History, Ideology, and General Ideological History: A Case Study of Chan Buddhism in the Tang Dynasty
An increasing number of studies on the history of Chan Buddhism have been published by Chinese scholars in recent years. Not counting the early work by scholars such as Hu Shi and Yin Shun or other scattered research and translations that appeared before
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Introduction An increasing number of studies on the history of Chan Buddhism have been published by Chinese scholars in recent years. Not counting the early work by scholars such as Hu Shi and Yin Shun or other scattered research and translations that appeared before the 1980s, a dozen or more studies were published on the mainland during the 1980s and 1990s. After my own Chanzong yu Zhongguo wenhua 禪宗與中國文化 (Chan Buddhism and Chinese Culture) (1986), other titles included Chanzong sixiang de xingcheng yu fazhan 禪宗思想的形成與發展 (The Formation and Development of Chan Ideology) (1991) by Hong Xiuping, Zhongguo Chanzong sixiang licheng 中國禪宗思想歷程 (The Ideological Course of Chan Buddhism) (1992) by Pan Guiming, Zhongguo Chanzong tongshi 中國禪 宗通史 (A Comprehensive History of Chan Buddhism) (1993) by Du Jiwen and Wei Daoru, my Zhongguo Chan sixiangshi 中國禪思想史 (A History of Chinese Chan Buddhism) (1995), Zhongguo Chanzong sixiang fazhanshi 中國禪宗思想發 展史 (The History of the Development of Chinese Chan Buddhism) (1997) by Ma Tianxiang, and Tangwudai Chanzongshi 唐五代禪宗史 (Chan Buddhism during the Tang and Five Dynasties) (1999) by Yang Zengwen. In Taiwan, Cai Rixin’s Zhongguo Chanzong de xingcheng 中國禪宗的形成 (The Formation of Chinese Chan Buddhism) was published in 2000 and Liu Guozong’s Chanzong sixiangshi gaishuo 禪宗思想史概說 (Historical Overview of Chinese Chan Buddhism) in 2001. In addition to these works of scholarly research, major progress has been made in the archiving of material and the publication of primary materials such as the Chinese manuscripts on Chan Buddhism from Dunhuang, Chanzong quanshu 禪宗全書 (The Complete Works of Chan Buddhism), new editions of the Tanjing 壇經 (The Platform Sutra) and Shenhui yulu 神會語錄 (Discourses of Shenhui), and Z. Ge (*) National Institute for Advanced Humanistic Studies, Fudan University, Hong Kong, China e-mail: [email protected] P.-k. Cheng and K.W. Fan (eds.), New Perspectives on the Research of Chinese Culture, Chinese Culture 1, DOI 10.1007/978-981-4021-78-4_4, © Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2013
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dictionaries on Chan Buddhism, all of which have greatly facilitated further research. However, in my opinion, despite all of these, the quality of the research published has made little progress. Many of these works echo what others have written before, leaving questions unanswered; old problems have not been solved, while new questions have emerged. The above is more self-reflection than criticism of others. After I finished writing my Zhongguo Chan sixiangshi in 1993 which was published in 1995, I suspended my research into the subject for a long time. One reason was that my time and energy were put into another project. But another reason was that my research on Chan Buddhism had stumbled upon obstacles, such as the following: How do we interpret Chan Buddhism? How do we explain “Chan”? When writing about Chan ideology, there is the problem of how to break out of the mainstream of historical thought. If we wish not only to go beyond the records in Denglu 燈錄 (The Tr
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