Adaptation of Buddhism (second, third and fourth centuries)

The Cambridge Illustrated History of China
Patricia Buckley Ebrey, Cambridge University Press
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In this period when it was difficult to place much faith in civil governments, China encountered a religion whose reach extended way beyond any known government, a religion then spreading its teachings across Asia. As knowledge of Buddhism filtered into China during these centuries, Chinese learned a radically different way of conceiving of life and death, humanity and the cosmos.

Shakyamuni, the historical Buddha ("Buddha" means enlightened one), lived in India at about the time of Confucius. He naturally took for granted the basic concepts of Indian cosmology, such as karma and reincarnation. In this world view, men, women, animals, heavenly beings, hell dwellers, and other sentient beings pass through an endless series of lives, moving up or down according to the karma, or good and bad deeds, that they have accumulated. Shakyamuni’s own spiritual journey led him to feel he had discovered basic truths about the human condition, and he began to teach people that their desires and attachments were the source of their suffering; because they became enmeshed in the web of their attachments, their lives were inevitably filled with disappointments and anxieties. The way to put a stop to this process, he preached was to live a ethical life (abstaining from the taking, for instance) and engage in spiritual exercises that enhance concentration and insight. Those who progress along this path can eventually escape the cycle of rebirth and enter nirvana, though it may take many lifetimes to reach that ultimate goal. Shakyamuni’s most committed early followers left their families and made the quest for salvation the prime activity in their lives. After Shakyamuni’s death, his disciples passed down his sermons orally, though after a few centuries these sermons were recorded, forming the basis of a huge corpus of scriptures called sutras.

Buddhism arrived in China along with commercial goods, following trade routes from northern India through the Buddhist kingdoms of Central Asia such as Khotan and Kucha. At first the new faith was mostly a religion of foreigners. What Chinese encountered in the second, third and fourth centuries was not a single creed, but an extraordinary array of ideas and practices, ranging from monastic discipline to magic, the worship of statues and relics, and techniques of meditation and ecstasy. Mahayana ("Great Vehicle") Buddhist philosophy was developing just as Buddhism was being introduced to China, and the Chinese people learned earlier and later theories at the same time. Mahayanists argued that pursuing the goal of nirvana was selfish compared to becoming a bodhisattva, a being of advanced spiritual standing who postponed entry into nirvana in order to help other beings.

By the end of the Western Jin, members of the upper levels of Chinese society had begun to be attracted to Buddhism. Those who decided to become monks had to give up their surname and take a vow of celibacy, thus cutting themselves off from the ancestral cult that tied the dead, the living and the unborn. Yet many made this decision, and Buddhist philosophy came to be widely discussed in aristocratic circles. The alien rulers in the north also found Buddhism appealing. Devoted missionaries from Central Asia were quite willing to use feats of magic to convince these rulers that Buddhism was a more powerful religion than the shamanism they had traditionally practised. But Buddhism had other advantages to alien rulers; its universalistic claims did not put them at a disadvantage in relation to the Chinese in the way Confucian theories did, and thus offered a basis for unifying an ethnically mixed population.

To many Chinese, Buddhism seemed at first a variant of Daoism, which was understandable since Daoist terms were used by early translators to convey Buddhist ideas. For instance, the Mahayana concept of the fundamental emptiness of phenomena was identified with the Daoist notion of non-being. A more accurate understanding of Buddhism became possible after the eminent Central Asian monk Kunarajiva (350-413) settled in Chang’an and directed several thousand monks in the translation of thirty-eight texts. Chinese also began in this period to undertake the arduous journey to India to discover for themselves what might have been lost in translation. The first to leave a record of his trip was the intrepid Faxian, a monk who went to India overland in 399 via Kucha and Khoian, returning by the sea route via Sri Lanka and Sumatra in 414.

