'Simplicity' and 'silence' in Chinese Buddhism

Abstract

The Hinayäna and the Mahayäna were the two main schools of Buddhism in India. The former taught in simple and easily understood language, making use of negative terms and repetitive argument, whilst the latter was rich in literary imagination and scholasticism.

When Buddhism first came to China (58-75 AD), it was expressed in borrowed ideas and terminology from the teaching of Huang-Lao. From about 200 AD it began to rely on the ideas and terminology of Taoism. It was not until the beginning of the fifth century that the true principles of Buddhism were expressed in Chinese by the Chinese themselves.

The confusion which had been created in people's minds by the borrowed ideas and terminology was largely dispelled by 'The Book of Chao', which was written rrom 404 to 414 AD. Using only about one thousand words, Seng-chao, the author, demonstrated the whole principle of 'Emptiness' of the Prajnä Sutras which consist of six hundred large volumes, and Seng-chao was greatly admired by his Indian master Kumärajiva. Seng-chao abandoned the former reliance on Taoist ideas and terminology and did not employ the Indian analytical mode of expression but expressed the original meaning in a more concise way. The original thought. of Prajnä was thus expressed in Chinese for the first time, and for the first time Chinese culture accepted and absorbed a foreign philosophy. The Chinese transformed the complex mode of expression of another country into a simple one of their own whilst still conveying the spirit of., the original. Seng-chao's preference for 'Simplicity' and 'Silence' became the'model for Chinese Buddhist writing and speech.

The elements of 'Simplicity' and 'Silence' in the sutras were skillfully developed. These qualities came to be the outstanding characteristics of'Chinese Buddhist thought. Seng-chao, Tao-sheng, Chih-i, and others, revealed in their teachings and daily lives a preference for 'simplicity' and 'Silence', e. g. the emphasis on the practice of concentration or meditation in the T'en-t'ai, the Hua-yen and the Pure Land schools; the rejection, by Chinese culture, of the Fa-hsiang School (which had clung to Indian complexities of speech and thought).

Hui-neng, the sixth patriarch of the Chan School ("Ch'an", known as "Zen" in Japanese) developed these qualities even further. His teaching technique, the 'Thirty-six Pairs of Opposites', was a means of dispelling attachments from the mind. By this method the Mind and the object on which it concentrated correspond to each other, transcending all words and speech, and so Enlightenment is silently and instantaneously achieved. This method was derived from Prajnä thought, which also aimed to dispel attachment, but was also inspired by Confucianism and Taoism, which naturally preferred 'Simplicity', 'Silence' and moral practice within the Mind.

Traditional Chinese thought emphasised practice and experience as against knowledge and theory. Chinese Buddhism, the Ch'an School in particular, emphasised practice within the Mind. The characteristics of 'Simplicity' and 'Silence' in Chinese Buddhism thought thus reached their full development in the teaching of the Ch'an School.