Edkins Chinese Buddhism

1. Auflage 2012
ISBN: 978-3-8496-2204-6
Verlag: Jazzybee Verlag
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 398 Seiten

Edkins' account of Chinese Buddhism is one of the most extensive ever written. In far more than 20 chapters he covers everything there is to know about about Chinese Buddhism. Contents: 1. Joshu's Dog 2. Hyakujo's Fox 3. Gutei's Finger 4. A Beardless Foreigner 5. Kyogen Mounts The Tree 6. Buddha Twirls A Flower 7. Joshu Washes The Bowl 8. Keichu's Wheel 9. A Buddha Before History 10. Seizei Alone And Poor 11. Joshu Examines A Monk In Meditation 12. Zuigan Calls His Own Master 13. Tokusan Holds His Bowl 14. Nansen Cuts The Cat In Two 15. Tozan's Three Blows 16. Bells And Robes 17. The Three Calls Of The Emperor's Teacher 18. Tozan's Three Pounds 19. Everyday Life Is The Path 20. The Enlightened Man 21. Dried Dung 22. Kashapa's Preaching Sign 23. Do Not Think Good, Do Not Think Not-Good 24. Without Words, Without Silence 25. Preaching From The Third Seat 26. Two Monks Roll Up The Screen 27. It Is Not Mind, It Is Not Buddha, It Is Not Things 28. Blow Out The Candle 29. Not The Wind, Not The Flag 30. This Mind Is Buddha 31. Joshu Investigates 32. A Philosopher Asks Buddha 33. This Mind Is Not Buddha 34. Learning Is Not The Path 35. Two Souls 36. Meeting A Zen Master On The Road 37. A Buffalo Passes Through The Enclosure 38. An Oak Tree In The Garden 39. Ummon's Sidetrack 40. Tipping Over A Water Vase 41. Bodhidharma Pacifies The Mind 42. The Girl Comes Out From Meditation 43. Shuzan's Short Staff 44. Basho's Staff 45. Who Is He? 46. Proceed From The Top Of The Pole 47. Three Gates Of Tosotsu 48. One Road Of Kembo 49. Amban's Addition

Autoren/Hrsg.

Edkins, Joseph

Leseproben

CHAPTER III. FROM THE COMMENCEMENT OF RAHULA'S RELIGIOUS LIFE TILL THE NEAR APPROACH OF THE NIRVANA.

Buddha sends for Rahula--Arrangements for instructing Rahula and other boys--Tutors--Boys admitted to the vows--Nuns--Rapid spread of monasticism--Disciplinary rules--Education in metaphysics--Ananda and the Leng-yen-king--Buddha in these works like Socrates in Plato--Buddha said to have gone to Ceylon--Also to the paradise of desire--Offer of Devas to protect Buddhism--Protectors of China--Relation of Buddhism to Hindoo polytheism--Pradjna Paramita--King Prasenajit--Sutra of the Benevolent King--Daily liturgy--Ananda becomes Buddha's attendant disciple--Intrusted with the Sutras in twelve divisions--Buddha teaches his esoteric system--Virtually contained in the "Lotus Sutra"--In this the sun of Buddha culminated--His father's approaching death announced--Buddha reaches the forty-ninth year of his public preaching.

WHEN Buddha was forty-four years old he sent a messenger to his father and wife to say that his son Rahula was now nine years of age, and ought to commence the religious life. Maudgalyayana was the messenger. The mother replied, "When Julai (Tathagata) was a prince he married me, and before we had been married three years he went away to lead a mountain life. Having after six years become Buddha, and returned to visit his country, he now wishes me to give him my son. What misery can be so great as this?" She was, however, persuaded to consent to this sacrifice, and committed him to the care of the messenger. With him the king sent fifty sons of noble families to be his companions in taking the vows and receiving instruction.

They were placed, says the legend, under the care of Shariputra and Maudgalyayana as their tutors--Ho-shang (Upasaka), and A-che-li (Acharya).The original meaning of the ordinary Chinese term for Buddhist priest thus appears to be "tutor." The primary duty of the Ho-shang was to be the guide of young monks. The term was afterwards extended in Eastern Turkestan to all monks. From that country it was introduced into China, where it is still used in the wider sense, all monks being called Ho-Shang.

It was now arranged by Buddha that while boys might be received into the community, if the parents were willing, when still of tender years, as from twelve to seventeen, they should not receive the full vows till they were twenty. He also ordered the erection of an altar for administering the vows. It is called Kiai-t'an, "Vow altar." It is ascended by three flights of steps. On the top sit the officiating priest and his assessors. The flights of steps are so arranged that the neophyte passes three times round the altar on his way up, to indicate his triple submission to Buddha, the Law, and the Priesthood.

Women began to ask and received permission to take the vows. They were called in India Bikshuni, and in China Niku. Ni is the Sanscrit feminine termination of Bikshu, and ku is a common respectful term used of aunts, young girls, &c.

