabha—that is effective in bringing one to his pure land.20
Tien-t'ai and Hua-yen
By the middle of the sixth century Indian Buddhist texts of various sorts and from numerous schools all purporting to be the word of the Buddha had been translated into Chinese. Both Tien-t'ai and Hua-yen start from the premiss that the diverse and seemingly contradictory teachings represented by these texts must be ordered and arranged into a coherent whole. Both schools thus propose a system of division and classification of the Buddha's teachings (p'an-chiao). The theoretical basis for this is the concept of the Buddha's 'skill in means' (upaya-kausalya): the notion that the Buddha adapted his teachings according to the ability of his hearers to understand.
For Chih-i (538-97), the founder of T'ien-t'ai, the Buddha's teaching should be arranged according to the 'five periods and eight teachings'. The final teaching of the Buddha is found in the
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Lotus Sutra. Chih-i expressed his understanding of Buddhist metaphysics and dependent arising in the form of a doctrine known as 'the threefold truth': phenomena are at once empty of existence, temporarily existing, and poised in the middle between existence and non-existence. Associated with the elaboration of this doctrine, which is seen as relating all things to each other and to the whole, is a theory of the 'interpenetration' of all phenomena: every individual thing in the universe contains and at the same time is contained in everything else, or, as Chih-i himself would put it, one thought is the 3,000 worlds.21 While some of the writings of Chih-i represent sophisticated (and mind-boggling) intellectual meditations on the interdependence of all things, others also show a concern for the down-to-earth problems and practicalities of just sitting in meditation.22
The Hua-yen school was founded by Tu-shun (557-640) and its thought was developed especially in the writings of Fa-tsang (643-712). For Ffua-yen the vast Avatamsaka or 'Flower Garland' Sutra collection represents the highest teaching. As with Tien-t'ai, great emphasis is put on an elaborate theory of the interpenetration of all phenomena.23
Nichiren
An important and distinctive form of Buddhism is associated with the name of the Japanese prophet Nichiren (1222-82). Nichiren's Buddhism springs from the view that Japanese Buddhism and Japanese society were, in the mid-thirteenth century, passing through a state of crisis. Although he criticized other forms of Buddhist practice as ineffective, his understanding of the Lotus Sutra as the highest teaching of the Buddha derives from Tendai (T'ien-t'ai); his insistence on a single chant as the only effective form of practice in the days of mappo owes something to Japanese Pure Land traditions. Nichiren's Buddhism thus centres on the repeated chanting of the daimoku, homage to the sacred title of the Lotus Sutra (na-mu myd-hd-ren-ge-kyo), backed up by a complex and sophisticated theory of the manner in which the syllables of the chant actualize Sakyamuni Buddha, transforming the individual and society. By all accounts Nichiren was an uncompromising and provocative teacher. In the centuries after
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his death Nichiren's message attracted a considerable following in Japan, and today the numerous sub-sects of Nichiren Buddhism together continue to constitute one of the significant schools of Buddhism in Japan. Among the important Nichiren sub-sects is the Nichiren Shoshu or Soka Gakkai, which has been active in Japanese politics since the 1960s, and must also be reckoned a significant presence in the context of Buddhism in Europe and America.24
Tibet and Mongolia: Northern Buddhism
Tibetan tradition makes reference to a first and second diffusion of Buddhism in Tibet. Tradition links the introduction of Buddhism to Tibet with the two wives of King Srong-bsan-sgam-po (d. 649), one of whom came from Nepal and the other from China, who thus introduced both Indian and Chinese forms of Buddhism. But the Buddhist presence in Tibet remained superficial for another century. It was not until the latter half of the eighth century, during the reign of King Khri Srong-lde-brtsan (756-97?), that the Indian monk Santaraksita was invited to establish the first monastery, bSam-yas. In order to accomplish his purpose, Santaraksita is said to have had to call on an Indian yogin, Padmasambhava, to assist in the task of subduing the local demons hostile to Buddhism. Tradition records a dispute at bSam-yas or Lhasa in 792-4 between an Indian faction, headed by Santaraksita's disciple Kamalasila, and a Chinese faction, headed by the teacher (hva-shang) Mahayana.25 The dispute is characterized as centring on the question of gradual (the Indians) or sudden (the Chinese) awakening; the Indian opinion supporting gradual awakening is said to have prevailed, but all this is probably a simplification of a complex history, and we can assume some influence of Chinese forms of Buddhism on Tibetan Buddhism.
A 'second diffusion' of Buddhism in Tibet occurred after its suppression during the reign of gLang-dar-ma (838-42), and is associated especially with the activity of the Indian monk and yogin Atisa (982-1054), which led to the founding of the monastery of Rva-spreng by his disciple 'Brom-ston in 1057, and the