The Unlikely Buddhologist : Tiantai Buddhism in Mou Zongsan's New Confucianism [1 ed.] 9789047430810, 9789004177376

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The Unlikely Buddhologist

Modern Chinese Philosophy Edited by

John Makeham, Australian National University

VOLUME 2

The Unlikely Buddhologist Tiantai Buddhism in Mou Zongsan’s New Confucianism

By

Jason Clower

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2010

Unlike classical, medieval, Buddhist, or post-Tang Confucian philosophy, modern Chinese philosophy has been largely ignored in Western studies of Chinese philosophy. This series aims to redress this imbalance by publishing authoritative, innovative, and informative studies in Chinese philosophy from the late Qing period to contemporary times. It aims to become the series of choice for prospective authors of studies on modern Chinese philosophy writing on topics in new Confucian philosophy, modern Buddhist philosophy, Chinese Marxist philosophy, modern Daoist philosophy, as well as works of a comparative nature. It will be “catholic” in its judgment of what constitutes Chinese philosophy, adopting the norms favored by Chinese scholars and intellectuals, as well as those adopted in the Western academy. This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Clower, Jason ( Jason T.) The unlikely Buddhologist : Tiantai Buddhism in Mou Zongsan’s new Confucianism / by Jason Clower. p. cm. — (Modern Chinese philosophy ; v. 2) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-17737-6 (hard cover : alk. paper) 1. Mou, Zongsan. 2. NeoConfucianism. 3. Tiantai Buddhism—Influence. I. Title. II. Series. B5234.M674C59 2010 181’.11—dc22

2010010990

ISSN 1875-9386 ISBN 978 90 04 17737 6 Copyright 2010 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints BRILL, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands

For Bruce Grelle, Daniel Veidlinger, Jed Wyrick, Joel Zimbelman, Kate McCarthy, Mahan Mirza, Micki Lennon, Sarah Pike And most especially, Andy Flescher 雪中送炭

CONTENTS Acknowledgments ....................................................................... Abbreviations ..............................................................................

xi xiii

Chapter One Mou Zongsan, His Times, and His Aims ........ The Problem of the Unlikely Buddhologist ......................... Why Mou Matters ................................................................ Interpreting Mou .................................................................. The Cultural Context—China’s National Crisis and Mou’s Generation ............................................................. The New Culture and the Attack on Confucianism ........... Progress ........................................................................... Public-Mindedness .......................................................... Governing by Educating ................................................ Crisis in the New Culture .................................................... Marxism .......................................................................... Cultural Conservatives ................................................... Mou and the New Confucians ............................................. The New Confucian Agenda ............................................... The On-Going Life of the Confucian Tradition .......... Moral Realism ................................................................ Synthesizing Chinese and Western Philosophy ............. Science and Democracy ................................................. Mou’s Mature Writings ........................................................ Goals of Mou’s Philosophy .................................................. Vindicate Chinese Philosophy ....................................... Join Chinese and Western Philosophy in Common Enterprise .................................................................... Assert Morality in Matter and the Moral Mission of Science ...................................................................... Help Regenerate China Morally and Politically ........... Proclaim Metaphysical Optimism .................................

1 1 7 16

Chapter Two “Philosophy” and the Building Blocks of Mou’s Universe ....................................................................... Mou’s Notion of “Philosophy” .............................................

20 20 25 25 26 27 28 29 33 36 36 38 39 40 45 46 47 48 49 50 53 57 57

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contents Mou the Theologian ............................................................ The Building Blocks of Mou’s Universe: The “Two-Level Ontology” .........................................................................

61

Chapter Three What the Buddha Taught—The Fable of the Five Periods ...................................................................... The Canonic Buddha and the Canon ................................. The Buddha’s Teaching ....................................................... How the Buddha Unveiled His Teaching Progressively ..... First Period: Flower Garland Sutra ............................... Second Period: Hīnayāna Scriptures ............................. Third Period: Mahāyāna Scriptures .............................. Fourth Period: The Perfection of Prajñā Scriptures ..... Fifth Period: Lotus and Nirvana Sutras ........................

65 65 68 70 71 71 75 77 83

Chapter Four The Buddhist Philosophers .............................. Hīnayāna, the Tripitaka Theory ......................................... Nāgārjuna and the “Common Theory” .............................. Nāgārjuna’s Flaws .................................................... The Common Theory as a Formal Type ........................... The Two “Separation Theories” ......................................... Yogācāra: The Beginning or “Deluded Mind” Separation Theory .............................................................................. The Mature Separation Theory .......................................... Paramārtha and the History of the Mature Separation Theory ........................................................................ Buddhas and Buddha-Nature in the Mature Separation Theory ...................................................................... The Theory’s Advances and Failings .......................... Huayan Representatives of the Mature Separation Theory ................................................................ The Complete or Perfect Theory ...................................... Spiritual Progress according to the Perfect Theory .... The Two Topics of Buddhist Philosophy: Buddha-Nature and Prajñā ...................................................................... The Inclusiveness of the Perfect Theory ........................... The Chan Tradition ...........................................................

59

91 92 93 96 102 103 105 112 113 116 123 129 136 145 148 151 153

contents

ix

Chapter Five Where Buddhists Go Wrong .......................... The Orthodox Confucian Tradition according to Mou ... Heaven “Creates” the Universe .................................. Heaven Also Dwells in Us ........................................... Where Buddhism Falls Short .............................................

157 157 159 162 167

Chapter Six So What Good is Buddhism? ........................... Separation Theory and Perfect Theory as Formal Types ............................................................................... How Buddhists Led the Way ............................................. Confucian Perfect Theory and Separation Theories ........ What Good is a Perfect Theory? .......................................

179 181 189 191 197

Chapter Seven Toward an Appraisal of Mou’s Use of Buddhist Philosophy ........................................................... Mou as Historian of Philosophy ........................................ Mou the Dogmatic ............................................................. Mou’s Interpretation of Buddhism .................................... The Mystery of Variegated Dharmas ......................... Guaranteeing the Existence of All Things .................. Universal Buddhahood and the Beginning Separation Theory ...................................................................... Mou’s General Criticisms of Buddhism ............................ Ontological Substance and Moral Law ....................... The Socio-Political Criticism ....................................... Mou’s Ambivalent Ecumenism .................................... Mou’s Perfect Theory Model ............................................. Coherence ..................................................................... Fung’s First Argument: On Non-Discriminating Statements ................................................................. Fung’s Second Argument: On Critique ...................... Fung’s Third Argument: Linguistic Contortion .......... Fung’s Interpretation: Non-Rationality or Mystagogy Obscurantism and Esotericism in the Perfect Theory .. The Door to Antinomianism ....................................... Is Mou Worth the Trouble? ..............................................

219 222 222 224 226 229 229

Works Cited .............................................................................. Index ...........................................................................................

253 265

209 209 215 217 217 218

230 231 233 235 241 248 251

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I will always owe a debt to my teachers and advisors Robert Gimello, Tu Wei-ming, Michael Puett, Parimal Patil, and John Berthrong, and I owe great thanks to the estimable scholars of Chinese philosophy and literature on the other side of the Pacific who helped me to find my way through Mou Zongsan’s writings and thought: Sébastien Billioud, Du Baorui 杜保瑞, Fabian Heubel, Fung Yiu-ming 馮耀明, HansRudolf Kantor, Li Ming-huei 李明輝, Li Ruiquan 李瑞全, Lin Anwu 林安梧, Lin Chen-kuo 林鎮國, Liu Shu-hsien 劉述先, Ng Yu-kwan [Wu Rujun] 汝鈞, Stefan Schmidt, Yang Zuhan 楊祖漢, and You Huizhen 尤惠貞. I was also privileged to consult at various times with Brook Ziporyn of Northwestern University. I will feel lifelong gratitude to old classmates and peers Michael Allen, Eyal Aviv, Patrick Baker, Annie Boisclair, Erik Braun, Joshua Capitanio, Chao Tung-ming 趙東明, William Chu, Beverly Foulks, Holly Gayley, Doug Gildow, Elon Goldstein, Catherine Hudak, Ven. Huidong 釋慧東, Ven. Huifeng 釋慧峰 (M.B. Orsborn), Michael Ing, Brooks Jessup, Ven. Jueji 釋覺繼, Ching Keng, David Kim, Natalie Koehle, Adam Lobel, Brian Loh, Amod Lele, Ryan Overbey, Michael Radich, Justin Ritzinger, Josh Schapiro, Emma Yanfei Sun, Misha Tadd, Teng Wei-jen, Stefania Travagnin, Alan Wagner, Cameron Warner, and Jimmy Yu. Ven. Dr. Yifa 依法 of the Buddha’s Light International Association has been a good friend and generous supporter, and without her and the Woodenfish program at Foguangshan Monastery in Gaoxiong I would never have been able to do all the research I have. Finally, I thank all the Woodenfish students and staff. I am a happier person for knowing you. Over the years I have received generous support from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, California State University, Chico, the Buddha’s Light International Association and the International Buddhist Progress Society, and also the hospitality of the National Taiwan University Library. At Cal State Chico, apart from my colleagues in the Department of Religious Studies, to whom this work is dedicated, I am grateful for

xii

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the support of my fellow writers Heather Altfeld, Vernon Andrews, Laird Easton, and Troy Jollimore. For better or worse, there is a direct line to this book from kindness shown me many years ago at Michigan State by Zhong Yang 鍾揚, now of Fudan and Peking Universities and one of my oldest and most influential friends, and the members of the old Michigan State University Buddhist Study Group from 1992 to 1994, especially Dr. Hsu Bing-chuan 徐秉權, Prof. Denise Ming-yueh Wang 王明月, and the Ven. Minhui 釋敏慧.

ABBREVIATIONS When citing works in the notes, those mentioned most frequently have been referred to, following their first mention, by the abbreviations below: CX

Mou Zongsan 牟宗三. Caixing yu xuanli 才性與玄理 [Material Nature and Profound Principle]. Taipei: Xuesheng, 1993.

FB

Mou Zongsan 牟宗三. Foxing yu boruo 佛性與般若 [BuddhaNature and Prajñā]. Taipei: Xuesheng, 1977.

FC

Mou Zongsan 牟宗三. “Fojia de cunyoulun 佛家的存有論 [Buddhistic Ontology].” In Mou Zongsan xiansheng quanji 牟宗 三先生全集 [Complete Works of Mou Zongsan]. Vol. 27. Taipei: Lianjing, 2003.

HZQ

Huang Zongxi quanji 黃宗羲全集 [Complete Works of Huang Zongzi], Vol. 12. Shen Shanhong, ed. Hangzhou: Zhejiang guji chubanshe, 2005.

JSX

Mou Zongsan 牟宗三, Xu Fuguan 徐復觀, Zhang Junmai 張君邁, Tang Junyi 唐君毅. “Wei Zhongguo wenhua jinggao shijie renshi xuanyan 為中國文化敬告世界人士宣言 [Manifesto to the World on Chinese Culture].” In Feng Zusheng 封祖盛, ed., Dangdai xin rujia 當代新儒家 [New Confucianism]. Beijing: Sanlian, 1989: 1–52.

KL

Mou Zongsan 牟宗三. “Keguan de liaojie yu Zhongguo wenhua zhi zaizao 客觀的瞭解與中國文化之再造 [Objective Understanding and the Remaking of Chinese Culture].” In Mou Zongsan xiansheng quanji 牟宗三先生全集 [Complete Works of Mou Zongsan]. Vol. 27. Taipei: Lianjing, 2003.

MLL

Ludwig Wittgenstein. Mou Zongsan 牟宗三, tr. Mingli lun 明理論 [Tractatus Logico-Philosophicalus].” In Mou Zongsan xiansheng quanji 牟宗三先生全集 [Complete Works of Mou Zongsan]. Vol. 17. Taipei: Lianjing, 2003.

xiv

abbreviations

MJS

Mou Zongsan 牟宗三. Mou Zongsan xiansheng shengping jiangxue shilu 牟宗三先生生平講學實錄 [Record of Lectures from the Career of Mou Zongsan]. Taipei: Guoli Taiwan daxue tushuguan, 2006.

NST

Mou Zongsan 牟宗三. “Jiang Nanbeichao Sui-Tang foxue zhi yuanqi 講南北朝隋唐佛學之緣起 [On the Arising of the Buddhist Learning of the Northern and Southern Dynasties and the Sui and Tang].” In Mou Zongsan xiansheng quanji 牟宗 三先生全集 [Complete Works of Mou Zongsan]. Vol. 27. Taipei: Lianjing, 2003.

SJJ

Mou Zongsan 牟宗三. Zhongguo zhexue shijiu jiang 中國哲學十 九講 [Nineteen Lectures on Chinese Philosophy]. Taipei: Xuesheng, 1983.

SLY

Mou Zongsan 牟宗三. “Song-Ming lixue yanjianglu 宋明理學 演講錄 [Lectures on Song-Ming Lixue].” In Mou Zongsan xiansheng quanji 牟宗三先生全集 [Complete Works of Mou Zongsan]. Vol. 30. Taipei: Lianjing, 2003.

SRF

Mou Zongsan 牟宗三. “‘Song-Ming ruxue yu fo-lao’ yantaohui zhuanti yanjiang 「宋明儒學與佛老」研討會專題演 講 [Presentation to a Conference on Song-Ming Confucianism and Buddhism and Daoism].” In Mou Zongsan xiansheng quanji 牟宗三先生全集 [Complete Works of Mou Zongsan]. Vol. 27. Taipei: Lianjing, 2003.

SRZ

Mou Zongsan 牟宗三. “Song-Ming ruxue zongshu 宋明儒學 綜述 [A General Account of Song-Ming Confucianism].” In Mou Zongsan xiansheng quanji 牟宗三先生全集 [Complete Works of Mou Zongsan]. Vol. 30. Taipei: Lianjing, 2003.

SX

Mou Zongsan 牟宗三. Shengming de xuewen 生命的學問 [Existential Learning]. Taipei: Sanmin, 1970.

SYL

Mou Zongsan 牟宗三. Siyin shuo yanjianglu 四因說演講錄 [Lectures on Four Kinds of Causation]. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1998.

abbreviations

xv

T

Takakusu Junjirō and Watanabe Kaigyoku 高楠順次郎, 渡邊 海旭, ed. Taishō Shinshū Daizōkyō 大正新修大藏經 [New Taishō Compilation of the Tripitaka]. Tokyo: Taishō Issaikyō Kankōkai, 1924–32.

TBY

Mou Zongsan 牟宗三. “Yi tong, bie, yuan sanjiao kan fojia de ‘zhongdao’ yi 依通、別、圓三教看佛家的「中道」義 [A Look at the Meaning of ‘Middle Way’ in the Common, Separation, and Perfect Theories].” In Mou Zongsan xiansheng quanji 牟宗三先生全集 [Complete Works of Mou Zongsan]. Vol. 27. Taipei: Lianjing, 2003.

TZD

Mou Zongsan 牟宗三. “Tiantaizong zai Zhongguo fojiao zhong de diwei 天台宗在中國佛教中的地位 [The Place of the Tiantai Line in Chinese Buddhism].” In Mou Zongsan xiansheng quanji 牟宗三先生全集 [Complete Works of Mou Zongsan]. Vol. 27. Taipei: Lianjing, 2003.

WZ

Mou Zongsan 牟宗三. Wushi zizhu 五十自述 [My Life at Fifty]. Mou Zongsan. Taipei: Ehu, 1993.

XT

Mou Zongsan 牟宗三. Xinti yu xingti 心體與性體 [Ontological Mind and Ontological Human Nature]. 3 vols. Taipei: Zhengzhong, 1968–69.

XWZ

Mou Zongsan 牟宗三. Xianxiang yu wu zishen 現象與物自身 [Phenomenon and Thing in Itself]. Taipei: Xuesheng, 1990.

YSL

Mou Zongsan 牟宗三. Yuanshan lun 圓善論 [Treatise on the Summum Bonum]. Taipei: Xuesheng, 1985.

YZ

Mou Zongsan 牟宗三. “Yuanshan lun zhiyin《緣善論》指引 [Guide to Treatise on the Summum Bonum].” Ehu 22 (1): 1–7.

Z

Shinsan Dai Nihon Zoku Zōkyō 新纂大日本続蔵経 [Revised Edition of the Kyoto Supplement to the Manji Edition of the Buddhist Canon]. Kawamura, Kōshō, ed. Tokyo: Kokusho Kankōkai, 1975–89.

xvi

abbreviations

ZY

Mou Zongsan 牟宗三. “Zhexue yu yuanjiao 哲學與圓教 [Philosophy and the Perfect Theory].” In Mou Zongsan xiansheng quanji 牟宗三先生全集 [Complete Works of Mou Zongsan]. Vol. 27. Taipei: Lianjing, 2003.

ZZT

Mou Zongsan 牟宗三. Zhongguo zhexue de tezhi 中國哲學的 特質 [The Specialness of Chinese Philosophy]. Hong Kong: Young Sun, 1963.

ZZZ

Mou Zongsan 牟宗三. Zhi de zhijue yu Zhongguo zhexue. 智的直 覺與中國哲學 [Intellectual Intuition and Chinese Philosophy]. Taipei. Shangwu, 1971.

CHAPTER ONE

MOU ZONGSAN, HIS TIMES, AND HIS AIMS Today we remember Mou Zongsan 牟宗三 (1909–1995) as his century’s most sophisticated, influential apologist for Confucianism. Though he began as an analytic philosopher in the mould of Russell and Whitehead, in middle age the Hong Kong-based Mou turned his Western tools to the study and revalorization of traditional Chinese thought. He believed that humanity urgently needs a rigorous metaphysical account of value and human dignity as a necessary companion to democracy, and that only Confucian philosophy has provided a completely adequate account. He emerged as one of the leaders of the “New Confucian” movement, which is now one of the most influential forces in Chinese-language philosophy and is also the focus of a group of North American religious philosophers and theologians such as Tu Wei-ming and the other “Boston Confucians.”1 By his death in 1995, the prolific Mou produced not only histories of all phases of Chinese philosophy and translations of Western philosophical masterworks (including all three of Kant’s Critiques!), but also an original systematic philosophy that has shaped the course of philosophy in East Asia as deeply as Heidegger’s did in Europe. “In fact,” writes one observer, “many believe Mou basically solved the major metaphysical problems.”2 The Problem of the Unlikely Buddhologist Curiously, Mou chose to build his “New Confucianism” on Buddhist foundations. He openly borrowed some of the central concepts for his

1 See, for example, Robert C. Neville, Boston Confucianism: Portable Tradition in the Modern World (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000). 2 Thomas A. Metzger, “New Confucian Philosophy and the Global Philosophical Problem of Culture,” in Xianggang Zhongwen Daxue de dangdai ruzhe: Qian Mu, Tang Junyi, Mou Zongsan, Xu Fuguan 香港中文大學的當代儒者: 錢穆、唐君毅、牟宗三、徐復觀 [New Confucians of the Chinese University of Hong Kong: Qian Mu, Tang Junyi, Mou Zongsan, and Xu Fuguan], ed. Zheng Zongyi 鄭宗義 (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2006), 19.

2

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New Confucian “moral metaphysics” from Buddhism, and he even paid Buddhism the high compliment of conceding its superiority to Confucianism in theoretical matters.3 Most surprising is the time and effort that Mou invested in understanding Buddhist scriptures and scholasticism. As the culmination of that effort, Mou wrote a twovolume Buddhist summa entitled Buddha-Nature and Prajñā (Foxing yu boruo 佛性與般若), intended as nothing less than a comprehensive treatment of all Buddhist philosophy. We should be surprised to see an eminent Confucian leader extol Buddhism this way. It is almost as if Karl Barth had honored Maimonides as the king of theologians. After all, historically Confucians’ relationship with Buddhism was usually marked by enmity and polemics. This is not to say that Confucian scholars never appreciated or borrowed from Buddhists. On the contrary, they often sought the company of learned monks and exchanged essays, poems, and ideas. But over the centuries they spilt buckets of ink and even some blood over the very real differences between their Way and the Buddhist one. In contrast, Mou paid intellectual homage to Buddhism and immersed himself in Buddhist scholastic learning, something almost unprecedented among the great Confucians.4 In fact, one of Mou’s

3 Mou Zongsan 牟宗三, Foxing yu boruo 佛性與般若 [Buddha-nature and Prajñâ], 2 vols. (Taipei: Xuesheng, 1977; reprint, 2004), 1023, 1088ff. Hereafter cited as FB. 4 It has become commonplace to observe that Confucians of the Song and Ming were influenced by Chan Buddhism. Not only did they selectively adapt certain Buddhist philosophical topics and terms for their own discussions, but they also in imitated some of the forms of Buddhist lifestyle and ritual cultivation. See, for example, James T.C. Liu, “How Did a Neo-Confucian School Become the State Orthodoxy,” Philosophy East and West 23, no. 4 (1973): 494–497; Rodney L. Taylor, “The Sudden/ Gradual Paradigm and Neo-Confucian Mind-Cultivation,” Philosophy East and West 31, no. 1 (1983). Some scholars of the late Qing showed plenty of curiosity about Buddhist writings and a willingness to dip into their fund of ideas, most famously Tan Sitong 譚嗣同, Liang Qichao 梁啟超, and Zhang Binglin 章炳麟. By the early years of the Republic, Xiong Shili had the genesis of his revised Confucian metaphysics in his reaction to the Yogācāra tradition, and his teacher in Yogācāra philosophy, Ouyang Jian, himself moved through more than one phase of declared preference for Confucian over Buddhist thought (Eyal Aviv, “Differentiating the Pearl From the Fish Eye: Ouyang Jingwu (1871–1943) and the Revival of Scholastic Buddhism” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 2009), 80–83). Another of the notable modern champions of Confucianism, Liang Shuming 梁漱溟, also acknowledged a Yogācāra inspiration for his metholodgy, and although he publically declared himself for Confucianism, it is arguable that he covertly identified as strongly with Buddhism as with Confucianism. See John J. Hanafin, “The ‘Last Buddhist’: The Philosophy of Liang Shuming,” in New Confucianism: A Critical Examination, ed. Makeham (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,

mou zongsan, his times, and his aims

3

Buddhist reviewers marveled at this so much that he thanked him for reading so deeply into the Buddhist tradition at all.5 What I am calling “the problem of the unlikely buddhologist” is simply this: Why did someone who was first and last a Confucian apologist care so much about Buddhist philosophy and make it the center of his work? Other figures had taken an interest in mobilizing specific Buddhist practices or developing on certain Buddhist themes, such as meditation or the bodhisattva ethos, for the country’s social and political improvement. But Mou spent years of his life combing systematically through the Buddhist canon and carefully appropriating its ideas into the classical Confucian tradition of learning. Why? Regrettably Mou died without fully answering the question himself. He left his interpretation of Buddhist philosophy surrounded by question marks, so that even his students are hard-pressed to explain all his uses of Buddhist ideas. For example, one conundrum is why a staunch Confucian such as Mou took sides in Buddhist sectarian debates. 2003). Although this did not lead to an age of ecumenism and an end to Confucian jealousies—Xiong himself went on to call Buddhist influence on Song Confucianism a pollutant and a poison ( Jing Haifeng 景海鋒, Xiong Shili 熊十力 (Taipei: Dongda, 1991), 80)—it was a more forgiving atmosphere, Mou did not court opprobrium simply by borrowing from Buddhism. It is instructive to compare Mou’s situation with that of Wang Yangming, who was regularly and, Mou believes, unjustly accused of Buddhist taint. “To declare that he had nothing to do with Buddhism was a necessary precondition for [Wang Yangming] to be accepted as an authentic Confucian scholar,” writes Araki Kengo. “Generally speaking, to pass from Confucianism to Buddhism . . . was almost inconceivable, as the two were thought to run on parallel roads that could never meet. The Confucians claimed that if those who believed in the faultless teachings of Confucianism so much as showed an interest in any other teaching it would disqualify them as Confucians. In this way a high embankment was constructed between Confucianism and Buddhism.” (Araki Kengo, “Confucianism and Buddhism in the Late Ming,” in The Unfolding of Neo-Confucianism, ed. de Bary (1976), 43–44). What makes Mou notable even against this background of increased, if still qualified, sympathy for Buddhism is his willingness not only to adopt particular words, ideas, and questions, but his catholicity of interest and breadth of reading in Buddhist writings and willingness to proclaim the philosophical superiority of Buddhists to Confucians and the necessity for Confucians to submit themselves to Buddhist tutelage, and then to openly re-organize and re-evaluate the whole Confucian philosophical tradition in an explicitly Buddhist way. 5 Yinshun 印順, “Lun sandi sanzhi yu laiye tong zhenwang: du Foxing yu boruo 論三諦三智與賴耶通真妄: 讀《佛性與般若》 [On the Three Truths and the Three Wisdoms and the Connection of the Ālaya to the True and the Deluded: Reading Buddha-Nature and Prajñā],” Ehu yuekan 7, no. 4 (1981): 17; Huimen, review of Foxing yu boruo, by Mou Zongsan, Foguang xuebao, no. 2 (1977). Also see Whalen Lai, review of FO-HSING YU Pan-ju [Foxing yu boruo], by Mou Tsung-san [Mou Zongsan], Journal of Chinese Philosophy 11, no. 3 (1984).

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In Buddha-Nature and Prajñā he spent over a thousand pages reviving hoary Buddhist intramural disputes on arcane matters such as the buddha-nature of inanimate objects, when it would seem to make no sense for him to have any opinion or stake in those affairs at all. A further puzzle is why, after Mou took this surprising interest in Buddhist disputations, then, out of all the possibilities available, he chose to go about reinterpreting Confucian philosophy in the little-understood terminology of Tiantai Buddhism, with all the travail that required. Why toil to recover the recondite ideas of long-neglected Tiantai commentaries and apply them to Confucianism, where they scarcely seem to fit? For that matter, scholars often cannot explain what key passages of Mou’s book even mean. Mou does not write for clarity. Reading him, remarks one scholar, is “like reading academic German philosophy in Chinese,”6 and even Chinese scholars must endure a wearying apprenticeship in order to learn Mou’s esoteric, quasi-Kantian philosophical lexicon. Moreover, Mou has a penchant for dramatic-sounding claims that almost assure misunderstanding in readers who do not search carefully for the fine print. Mou frequently leaves out important steps in his chain of reasoning, stating his conclusions but not the premises and intermediate reasoning, or even the definitions of his key terms. As a result, he calls for active engagement and a memory that can span scores of hundreds of pages. Readers can feel doubly stumped by Buddha-Nature and Prajñā because it supposes a special background which very few actual readers possess. It assumes that the reader not only has acquainted herself with Mou’s difficult Confucian systematic philosophy, peculiarly inflected by German idealism, but also is fully fluent in the canon of Chinese Buddhist scholasticism. Such readers are very scarce in the academy as it actually is. Scholars who invest the necessary years to read Mou’s work usually come from departments of philosophy or Chinese studies, where Mou has the greatest influence, and they are schooled in Confucian and Daoist philosophy far better than in Buddhism. Buddhologists, for their part, rarely show any awareness of Confucian philosophy, to say nothing of Mou’s version thereof. As a result Mou’s

6 Hoyt Cleveland Tillman, review of Escape from Predicament: Neo-Confucianism and China’s Evolving Political Culture, by Thomas A. Metzger, Philosophy East and West 28, no. 4 (1978): 501.

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book can scarcely find its ideal reader, and actual readers describe it in terms such as “the most difficult book in the modern Chinese language.”7 Thus no one has yet explained, step by step and at an architectonic and comprehensive level, how and why Mou incorporated Buddhist ideas in the way that he did. Since Mou’s death, the literature about his larger body of work has grown, but until recently, when the subject of his buddhology came up, works emerging from Mou’s home territory in Taiwan and Hong Kong avoided trying to straightforwardly interpret what Mou might have meant by his more enigmatic statements, instead skirting them or dealing with them chiefly by means of quotation or paraphrase.8 Quite likely what has happened is that, within the intimate circles of Hong Kong and Taiwan philosophy, where Mou’s works have been the common currency of philosophical publishing and seminar rooms the longest, such notions and terms have entered into the shared stock of “clichés” which are so ubiquitous that they are not felt to require much explicit explanation yet remain unclear to outsiders.9 Hence, a reader outside that community can feel disappointed and unenlightened by these works, which consist in effect of assemblages of representative quotations or restatement of Mou’s own slogans, which are typically made up of ambiguous or opaque nomenclature, and even an insider such as Cheng Guying 陳鼓應 complains, “Mou Zongsan writes his essays in a very poor style, but some people use these terms and concepts created by Mou, which are extremely hard and difficult to read, and his disciples have made it a duty and a habit to ape these abstruse and half-understood words and concepts of their master.”10 7 Du Baorui 杜保瑞, July 24, 2005. Also see Lin Chen-kuo 林鎮國, Kongxing yu xiandaixing 空性與現代性 [Emptiness and Modernity] (Taipei: Lixu, 1999), 100. 8 A prime example of the latter style of exposition is Li Qingyu 李慶餘, Dasheng foxue de fazhan yu yuanman: Mou Zongsan xiansheng dui fojia sixiang de quanshi 大乘 佛學的發展與圓滿─牟宗三先生對佛家思想的詮釋 [The Development and Fulfillment of Mahāyāna Buddhist Learning: Mou Zongsan’s Interpretation of Buddhist Thought] (Taipei: Xuesheng, 2003). In Taiwan and Hong Kong, signal exceptions are the works of German-trained Tiantai scholar Hans-Rudolf Kantor, who studied with Mou as a young man but left for graduate training in the United States and Germany, analytic philosopher Fung Yiu-ming 馮耀明, Chen Yingshan 陳英善, and Xie Daning 謝大寧. 9 See Thomas A. Metzger, A Cloud Across the Pacific: Essays on the Clash between Chinese and Western Political Theories Today (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2005), 80ff. 10 Wang Yingming 王英銘, Taiwan zhi zhexue geming 台灣之哲學革命 [Taiwan’s Philosophical Revolution] (Taipei: Shuxiang, 1998), 95. Translated in Umberto Bresciani,

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In the last decade, scholars such as Cheng Gongrang 程恭讓, Zheng Jiadong 鄭家棟, and Yang Zebo 楊澤波, writing on the Chinese mainland, where Mou’s influence is newer, have gone farther in asking basic interpretive questions about what Mou intends to say. However, other than Cheng’s three topical articles,11 thus far these mainland scholars have devoted much more of their impressive energies to other facets of Mou’s oeuvre, such as his reception of Kant, his basic ontology, and his ideas concerning democracy and political philosophy.12 Thus basic interpretation of Mou’s buddhology is still at an early stage. To help fill the gap, I will attempt to explain Mou’s mature opinions about the “what?” and the “so what?” of Buddhist philosophy, and thereby to answer the question of why he prized it so much as a boon to Confucian philosophers and indeed all philosophers.13

Reinventing Confucianism: The New Confucian Movement (Taipei: Taipei Ricci Institute for Chinese Studies, 2001), 603, n. 44. 11 “Lüexi Foxing yu boruo zai Mou Zongsan zhexue sixiang jinzhan zhong de weizhi 略析《佛性與般若》在牟宗三哲學思想進展中的位置 [A Brief Analysis of the Place of Buddha-Nature and Prajna in the Development of Mou Zongsan’s Philosophical Thinking],” Pumen xuebao, no. 13 (2003); “Mou Zongsan Dasheng qixin lun ‘yixin kai ermen’ shuo bianzheng 牟宗三《大乘起信論》「一心開二門」說辨正 [A Correction of Mou Zongsan’s Opinions about the Mahāyāna Awakening of Faith],” Zhexue yanjiu, no. 12 (1999); “Zai ‘fojiaohua’ yu ‘Zhongguohua’ de sixiang zhangli zhi jian: guanyu Zhongguo fojiao sixiangshi de yizhong lijie fangshi 在「佛教化」與「中國化」的思 想張力之間: 關於中國佛教思想史的一種理解方式 [Between the Intellectual Tensions of ‘Buddhification’ and ‘Sinification’: On an Understanding of the Intellectual History of Chinese Buddhism],” Zhongguo zhexueshi, no. 3 (2000). 12 In very recent years their output has skyrocketed, so that at the time of this writing, China Academic Journals (Zhongguo qikan quanwen shujuku 中国期刊全文数据库) contains nearly five hundred articles that mention Mou, most of them taking him as their main focus. 13 Happily, toward the end of his life Mou told us specifically which of his works he wished to repudiate (namely those written before his fiftieth year) and which he still endorsed. (See Mou Zongsan 牟宗三, Zhongguo zhexue shijiu jiang 中國哲學十九講 [Nineteen Lectures on Chinese Philosophy] (Taipei: Xuesheng, 1983), 406–407) (hereafter cited as SJJ). I have given special attention to Mou Zongsan 牟宗三, Zhongguo zhexue de tezhi 中國哲學的特質 [The Specialness of Chinese Philosophy] (Hong Kong: Young Sun, 1963); Xinti yu xingti 心體與性體 [Mind and Human Nature], 3 vols. (Taipei: Zhengzhong, 1968–69); Shengming de xuewen 生命的學問 [Existential Learning] (Taipei: Sanmin, 1970); Zhi de zhijue yu Zhongguo zhexue. 智的直覺與中國哲學 [Intellectual Intuition and Chinese Philosophy] (Taipei. Shangwu, 1971); Foxing yu boruo 佛性與般若 [BuddhaNature and Prajñā] (Taipei: Xuesheng, 1977); the aforementioned SJJ; Yuanshan lun 圓善論 [Treatise on the Summum Bonum] (Taipei: Xuesheng, 1985); Xianxiang yu wu zishen 現象與物自身 [Phenomenon and Thing in Itself ] (Taipei: Xuesheng, 1990); Caixing yu xuanli 才性與玄理 [Material Nature and Profound Principle] (Taipei: Xuesheng, 1993);

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The very short answer is this: Mou thinks Buddhists lead the way for Confucians. He abstracts from the Tiantai doxographic tradition a scheme with which he analyzes philosophical systems in terms of what they say about the relationship between ultimate value and the universe of objects, and he prizes those systems most highly which claim that the ultimate value is “paradoxically identical” to the universe of objects in some fashion. Tutored in such a scheme, Mou thinks, Confucians can solve one of their great intramural disputes and more clearly voice a truth which Mou takes to be unsurpassably important for human flourishing—namely that in a certain sense we and our world are perfect just as we are—and which Confucians can use to solve a theodicic problem, explaining that even though the universe is stricken in some respects, it is entirely good and fortunate in another respect. Why Mou Matters Before I embark, however, I owe an explanation of why the reader ought to care about Mou’s beliefs about the history of Buddhist philosophy and what goodness is, why I think it is necessary and feasible for me to interpret those beliefs for the reader, and how I have set about the work of reconstruction and interpretation. For Western scholars, Mou Zongsan matters for both practical and philosophical reasons. Philosophicalally, the polymath Mou takes on an important and universal question—namely, what is the relationship between value and being?14—and he does so with the resources of an extremely rare breadth of traditions, including not only the major

Wushi zizhu 五十自述 [My Life at Fifty] (Taipei: Ehu, 1993); Siyin shuo yanjianglu 四因說 演講錄 [Lectures on Four Kinds of Causation] (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1998). I have also listened to many of the unredacted recordings of Mou’s lectures assembled by the National Taiwan University Library as Mou Zongsan shengping jiangxue lu 牟宗三 生平講學錄 [A Record of Lectures from the Career of Mou Zongsan] (Taipei: Guoli Taiwan daxue tushuguan, 2006). 14 In calling this a universal question, I mean that some form of the question “What is good?” or “What would be good?” is implicit in any purposeful act or plan and that it is open for any such person to wonder what relationship this “good” has to what is, i.e. to “being.” (For example, does “good” refer to a thing, or a quality, or an opinion, or perhaps to something else? And whichever it is, what kind of being might be predicated of it?) To be a universal question in this sense, it need not have been pondered by every human individual, but simply be available to them in some form. In point of fact, though, I expect that it would be very hard (perhaps impossible) to

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Chinese ones but also the Western philosophical tradition in its German idealist and Anglo-American analytic branches. If we wish to consider that question ourselves (and I can hardly think of a more important one) and to leaven our own powers of thought by consulting the opinions of reflective people from other places and times, then we can go to Mou Zongsan for a good deal of “one-stop shopping.” We do not need to accept all his conclusions or even all his descriptions of past thinkers’ beliefs—indeed, in greater China now much of the study of Confucian philosophy consists of spirited debates about Mou’s history of Confucianism. However, if we were to invest in understanding only one modern Chinese philosopher’s conclusions about value and being, it would probably be foolish to look anywhere else. Beyond that, we have at least four practical reasons to care about Mou. The first is simple: he is too influential in too many places for us to ignore him. New Confucianism in general and Mou in particular have reshaped and dominated the study of philosophy and religion in Hong Kong and Taiwan, and on the Chinese mainland New Confucianism is regarded as “second only to Marxism in terms of its creative theoretical qualities, influence, and longevity.”15 Mou appears in much of contemporary Chinese-language philosophy and Buddhist and Confucian studies as either a seminal influence or a major foil.16 It is no exaggeration to say that Mou re-wrote the history of Confucian thought in China, and he single-handedly rekindled Chinese interest in Tiantai Buddhist thought in his time. His ideas and expressions have penetrated into the common language of Chinese learning, much as Foucault’s have done in North America. As for the Western academy, here New Confucian theologians and philosophers have long since entered into dialog with scholars in other fields about religious identity, Christian theology, cognitive science, and virtue ethics. And as Chinese scholars loom larger in the international study of philosophy, religion, and Confucian and Buddhist studies, they have Mou’s

find a tradition of thought that does not somewhere feel called upon to articulate the sense in which value is something, or what value may be said to be or to reside in. 15 John Makeham, ed., New Confucianism: A Critical Examination (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 2. 16 On the former see especially Lin Anwu 林安梧 (1993) and Ng Yu-kwan [Wu Rujun] 汝均 (2005), and on the latter, the work of Liu Shu-hsien 劉述先, Lin Chen-kuo 林鎮國, Du Baorui 杜保瑞, Fung Yiu-ming [Feng Yaoming] 馮耀明, Huang Guoqing 黃國清, Xie Daning 謝大寧, Chen Yingshan 陳英善, and You Huizhen 尤惠貞.

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thought in mind as one of their main points of reference. In order to talk effectively with them, we must spend at least a little time on Mou. As is now routinely said in the Chinese academy, one can agree with Mou or disagree with him, but to be a serious scholar no one can ignore him.17 Another practical reason for us to take an interest in Mou is that he stands out like a crane among chickens (heli jiqun 鶴立雞群) in an important way. To wit, he knows both Buddhist and Confucian thought exceedingly well and comments frequently on their relationship. By contrast, other modern scholars who know one rarely know (or care) much about the other. Each group is equipped with a few second-hand generalizations about the other tradition and little else, and indeed they rarely try to find out more. This is deeply strange. For most of Chinese history, the Buddhist and Confucian literary elite mingled constantly. They attended parties together, argued about many of the same issues, discussed many of the same essays, traded terms and ideas and ritual behaviors (whatever their disagreements and rivalries), and even exchanged poetry. They have left their fingerprints and footprints all over each other’s philosophies. We can be forgiven for our incapacity for studying Buddhism and Confucianism alongside each other, because we could hardly have avoided it. Over the last century and more, scholars learning about Chinese Buddhism or Confucianism had little choice but to overspecialize in one or the other, both because of the sheer size of the two literatures and also because of the ravaged state of modern China. First, the Buddhist and Confucian canons are very different from one another, each composing a vast and formidable body of learning. And even though historically and philosophicalally speaking they should be read together, they each demand a separate training. Few people have had the time and the native gifts needed to be brilliant in both, even in imperial times, when our forebears enjoyed the advantage over us of early and unending immersion. Second and more notably,

17 Liu Shu-hsien 劉述先, “Mou Zongsan xiansheng linzhong yiyan ‘gujin wu liang’ shi [Mou Zongsan’s Death-bed Words on the ‘Non-Duality of Ancient and Contemporary Times’] 牟宗三先生臨終遺言「古今無兩」釋,” in Mou Zongsan xiansheng jinianji 牟宗三先生紀念集 [Commemorative Essays on Mou Zongsan], ed. Cai Renhou and Yang Zuhan 蔡仁厚、楊祖漢 (Taipei: Dongfang renwen xueshu yanjiu jijinhui, 1996), 498.

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between the 1860s and 1960s, Buddhist and Confucian learning both suffered terrible losses. Both traditions had their institutional bases all but annihilated by a solid century of repeated cultural convulsions and civil wars of apocalyptic proportions. (To give just two less famous examples, in the 1860s Buddhists had their great libraries razed in the Taiping rebellion, losing significant portions of their canon. And in 1905, the imperial dynasty decided to modernize the civil service, doing away with examinations in the classics, and the traditional institutions of Confucian education soon fell apart.) Together with the institutions went the intellectual networks that once fed off them. Scholars were scattered, distracted, or dead, and they were not conversing about their ideas and passing down their learning to students in anything like the numbers they once did. As a result, we lost a great deal of expertise and, in the twentieth century, the relatively few scholars who still cared about Chinese Buddhist and Confucian thought spent several generations salvaging lost intellectual capital by hyper-specializing, narrowing their focus to a degree which was, if unavoidable, also historically abnormal. We have also come to this pass simply because of historical happenstance involving the way that, in both China and the West, we have drawn our disciplinary boundaries. In China, despite some fitful attempts in the 1800s, it has been centuries since Buddhist writings were assigned more than a marginal place in the canon of classical Chinese learning. As a result, even to this day, experts in sinology and Chinese philosophy receive little training in Buddhist matters simply because such learning is ruled not to be sufficiently Chinese. In the West, on the other hand, we have traditionally subordinated the study of Chinese Buddhism to a larger, pan-Asian “buddhology,” reading its texts as a body of clues or puzzle pieces alongside Indic and Tibetan Buddhist writings in the hope of adding something to our extremely spotty understanding of the history of Buddhism in India. Because of this concern with Indian origins, we have only rarely read Chinese Buddhists’ writings as half of a conversation with non-Buddhist Chinese. However, even if we got into this problem for good reasons, it is still a problem. Since China’s Confucian and Buddhist traditions exerted centuries of influence on each other on the political, institutional, ritual, doctrinal, and literary and scholastic planes, we are missing literally half the picture when we are forced to study one in isolation from

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the other. It would be no more bizarre if we attempted to study the Protestant Reformation without reference to Roman Catholicism. Happily, it is now becoming much more feasible for us to “cross train” in both traditions, if we choose, using the twin conveniences of digital text and the accumulated work of our teachers and grandteachers. Having instant access to the ancients and further guidance from the moderns, we are saved a great deal of labor and can aspire one day to speak intelligently about Buddhist and Confucian thought in tandem. And since Mou Zongsan was one of extremely few moderns who has already managed do this, I propose that we begin with his legacy. A third practical reason to care about Mou is that with additional study, those of us who study Buddhism, Confucianism, and the history of Chinese thought in the anglophone academy can get enormous mileage and novel input from his research. For example, Mou is a particularly timely writer for Western students of East Asian Buddhism. Until recently we learned about Chinese Buddhism from Japanese mentors and unwittingly absorbed their peculiar prejudices which we are now trying to exorcise: blinkering sectarian biases, lopsided interest in the (alleged) forerunners of Japanese lineages, and peculiarities of Japanese historiography such as a tendency to national essentialism.18 Already seen by some as the examplar of a Chinese model of buddhology, Mou is a formidable historian of religious philosophy, with an immense body of work and a prodigious range, and he is one of

18 See for example Bernard Faure, The Rhetoric of Immediacy: A Cultural Critique of Chan/Zen Buddhism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991); Theodore Griffith Foulk, “The Ch’an ‘School’ and its Place in the Buddhist Monastic Tradition” (University of Michigan, 1987); Robert Sharf, “Buddhist Modernism and the Rhetoric of Meditative Experience,” Numen 42, no. 3 (1995); Robert H. Sharf, Coming to Terms with Chinese Buddhism: A Reading of the Treasure Store Treatise, Studies in East Asian Buddhism 14 (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2002) As with any conscious attempt at liberating oneself from intellectual conditioning, there has been some doubt about what to replace the Japanese buddhological influence with. In the U.S., we have seen a number of studies animated by the spirit of French post-structuralism. (E.g. Alan Cole, Text as Father: Paternal Seductions in Early Mahāyāna Buddhist Literature (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005); Bernard Faure, The Red Thread: Buddhist Approaches to Sexuality (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998); Brook Anthony Ziporyn, Evil and/or/as the Good: Omnicentrism, Intersubjectivity and Value Paradox in Tiantai Buddhist Thought (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2000); Angela Zito, “Queering Filiality, Raising the Dead,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 10, no. 2 (2001).) By contrast, Mou comes to us with a host of positive theses, fresh from a much different scholarly lineage which thus far owes few debts to Japanese buddhology.

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the most talented scions of a scholarly tradition quite distinct from our own.19 The possibilities afforded by Mou’s work have hardly begun to be examined in the West, and I regret that I have neither the time nor the erudition to try to enumerate them all. It will likely require a number of collaborating and competing minds some time to accomplish that. Rather, “philosophical laborer” that I am, in this essay I must limit myself principally to a humble but necessary preliminary labor, which is simply to rehearse with the greatest possible combination of clarity and fidelity what Mou’s beliefs about Buddhism and Buddhist philosophy were, so that we can criticize and perhaps appropriate them in an informed way. I will wait until Chapter Seven to begin to evaluate credibility and adequacy of Mou’s work, and out of necessity I will focus that portion narrowly on Mou’s buddhology. I leave it to scholars more erudite than I am to try to venture informed critical positions on more distant questions such as the fidelity of Mou’s appropriation of Kant, to say nothing of whether his overall system succeeds.20 Mou cares about such different things than buddhologists in our part of the world, and addresses such a different audience, that he can notice and enunciate things which we are apt to miss. He does

19 Cheng Gongrang 程恭讓, “Zai ‘fojiaohua’ yu ‘Zhongguohua’ de sixiang zhangli zhi jian: guanyu Zhongguo fojiao sixiangshi de yizhong lijie fangshi 在「佛教化」與「中 國化」的思想張力之間: 關於中國佛教思想史的一種理解方式 [Between the Intellectual Tensions of ‘Buddhification’ and ‘Sinification’: On an Understanding of the Intellectual History of Chinese Buddhism],” Zhongguo zhexueshi, no. 3 (2000), 12–13. 20 Impressive attempts in this direction include Sébastien Billioud, Thinking through Confucian Modernity: A Study of Mou Zongsan’s Moral Metaphysics (Leiden and Boston: Brill, forthcoming); Cheng Chung-ying 成中英, “Benti yu shijian: Mou Zongsan xiansheng yu Kangde zhexue 本體與實踐: 牟宗三先生與康德哲學 [Substance and Praxis: Mou Zongsan and Kant’s Philosophy],” Zhongguo zhexueshi, no. 2 (1997); Antje Ehrhardt Pioletti, Die Realität des moralischen Handelns: Mou Zongsans Darstellung des Neokonfuzianismus als Vollendung der praktischen Philosophie Kants [The Reality of Moral Action: Mou Zongsan’s Explanation of Neo-Confucianism as the Perfection of Kant’s Practical Philosophy] (Frankfurt am Main and New York: P. Lang, 1997); Hans-Rudolf Kantor, “Rezeption Kants und die Einheit von Wissen und Handeln bei Mou Zongsan (1909–1995) [The Reception of Kant and the Unity of Knowledge and Action in Mou Zongsan],” in Deutsche Vereinigung für Chinastudien, ed. Hammer (Dortmund: Projekt Verlag, 1996); Li Ming-huei 李明輝, “Mou Zongsan sixiang zhong de rujia yu Kangde [Confucianism and Kant in the Thought of Mou Zongsan] 牟宗三思想中的儒家與康德,” in Dangdai ruxue zhi ziwo zhuanhua 當代儒學之自我轉化 [The Self-Transformation of Contemporary Confucian Learning], ed. Li Ming-huei 李明輝 (Taipei: Zhongyang yanjiuyuan wenzhe yanjiusuo, 1994).

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history of philosophy in a mode which he calls “existential” (shengming de 生命的), or what we might call “theological.”21 That is, he picks up Buddhist and Confucian and Daoist writings because he is looking for serious guides in matters concerning ultimate ends. He reads them because he wants to know how to live; historicity is important and informative, but ancillary. Accordingly, he reads these texts in a way thus far seldom seen in our universities,22 and gives a formidable interpretation of the entirety of Buddhist philosophy which could hardly have come into being in the Western academy. And though we may not agree with Mou’s theological commitments—I for one am not persuaded—these are merely the occasion of his description of Buddhist philosophy, the condition of its coming into being. Mou does not bankrupt his whole description simply because he might not “sell” us on his entire vision of human flourishing. One way or another, he has certainly noticed patterns that are worth hearing about. For example, Mou identifies what he believes to be the defining commonalities and watershed differences in the philosophical commitments of different versions of Buddhism, namely what we might call their theories of “buddha-to-world relations,” of what a buddha’s

21 Mou Zongsan 牟宗三, “Jiang Nanbeichao Sui Tang foxue zhi yuanqi [On the Arising of the Buddhist Learning of the Northern and Southern Dynasties and the Sui and Tang] 講南北朝隨唐佛學之緣起,” in Mou Zongsan xiansheng quanji (Taipei: Lianjing, 2003), 279 (hereafter cited as NST). Also see Mou Zongsan 牟宗三, “Yi Tong, Bie, Yuan sanjiao kan fojia de ‘zhongdao’ yi [A Look at the Meaning of ‘Middle Way’ in the Common, Separation, and Perfect Theories] 依通、別、圓三教看佛家 的‘中道’義,” in Mou Zongsan xiansheng quanji 牟宗三先生全集 [Complete Works of Mou Zongsan] (Taipei: Lianjing, 2003), 279–80 (hereafter cited as TBY). 22 At the moment it appears that American Buddhist studies is now prepared to greet this sort of thing with a less frosty countenance. In the last several years a small number of buddhologists have begun to write in a normatively Buddhist mode. (See for example Roger R. Jackson, and John J. Makransky, ed., Buddhist Theology: Critical Reflections by Contemporary Buddhist Scholars (Richmond, Surrey [England]: Curzon Press, 2000); David R. Loy, A Buddhist History of the West: Studies in Lack (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002). Moreover it has received provisional acceptance by the American Academy of Religion in the form of a program unit in “Buddhist Critical-Constructive Reflection.” And more than one well-known American graduate program has begun offering programs in Buddhist ministerial arts and Buddhist critical/constructive theology. (See John Makransky, “The Emergence of Buddhist Critical-Constructive Reflection in the Academy as a Resource for Buddhist Communities and for the Contemporary World,” Journal of Global Buddhism 9 (2008).) This is not to say that the field as a whole does—or should—receive these particular writings and initiatives warmly, but the climate has changed to the point where they can be taken seriously enough to be noticed and discussed as potentially serious possibilities.

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subjectivity is in relation to our subjectivity and to the objective universe. In particular, he thinks the major Buddhist philosophers agree about how the universe looks to a buddha subjectively, and also that they agree to deny any ontologically primary being which could serve as an uncaused causer to other beings. Where they disagree decisively is in what they say about the causes of buddhahood and exactly how buddhas’ minds are related to everything and everyone else. Mou follows these disputations in such voluminous detail because he is keenly interested in the problem that Confucians have in hashing out an analogous dispute, namely what the relation is between Heaven, sages, and ordinary humans. Mou is convinced that if we take an interest in the very good philosophical guidance available on this question, we can streamline our efforts to cultivate ourselves and live better lives. What we need is to begin with an awareness of the vast distance by which we are separated from Heaven, the source of our being, and then progress gradually to a more nuanced awareness of the subtle ways in which we also are identical to Heaven and play the role of its representatives on earth. At the very least then, Mou serves up plausible and minutely thought-out interpretations of individual Buddhist commentators and lineages that are different from what we already have. But beyond that, in keeping with a certain venerable Chinese tradition in intellectual historiography, Mou lives for the big questions and big narratives that are momentarily unfashionable in our profession and which, in my opinion, we are forgetting how to do well. For example, Mou offers his own take (influential among Chinese scholars) on the “sinification” question, namely “how and how thoroughly did Chinese people change the Buddhist traditions they inherited from their western neighbors?” which has been one of the perennial preoccupations of Western and Japanese buddhology from their inceptions. Mou’s work spans almost a thousand years of Buddhist philosophy to give us an extremely detailed reading in which, when Buddhists such as Paramārtha 真諦 and Fazang 法藏 (643–712) and Zhiyi 智顗 generate novel-looking doctrines in China, such as that of a “Pure True Mind” (qingjing zhenxin 清淨真心), they remain loyal to what Mou takes to be the decisively Buddhist message, outfitting it with a more comprehensive theoretical expression that expands on Indian materials only to the point of supplementing the deficiencies in what they say about the buddhas’ relationship to the rest of us. In this essay, one of my duties will be to spell out precisely why Mou thinks this is.

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What he takes to be the essential Buddhist message, and how it is that those thinkers are its faithful expositors. What emerges is a very strange state of affairs in which Mou the apologist for Confucianism also emerges as one of the few well-known modern Chinese interpreters of Buddhism who defends indigenous Chinese systems of Buddhist philosophy (e.g. Huayan and Tiantai) as authentic vehicles of the Buddhist message. As Lin Chen-kuo 林鎮國 points out, in the twentieth century the highest-profile Buddhist intellectuals were “anti-traditionalists” who condemned the distinctively Chinese versions of Buddhist thought as fundamentally wrong-headed misinterpretations of the Indian tradition.23 A final practical reason to look to Mou is that, by sharing his thoughts on the Buddhist-Confucian relationship, he can also help us with matters of broad contemporary relevance. In my generation’s lifetime it will be necessary for some observers to undertake a new cultural critique of Buddhism, as it burgeons into a viable guide to living for an ever-growing number of people in greater China, Europe, and the Americas. Its adherents are drawn, very many of them, from influential segments of their societies, and its representative organizations include many which are well-funded, well-organized, wellpublicized, and winningly evangelistic. However, as a prescription for living, Buddhism invites ethical doubts that do not long escape even casual observers—misgivings about its real or perceived vices of quietism, nihilism, individualism or solipsism, and amoralism. Hence, as Buddhism has grown in influence, we have seen such attempts at thorough-going reform movements as “engaged Buddhism,” “humanistic Buddhism” (renjian fojiao 人間佛教), “Buddhist economics,” and “critical Buddhism” (hihan bukkyō 批判仏教) in recent years,24 not to mention far more radical and tumultuous ones in earlier decades, in Republican China, colonial Korea, and Meiji Japan.25 Lin Chen-kuo, Kongxing yu xiandaixing, 28–33. See Stuart Chandler, Establishing a Pure Land on Earth: The Foguang Buddhist Perspective on Modernization and Globalization (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2004); Jamie Hubbard, and Paul L. Swanson, ed., Pruning the Bodhi Tree: The Storm Over Critical Buddhism (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1997); Christopher S. Queen and Sallie B. King, Engaged Buddhism: Buddhist Liberation Movements in Asia (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996); Simon Zadek, “The Practice of Buddhist Economics? Another View,” American Journal of Economics and Sociology 52, no. 4 (1993). 25 For example see Wi Jo Kang, Religion and Politics Under the Japanese Rule (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1987); James Edward Ketelaar, Of Heretics and Martyrs in Meiji Japan: Buddhism and its Persecution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 23 24

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As we consider those misgivings, in order not to reinvent the wheel as it were, we would do well to consult the long Confucian tradition of intelligent, well-informed criticism of Buddhism. And once again, when we want mature reflections on Buddhist teachings by an eminent Confucian thinker, the first name on the list has to be Mou Zongsan. Interpreting Mou Weighty as Mou may be, why is it necessary that I write a new essay to reconstruct and interpret his opinions about Buddhism? Can we not simply rely on Mou’s own writings, or translations, or an existing secondary literature in Chinese? I hope that I have already succeeded at explaining that, aside from the generally uninviting and often systematically ambiguous character of Mou’s writings and the limited helpfulness of his disciples’ commentary, we have an additional problem. Mou thinks that in order to know Confucian philosophy correctly, we first need to understand Tiantai Buddhist philosophy as a propaedeutic. Therefore if we cannot spell out Mou’s understanding of Tiantai Buddhism clearly, we are not entitled to feel confident that we grasp his understanding of his Confucian philosophy either. In order to reconstruct the missing pieces in Mou’s expositions and try to explain his opinions, I have studied his mature corpus and formed a set of interpretive hypotheses that seems best supported by the evidence.26 Moreover, though authors may change their opinions over time, in the case of a consciously systematic philosopher such as Mou, who tries very hard (if not always successfully) to be precise and consistent, I judge it more reasonable to suppose that his beliefs are consistent (i.e. non-contradictory) and stable over time except when there is positive evidence that suggests the contrary. For example, Mou employs so many terms of art, idiosyncratically and often without definition, that sometimes it seems that he himself loses track of their precise semantic ranges. As such it is not difficult to find (at least 1990); Don Alvin Pittman, Toward a Modern Chinese Buddhism: Taixu’s Reforms (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2001); Holmes Welch, Buddhism Under Mao (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972); Holmes Welch, The Buddhist Revival in China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968). 26 See E.D. Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967), 169–171.

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apparent) inconsistencies in Mou’s statements, and at times I have found him saying almost unquestionably contrary things virtually on the very same page.27 The challenge, then, is to read carefully and try to discern whether (a) the apparent contradiction is resolvable because Mou is attaching a sort of private meaning to one or more terms, as is often the case; (b) he has slipped from using a certain term one way in one passage to using it in quite a different way in the next; or (c) he truly is expressing contrary opinions in the two passages. Happily, even if Mou was not as gifted an expositor of his ideas as we might hope for, he does at least make it much easier for us to reconstruct the blurry parts than in the case of a figure such as Heraclitus for whom we have only fragments, or even one like Foucault who does not even seek to be systematic. To begin with, genre makes a big difference. It is much easier to reconstruct a metaphysician’s opinions about metaphysics from his metaphysical treatises than it is to divine a poet’s opinions about foreign affairs from a collection of sonnets or to discover a whole theory of ethics in the journals of a lighthouse keeper. For his part, Mou has written his books with an eye to consistency and systematicity for the express purpose of conveying the very beliefs we seek to understand. Of course, it is possible that he failed to some extent—and in fact I doubt anyone would praise Mou for his lucid exposition—but nevertheless it helps the work of reconstruction a great deal when the author is actively collaborating with us. Mou frequently gives us directions about how to understand him. At the level of individual words and phrases, he routinely gives English glosses for his technical vocabulary, giving us extra clues about how he means us to take a certain term. Beyond that, he tells where the major changes in this thinking occurred and what the decisive insights were, and he gives us directions about reading his collected works, explaining which books we should consider more precise explanations of certain views than others. It also helps that Mou handed down to us so much material with which to work. At the end of his life he left over a dozen volumes of original work in philosophy and the history of philosophy presenting his mature views. He also repeated himself a great deal in those For example, Ludwig Wittgenstein, “Mingli lun [Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus] 明理論,” in Mou Zongsan xiansheng quanji 牟宗三先生全集 [Complete Works of Mou Zongsan] (Taipei: Lianjing, 2003), viii–ix (hereafter cited as MLL), on the sets of things which are ‘sayable’ (keshuo 可說). 27

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writings, giving overlapping, semi-redundant presentations of the same topics in a variety of places. In addition, we have four volumes of redacted lectures28 and several hundred hours of audio recordings of his lectures from the same period, which amount mainly to oral explanation of the material covered in his books. Within this trove of materials, when I have been puzzled by one of Mou’s terms or claims, I have usually been able to find a handful of restatements of it elsewhere for comparison. As a result I have been able to form a network of interpretive hypotheses which, I believe, is well supported by evidence, and far better supported than any other. That is, for the several dozen of Mou’s terms and claims that call for special interpretation, I have only found one combination of interpretations that allows me to connect almost all the dots, so to speak, without supposing that Mou was massively inconsistent. There being little interpretive scholarship about Mou’s buddhology, for the most part I have simply stated my full interpretation. I have not encumbered the central chapters with a recitation of the interpretive questions I faced, the hypotheses I then entertained, and the weighing of the evidence that went into the final interpretation, lest I make this work ten times longer and a hundred times less readable. That is a quality important to me, for I hold to Orwell’s conviction that clear writing is clear thinking, almost as to an article of religion, and I am in earnest about making sure that readers will feel at home in this book even if they come from a disciplinary home far outside the sinological and buddhological guilds. In cases where I disagree consequentially with a previous interpreter, I explain my reasons in Chapter Seven. Until that point, I simply indicate to the reader approximately how much inference has gone into a particular statement by citation and diction. Where I am more or less repeating a statement that Mou himself makes in black

28 These lectures were transcribed and edited by Mou’s graduate students and then published with Mou’s approval. However, Mou writes that they were never originally intended for publication and should only be taken as informal sketches of the gross outline of his philosophical agenda, questions of any detail needing to be settled by consulting his monographic works (SJJ, i). Interpreters do not always abide by that instruction and rely too greatly on these lectures. I have kept Mou’s wishes in mind, giving greater weight to the works that he wrote for publication as books, and at times it has made a difference in my interpretation, as when I have tried to explain Mou’s views on the relationship of “discriminating” and “non-discriminating” discourse.

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and white, I cite the passage(s). Where I am “connecting the dots” of something which Mou has not stated explicitly but which I believe is easily interpolated from one or two of his explicit statements, I cite those passages preceded by the abbreviation “vid.” So for example, such a citation might read, “Vid. FB, 411, 453.” Finally, where I am forced to conjecture—usually when I am persuaded by evidence to ascribe a belief to Mou which seems to me inconsistent or tendentious—I indicate it by my diction (e.g. “Mou seems to think that . . .”). More detailed discussions about the evidence behind competing interpretive hypotheses will have to await a more advanced phase in the study of Mou’s work. To reduce the likelihood that I would misjudge Mou, I have consulted with scholars in Taiwan,29 most of whom were his protégés at various points over his last four decades. They cannot afford me untinctured insight into Mou’s thoughts, but they have given me a good deal of information about Mou the man that I would otherwise have lacked, helped me deal with some of his ambiguities, and provided checks against my interpretive biases.30 When one of them thinks I have gotten something wrong, I listen, and when they endorse an interpretation, I put greater confidence in it. If I must err, I hope to err on the side of charity. Of course, this opens the possibility of crediting Mou with a better set of arguments then he actually had, and so I have alerted the reader to such places. However, if I really have extended too much credit to Mou on some points, no great ill should come of it. Scholars have only just begun to examine Mou’s thought, and as their researches grow progressively more minute and periodized, it is very likely that they will ferret out real inconsistencies in Mou’s thoughts which I have missed. However, that criticism necessarily belongs to a later time, because in order to

29 I am especially grateful to Profs. Du Baorui 杜保瑞, Fung Yiu-ming 馮耀明, Li Ming-huei 李明輝, Li Ruiquan 李瑞全, Lin Anwu 林安梧, Lin Chen-kuo 林鎮國, Shu-hsien Liu 劉述先, Ng Yu-kwan 汝均 [Wu Rujun], Yang Zuhan 楊組漢, and You Huizhen 尤惠貞. 30 In particular, they have helped me when, on the one hand, I am required by the principle of charity to read Mou’s statements in the strongest possible way yet, on the other hand, the preponderance of the evidence suggests an interpretation which does Mou less credit. In these cases, the scholars who knew Mou can act as “tie-breakers” on the basis of their experience of Mou’s self-presentation. This input has helped, for example, with knowing what to make of Mou’s problematic-seeming description of his writings about Tiantai doctrine as “history of philosophy.”

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have any confidence in it, we must first have done due diligence with a more charitable study such as this one. The Cultural Context—China’s National Crisis and Mou’s Generation To understand Mou, we need a picture of the thirty or forty years of crisis that Chinese underwent before Mou arrived at university in 1927. It was truly a crisis in the full sense of the word, a time not only of anxiety and turmoil but also of uncertainty and indecision more fundamental than many of us imagine. In a country at peace with itself and its neighbors, in a time of relative intellectual optimism, it could be hard to understand the atmosphere of frantic worry in which Mou and his generation grew up. In order to understand the China into which Mou was born, the backdrop to his life’s work, we must appreciate that Chinese people believed they were about to be snuffed out. When Mou was born in 1909, China had already known decades of much tumult and little peace. The imperial dynasty had managed the economy badly for much of the previous century and already faced an upswing in tax rebellions by hard-pressed peasants. Worse still, in the middle of the nineteenth century it was rocked by a series of very large-scale rebellions. Just one of these groups, the quasi-Christian Taiping Heavenly Kingdom (Taiping tianguo 太平天國) (1850–1864), conquered huge swaths of southern and central China, killing more people than any other war in the 19th century. The dynasty also suffered military and diplomatic domination by a group of foreign powers that included even as minor a player as Italy, followed by a particularly humiliating defeat by its small and traditionally subordinate neighbor Japan. In 1911, not only was the dynasty itself overthrown, after ruling China for nearly three hundred years, but also the very institution of monarchy itself. China took on the forms of republican government, which quickly devolved into a fractious patchwork of strongmen who kept each other busy in warfare and drained the populace of men, money, and food. The New Culture and the Attack on Confucianism As reflective people speculated about the causes of their nation’s plight, more and more blamed the Confucian tradition and tried to exorcise its influence and invent a brand-new culture for China.

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Following a long-held axiom in Chinese political philosophy, the literati attributed their nation’s plight to a flaw in their culture. In fact, if any belief has been common currency in the history of Chinese thought, it is that a country thrives or suffers according to its culture. Hence when the Qing dynasty failed, and later when the Republic cracked into fragments, the blame had to fall on a problem in thought and literature. Whatever thinking and writing should prevail in a country, its influence would trickle down into the masses’ manners and mores and color their behavior in the family, the village, and the realm. Modern Chinese patriots assumed that in order to save their motherland and outfit it for survival in a harsh and unfriendly world, it was most important that somehow they fix China’s culture. Thus for most of the next century, the common quest of Chinese intellectuals was to find just the right recipe for such a cure. As these intellectuals resorted to more and more radical prescriptions, the tradition of “scriptural Confucian” learning31 could not but suffer. It had been understood as the lifeblood of Chinese civilization, but over a period of decades the tradition first came under doubt and eventually, by Mou’s youth, was diagnosed by many as the cancer that caused China’s other ills. Of course, the prestige of Confucian learning had begun to erode long before. The decay had begun in the mid-Qing dynasty, in the eighteenth century, with the dynasty’s suppression of much creative thought in scholarly circles and even a widespread drug problem among the ruling class who were the mainstay of Confucian learning.32 In addition, as the population grew, the economy failed to keep pace and life in China’s economic heartland became grubbier and tougher. The Confucian literati was also growing demoralized as competition

31 Mark Elvin defines this as “the system of meanings, values, and explanations of the place of human life in the universe that was based on the Classics, and closely related sources such as Menciu . . .” (“The Collapse of Scriptural Confucianism,” Papers on Far Eastern History 41 (1990):45). A critical scholarship has emerged in recent years questioning whether it is best for all purposes to to treat “Confucianism” as a coherent entity. Nevertheless, since my purpose here is to describe the change in Chinese public attitudes toward the complex of things called Confucianism that accompanied and followed the weakening and overthrow of the Qing dynasty, and since its detractors and defenders both spoke of it as a coherent something, I will adopt this convenient manner of speaking also. 32 Bresciani, Reinventing Confucianism, 12.

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for government jobs stiffened, and as the official esprit lost luster, graft increased and tax rebellions proliferated.33 By the closing years of the nineteenth century, after the Qing dynasty was nearly exhausted by decades of costly wars against internal rebels and European troops, patriotic Chinese scholars feared that the empire might be broken up and swallowed in pieces by outsiders, and in the following century of continual war and mayhem, Chinese began to consider very seriously that they might become a permanently colonized race, a people without a country like the Jews, or worse still, that they might be driven into extinction. Particularly shocking and damaging to the national confidence in the primacy of Confucian learning was the Taiping Rebellion. The Taipings held much of southern and central China, including the Yangzi River, for years, and attacked not just the Confucian government but also the very legitimacy of government-backed Confucian ideas. Indeed they replaced the Confucian classical curriculum with their own and conducted official examinations in them. Their accomplishment was to communicate to the empire that the Confucian learning could not only be disapproved of but even unseated. Some scholars say this was the beginning of the end for the Confucian way of life.34 The decisive years for its slide from supremacy came at the turn of the twentieth century, in the twilight years of the Qing dynasty, amid China’s encounter with a modernizing Japan.35 People were shocked and humiliated when the Qing was drubbed by Japan in the first Sino-Japanese War of 1894–5. Under the Meiji emperor, Japan had spent thirty years studying and learning from the Western powers, and among its accomplishments was a new military that outclassed China’s hopelessly. Quickly the Qing government and Chinese intelligentsia grew hungry to learn from Japan’s example how to modernize ( jindaihua 近代化).36 Ambitious young students were no longer so

33 John King Fairbank, The Great Chinese Revolution: 1800–1985 (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1986), 63–64. 34 Joseph R. Levenson, Confucian China and Its Modern Fate: A Trilogy, 3 vols. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1958–1965), 2:110–116. 35 See Hao Chang, Chinese Intellectuals in Crisis: Search for Order and Meaning (1890– 1911) (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987); Hao Chang, Liang Ch’i-ch’ao and Intellectual Transition in China, 1890–1907 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971). 36 See Douglas R. Reynolds, China, 1898–1912: The Xinzheng Revolution and Japan (Cambridge, Mass.: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1993).

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interested in mastering the classical Confucian curriculum that led to high office and lofty honors just a short time before. The dynasty let the classical civil service exams fall into abeyance and finally abolished them once and for all in 1905. Now students were sent abroad in great numbers, particularly to Japan, seeking quick training in the new disciplines: engineering, agriculture, political and military science. For a generation of aspiring scholar-officials who had invested years in the classical studies, the future disintegrated before their eyes, and the career path that had provided the “plausibility structure” of the classical tradition for them crumbled. It might still hold emotional appeal, but its unique truth was now in more question than ever, and it appeared to be retarding China from helping itself. Many of the students who had begun to “re-tool” with modern subjects in Tokyo and Paris turned on the traditional learning with fierce bitterness. It now became easy to accept that revered Confucian texts which men of previous generations had imbibed almost with their mothers’ milk were cultural products like any other, all-too-human and even liable to be used perniciously in exploitation. The Confucian tradition lost more prestige in 1911, when the imperial dynasty was abolished to make way for a republic. Then it suffered even worse embarrassment and popular dislike in 1915 when General Yuan Shikai 袁世凱 made an unpopular attempt to hijack the new Republic and enthrone himself as ruler of a new “Empire of China.” To help him pull it off, he courted the support of monarchist conservatives (fruitlessly, as it happened) by cloaking his regime in Confucian symbols. To the contemptuous public, Confucianism itself looked complicit in the imperial farce and appeared guilty by association. The anger, resentment, and disgust peaked among the intelligentsia in 1919, prompted by what they condemned as their government’s weak response to a fresh imperialist outrage. The Republic of China, it appeared, was about to allow the defeated Germany’s colonial concessions in the province of Shandong (where coincidentally the young Mou Zongsan was living) to be awarded to Japan. Chinese in many walks of life felt enraged at Japan’s newest cruelty and their government’s continued helplessness, and in the capital students and scholars were moved to launch a renewed intellectual and cultural movement to set their country right by purging its culture, with new radicalism and desperation, of the inherited poisons of antiquity. From this point forward, Confucianism became an enemy for the mainstream of intellectuals and remained perpetually on the defensive.

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It was attacked perhaps not more stridently than before, but certainly more widely. No longer just insulted by émigré newspaper columnists and knots of disaffected exchange students, it was buffeted non-stop by intellectuals in general. By this point China had been a republic for seven years, though perceived as a fractured, ineffectual one with little power to enforce its writ even within its own borders,37 much less sway the politics of the Great Powers meeting in Versailles. To intellectuals impatient for reform, this seemed a sign of continued failure. If China still had not turned itself around by now, it must be because the cultural renovations still had not gone deep enough. Led by figures such as Chen Duxiu 陳獨秀, editor of New Youth and later an early leader of the Chinese Communist Party, opinion-makers vilified Confucianism. They condemned the Confucian tradition as sexist and feudal. It suffocated individuals, said the young would-be reformers, and imprisoned them in patriarchal families It suppressed the young and the poor. It harmed people with unreasonable sexual taboos and benighted them by discouraging practical learning. It held the bulk of the Chinese people in chains and squelched their strength and creativity, fostering a servile, passive race. If such a nation were to learn to stand on its own and fight off the wolves threatening to devour it from within and without, it would have to unburden itself of Confucianism like a drowning man with stones in his pockets. Writers then and now have often compared these intellectuals in the years following 1919 to the philosophes of the European Enlightenment, and the comparison is apt in many ways.38 They venerated critical reason, particularly as practiced in science and institutionalized in democratic politics. Cultivating these, they hoped to enlighten their peoples, remedy their backwardness, and rebuild society along more rational and just lines. Finally, they opened everything, especially the old and the traditional, to questioning and criticism, looking for anything that seemed to them to oppose reason, institutionalize injustice, and block 37 Frank Dikötter has argued provocatively that in reality the Republic was better integrated and more efficient than previously supposed, but nevertheless the perception remained (The Age of Openness: China Before Mao (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008)). 38 Jerome B. Grieder, Hu Shih and the Chinese Renaissance (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970); Vera Schwarcz, The Chinese Enlightenment: Intellectuals and the Legacy of the May Fourth Movement of 1919 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986).

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progress, and in so doing they turned their critical ire against the religion of Confucianism. However, rail as they might against “the old Confucian shop,” the New Culture iconoclasts owed many of their famous characteristics, such as a faith in progress and reason and learning, as much to their country’s classical tradition as to the example of Western learning. Progress Above all, the Chinese Enlightenment believed in progress. New Culture philosophes believed they could improve themselves, other persons, and their society as a whole, almost without limit. Scholars used to trace this to the example of Europe’s Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution (mediated largely by Meiji Japan) and the input of American progressives like John Dewey, for these were the inspirations which the May Fourthers themselves hailed. However, now it is recognized that those Chinese enlighteners were carrying on a much longer trend in the Confucian tradition and late Qing classicism. Classicists of the late Qing had already articulated a homegrown philosophy of social progress, particularly the New Text classicists of the 19th century. In the 1820s and 1830s, innovators like Wei Yuan 魏源 (1794–1856), who functioned as what in our day we would call an outside consultant to government officials with problems to tackle, was also a devoted and accomplished New Text classicist who saw the Confucian canon as a treasury of resources through which men of affairs such as himself should sift ceaselessly to find old principles for solving ever-new problems. In the 1890s, other scholars such as Kang Youwei 康有為 and Tan Sitong went further and developed full-blown philosophies of history in which they taught, inspired partly by Western learning and partly by indigenous Chinese trends, that the world was moving through stages of progress or evolution to a final utopian end. This powerful example not only inspired variants that remained influential even into the May Fourth era (such as cultural conservative Liang Shuming’s) but also is seen as a step in the development of a Chinese brand of Marxism-Leninism. Public-Mindedness Though the philosophes demanded freedom to define themselves however they might, they did not emancipate themselves from the Confucian

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literati’s sense of duty to the country and its people.39 Granted, they did foreswear seeking government office, which was a big step in a land which traditionally saw the natural calling of a lettered man as the civil service. But like Confucians since time immemorial, they felt that by being privileged with an education, they were obligated all the more to spend their strength on the betterment of their people. Moreover, they believed in themselves, as Confucian literati had before them, as society’s natural leaders. They were outfitted by their educations, they assumed very naturally, to direct the needed changes in Chinese culture and morals and enlighten the benighted. In this sense they assumed they would fill the same social role as their Confucian forefathers and set the country’s cultural and moral agenda; the difference was simply that they were going to clear out the old content and replace it with their own selections. Governing by Educating These New Culturists persisted in a Mencian belief in humans’ educability. Individually and collectively, people could be changed and improved so long as they were awakened, educated, or re-educated. This was a common trait of the whole Chinese Left from turn-of-thecentury anarchists to early Communists such as Chen Duxiu, Ai Siqi 艾思奇, and Mao Zedong 毛澤東, who mingled faith in the power of thought in with their historical materialism.40 Moreover, like their Confucian forefathers, the New Culturists took a patronizing view of the education of the masses. They assumed that the common people were to be shepherded and improved by a wiser, more learned class which shouldered responsibility for the people’s uplift.

39 As Tu Wei-ming observes, something similar seems to be at work at well in post-1949 China, which has produced no equivalent of the Soviet refuseniks: “The idea that a member of the intelligentsia . . . would deliberately alienate himself from the ideological claims of the state to live a meaningful life guided by an alternative sense of truth and reality, has never been even a rejected possibility” (Way, Learning, and Politics: Essays on the Confucian Intellectual (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), Chap. 9). 40 See, for example, D.W.Y. Kwok, Scientism in Chinese Thought, 1900–1950 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965); Benjamin Schwartz, “Notes on Conservatism in General and in China in Particular,” in The Limits of Change, ed. Furth (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976).

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Crisis in the New Culture In 1927, when the teenaged Mou arrived at Peking University, a further cultural and political struggle intensified in China which set the agenda for his intellectual life to come. In April of that year, Chiang Kai-shek 蔣介石 and the Nationalist Party’s right wing began to “cleanse the Party” of leftist opposition and destroy workers’ unions in a sudden campaign of arrests, executions, and extralegal street justice meted out by mafiosi working for Chiang. Beijing and Shanghai, the intellectual centers, were convulsed by political violence on a large scale, with no effort made to conceal it. Since the Chinese Left was well-stocked with May Fourth enlighteners, some of them fell victim to the killing. Most infamously, Li Dazhao 李大釗, the Peking University librarian and professor who was a leading May Fourther and also a member of the fledgling Chinese Communist Party, was snatched from the sanctuary of the Soviet embassy and hanged. Intellectuals were forced by the undisguised lawlessness and the brutality being visited even on their own peers to see that, even if they were the arbiters of China’s high culture, they were not the ones who steered the country’s politics. Amid the arrests and assassinations of Chiang Kai-shek’s “White Terror,” China’s political course was not being set by reasoned argument at all, but by goon squads who cared little about enlightenment and the critical spirit. The philosophes in their reading chairs, impotent and dazed, began to admit that “reason” as they had understood it was less powerful than they supposed, and indeed so were they.41 China’s new direction was not to be decided in a marketplace of ideas, the intellectuals discovered, but in a struggle of interests. If reason were a party to these struggles at all, it was not in a position to deliver victory and political sway to him who sought the truth most diligently. Instead it seemed that the opposing historical forces could use ideas and cultural productions to swell their ranks through propaganda and organize their forces, but afterward they would still have to fight the battles that followed with real bullets. Intellectuals could still help the struggle, they decided, but more as progapandists and opinion-makers than as truth-seekers.