The steady adaptation of Buddhism to China can be illustrated through the career of the great teacher Huiyuan (334-417). Born in the north in the period of greatest disorder, he still managed to get a basic education in Confucian and Daoist texts. It was hearing a sermon by a Chinese monk (himself a disciple of a Kuchan missionary) that led Huiyuan to decide to leave the family himself. Eventually he moved to the south, founding a monastery on Mount Liu on Jiangxi province. He kept up a learned correspondence with Kumarajiva on points of doctrine but also interacted with lay followers whom he taught concentration techniques involving visualizing Buddha. In 402 he assembled a group of both monks and lay people in front of an image of Pure Land, the western paradise of the buddha Amitabha. Buddhism thus was well on its way to becoming a religion of universal salvation with appeal to all the faithful. Two years later, in 404 Huiyuan wrote a treatise entitled On Why Monks Do Not Bow Down Before Kings, asserting the independence of the Buddhist church. He also tried to assure the ruler that Buddhism was not subversive, arguing that lay Buddhists make good subjects because their belief in the retribution of Karma and desire to be born in paradise make them act circumspectly. ‘Those who rejoice in the Way of the Buddha invariably first serve their parents and obey their lords.’

Before the end of the Age of Division, Buddhism had gained a remarkable hold in China. It appealed to people in China above all because it addressed questions of suffering and death with a directness unmatched in native traditions. It offered a fully developed vision of the afterlife and the prospect of salvation, promising that all creatures might one day find blissful release from suffering. Its code of conduct, including the injunction against the taking of life, seemed to many to carry the principle of compassion to its logical extreme. Retreating to a monastery or nunnery offered new alternative to the world-weary, one especially attractive to high born widows. Indeed, Buddhism had particular appeal to women. Although incarnation as a female was considered lower than incarnation as a male, it was also viewed as temporary, and women were encouraged to pursue salvation on nearly equal terms with men. Moreover, Buddhism held out for women some androgynous symbols unlike anything in native Chinese traditions; bodhisatvas were conceived as neither male or female, transcending differences of gender in addition to differences of class and ethnicity.

The landscape of China, too, was transformed by Buddhism as temples and monasteries were built in towns and remote mountains. The Buddhist church in north China reportedly had 6,478 temples and 77,258 monks and nuns by 477; south China was said to have 2,846 temples and 82,700 clerics some decades later. The beauty of Buddhist art and architecture (see pages 106-7) appealed to people of all levels of education. Buddhism helped transcend class differences; inscriptions on Buddhist statues and temples show that Chinese and non-Chinese officials, local notables, commoners, and Buddhist clergy often all contributed to a project, working together. The scale of contributions was enormous; pious lay believers donated tracts of land and serfs in the conviction that donation of worldly wealth to the monastic community was an especially effective way to gain merit and to fulfill filial obligations to fathers and mothers. The most generous imperial patrons was Wudi of Liang (r. 502-549), who banned meat and wine from the imperial table, built temples, wrote commentaries on sutras, and held great assemblies of monks and laymen, one of which attracted 50,000 people. To raise money for Buddhist establishments, he had himself held "hostage" until those at court raised huge sums to get him freed.

Not everyone, of course, was pleased by the many-faceted success of Buddhism. Resentful Daoists and Confucians denounced many Buddhist ideas and practices as immoral or unsuited to China. Monks’ practices of shaving the head and cremating the dead they decried as violations of the body, not allowed in Confucianism. Even worse was celibacy, for Mencius had stated that the ultimate unfilial act was failure to provide one’s ancestors with an heir. The refusal of monks to pay homage to the ruler, as well as their failure to contribute to the tax coffers, were depicted by critics as threats to the well-being of the state. Such critics argued that the great sums spent on construction of temples, statues, and ceremonies were a drain on the economy, impoverishing the people and thus indirectly the state. To rebut such criticisms, and to overcome resistance on the part of potential converts, Buddhist apologists argued that their religion was basically compatible with Chinese values. It was the utmost expression of filial piety, they argued, to free a parent from the suffering of purgatory by performing pious acts in his or her name. By praying for the welfare of the ruler and the population, they argued, monks were aiding the state, not injuring it.

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