Sunday, July 17, 2011
Is this a fair and accurate characterization of Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese Buddhism?
Zen eventually became the dominant tradition of Chinese Buddhism. The warfare and persecution of previous centuries had devastated those schools of Buddhism that relied upon scholarship, large temples, and imperial patronage. Zen survived because its temples and monasteries were in the mountains away from the cities and had become fairly self-sufficient. By the end of the Sung dynasty, the abbots of most temples were Zen masters of either the Lin-chi or Ts’ao-tung houses of Zen. These temples also accommodated the teachings of the earlier schools such as the Flower Garland School or the T’ien-t’ai School. They also catered to the practice of Pure Land Buddhism for the common people, though some Zen masters used the nembutsu as a kind of hua-t’ou practice in its own right. The temples continued to ordain people using the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya of the Precepts School, though Pai-chang’s rules were also used to organize and regulate the life and routines of Zen monastic life. The primary practice of the Zen monks had become either the koan or hua-t’ou introspection of the Lin-chi school or the silent illumination of the Ts’ao-tung, though even the latter utilized koans at times. This eclectic, but ultimately Zen based form of Buddhism, continues to be the standard form of Buddhism in China, Korea, and Vietnam to this day.
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