41

Schwarcz, Chinese Enlightenment, 145–163.

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Marxism Partly as an effect of the terror, intellectuals were alienated from Chiang’s Nationalists and propelled further into sympathy with the Communists.42 Chinese progressives of the mid-1920s had admired and emulated Lenin’s Soviet Union. Even Chiang’s own Nationalist Party had organized itself along Leninist lines and had an ongoing relationship with the Comintern, and Chiang Kai-shek himself had received a period of training in Moscow. The party had encompassed both radical and conservative factions and it was only with the White Terror of 1927 that Chiang managed to chop off its own radical wing. The Communist Party survived the attacks, however, and appealed more than ever to the country’s disenchanted intellectuals. In this, the Chinese cultural elite was walking a parallel course with intellectuals elsewhere in the world, and by the early 1930s, much as in Paris, London, or New York, in China too the smart literary and artistic circles were peopled largely by Communist Party members or fellow travelers. Academics also adopted Marxist historical materialist explanations in large numbers.43 And like their contemporaries elsewhere in the world, the intellectuals also began thinking of themselves in a Marxist way, as a social class who had to take a position on a coming revolution and whose cultural production needed to advance the revolutionary cause.44 Many of them felt obliged to abandon the attempt at maintaining critical distance from political action that had been the ideal in 1919. Apparently powerless and irrelevant as mere scholars and critics and commentators, they felt called to declare themselves for revolution and work accordingly. May Fourth philosophe Ye Shengtao 葉聖陶 summed up the feelings of many of his peers in Ni Huanzhi (1929), a novel about a teacher disillusioned and politically galvanized by the undisguised political gangsterism on the streets of Shanghai: “Education for education’s sake was meaningless gibberish. Today’s education should take

42 Benjamin I. Schwartz, “Themes in Intellectual History: May Fourth and After,” in An Intellectual History of Modern China, ed. Goldman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 138. 43 For Mou’s reminiscences about this, see Mou Zongsan 牟宗三, Wushi zishu 五十 自述 [My Life at Fifty] (Taipei: Ehu, 1993), 64 (hereafter cited as WZ ). 44 Vid. Schwarcz, Chinese Enlightenment, 185ff.

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revolution as its starting point . . . [I]f he meant to achieve any worthwhile results, he must become an educator for the revolution.”45 Cultural Conservatives However, the Marxist trend was met by a more conservative minority of scholars who continued to cherish classical Chinese learning with special loyalty. They maintained that China ought only rework it. For this broad camp, which Mou went on to join, the important task of the age was not to purge the culture of antique backwardness but to “sort out the national heritage” (zhengli guogu 整理國故) for use in the twentieth century. They had their way prepared ahead of them by literati of the late Qing. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, a group of Qing literati who became known as “the statecraft group” ( jingshi pai 經世派) felt prescient concern about the dynasty’s future. They rummaged anew through their civilization’s massive cumulative literary inheritance and hoped to find ways to tackle the state’s worsening moral and economic ills among the forgotten techniques of past worthies and statesmen.46 To their minds this meant giving serious attention not just to agriculture and hydraulics and revenue management but also speculative matters. Thus a man such as Wei Yuan, the great administrative troubleshooter, pored over writings like the esoteric Gongyang 公羊 commentary, which analyzed the Spring and Autumn Annals for hidden teachings about the cosmos and kingship. By the end of the century, the literati grew in curiosity about forgotten corners of China’s literary past and took new interest in great questions of meaning, the “dayi 大義,” which had gone out of fashion in the 1700s. Often in Chinese history, when a political order collapsed, scholars began innovating in literature and thought. They doubted the efficacy of the old dynasty’s thought—after all, it failed to sustain the dynasty—and also were freed from having to follow the old dynasty’s approved reading lists and interpretations. Hence in such times the men of letters begin reading odd books, and sometimes 45 Ye Shengtao 葉聖陶, Ni Huanzhi 倪煥之 (Shanghai: Kaiming, 1929). Quoted in translation by Schwarcz, Chinese Enlightenment, 171. 46 Chang, Chinese Intellectuals in Crisis, 10–11, 20; Chang, Liang Ch’i-ch’ao and Intellectual Transition, 15–25; Susan Mann and Philip A. Kuhn Jones, “Dynastic Decline and the Roots of Rebellion,” in The Cambridge History of China, ed. Twitchett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 146–153.

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they blended them into the ongoing tradition and produced a new mainstream. By the late Qing, hobbyists and public intellectuals alike reinterpreted canonic Confucian texts in unorthodox, inventive ways and rediscovered Buddhist and Mohist writings long since pushed out of the philosophical mainstream. Taking advantage of the intellectual freedom and eclecticism of the time, in the 1890s Gongyang scholars Kang Youwei and Tan Sitong developed a revisionist Confucianism47 that inventively purported to limn occult patterns in history predicting China’s and the world’s evolution into a technological and moral socialist utopia. These visionary optimists thought that Chinese would eventually sinify the world, to its great profit. Younger scholars writing just after the turn of the century aimed at lower, more sober goals. Instead of novel evolutionary philosophies of history, they looked into the literary past to find symbols for China’s republican modernization or for the principles of moral conduct which, when practiced widely, would aid national construction. Zhang Binglin, like Friedrich Nietzsche, grew to fame not only as a formidable philologist but also as a wickedly mordant social critic. Though he contributed mightily to the early defamation of Confucianism, instead of looking for reformist inspiration from modern Europe, he found revolutionary inspiration in the negative dialectic of Buddhism. Years later, after the Great War in Europe, even as China’s intellectuals hailed science and democracy and sought a national awakening patterned largely on the European Enlightenment, together with people around the world they were so repelled by the carnage of Belgium and France that they felt misgivings about Western civilization itself. This was the occasion for Spengler’s Decline of the West (1918), still influential among Chinese readers today. Following the old assumption that history follows culture, readers were newly willing to suppose that, for all their technical competence, Europeans must harbor deep and momentous flaws in their culture in order to maul themselves so frightfully.48 Such reflections inspired a new generation of cultural traditionalists to reconsider the merits of China’s own civilization.

47 Kang’s project has been described as “Confucian revisionism.” Kung-chuan Hsiao, A Modern China and a New World: K’ang Yu-wei, Reformer and Utopian, 1858–1927 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1975). 48 Scholars generally treat Liang Qichao’s Recollections of Travels in Europe as the seminal statement of this disillusionment. See Liang Qichao 梁啟超, Liang Qichao you ji: Ou you xinying lu, Xin dalu ji 梁啟超游記: 歐遊心影錄、新大陸遊記 [Travelogues

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This more or less conservative minority tried to contribute to the generally sought-after salvation of China by rehabilitating indigenous Chinese culture as a resource for nation-building, for cementing a culturally cohesive people willing to stick together as a polity. Some said they were interested in those cultural resources for merely instrumental reasons, to inculcate group loyalty in the Chinese citizens of tomorrow. It was a common belief among such scholars, learned partly from German philosophy of history, that nations needed to preserve their cultural continuity in order to resist foreign conquest. So for example Zhang Binglin treasured China’s accumulated literature, despite his revolutionary politics, for straightforwardly nationalist reasons: those writings were its “national essence” (guocui 國粹), the tangible body of the Chinese nation. For a Chinese to read it was to know his history and acquire national consciousness. He was followed in this way of thinking by younger scholars of what was known as the “National Studies school” (guoxue pai 國學派), such as Gu Jiegang 顧頡剛, who combed through the vast warehouse of China’s intellectual past, packed with forgotten movements and ideas, and selected supplies that looked like they could be updated in order to build salutary political institutions and cultural movements that would be new and suitably adapted to modern times but still Chinese in their genesis. However, there was another more eccentric minority who defended the classical inheritance on more basic grounds, as something not just instrumentally but intrinsically valuable. Like Kang Youwei they believed that if the Confucian tradition and its motivating spirit were properly interpreted, it could still provide the vision for building a future republic of progress, science, and human self-actualization. In a landmark book that is influential even today, Confucian apologist Liang Shuming tried famously to find a place for Chinese traditional culture as a premature realization of what should properly be a later stage of human social evolution.49 He claimed that Chinese civilization represented a higher and more advanced culture than the Western one of mere material mastery; China simply had not first mastered that lower phase and now had to go back and make up its missed stage of development. Around the same time, Liang helped find a job of Liang Qichao: Recollections of Travels in Europe and Travels in the New World] (Beijing: Dongfang, 2006). 49 Liang Shuming 梁漱溟, Dongxi wenhua ji qi zhexue 東西文化及其哲學 [The Cultures of East and West and their Philosophies], 4th ed. (Shanghai: Shangwu, 1923).

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at Peking University, the center of the New Culture enlightenment, for his friend Xiong Shili 熊十力, a former anti-dynastic revolutionary and autodidactic classicist who became the young Mou Zongsan’s most influential mentor. Like Liang, Xiong was “trying to save China by digging into the main river-bed of its cultural tradition” and felt impressed with Buddhism’s value as a touchstone for reflection.50 With his writings on Yogācāra and the Book of Changes (Yijing 易經), he did more than anyone in his generation to put Confucian metaphysics on the conservative agenda. With his deeply unfashionable infatuation with the Book of Changes, the young Mou was already taking sides with these cultural traditionalists when, in his junior year, he met Xiong Shili and became his disciple. In 1923, as Xiong settled into his duties at Peking University and Liang Shuming’s fame spread, cultural conservatives of various stripes came together in one of the most celebrated intellectual controversies of the decade, the so-called “Science vs. Metaphysics” debate. The debate was set in motion by a lecture by Zhang Junmai 張君邁 (Carsun Chang), a political theorist and admirer of German spiritualist Rudolf Eucken.51 Zhang argued for recognizing limits to the power of the scientific method in understanding human affairs. He was rebutted hotly by geologist Ding Wenjiang and other paladins for science, but Zhang was quickly joined by a confederacy of more or less culturally conservative men of letters who criticized the naïve worship of science. In hindsight it is clear large parts of the Chinese intelligentsia underestimated the tentative character of scientific reasoning, speaking

50 Bresciani, Reinventing Confucianism, 118. Xiong has been described as an early representative of a new turn in the late imperial and early Republican literati’s emerging tradition of “creative Buddhist studies” (chuangzaoxing foxue 創造性佛學) (see Jing Haifeng, Xiong Shili, 124–25). Whereas an earlier generation, typified by Kang Youwei, Tan Sitong, and Zhang Binglin, took an interest in more pragmatic themes in Buddhist thought that seemed to lend themselves relatively directly to moral and political reform, among younger men beginning with Xiong there came to be a more metaphysically directed interest in Buddhist studies, “emphasizing cultures and their philosophies” (ibid., 124). 51 Bresciani, Reinventing Confucianism, 156–161. Zhang’s controversial lecture celebrated the concept of “renshengguan” (人生觀) or “life-view,” his rendering Eucken’s term Lebensanschauung. Because Eucken’s term has not been preserved in common parlance, historians writing in English often resort to description rather than literal translation and call the ensuing debate, which is still known in Chinese as the kexue yu renshengguan (-科學與人生觀) controversy, by the more pellucid name of “the Science vs. Metaphysics debate.”

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as though scientists simply observe nature and discover unambiguous, comprehensive truths, and they refused to recognize any such thing as right cognition and behavior outside the province of science, thinking that any belief or practice which could not find scientific backing must be both false and also socially deleterious. Intellectuals of the mainstream had also inherited the nineteenth century’s wild optimism about science’s power. As a variety of cultural traditionalist writers rallied to Zhang’s defense in the months-long literary debate which followed, they came to form the beginnings of a culturally conservative group identity which Mou inherited when he arrived in the capital a few years later. Mou and the New Confucians These, then, were the problems Mou inherited when he walked through the gates of Peking University: What could be done to save China? Did reason have the kind of power over the world that could remake society? How much was it appropriate for intellectuals to involve themselves in politics? What should be done with China’s Confucian tradition? Mou arrived there from his home in rural Shandong in 1927, the same year as the White Terror that inaugurated two decades of civil war.52 Ultimately a philosophy major, Mou developed twin interests in the mathematical logic of Alfred North Whitehead and the natural philosophy of the ancient Book of Changes, both of which were so unpopular that Mou studied them virtually alone.53 Alone, that is, until

52 A pleasant, philosophically-minded but still minimally technical biography of Mou can be found in Li Shan 李山, Mou Zongsan zhuan 牟宗三傳 [A Biography of Mou Zongsan] (Beijing: Zhongyang Minzu Daxue, 2002). Another excellent biography, less narrative and focusing on problems and themes in the unfolding of Mou’s thought, is Zheng Jiadong 鄭家棟, Mou Zongsan 牟宗三 (Taipei: Sanmin, 2000). Analysis of Mou’s intellectual career in the context of his historical and political milieu is available from anthropologist Joël Thoraval, “Idéal du sage, stratégie du philosophe, Introduction à la pensée de Mou Zongsan (1909–1995) [The Ideal of the Sage and the Strategy of Philosophy: An Introduction to the Thought of Mou Zongsan],” in Spécificités de la philosophie chinoise (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 2003). In English, for short sketches of Mou’s intellectual career, see Bresciani, Reinventing Confucianism; Shu-hsien Liu, “Mou Tsung-san (Mou Zongsan),” in Encyclopedia of Chinese Philosophy, ed. Cua (New York: Routledge, 2003). 53 Zheng Jiadong, Mou Zongsan, 28–29.

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his junior year, when he was introduced to Xiong Shili, who had just published the New Treatise on Yogācāra (Xin weishi lun 新唯識論) that was to make him one of modern China’s most influential philosophers until Mou himself. The young Mou borrowed the book from a teacher, devoured it straightaway, and two days later was taken by his teacher to Sun Yat-sen Park to be introduced to the philosopher. The intense, cantankerous Xiong struck Mou as positively sagely. “[H]e emitted an obvious radiance,” Mou later wrote, “and it contrasted with the mean vulgarity of those celebrity professors. That was the first I knew that humans could be loftier, greater than that. Here I had finally met a Perfected Person (zhenren 真人) and finally gotten a whiff of the meaning of learning and life.”54 However, Mou did not have long to spend with Xiong. He graduated the following year and began a decade and a half of lonely, grueling wandering. For several years he moved through a series of short-lived appointments as a high school teacher all over the country. In 1937 China descended deeper into tumult as Japan began a full-scale invasion of the Chinese heartland. Like many intellectuals, Mou survived as a semi-refugee for more than a decade, retreating to stay ahead of the fighting and picking up work as a teacher or editor where he could. Amazingly, he was able to write his first book during this time, the massive Logical Model and have it published in Hong Kong.55 The following year, after relying on his old teacher Xiong’s hospitality for several months, Mou finally landed his first university job, at Huaxi 華西 University in Chengdu. Because China had few university graduates to begin with and now was deep in the confusion of war, it was common for college faculties to be staffed by scholars who held no formal degree higher than a bachelor’s. Indeed, even today, some excellent Chinese university faculties have distinguished older professors who never had the time to acquire an earned doctorate. Though Mou taught in universities for the rest of his life, he never held a Ph.D. until finally given an honorary degree almost fifty years later. In the summer of 1949, a few months before the Communist Party took control of the mainland, Mou fled to Taiwan. After the outbreak Mou Zongsan 牟宗三, Shengming de xuewen 生命的學問 [Existential Learning] (Taipei: Sanmin, 1970), 147–148 (hereafter cited as SX). 55 Mou Zongsan 牟宗三, Luoji dianfan 邏輯典範 [The Logical Model] (Hong Kong: Shangwu, 1941). 54

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of the Korean War, with the U.S. Navy protecting Taiwan, Mou came to believe that the Communist and KMT regimes would coexist indefinitely and so, putting aside a period of writing political philosophy and critical reflections on China’s political traditions, Mou turned to basic research on the history of Chinese philosophy.56 Then around the age of fifty, Mou reached a turning point as a scholar and thinker. Apparently prone to personality conflicts that made it difficult for him to hold onto jobs, Mou left his post in eastern Taiwan in 1960 to teach at New Asia College in Hong Kong with his friend and fellow Xiong Shili student Tang Junyi 唐君毅. In its intellectual climate, New Asia College was very friendly to Mou’s longstanding and re-emerging interest in Confucian thought. Just a couple of years before, Mou and Tang had joined another Xiong student, Xu Fuguan 徐復觀, and Zhang Junmai and issued published a public apologia for Confucian philosophy, a “Manifesto for a Re-appraisal of Sinology and Reconstruction of Chinese Culture.” They met no great fanfare when they first published the manifesto, but they are now celebrated retrospectively as charter members of a “New Confucian” revivalism that continues to this day.57 Committed to the universally shared cause of China’s national salvation, they accepted much of the social and political program of the early May Fourth era, such as the passion for democracy, and they were not so wedded to Confucian tradition that they wanted to recreate pre-modern Confucian society in the twentieth century. Rather, they were willing to rework almost any aspect of the way Chinese society was organized.

56 Liu, “Mou Tsung-san,” 482. On the same period also see Zheng Jiadong, Mou Zongsan, 30. 57 On the construction of New Confucian identity and lineage that began in the 1980s, see Makeham, ed., New Confucianism, 25–53. Makeham notes that there is indication that a fifth author, Xie Youwei 謝幼偉 (1900–1976), a former friend and colleague of Xiong Shili, also participated in the composition of the Manifesto. Also see Bresciani, Reinventing Confucianism, 535 n. 3. In China it is common to group figures from philosophers to film directors into cohorts or “generations” spaced about ten years apart. Hence Zhang, Mou, Tang, and Xu are sometimes retrospectively called the “second generation” of New Confucians, following their teachers Liang Shuming and Xiong Shili. For example, see Liu Shu-hsien 劉述先, Xiandai xin ruxue zhi shengcha lunji 現代新儒學之省察論集 [Essays on Contemporary New Confucianism] (Taipei: Zhongyang yanjiu yuan Zhongguo wenzhe yanjiusuo, 2004), 134–135, 144–145.

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chapter one The New Confucian Agenda

As background to Mou’s philosophy, it is worth our time to talk about these New Confucian partisans’ common mission and values. The On-Going Life of the Confucian Tradition Before anything else, these four New Confucians58 insisted that the world take China’s cultural tradition seriously as a living entity and not simply as a museum piece or a corpse fit only for autopsy.59 By this they meant that they wanted people in China and abroad to look for guidance as much to classical culture as to any ideas of modern or Western provenance. Far from being misguided and obsolete, they thought, China’s classical tradition could tell us how best to live. In fact, they thought it did so better than other nations’ cultures could, wherefore it was really a treasure for all peoples. At the very least, they thought, it contained much which is not only true but also unique.60 And because Chinese culture is alive and uniquely precious, they asked that the West learn from it and try to graft Chinese thought into Western thought. Like earlier conservatives such as Liang Shuming, they still believed that Chinese culture could save not just China but also the West, with its self-destructive Faustian ambition and atomic individualism. They also saw natural points of continuity between

58 For the remainder of the chapter I will use “the New Confucians” as an etic shorthand to refer to Zhang, Xu, Tang, and Mou, particularly as they presented themselves in the Manifesto. 59 Mou Zongsan, Xu Fuguan, Zhang Junmai, and Tang Junyi 牟宗三、徐復觀、張 君邁、唐君毅, “Wei Zhongguo wenhua jinggao shijie renshi xuanyan [Manifesto to the World on Chinese Culture] 為中國文化敬告世界人士宣言,” in Dangdai xin rujia 當代新儒家 [New Confucianism], ed. Feng Zusheng 封祖盛 (Beijing: Sanlian, 1989), 5, 7 (hereafter cited as JSX). Good summaries of the agenda of the Manifesto can be found in Bresciani, Reinventing Confucianism; Hao Chang, “New Confucianism and the Intellectual Crisis of Contemporary China,” in The Limits of Change: Essays on Conservative Alternatives in Republican China, ed. Furth (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976). Zhang Junmai, under the name Carsun Chang, provides an English translation. See Carsun Chang, The Development of Neo-Confucian Thought, 2 vols. (New York: Bookman Associates, 1957–62), 2:455–483. 60 Thomas Metzger highlights this belief in the unique value of Chinese tradition when he translates ‘daotong’ as “tradition transmitting ancient insights into the true nature of human life and the rest of the cosmos” (“New Confucian Philosophy,” 18).

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Chinese and Western culture, such as an important affinity between the Song-Ming Confucian heroes and Immanuel Kant.61 Moreover, they identified the vital and important part of Chinese culture with the Confucian tradition in particular. Though dynasties had come and gone, they wrote, at a deeper level “this had never diverted the larger orientation of the culture’s learning and thinking, namely the ongoing tradition of the Way (daotong 道統). However, nowadays scholars in China and elsewhere in the world cannot recognize that this [Confucian] learning of mind and nature (xinxing zhi xue 心性之學) as the core of the Chinese culture of learning.”62 The four New Confucian signers of the Manifesto were neither unsophisticated nor reactionary. They had been exposed to all the leading intellectual currents of their day, and they had adopted many of the same modern views as others of their contemporaries and honored many of the achievements of the post-World War I Chinese Enlightenment.63 And they conceded points that not even their intellectual predecessors, the late Qing Confucian reformists, would not have conceded. Unlike Kang, they looked for a democratic constitution for China right away and would not countenance monarchy for China under any conditions. Nor did they flirt, as Kang had done in extremely unpopular fashion, with restoring Confucianism as a statesponsored religion. Nor, after living through the multi-stage disaster of the Chinese Civil War, did they speak of a utopian end of history. However, among their peers, the four men remained quixotic figures. In most learned circles of the day, they won almost as little sympathy for a revival of Confucian philosophy as one might today for a celebration of the divine right of kings. As apologists for the classics in a time when that tradition seemed worse than quaint, these New Confucians remained old-fashioned almost to the point of irrelevance in continuing to talk of an ancient wisdom found only in Chinese culture, in their reverence for Song and Ming metaphysics and its power to enlighten in a way that transcends the possibility of linguistic

61 JSX, 4, 19. On Mou’s decades-long “digestion” of Kant, see Zheng Jiadong, Mou Zongsan, 36. 62 JSX, 17. Also see Ng Yu Kwan 吳汝鈞, “Duiyu dangdai xin ruxue de zai renshi yu fansi (5) 對於當代新儒學的再認識與反思（五）[Reacquaintance with and Reflections on New Confucianism (5)],” Ehu 34, no. 5 (2008): 12. 63 Guo Qiyong, “An Overview of the New Confucian Intellectual Movement,” Contemporary Chinese Thought 36, no. 2 (2005): 22–25.

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description, and in their insistent recourse for proof to their inner conviction.64 Moral Realism Another reason that the New Confucians seemed naïve dinosaurs was that they thought that moral values are objective facts of nature, not arbitrary opinions. Though they lived in a disenchanted world among peers who separated values from facts, the New Confucians insisted that morality is an objective quiddity. Until the crises of Confucian tradition in the late Qing, rarely did the affairs of the day positively force people to question whether right and wrong were real. But when Chinese people discarded the classical tradition, they sacrificed an easy confidence that there is a moral color to events representing something more cosmically real than the arbitrary preference of the human animal. Filling this void became one of the preoccupations of Chinese writers in the twentieth century. In fact it would not be outlandish to view every Chinese writer in the first half of the twentieth century as writing about morality in some way or other: with reformist outrage, with conservative piety, as a dialectical materialist, as a scientist, as a utopian, as a satirist, as an escapist, in novels, in plays, in tracts, in essays, in philosophical treatises, as a Buddhist, as a Confucian, as a liberal, as an anarchist, as a revanchist monarchist, as a Communist. But in many quarters what we might call an absurdist’s view prevailed, in which however real morality might seem to us, on an ontological plane it remained a mere human posit, without support from nature itself. It would never attain the status of scientific fact, as would the speed of a falling object or the boiling point of water. The New Confucians thought it vital that they defend the facticity of value, though they had a very hard time providing an answer that would pass muster to modern sensibilities about wherein one could find evidence of this moral value. What they settled on was a tactic familiar throughout the modern world, namely to locate the evidence of value in the universe in the interiority of the human self. Adopting the

The appeal to inner conviction was typical of the influence of Xiong. See Chang, “New Confucianism and the Intellectual Crisis of Contemporary China,” 285; Edward F. Connelly, “Xiong Shili and His Critique of Yogācāra Buddhism” (Ph.D., Australian National University, 1978), 26. 64

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teaching of Ming Confucian thinker Wang Yangming, they looked within, to the moral sense of right and wrong, of shame and pity, which they claimed was the bottom-most bedrock of selfhood. Goodness in the universe is evidenced very sufficiently, they contended, by the powerful intuition planted in the human mind that it is so. Synthesizing Chinese and Western Philosophy Like other well-educated people of their generation, the New Confucians had been thoroughly acquainted in the university with Western (and especially Anglo-American) literature, logic and philosophy, and political ideas. And like most contemporaries, though they admired much of what they found there, as patriots they envied the pre-eminence of Western learning. It was Chinese who had to learn the Western languages,65 and it was Chinese who had to defend their culture before the tribunal of Western thought. Like many interwar figures, the New Confucians were readier than ever to recognize Western philosophy and knowledge not as philosophy and knowledge simpliciter but as what nowadays we would call a constructed cultural artifact, wherefore another culture such as China’s could still contribute something useful. Ever since Zhang Zhidong 張之洞 and the late Qing self-strengtheners, various kinds of friends of the classics had proposed blending the best of East and West. China would retain traditional Chinese mores and morals in modified but recognizable form and marry them with the means of Western-style industrial development and parliamentary rule. The New Confucians endorsed this kind of program as well, and indeed throughout the twentieth century this has remained one of the perennial discourses of Asian modernity. Being champions of philosophy, the New Confucians carried out this attempted synthesis on a philosophical plane. They did not simply try to recast past Chinese thought in a Westernized philosophical vocabulary that would prove the two commensurable. They tried to show that Chinese philosophers had answers to problems that their Western counterparts had not been 65 It is ironic that when the New Culturists unburdened themselves of their fathers’ and grandfathers’ Confucianism and reinvented themselves as moderns, one of the things that made them feel freest was that they were saved the trouble of mastering the difficult classical Chinese language; yet in opting to “modernize,” they committed themselves to the even more difficult task of learning English or French or German, or all three!

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able to solve on their own. In this way Chinese philosophy would be an equal partner with Western philosophy. Science and Democracy Above all, the New Confucians wanted to synthesize Chinese tradition with the Western inventions of science and democracy.66 For more than a generation, even if Chinese intellectuals did not always generate clear, shared ideas about how to define these goals, they shared the pursuit of science and democracy as a commonplace. The New Confucians agreed, as indeed they had to if they were to be credible. In the twentieth century, they knew, Confucianism would not be taken seriously if it could not be made friendly to science and democracy. Therefore they tried especially hard to persuade people that even if China had not already developed these two undeniable goods in its antiquity, Confucian tradition was naturally friendly to these concerns and required by its own values to give them a high place in its list of priorities. In doing so, they were updating a notion found among reformminded Chinese since the “self-strengthening” (ziqiang 自強) movement of the late Qing, which hoped to retain the Confucian tradition as China’s cultural soul yet cultivate Western technological and administrative know-how as instruments of good government.67 As they put it, China should keep “Chinese learning as the essential” or “main” concern and introduce “Western learning as a functional” or “subsidiary” occupation (zhongxue wei ti, xixue wei yong 中學為體 西學為用; also, zhu yi zhongxue, fu yi xixue 主以中學 輔以西學). Later in the Qing, others claimed to find precursors of science and of democracy in classical tradition. The great difference was that whereas the Qing figures had to persuade the dynasty’s decision-makers to invest in Western studies at all, even instrumentally, in the middle of the twentieth century the New Confucians now had a much different audience. Facing widespread scientism and scorn for Confucian learning, they struggled

66 Albert H.Y. Chen, “Is Confucianism Compatible with Liberal Constitutional Democracy,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy (2007). 67 The classic treatments of this proposal are Levenson, Confucian China and Its Modern Fate; Mary Clabaugh Wright, The Last Stand of Chinese Conservatism: The T’ung-Chih Restoration, 1862–1874 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1957). Both treat it with opprobrium and represent the kind of dismissal that the New Confucians protested. Also see Kwok, Scientism in Chinese Thought.

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to persuade Chinese and foreigners in their day to retain Chinese high culture as a going concern at all. To begin with, where New Culture enlighteners complained that Confucianism retarded to science and democracy, the New Confucians contended that true Confucian values were actually congenial to both. They saw an especially clear affinity between authentic Confucian values and broadly democratic values. In the 1890s Confucian reformers fortified the tradition with ideas, sifted out of Buddhism and non-canonic Chinese philosophers (zhuzi 諸子), which seemed to offer parallel features to Western-style political ideas of liberalism and revolution.68 Now the New Confucians of the 1950s tried to point out a powerful democratic impulse in the centermost Confucian authorities. They taught that the world belonged to its people, with rulers merely serving as custodians, and demanded that rulers look after the people’s welfare, welcome remonstrance from his subjects, weigh the judgment of future historians in his decisions, and model moral integrity for the public.69 Thus according to the New Confucians, their tradition had always contained an implicit imperative to democracy.70 Inasmuch as democratic government was the form most able to provide for the people, respond to their needs, and give life to morality in politics, it was this which represented the properly Confucian direction of political development (zhengtong 政統).71

Chang, Chinese Intellectuals in Crisis, 10–14, 20, 49, 59, 108–109, 144. These figures, who were radicals in their time, can be seen as a direct precursor to Mao’s millenarian vision of a moral-political utopia. For example, historian John Fairbank identified Kang’s doctrine of the world of Great Unity (datong 大同) as one of the top three intellectual events that prepared China for Marxism-Leninism (Great Chinese Revolution, 205). I would suggest Tan Sitong as a much nearer forerunner, with his belief in radical leveling of social hierarchy, political violence, and the sage-hero as a sort of vanguard of history, and especially his celebration of a bodhisattva-like spirit of spectacular and gory self-sacrifice for the national/global utopia. 69 JSX, 31–32. 70 Chen, “Is Confucianism Compatible with Liberal Constitutional Democracy,” 196–197. 71 Bresciani, Reinventing Confucianism, 364. Cf. Mou Zongsan 牟宗三, Xinti yu xingti 心體與性體 [Mind and Human Nature], 3 vols. (Taipei: Zhengzhong, 1968–69), 1:5 (hereafter cited as XT). Although it has been common to hear New Confucians and other modern traditionalists described as retreating from the Neo-Confucian tradition of political engagement to contemplate an “inner light” (e.g. Schwartz, “May Fourth and After,” 132), we can also see Mou and his New Confucianism as a return to a concern with translating “inward sagehood” (neisheng 內聖) into “outward kingliness (外王). See Yu Zuhua 俞祖華, “Lun wenhua baoshouzhuyi sichao de liangci 68

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But how could they account for Confucianism’s imperial past? After all, one thing that iconoclasts detested most in the Confucian heritage was its connection to anti-democratic, imperial rule. In response, the New Confucians disowned China’s tradition of hereditary monarchy as something alien to properly Confucian values. They explained that in pre-modern times, even if Confucians consciously conceived of something like democratic government as we know it, they lacked the political strength to implement the democratic ideal. China had the philosophy of monarchism foisted on it, they said, by a line of political theorists known as the Legalists ( fajia 法家), and Confucians had been forced to endorse the theory (though no doubt many of them internalized it and accepted it) by rulers since the Han dynasty if they wished to have a say in the governance in the empire.72 However, that political tradition remained an essentially foreign body in Confucian thought, and the New Confucians were ready to pry it out. It was left to the friends of democracy in China to recognize and capitalize on the indigenous Chinese “germ of democracy” in their own Mencian tradition. One reason earlier reformers failed to make democracy stick in China was that they made it appear “no more than an import from the West without root in Chinese culture.”73 Henceforth the New Confucians counseled, in the words of Xu Fuguan, “traditionalism where the Way is concerned, and liberalism where politics is concerned.” In the case of science, the New Confucians had a tougher sell. Instead of trying to discover a proto-scientific tradition in China, they conceded that Confucianism had routinely put empirical learning second to moral philosophy but claimed nonetheless that it was obligated by that philosophy to seek to develop science. When the New Confucians penned their manifesto in the 1950s, China had already passed well over half a century beyond the time

zhuanxiang 論文化保守主義思潮的兩次轉向 [Two Intellectual Shifts in Cultural Conservatism],” Dongyue luncong 25, no. 4 (2004). 72 Incidentally, one of the New Confucians’ great rivals, Harvard sinologist Joseph Levenson, pointed out a traditional tension between the monarchs and the Confucian scholars who staffed their governments. It was only after the Taiping rebellion in the nineteenth century, Levenson claimed, that the Confucian bureaucrats made common cause with the monarchy and came to be seen not as foils or checks to the emperors but simply as their collaborators. (Confucian China and Its Modern Fate, 86). 73 Chang, The Development of Neo-Confucian Thought, 472, 474.

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when anxious imperial ministers had to persuade the throne and the bureaucracy to embrace science, however cautiously. It had already known decades of sometimes febrile optimism which supposed that science could not only ease man’s estate but also dispel irrationality from the human mind, banish selfishness, and re-engineer society according to a scientifically validated plan.74 And in Chinese intellectuals’ haste to throw China’s doors and windows open to the brilliant light of science, they dismissed their country’s classical learning as irrelevant at best to scientific practice. They were dogged by a question that had already exercised a few generations of Chinese patriots and driven decades of sinological research: why had China’s elaborate, learned civilization never developed science? Chinese who cherished their country’s past also admired and envied Western science and its fruits, and in neglecting to cultivate them, they believed, their homeland had failed spectacularly, even shamefully. They needed an explanation. Nowadays scholars hasten to defend China’s reputation. After all, she led the world in technological innovation right up until Europe’s Scientific Revolution. The New Confucians knew this,75 but the fact still remained that whereas the modern Western intellectual tradition organized itself around scientific inquiry,76 China’s did not. Mou Zongsan, for one, would explain China’s failure in a way once common not only among Western sinologists and orientalists but also made popular in China by cultural conservative Liang Shuming. Chinese literati had been so pre-occupied, he thought, with inquiry into the higher things such as their moral nature, the decree of Heaven, and sagehood, and they esteemed that learning so highly that they neglected the lower but still necessary pursuit of scientific knowledge. Not afforded the same honors as moral philosophy, scientific learning failed to thrive.77 The New Confucians claimed that even if actual Confucians had not valued science enough in the past, the Confucian teaching itself 74 Charlotte Furth, “Intellectual Change: From the Reform Movement to the May Fourth Movement, 1895–1920,” in An Intellectual History of Modern China, ed. Goldman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 33–36. 75 JSX, 28. 76 At least, so Mou thought. In his comparisons of China with the West, Mou routinely overlooks parts of the classical, medieval, and early modern tradition where Western thinkers are not all like Swift’s Balnibarians. 77 Bresciani, Reinventing Confucianism, 362.

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still implicitly demanded the development of science for the sake of the common good. As a matter of historical happenstance, past Confucian authorities had almost always placed lopsided emphasis on moral philosophy and slighted empirical studies, but in Confucianism as such there was nothing essentially hostile to science. As the New Confucians saw it, they were required by the Confucian message only to oppose scientism, but not science.78 On the contrary, in fact, as with democracy, the New Confucians felt that since science enriches humankind, its pursuit is an imperative. After all, they reasoned, no values are more solidly Confucian than ministering to the people’s health and safety, and ensuring their livelihood. Since science can provide these things, it had to be the clear duty of a Confucian to aid scientific achievement. Hence, they thought, Confucianism should no longer be thought of as a dead weight which encumbered China’s progress or positively benighted it. It was friendly to both. It may not already have invented democracy and science, and China had suffered by this oversight, but it could certainly honor their excellence, praise their utility, and enshrine them henceforth high on its list of social goods. Together, they intended for science and democracy to supplant China’s indigenous (and inferior) way of managing worldly affairs. However, Chinese tradition still had its own unique and equally valuable contribution to make in return, namely its unsurpassed knowledge of human nature and moral formation. The West had benefited the world greatly by introducing scientific study and democratic politics and continued to excel at social organization and providing people with livelihoods, but China’s Confucian tradition had still never been equaled when it came to teaching about the ultimate ends of human life and how best to form and perfect people’s characters. So to complement the “outward” blessings of science and democracy, Confucianism could tutor the world in these equally important “inward” matters. As a catchphrase for this idea, the New Confucians refigured the traditional phrase “outward kingliness and inward sagehood” (nei-sheng waiwang 內聖外王). Past Confucians had been referring to the Mencian ideal of the sage-king, who swayed the world by moral example. The point was that by his moral virtue he naturally brought political

78 Chang, “New Confucianism and the Intellectual Crisis of Contemporary China,” 285, 301.

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legitimacy and mastery as well. The New Confucians reworked the phrase to mean that they were adopting science and democracy, the modern means of good political rule, into the Confucian tradition and elevating them to near-equality with traditional moral cultivation. Science and democracy would provide the new watchwords in public life, and Mencian moral philosophy would provide the last word on “the ascetic effort of progressive improvement of the moral self.”79 Mou’s Mature Writings In one sense, when Mou joined together with these other forebearers of the New Confucian movement, he joined a community that would one day grow into a large circle of students and peers, an extended family in which Mou would be a central figure, respected and even loved by many. However, those days were still far off in 1960 when Mou moved to New Asia’s campus in the rural part of the colony. He was lonely there. Unable to speak Cantonese, Mou felt socially isolated and so buried himself in his reading and research.80 He had always been a prolific writer, having written extensively on logic and epistemology while a war refugee. But over the next twenty-five years he poured out scholarship with amazing diligence—biographer Li Shan characterizes his as a “carpet bombing” style of research81—and produced six magisterial monographs in ten volumes. These were the works on which Mou built his reputation, and which he endorsed as the true representatives of his mature thought. He began a long-term project to compose histories of all phases of Chinese philosophy “in order to provide a foundation for his urgent calls for cultural reform.”82 In 1963 he began by publishing Material Human Nature and Profound Principle, his study of Daoist commentators Wang Bi and Guo Xiang,83 followed five years later by a three-volume reinterpretation of the history of Confucian philosophy, Mind and

Bresciani, Reinventing Confucianism, 46. Liu, “Mou Tsung-san,” 483. 81 Li Shan, Mou Zongsan zhuan, 213. 82 Liu, “Mou Tsung-san,” 482. 83 Because “Daoism” is an unusually crowded category, Western sinologists used to refer to Wang and Guo and other post-Han commentators as “Neo-Taoists” to distinguish them from pre-Qin Daoists such as Zhuangzi and Laozi. Nowadays NeoTaoism is more often called by the name of “xuanxue 玄學” or “Dark Learning.” 79 80

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Human Nature.84 As he was completing it, Mou chanced to read Heidegger’s Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics (1962). Convinced that Heidegger had missed the crucial transcendent dimension to metaphysics, Mou felt spurred to correct the oversight.85 This was the impetus for his next two books, straightforwardly constructive treatises rather than historical monographs, Intellectual Intuition and Chinese Philosophy (1971) and Phenomenon and Thing-in-Itself (1975). It was in those books that Mou began taking Tiantai Buddhist philosophy as the floorplan for refurbishing Confucian thought. As Mou was writing the latter volume, he was already publishing journal articles on Buddhism which he would latter incorporate into Buddha-Nature and Prajñā (1977), by far the most sprawling and loosely organized of his books. Here he attempted to make his definitive statement about the Buddhist philosophy with which he had now brought to the forefront of his philosophy. Finally, in what became Mou’s last original monograph, he began trying to explain what he saw as the payoff of Buddhist thought for Confucianism in his Treatise on the Summum Bonum (1985),86 an extended commentary and meditation in Tiantai-inspired language on Mencius’ dialog with Gaozi. Goals of Mou’s Philosophy Lest we lose our way in the coming thicket of details about Mou’s philosophy, I should first make clear what Mou was striving to accomplish throughout those many years and many volumes. One reason that Mou can be difficult to interpret is that even though he often speaks with perfect confidence about the most arcane questions, such as the very structure of mind itself, he is often nebulous about the reasoning by which he arrived at these very certain conclusions and the reasons that he holds them with such unshakeable confidence. Often we have to work to supply the underlying logic.

84 Mou Zongsan 牟宗三, Cong Lu Xiangshan dao Liu Jishan 從陸象山到劉蕺山 [From Lu Xiangshan to Liu Jishan] (Taipei: Xuesheng, 1979) is generally reckoned as the fourth volume of XT. 85 Cai Renhou 蔡仁厚, Mou Zongsan xiansheng xuesi nianpu 牟宗三先生學思年譜 [A Chronicle of the Scholarship of Mou Zongsan] (Taipei: Xuesheng, 1996), 36; Liu, “Mou Tsung-san,” 483. 86 Mou Zongsan 牟宗三, Yuanshan lun 圓善論 [Treatise on the Summum Bonum] (Taipei: Xuesheng, 1985), hereafter cited as YSL.

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However, one help is that we know where Mou wants to go, so to speak. He makes no secret of his agenda. As he sets about synthesizing his reorganized system of Confucian philosophy, he demands that it serve a number of purposes. First, it must establish the worth of Chinese philosophy as a whole, raising it to equal standing with Western philosophy and integrating a philosophy of science into its repertoire. Second, it should kindle a civic-minded and anti-Communist patriotism in China’s young people. Finally, it must underwrite a metaphysical optimism about the oneness and underlying goodness of an imperfect world. Vindicate Chinese Philosophy As we have seen, New Confucians in general share a conviction that there is something worthy and valuable in Chinese philosophy, and it is deeply important to Mou not just that he produce a metaphysics that satisfies all the requirements which we will learn about later in this book, but also that he generate it out of Chinese resources. Even if Mou could create a completely satisfactory metaphysics “out of thin air,” as it were, without obvious kinship to earlier Chinese philosophies, he would not be entirely happy. He wants his final product to wear the toolmarks of earlier Chinese philosophers and thus engender respect for their wisdom. Even where Mou disagrees with one of the traditional thinkers, he wants to highlight points on which that thinker was correct and to honor such advances as he might have made. And in particular Mou wants to praise the great Buddhist and Daoist thinkers and acknowledge them among the important ancestors of Chinese philosophy, right alongside (though still a step below) the Confucians. Hence, in addition to his great four-volume history of Confucianism, he also writes an appreciative study of Daoism in Material Human Nature and Profound Principle and an extraordinarily detailed and sympathetic survey of Buddhist philosophy in Buddha-Nature and Prajñā. We will notice, then, that Mou attaches a somewhat special meaning to the phrase “Chinese philosophy.” He is not using it as a catchall label for any and all speculative thought ever generated in China. He is referring to a family of philosophical claims which he thinks are true and important for the business of human cultivation, and widespread and uniquely well-developed in Chinese tradition. So for example, on Mou’s construal, the Legalists are a poor example of “Chinese

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philosophy” because they are base and unedifying. Zhuangzi belongs, but Mou has little to say about any of the work attributed to him except for the non-dualist essay “Discourse on Seeing Things as Equal” (qiwu lun 齊物論). The really exemplary figures are ones such as Daoist commentator Guo Xiang, or Buddhism’s “Śākyamuni of the East,” Tiantai Zhiyi 天台智顗, and his successors, and above all Mencius and the Confucian thinkers Mou dubs his authentic heirs, such as Cheng Mingdao 程明道, Hu Wufeng 胡五峰, and Liu Jishan 劉蕺山. Join Chinese and Western Philosophy in Common Enterprise Like his other New Confucian confrères, Mou hopes to marry Chinese philosophy to Western philosophy in a common enterprise, something in which Chinese philosophy can showcase its special value and contribute importantly to the Western cultures threatening to eclipse it. Among New Confucians, Mou is especially anxious to demonstrate the unique value of Chinese philosophy for the whole world, and not merely assert it. Generations of traditionalists had sloganeered about an East-West intellectual synthesis in hopeful, vague terms, but no Chinese philosopher or philosophy had yet emerged to fulfill these great expectations. Mou follows up more diligently than anyone and strives to acquire enough expertise in many branches of Chinese, Anglo-American, and German thought to put them into disciplined, detailed dialog. Mou himself respects the systematic rigor and precision of a number of modern Western philosophers, and he is not satisfied to settle for a nebulous assurance that Chinese and Western philosophy each have their strengths. Nor, he certainly notices, will he impress Confucianism’s many detractors with this kind of bromide. No, if he and others are to take the New Confucian claims seriously, he needs to produce a single, unified theory of how certain Western philosophers and Chinese philosophers have excelled in understanding different but related aspects of being. He needs a Chinese-based philosophy detailed and complex enough that it can mesh gears with Western thinkers of recognized importance on their own terms and sublate them into a larger system that recognizably supplements some particular deficiency in them. He has to make Confucianism able to address Western philosophy in its own language and advance it further.87 87 Li Ruiquan 李瑞全, “Dangdai xin ruxue zhi zhexue kaikuo: Mou xiansheng zhi zhexue gongxian yu qifa [New Confucianism’s Philosophical Expansion: Mou

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To Mou it seems most important to hold these conversations with Kant.88 Like other New Confucians, he finds that Kant resembles the Confucian thinkers of the Song and Ming, who also emphasized the metaphysics of mind and an ethics of duty.89 Among the Western philosophers, Mou thinks, Kant understands morality best, namely as coextensive with a function of reason itself, and hence Kant is most amenable to being tutored by Confucian thought.90 Moreover, Mou thinks Kant can supplement the main deficiency in Chinese philosophy, its inattention to empirical knowledge, with his detailed and (Mou thinks) largely correct philosophy of mind. Assert Morality in Matter and the Moral Mission of Science Another of Mou’s grand aims is to join a theory of moral realism and a theory of empirical knowledge comfortably under one large tent. He wants to give philosophical muscle and precision to the New Confucians’ insistence that moral value is every bit as real as matter and gravity. After all, for some this is not an easily thinkable idea in the modern age, when most of us are philosophical materialists in most of our moods and distinguish routinely between mere values and fullblooded facts. What would it even mean for us to say that value is built right into the universe? Mou sets this question high on his agenda. So as his first concern, Mou aims to show that when we feel moral intuitions, we are experiencing full-fledged knowledge, even more than in the case of empirical knowledge. And why does he feel so certain of this? Because surely, he believes, “there is an isomorphism between thought and nature; otherwise, we would have no reasonable explanation for the application of mathematics to physics.”91 In other words, it seems evident to Mou that the structure of mind mirrors the structure

Zongsan’s Philosophical Contributions and Findings] 當代新儒學之哲學開拓: 牟先 生之哲學貢獻與啟發,” in Jimo de xin rujia 寂寞的新儒家 [The Lonely New Confucian], ed. Zhou Boyu 周博裕 (Taipei: Ehu, 1992), 176. 88 Zheng Jiadong, Mou Zongsan, 36. 89 They were not alone, of course, in perceiving a kinship between Confucians and Kant. Their contemporary H.G. Creel had found much to compare in the moral philosophy of Confucius and Kant and concluded that Kant’s assertion “that there are two ends toward which we are morally obliged to strive: ‘our own perfection— the happiness of others’ ” could “serve to summarize the moral lessons of the Analects” (Confucius: The Man and the Myth (New York: John Day, 1949), 132). And as Joël Thoraval points out, Friederich Nietzsche poked fun at Kant as the “the great Chinese of Königsberg” (“Idéal du sage,” 38). 90 SJJ, 437; YSL, 241. 91 Liu, “Mou Tsung-san,” 481.

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of all of nature. So he takes it as a significant fact about nature that our minds experience a moral coloring in things. We have notions of right and ought, and Mou believes these moral notions tell us as much about the universe as our empirical observation and reasoning. If anything, they are more important! However, Mou must also signal clearly that he is a friend and admirer of science. He knows he can never be taken seriously in the twentieth century if his philosophy seems to vault into the heavens and slight concrete particulars. So even as he elevates and extols the facticity of morality, he must do this in a way that honors science. For Mou’s purposes as a metaphysician, this means that he wants to integrate his theory of moral value as solid, knowable reality as completely as possible with an epistemology of empirical knowledge. In this way Mou can enhance not only the credibility of his philosophy but also its comprehensiveness. He will not only stake out a place for science in his metaphysics but also deliver a teleological message about the moral mission of science. To wit, our empirical knowledge (our capacity to see, hear, think, and to imagine and our resulting ability to do works great and small ) is directed toward a recognizable natural purpose, which is the exercise and perfection of our moral capacities. Help Regenerate China Morally and Politically Through all his metaphysical writing, Mou has a very practical goal in mind. By persuading China’s young people that morality is a real thing (indeed, the most real thing), he wants to embolden them to act accordingly in a way that will save their country from ruin, and in particular from Communism.92 For Mou, as for the other New Confucians, the proximate form that his regenerated China should take was democracy.93 But for someone trying to transform his country, Mou was disengaged from politics. One biographer calls him “the man who walked out of history,” remarking that, “Mou Zongsan, it could be said, had no connection 92 SX, 152ff.; NST, 276–77; Bresciani, Reinventing Confucianism, 363, 389. Also see Li Shan on Mou’s opinion that the mass starvations of the Great Leap Forward were the outcome of a “disaster of concepts” (guannian de zaihai 觀念的災害) (Mou Zongsan zhuan, 129). 93 SJJ, 174; Zheng Jiadong, Mou Zongsan, 78; Bresciani, Reinventing Confucianism, 363; Li Shan, Mou Zongsan zhuan, 109–110.

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to any of the important historical events. He was not a historical personage . . .”94 That is, unlike many notable Chinese philosophers and thinkers of his time, such as his teacher Xiong Shili and his contemporary Feng Youlan 馮友蘭, Mou was not a public figure. In fact he sneers at the leading intellectuals of his day such as Hu Shi, Zhang Junmai, Zhang Dongsun, Feng Youlan, and Liang Shuming, whom he thought dirtied themselves too much with politics and current affairs, and were too “this-worldly” (rushi 入世) or engagé.95 Nonetheless, like his mentor Xiong Shili, Mou thinks he is doing his part for the common weal by his philosophizing. Mou thinks philosophers play an indispensable political role. In ordinary times the Chinese ship of state is crewed by learned people, and the philosophy that prevails in their education and absorbs their attention is what supplies them with their ideas about the correct goals and means for their personal and political efforts. Hence we find Mou full of opinions about how China’s philosophical mistakes had led it to political disasters.96 Even though he confines his monographs mostly to logic, epistemology, ontology, and axiology, in his lectures Mou likes to show his students the links between bad philosophical thinking and political degradation and disaster. He teaches that Tang philosophers missed a chance to arrest the dynasty’s slide into decadence because of their interest in Buddhism, which Mou pooh-poohs as a poor stimulant to public service. Sidetracked into Buddhist thought, he explains, China’s leading men held no ready supply of answers to the country’s problems until the gradual reworking of Confucianism that began in the 94 Zheng Jiadong, Mou Zongsan, 3; Zheng Jiadong, “Between History and Thought: Mou Zongsan and the New Confucianism That Walked Out of History,” Contemporary Chinese Thought 36, no. 2 (2005). 95 Zheng Jiadong, Mou Zongsan, 12–13. Mou professes distaste for party politics, though for a time after university he edited the weekly publication of a marginal group organized by Zhang Dongsun 張東荪 and Zhang Junmai called the Chinese National Social Party (中國國家社會黨 or 國社黨), which was conceived in 1932 as an opposition group to the Nationalist one-party state. Mou writes that he ended his involvement with the party after a falling out with Zhang early in the war (WZ, 23–29). His biographer Li Shan dates Mou’s withdrawal from the party to 1939 (Mou Zongsan zhuan, 38). 96 E.g. Mou Zongsan, “Song-Ming ruxue zongshu [A General Account of SongMing Confucianism] 宋明儒學綜述,” in Mou Zongsan xiansheng quanji 牟宗三先生全集 [Complete Works of Mou Zongsan] (Taipei: Lianjing, 2003), 24ff. (hereafter cited as SRZ). Mou even explains the skepticism about innate sagely intuition expressed by Feng Youlan, whom Joël Thoraval calls Mou’s “antimodèle paradox excellence” (“Idéal du sage,” 14), as the precursor of Feng’s “going Communist and his shamelessness” (SX, 151).

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Song. He reviles the Qing dynasty’s achievements in text-criticism and philology, which some see as an indigenous Chinese birth of the modern spirit of critical inquiry, as pusillanimous flight from moral philosophy into inconsequential folderol and textual puzzles.97 The resulting vacuum of moral leadership was ultimately was filled by Marxism.98 Mou seems to think that philosophers serve their country best as educators. On the one hand he shares the conventional Chinese assumption that educators are responsible for the moral education of the country’s intelligentsia. They must ensure that the students who will one day decide the fate of the nation will be people of responsibility and conscience. And in Mou’s opinion, educators cannot long succeed in this vocation of inculcating a public-minded moral code in students unless some of them, such as the philosophers, show the students how that code is a necessary, unalterable truth, built into the nature of the universe, just as much as the laws of matter and mathematics. Hence the philosophers are contributing a clear political good, and we could say that they are politically “engaged” in that sense. Moreover, Mou does not seem to think that he contributes less to national salvation than any other educator even though he concentrates on metaphysics. To his way of thinking, it is merely that philosophers are specialists whose work on theoretical, abstract matters helps to guide concrete (social and political ) practice. In something like 97 NST, 272; WZ, 22. Here as elsewhere, Mou inherits some of his decisive, bedrock beliefs from his teacher Xiong Shili. Xiong once explained that he had five reasons for objecting to Buddhism and preferring Confucianism ( Jing Haifeng, Xiong Shili, 79). First was that Confucianism had a correct understanding of the basic ontological substance (benti 本體). Second, Xiong thought Confucianism more capacious, able to make a place in its thought for whatever correct insights cropped up in other kinds of philosophy. Third, it was friendlier to empirical knowledge, making it able to dovetail with scientific thinking. Fourth, Confucianism brought a more pragmatic, problemsolving approach to the world, Xiong believed, seeking ways to benefit people’s livelihood and put human desires to work for a good end, which Xiong felt was “not dissonant with science.” Finally, it paid attention to the management of the economy and country and aspired to build a cosmopolitan world of universal love, which Xiong felt was “precisely the direction of the world’s development.” On the second and third points, Mou assumes a more charitable spirit toward Buddhism thought. He has a broad, dialectical vision of the many branches of Buddhist philosophy that fully recognizes its internal variety, and he finds nothing inherently hostile in Buddhist thought to empirical, scientific learning. However, as we will see in Chapter Five, Mou still inherits from Xiong his weightiest complaints, about Buddhism’s shortcomings in ontology and consequently in political society. 98 NST, 275. For a detailed picture of what Mou thinks happens when intellectuals abdicate their responsibility as moral educators, see his reminiscence of the war years (SX, 172).

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the same way, we might say, scientists doing basic research in chemistry and physics produce knowledge that is necessary and beneficial for the practice of medicine and engineering, but those scientists are usually not themselves practicing physicians or engineers. They spend their time and energy on something else, something more general and theoretical than seeing patients and drafting designs, in order to help the actual practitioners do their jobs better.99 Indeed, a standard complaint about New Confucians like Mou is that by not participating in the politics of the day, they stopped practicing the “unity of knowledge and action” (zhixing heyi 知行合一) of their hero Wang Yangming. However, as defenders point out, they practiced very energetically in their role as educators.100 Traditionally a Confucian’s moral practice is to be conducted through the medium of certain well-known relationships, such as those between monarch and minister or husband and wife. Modern times abolished the monarchic relationship and the acids of modernity changed family relationships as well, meaning that the practice of Confucian moral cultivation in these contexts had to change almost beyond recognition, as those such as Joseph Levenson who prematurely mourned the tradition’s passage were quick to point out. However, the teacher-student relationship was not fundamentally discredited as the political, parental, and marital relationships were. And it was here that the New Confucians exerted themselves most. In fact, the number and loyalty of influential players in Taiwanese and Hong Kong society who were Mou’s disciples is a testament to the intensity of his “moral practice” in this respect. Proclaim Metaphysical Optimism It is curious that twentieth-century champions of Confucianism so often could philosophize in a buoyant, up-beat voice, even in a country beset by war, starvation, and atrocity. At least in modern times, optimism seems to be required of Confucian spokesmen. Thomas Metzger comments on it in Mou’s colleague Tang Junyi, accusing him of “Panglossian optimism.” “His philosophy,” Metzger writes, “has the cheerfulness of a kind of metaphysical YMCA.”101 We find a similar 99 As we will see, this is why Mou thinks that Buddhists made such an outstanding contribution to China, in spite of serious flaws as philosophers and members of society. 100 Guo, “Overview of the New Confucian Intellectual Movement,” 29. 101 Metzger, Escape from Predicament, 36–37.

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optimism in Mou himself. One of his non-negotiable demands for a complete philosophy is that it teach that however disappointing the universe may seem to us, it is actually a friendly place where goodness reigns. And against Heidegger, who is preoccupied with man’s finitude, Mou protests that man is connected directly to infinite Being and can himself be infinite. Conceivably, someone who draws inspiration from Confucian works could adopt a more tragic posture and concede to modern materialism that even if he feels very strongly in a subjective way that there is a right and a wrong, there is no indication that the universe itself feels the same way, and indeed no good theory by which it would even be possible to say that a moral value could be a real, substantial quidditiy. And in fact, modern Confucians in general have had to concede a great deal in this vein and quietly downsize their expectations of the sage. Since they could not persuade even themselves, for example, that anyone exerts kingly power over nature and the world of men by virtue of his sageliness, as Mencius teaches, they have had to content and console themselves with the thought that it is enough to retain one’s integrity and live as an “inward sage” (neisheng 內聖). Mou, too, quietly repudiates much of the mystique surrounding sagehood and shrinks it down to a very modest size. However, even though Mou can disclaim much of the traditional Confucian mythology about the sage, as we know, he goes aggressively on the offensive to assert the full-blown reality of moral value. For him it would not be nearly enough to posit a moral law and accept it as a mere projection onto a frigid universe of dumb matter and no sympathy. He insists that morality and goodness must be built-in features of the universe. Mou also requires that the universe actively support us in living moral lives. Aside from endorsing moral value as a “reality” (zhenshi 真實),102 it also has to reward us for conforming ourselves to it. If virtue does not always lead to happiness, Mou feels, it would be “too tragic; people’s feelings could not be at peace.”103 Mou’s solution will be to look for a philosophy which is fundamentally “idealist,” in the sense that its foundation is our minds, and in particular its moral sensibilities. This is what Mou means when, early

102 XT 1:114. See Sébastien Billioud’s discussion of this passage in Chapter One of Thinking through Confucian Modernity. 103 SJJ, 377, 328.

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in his mature career, he calls his philosophy a “moral idealism.” What makes things count as “existing” in the decisive sense is the fact of their being involved with our moral mentation. Mou’s ultimate goal will be to show, or at least claim, that if we dig deep enough, we will find that both reason and existence, which are the stuff of science and empirical knowledge, are actually aspects of morality. He would like to keep a hard-nosed philosophy of science which fully respects concrete particulars and the study of matter and motion, but he also wishes to incorporate it into a larger theory that establishes moral value as fact.

CHAPTER TWO

“PHILOSOPHY” AND THE BUILDING BLOCKS OF MOU’S UNIVERSE Now we may turn to the substance of Mou’s philosophy. Before we take up his specific understanding of Buddhist philosophy in Chapter Three, I would like to forewarn the reader that Mou conceives of “philosophy” differently than we ordinarily do in the English-speaking academy and presumes different ground rules for his philosophizing. I would also like to to familiarize the reader with the “moving parts” of Mou’s metaphysics and introduce bedrock ideas and terms which we will use in later chapters to make sense of Mou’s more difficultseeming claims. Mou’s Notion of “Philosophy” Much like his teacher Xiong Shili, Mou thinks of philosophy as a guide to living. He thinks of it as “existential learning” (shengming de xuewen 生命的學問), a theoretical study that we use in order to get better at a certain kind of practical activity (shijian 實踐), namely living what we could call a spiritually excellent life.1 As with other practical activities, we can do a better job of learning how to live and teaching it to others if we have a theory which accurately describes how this process works. Confucian and Buddhist philosophers both offer theories of the cultivation of spiritual excellence, and they have significant differences. 1 Vid.YSL, ii–vi; SX, 166–68; Mou Zongsan 牟宗三, “Keguan de liaojie yu Zhongguo wenhua zhi zaizao [Objective Understanding and the Recreation of Chinese culture] 客觀的瞭解與中國文化之再造,” in Mou Zongsan xiansheng quanji 牟宗三先生全 集 [Complete Works of Mou Zongsan] (Taipei: Lianjing, 2003), 431–32 (hereafter cited as KL); Mou Zongsan 牟宗三, “Song-Ming lixue yanjianglu [Lectures on Song-Ming Lixue] 宋明理學演講錄,” in Mou Zongsan xiansheng quanji 牟宗三先生全集 Complete Works of Mou Zongsan (Taipei: Lianjing, 2003), 19, 49 (hereafter cited as SLY). Also see Bai Yuxiao 白欲曉, “Mou Zongsan ru-shi-dao sanjiao de zhexue zhengli yu yuanjiao panshi 牟宗三儒釋道三教的哲學證立與圓教判釋 [Mou Zongsan’s philosophical establishment of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism and doxography of perfect theories],” Nanjing daxue xuebao 40, no. 6 (2003).

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Mou believes that Confucians teach a style of practice which can produce top-level performers of a higher rank than Buddhists can, but that Buddhists traditionally devoted much more energy to theorizing the activity and made a number of major theoretical breakthroughs that made much better sense of it than the Confucians had done. Confucians then learned about these more sophisticated theories and used what they learned to solve problems in their own theory, and on top of that also managed to account successfully for a hugely significant factor which the Buddhists had systematically left out of their own theory. The result was a Confucian theory which became the best yet at explaining the activity of living a spiritually excellent life, but which is so deeply indebted to earlier Buddhist advances that, in order to master it, one needs to master the Buddhist models that inspired its most complicated points. To begin with, Mou thinks that Buddhist philosophers historically had much more sophisticated theories of psychology and spiritual anthropology (i.e. of the spiritual types of humanity). They analyzed the mind better and developed minutely detailed theories about the sagely and non-sagely varieties of mentation. From there they developed a highly articulated spiritual anthropology, which classified subjects into over fifty grades of spiritual excellence and described precise differences among them. Moreover, Mou thinks, Buddhists gave the most advanced doxography or meta-theory yet reconciling different metaphysical models of the universe. The best Buddhist philosophers taught that because the universe presents the theorist with more salient aspects than are convenient for one to speak of at one time, in order to describe the universe optimally we need at least two distinct models, which appear superficially contradictory but in fact cohere with each other. So why, according to Mou, did Buddhists lag behind Confucians in their spiritual attainments? The answer is that, in Mou’s opinion, the most effective way to practice for spiritual excellence is to notice the moral law in and around us (see Chapter Four) and then conform our will to it, so that, in an ideal case, we will identify ourselves with the moral law entirely. The problem for Buddhists is that, under their distinctive “emptiness” doctrines, they disavow the existence of a moral law (at least theoretically) and try to contrive a useful theory of spiritual practice that makes no reference to it. Though they manage very impressively by developing a sophisticated pathology of ‘ignorance’ (or the absence of intellectual intuition from non-sages), Mou thinks, they

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are handicapped insuperably by having to omit the most practically significant factor from their theory. Mou the Theologian We will understand and appreciate Mou better and avoid frustration if we recognize right away that, from our perspective, Mou is a special sort of scholar. He little resembles a “philosopher” as they are commonly understood in English-speaking universities and comes closer to what we would call an exegetical theologian, inasmuch as he aims to speak on behalf of the Confucian tradition, giving special weight to the teachings of its authorities, and assumes some premises that are common inside the tradition. He does not try to demonstrate their truth with compelling arguments to determined doubters. Instead he simply takes them for granted, not because he is naïve—after all, Confucianism had little more following in Mou’s time than the cult of Thor—but because he believes that though they can be clarified and partially supported by speculative reasoning, nevertheless argument alone is never really persuasive or decisive in these matters.2 As Mou’s biographer Zheng Jiadong remarks, “. . . at bottom, the mission and basic concern of contemporary New Confucians’ thought is

2 See SJJ, 436–437; SY, 74. In reviewing Mou’s major work on Confucian philosophy, Xinti yu xingti, Tu Wei-ming remarks, “Since the emphasis [in Confucian inquiry into how to become a sage] is on the experiential how rather than on the cognitive why, the road to sagehood is basically a matter of spiritual quest and not merely of intellectual argumentation.” See Tu Wei-ming, review of Hsin-t’i Yü Hsing-t’i (Mind and Human Nature), by Mou Tsung-san [Mou Zongsan], Journal of Asian Studies 30, no. 3 (1971): 642. This is not to say that Mou does not think that Confucian faith is eminently rational. For in fact, he thinks that it is coextensive with rightly ordered reason, and that human nature inclines us toward that recognition of the sovereign moral law affirmed by any properly rational being (even if he or she cannot discourse clearly about it) which is the principal element of Confucian teaching (YSL, 23–24, 241; XT, 1:647ff.; Mou Zongsan 牟宗三, Zhi de zhijue yu Zhongguo zhexue 智的直覺與中國哲學 [Intellectual intuition and Chinese philosophy] (Taipei: Shangwu, 1971), 13, hereafter cited as ZZZ; Mou Zongsan 牟宗三, Xianxiang yu wu zishen 現象與物自身 [Phenomenon and Thing-inItself] (Taipei: Shangwu, 1975), 76, hereafter cited as XWZ). It is also not to say that Mou does not hope to induce his readers to think well of Confucian teachings and assent to them. On the contrary, this is clearly one of his motives in his writings about the Confucian view of things, and in his lectures he is not shy about being morally didactic, about the monstrosity of Communism, analytic philosophy’s complacency, and the tragedy of the Manchu conquest and the “revolting” decadence and worthlessness of Qing dynasty scholarship (SJJ, 337–339, 418; SLY, 58–59, 62, 64).

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not to do scholarship but to establish a teaching and propagate the Way.”3 In so saying, Zheng may be assuming too narrow a view of what deserves to be called “scholarship,” but he is right about Mou’s existential and didactic intentions. Mou believes that we should tack back and forth between “open” (kaifang de 開放的) or “philosophical” (zhexue de 哲學的) explication and committed or doctrinaire ( jiaoxia de 教下的) explication.4 In the philosophical mode we “open ourselves up” (kaifang ziji 開放自己) to using another tradition’s ideas to improve upon those in our home tradition. In the doctrinaire kind, we bind or restrain ourselves (shouzhu ziji 守住自己) to the founder’s doctrine. Mou explains that we need to use both kinds of thinking in alternation. After contemplating in open, philosophical fashion, if we want to apply the lessons we have learned and translate them into practice, we should return to an exegesis of commitment. Mou for his part certainly does open himself up to Buddhist thought, to the point of borrowing a whole metaphysical and doxographic apparatus from Zhiyi. However, ever mindful of the practical purpose of philosophy, he feels called to take a committed stand against Buddhism and for Confucianism when he sets pen to paper to write his books. Hence we almost always seem to hear from Mou in his committed, doctrinaire mode, after he has completed his open phase. As we might expect from someone who does philosophy in this distinctly theological mode, Mou also has something special in mind when he calls Buddha-Nature and Prajñā a “history of philosophy.” When he explains that he intends to be resolutely philosophical and neutral in his interpretation, what he actually means is that unlike other writers on Buddhism such as Ouyang Jingwu 歐陽竟無 or Yinshun 印順, he is not himself a Buddhist and hence feels that he is not burdened with sectarian prejudice.5 He is free to interpret Buddhist philosophy as he finds it, he feels, because he does not have a stake in the sectarian squabbling. However, reading further, we soon find Mou absolutely

3 Zheng Jiadong, Mou Zongsan, 91. Bai Yuxiao puts it with a great deal more understatement, saying that “. . . at its root, Mou’s ‘philosophical ranking of the teachings’ has not shaken off the influence of cultural, confessional, and normative judgment” (“Mou Zongsan ru-shi-dao sanjiao de zhexue zhengli,” 153). 4 Mou Zongsan 牟宗三, “Tiantaizong zai Zhongguo fojiao zhong de diwei [The Place of the Tiantai Line in Chinese Buddhism] 天台宗在中國佛教中的地位,” in Mou Zongsan xiansheng quanji 牟宗三先生全集 [Complete Works of Mou Zongsan] (Taipei: Lianjing, 2003), 293–94 (hereafter cited as TZD). 5 TZD, 293; vid. NST, 278–280.

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does not think that, by writing as a mere historian of philosophy, he is barred from normative punditry. In fact he is openly judgmental about which Buddhist positions are correct and which are disastrously flawed, and he organizes Buddha-Nature and Prajñā accordingly, in didactic fashion. Instead of laying it out chronologically, he begins with the least adequate schools of Buddhist philosophy and ascends upward, through the better ones, and finally explains the supreme one, Tiantai, even though he must therefore hop around in time. He also chooses to omit many historically significant thinkers and cover only those thinkers and works which he judges philosophicalally essential, by instantiating all the logically possible combinations of answers to the decisive questions.6 He wants to “digest” (xiaohua 消化) the lessons of past systems of philosophy, meaning that he will distill them down to their answers to the crucial questions (guanjie 關節),7 separate what is true and instructive for a modern Confucian from what is flawed and misleading, and absorb that into his Confucianism.8 We would do well, then, to think of Buddha-Nature and Prajñā as something akin to a combination of biblical and systematic theology, inasmuch as Mou is trying to uncover the important themes in the tradition’s major works, discover its core principles, and give them orderly, systematic exposition. The Building Blocks of Mou’s Universe: The “Two-Level Ontology” Mou’s metaphysics is actually a good deal simpler than one would think from reading his books. Tortuous as his historical and systematic writings get, we can actually boil down his beliefs about the structure of the universe to a very few parts. Throughout we see Mou apply the same structure over and over again, a bifurcated whole in which he distinguishes two levels and explains that they are importantly different but ultimately complementary.

FB, 3; NST, 281. FB, 4; NST, 281. 8 Mou’s “existential” interest in past philosophers is much like that of his teacher Xiong Shili. Xiong explained his scholarship this way: “I studied Buddhism; I studied the other doctrines, not out of curiosity, in order to broaden my knowledge. . . . I studied to fathom the truth to its very bottom. I was driven by the yearning to discover the place where to achieve calming one’s mind and establishing one’s destiny.” (Translated in Bresciani, Reinventing Confucianism, 136.) 6 7

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Like most people, Mou believes in a universe of more or less mindindependent objects, which is to say, objects that do not depend for their bare existence on the attention or will of any subject. Some objects are also subjects, which is to say they have minds.9 This includes people and animals, and it would also include any other kinds of sentient beings which may happen to exist. Among subjects, Mou distinguishes two kinds of mental faculty, called “sensible intuition” and “intellectual intuition” (ganxing de zhijue 感性的直覺 and zhi de zhijue 智的直覺), and he divides subjects accordingly into non-sages and sages. Those of us who are not sages only have ready access to sensible intuition, which is simply the ordinary capacity for sense perception.10 Where sages differ from the rest of us, Mou teaches, is that they have full access to intellectual intuition, a God-like supra-sensory faculty.11 Ever since New Confucians began defending the worth of Confucian learning to a society which now prized science above all else, they had been trying to explain how one could know its moral teachings to be true even though not verifiable by the senses. Mou’s teacher Xiong Shili had spoken, rather too vaguely to be persuasive, of “inner proof” or “inner verification” (neizheng 內證).12 Mou will now try mightily to establish the New

9 See FB, 1010–1011 on “trans-sensible organisms” (chao ganxing de jiti 超感性的 機體), or subjects viewed as things in themselves. 10 Along with sensible intuition come cognitive faculties like ‘understanding’ (zhixing 知性) and ‘imagination’ (xiangxiang 想像), according to the analysis that Mou borrows from Kant, but for economy’s sake I will refer to this bundle of faculties simply as “sensible intuition.” 11 Xie Daning’s phrase is apt: “the capacity of a de-anthropomorphized God.” See Xie Daning 謝大寧, Rujia yuanjiao de zai quanshi 儒家圓教底再詮釋 [Reinterpretation of the Confucian Perfect Theory] (Taipei: Xin wenfeng chubanshe, 1996), 125. Also see Nicholas Bunnin, “God’s Knowledge and Ours: Kant and Mou Zongsan on Intellectual Intuition,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 35, no. 4 (2008). In formulating his idea of intellectual intuition, Mou is of course borrowing inspiration from Kant, though he innovates on Kant’s idea greatly, beginning of course with his conviction that intellectual intuition is available to human beings. See ZZZ, ii–iii, 184ff.; XWZ, 23; Ehrhardt Pioletti, Die Realität des moralischen Handelns; HansRudolf Kantor, “Ontological Indeterminacy and Its Soteriological Relevance: An Assessment of Mou Zongsan’s (1909–1995) Interpretation of Zhiyi’s (538–597) Tiantai Buddhism,” Philosophy East and West 56, no. 1 (2006): 35; Hans-Rudolf Kantor, “Tiantai Buddhismus und seine Relevanz für Mou Tsung-sans ‘praktische Ontologie’ [Tiantai Buddhism and its Relevance for Mou Zongsan’s ‘Practical Ontology’],” in Der Konfuzianismus: Ursprünge—Entwicklungen—Perspektiven, ed. Moritz, Deutsche Studien zu Ostasien (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 1998). 12 Guo, “Overview of the New Confucian Intellectual Movement,” 26. Note that, as in so many of the rudimentary structures of his philosophy, Mou inherits his notion

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Confucians’ claims by means of the idea of intellectual intuition. As we will discover later, Mou thinks this is one of the most momentous truths in the history of Chinese philosophy. Since subjects can see objects with two very different kinds of intuition, objects can present two different aspects to us, depending on the kind of intuition we use to view them.13 If we are sages and can view them with intellectual intuition, then the objects present themselves to us as they really are, in their true, plain, unvarnished character. This is called their “transcendent” (chaoyue 超越) aspect, since it “transcends” sensible intuition, or to put it more plainly, since it cannot be seen with sensible intuition.14 On the other hand, when we view objects with our sensible intuition, the objects appear to us in a way that is conditioned by our perceptual apparatus.15 They do not appear to us just as they are but rather as “phenomena” (xianxiang 現象), which is to say, as “seemings.”16 When we view objects this way, as phenomena, then in Mou’s terms we are seeing not their transcendent aspect but their “immanent” aspect, where “immanent” is shorthand for “immanent to our sensible intuition.”

of two distinct levels of mind and knowing most proximately from Xiong, who differentiated between an “original mind” (benxin 本心) (q.v. Chapter Five) possessed of a “qualitative understanding” (xingzhi 性智) like Mou’s “intellectual intuition,” and a “habituated mind” (xixin 習心) whose function isa “quantitative understanding” (liangzhi 量智) like Mou’s sensible intuition. See Jana S. Rošker, Searching for the Way: Theory of Knowledge in Pre-Modern and Modern China (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2008), 215–222. 13 XWZ, 408. Vid. Fung Yiu-ming 馮耀明, ‘Chaoyue neizai’ de misi: cong fenxi zhexue guandian kan dangdai xin Ruxue 「超越內在」的迷思: 從 分析哲學觀點看當代新儒學 [The Myth of the ‘Transcendent Immanent’: A Look at New Confucianism from the Perspective of Analytic Philosophy] (Hong Kong: Zhongwen Daxue, 2003), 91–93. It is this bimodality of subjects and the corresponding dual aspect of objects which forms the basis of what Mou calls “two-level ontology” (liangceng cunyoulun 兩層存有論) (XWZ, 38–39; YSL, 340.) 14 Though Mou observes that Kant tries (somewhat inconsistently) to main a distinction between “transcendental” (chaoyue 超越) and “transcendent” (chaojue 超絕) having to do with what Kant thinks can and cannot be known or inferred about the transcendental horizon and what lies beyond it (vid. Zheng Jiadong, Mou Zongsan, 132ff.), Mou himself does not insist on the distinction in his own thought, for because he believes that humans can possess intellectual intuition, he does not believe that our knowledge is severely limited by a transcendental horizon. 15 It is important to note that our perceptual apparatus processes them in a predictable rather than a random way, which is why we can generate reliable knowledge from our experiences with sensible intuition. 16 XWZ, 129.

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So all objects have both a transcendent and an immanent aspect, and this is what we often refer to as Mou’s “two-level ontology” (liangceng cunyoulun 兩層存有論). Mou thinks that this two-level model is one of the most important ideas to be found Chinese philosophy. As we will see, he believes that although many prominent thinkers have taught that a given thing can be either a transcendent thing or an immanent thing but not both, they are gravely mistaken. In Mou’s opinion, the best philosophers insist that anything which transcends the world of sensible experience nonetheless also dwells in that world in some guise or other. For this reason, although Mou sometimes speaks loosely about “transcendent things” and “immanent things,” this is somewhat misleading, and we must not forget that strictly speaking, “transcendent” and “immanent” are two aspects of the same object that correspond to the two kinds of intuition, not two different kinds of object. Similarly, when Mou speaks of “phenomena” and “things-in-themselves,” we should take this as referring elliptically to “objects in their immanent aspect” (or “objects as they appear to sensible intuition”) and “objects in their transcendent aspect (or “objects as they appear to intellectual intuition”). He is not referring to two separate sets of objects. To the contrary, he is virtually obsessed with overcoming the belief that they are separate, and as we will see later, he believes that Buddhist thinkers made their contribution to Chinese philosophy by developing the Tiantai idea of “buddha-nature.” The practical value of this two-level model of the universe for Mou, stated most broadly, is that they underwrite a certain kind of optimism. First, our universe does have moral meaning; it is not a meaningless jungle and we are not alone. Though we do not see it with the naked eye, the universe possesses a whole different aspect, quite apart from sensible properties, a hidden and unsurpassably important side which it discloses to anyone who can use the sagely intuition needed to see it. Furthermore, even before such time as we have that sagely vision, we non-sages are not alone. Sages do not dwell sequestered from us in a separate and privileged universe. They live here in the very same universe with the rest of us, amid the racetracks and speakeasies and war zones and flophouses.

