Chan Buddhism

I wrote this tutorial presentation for "Foundations of Chinese Thought II" in 1996. This is a near-complete draft I've just found. The submitted version, along with most of my course notes (*wah*), was lent out and hasn't found its way back to me... I might work on re-developing a few less coherent pieces that were stored with this, but anyway, re-reading those of my notes that are still here is interesting.

What did Chan ideology 'deconstruct' and what possible roots might Chan deconstruction have had in early Daoist thought?

Introduction

Chan is a form of Buddhism which developed originally as a monastic discipline in China. The Chinese familiarity with meditation techniques through religious Daoist attemts to obtain immortality/longevity led them to emphasise the samyak-samhadi (right contemplation) part of the Buddhist Eightfold Path. The name Chan, and later Zen, is derived from the Sanskrit dhyana - meditation. Other Daoist concepts contributed a great deal to the development of Chan. In particular, the Buddhist notion of achieving nirvana (release from suffering) through bodhi (awakening) was interpreted as realisation of the Dao and sunyata (emptiness) was associated with wu.

Chan developed into a philosophy which stressed the accessibility of enlightenment to everyone because of their essential Buddha nature, and enlightenment through sudden awakening, as opposed to a gradual enlightenment resulting from the study of sutras and attention to correct behaviour and mental discipline. Rather than being a practice demanding withdrawal from participation in ordinary life in order to find the Way, Chan proposes that ordinary life is the Way.

Deconstructing Mahayana Buddhism

I see Chan as a deconstruction of Mahayana Buddhism. With Buddhism's early indtroduction to China, the Mahayana tradition was more accessible than the Hinayana with its emphasis on rigorous self-control and nirvana only obtainable through death. However, the Mahayana tradition was still grounded in an Indian cultural perspective which made it not completely asssimilable in China.

Chan's reformulation of Buddhism removed many of the Indian culturally defined assumptions which proved to a barrier to understanding, not only to the Chinese, but to the Western world also. If you regard Buddhism as a universal thought system with cross-cultural relevance, then Chan was the means by which the Indian cultural associations were stripped from Buddhism to allow it to be more accesible to all.

Conversely, it could be argued that its contact with China found Buddhism lacking universality; Chan being not Buddhism, but a synthesis in very Chinese fashion.

One could argue that Chan attempts to deconstruct everything: the central tenet of Chan is to remove the misconceptions and assumptions that prevent a clear apprehension of the facts (reality).

Daoist Roots

The basic concept of the Dao as inexpressible in words, finds its counterpart in Chan's stance on language.

There is also a point of view which sees an Indian influence on Daoism; Mair (1990) suggests that the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita influenced the Daoist classic, the Daodejing. This perhaps accounts for the affinity between Buddhism and Daoism.

Conclusion

The essential Buddhist notion that everything is in a state of flux meets the Laoist idea of the Dao as chaos from which all things arise and return.

Buddhist: there is no substance and no essences;
Daoist: the Dao is wu (non-being).

Buddhism has it that everything is dependent on the combination of circumstances at this very moment which gives the appearance of existence and substance;
Chan, after refuting true existence, returns to the recognition that "a mountain is just a mountain".
This pragmatism is Daoist in its nature.

Buddhism sees life as a continuous cycle of suffering which can only come to an end with the cessation of karma from earlier life.
Chan adopts a position of life as an endless struggle until one sees the ****.