In twelve years from the commencement of his public teaching Buddha's doctrines had spread over sixteen Indian kingdoms, the monastic system was founded, and the outline of the regulations for the monks and nuns was already drawn.

Shakyamuni taught morality by rules. He hedged round his community with the strictest regulations, but he made metaphysics the staple article of his oral instructions. He tried first to bring his disciples out of danger from the world's temptations by introducing them to the spiritual association of the Bikshus. Here there was community of goods, brotherhood, the absence of secular cares, strict moral discipline, and regular instruction. The only respite was when the whole community went out into the streets of the city to receive the alms of the householders in the form of money or food. The instruction consisted of high metaphysics and a morality which speaks chiefly of mercy, and only looks at duty on its human side. Obedience to the law of God is in Shakyamuni's morality kept assiduously out of view. Instead of theology he taught metaphysics, and instead of a history of God's dealings with mankind, such as the Bible is to the Christian, he supplied them with an unlimited series of the benevolent actions of the Buddhas and Bodhisattwas.

This is true of Northern and Southern Buddhism, but the system prevailing in Ceylon and Siam has perhaps somewhat less of the metaphysical and more of the moral element than that found in China and Mongolia.

One of the most striking examples of the use of metaphysics as a cure for moral weakness, is found in the Leng-yen-king. The incident, which is of course legendary, is placed by Buddha's biographers in the forty-fifth year of his age and in the city Shravasti. Ananda, the favourite disciple, lingered one evening in the streets, where he proceeded alone from door to door begging. He accidentally met a wicked woman named Matenga. The god Brahma had already resolved to injure Ananda, and now drew him by a spell into the house of Matenga. Buddha, knowing of the spell, after the evening meal returned from the house of the rich man who entertained him, sent forth a bright lotus light from his head and received a charm. He then directed Manjusiri to take the charm with which he had thus been miraculously furnished, and go to save Ananda. By means of it he was told to bring Ananda and Matenga for instruction. Ananda on arriving made his bow and wept, blaming himself that he had not come before, and that after much teaching his "strength" (tau-li) was so far from perfect. Earnestly he asked the aid of the Buddhas of the ten regions that he might obtain the first benefits of knowledge (Bodhi). Buddha in agreeing to his desire announced to him the doctrine of the Leng-yen-king. The attempt is made to strengthen the disciple against temptation by a grand display of metaphysical skill. The man who founded the monastic institute as a cure for worldliness, might consistently teach philosophical negations as a remedy against bad morality. But it is for ever to be regretted that Shakyamuni failed to see the true foundations of morality. Confucius was able to uncover the secret of the origin of virtue and duty so far as to trace it to conscience and natural light. Judaism found it in the revealed law of God. Christianity combined the law written on the heart with the revealed law of the Divine Ruler. But Shakyamuni failed to express rightly the relation of morality to God or to human nature. Here is the most grievous failure of his system. He knew the longing of humanity for deliverance from misery, and the struggle which takes place perpetually in the heart of mankind between good and evil; but he misunderstood them because he was destitute not only of Christian and Jewish, but even of Confucian light. Fortunately, however, all the imperfect teaching in the world cannot destroy the witness which conscience in every land bears to the distinctions of eternal and immutable morality, or Buddha's teaching would have been still more harmful.

The occurrence of the Leng-yen-king early in Buddha's public life constitutes a difficulty to the Buddhist commentators. Buddha is perfect. He commences with the superficial, and finishes with the profound. How was it that this most polished specimen of his acumen, acknowledged to be so by noted Chinese Confucianists like Chu-fu-tsi, should equal the Sutras which were delivered at the end of his life? They therefore deny its equality with the Fa-hwa-king, "The Lotus of the Good Law," delivered, so they say, when Shakyamuni was an old man.

It has cost much labour to reduce the Sutras into a self-consistent chronological order. The Northern Buddhists when they added the literature of the Mahayana to that which was composed by Shakyamuni's immediate disciples, felt obliged to show in a harmonious scheme of his long life, to what years the various Sutras of the Hinayana and Mahayana, or "Smaller" and "Greater Development," should be assigned.

Imagine a life of Socrates composed by a modern author on the hypothesis that he really spoke all that Xenophon and Plato said in his name. Each or these authors imparted his own colouring to his account, and introduced his own thoughts in various proportion; and Plato's works certainly constitute the record of his own intellectual life rather than that of Socrates. His rambles in the world of thought have ever since his time been regarded as his own much more than they were those of his revered teacher. How foolish and useless would be the endeavour to construct a biography of Socrates on the principle that he wrote Plato, that the Platonic dialogues were all the products of his mind, that the incidents real or fictitious they record were all capable of arrangement in a self-consistent scheme, and that the philosophical principles they contain were all developed in a symmetrical succession, and at definite epochs in the life of Socrates! Such is the hopeless task undertaken by Buddha's Northern biographers.

Buddha, in the eighteenth year of his public teaching, is said to have gone to Ceylon, called in the Sutras Lenga island. He went to the top of Adam's Peak, and here delivered the Lenga Sutra. A Bodhisattwa said to him, "Heretics...