CHAPTER THREE

WHAT THE BUDDHA TAUGHT— THE FABLE OF THE FIVE PERIODS Mou assembles Buddha-Nature and Prajñā more as an anthology of essays than a linear work, but he does arrange them according to a discernible plan. He begins with what he intends as an overview of the book, which functions not so much as an introduction which helps to warm the reader up for the contents to come as a group of samples, collected partly from previously published articles, of Mou’s opinions about what Mou judges to be the two overarching themes of Buddhist philosophy, namely buddha-nature and prajñā. Thereupon he explains and criticizes each of what he reckons as the major interpretations of the Buddhas’ message. But even Mou has a great deal to say about the Buddha’s latterday interpreters and the merits and demerits of their interpretations, but he speaks far less explicitly about the Buddha himself, what the Buddha intended to say, and why he said it in the way and the order that he did, even though Mou implicitly holds definite notions about all that, such that he feels entitled to write at such length adjudicating among the Buddha’s various interpreters. Therefore let us first reconstruct and spell out the notions about the canonic Buddha that underlie Mou’s buddhology. The Canonic Buddha and the Canon As a point of method, Mou chooses to treat the Buddha Śākyamuni as a sage and Buddhist scriptures as authentic communications, for practical purposes, of the Buddha’s message. Among modern academic buddhologists and philosophers, this is an uncommon methodological choice to say the least, but Mou has his reasons. Concerning the Buddha’s sagehood, Mou seems to find the canonic Buddha and his teachings to resemble what he would expect from a perfected person and an authority on perfection closely enough that Mou accepts him as a genuine sage.1 1

XT, 1:586; SJJ, 285.

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There are important qualifications to be added. First, though Mou does not advertise the fact, he only admits to what is really a very modest notion of what it means to be a perfected being, compared to more traditional accounts. For though canonic Buddhist and Confucian texts claim striking supernormal qualities for buddhas (of which, for buddhas, clairvoyance and clairaudience are only the most prosaic), Mou seems to think that they have spoken with poetic license. For although sages are notionally “unlimited” (wuxian 無限), Mou quietly admits that in truth actual sages such as Śākyamuni and Confucius are complete but miniature ( juti er wei 具體而微), or “same in quality but not in quantity” (zhi tong liang butong 質同量不同) as they would be if they were really unlimited beings, or that they are “functionally” (zuoyong di 作用地) all-encompassing but not objectively, ontologically so (zai keguan de cunyou shang 在客觀的存有上).2 Hence they do have many of the same limitations as any ordinary person. So, for example, when the Confucian tradition says that a sage is omniscient, Mou thinks this only means that he knows all there is to know about the heavenly principle (tianli 天理).3 Hence we could not expect a sage to be omniscient about sublunary matters such as how to pick winning horses, for instance, or construct an atomic bomb.4 Regarding the scriptures, Mou decides to treat them for practical purposes as useful communications of the Buddha’s teachings. Here again, this is a methodological conceit.5 Mou acknowledges that the

FB, 1016–1067. Also see FB, 1133; XT, 1:524–526. Vid. SJJ, 349. 4 XWZ, 121. In addition, Mou ultimately withholds full recognition of buddhas’ sagehood, classing them instead as “lopsided” (pianzhi xing 偏至型) sages since they do not acknowledge a moral law or heavenly principle which is the uncreated creator of everything and thereby are blocked from attaining the higher spiritual states (FB, 1023; XT, 1:571ff.). 5 For example, Mou notes: “It is not possible to rule clearly whether the concept of ‘buddha-nature as tathāgatagarbha and the myriad dharmas’ (rulaizang hengsha fofa foxing 如來藏恆沙佛法佛性) is already present in the Perfection of Prajñā scriptures. Ordinarily it is thought to have been brought up in late Mahāyāna tathāgatagarbha scriptures. However, if we think in terms of the [Tiantai] five-period classification of teachings, the Perfection of Prajñā scriptures were spoken in the fourth period [i.e. after all the other Mahāyāna scriptures] and would of course have known about it. One is a historical question, the other is a philosophical ( yili 義理) question. The five-period classification is talking philosophically. And if we think in terms of the statement ‘All dharmas tend toward permanence, pleasantness, self, and purity’ ( yiqie fa qu chang le wo jing 一切法趣常樂我淨) [which appears in nearly this form in the Great Perfection of Prajñā Sutra (Daizōkyō Gakujutsu Yōgo Kenkyūkai, ed., Taishō Shinshū Daizōkyō 大正 新修大蔵経 [New Taishō Compilation of the Tripitaka] (Tokyo: Taishō Issaikyō Kankōkai, 2 3

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scriptures are only representations of the Buddha’s words in the sense that they are faithful to his message, but certainly not as contemporary records of his speech.6 Mou stipulates that he will not take up the historical-critical question of whether all sutras attributed to the Buddha Śākyamuni are really attributable to him, but he does still treat the Buddha as their notional author.7 Mou also decides to presume the traditionally authoritative Chinese translations to be reliable unless he finds convincing reasons to doubt them. He thinks that translators such as Kumārajīva 鳩摩羅什 and Xuanzang 玄奘 won their fame by their real merits, and that they were probably sufficiently better-informed than latter-day translators and critics about the the texts they translated that there should be a high threshold to second-guessing them.8 And though Mou does refer extensively to the philological work of Tang Yongtong 湯用彤, Yinshun 印順, Ouyang Jian 歐陽漸, Wang Enyang 王恩洋, and Lü Cheng 呂澂 and says a good deal about their disputat=ions, like his teacher Xiong Shili 熊十力, he does not read Sanskrit or Tibetan, and he is not interested in historical philology for its own sake. Indeed he seldom even mentions making a deliberate selection among variant Chinese editions of texts. Rather he thinks philology is best used only as an aid to doing better metaphysics, and on that score he judges it prudent in most cases to defer to the judgment of the medieval authorities.9 Moreover, he decides to follow a medieval guide as he considers how to make sense of the myriad puzzle pieces of the enormous, hermeneutically convoluted Buddhist canon. Mou chooses to trust the Tiantai scriptural interpreter Zhiyi 智顗 (538–597) as a learned and reliable guide.10 In Zhiyi’s writings he finds something congenial to his own views and worthy of deferential study, and he accepts

1962), 220.6:248b11–12 inter alia, hereafter cited as T ), then even though the Perfection of Prajñā scriptures appeared early in history, they already seem to know of the statement that ‘the dharma body abides permanently’ ( fashen changzhu 法身常住). And yet ‘permanence, pleasantness, self-nature, and purity’ is precisely what is talked about in the Nirvana Sutra. Here we will be talking philosophically” (FB, 180). 6 YSL, 267–268; TZD, 288, 290, 293–294. 7 Vid. FB, i, 89, 576, 583–587, 631; TZD, 287ff. 8 FB, iv; NST, 279. 9 Vid FB, i, iv, vi–vii, 3, 180, 183–189; SX, 160; SJJ, 290; KL, 421–422; NST, 277–279. 10 FB, iii, vii, 587. Incidentally, for reasons not known to his students, Mou insisted that the name was properly pronounced Zhikaì.

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the minutely learned Zhiyi as the most reliable authority available. Although Mou speaks up when he thinks Zhiyi gets something wrong, he almost always defers to Zhiyi’s interpretive judgments. And when Mou requires clarification or elaboration, he turns to the later Tiantai authorities Jingxi Zhanran 荆溪湛然 (711–782) and Siming Zhili 四明 知禮 (960–1028), whom he treats as entirely faithful to Zhiyi’s intent. Though he criticizes them on occasion, it is only for willfully obscurant writing, not because they twist Zhiyi’s message.11 The Buddha’s Teaching In Mou’s opinion, the Buddha teaches the same basic metaphysical truths that we visited in Chapter Two, though under a different set of terms. First, there is a reality which Buddhists call “suchness” (ru 如, tathatā). Also, subjects have either of two modes of awareness. Ordinary creatures like us have sensible intuition, whereas enlightened subjects have sagely intellectual intuition, which Buddhists call prajñā (boruo 般若) (or, pleonastically, “prajñā wisdom” (boruo zhi 般若智)).12 In sensible intuition,13 says the Buddha, a mind “discriminates” ( fenbie 分別, Skt. vikalpati) or “conceptualizes” (bianji 遍計, Skt. parikalpati) or “grasps”

Mou does not say a great deal about the process by which he chooses Zhiyi as his chief hermeneutical guide, except to mention Zhiyi’s great learning and spiritual attainments and to explain that “[w]hen I put effort into immersing myself [in the Buddhist canon], I felt that Tiantai [Zhiyi] was quite good, whereupon I gradually came to particularly appreciate the Tiantai line. This is not a bias, but one could call it a sort of subjective impression. A subjective impression cannot fail to have something to do with one’s particular temperament; still, the crucial thing is a subjective impression, and as I immersed myself over a long time I saw there was an objective, doctrinal necessity to it. I believe that if we do not approach it through the Tiantai ranking scheme ( panjiao 判教), we must have a very hard time grasping the differences and decisive turning points among the doctrinal systems [that arose] over the course of the Chinese absorption of Buddhism” (FB, vii). For my part, I think that a helpful way to explain Mou’s sustained feeling of kinship with Zhiyi is to say that he finds in Zhiyi a close analog to what he treasures in his favored Confucian thinkers such as Hu Wufeng, namely a theory of the identity of ultimate value with the universe of objects. 11 E.g. FB, 257, 763. 12 FB, 58ff.; MLL, xii; cf. XWZ, 38. 13 Mou uses several terms interchangeably to refer to mind in this mode, such as the “limited mind” ( youxian xin 有限心), the “mind of [deluded] consciousness” (shixin 識心), or the “thinking” or “epistemic mind” (renzhi xin 認知心) (e.g., XWZ, xv).

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(zhi 執, Skt. grahati ) things using mind-concocted concepts.14 Buddhists analyze this process using a complex array of technical concepts, such as dhātu, vijñāna, and sa skāra, which are far from home for the modern student. However, says Mou, we can re-express the purport of the Buddha’s teachings about this process in the terms provided by Kant’s theory of “forms” and “categories.”15 Here the “forms” refer to the “forms of sensibility” (ganxing de xingshi 感性的形式), namely space, time, and (here Mou adds to Kant) number;16 the “categories” are “categories of understanding” (zhixing de fanchou 知性的範疇), the “formal concepts” (xingshi gainian 形式概念) by means of which the mind discriminates among things in terms of identity and non-identity, causality, substance and property, and existence and non-existence.17 In applying these forms and categories, the discriminating mind does not apprehend things as they really are (rushi zhi 如是知 or 如實知). Or, putting it in more Kantian terms, it does not intuit things-inthemselves (wu zishen 物自身, wu zhi zai qi ziji 物之在其自己), objects in their transcendent aspect. Rather, by discriminating or grasping objects through its categories,18 the subject apprehends them in their immanent aspect, as “phenomena” (xianxiang 現象), things located in time and space, with quantity and properties and identity relations. In contrast, a perfected buddha’s prajñā, or intellectual intuition, apprehends “suchness” or objects as they really are, without employing the distorting categories.19 And note that since spatiality, temporality,

Mou frequently provides English translations for his technical terms, but sometimes they prove unidiomatic. For 執 (zhi) he uses “attachment,” but I will substitute “grasping,” also a standard buddhologist’s translation, on the grounds that in English “attachment” calls to mind an emotionally charged clinging, whereas Mou has in mind something entirely pre-conscious and “transcendental” in Kant’s sense. 15 FB, 92, 100, and especially 141ff. Here, drawing on Xiong’s Comprehensive Explanation of Buddhist Terms (Fojia mingxiang tongshi 佛家名相通釋) of the twenty-four cittaviprayukta-sa skāras (bu xiangying xingfa 不相應行法) as explained in the Dasheng guang wuyun lun 大乘廣五蘊論 and Cheng weishi lun 成唯識論, Mou construes these sa skāras as functionally comparable to Kant’s forms and categories. Also see XWZ, 398–399; SJJ, 261; SY, 177, 179. Vid. YSL, 337. Mou is not the first Chinese buddhologist to see such a connection. Zhang Binglin 章炳麟 also saw Yogācāra philosophy as perhaps representing the perfection of Kant. 16 On Mou’s reasons for construing number as a form, see FB, 151. 17 SYL, 208; FB, 100, 151, 175. 18 For simplicity’s sake I will begin to refer to forms and categories together simply as “categories,” since for our purposes we do not need to distinguish between the two. 19 XWZ, 401ff.; FB, 1010. Mou sometimes speaks of the discriminating mind as “distorting” (niuqu 扭曲) things when it subjects them to its categories (e.g. SJJ, 305), 14

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quantity, causality and the like are functions of the distorting categories, it follows that objects in themselves do not have determinate locations, times, causes, or even identities—no kind of determinate finitude at all. How the Buddha Unveiled His Teaching Progressively Mou also decides that he will play along with Zhiyi’s elaborate story about the architectonic design of the Buddha’s teachings, at least as an exegetically useful fiction.20 By the time Zhiyi was born, in the sixth century C.E., Buddhists in China had been receiving a confusing welter of Buddhist scriptures, or sutras, for over three hundred years as they trickled in from abroad piecemeal, in no particular order.21 They had a hard time deciding how to make sense of this avalanche of texts, which appeared not to fit together very well. With few exceptions, Buddhists accepted all these texts as authoritative scripture, but they also noticed that the texts seemed highly discrepant in the doctrines they taught, to the point that some seemed to flatly contradict others. To explain these differences and secure the canon against disintegration, Buddhist scholastics like Zhiyi developed intricate schemes for “ranking the doctrines” (in Chinese, panjiao 判教).22 Picking up an old Mahāyāna belief, they postulated that the Buddha unveiled his teaching progressively, in stages, so that his pupils could absorb his surprising and difficult teachings gradually, in graded steps.

but he does not mean in any way to denigrate phenomena and the discriminating mind. Rather, he takes pains to show that the formation and behavior of phenomena is regular (i.e. rule-governed) and therefore “objective” (i.e. scientifically knowable) despite their also having a transcendental counterpart which defies empirical observation. See, for example, FB, 100–101, 362–364; SJJ, 261, 272–273, 277–278; Mou Zongsan 牟宗三, Siyin shuo yanjiang lu 四因說演講錄 [Lectures on Four Explanations of Causation] (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1998), 157 (hereafter cited as SYL). 20 FB, 180. 21 Mou Zongsan 牟宗三, “Fojia de cunyou lun 佛家的存有論 [Buddhistic Ontology],” Ehu yuekan 1, no. 6 (1975), 242 (hereafter cited as FC). 22 A more literal rendering is “classifying” or “judging” the teachings. However, it is important to understand that this is not undertaken in a disinterested spirit but a doxographic one. The purpose of this kind of writing is to assign a rank order to the various teachings.

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First Period: Flower Garland Sutra As Zhiyi told the story, 23 at first the Buddha Śākyamuni attempted to convey his enlightened wisdom all at once but met with disappointing results. Soon after the Buddha attained enlightenment, having spent a week rapt in dharmic bliss and still sitting under the same tree, he gushed forth an ecstatic description of the wonders of the universe as he now could see it, in the discourse now recorded as the Flower Garland Sutra (Huayan jing 華嚴經, Avata saka-sūtra). The problem was that the Buddha did not take his audience into account. He made no concessions to the limitations of his listeners and their deeply deluded way of seeing and thinking. As a result, most of them were utterly baffled by his torrent of speech (which lasted an entire week!) and sat “as though deaf and dumb” (rulong ruya 如聾如啞), taking none of it in.24 Thereupon the Buddha started again from the very bottom, making his teaching intelligible by revealing it gradually, step by dialectical step. Over the next twenty-three years, as he gave the sermons which are traditionally thought to have been recorded in the Hīnayāna and Mahāyāna sutras,25 he gradually unveiled a panoply of particular doctrines. Second Period: Hīnayāna Scriptures Among these, he taught that there are many kinds of creatures sharing our universe.26 Most are not enlightened. Not only are there human beings and animals in our universe, but there are also hell-dwellers, hungry ghosts, titan-like creatures called asuras, and devas living in the

23 Mou gives his main account of Zhiyi’s chronology of the five stages in FB, 619–624. 24 FB, 620. Also see FB, 491–493, referring to Xianshou Fazang’s narration of this period. 25 Following the Tiantai writers, Mou calls these the Deer Park period (luyuan shi 鹿苑時) and what we might translate as the universalist or latitudinarian period ( fangdeng 方等, representing the Skt. vaipulya). Though nowadays buddhologists avoid the name “Hīnayāna” or “lesser vehicle” as needlessly prejudicial, Mou uses it without embarrassment since, in his considered judgment, these teachings really are a lesser vehicle. 26 Naturally ‘creature’ here simply means a living being—what is usually called a “sentient being” according to the cacophonous conventions of what Paul Griffiths calls “Buddhist hybrid English”—and not the much older, distinctly Christian sense of something creatum a Deo.

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Unenlightened creatures

Enlightened sages

Hell-dwellers Hungry ghosts Animals Humans Asuras Devas

Arhats Pratyeka-buddhas Bodhisattvas Buddhas

heavens. Apart from these, there are also a handful of kinds of enlightened beings called “sages” (sheng 聖, ārya) including, of course, the buddhas themselves. Again following the Tiantai tradition, Mou thus counts ten kinds of beings. The ten kinds of creatures live in ten “worlds.” The nine kinds of unenlightened creatures each experience different kinds of things, or dharmas. For example, a hell-dweller sees such dharmas as lakes of fire, frozen wastelands, cruel guards, and instruments of torture. We human beings do not see such or experience the same things as helldwellers. We do not see their lakes of fire or the horse-headed guards who lower the hapless sufferers into them. Instead we experience a set of things which is peculiar to humans: magazine stands, pear trees, automobiles, and also tastes, sounds, emotions, and a good many other intangible objects of human experience.27 Since there are ten different kinds of creatures,28 each with a distinctive mental apparatus, we can speak of ten different kinds of dharmas, one for each kind of creature. Tiantai Buddhists call them “dharma-types” or “dharma-worlds” ( fajie 法界, dharmadhātu).29 The “dharma-world” of hell-dwellers comprises every sort of dharma which it would be possible for a hell-dweller to perceive (most of them horrifying, of course), and the “dharma-world”

One might wonder whether, when humans feel terrible pain or hunger, we are experiencing the same dharmas as hell-dwellers or hungry ghosts. From the Tiantai perspective which Mou adopts, the answer would have to be no. Human hunger belongs to one class of dharmas, and hungry ghost hunger belongs to another. 28 It is the Tiantai tradition which favors the number ten. Other Buddhists group creatures into slightly different schemes, but this is not important for our purposes. 29 ZZZ, 255, quoting T 1911.46:b23ff. Mou prefers a reading like “dharma-type,” glossing 界 as 類 (FB, 518; SYL, 122–23). I should caution the reader that throughout the long history of Buddhism, Buddhists have used the word fajie or dharmadhātu in many different ways, none of them very simple. I will go over some of them in due course, but for the moment I want to keep things clear by giving the interpretation of the word that Mou thinks is the most important and most illuminating one. 27

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of humans is the sum total of all dharmas which could be experienced by a human. Likewise with “dharma-worlds” of hungry ghosts, animals, devas, and so on. (Incidentally, a creature’s dharma-world includes not only the concrete things that are encountered by a given kind of subject, but also his or her “mental furniture.” For example, the dharma-world of hell-dwellers would include not only fire and ice, tormenting demons, instruments of torture, and mutilated bodies, but also sensations of heat and cold and pain, fear, and the wish to escape.) As we know, unenlightened creatures experience phenomenal dharmas, or subjective appearances, that do not exactly match things as they really are.30 This is because we can only intuit them with our deluded, discriminating minds of sensible intuition. Our discriminating minds apply the forms and categories to things as they really are and thereupon perceive them as delusive dharmas. Hell-dwellers see them as hell dweller-type dharmas, humans as human-type dharmas, and so on. Now, buddhas also experience dharmas31—after all, they have intuition too—but a buddha’s dharma-world is special because it is the only one which is not distorted. Alone among the ten kinds of living beings, buddhas actually do experience the objective universe as it truly is.32 Therefore the buddhas’ dharma-world is the only one in which the dharmas within it are nothing other than the undistorted objects (things-as-they-actually-are). The reason for this, as we know, is that unlike unenlightened beings, buddhas intuit objects with true-seeing prajñā or intellectual intuition. At this second stage of the Buddhas’ preaching, however, Mou thinks that he has still left a few important points unclear. One of

30 From this point forward I will use ‘creature’ to refer specifically to unenlightened creatures. Following the usual Chinese Buddhist convention, Mou uses ‘zhongsheng 眾生’ this way, though at one point he does observe, following a remark which Zhiyi attributed to Nāgārjuna (zhongsheng wushangzhe fo shi 眾生無上者佛是), that strictly speaking buddhas are also a kind of creature (FB, 789; T 1726.34:878c6). 31 Mou normally uses the words “see” ( jian 見) and “experience” ( jingyan 經驗) when talking about limited, discriminating minds. In the case of enlightened minds he generally uses words such as chengxian 呈現, xianxian 顯現, and langxian 郎現that have the force of “being presented,” “appearing” or “becoming apparent,” and “manifest” or “being manifested.” (There are exceptions, however, as in FB, 614.) For clarity and accessibility, I simply use “see” and “experience” when talking about either kind of subject. 32 FB, 601.

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them, he thinks, is extremely consequential, and is debated for the rest of Buddhist history. It is the question of buddha-nature ( foxing 佛性). For our purposes we can express it this way: How different are buddhas from us, and how can we become buddhas? So for example, if I want to become a buddha, how much do I have to change about myself? Do I need a different kind of body than I have now? Do I need a different kind of mind? Will it take aeons, or could it happen very soon? Could I become a buddha while still living in the very world that I inhabit now, or would I have to go somewhere else? Will my chances for becoming a buddha depend at all on luck, or do I have complete control of them? Mou thinks that there is no short answer to these questions. In some ways, buddhas are so different from us that according to certain exegetical traditions it is almost a miracle that we can see them and know about them at all.33 But in some other important but subtle ways, buddhas are scarcely any different from us. The full story, on Mou’s analysis, is so complicated that it took the Buddha nearly fifty years to present all its pieces one by one, and it took his followers about a thousand years to explain in philosophical form with even minimal clarity. As we will see later, Mou believes that the surprise ending will be that all buddhas lead double lives, as it were. They live as ordinary sentient beings, and also at the same time as buddhas.34 For example, for purposes of compassionate ministry, a buddha might actually choose to live as a hungry ghost. This would mean that he had the body of a hungry ghost—with a cavernous, hungry belly and a piteously tiny pinhole of a mouth—and also the discriminating mind and the subjective experiences of a hungry ghost. That is, he would “live in the dharma-world” of a hungry ghost, for example seeing himself amid rivers of blood and lakes of slime. (This does not mean that he would 33 Readers of Buddhist literature know that much of it is devoted to emphasizing the pains which buddhas must take to make themselves even partially comprehensible to us. In fact, as we will see later, according to some schools of thought they have to go to superhuman lengths simply in order that they can be seen by our distorting senses. And despite this elaborate outreach, Buddhists frequently say, creatures still seldom have a chance to meet a real buddha, or hear a buddha’s teachings, or even hear the name “Buddha.” It is an opportunity “scarcely met with in a billion eons” (baiqianwan jie nan zaoyu 百千萬劫難遭遇), according to one common liturgical formula. 34 FB, 239, 620; SJJ, 382. This is what Mou will call the doctrine that buddhas “become buddhas as the nine dharma-realms” ( ji jiu fajie er chengfo 即九界而成佛) (FB, 717, 981–982).

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also suffer the agonies of a hungry ghost—by definition, buddhas do not experience suffering, and in fact a buddha would be quite happy as a hungry ghost. But outwardly he would submit to the same privations that afflict hungry ghosts).35 Yet at the same time, he also would be a fully awakened buddha, with the prajñā, the intellectual intuition, and all the other traits of a buddha, such as compassion and unsurpassable happiness. Moreover, it will be revealed that buddhas as a group still experience material things and all the other sorts of dharmas that you and I do—shoes and ships and sealing wax, cabbages and kings. As we will see, this is a somewhat suprising teaching, for the Buddha allowed many of his disciples to believe that only deluded creatures still live in such dharma-world and that buddhas shed or outgrow them when they attain enlightenment.36 Third Period: Mahāyāna Scriptures As time went by, the Buddha gradually laid less emphasis on the many ways in which buddhas are so different from us ordinary beings and, bit by bit, supplemented his earlier teachings with further information about the ways in which we ourselves are somewhat akin to buddhas, most of which are somewhat abstract but still very consequential in Mou’s view. These later speeches form the scriptures of the “Mahāyāna” or “Great Vehicle.”37 There the Buddha revealed, for example, that we all can become buddhas. Earlier, in his Hīnayāna teachings, he left his audience with the impression that only extremely few creatures would attain buddhahood, which of course is the pinnacle of spiritual excellence, and the vast majority of creatures would only arrive at a slightly lesser (though still very exalted) state and then stop there.38 Now the Buddha revealed that in fact, any sentient being

35 Mou Zongsan 牟宗三, “Yuanshan lun zhiyin 《圓善論》指引 [Guide to the Treatise on the Summum Bonum],” Ehu 22, no. 1 (1996), 5 (hereafter cited as YZ); SJJ, 383. 36 XT, 1:614–15. 37 Among these, Mou refers most often to the Śrīmālādevī-si ha-nāda sūtra, Lankāvatāra sūtra, Sa dhi-nirmocana sūtra, and Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa-sūtra. 38 FB, 626. The less exalted state is that of either an arhat (aluohan 阿羅漢 or shengwen 聲聞) or a pratyeka-buddha (pizhi fo 辟支佛 or ziliao han 自了漢 or yuanjue 緣覺), who are sometimes referred to as “[beings of] the two vehicles” (ersheng 二乘) (vid. FB, 596–97). These two are said in a great variety of ways to have attained a spiritual estate which on the one hand gives them a sort of enlightenment but on the other hand is not equal to the buddha’s supreme, unexcelled enlightenment.

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at all has the potential to become a buddha. This is because, the Buddha teaches, all sentient beings possess what Mou calls a “transcendent” (chaoyue 超越) cause or basis of buddhahood, or “buddhanature” ( foxing 佛性).39 When we say “transcendent cause of buddhahood,” this sounds quite exotic and mysterious, but it turns out be quite prosaic. Suppose I ask, “What causes fluency in Italian?” Obviously, part of the answer would be that I need a good deal of experience in which I interact with Italian speakers, grasp the meaning of their utterances, and develop facility at reproducing like utterances. But beyond that, I also need certain deep requisites, a “preparedness for language.” After all, if I didn’t possess a brain which is wired in such a way that I can understand sounds and symbols as meaningful tokens of a language, I could spend all the years of my life hearing Italian spoken without ever acquiring the language. This is why, all over Italy, pet gerbils and tortoises regularly fail to master the language of Dante. On the interpretation of Buddhism which Mou ultimately chooses, this mysterious-sounding “transcendent” cause of buddhahood will turn out to refer to this kind of deep preparedness for it. Essentially it will boil down to being a sentient being rather than an inanimate object.40 However, as we will see, Mou thinks that for pedagogical reasons the Buddha was not nearly so plain-spoken, especially at this point. Instead he merely introduced the word and left it an open question exactly what he meant by it. As a result, Buddhist scholastics later

XT, 1:586; SJJ, 285. Students of the later history of Tiantai thought might object in advance to my saying this. After all, Jingxi Zhanran claimed very famously in his Vajra Scalpel (Jingang pi 金剛錍) (T 1932) that even non-sentient creatures have buddha-nature, i.e. can become buddhas. However, Mou reads this as the kind of flamboyant but inflated pronouncement that is the stock-in-trade of the great Buddhists, in which one makes a stunning-sounding, ear-catching claim (e.g. “Bodhisattvas are not bodhisattvas”) but, when pressed for details, concedes that he is deliberately using the words in out-of-theordinary ways to restate a commonplace truth in a novel way. What Zhanran actually means, as Mou reads him, is that since (a) enlightened beings have the deep requisites for buddhahood, and (b) enlightened beings see inanimate objects as not separate from themselves in a certain sense, we can conceivably say that (c) inanimate objects share buddha-nature too (vid. FB, 240–257). This is permissible, by a sort of poetic license, but really Zhanran is playing with words. His claim is directly analogous to saying that since (a) I am a scholar of religion, and (b) I see myself as not separate, in a certain sense, from the ecosystem that I live in, I am therefore justified in saying that (c) my ecosystem is also a scholar of religion. 39 40

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argue a great deal about the detailed picture, and in Mou’s estimation most of them get it wrong. Fourth Period: The Perfection of Prajñā Scriptures In both the Hīnayāna and Mahāyāna discourses the Buddha explained a great many particulars to his disciples. He explained the particulars of suffering and its cessation (the four noble truths), of the composition of human beings (the five skandhas), of the kinds of rebirths in the realm of suffering (the six paths), of the various soteriological values of different deeds (good, bad, and neutral ), of the three kinds of karma (that of body, speech, and mind), of the major steps toward salvation (the eightfold path), of the thirty-two major and eighty minor marks of buddhas and other great beings, of the particular conditions of bodhisattva practice (there are thirty-seven), of the manifold stages of the bodhisattva path (variously reckoned as ten, or forty-two, or fifty-two, or some other number), and so on.41 In dispensing these countless particulars, the Buddha was knowingly courting a certain misunderstanding, Mou thinks, because he was using “discriminating speech” ( fenbie shuo 分別說). That is, he talked about things unreservedly in the terms offered by the discriminating mind’s forms and categories: place, time, number, cause, identity and difference. We can usually recognize discriminating speech by its language of delimitation (xianding 限定), such as definite description; conditionals and disjunctives; terms of number, duration, extent, or location; or acknowledgements of non-identity.42 For instance, Mou notes, we can spot discrimination in the sentences, “Once the Buddha was in Jetavana” and “I [the Buddha] have taught the dharma for fortynine years,” because they clearly show the Buddha discriminating with respect to location and duration.43 And we can recognize it in the Buddha’s exhortation, “Refrain from all that is bad and practice all that is good,” where “what is bad” is held to be non-identical to “what is good.” These are just the most obvious examples. In fact, the Buddha (and anyone else) is using discriminating language almost anytime he speaks, at least in propositional sentences. So for example, he was discriminating whenever he formed a subject-predicate sentence, simply

41 42 43

FB, 3ff.; TZD, 290; NST, 282. TZD, 289. On delimitation also see Mou’s preface to MLL. SJJ, 355; MLL, xviii.

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Formal name

Representative tradition

1 Tripitaka Theory (藏教) 2 Shared Theory (通教)

Hīnayāna Madhyamaka, the emptiness tradition (空宗) Late Chinese Yogācāra

3 Beginning Separation Theory (始別教) 4 Mature Separation Theory (終別教) 5 Perfect or Complete Theory (圓教)

Shelun School (攝論師) Huayan tradition Tiantai tradition

inasmuch as he posited a thing or being which was distinct from some others and had some properties but not others.44 So if the Buddha was to speak at all, he necessarily had to discriminate.45 But it is a slippery thing to teach people how not to discriminate by using discriminating speech. After all, on the one hand the Buddha was supposed to exemplify the non-discrimination of prajñā, yet he also explained his teachings discriminatingly. Mightn’t someone infer that, somehow or other, prajñā actually does discriminate? Following Zhiyi, Mou concludes that the Buddha tried to correct this sort of error in the fourth period of his teaching, in which he spoke what are called the “Perfection of Prajñā” (boruo boluomi 般若波羅蜜, prajñā-pāramitā) sutras.46

44 For a detailed discussion of the notions of discrimination held in various traditions of Buddhist thought, see Paul Williams, “Some Aspects of Language and Construction in the Madhyamaka,” Journal of Indial Philosophy 8 (1980): 27ff. 45 Vid. FB, 1181. 46 For his interpretation of the Perfection of Prajñā sutras in general, Mou relies on the Sutra of the Perfection of Prajñā in 25,000 Lines (Pañcavi śati-sāhasrikā-prajñāpāramitāsūtra), translated in the early fifth century by Kumārajīva into a Chinese version entitled the Great Perfection of Prajñā Sutra (Chin. Mohe boruo boluomi jing 摩訶般若波羅 蜜經, also called Da boruo jing 大般若經 or Dapin boruo jing 大品般若經) (T 223). For a historical treatment of the Perfection of Prajñā sutras, see Paul M. Williams, Mahāyāna Buddhism: the Doctrinal Foundations (London and New York: Routledge, 1989), 40ff. Modern students of Buddhism may find it disorienting to reflect that, in this Tiantai-based classification, the prajñā-pāramitā sutras are not grouped with the Mahāyāna sutras but in a separate class. After all, some of them are among the earliest sutras we have which evince the features that we associate with Mahāyāna sutras. We must recall, therefore, that this scheme of classification is not informed by historical-critical chronology but by a traditional chronology that is based on the perceived theological significance of the sutras’ contents. In this scheme, the prajñā-pāramitā are separated off from the Mahāyāna category of sutras not because they are considered un-Mahāyāna but because they are a sort of “Mahāyāna-plus.” They presuppose the Mahāyāna sutras and their teachings and then provide supplementary comment.

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He hammered at the same lesson everywhere in those sutras, varying the wording but never the message: prajñā does not discriminate, does not grasp. It does not perceive the universe of objects as things in space and in time, with quantity and causal and identity relations.47 For this reason, Mou characterizes the Perfection of Prajñā sutras as “abolishing phenomena and dispelling grasping” (dangxiang qianzhi 蕩相 遣執) and “merge [things] and eliminate [grasping]” (rongtong taotai 融 通淘汰).48 Again and again, the Buddha repeated this same lesson, though he said it in a great many ways. Perhaps the most famous was by saying that dharmas are all dependently arisen and therefore “empty of self-nature” (kong wu zixing 空無自性, svabhāva-śūnyatā). In Mou’s interpretation of this doctrine, dependent arising refered not primarily to dharmas’ depending mechanically on other dharmas (like a game of billiards) but, in the first instance, to their being arisen in dependence on the mind’s categorial discrimination. Likewise, when the Buddha says a thing is “empty of self-nature,” once again he means chiefly (though not exclusively) that it lacks “self-nature” because it is a phenomenon, a thing-as-it-appears-to-a-discriminating-mind.49 If there is no mind or no discrimination, there is no phenomenon. So phenomena lack selfnature in the sense that you cannot have phenomena without a mind for them to appear to.50 I might add that, for my part, what I find most curious about this classification is that it supposes that the Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa precedes the prajñā-pāramitā period. I find the Vimalakīrti so full of distinctly prajñā pāramitā-like utterances that it is hard for me to imagine anyone not concluding that it is clearly referring to them. 47 XWZ, 369–370. On the subjective orientation of this body of doctrine, see SJJ, 358; Mou Zongsan 牟宗三, Mou Zongsan shengping jiangxue shilu 牟宗三先生生平講學 實錄 [A Record of Lectures from the Career of Mou Zongsan] (Taipei: Guoli Taiwan Daxue tushuguan, 2006), 0267a 26:30 (hereafter cited as MJS ). 48 FB, 10–11; SJJ, 353–354. 49 SYL, 142. 50 This works in slightly different ways for different types of dharmas. In the Sutra of Perfection of Prajñā in 25,000 Lines, Mou says, the Buddha tacitly recognized three distinct types of “dharma,” each “dependently arisen and empty of self-nature” in a distinct way: (1) First, the Buddha treated material things (and indeed all dharmas of the five skandhas) as “concrete things” (shiwu 實物) (FB, 46, 55). These are considered “empty of self-nature” in the sense that, as phenomenal items in sensible experience (rather than intellectual intuition) with phenomenal characteristics (identity, causal, temporal, and spatial relations), they depend on the minds’ discrimination. (2) The Buddha recognized states of concrete things as a second type of dharma. An example of this is arising or birth (sheng 生, utpatti), a dharma mentioned ubiquitously in the sutras. Naturally, ‘birth’ does not so much refer to a concrete object

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So what would it take for something to have this “self-nature?” The answer is that it would have to be a distorted dharma and not a distorted dharma, at the same time and in the same sense, which of course is impossible. That is, it would have to be both a phenomenon (a “thing which appears” to the discriminating mind) and it would also have to be an undistorted thing-is-it-really-is (which only buddhas can see). It would have to be an object of sensible intuition or discrimination, and also not be that—in other words, it would have to be both distorted and, at the same time in the same sense, not distorted.51 That is nonsense. However, as pieces of rhetoric, the Perfection of Prajñā sutras are much more varied, and generally less abstract, than that. Much of the time the Buddha gets his message across by talking about “the great bodhisattvas,” using them as exemplars of prajñā and then telling us how different their experience of prajñā is from our discriminating experience. So, for example, he frequently says things like this: “In practicing the perfection of prajñā, great bodhisattvas do not see ‘matter’ as ‘arisen’ nor as ‘extinguished’, not ‘impure’ or ‘pure’, ‘increasing’ or ‘decreasing’.”52 What he means, in Mou’s interpretation, is that since the mind of prajñā (represented here by the bodhisattva) does not discriminate, it does not see a thing and pick it out as “matter” and attribute to it properties such as “impurity” or “purity.” All such operations belong strictly to discriminating thought. Put more plainly,

as to a state of things, a certain configuration and sequence of concrete objects. (Likewise “old age,” “sickness,” and “death,” and “suffering,” “clinging,” “impermanence,” “uncleanliness,” and so on.) When the Buddha calls these state-type dharmas “empty of self-nature,” he means first that they are not concrete objects but merely words referring loosely to contingent arrangements of concrete objects (which are themselves empty of self-nature), and second and even more fundamentally that they too depend on discrimination via the categories and hence mean nothing to prajñā. (See FB, 51–52; SYL, 178–179; SJJ, 270–271). (3) Finally, the Buddha reckoned the categories themselves as “empty of self-nature” too since they also depend on discrimination and are not intuited by prajñā (FB, 55). The formal concept of space is not itself an item in sensible experience, but it gives sensible experience form and makes it possible. 51 In Mou’s very dense technical phrase, it would be “a real being which is objectively self-existing” (keguan zicun de shiyou 客觀自存的實有) (FB, 161, 174–75). Appropriately parsed, this is a way of saying that it would be a concrete object, or “real being” (shiyou 實有), and hence a thing with phenomenal characteristics, but would be non-mind-dependent (zicun 自存) and hence an objective (keguan 客觀) entity, or thing-as-it-actually-is. 52 T 223.8:278a17ff. Quoted in FB, 10.

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since prajñā does not discriminate, it does not see matter, much less see it as arising or extinguished or impure or pure. Moreover, prajñā does not even think in such terms. For example, Mou could have pointed out this passage in the Sutra in 25,000 Lines, in which the Buddha explains: When practicing the perfection of prajñā, a great bodhisattva does not think, ‘Here are dharmas coming together with other dharmas’, nor ‘not coming together with them’, nor ‘[here are dharmas which are] like other dharmas’, nor ‘unlike other dharmas’. And why not? Because the great bodhisattva does not see ‘these dharmas’ and ‘those dharmas’, whether as ‘coming together’ or ‘not coming together’, ‘like’ or ‘unlike’.53

We should notice, by the way, that the Buddha is again emphasizing the ways in which an enlightened person is completely different from ordinary creatures. Because highly advanced bodhisattvas and buddhas have prajñā, they experience the universe in a radically different way. The experience of prajñā is so very unlike our much humbler experience of sensible intuition that we cannot even imagine it. It is useless for the Buddha even to try to tell us about it except to impress upon us that it is nothing like what we are used to. In the relatively plainspoken examples above, the Buddha used verbs of “thinking” and “seeing as” to call attention to the fact that he was trying to speak, for the moment, not about what a given phenomenon is, in the ordinary, discriminating sense, but about how it seems (or rather, does not seem) from the vantage point of prajñā.54 Sometimes Mou expresses this by saying that in the prajñā sutras the Buddha is speaking “functional” (zuoyong de 作用的) rather than “ontological” (cunyoulun de 存有論的) truths, or answering “how?” questions rather than “what is?” questions.55 He is telling us how prajñā experiences what our ordinary, discriminating minds experience as phenomenal things, in order to help us learn the skill of reproducing that sort of experience ourselves. He is not trying, in these discourses, to go farther

T 223.8:224b20–24. Also see FB, 64. Richard Gombrich makes an almost identical distinction in almost exactly the same terms as Mou in his description of what he conjectures were the intended teachings of the Buddha (How Buddhism Began: The Conditioned Genesis of the Early Teachings, 2nd. ed. (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), 27ff.). But unlike Gombrich, Mou thinks that eventually the Buddha does tell us the ontological status of things, just not in the relatively lowly speeches of the Hīnayāna sutras. 55 FB, 1133; XWZ, 404–05; SJJ, 127; SYL, 76. 53 54

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and pin down what they are, simply and without qualification (i.e. their ontological status). But according to Mou, in the Perfection of Prajñā sutras the Buddha also gestured to the difference between the experience of discrimination and prajñā in still another, more attention-grabbing way, with odd-sounding paradoxes (guijue 詭譎, guici 詭辭). That is, by his diction he deliberately appears to say something absurd. Sometimes he does this in a single sentence, as when he says, “All sentient beings are actually not sentient beings”.56 Though Mou does not put it in these terms, he seems to read it as a clever contraction of what is actually a longer statement. Stated in full, what the Buddha means is that sentient beings do not register with prajñā as “sentient beings” as we see and conceptualize them with our discriminating minds. In fact, no phenomenal, determinate things register as such with prajñā. As Mou likes to say, “The singular, true characteristic is what is called the absence of characteristics” (shixiang yi xiang suowei wuxiang 實相一相所謂無相). This is certainly a strange declaration if ever there was one, but it simply means that, as an invariable fact, where the discriminating mind sees phenomenal characteristics, prajñā sees none.57 Sometimes the Buddha delivered these paradoxes less bluntly. Instead of a paradoxical one-liner, he said something which sounded like an obvious contradiction of cornerstone doctrines from his own earlier discourses. For example, when he said that things are “neither arisen nor extinguished,” he seemed to contradict his own elementary teachings in which he was forever explaining the arising and extinction of craving, cognition, suffering, and scores of other things. What he meant, once again, was just that prajñā does not see or think of things as “arisen” or “extinguished” or anything else. Therefore Mou thinks that in his prajñā discourses the Buddha is doing something quite different than in the Hīnayāna and Mahāyāna discourses, something Mou calls a “critique” (pipan 批判). Mou labels the Buddha’s earlier discourses, where he “discriminatingly” expounded mountains of particular facts, the “first-level” discourses, and he calls the prajñā discourses “second-level” (di’er xu 第二序) or meta-level T 235.8:750b26–7. E.g. SYL, 176; FB, 1205–1206; YSL, 278, 281; cf. FB, 139; XWZ, 18. It is not scriptural, though Mou sometimes implies otherwise and misattributes it at least once (SJJ, 269). 56 57

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discourses, since there the Buddha “critiques” all those earlier teachings of his.58 Although in recent decades many English-speaking academics have become accustomed to use ‘critique’ to mean something like “finding fault,” Mou is using the word in its Kantian sense here, to mean “a learnèd examination.” Therefore when he says that the Buddha critiqued his own teachings, he did not mean that he retracted them. He merely commented on them and corrected possible misapplications of the discriminating terms he used there.59 Fifth Period: Lotus and Nirvana Sutras However, the Buddha still had not given his complete teaching. Despite the name, the Perfection of Prajñā sutras were only “perfect” or definitive in one certain respect, Mou thinks. In those sutras, the Buddha was doing his best to tell us what it is like to have the experience of prajñā, how prajñā experiences what our ordinary, discriminating minds experience as spatio-temporal things, as a way of helping us learn the skill of reproducing that sort of experience ourselves.60 (In Mou’s often-difficult terminology, the teachings of the prajñā sutras61 are “functionally perfect” (zuoyong de yuan 作用的圓),62 because they represent the Buddha’s last word on the “wondrous functioning of prajñā” (boruo de miaoyong 般若的妙用).63 However, Mou says they are still missing something. They do not go on to tell us more affirmatively about what buddhas and other beings and things actually are and SJJ, 367–368. Mou takes this to be the point of the Great Treatise on the Perfection of Prajñā’s calling this a “different dharma gate” ( yi famen 異法門) (FB, 12–15, referring to T 1509.25:62b6–c11). 60 FB, 89. 61 On a cursory reading of Mou, one might object to this phrase that Mou specifically says that in the Perfection of Prajñā sutras the Buddha does not add new doctrines (e.g. FB, 3). This is true, but Mou is speaking elliptically here, as he so often does. The point here is not that the Buddha is not conveying anything new, but rather that he is not adding further doctrines of the sort revealed in the discourses of the second and third periods, i.e. what Mou calls ‘discriminating’ ones. He is not expanding the accumulated stock of technical terms but rather adds quantifiers to the already-revealed doctrines. Within his peculiar terminology Mou chooses not to label these further revelations “doctrines” or “propositions” since they represent modifications of previously stated doctrines, but there is nothing in them that cannot be called doctrinal or propositional in the ordinary senses of those words. 62 FB, 624, 456, 1133; SJJ, 357. Alternatively, sometimes Mou tries to communicate this by saying that the prajñā sutras answer “how?” questions rather than “what is?” questions (e.g. SJJ, 127; SY, 76). 63 FB, 179; XWZ, 404. 58 59

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where they come from.64 As Mou puts it, the Perfection of Prajñā sutras are not yet ontologically perfect (cunyoulun de yuan 存有論的圓).65 Now, many readers will find it strange that Mou should say that he expects to find “ontological” teachings in Buddhism at all. After all, are we not often told that Buddhism resolutely abjures ontology? And in fact it would be strange if he meant by “ontology” a theory of, say, a perduring and immutable Being like Parmenides’ or an unmoved mover.66 However, here as elsewhere, Mou is deliberately using a familiar word in an uncommon way. When he speaks of Buddhist “ontology,” he is referring simply to the uncontroversial fact that the canonic Buddha and his authoritative commentators did teach that certain items “are” or “exist” and they said a great deal about the precise senses in which these various things “exist” and about the conditions of their existence.67 The Buddha now underscored that any being of any of the nine kinds of creatures can become a buddha.68 In some of his earlier Mahāyāna teachings he informed us that we all can become buddhas. This time

Mou writes: “In the Perfection of Prajñā sutras nothing is erected, just a spirit of merging and eliminating, a wondrous functioning of abolishing phenomena and dispelling grasping . . . Here we see the unique characteristic of the Perfection of Prajñā sutras. This characteristic is not to discriminatingly speak the dharma and erect doctrines but only to abolish phenomena and dispel grasping with respect to already established dharmas so that they all return to their true character” (FB, 10–11). 65 FB 1033; XWZ, 406. 66 Indeed, this is the reason that even though Mou consistently uses the English word “ontology,” in Chinese he chooses to call the kind of ontology he has in mind by the less usual word “cunyoulun” rather than the more familiar “bentilun 本體論” (FB, 1033; SYL, 4). 67 XWZ, 401ff.; YSL, 337f.; FB, 1033; FC, 237ff.; SJJ, 120, 128, 133. 68 Mou takes this as the purport of a Tiantai slogan which literally means “[even those who] nod their heads or raise their hands will all attain the way to buddhahood” (ditou jushou jie cheng fodao 低頭舉手皆成佛道) (FB, 598–599). The slogan originates with Zhiyi and is based on a passage in Kumārajīva’s translation of the Lotus Sutra in which the Buddha explains that “if people prostrate or join their palms, or even raise a hand or nod slightly, doing this as an offering to a buddha image, in time they will see all buddhas, complete the supreme path, and save countless sentient beings” (T 1716.33:757b9–10; T 1718.34:36c3–4; T 242.9:9a20). As Mou is aware, Zhiyi took the Buddha to mean, in addition, that all creatures will attain buddhahood eventually, and in fact that in a sense their buddhahood is already an established fact, such that all creatures are buddhas. (See FB, 608–609, referring to T 1911.46:10b15–20.) Mou accepts this, and he does mention at points that he believes that Buddhism properly understood requires “the salvation of all sentient beings as a condition,” but characteristically he is much more interested in the consequences for metaphysics (namely the necessary existence of phenomena, discussed below) than for soteriology (FB, 180, 1206; SJJ, 358). 64

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he explained that it is a certainty. The Buddha knew very well that this would come as a surprise. After all, he had been saying something different for over forty years. In earlier sermons he had said that an aspirant to enlightenment would not necessarily become a buddha but might also achieve liberation from suffering and rebirth as an arhat or pratyeka-buddha. But now he explained that there is only buddhahood and no other kind of final enlightenment, and this changed (yet again) much of what we thought we knew about buddhas.69 For example, it emerged in the Lotus Sutra that there is more to buddhas than meets the eye. It was here that the Buddha revealed the surprising truth that I referred to earlier by saying that buddhas lead “double lives.” That is, they live as both a creature of one of the usual kind (such as a person or a hungry ghost) and as a buddha.70 The whole truth, it emerged, was that buddhas are not just ordinary creatures. A buddha might appear as a hungry ghost, but he is not just a hungry ghost. He has substantially the same kind of mind that regular hungry ghosts have, and he perceives the same kinds of dharmas or, putting it metaphorically, he lives in the “dharma world” of a hungry ghost.71 But he also has the prajñā or intellectual intuition that only buddhas have, and therefore he also sees dharmas in their “true character” (shixiang 實相), as they really are. Putting it another way, he also dwells in the dharma-world of buddhas, where what you see is what there really is. We knew all along that buddhas have bodies. These bodies are like any other creatures’ bodies: they have a definite size and shape, and they also have a certain lifespan.72 But now we find that, just as a given buddha is not merely a hungry ghost, he does not merely have a hungry ghost’s limited and perishable body. On Mou’s understanding of the Lotus, it implicit that from the subjective perspective of a buddha’s intellectual intuition, it will seem to him that he also has a more capacious kind of body called a “dharma body” ( fashen 法 身, dharmakāya). This dharma body is not limited in space and time, and it does not depend on anything else to cause it. It is timeless and

69 FB, 233ff., referring to T 374.12:493b22ff., with minor discrepancy. Also, FB, 589, 597, 943. 70 FB, 236ff. 71 XT, 1:641–42. 72 This is what the Buddhist tradition often calls the “fragmentary” or “samsaric body” ( fenduan shen 分段身). (See for example FB, 114.)

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placeless and limitless. Putting it another way, the dharma body is eternal and omnipresent.73 In the next chapter we will find that the great Buddhist philosophers disagree hugely about this dharma body. Many of them believe (mistakenly, in Mou’s opinion) that a buddha’s “dharma body” is more important and more real than his ordinary creaturely body (which they sometimes call a “responding body” ( yingshen 應身) because it ministers to suffering creatures in need).74 They think of the dharma body as a mysterious, invisible, and intangible entity which, rather like a Platonic Idea or Form, exists independent of and prior to buddhas’ physical, creaturely bodies. Mou disagrees with those interpreters and

FB, 181, 221–24, 584, 590–91. According to Mou’s view of the doctrine, the reasoning here seems to be that buddha-nature as dharma body ( fashen foxing 法身佛 性) includes all dharmas in its “body” (i.e. “thoroughly permeates (bianman 遍滿)” or “entails” ( juzu 具足) them all ) and so it is ubiquitous. And so, since there is the fashen foxing wherever there are dharmas (which is to say, throughout the domain of space and time), it is said to be eternal. As Mou writes, “. . . it is because it is thoroughly pervasive that it is called eternal” (FB, 181). Some readers may wonder whether this would not mean that the Buddha had contradicted his own teachings by saying that buddhas are eternal and worldly dharmas are permanent. In Mou’s view, he did not. Permanence itself is not a problem; Buddhists generally recognize certain things as “unconditioned (wuwei 無為 or wuzuo 無作, Skt. asa sk ta)” and therefore permanent, yet not self-ful. The paradigmatic example is vacuity (xukong 虛空, Skt. ākāśa). What is not allowed is merely to conclude that a dharma has “self-nature” in the sense we discussed above. Once again, if a thing X had self-nature, it would on the one hand be a phenomenal thing (with the characteristics of spatial, temporal, causal, and identity relations that are conferred by the discriminating mind’s categories), and yet it would not rely on the discriminating mind. Rather it would be an object in itself, undistorted by discrimination and perceivable as such only by prajñā. And, true to his teachings, the Buddha did not say that the “dharma body” has self-nature of that sort. In the case of the dharma body, the Buddha did say that it is permanent or eternal in the sense of having no relationship to time (FB, 181). It is objective and self-existing. But it is also supra-sensible. It is not a concrete thing or configuration of concrete things, not a phenomenon of any kind. Hence the Buddha was not claiming for the dharma body both of the attributes required for a claim of self-nature of the forbidden kind. See Mou’s discussions of “the [concept of] buddhanature [in which one] grasps at self-nature (zixing zhi de foxing 自性執的佛性)” and the “fixed characteristic (dingxiang 定相)” (FB, 104–106, 233–236). 74 See FB, 472; YSL, 277; XT, 1:607–610, 614–615. Like many Buddhist scholars, Mou frequently calls it a “transformation body” (huashen, Skt. nirmā akāya) too, because a buddha transforms himself into whatever sort of creaturely apparition will be most effective for saving suffering beings. Note that although it is quite common among Chinese Buddhists to treat the two as synonyms (as for example in the highly influential Mahāyāna Awakening of Faith), some texts attach distinct meanings to them, such as the Hebu Jinguangming jing 合部金光明經 (T 664) and the Dasheng yizhang 大乘 義章 (T 1851). 73

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thinks that the Buddha meant something slightly more complicated but also less mystagogic and outré. “Dharma body” can refer to buddhahood itself, as when the Buddha spoke of the “dharma-body-asnirvana” (niepan fashen 涅盤法身) in the Nirvana Sutra.75 Buddhas also think of the whole collectivity of dharmas in the universe as as their “dharma body,” 76 since their intellectual intuition does not distinguish between their creaturely bodies and other objects, so that everything is their body, or feels that way.77 As Mou sees it, the Buddha also gave us another surprise “critique” in the Lotus Sutra, this time about the “ontology” of material things and other objects, when he declared that “worldly dharmas abide permanently (shijian xiang changzhu 世間相常住).”78 In saying this, it is apparent that the Buddha was trying to be provocative. After all, he is known for emphasizing unceasingly that phenomenal things do not abide permanently! They are ephemeral, “like a dew drop or a bubble, a dream or a flash of lightning.” They arise, abide for a time, and vanish. But what he really meant, Mou believes, was that buddhas

FB, 190. FB, 223–24. Cf. Paul Harrison, “Is the Dharma-kāya the Real ‘Phantom Body’ of the Buddha?,” in Buddhism: Critical Concepts in Religious Studies, ed. Harrison (London and New York: Routledge, 2005). 77 YSL, 154, referring to T 262.9:9b10. Also see SJJ, 426–28, 358ff. Mou uses this interchangeably with another slogan, “famen bugai 法門不改.” 78 See FB, 224 inter alia, quoting T 213.9:9b10. Mou writes: “Badness (zui’e 罪惡) and ignorance can be eradicated (or cut off completely), but the limits imposed by fortune (mingxian 命限) can only have their significance transformed and cannot be eradicated . . . Buddhists have the concept of ignorance, not a concept of the limits of fortune. And yet in actuality, it is just that they are not conscious of it. In truth they cannot deny it. For in fact, if an individual being becomes a buddha as the nine dharma worlds, being a buddha with the ten worlds encompassing one another, then all who attain this are perfect buddhas, and all perfect buddhas are one, where this oneness is a qualitative oneness (oneness as the dharma body). As far as the material components of their material bodies go (bodies with senses and the world of matter) (genshen qijie 根身 器界), they necessarily have every kind of difference (chayi 差異). These differences of every kind are their limits imposed by fortune, and hence there must be perfect buddhas of every form. Even though matter and mind are non-dual (as they necessarily are for perfect buddhas), impermanent matter can be transformed into permanent matter, but this transformation is a transformation in significance, a transformation in function. The variegations of the various forms of material dharmas cannot be eradicated. It is only in the matter of the absence of ignorance’s grasping at them [that there is eradication]. This is what the Tiantai line meant by saying that “Without ignorance there is [still] variegation.” This variegation is what becomes that obstruction-less functioning that happens for perfect buddhas, the following and penetrating limits of fortune which are not limits of fortune: variegated without variegation, without variegation yet variegated.” (YSL, 154. Emphasis original.) 75 76

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experience all the creaturely dharmas there are, and they experience them eternally.79 Why should that be so? The reason has to do with the Buddha’s critical revelations that (1) buddhas with their intellectual intuition experience the universe of objects in a non-temporal way and (2) as the dharma body they are timeless, but also (3) as responding bodies they go on living as the nine kinds of creatures and retain their awareness of creaturely dharma worlds. Because buddhas are a timeless, necessary constant of the universe but nevertheless experience creaturely dharmas, we can know that there will always be such dharmas. And what is more, from a “buddha’s-eye view,” all of these dharmas “abide eternally,” for because a buddha intuits them intellectually rather than sensibly, with his prajñā, he experiences no temporal character in them.80 Hence Mou concludes that in the Lotus Sutra, with his final “critique” of his earlier teachings, the Buddha unveiled once and for all what he had been trying to convey all along and showed that if we view the inconsistent-looking partial truths of his earlier teachings all together and in the proper light, they add up to the whole truth.81 79 Mou refers to this fact as “the necessity of all dharmas (wanfa de biranxing 萬法的必然性)” (e.g. SJJ, 429). Also see SJJ, 277–78. 80 XWZ, 409. As we will see later, Mou makes a point of explaining that even though, strictly speaking, a buddha does not experience these creaturely dharmas as individuated phenomena—since number and identity relations depend on the sensible intuition buddhas have left behind—he does see them as “variegated” (chabie xiang 差別相) (XWZ, 408; FB, 27, 241–42). It appears, then, that even though a buddha has replaced his sensible intuition and hence, strictly speaking, does not experience “phenomena,” his intellectual intuition still sees something quasi-phenomenal in things-inthemselves. However, it remains a puzzle how Mou thinks this is possible. See Ng Yu Kwan 吳汝鈞, Chuncui lidong xianxiangxue: Phänomenolgie der reinen Vitalität 純粹力動現 象學 [Phenomenology of Pure Vitality] (Taipei: Shangwu, 2005), 699–701. 81 FB, 576–98. Mou describes this situation by using a borrowed Tiantai phrase, which says that the Buddha is “revealing the partial truths [in the proper light] to bring into view the whole truth” (kaiquan xianshi 開權顯實). In English writing about Tiantai, we often render “權” as “provisional truth.” This is adequate for specialist discourse (though it would disambiguate things helpfully if we were to say that it is a provisional expression of the truth). However, outside buddhological circles we cannot use such an odd-sounding phrase as “provisional truth” with the expectation of ready comprehension. Nonetheless, in everyday English do often talk in terms of “partial truths” and “the whole truth,” in very much the way that Mou has in mind here, right down to the understanding that partial truths may look incompatible but actually make sense together when interpreted as part of a bigger picture. And note that although in this particular phrase, the Tiantai thinkers choose to use “實” (lit. “real, actual”) rather than a word for “whole,” in another setting (namely the panjiao classification scheme) they substitute “圓.” (For Mou’s discussion of why it is correct to take the

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To give a familiar and simple example—we will tackle the complex ones later—the Buddha first taught that because buddhas have prajñā, they experience the universe in a way radically unlike the way that we ordinary creatures experience it with our discriminating minds and sensible intuition. Recall, for instance, that in the Perfection of Prajñā sutras, the Buddha emphasized again and again that our discriminating minds have no terms at all that fit the way a great bodhisattva with prajñā sees the universe. In saying such things, the Buddha led his audience to suppose quite naturally that he must mean that buddhas and great bodhisattvas have discarded sensible intuition entirely and no longer have six senses like ours,82 only prajñā, and so subjectively speaking, they live exclusively in a life-world or “dharma-world” indescribably alien to our own. So for example, when I peruse the Diamond Sutra, I find the Buddha enjoining me thus: Bodhisattvas should leave behind all phenomena . . . They should not dwell in a matter-producing mind . . . in a sound-, smell- etc. producing mind.83

Naturally I gain the impression that an enlightened person leaves behind the phenomenal world of sights and sounds and experiences nothing but an undifferentiated “dharma mush.” However, the Buddha later revealed that this was a misunderstanding. He had only given us a partial truth. For in fact, buddhas live among and experience all the dharmas are appropriate to the creaturely bodies have assumed for purposes of their compassionate ministry. In that way they are just like the rest of us, but—and this is a very big but—they also have the prajñā that the rest of us only dream about. So really, when the Buddha impressed on us that buddhas and

Tiantai use of “圓” as “perfect, whole, complete” rather than “round” or “rounded,” as is also conventional in some the also-conventional “round,” see SJJ, 323. Cf. Leon Hurvitz, “Chih-i (538–597): An Introduction to the Life and Ideas of a Chinese Buddhist Monk” (Ph.D., Columbia University, 1959), 298ff; Ng Yu Kwan, T’ien-T’ai Buddhism and Early Mādhyamika (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1993), passim.) Mou does permit “round” as a description of the functional perfection of prajñā, as pointed out in Law Shun Man 羅舜文, “Lun Mou Zongsan de fojiao yuanjiao guannian” 論牟宗三先生的佛教圓教觀念 [On Mou Zongsan’s Concept of ‘Perfect Teaching’ in Buddhism] (M.Phil. thesis, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 2007), 19, referring to SJJ, 323). 82 In Buddhist analyses we have six senses, with the sixth being our cognitive faculty. 83 T 235.8:750.

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their experience outstrip our wildest imagination, he was telling us the truth, but it was a partial truth. Later on, after he finally revealed the crucial missing information in the Lotus Sutra (that buddhas still experience material things and other variegated dharmas)84 in the Lotus Sutra, we could finally piece together the whole truth: buddhas differ from us fantastically in that they lead these double lives and view the world in completely different ways at once; but except for that, they are not so different from us.

84 For illustrative purposes, I will often use material things as a stand-in for all dharmas of the nine dharma realms, which latter idea will be too unfamiliar and cumbersome for many readers to manipulate freely. First, it is concrete and easy to follow. When reading Mou, one is often tempted to “zone out,” stop following the argument closely, and instead listen only to the music of the religious slogans. In my judgment, much of the secondary literature about Mou’s buddhology has been written this way, and this is largely why I find much of it to consist of unhelpful recitation. Second, it is faithful to Mou’s meaning. Mou uses the same shorthand at times, especially when trying to describe what he thinks Tiantai’s broader significance is (e.g. YSL, 154; FB, 471–472). In a fuller inventory of the dharmas of the nine worlds, of course, we must include not just material things but also subjects’ feelings, thoughts, concepts, and consciousness, and not just for humans; and not the material things, feelings, and so on to which human subjects are privy, but also hell-dwellers, hungry ghosts, and so on up through advanced bodhisattvas. Thus we sometimes speak collectively of the dharmas of a certain dharma world as “material and mental dharmas” (sexing fa 色心法) (vid. FB, 150ff.; ZZZ, 278–279).

CHAPTER FOUR

THE BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHERS The foregoing was a beginning sketch of Mou’s opinion of what the Buddha wanted to teach and how he went about gradually communicating it. However Buddhist philosophers have not been able to agree on precisely what the Buddha meant to teach us. When Mou reads through the history of their scholastic disputations, his eyes pick out what he thinks is a very significant constant: though the Buddhist philosophers concur on some important things, particularly how the universe looks when viewed with prajñā, they disagree very consequentially on the topic of “buddha-nature” ( foxing 佛性), namely how much ordinary creatures like us have in common with buddhas and how it is that we can attain buddhahood.1 This may sound aridly metaphysical, but to Mou and the Buddhist commentators, it is extremely weighty and deeply practical too. Translated into concrete terms, the question of buddha-nature amounts to asking, If I want to be a buddha, how much do I have to change? What are the conditions and constraints? Do I have to acquire a special kind of body, or will any body do? Do I have to radically renovate the structure of my mind, or is it enough just to make relatively minor changes to the one I have now? Will it take aeons, or could it happen soon? Will I have to go to a different world? Will my chances depend on luck, or can I exert much control over them?2

1 Mou sometimes refers to these as, on the one hand, the question of how to meditate or or contemplate things ( guanfa 觀法), which I have been explaining as the question of how prajñā sees things, which is the subject matter of “prajñā learning” (boruo xue 般若學), and on the other hand the “ontological” questions of liberation ( jietuo 解脫) and buddhaphala ( foguo 佛果) (FB, 625–47). At other times Mou analyzes the topic of buddha-nature into “the question of how the attainment of buddhahood is possible” (chengfo zhi suoyi keneng zhi wenti 成佛之所以可能的問題) and “the question of the form in which the attainment of buddhahood is ultimate” (chengfo yi he xingtai er chengfo fang shi jiujing de wenti 成佛依何形態而成佛方是究竟的問題) (FB, 180). 2 In this he parts company with medieval Tiantai exegete Fadeng (法登), author of Yuandun zongyan (圓頓宗眼), number 58 in Kawamura Kōshō 河村孝照, ed., Shinsan Dai Nihon Zoku Zōkyō 新纂大日本続蔵経 [Revised Japanese Supplement to the Tripitaka] (Tokyo: Kokusho Kankōkai, 1975–89). According to Mou, Fadeng mistakenly presents the essential Tiantai contribution as the “threefold contemplation” (三觀 sanguan),

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Taking his lead from Tiantai Zhiyi, Mou interprets the Buddha’s final message as meaning that buddhas are essentially like us in body and mind and experience the very same things we do, only in a truer way. This means that buddhas are not literally “otherworldly.” To say that a Buddha “leaves the world” should really be a figurative way of saying that he leaves behind delusions about the universe of objects and sees it more truly but still dwells in our same universe and in fact in our same subjective life-worlds. When Mou reads other Buddhist scholastic authorities, he measures them by how closely they match this understanding of buddha-nature. Then, using a scheme inspired by Zhiyi, he divides their philosophies into five ranks:

Formal name

Representative tradition

1 2

Tripitaka Theory (藏教) Shared Theory (通教)

3

Beginning Separation Theory (始別教) Mature Separation Theory (終別教) Perfect or Complete Theory (圓教)

Hīnayāna Madhyamaka, the emptiness tradition (空宗) Late Chinese Yogācāra

4 5

Shelun School (攝論師) Huayan tradition Tiantai tradition

Hīnayāna, the Tripitaka Theory We will recall that, according to Mou’s view, after the Buddha decided to abridge and simplify his message for deluded creatures, he began by giving the sermons that became the three-part canon, or “Tripitika,” of what is sometimes callled the Hīnayāna, the “Lesser Vehicle” to

which Mou regards as being, in substance, common property of the entire Mahāyāna (FB, 1030–1032). Mou’s focus on the decisiveness of buddha nature also sets him apart from with such influential modern-day Japanese and Japanese-influenced interpretations such as Andō Toshio 安藤俊雄, Tendai shōgu shisōron 天台性具思想論 [On Tiantai ‘Nature-Inclusion’ Thought] (Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1953) and Tamura Yoshirō and Umehara Takeshi 田村芳朗, 梅原猛, Zettai no shinri: Tendai 絶対の真理 [Absolute Truth: Tendai] (Tokyo: Kadokawa, 1970), which take the Threefold Truth and Threefold Contemplation as the central features. See Ng Yu Kwan, T’ien-T’ai Buddhism and Early Mādhyamika, 40, 224 n.5.

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enlightenment. Nowadays many scholars avoid that name as unnecessarily judgmental, but Mou is being frankly evaluative and he is not shy about saying that he rates these sutras lowest. Some Buddhist philosophers have treasured them most, usually discounting other sutras attributed to the Buddha as spurious, but until very recently they have had little direct influence on Buddhist thought in China, which is the real domain of Mou’s interest, and consequently Mou says very little in detail about their thought. He does not quote them, nor does he mention any of them or their texts by name. And whereas he devotes a full chapter of Buddha-Nature and Prajñā to each of the other four schools of interpretation, he spends only a few pages on the Tripitika Theory.3 For Mou’s purposes, what is significant about them is that here the Buddha explained the rudiments of his teaching: that our minds suffer from ignorance (wuming 無明, avidyā), that this ignorance is responsible for the existence of the dharmas we see, and that we can extinguish our ignorance and attain enlightenment, a state of supreme excellence. Enlightenment is essential to Buddhism, being the single goal for which everything else in Buddhism is a means. As such, enlightenment will be a center of the disagreement among all higher theorists, and as we will see, the idea of enlightenment is at issue when Mou himself makes his choice for Confucianism and against Buddhism. As for ignorance, it is in the Hīnayāna sermons that the Buddha enunciates the special relationship between ignorance and the existence of phenomena,4 which exercises the wits of Buddhist philosophers for the rest of Buddhist history. On both topics, what the Buddha teaches in his Hīnayāna sermons becomes a sort of puzzle, since it appears somewhat at odds with his later revelations, and the theorists of the higher theories have to work to square them all. Nāgārjuna and the “Common Theory” Mou calls the next most advanced interpretation of the Buddha’s message the “Common Theory,” or shared theory (tongjiao 通教), a name he borrows from Zhiyi. Even though this type of theory is not shared

FB, 620, 624–27. To wit, ignorance is closely associated with discrimination, and discrimination is a condition of the existence of phenomena. 3 4

94 Traditional name Taxonomic description Representative treatise

chapter four Madhyamaka, the emptiness tradition (空宗) Common Theory (通教) Great Treatise on the Perfection of Prajñā, Middle Verse

by all Buddhist philosophers in all of its tenets, Mou calls it a Common Theory because its great achievement, in his opinion, is that it gave clearer expression to the doctrine that all Buddhist philosophers share in common.5 For our purposes we can explain this an understanding of the subjective experience of prajñā.6 Mou uses Nāgārjuna, perhaps the most famous Indian Buddhist writer, as the exemplar of the Common Theory. Mou makes a consequential textual choice here. For his understanding of Nāgārjuna, Mou not only draws on Nāgārjuna’s widely admired Middle Verses7 but also (again following Zhiyi) accepts the highly influential commentary on the Sutra of the Perfection of Prajñā in 25,000 Lines, entitled the Great Treatise on the Perfection of Prajñā.8 Traditionally, Chinese Buddhists have believed that it was Nāgārjuna who authored this enormous and encyclopedic commentary, which only exists in Chinese but claims to be a translation from Sanskrit. However, many modern buddhologists doubt that Nāgārjuna really wrote the treatise. Some speculate that it was written mostly by its putative translator, the great Kuchan scholarmonk Kumārajīva (344–413).9 However, following the Buddhist monastic scholar Yinshun, Mou and accepts the Treatise as Nāgārjuna’s work, and in fact he relies on it a great deal for his impressions of what Nāgārjuna thought. In fact, he notices that the Treatise differs greatly

FB, 11, 628. Mou calls this gong boruo 共般若. Mou adverts to Tiantai doxographer Diguan 諦觀 on this point (TBY, 386; cf. T 1931.46:777c8). Like some other names in this scheme, the name of the “common” or “shared” theory is overdetermined. Mou also explains that this theory “shares” with the Tripitika Theory a domain of concern that only includes phenomenal or immanent things, not transcendent ones (SJJ, 359). 7 Skt. Mūlamadhyamaka-kārikā, Chs. Zhonglun 中論 or Zhongguan lun 中觀論 or Zhongguan lun song 中觀論頌) (T 1564). 8 Da zhidu lun 大智度論 (T 1509), Skt. *Mahā-prājñā-pāramitôpadeśa. 9 See Po-kan Chou, “The Translation of the ‘Dazhidulun’: Buddhist Evolution in China in the Early Fifth Century” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 2000). 5 6

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from the Verses in its style of argument, and in fact he greatly prefers the Treatise and often finds the Verses irritating (as many readers do). He goes so far as to call the Verses’ treatment of space “pure sophistry” (chun guibian 純詭辯) and a waste of the reader’s time. He adds, “I do not know why Nāgārjuna did not take the tack [that he used] in the Treatise on the Great Perfection of Prajñā Sutra . . . but instead insisted on resorting to nonsense”.10 As Mou sees it, Nāgārjuna’s triumph was to interpret the Perfection of Prajñā sutras correctly and understand what the Buddha wanted to say about the subjective experience of prajñā when it “sees” the world in its true character.11 Mou implies that he thinks that Hīnayānists took the trees for the forest, so to speak, and did not fully understand what the Buddha called the “true characteristic” of things. Instead they approached it by means of a crude technique, taught by the Buddha to people of the lowest understanding, called “entering [i.e. contemplating] emptiness by dissecting dharmas” (xifa rukong 析法入空).12 They taught meditators to contemplate things using a simple, somewhat crude technique in which the meditator imaginatively dissects things such as chariots and persons into their component parts, hoping to see things as prajñā would see them and penetrate to their real character. They would not be entirely wrong to do this, on Mou’s view,13 but they would make it seem as though when the Buddha said that the truth of phenomenal things is that they are “empty,” he just meant that they are composite and impermanent. In that case, we would see a chariot correctly only if we saw it as an assemblage of components, so that whole chariots would be less real than axles. The medieval

FB, 175. This is not immediately apparent from Mou’s usual statements about Nāgārjuna’s Common Theory. It is explained most directly when Mou says that the Perfection of Prajñā sutras, on which Nāgārjuna centers his theory, has its forte in explaining the way to meditate on or contemplate things ( guanfa 觀法) (FB, 16, 624ff.). 12 FB, 624–26; FC, 243. Also see Ziporyn, Evil and/or/as the Good, 115–16. 13 Like his contemporary Yinshun, Mou is one of a minority of interpreters of East Asian Buddhism to interpret Nāgārjuna’s understanding of emptiness as basically coherent with that in the Pali sutras, rather than a radical reinterpretation. See William P. Chu, “A Buddha-Shaped Hole: Yinshun’s (1906–2005) Critical Buddhology and the Theological Crisis in Modern Chinese Buddhism” (Ph.D. diss., UCLA, 2006), 107–11. 10 11

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commentator Xianshou Fazang puts this well: “In [Hīnayāna’s emptiness-by-dissection] doctrine, form is not [in itself ] empty, but only when form is destroyed is there emptiness. This is not, however, so. Form is identical with emptiness; it is not an emptiness which results from the destruction of form.”14 In contrast, Mou thinks, the Common Theory succeeds in conveying the Buddha’s actual message about emptiness. When he says phenomenal things are “empty,” he is saying not just that they decompose but also that they lack “self-nature” (zixing 自性), meaning that from prajñā’s viewpoint they are not “determined” ( jueding 決定) according to the discriminating mind’s forms and categories and therefore they cannot have identity relations.15 They cannot be counted ‘identical’ to anything or ‘different’ from anything. Instead they appear to prajñā as “without obstruction” (wu’ai 無礙), or in other words transparent and without differentiation.16 Under this new model, “dharmas” and “emptiness” amount to the same thing spoken of in two different ways, with “emptiness” being the defining characteristic of dharmas (i.e. their “true character”). Hence the Common Theory, Mou says, teaches that spatio-temporal things “embody” emptiness (tifa kong 體法空) since they evince the true character as they are, even without being imaginatively pulled apart.17 In other words, Nāgārjuna captured the message of the Perfection of Prajñā sutras perfectly. He excelled at explaining how buddhas’ minds work, or rather, how they do not work. A buddha’s enlightened mind of prajñā does not experience the world as a place of finite objects with number or location in space, time, or any other phenomenal qualities. It has transcended such experiences. Nāgārjuna’s Flaws However, for all Nāgārjuna’s brilliance, Mou also thinks that he fell short of understanding the other half of the Buddha’s teachings, the

14 “汝宗即色非空滅色方空。今則不爾。色即是空非色滅空。 ” (T 1712.33:553a18). See Francis H. Cook, “The Meaning of Vairocana in Hua-yen Buddhism,” Philosophy East and West 22, no. 4 (1972), 410. 15 SYL, 165. Mou takes this to be the point of Nāgārjuna’s remarks about dharmas’ “Eight ‘Nos’,” (ba bu 八不) (FB, 89ff.; MJS 0578a 15:00). 16 FB, 7, 525. 17 FB, 630.

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ones about “buddha-nature.”18 These amount to teachings about why buddhahood is even possible and who and what buddhas are in relation to the rest of us, and in particular that the Buddha revealed toward the end of his earthly life that we all are destined for buddhahood because we all possess a kind of timeless buddha-nature.19 Nāgārjuna’s problem was that he did not teach this. Though Nāgārjuna mentioned the word “buddha-nature,” Mou notes, he was using it in a different sense that is simpler than the Buddha went on to use it in his final discourses, to refer to something that does not exist.20 There could be no such thing as “buddha-nature,” Nāgārjuna explains, if we mean some unalterarable nature (dingxing 定性) or fixed property which would be necessary and sufficient to confer buddhahood on everyone who had it but also could not be acquired by anyone who did not already have it. That would mean that people who were not already enlightened could never become buddhas.21 In Mou’s opinion, Nāgārjuna was correct to deny such a thing as buddha-nature on that definition. After all, if there were, no one could ever become a buddha. But when the Buddha spoke about “buddhanature,” he was talking about something completely different from the obviously chimerical meaning that Nāgārjuna attached to the word. The Buddha was not talking about a nonsensical property that blocks people from attaining enlightenment. He was talking about something innate and inalienable (because not dependently arisen) which in some sense causes subjects to become enlightened.22 Nāgārjuna never mentioned this sort of buddha-nature.23 As far as he let on, he thought that we are not positively predisposed in any way to become buddhas. On such a theory, Mou thinks, it all depends on the vicissitudes of our karma.24 If I behave, or practice, in such a way as to fulfill certain (extremely difficult) conditions, then I may eventually become a buddha. If not, then I will not. I am no more predisposed to become a buddha than I am to become an alpaca

18 This is what he means by saying that Nāgārjuna is only “formally adequate” (xingshi de zu 形式的足) (FB, 99). 19 FB, 103. 20 FB, 103–04, referring to T 1564.30:33b23–34a25. Also see TBY, 388. 21 FB, 179. 22 FB, 112ff. 23 FB, 179. 24 FB, 180.

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or an asura. All that I have going for me is that I am not necessarily doomed to fail.25 But this is not at all what the Buddha meant to teach, in Mou’s estimation, at least not in the complete and definitive version of his teachings. There he taught that all creatures already possess a property of buddha-nature which can lead us to buddhahood without fail. So Nāgārjuna was wrong to tell us that whether we attain buddhahood depends on chance, for in the end the Buddha told us that it is a certainty. It would seem that Mou thinks that Nāgārjuna’s main problem was that he has misinterpreted the master plan of the Buddhist canon (a very easy thing to do, I might add) and looked for the Buddha’s final teachings in the wrong sutras.26 But he also reads Nāgārjuna as missing another crucial point in the Buddha’s later revelations, another upshot of his teaching on buddha-nature, because he does not think that buddhas are in any way eternal.27 We will remember that in his final discourses he announced something extremely surprising: he has always existed. What makes this so stunning? In earlier revelations the Buddha had told his students only that he had worked to perfect himself for aeons of previous lifetimes before he finally attained buddhahood, and he also allowed them to believe that at the end of his earthly lifetime he would enter “nirvana without remainder” (wuyu niepan 無 餘涅槃, Skt. nirupadhiśe a-nirvā a), never again to take rebirth. Strictly speaking he was telling the truth, but he left his audience with a misimpression. He let them believe that buddhas are temporally very finite.

