This post is the first in a series looking at distinctly Buddhist words in Zen texts. I've been studying Chinese for about 8 years (first modern while living for 4 years in the greater China area, and then classical Chinese for the last couple years (which are two different, though related, language systems)), and while my Chinese is far from perfect, I can find my way around these texts and enjoy doing so.
This series is inspired by an exchange I had that revealed to me how misguided the normative understanding of these texts are on this board (you can find the original exchange here: https://www.reddit.com/r/zen/comments/gjv7yc/practicing_zen_with_wumenguan_case_2/fqqklft?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x)
I want to first draw our attention that every proponent of the notion of “Zen is not Buddhism” on these boards cannot read Chinese. I would love for one person on these boards who can read Chinese to step up and defend this position. Those people on the board who claim "Zen is not Buddhism" pretend to be experts on these texts, but are illiterate in the original language of these texts. Think about the degree of ego and attachment necessary to think you are an expert on something you can't read. All information they’ve received on Zen has been filtered through 20th/21st century modern English, prepared for a modern, secular, Western audience, and commensurately distorted owing to this translation/filtration/modernizing process.
There’s a lot I would like to say, but I will spread this out by focusing on one or two Chinese Buddhist words found in Zen texts for each post. I will begin by drawing our attention to two words: 僧 (Buddhist monk) and 和尚 (preceptor – the one who gives vows to Buddhist monks).
Here is a brief sampling of how common 僧 and 和尚 are in these texts.
Wumen Guan:
Case 1: 趙州和尚因僧問。狗子還有佛性。也無。州云無。
Case 2: 住在山後。敢告和尚。乞依亡僧事例...
Case 3: 俱胝和尚。凡有詰問….
Case 5: 香嚴和尚云...
Case 7: 趙州因僧問。某甲乍入叢林。乞師指示。州云。喫粥了也未。僧云。喫粥了也。州云。洗鉢盂去。其僧有省。
I skipped over a few in just these seven cases, and I could keep going for all 48 cases, but you get the point. All of these dialogues are between Buddhist monks with the Zen master (Zhaouzhou 趙州, Xiangyan 香嚴, Juzhi 俱胝) referred To as preceptor (和尚, meaning they make other people into Buddhist monks) and the disciple/congregation referred to as 僧 (ordinary, lowly monk).
Wumen Guan contains 44 uses of 僧, and 26 uses of 和尚. You can search for these words here using command+F: https://cbetaonline.dila.edu.tw/zh/T2005_001
Blue Cliff Record contains 83 uses of 僧, and 14 uses of 和尚: https://cbetaonline.dila.edu.tw/zh/T2003_001
The Book of Serenity contains 56 uses of the word 僧, and 29 uses of the word 和尚: https://cbetaonline.dila.edu.tw/zh/T2004_001
To say that these texts are not Buddhist is to deny the clear Buddhist affiliation of the very monks who wrote this text. Furthermore, look at the content of these cases: Buddhist monks talking and arguing over ideas such as Buddhanature (佛性 Case 1), cause and effect (Case 2), enlightenment (Case 3), etc. To say that this is not Buddhist feels willfully delusional.
The response here is usually “Define Buddhism!” – easy: Buddhism is what Buddhists do. If Buddhist monks, those who call themselves Buddhist, are doing Zen things, then Zen things are Buddhist. What makes something American? What Americans do (eat hamburgers, drive pickup trucks, be loud and obnoxious, etc). Take any category of people broad enough (nationality, religious affiliation, political affiliation), and this is the definition you will get. Of course, there are also subdivisions, splintering, subcategories, sects, outliers, etc – which is why any rigid, limited, narrow definition of any category that’s so broad is a simplistic, reductionist, anti-intellectual way of approaching our understanding of the world.
And yes, a way of defining that reflects reality means that if reality became (even more) absurd, then the definition would reflect that. If all people who call themselves Americans started walking on their hands, this would be American. If all people who call themselves Buddhists started quacking like a duck, this would be Buddhist. But these things won't happen, because reality is determined by a sequence of events. All we can do is look at what we have. I am not interested in hypotheticals.
Are Zen Masters a unique kind of Buddhist? Certainly. Does that mean they are not Buddhist? They are monks, expressing the nature of Enlightenment, talking about Buddha, and the nature of mind.
Is there secular value in these texts? Absolutely. I think we can still gain secular value from these texts without having to force them, through a limited and incomplete understanding of their language, to perfectly align with our 21st century, modern, Western cultural conditioning. It’s OK for texts from medieval China to be Buddhist and for us to enjoy them still. They don’t have to be secular to be of value.
I will continue this later in another post looking at other distinctly Buddhist words (佛法, 佛性, 悟, etc.) that appear all over these texts.
Submitted May 22, 2020 at 01:58AM by oxen_hoofprint https://ift.tt/3bUqufj
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