25 Mou writes: “. . . the Middle Verses also do not have a doctrine that buddha-nature abides permanently. When it says ‘buddha-nature’ it is referring to grasping at [a notion that] buddhas have self-nature. ‘Self-nature’ is a kind of grasping. If one grasped at [a belief that] buddhas have self-nature, then buddhahood would not be arrived at through cultivation, in dependence on causes and supported by conditions. Without first possessing this self-nature, there would never be any attaining buddhahood. [But] if one did first possess this buddha-nature, then likewise there would no necessity of attaining [buddhahood] through causes and conditions . . . Grasping at self-nature and the doctrine of buddha-nature are not the same. However, the Middle Verses do not make this distinction. This demonstrates that the Middle Verses are without the later doctrine of buddha-nature. It also demonstrates that, apart from true mark prajñā [learning], the Middle Verses also have special doctrinal limitations” (FB, 179). 26 FB, 180. 27 FB, 114–15, 1206; FC, 243–244. Mou also calls this the “huiduan fo 灰斷佛” view, meaning that it supposes that when the karmic causes and conditions of the buddha’s embodied existence are exhausted, his “body goes to ashes and he enters [final] nirvana” (huishen rumie 灰身入滅) (FB, 115).

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They attain buddhahood after a period of preparation that is almost inexpressibly long, and then teach for just a few decades before their final parinirvā a. Now, in the Lotus Sutra, the Buddha was saying very nearly the opposite. Buddhas are not finite in time at all. They are eternal! When a buddha takes on a creaturely form to educate the suffering, he pretends to die after a period of years just as ordinary creatures do. But in fact, it is only the creaturely body which dies. The buddha’s “dharma body” lives on. Mou thinks Nāgārjuna deficient on this point. He still thinks of a buddha as just a finite product of causes and conditions, a dependently arisen, passing occurrence, no different from a hamster or a phone call. When he dies, his “body goes to ashes and he is snuffed out” (huishen rumie 灰身入滅).28 Nothing remains of him.29 In so thinking, according to Mou’s analysis, Nāgārjuna could not consistently affirm that buddhas really are all-saving rescuers who ferry all sentient beings to buddhahood without fail. Instead, in his theory, the buddhas come out looking like disappointingly limited saviors. They appear in a given world once every few billion or trillion years,

FB, 114–15, 1206; TBY, 388. Mou frequently quotes Zhiyi, saying that the Common and Tripitika Theories are “limited to the three worlds with respect to their merit” ( gong qi jienei 功齊界內), meaning that their understanding does not extend as far as having a concept of either a buddha or a region of mind which transcends contingency in any way. (See Mou’s discussion of the delusions belonging to the three worlds ( jienei huo 界內惑) in FB, 986–89.) Hence Mou’s summary verdict of the Common Teaching is that “. . . it is limited to the three worlds with respect to its merit and cannot enter [nto an understanding of] buddha-nature as tathāgatagarbha and the myriad buddha dharmas. It can only understand impermanence correctly, not permanence [such as the buddha’s permanence], and hence its [account of] the fruit of buddhahood is [one in which his] buddha goes to ashes and his wisdom is snuffed out” (FB, 931). Later Mou adds: “What is meant by ‘limited to the three worlds with respect to their merit’ ( gong qi jienei 功齊界內) is that the impartially salvific merit of [the Common Theory’s] correspondingly larger compassionate vows is limited to the three worlds and is unable to extend beyond the [three] worlds, or that it can only liberate the samsaric body ( fenduan shen 分段身) and is unable to reach and liberate the metamorphic body (bianyi shen 變易身). The transformation body is the marvelous fruit of the bodhisattva which is not shared by the Hīnayāna. In discussion of “having only one more life ( yisheng buchu 一生補處, Skt. eka-jāti-pratibaddhā) (the bodhisattva who has one more life), the one life in question is the samsara of miraculous metamorphosis (bianyi shengsi 變易生死) of the metamorphic body. With samsara comes the fruit [of karma], which is to say, there is ignorance (cognitive delusions) (sihuo 思惑). This ignorant cognitive delusion is outside the three worlds, and analogically speaking is cognitive delusion of the extraworldly three worlds. Therefore in order to reach this samsara of miraculous metamorphosis and liberate it, it is first necessary to plumb the source of dharmas and reach the unlimited state” (FB, 1207). 28 29

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teach for a few decades, and then they are gone. They have the very best of intentions, of course, and they overflow with compassion and earnestly wish to save all creatures. However, their powers are limited by their tiny lifespan—after all, how many creatures can one save in just forty-odd years?—and so their concrete achievements fall far short of their limitless aspirations. This is what Mou means when he complains, using a phrase borrowed from Zhiyi, that if Nāgārjuna were right about buddhas and buddha-nature, then as high-minded as buddhas might be, “their compassion would not reach [many] creatures” (en bu ji wu 恩不及物).30 Mou thinks that, from a cerain perspective, another cause of Nāgārjuna’s problem was that he took an excessively narrow view of what there is in the universe. In his comments on the Great Treatise on the Perfection of Prajñā, Mou’s logic seems to run as follows. Nāgārjuna assumed that there are essentially two kinds of dharmas, or items in the universe which we can say exist, namely concrete objects and facts about concrete objects. Concrete things are conditioned and dependently arisen, and hence they are impermanent. Following Buddhist convention, Nāgārjuna included not just material things but also minds and their components (in Buddhist terms, caitta or xinsuo 心所 dharmas). The other kind of thing which Nāgārjuna acknowledged to exist is facts about those concrete things, which Mou sometimes calls “significance dharmas” ( yiyi fa 意義法).31 Since some facts are permanent, some of these significance dharmas are permanent, such as the lack of self-nature in concrete things (called their shixiang 實相 or “true character”).32 In this simple model of existence, Nāgārjuna could not accomodate an idea such as the “buddha-nature” that the Blessed One explained in the Nirvana Sutra, since it is neither a concrete thing nor a fact about concrete things. Though the Buddha left the concept a bit mysterious there, it is clear that on the one hand buddha-nature is some

T 1716.33:737a7, quoted in FB, 977. Also see FB, 470. E.g. FB, 108. 32 This is also known as their “suchness” (ruxiang 如相, tattvasyalak a a), “quiescence” ( jimie xiang 寂滅相, nairv tya), “dharmic character” ( faxiang 法相, dharmalak a a) or “dharmaness” ( faxing 法性, dharmatā) (FB, 60–61). As for space ( fang 方, equivalent to Mou’s kongjian 空間), Mou thinks the Treatise treats it as a borderline case. On one hand, as a formal being, it is acknowledged to be unconditioned in a fashion and hence permanent. On the other hand, it still depends for its existence on discriminating mind (FB, 173–74). 30 31

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kind or aspect of subjectivity (like some of Nāgārjuna’s concrete dharmas), but on the other hand it is innate and inalienable because it is eternal, unconditioned and not dependently arisen (like Nāgārjuna’s significance dharmas).33 Nāgārjuna cannot fit such a dharma into his theory. If Nāgārjuna were right and he really could shoe-horn all existing things into one of his two categories, then since buddha-nature is something that has to do with mind, it would follow that it had to be conditioned and impermanent. It could not be eternal; it would have to be corruptible and impermanent.34 (This would also be the reason that Nāgārjuna thought that even though emptiness is eternal, a buddha’s enlightened awareness of emptiness perishes along with the buddha himself at the end of his life. Since it too is a mental dharma, it cannot be permanent.) Mou also thinks that because Nāgārjuna neglected these revelations about buddha-nature and eternal buddhas, he bungled his presentation of the Buddha’s teachings in a second way, by trapping himself into a certain kind of implicit nihilism.35 In the Lotus Sutra, remember, the Buddha taught that even after buddhas reach enlightenment, they do not decamp from the worlds of hell-dwellers, hungry ghosts, and the rest. They remain here forever. Now since Nāgārjuna disregarded those revelations, he was left operating with one of the Buddha’s early, crude Hīnayāna doctrines, in with the Buddha made it seem as though phenomenal dharmas always depend for their existence on delusion.36 But of course, in Mou’s mind that is not the whole story—if it were, then it would follow that once a creature attained buddhahood by eradicating his delusion, then all phenomena would disappear too.37 But that cannot be true, says Mou, for the Buddha says plainly that “worldly dharmas abide permanently” and enlightenment only “gets rid of the sickness, not the dharmas” (chu bing bu chu fa 除病不除法).38 Nāgārjuna’s theory falsely suggests that phenomena as a group only

FB, 179. FB, 627, 631. 35 XWZ, 408. 36 This is the classic twelve-step dependent origination doctrine, which Mou refers to as the theory of karmic arising ( yegan yuanqi 業感緣起), in order to contrast it with more advanced theories of how dharmas are produced (SYL, 118). 37 XWZ, 408; SYL 100, 124. 38 In Kumārajīva’s translation of the Vimalakirti Sutra, the complete wording is “但除其病而不除法” (T 475.14:545a17). 33 34

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exist happenstantially and provisionally, not as a necessary and abiding feature of the universe.39 The Common Theory as a Formal Type So Mou concludes that on the one hand Nāgārjuna gave the definitive theory about one aspect of the Buddha’s teachings, but he left out another crucial group of teachings. In commenting on the Perfection of Prajñā sutras, he gave an almost unsurpassable description of how buddhas experience world, namely in nothing like the way that the discriminating mind does. However Mou found Nāgārjuna completely deficient in his understanding of teachings about “buddhanature,” which amount to doctrines of what causes buddhahood and how exactly people like us attain buddhahood. He never mentioned the Buddha’s revelation that buddhas are eternal, and that we all possess an eternal buddha-nature which enables all of us to become buddhas as well. Nor did he help us understand the Buddha’s revelation that, because of this eternal buddha-nature, ephemeral dharmas must nonetheless be permanent. Put another way, though Nāgārjuna skillfully wrote about how the world presents two different aspects, one to ordinary creatures such as us with our sensible intuition and an unimaginably different one to enlightened minds with prajñā.40 However, he never touched on the Blessed One’s revelation that buddhas have a double character of their own. He did not explain that even as buddhas are contingent beings in time and space who live and then die, they also are a birthless and deathless dharma body which pervades the whole universe. He did not explain that even as they live in a buddha’s dharma-world, they also dwell in one or another ordinary dharma-world, just like the rest of us. Nor again did he mention that buddhas are somehow responsible for the fact that there are always dharmas in the universe. 39 As Mou puts it, in the Common Theory there is no root explanation ( genyuan de shuoming 根源的說明) (SJJ, 267). (In one of his less successful efforts at auto-translation, Mou suggests rendering the phrase as “original interpretation.”) 40 This is really the Nāgārjuna (or pseudo-Nāgārjuna) of the Treatise; the Nāgārjuna of the Middle Verses does not tell us much about the “double character” of things—he confounds readers by sticking insistently to the perspective of intellectual intuition rather than that of sensible intuition. In contrast, the famous Chinese Mādhyamika Sengzhao 僧肇 (384–414) delights in hopping back and forth between the two perspectives.

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For Mou’s purpose, any version of Buddhism espouses a Common Theory if, like Nāgārjuna, it teaches “[understanding] emptiness by embodying dharmas” (tifa kong 體法空) (once again, that dependently arisen things are “empty” of self-nature not just because they are assemblages of component parts but also in the more thorough-going sense that they depend on mind) in conjunction with the following set of positions related to the theme of buddha-nature:41 (a) that buddhas are perishable; they are not eternal in any sense; (b) that there is not any inherent buddha-nature that causes creatures to become buddhas; (c) that creatures’ minds are reducible to conditioned, dependently arisen dharmas;42 (d) that creatures are not positively assured of attaining buddhahood. .

The Two “Separation Theories” Recognizing the omissions in Nāgārjuna’s Common Theory concerning buddha-nature, two competing groups of Buddhists tried to remedy them and produced a pair of theories to plug the holes and address the unanswered questions. The first group, called Yogācārins, made a wonderful study of how our discriminating minds work, overlaying reality with categories and “fabricating” (zao 造) distorted phenomena, and they tried to extend this into a plausible theory of what separates us from the buddhas and how we can change to be like them. The other group built on and adapts the first group’s theories, and they developed insights about buddha-nature and how we become enlightened that were nothing short of revolutionary.

FB, 628ff. This belief is related to the previous one, about the absence of a special unconditioned buddha-nature, because when Buddhists do postulate an unconditioned buddha-nature, they need to suppose that it resides in some province of the mind which is not dependently arisen. Mou refers to this, again borrowing Zhiyi, by saying that such a theory only includes what is within the three worlds (sanjie 三界, tridhātu), meaning it supposes that mind comprises the traditional six consciousnesses (liushi 六識, advijñāni) (of which one belongs to each sense organ and the sixth to the reasoning faculty) (FB, 1207; SYL, 167). 41 42

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Mou calls both of them “Separation Theories” (biejiao 別教), partly because they exaggerated the differences that separate buddhas from us.43 Neither of the two groups could fully understand buddhas’ double character and give up believing that buddhas are qualitatively different from the rest of us. The first group, the Yogācārins, excelled at explaining our discriminating minds, but they were so obsessed with our capacity for delusion that they taught that we are thoroughly alienated from buddhahood and separated from it by an extremely formidable gulf. A later group was more sophisticated about buddhanature, Mou thinks, but they still thought that we have to shed our existing minds and leave behind the material world before we can attain our full enlightenment.44

43 Mou is aware that the bie in “biejiao” is overdetermined, carrying more than one meaning for Tiantai writers (FB, 637, quoting and commenting on T 1931.46:778a24–28, and FB, 640–45, quoting and commenting on T 1716.33:788a9–789c3. Also see FB, 620. Zhiyi, for example, glosses it in eight ways (T 1929.46:722a23ff.). One of the denotations is that it is a graded path, to be practiced over a long time and many stages. (Cf. Zhiyi’s fifth and sixth glosses, xingbie 行別 and weibie 位別.) (Ng Yu-kwan highlights this meaning when he chooses to render the term as “Gradual Doctrine.” See T’ien-T’ai Buddhism and Early Mādhyamika, 45). Cf. Ziporyn, Evil and/or/as the Good, 114–115. In his study of Zhiyi, Kantor chooses to highlight this theory’s quality of being particular to or set aside for the bodhisattva in translating it as “besondere Lehre, which corresponds particularly to Zhiyi’s jiaobie 教別. See Hans-Rudolf Kantor, Die Heilslehre im Tiantai-Denken des Zhiyi (538–597) und der philosophische Begriff des “Unendlichen” bei Mou Zongsan (1909–1995): die Verknupfung von Heilslehre und Ontologie in der chinesischen Tiantai [Soteriology in the Tiantai Thought of Zhiyi and the Philosophical Concept of the ‘Unlimited’ in Mou Zongsan: The Linkage Between Soteriology and Ontology in Chinese Tiantai] (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1999). However, because Mou is by far the most concerned with the ontological separation entailed by that theory of what the Buddha taught, I have chosen to highlight that meaning in my translation of the term. (Cf. Zhiyi’s yinbie 因別 and guobie 果別.) 44 FB, 328. This is why Zhiyi called Separation Theories “tortuous, and clumsy in what they take as the basis” (曲逕紆迴所因處拙) (T 1716.33:737a11), says Mou, referring to their doctrines of buddha-nature (FB, 560). Mou refers to this same fact by saying that Separation Theories take a “discriminating” ( fenjie 分解) or “analytic” ( fenxi 分析) approach. Readers interested in Mou’s technical nomenclature should note here that Mou uses ‘analytic’ in two confusingly different ways. When he talks about the “experiential analytic” ( jingyan de fenxi 經驗的分析) of Yogācāra and the “transcendental analytic” (chaoyue de fenxi 超越的分析) of Huayan (e.g. FB, 182, 483), he means that Yogācāra traces the origin of dharmas back to the ordinary, limited mind and Huayan traces them ultimately to the True Mind. (Also see XWZ, 181–2). In contrast, most of the time Mou uses ‘analytic’ in contrast to ‘synthetic’ (zonghe 綜合). In that sense of the word, A is said to be “analytically” related to B if it is necessarily implied by B.

the buddhist philosophers Formal description Alternate names

Associated commentarial traditions Representative treatises Representative figures

Beginning Separation Theory (始別教) Deluded-mind faction (妄心派) Consciousness-centered system (唯識系統) System of arising from the ālaya consciousness (阿賴耶緣起系統) Yogācāra / cittamātra Mahāyāna-sa graha, Foxing lun, Madhyāntavibhāga-śāstra, Yogācāra-bhūmi-śāstra Asa ga Mature Vasubandhu* Xuanzang

105 Mature Separation Theory (終別教) True-mind faction (真心派) True Mind-centered system (唯真心系統) System of arising from the tathāgatagarbha (如來藏緣起系統) Huayan Awakening of Faith

Paramārtha Fazang

* Most particularly, Mou is thinking of the Mahāyāna-sa graha-bhā ya, Foxing lun, and Tri śikā. He does refer to the Daśabhūmika-bhā ya but dismisses it as unrepresentative juvenilium (FB, 277, 290).

Yogācāra: The Beginning or “Deluded Mind” Separation Theory The story of the Separation Theories begins in Gandhāra in the fourth-century AD, with a pair of extraordinarily gifted and prolific scholar-monks, the brothers Asa ga and Vasubandhu (Chs. Wuzhuo 無著 and Shiqin 世親 or Tianqin 天親).45 According to Chinese Buddhist lore, Asa ga, the elder brother, was able to communicate with the bodhisattva Maitreya and received a set of teachings, concerning which he and Vasubandhu then wrote a large group of very difficult commentaries and treatises. In doing so, they gave rise to a family of theories about what the Buddha taught, often called the Yogācāra tradition, or as Mou often calls them, the “deluded mind” (wangxin 妄心)

45 Mou believes that as a young man Vasubandhu wrote in favor of an understanding which more closely resembles that which he attributes to Paramārtha (see next section) than the ones under discussion here (FB, 277; XT, 1:577f.).

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school,46 after their belief that the discriminating mind is inherently deluded. Asa ga and Vasubandhu gave an extremely detailed theory of how the discriminating mind works. They describe in great detail how, in sensible intuition, the discriminating mind filters reality through something functionally just like Kant’s forms and categories47 to give rise to phenomena. Moreover, they say, apart from our six senses, our discriminating minds also possess a vast and ancient, unconscious “storehouse consciousness” (alaiyeshi 阿賴耶識, ālayavijñāna) in which they store every datum of our discriminating, sensible experience as a “seed” (zhong 種 or zhongzi 種子, bīja). In time these “seeds” of discrimination germinate into more phenomenal experience and cause our discriminating minds to persist, lifetime after lifetime. Through this process, Asa ga and Vasubandhu taught, we are kept systematically mired in delusion by our discriminating minds, and we cannot attain buddhahood until we demolish them. For according to

46 Perhaps more than any other family of Buddhist thought that Mou treats, the Yogācāra is a vast and variegated historical and intellectual complex. Mou derives his impressions of it from two influences, his teacher Xiong Shili and Xiong’s critic, Buddhist scholar-monk Yinshun 印順 (1906–2005). Hence Mou thinks of the representative Yogācāra treatisese as the Mahāyāna-sa graha, Foxing lun 佛性論, Madhyāntavibhāgaśāstra, and Yogācāra-bhūmi-śāstra. (Of course, not all scholars would agree that this is a natural, consistent grouping, that Asa ga and Vasubandhu thought alike, or that the traditional attribution of the Foxing lun (T 1610) to Vasubandhu is reliable. Many thanks to Michael Radich for pointing this out.) One of the ways in which Mou’s buddhology innovates considerably on Xiong’s is in expanding his focus far beyond Yogācāra. Naturally, Xiong was well aware of the Awakening of Faith, a text that had been receiving particular attention in the late Qing, and he was sufficiently acquainted with the Tiantai figure Zhanran to feel what Jing Haifeng calls “something of a distant affinity” with him because of his emphasis on non-duality of substance and function ( Jing Haifeng, Xiong Shili, 93). However, he focused his critical powers very narrowly on the Yogācāra tradition. Mou, for his part, managed to outstrip Xiong in the breadth and quality of his research. Mou had the opportunity to build not only on Xiong’s researches but also to consult the works of Yogācāra partisans Ouyang and Lü, historians of Buddhism Li Yizhuo 李翊灼 (Zhenggang 證剛) and Tang Yongtong 湯用彤, university colleagues with Buddhist tastes such as Tang Junyi and Fang Dongmei, and disciples of Taixu 太虛 publishing in Haichaoyin 海潮音 magazine, including most especially the scholar-monk Yinshun 印順, whom Mou held in especially high regard. Indeed, influential as Xiong’s ideas were to Mou’s general philosophical system and his criticisms of Buddhist philosophy in general and Yogācāra in particular, nevertheless I anticipate that future research will show that in his interpretation of Madhyamaka and Yogācāra texts, Mou owes a similarly great debt to Yinshun. 47 Viz. the citta-viprayukta-sa skāras. See FB, 139–60; SYL, 205ff. Mou draws heavily on Xiong Shili’s Comprehensive Explanation of Buddhist Terms (Fojia mingxiang tongshi 佛家 名相通釋) in this discussion.

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Mou, Asa ga and Vasubandhu believed that buddhas do not have discriminating minds. They dismantled them piece by piece and purified themselves of every last vestige of discrimination, only then acquiring prajñā and attaining buddhahood. And thus so long as we have discriminating minds, they thought, we remain in suffering and delusion, and only when we free ourselves from our discriminating minds do we join the Noble Ones in enlightenment. In order to eliminate something so basic and enduring as our discriminating minds, Mou thinks Asa ga and Vasubandhu taught, we will need a very, very long time. We need to hear the Buddha’s word and do so repeatedly over many eons.48 When we hear the Buddha’s message, we have a very special kind of seed planted in our storehouse consciousness. This is called an “undefiled seed” (wulou zhong 無漏種).49 As we learned a moment ago, when we have other kinds of sense experiences, they plant seeds which perpetuate the operation of our discriminating mind and sensible intuition and hence, the Yogācārins believed, keeps us from buddhahood. Those are seeds of defilement. But when we hear the Buddha’s word, even though this is also a sense experience, it is an exceptional kind. Rather than perpetuating our delusion, it tends to inch us along toward enlightenment and hence is called an undefiled seed. After an extremely long time, when we have accumulated a great many of these seeds of purity, we will cease to have a discriminating mind at all any more, and only then will we attain prajñā.50 Mou thinks this “deluded mind” theory falsely predicts a bleak, almost hopeless future for us. His chief complaint is that it ignores the Buddha’s promise that we are all destined for buddhahood. First, it portrays enlightenment as a hit-or-miss process that might take forever.51 It supposes that our minds can only be propelled toward buddhahood by repeated encounters with the Buddha’s word—and eventually with a real live buddha52—which will implant undefiled

In Yogācāra jargon this is called being “perfumed by hearing what is wholesome” (zhengwen xunxi 正聞薰習, śrutavāsanā). 49 SJJ, 284–285. 50 SJJ, 284–285, 309n.7. Mou’s criticism of Yogācāra seed theory closely resembles his teacher Xiong Shili’s. See Connelly, “Xiong Shili and his Critique of Yogācāra Buddhism,” 69–166. 51 XT, 1:579; SJJ, 285; vid. F B, 286–330, especially 311ff.; cf. XWZ, 82, 91f. 52 Mou thinks that according to the Yogācāra theory, sooner or later one must study with actual buddhas or visit the future buddha Maitreya personally at the advanced stages of one’s career (SJJ, 285). 48

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seeds in us and eventually undermine our discriminating minds. But we have no guarantee that we will ever manage to do this. First, as Mou reads them, the Yogācārins thought that we require a staggeringly great many such seeds, so that we will have to suffer through virtually endless eons of tutelage while we gather seeds for the distant future. But even more dauntingly, it is extremely difficult for creatures to encounter the Buddhas’ message, be receptive to it, and seek it out further. And it is even more notoriously rare and difficult to be born in a time and place when one will have an opportunity to meet an actual buddha. Many, many creatures will “fall through the cracks,” as it were, drifting along lifetime after lifetime without ever attaining salvation.53 In fact, Mou notes with opprobrium, the Yogācārins affirmed that some creatures will definitely never make it to buddhahood because they will become trapped at lower desinations. Yogācārins teach what Buddhists call a “three-vehicle” (sansheng jiujing 三乘究竟) model of salvation. This means that instead of predicting that in the end creatures will all become buddhas (that would be a “one-vehicle” model), Yogācārins thought we can end up at any of three destinations. Some creatures will luck their way into buddhahood, but others will turn by happenstance into pratyeka-buddhas or arhats, beings with a far lower grade of enlightenment than buddhas enjoy.54 Mou also disapproves of the Yogācārins’ conclusions because they contradict the Buddha’s prediction of eventual buddhahood for everyone in the Lotus Sutra, where he repeatedly emphasized that, despite what he taught in earlier discourses, there is really only one “vehicle”

53 XT, 1:586–87; CX, 36. Mou takes this fundamental objection to Yogācāra seed theory directly from Xiong Shili. In Xiong’s celebrated literary debate with former classmate Lü Cheng about the legacy of their erstwhile teacher Ouyang Jian, Xiong wrote, “The power of master Ouyang’s vows is great; it is only regrettable that the School of Existence ( youzong 有宗) was the foundation of his teaching and that he chose the theory of perfuming by hearing (wenxun 聞熏, Skt. śrutavāsanā) as his starting point, a teaching that the School of Existence itself often advocates. Those who choose the practice of perfuming by hearing as their primary principle, though they invoke the great mind [of enlightenment], are not as good as those who having returned to their [original] own mind and extend it out of mercy (ceyin 惻隱) [i.e. in Confucian fashion], without relying on external infusion.” See Xiong’s letter of March 10, 1943 to Lü in Lü Cheng and Xiong Shili 呂澂、熊十力, “Bian foxue genben wenti: Lü Cheng, Xiong Shili wangfu hangao 辯佛學根本問題：呂澂、熊十力往復函稿 [Arguing the Foundational Problem of Buddhist Studies: The Correspondence of Lü Cheng and Xiong Shili],” Zhongguo zhexue 11 (1984). 54 FB, 430.

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for all creatures, leading us all eventually to buddhahood, and we need not depend on luck or any outside ourselves to get there.55 I suspect that this is also what he has in mind when, in his earliest serious buddhological writing, he says that if Yogācārins were right, no one could ever really arrive at buddhahood.56 He does not explain just how this is so, and I have long found it a puzzling remark. He does not mean that Yogācārins truly deny that any creatures ever become buddhas. I have two guesses about exactly what he means to say. One is that this is a colloquially overstated version of this complaint. In this case Mou would be saying that we could never attain buddhahood as hyperbole, in the same way that I might say, “This concert is never going to start,” meaning that it is a vexingly long wait. A second possibility is that Mou means that under a Yogācāra theory a person can never become buddhahood itself but merely a local instance of it, just as he complains that in Christianity, “Divinity is forever unattainable” (shensheng yong bu neng zhi 神聖永不能至) to the believer, meaning that the believer can never become God.57 In this case, however, the complaint may not be consistent with what Mou eventually writes in Buddha-Nature and Prajñā about the limitations of buddhas and sages.58 In any event, Mou thinks the Yogācārins trapped themselves into their bleak conclusions about the prospects for buddhahood because they also omitted the Buddha’s teaching about a transcendent, innate buddha-nature from their theory and mistakenly thought that we need to have the cause buddhahood implanted in us from without, as a seed. Yet in fact, as we know, Mou thinks the Buddha taught that creatures are never without buddha-nature.59 We do not have to acquire it from outside and we cannot lose it—we have buddha-nature built into our minds in some way. And even though this buddha-nature apparently cannot turn us into buddhas all by itself (for otherwise we would all be fully enlightened already and the Buddha would have had no one 55 FB, 430. Mou repeats this same complaint about Yogācāra in more than one form. Often he phrases it by saying that according to the Yogācāra theory, we have only a weak possibility of attaining buddhahood rather than a strong, “real” (zhenshi 真實) possibility, i.e. a guarantee anchored in our undying buddha-nature (e.g. SYL, 214–15). 56 E.g. XT, 1:587; cf. SJJ, 304. 57 YSL, 154. 58 FB, 1013ff. 59 Indeed he even thinks that the bodhisattva Maitreya was not saying otherwise with the verses that he taught to Asa ga and Vasubandhu, and that the brothers misinterpreted him (FB, 384).

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left to save), the Buddha does tell us that it is already working inside us to bring about our eventual enlightenment. Yogācārins could not incorporate this message into their theory because it flatly contradicted one of their bedrock beliefs that our existing minds are intrinsically deluded and represent the very opposite of enlightenment. If our minds are intrinsically deluded, then they cannot be enlightened from within; the buddha must infiltrate them and overthrow them from without, as it were, by spiriting “pure seeds” in through the senses, through happenstantial encounters with buddhas and their teachings.60 To Mou’s way of thinking, if we try to account for all the causes of buddhahood only by happenstance, “dependently arisen” events, the result is a theory which is still “too hollow and powerless” (tai kongfan er you wuli 太空泛而又無力).61 In this respect Mou is following his teacher Xiong Shili. Xiong built his fame on his New Treatise on Yogācāra (Xin weishi lun 新唯識論), a Confucian-inspired attack on what Xiong believed were the inadequacies in Yogācāra philosophy. Among these was that Yogācāra refused to recognize a transcendent “substance” (ti 體) underlying our ordinary minds which could account for “functioning” ( yong 用) or phenomena. Here Mou is following Xiong’s axiom that there can be no phenomenal world without a transcendent substance as its ultimate cause and applying it to the Yogācāra account of what causes buddhahood. He is left with the conviction that if we are to

60 Mou is aware of an alternative Yogācāra hypothesis which speculates that we become buddhas thanks to seeds which are innate rather than acquired from without, but he thinks that the very idea is incoherent. He points to the example of Dharmapāla, who tried to mend the seed theory of enlightenment in the seminal Yogācāra Treatise on the Stages (Yuqieshi di lun 瑜伽師地論, Yogācāra-bhūmi-śāstra) by positing that we possess “original seeds” (benyou zhong 本有種 or benxing zhong 本性種), pure seeds that “exist ab origino as a matter of course” ( fa’er ben you 法爾本有), inevitably and inalienably, regardless of time, place, or conditions (T 1585.31:8b5). The problem is that although the Treatise does indeed mention the phrase “original seeds,” Mou thinks it does not mean what Dharmapāla thinks it means. As Mou interprets the text, it does not mean that “original” pure seeds are non-contingent and exist without beginning. Rather, when Maitreya speaks of “originally abiding seeds . . . passed along continuously for beginningless lifetimes, acquired naturally” (T 1579.30:478c13), he means that bodhisattvas aquire them through practice over an extremely large, unknown number of lifetimes. These seeds are dependently arisen, and though they go back extremely far in time, they still did come into existence through a contingent process at some point in time, however long ago (FB, 314–16). (Note that although Zhiyi says the Nirvana Sutra acknowledges transcendent “seeds” of bodhisattva cultivation and dhyāna (T 1726.34:880b24–28), in Mou’s opinion he does not accept the Yogācāra premise that seeds can only be conditioned things. See FB, 195.) 61 FB, 180.

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attain buddhahood, with the transformation that this entails for our discriminating minds and our experience of phenomena (namely the end of our minds’ affliction by ignorance and the change from impure or deluded experience to pure or enlightened experience), there must a transcendent basis for this transformation, namely an inborn buddhanature of the sort that the Buddha explained in the Nirvana Sutra.62 Now it is true that, like Nāgārjuna, some Yogācārins used the word “buddha-nature,” but without having the right meaning in mind. Vasubandhu mentioned an unconditioned “buddha-nature” in his Treatise on Buddha Nature,63 but Mou concludes that Vasubandhu was not using the word to mean something which causes buddhahood. Instead, having encountered the word in the Śrīmālādevī-sūtra, Vasubandhu reconceived the word “buddha-nature” as a synonym for dharmas’ “emptiness of self-nature.”64 According to Vasubandhu, this “buddha-nature” is not something that causes buddhahood at all. It is simply the trait or character that buddhas perceive in the universe, the object of their awareness. If we were really determined to construe this as some kind of cause of enlightenment, says Mou, we could only depict it as a fairly trivial “supporting cause” ( pingyi yin 憑依因), a necessary condition but still a very minor, not nearly sufficient cause. To Mou, who is interested in theories that help people achieve spiritual excellence, this is hardly worth glorifying as a substantial cause. By analogy, imagine the case of a Nobel Prize-winning physicist. Suppose that we decided to use the phrase “Nobel-Prize-winningness” as a (very odd) synonym for “the bare fact that the laws of physics exist.” If we wanted, we could probably get away with saying that “Nobel-Prize-winningness” in our strange sense of the word was a “supporting cause” of the physicist’s winning the prize. After all, if the laws of physics did not exist, she could not have discovered them and won the prize. However, it would hardly be worth mentioning this

FB, 1015. Foxing lun 佛性論 (T 1610), Skt. *Buddhatva-śāstra or *Buddhadhātu-śāstra. 64 Vid. XT, 1:576–577; FB, 316ff. As Vasubandhu put, it “has for its substance [merely] the principle of unconditioned suchness [i.e. emptiness]” (以無為如理為體) (FB, 317–318, referring to T 1610.31:794a20). Mou calls this a concept of “buddhanature as the principle [of emptiness].” Vasubandhu also mentioned “buddha-nature as practice” (xingxing foxing 行性佛性), referring to the countless practices which the bodhisattva takes in order to help foster enlightenment (FB, 318). For Mou’s purposes this is also not a satisfactory representation of buddha-nature because it still refers to something acquired rather than innate and inalienable. 62 63

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“Nobel-Prize-winningness” as a cause of winning the prize if what I cared about were discovering the causes of that happy event so that I too could repeat it and win a Nobel Prize of my own. In the same way, Mou thinks of Vasubandhu’s mention of “buddha-nature” as just a play on words, not a useful idea. He also thinks the Yogācārins ignored the corollary to the Blessed One’s teaching about buddha-nature, that buddhas are really eternal. They strictly separated buddhas from what is truly eternal. In their theory, the only really eternal thing is suchness, or reality itself. Buddhas are not eternal. Buddhas are contingent and limited.65 Just as we routinely distinguish between minds and the objects of their mentation, Yogācārins distinguished between buddhas’ intellectual intuition and the objects of this intellection. They can know eternal, uncontingent verities, but they cannot be eternal and uncontingent, for the same reason that we would say that I can be aware of eternal arithmetic verities, but I cannot share their eternality.66 To Mou, buddhas emerge from this description looking a little too ordinary, as brief, dying specks of knowing in a universe that dwarfs them. There is no hint here that they actually stand outside of space and time and somehow pervade the whole universe. Still less is there any hint that, by remaining in the worlds of creaturely dharmas, they secure their permanence and necessity. The Mature Separation Theory Yogācārins had a superb model of how the discriminating mind works, Mou believes, but outside of that their theory left much room for improvement, being very weak on the “who?” and “how?” of buddhahood. They taught, falsely, that we have no inner, transcendent buddha-nature but rather have to aquire enlightenment from without. They failed to teach that all beings will become buddhas and to present buddhas as somehow ubiquitous and eternal and not just contingent and perishable. Nor did they explain that buddhas see the material things and other “worldly” dharmas that we do and secure their per-

FB, 319–21. Instead, Vasubandhu’s answer was to say that buddhas’ minds are “pure paratantra” (qingjing yita 清淨依他), meaning that though they are without delusion, they are still contingent (FB, 319). 65 66

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manence. Mou thinks that a scholar-monk named Paramārtha (Ch. Zhendi 真諦) (499–569) set out to adapt their theory and remedy its deficiencies, bringing it closer to the Buddha’s true message. In effect, Mou says, Paramārtha founded something new, a Mature Separation Theory.67 Paramārtha and the History of the Mature Separation Theory A missionary from western India, Paramārtha established himself as one of Chinese Buddhism’s most influential translators of Indic texts, including the “deluded mind” commentaries and treatises of Asa ga and Vasubandhu. Mou tries to show that in translating them, Paramārtha deliberately altered some key phrases (and possibly added sizable passages himself ) to make it appear that Asa ga and Vasubandhu did not really think that the discriminating mind’s “storehouse consciousness” is essentially deluded and antithetical to enlightenment.68 Instead, he doctored his translations, in a sort of “noble lie,” to make it seem as though Asa ga and Vasubandhu really taught that we have all been enlightened all along, at least latently so, and have only to clear off “adventitious defilements” (kechen 客塵) in order to reclaim our birthright of enlightenment.69 Appropriately, Buddhist literature of this type abounds in similes of cleaning and sweeping. To reclaim our original enlightenment, we are told, it is as though we brush dust off a mirror.70 Under the dust, the mirror is already clear and bright; all we have to do is the relatively simple labor of restoring what has been all along. Mou does not think, of course, that Paramārtha was teaching that we are not deluded at all. He supposes that in the main Paramārtha accepted Yogācārins’ theories about the psychological mechanics by which our deludedly discriminating minds function (with seeds and 67 This is one place in which Mou innovates on Zhiyi’s ranking of the teachings. Zhiyi did not distinguish between a “Beginning” (shi 始) and “Mature” (zhong 終) Separation Theory. Mou borrows the distinction from the Huayan thinker Xianshou Fazang. (See FB, 281, 638; T 1866.45:481b7ff.; Kantor, Heilslehre, 340 n.27.) 68 XWZ, 405. 69 FB, 308, 362, 376; XT, 1:585ff.; FC, 240. Mou believes that not only did Paramārtha have honorable intentions, but he also had a deeper justification in the sutras. He thinks that in his third period, Mahāyāna discourses the Buddha adumbrated his later teachings on universal buddha-nature, such as in the Śrīmālādevī-sūtra with its talk of an “innately pure mind as the womb of buddhas” (rulaizang zixing qingjing xin 如來臧自性清淨心) (FB, 293). 70 See Alex Wayman, “The Mirror as a Pan-Buddhist Metaphor,” History of Religions 13, no. 4 (1974).

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perfuming and so on), but he also taught that as deeply deluded as we are, enlightenment is even more basic to us.71 As we saw, Paramārtha taught that when we attain buddhahood, all we are doing is returning to our original condition of enlightenment.72 For the enlightened state of mind is really our original, true mind, or what posterity called the “True, Permanent Mind,” (zhenchang xin 真常心) or simply “True Mind” (zhenxin 真心).73 In teaching this, Mou thinks, Paramārtha pioneered a new and more mature theory that does not really belong to the Yogācāra’s “deluded mind” school of thought at all.74 On the contrary, he inaugurated a whole new “True Mind” school of thought (zhenxin pai 真心派) during his years in China. Buddhists back in India had of course been aware of an idea of original enlightenment in sutras such as the Lankāvatāra-sūtra, but as far as Mou is concerned, their philosophers did not codify it into a fullblown, scholastically organized system of thought, being preoccupied with Nagarjunian and Yogācārin theories. It was only in China, Mou thinks, with its indigenous Mencian tradition of optimistic universalism, that such a theory had a chance to grow and flourish.75 Mou hypothesizes that it was Paramārtha who authored the famous and hugely influential Mahāyāna Treatise on the Awakening of Faith (dasheng qixin lun 大乘起信論). This is a controversial opinion, as Mou well 71 That is, he taught that the discriminating “ālaya” or “storehouse consciousness ‘has liberation as its nature’ ( yi jie wei xing 以解為性) . . . Thus it does not have delusion and defilement as its nature . . . but is just entangled [in ignorance] and hence not enlightened” (FB, 291). Also see Mou’s discussion of Paramārtha’s invention of the idea of the “taintless consciousness” (amoluoshi 阿摩羅識, Skt. *amalavijñāna) (FB, 349ff.). 72 In Paramārtha’s language, our minds “take liberation as their nature” ( yi jie wei xing 以解為性), but Mou more often uses a term from the Awakening of Faith, “original enlightenment” (benjue 本覺) (FB, 461–463). 73 FB, 453ff. 74 Following the Tiantai doxographers, Mou views the Yogācāra as a defective version of the Mature Separate teaching, its immature prototype which had not yet followed the logic of separating buddha-nature from conditioned objects to its end. Mou takes this to be the force of Zhiyi’s comment that this immature theory is a “one-dimensional dharma-door beyond the tridhātu” ( jiewai yitu famen 界外一途法門) (TBY, 402–03). 75 XT, 1:577, 579; SJJ, 288. That said, when critics chide Mou for a certain national triumphalism and a wish to claim supposedly pivotal philosophicalal insights as Chinese inventions, there is justice in it. See, for example, Ye Haiyan 葉海煙, “Dangdai xin rujia de foxue quanshi: yi Mou Zongsan wei li 當代新儒家的佛學 詮釋：以牟宗三為例 [The New Confucian Interpretation of Buddhism, Taking Mou Zongsan as an Example]” (paper presented at the Disan ci ru-fo huitong xueshu yantaohui, December 26).

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knows, for modern scholars have debated energetically about who really wrote the Awakening of Faith. And Mou confesses that his attribution is really conjectural. He cannot prove that Paramārtha himself wrote the Awakening of Faith, only that he might have. Whoever exactly wrote it, Mou says, he shared Paramārtha’s opinions about our original enlightenment. And because the Awakening of Faith seems so consonant with Paramārtha’s known opinions, for philosophical purposes Mou decides that he might as well attribute it to Paramārtha.76 Why should Mou present conjecture as fact? Why speak loosely and claim that Paramārtha did compose the Awakening of Faith, when he only believes that he might have? In my opinion, Mou wants to stand up as vigorously as he can for the Awakening of Faith’s philosophical authenticity against modern Buddhist scholars who smear all original enlightenment-type sutras and treatises as heretical forgeries. In particular, Mou detests a circle of Yogācāra partisans called the China Metaphysical Institute (Zhina neixue yuan 支那內學院) who, in his estimation, sift evidence and concoct learned-sounding but ill-founded philological arguments to dismiss any text unfriendly to their sectarian beliefs.77 76 FB, 461; SJJ, 290; SYL, 226–27. In FB, Mou introduces Paramārtha in a chapter separate from that on the Awakening of Faith, focusing on Paramārtha’s Jueding zang lun 決定藏論, Zhuanshi lun 轉識論, San wuxing lun 三無性論, and Shiba kong lun 十八空論 (T 1584, 1587, 1617, 1616). Nonetheless, throughout the rest of his corpus Mou always treats the Awakening of Faith as the prime generic representative of the Mature Separation Theory, and therefore I will follow suit. Note that in Mind and Human Nature Mou has not settled on his Paramārtha theory yet (XT, 1:577). There he thinks simply that the Awakening of Faith is not an Indian work. Likewise, in ZZZ, he comments merely that Paramārtha’s thought is similar to that in the Awakening of Faith (239). 77 Detest is not too strong a word. Although in Mou’s published lectures he allows himself some intemperate comments about Manchus and Communists and in audio recordings sometimes lets fly with colorfully bilious remarks about Catholicism (e.g. SJJ, 174, 416; TBY, 276–7; MJS, 0703A 20:00), everywhere else in his books Mou maintains a moderate tone except in his remarks about the Metaphysical Institute circle. It is only in this case that he stoops to ad hominem vitriol. (See FB, vi–vii, 451–53; MSJ, 0704B 13:30. Less personal but still caustic observations can be found in WZ, 106.) In their commentary on the Lankāvatāra-sūtra (Lengqie jing 楞伽經), Metaphysical Institute scholars Ouyang Jian 歐陽漸 and Lü Cheng 呂澂 write that the Awakening of Faith perverts the doctrine of the tathāgatagarbha as it is found in that sutra. Mou responds that (a) they have misinterpreted the Lankāvatāra Sūtra’s ‘tathāgatagarbha’ as meaning the same thing as the Mahāyāna-sa graha’s ‘ālaya-vijñāna’, and (b) they ignore the Nirvana Sutra and Śrīmālādevī, where the Awakening of Faith’s presentation of the tathāgatagarbha has clear precedent. Elsewhere, Lü Cheng writes that the Awakening of Faith bases some of its doctrines, such as that of original enlightenment, on Bodhiruci’s sixth-century translation of

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After its composition in the sixth century, Mou thinks, the Awakening of Faith imparted its original enlightenment theory to a lineage of spectacularly gifted and influential Buddhist thinkers who came to be known as the Huayan line (Huayan zong 華嚴宗). As their name suggests, they looked to the Huayan or Flower Garland Sutra (Skt. Avata saka-sūtra) as their main source, but they interpreted it through the doctrines and terminology of the Awakening of Faith. By the eighth century, Mou believes, the Huayan thinkers had unpacked all the doctrinal import of the Awakening of Faith’s revolutionary original enlightenment teachings, culminating in the work of Xianshou Fazang (643–712).78 Buddhas and Buddha-Nature in the Mature Separation Theory The simplest way to make sense of what Mou thinks this theory teaches about buddha-nature—what buddhas are and how they are related to other creatures—is to talk about how the two parties see the universe. Suppose ordinary creatures such as you or I were lucky enough to see a buddha.79 Because of our discriminating minds and sensible intuition, we would see him as external to ourselves, as a humanoid body with a particular size and location. However, according to the Awakening of Faith, we would be mistaken. We would only be seeing an apparition, a sort of hologram.80 A buddha as he truly is, is the True Mind,

the Lankāvatāra, which Lü dismisses as a mistranslation. Mou responds that (a) the Bodhiruci translation actually agrees with Śik ānanda and Gunabhadra on the matter of the tathāgatagarbha, and that Lü seizes arbitrarily on Śik ānanda’s as the authoritative translation just because he can most easily force his “deluded mind” reading onto it; (b) that Lü dismisses as spurious any texts which do not comport with his pet reading; and (c) that as in the book he co-wrote with Ouyang on the Awakening of Faith, Lü does not even think to ask whether the text’s doctrines might not also be precedented in sutras other than the Lankāvatāra, such as the Śrīmālādevī and the Nirvana Sutra. On the background to this disagreement, see Lin Anwu, Xiandai ru-fo zhi zheng 現 代儒佛之爭 [Modern Buddhist-Confucian Controversy] (Taipei: Mingwen, 1990) and Lin Chen-kuo, Kongxing yu xiandaixing, 29–33. 78 Fazang wrote one of the two or three most influential commentaries on the Awakening of Faith, the Dasheng qixunlun yiji 大乘起信論義記 (T 1846). However, in his extensive study of Fazang in FB (483ff.), Mou refers chiefly to Fazang’s Huayan jing tanxuan ji 華嚴經探玄記 (T 1733) and his famous Wujiao zhang 五教章 (formally titled Huayan yisheng jiaoyi fenqi zhang 華嚴一乘教義分齋章) (T 1866). 79 More precisely, it is the fanfu ersheng 凡夫二乘, the first eight kinds of creatures, from hell-dwellers up through pratyeka-buddhas. 80 FB, 465, 469–470. Also see XT, 1:596, 607–608.

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which has no physical body. We would only see him that way because we would be glimpsing “him”—the pure True Mind through the distorting lens of sensible intuition, as a body in space and time.81 This is called a “responding body” ( yingshen 應身) because it ministers to suffering creatures in need.82 But if we were bodhisattvas, says the Awakening of Faith, we would see buddhas—and indeed everything—differently, and more truly. Because bodhisattvas have a share of enlightenment, they begin to shed their sensible intuition, and they no longer see a buddha as a creaturely body in space and time. In fact, they no longer see anything in an ordinary spatio-temporal, phenomenal form. They stop seeing the dross that you and I see—parks and playgrounds, dumpsters, restaurants, prison cells. Instead they see entire universe as a wondrous super-human buddha living in timeless, infinite and infinitely glorious-looking “pure land” ( jingtu 淨土).83 The True Mind reveals (shixian 示現) itself to them in a beatific vision of a buddha who has splendid “reward body” (baoshen 報身) with innumerable and wondrous “marks” (xianghao 相好)84 and lives in a kind of wonderland adorned with innumerable “merits” ( gongde 功德, Skt. gu a). Moreover, unlike you or I, bodhisattvas understand that the buddha they see is not someone separate and outside of themselves but rather their own True Mind. 81 That is, as a “discrete phenomenon” ( fenqi xiang 分齊相) or “delimited phenomenon” (xianding xiang 限定相) (FB, 469–470, referring to T 1666.32:579b9–579c1). 82 See FB, 472; YSL, 277; XT, 1:607–610, 614–615. Mou also associates this kind of view of responding bodies with the Beginning Separation Theory, but he gives his main treatments of the issue in his discussions of the Mature Separation Theory. Note that Mou also uses the terms “transformation body” (huashen 化身, Skt. nirmā a-kāya) or “responding transformation body” ( yinghuashen 應化身), because a buddha transforms himself into whatever sort of creaturely apparition will be most effective for saving suffering beings. Note that although it is quite common among Chinese Buddhists to treat the two as synonyms (as for example in the highly influential Awakening of Faith in Mahāyāna), some authors attach distinct meanings to them, such as Paramārtha in the third chapter of the Hebu Jinguangming jing 合部金光明經 (T 664) and Huiyuan in the Dasheng yizhang 大乘義章 (T 1851). 83 This vision thus vouchsafed or revealed to bodhisattvas is what the Huayan tradition goes on to call (somewhat misleadingly, Mou thinks) “dharmadhātu-arising” ( fajie yuanqi 法界緣起). See below. 84 Classically the Buddha was credited with thirty-two major and eighty minor wondrous bodily characteristics. These included radiant and golden skin, blue hair, unusually large tongues and earlobes, swastikas on their chests, and distinctive genitals (see T.W. Rhys Davids, and J. Estlin Carpenter, ed., The Dīgha Nikāya (London: Pali Text Society, 1975–1982), Sutta 14, section 1.32). In the Awakening of Faith we are now told that a bodhisattva sees the buddha as having an infinity of such meritorious characteristics.

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As we can see, bodhisattvas see the universe (which is to say, the True Mind) very differently than we do. However, the rift is even greater in the case of buddhas. As explained in the Perfection of Prajñā sutras, because buddhas have replaced sensible intuition with intellectual intuition or prajñā, they do not see the universe of objects as individuated dharmas in space and time. They experience the universe, or what the Awakening of Faith calls “True Thusness” (zhenru 真如), in its “true character”: a splendid, undifferentiated homogeneity. This is the universe as it really is, not a jumble of “variegated” (chabie 差別) things.) Even bodhisattvas see variegation in the universe: they see it as a buddha with infinitely many marks of beauty residing in a world of innumerable adornments. But a buddha stops seeing any differentiation or variegation whatsoever.85 In fact, he stops seeing anything! He86 simply experiences the entire universe of objects as his own unitary, featureless True Mind or “dharma body” ( fashen 法身). He has nothing left to see: no “defiled” dharmas such as you or I see, nor even the wondrous dharmas that a bodhisattva sees. As the Tiantai commentators put it, according to the Awakening of Faith a buddha has “cut off the nine dharma worlds” belonging to creatures lower than himself (duan jiujie 斷九界). He lives in an entirely separate dharma world where there is nothing left to see. So on this view, what causes us to see “variegated dharmas” such as curtain rods and stop signs, according to Mou? And what has to happen to us before we can stop seeing them and become buddhas? The short answer, thinks Mou, is that the True Mind is the source of everything.87 In one way or another it precedes and causes everything

FB, 471. Of course, as True Mind or dharma body, the Buddha is not truly masculine either. In his excellent book on the problems attending doctrines such as this one about buddha qua dharma body, Griffiths draws attention to this by choosing (quite fairly) to refer to Buddha as “it.” See Paul J. Griffiths, On Being Buddha: The Classical Doctrine of Buddhahood (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994). I should also note that on this theory, buddhas are not truly singular or plural either, since these are functions of the discriminating mind’s forms and categories. You and I experience ourselves as having number, but when we attain buddhahood, our discriminating minds will revert back to the True Mind, which does not have number except grammatically, as a figure of speech. 87 In the language of the Awakening of Faith, it “comprehensively accounts for all dharmas” (zongshe yiqie fa 總攝一切法) (FB, 455, referring to T 1666.32:576a5–6). Such a model is sometimes called the “tathāgatagarbha-arising” (rulaizang yuanqi 85 86

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else.88 In one manner it causes the variegated dharmas, and in a separate way it can also cause the end of those dharmas (huanmie 還滅), or enlightenment. For this reason, Mou often refers to this, using a famous scholastic Buddhist phrase, as a doctrine of “the one Mind opening two gates” ( yixin kai ermen 一心開二門), namely disclosing objects in their transcendent and immanent aspects.89 The first process happens when the True Mind is inexplicably overcome with a limiting condition which the text calls by the name of “ignorance” (wuming 無明, avidyā). The Awakening of Faith did not try to explain why or how the True Mind succumbs to ignorance, only that when it does, it gives rise to our limited, deluded, discriminating minds.90 Then these limited minds begin to discriminate in temporal, spatial, causal, and identity terms and thereby they fabricate phenomena by the now-familiar process.91 In this sense, then, we can say that 如來藏緣起) system, since everything is traced back to the True Mind (here called the “tathāgatagarbha” or womb of buddhas) (FB, 460). 88 FB, 458; SJJ, 293ff.; vid. XT, 1:580ff. 89 In this form the phrase originates with the Huayan “patriarch” Zixuan 子璿 (965–1038) in a reference to the Awakening of Faith in his commentary to the Śūrangamasūtra (Lengyan jing yishu 楞嚴經義疏) (T 39: 824c12). A shorter form of the same phrase, “yixin ermen 一心二門,” was also used in the seventh-century by Korean commentator Wonhyo 元曉 (617–686). 90 FB, 460–61. The Awakening of Faith refers to these deluded, discriminating minds as fenbieshi shi 分別事識, and because of its mixed nature Mou also characterizes it as a “composite” consciousnesses (alaiye hehe shi 阿賴耶和合識) (FB, 469–70, 461–62). This devolution of True Mind into discriminating mind becomes the model for Mou’s concept of “self-abnegation” (ziwo kanxian 自我坎陷), in which a transcendent, unlimited mind voluntarily takes on the limitations of categorial discrimination and becomes and ordinary, personal, discriminating mind. See XWZ, 123–25; SJJ, 278. Also see Huang Zhenhua 黃振華, “Cong Mou Zongsan xiansheng de zhexue sixiang kan Kangde zhexue zhong ‘yixin kai ermen’ de sixiang [A Look Through Mou Zongsan’s Philosophy at the Idea of the ‘One Mind Opening Two Gates’ in Kantian Philosophy] 從牟宗三先生的哲學思想看康德哲學中「一心開二門」的思想,” in Dangdai xin rujia renwu lun 當代新儒家人物論 [On Figures in New Confucianism], ed. Liu Shu-hsien and Li Ming-huei” 劉述先、李明輝 (Taipei: Wenjin, 1994); You Huizhen 尤惠貞, “Yi ‘yixin kai ermen’ zhi sixiang jiagou kan Tiantaizong ‘yinian wuming faxing xin’ zhi teshu hanyi 依「一心開二門」之思想架構看天臺宗「一念無明 法性心」之特殊涵義 [Looking at the Special Implication of the Tiantai ‘Mind as a Moment of Ignorance or Dharma-Nature’ Through the Intellectual Construct of the ‘One Mind Opening Two Gates’],” Zhonghua foxue xuebao, no. 10 (1997); Bresciani, Reinventing Confucianism, 599–600 n.2; Fang Zhaohui 方朝暉, “Mou Zongsan ‘ziwo kanxian’ shuo shuping 牟宗三「自我坎陷」說述評 [Explanation and Critique of Mou Zongsan’s Theory of ‘Self-Abnegation’],” Confucius2000, http://www .confucius2000.com/confucian/mzszwkxssp.htm (2002). 91 Note that the True Mind theorists would shy away from saying that the discriminating mind does this by overlaying its categories atop a mind-independent universe. In Mou’s opinion, they exaggerate the ontological primacy of True Mind, speaking as

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True Mind “causes” our creaturely discriminating minds and dharmaworlds, even if it does so only indirectly, when it is overwhelmed by ignorance.92 However, a Mature Separation Theory also says that the same True Mind also causes our enlightenment, when we leave behind phenomenal, variegated things.93 This is true in a couple of ways. To begin with, this theory says that the True Mind “causes” enlightenment in the sense that it is the stuff of enlightenment. True Mind is the reason that buddhas are buddhas. When a creature attains buddhahood, what has happened is that it severs the ignorance that afflicted the True Mind and gave rise to that creature’s discriminating mind in the first place. The creature “returns to the True Mind,” which is to say, it achieves buddhahood or enlightenment. Hence, in the Mature Separation Theory, we could say that the True Mind “causes” buddhahood (or the absence of unenlightened phenomena) in previously unenlightened creatures in roughly the way we could say that “Health” causes healthiness and absence of disease in patients who were once hospitalized.94 In that sense, True Mind “causes” buddhahood in a very abstract way. However, it also does so in a second, strikingly active way. It dwells deep beneath our discriminating minds, so to speak, and acts upon them from within to draw them back to their original enlightenment.95 It lies buried deep beneath everyone’s discriminating mind and calls to it to shed its discriminatingness or ignorance and melt back

though it is identical to suchness proper (zhenru 真如) and the extra-mental universe of objects arises from that. Strictly speaking, Mou thinks, that is not the case. They make a valuable point, he thinks, but we must interpret it figuratively (FB, 473–475). 92 FB, 460–461. 93 FB, 453ff. Hence Mou sometimes refers to a theory such as Paramārtha’s, again using a common Buddhist term, as a doctrine of “tathāgatagarbha-arising” (rulaizang yuanqi 如來藏緣起), where tathāgatagarbha or “womb of buddhas” refers to the True Mind. See for example FB, 460ff., 499; FC, 240–242. 94 In discussing this theory, it is common to speak of “arising from nature” (xingqi 性起). As Mou explains it, this means that whereas phenomenal objects are dependently arisen ( yuanqi 緣起) subsequent to the working of ignorance on the True Mind, such things as there are in the buddha’s dharma world (which is to say, things visible to a buddha’s prajñā) can be said to “arise” directly True Mind or intellectual intuition (here, xing 性 or “nature”), without the irruption of ignorance (FB, 518–519). 95 FB, 461–66, referring to T 1666.32:576b10–c4 and 576c29–577a6. The Awakening of Faith calls this recovery of enlightenment “incipient enlightenment” (shijue 始覺) and gives the True Mind’s inner influence on us the odd-sounding name of “perfuming by True Thusness” (zhenru xunxi 真如熏習).

the buddhist philosophers A. In the Beginning Separation Theory we do not call this a “True Mind.” It is not mind at all. Mind has been abolished.

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A

ENLIGHTENMENT

B

LIMITED MIND (fundamentally deluded)

B. When the limited mind dismantles itself, it ceases the discrinination that perpetuates delusion. When it is completely transformed, that is enlightenment. C. When the limited mind operates according to its discriminating nature, it fabricates phenomena.

C

PHENOMENA

Figure 1. The deluded mind view of the causes of enlightenment and phenomena.

into what it originally and most essentially is, an originally enlightened Pure True Mind. The Awakening of Faith puts it this way: When the wind of ignorance blows on the intrinsically pure [True] Mind, it gives rise to the waves of consciousness [i.e. limited mind] . . . Thus the intrinsically pure [True] Mind is the basis of the [limited mind]. When ignorance ends, the [limited mind] ends with it, [but] the wisdom-nature [i.e. True Mind] is not destroyed.96

Mou points out how different this is from the Yogācārins’ “deluded mind” philosophy. Where they taught that in order to attain enlightenment we have to depend on hearing the buddhas’ teaching, something external to us, the True Mind theory now taught that we attain enlightenment mainly through this “inner power” (neili 內力) that wells up from inside us all by itself.97 We always have the cause of enlightenment within us, as an “innate, transcendent basis” (xiantian de chaoyue genju 先天的超越根據) that we can never lose.98 In practical terms what this means is that we do not achieve buddhahood by an accidental, hit-or-miss process. We are naturally, innately drawn toward buddhahood from within, by the True Mind 96 97 98

T 1667.32:585b8–10. FB, 463. Ibid.

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A. The True Mind is itself enlightenment and is called the “basis” of phenomena, inasmuch as it is one of their supporting causes. B. For no discetnible reason, the True Mind is overcome by Ignorance.

A

TRUE MIND

B

IGNORANCE

A

C. From the overcoming of True Mind by Ignorance arises Limited Mind… D. … and Limited Mind gives rises to phenomena.

C

LIMITED MIND (fundamentally deluded)

D

PHENOMENA

Figure 2. The true mind view.

from which we arose. In fact, in the long run, no one could avoid buddhahood even if he wanted to. It is necessary and inevitable.99 We still require some “external conditions” (waiyuan 外緣) in order to get there, but the main thing is the “inner cause” (neiyin 內因) which we always possess.100 This, then, is what Mou thinks Paramārtha and the Awakening of Faith teach about “buddha-nature.” So in his eyes, what makes theirs a “Separation” Theory? To start, we can illustrate it very concretely if we consider the Mature Separation Theory’s account of buddhas. It keeps buddhas separate and aloof from everything except, well, themselves. They do not see the dharmas that anyone else sees: not hell-dwellers or hungry ghosts,

FB, 463. FB, 465–66. The Awakening of Faith’s names for these are zhenru yong xunxi 真如用熏習and zhenru zitixiang xunxi 真如自體相熏習respectively, or simple yong xunxi and ti xunxi. (See FB, 464–466, referring to T 1666.32:578b19ff. Mou notes that the Awakening of Faith is attributing even these relatively external conditions to the working of the True Mind, which for example can appear to us, “through a glass darkly,” as responding bodies (FB, 465). 99

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not humans, not even arhats or bodhisattvas. It is only for special purposes, when conjuring up magically generated illusions for ordinary creatures, that they see counterfeit likenesses of those things. Nor do they have bodies as you or I do, not really. Their “responding bodies” are glorified holograms. They may seem to eat, say, a bowl of rice. But in reality, the buddha of the Mature Separation Theorists cannot see it or taste it, because he does not experience creaturely dharmas such as bowls and grains and tastes. A buddha such as this is truly, deeply separate from a creature like you or me. We can also talk about this separation in the more abstract, ontological terms that Mou prefers. The Mature Separation Theory teaches dualism in the sense that it divides dharmas into two separate kinds, the “impure” (ran 染) and the “pure” ( jing 淨), which have separate causes. “Impure” dharmas are objects as they are seen by anyone but a buddha, or simply put, variegated or phenomenal dharmas. If a helldweller sees something, it naturally counts as an impure dharma; and in fact if a deva, or an arhat sees something, that is also an “impure” dharma by this standard. (In fact, strictly speaking, even an advanced bodhisattva sees impure dharmas.) These dharmas are caused, as we know, if True Mind lapses into ignorance. That gives rise to the discriminating mind, and the discriminating mind in turn gives rise to “impure,” variegated dharmas such as material things. “Pure” dharmas are the universe of objects as a buddha experiences it with his prajñā, namely the unvariegated dharma world of a buddha ( fo fajie 佛法界), the featureless Pure, True Thusness. The Awakening of Faith traces this directly back to True Mind: True Thusness is “caused” by the True Mind in the sense that it is the True Mind. The Theory’s Advances and Failings Mou dubs this a Mature Separation Theory because he thinks it better explains the World-Honored One’s still somewhat mysterious revelations about buddhas and “buddha-nature.” He finally gives a coherent theory about how it is that we all will attain buddhahood eventually. The answer is that we ordinary creatures also have a double character of our own: we are deluded in one respect, but we are also inherently buddha-like in another, very important way. He also explains how it is that buddhas are eternal and ubiquitous. However, the theory’s great flaw is that it still teaches that buddhas are otherworldly beings who do not really have creaturely bodies or experience like we do.

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As a result, the True Mind thinkers offer a theory that suffers a false dualism and overly-strict separation ( gebie 隔別) between buddhas and the rest of us. Whereas Yogācārins insisted that our minds are hopelessly deluded, the True Mind model suggested that our minds actually have a sort of “double character” (shuangchongxing 雙重性).101 We are not merely deluded. We also are originally enlightened and tend to return to that enlightenment. We are being pulled toward that enlightenment by our birthright of inner buddha-nature, which the Mature Separation Theory conceives of as an innate force and not as a pure vacancy that needs to be filled in with factors of enlightenment that come from without. By speculating on such a “transcendent basis” (chaoyue de genju 超越 的根據) of buddhahood, Mou thinks, the Mature Separation Theory made a cluster of spectacular breakthroughs.102 First, it recognizes that a buddha is not just another finite, dependently arisen phenomenon but, as the timeless dharma body, is a permanent entity. Second, it means that sooner or later all creatures will become full buddhas, without fail. If the True Mind constantly tends to draw us back to itself, then given enough time we are bound to recover our original enlightenment sooner or later. We may either hasten that day or delay it, depending on whether we devote ourselves to spiritual practice or to frivolity and wrong-doing. But since we carry around the main cause of enlightenment right inside of us, there is nothing we could ever do which would alienate us entirely from our True Mind and the potential for enlightenment.103

101 SJJ, 294. It is interesting to note that Mou writes that he picked this phrase up from D.T. Suzuki, Studies in the Lankavatara Sutra (London: G. Routledge and Sons, 1930). Also see FB, 460–63; YSL, 340. 102 FB, 473–74. For a general discussion of Mou’s opinions about the differences between the doctrines of the Awakening of Faith and of the earlier versions of the Separation Theory, see Cheng Gongrang 程恭讓, “Mou Zongsan Dasheng qixin lun ‘yixin kai ermen’ shuo bianzheng 牟宗三《大乘起信論》「一心開二門」說辨正 [A Correction of Mou Zongsan’s Opinions about the Mahāyāna Awakening of Faith],” Zhexue yanjiu, no. 12 (1999). 103 As much as Mou appreciates the Mature Separation Theory’s promise of inevitable buddhahood, he still complains that the mechanism it offers is not certain enough for his liking. The problem is that even if our innate “inner cause” (which is to say, zhenru zitixiang xunxi 真如自體相熏習) is the main one, it still can take effect only after being aroused by an external condition (FB, 466). As we have seen, Mou does not like to think that anyone could be handicapped in the quest for perfection because of lacking some external necessity, and so ideally, he thinks, our transcendent

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Furthermore, in theory we could become enlightened at any time. For if our ordinary minds really do consist of a True Mind which has only been covered over by “ignorance” happenstantially, in principle we can return to it at any time. We could experience what is called “sudden enlightenment.”104 Finally, since we all have the same innate buddha-nature, we all will become full buddhas, nothing less. In Mahāyāna doxographic jargon, we call this idea a “one-vehicle” ( yisheng jiujing一乘究竟) model to contrast it with the Tripitika, Common, and Beginning Separation Theories’ “three-vehicle” model. Under that old model, it was thought that there were three possible tracks to spiritual beatitude. Some creatures would not necessarily attain the maximal enlightenment of a buddha but instead would end up in the lesser estate of a pratyeka-buddha or arhat. The Mature Separation Theory has ruled out either of these lower possibilities and identified full buddhahood as the single destiny awaiting us all.105 Mou is struck by how different this interpretation of buddha-nature was from the Yogācārins’, and how much more robust.106 Recall that the Yogācārin Vasubandhu took “buddha-nature” as just another word for the bare fact that objects are empty of self-nature, not as any kind of active power dwelling within us.107 As we saw, Mou thought this created a soteriological problem for them, because they could not then teach a doctrine of eventual universal buddhahood. Morever Mou seems to think they inadvertently belittled buddhahood itself, making it seem metaphysically paltry rather than a motive force that can reach up from the depths and act on us. In contrast, he thinks, Paramārtha and the Awakening of Faith corrects the Yogācārins’ mistake of saying that we have to depend for enlightenment on a factors that are external to us and therefore not under our full control. As with the Awakening of Faith’s universalism, in which everyone is guaranteed eventually to attain full buddhahood, Mou finds this wonderfully egalitarian since it

buddha-nature could interrupt our delusion all by itself. However, as Mou himself notes, in the case of the Awakening of Faith, the external conditions in question (such as the ministration of a buddha’s responding or reward bodies) are also said to be aspects of our own True Mind (namely its zhenru yong xunxi 真如用熏習) which merely appear as though external to us. In other words, according to the Awakening of Faith, even the so-called external conditions are not really external. 104 FB, 385. 105 FB, 453–54, referring to T 1666.32:575c20ff., 576a4–18. 106 FB, 463. 107 FB, 353, 463.

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means that no one can be prevented from buddhahood by any poverty of spiritual endowment,108 and he thinks this model of buddha-nature appealed to Chinese predilections for the Mencian spirit of universalism and its high estimate of people’s inborn spiritual capacities—much the same qualities, he thinks, that we find in Mencius.109 However, Mou complains that the True Mind thinkers created problems as well as solving them because, for all its advances, it continues to divide buddhas and their dharma worlds from us and ours. Consider, for example, the Mature Separation Theory’s odd, otherworldly view that buddhas do not see variegated dharmas such as hubcaps and ivy and flowers. On Mou’s view, the Buddha did not really teach that when we cut off our ignorance we cease to experience variegated things like trees, bicycles, soda pop, and sunshine. It is true that buddhas do not see phenomena—things in space and time, with number and causal and identity relations. The Buddha made that clear in the Perfection of Prajñā sutras. But the True Mind thinkers do not take proper account of the “critical” revelation that followed in the Lotus Sutra. Similarly, in the Nirvana Sutra he explained that the Buddha declared that “worldly phenomena go on forever,” and adumbrated in Vimalakirti’s explanation that at enlightenment we “get rid of our sickness [i.e. ignorance and suffering], not of dharmas” (chu bing bu chu fa 除病不除法).110 Another consequence, as we saw earlier, of the Mature Separation theorists’ view is that a real buddha is not the individuated, flesh-andblood “responding body” that you or I would see.111 That is just a helpful counterfeit.112 No, the only really real buddha is the dharma body, the True Mind itself, radically disjoined from any limited mind or delimited phenomenon thereof. But based on what the Buddha revealed in his final discourses, buddhas really are their responding bodies, just as much as they are the

108 This is the point of Mou’s explanation that the Awakening of Faith’s account of buddhahood does not entail gotra or externally acquired seeds and also of his discussion of the Awakening of Faith’s doctrine of an “inner power” (neili 內力) or “inner cause” (neiyin 內因) of enlightenment and corresponding de-emphasis on “external conditions” (waiyuan 外緣) (FB, 463). 109 SJJ, 91–92; XT, 1:578–579. 110 FB, 199–200. 111 Nor is it even the glorious “reward body” that an advanced bodhisattva would see (FB, 472). Also see XT, 1:614–615. 112 FB, 469–472, 478.

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dharma body. In the Nirvana Sutra, for example, he explained that buddhas do not merely appear as flesh-and-blood bodies; they really have them!113 So in Mou’s view, we cannot be understanding buddhas correctly if we lop their dharma body off from their individual bodies.114 There is no such thing as a truly separate and supra-creaturely dharma body which “floats in the aether” (kongxuan 空懸) all by itself.115 At bottom, Mou thinks the Awakening of Faith went wrong on these points because of its false dualism, an overly-strict separation ( gebie 隔別) between buddhas and the rest of us. It refused to recognize that a buddha sees the universe of objects both as both a featureless uniformity and as lampshades and water-towers and is both an unlimited, transmundane dharma body and a creaturely body.116 Now, he does note that Mature Separation Theorists do not boldly advertise themselves as dualists. They camouflage their dualism by highlighting unity in their theory. Sometimes they try to do this by presenting the True Mind as stuff of all dharmas or (as Mou likes to put it) the source of all things. However, Mou thinks that on inspection this is a false presentation. For as we have seen, they actually teach that the True Mind does not produce material things and other phenomena all by itself but only when it is acted upon by ignorance.

113 FB, 472. Going further, Mou insists that the responding bodies must exist by an “ontological, analytic necessity,” “eternally and unchangingly” and not just whenever they happen to be needed by some creature or other (ibid.). He eloborates: “The complete dharma body is not separable from the reward body . . . and transformation body. The three bodies are like a perfect [Siddham] letter i ( yuanyi 圓伊) [i.e. like the three points of an equilateral triangle], not horizontal and not vertical. When perfect theorists speak of the dharma nature, it not just the principle of empty suchness but necessarily a dharma nature in which ‘wisdom and suchness are non-dual’. Wisdom is not a vacuous wisdom but a wisdom that necessarily bears the three thousand [variegated dharmas] with it; this is because the dharma nature is non-abiding and must but a dharma nature that necessarily bears the three thousand [variegated dharmas] with it. Hence the dharma nature is the dharma nature body; the dharma body is not a solitary dharma body but must be a dharma body equipped with reward and transformation bodies” (ZZZ, 319). This follows from the doctrine that the nine creaturely dharma worlds going on existing for a buddha even after his enlightenment. Simply put, if part of buddhas’ job description is that they must go on living in those dharma worlds, and permanently, they need to have the appropriate bodies as an indispensible part of their equipment. 114 Ibid. 115 XT, 1:641; cf. FB, 224. 116 Law Shun Man has given an excellent and compact summary of Mou’s criticism of the Mature Separation Theory in his discussion of Mou’s view of the Huayan line’s attempt at a perfect theory (Lun Mou Zongsan de fojiao yuanjiao guannian, 38).

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Thus it would be more accurate to say that the True Mind works in tandem with ignorance. In fact, True Mind plays the passive partner, as what Mou calls a “supporting cause” (pingyi yin 憑依因), necessary but not at all sufficient.117 At other times, Mou observes, Mature Separation Theorists try to disguise their dualism by falsely giving the impression that the True Mind is not separate from variegated dharmas. So for example, Mou notices, the Awakening of Faith explains that the reason that unenlightened creatures can perceive the dharma body in creaturely form (i.e. as a responding body) is that “matter and the [True] Mind are non-dual” (sexin bu’er 色心不二) and “the nature of prajñā is precisely material” (zhixing ji se 知性即色).118 But on inspection, Mou finds, this is only intended to mean that matter (and variegated dharmas in general) things are derived indirectly from the True Mind under the influence of ignorance, not that they are interchangeable. On the contrary, he points out, elsewhere the text still explicitly forbade us to think that the True Mind itself has any truck with phenomena.119 Indeed this is the reason that, in a Mature Separation Theory, the True Mind is called “empty but not empty” (kong bukong 空不空).120 It is “not empty” in the sense that it “possesses all pure dharmas,” but it remains “empty”

117 This is the point that Mou is making in a difficult section of Buddha-Nature and Prajñā on “How the True Mind is Both Unchanging and Also Follows Conditions” (zhenru xin zhi ‘bubian suiyuan suiyuan bubian’ 真如心之「不變隨緣隨緣不變」) (FB, 498–516), where using terms borrowed from Fazang he points out that the True Mind’s “condition-following” character is not implied in logical, or “analytical” ( fenxi de 分析的), fashion by its “unchanging” character (FB, 499ff.). This is also what Mou has in mind when, quoting Zhiyi, he calls the net effect of Paramārtha’s theory “crooked and tortuous” (qujing yuhui 曲徑迂迴). He “points one-sidedly to pure suchness” (pianzhi qingjing zhenru 偏指清淨真如), or the pure True Mind (FB, 616, 977, 507). 118 FB, 471–472, referring to T 1666.32:579c11. 119 XT, 1:593–594; Liu, “Mou Tsung-san,” 484; cf. FB, 503. Also see FB, 479, where Mou quotes a passage in the Awakening of Faith which explains: “Some people hear the words of the sutras which say that worldly, samsaric, defiled dharmas rely for their existence on the tathāgatagarbha [i.e. True Mind] . . ., and they misunderstand and think that the tathāgatagarbha itself is replete with all worldly, samsaric dharmas. How do we rectify this misconception? [By explaining that] only the myriad pure merits have ever been inseparable from the tathāgatagarbha and not cut off from it . . .; and that the myriad afflictive, defiled dharmas only exist in an illusory way, and in terms of having svabhāva have never existed, and from beginningless time they have never had a relationship with the tathāgatagarbha. And if the substance of the tathāgatagarbha had illusory dharmas, on attaining enlightenment they would be dispelled forever, so this is not even a possibility.” (FB, 479, quoting T 1666.32:580a18–26.) 120 FB, 458–459, 517; TBY, 392–394.

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of phenomena since, even though it gives rise to them indirectly, it remains separate from them. So Separation theorists’ claim of nonduality is just empty rhetoric, “to be taken out and used casually whenever needed.”121 They continue to jealously guard the True Mind’s pristine separateness. Huayan Representatives of the Mature Separation Theory In China there has been a strong body of opinion which extols the Huayan line of thinkers as the most advanced of Buddhist philosophers, especially among Confucians, but Mou goes out of his way to show Huayan philosophy as just a restated Mature Separation Theory adorned with a great many flourishes. What it did was to recapitulate the Awakening of Faith’s system in novel terms. Mou treats Xianshou Fazang 賢首法藏 (643–712) as the Huayan line’s representative thinker.122 Fazang was a favorite at the Tang court and he did more than anyone to make a name for the Huayan line as a school of Buddhist scholarship distinct from others and to claim that Huayan theorists summarized the Buddha’s teachings better than anyone else. Modern scholars sometimes opine that Fazang was mostly elaborating on and popularizing the innovations of earlier thinkers such as Zhiyan 智儼 (602–688).123 Mou agrees and says that insofar as there is anything philosophically novel in Huayan thought, it is adumbrated in the Gate of Contemplation of the Dharmadhātu (Fajie guanmen 法界觀門),124 a text attributed to Dushun 杜順, traditionally honored as the first Huayan patriarch.125 However, Fazang was a particularly

121 FB, 472. I suspect that Mou probably believes that it is something of a constant among teachers of a Mature Separation Theory that, like the Awakening of Faith, they claim falsely to teach the unity of the True Mind with phenomenal dharmas. He quotes Zhili’s comment that because Mature Separation Theorists “do not understand that the nature (xing 性) [which they interpret as the True Mind] includes the ten dharma-worlds, they have no doctrine of perfect cutting off ( yuanduan 圓斷) and perfect awakening ( yuanwu 圓悟). Therefore they only gain a name for [teaching] identity ( ji 即) but have no [true] doctrine of identity” (T 1928.46:707b21–22, quoted in ZZZ, 254). 122 FB, 490ff. 123 E.g. Ming-wood Liu, “The Teaching of Fa-tsang: An Examination of Buddhist Metaphysics” (Ph.D. diss., University of California Los Angeles, 1979). 124 The full title is Xiu da fangguang fo huayan fajie guanmen 修大方廣佛華嚴法界觀門. It is not incorporated into the Taishō canon as a stand-alone text but rather together with commentaries by Chengguan (T 1883) and Zongmi (T 1884). 125 FB, 542ff.

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beguiling writer, and many later Buddhists have treated him as the Huayan author of record. Mou gives his attention to Fazang not because he made any significant philosophical advances but because he is the most famous Buddhist proponent of the Mature Separation Theory and because he positioned himself and his school as a principal rival to the Tiantai line. Like Zhiyi before him, Fazang designed a “ranking of the teachings” (panjiao 判教) scheme of his own, in which he evaluated various Buddhist theorists’ understanding of the Buddha’s teachings, but he ranked the Huayan theories first. Since Fazang and the later Huayan line were so successful at publicizing this claim, Mou takes time to argue that Fazang’s Huayan theory is neither revolutionary nor supreme but just a derivative rehash of the Mature Separation Theory couched in a “hypnotizing and anesthetizing” rhetoric.126 Fazang believed that he was recovering the teaching that the Buddha first issued in the Flower Garland or Huayan Sutra, with which he so bewildered his audience because he had not watered it down to suit their capacities.127 Nonetheless, Mou classifies Fazang’s philosophy as yet another instance of a Mature Separation Theory. The reason is that, for Mou’s purposes, Fazang does not say anything substantially different from the Awakening of Faith (the paradigmatic Mature Separation text) on the decisive topic of buddha-nature. In the main, Mou contends, Fazang took over a standard Mature Separation model which proposes the True Mind as the source of all dharmas. Here he innovated in just a couple of superficial ways. First he he repackaged the Awakening of Faith model in a different set of terms, speaking of the True Mind as “the Changeless” (bubian 不變) which “follows conditions” (suiyuan 隨緣), which is to say, gives rise to the limited mind and phenomena in conjunction with ignorance.

XT, 1:625. As Mou notes, Fazang called this the “root teaching, which announces the dharma” (chengfa benjiao 稱法本教) as distinct from the lower “branch teachings, which are adjusted to creatures’ capacities” (suiji mojiao 遂機末教) (FB, 483). In Fazang’s own ranking of the teachings, terms his “dharma-realm arising” doctrines the “separate” or “distinct one-vehicle perfect teaching” (biejiao yisheng yuanjiao 別教一乘圓教), often abbreviated as “separate perfect teaching” (bie yuanjiao 別圓教). In Fazang’s Huayancentered ranking of the teachings (panjiao 判教), the Awakening of Faith merely taught a “final teaching” (zhongjiao 終教), as distinct from the “beginning teaching” (shijiao 始教) of the Yogācārins. The “separate perfect teaching” is separate in the sense that it is exclusive to enlightened subjects and not simplified for the benefit of creatures of lesser understanding (FB, 491; XWZ, 417–418). 126 127

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Second, he tried harder to make it seem as though the True Mind gives rise to the “impure” or phenomenal dharmas seen by ordinary creatures directly. Nonetheless, Mou points out, just as in the Awakening of Faith, upon inspection we find that Fazang plainly meant that the True Mind only produces those dharmas indirectly, when acted upon by ignorance.128 Fazang also introduced novel talk of a theory of “dharma-world arising” ( fajie yuanqi 法界緣起). According to the Flower Garland or Huayan Sutra, Mou explains, after a buddha attains enlightenment, he enters a spiritual state which the Flower Garland Sutra calls the “Ocean Seal samādhi” (haiyin sanmei 海印三昧) and his experience of things changes completely.129 As in the Awakening of Faith, he stops seeing the dharmas proper to pre-enlightened creatures. In its place he experiences all as his “dharma body,”130 or what seems from a bodhisattva’s perspective like a collection of countless, splendid “merits” ( gongdeju 功 德聚) or a “treasury of adornments” (zhuangyan zang 莊嚴藏).131 He ceases to have any phenomenal experience, only the experience of liberation and wisdom and purity. Other creatures will still see him in their usual fashion, as having phenomenal appearance (e.g. as a responding body or reward body), but subjectively the buddha’s

128 FB, 506–509, 518–519. See Xie Daning’s delightfully clear treatment of this point (Rujia yuanjiao de zai quanshi, 152). For his part, Law Shun Man argues that Mou has not given Fazang enough credit. Owing to a shallow understanding of Fazang’s notion of arising from nature (xingqi 性起 ) and an overdependence on Zhili’s criticism of Huayan, Law contends, Mou does not see that Fazang anticipated the difficulties Mou points out with trying to put the True Mind at the center of his ontology (“Lun Mou Zongsan de fojiao yuanjiao guannian,” 38–46). Building on the work of Tang Junyi, he argues for a more charitable reading of Fazang which could save him from Mou’s criticisms (ibid., 52–62). 129 FB, 483–491. 130 FB, 517. In Huayan parlance this is called the dharma body of the Buddha Vairocana (Chs. Biluzhena fo fashen 毘盧遮那佛法身). Following their enlightenment buddhas do not experience themselves as discrete individuals—even though they continue to appear that way to the discriminating minds of unenlightened creatures—and hence the Huayan tradition does not speak of various buddhas’ each having a different dharma body proper to himself. 131 FB, 497, 517, 527. Mou explains that this is a figure of speech ( jiashuo 假說) using the sorts of terms familiar to pre-enlightened ( yindi zhong 因地中) creatures since, strictly speaking, dharmas are phenomenal and dependently arisen things, whereas the Buddha does not experience phenomena (FB, 497). See the discussion of the dharma body’s or dharma realm’s “perfect fullness and inexhaustibility” ( yuanman wujin 圓滿無盡) below.

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normal condition is to live in a featureless “buddha dharma-world” ( fo fajie 法界).132 Fazang described the contents of this spiritual state with the term “dharma-world arising.” Therein, Mou explains, the Buddha experiences his dharma body (which is to say, the universe) as “perfectly integrated without barriers” ( yuanrong wu’ai 圓融無礙) and “perfectly full and inexhaustible” ( yuanman wujin 圓滿無盡). However, in neither case was Fazang going beyond the doctrines that had already been agreed on by earlier Mature Separation Theorists. Put in simplified terms, Mou takes Fazang’s talk of “perfect integration” as a reference to the shared Buddhist belief that, from a buddha’s perspective, dharmas are alike in their dependency on other dharmas. Inasmuch as they depend on each other, runs Fazang’s thinking, we could say that they are “identical” in their dependence. We could also say that they are all “interpenetrated” by mutual dependence, or “merged” together or “integrated” into one another by their dependence. In Fazang’s terms, we might say that dharmas are all “mutually identical” (xiangji 相即), “mutually interpenetrating” (xiangru 相入), and “mutually inclusive” (xiangshe 相攝). Or we could simply say that the dharmas are “perfectly integrated” with each other, “without barriers” among them ( yuanrong wu’ai 圓融無礙).133 FB, 518. The following is a more detailed explanation of how Mou reads Fazang’s claims. (1) Dharmas are identical with one another (xiangji 相即), because self is only self in dependence on other. That is, we say “X is empty” because it depends on all the conditions which are not it, which is to say that it depends on non-X. So Fazang says, with rhetorical flourish,” that X is “empty” because all of non-X “exists,” in order that it may supply the conditions that support X. Similarly, we could say that “X exists” as the condition for non-X’s being empty (FB, 523; XWZ, 392–393). Of course, Fazang was not really contravening the lessons of the Perfection of Prajñā sutras. When he said “X is empty and non-X exists,” he did not really mean for this to entail that non-X is not dependently arisen. He was just demonstrating non-obstruction in the “dharmarealm arising” view of things (FB, 525). (2) Also, dharmas enter into each other (xiangru 相入). Since X depends on the other ten thousand things as its conditions, in that sense those ten thousand things are all present in (enter into) X. Similarly, X enters into all of them too (FB, 523–524; XWZ, 392–393). (3) Also, “in one there is multiplicity” ( yizhong duo 一中多) because, first, a multiplicity of conditions go into making a single thing. Also, ones are the building block of multiples, so that one is a multiplicity waiting to happen. Likewise “in multiplicity there is one” (duozhong yi 多中一) since higher numbers are made up of ones (FB, 522; XWZ, 394–395; Li Qingyu, Dasheng foxue de fazhan yu yuanman, 194–195). For a more detailed treatment of Mou’s reading of these matters, see ibid., 193–197. 132 133

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When Fazang said that buddhas see dharmas are “identical” to each other or “mutually interpenetrating” and so on, Mou points out, he was not really saying anything substantially different from what all other Buddhist theorists have taught about emptiness and dependent origination since Nāgārjuna. He just used a novel vocabulary to restate the cardinal belief of all Buddhists, that all things lack ‘self-nature’ and therefore rely for their existence on a multitude of causes.134 In each case, Fazang was expressing the very same proposition in different words. We could do the same sort of thing with the proposition, “All pennies are copper.”135 We could say that all pennies are “one” in their copperness, “merged” or “joined” together by their copperness; they are “inseparable” with respect to their common copperness; they “interpenetrate” one another in their mutual copperness, etc. But in each case we are simply repeating the original proposition that “all pennies are copper” in novel forms. This is just what Fazang did with the relationship between dharmas and emptiness. When it came to buddha-nature, Fazang’s main claim was that the Buddha’s dharma body is “perfectly full and inexhaustible” ( yuanman wujin 圓滿無盡). Even though, for his own part, a buddha does not experience variegated dharmas or have phenomenal characteristics, in a certain state called the “Ocean Seal samādhi” (haiyin sanmei ) he can can reveal himself to unenlightened creatures as a magical simulacrum of whatever splendid body, thing, or things they would enjoy seeing.136 And in performing that function, he himself can also see these apparitions with his “universal eye” ( puyan 普眼) or “buddha eye” ( foyan 佛眼). Much as the Awakening of Faith called the True Mind the “stuff of all dharmas” ( yiqie famen zhi ti 一切法門之體),137 Fazang called the dharma body “perfectly full and inexhaustible,” replete with whatever magnificent “merit” dharma are to be conjured up.

FB, 519. This is almost exactly the metaphor Fazang uses in his famous Essay on the Golden Lion ( Jin shizi zhang 金師子章) (T 1881). 136 FB, 527–528. See Mou’s explanation of the bodhisattva Samantabhadra’s (Puxian 普賢) entry into the samādhi of the Buddha Rocana’s Tathāgatagarbha Body (FB, 486–488, referring to T 279.10:32c27ff. and the revelation of the “treasury of adornments” to the bodhisattva Sudhana (Shancai 善財) (FB, 496ff., referring to T 279.10:437c17ff.) 137 FB, 457, 474; cf. T 1666.32:576a8. 134 135

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So is Fazang’s theory of buddha-nature, with its “perfectly replete” dharma body, really very different from what we found in the Awakening of Faith? Mou thinks not. He emphasizes that Fazang simply meant by the phrase that the dharma body can reveal and see itself in infinitely many splendid forms.138 Since all these dharmas issue forth from True Mind, than as a figure of speech Fazang and other Huayan thinkers said that the True Mind is “filled” with all dharmas, replete with everything in the universe. Analogously, we might say that since all the books ever written and all the stories ever told were generated by the human mind, the human mind is “perfectly full” of stories and ideas—whatever stories and thoughts there ever are, were, or will be, originated there. But this is already a matter of consensus in the Mature Separate Theory. And as in any Mature Separation Theory, Mou points out, Fazang did not actually mean that buddhas participate in creaturely dharma worlds.139 He did not mean that “worldly dharmas abide permanently,” nor that a buddha actually has an individuated body. When a buddha is left to his own devices and does not make a deliberate effort to conjure up appearances for creatures’ benefit, he experiences none of these, only quiescence.140 From a buddha’s perspective these are simply apparitions, like holograms, “revealed through [the dharma body’s] supernatural powers” ( fo zhi shenli zhi suo shixian 佛之神力之所示現).141 There is no actual person or asura, no actual variegated dharmas there, just a conjuration.142 The only real thing there is the “pure, true suchness” of the dharma body, FB, 488, 494–495. FB, 528. 140 FB, 478, 527; FC, 245. 141 FB, 517–518, 527. (Also see FB, 497.) Another way to put this is to say that these dharmas are “arisen from nature” (xingqi 性起), or the True Mind, rather than “arisen from conditions” or “dependently originated” ( yuanqi 緣起). Mou concedes that we could call these non-phenomenal phenomena of the Buddha’s “dependently arisen” in the sense that arise because of creatures’ need for him. However, he emphasizes that this is not a case of the True Mind being deluded (zhenxin zai mi 真心在迷) or overcome with ignorance (FB, 518–519). What he wants to underscore here is that, in this theory, we are not to mistakenly think that the Buddha’s mind is experiencing phenomena in the way that ours do, by succumbing to ignorance. Though the Buddha can see “merits” akin to the phenomena that you and I see, these come about through an entirely different sort of mental process than is happening in your mind and mine. 142 FB, 478, 527–528. Mou frequently refers to these as “reflections” ( yingxian 映現) from the dharma body (FB, 528). Using Tiantai terms that we will encounter below, Mou phrases this by saying that [Fazang’s] True Mind does not “entail” ( ju 具) them. 138 139

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which remains “suspended there alone,” divorced from the other nine dharma worlds, just as in the Awakening of Faith.143 So Fazang’s theory still suffers the same defects as any Mature Separation Theory: it hypostatizes the Buddha’s mind as something separated from our own, with no experience of our dharma worlds. It remains a partial or provisional theory of division ( yige zhi quan 一隔之權).144 What Mou wants us to see in both these cases is that Fazang was not offering us new doctrines beyond what what are available in any other version of a Mature Separation Theory.145 Even if other Buddhists had not previously used these particular locutions of Fazang’s (such as the metaphor of “interpenetration”),146 they all assented to his proposition that dharmas are all empty. And if Fazang’s ideas sound mysterious or radically inventive, it is only because some of his metaphors are forced, just as it is stretching language a bit thin to insist on saying that “penny interpenetrates penny with copperness.”147 As analytic philosophers would say, Fazang is saying things which are true but trivial. Mou frequently says that the Huayan line takes the “discriminating” or “analytic” ( fenjie de 分解的) approach to Buddhist philosophy as far is it can go, without even being entirely clear about how he is using the word.148 When Mou says “discriminating” in characterizing Huayan or Yogācāra theory as a whole, he means in effect that they are excessively reductive. For whereas in Mou’s opinion mind and buddhahood have an irreducible double character, having both an immanent and a transcendent aspect, the beginning and mature Separation Theories favor one or the other aspect, ranking it as ontically primary,

143 FB, 478, 494–495. This is what Mou is referring to when he says that Fazang’s teaching is only “analytically” ( fenxi 分析) perfect, speaking exclusively from the perspective of a buddha (weitan wo fo 唯談我佛) (FB, 491). 144 FB, 561. 145 This is what Mou means by saying that Fazang’s system, which Fazang claims is an advance beyond the doctrine of the Awakening of Faith and a definitive, unsurpassable, “perfect” teaching, is a “tautological, deductive” (taotaoluoji de tuiyan 套套邏輯的 推演) or “tautologically analytic” (taotaoluoji di fenxi 套套邏輯地分析) system, since it is derivable from the the same principles found in any other specimen of the Mature Separation Theory (FB, 554–555). 146 Mou adds that Fazang was re-presenting ideas that had already substantially introduced in more intelligible language in the Gate of Contemplation of the Dharmadhātu (Fajie guanmen 法界觀門) (see T 1884.45:683b–692b) attributed to the legendary 6thand 7th-century founder of the Huayan line, Dushun (FB, 542–543). 147 SYL, 123. 148 E.g. FB, 483.

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and try to reduce the second aspect to that first one. The Yogācārins’ Beginning version says that the mind’s immanent character is primary, i.e. that “mind” only means limited mind, and enlightenment is what results when someone abolishes mind. The Mature Separation Theory tries the opposite tack and ranks True Mind, the transcendent aspect of mind, as ontically primary. The point of Mou’s calling these “discriminating” theories is that each splits off one aspect from the other and privileges it. When he says that Huayan takes the discriminating approach to its end, he simply means that the Huayan thinkers gave the best theory of the Buddha’s teaching that it is possible to give without doing what the Tiantai thinkers ultimately do and acknowledging that we cannot reduce beings’ immanent and transcendent aspects one to the other. The Complete or Perfect Theory According to Mou, it was the renowned Tiantai Zhiyi 天台智顗 (538–597) who was the first Buddhist writer to form a complete and accurate systematic theory of the Buddha’s teachings.149 Zhiyi was a celebrity in his day, lecturing to thousands when he descended from his mountain cloisters and was sought after by the rulers of two

149 In his presentation of the Tiantai Perfect Theory, the texts Mou relies on most are the “three great Tiantai works” (Tiantai san da bu 天台三大部) attributed to Zhiyi, namely Mohe zhiguan 摩河止觀 (T 1911), Fahua wenju 法華文句 (T 1718), Fahua xuanyi 法華玄義 (T 1716), as well as the Weimojing xuanshu 維摩經玄疏 (T 1777), which Mou calls Weimojing xuanyi 維摩經玄義 (see FB, 1074), Diguan’s Tiantai sijiao yi 天台 四教儀 (T 1931) and Zhanran’s Jingangpi 金剛錍 (T1932), Shi bu’er men 十不二門 (T1927), Fahua wenju ji 法華文句記 (T 1719), Fahua xuanyi shiqian 法華玄義釋籤 (T 1717), Zhiguan fuxing chuanhong jue 止觀輔行傳弘決 (T 1912), and Zhili’s Shi bu’er men zhiyao chao十不二門指要鈔 (T 1928), Jin guangming jing xuanyi sheyi ji 金光明經玄義 拾遺記 (T 1784), and Bieli suiyuan ershi wen 別理隨緣二十問, Tiantai jiao yu Qixin lun ronghui zhang 天台教與起信論融會章, Shi Qing Guanyin shu zhong xiaofu sanyong 釋請觀 音疏中消伏三用, and Dui Chanyi chao bian sanyong yishijiu wen 對禪義鈔辨三用一十九 問 (all located in a larger compilation, the Siming zunzhe jiaoxing lu 四明尊者教行錄, T 1937). He discounts Dasheng zhiguan famen 大乘止觀法門 (T1924), attributed to Huisi, as teaching what is in fact a Mature Separation Theory (FB, 1077ff.; XT, 1:598). Note that Mou accepts Zhanran as a faithful purveyor of Zhiyi’s thinking, not the advocate of a True Mind kind of thought that he was taken for by the so-called “off-mountain” (shanwai 山外) faction in the Song, whom Mou regards as a relapse to the Mature Separation Theory (FB, 1123ff.). On the Shanjia-Shanwai schism see Chi-wah Chan, “Chih-li and the Crisis of T’ien-t’ai Buddhism in the Early Sung,” in Buddhism in the Sung, ed. Gregory, Kuroda Institute Studies in East Asian Buddhism (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1999); Ziporyn, Evil and/or/as the Good, 186–198.

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successive dynasties. He was also a fantastically prolific interpreter of Buddhist writings. His genius, according to Mou, was that he digested the already enormous body of Chinese translations of Buddhist sutras and treatises and then, recognizing the Lotus Sutra as the keystone of the whole canon, interpreted the Buddha’s other discourses in light of its message and divined his true intent in each. By recasting the message of the Lotus and Nirvana Sutras in disciplined philosophical form,150 Mou thinks, Zhiyi earns the distinction of being the first to formulate a complete, “perfect” theory.151 Where Nāgārjuna propounded the definitive interpretation of how buddhas’ minds work, Zhiyi’s is the last word concerning what the Buddha said about buddhas’ relationship to us ordinary creatures and the rest of the universe of objects. Mou believes that Zhiyi finally made clear that we are already identical to buddhas in a certain sense.152 Though we may not yet manifest all their spiritual achievements, we are all destined for buddhahood.153 Even more importantly, our minds are already built just like buddhas’ minds. No structural chasm separates us from them. We need not toil for aeons, as the Yogācārins said, to amass the preconditions to be born into the presence of a buddha and receive his instruction in hope of gaining enlightenment one day aeons hence. Nor do we need to leave the world of dumpsters and bail-bondsmen for a splendid isolation in a separate, tidy buddha world, as Paramārtha and Fazang thought. In fact our entire universe of objects is identical to buddhas— including even bawdy houses, meth labs, and extortion rackets—in the sense that it generates all of these future buddhas.154 To use a simile from the Vimalakirti Sutra, this universe is the muck where the pure,

150 According to Mou’s Tiantai-based analysis, in the Lotus and Nirvana Sutras the Buddha speaks in language which is discriminating, but the doctrinal purport is implicitly paradoxical (SJJ, 354; FB, 216). It is the Tiantai philosophers who put it into explicitly paradoxical language. 151 FB, 603. 152 FB, 603–604. 153 FB, 600. 154 Hence, Mou explains, Tiantai writers sometimes equate the true character (shixiang 實相) of the universe with the “tathāgatagarbha, or ‘buddha-womb’, principle” (rulaizang li 如來藏理) (FB, 603). This version of the idea of the true character, characteristic of the Perfect Theory, can be referred to as the “principle of the true character [of things, seen from the perspective of ] the Middle Way” (zhongdao shixiang li 中道 實相理).

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clean lotus flower of buddhahood grows.155 We can not really separate the two any more than we can separate a flowering plant from its soil. No matter what sorts of creatures we are, no matter how heavy our karmic burden and how unfortunate and degraded our circumstances, we have everything we need for buddhahood right now, including even the very degradation we live in. As Mou sees it, the Perfect Theory grows out of the Buddha’s critical revelation that, just as buddhas first had to be ordinary creatures in order to become buddhas, and so even after attaining buddhahood they go on having day jobs as embodied creatures living amid material things.156 Zhiyi gave an entirely new interpretation of the Buddha’s talk about buddhas’ “dharma bodies” and their flesh and blood “responding bodies” that appear to suffering creatures.157 The Mature Separation theorists taught that the real buddha is the dharma body, interpreted as a completely supermundane, trans-material True Mind. And they thought of the responding bodies in rather the way that I think of my reflection in a store window: It looks like me and is caused partly by me, but I would never say that it is me. Nor would I say that it is real in the way that I am real, nor even that it is a part of the real me. Nor do I always cast such a reflections. It only happens in the presence of mirrors and plate glass. Likewise, the Mature Separation Theory said T 475.14:575c5ff., quoted in FB, 599. FB, 598–603, 608. This is part of what is meant by “cutting off without cutting off ”: Just as lotus flowers must grow out of mud, buddhas could not have become buddhas except by cultivating first as ordinary creatures, among defiled dharmas. That suggests that existence even as the most humble ordinary creature and the experience of even the most revolting things and events are, looked at from another perspective, the seeds of buddhahood (FB, 599, quoting T 475.14:575c5ff.). Mou supposes that because buddhas had to become buddhas as creatures of the lower nine kinds ( ji jiujie er chengfo 即九界而成佛), even after their enlightenment they must go on that way as well: “. . . even after becoming buddhas they still have the nature and marks of the Three Paths. Because they originally became buddhas as the nine kinds [of creatures], they themselves are traces ( ji 迹) [that is, responding or transformation bodies], and so they can never leave [their status as] transformation body traces. It is just that they have a liberated, untainted mind” (FB, 608, emphasis mine). This suggests that even after buddhas become buddhas they do not leave those dharma worlds behind. They may “cut off ” their ignorance, but they do not cut off their existence as humans, hungry ghosts, and so on (FB, 608). Using the surprising, paradoxical language that Mou finds so characteristic of the Perfect Theory, we can also say that in becoming a buddha one does not “leave behind lust, anger, and foolishness” (duan yin nu chi 斷淫怒痴) (FB, 600). In the main this means is that a buddha does not cut off dharmas associated with lust, anger, and delusion. He still sees and lives around debauchery, fighting, and so on. 157 FB, 588–591. 155 156

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that individual “responding bodies” are not the real buddha, only epiphenomenal apparitions.158 Zhiyi disagreed, Mou believes, and opined that when the Buddha said “dharma body,” he was not referring to anything as outlandish and mysterious as an ethereal, disembodied mind. On Mou’s interpretation the Buddha was just speaking principally of nothing other than buddhahood ( foguo 佛果, buddhaphala), the condition of being liberated and having prajñā, and more broadly of the universe itself when seen from a buddha’s perspective.159 As for “responding bodies,” they are real-life, particular instantiations of buddhahood, the “dharma body.”160 They are buddhahood-in-the-flesh. We can still think of the dharma body as a trans-personal, trans-historical buddha, but we also need to understand that the one and only way that it carries out its mission of teaching suffering creatures is to live as the various flesh-and-blood “responding body” buddhas.161 Hence we might say, then, that whereas the Awakening of Faith treated the dharma body like something which casts a reflection in a mirror, Mou reads Zhiyi as thinking of the dharma body in something like the way that we think of a basketball team. On the one hand we would say that a basketball team transcends its individual players in some ways. For example, as the years pass, players come and go but the team continues. However, the team cannot exist and do its work of playing basketball games except in the persons of its players, and we treat each of them as a local instantiation of the whole team, so that when Dr. J scores, the 76ers score. Likewise with buddhas, the dharma body does transcend the individual flesh-and-blood buddhas in a sense, but it cannot exist and act without them. They are not counterfeit tokens of a buddha; they are each the person of a buddha.162 Zhiyi also breaks with the Common and Separation Theories by declaring that material things are, in a special but important sense, real and permanent! And the same goes for all the other dharmas that creatures like us experience. Recall that the Separation Theories and

Cf. Mou’s discussion of phenomena in general in XT, 1:591–592. FB, 190, 225, 241; ZZZ, 318. 160 XWZ, 407. 161 Vid. FB, 472. 162 FB, 590–591; YSL, 277. Mou explains that this is what is meant by the identity of what Zhiyi called the “root” (ben) buddha, namely the dharma body, and “trace” ( ji 跡) buddhas, or responding bodies. As Mou sees it, there is a particular contrast here with the Mature Separate Theory, which teaches that the root (the dharmakāya) is aloof from the traces and truly “transcends” them. 158 159

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also the Common Theory taught that material things were ultimately illusions and that the universe was really an undifferentiated suchness. Unenlightened creatures mistook it as consisting of variegated things and events: rivers of blood, pear trees, hurricanes. Buddhas knew otherwise but sometimes they humor us and collude with our delusions.163 Now the Perfect Theory unravels what the Buddha tried to reveal at the very end of his career, when he taught that “worldly dharmas abide permanently” (shijian xiang changzhu 世間相常住) and that buddhas “eliminate impermanent matter and gain permanent matter” (mie wuchang se, huode chang se 滅無常色, 獲得常色).164 What he meant, Mou says, was that material things are real and permanent, and when a buddha becomes a buddha, he continues to experience165 material things and all the creaturely dharmas there are—birth, old age, sickness, death, swimming pools, speeding tickets, famines, recessions.166 Mou reads a great many Tiantai slogans as referring to this fact that material things and other variegated dharmas survive unchanged when a subjects shifts from a perspective of sensible intuition or ignorance to one of intellectual intuition or enlightenment. Some, such as “dharmas do not change” ( famen bu gai 法門不改) and “without ignorance there is [still] variegation” (chu wuming you chabie 除無明有差別) stress the permanent, necessary, irreducible plurality of these dharmas even after the change in perspective.167 “Others emphasize the difference that perspective makes in the subjective appearance of the very same objects. For example, Zhanran says, “For an unenlightened creature, the three thousand dharmas are all dharmas of ignorance, but for a buddha they are all called permanent and pleasant” (sanqian zai li tong

163 One way Mou puts this is to say that, according to the Separation Theories, “There is originally no affliction; enlightenment is primary” (ben wu fannao, yuan shi puti 本無煩惱, 元是菩提) (YSL, 273). 164 XWZ, 255, referring to T 1911.46:52c20; YSL, 154. 165 I am using the word “experience” in a broader sense than Mou does. Given his Kantian influence, Mou reserves the word jingyan for the activity of discriminating minds. Where enlightened minds (i.e. those using intellectual intuition) are concerned, he uses xian and binomial variants such as chengxian 呈現, langxian 郎現, xianxian 顯現, and guanxian 觀現, meaning that they “present” or “manifest” these dharmas to themselves and others. (At other times Mou also says that buddhas “have” such-and-such dharmas (e.g. FB, 601). However, I am taking the liberty of speaking of the content and objects of intellectual intuition in terms of “experience” and “seeing” rather than the special terms that Mou invents for the sake of making his meaning clearer and less mysterious. 166 XWZ, 408; FC, 238. 167 FC, 238, 246. Also see XWZ, 408.

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ming wuming, sanqian guocheng xian cheng changle 三千在理, 同名無明, 三 千果成, 咸稱常樂).168 Another way to say this is that from a buddha’s enlightened perspective, all objects are buddha dharmas (members of the buddha dharma-class) and appear as pure, even especially loathsome ones.169 Sometimes Tiantai thinkers relate the same insight in flatly paradoxical slogans such as “samsara is nirvana” (shengsi ji niepan 生死即涅槃) and “affliction is enlightenment” ( fannao ji puti 煩惱即菩 提).170 That is, despite how different things look when minds experience them ignorantly, rather than experiencing the true “nature of the dharmas” ( faxing 法性), Tiantai thinkers say that those disparate experiences “rely on the same stuff ” (tongti yi 同體依). That is, the minds are experiencing the very same things in both cases. Mou comments, “This is like the way that for one and the same eye, if it closes there is darkness, and if it opens there is light.”171 Mou stresses that the reason that Zhiyi makes such an important advance over the Mature Separation Theory in this area, as in explaining what buddhas’ responding bodies are, is that he thinks that buddhas must see things, always, and every single dharma must exist necessarily (biran cunzai 必然存在).172 The contrast with the Mature Separation Theory here is actually very subtle. There, a buddha could see material things, but it required special circumstances, an act of intention (zuoyi 作意). Otherwise there were no material things and other variegated dharmas. Now, under the Tiantai Perfect Theory, a buddha always sees all of these dharmas (which is to say, necessarily and not just under special conditions.173 Of course, buddhas still do see the universe differently than unenlightened creatures do. After all, buddhas view it with prajñā, not our ignorant, grasping sensible intuition. First, whereas you and I can only

YSL, 279 and ZZZ, 295, referring to T 1717.33:919a6–7 and T 1927.46:703c7. FB, 601, 604. 170 FB, 599; FC, 246. 171 FB, 854. Also see FB, 611–614; XWZ, 423; YSL, 273–276. 172 Naturally we have to take “single” as a figure of speech, since the objects themselves do not possess number. 173 See FC, 245–246. Also see YSL, 279. This is what Mou takes to be the significance of Zhiyi’s contrasting the Mature Separation Theory’s “innumerability” doctrine (the so-called wuliang sidi 無量四諦), in which the innumerable dharmas are causally connected to the buddha qua dharma body, with the Tiantai “unconditioned” doctrine (the wuzuo sidi 無作四諦), in which those innumerable dharmas are causally connected with the buddha qua “mind of ignorance and dharma-nature” as a matter of necessity, without need for special conditions or effort. 168 169

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see objects that are visible to humans, buddhas see them all. They see the hells with their lakes of fire. They see the hungry ghost worlds with their rivers of slime. They hear dog whistles and bat sonar. They see the asura worlds and the heavens. In addition, according to Mou, they see all these things at once, leaving nothing out.174 Since they do not operate with sensible intuition’s categories of space and time, they see the sack of Troy and Lincoln’s inauguration and the falling of the Berlin Wall, all together. And finally, they have access to the buddha dharma world, the vision of things that only buddhas can see, as undifferentiated, featureless, quiescent suchness, as described in Perfection of Prajñā sutras.175 Since prajñā dispenses with the categories that assign properties such as number and identity (difference or sameness), buddhas do not have to distinguish things from each other or from themselves. They experience everything as presenting itself as one stuff or body with themselves and each other ( yiti chengxian 一體呈現), as a dharma body that includes everything all things without exception.176 Hence a buddha sees the universe as “variegated but not variegated” (cha er wucha 差 而無差).177 It is this aspect of things that Mou takes Tiantai writers to have referred to as the “principle of the true character [of things, seen from the perspective of ] the Middle Way” (zhongdao shixiang li 中道實相理), or as “emptiness [as seen from the perspective of ] the Middle Way” (zhongdao kong 中道空),178 or as simply “dharmaness” or the “nature of dharmas.” Another reason that the Perfect Theory teaches that we already are buddhas, or are identical to buddhas, is that our minds are already built just like buddhas’ minds. In all the ten dharma worlds, There is really only one basic kind of mind, and the only question is whether it

XWZ, 409. ZZZ, 249. 176 YSL, 154; XWZ, 414; FB, 241; SJJ, 120–121. 177 FB, 224; XWZ, 46, 408; ZZZ, 245, 249; cf. FB, 240–241. 178 This is a contraction of a longer phrase, “emptiness [as seen from the perspective of the] Middle Way [according to the] ultimate truth” (zhongdao diyiyi kong 中道 第一義空), which denotes that it is a full, balanced, and correct interpretation of the Buddha’s teachings about emptiness, in contrast to the “lopsided [view of ] emptiness” (piankong 偏空) of a Nāgārjuna, for example, who does not acknowledge the “non-empty” (bukong 不空) aspect of dharmas (their perduringness as a group from a buddha’s perspective) which the Buddha explains, among other places, in the Nirvana Sutra. See FB, 198–200. 174 175

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already makes full use of its capacities.179 That is, does it already manifest its intellectual intuition or enlightenment, or is it still grasping? Recall that the Separation Theories talked of buddhas as an altogether different kind of subject from the rest of us. In order to achieve liberation, we had to get rid of our existing minds. But under the Perfect Theory, Mou emphasizes, the Perfect Theory makes plain that what sets a buddha apart from the rest of us is not that he is substantially different but just that he has access to an extraordinary vision of things.180 We attain enlightenment, we do not return to some far-off True Mind that transcends or underlies things. We just awaken to the true character or nature of the things, as permanent, pleasant, selfful, and pure.181 And our minds are already outfitted to see that True Character of things, All they have to do is just “turn on” intellectual intuition and change from one perspective (an ignorant, unenlightened one) to another. In principle, this change could come about at any moment, instantaneously. After all, the really important part—our intrinsic buddhanature—is already an established fact. All the mental hardware that we ever needed has been in place from the beginning and just needs to be switched on, as it were. It always has been. Hence in theory it is possible that we will awaken into enlightenment at any moment, whether fully and permanently or not.182 Finally, the Perfect Theory teaches that any mind “is and entails” the whole universe of objects, in one sense or another. Whereas Mature Separation Theorists such as Fazang taught that the transcendent True Mind spawned all things, under the Perfect Theory, Zhiyi and his Tiantai followers trace all things not to an otherworldly True Mind but to the very kind of mind that you already have. They call this the “momentary mind of ignorance and dharma-nature” ( yinian wuming faxing xin 一念無明法性心).183

FB, 608, 614–615. Vid. FB, 614, 698. Xie Daning argues that sometimes Mou slips and misrepresents Tiantai as teaching that a buddha’s mind (here the yinian xin 一念心) is an unlimited mind of wisdom (wuxian zhixin 無限智心) which spawns all objects, more closely resembling Mou’s Confucian Perfect Theory (Rujia yuanjiao de zai quanshi, 144–145). 181 FB, 600. 182 SYL, 151–152; WZ, 82; cf. YSL, 322. 183 FB, 785–786; YSL, 276. 179 180

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With this name, as Mou sees it, they mean to point out the twoin-one quality of our minds and the universe as a whole.184 Since my mind has the capacity for either ignorant, grasping sensible intuition or enlightened intellectual intuition, it can notice either of two different aspects in the universe of objects. Operating in an ignorant, sensible mode, it experiences the universe as one of spatio-temporal phenomena and suffering. If and when it operates in an enlightened way, it will apprehend things’ true characteristic or dharma nature and experience the universe as one of permanence, pleasure, self, and purity. In either mode, we can say that my mind (or yours) “is and entails” ( jiju 即具) all dharmas.185 In its grasping, sensible mode it “is and entails” all dharmas in the sense that it processes them by means of its forms and categories and “constructs” or “fabricates” (zao 造) their phenomenal form. In Tiantai terms, we can call this a relationship of “entailment in the momentary mind” (nianju 念具 or xinju 心具) or “entailment in [discriminating] consciousness” (shiju 識具).186 On the other hand, when minds use prajñā, even though it is no longer applying sensible intuition’s distorting categories, it still experiences all the same objects that sensible intuition did, only without the distortion and the false sense that the objects are separate from each other and itself. Hence we can say that prajñā “is and entails” all things as well. In Tiantai terms this is called “entailment in wisdom” (zhiju 智具)

184 FB, 611–613. Hans-Rudolf Kantor questions the fidelity Mou’s application of the terms of Kant’s transcendental distinction to Tiantai thought: “Kant’s transcendental difference between noumena and phenomena . . . does not really fit with Chinese Buddhism’s understanding of the relationship between the sacred and the profane as simultaneously one of opposition and nonduality. Noumena and phenomena just represent objects of or within different cognitive realms; for Kant these are heterogenous realms because there is no way for us to reduce the one to the other. Therefore the Kantian phenomena cannot be interpreted as just manifestations of noumena, nor the noumena as merely the foundation of phenomena. In Kantian philosophy, phenomena do not at all provide the ‘instructive clue’ revealing the realm of noumena, whereas in the Tiantai Buddhist teaching of inverse manifestation . . . the profane provides by means of instructive inversion the clue to the sacred, or discloses it dialectically” (“Ontological Indeterminacy,” 34. Also see ibid., 21–28). 185 Note that whereas it is possible to read Zhiyi’s original use of ji as adverbial, meaning “immediately,” Mou specifically affirms the copulative meaning (FB, 786). 186 Vid. FB, 785–786; ZZZ, 250–251, 261. This seems to be a bit of fuzzy logic. Strictly speaking, we ought to say that minds do not fabricate the objects qua thingsin-themselves, but rather that they interpret them in such a way as to give rise to phenomena.

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of all things.187 And inasmuch as prajñā looks at things and sees that the instantiations of the “nature of dharmas” or the “principle of the true character” (namely that the universe is one stuff with two aspects, one presented to sensible intuition and the other to intellectual intuition,) we can also say that the “nature [of dharmas] entails” all dharmas (xingju 性具) or that the “principle [of the true character] entails” them.188 We can also gesture to all these relationships between mind and objects by saying that “the momentary mind of ignorance and dharma-nature is and entails all dharmas.” That is, our minds have two aspects or capacities—the “ignorant” sensible intuition and the intellectual intuition which sees through to the nature of dharmas—and no matter which is operating, we can say that mind “is and entails” everything. Mou points out that no Separation Theory could muster a comparable doctrine.189 A Beginning Separation Theory could not allow that a mind which is structurally like our own has an intrinsic buddha-nature and is already a buddha, and in fact an eternally abiding buddha, in a meaningful sense.190 A Mature Separation Theory can only say that mind gives rise to all dharmas indirectly, through the mediation of ignorance.191 Spiritual Progress according to the Perfect Theory Of course, no one arrives at this exalted state in a single bound. Creatures must progress through many stages of enlightenment on their way to buddhahood. At the lowers levels of enlightenment, someone like an arhat192 sees the universe of phenomenal things principally in terms of what they are not: they are not permanent, they are empty of self-nature, they are not reliable enough to make us happy. These low-level practitioners learn to see through things to the emptiness of self-nature

ZZZ, 215, 250–251. FB, 611–612. 189 FB, 604. 190 FB, 614. 191 FB, 604. 192 Zhiyi prefers a taxonomy of attainments which is different from, but still commensurable with, the usual ten-part scheme—in this case the state in question is that of “fifth rank coupled with purity of the six sense-bases” (wupin wei jian liugen qingjing 五品位兼六根清淨). 187 188

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described, among others, by Nāgārjuna: what they see are “seemings” generated one and all by our minds’ categorial discrimination.193 Viewing things thus, the practitioners see things as undifferentiated— everything is just another illusory product of discrimination—and they become emotionally detached. They allay much of their suffering this way, but they are still a long way from full spiritual perfection, because they are not so much liberated as anesthetized. Their ignorance is “just suppressed, not destroyed” or “severed” (zhi fu bu po 只伏不破, zhi fu bu duan 只伏不斷).194 Disengaged as they are, they do not really function in the world as we know it. From the perspective of ordinary, workaday creatures such as ourselves, it seems likely that they would appear dour and even zombie-like. (In fact, readers of the Mahāyāna sutras will know that the Buddha likes to chide them and needle them, and so in the Vimalakirti Sutra, for example, we get comic parables about lunkish arhats.) According to the Tiantai understanding, what the arhats have attained is not full enlightenment but just a “minor nirvana” (xiao niepan 小涅盤) or “quasi-enlightenment” (sijie 似解).195 As the Lotus Sutra says, they are at a rest stop on the way to a more distant goal. For they still have work to do, and as they grow in wisdom and experience, they develop into bodhisattvas. At this point they expand their spiritual repertoire and learn to re-engage with the world. Over lifetimes of practice, they develop the knack of both remaining depersonalized and undifferentiating where it matters while also living in the world in (what we would call) a normal manner at the same time. Even as they remain detached and undeluded, they interact with ordinary creatures to cajole us gently along the path.196 We might say that bodhisattvas learn to be in the world but not of it. It takes a very long time to learn to do this effortlessly. To master the skill, bodhisattvas must chip away bit by bit at their remaining imperfections, which the Tiantai tradition calls their “otherworldly delusions” ( jiewai huo 界外惑).197 When they achieved arhatship, they

193 In Tiantai parlance we call what they are doing “viewing things in terms of their emptiness” (kongguan 空觀). 194 FB, 968–975, 1018–1020. 195 FB, 969. 196 In Tiantai terms, they progress from “viewing things in terms of emptiness” (空觀) to “viewing them as virtually real” ( jiaguan 假觀). 197 Here “worldly” pertains to the lower six creaturely dharma worlds and “otherworldly” to the dharma worlds of arhats and above. Zhiyi analyzes the worlds and

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mastered four kinds of meditative stillness (chanding 禪定, dhyāna) and freed themselves of most desires and most experiences of matter and discriminating consciousness.198 In Tiantai terms, they escaped their worldly delusions ( jienei huo 界內惑). However, they are still held back from buddhahood because they still harbor very subtle otherworldly delusions. On Mou’s reading, what Zhiyi calls “otherworldly delusions” amounts to a propensity to experience oneself as a limited, local subject.199 Even arhats and bodhisattvas still experience themselves as separate, delimited beings. Unlike buddhas, they do not yet identify themselves undifferentiatingly with the entire cosmos as their “dharma body.” Before they can attain final enlightenment, they must cease to think of themselves as separate from the rest of existence. When a bodhisattva finally reaches full buddhahood, he is said to be no longer separate from anything. He is an unlimited (wuxian 無限) being.200 If we read closely, of course, Mou only understands a buddha as “infinite” in a subjective sense. Though Buddhists like to say that a buddha has all things as the members of his “dharma body,” Mou reads this as a metaphor. It means simply that a buddha enjoys a beatific state of mind in which he feels himself of a piece with all dharmas and does not differentiate between himself and anything or anyone else except as a concession to the creatures he educates.201 As Mou himself puts it, buddhas are “functionally” (zuoyong 作用) allencompassing but not objectively, ontologically so (zai keguan de cunyou shang 在客觀的存有上). They are microcosms, “complete but miniature” ( juti er wei 具體而微), since they are qualitatively like truly infinite beings but still not truly unlimited in extent (zhi tong liang butong 質同量不同).202

delusions in question into three types each, in a scheme which is more convoluted than truly difficult to understand and which is not helpful to our discussion here. For Mou’s full explanation see FB, 983–96, 1012. 198 FB, 988. 199 FB, 986 ff., especially 993. 200 FB, 1207. Also see XWZ, 244. Cf. FB, 1016–1017. 201 FB, 1016–1017. Mou wants very much to avoid sounding as though he intends to minimize buddhas, and so he adds that we could also affirm that buddhas are ontologically all-inclusive as well if we would assume it as an axiom and then adjust the meaning of “ontology” accordingly (FB, 1017–1018). 202 FB, 1017.

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chapter four The Two Topics of Buddhist Philosophy: Buddha-Nature and Prajñā

From a bird’s-eye view, then, Mou thinks Buddhist philosophy consists of answers to two questions, named in the title of his great buddhological monograph. The first is the question of prajñā, and we can phrase it this way: 1) What do things seem like to a Buddha, with his intellectual intuition? What is his experience of them like? Buddhist philosophers agree broadly on this from the “Common Theory” (represented by Nāgārjuna) on up, Mou believes. A buddha’s distinctive mental attribute is his prajñā or intellectual intuition, they agree, and prajñā does not draw the kinds of distinctions that we are used to making in our experience. It does not experience the universe in terms of self and other, space and time, sameness and difference, causality and so on. (Or putting it another way, prajñā experiences the universe as “empty” of such qualities.) With Nāgārjuna’s answer, Mou considers the question settled. Even more advanced Buddhist theorists (such as Fazang) do not offer a substantially different answer. They just couch it in different terms. It is on the second question that Buddhist philosophers disagree substantially, Mou thinks, and exercise most of their ingenuity. Though Mou does not spell out what he thinks this entails, we can formulate it this way: 2) What are buddhas, in relation to the world of ordinary creatures and material things, and what causes buddhahood? In a word, this is the question of “buddha-nature.” In distinction to “functional” discourse, on which Buddhists agree from the Common Theory on up, Mou calls buddha-nature discourse its “ontological” dimension since it pertains to the conditions for the existence of material things and other variegated things and of buddhas.203

203 Notice that with Mou’s talk of “ontology,” he is really referring to discourse about salvation or liberation. It is an ontology conducted for soteriological purposes. If we wanted, we could call it “soterio-ontology.” In Buddha-Nature and Prajñā “ontology” pertains specifically to doctrines about minds (subjects), dharmas (the objects which form our minds’ surroundings and furniture), and especially buddha-nature (our liberatability). In other words, ontology teaches us what we need to know about the modes of being of the various things for the sake of attaining liberation.

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As Mou sees it, Buddhist philosophers ultimately must answer this ontological or “buddha-nature” question in one of two main ways. They may say that buddhas are more separate from the rest of us than not, or they may say that buddhas are substantially the same as us. The philosophers who say that a buddha is strictly separate from us can offer one of two explanations. Those who teach some version of the Beginning Separation Theory say that buddhas are finite, conditioned objects like any other. For even though they have extraordinary and desirable powers, they still arise, abide, and perish in dependence on causes and conditions, like any other object. They are as separate from each other as any other concrete thing, and the only sense in which they are literally at one with the rest of the universe is subjectively. Simply put, they may feel as though they are identical with the whole universe or “suchness,” but in plain fact they are not. They will perish, but the universe will go on. On the other hand, teachers of a Mature Separation Theory say that a buddha is separate from the rest of the universe of objects for the opposite reason, namely because he is not really a finite object at all but in fact is an infinite, purely transcendent entity. Ordinary creatures and material things are causally related to him (since, as True Mind, he causes their existence), but they are not identical to him, nor he to them. He transcends them. Though the Mature Theory is still wrong, Mou thinks, nonetheless it is an improvement. First, it does not diminish buddhas by making them out to be just another type of perishable creature, as the Beginning Separation Theory does. And the Mature Theory comes a step or two closer to the truth about buddhas, namely that they are not separate from us, inasmuch as it recognizes that we enjoy a deep kinship with the buddhas. The Mature Theory’s mistake is simply to insist that the Buddha belongs to a different plane of existence from ours. According to the Perfect Theory as Mou understands it, the truth is not so simple. It maintains that even though a buddha is separate from other creatures in a common-sense way, just as each of us is separate from Zimbabwe or a ping-pong table, there is more to it than that. He is not entirely separate from us in every way. There are also a few esoteric senses in which we are “identical” to him. First, a buddha does not subjectively feel himself to be a numerically separate person from you or me, as the Buddha already told us in the Perfection of Prajñā sutras, and he is also the being that you

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and I will become in the indefinite future, as the Mature Separation Theory recognized. But more than this, you and I are “identical” to buddhas in the sense that we both have the same basic kind of mind. Whether helldwellers or humans or buddhas, we all have minds outfitted with the capacity for ignorance or liberation, sensible intuition or intellectual intuition. In our mental equipment we are the same. And whether our minds are already liberated or still ignorant, they can be said to “be and entail” all things, in the sense that minds have the same “nature” (xing 性)204 or “principle” (li 理) as the whole universe, meaning that they the universe can present two different aspects to minds—its phenomenal aspect or its true aspect—depending on their perspective and minds can view objects in either aspect. Unenlightened, ignorant minds see objects in phenomenal form, and enlightened minds see “the nature of dharmas” or things as they are in their true character. Viewed with discriminating awareness, it presents itself as a universe of objects that are separate from the mind and from each other. Viewed with prajñā, it presents itself as not separate. In Tiantai terms we can call this entailment of all things by mind as equivalent the nature principle of things as “nature entailment” (xingju 性具), “prajñā entailment” (zhiju 智具), or “principal entailment” (liju 理具).205 That is, since the dharma nature or principle—their having

204 In Tiantai terms this is called “buddha-nature [as instantiated among] dharmas” ( fa foxing 法佛性 ), known in Tiantai parlance as “buddha-nature as the main cause” (zhengyin foxing 正因佛性), as opposed to “buddha-nature [as instantiated in] awakening” ( jue foxing 覺佛性) (or the Tiantai tradition’s buddha-nature as the “conditioning and completing” ( yuanliao 緣了) causes. Mou writes: “Buddha-nature as the main cause is the status (tiduan 體段) of a buddha converted to the causal stage of practice ( yindi 因地) [i.e. the stage before enlightenment]. This is buddha-nature spoken of objectively. Buddha-nature as the supporting and completing causes are internally analyzed out of the objectively treated, unitary buddha-nature as the main cause. This is buddha-nature spoken of subjectively. Buddha-nature as the main cause is the subject in the objective sense and buddha-nature as the supporting and completing causes are the subject in the subjective sense. This is where the real subject is and buddha-nature as commonly understood, namely the locus of the capacity by which one becomes a buddha. Buddha-nature in the objective sense can be called buddha-nature [as instantiated among] dharmas and buddha-nature in the subjective sense can be called buddha-nature [as instantiated in] awakening” (FB, 196. cf. FB, 241; XWZ, 406–407). That is, we are referring to the nature of the universe as it is found even in insentient things, to differentiate it from the distinct way in which that same nature can be found among sentient things, viz. as enlightened awareness or prajñā. 205 FB, 85, 785–786; ZZZ, 250–251, 261. The first of these, xingju 性具, is routinely contrasted with the Huayan line’s corresponding term xingqi 性起.

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the “true characteristic”—is really a figure of speech and only exists as instantiated by dharmas, we can say that the dharma nature or principle exists as those dharmas and “entails” their existence.206 The Inclusiveness of the Perfect Theory Notice that the Perfect Teaching does not reject the lower teachings outright; it merely “critiques” them in the sense of putting them in their proper context. In Mou’s scheme, each of the lower theories incorporates some important insights as well as some misunderstandings. For example, the Beginning Separation Theory was right that all minds are discriminating minds and that a buddha is indeed a finite, conditioned creature like the rest of us. Its mistake was just to say that this is all that a buddha is. The Mature Separation Theory was correct to teach that enlightenment inheres (transcendently) in our minds and is available in it instantly as soon as we stop discriminating, but it stumbles when it introduces a false dualism which exaggerates the distance between buddhas and the rest of us. Mou stresses that the Tiantai thinkers do not want to expunge these theories but to clean them up and merge them. Their Perfect Theory retains the correct insights contributed by the two Separation Theories, and it marries them together and shows how they are actually consistent with each other in the bigger picture.207 Tiantai writers express this by saying that the Perfect Theory “reveals the partial truths [in the proper light] to bring into view the whole truth” (kaiquan xianshi 開權 顯實) and “uncovers traces [i.e. historically particular Buddhist teachings] as manifesting the root [that is, supra-historical enlightenment]”

FB, 612. Brook Ziporyn captures this sense by calling it the “Integrated Teaching” (Evil and/or/as the Good, 123–124). Hans-Rudolf Kantor also nicely calls to mind this sense of being dialectically consummated in calling it “die vollenden Lehre” (Heilslehre, passim). Kantor also writes helpfully that according to Zhiyi’s teaching, “[e]ach moment within the contingent existence of sentient beings inspires the enlightened one, then, to apply the distinctive teaching necessary to face the present degree of ignorance. Paradoxically, unwholesome moments of existence encompass the directions for their own wholesome transformation; any given moment of existence contains this instructional or heuristic value . . . The authentic nature of all things is precisely this ‘instructional’ nature penetrating each moment of existence, or Buddha-nature ( foxing 佛性)” (“Ontological Indeterminacy,” 31). 206 207

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( faji xianben 發迹顯本), or that it critiques the lower teachings, “definitively establishing their meaning and making them coherent with each other” ( jueliao changtong 決了暢通).208 Each of these theories is an important phase in the growth of our understanding. The Buddha’s full, definitive message is complicated and subtle enough that virtually no one could get it right at once, nor did he expect that we should. We progress through phases of greater and then lesser misunderstanding before we get it just right, and each phase is an important stepping stone. The job of the Perfect Theory is not to overthrow these lower theories but to make us see the big picture when we are ready, the Buddha’s original intent. That will make us see the insights captured in each theory and finally understand how they all fit together. Since the Perfect Teaching presupposes the lower ones, Mou thinks, it must also be learned last. Were someone to attempt to skip the lower, discriminating teachings and proceed directly to the Perfect Teaching, he would only be able to parrot the formulae of the Perfect Teaching, not understand them.209 Mou’s case in point is Jingjue Renyue 淨覺仁岳 (992–1064). Renyue learned at the feet of Zhili, traditionally honored as the last of the great Tiantai apologists. Zhili is remembered as the authority who firmly refuted a group of confused latter-day members of the Tiantai line who thought that Zhiyi and Zhanran were trying to teach something basically consonant with the Awakening of Faith.210 That is, they were confusing the Tiantai teaching with what was in fact a Mature Separation Theory. Tragically, Renyue had the precious opportunity to study with Zhili only to break with him and revert to that very heterodoxy glorified in the Awakening of Faith. In Mou’s opinion this happened because Renyue did not get from Zhili a solid enough foundation in the lower teachings.211 FB, 589–591; SJJ, 360–361. FB, 1181. 210 See Chi-wah Chan, “Chih-li and the Crisis of T’ien-t’ai Buddhism,” 418 ff. 211 Mou writes “[Renyue’s] originally helping Zhili confute Jiqi 繼齊 and Xianrun 咸潤 while under Zhili’s tutelage was just a case of him parroting [the Perfect Theory], for from the beginning what he studied had not entered into him existentially. As soon as he exerted his own efforts, he could not enter and in fact he unwittingly, naturally slipped into the True Mind doctrinal framework yet still made arguments attaching Tiantai terms everywhere. This is why he was in confusion…It is important to understand that the Tiantai Perfect Theory emerges through a digestion of all partial teachings (quanjiao 權教). From the beginning it is the conceivable as the inconceivable, the graduated (cidi 次第) as the ungraduated, the partial as the actual, 208 209

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He was introduced too soon to the subtleties of the Perfect Theory and as a result he missed its true purport. Zhili failed him by allowing him, in effect, to run before he could crawl by starting his studies with the Perfect Theory. The Chan Tradition Mou sees the Chan tradition as “a simplification of Huayan and Tiantai,” where the teachers recast Huayan and Tiantai views of mind and buddhahood into colorful, “charicaturesque” (manhua shi de 漫畫 式的) explanations.212 And over its history, Mou thinks, the Chan tradition was steered by its leaders from a Perfect-type to a Separate-type position. Early in its history, the legendary “sixth patriarch” Huineng was teaching what Mou sees as an essentially Tiantai-like doctrine.213 When Huineng said, for example, that our “own nature can give birth to the ten-thousand dharmas” (zixing neng sheng wanfa 自性能生萬法),214 superficially he seems to be saying that the True Mind is the source of phenomenal things. That, of course, would be the “True Mind-only” doctrine characteristic of the Mature Separation Theory. In fact, with never adversarial to any partial teaching and never occupying the same level as any partial teaching. Taking it as a partial, definite (teding 特定) discourse to be argued with on the basis of another definite discourse, it is always impossible to get to what is actual in it or to understand its words’ and reasonings’ true significance. Therefore the study of Buddhist learning can never begin from Tiantai. As for the order of study, it should always begin from discrimination ( fenjie 分解), understanding all the teachings, understanding all the doctrines, understanding every level, and understanding every system. After there is that understanding, one knows to reflect on the digestions according to level of why there is partial explanation, why there is actual explanation, and why perfect and imperfect explanation. In sum, one knows why there is this sort of ranking scheme for the teachings. If basic training in the previous stage is insufficient, then empty talk of perfection and imperfection is just parroting words. There is no actual gain, and in time there must necessarily be a weariness with it and even a backlash. Jingjue was of this sort. If he had first had sufficient discriminating training, then he would naturally have flowed into the perfect and actual theory, and even if he had not been able to flow into it on his own, as soon as he were corrected, he would have realized it . . . Thus when Jingue was studying with Zhili, Zhili should just have supervised and encouraged him to first exert himself on the lower learning. It was not fitting to allow him to participate in the debates about partial and actual [i.e. about the merits of the Separation and Perfect Theories], which made his mind superficial” (FB, 1181–1182). 212 FB, 85–86. 213 FB, 85, 95, 119–120; ZZZ, 267. 214 T 2008:48.349a19.

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his talk of “nature” “giving birth,” by his diction Huineng tends to make later readers think of the phrase “nature-arising” (xingqi 性起), a latter-day doctrine of the Mature Separate doctrine, or of Zhanran’s saying that in the Mature Separation Theory, “The True Mind when under delusion gives birth to the nine kinds of phenomena” (zhenru zai mi neng sheng jiujie 真如在迷能生九界).215 But Mou thinks that if we enough pay attention to such utterances in context, we find that really Huineng was enunciating a Perfect-type doctrine. For example, Mou takes Huineng’s saying that “self-nature can give birth to the tenthousand dharmas” as meaning that just as we are, we include in our minds all the possible kinds of dharmas. By “self-nature,” Mou thinks, Huineng was referring to our ordinary minds, which have the potential to switch at any time from an ignorant, discriminating perspective to an enlightened one and see things just as they are and without distortion. Whether you are a hungry ghost or a deva or an arhat, no matter what kinds of things you see (such as blood and excrement in the case of a hungry ghost), you are seeing it with a mind just like this one.216 This is different from a True Mind-only doctrine, wherein the Pure True Mind “gives rise” to things indirectly by succumbing to ingnorance. Hence Mou finds that what Huineng’s thinking actually resembles is a non-systematic version of the Tiantai doctrine that “the ordinary mind entails the three thousand kinds of dharmas” ( yinian xin jiju sanqian fa 一念心即具三千法 or yinian sanqian 一念三千). However, the Chan line eventually was converted to what Mou sees as a Separate-type position.217 For Mou this is exemplifed by Heze Shenhui 荷澤神會, Huineng’s rival in latter-day Chan legend, whom Mou associates with talk of our “true nature as numinous awareness” (lingzhi zhenxing 靈知真性).218 Mou takes this “true nature” as a

T 1719.34:171a16, quoted in FB, 518. One might wonder about buddhas. After all, with their prajñā, buddhas see things as they actually are, without the distorting categories of the discriminating mind. So how can we say that the mind “gives birth to” things in the case of a buddha? Mou’s answer would probably be that buddhas are never only buddhas but always buddhaswho-are-hungry-ghosts, buddhas-who-are-humans, and so on. As such, they do have discriminating minds and do experience phenomenal dharmas. 217 FB, 85–86, 569; XT, 1:620. 218 As a four-character phrase, ‘lingzhi zhenxing’ is not attested in the Taishō canon (T), but Zongmi attributes to Shenhui an identification of ‘lingzhi’ with ‘zhenxing’ (e.g. T 2015.48:402c29 inter alia). (I am grateful to Brook Ziporyn for pointing this out.) Later, in Shi bu’er men zhiyao chao (T 1928) and elsewhere, Zhili takes up ‘lingzhi’ from Zongmi and uses it as a representative term in discussing Zongmi’s Separation Theory. 215 216

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reference to an aloof and extra-phenomenal True Mind. It was this strand of the historical Chan tradition that the influential Guifeng Zongmi 圭峰宗密 (780–841) eventually brought to the fore when he married the Chan line into the philosophical tradition of Huayan.219

219 On Mou’s philosophical evaluation of the Chan tradition, also see Chan Wingcheuk, “MOU Zongsan on Zen Buddhism,” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosopy 5, no. 1 (2005); Bai Yuxiao 白欲曉, “Mou Zongsan chan jiao panshi yu chan jiao yizhi lun tanxi 牟宗三禪教判釋與禪教一致論探析 [Analysis of Mou Zongsan’s Doxography of Chan and Jiao and Theory of the Unity of Chan and Jiao],” Zongjiaoxue yanjiu, no. 1 (2005).

CHAPTER FIVE

WHERE BUDDHISTS GO WRONG As much as Mou respects the Buddha and Buddhists, as a committed Confucian he cannot agree with them in everything. Though he makes it his mission to wake Confucians from prejudices against Buddhism and to acknowledge Buddhists’ superior accomplishment as philosophers and learn from them, nevertheless Mou believes that Buddhists and Confucians differ on subtle but important matters, and where they differ he declares himself steadfastly on the Confucian side. The Orthodox Confucian Tradition according to Mou In much the same way that Mou thinks of Buddhism as a teaching first dispensed by a sagely teacher, the Buddha Śākyamuni, which commentators then unpacked over a period of centuries into more or less adequate bodies of theory, he thinks the Confucian tradition began with a deposit of faith transmitted in a group of scriptures of varying antiquity associated with several ancient sagely teachers, including the legendary sage kings Yao, Shun, Yu, Tang, Kings Wen and Wu, and the Duke of Zhou, and their less politically fortunate latter-day inheritors Confucius and Mencius.1 Among the Confucian scriptures, Mou takes the greatest interest in the appendices to the Book of Changes and the work sometimes called The Doctrine of the Mean (Zhongyong 中庸), which speak on a cosmological or macrocosmic scale, and the Analects (Lunyu 論語) of Confucius and the Mencius (Mengzi 孟子), which talk far less in obviously metaphysical terms and much more about the person of the sage, his conduct, and his mind. And as with the Buddhist sutras, Mou is happy to admit that these scriptures have passed through a great many editors’ hands, but he maintains his conviction that they faithfully embody sagely dispensations.

1 On Mou’s detailed understanding of this succession, see XT, 1:42ff. and SJJ, 303. On what Mou thinks is consistent and timeless in the Confucian tradition, see XT, 1:4–5.

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Just as Mou thinks the Buddha’s teaching was interpreted best by the Tiantai thinkers, he believes the Confucian sages’ message was most effectively summarized by certain figures in the Song 宋 (960–1279) and Ming 明 (1368–1644) dynasties. He gives highest marks to Zhou Dunyi 周敦頤 (Lianxi 濂溪 1017–1073), Zhang Zai 張載 (Hengqu 橫渠 1020–1077), Cheng Hao 程顥 (Mingdao 明道 1032–1085), and especially the now-obscure Hu Hong 胡宏 (Wufeng 五峰 1102–1161) and Liu Zongzhou 劉宗周 ( Jishan 蕺山 1578–1645).2 In the next chapter I will try to explain what Mou thinks Buddhist philosophers got supremely right, ideas that Confucian philosophers should openly borrow from them. But first we need to cover the issues on which Mou thinks the two differ irreconcilably, the consequential truths that the Confucian philosophers capture and their Buddhist cousins miss. To be fair to Mou, we need to remind ourselves that Mou is speaking here as something like a “dogmatic theologian” in the most respectable sense. Like Karl Barth in his Church Dogmatics, he makes it his mission to enunciate the Confucian kerygma, not to try to prove it to determined skeptics with knock-down arguments, since he thinks that demonstration and argument take us only so far in these matters.3 2 SJJ, 414. Bresciani gives a helpful diagram of Mou’s version of the orthodox Confucian transmission (Reinventing Confucianism, 368). Mou rates Lu Xiangshan 陸象山, Wang Yangming 王陽明, and Wang Longxi 王龍溪 highly, but still below these others. And somewhat infamously, he rules Cheng Yichuan 程伊川 and Zhu Xi 朱熹 outside the mainline of Confucian orthodoxy. As we will see in the following chapter, Mou believes they strayed from the sages’ message in much the same way that Buddhist Separation Theorists strayed from the Buddha’s message, by teaching that our minds are not innately transcendent. For a detailed critical discussion in English of Mou’s opinion of Zhu Xi, see John Berthrong, All Under Heaven (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), 118–25; John Berthrong, “The Problem of Mind: Mou Tsung-san’s Critique of Chu Hsi,” Journal of Chinese Religion, no. 10 (1982). Also, note that Mou’s distinction between the work and thought of Cheng Mingdao and the one hand and his brother Cheng Yichuan on the other is interpretive. Their literary remains do not make clear which of the two was speaking at a given time, and Mou disagrees with the standard attributions arrived at by editor Huang Zongxi 黃宗羲 (1610–1695). (See SJJ, 403–404). 3 In one of his lectures Mou complains to his audience about the “intellectualism” (lizhizhuyi 理智主義) of Western and Chinese philosophy of recent centuries: “Whatever is provable gets believed and what is not provable is not believed. That is the intellectualist attitude. Intellect is limited to the domain of [empirical] experience, and so people who cling to an intellectualist attitude always demand evidence. In the past the slogan of Hu Shizhi 胡適之 [also known as Hu Shi] was “Bring me the evidence.” It sounds so persuasive and justified, but in reality it makes no sense . . . For some things

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Ingenious as Mou thinks Buddhists are, he also believes they are hobbled somewhat in their spiritual practice because they omit the most decisive factor from their theory, namely Heaven and its moral law.4 In this respect it is Confucians who set the standard. Heaven “Creates” the Universe It is an article of Confucian faith,5 according to Mou, that the locus of goodness and the giver of meaning to all things is Heaven. Heaven

you can produce evidence [but] some things have nothing to do with evidence. So where will you get evidence from? For example, under Chinese people’s old way of thinking, when your mother or father dies you must not wear gold-rimmed glasses or wear silk. You can only wear hemp cloth. But [Hu Shi] said, ‘Why can’t I wear gold-rimmed glasses? If I can wear silver-rimmed glasses then of course I can wear gold-rimmed glasses. Gold rims and silver rims are both metallic; what’s the difference? How is silk different from hemp cloth?’ In this way he denied the way of filiality. Where can you find evidence for the way of filiality? . . . So these people have no moral consciousness. Moral questions have nothing to do with evidence. All you can do is testify to it yourself. As soon as you ask why, you are not human anymore. You are a beast or a bird. What modern people calling scholarship (xueshu 學術) is mostly like this. What people in the past called learning (xuewen 學問) was just the opposite. They talked specifically about how the way of filiality manifests itself. Modern people look at all this as mysticism. They do not treat it as learning at all” (SJJ, 446–447). 4 Mou has a great many terms with which to refer to this. Perhaps the most complete formulation is “the autonomous Heavenly moral principle” (zilü zhi daode tianli 自律之道德天理) (XT, 3:437). But for the sake of clarity and simplicity I will speak of it chiefly using his Kantian-inspired term “moral law” (daode faze 道德法則). (See SJJ, 303; ZZT, 376–377; SLY, 17, 48, 52, 55.) As represented by Mou, the Confucian tradition does have analogous terms. (For example, he mentions the Classic of Change’s command to “honor qian but take your law from kun” (zun qian er fa kun 尊乾而法坤). When Mou speaks about this moral law in terms specific to the Confucian tradition, he more often uses words which involve the notions of “way” or “principle” rather than “law,” such as tiandao 天道, daoti 道體, tianli 天理, or simply li 理 (e.g. ZZT, 22ff.). For this discussion, I prefer not to rely on those terms because, probably like many readers of Confucian texts, I find the abstract talk of “principle” or “way” unhelpfully vague. (Some may object that, by focusing on the “law” terms instead of the “way” or “principle” terms, I may cause the reader to conflate this Confucian notion of moral law with an Abrahamic idea of divine law or a Stoic-based notion of “natural law.” Alas, few translations are perfect, especially in the case of Mou’s work, and the reader is herewith forewarned.) As an alternative, Mou uses Confucian terms that denote Heaven’s moral law as it subsists in us as our human nature, such as xingming tiandao 性命天道, xingti 性體, or renxin 仁心 or liangzhi 良知 (e.g. SY, 74; XWZ, 63, 438, 444–445; YSL, 310; XWZ, 438). This equivalency of Heaven’s moral law with our indwelling human nature is introduced below. 5 I am speaking here of what Mou thinks is the correct Confucian message, and it is important that we differentiate between that and what Mou thinks that certain famous Confucians (notably Zhu Xi) have said incorrectly about Confucianism. We will talk about mistaken interpretations of Confucianism in the next chapter.

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“morally creates” the universe by decreeing for it a moral standard or moral law. Mou has a flair for the dramatic that often misleads readers, and we have to take care with Mou’s notion of “moral creation” (daode chuangzao 道德創造) because, as is so often the case in his writing, he is attaching a somewhat esoteric meaning to an ordinarylooking word without warning us. On close inspection it is clear that he does not mean that Heaven creates the universe materially, as God is said to have created the world, or in the way that Dr. Frankenstein created a monster or a carpenter creates a cabinet. What Heaven does is creatio ex materia, creation from pre-existing materials. It takes the universe of matter that is ready-to-hand (or, in Mou’s phrase, is “an already-existing existence” ( yiyou de cunzai 已有的存在)) and “create” it by endowing it with moral meaning.6 So what Mou has in mind is not material creation but moral creation. Heaven takes what already is and affirms its moral significance or moral existence.7 Given the way we use “create” in modern English, strictly speaking we should probably say that Heaven does not create things so much as it creates or decrees meaning for those things.8 Or, in a more Nietzschean mode, we might say that what Heaven does is to “posit values.”9 YSL, 140. YSL, 140; SLY, 75–76. 8 FB, 760. 9 Mou expresses himself so misleadingly on this point, creating so much confusion, that recently, more than ten years after Mou’s death, Yang Zebo 楊澤波 still found it necessary to devote part of an article for specialists to clarifing emphatically: “. . . the actual meaning is that the moral mind can bestow ‘value’ on the myriad things of the universe . . . giving moral meaning and content to external objects . . . ‘Creation of valueladen being’ is the whole of the meaning of Mou Zongsan’s ontological thought. One absolutely cannot explain Mou Zongsan’s ontology as ‘the creation of the existence of actual [i.e. material] objects.” See Yang Zebo 楊澤波, “Mou Zongsan chaoyue cunyoulun de lilun yiyi yu neizai quexian [The Theoretical Significance and Internal Shortcomings of Mou Zongsan’s Transcendental Ontology] 牟宗三超越存有論的理 論意義與內在缺陷,” in Xianggang Zhongwen Daxue de dangdai ruzhe 香港中文大學的當 代儒者 [Contemporary Confucians of the Chinese University of Hong Kong], ed. Zheng Zongyi 鄭宗義 (Hong Kong: New Asia College, Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2006), 387. Also see Guan Zhenqiang 關鎮強, “Wudai de xingfu: Mou Zongsan xiansheng de xingfuguan chutan 無待的幸福：牟宗三先生的幸福觀初探 [Unconditional Happiness: A Preliminary Exploration of Mou Zongsan’s View of Happiness],” Ehu 22, no. 7 (1997), 14; Yang Zebo 楊澤波, “Wei guan yi cunyoulun mingcheng de cunyoulun sixiang: Mou Zongsan Xinti yu xingti cunyoulun sixiang bianxi 未冠以存有 論名稱的存有論思想：牟宗三《心體與性體》存有論思想辨析 [Ontology Except in Name: An Analysis of Mou Zongsan’s Ontological Thought in Mind and Human Nature],” Xiandai zhexue, no. 2 (2004); and Ng Yu-kwan’s outstanding clarification of the relationship between “the manifold” (zaduo 雜多) and the thing-in-itself in Mou’s thought (Ng Yu-kwan, Chuncui lidong xianxiangxue, 697–698). 6 7

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As Mou recognizes, with this understanding of creation he is propounding what is really a “subjectivist” ontology or an ontology pro nobis, an account of things in terms of their significance for us.10 As Zheng Jiadong puts it, for Mou “the main thing is the subject. Mou thinks objects are assimilated through the subject; the subject projects onto the object and assimilates the object back into the subject”.11 Hence Mou calls what Confucianism teaches a “moral metaphysics” (daode de xing’ershangxue 道德的形而上學), a system which traces being to morality. The alternative, according to Mou, would be a mere “metaphysics of morals” (daode di xingshangxue 道德底形上學) like Kant’s, which assumes that morality is ontologically secondary to something still more fundamental.12 Though he seldom calls attention to it, Mou is recognizing two theoretical kinds or degrees of existence.13 Without Heaven’s moral endowment, there would only be simple “existence” (cunzai 存在) as an impoverished condition. (Happily, this possibility exists only in counterfactual imagination, for Heaven does not ever withhold its transforming power from anything.)14 What Heaven creates by Heaven’s moral endowment is not mere existence but “being” (存有), a sort of existence-plus as it were, in which what would otherwise be bare existence is morally irrigated or imbued or nourished (zerun 澤潤) by Heaven’s creative act.15

FB, 760. SJJ, 79; see Zheng Jiadong, Mou Zongsan, 109–111. 12 SJJ, 71–73. 13 Most of the time, Mou does not distinguish explicitly between the two ideas, easily giving the misimpression that he thinks that without moral mind/Heaven, objects would simply be annihilated: “Apart from the original mind . . ., all things would revert to not existing” (SLY, 11). 14 However, in Mou’s autobiographical writings he seems to depict what such an existence would be like, for example in his reflections on the decadence and despondence of his life during the war years (SX, 163). Also, Mou seems to take the Chinese Communist Party as emblematic of a life lived in denial of the moral mind, both because of it professed philosophicalal materialism and also because of his relatives’ and friends’ sufferings at the Communists’ hands (WZ, 146). 15 Hence Mou writes, for example, “Since the fuction of ren 仁 [Heavenly intellectual intuition] is so profound, we might as well say that ren represents our true life . . . our true substance . . . our true self (ZZT, 32. Emphasis mine.) Cf. Hegel’s distinction between “existence” (Existenz) and “actuality” (Wirklichkeit) and his idea that “[a] lthough the absolute could indeed exist apart from and prior to subjectivity, it could still not fully realize or develop its nature without subjectivity.” See Frederick Beiser, Hegel (New York: Routledge, 2005), 70. 10 11

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To make the metaphysics more concrete, imagine what the Genesis creation story would look like if we changed it to the story of how Heaven “morally creates” the world. When Heaven entered the scene, the sky, earth, and waters and all the animals and people would already be in place. At that point, instead of God commanding, “Let there be such-and-suches” and calling various things and creatures into existence, Heaven would decree a moral law that lays down authoritative moral significance for them and moral claims on them. It is difficult to pin down just what Heaven would say. For Mou the imperative for us seems to be to feel and act on certain dispositions of concern for various kinds of people and creatures. So for instance, Heaven might say something like, “Let there be a father-son relationship! Let fathers cherish their sons and teach them virtue, and let sons honor and obey their fathers. And let there be the relationship of ruler and ruled! Let rulers be as shepherds unto their people, seeing selflessly to their order and welfare, and let the ruled support their rulers and follow their virtuous example. Let there be the relationship of husband and wife! . . . of elder brother and younger brother! . . . of friend and friend!” and so on. More generally, Heaven would pronounce on the goodness and worth of such virtues as benevolence, dutifulness, propriety, wisdom, and faithfulness. Most generally of all, Heaven would declare, along with Kant, that we ought to treat all persons as ends and not merely as means.16 From this, quotidian things like automobiles and vegetables too would get their purchase on morally-charged being, indirectly. For in order that there may be a father-son relationship, there must food for fathers to feed their young sons and cars with which sons can take their aged fathers to see the doctor. Heaven Also Dwells in Us Even though Heaven transcends us, being far greater than us, Mou thinks that the sages also teach that there are senses in which Heaven dwells in us. One way to express this is by saying that we have an innately moral mind (daode benxin 道德本心).17 That is, we have an

Vid. SJJ, 327. Mou also often refers to this as our “mind of benevolence” (renxin 仁心) as well, a phrasing he associates with Confucius’ Analects. 16 17

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indelible moral dimension to our minds.18 Our minds are naturally disposed to experience moral significance in things and to feel and think in moral terms, such as “lovable,” “pathetic,” “worthy of respect,” “just” or “unjust,” “right” or “wrong”.19 Now, this is not the same as saying that we always think good thoughts and do good deeds. But regardless of how we actually behave or whether we profess skepticism about moral properties being really real, our minds are simply such as to experience things in moral terms.20 Another way to express this is by saying that Heaven resides in us as our innermost human nature (xing 性).21 Just as we can say that Heaven is present throughout the universe in the form of its moral decree or law, i.e. its positing moral significance to things, we can also say that Heaven is present in us as our wired-for-moral-awareness minds. In doing so, it furnishes us with our human nature,22 makes us kin to Heaven itself, and in fact makes us its partner or co-creator.23 For in fact, Mou thinks, Heaven does not merely dwell in us, it acts through us too.24 We represent Heaven as its eyes and actors on earth

Vid. SLY, 5ff. YSL, 23–24; SLY, 5. 20 Mou’s student You Huizhen writes: “If moral consciousness were just an affirmation or supposition by a minority of people, or if as some people think morality were just popular convention, then what about the reciprocal love that people and all humanity value so much, or our sense of and demand for [a difference between] good and evil, right and wrong? Just where exactly would these demands and sensibilities come from? Why should all humanity universally have such demands? Even though in every society there are differences in how people express love, . . . nevertheless the demand for love, including [the demand for both] loving and being loved, is clearly universal.” You Huizhen 尤惠貞, “Mou Zongsan xiansheng duiyu ru-fo zhi bianxi: cong ‘Fojia tiyong yi zhi hengding’ tanqi 牟宗三先生對於儒佛之辨析：從《佛家 體用義之衡定》談起 [Mou Zongsan’s Analysis of the Distinction Between Confucianism and Buddhism, Focusing on ‘Judgment Concerning Buddhist Doctrines of Substance and Function’]” (paper presented at the Mou Zongsan yu dangdai ruxue, Zhongyang Daxue, Zhongli, Taiwan, May 6–8), 8. 21 ZZT, 30. 22 As the Zhongyong says, what is decreed or bequeathed by Heaven is our nature (tian ming zhi wei xing 天命之謂性). 23 Tu Wei-ming has written famously on this point of Confucian faith, of which the locus classicus is the Zhongyong’s dictum that humans can “form a trinity with heaven and earth” ( yu tiandi san 與天地參). See Tu Wei-ming, Centrality and Commonality: An Essay on Confucian Religiousness (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989), 70, 82, 99 106–107. 24 We should add here that not all Confucian writers agree about this. As we will see in the next chapter, according to Mou’s presentation, the great philosophical dispute among Song and Ming Confucians is over the relationship of Heaven and moral law on the one hand and the human mind on the other, much as the great Buddhist 18 19

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Simply by being human, experiencing the universe in moral terms and doing our best to act according to our moral sensibilities, we are carrying out Heaven’s work of “moral creation” for it, as its representatives.25 This is most completely so in the case of a sage, a person whose mind is completely aligned with the moral law and in whom Heaven personifies itself as a concrete subject: [Heaven’s] principle is not empty talk, and the Way is not a vacuity; they must have a [sage] to actualize them . . . The pinnacle of [Heaven’s] instantiation of itself is the sage.26 Its transcendence and a priori-ness is not the kind that is just floating there by itself, but is an immanent a priori-ness or particular transcendence that is completely integrated into real lives . . .27

One of the great Confucian authors, Wang Yangming, exemplified this figurative equivalence of “existence” with “existence with moral significance” when he wrote: Without my [moral mind’s] enlivening awareness, who would there be to admire Heaven’s loftiness and behold the earth’s profundity? . . . Without my [moral mind’s] enlivening awareness, there would be no Heaven or earth or . . . myriad things . . . With the [moral] mind, all is real; without it, all would be illusion.28

The reasoning here seems to be like that in the old thesis that a falling tree makes no sound unless someone is present to hear it: if there were no subject to witness Heaven’s imbuing existence with moral significance, or to do the imbuing on Heaven’s behalf, then there would not really be a moral significance.29 Of course, this is not to say that any of us, even a sage, could change the moral law to suit his whim, any more than we can bend spoons with our minds. The moral law is an objective law, built right into the philosophers disagree principally over the relationship of buddhas and suchness on the one hand and ordinary creatures on the other. And just as Mou sides with the Buddhist thinkers who believe in the identity of buddhas and ordinary creatures, he endorses the Confucian philosophers who teach the unity of Heaven and human mind and opines that it is they who best capture the authentically sagely teaching. 25 ZZT, 45f. 26 XT, 1:323. 27 XT, 1:117–118. 28 Wang Yangming 王陽明, Chuanxi lu 傳習錄 [Instructions for Practical Living] (Changsha: Yuelu, 2004), 331, quoted in XT, 1:32; YSL, 307. 29 Cf. Hegel, for whom the formal-final cause is realized in history only through actions of particular agents (Beiser, Hegel, 264–265).

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universe as much as the laws of matter. We could no more cause evil to be good by an act of will than we could cause ourselves to grow extra arms or add extra planets to the solar system just by wishing it so. It is simply not in the nature of things. Moreover, we could not even self-consistently will evil and good to be inverted. The moral law is what our very nature is. It is not dictated to us by some sovereign external to ourselves. Rather, as in Kant, it is “autonomous” (zilü 自律), a “self-given universal law” that we legislate for ourselves in accordance with reason itself.30 That is, the moral law is dictated by pure reason, and since we are reasonable creatures, it is our own law.31 Hence it is not only Heaven’s will but our own will, for remember that Heaven is not something substantially separate from us, and its decree is not someone else’s decree but our own. Of course, most of us do not actually will Heaven’s law so unambiguously and carry it out with our every thought and action. That is

30 XT, 1:112–113, 1:115ff., 1:647ff.; ZZZ, 13; XWZ, 76. Mou writes: “First we should give a comprehensive analysis of this freedom that we have postulated: (1) The free autonomous will is the essential function of moral feeling. It is precisely the mind. (2) It is self-legislating (ziwo lifa 自我立法). It is precisely principle (li 理). (3) . . . [i]t is self-determining (zijue 自決). This follows from its being autonomous. That is to say, it is not passively, unhappily determined by the law, but rather is actively, happily, and thus in accordance with the law it has established, determining itself. This is what Mencius says about the principle of rectitude delighting in mind and mind delighting in the principle of rectitude (liyi yue xin, xin yi liyue 理義悅心, 心悅理義). (4) ‘Determining’ means that the will is displaying its own special nature because of its self-legislation. (5) It delights in the law it has established and its maxim could not possibly conflict with the moral law. Therefore it is a holy (shensheng 神聖) will, because it is itself the principle. (6) The awareness that is influenced by sensibility is not this autonomous will. The former admits of goodness or badness, ‘being there as two, differing in sentiment’ (liang zai er yiqing 兩在而異情), but the former is purely good and without badness, ‘one organ with two functions’ (yiji er eryong 一機而二用). (The ‘one organ’ refers to the freely, autonomously self-established law. The ‘two functions’, according to Liu Jishan, are loving good and despising bad. . . .) (7) The law is synthetic in relation to awareness and analytic in relation to the free, autonomous will. (8) The free, autonomous will is self-legislating and so is a promulgator of an imperative and therefore the arbiter of duty. The imperative is commanding us to follow this law, and thus following this law is our duty. Imperative and duty are not spoken of in relation to the free, autonomous will. The free, autonomous will’s self-legislating is the unceasingness of our nature (xingti zhi bu rongyi 性體之不容已). Its [self-]determined duty is simply our nature (benfen 本分), or as Mencius says, “it is because it is our fixed nature” ( fending gu ye 分定故也). (He says, “As for what is in the nature of the superior person, though he act magnanimously it is not added to, and though he live in poverty it is not subtracted from, for it is his fixed nature” (君子所性, 雖大行不加焉, 雖窮居不 捐焉, 分定故也).)” (XWZ, 76–77) Also see Zheng Jiadong, Mou Zongsan; Guo Qiyong, “Overview of the New Confucian Intellectual Movement.” 31 Vid. YSL, 23–24, 67–68.

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what a perfect person does, a sage (sheng 聖), and most of us are not sages. Our minds are cluttered by selfish passions (siyu 私欲), chaotic desires that do not beat in time with the moral law. These distract us from “perfecting our minds and completing our nature” ( jinxin chengxing 盡心成性),32 that is, from cultivating the dispositions that we ought and living up to the sagely potential offered by our Heavenly human nature, in much the same way that the more astute Buddhists say that our original or innate enlightenment happens to be occluded by ignorance.33 Practically speaking, Confucians think the way for us to arrive at sagehood is simply through “moral action” (daode 道德實踐).34 We behave according to the moral law and form the sort of character which chooses moral action over illegitimate action.35 The better we get at this, the more we align our actual passions with the moral law, so that ultimately we no longer have the selfish passions that occlude our moral, Heavenly nature. We achieve full sagehood when our desires coincide entirely with Heaven’s moral law, so that it becomes our very self.36 And at that point, we also identify ourselves with the whole cosmos (the whole domain suffused by the moral law and given its “moral existence”) as what Mencius calls our “great body” (dati 大體).37 To the sage, nothing is separate from himself and “all is the flowing of the Heavenly Way. All is the reappearance of the Heavenly Way,

The phrase begins with Zhang Hengqu and is picked up by Hu Wufeng and made the center of his thought, and Mou considers it an ideal expression of the true Confucian teaching (SJJ, 392; SLY, 56). 33 Mou quotes his hero Hu Wufeng: “Under Heaven nothing is greater than our [moral] mind; the problem is just when we cannot extend it. Nothing is more eternal than our [moral] mind; the problem is just when we cannot abide by it.” (天下莫大 于心, 患在于不能推之爾; 莫久于心, 患在于不能順之爾). See XT, 3:436, referring to Huang Zongxi 黄宗羲, Huang Zongxi quanji 黄宗羲全集 [Complete Works of Huang Zongxi], ed. Shen, 12 vols. (Hangzhou: Zhejiang guji chubanshe, 2005), 4:670. 34 XT, 1:6. 35 Vid. SJJ, 377; SLY, 47–48, 81. 36 “. . . [O]ur behavior accords purely with the [Heavenly, moral] mind’s autonomous [i.e. legislated-for-itself ] Heavenly moral law without even a shred of impurity [such as selfish passion]” (XT, 3:437). Also see XWZ, 78–79, 97. 37 James Legge, The Works of Mencius (New York: Dover, 1970), 6A15; YSL, 307; Yang Zuhan 楊祖漢, “Ruxue de chaoyue yishi 儒學的超越意識 [The Transcendent Mentality of Confucian Learning],” in Mou Zongsan xiansheng de zhexue yu zhuzuo 牟宗三 先生的哲學與著作 [The Philosophy and Works of Mou Zongsan], ed. Mou Zongsan xiansheng qishi shouqing lunwenji bianjizu 牟宗三先生七十壽慶論文集編輯組 (Taipei: Xuesheng, 1978), 714–715. 32

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and in truth, at bottom there is no individual, independent person or thing.”38 Where Buddhism Falls Short It is no wonder, then, that Mou thinks Buddhists are handicapped in their spiritual practice. The moral law is the key to the most effective spiritual practice we have, but the Buddhists’ teachings never even mention it! In fact they actively deny any such things as a moral law which is the creative substance of the universe.39 Mou is not denying that actual Buddhists do in fact act morally, and he acknowledges that some Buddhist ideas resemble Confucian notions of Heaven and the moral law and our Heavenly nature, but the resemblances turn out to be inessential.40 In the end, Buddhist philosophy does not recognize the moral law as a singular creative force that gives being, in Mou’s special sense, to all existence.41 Consider, for example, Zhiyi’s saying that our everyday minds “are and entail” ( jiju 即具) all things, and Fazang’s dictum that the dharma body is the substance that underlies creatures just as gold is the substance underlying jewelry.42 This certainly sounds like Confucians’ talk

38 Ibid., 713; vid. FB, 981, 990; Mou Zongsan 牟宗三, “’Song-Ming Ruxue yu folao’ xueshu yantaohui zhuanti yanjiang [Presentation to a Conference on ‘Song-Ming Confucianism and Buddhism and Daoism’] 「宋明儒學與佛老」研討會專題演講,” in Mou Zongsan xiansheng quanji 牟宗三先生全集 [Complete Works of Mou Zongsan] (Taipei: Lianjing, 2003), 481ff. (hereafter cited as SRF ). Mou writes: “With this unlimited mind of wisdom [i.e. Heaven present among humans as our moral mind] nourishing all and adjusting all, manifested in moral practice, the culmination of this manifestation is necessarily taking Heaven, earth, and the myriad things as of one body, where being of one body means that there is nothing outside of this unlimited mind of wisdom’s nourishing. A being who takes Heaven, earth, and the myriad things as one body is a sacred (shensheng 神聖) being, what Confucians call a sage or a great person or a person of benevolence” (YSL, 307). 39 XT, 1:641–650. 40 Vid. XT, 1:615ff.; 641–644; FB, 475ff.; SRF, 481–486. Also see You Huizhen 尤惠貞, “Cong Boruo jing dao Fahua jing: shilun yinian juzu wanxing yu yinian jiju sanqian 從般若經到法華經：試論一念具足萬行與一念即具三千 [From the Great Perfection of Prajñā Sutra to the Lotus Sutra: On the One Moment of Thought’s Being Replete with All Practices and Its Being and Entailing the Three Thousand Dharmas]” (paper presented at the Di yi jie bijiao zhexue yantaohui, January, 1998), 144. 41 YSL, 327–328. 42 Cook, “The Meaning of Vairocana in Hua-Yen Buddhism,” 408. See Fazang’s Dasheng fajie wu chabie lun shu 大乘法界無差別論疏 (T 1838).

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about Heaven as the root substance (benti 本體) which creates the myriad things and encompasses them all. It is little wonder that many scholars have concluded that Buddhism was radically “sinified” by Chinese adherents who twisted the Indian tradition unwittingly, misunderstanding True Mind or buddha-nature as a (metaphysical) substance that underlies and produces all things in an ontological sense.43 But Mou goes to great lengths to show that this is not the case. Since at least the Warring States period Chinese philosophers have used language of “birth” or “source” or “beginning” or “substance” of things, but they do not apply simple, obvious meanings to these words. For example, when Xunzi writes “The beginning of Heaven and Earth is this very day” (tiandi shi zhe jinri shi ye 天地始者 今日是 也), he is playing with words. He is not really saying anything about the temporal or causal origin of the universe—that is a mere figure of speech. He really means that at any time we can turn over a new leaf, as it were, and start our lives anew.44 When Laozi writes that “the myriad things are born of being, and being is born of nothingness” (tianxia wanwu sheng yu you, you sheng yu wu 天下萬物生於有, 有生於無), he is not propounding a cosmological theory of the beginnings of the objective universe. Rather he is describing a spiritual state in which it seems to him that being simply takes care of itself, without anyone’s having to bring it about.45 When Zhuangzi writes, “Heaven and Earth are born together with me” (tiandi yu wo bingsheng 天地與我並生) he is not talking about the origin of the universe. He means that he experiences himself as intimately connected with the life of all things.46

43 This “sinification” thesis has attracted far more attention than any other in the modern study of Chinese Buddhism. Notable works on the matter in Western languages include Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, “Zen: A Reply to Hu Shih,” Philosophy East and West 3, no. 1 (1953); Jacques Gernet, Les aspects économiques du bouddhisme dans la société chinoise du V e au X e siècle (Paris: École française d’Extrême-Orient, 1956); Arthur Wright, Buddhism in Chinese History (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1959); E. Zürcher, The Buddhist Conquest of China: The Spread and Adaptation of Buddhism in Early Medieval China, 2 vols., Sinica Leidensia 11 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1972); Kenneth K.S. Ch’en, The Chinese Transformation of Buddhism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973); Peter N. Gregory, Tsung-mi and the Sinification of Buddhism (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1991); Hubbard, ed., Pruning the Bodhi Tree; Robert Sharf, Coming to Terms with Chinese Buddhism: A Reading of the Treasure Store Treatise (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2002). 44 SYL, 24. 45 SYL, 67–68; SJJ, 112. 46 SYL, 97.

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Like them, Mou thinks, Buddhists who offer mind or buddha-nature as the source or substance of all things are playing games with words. When Tiantai writers say that the ordinary mind or the dharmanature or the Principle of the True Characteristic “encompasses” or “entails” ( ju 具) material things and all the other dharmas of the ten classes, this is not a claim about where existence comes from or what it is made of, such as we find in Confucianism. It is an artfully convoluted way of saying that even though the various creatures experience the universe variously, they share the same type of mind and (notwithstanding differences in subjectivity) they all dwell in the same objective universe. There is nothing here about where the universe came from and why, nor about what the universe is made of. It just sounds that way.47 And when Fazang writes that the dharma body is the substance that underlies creatures, as gold is the substance that underlies jewelry,48 he is only playing with words again. His talk is “hypnotizing and anaesthetizing,” says Mou, but it does not really identify a robust ontic source of things.49 In effect Mou thinks Fazang is using the dharma body as what Francis Cook calls “a mere name for the interdependent way in which things exist.”50 By saying that the dharma body underlies all things, he is just using a deliberately arcane way of saying that if we look beneath the surface of things, as it were, we find dependent arising everywhere we look. Confused by all this circumlocution? We are supposed to be—or at least we are supposed to be intrigued. It seems to me that on Mou’s reading, these authors are going out of their way to get our attention by saying things that sound outlandish. They are teasing us. Depending on their personalities, they range from merely tongue-in-cheek to riotously silly. When Zhiyi wrote that “all dharmas are founded upon the basis of non-abiding” (cong wuzhu ben li yiqie fa 從無住本立一切法), he was making an anti-foundationalist joke lifted from the Vimalakirti Sutra.51 In effect, the joke says, “The basis of the universe? Sure, I’ll

XT, 1:574ff.; MJS, 0703B 23:30. Cf. Cook, “The Meaning of Vairocana in Hua-yen Buddhism,” 408, 412–413 and Fazang’s Dasheng fajie wu chabie lun shu 大乘法界無差別論疏 (T 1838). 49 XT, 1:625. 50 Cook, “The Meaning of Vairocana in Hua-yen Buddhism,” 412–413. 51 FB, 675–677, referring to Kumārjīva’s translation of the Vimalakirti Sutra) (T 475.14:547c16ff.) and Zhiyi’s Weimo jing xuanshu 維摩經玄疏 (called by Mou the Weimo jing xuanyi 維摩經玄義) (T 1777.38:528a24ff.). Also see Mou’s discussions in ZZZ, 47 48

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tell you what the basis of the universe is . . . It’s that there is no basis!”52 That may only be funny to bookish Buddhist insiders, but later Siming Zhili made the same sort of point in terms that were unmistakably silly. If we really want a basis for the universe, he said, we can name anything we like! After all, since nothing is really separate from anything else, and the whole universe is not really made of anything in particular, then if we feel desperate to call something the basis of the universe, we can just make something up! Zhili liked the farcical sound of the phrase “the [ontologically] ultimate dung-beetle” ( jiujing qianglang 究竟蜣螂), but this was just an arbitrary choice.53 We are free to substitute whatever we like. Green cheese, rubber chickens— anything goes.54 Hence Mou calls the Tiantai account “an explanation that explains nothing.”55 Notwithstanding their word games, Mou points out, Buddhism specifically denies that there exists anything like the Confucians’ ‘Heaven’ and ‘moral law’, namely an uncreated creator, an uncaused causer, a positive principle that commands the universe and provides its ontological foundation or substance.56 Xiong Shili rejected Buddhism chiefly because of this refusal to name a foundational ontological substance. Xiong believed that this would make it impossible to explain how it is possible for a buddha or bodhisattva to exist in the world to perform compassionate work.57 Following Xiong’s lead, Mou often

216ff. Mou’s student You Huizhen (“Cong Boruo jing dao Fahua jing”) gives an explanation of this slogan which is very helpful for understanding Mou’s reading. 52 FB, 676–678. 53 FB, 242. 54 Brook Ziporyn is referring to this when he says that Tiantai teaches an “omnicentric” universe, since we can justifiably call anything at all the center of this universe (Evil and/or/as the Good, 37). Mou thinks that this is the thrust of Zhiyi’s analysis of the frequent refrain (e.g. T 223.8:332c26ff.) of the Sutra in 25,000 Lines that “ultimately all dharmas go back to emptiness (or matter, or sound, or scent, etc.)” (一切法趣某某, 是趣不過) (TBY, 398–403). 55 FB, 1212; TZD, 293. 56 YSL, 327–328; vid. YSL, 265; SRF, 477–479, 485. 57 Ng Yu-kwan elaborates: “For instance, it is necessary for a farmer to have a strong and healthy body in order to have the power and strength to plough and sow . . . [T]he farmer’s healthy body is like substance, while the cultivation of the field is like function. . . . According to Xiong, Buddhism could not hold either that substance produces function or that a substance spirituality produces spiritual action. If it did have the concept of substance or substantive spirituality, then the fundamental Buddhist standpoint of dependent origination ( pratītyasamutpāda) of all things, and thereby its doctrine of Nature-Emptiness would have collapsed since substance is an expression of or pertains to self-nature.” See Yu-kwan Ng, “Xiong Shili’s Metaphysical Theory

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points out that Confucians are committed to believe in “real things and real principles” (shishi shili 實事實理).58 Although Mou does not agree that Buddhists need an ontology like the Confucians’ just in order to explain the existence of ordinary things and bodies—the Tiantai thinkers do this quite adequately—he does charge that there are repugnant consequences for specifically moral philosophy. After all, moral law could not exist without particular things. We could have no moral law if there were no parents to honor, no children to love, and no public to serve. But Buddhism recognizes no such ontological stopping-point. The only such principle, the so-called Principle of the “True Character from the perspective of the Middle Way”? (zhongdao shixiang li 中道實相理), is that there is no such principle. In one of his bluntest statements of the matter, Mou explains that in his opinion, “Daoism and Buddhism are both non-moral; they [talk about emptiness and vacuity (wu 無) but] do not start out by talking about what people should do (ren de ‘dangran’ 人的‘當然’), so they are of no use for public morals (shidao renxin 世道人心).”59 At the level of doctrine, this denial of an ontically primary morality is the watershed teaching that divides Buddhists from Confucians.60

about the Non-Separability of Substance and Function,” in New Confucianism: A Critical Examination, ed. Makeham (2003), 226. 58 XT, 1:653–654. 59 SLY, 3. 60 XT, 1:641, 646. “The Confucian teaching’s perfect theory is not like the Buddhist or Daoist ones, which can be expressed only in terms of the functioning of the ‘stainless liberated mind’ or ‘non-action and non-clinging’. It proceeds from moral consciousness, with a vertical, morally creative backbone according to which one ‘uses reverence to straighten what is within and rightness to order what is without’ ( jing yi zhi nei yi yi fang wai 敬以直內 義以方外)—an upright, central pillar [i.e. an ontological substance or cause in the usual sense of the term, an uncaused causer]. Of course we can talk about the Confucian sage in terms of trace and root, saying that the Confucian sage is not divorced from everyday life and human relationships and is identical, not separate from, Heaven and earth and the myriad things . . . Integration of trace and root is common to the [perfect teachings] of the three traditions. But when [the Confucian tradition speaks of ] “the great person [i.e. sage] who is one body with Heaven and earth and the myriad things . . . the ‘root’ here is not only a liberated, stainless mind [as for the Buddhists] . . . and its unlimited mind of wisdom is not just prajñā . . .; and speaking with reference to the Buddhist [concept of ] buddha-nature which is the same as the tathāgatagarbha and the innumerable dharmas (rulaizang hengsha fofa foxing 如來藏 恆沙佛法佛性), this great person who ‘is one body with the myriad things’ is not just the dharma-body of disentangled buddha-nature which emerges from prajñā and the severing [of afflictions]. Apart from being a liberated pure mind (or Pure Mind of Selfnature) . . . this unlimited mind of wisdom also has an upright central pillar, namely the

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And because Buddhists write Heaven and the moral law out of their theory, they arrive at some very different conclusions from Confucians’ about the practice of the spiritual life. For example, because they do not understand their own real nature, they think religious practice is more complicated than it really is, requiring much more contrivance than it actually does.61 Confucians think that the way to live is easy to discover. We have the moral law printed in our very natures. It is not hidden in any way, not a “secret storehouse of the buddhas” (rulai mimi zhi zang 如來秘密之藏), as the Tiantai tradition says of buddhanature.62 Even the most ordinary person consults her conscience constantly. It is almost as difficult to forget about our moral nature as it would be to forget about our arms or legs. There is nothing esoteric about it. Mou is so intent on showcasing what is true and useful in Buddhist thinking that he politely leaves out many of the details about why he rejects Buddhism, leaving us with a few sketchy headings to unpack for ourselves. But Mou does seem to think that Confucians have a more straightforward, less complicated teaching than Buddhists about just how to live. It may not be easy to carry out well, but it is simple and in no way arcane or occult. We just carry out our cultivation amid our existing social relationships, by participating in them morally and acting as much as possible in accordance with the categorical imperative (dingran mingling 定然命令) and “improving the old and generating the new” ( gegu shengxin 革故生新).63 We have families and neighbors, parents and children and superiors and subordinates, and the most effective way for us to achieve spiritual beatitude is to do right by them. There is no mystery here. As Mou sees it, Buddhists vastly overestimate the complexity of it all, calling for exotic meditations

moral creation expressed in the phrase ‘using reverence to straighten what is within and rightness to order what is without’, or the unceasingness of the mind of benevolence (renxin 仁心) . . . Therefore in Confucianism the unlimited mind of wisdom must always be always be discussed in close conjunction with [the idea of ] ‘benevolence’, and the perfect spiritual state ( yuanjing 圓境) in which the great person ‘has Heaven and earth and the myriad things for his body’, in which this unlimited mind of wisdom is manifested, must always be established [i.e. thought of ] in terms of benevolence’s [i.e. Heaven’s, the Ultimate’s] pervasive nurturing (bianrun 遍潤) or generative (chuangsheng 創生) property . . .” (YSL, 305–306. Emphasis original). Concerning the Confucian version of a perfect theory, see Chapter Six. 61 FB, 466. 62 FB, 190, quoting T 374.12:408b26–c3. 63 YSL, 306; ZZZ, 190; vid. SLY, 19.

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and ceremonies or contrived spiritual exercises or celibacy.64 We do not need to rise first through the four dhyānas, later to attain five further otherworldly states of concentration, as Zhiyi would have it. We do not need to embark on austerities aimed at conferring this or that samādhi, nor to undergo ritual repentances to manipulate the karma from our past lives. There is certainly no call to abandon our families and communities and retire to a monastery.65 We do not require a revealed buddhavacana (word of the buddha) that is “scarcely met with in a billion eons,” nor even much in the way of “external factors” (waiyuan 外緣).66 For according to Confucianism, we do not have to look hard to discover our moral nature, for it does not hide itself from us, and we have to suffer a great deal of harm before we can be made inveterately bad.67 Of course, Mou does acknowledge (a little reluctantly, it seems) that even though we are oriented by nature to the moral life, we can still be held back from exercising it by ill fortune. Although in a sagely spiritual state we can enjoy a feeling that we cannot be buffeted by the winds of fortune because nothing is ultimately external to us, it is far from certain that any given person will be permitted to achieve that state. He may be deprived, for example, of the upbringing and relationships needed to establish a person in such a life.68 So on close inspection, Mou does not think that Confucians are really such thorough-going optimists as they wish to appear. They do not think it wise to call people’s attention to lachrymose facts of life that could

64 Vid. FB, 466, 1020, 1022–1023. On Mou’s dislike even of Neo-Confucian “quiet sitting” meditation, see Li Shan, Mou Zongsan zhuan, 161, as well as Cai Renhou 蔡仁 厚, Ruxue de chang yu bian 儒學的常與變 [Continuity and Change in Confucianism] (Taipei: Dongda, 1990), 217. 65 Vid. XT, 1:651. 66 FB, 466. 67 YSL, 29. 68 “All is not perfect here,” Mou writes. “All people know existentially [i.e. as a matter of experience] how much imperfection and how much cause for regret there is . . . Examples abound of fathers who do not have proper sons or sons without proper fathers (of which the earliest example is Shun . . . [a legendary sage-king who put up patiently with his father’s attempts to murder him]), and people who wish to love their children or siblings or to behave filially to their parents but have not the means to do so. This is especially the case in times when people are parted by war. As for marriage and the way that [happiness between] husband and wife is even more a matter of chance, this does not even need to be explained” (YSL, 152).

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only confirm them in unhealthy cynicism; far better that philosophers should call attention to the facts that edify rather than discourage.69 I believe that Mou thinks that another great problem with Buddhists is that since they disavow a moral law that, as Heaven’s decree, is an end in itself, their theory does not provide an idea that can serve as an equivalent to what Confucians say is the spiritual practice par excellence, namely acting according to the moral law for its own sake. The decisive difference between the two groups here is that the Buddhists cannot self-consistently form a notion of an action which is an end in itself. For whereas Confucians think of their living by the moral law not just as a means to a further end but as something they do for its own sake, because it is wonderful to do so, Buddhists need to conceive of their practice as the instrumental means of liberation (both their own and other beings’). They are taught to aim for a kind of closure, a goal that they can attain once and for all, namely liberation or buddhahood. Now, it is true that even after their enlightenment buddhas go on acting. They continue to work for the liberation of all sentient beings. However, in a Buddhist universe, it would at least be logically possible to attain the religious goal without remainder. If hypothetically there were to come a time when all sentient beings had finally won their liberation, the buddhas would not be called to act any further. They would have attained all their goals, so that as the Pali scriptures say, “what needed to be done was done” (kata kara īya ). So Buddhist practice admits of an end-point, even if it is only an ideal one. Confucians could entertain no such scenario even as a logical possibility. They are called to practice moral action as an end in itself, world without end, for they take moral action as an endless, open-ended pursuit. Even supposing that all people attained sagehood, the goal still wouldn’t be finished. Heaven would still call them to go on living the moral law and also to attain ever-greater excellences than had been attained before. People can never finish doing all the worthy

69 Compare Leo Strauss’s conclusions about the famous exchange between Socrates and Thrasymachus. On close inspection, Socrates never actually refutes Thrasymachus’s thesis that justice amounts to nothing but the advantage of the stronger. He merely resorts to a debater’s trick to embarrass Thrasymachus. Strauss infers that Socrates does not really think Thrasymachus’s thesis false, merely indecent. It is an ugly truth that does not bear mentioning in polite company. See Leo Strauss, The City and Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), 74, 83–85.

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acts which could be done.70 Indeed, we might wonder, why would they want to? If moral action is a good in itself, why would one ever wish an end to it? Buddhists also seem strange to Mou’s Confucian point of view because they do not devote themselves principally to effecting some real-world good, such as a chicken in every pot or justice for all, but instead aim chiefly at a certain desirable subjective state. Buddhists take as their core problem that we generate suffering for ourselves, and they teach a way to manipulate one’s experience to produce a desirable subjective state.71 Mou contrasts this Buddhist preoccupation with suffering and karma with Confucians’ “concern consciousness” or “care consciousness,”72 or more literally, “disaster consciousness,” which we might think of roughly as public-mindedness and concern for posterity. Focused on improving the world, Confucians spend their time worrying lest the world falter and stray from the way of morality. Mou’s Confucian heros cannot help but notice that whereas they are concerned for the cosmos as a whole and the unshirkable moral law, Buddhists deal in a form of self-therapy aimed at personal well-being.73 They “found their teaching on their desire to quit samsara,” as Wang

70 “‘Improving the old and generating the new’ ( gegu shengxin 革故生新) is [what the Zhongyong calls] virtue’s ‘purity and unceasingness’ (dexing zhi chun yi buyi 德行之純 亦不已). My existence as an individual life is set ( jicheng de 既成的), but even though it is set, it can be improved. Thus there is no fixed (dingxing de 定性的) existence here [in Confucian thought], much as Buddhists say there is no fixed existence [i.e. with immutable particulars]. By extension, even though Heaven, earth, and the myriad things are set existences, they are not fixed existences. All existents can all swim in the nurturance of reason. This is exactly what the Zhongyong calls ‘participating with Heaven and earth in their transforming generativity’ (can tiandi huayu 參天地化育), or ‘hitting on the harmony of centrality, heaven and earth are in their place and the myriad things are generated’ (zhi zhonghe tiandi wei yan wanwu yu yan 致中和 天地位焉 萬物育焉)” (YSL, 307–308). Also see ZZT, 32. 71 Cf. Sue Hamilton, Early Buddhism: a New Approach: the I of the Beholder (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 2000); Sue Hamilton, Identity and Experience: the Constitution of the Human Being according to Early Buddhism (London: Luzac Oriental, 1996). 72 Mou calls these kuye yishi 苦業意識 and youhuan yishi 憂患意識, borrowing the latter term from his friend Xu Fuguan 徐復觀. (See XT, 1:572; ZZT, 15.) 73 In a very early treatment of Buddhism, Mou writes that Buddhists seek to “attain suchness, not compassion” (zheng ru bu zheng bei 證如不證悲) and treat the two as separate, whereas Confucians see them as one thing (WZ, 166–167). In effect Mou is pointing out that Buddhists conclude that compassion is a means to a further end, not the end itself. Likewise, John Hanafin points out that for Mou’s contemporary Liang Shuming, “the Mahāyāna tradition’s involvement with the practical world was an incomplete one. It was an involvement without real involvement. That is to say, its goal was to enable all creatures to pass to the other shore” (“The Last Buddhist,” 194).

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Yangming wrote. “They are wrapped up in accomplishing their selfish ends. That is the root of their sickness” (釋氏立教本欲脫離生死, 惟 主於成其私耳, 此其病根也).74 In this very significant respect, then, Buddhists appear in an unflattering light, as narcissists and hypochondriacs of the spirit. Now, Mou is no Confucian chauvinist, and he is not claiming that buddhas and Buddhists behave unaltruistically. He is observing that Buddhists conceptualize their mission in terms of subjective states— suffering, delusion, enlightenment—and not in terms of a moral law which is as much an objective, self-so fact as it is a subjective one. The Buddha is teaching us to see purity where before we saw impurity and see eternity in place of ephemerality,75 not to reorder ourselves and the world in harmony with Heaven’s decree. The goal is not to discover laws to which we will order ourselves and the world. It would not be too much, according to Mou, if we were to say with Lu Xiangshan that Confucianism teaches us to do the public-minded thing and manage the affairs of this world whereas Buddhism selfishly teaches escape from the world.76 This is a broad generality and bluntly put, but Mou thinks it makes a true point nevertheless. The difference is subtle rather than stark—at least on the philosophical plane—but still undeniable. Granted, the Buddha ultimately teaches that nirvana is a state of mind, and when we “leave the world” we are just leaving behind our old outlook, not the whole universe. However, as far as Mou is concerned he is still preaching escape. Later theorists can dress the facts with paradoxical talk of a “nirvana which is not nirvana” and “leaving the world without leaving the world,” but the facts remain facts. This is not to say that a sage does not also attain a better sort of subjectivity and experience a greater felicity than a non-sage. For as we shall see later, when the sage feels himself united with all of Heaven and creation, he rises above any sense that he is vulnerable to the vicissitudes of fortune. But he is not acting specifically for the sake of happiness; he aims to carry out ‘moral action’, in accordance with Heaven’s Way. Finally, though Mou does not call much attention to it, it is worth noting that, unlike buddhas, sages are not always free from care and

74 75 76

SJJ, 311 n.32. “染淨對翻, 生滅不生滅對翻.” See XT, 1:646. XT, 1:646.

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woe. They sometimes feel anguish and frustration. For though they are not blemished by selfish passions, that is not because they have “gone beyond” feeling and desire. It is because they have come to feel and desire only what is moral. They still have righteous desires. They rejoice in good deeds and remonstrate against bad ones. They desire that all will be as it should be. Inevitably they are often thwarted in these hopes, and they feel grief and bitter disappointment.77 And on their deathbeds they sigh in disappointment at all that they could not accomplish.78 *

*

*

So what does Mou think is the cash value of these differences? It is this: since Buddhists deny their moral nature, they are hobbled from cultivating it, and hence from following the royal road to enlightenment. Of course it helps that Buddhists know that they have a nature conducive to enlightenment, and that they are somehow joined to the rest of the universe or integrated with it by that nature of theirs. The problem is that their brand of philosophy scrupulously refuses to name the content of that nature so that they can better cultivate it. When the Buddha taught about “buddha-nature,” it turned out that all he had in mind was the potential to change our outlook on the universe, viewing it through the eyes afforded by intellectual intuition, and feel a subjective unity with it. To the Confucian Mou, this sounds like a thin, unhelpful answer. It may be better than nothing, but it still does not direct the practitioner’s attention to the one thing needful, which is to align his or her will and sense of self with the moral law and thereby participate with Heaven in its “moral creation” and work to conform the world to its moral law. Ultimately, in Mou’s opinion, a philosopher’s job is to write theories that will help us cultivate our way toward perfection as efficiently as possible, and the Buddhist philosophers could be doing that job better if they picked up on the Confucian theory of morality.79 Of course, this is more a lacuna than a positive harm, and certainly not irreparable. Buddhists are people too, and the moral law dwells in their breasts just as much as in any Confucian’s. They certainly do not sacrifice their moral natures for want of the right theory. 77 78 79

ZZT, 85. ZZT, 37; Yang, “Ruxue de chaoyue yishi,” 715. FB, 137, 1018ff.

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And Buddhists do get a good deal of mileage out of their practices. From Buddhist meditation they win some true insights into the ephemerality of things and the limited mind’s systematic distortion, and by their meditation and monastic disciplines they erase some of the illegitimate desires that occlude people’s free nature and hinder its free working. But their faulty Buddhist philosophy steers them away from real progress. At the lower levels of the path, it directs them to abandon their secular lives, where in actuality they already have every opportunity for working toward sagehood by adhering to the moral law, and it diverts them into practices which are more bothersome and less productive. In effect, Mou thinks Buddhists are gulled by their flawed model of perfection into fixing what was never broken. At the higher levels of advancement, when bodhisattva-level practitioners have suppressed the baser imperfections and are poised to embrace the moral law as their true, great self, they find its very existence denied by their cockeyed Buddhist model, so that as long as they labor under their faulty theory, they will never break through to sagehood.

CHAPTER SIX

SO WHAT GOOD IS BUDDHISM? Whatever oversights Buddhists suffer concerning the moral law and human nature, Mou thinks the Tiantai thinkers were exactly right about buddhas’ relationship to ordinary people: even though buddhas differ from the rest of us in many ways, nevertheless in some respects they are “identical” to us. And as it happens, Mou thinks, the great Song and Ming Confucians were arguing about the same kind of question as Nāgārjuna, the Yogācārins, Paramārtha and the Huayan line, and the Tiantai philosophers. Where the Buddhists disagreed about how we are or are not separate from buddhas, the Confucians split into camps over just the same sort of question about Heaven. Does Heaven simply surpass us utterly? Or is it also somehow inside us? Or maybe even somehow the same as us? Put another way, both Buddhists and Confucians struggled among themselves over how the universe of objects, including creatures like us who have flesh-and-blood bodies and sensible intuition, is and is not related to what I will call “ultimate value.” By ultimate value I mean whatever a thinker supposes is the standard of maximal worth, namely buddhahood for Buddhists or Heaven for Confucians.1 Mou thinks that in both the Buddhist and Confucian traditions, the orthodox teaching2 is that ordinary people and things are “paradoxically

1 Mou sometimes refers to this as the relationship of the “immanent” (neizai 內在) and the “transcendent” (chaoyue 超越) (e.g. SJJ, 234; YSL, 340; cf. XT, 2; 224), and many Mou scholars refer to it in those terms too (e.g. Zheng Jiadong, Mou Zongsan; Fung, ‘Chaoyue neizai’ de misi ). However, I prefer to avoid these words because I find they cause more confusion than they dispel. Over the centuries, too many authors have used them in so many deceptively similar ways that, in my experience, when we try to use them nowadays as terms of explanation, the conversation easily devolves into gaseous generality or mutual misunderstanding. Even Mou himself uses ‘immanent’ and ‘transcendent’ with a good deal of slippage. Therefore in order to help us keep this discussion relatively concrete and focus squarely on the practical import of the metaphysical issues, I present the question chiefly in terms of ‘ultimate value’ and ‘the universe of objects’. 2 Once again, an authentically Buddhist or Confucian teaching would be one that accorded with the intention of the Buddha or the founding Confucian sages.

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identical” (guijue de xiangji 詭譎的相即)3 to ultimate value. That is, even though we are imperfect in many ways, we could also say that we are actually “perfect” in a certain sense, namely that in order for ultimate value to exist at all, it must exist as the whole universe of objects, and in particular as ordinary people.4 Whatever Buddhists’ shortcomings, Mou thinks they have always outstripped Confucians in their facility for spelling out tricky relationships like this clearly. Of course Mou thinks that the best Confucians have always taught this sort of unity-amid-distinctness of humanity with ultimate value, but they have not expressed this relationship as clearly as Buddhists have.5 In matters of “philosophy,” Mou thinks Buddhists have always led the way for China.6 Already in the sixth century Zhiyi not only condensed his tradition’s definitive message into systematic form—something that Confucians did not even approach for another five hundred years—but he also sorted out and ranked all the contending interpretations of his tradition on formal grounds.7 Now the Confucians of the Song and Ming never matched the theoretical comprehensiveness and clarity of the Buddhists, and they 3 Mou famously uses the term in this form in the context of his discussion of the “coincidence of virtue and happiness” (defu yizhi 德福一致) in the final chapter of Treatise on the Summum Bonum (YSL, 274, 305, 325). Also particularly relevant is his discussion of “identity” ( ji 即) as the “original insight” ( yuanchu zhi dongjian 原初之 洞見) of Tiantai which opens the way to the Perfect Theory (FB, 598–600) and his equation of relationship of virtue and happiness with that of the “buddhas’ original body” ( fo de benshen 佛的本身) and “the existence of dharmas” 法的存在 (SJJ, 283). Fung Yiu-ming 馮耀明 forefronts the idea as a lynchpin of Mou’s entire philosophical project in his seminal essay. See Fung Yiu-ming 馮耀明, “Panjiao yu panzhun: dangdai xin ruxue zhi er pan 判教與判准: 當代新儒學之二判 [Doxography and Doxographic Standards: Two Doxographies of New Confucianism],” Zhexue yanjiu 11 (1995). Also see Luo Yijun’s introduction to Mou’s use of the idea, in Luo Yijun 羅義俊, “Yuanjiao yu yuanshan: Kangde yu Mou Zongsan: du Mou Zongsan xiansheng Yuanshan lun 圓教與圓善: 康德與牟宗三: 讀牟宗三先生《圓善論》[Perfect Theory and Summum Bonum: Kant and Mou Zongsan—Reading Mou’s Treatise on the Summum Bonum],” Shehui kexue, no. 3 (2004), and Hans-Rudolf Kantor’s discussion of what he calls “paradoxe Identität” in Zhiyi, in Heilslehre, 107–108, 134, 306, 450. Most recently, Law Shun Man discusses the idea in Lun Mou Zongsan fojiao yuanjiao guannian. 4 Some readers will be reminded of mid-century Chicago religionist Mircea Eliade with his stress on the coincidentia oppositorum, in which the ‘profane’ and the ‘sacred’ are defined in opposition to each other but are ultimately discovered to be a unity. 5 YSL, 354; SJJ, 354. 6 KL, 432; FB, 1023; YSL, xii. 7 SYL, 153.

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never did develop their own full-blown version of a “ranking of the teachings.” However, Mou thinks, they can benefit greatly if they piggyback off Buddhist efforts. Since Confucians are concerned with the same kind of problem as the Buddhists, and since the Confucian sages taught the same kind of solution as the Buddha (i.e. that ultimate value is paradoxically identical to people and objects), Confucians may simply adapt the Tiantai ranking scheme. In that way they can better explain the sages’ message and show exactly how some Confucian theorists capture it better than others. And while they are at it, Mou thinks that Confucians can also solve one of the great problems of all philosophy generally, namely whether and how a perfect person is also a happy person. Separation Theory and Perfect Theory as Formal Types Mou does not clearly spell out once and for all just how he defines “Perfect Theories” and “Separation Theories,” so we should pause here and try to spell it out for him. For Mou, a Perfect Theory has to do with what theologians call “God/world relations,” or what we might more broadly call “ultimate value/universe relations.” This consists of theories about how the universe of objects is related to “ultimate value,” that is, to whatever we might hold to be the epitome of maximal worth, be it God or Heaven or buddhahood. In Mou’s mind, we can answer that question in two basic ways. We can either say that the universe and ultimate value are separate from each other to some degree, or we can say that even though they seem distinct, in the final analysis they are really identical to each other. If we say they are separate, we have a Separation Theory. If we say they are really identical, we have a “Perfect Theory.” Put differently, we could say that in order to distinguish between a Perfect Theory or Separation Theory, we just need to ask, “To what extent does it teach that ordinary people and things are ontically separate from the ultimate value, and to what extent does it say that they are just one and the same substance?” In other words, should we say that they are dual or that they are a single stuff ? Mou treats any theory as a Separation Theory if in the final analysis it says that the ultimate value is anything less than identical to the whole universe of objects in what he considers a robust ontological

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sense. So even if we claim that we can know the ultimate value or communicate with it or conform ourselves to it in some way, Mou will still call this a Separation Theory unless we go so far as to say that, yes, as a matter of ontological fact, we actually are ultimate value. So for example, Mou treats standard Christian systems of theology as Separation Theories, since they teach that we cannot be God: Creation is not God, and God is not creation; humans are not God, and God is not ordinary humans.8 Granted, Christ may have had a fully human nature, but for Mou’s purposes he was not an ordinary human but rather one of a kind, a singularity. If a Christian theologian wanted to offer a Perfect Theory, in order to satisfy Mou she would have to say, “God is other people” (or better yet, “God is all people”), and she would have to mean this in a robust ontological way. It would not be enough if she only meant that we should think of other people with the same reverence with which we might think of God, or that if we do ill by other people we also do ill by God, or even that other people resemble God in some ways. No, in order to pass muster, our theologian would have to mean that every person is perfect as God is perfect, and moreover that for God to be God, He must necessarily exist as an ordinary person. (And once again, Christ would not count as “ordinary” here because, though a God-man, he is one of a kind.)9 Mou sub-divides Separation Theories into two classes, corresponding to the Buddhist “Beginning” and “Mature” theories. To differentiate them, he looks to see just how separate and distant they claim

FB, 1014. Mou makes rather hasty work of Christian theology. He either does not know about Christian theologians who interpret the Christian kerygma in such a way that it resembles a Perfect Teaching or else regards them as inauthentic. Nevertheless in the present day, at least, there is no shortage of theologians who espouse “panentheistic” theories of God-world relations which could well fit into Mou’s “perfect” category. See, for example, Joseph A. Bracken, S.J., The One in the Many: A Contemporary Reconstruction of the God-World Relationship (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2001); Philip and Arthur Peacocke Clayton, ed., In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being: Panentheistic Reflections on God’s Presence in a Scientific World (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2004). Many of these are in close conversation with the process theology of A.N. Whitehead, and it is no surprise that to the extent that Mou has already attracted attention in English-language scholarship, it has been among process thinkers. See, for example, Berthrong, All Under Heaven; Shu-hsien Liu, “Confucianism as World Philosophy: A Response to Neville’s Boston Confucianism from a Neo-Confucian Perspective,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 40 (2003); Liu Shu-hsien, Xiandai xin ruxue zhi shengcha lunji, 23. 8 9

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Ultimate value is . . . Beginning Separate Mature Separate Perfect

Ontologically separate from the universe of humans and other objects. Ontologically separate, but a deep cause of objects. Subjects who shed sensible intuition merge back into it. Apparently distinct from, but also subtly identical to, the universe of objects.

that ultimate value is from the universe of objects. If a theory treats ultimate value as so separate from the universe that it must belong to an ontological order all its own, aloof from objects, and cannot or does not reach out to us or draw us toward itself in some way, then Mou classifies this as a Beginning Separation Theory. On the other hand, he groups it with the Mature Separation Theories if it claims that ultimate value underlies or causes objects’ existence and, in the case of humans (objects who have subjectivity), that ultimate value draws us back to itself.10 As his paradigm case, Mou is thinking of the split that we talked about in Chapter Three between the Yogācārins and the “True Mind” thinkers. Both those two groups of Buddhists agree that buddhahood

10 If we wished to state this in a more precise but turgid form that made full use of the terms that we set out in Chapter Two, we could say the following: In a Beginning Separation Theory, we assert simply that ultimate value (UV) is non-identical with any set of objects. In a Mature Separation Theory we add extra propositions. First we stipulate that the ultimate value is identical to the subject of intellectual intuition (S-II). (I am talking about the ultimate value/S-II as grammatically singular, but strictly speaking it does not have quantity, since quantity is ascribed by sensible intuition. See Chapters Two and Three, as well as ZZZ, 106.) Second, we add that the S-II is non-identical to any object which is a subject of sensible intuition (S-SI) (i.e. any ordinary subject) or, for that matter, an object of sensible intuition (O-SI) (which includes inanimate objects), on the grounds that the S-II is ontologically prior to them. However, in a Mature Separation Theory we also say that the S-II is somehow a deep cause of S-SIs (and thereby also of O-SIs, which arise together with S-SIs), and further that S-SIs will all eventually revert into being the S-II when they shed sensible intuition and manifest intellectual intuition. In short, we can say make that a Mature Separation Theory must make statements of all the following forms: 1) UV = S-II; 2) S-II → universe of objects (S-SIs and O-SIs), where the operator “→” denotes some kind of deep causation; 3) S-II ≠ any S-SIs or O-SIs.

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(that is, ultimate value) belongs to an entirely separate ontological class from the universe of objects. But the True Mind thinkers go a crucial step further. They conceptualize buddhahood as an ontologically primary entity that gives rise to ordinary minds and material objects. And they teach that this True Mind summons us to divest ourselves of our ordinary minds and rejoin it. In contrast, Mou calls it a “Perfect Theory” if we insist that, notwithstanding some superficial differences, ultimate value and the universe of all objects are really identical to each other in what he considers a strong ontological sense.11 This means that we must be able to affirm both of the following: 1) We must say that, in some fashion or other, any person or thing is identical to ultimate value.12 So for example, in a Buddhist Perfect Theory, we must say that any creature “is” a buddha inasmuch as he or she has a mind of buddha-nature and is already destined for full-blown buddhahood. In fact, we must say that every inanimate thing also has “buddha-nature” of a sort13 in the (admittedly distant) senses that, (1) just like the 11 Characteristically, Mou refers to this position using a number of different philosophical “dialects.” Sometimes for example he speaks of “the immanence of the transcendent” (chaoyue neizai 超越內在) (e.g. SJJ, 234), which is the phrasing most popular among scholars. More often he uses a pair of terms that were popularized by fourth century C.E. “Dark Learning” (xuanxue 玄學) and used in Zhiyi’s doxography, as “integration of root and trace” ( ji-ben yuan or ji-ben yuanrong 迹本圓融) (e.g. YSL, 323; FB, 578–82; SJJ, 233). Xie Daning’s helpful summary of Mou’s understanding of a Perfect Theory is that it entails making a transcendental distinction (chaoyue fenjie 超越分解) between a transcendent ultimate value and the actual world and then synthesizing the two dialectically (bianzheng zonghe 辯證綜合) through spiritual effort (gongfu 工夫), such that the two can be seen as one at any moment (Rujia yuanjiao de zai quanshi, 128). Mou takes over his assumption of the unity of ultimate value with the universe of objects from Xiong Shili. Xiong took it as axiomatic, writes Umberto Bresciani, that “substance does not subsist outside, above, or behind function, that is . . . phenomena. Substance is function, and function is the manifestation of substance itself. [Furthermore] outside function there exists no substance. It is not possible to leave aside function in order to look for substance” (Reinventing Confucianism, 128). 12 Vid. SRZ, 51; SLY, 69. 13 This attenuated kind of buddha-nature is what Mou calls “buddha-nature in an objective sense” (keguanyi de foxing 客觀義的佛性) or “buddha-nature as a dharma” (fa foxing 法佛性), whereas creatures can have buddha-nature in a subjective sense (zhuguanyi de foxing 主觀義的佛性) or buddha-nature qua enlightenment ( jue foxing 覺佛性). See Mou’s explanation of this matter in his treatment of Zhanran’s famous claim that “insentient things have buddha-nature” (wuqing you xing 無情有性) in The Vajra Scalpel ( Jingang pi 金剛錍) (T 1932) (FB, 240ff.).

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buddhas and everything and everyone else, it evinces the “True Characteristic” and (2) they must necessarily be experienced as real by buddhas. (See Chapters Three and Four.) Similarly, in a Confucian Perfect Theory we say that humans are “identical” to Heaven in the sense that we have Heaven’s decree or moral law as our nature and we represent Heaven as its eyes and actors on earth. And we would also say that inanimate things are identical to Heaven because they derive from it their “being” (i.e their moral relevance). 2) We must also say that in order for ultimate value to exist at all, it must necessarily exist as people and other objects. In a Buddhist Perfect Theory, then, buddhas must always live embodied as a hungry ghost or a human being or one of the other nine kinds of creatures. In fact, a buddha must exist as all creatures and objects in the universe, viewing them as his “dharma body” and not separate from himself. Likewise, in a Confucian Perfect Theory, Heaven needs humans to act for it and it requires the whole universe of inanimate objects as the stage on which we act out its decree.14 Of course, even though Mou seldom says it out loud, he does not think that a Perfect Theory truly entails that we are all identical to the ultimate value in every way, nor even in most ways.15 After all, it is because most of us are so imperfect that we need spiritual practice and “philosophy” in the first place.16 What a Perfect Theory 14 Even though earlier in his life Mou judged Buddhism more harshly, like so many other Confucian reformers of the late Qing and the Republic, from early on he was impressed with the bodhisattva ethos as an admirable analog of encomium in the Classic of Change’s “Appended Statements Commentary” (xici zhuan 繫辭傳) for “bearing the people’s blessings and misfortunes together with them” ( jixiong yu min tong huan 吉凶與民同患), and already in his My Life at Fifty, Mou has much to say about Vimalakirti, the Buddhist hero who manifests himself in the form of an ordinary layman but is the peer of buddhas and the teacher of venerable Buddhist disciples, which takes him as a paradigmatic figure for Mou’s later theorization of Perfect-type doctrines (WZ, 140–141). 15 We can discern this most easily in Mou’s discussion of the Tiantai idea of the “six [ascending levels of] identity with the buddha” (liu ji fo 六即佛) (FB, 603, 608, 916–922). Also see his treatment of the ways in which buddhas and sages are and are not “unlimited” (FB, 1017). 16 Note that a Perfect Theory does not answer the question of why there is imperfection. Granted, it reveals that “sensibility” or “avidyā” or “selfish passion” (siyu 私 欲) coexists somehow with enlightenment and intellectual intuition, and that it must so coexist; but it does not (and according to Mou, cannot) explain why that is the case (SJJ, 295–296). But from Mou’s perspective, this is not a pressing question because it belongs to what Mou calls “speculative” (sibian de 思辯的) matters, not practical (shijian de 實踐的) ones (cf. FB, 1019). That is, it is not particularly important

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teaches is simply that, despite our imperfections, each of us is already ultimate value itself, at least in some rather esoteric sense of the word “is.”17 In this chapter I do not aim to evaluate Mou’s positions yet, but I would not be doing my job of interpreting him clearly if I did not point out that, looked at in the cold light of day, Mou is using the word “is” in some confusingly peculiar ways. Consider the Buddhist case again. When we say that a buddha “is” ordinary creatures, in plain language what we mean in effect is that a buddha is similar to us because he has the same type of mind as ordinary creatures do. This is a relationship that analytic philosophers call “type-identity,” in distinction to “token-identity.”18 That is, buddhas and ordinary creatures are the same type of thing, namely the type that has the capacity for both sensible and intellectual intuition.19 They are not actually the same individual (i.e. the same instance or “token” of that type). And when in Tiantai Buddhism we say that a buddha “is” inanimate things, we actually mean this in an even more roundabout sense. We mean that he is a mind, and there are two ways in which inanimate things are related to mind: (1) as objects of sensible intuition,

for spiritual practice. What we need to know for the purpose of spiritual practice is just that in spite of our imperfection, in the most fundamental respects we are already complete. 17 Recall that Mou thinks we can also find Perfect-type and Separate-type views of ultimate value implied in non-systematic literature, such as Chan writings. Neither Shenxiu nor Huineng was trying to set out a system of philosophy, but they did frequently talk about the relationship of buddhas to our minds or to other objects aphoristically, and they used figures of speech that implied either a Separate-type or Perfect-type relationship. 18 I am indebted to the excellent Prof. Fung Yiu-ming for making this distinction. See Fung Yiu-ming, “Three Dogmas of New Confucianism: A Perspective of Analytic Philosophy,” in Two Roads to Wisdom? Chinese and Analytic Philosophical Traditions, ed. Mou (Chicago: Open Court, 2001), 246. Yang Zebo refers to Mou’s equation of moral mind and Heaven as a trope of “equivalence” (binglie 並列), and he argues that it is a misrepresentation of historical Confucian discourse. See Yang Zebo, “Mou Zongsan chaoyue cunyoulun de lilun yiyi yu neizai quexian,” 389ff. 19 We might also observe that a buddha, as bearer of intellectual intuition, accepts himself as identical to all creatures and things in the sense that Mou identifies with the message of the Perfection of Prajñā scriptures, namely in that he does not discriminate categorially. However, it is crucial to recall that in Mou’s judgment, this realization is the common property of all Buddhists, including teachers of the Separation Theory such as Fazang. It is not the doctrine of identity which is the crowning accomplishment of the Perfect Theory.

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they are constructed by means of its categories, and (2) as objects of intellectual intuition they do not seem to the subject to be separate or even distinguishable from itself.20 Here again, what we mean is that buddhas and objects belong to the same type of thing (namely mindinvolved things), not that they are one and the same token of that type, and that we can view the universe of objects as a world either of splendor or degradation, depending on whether we regard it from the perspective of ignorant, sensible intuition or from the perspective of intellectual intuition, as the “nature of dharmas.” Likewise, in the Confucian Perfect Theory, when we say that Heaven and humans are “identical” to each other, we actually mean that Heaven must perform its creative work through the person of a sage, and all humans have morally-wired minds and at least the bare potential to be sages. And when we say that even lifeless things are somehow identical to Heaven, we mean that the whole universe of objects (including lifeless objects) is within the jurisdiction of Heaven’s moral law, deriving their “moral creation” from it, and furthermore that the sage feels a subjective sense of oneness with the whole universe.21 Here again, we are really only claiming that (1) humans and Heaven are type-identical, inasmuch as they are both the type of thing that has what we might call the stuff of sageliness, and that (2) objects in general are type-identical to Heaven, inasmuch as objects and Heaven are all the type of thing that is informed by the moral law and identified with by sages. So when we follow closely, we find that these Perfect Theories are actually claiming an “identity” between the universe and ultimate value that is not so ontologically robust as it seems at first. In fact, it is deceptively weak. After all, if a person were to declare to me, “I am a buddha just as I am,” I would understand her to mean that she is a token of the type “buddha” in the conventional sense of the word (i.e. a fully enlightened being who does not suffer, knows the minds of others, and so on). It probably would not occur to me that she only meant, “I have a mind structurally the same as a buddha’s mind, even if it does not yet function in the same way,” at least not 20 As Lin Chen-kuo puts it, repeating a distinction of Mou’s (ZZZ, 187), things are not so much the ob-jects of intellectual intuition as they are “e-jects in the sense that there is no duality of mind and thing.” See Lin Chen-kuo, “Dwelling in Nearness to the Gods: The Hermeneutical Turn from MOU Zongsan to TU Weiming,” Dao 7 (2008), 386. 21 Vid. XWZ, 442–443; SLY, 69.

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until I had tried out the first interpretation and felt too puzzled to accept it. In fact, that is exactly why Mou can call this a statement of “paradoxical” identity: it is so surprising since it does not really mean what it sounds like it means. So to be entirely clear, in a Perfect Theory when we talk about the identity of ultimate value and the ordinary, we are speaking poetically, for rhetorical effect, as when a cabinet minister expresses solidarity with bombing victims in Spain by declaring, “Today, we are all Spanish,”22 or when John Donne pleads sympathy for the departed by writing, “Any man’s death diminishes me/I am involved in Mankind/ And therefore, never send to know for whom the bell tolls/It tolls for thee.” In unvarnished terms, none of these things really means that I am enlightened or Spanish or dead. They simply mean that I am not utterly disconnected from those things in every way.23 Mou seldom calls attention to just how weak this sort of identity is, but he does acknowledge that we are stretching things a bit and “idealizing” (lixianghua 理想化) when we maintain that sages are objectively rather than just subjectively “infinite,” such that they are identical to the whole universe and to ultimate value.24 For example, a sage may feel as though he is one with the flatware and the tea service, but we are right to distinguish between his feeling so (subjectively or functionally speaking) and his actually being so (objectively or ontologically speaking). Of course, Mou adds, we can get around this and insist that sages really and truly are objectively and ontologically infinite as long as we are willing to change the meaning that we attach to the words “objectively and ontologically.” To do this, we would simply adopt a new way of talking about existence, of which the first rule would be that, as a matter of axiom, a sage is considered infinite in the decisive sense.25 We should also underscore that different traditions do not teach precisely the same things in their Perfect Theories. Though formally they all say that ultimate value “is” the universe of objects in some way, they mean different things by this. For instance, they can disagree

22 British minister for Europe Denis MacShane, “Today, we are all Spanish,” Guardian Unlimited, March 11, 2004. 23 Cf. SLY, 69. 24 FB, 1016; YSL, 154. 25 FB, 1018.

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on precisely what the ultimate value is and how exactly it “is” the rest of us. So for example Confucians and Buddhists differ irreconcilably, Mou thinks, over the question of whether or not the ultimate value is a basic, transcendent and creative substance underlying or preceding the universe and legislating a moral law for it.26 And whereas the Confucian Perfect Theory says that Heaven is identical with all things in the sense that it “morally creates” them in the person of the sage, who as Heaven’s embodiment experiences “Heaven, earth, and the myriad people and things as one body,” in contrast the Buddhist Perfect Theory posits that a buddha’s perfect enlightenment is identical to the universe of objects in the weaker sense that he “retains” their existence, meaning that after his enlightenment he is not oblivious to them.27 How Buddhists Led the Way Mou thinks the key innovation by which Tiantai theorists learned to pin down the elusive relationship between ultimate value and objects was that they developed a new use for a favorite Buddhist rhetorical device, namely paradox. Characteristically, Mou never does define “paradox” (guijue 詭譎) for us, but in practice he uses it to mean that a speaker says something which sounds absurd but really is not because she is actually using some of her terms in special, esoteric senses. When a speaker

26 XT, 1:573. Mou often refers to this as the “vertical” (zongguan 縱貫) dimension in a philosophical system, and he likes to say that whereas Confucian philosophy “talks about the vertical as vertical” (zongguan zongjiang 縱貫縱講), since Buddhist thought omits this vertical element from its philosophy, it “talks about the vertical as horizontal” (zongguan hengjiang 縱貫橫講), where “horizontal” refers to the fact that Buddhist pseudo-ontology (what Mou calls cunyou lun) does not truly trace our ordinary minds and life-worlds back to a transcendent (i.e. “vertical”) source, but rather contents itself with saying, in effect, that the source of our ordinary minds and life-worlds is our minds and life-worlds themselves, or as Vimalakirti says, dharmas are based on the basis non-abidingness (wuzhu ben 無住本), which is to say, on no deeper basis. (For examples of Mou’s discourse about “vertical” and “horizontal” dimensions in the comparison of Buddhist and Confucian thought, see YSL, 305, 328–330 and especially SJJ, 113–126, 421ff. Also see Berthrong, All Under Heaven, 119. Mou also occasionally uses these words in different senses in discussions of intramural Buddhist affairs, most notably in a chapter about different Yogācāra models of the storehouse consciousness in FB, 393–431.) 27 SJJ, 120. This is a necessarily truncated recitation of the way in which a buddha is said to be identical with other things (q.v. Chapter Four).

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uses paradox to good rhetorical effect, she manages to surprise us with what sounds like a contradiction either of one’s own stated opinions or of plain fact, as when Paul writes, “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live.” Ordinarily we would think that if Paul were crucified, he would die as a consequence, so the game for us is to figure out his play on words and the esoteric meaning of his statement. Presumably his “crucifixion” does not mean that he is bodily transfixed and hung to die, being instead a crucifixion of the spirit. According to Mou, the Buddha used rhetorical paradox as one form of the “non-discriminating” speech that he used to “critique” (pipan 批判) his own teachings, or rule out the inevitable misinterpretations. (See Chapters Three and Four.) Recall that the Buddha usually spoke to his audience straightforwardly as one discriminating intelligence to another. But when it came to telling them what it is like to experience the world with prajñā, he could not describe it in ordinary, discriminating language without inviting the misimpression that prajñā is just another kind of discriminating consciousness. So he followed up with “non-discriminating” statements, including paradoxes such as “Prajñā is not prajñā,” in which he declined to discriminate between, for example, identity and non-identity.28 A thousand years later, when the Tiantai philosophers systematized the Buddha’s teachings, Mou finds that they used paradox extensively. They felt it ideal for summing up the relationship of buddhas and ordinary creatures because, as Mou understands it, the relationship is nothing other than “paradoxical identity” (guijue de xiangji 詭譎的相即): Buddhas are not us, but in a way they are. Their “world” (nirvā a) is the very antithesis of ours (sa sāra), but in a way it is the same. Keep in mind that in Mou’s usage, not every statement using paradox amounts to a Perfect Theory. In Buddhism, even the lower teachings abound with paradoxical statements. But they are not complete and perfect because they do not venture ontological assertions of the universe’s identity with buddhahood. For example, in the Perfection of Prajñā sutras, when the Buddha uttered paradox after paradox, in Mou’s view he was still not enunciating his full teaching. Why not? Because at that point the Buddha was not talking ontologically, Somewhat atypically, Mou gives a definition of non-discriminating discourse in one of his minor works, though it is not especially helpful: it is “language concerning perfect manifestation in a Perfect Theory of the basic substance” (本體之圓教中的 關于圓滿的體現之語言) (MLL, xi). Also see TZD, 288–289. 28

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about what is identical to what. He was only reporting on how things do or do not seem from the perspective of a person with prajñā, not stating ontological conclusions about what they actually are. So in those sutras when he said something with the form “Golf balls are not golf balls,” he was really saying something along these lines: “Prajñā does not see or touch a golf ball and think, ‘Ah, a golf ball!’ It does not even apprehend golf balls as golf balls. Prajñā qua prajñā knows no such thing as ‘golf ball’. It does not operate with concepts like that.” So far as Mou is concerned, there is nothing ontological in those scriptures.29 Granted, we can infer from them that a person with prajñā, a buddha, feels as though he is at one with the world and all its things and creatures, but we do not find the Buddha confirming that, in some esoteric sense, he really is them. Not yet. For that we have to wait for the Lotus and Nirvana Sutras, for the Buddha’s complete and definitive teaching. Confucian Perfect Theory and Separation Theories When Confucians of the Song and Ming set about organizing their tradition’s teachings, they too managed in their unsystematic way to enunciate a Perfect Theory, in which we are paradoxically identical to Heaven. This was a matter of some dispute among Confucian theorists. Confucian thinkers have always agreed, Mou thinks, that whatever else we might say about Heaven, it definitely transcends us. Whereas we are small and finite and short-lived, Heaven is “profound and ceaseless” (wumu buyi 於穆不已). It surpasses us vastly, and we ought to approach it with a feeling of responsibility, dread, and reverence (zerengan 責任感, kongju 恐懼, jing 敬).30 So whatever we might say about humans as “co-creators with Heaven”31 and the like, we must never forget that Heaven outstrips us utterly. We must never feel complacent, must not approach Heaven with levity, and must always be mindful of the infinite claims that Heaven makes on us. For we are 29 In Mou’s terms, the Perfection of Prajñā scriptures are making “functional” (zuoyong de 作用的) statements, i.e. statements about how prajñā or intellectual intuition works, rather than ontological statements (FB, 16, 456). 30 ZZT, 16. 31 This phrase is a favorite of Mou’s student Tu Wei-ming. See, for example, “Creativity: A Confucian View,” Dao 6 (2007), 118.

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never finished with “moral action.” There is always more for us to do. Heaven is perfect and sufficient without qualification, but we are not. However, as Mou sees it, some Confucian theorists became confused about exactly how Heaven does and does not transcend us, and consequently they misrepresented the sages’ authentic teaching. They confused the claim that Heaven knows no bounds and outstrips our finite persons (which is true) with the claim that Heaven also exists entirely separately from us (which is false). In effect, these thinkers end up teaching Confucian Separation Theories. Thus in Mou’s mammoth history of Confucian philosophy, he takes the unusual step of opposing the philosophy of the great Zhu Xi 朱熹, who was officially considered the arbiter of orthodoxy since the Yuan dynasty, as a “deviant teaching” (qichu zhi jiao 歧出之教).32 He likens Zhu’s doctrine of the separateness of Heaven from the human mind to the Yogācārins’ Beginning Separation Theory.33 As Mou reads Zhu and the Yogācārins, both teach that ultimate value does not overlap at all with the universe of objects or dwell therein. Yogācārins assumed that buddha-nature (ultimate value) is something separate from suchness (the universe), and Zhu for his part portrayed Heaven as strictly separate from us and any mundane object. Though we can comprehend Heaven by studying its law or principle (li 理), Zhu thought, we can never be Heaven.34 It remains forever separate YSL, 310. XT, 1:578; XWZ, 455. Mou Tsung-san [Mou Zongsan], “The Immediate Successor of Wang Yang-ming: Wang Lung-hsi and his Theory of Ssu-wu,” Philosophy East and West 23, no. 1–2 (1973), 116. “Chu Hsi [Zhu Xi] . . . presupposed a duality between mind and nature, or mind and reason [the Heavenly principle or law]. . . . [Similarly] for those who affirm ālaya as the origin of occasions but not the TrueThusness-Mind [viz. Yogācārins and other exponents of a Beginning Separation Theory], True Thusness in their system is “mere reason” or “inactive True Thusness.” Then, True Thusness is not tainted by avidyā [ignorance], nor does it fumigate [i.e. perfume] avidyā; it is only an object enlightened by prajñā. So those who belong to the School of Mere Ideation (Vijñaptimātra, Vijñānavāda or Yogācāra) handed down by Hsuan-tsang [Xuanzang] have to deny the fumigation of True Thusness in the Mahāyāna-śraddhotpāda-āśstra, or Treatise on the Wakening of Faith in the Mahāyāna. (On this point, Chu Hsi and the Mere Ideation school share the same type of thought, therefore, both are thoroughly gradual teaching, which is also thoroughly empirical learning because it depends solely on empirical treatment)” (ibid.). Mou’s complete critique of Zhu occupies the whole of the third volume of XT. In English see Berthrong, “The Problem of Mind: Mou Tsung-san’s Critique of Chu Hsi,” ; Berthrong, All Under Heaven, 118–21. 34 SLY, 27, 35. “If we talk about Heaven’s Way as separate from the [sage’s] practice of benevolence, this is a deviant teaching in which we are just playing around [with theories] . . . If we cut off the substance of the Heavenly Way from [ordinary] 32 33

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from us. Still less does Heaven act through us, summoning us to join ourselves with it. In fact, Heaven is not involved in activity at all.35 Therefore Mou considers Zhu’s philosophy a Confucian version of a Beginning Separation Theory. The venerable Wang Yangming 王陽明 did much better, Mou thinks, and came up with a Mature Separation Theory. He lessened Zhu’s false dichotomy between Heaven and the human mind by teaching that we can think of Heaven itself as being mind of a certain sort, namely the moral mind.36 Just as True Mind thinkers improved on the Yogācārins by explaining that the universe of objects is descended from a “Pure True Mind,” likewise Wang advanced existence and do not understand that the unlimitedness of the mind of benevolence is precisely the substance of the Heavenly Way, this is a petty teaching. Neither of these accords with the model of the sage’s [here, Confucius’ in particular] teaching of completion and abundance (yuanying zhi jiao 圓盈之教) . . . We can rank and critique latter-day people’s various understandings, their adequacy or inadequacy, according to this original model . . . The Great Learning is [ just] an outline for practice . . . It needs to be put in the context of Confucius’ original model. By itself it is insufficient. It is seeing it as sufficient and able to determine the orientation of the sagely teaching that is Master Zhu’s deviation . . . It was [Cheng] Yichuan who first celebrated the Great Learning’s [recommendation to] ‘examine things to plumb their principle’ (gewu qiongli 格物窮理) and Master Zhu who followed him and multiplied his followers. In this way he then inadvertently stepped onto the path of deviance and out of synch with Confucius’ and Mencius’ model . . . In this way he spoke of the mind and the nature [here, Heaven as disembodied principle] as separate. The mind was something physical and mundane (xing’erxia de 形而下的), and could not be called a mind of unlimited wisdom; and the nature was a principle, something metaphysical. Hence the nature became a mere principle, something vapidly ontological ( fan cunyoulun de 泛存有論的) . . . and the original Mencian understanding of nature as a moral nature or natural goodness was then killed off.” (YSL, 310–312) Mou remarks further on Zhu’s teaching as a Beginning Separation Theory in YSL, 315–6. 35 SRF, 483. Mou frequently mentions Zhu’s alleged notion that Heaven “just exists and doesn’t act” together with the complaint that Yogācārins portray suchness as (in Fazang’s polemic phrase) “frozen suchness” (ningran zhenru 凝然真如) (e.g. FB, 411, 639; see Kantor, Heilslehre, 341). We can easily become confused by this, as it appears that Mou is comparing two unlike claims: that ultimate value (Heaven) is passive and that the universe of objects (suchness) is passive. The trick is to remember that when Fazang is talking, he is not using “suchness” the way that Yogācārins themselves do, to mean the universe of objects, but in the way that the Awakening of Faith does, to refer principally to the enlightened original mind, which is to say, to ultimate value. So for Mou’s purpose, Zhu Xi and Yogācārins really are making equivalent claims, viz. that ultimate value not only is not identical to the universe but is not even acting upon it or doing anything within it. 36 That is, what Mou often calls the daode benxin 道德本心. It is perhaps more helpful for us the say that this picks out a certain aspect or property of our minds, or a certain fact about them, namely that they have what the Mencian tradition calls the “four beginnings” (siduan 四端) of ren yi li zhi 仁義禮智.

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beyond Zhu Xi by teaching that Heaven is the deep cause and essence of our minds, namely the moral mind. However, Mou finds that Wang still spoke of this sort of mind in a way that made it sound too rarefied and trans-human, too distinct from ordinary minds like yours or mine, and hence Mou classifies Wang’s work as a Mature Separation Theory like the True Mind school’s, which distinguished strictly in some ways between the Pure True Mind and ordinary creaturely minds. Like them Wang taught that our ordinary minds are derived from the transcendent moral mind but still separate from it.37 Owing to the intrusion of the selfish passions into our sagely nature, we remain imperfect ordinary minds, though full of potential for greatness, and hence we partake of the moral mind in substance but not in actuality. From here, we need only make a short conceptual jump to arrive at a Confucian Perfect Theory of the sort intimated by Zhang Hengqu and Cheng Mingdao and developed by Hu Wufeng.38 They recognized that the Heavenly moral mind is not just a super-human, trans-personal entity that precedes our ordinary minds so distantly that it is entirely separate from them. According to these Perfect Theorists, as lofty as the Heavenly moral mind is, nevertheless it exists in human form, in the persons of sages. Sages are flesh-and-blood individuals and they have ordinary, sensibly intuiting minds, but the Heavenly moral mind is perfectly manifested or incarnated in them. As Cheng Mingdao puts it, “precisely the mind is what Heaven is” (zhi xin bianshi tian 只心便是天).39 That is, when we say that Heaven exists, what this actually means is that it is manifest as the minds of sages.40

37 In Wang’s thought, Mou writes, “Since intention ( yi 意) [in our terms, the ordinary mind] is issued forth from the [transcendent] mind (xin 心) as the action of intention, and this action is action for the sake of acting on things and thus has its property of [consciousness of the distinction between] good and bad, therefore we must presuppose a mind which does not act upon things and has no [conscious concept of ] good and bad and which is a transcendent entity to serve as our standard [i.e. the centerpiece of our ontology]” (YSL, 320). 38 SLY, 65–66. 39 XT, 2:17, 437; Cheng Hao and Cheng Yi 程顥、程頤, Er Cheng yishu—Er Cheng waishu 二程遺書—二程外書 [Literary Legacy of the Brothers Cheng and Additional Works] (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1992), 17. 40 Xie Daning argues that in Mou’s Tiantai-inspired construal of the Confucian Perfect Theory, Mou does not follow the Tiantai example far enough and still retains a measure of distinction between the transcendent, Heavenly “unlimited mind of

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In fact, say the perfect theorists, Heaven has to be incarnated as sages.41 Similarly, we will recall, the Tiantai writers opined that buddha-nature does not hang out in the vacant aether since it has to take on creaturely form in order to advance its mission of saving sentient beings.42 In the same way, as we saw earlier, their Confucian counterparts think that Heaven must necessarily conduct its moral creation through the agency of human sages. Sages act as Heaven’s viceroys, so to speak, or its plenipotentiary representatives. We can also say that Heaven exists as ordinary people such as me and you, according to the Perfect Theory, though in a more extended sense. Even though you and I are not full-blown sages, we do at least have the capacity or potential to be sages, inasmuch as we have minds that are informed by Heaven’s law. To that (rather limited) extent we are “paradoxically identical” (meaning once again, typeidentical) with Heaven. Likewise a Confucian Perfect Theory also says that our entire world is nothing other than the ultimate value.43 Recall how the Tiantai authors said that our universe has a double character: although we with our sensible intuition experience the universe as a world of suffering and imperfection, the buddhas with their intellectual intuition also experience this very same universe differently, as a world of peace and joy. Similarly, Mou thinks that Confucian Perfect Theorists teach that sages see the universe not just as a world of selfishness and strife, full of disappointing evils, but also (with their intellectual intuition) as a world which is shot through with Heaven’s nourishing, morally uplifting creativity. Hence Cheng Mingdao says, “This right here is Heaven and earth’s transforming; there could be no other Heaven and earth opposite this.”44 Mou’s favorite Confucian formula for expressing this double character comes from Hu Wufeng. Whereas a Theorist of Separation like Zhu Xi tells us that “the multitude of the sages and worthies’ words are all just telling us to understand the Heavenly principle and snuff out our [selfish]

wisdom” (wuxian zhixin 無現智心) and our ordinary minds, at least in some of his moods (Rujia yuanjiao de zai quanshi, 105–159). 41 Vid. XWZ, 122–123. 42 XT, 1:641–642. 43 Vid. SLY, 28. 44 “只此便是天地之化, 不可對此個別有天地” (Cheng Hao and Cheng Yi, Er Cheng yishu, 19. Vid. YSL, 324; SLY, 66.)

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human passions,”45 Hu answers, “Heavenly principle and human passions are different functionings of the same entity” (tianli renyu tongti er yiyong 天理人欲同體而異用).46 What he means, Mou says, is that ontologically speaking, the world as a place of Heavenly principle or moral law and the world as a place of human passions are not separate. Objectively they are the same universe. The difference is in whether we look at it from the point of view of sensible intuition or intellectual intuition.47 For a tidier overview of the three kinds of theory, see the following table. How to Differentiate the Theories Buddhist Is ultimate value (buddhahood) identical to all creatures and other objects?

Confucian Is ultimate value (Heaven) identical to all ordinary people and other objects?

Beginning No. Buddhahood is not an Separation object. Still less is it all objects.

No. Heaven is a principle (li 理), which is inconsistent with its being any kind of object. It is passive and inert, not an active presence in us.

Mature No. Buddhahood is categorically Separation a separate type from any creature or other object. However, as True Mind (and in tandem with ignorance) it causes our existence in a distant way. Once we shed our ignorance (and sensible intuition with it), we will be token-identical to the True Mind, and the whole universe will appear as the dharma body of the buddha.

No. Heaven transcends ordinary people and things, although as moral mind it is present in our ordinary minds and “creates” all objects (in the sense that it confers moral significance on them). If an ordinary mind sheds its ordinariness, it will be absorbed back into the Heavenly moral mind, and the whole universe will seem identical to Heaven as well.

45 “聖賢千言萬語只是教人明天理 、滅人欲” Zhu Xi 朱熹, Zhuzi yulei 朱子語 類 [Sayings of Master Zhu] (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1986), 207). 46 Huang Zongxi, Huang Zongxi quanji, 674; YSL, 275. 47 YSL, 324; XT, 2:474. Xie Daning perceives a tension in Mou’s presentation of the Confucian Perfect Theory. He believes that in some of Mou’s moods, particularly when he explains the Confucian Perfect Theory in terms of Wang Longxi’s 王 龍溪 “theory of four no’s” (si wu jiao 四無教), Mou retains a measure of distinction between the ordinary human mind and a trans-personal unlimited mind of wisdom (wuxian zhixin 無限智心) (Rujia yuanjiao de zai quanshi, 57–159).

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Table (cont.)

Perfect

Buddhist

Confucian

Yes. They are type-identical. Buddhahood “is and entails” all creatures and other objects. Looked at from the proper perspective (namely that of intellectual intuition), everyone and everything is buddha-nature.

Yes. Heaven is identical to the ordinary mind of a sage. Furthermore, a sage’s mind is said to be identical to ours inasmuch as it is structurally the same. Also, his mind is said to be identical to all things, too, in the senses that (a) things are morally created by his mind, (b) they are not experienced by him as separate from himself, and (c) they seem perfect to him through his sagely intellectual intuition. Hence looked at from the proper perspective, everyone and everything is already perfect.

What Good is a Perfect Theory? On Mou’s view, Confucian philosophers benefit from having a Perfect Theory at hand because, just as the Buddhists could, they can use it to express some of the essential lessons of their tradition in clearer and more pedagogically useful form. In short, the Perfect Theory helps them do a better job at “philosophy” in Mou’s sense of the word. But it is implicit in Mou’s views that Confucians need a Perfect Theory for some different reasons than Buddhists did. In Buddhism, the Perfect Theory had a great deal of surprise value. Because the Buddha unfolded his message in such a cagey way, it was stunning when he revealed near the end of his life that perfect persons are really mostly just like the rest of us. For Mou’s fellow Confucians this is not a news flash, because unlike the Buddhists they were never taught to think of sages as some kind of alien life-form. Instead, they need a Perfect Theory to do other work in their tradition. First, Mou thinks, they can use a Confucian Perfect Theory as a teaching of completeness, to drive home the essential Confucian message that all of us already have everything we need in order to be sages. Second and more importantly, Confucians can use the Perfect Theory to explain that if we take the necessary pains to attain full spiritual perfection, we will definitely be rewarded for our efforts with happiness.

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For Buddhists, a Perfect Theory had important social implications for how practitioners ought to live their lives. Even a full-blown buddha is not a cave-dwelling recluse whose virtue entails isolation from the shop and the marketplace and the smoke and fire of the common run of humanity (renjian yanhuo 人間煙火). Rather, as Mou understands buddhas, their very mode of being and working is a social one. To be buddhas and do the work of buddhas, they must try to improve the world of creaturely affairs, not opt out of it. Hence even though Tiantai practitioners might withdraw into solitary cultivation for some limited purposes, Mou thinks there was no question of their trying to shed their creaturely bodies and minds and vault right out of the world of phenomena, as Buddhists of the lower sorts might. However, it is plain that in Mou’s view Confucians do not need to wait for a Perfect Theory to tell them this. Even though their tradition sometimes commends people who choose to retire in disgust from a hopelessly corrupt situation and wash their hands of it, they have always distinguished themselves from Buddhists and Daoists by their clear preference for the engagé.48 It was the Buddha, not any Confucian sage, who first taught his disciples to retire far from social life and only later qualified that message subtly—so subtly, in fact, that most of his followers did not figure out what he meant. Therefore, even though Mou welcomes the Perfect Theory’s call to worldly engagement, he does not see this as a decisive contribution to Confucian philosophy. However, Mou does think Confucians benefit from having a Perfect Theory as a way to drive home that even ordinary folk are complete.49 We are whole. Just as we are, we already possess everything we really need in order to be sages. Though most of us are all too human, we do not need anything added to us from without in order to be sagely. In fact, theoretically we could manifest full-blown sagehood at any moment, since we already possess the important requisites:

Vid. SLY, 5. In some respects it would be better for us to translate “yuanjiao” not as “perfect theory” but as “theory of completeness,” since we could better highlight the alleged identity of all things with each other and ultimate value and emphasize that all people are already spiritually complete in a sense and lack nothing that they need to attain sagehood. However, I have chosen to retain Mou’s choice of translation simply it is well-known and I do not wish to confuse the casual reader. 48 49

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This unlimited mind of wisdom is possessed not just by [sages] but by all people. In Kant’s terms, all rational beings have it; it is just that [sages] have it perduringly and can manifest it [consistently] in moral practice. And although ordinary people cannot manifest it completely, they can still manifest a little, because it can appear at any time. As long as reason is in control and not sensibility . . . total manifestation is possible. This entails the possible of complete and sudden manifestation ( yuandun tixian 圓頓體現). Confucianism’s perfect teaching must necessarily be expressed in terms of this possibility of complete and sudden manifestation [i.e. our basic completeness and preparedness for sagehood.50

In so teaching, Mou thinks, the Confucian Perfect Theorists are only clarifying a main message of Mencius, one of the Confucian tradition’s founding fathers. Though lionized for centuries in the Chinese tradition of humane letters, in his own lifetime the ill-starred Mencius was not nearly so fortunate. It was his fate to be born into the demoralized atmosphere of China’s Warring States period, and he remained a prophet without honor in his own age. A beleaguered idealist, he visited petty rulers in their courts and tried (but mostly failed) to humanize them.51 In the book of stories and sayings that bears Mencius’ name, he teaches us that of all the goods there are, humans are made most truly happy by virtue. We take delight in other things too, of course, such as health and wealth and safety, but none is as desirable as virtue.52 We are very lucky that this is so, since virtue is always within our reach. As for health and wealth and safety and those lesser sources of happiness, we may or not be able to get YSL, 307–308. Emphasis original. Cf. Leo Strauss on the job of the political philosopher. He writes, in commenting on al-Fārābi, of “the secret kingship of the philosopher who, being a ‘perfect man’ . . ., lives privately as a member of an imperfect society which he tries to humanize within the limits of the possible (Persecution and the Art of Writing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 17). 52 Mencius famously says: “I like fish. I also like bear paw. If I cannot have both, I will give up the fish and take the bear paw. [Likewise] I like living. I also like rectitude. If I cannot have both, I will give up living and take rectitude. [So although] I like living, there are things I like more than living, and therefore I won’t stoop [to just anything] to hold onto life. And [though] I abhor death, there are things I abhor more, and so there are some misfortunes that I wouldn’t run from. . . . Thus there are things we like more than life and things we abhor more than death. It isn’t just worthies [i.e. people of great spiritual attainment] whose hearts are this way. All people have this kind of heart. It’s just that worthies don’t lose it.” (魚我所欲也. 態 掌亦我所欲也. 二者不可得兼, 舍魚而取態掌者也. 生亦我所欲也. 義亦我所欲也. 二者不可得兼, 舍生而取義者也. 生亦我所欲, 所欲有甚於生者, 故不為茍得也. 死亦我所惡, 所惡有甚於死者, 故患有所不辟也. . . . 是故所欲有甚於生者, 所惡有 甚於死者. 非獨賢者有是心也, 人皆有之, 賢者能勿喪耳) (6A10). 50 51

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them—it depends on fortune or fate (ming 命). If we are born into the wrong time or country or family, we may be destined for poverty, sickness, and tumult. But we can always have virtue, no matter what, regardless of the whims of fortune. “If I pursue it I will [surely] get it . . .,” Mencius assures us. “It just depends on me.”53 Mencius was far from a systematic theorist, but Mou thinks that implicitly he was adumbrating a sort of proto-Perfect teaching: I am not separate from perfection. I can never be alienated from it, and it can never be taken from me. I can always find my way to excellence if only I will it, and I cannot be stripped of this capacity against my will by any want or any stroke of ill fortune. In this respect I am complete just as I am. Beyond this, Mou thinks Confucian philosophers derive another supremely important advantage from having a Perfect Theory. Equipped with such a theory of their own, Confucians are finally in a position to craft a cogent answer to a great and particularly nettlesome problem of all philosophers the world over, namely the question, “What is the point of spiritual excellence? What is the payoff ?” Mou likes to refer to this with a Kantian shorthand, as the question of “the coincidence of virtue and happiness” (defu yizhi 德福一致), which is equivalent to what he calls the “summum bonum” or yuanshan 圓善.54 Even in the Song and Ming, Mou thinks, Confucians did not much time spelling out the relationship between happiness and spiritual

“求則得之 . . . 求在我者” (7A.3). See YSL, 147; XT, 1:4–5. Mou paraphrases this section of the Mencius thus: “[The cardinal virtues of ] humaneness, rectitude, propriety, and wisdom are not things forged and added to us from without, but rather are things that we fixedly possess. People only fail to understand this because they are . . . unable to reflect. And since they are fixedly ours, we can say this: if you seek [virtue], it is yours. If you relinquish it and do not seek it, then you lose it” (YSL, 25). 54 YSL and YZ, passim. For a laudably plain framing of the problem as Mou sees it, see Cheng Zhihua 程志華, “Yuanshan zhi zhen yu keneng: Mou Zongsan yuanshan de zhengcheng ji qi yiyi: jian yu Feng Yaoming xiansheng shangque 圓善之真與可 能: 牟宗三圓善的證成及其意義: 兼與馮耀明先生商榷 [The Reality and Possibility of the Summum Bonum: The Establishment and Meaning of Mou Zongsan’s Summum Bonum—A Discussion with Fung Yiu-ming],” Zhexue yanjiu, no. 7 (2006). Also see Guan Zhenqiang, “Wudai de xingfu.” 53

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perfection.55 However, Mou takes it as a serious question that dogs their tradition.56 After all, when teachers counsel their followers to struggle through an arduous self-transformation, they need to give them a powerful motive. Moreover, it seems to me that Mou feels that Confucianism is particularly bedeviled by this sort of question because of its moral realism. If the universe is truly subject to moral law, does it not seem that a perfectly good and morally unblemished person ought to be blessed with happiness? Why then does it seem that in the real world people who spurn virtue prosper and are sometimes granted happiness while virtuous people go unrewarded or even suffer evil fates? Even the great Confucians have found it hard to explain this away. Especially in modern times, Confucians have been cudgeled by critics for claiming an underlying metaphysical moral order in such a disappointing world. Mou’s friend and fellow New Confucian Tang Junyi was ridiculed for his “Panglossian optimism,” for example, by a Western sinologist who remarked that “[Tang’s] philosophy has the cheerfulness of a kind of metaphysical YMCA” 55 SJJ, 329. To resolve this sort of problem, Kant postulates that even if a virtuous person should come to harm and misery in this world, she will be cared for in the eternal life to come, wherein God will requite her virtue with celestial happiness. This would be a fairly simple solution (even if one does not believe it), for it does not require us to construe “happiness” in any particularly outré sense far different from its usual one. However, Mou is not satisfied with this solution, which strikes him as an unphilosophical resort to a deus ex machina. He explains his reasons at great length, and for our purposes it is sufficient simply to say that Mou does not believe that it is reasonable to suppose the existence of God such as the one Kant has in mind, and he believes that if we do so, then we imply that morality is not “autonomous” (zilü 自律) but “heteronomous” (talü 他律). That is, Mou thinks we commit ourselves to what metaethicists call a “divine command theory,” in which morality is whatever God capriciously declares it to be. (Mou’s fullest criticism of Kant’s solution to the problem can be found in YSL, 244ff.) There are other attempted solutions which Mou finds even less satisfying. For example, we could try to redefine “happiness” to mean nothing other than virtue. This is the Stoic solution, and Mou dismisses it as semantic sleight-of-hand. For even if happiness follows closely upon virtue, nonetheless the two are in fact distinct and we give a lop-sided presentation of happiness if we try to reduce it to nothing but virtue. Similarly, even if we were to suppose that smoke always follows closely upon fire, it would be ridiculous to say therefore that smoke is precisely fire and nothing else. (Mou calls this relationship, in which the meaning of B is said to be entirely present in and derivable from the meaning of A, a “discriminating analytic” relationship.) 56 We might consider the case of Mencius himself, who preaches on the one hand that a ruler has only to personify virtue and the people of the realm and indeed the very elements of nature will give cooperate with his righteous will, and yet in spite of his virtue can exert almost no control over the politics he wishes to reform.

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and accused him of teaching of a “godlike self ” not so different from that found in Mao Zedong’s thought.57 Hence Mou is extremely concerned that Confucianism defend the thesis that virtuous people really are blessed and happy, at least in some sense, and he thinks that with a Perfect Theory Confucian philosophers have just what they need to mend this chink in their armor. Before continuing, in order to avoid great confusion we must understand that when Mou says that perfect people are always rewarded with fu 福, which he renders in English as “happiness,” he is packing a simple-looking word with a very particular set of meanings, some of them quite unusual.58 As with many of his other terms, it is not easy to discern just how he is using it, but it will help us if we read him as meaning that perfect people enjoy “both happiness and good fortune.” For on close examination we can see that Mou says that they not only feel subjective well-being (happiness) but also are blessed with objective good fortune. A perfected person feels subjectively happy because, feeling himself “infinite” or “unlimited” and thus identical to the entire universe, he does not feel himself thwarted by limitations or bad fortune. And he is objectively blessed with good fortune both because he has existence as a localized, particular person and because through him the moral law is made real in the world. First, Mou considers a perfected person to enjoy “happiness” in the sense that we usually think of in contemporary English, namely a subjective sense of well-being. He is considered infinite and one with the universe, as we saw earlier, both on the grounds that he shares some real commonality with the whole universe of objects59 and because he feels subjectively that he is united with everything.60 Hence he enjoys a sense of well-being, for he is free from finitude and blessed with “unlimited life” (or at any rate, he feels as though he is). As a Confucian might put it, he has the whole cosmos for his true self or “great self ” (dati 大體), and that self never dies.61 And as that self, he is never buffeted by the shifting winds of fortune (ming 命), for Metzger, Escape from Predicament, 36–37, 39–41. Cf. Guan Zhengqiang, “Wudai de xingfu,” 10–11. 59 That is, he and the universe are type-identical in both instantiating the moral law (tianli 天理). 60 YSL, 278–279, 305; cf. SRZ, 45–47. Also see Guan Zhengqiang, “Wudai de xingfu,” 14–15. 61 XWZ, 113; Yang Zuhan, “Ruxue de chaoyue yishi,” 713–714. 57 58

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there are no forces which are alien to his greater and truer self.62 Hence he knows no adversity. However, for Mou ‘happiness’ involves much more than subjective well-being. If that were all happiness were, than any one of the lower Buddhist theories, even the Hīnayāna, would yield a theory in which buddhas are not just spiritually perfected but also happy. However, Mou thinks that is not the case; even in Buddhism, we only receive a satisfactory account of happiness in the perfect theory.63 This because, as a second requirement for happiness, one must be a localized person. Even though he is supposed to be infinite, the perfected person is also a localized subject.64 He is a concrete, particular person, with a discriminating mind and sensible intuition. Mou thinks this is absolutely essential, just as in Buddhism. If a perfected person were not manifest as a particular, localized individual, he could not carry out his mission of working in the world as an embodiment and agent of ultimate value. He would not be able to participate in Heaven’s ongoing moral creation of the universe or, in the case of a buddha, to educate and rescue sentient beings. In that case he might as well not exist at all! In addition, a perfected person needs to be a concrete, “realworld” person in order to experience happiness subjectively. To Mou it would not make sense to say that a strictly ethereal, disembodied, utterly trans-phenomenal non-personality could be the subject of “happiness.” For a person to be happy, there has to be a person there.65 If he were just a disembodied intelligence, perfectly transmundane and oblivious like Huayan Buddhists think the “dharma body” is, we could scarcely describe him as being or doing, well, anything.66 Third and most strangely, Mou reckons perfected persons “happy” simply because the universe of objects exists. The idea here is that a perfected person finds contentment in the mere fact that there is a

On ming as what is external to oneself, see YSL, 143–144; CX, 1–41. SJJ, 378. 64 Vid. YSL, 278; SJJ, 329. 65 YSL, 279. 66 In On Being Buddha, Paul Griffiths criticizes Yogācārins as Mou does for denying Buddha subjectivity, without which he cannot have many of the excellences that Buddhist tradition ascribes to him (197). 62 63

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universe!67 Mou comes to this understanding of “happiness” by expanding on Kant’s meaning. On Mou’s reading, Kant understood “happiness” mostly as referring to an objective state of affairs. To be happy was to be alive, healthy, and endowed with a certain prosperity. In effect, happiness meant something like “the objective conditions which are required for a subjective feeling of well-being.” Mou extends this usage of Kant’s. Where Kant used “happiness” to refer to one set of life circumstances (life, health and prosperity) rather than another, Mou expands it to encompass the simple metaphysical fact that things morally exist at all.68 A perfected person feels a sense of well-being, or at least solace, just knowing that the universe exists. In the Confucian tradition, for example, a sage is sure to meet with frustration and find much evil which he cannot change. The sage Shun 舜, for instance, was nearly assassinated more than once by his incorrigibly wicked father. But at least the sage is ever happy and blessed to the extent that he is his “great self.”69 Identified with Heaven and the whole universe, he takes unsurpassable satisfaction in the simple fact of moral existence: Come what may, Heaven is always creating unceasingly and permeating everything with its moral law. The universe is never vacant of moral meaning. In this respect the sage always feels that the world “turns over [to show a happy aspect] following his own mind” (suixin zhuan 隨心轉).70 So even though he 67 Speaking specifically of the Buddhist case, Mou says in a moment of rare simplicity, “In Buddhist terms, happiness rests on material dharmas (sefa 色法) . . . [I]f material dharmas were gone [as in a Separation Theory], how could we speak of happiness?” (SJJ, 379). 68 Vid. SJJ, 329, 379. 69 Here as elsewhere, Mou’s Confucianism adheres to the basic pattern set by Xiong Shili, who taught the cultivation of the trans-personal “great self ” (daji 大己). 70 YSL, 333. In this respect (again, the sage’s satisfaction in the moral existence of things), I believe the sage’s happiness is different and more complex than a buddha’s. As we noted above, it seems that a buddha takes delight in his own existential condition (i.e. his nirvana) but not in the fact of the empty-and-provisional-and-middle existence of things (which is the Tiantai counterpart to the moral existence of things in Confucianism). I have looked for indications that Mou thinks that buddhas take a subjective delight not just in their liberation but also in the sheer fact that dharmas exist. Thus far I have not found any. Clearly dharmas are necessary to buddhas’ happiness (SJJ, 379) and buddhas do take pleasure in dharmas. As the Nirvana Sutra says, they experience dharmas as “permanent, pleasant, self-ful, and pure” (chang le wo jing 常樂 我淨) in certain respects. However, I think it would be tendentious to argue on that basis that buddhas rejoice in the fact that dharmas exist, just as I think it would be a stretch to argue that since my sister likes watching movies, it must follow that she derives happiness just from knowing that movies exist in the world.

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cannot realize all his ambitions, just as a buddha cannot completely fulfill his basic aspiration (benhuai 本懷) of liberating all creatures, Mou thinks it quite suffices in order for him to feel at peace. It is only under a Perfect Theory that Buddhists or Confucians can prove a buddha or a sage “happy” in Mou’s special threefold sense.71 The lower teachings do not teach that buddhas or sages are paradoxically infinite-yet-finite, and they do not guarantee that the universe of objects must necessarily exist either. Lacking those things,

Another argument might be that (a) because the buddha’s basic mission (benhuai 本懷) is the salvation of all sentient beings, and (b) the salvation of all sentient beings is equivalent to the conversion of all dharmas to “buddha-dharmas” or members in the buddha dharma-class (since hell dweller-dharmas or hungry ghost-dharmas only exist if there are hell-dwellers and hungry ghosts to fabricate them with their discriminating minds), buddhas must feel necessarily happy since (c) according to the Perfect Theory there is a sense in which we can say that all dharmas “are” buddhadharmas (namely in the sense that all things-in-themselves will naturally appear to a subject as buddha-dharmas, provided only that the subject has intellectual intuition). In short, then, the argument would be that buddhas desire that all dharmas be buddha-dharmas, and since there is a certain sense in which we can say that they are, the buddhas must be gladdened by this. I do not think that this argument would succeed either, since the sense in which it is true that “all dharmas are buddha-dharmas” is different from the sense in which buddhas want it to be the case that all dharmas are buddha-dharmas. What the buddha wants is for all dharmas qua objects intuited by a subject to be intuited as buddha-dharmas or things-in-themselves, i.e. intellectually intuited. This just means that the buddha wants all creatures (all subjects) to be buddhas (that is, subjects who exercise intellectual intuition and not just sensible intuition). In contrast, when Mou says that the Buddhist Perfect Theory establishes that “all dharmas are buddha-dharmas,” he means that all dharmas qua things-in-themselves are buddhadharmas (which is true by definition), not dharmas qua objects of intuition. Simply put, the fact that a buddha needs for things to exist in order to pursue his mission does not itself seem like cause for him to be happy. 71 As we know from Chapters Four and Five, according to a Perfect Theory it is the perfected person who establishes the existence of the universe. Just as Kant opines that the way that God is said to create things is by his intellectually intuiting them, Mou thinks that, likewise, in Buddhist and Confucian metaphysics, the sage or buddha (who functions in place of Kant’s God) establishes things’ existence through his intellectual intuition. In this mode of speaking (which Mou calls wuzhi de cunyoulun 無執的存有論 or “ontology without attachment”) the standpoint of intellectual intuition becomes the authoritative standpoint. In effect, we define existence as whatever is intellectually intuited, so that we say that things exist when and because intellectual intuition intuits them. In the Tiantai Perfect Theory, a buddha establishes things’ existence in a relatively weak way, merely “retaining” it. That is, when he attains intellectual intuition he does not dispense with phenomenal things, wherefore we are assured thereby that there are always phenomena, in all cases and for all subjects. According to the Confucian Perfect Theory, the sage positively participates in Heaven’s ceaseless “moral creation” of the universe (i.e. its infusing moral significance into what is already there in the universe) as its living instrument.

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they cannot promise buddhas and sages the odd kind of happiness that a Perfect Theory does. Take Buddhists, for example. First, even though Hīnayānists, Mādhyamikas, and Yogācārins admit that a buddha feels subjectively infinite, they deny that he really is objectively infinite. Instead they think he is just a finite or limited buddha, arisen through contingent conditions and limited in lifespan. The most they could say is that a buddha’s mind conforms to a cosmic principle.72 They cannot give him the ultimate satisfaction of actually being one with the cosmos. Second, the lower teachings all deny that a buddha has a discriminating mind, and in doing so they deny him a localized subjectivity. They make him into oblivion, an automaton. Under their theories he cannot have proper happiness because there is no one there to be a proper subject of happiness. And finally, when the lower theories deny discriminating minds and subjectivity to buddhas, they also deny them a life-world furnished with phenomenal dharmas. As we know, Mou believes that as a result, they cannot assure us that the universe really exists of necessity. Instead, it seems that when a buddha attains his final liberation, the universe of objects flickers out of existence. And since these Buddhists cannot guarantee their future buddhas a durable universe, they cannot guarantee them happiness in Mou’s sense either. Confucians, too, have no way to promise such happiness to aspiring sages except through a Perfect Theory. Under a Separation Theory such as Zhu’s or Wang’s, they cannot count sages as identical to or one with Heaven. All they can say is that though a sage harmonizes himself with Heaven, he is still categorically separate from it. Nor can they say that Heaven can incarnate itself as sages and conduct its moral creation through them. Heaven is left with no agent or representative, no presence in the world, and no way to act. And finally, they cannot explain the necessary moral existence of the universe either. For since they hold Heaven to be separate from sages and leave Heaven with no one to act through, they give it no way to carry out its moral creation. If Heaven cannot be incarnated as sages, then there is no one to pronounce the moral law and no one to witness the universe’s moral existence. So, much as in the Buddhist case, since these lower theories cannot account for the necessary moral

72

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existence of the universe, they cannot promise the kind of happiness that a Perfect Theory does. I also suspect that a final reason that Mou finds this an important ingredient in a Confucian version of “happiness” is that otherwise a true sage could not need to justify feeling happy to himself. A sage is animated not by a narrow preoccupation with his own feeling of well-being but by “concern consciousness” ( youhuan yishi 憂患意識) for the entire world. If the real character of the world were only that it is a place of ineradicable injustice and affliction, it would seem that a sage could hardly allow himself to enjoy contentment, “great self ” or not. For that, the entire world has to be suffused with goodness in some sense or other, and this is accomplished by identifying it with Heaven and its moral law. With that in place, the world is right enough that sage can be allowed his happiness. A Confucian Perfect Theory provides this assurance. It teaches that the whole universe is already redeemed, Mou explains, even if we do not see it thus because of our imperfections. *

*

*

So what good does Mou find in Buddhist philosophers? Simply put, they lead the way for Confucians. Despite their many mistakes, they developed the notion of a “Perfect Theory,” in which we claim that the ultimate value is “paradoxically identical” to the universe of objects in some fashion. Mou thinks the Confucian sages were implicitly saying precisely this, and some of the Song and Ming theorists understood this, even if they did not say it as clearly as they might have. By making full use of this theory, Confucian philosophers can settle disputes in their own tradition about unity of Heaven and humanity. They can also explain the truths of the sages to better pedagogical effect, and in particular they can assure students that if they exert themselves for spiritual excellence, they will be crowned with happiness.

CHAPTER SEVEN

TOWARD AN APPRAISAL OF MOU’S USE OF BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHY Mou’s philosophical legacy will occupy the scholarly community for years to come, and this book is sure to be followed by many more. In this chapter I will take preliminary steps toward assessing Mou’s understanding and appropriation of Buddhist philosophy. I will deal first with just a couple of common complaints about Mou’s method, followed by some questions of my own both about some of his specific interpretations concerning Buddhism and his general critique of Buddhist thought. Mou as Historian of Philosophy Mou bills Buddha-Nature and Prajñā as a “history of philosophy,” and he incurs a good deal of criticism thereby. He makes a special point of declaring his objectivity and neutrality. He writes Buddha-Nature and Prajñā, he insists, as a “history of philosophy” (zhexueshi 哲學史) plain and simple, “not [written from] a position of ordinary religious faith, nor . . . an ordinary apologetic position” and “without any religious prejudice whatsoever.”.1 And his disciples have presented Buddha-Nature and Prajñā unproblematically as a straightforward introduction to the major forms of Buddhist philosophy. For example, Mou’s student Liao Zhongqing 廖鍾慶 praised it for its objectivity and neutrality. He wrote that Mou filled a need for an accessible work for the non-buddhologist which would first give “a proper understanding of the objective doctrine of each [Chinese Buddhist] school of thought” and then “after digesting their objective doctrine, give a brand-new doxographic analysis, what is called ranking the teachings . . . As for the latter [the doxography], it is important to give equal regard to ( pingshi 平視) each system’s objective doctrine . . . It is

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absolutely forbidden to praise or blame based on one’s subjective predilections.”2 However, like much else in Mou’s philosophy, these declaration come with a great deal of implicit fine print. For as we have seen, Mou’s book is not a straightforward “history of philosophy” in any sense of that phrase which is commonly accepted nowadays in either the English- or Chinese-speaking academy. Normally, for example, we do not expect the author of a history of philosophy to predicate his major theses on controversial articles of faith. But Mou does. He presumes from the outset that humanity has access to intellectual intuition and that intellectual intuition testifies to the identity or equality of every ostensible thing in the universe with every other thing. But if we do not accept those presumptions (as I have a hard time doing), then we cannot entertain Mou’s main thesis as a candidate for either truth or falsehood, at least not in its entirety. For Mou’s thesis is not only that (a) the Tiantai version of Buddhism captures Śākyamuni’s intended meaning best but also that (b) it also comes closest to capturing the truth about metaphysics. Anyone can take the first part seriously as a thesis for historical debate, but we cannot even get to the point of weighing Mou’s arguments for the second part of the thesis if we already think that its very premises are unsound. We can commence an argument about whether Mou is 2 Liao Zhongqing 廖鍾慶, “Foxing yu boruo zhi yanjiu [Researches on Buddha Nature and Prajna]《佛性與般若》之研究,” in Mou Zongsan xiansheng de zhexue yu zhuzuo 牟宗三先生的哲學與著作 [The Philosophy and Works of Mou Zongsan], ed. Mou Zongsan xiansheng qishi shouqing lunwenji bianjizu 牟宗三先生七十壽慶論文集編輯組 (Taipei: Xuesheng, 1978), 524, emphasis added. This is, in effect, an anticipation of criticisms such as Cheng Gongrang’s, who remarks, “The deluded mind school, of which the Mahāyāna-sa graha and Sa dhi-nirmocana Sūtra are emblematic and the True Mind school represented by the Awakening of Faith are very different in their intellectual purport, and in the history of Buddhism, doctrinal classifications have always seen these schools asbeing as different as fire and water. In putting his presentations of these two schools together into Part II [of Buddha-Nature and Prajñā], Mou’s purpose is clearly to exaggerate the stature and specialness of Tiantai Buddhist thought.” See Cheng Gongrang 程恭讓, “Lüexi Foxing yu boruo zai Mou Zongsan zhexue sixiang jinzhan zhong de weizhi 略析《佛性與般若》在牟宗三哲學思想進展中的位 置 [A Brief Analysis of the Place of Buddha-Nature and Prajñā in the Development of Mou Zongsan’s Philosophical Thinking],” Pumen xuebao, no. 13 (2003), 145–146. The implication of obvious partisan jerrymandering is misplaced, as Mou is entirely clear about the respects in which they are diametrically opposed, such as in their theories of the relationship between unenlightened and enlightened mind, as well as their points of common differences from Tiantai philosophy. As for the stature of Tiantai thought, it is precisely the task of any doxographer to enunciate a rank order among doctrinal schools, and hence is well within Mou’s perogative.

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correct about intellectual intuition and identity relations (metaphysics) or about whether he is in a position to know about such things (epistemology), but by that point we will have left behind his comparisons of Zhiyi, Fazang, Paramārtha, and the like. We will no longer be talking about what we would typically call history of philosophy. Recently Mou’s student You Huizhen 尤惠貞, an outspoken defender of Mou’s buddhological work, has suggested that we stop trying to think of Mou as a historian of philosophy at all.3 She reminds us that her teacher explained himself as a nurturer of the cultural life of the Chinese nation and a protector of the root of value, or what in our terms we would call a socially engaged public intellectual, and she concludes that Mou is best understood as a constructive thinker in dialog with past thinkers. He read texts such as Zhiyi’s “for the sake of creating thought . . . not for the sake of history of philosophy”.4 As with so much in Mou’s philosophy, we need to read his protestations of historical objectivity and neutrality with what we might call an interpretively nimble mind, because he does not actually mean that he is foreswearing normativity or Confucian allegiances. In order for us to square what Mou says he does with what he actually does, we have to supply some unstated qualifications and surprising redefinitions. He may disavow any religious “prejudice,” but he certainly has Confucian religious commitments, and he consults them openly to make normative judgments about Buddhist philosophy. By “prejudice” he seems to mean specifically a bad or untrue commitment, and he seems to distinguish between “ordinary religious faith” (which he does not admit to his reasonings) and a faith which is well-tutored and reflective. In practical terms, by billing himself a historian of philosophy Mou seems to mean just that we should not confuse his buddhological writings with refuge-taking Buddhist authors’, such as Ouyang Jian and Lü Cheng of the Metaphysical Institute, who Mou thinks

3 “Mr. Mou does not read Kant for the sake of reading Kant, and likewise Daoists, Buddhists, and Confucians are all traces of thinking (sibian guiji 思辨軌跡) that he goes through in the course of expanding cultural life (wenhua shengming 文化生命). Mr. Mou does not read thought for the sake of understanding thought. He reads these things for the sake creating thought and manifesting thought. He reads for the sake of philosophy and thinking, not for the sake of history of philosophy” (You Huizhen, “Mou Zongsan xiansheng duiyu ru-fo zhi bianxi,” 16–17. Emphasis added). 4 Ibid., 16–17.

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sift evidence and interpret it arbitrarily in order to lionize the great men of their pet sect (namely the Yogācārins) and smear the rest.5 In short, Mou means that he is not a Buddhist insider and not a party to Buddhist sectarian disputes. He absolutely does not mean that he will not speak about Buddhism normatively, nor that he will not treat some of his Confucian beliefs as axioms. There are critics who feel troubled by this gap between the way that Mou presents his book, as a neutral historian’s history of Buddhist philosophy, and the way he actually writes it, namely as a Confucian theologian’s doxography of Buddhist thought, and consequently they mistrust Mou’s entire buddhology. For example Lin Chen-kuo talks of “overinterpretation” (guodu quanshi 過度詮釋).6 His suspicion is that Mou discovers things in Buddhist thinkers’ texts which are not really there. Overwhelmingly such critics point to Mou’s talk of Zhiyi’s “ontology” (cunyoulun 存有論) or general account of things’ existence. Their complaint is that Zhiyi and the other Tiantai greats did not really intend to create any such theory.7 When Zhiyi and his FB, 6, 453. Lin Chen-kuo 林鎮國, “Zhongguo fojiao xingshangxue de xushuo xingtai: xin rujia lun fojia tiyong yi 中國佛教形上學的虛說形態：新儒家論佛家體用義 [The Figurative Mode of Speech in Chinese Buddhist Metaphysics: New Confucianism on the Buddhist Idea of Substance and Function]” (paper presented at the Dangdai rujia zhuti jihua, July 1998), 16; Lin Chen-kuo, Kongxing yu xiandaixiang, 124. For closely related variants of this criticism, see Chen Yingshan 陳英善, Tiantai yuanqi zhongdao shixiang lun 天台緣起中道實相論 [The Tiantai Conditioned Arising Middle Way True Mark Theory] (Taipei: Dongchu (Fagu), 1995), 451; Du Baorui 杜保瑞, “Shilun Mou Zongsan xiansheng zhexue de ru-fo huitong (shang, xia) 試論牟宗三中國哲學 詮釋體系的儒佛會通 (上、下) [An Examination of Mou Zongsan’s Reconciliation of Confucianism and Buddhism, Parts One and Two],” Faguang zazhi 107–108 (1998); Ng Yu-kwan 吳汝鈞, Fahua xuanyi de zhexue yu gangling 法華玄義的哲學與綱 領 [The Philosophy and Outline of the Fahua xuanyi] (Taipei: Wenjin chubanshe, 2002), 74; Ng Yu-kwan, Chuncui lidong xianxiangxue, 133–134 n. 43. 7 Lin, who gives the most informed and balanced version of this very common criticism, sees Mou’s underlying motivation as a wish to portray Buddhism as an other against which to bolster Confucian self-identity (Kongxing yu xiandaixing, 123– 124). Pei Chunling presents the same view more sharply and in more explicitly postcolonial terms, as a form of essentialism and ethnic triumphalism which Mou inherited from Xiong, in Pei Chunling 裴春玲, “Dangdai xin ruxue ‘ru-fo rongshe’ quanshi fangfa zhong ‘ziwo’ yu ‘tazhe’ de guanxi tantao: yi Xiong Shili, Mou Zongsan wei li 當代新儒學「儒佛融攝」詮釋方法中「自我」與「他者」的關係探 討—以熊十力、牟宗三為例 [A Discussion of the Relationship of ‘Self ’ and ‘Other’ in New Confucianism’s Interpretive Method of Buddhist-Confucian Assimilation],” Ehu 25, no. 12 (2000). For a broader analysis of the New Confucian movement as a species of post-colonial discourse, see Arif Dirlik, “Confucius in the Borderlands: Global Capitalism and the Reinvention of Confucianism,” boundary 2 22, no. 3 5 6

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followers developed their doctrine of the mind’s “entailing” or “involving” ( ju 具) the ten dharma-classes and three thousand dharma-worlds, these critics say, they were trying to talk about spiritual states ( jingjie 境界), spiritual effort (gongfu 工夫), attainment (xiuzheng 修證), or soteriology ( jiudulun 救渡論).8 That is, the Tiantai writers intended to talk about how it is that creatures such as ourselves can become buddhas. They did not truly have a general theory of things’ existence in mind.9 Of course not all experts agree that Zhiyi had nothing ontological in mind,10 but even if we grant that the critics are right, they still do not damage Mou’s analysis of Buddhist philosophy too badly. Mou can still be correct that even if Zhiyi is not trying to tackle problems

(1995), and in a related vein, Roger T. Ames, “New Confucianism: A Native Response to Western Philosophy,” in Chinese Political Culture, 1989–2000, ed. Hua (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2001). 8 Du Baorui, “Shilun Mou Zongsan xiansheng zhexue de ru-fo huitong,” passim; Ng Yu-kwan, Fahua xuanyi de zhexue yu gangling, 74–75; also see Ng Yu-kwan, Chuncui lidong xianxiangxue, 133–4 n. 43. 9 Mou’s one-time student Ng Yu-kwan now believes that when Zhiyi says that mind or buddha-nature “perfectly entails” ( yuanju 圓具) all dharma-worlds or all dharmas, he means that when we observe the mind meditatively, we have access to all “dharmas” in the sense of “spiritual states of truth” (zhenli jingjie 真理境界) (Fahua xuanyi de zhexue yu gangling, 74–75). What has happened, Ng seems to think, is that Mou has been misled by the ambiguity of the word “dharma.” Where Zhiyi was using it loosely to mean something like “teachings, practices, and truths conducive to buddhahood,” Mou takes it to mean “things, objects” and thinks that Zhiyi is talking about the ontic support or origin of things’ existence, rather than talking about the wondrous multifariousness of meditating on our minds. One of Mou’s leading critics, Du Baorui, charges that Mou mistakes Zhiyi’s talk about creatures and their consciousness (can they be enlightened?) for talk about worlds and existence (can we guarantee that the manifold kinds of worlds exist and are buddha-worlds?): “Tiantai does not talk about existence. In actuality, Tiantai talks about the possibility of spiritual effort (gongfu 工夫) and emphasizes that one can become a buddha in any dharma-world, in whatever world a being is in, in whatever spiritual state. Since Tiantai does not talk about existence, it cannot guarantee it” (“Shilun Mou Zongsan xiansheng zhexue de ru-fo huitong (xia)”). 10 For example, Hans-Rudolf Kantor finds fault with Mou for other reasons, but he does think that there is nothing misleading about saying that Zhiyi offers an account of existence of conditioned things (“Ontological Indeterminacy,” 36, 43). Mou’s former student Ng Yu-kwan allows for an ontological sense as well as a soteriological one (Fahua xuanyi de zhexue yu gangling, 73), and Law Shun Man, in something of an aside, takes the opinion that Mou’s idea of ‘paradoxical identity’ is quite consonant with Zhiyi’s but emphasizes its ontological dimensions (“Lun Mou Zongsan de fojiao yuanjiao guannian,” 85). Also see Chen Yingshan, Tiantai yuanqi zhongdao shixiang lun, Chapter 10, especially 450–451, and You Huizhen’s rebuttal in “Cong Boruo jing dao Fahua jing,” 150.

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of ontology, he does so nevertheless. In the same way, we might say, when Pythagoras devised his theorem about right-angled triangles, he advanced the study of trigonometry and in doing so he contributed to the science of navigation, whether or not that was his intention. Likewise, we may say, when Zhiyi spoke the words which became the Profound Meaning of the Lotus Sutra, he may not have thought to himself, “At long last, I will provide a definitive account of the existence of things, pure and impure alike!” But this does not bar Mou from claiming that Zhiyi’s teaching about our minds accomplishes just that. It may simply be a matter of who is interested in what. Navigators have a special interest in the consequences of geometry for techniques of moving across the surface of the earth, and if they focus on the utility of Pythagoras’ discovery for their peculiar activity, they are not guilty of misappropriating his thoughts. Likewise, we could say, Mou is interested in the utility of Zhiyi’s theory of mind for the activity of Confucian-style ontologizing, and when he zeroes in on the consequences of Zhiyi’s thinking for that particular activity, he does not necessarily abuse Zhiyi. In that case, if Mou is “overinterpreting” Zhiyi, then overinterpreting simply means, as Lin Chenkuo himself says, “bringing in factors such as categories, intentions, or imagination not belonging to the object of interpretation.” And in that case, “any interpretation is ‘overinterpretation’.”11 However, a great many other antagonists criticize Mou’s buddhology in another way that has more bite, namely that Mou is a Confucian chauvinist. Lin Chen-kuo, for example, also thinks that in Mou’s zeal to construct a presentation of Buddhism to which he could then compare Confucianism favorably, he overlooks a decisive difference among Buddhists which could unravel his doxography. Recall that Mou thinks that the great Buddhists fail to teach “substantialism” (shitizhuyi 實體主義), the belief in a permanent, positively existing ontic substance underlying all things. Even in the case of “True Mind”-type thinkers such as Paramārtha, Mou thinks that even though Paramārtha talks as though the True Mind were such a substance, he is merely employing a figure of speech. Lin accuses Mou of misreading the texts and overlooking cases in which the

11

Kongxing yu xiandaixing, 130 n. 49.

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reason that the authors sound like substantialists is that they really are substantialists.12 Though Lin does not explain further, even if he can provide evidence of this, he will not necessarily cripple Mou’s doxographic thesis. However, he will put it in jeopardy. For part of the reason that Mou argues so vigorously that Buddhists such as Paramārtha do not really teach substantialism is that this helps Mou present very clearly the decisive difference between Buddhists and Confucians. So if Lin can give persuasive examples of Buddhist substantialists, Mou would need to shore up his thesis. He could try to discredit Lin’s examples or he could concede that even though there are some important Buddhist substantialists, they teach a different kind of substantialism than Confucians’, where the “substance” in question is the moral law.13 Mou the Dogmatic What can be most alienating in Mou’s thought is the abundance of dogmatic assumptions: that humans can have this God-like intellectual intuition; that we are “identical” to ultimate value in a certain way; and that the precise content or character of ultimate value is 12 Ibid., 123–124. Such critics are legion. One of the more sensitive yet incisive ones is Chen Yingnian. He finds what he believes is a contradiction between the “dialogic Mou,” who represents Mou in his more clear-minded moods, and the partisan “apologetic Mou,” who “clings to the perfection of Tiantai and the preeminence of Confucianism.” (See Chen Yingnian 陳迎年, “Mou Zongsan xiansheng ‘fenbie shuo yu fei fenbie shuo’ zaiyi [Further Discussion of Mou Zongsan’s ‘Discriminating Discourse and Non-Discriminating Discourse’] 牟宗三先生「分別說與 非分別說」再議,” Renwen zazhi, no. 4 (2005), 22). At bottom for Chen is the question of why Mou withholds his full approval from the merely “functionally perfect” prajñā doctrines and insists on the superiority of the Tiantai teaching’s “ontological perfection.” Chen opines that Mou’s aim is clearly to prepare his claim for the supremacy of Confucianism: “Here Mou has a postulate which he not only never doubts but also defends with all his might” and which allows him to claim superiority for Confucianism, “namely the absolute postulate of the moral substance’s creativity, the absolute postulate of the praxis and establishment of moral consciousness” (ibid., 22). What Chen seems to mean is that while Mou is forming his ranking of the Buddhist teachings, he insinuates the presence or absence of an ontology as a criterion of philosophical perfection precisely in order that, when it comes to comparing Buddhism as a whole with Confucianism, he will have a score on which to rank Confucianism higher. 13 Of course, if Mou took the second route, he would also renew his argument that any kind of substantialism at all is incompatible with the rest of the Buddha’s message, so that a substantialist Buddhist would also be either an incoherent Buddhist or no Buddhist at all.

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thus-and-so (e.g. a moral law coextensive with “reason” itself ). For Mou these are not topics to be brought up when reasoning in an “open” (kaifang 開放) mode and subjected to doubt and scrutiny. He merely proclaims these beliefs in his “closed” (shouzhu 守住) mode, without explaining their warrant. But it seems to me that we can suggest three kinds of arguments on Mou’s behalf. (1) Ultimately such conviction must be born of inner experience, through intellectual intuition. This position is reasonable enough, for one might argue that the experience of intellectual intuition is sufficient warrant for believing in intellectual intuition and even for believing in the supreme epistemological authority of intellectual intuition. However, this may not carry much weight with persons who have not experienced intellectual intuition, or at least are not aware that they have.14 (2) Mou seems to be convinced by the testimony of past authorities, such as Mencius and the great philosophers. They concurred, Mou thinks, that we have (or can have) intellectual intuition, that we are identical to ultimate value, and that the ultimate value is suchand-such. For Mou that supports his intuition. For example, in one place he writes: “If truly humankind cannot have intellectual intuition, then the whole building of Confucian philosophy would crumble to the ground, and the strenuous efforts of countless thinkers through thousands of years past would all have been in vain, would all be just day-dreaming.”15 Elsewhere he says the same thing about Chinese philosophy as a whole. There is something of a perennialist argument or consensus argument here (though of course most Chinese philosophers disagree with his package of beliefs on at least one point). But more than that, it is an argument based on admiration for certain authorities: it is simply not permissible that Mencius, for example, was wrong. Mou will not countenance that. (3) On a related point, Mou is working from an unstated axiom of optimism. If we were not guaranteed “happiness” by spiritual perfection (i.e. if ultimate value were not identical to the universe of objects), that would be “too tragic.”16 Likewise, since we are born for spiritual practice, and since “practice which did not affirm this 14 15 16

Many thanks to Michael Allen for arguing this point with me. ZZJ, 190, translated by Bresciani (Reinventing Confucianism, 382). SJJ, 377.

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existence [i.e. its realness and its goodness] would be equal to suicide,” and since “[s]uicide cannot be called practice . . . the affirmation of existence is necessarily entailed in practice . . .”17 He simply will not sanction a tragic view of the universe. Mou’s Interpretation of Buddhism There are certain gaps in Mou’s presentation of the “ontological” or “buddha-nature” doctrines of the lower teachings. The Mystery of Variegated Dharmas One mystery has to do with the variegation that Mou says buddhas see in the universe of objects. It does not merely seem to comprise a wide variety of material things and so on, as a result of distorting sensible intuition. It really is composed of all the material things and other variegated dharmas that are proper to the nine kinds of unenlightened creatures, the shoes and ships and ceiling wax and so on. And thus buddhas still see and interact with these things even after their enlightenment. They do not see the universe simply as a featureless, undifferentiated mush. Therefore buddhas experience all the same objects that you and I do (in fact more, because they experience objects of all places and times and all dharma-classes, all at once). But it is difficult to understand how Mou could explain this “variegation” that they see in things? If things are not variegated with respect to spatial, temporal, numerical, causal, and identity relations, what is left? And if if prajñā does not differentiate among dharmas (appearances) by submitting them to the forms and categories, how can it differentiate among them?18 Mou gives an obscure answer that is not really an answer, citing Zhiyi to the effect that prajñā can be described as either “undifferentiating prajñā” (wu fenbie zhi 無分別智, which does not distinguishing things from itself and each other, or as “differentiating prajñā” ( fenbie zhi 分別智), which does so distinguish.19 These discussions do go a YSL, 270. See Ng Yu-kwan, Chuncui lidong xianxiangxue, 699–701. 19 XWZ, 412–413. Also see FB, 241 on Zhanran’s talk of “not differentiating yet differentiating” (bufen er fen 不分而分) on “differentiating yet not differentiating” ( fen er bufen ) (FB, 1106–1107); ZZZ, 249 on “variegation without variegation, [where] lack of variegation is variegation” (cha er wucha, wucha ji cha 差而無差, 無差即差); 17 18

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certain distance toward explaining a buddha’s simultaneous oneness with and distinction from the universe of objects, but they do not have anything further to say about how those objects are variegated among themselves if not according to the forms and categories associated with sensible intuition. Odder still is that Mou’s insistence on buddhas’ transcendence of categories seems to create just the kind of robust, significant difference between buddhas and ordinary creatures that Mou wishes not to find in the Buddha’s teaching. Guaranteeing the Existence of All Things Even more than the mechanism of variegation, it is not clear from Mou’s writings why he insists so much on “saving” variegated dharmas from the oblivion predicted for them by the lower theories. Recall that one of Mou’s chief criticisms was that none of the lower theories accounts satisfactorily for the “necessary existence” of the material things and other variegated dharmas proper to the nine kinds of unenlightened creatures, that is, of shoes and ships and ceiling wax. What troubled Mou was that, according to all those other theories, was that those things depended for their existence at least partly on ignorance, or sensible intuition. Therefore they could not be timelessly existing, “really real” things-in-themselves (that is, objects of intellectual intuition). So just as soon as a newlyperfected buddha “cut off ” the last of his ignorance, he would also “cut off ” material things and other such dharmas. Hence, Mou concluded, those theories could not teach the necessary existence of such dharmas. Mou does not explain why it is imperative that we secure the necessary existence of these variegated things. Nor does he explain why it is important that they exist independent of ignorance, as objects of intellectual intuition and not merely or sensible intuition. Without that requirement that things exist even in the absence of ignorance, any of the lower theories could easily arrange for all things to exist necessary as phenomena, as objects of ignorant, sensible intuition. So long as we assumed—uncontroversially, among Buddhists—the necessary existence of at least some ignorant creatures in the universe at

and ZZZ, 265 on the Tiantai commentators’ notion of the “incomprehensible wondrous perceptual object” (busiyi miaojing 不思議妙境).

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all times, including representatives of all nine kinds, then it would follow that there would always be phenomenal things. For, on Mou’s view, part of the definition of an ignorant mind is that it is always busy discriminating and constructing phenomena. So given a sure supply of unenlightened creatures, who invariably experience phenomena, there will always be phenomena appearing to some subjects. Phenomena will never go extinct. Granted, the individual phenomena would be impermanent, but as a class they would be eternal. Imagine a universe in which cockroaches are always born in great profusion. (This is probably not so unlike our own universe.) In that universe the Buddha might say, “Cockroaches abide permanently.” He would not have to mean that individual cockroaches abide permanently, for roaches are short-lived, “like dew drops or bubbles,” but just that the universe was always teeming with some of these ephemeral individuals. Reasoning thus, any of the lower theories could justifiably say that phenomenal things exist necessarily and not just contingently, in the sense that they rely only on a condition acknowledged to be a necessary fact of the universe (namely continued existence of at least some unenlightened creatures). Mou remains unsatisfied with this only because he insists on an “ontology without attachment” (wuzhi de cunyoulun 無執的存有論), in which all things exist as objects of intellectual intuition. But why must we demand that in a system of philosophy? Mou does not give reasons for this imperative, but I believe he insists on such a system in short because he finds it celebrates material things and ordinary creatures better. After all, Mou wants a philosophy of what we could call epistemological optimism and respect for science, where the material world and objects of scientific investigation are not devalued and dismissed as illusions of the spiritually backward. He looks for a pantheism in which ultimate value is not restricted to a transcendent realm but suffuses the material world too, and for a soteriological optimism, an egalitarianism and universalism in which we emphasize the ease and imminence of salvation and hence do not require that people be evacuated from the material world. Universal Buddhahood and the Beginning Separation Theory Mou thinks a Beginning Separation Theory (that is, Yogācāra) necessarily condemns at least some creatures never to achieve buddhahood

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because the theory includes no transcendent, inner cause of buddhahood but instead relies entirely on “external conditions” (waiyuan 外緣). He is hazy about his reasons for saying this, but as far as I can infer them, I suspect that the Beginning Separation Theory is not necessarily doomed on the point concerning universal buddhahood. Where Mou charges that the Yogācārins’ theory cannot explain the Buddha’s promise of salvation for all creatures, Yogācārins could conceivably respond with a probability-based argument like the one which says that a monkey at a typewriter could eventually produce a copy of Hamlet by sheer chance if only it had unlimited time. Likewise, our Yogācārins might argue, so long as the probability of enlightenment is greater than zero—and it is—each of us will surely acquire the requisite conditions for enlightenment sooner or later since we have an unlimited number of lifetimes in which to do so. Now, Mou would object nevertheless that, be that as it may, according to the Yogācārins’ “three-vehicle” model of salvation, some creatures would wander irrevocably down the arhat or pratyeka-buddha path and end up receiving an inferior kind of enlightenment.20 That would mean that Yogācārins could still not coherently teach the Lotus Sutra revelation that all creatures will become buddhas. However, it is logically possible that, responding to Mou, committed Yogācāra partisans might depart from their own traditions and, jettisoning Asa ga and Vasubandhu’s established “three-vehicle” model, still retain their “seed and perfuming” model of enlightenment, in which we depend on contingent hearings of the Buddha’s word to cause buddhahood. Presumably, in such a case, they would still acknowledge that there are such creatures as arhats and pratyekabuddhas—after all, the buddha says as much—but would add that these are not terminal destinations but just temporary stops on the way to eventual buddhahood. Instead, arhats and pratyeka-buddhas

20 FB, 430. In Mou’s somewhat earlier histories, Material Nature and Profound Principle (Caixing yu xuanli ) (1963) and Mind and Human Nature (1968–1969), he makes an additional charge in passing, namely that Yogācāra teaches a form of fatalism (mingding lun 命定論), in which creatures have their terminal destination predetermined by membership in a sort of spiritual clan (zhongxing 種性, gotra) and some creatures are destined never to attain buddhahood (the so-called icchantika or yichanti 一闡提) (CX, 36; XT, 1:576). This had been one of Xiong Shili’s complaints about Yogācāra, but about a decade later, though, Mou omits it from his critique of Yogācāra in Buddha-Nature and Prajñā. (See Connelly, “Xiong Shili and His Critique of Yogācāra Buddhism,” 106.)

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would continue their spiritual careers until attaining full buddhahood by further exposure to the buddhas’ teachings. Of course, Mou could subject such Yogācārins to some difficult questions. First, these Yogācārins would bear the onus of explaining how it is possible that arhats and pratyeka-buddhas ultimately would all be transformed into buddhas. After all, on the Yogācāra model, arhats and pratyeka-buddhas have already had their discriminating minds fully dismantled. What more could there be left to accomplish? One possible solution would be for the Yogācārins to argue that when creatures became arhats or pratyeka-buddhas, they did not really have their discriminating minds deconstructed all the way. Perhaps they kept some vestige of a “storehouse” consciousness in which to gather yet more pure seeds and, according to the monkey argument, are assured of attaining full buddhahood by that mechanism sooner or later. Prima facie, it seems that the Yogācarins would not be prevented from attempting such an argument, so long as they were willing to jettison or radically reinterpret all the traditional three-vehicle Yogācāra commentary standing in their way. Or, if they did not wish to go that far, they could argue instead that arhats and pratyeka-buddhas are beings who have already gathered a sufficient number of pure seeds for buddhahood and and their discriminating minds have just begun to dissolve irreversibly, but for some reason the process is taking some time. Under either strategy, our Yogācārins would have to claim either that all creatures spend some time as arhats or pratyeka-buddhas on the way to buddhahood, like ABDs on their way to a Ph.D., or else that only some do, just as only some boys are Cub Scouts before they join the Boy Scouts. If it is all creatures who must go through this probationary period, then our Yogācārins must explain why the Buddha never revealed this startling fact, and how they came to learn it nevertheless. On the other hand, if only some creatures detour through the lower grades of enlightenment, then our reconstructionists must explain what determines who does and who does not. And perhaps they would be able to explain this plausibly, or at least coherently, by adapting the traditional “three-vehicle” models’ mechanisms for explaining the same thing. Also, on any of these models, our one-vehicle Yogācārins would need to explain how it is that every arhat and pratyeka-buddha is sure to move forward to full buddhahood and not become stuck, as some ABDs do. For this they could return to the monkey argument: Given

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infinite lifetimes, everyone will get there eventually so long as it is the only final destination available. Therefore, they could say, they can assure full buddhahood for everyone, even with a “seed and perfume” model that does not include an innate “buddha-nature.” Furthermore, it is not clear why Mou objects to Buddhism’s requiring any “external conditions” at all. He opines that even Buddhism at its best still calls for too much happenstance stimulation before innate buddha-nature can flower.21 But this appears to be another arbitrary preference stemming from Mou’s desire for soteriological optimism and universalism. Moreover, as Mou himself reluctantly admits, even his own Confucianism calls for external conditions for sagehood, at least to the extent of not growing up in an environment of such harmful degradation that one would not practically be able to develop one’s moral nature. Mou’s General Criticisms of Buddhism Mou suffers from an undeservedly bad reputation among Buddhist monastic intellectuals, who regularly accuse him of Confucian chauvinism, often without having read much of his work. In fact, Mou wants very much to stimulate interest in and appreciation for Buddhist philosophy. Perhaps for this reason, he does not dwell very much on the reasons that he rules Buddhist philosophy a pretty distant second to Confucianism, devoting just a tiny fraction of his buddhological work to discussing that opinion. As a result, he leaves his criticism of Buddhism underdeveloped and poorly defended against challenges that could easily be made by Buddhist partisans and would warrant response. In sum, then, Mou’s criticisms of Buddhism as a whole are far from conclusive. Ontological Substance and Moral Law Of those criticisms, Mou gives the most attention to his claim that Buddhist philosophy offers no equivalent to the Confucian doctrine of a transcendent Heaven and moral law, which supplies the

21

FB, 466.

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ontological ground of all things and gives them true being (i.e. moral significance).22 That requires a good deal of further argument. First, Mou does not say why it is a vice for a philosophy not to acknowledge a creative substance. I think the best answer would have to do, once again, with his strong preference for epistemological and soteriological optimism, egalitarianism, universalism, and his particular form of pantheism. However, these remain merely unargued and hence apparently arbitrary preferences. Second, Mou asserts that it is a crippling oversight that Buddhists do not teach a transcendent, non-contingent moral law like the Confucians’. But any Buddhist apologist with a pulse could counter with a whole family of prima facie plausible arguments that that the Mahāyāna notion of compassion can do almost any philosophical work that Mou’s idea of moral law can. For example, he or she could argue that Buddhism teaches selfless compassion for all beings as a primary, categorical imperative, not just as a derivative, instrumental good for the sake of winning one’s individual happiness, and an autonomous legislation rather than an unwelcome necessity. Or the Buddhist apologist could argue that their doctrine of compassion translates just as well as any Confucian counterpart into a proposition like the following: “It is rational and morally required to treat all creatures as ends in themselves, and to act only on maxims that are universilizable.” In fact, a Buddhist might well claim that someone like Śāntideva can make a better, more persuasive and motivating case for the imperative to selfless compassion than anything the Confucians can come up with, by resorting to doctrines of karma, rebirth, and emptiness. On a related note, when Mou complains that Buddhism does not share Confucianism’s “concern consciousness” or “disaster consciousness,” he seems to mean partly that Buddhism is a eudaimonistic teaching that conceives of the ultimate good as a subjective state, whereas Confucianism cares at least as much about concrete outcomes (i.e. real-world improvement) as it does about subjective wellbeing.23 Mou has not thought this through very well, or at least left his reasoning so vague that the argument just is not very helpful. He XT, 1:5ff. That is, using a favorite distinction of Mou’s, Buddhism is a “spiritual statetype” ( jingjie xingtai 境界型態) metaphysics whereas Confucianism is a “realist” (shiyou 22 23

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could have argued that the Tripitika Theory (i.e. the Hīnayāna) only aimed for eudaimonia and without committing any inconsistency. But I do not think that even Mou really believes that any version of the Mahāyāna pursues only one’s own subjective well-being and ignores extra-mental goods and other people’s welfare. After all, he thinks the orthodox view is that buddhas are indiscriminately compassionate, other-saving beings who appear in every dharma-world to save sentient creatures. As a way to “save” Mou’s criticism, I would hypothesize that he means that the difference is subtle rather than stark—at least on the philosophical plane—but still undeniable. Granted, the Buddha ultimately teaches that nirvana is a state of mind, and when we “leave the world” we are only leaving behind our old outlook, not the whole universe. However, as far as Mou is concerned he is still preaching escape. Later theorists can dress the facts with paradoxical talk of a “nirvana which is not nirvana” and “leaving the world without leaving the world,” but the facts remain facts. The Socio-Political Criticism Mou also complains that Buddhist philosophy does little to motivate and equip people for service to society and country. So for example, he blames Buddhist philosophy for having no answers for the decline of the Tang dynasty. This is a standard Neo-Confucian argument from at least the eleventh century and is repeated by Xiong as well, but it is a weak one, especially coming from Mou. First, historically speaking it is extremely questionable. There is no end of material for making a historical case that even in imperial times, Chinese Buddhism preached and practiced and stimulated much charity and public service, supported productive enterprise, and concretely contributed to the common weal. Buddhist clerics ran granaries, built bridges, took in orphans, and participated in public affairs.24 And this xingtai 實有型態) one (SJJ, 121, 145, 421–423). On Mou’s idea of “spiritual states” ( jingjie 境界), see Li Shan, Mou Zongsan zhuan, 117. 24 Jamie Hubbard records the lavish and imponderably large scale of charitable giving associated with the “Inexhaustible Storehouses” in the Tang. See Jamie Hubbard, Absolute Delusion, Perfect Buddhahood (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2001), 153–210. John Kieschnick writes of the Buddhist tradition of charity and public service which involved in “building and maintaining bridges . . . structures that were essential for the transportation, commerce, and communications of the empire.” See John Kieschnick, The Impact of Buddhism on Chinese Material Culture (Princeton:

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is saying nothing of the huge outpouring of magnanimity that has helped redefine Chinese Buddhism in modern times. Mou is just repeating a hoary old chestnut without supporting it. Second, it is also debatable philosophically. Mou does not pursue a detailed argument about just why and how Buddhist doctrine unfits people for service to society. And in point of fact, modern Chinese Buddhists have felled small forests writing about why it need not and should not do so. Since no later than Taixu 太虛 (1889–1948), modern Buddhists have made arguments, based on the centrality of the bodhisattva ethos and non-duality of self and other, that Buddhism correctly understood consists precisely of a call to altruism and selfless service.25 And Mou had ample contact with this movement from early on. No later than 1957, he received a regular subscription to Haichaoyin 海潮音 magazine,26 founded by Taixu and then edited by Yinshun, inventor of the term “renjian fojiao 人間佛教,” sometimes called “Humanistic Buddhism.” In 1972, he lectured at a Buddhist seminary belonging to Foguangshan Monastery 佛光山寺, a powerful proponent of Buddhist activism, and subsequently published some of the component chapters of what was to become Buddha-Nature and Prajñā in their journal, the Foguang xuebao 佛光學報.27 As a subscriber to the Buddhist journal Haichaoyin 海潮音. Over the last thirty years, the success of the “humanistic Buddhism” movement, radiating from Taiwan throughout the Chinese world, and now on the mainland itself, testifies to how persuasive they have been in these arguments. If Mou wants to press his point about an inherent unfitness in Buddhism for altruism, he has to defeat such arguments. (In fact, those Buddhist apologists inherited their main arguments from Mou’s own intellectual grandfathers, the progressive Chinese classical scholars of the late Qing.)

Princeton University Press, 2003), 199. Kenneth Ch’en writes of the process by which the Buddhist clergy in China came to “a position of active support for and participation in the political program of the government.” See Chinese Transformation of Buddhism, 114. 25 Taixu 太虛, “Cong Bali yuxi fojiao shuodao jin pusa xing [Today’s Bodhisattva Practice from the Perspective of Pali Buddhism] 從巴利語系佛教說到今菩薩行,” in Taixu dashi quanji 太虛大師全 [Complete Works of Master Taixu], ed. Yinshun 印順 (Taipei: Shandao si, 1980), 10:29 13–32. Also see Pittman, Toward a Modern Chinese Buddhism; Chandler, Establishing a Pure Land on Earth. 26 Li Shan, Mou Zongsan zhuan, 137. 27 Ibid., 209

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Third, Mou is applying a double standard to Confucians and Buddhists. For he himself does not think that Confucianism succeeded greatly either as a political philosophy of “outward kingliness” (waiwang 外王) either. After all, Mou admits the immaturity of pre-modern Confucian political thought. He writes that Confucian philosophers of the Song and Ming perhaps “thought that just an upright heart and a sincere mind were quite enough to take them directly to the proper administration of the kingdom and the pacification of the world, when in fact political problems are not that simple.”28 With this admission as his preamble, he admonishes modern people not to throw out the treasures of Confucian metaphysics and moral cultivation with the failures of imperial political philosophy. This is fair enough. But if modern-day Confucians are to be allowed and encouraged to renounce the political past and reinvent that part of their tradition, Mou should offer to Buddhists that same second chance. If Chinese Buddhists of the past erred in the direction of eremitism and heedlessness of social duties, Mou should allow them the rethink and reform. Otherwise he will look little different from the modern iconoclasts who judged Confucianism solely based on its past track record.29 Mou’s Ambivalent Ecumenism Mou tries hard to be conciliatory toward Buddhism, but he shows quietly that he is really of two minds in his evaluation of Buddhism.30 On the one hand, he goes far out of his way to speak highly not only of Buddhist thinkers but also of the buddhas themselves, and he honors the Buddha Śākyamuni as a perfected person of the same rank as Confucius, and he colludes with Zhiyi’s pious fable that the Buddha himself spoke the Lotus and Nirvana Sutras and taught the Perfect Theory in unsystematic form, such that Zhiyi only had to unpack his message in tidier form. On the other hand, Mou criticizes Buddhism XT, 1:5. Li Shan even mentions a correspondent answering some early articles of Mou’s in Rensheng 人生 magazine who pointed out exactly this (Mou Zongsan zhuan, 136–137). 30 Mou is less ecumenical in earlier writings, including his autobiography, My Life at Fifty (completed in 1957). There he still emphasizes the enmity between Confucianism and Buddhism and the essential foreignness of even Tiantai, Huayan, and Chan to Chinese philosophy as a whole (WZ, 106–107). By Mind and Human Nature he is more appreciative of Buddhist philosophy, and by Intellectual Intuition and Chinese Philosophy we see him taking his familiar inclusivist posture, wanting to import Tiantai thought into his Confucianism. 28 29

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frankly and settles on an open inclusivist position: Buddhism has things to teach Confucians which Confucians cannot as easily supply for themselves, but it still suffers catastrophic defects. To name only one, Buddhism nowhere mentions the all-important moral law, and because of that omission Buddhists are handicapped decisively as spiritual cultivators. This suggests that either the Buddha did not know about the moral law—in which case one wonders how he could have attained the enlightenment with which Mou credits him—or else he neglected to teach about it and also left his followers with the impression that such a thing could not exist. In either case, the Buddha seems to be not only a “skewed sage,” as Mou calls him at one point,31 but an altogether poor spiritual exemplar. Though Mou is too polite to say so, I suspect that in his private thoughts he thinks the Buddha was a flawed spiritual genius, with some great insights but also “greatly bent” or “lop-sided” (大偏),32 and that over the centuries his followers patched up his message as best they could by crediting him with various buddha-nature doctrines. And as we have seen, Mou thinks the Tiantai line came as ingeniously close to the ideal philosophy as anyone could make it without renouncing Buddhism’s salvation-minded problematique and its trademark antifoundationalism. But at least in some of his moods, Mou thinks that Buddhist philosophy could be fixed. At one point he writes, suddenly and uncharacteristically: [E]mptiness and transcendent self-essence and self-nature are not necessarily mutually exclusive. This will be the great connection (datong 大 通) between Buddhism and Confucianism. And Buddhism and Confucianism can be said to be views of two aspects of one truth.33

He drops the matter as suddenly as he raised it, without elaborating, but I take him to mean that Buddhists have correctly ruled out “selfessence” or “self-nature” in mundane things (that is, in dependently arisen dharmas), but that we should not try to extend their insight to a transcendent Heaven (which is to say, intellectual intuition understood in Mou’s Confucian sense, as moral mind with its moral law). Instead, we would acknowledge that that substance alone depends on

31 32 33

FB, 1023. You Huizen, “Mou Zongsan xiansheng duiyu ru-fo zhi bianxi.” FB, 137.

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nothing else. Mou recognizes that the resulting philosophy would not be what is normally called Buddhist, for it would violate what Mou takes to be a pan-Buddhist convention that prohibits acknowledging a substantial ontic source or uncaused causer.34 But it would represent the perfection or completion of Buddhist philosophy, taking Buddhist insights about dependent origination and emptiness as far as they can truthfully go. In fact, I suspect that on Mou’s analysis of prajñā in Tiantai thought, it already functions almost exactly as transcendent, Heavenly intellectual intuition does in Mou’s Confucianism. In both cases, intellectual intuition operates on a universe whose material causes are taken for granted and not explained, and then it declares value significance for that universe. In Mou’s Confucianism, of course, this happens when intellectual intuition autonomously legislates the moral law and “morally creates” unorganized matter into morally valent thingsin-themselves. In the Tiantai case it happens when prajñā divests itself of ignorance and recognizes things-in-themseleves as permanent, pleasant, self-ful, and pure. Furthermore, in both Mou’s Buddhism and Confucianism, a related part of intellectual intuition’s job is to prescribe or acknowledge an ideal configuration for the universe, which is to say, one which would be maximally good but also cannot be fully and finally actualized. In both Mou’s Confucianism and his Buddhism, this ideal configuration would be for all minds to fully manifest intellectual intuition. In the Confucian case, then, the ideal configuration would be for all the world to identify fully with their moral minds and conform to the moral law, and in the Buddhist case it would be for all creatures to attain buddhahood. And in both Mou’s Confucianism and Buddhism, we are supposed to affirm that this prescription is not merely a subjective preference or projection but an objective ontological fact. We rule that the rightness of the ideal configuration is an item of true knowledge, not just an arbitrary value. Even though it originates with a subject, we are to affirm it as“objective” in the sense that it is a necessary metaphysical truth and is knowable as such by all right-seeing subjects (i.e. those using intellectual intuition). In other words it looks as though in truth, on Mou’s presentation of Buddhist philosophy, it already preaches the only kind of metaphysical 34 Indeed this prohibition is the subject of the mature Mou’s first major publication on Buddhist philosophy (XT, 1:571ff.).

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foundationalism that Mou really cares about, where intellectual intuition legislates a non-contingent affirmation of values and sets a goal of ongoing cultivation. In order to achieve the “great connection” with Confucianism, at least philosophically, all that would remain would be for Buddhists to make the argument I suggested earlier, in which they would refute Mou’s allegation that they lack “concern consciousness” and hence are ultimately too self-involved for real enlightenment. As explained earlier, they would do this by arguing Buddhist philosophy includes a deontological imperative to altruism, as the necessary, unvarying, non-negotiable, non-contingent judgment of prajñā. Mou’s Perfect Theory Model Coherence Mou faces another critic who argues that, whether or not Mou describes the history of Buddhist thought faithfully, the supposed philosophical payoff for doing so is bogus. Mou believes, we will recall, that he is rewarded for his study of Buddhist philosophy with its crown jewel, the Tiantai idea of a “Perfect Theory,” a non-discriminating teaching of the paradoxical identity of ultimate value and the universe of objects. Equipped with that idea, Confucian philosophers can solve problems including the great one concerning spiritual excellence and happiness. But philosopher Fung Yiu-ming [Feng Yaoming] 馮耀明 argues that regardless of whether Mou can legitimately claim Tiantai provenance for this idea or whether he unwittingly dreamed it up himself, it solves nothing at all. It is either incoherent or mystagogically nonrational. Fung interprets Mou’s notion of a Perfect Theory differently than I have explained it thus far (and in my opinion not charitably enough). Recall that the distinctive feature of a Perfect Theory is the statement of paradoxical identity, a statement of the form “x is y” (“x 即 y”) where x and y are (at least apparently) mutually exclusive, e.g. “delusion is enlightenment”. On Fung’s analysis, Mou must intend one of three things by this:35

35

Fung Yiu-ming, Chaoyue neizai de misi, 88–90.

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(1) A logical contradiction pure and simple. Fung rightly rejects this interpretation as a non-starter. (2) Or perhaps “x is y” could be intended as a discriminating statement in which “is” ( ji 即) denotes some relation weaker than token-identity, i.e. some sort of type-identity. (For example, Fung suggests, it might mean something like “x is inseparable from y.”) That would not be a bald contradiction. However, Fung rejects this interpretation for reasons which I will outline below. (3) Ultimately then, Fung concludes, Mou could only mean “x is y” as not a discriminating statement at all. He must intend the “is” term, or maybe even all three terms, as a “non-discriminating term” (fei fenjie fangshi xia de yongyu 非分解方式下的用語), with “mysterious meaning” (xuanyi 玄義). That is, it must be a sort of mystagogic exclamation and not a meaningful declarative sentence. Why does Fung think that we have to interpret these paradoxical “x is y” statements in this third way, as irrational exclamations rather than as statements of mere type-identity? He makes two arguments. Fung’s First Argument: On Non-Discriminating Statements The first argument concerns the meaning of the term “non-discriminating” ( fei fenjie 非分解). Fung argues that Mou could not take paradoxical “x is y” statements to mean something like “x is inseparable from y” because he calls them “non-discriminating” statements. If Mou interpreted “x is y” as “x is inseparable from y” or the like, he “would still be reading the statement ‘x is y’ in a discriminating way . . . So even though [the ‘x is y’ statement] would not be a selfcontradiction, it would still be ‘discriminating discourse’.”36 We can analyze Fung’s argument in this way: (a) Mou labels “paradoxical identity” statements such as “x is y” as “non-discriminating” statements. (b) Statements of the form “x is inseparable from y” are “discriminating” statements.

36

Ibid., 88.

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(c) If Mou had indeed interpreted “x is y” statements as meaning “x is inseparable from y,” then he would thus be interpreting nondiscriminating statements as translatable into discriminating statements. (d) Fung presumes that Mou defines “non-discriminating” in such a way that if a statement S is translatable into a second, discriminating statement, then S cannot be called “non-discriminating.” (e) Therefore Fung believes it follows that Mou could not have endorsed the second interpretation. However, Fung is making a false assumption in (d). Mou explicitly says that he thinks that non-discriminating statements can be restated in discriminating form.37 He writes: Whatever is sayable positively ( jiji di 積極地) can thus be clearly (delimitedly) (xianding di 限定地) said [i.e propositionally, discriminatingly]. Whatever is negatively (xiaoji di 消極) [here, non-discriminatingly] sayable cannot be delimitedly clearly (xianding di qingchu di 限定地清楚地) said, but it must not therefore be unclearly said. It is non-delimitedly [but] clearly said. It is said clearly with intellectual intuition, by awakening (zhengwu 證悟). Since it [i.e. non-discriminating discourse] is something that can be awakeningly clearly said, it is a matter of practical reason. And since it is a matter of practical reason, it also belongs to what can be discriminatingly said.38

That being the case, Fung’s first argument fails and the road is left open to the type-identity interpretation. Fung’s Second Argument: On Critique Fung’s second objection to interpreting paradoxical identity statements as type-identity statements is that he thinks it inconsistent with Mou’s frequent statement that Tiantai’s teaching of paradoxical identity constitutes a “critique” ( pipan 批判) of Separation Theories.39 E.g. SYL, 176–178. MLL, x–xi. Emphasis added. 39 Fung Yiu-ming, Chaoyue neizai, 89. An earlier version of this argument can also be found in Fung Yiu-ming 馮耀明, “Cong fenxi zhexue guandian kan yuanjiao [A Look at the Perfect Theory from the Standpoint of Analytic Philosophy] 從分析 哲學觀點看圓教,” in 1996 nian foxue yanjiu lunwenji 1996 年佛學論文集 [1996 Articles in Buddhology], ed. Foguangshan wenjiao jijinhui 佛光山文教基金會 (Taipei: Foguang, 1996). 37 38

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Fung reasons this way: Separation Theories boil down to assertions of non-identity, such as “Delusion is not enlightenment.” Perfect Theories are said to “critique” them because they make a surprising rejoinder: “Delusion is enlightenment!” However, Fung claims, this is not a true critique if it employs words differently than they were used in the original statement. Let us consider this example: Suppose that we interpret Tiantai teachers’ rejoinder, “Delusion is enlightenment!” as really meaning something like “Delusion is not separate from enlightenment inasmuch as both are the same sort of mind’s experiences of one and the same universe of objects.” In that case, Fung would point out (quite correctly) that we are interpreting the terms “delusion,” “is,” and “enlightenment” differently than they were used by the theorists of Separation. For when the Separation theorists said, “Delusion is not enlightenment,” they meant, “The spiritual state of delusion is not the spiritual state of enlightenment. They are two different states.” But our Perfect Theorists have made a rejoinder that does not so much contradict the Separation Theorists as it says something almost irrelevant to their original meaning. That is, instead of telling the Separation Theorists that, contrary to their opinions, delusion and enlightenment are utterly indistinguishable or token-identical as spiritual states, our Perfect Theorists have merely said that they consider delusion and enlightenment similar or comparable or typeidentical in the sense of being variant experiences of the same set of objects. In short, they have not necessarily disagreed with the Theorists of Separation; they have simply said something else. And so, Fung complains, if we went ahead and interpreted paradoxical identity statements as statements of mere type-identity, then it would follow that Perfect Theorists do not successfully “critique” Separation Theorists’ statements but instead are simply irrelevant to them. In that case their “arrows have no target, and all that is critiqued is a straw man.”40 In roughly the same way, we might say, if someone remarks, “Barley is not rye” and I interject, “But they’re both high in thiamin!” I have not necessarily disagreed with her—it remains true that barley and rye are different grains. To Fung’s sensibility, I have not “critiqued” her since I have not contradicted her. Now, this same objection would apply even under Fung’s interpretation of paradoxical identity statements as well. However, Mou does

40

Fung Yiu-ming, Chaoyue neizai de misi, 89.

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not use “critique” to mean contradict. In Mou’s usage, to critique a statement means to delineate the conditions within which it is true and thereby rule out mistaken inferences. So for example, when Tiantai teachers say something such as “delusion is enlightenment,” on Mou’s reckoning they are not denying the Separation Theorists’ observation that the deluded spiritual state is distinct from the enlightened one. They are tacitly accepting it but also adding a further observation, namely that delusion and enlightenment are associated with a common objective universe. So “delusion is not enlightenment” holds true where the words “delusion” and “enlightenment” refer to subjects’ spiritual states, but the Tiantai critics mean to indicate that it does not hold true outside of those limits, for example in a discussion of the objects of subjects’ experience. This is why the Tiantai doctrine is said not to reject or annul a teaching such as the Huayan one outright but to “open” it up and reveal what is true in it (kaiquan xianshi 開權顯實).41 Fung’s Third Argument: Linguistic Contortion In some of his essays, Fung makes a slightly different kind of objection. Whereas earlier we saw Fung arguing that Mou does not mean paradoxical “x is y” statements as type-identity statements, here Fung argues in effect that Mou should not mean that, because it twists words too far beyond their accepted meanings. I sympathize with these objections, for although we can dismiss them as semantic quibbles, they point the way to the complaint discussed later that Mou is guilty of at least the venial sin of obfuscation. Fung zeroes in on Mou’s claim that according to a Perfect Theory, the “transcendent” (chaoyue 超越) (e.g. Heaven) is also the “immanent” (neizai 內在), i.e. people and other objects. Fung points out that “immanent” and “transcendent” are ordinarily understood as contraries: “immanent” means something like “located here in our world, in or among us human beings,” and “transcendent” refers precisely to whatever is not immanent. On that understanding, he contends, if something is even the least bit immanent, it is not really transcendent 41 Vid. FB, 558–560. Mou refers to this with a pair of terms picked up from Fazang, saying that whereas Huayan thinkers attempt a Perfect Theory which is separate from other theories (bie yuanjiao 別圓教), which is to say that it is intended to supersede them entirely, the Tiantai thinkers offer a “common Perfect Theory” (tong yuanjiao 同圓教), which is to say, one that incorporates the lower ones (FB, 556ff.).

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at all. That is, if something supposedly transcendent such as Heaven really is immanent enough that it can create or become regular objects, then by definition, Fung points out, it is not really “transcendent” to the extent that that word means something that completely transcends immanent things.42 In one way, we could dismiss this as another case of not paying attention to Mou’s (admittedly unstated) definitions, so that we end up quibbling about what Mou seems to be saying rather than what he actually means to say.43 After all, as Fung himself recognizes, on inspection it turns out that Mou is not using “transcendent” in its conventional sense.44 At least some of the time, what Mou actually means is “transcendental ” in Kant’s sense (in Chinese, chaoyan 超驗 or xianyan 先驗), which is to say, “beyond or prior to our sensory experience” or “not sensible.”45 So in actuality, Mou’s Perfect Theory is only claiming that on the one hand Heaven is “immanent” in the sense that it somehow is or causes regular objects yet Heaven is also “transcendent” inasmuch as it is not sensible. There is no logical problem in that. We cannot accuse Mou of self-contradiction if Mou never intended to use the words in question as contraries.46 Since Fung recognizes that this is not genuine contradiction but mere linguistic legerdemain, it seems that he wants to say not that Mou cannot speak this way—after all, Mou can define “transcendent” to mean “circus elephant” if he wishes—but that he should not do so, Fung Yiu-ming, Chaoyue neizai de misi, 235–236. Sébastien Billioud writes: “The greatest source of confusion and misunderstandings, reading his works, would be to ascribe strictly to these imported concepts the very meaning they had in their original contexts. Mou’s conception of transcendence provides us with a good illustration of the problem. Transcendence (in his thought) cannot be understood if we just stick to Western interpretations of such a concept.” “Mou Zongsan’s Problem with the Heideggerian Interpretation of Kant,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 33, no. 2 (2006), 229. 44 Fung, Chaoyue neizai de mis, 188–190. 45 See YSL, 340 (quoted in Fung Yiu-ming, Chaoyue neizai de misi, 188): “Putting it discriminatingly, it [the unlimited mind of wisdom] has absolute universality, above every person and thing, and also is not susceptible of sensory experience. Hence it is transcendent. But it also is the substance (ti 體) of all things and people, and hence is immanent.” Also see XWZ, 401. 46 And in justice to Mou we should notice that not all his paradoxes consist of apparently contrary terms. Often in his examples of paradoxical identity, he chooses pairs of things which, though very different from each other, are not typically defined as expressly contrary. So for example, although it is certainly surprising to claim that mind and dharma (xin 心 and fa 法) are identical, or Heaven and thing (tian 天 and wu 物), or trace and root ( ji 跡 and ben 本), it does less violence to our semantic sensibilities than saying, “The transcendent is immanent.” 42 43

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at least not without warning us beforehand. This is a just and injurious criticism, and although as we will see below it is not enough to establish that Mou is in headlong flight from reason itself, it does implicate Mou in a charge of obfuscation. Fung’s Interpretation: Non-Rationality or Mystagogy After mistakenly rejecting the type-identity interpretation, Fung concludes that he has exhausted all other possibilities and settles on the third interpretation. Here, Fung supposes, Mou would say that the “is” term, and perhaps even the “x” and “y” terms as well, are “nondiscriminating terms”47 ( fei fenjie fangshi xia de yongyu 非分解方式下的 用語) with “mysterious meanings” (xuanyi 玄義), implying that the statement is not intended to be rationally meaningful or to obey the rules of logic at all.48 What is missing is an understanding that Mou tacitly thinks of paradox not as a logical form but as a rhetorical device. That being so, Fung indicts Mou’s entire system on charges of grave inconsistency and outright irrationalism. 1) His first accusation is that since the central claim of Mou’s philosophy is a paradoxical identity statement, if such statements are fundamentally irrational, then Mou is trying, absurdly, to argue rationally for irrationalism: . . . [New Confucians such as Mou] do not despair of the problems of logical contradiction that their positions lead to. Instead they . . . turn this surface contradiction into a profound paradox, thinking this . . . can liberate people from the prison of reason or the attachments of rationality. . . . However, when they want to discuss the relationship of the transcendent and the immanent, it seems they cannot well cast off all reason and principles of rationality. Otherwise, how could they compare their own view and the commonsense view and use their views to criticize others’ views?49

Such an attempt is self-defeating, Fung writes.

47 As far as I know, Mou never speaks of non-discriminatingness as a property of terms, only of statements and discourse. However, this is not a decisive objection to Fung’s interpretation: we can easily amend it to say that a paradoxical statement as a whole is non-discriminating. 48 Fung Yiu-ming, Chaoyue neizai de misi, 89. 49 Ibid., 237.

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If you want to “transcend” rationality, you must “transcend” it by first “engaging” rationality (“zhendui” lixing er “chaosheng” zhi「針對」理性而 「 超升」之). [And then,] since there is engagement, you have already supposed rational disputation and hence cannot ‘transcend’ your way out of rationality. So if paradox (diaogui 弔詭) transcends logic, that necessarily supposes that paradox is logically “engaging” logic.50

But whether or not this is true of other New Confucians, in Mou’s instance it is overstating the case. First, Mou never explains reason (lixing 理性) as a form of confinement, and rather than seeking liberation from reason, he says everywhere that human perfection requires the fulfillment and completion of reason, which amounts to bringing intellectual intuition into operation as well as sensible intuition.51 Second, Mou tacitly understands paradoxical statements as rational (i.e. not logically absurd) statements that are deliberately adorned with rhetorical features that are supposed to give them the (specious) appearance of wrong-headedness. As Fung himself seems to recognize in another essay, the actual purport of Mou’s talk about paradoxical locutions is that they can be translated into non-paradoxical ones.52 For example, in the case of paradoxical “x is y” sentence, the trick is to read it as saying that even though set x is defined in a different way from set y, they share all and only the same elements and hence are equal sets, i.e. identical. There is no logical absurdity here, just a tendentious use of words. What makes them paradoxes is not logical absurdity or any other special logical feature but a rhetorical device53 in which the speaker gives the appearance of committing some basic error of reasoning. The speaker intends for the listener to struggle to understand what he or she could possibility mean and conclude that the speaker is forming his or her utterances according

Ibid., 239. Vid. SJJ, 336–337; XWZ, 37–38; YSL, 268. 52 Fung Yiu-ming, Chaoyue neizai de misi, 27, 33–6. 53 If there be any doubt about this, consider that Mou’s examples of non-discriminating statements are not joined by any common sentential pattern. What makes them non-discriminating is not that they necessarily flout grammatical or logical rules but that they offend some expectation of the listener’s. For example, Mou gives “Greed is nirvana, and so are anger and delusion” (tanyu shi niepan, hui chi yi rushi 貪欲是涅盤 恚癡亦如是) as an instance of paradoxical, non-discriminating discourse (T 650.15:759c13–4, referred to in FB, 1192). The sentence is calculated to strike one as surprising and seem wrong-headed, but not because it is logically malformed. Its surprisingness is rhetorical, playing on the listener’s expectation that greed cannot be associated with nirvana. 50 51

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to a very peculiar (though nonetheless rational) set of discursive rules.54 In the case of a paradoxical “x is y” statement, the listener is supposed to notice that the speaker is declining to admit that any nameable item is non-identical to any (apparently) separate item. The hope is that the listener will then imagine the speaker as operating with an uncommon kind of subjectivity, such that he views the universe in two disparate aspects at the same time. As Fung himself recognizes, this intended rhetorical effect is what Mou is referring to when he speaks of paradoxical speech’s “awakening”, “gesturing,” “heuristic” function.55 So when Mou declares grandiloquently that paradox “transcends logic,” Fung would certainly be right to complain that Mou is indulging in loose talk, but Mou is not attempting rational suicide.56 As he so often does, Mou is just dramatizing what is actually a rather underwhelming claim, viz. that paradoxical statements have both

54 Interestingly, Fung indicates that he agrees with me about paradoxical statements in general. He agrees that Mou’s paradoxical statements can be translated into non-paradoxical sentences, that paradox amounts to a rhetorical form and does not indicate logical contradiction, and that this rhetorical flourish is supposed to carry with it a special perlocutionary force (Chaoyue neizai de misi, 33–7). However, he interprets Mou’s understanding of paradoxical identity statements, such as “x is y,” entirely differently. He concludes, by the process outlined above, that the statements are not thought to be translatable into discriminating sentences and are intended to be downright irrational and mystical. I do not know the reason for the inconsistency in Fung’s interpretation, except to observe that for Fung (though in fact not for Mou), the paradigm case of a paradoxical locution would be one with the form “A & ~A,” such as “prajñā is not prajñā” or “gives birth without giving birth,” which he then resolves as meaning “A1 & ~A2.” Here the original statement seems to say that one and the same set is not itself or that one and the same proposition is both true and false, and we resolve the problem by analyzing what was mistakenly thought to be one set or proposition into two. This is a fitting way to handle some paradoxical statements, but it does not fit paradoxical identity (“x is y”) statements very neatly. Fung is definitely aware of the possibility of reading an “x is y” sentence in the way that we are taking them here (as referring to sets defined different ways but with identical elements) (ibid., 91ff.), but I think he believes that it would mean bending the meaning of ‘is’ so far beyond its ordinary meanings as to pass the point of credibility. I tend to agree, and without doubt it strains conventional language much more than the “A1 & ~A2” pattern. For whereas we differentiate all the time between distinct meanings of a word, so that there is nothing outlandish about distinguishing between one sense of “birth” or “prajñā” and another, we have to do considerably more violence to our everyday semantic sensibilities if we want to concoct some sense in which, say, “ignorance” and enlightenment” actually refer to one and the same set. 55 MLL, xvii. 56 Cf. Fung Yiu-ming, Chaoyue neizai de misi, 241.

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logical meaning and a clever rhetorical dimension. The rhetorical device “transcends” logic in the (entirely quotidian) sense that it is not related to logic, just as chiasmus, anastrophe, ellipsis, and anaphora are not related to logic. They are all properties of sentences (i.e. of natural language) rather than of their underlying propositions (i.e. of logic).57 So Mou’s dictum that paradoxical identity statements “transcend logic,” which he trumpets quite a bit, is nothing mysterious or exotic. It does not mean that these statements somehow defy logic and leave reason behind, just that they have logical and rhetorical features. We can say the same thing about this poem of Robert Frost’s: Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee And I’ll forgive Thy great big one on me.58

It has propositional content and yields perfectly well to logical analysis, but it also has rhetorical features which, being properties of the sentence rather than the underlying proposition, cannot be represented in that analysis, such as its use of iambic pentameter and endrhyme. There is nothing mysterious happening here. 2) Fung also reworks his earlier claim that a Perfect Theory expressed in paradoxical identity statements cannot successfully “critique” a Separation Theory. However, this exaggerates the mysteriousness of paradoxical identity statements and because, as before, it is predicated on the wrong notion of critique. Earlier, we will recall, Fung objected to interpreting Mou’s paradoxical identity statements as type-identity statements because, he said, they would not really “critique” discriminating statements, by which he meant that they would not negate those statements. Now, having opted for the mystagogy interpretation, Fung makes the same kind of objection: paradoxical identity statements cannot be said to critique discriminating statements because, according to this interpretation, 57 In one of his essays Fung says something very similar. But there, interpreting a passage from Mou’s lectures (SJJ, 240) which was clearly spoken and edited in too much haste, since it has Mou making obvious slips of the tongue, Fung suggests Mou means that paradoxes have no connection whatsoever to logic, like a poem or even a non-verbal act (Chaoyue neizai de misi, 33, 37). The difference between Fung’s position and mine is just that Fung does not specify that, under this way of seeing Mou’s paradoxical sentences, they have both a logically relevant dimension (as expressions of propositions) and another dimension (the rhetorical one) which is not relevant to logic. 58 Robert Frost, In the Clearing (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1962), 39.

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they are non-rational. “The language in the two cases [of the Perfect Theory with its non-discriminating, paradoxical statements and a Separation Theory with its discriminating statements] is completely different,” Fung writes, “with no possibility of mutual understanding, interpretation, or communication.”59 This objection does not have real teeth. As we saw above, Mou’s non-discriminating statements are not nonsense utterances which defy a discriminating subject’s attempts to interpret them, and there is no reason to suppose that a Separation Theorist does not or cannot ever figure out what the Perfect Theory is trying to get at. Even though a Perfect Theory’s non-discriminating statement is not comparable to a Separation Theory’s discriminating statement with respect to the rules of their formation, it does not follow that Separation Theorist herself cannot understand a Perfect Theorist’s statement. She may understand it quite well—and to all appearances real Tiantai and Huayan thinkers have understood one another well enough to have genuine disagreements—or she may fail to understand it at first and then figure out the Perfect Theorist’s intended meaning. (In fact, for the Perfect Theorist’s purposes, that would be ideal.) Finally, be that is it may, Fung is still not engaging Mou’s true position (viz. that a paradoxical statement can “critique” a discriminating statement) because he is still using the wrong definition of “critique,” taking it to mean “negate.” As we know, Mou happily concedes that a non-discriminating “x is y” statement does not negate a discriminating “x is not y.” His claim is rather that it “opens” it up, pointing to a further fact (viz. some theologically important respect in which x is not non-identical to y) which points up the limited truth conditions of the first statement and thereby prevents people from misunderstanding it and drawing false conclusions. 3) Fung also thinks that if the mystagogy interpretation prevails, then Mou is also incorrect to claim that a paradoxical identity statement is “indisputable” (wuzheng 無諍). After all, Fung reasons, if Mou is claiming that it belongs to some supra-logical discourse that transcends the usual rules of reasoning, then there is no basis on which to claim necessity for it. “It is not susceptible to analysis by any conceptual language, and therefore not only is it not “indisputable,” it is

59

Fung Yiu-ming, Chaoyue neizai de misi, 89.

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not even “disputable.” It does not possess the qualifications of disputability or indisputability. It is a purely unknowable thing!”60 In this case, though, Fung has come to a mistaken but entirely natural conclusion about the meaning that Mou attaches to one of his tricky, ambiguous terms. When Mou says that a Perfect Theory is “wuzheng 無諍,” in at least some of his moods he does not mean “cannot be disputed” or “has not been disputed.”61 Rather, at least some of the time, he means that it is “without dispute” or “not disputatious,” in the sense that it does not dispute the identity of any object with ultimate value or any other object (for example the identity of any given creature with buddhahood). This is clearly the sense in play when, for example, Mou writes that “since the Perfect Theory of the Lotus Sutra not only does not rely on a discriminating mode of speech . . . it is [a theory of ] homogenous equality of perfect repleteness, fullness, and eternity: even nodding one’s head or raising one’s hand is nothing other than the way of buddhahood. Therefore it is perfect and definitive and without dispute”.62 At other times Mou does seem to slip into treating non-discriminating discourse as though it really is indisputable (bu kezheng 不可諍) in the sense of being a necessary truth.63 It seems to me that these could be instances of inconsistency, in which Mou is fooled by the fuzziness of his own terms and overstates his case (forgetting that he had justified the claim that non-discriminating discourse is “wuzheng” only in its weak sense of “not disputatious” and not in the strong sense of “indisputable, unquestionably true”), unless what he means is that these statements are indisputable and necessarily true in the sense that once we accept the ground rules of non-discriminating discourse (i.e. once we agree to speak from the perspective of an intellectually intuiting subject who thinks that no object x is ultimately non-identical to any y including the subject itself ), we have to affirm that any well-formed sentence of non-discriminating discourse is true.64 60 Ibid., 89–90. Also see Fung Yiu-ming, “Cong fenxi zhexue guandian kan yuanjiao,” 134. 61 Chen Yingshan 陳英善 takes it in this second way (Tiantai yuanqi zhongdao shixiang lun, 451). Maddeningly, Mou never truly defines zheng 諍 but instead confines himself to remarking that any thesis which is discriminating is also delimiting and disputable (FB, 12–13; SJJ, 372). 62 FB 16. See Fung Yiu-ming, Chaoyue neizai de misi, 87. 63 E.g. MLL, xviii. 64 This possibility is supported by the observation that Mou sometimes describes non-discriminating statements as “tautologies” (SJJ, 362).

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Obscurantism and Esotericism in the Perfect Theory In the subtext of Fung’s critique, I believe, there lies a complaint that is perfectly legitimate: that Mou is willfully unclear and confusing. Mou seems almost to delight in confounding us by inventing new definitions for words without warning us. Mou makes it harder to follow him than he probably needs to, and as we have seen in this chapter and the last, he specializes in claims that are deliberately calculated to grab our attention, confuse us, and make us decrypt them. We probably should not fault Mou for his penchant for polysemy and his insistence on intermixing an unreduced plenitude of redundant philosophic nomenclatures, however remarkable. For example, note the liberal intermixture of Huayan, Tiantai, and Kantian language in this single sentence from the Treatise on the Summum Bonum: If not for the Perfect Theory, [it would be the case that] the principle [conceived of in the manner of the Mature Separation Theory as a Pure True Mind which gives rise to ordinary objects by following] conditions and [is awakened to in buddhahood when one] cuts off the lower nine dharma-classes ( yuanli duanjiu 緣理斷九), and naturally there would be virtue without there necessarily being happiness and good fortune ( fu 福) since [under a Mature Separation Theory there would be] no opening up of the partial truths (kaiquan 開權) [to bring the whole truth into view], no revealing of the trace[-buddhas as the transspatial and -temporal dharma-body buddha] ( faji 發跡), only a pure dharma-body virtue ( fashen de 法身德), and the origin of the existence of dharmas would be through their arising out of [the Pure True Mind’s] following conditions (suiyuan 隨緣), not perfect inclusion after all, and would not receive explanation later; and also since happiness (xingfu 幸福) would therefore not be settled, which is to say there could be no talk of happiness; and also since there could be no talk of happiness because matter and mind could not truly be non-dual and material dharmas would be extinguished.65

Mou is such an expansive reader and such a prolific and creative writer that it would be too much to insist that, apart from filling over thirty volumes with his work and rewriting the history of Chinese philosophy, he should also make his thoughts tidy and easy to follow. And in conducting an informed comparison of several families of philosophy all at once, Mou could hardly be expected not to intermingle their concepts and vocabularies in a way that taxes most

65

YSL, 279. Emphasis original.

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readers’ attention. In any event, these are more nuisances than riddles. When reading Mou, we can keep track of his many terms of art and infer their relationships as long as we are diligent. But what of his central theory, that exalts a Tiantai-inspired “Perfect Theory” with its paradoxical, “non-discriminating” statements as the final word in philosophy? Mou does prefer to use paradoxical discourse in his explanations, when speaking in his own voice, and even though he acknowledges that one can translate these statements into discriminating form, he rarely does so.66 Moreover, when he does talk about non-discriminating claims in discriminating terms, for example explaining their unique merits, he does so in confusing terms such as “necessary” (biran 必然) and “without dispute” or “indisputable” (wuzheng 無諍 or bu kezheng 不可諍) to which he attaches peculiar private meanings that the reader is required to guess at. Fung may have thrown in the towel too soon when he gave up and concluded that Mou is not even committed to rational conversation, but I can scarcely blame Fung. Cynics could argue that Mou hides his thought in over-complexity to prevent readers’ examining its propositional content too carefully and cloaks himself in a forbidding obscurity to appear more authoritative.67 They would be uncharitable but they could mount a plausible case. And in any event, whether Mou intended to or not, he does achieve those effects with his writing, making his thought so slippery that it is hard to hold onto long enough to criticize and making himself appear so imposing that one scarcely dares assail him. Also, Mou allows and even invites his audience to wonder whether he himself shares the exalted sagely states when he writes about them with such confidence. Ng Yu-kwan recalls wondering just this: Thirty-one years ago, in 1969, the author had just entered the graduate program in philosophy at Chinese University of Hong Kong and chose two of Mr. Mou’s classes . . . Before long he touched on intellectual intuition and said that all people can have it. I felt this was just fascinating and very instructive. After class I chased after Mr. Mou and circled around the issue, asking all manner of things. Finally I flatly asked him, “Mr. Mou, you said that anyone can have intellectual intuition. 66 A rare exception is at the end of his discussion of the buddha-nature of nonsentient objects (FB, 256–257). 67 Fung Yiu-ming implies as much when he entitles his chapter about New Confucian doctrines of mind “The Emperor’s New Mind” (huangdi de xin xin 皇帝的新 心) (Chaoyue neizai de misi, 195ff.).

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Have you yourself had the experience of that kind of intuition?” Mr. Mou looked embarrassed and did not answer my question . . . Only later, after thinking about this question, did I think that for Mr. Mou, this had been a dilemma. If he said that he had experienced intellectual intuition, then since this was only possible after reaching the spiritual state of a sage, then this would be no different from declaring himself a sage68 . . . If he answered that he had not, then [his claim that] humans can have intellectual intuition would lack persuasiveness.69

It is interesting to compare Ng’s reminiscence with Mou’s accounts of his early encounters with Xiong Shili. In his junior year of college, Mou was lent a copy of Xiong’s brand-new New Yogācāra Treatise by another teacher. Mou writes that he was taken aback by the books cover, which announced the book’s authorship in a way copied from the great Buddhist śāstras: “黃崗熊十力造” (“Created by Xiong Shili of Huanggang”). The implication was that Xiong had not just written one more scholarly essay but had created a book of wisdom with near-scriptural importance. Two days later Mou was taken to Sun Yat-sen Park to be introduced to him. The intense, cantankerous man he met appeared to him positively sagely: “. . . he emitted an obvious radiance, and it set off the mean vulgarity of the celebrity professors. That was the first I knew that humans could be loftier, greater than that. Here I had finally met a True Person (zhenren 真人, i.e. a sage), finally gotten a whiff of the meaning of learning and life.”70 Later, Mou was impressed by a conversation between the charismatic Xiong and emerging academic star Feng Youlan, in which Xiong claimed a sort of privileged access to transcendent understanding, which apparently he then suddenly transmitted to the young Mou. Xiong flatly told the unbelieving Feng, “Moral intuition (liangzhi 良知),” meaning what Mou would later call intellectual intuition, “is absolutely real . . . It has to be spontaneously realized for oneself, spontaneously affirmed.” Mou remembers, “This thunderclap made my eyes to see and my ears to hear, and it gave me a level of realization ( juewu 覺悟) on a par with the Confucians of the Song and Ming. But Feng remained as blind and deaf as before. This showed that

Ng seems to have been asking about the full manifestation of intellectual intuition, which is peculiar to sages. 69 Ng, Chuncui lidong xianxiangxue, 693 n. 27. 70 WZ, 85ff. 68

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those ossified professors’ thinking stayed stuck on the plane of [sensory] experience and knowledge.”71 Eventually Mou does let on that he is more or less an ordinary man (and even slightly rueful about his actual spiritual estate), but he does so obliquely, and as in other matters we have to put the pieces together for ourselves.72 But until that point Mou writes in such a way as to invite the impression that he believes he has some firsthand experience of sagehood, for whenever he makes a non-discriminating statement in his own voice, he is speaking as a sage, or at least for the sages. But more than that, Mou seems to promise more than he ultimately delivers. Mou speaks as though his Perfect Theory will establish, or at least proclaim, that the universe has a wondrous perfection built right into it, and that any of us can discover this perfection for ourselves at any time. But on inspection this turns out to be an esoteric language game in which we say something arresting and extraordinary-sounding to mean something much more quotidian. When Mou says that the universe is perfect and shot through with ontologically real value, he actually means that under the influence of a certain spiritual condition we can see it as perfect. When he says that anyone has access to this perfection at any time, he means that we innately have a bare requisite for that experience, a cause which is necessary but by no means sufficient. That seems weak, even by Mou’s own standards. He criticizes Yogācāra soteriology for allowing only a “logical possibility” of achieving buddhahood, but I do not think his philosophy actually delivers anything much stronger. His philosophy changes the rhetorical packaging, but there is still a disappointing, almost tragic side to his universe: We are not guaranteed eventual realization of sagehood

WZ, 88. The best indication is in the chapter of Buddha-Nature and Prajñā in which Mou explains the import of Tiantai Zhiyi’s reported remarks about his own spiritual attainment (FB, 911ff.), which Mou’s one-time colleague and intimate Liu Shu-hsien reads as Mou’s comment on his own life as a spiritual cultivator Liu Shu-hsien 劉述 先, “Daonian Mou Zongsan jiaoshou [Mourning Professor Mou Zongsan] 悼念牟宗 三教授,” in Mou Zongsan xiansheng jinianji 牟宗三先生紀念集 [Commemorative Essays on Mou Zongsan], ed. Cai Renhou and Yang Zuhan 蔡仁厚、楊祖漢 (Taipei: Xuesheng, 1996), 88. The thrust seems to be that Mou feels that, like Zhiyi, he “denied himself to benefit others” (sunji liren 損己利人), foregoing the single-minded cultivation that would give him sagehood in order to do philosophical scholarship for the general spiritual good. 71 72

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(this only worked in Buddhism because we had no limit of lifetimes), and innocents can suffer accidents of birth that would make them almost irretrievably bad. Mou’s system does not change tragic facts, it just relies on Perfect Theory paradoxes to obscure them and direct attention to what is hopeful and edifying. Of course, Mou has self-consistent and honorable reasons for at least one of the main ingredients in his obscurity, namely his preference for talking about his metaphysical teachings in their unresolved paradoxical form instead of stripping off the intriguing paradoxical rhetoric and breaking the teachings down into unvarnished discriminating form. The Perfect Theory’s rhetoric of paradox really does help to advance some of Mou’s aims: to interest his audience in supra-immanent meaning and value, to inspire them to spiritual cultivation, to convince them of unique merits of the Chinese philosophic tradition, to support democratic politics, to make a place in Chinese philosophy for a modern philosophy of science, and to engender admiration for Chinese philosophy. An esoteric philosophy tantalizes students with the promise of initiating them to a hidden dimension of reality, reserved for the spiritual elite, if they work patiently and passionately enough at deciphering its teachings and internalizing them through spiritual practice. And as for the special worth of Chinese philosophy, Mou claims the Perfect Theory—of which a vital ingredient is its special esoteric, paradoxical exposition—as a Chinese invention.73 That is something to be proud of ! As for democracy and science, Mou’s teaching in particular has a leveling character and vigorous assertion of inalienable worth, inasmuch as everyone has a mind which can manifest intellectual intuition and instantiate ultimate value. This not only seems congenial to democratic politics and also grants a place of symbolic dignity to matter and scientific learning. Since paradox of Mou’s sort is a rhetorical device, it is no surprise that the special advantage that Mou gains from paradox is rhetorical. With its paradoxical locutions of equivalency, a Perfect Theory sounds

73 Even if this is the case, Chen Yingnian argues that Mou’s formulation of the concept of non-discriminating discourse is not only an outgrowth of Chinese philosophy’s encounter with Buddhism but also of Mou’s own dialogue with Kant and, to a lesser extent, Martin Heidegger (“Mou Zongsan xiansheng ‘fenbie shuo yu fei fenbie shuo’ zaiyi,” 20–21).

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like a powerful statement of the egalitarianism Mou values and the democratic politics he hopes to see take root in China.74 It articulates a sense in which all people enjoy equal value and dignity. Granted, it is a very restricted sense, but a Perfect Theory boldly glosses over those restrictions and keeps things simple and on-message. Even though we can unpack the theory’s purport in discriminating form, this is not memorable or catchy. It will not hold the audience’s attention on the desired message nearly as well as saying, for example, “the demon-realm is buddha” (mojie ji fo 魔界即佛).75 What makes a Perfect Theory distinctive and effective here is that, by refusing any modal qualifiers such as “potentially” or “sometimes” or “in one respect,” it specifically avoids drawing attention to the very real differences in people’s goodness. Instead it spotlights only their equality and virtue. People of all stations are wise and good just as they are, it teaches, and every person the equal of every other. A Perfect-type teaching also seems to give equal weight to the scientific knowledge associated with sensible intuition and categorial understanding (zhixing 知性) and also to the wisdom (zhi 智) of intellectual intuition. Mou wants to protect Confucian and especially Buddhist philosophy from a widespread opinion that they are fundamentally anti-scientific because overly concerned with the transmundane and dismissive of empirical knowledge and even sense experience itself.76 He wants it known that although they were not developed as philosophies of science, they do not dismiss the senses, the scientific understanding, or the material world. A Perfect Theory does not deny the variegated, material world nor subordinate or reduce it to transcendent reality. It takes the material world as the absolutely necessary expression of ultimate value, where matter itself has buddha-nature or moral valence, and it insists that living in the material world as a sensing, particular being is the indispensable condition of achieving human perfection. A Perfect Theory strikes what

74 On the relation between a philosophy of pantheistic unity and democratic egalitarianism, see Peter Augustine Lawler, “Tocqueville on Pantheism, Materialism, and Catholicism,” in Democracy and Its Friendly Critics: Tocqueville and Political Life Today, ed. Lawler (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2004). Cf. Mark Lilla, The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West (New York: Random House, 2008), 25–26. 75 See ZZZ, 267, quoting T 1928.46:410a6. 76 FB, 100, 363–364; SJJ, 261; 265–281; SYL, 157; Mou Zongsan 牟宗三, Zhongxi zhexue zhi huitong shisi jiang 中西哲學之會通十四講 [Fourteen Lectures on the Reconciliation of Chinese and Western Philosophy] (Taipei: Xuesheng, 1990), 106–110.

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Mou considers just the right balance: it honors matter without being reductively materialist or empiricist, and it recognizes transcendence without being otherworldly. Mou the Confucian spokesman needs to spotlight both advantages to different audiences at the same time, and with non-discriminating formula he can do this to great effect. Some of his readers and listeners are bound to be “tough-minded,” scientistic critics who have little regard for China’s spiritual traditions, and to that multitude of people he must make the most of the traditions’ credentials as friends of empirical knowledge if he is to have any chance at persuading them that value is just as real a thing as gravity, built right into matter, and that humans are naturally equipped to have super-sensible knowledge of this value, as much as we are fitted to know empirically. Others in his audience will be people who embrace one Separation Theory or another and so are fixated on ultimate value to the point of not understanding the necessity and sanctity of plain, mundane existence. With non-discriminating formulae he can make both points to both audiences at one and the same time with a single dramatic phrase such as “the ultimate dung beetle.” Nothing pops the pretensions of coffeehouse metaphysicians with fantasies of a numinous universe beyond our own like telling them its apotheosis is a scarab that sucks juice from manure. And at the same time, how better to show that the ordinary world is also the perfect world? We could try to make the point about the relationship of the material and sensible with ultimate value and intellectual intuition in a series of carefully qualified discriminating statements, but the effect would be as tedious as the beetle example is fun. For my part, though I appreciate the utility of this “non-discriminating” speech, even more do I appreciate a plain-spoken philosopher. I would admire Mou’s work more if he made witty use of paradoxical locutions as playful, catchy slogans and then translated them straightaway into ordinary language, choosing not to be so mysterious about their purport and import and their “necessity” and “indisputability.” He would not deprive them of their rhetorical power, for slogans do not lose their influence over people when they know that the slogans serve as shorthands for something wordier. If anything, it is the slogans which dominate and cloud people’s recall of the nuances in the underlying positions or doctrines. There would be nothing amiss if on the one hand Mou praised “non-discriminating”

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discourse as the highest and most perfect expression of metaphysical truths but on the other hand used it sparingly in his books, preferring to talk down, as it were, for the sake of clarity. The Door to Antinomianism Moreover, I see a danger of an unintended antinomianism. With its insistence on paradoxical rhetoric, a Perfect Theory also seems an invitation to antinomian misinterpretation. Normally, in a study such as this I believe we should be slow to scrutinize an author’s thought for suspicious-looking sociopolitical consequences. However, Mou himself is so invested in the practical social effect of his philosophy that this only seems fair. I am not so much worried about his talk of a deathless “great self ” within which we have our true being. Granted, it is true that people have said similar things before for dubious political ends. The claim that we are deathless because we are spiritually united with some larger community which provides us our truer and greater self is familiar to readers not just of Transcendentalist poetry but also of sterner stuff: No easy hopes or lies Shall bring us to our goal, But iron sacrifice Of body, will, and soul. There is but one task for all— For each one life to give. Who stands if freedom fall? Who dies if England live?77

However, Mou’s “great self ” is not any kind of political “in-group” but rather includes all things and people. Though one could conceivably invent ways to use such a doctrine for political domination, for instance by claiming to be a sage who is uniquely positioned to rule for the common welfare of the collectivity, there are easier ways to establish an authoritarian ideology. A would-be tyrant does need to invent an unintuitive leveling and clumping ontology of transcendent unity to claim that he knows best.

77 Rudyard Kipling, from “For All We Have and Are,” in George Herbert Clark, A Treasury of War Poetry: British and American Poems of the World War, 1914–1917 (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1917), 23.

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What I do worry about is that Mou’s Perfect Theory model could engender antinomianism, wherein someone would declare himself a full buddha or sage without spiritual effort (gongfu 工夫), based simply on his nominal identity with ultimate value. This would be the “mad Chan” syndrome that Neo-Confucian writers of the Song and Ming complained about. Mou certainly does not intend to convey any such message, but it is an easy enough mistake to make when he insists on “non-discriminating” slogans equating, say, delusion and enlightenment as the highest and best expression of the Perfect Theory, instead of unpacking them into a more sober, discriminating language. However, Mou has his reasons. First, he thinks he hedges against misinterpretations of Perfect Theory slogans by emphasizing that they do not constitute a stand-alone teaching but are supposed to be an add-on to the Separation Theory, which incorporates and modifies the Separation Theory (that is, sublates it) and should only be taught to students when they have matured sufficiently and learned all the ways in which the Separation Theory is correct to emphasize the significant ways in which we ordinary creatures are far from ultimate value. Thus the Perfect Theory is to be arrived at “dialectically,” and it does not replace the Separation Theory but nuances it. Still, the fact remains that Mou is dispensing his Perfect Theory to one and all, in books and lectures. It is not as though this is his “closed-door” teaching for hand-picked disciples. Second, Mou seems to think it more fitting that ultimately a system of philosophy should explain things as much as possible from the perfected person’s point of view (which Mou thinks is best represented with those paradoxical turns of phrase), since that is the ultimately authoritative point of view.78 Yes, a philosophy can make concessions to more ordinary people’s way of thinking and speaking, but that can never be the last word. This is really a question of first principles. Mou sees a more plainspeaking philosophic writing as merely the handmaiden to greater things. In fact, he see it as exactly the lower, discriminating sort of teaching that he wants to teach us to rise beyond. I would have Mou 78 Mou continues to find support for this preference among thinkers who see it both as a philosophically valuable point of view in itself and also as an instance of unique Chinese contributions to the world. See, for example, Cheng Zhihua’s rebuttal to Fung Yiu-ming, whose avowed commitment to the “discriminating” point of view Cheng criticizes as “reflective of the differing problematiques and research methods of Western and Chinese philosophy” (“Yuanshan zhi zhen yu keneng,” 39).

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employ his non-discriminating sayings for attention-grabbing slogans but then, having seized our interest, revert almost at once to commonsense, discriminating speech to comment on his paradoxical epigrams. But remember, Mou thinks that true philosophy, philosophy worthy of the name, should be an attempt to use speculative reason (sibian lixing 思辨理性) to help manifest the mind of unlimited wisdom (the sagely subjectivity which uses intellectual as well as sensible intuition). The job of philosophy is “develop people’s reason and guiding people to purify, through practice, human life” (e.g. by becoming a sage or buddha).79 That means that the philosopher does not just comment on wisdom; he performs it or channels it! That is, even though philosophic discourse is addressed to discriminating, conceptual minds (unlike, say, music), Mou thinks that, at its best, philosophy is supposed to speak for the mind of unlimited wisdom and not just about it. He does not think that his books belong to a separate genre from Zhiyi’s or Zhili’s, such that he would comment analytically on their paradoxical talk in the way that books of poetry criticism comment on works of poetry. He thinks of his works as comparable to Zhiyi’s and Zhili’s: they “rank the teachings,” illuminating the true relationship of the highest, or perfect, teaching (the non-discriminating, paradoxical teaching) to the lower (discriminating, analytic) teachings and speaking as the representative of that perfect teaching. Instead of commenting analytically on the paradoxical talk, he wants to comment paradoxically on the analytic talk!80 Mou sees a place for the sort of more analytic, less epistemically self-assured philosophy that I prefer, but that place is a lower one, for exactly the same reason that he thinks the discriminating kinds of Buddhist and Confucian philosophy (that is, the Separation Theories) are lower teachings. To wit, they operate with only one of our two kinds of subjectivity, the categorially discriminating kind, rather than both. Their fitting place is to be critiqued by the Perfect Theory, as the Buddha’s discriminating speeches are critiqued in the Lotus Sutra and as Vasubandhu’s theories are critiqued by Zhiyi.

79 Mou Zongsan 牟宗三, “Zhexue yu yuanjiao [Philosophy and the Perfect Theory] 哲學與圓教,” in Mou Zongsan xiansheng quanji 牟宗三先生全集 [Complete Works of Mou Zongsan] (Taipei: Lianjing, 2003), 367. 80 Vid. YSL, 273.

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Is Mou Worth the Trouble? So what have we learned? That Mou is difficult to follow, even deceptive. He describes thinkers in a way to which many critics object, and he carries out his descriptions with a bold normative agenda which is based on premises that many readers cannot accept. Is he worth the effort then? Yes. True, he writes in a way that is frustratingly difficult and deceptive, but he is not so hard to follow if someone first explains how to decipher him, as this book is meant to do. He does have a rhyme and reason to his gnomic pronouncements—that is, he is rational and coherent—and at least some of the time he has legitimate philosophic reasons for being so obscure. And yes, he is worth the effort, both as historian of philosophy and theorist. Granted, between Mou’s normative enterprise and his slippery way with words, we cannot take him naively at his word and treat him as a simple historian of philosophy in the now-conventional sense. But we are lucky to have in him such an ambitious, articulate, and wellread commentator on Buddhist philosophy, someone who covers the map of Chinese Buddhism and “digests” (xiaohua 消化) it, to use one of his favorite words, in a way that is it at least supposed to be accessible to modern readers. And we are even luckier that this same person is also the man who re-wrote the history of Song-Ming Neo-Confucianism, because he then devoted the golden years of his career to thinking about the structural relationship of Buddhism and Confucianism, becoming the most sophisticated writer on the subject in modern history. In that role alone he has much to teach modern students of either tradition, since the two are so closely linked in intellectual, social, and even political history that in my opinion it is lunacy to continue studying one apart from the other. For the same reason he can offer needed background and helpful leads to the swelling study of Buddhist ethics and to future social and cultural critics of Buddhism. But Mou is as much a theoretical as a historical writer, and depending on our interests he can give us much in that capacity too. As a philosopher devoted to the “ranking of teachings” ( panjiao 判教) genre he is what we would nowadays call a theorist of religious pluralism, and he both theorizes and exemplifies a very open inclusivism. Indeed so open is he that, though a Confucian apologist right

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down to his marrow, he makes a show of borrowing most of his norms from Buddhists. Better still, Mou does philosophy in a grand old way that we have rarely seen in our part of the globe in the last century. In our age it is exceedingly rare for a thinker to confidently state a sophisticated and well-thought theory of the human telos by which to set the compass of our moral philosophizing, much less to theorize about the whole universe in that light. Happily, Mou represents a national literary tradition in which that sort of philosophy is still a going concern. He is a wenren 文人, a man of humane letters, and inspired by Mencius and Socrates, he takes the bearings for his philosophy from the experience of being a human person, with a body, a family and society, and an aspiration to live in a way that will be worthwhile. A system-builder, he does not shrink from elaborating a metaphysical theory of value (in fact, a whole family of metaphysical theories of value) to beef his system up by speculating about what human flourishing and the value of a person has to do with being.

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INDEX adventitious defilements (kechen), 113 Ai Siqi, 26 ālaya-vijñāna. See storehouse consciousness Allen, Michael, 216 Analects, 157, 162 arhat, 72, 85, 108, 123, 125, 145–147, 154, 220–221 arising (sheng) (also see dependent arising), 79 Asa ga, 105–107, 113, 220 autonomy of morality, 165, 201, 223, 228 Avata saka-sūtra. See Flower Garland Sutra avidyā. See ignorance Awakening of Faith (Dasheng qixin lun), 6, 86, 105, 106, 114–119, 121, 122–131, 133, 135, 139, 152, 193, 210 authorship of, 114–115 Mencian spirit of, 114 Bai Yuxiao, 60 baoshen. See reward body being and existence, 161 Beginning Separation Theory. See Separation Theory: Beginning benjue. See enlightenment: original bentilun. See ontology: as “cunyoulun” rather than “bentilun” biejiao. See Separation Theory biejiao yisheng yuanjiao. See Separation Theory: separate perfect teaching Bieli suiyuan ershi wen, 136 bie yuanjiao. See Separation Theory: separate perfect teaching bīja. See seed Billioud, Sébastien, 234 birth (sheng) (also see arising), 79, 168 Bodhiruci, 115–116 bodhisattvas, 3, 41, 72, 76, 77, 80, 81, 89, 99, 104, 105, 110, 111, 117–118, 123, 126, 131, 133, 146, 147, 170, 178, 185, 225 bodhisattva ethos, 3, 185, 225 Book of Changes (Yijing), 32, 33, 185 Boston Confucians, 1

bubian suiyuan. See True Mind: as changeless and following conditions buddhas basic aspiration (benhuai) of, 204–205 as creatures of the lower nine kinds ( ji jiujie er chengfo), 138 the Buddha Śākyamuni, 48, 65–90, 91–93, 95–105, 107–111, 113, 117, 118, 126, 129–130, 131, 132, 134, 135–140, 142, 146, 149, 152, 157–158, 176, 177, 179, 181, 190–191, 198, 210, 215, 218–221, 224, 226–227, 250 and Confucius, 226–227 revelations of, 65–90 as “skewed sage,” 227 buddha-lak a a, see buddhas: marks of as complete but miniature ( juti er wei), 147 dharma body ( fashen) of, see dharma body “double lives” of, 74–75, 85–87, 90, 138 eternality of (also see dharma body), 86, 88, 97–99, 145 and happiness, 203, 206 huiduan fo or huishen rumie view of, 98, 99, 101, 112 identity with ordinary creatures (also see paradoxical identity), 84, 90, 91–92, 141–143, 148–151, 185, 186–187, 189–190, 197–198 “lopsidedness” of, 66, 227 marks (xianghao) of, 117 merits ( gongde) of, 117, 131 collection of merits ( gongdeju), 131 responding body ( yingshen) of, see responding body status (tiduan) of, 150 supernatural powers (shenli) of, 133 transformation body (huashen) of, see transformation body unlimitedness of, 147, 148–151, 188–198, 206 buddha-nature, 64, 65, 66, 74, 76, 86, 91–92, 97, 98, 99–103, 104, 109–112, 113, 114, 116, 122–126, 130, 133–134, 138, 148–149, 151,

266

index

168–169, 171, 177, 184, 192, 197, 209, 213, 217, 220, 222, 227, 242, 246 awakening, buddha-nature as instantiated in ( jue foxing), 150, 184 in Common Theory, 97–101 as conditioning and completing ( yuanliao) causes, 150 as dharma body ( fashen foxing), 86 dharmas, buddha-nature as instantiated among ( fa foxing), 150, 184 in insentient things, 184 as main cause (zhengyin foxing), 150 objectively, buddha-nature spoken of, 150, 184 as secret storehouse of the buddhas (rulai mimi zhi zang), 172 subjectively, buddha-nature spoken of, 150, 184 as supporting cause ( pingyi yin), 111 as the tathāgatagarbha and the myriad dharmas (rulaizang hengsha fofa foxing), 66, 99, 171 as a topic of Buddhist philosophy, 91, 148–151 Buddha-Nature and Prajñā (Foxing yu boruo), 2, 4–5, 46–47, 60–61, 65, 93, 109, 148, 209, 220, 244 organization of, 46, 61, 65 special problems in reading, 4–5 Buddhism as boon to philosophy in general, 181 charity and, 224–225 “great connection” (datong) to Confucianism, 227–229 kuye yishi, 175 meaning of ontology in Buddhist philosophy, 84 political effects of, 51, 52, 175, 224–225 shortcomings as moral philosophy (also see Confucianism: points of superiority to Buddhism), 171–177, 224–226 subjective state as goal of, 175–176 Buddhist studies, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 32, 168 Chinese buddhology, 11 critical Buddhism (hihan bukkyō), 15 Japanese buddhology, 11, 14 overspecialization in, 9–10 relationship to Confucian studies, 8, 9–10, 57–58 Mou’s distinctiveness in, 11, 12–13, 14 question of sinification, 14, 168 buduan duan. See cutting off: without cutting off

Caixing yu xuanli. See Material Nature and Profound Principle canon, Buddhist, 65–90 passim historicity of, 65–66 translation of, 66, 113 categorical imperative (dingran mingling). See moral law: as categorical imperative categories. See forms and categories causal stage (yindi) of practice, 131, 150 Chan, 2, 153–155, 249; “mad Chan,” 249 chanding, 146–147 Chang, Carsun. See Zhang Junmai chaoyue de genju. See enlightenment: transcendent basis of charity, hermeneutical, 19–20, 52, 131, 224, 229, 242 Chen Duxiu, 24, 26 chengfa benjiao, 130 Cheng Gongrang, 6 Chengguan, 129 Cheng Guying, 5 Cheng Hao. See Cheng Mingdao Cheng Mingdao, 48, 158, 194–195 Cheng Yi. See Cheng Yichuan Cheng Yichuan, 48, 158, 194–195 Ch’en, Kenneth, 225 Chen Yingnian, 215 Chen Yingshan, 5, 8, 212, 213, 240 Chiang Kai-shek, 27, 28 China Metaphysical Institute (Zhina neixue yuan) (also see Ouyang Jian; Lü Cheng), 115 chu bing bu chu fa. See enlightenment: “getting rid of the sickness, not the dharmas” chu wuming you chabie (also see enlightenment: “getting rid of the sickness, not the dharmas”), see variegation: without ignorance Common Theory (tongjiao) (also see Nāgārjuna), 93–105, 140 and buddha-nature, see buddhanature: in Common Theory and compassion not reaching creatures (en bu ji wu), 100 as limited to the three worlds with respect to its merit (gong qi jienei) (also see buddhas: huiduan fo or huishen rumie view of ), 99 Mou’s criticisms of, 96–102 Mou’s endorsements of, 95–96 Communism and Communist Party 24, 27, 28, 34, 38, 47, 50, 51, 59, 115, 161

index compassion, 74–75, 89, 99, 100, 170, 175, 223–225 Complete Theory. See Perfect Theory concern consciousness (youhuan yishi), 175–176, 207, 223, 229 Confucianism attacks on, 20–33 authoritative figures, 158, 216 benefits of Buddhist philosophy for, 7, 14, 17, 57–58, 179–207, 226, 229 Buddhist influences on, 2, 3, 9, 10 Confucian criticisms of Buddhism, 3, 175–176, 224–225, 249 improving the old and generating the new (gegu gengxin), 172, 175 modern revisionism. See Confucian revisionism Mou’s interpretation of, 14, 46, 61, 157–179, 191–197 New. See New Confucianism New Text, 25, 30 Perfect Theory of. See Perfect Theory: Confucian points of superiority to Buddhism, 58–59, 93, 159, 167–178, 222–229 as political philosophy, 41, 42, 44, 47, 226 of the Qing, 2, 21, 25, 29, 30, 37–40, 52, 59, 185, 225 on “real things and real principles” (shishi shili), 170–171 Separation Theory of. See Separation Theory: Confucian of the Song and Ming, 37, 39, 41, 51–52, 157, 191–197, 200, 226, 251 texts of special interest to Mou, 157, 158 Confucian revisionism, 30 Confucius, 49, 66, 157, 162, 193, 226 contemplation (guanfa), 91, 92, 95–96, 103, 172–173; “embodiment” of emptiness by dharmas (tifa kong), 96, 103; “entering emptiness by dissecting dharmas” (xifa rukong), 95–96 creatures, ordinary: double character (shuangchongxing) of, 123–124, 135, 195; usage defined, 71 Creel, H.G., 49 critical Buddhism (hihan bukkyō). See Buddhist studies: critical Buddhism critique (pipan), 82–83, 87, 151–152, 190, 231–233, 238–239, 250 cunyoulun. See ontology

267

cultural conservatives, 29–33, 43 “cutting off ” (duan), 118, 129, 138; without cutting off (buduan duan), 118, 138; perfect ( yuanduan), 129 Dark Learning (xuanxue), 184 daode benxin. See mind: moral daode chuangzao. See moral creation daode de xing’ershangxue. See moral metaphysics daode faze. See moral law daode shijian. See moral practice Daoism, 4, 13, 45, 47–48, 171, 198, 211 daotong, 36, 37, 157 Dasheng qixin lun. See Awakening of Faith Dasheng zhiguan famen, 136 dati. See great self defu yizhi. See happiness: coincidence of virtue and delimitation (xiandingxing), 77, 117, 126, 147, 231, 239 delusions, otherworldly ( jiewai huo), 146–147 democracy, 1, 6, 30, 35, 37, 40–45, 50, 245–246 dependent arising ( yuanqi), 79, 97, 99–101, 103, 110, 117, 118, 120,124, 131, 132, 134, 169, 227–228 dharmadhātu-arising, 117, 131–132 karmic arising ( yegan yuanqi), 101 tathāgatagarbha-arising (rulaizang yuanqi ), 118, 120 dharmas ( fa) basis of non-abiding for (cong wuzhu ben li yiqie fa), 169, 189 impure (ranfa), 122 as mutually identical (xiangji ), mutually interpenetrating (xiangru), mutually inclusive (xiangshe), 132 nature of ( faxing), see nature: of dharmas pure ( jingfa), 122 significance dharmas (yiyi fa), 100 variegation (chabie) in, see variegation dharma body ( fashen), 67, 85, 86, 89, 118, 131–135, 139, 141, 142, 147, 169, 195, 196 as collection of merits (gondeju), see buddha: merits of “floating in the aether” (kongxuan), 127, 135, 195 as nirvana (niepan fashen), 89 as perfectly full and inexhaustible ( yuanman wujin), 132–133, 134, 142, 147, 169

268

index

as perfectly integrated without barriers (yuanrong wu’ai), 132–133 and self-nature, 86 of Vairocana (Biluzhena), 131 dharmakāya. See dharma body dharmaness. See nature: of dharmas dharma-types, dharma-worlds, dharmaclasses ( fajie), 72–75, 85, 89, 102, 118, 129, 132, 138, 141, 154, 205, 213, 217, 224 of buddhas ( fojie, fo fajie), 73, 85, 89, 102, 120, 123, 132, 141, 205 of the lower nine kinds of creature ( jiujie), 72–75, 84, 118, 138, 154, 241 Diguan, 94, 104, 106, 114 Dikötter, Frank, 24 dingran mingling. See moral law: as categorical imperative Ding Wenjiang, 32 disciplinary boundaries, 10 discriminating discourse, discriminating speech, 77, 190, 230, 231, 236, 240, 245 ditou jushou jie cheng fodao (also see universalism), 84 doxography (also see rankings of the teachings), 7, 58, 60, 70, 94, 114, 125, 180–181, 184, 209, 210, 212 duan. See cutting off Du Baorui, 5, 8, 19, 213 Dui Chanyi chao bian sanyong yishijiu wen, 136 dung-beetle, ultimate ( jiujing qianglang), 170 Dushun, 129, 135 education, 10, 26, 28–29, 51–53, 99, 147, 203 ekayāna. See one-vehicle theory Eliade, Mircea, 180 emptiness, 58, 78, 79–80, 94, 95, 227–229 correct conception in Common Theory, 95–96 from perspective of the Middle Way (zhongdao kong), 142 and self-nature (zixing), 79–80, 227–229 tifa kong, see contemplation: “embodiment” of emptiness by dharmas xifa ru kong, see contemplation: “entering emptiness by dissecting dharmas”

en bu ji wu. See Common Theory: and compassion not reaching creatures engaged Buddhism, 15 enlightenment external conditions (waiyuan) for, 121, 173–174, 219–222 “getting rid of the sickness, not the dharmas” (chubing bu chufa), 101, 125 incipient (shijue), 120 inner cause (neiyin) of, 121 one-vehicle (yisheng jiujing) theory of, see one-vehicle theory original (benjue) (also see True Mind), 114, 120–121 quasi-enlightenment (sijie), 146 “real” (zhenshi) possibility of, 109 seed theory of, see seeds time needed to reach, 107–108, 137 three-vehicle (sansheng jiujing) theory of, see three-vehicle theory transcendent basis of (chaoyue genju) (also see enlightenment: original), 120–121, 124, 220 Enlightenment, Chinese, 24–26, 30, 32, 37, 52 entailment ( ju) (also see nature: entailment by), 134, 144–145, 150–151, 169, 213 Eucken, Rudolf, 32 existence (also see being and existence), 55, 58, 62, 69, 84, 93, 98, 100, 101, 108, 110, 133, 138, 148–151, 160–166, 167, 169–171, 175, 178, 180, 183, 189, 193, 196, 201–207, 212–213, 218–219, 241, 247 in Buddhism, 58, 69, 93, 98, 100, 101, 108, 110, 133, 138, 148–151, 167, 169–171, 178, 180, 183, 196, 205–207, 212–213, 247 in Confucianism, 160–164, 169–171, 175, 193, 204–207 necessary, 84, 203–205, 218–219 Fadeng, 91 fa foxing. See buddha-nature: dharmas, buddha-nature as instantiated among Fahua wenju, 136 Fahua wenju ji, 136 Fahua xuanyi, 136 Fahua xuanyi shiqian, 136 Fajie guanmen. See Gate of Contemplation of the Dharmadhātu faji xianben. See Perfect Theory: uncovering traces as manifesting the root

index famen bugai, 140 Fang Dongmei, 106 fannao ji puti, 141 fatalism (mingdinglun), 220 Fazang, 14, 71, 96, 105, 113, 116, 128–135, 137, 143, 148, 167, 169, 186, 193, 211, 233; and analytic ( fenxi) perfection, 135 fenbie shishi, 119 Feng Youlan, 51 fenqi xiang. See phenomena: discrete Flower Garland Sutra (Huayan jing), 71, 116, 130–131 Foguangshan Monastery, 225 Foguang xuebao, 225 forms and categories, 69, 73, 77, 80, 86, 88,96, 103,106, 118–119,142, 144, 154,186, 214, 217–218, 246 relation to Buddhist sa skāras, 69 fortune (ming) (also see happiness: and fortune or fate), 87, 199–200, 220–222, 241 limits imposed by (mingxian), 87, 220–222 Foxing yu boruo. See Buddha-Nature and Prajñā fu. See happiness Fung, Yiu-ming, 5, 19, 180, 186, 200, 229–242, 249 ganxing de zhijue. See sensible intuition Gate of Contemplation of the Dharmadhātu (Fajie guanmen), 129, 135 gegu gengxin. See Confucianism: improving the old and generating the new German idealism, 8 God/world relations. See paradoxical identity; Perfect Theory: as formal type; Separation Theory: as formal type; ultimate value: ultimate value/ universe relations. gongde. See buddhas: merits of gongfu. See spiritual effort gong qi jienei. See Common Theory, as limited to the three worlds with respect to its merit Gongyang commentary, 29, 30 gotra (zhongxing), 220 Great Leap Forward, 50 great self (dati ), 166, 178, 202, 204, 207, 248 Great Treatise on the Perfection of Prajñā (Da zhidu lun), 83, 94–95, 100–102 guanfa. See contemplation Guifeng Zongmi. See Zongmi

269

Gu Jiegang, 31 gu a. See buddhas: merits of guocui. See national essence guodu quanshi. See overinterpretation Guoshedang. See Mou Zongsan: in Chinese National Social Party Guo Xiang, 45, 48 guoxue. See National Studies Haichaoyin magazine, 225 haiyin sanmei. See Ocean Seal samādhi Han dynasty, 42 happiness ( fu), 180, 198–207 coincidence of virtue and (defu yizhi ), 180, 198, 200–207 difference between that of a sage and that of a buddha, 204 and fortune or fate (ming), 199–200; and localized individuality, 203 Mou’s special construal of, 202–204 Mou’s understanding of Kant’s interpretation of, 204 Heaven, 14, 43, 66, 159–167, 171–177, 179, 181, 185–187, 191–192, 194–197, 205–207, 222, 227, 233–234 as acting through humanity (also see nature: Heaven as instantiated in human nature), 163–164, 185–187, 194–195, 205–207 as creator, see moral creation as identical to humans, 179–180, 184–185, 187, 189, 194–197 proper feelings toward, 191 as separate from humans, 179, 205–206 as transcending humanity, 191–192 Heavenly principle (tianli ) (also see moral law), 66, 159, 192, 195–196 Heidegger, Martin, 1, 46, 54, 245 Hegel, G.W.F., 161, 164 Heze Shenhui. See Shenhui hihan bukkyō. See Buddhist studies: critical Buddhism Hīnayāna (also see contemplation: and “entering emptiness by dissecting dharmas”; Tripitaka Theory), 71–75, 77, 78, 81, 82, 92–93, 95–96, 99, 101, 203, 206, 224 history of philosophy (zhexueshi), 7, 8, 13, 19, 60–61, 209–215, 251 Huang Zongxi, 158, 166 Huayan jing. See Flower Garland Sutra Huayan line, 15, 71, 78, 92,104, 105, 113, 116, 117, 119, 127, 129–136, 150, 153, 155, 179, 203, 226, 233, 239, 241

270

index

Hubbard, Jamie, 224 Hu Hong. See Hu Wufeng Huineng, 153–154, 186 Huisi, 136 humanistic Buddhism, 15, 225 Hu Shi, 51 Hu Wufeng, 48, 68, 166, 194 icchantika, 220 idealization (lixianghua), 188 identity paradoxical. See paradoxical identity token- and type-, 186–187, 196–197, 202, 230, 232, 233, 235, 238 identity relations. See forms and categories, paradoxical identity. ignorance (wuming), 58, 87, 93, 99, 111, 114, 119–131, 134, 138, 140, 141, 143–145, 150, 151, 154, 166, 185, 187, 192, 196, 218–219, 228, 237 as merely suppressed and not destroyed (zhi fu bu duan or zhi fu bu po), 145–146 imagination (xiangxiang), 62 immanence, 63–64, 69, 94, 119, 135–136, 164, 179, 184, 233–235, 245 imperial system. See monarchy indisputable (wuzheng) statements, 239–240 intellectual intuition (zhi de zhijue) 58, 62–63, 68–69, 73, 75, 79, 85, 87–88, 102, 112, 120, 140, 143–145, 148, 177, 183, 185, 186–187, 196, 205, 210–211, 216, 217, 218–219, 226–228, 231, 236, 243, 247 Intellectual Intuition and Chinese Philosophy (Zhi de zhijue yu Zhongguo zhexue), 46 inward sagehood (neisheng), 41, 44, 54 Japan, 20, 22, 23, 25, 34 jiewai huo. See delusions, otherworldly ji jiujie er chengfo. See buddhas: as creatures of the lower nine kinds jiju (also see entailment; mind: momentary mind of ignorance and dharma-nature; paradoxical identity), 144, 167 Jingangpi, 136 jingfa. See dharmas: pure Jingjue Renyue. See Renyue jingshi pai. See statecraft group jingtu. See pure land Jin guangming jing xuanyi sheyi ji, 136 Jingxi Zhanran. See Zhanran

jinxin chengxing. See mind: perfecting mind and completing nature jiujing qianglang. See dung-beetle, ultimate Jueding zang lun, 115 jue foxing. See buddha-nature: awakening, buddha-nature as instantiated in jueliao changtong. See Perfect Theory: definitively establishing meaning and bringing coherence kaiquan xianshi. See Perfect Theory: revealing partial truths to bring whole truth into view Kang Youwei, 25, 30, 31, 32, 37, 41 Kant, Immanuel, 1, 4, 6, 12, 37, 49, 62, 63, 69, 83, 106, 140, 144, 159, 161, 199, 200, 201, 204–205, 211, 234, 241, 245 on happiness, 204–205 on the nature of morality, 49, 159, 161–162, 165 Kantor, Hans-Rudolf, 5, 144, 151, 213 kechen. See adventitious defilements keguan zicun de shiyou. See real being which is objectively self-existent Kieschnick, John, 224 Kumārajīva, 67, 78, 84, 94, 101, 169 kuye yishi. See Buddhism: kuye yishi Lankāvatāra-sūtra, 114, 115–116 Law Shun Man, 89, 127, 131,180, 213 Lee Ming-huei, 19 Left, Chinese, 26, 27 Legalists, 42, 47 Liang Qichao, 2, 30, 31 Liang Shuming, 2, 25, 31, 32, 35, 36, 43, 51, 175 liangzhi, 159 Liao Zhongqing, 209 liaoyin foxing. See buddha-nature: as conditioning and completing causes Li Dazhao, 27 liju (also see entailment; mind: momentary mind of ignorance and dharma-nature), 150–151 Lin Anwu, 19 Lin Chen-kuo, 15, 19, 187, 212, 214 Lin Zhenguo. See Lin Chen-kuo lingzhi zhenxing. See nature: True nature as numinous awareness Li Ruiquan, 19 Li Qingyu, 5 Li Shan, 45, 51, 226

index liu ji fo (also see buddhas: identity with ordinary creatures), 185 Liu Jishan, 48, 158, 165 Liu Shu-hsien, 19, 244 Liu Zongzhou. See Liu Jishan Li Yizhuo, 106 Lotus Sutra (also see Tiantai; universalism), 83–90, 99, 101, 108, 126, 137–138, 146, 167, 191, 214, 220, 226, 240, 250 Lü Cheng (also see China Metaphysical Institute), 67, 106, 108, 115–116, 211 Lu Xiangshan, 158, 176 Madhyamaka (also see Common Theory; Nāgārjuna), 78, 92, 94, 106 Mahāyāna, 66, 70, 71, 75–77, 77, 78, 82, 84, 92, 105, 113, 125, 146, 175, 223–224 Mahāyāna Treatise on the Awakening of Faith. See Awakening of Faith Maitreya, 105, 107, 109, 110 Manchus (also see Qing dynasty), 59, 115 manifestation (xianxian, chengxian, langxian) 73, 140, 144, 167 Manifesto for a Re-appraisal of Sinology and Reconstruction of Chinese Culture, 35, 36, 37, 42 Marxism, 8, 25, 28–29, 41, 52 Material Nature and Profound Principle (Caixing yu xuanli), 45, 47, 220 material things (also see matter), 31, 75, 79, 87, 90, 90, 100, 104, 112, 123, 127, 128, 139, 141, 148–149, 160, 169, 184, 204, 213–214, 217–219, 246–247 as buddhas’ act of intention (zuoyi ), 141 necessary existence of, 101, 141, 203–205, 213–214, 218–219, 246–247 as permanent, 89, 139–140 matter (also see material things), 49–50, 52–54–55, 80–81, 8789, 128, 140, 147, 160, 165,1 70, 228, 241, 245–247 as already-existing existence (yiyou de cunzai), 160 non-duality with mind, 128 Mao Zedong, 26, 202 May Fourth, 24, 25, 27, 28, 35 meditation (also see contemplation), 91, 146–147, 172–173, 178

271

Mencius, 42, 44–46, 48, 54, 114,126, 157, 165, 166, 193, 199–201, 216, 252 Metaphysical Institute. See China Metaphysical Institute Metzger, Thomas, 1, 36, 53 Middle Verses (Zhonglun, Zhongguan lun), 94–95, 98, 102 Mou’s irritation with, 95 mie wuchang se huode changse. See material things: as permanent mind of benevolence (renxin), 159, 162, 172 discriminating, 69, 73, 74, 77, 80–82, 86, 89, 96, 100, 102–108, 111–113, 116, 118–120, 123, 131, 154, 203, 206, 221 double character of, 143–145 fabrication (zao) by (also see forms and categories; mind: discriminating), 144 momentary mind of ignorance and dharma-nature (yinian wuming faxing xin), 143–145 moral (daode benxin), 161, 162–163, 171, 187 perfecting mind and completing nature ( jinxin chengxing), 166 True, see True Mind momentary mind as entailing three thousand dharmas (yinian xin jiju sanqian fa or yinian sanqian), 127, 154, 213 unlimited (wuxian), 119, 143, 167, 171–172, 193, 194–195, 199, 234, 250 Mind and Human Nature (Xinti yu xingti), 220 ming. See fortune mingdinglun. See fatalism mingxian. See fortune: limits imposed by modernity and modernization, 10, 22, 30, 39, 52, 53, 54 Mohe zhiguan, 136 monarchy, 20, 22, 42, 53 moral creation (daode chuangzao), 160–162, 172, 187, 222–223, 228 nourishing (zerun, bianrun) by, 161, 172, 187 moral law (daode faze), 159, 172, 54, 58, 59, 66, 159–167, 170–178, 179, 185, 187, 189, 196, 202, 204, 206–207, 215, 216, 222–224, 227–229

272

index

as categorical imperative (dingran mingling), 172 moral metaphysics (daode de xing’ershangxue), 2, 161 as opposed to metaphysics of morals (daode di xingshangxue), 161 moral practice (daode shijian), 53, 166, 174 moral realism (also see value; ultimate value), 38, 49–50, 52, 55, 201, 228 Mou Zongsan autobiography, see My Life at Fifty on Buddhist philosophy: homage to, 2, 6 importance of, 7–16, 251–252 in Chinese National Social Party (Zhongguo guojia shehui dang, Guoshedang), 51 as Confucian apologist, 1, 3, 15, 60–61, 209–215, 226–229, 246–247, 251–252 criticisms of, 208–250 cultural context of, 20–44 dogmatism, 215–217 ecumenism of, 2, 6, 60, 226–229, 251–252 education of, 20, 33–34 employment history of, 34–35 esotericism of, 245 inclusivism of, see ecumenism of influence in English-speaking academy, 1, 182 interpretation of Confucianism, see Confucianism: Mou’s interpretation of and mainland Chinese scholars, 6, 8 mature work, 17–18, 45–46; definition of, 6, 17–18 and New Confucians, 33–45 obfuscation and obscurantism, 233–235, 241–245 optimism of, 53–54, 64, 114, 173, 201, 216–217, 219, 222–223 patriotism or nationalism of, 47–48, 50–53, 114, 212, 245 philosophical agenda, 46–55 problems in interpreting, 4–5, 16–20, 46–47, 240, 241–245, 251 “theological” traits, 13, 59–61, 158, 212 unclarity, 18, 233–235 as unlikely buddhologist, 3 My Life at Fifty (Wushi zishu), 7, 28, 161, 185, 226

Nāgārjuna, 73, 93–103, 111, 133, 137, 142, 146, 148, 179 and buddha-nature, see buddhanature: in Common Theory Mou’s criticisms of, see Common Theory: Mou’s criticisms of Mou’s endorsements of, see Common Theory: Mou’s endorsements of as putative author of Great Treatise on the Perfection of Prajñā, 94–95 “national essence” ( guocui), 31 Nationalist Party (KMT), 27, 28 “National Studies” ( guoxue), 31 nature (xing) as able to give rise to all dharmas (zixing nengsheng wanfa), 153–154 arising from (xingqi), 133 of Christ, 182 of the dharmas ( faxing) (also see mind: momentary nature of ignorance and dharma-nature), 141, 142, 144–145, 187 entailment by (xingju), 145, 150–151 Heaven as instantiated in human nature, 163 moral (also see mind: moral; nature: Heaven as instantiated in human nature), 172–173 perfecting mind and completing nature ( jinxin chengxing), see mind: perfecting nature and completing nature True nature as numinous awareness (lingzhi zhenxing), 154–155 neisheng. See inward sagehood neiyin. See enlightenment: inner causes of New Asia College, 35, 45 New Confucians and New Confucianism, 1, 8, 33–45, 47–53, 59, 62, 235, 236 New Culture, 20, 24, 25, 31, 39, 41 Ng Yu-kwan, 19, 170, 213, 242–243 nianju (also see entailment; mind: momentary mind of ignorance and dharma-nature; paradoxical identity), 144 niepan fashen. See dharma-body-as-nirvana Nietzsche, Friedrich, 30, 49, 160 Nineteen Lectures on Chinese Philosophy (Zhongguo zhexue shijiu jiang), 6 nirm āa-kāya. See responding body; transformation body

index nirvana (also see enlightenment), 87, 98, 141, 146, 176, 190, 204, 224, 236 minor (xiao niepan), 146 without remainder (wuyu niepan), 98 parinirv āa, 99 Nirvana Sutra, 67, 83–90, 100, 110, 111, 115, 116, 126, 127, 137, 191, 204, 226 non-discriminating discourse, 18, 178, 190, 229–231, 235, 236, 239–244, 245, 247–250 number. See forms and categories Ocean Seal samādhi (haiyin sanmei ), 131 one Mind opening two gates ( yixin kai ermen, yixin ermen), 119 one-vehicle ( yisheng jiujing) theory, 108–109, 220–222 ontology, 6, 14, 38, 51, 52, 61–64, 66, 81–87, 104, 119, 123, 127, 131, 147–149, 161, 168, 170, 181–184, 187–189, 191–196, 205, 212–215, 217, 219, 220, 222, 228, 244, 248 as “cunyoulun” rather than “bentilun,” 84 in Perfection of Prajñā sutras, 81–82 two-level ontology (liangceng cunyoulun), 61–64 without attachment (wuzhi), 205, 219 original interpretation ( genyuan de shuoming). See root explanation outward kingliness (waiwang), 41, 44, 226 Ouyang Jian (also see China Metaphysical Institute), 2, 60, 67, 106, 108, 115–116, 211 Ouyang Jingwu. See Ouyang Jian overinterpretation ( guodu quanshi), 213–214 panentheism, 182 pantheism, 219, 223, 246 paradox ( guijue, guici), 81, 82, 137, 138, 141, 176, 189–191, 224, 230, 233, 239, 242, 245–250 as essentially rhetorical, 189–190, 237–238, 245 in Lotus Sutra, 137, 138, 14 in Perfection of Prajñā sutras, 82–83 as typically Buddhist, 189–191 paradoxical identity ( guijue de xiangji ), 7, 179–180, 207, 213, 229–239 Paramārtha, 14, 105, 113–115, 117, 120, 122, 125, 128, 137, 179, 211, 214–215

273

as possible author of Awakening of Faith, 114–115 passions, selfish (siyu), 166, 177 Pei Chunling, 212 Peking University, 27, 32, 33 Perfect Theory (yuanjiao), 127, 136–147, 149, 151–155, 180, 181–189, 190, 191, 194–200, 202, 203, 205–207, 225, 229–250 advantages of, 141, 197–207, 245–247 and antinomianism, 248–249 coherence of, 229–240 Confucian, 185, 189, 191, 194–197, 200–202 pre-systematic character of, 200–202 definitively establishing meaning and bringing coherence ( jueliao changtong), 151–152 as formal type (also see happiness: coincidence of virtue and), 179–180, 184–189 inclusiveness of, 151–153, 232–233, 249 Mou’s translation of ‘yuan’, 88–89, 198 revealing partial truths to bring whole truth into view (kaiquan xianshi ), 151–152, 232–233, 239 and science and democracy, 245–247 uncovering traces and manifesting the root ( faji xianben) (also see traces, root and), 151–152 perfected persons (also see buddhas; happiness; sages and sagehood), 34, 65, 66, 69, 202–204, 205, 218, 226 Perfection of Prajñā (prajñā-pāramitā), 66, 77–83, 84, 89, 94, 95, 100, 118, 126, 132, 142, 149, 186, 191 abolishing phenomena and dispelling grasping (dangxiang qianzhi ) as characteristic of, 79, 84 merging and eliminating (rongtong taotai ) as characteristic of, 79 perfuming (xunxi ), 107, 108, 114, 120, 122, 192, 220, 222 by hearing (zhengwen xunxi or wenxun), 107, 108 by True Mind or True Thusness (zhenru xunxi ), 120–121, 122, 192 phenomena (xianxiang), 63, 64, 69, 70, 73, 79–82, 84, 86–89, 93, 94, 95–96, 101, 103, 106, 110–111, 117, 120, 121, 122, 123–124, 126–131, 133,

274

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134, 139, 144, 145–146, 198, 205, 205, 218–219 delimited (xianding xiang), 118 discrete ( fenqi xiang), 118 as permanent, see material things: as permanent Phenomenon and Thing-in-Itself (Xianxiang yu wu zishen), 46 philology, 30, 52, 67, 78, 115 philosophy analytic, 1, 5, 8, 59, 135, 186 Chinese, 1, 8, 10, 35, 39–41, 45, 47–49, 51, 63, 64, 158, 168, 216, 225, 245, 249, 245–247 as “existential learning,” 57, 61, 249–250, 252 intellectualism (lizhizhuyi ) in, 158 Mou’s concept of, 57–59, 60, 61, 249–250 as practical activity, 57, 60, 64, 166, 179, 185, 248–250 of science, 47, 55, 63, 245 Western, 1, 5, 8, 39–40, 47–49 pianzhi qingjing zhenru, 128 pingyi yin. See buddha-nature: as supporting cause pluralism, religious. See Mou Zongsan, ecumenism of post-structuralism, 11 practice, practical activity, 57–58 prajñā (also see intellectual intuition), 65, 68, 69, 73, 75, 78–85, 88–89, 91, 94–96, 98, 100, 102, 107, 118, 120, 123, 128, 139, 141, 142, 144, 145, 148, 150, 154, 171, 185, 190–191, 192, 215, 217, 228–229, 237 differentiating ( fenbie zhi ) and undifferentiating (wu fenbie zhi ), 217–218 experience of, 79–82, 89, 96, 142, 144–145, 148, 191, 217 as a topic of Buddhist philosophy, 81–83, 148–151 wondrous functioning of (boruo de miaoyong), 83 prajñā-pāramitā. See Perfection of Prajñā. pratyeka-buddha, 72, 74, 85, 108, 116, 125, 220–222 pure land, 117 Pure True Mind. See True Mind. Qing dynasty, 2, 21, 22, 25, 29, 30, 37, 38, 39, 40, 52, 59, 106, 185, 225 philological scholarship and classicism of, 25, 29, 40, 52, 59, 106, 185, 225

ranfa. See dharmas: impure ranking of the teachings (also see doxography), 60, 68, 70, 113, 130–131, 153, 180–181, 184, 209–210, 212, 215, 251 Fazang’s, 130–131 Tiantai, 60, 113, 125, 180, 184 real being which is objectively selfexistent (keguan zicun de shiyou), 80 reason (lixing), 24–25, 27, 32, 33, 49, 50, 55, 59, 103, 165, 175, 192, 197, 216, 231, 235, 236, 238, 250 renjian fojiao. See humanistic Buddhism renshengguan, 32 renxin. See mind: of benevolence Renyue, 152 Republic of China, 2, 15, 20, 21, 23, 24, 30, 32, 185 responding body (yingshen), 86, 88, 117, 122, 123, 125–128, 131, 138–139, 141 reward body (baoshen), 117, 125, 127, 131 root explanation (genyuan de shuoming), 101, 168 rulai mimi zhi zang. See buddha-nature: as secret storehouse of the buddhas rulaizang hengsha fofa foxing. See buddhanature: as the tathāgatagarbha and the myriad dharmas rulaizang li. See tathāgatagarbha principle sacred and profane (also see moral creation; paradoxical identity; value), 181 sages and sagehood, 109, 157–158, 162, 164, 166, 167, 171, 173, 174, 176, 178, 179, 181, 185, 187–189, 192–195, 197, 198, 199, 204–207, 222, 227, 242–244, 248–250 as unlimited, 188–189 salvation: one-vehicle (yisheng jiujing) theory of, see one-vehicle theory; three-vehicle (sansheng jiujing) theory of, see three-vehicle theory; universal, see universalism sa bhoga-kāya. See reward body sa skāra, 69, 106 sanqian zaili tongming wuming sanqian guocheng xiancheng changle, 140–141 sansheng jiujing. See three-vehicle theory San wuxing lun, 115 science, 8, 23, 24, 25, 30, 31, 32–33, 38, 40–45, 50, 55, 62, 70, 214, 219, 245–247 “Science vs. Metaphysics” debate, 32–33

index scientism, 40, 44, 247 seed (zhongzi), 107–110, 113, 126, 138, 220–222; and Dharmapāla, 110 pure or undefiled (wulou zhong), 107–108, 110, 221 self-abnegation (ziwo kanxian), 119 self-nature (zixing). See emptiness: and self-nature self-strengthening (ziqiang) movement, 39, 40 Sengzhao, 102 sensible intuition (ganxing de zhijue), 62–64, 68, 70, 73, 81, 88–89, 102, 106–107, 117–118, 140–142, 144–145, 150, 179, 183, 187, 195, 196, 203, 205, 217–218, 236, 246 Separation Theory (biejiao), 78, 92, 103–136, 138–141, 143, 145, 149, 151–155, 181–183, 191–193, 204, 220, 231–233, 238, 239, 241, 249, 250 Beginning, 78, 92, 105–112, 117, 121, 125, 145, 149, 150, 151–155, 183, 192, 193, 219–222 buddha-nature in, 109–112 and Dharmapāla, see seeds and Dharmapāla as jiewai yitu famen, 114 as formal type, 182–184 seed theory of enlightenment, see seeds Mou’s criticisms of, 107–112 Mou’s endorsements of, 106–107 Christian theology as instance of, 182 Confucian, 192–194 as discriminating or analytic ( fenjie de), 135–136 as formal type, 181–184 Mature, 78, 92, 105, 112–133, 138, 141, 145, 149, 150, 151–155, 183, 193, 194, 241 dualism of, 127–129, 151 as formal type, 182–184 Mou’s criticisms of, 126–129 Mou’s endorsements of, 123–126 separate perfect teaching (bie yuanjiao, biejiao yisheng yuanjiao), 130, 233 sexin bu’er. See matter: non-duality with mind shanwai. See Tiantai: shanwai faction Shelun (Mahāyāna-sa graha), 115 school, 78, 92 shengsi ji niepan, 141

275

Shenhui, 154–155 shenli. See buddhas: supernatural powers of Shiba kong lun, 115 Shi bu’er men, 136 Shi bu’er men zhiyao chao, 136 shijian xiang changzhu. See material things: as permanent shijiao, 130 shiju (also see entailment; mind: momentary mind of ignorance and dharma-nature; paradoxical identity), 144 shijue. See enlightenment: incipient Shi Qing Guanyin shu zhong xiaofu sanyong, 136 shitizhuyi. See substance: substantialism sijie. See enlightenment: quasienlightenment Siming Zhili. See Zhili Siming zunzhe jiaoxing lu, 136 sinification of Buddhism, 14, 168 shishi shili. See Confucianism: on “real things and real principles” shuangchongxing. See creatures, ordinary: double character of siyu. See passions, selfish Socrates, 174, 252 soteriology, 77, 84, 125, 148, 213, 219, 222–223, 227, 244, space and spatiality (also see forms and categories) ākāśa, 86 Nāgārjuna’s treatment of, 95 Specialness of Chinese Philosophy (Zhongguo zhexue de tezhi), 6 Spengler, Oswald, 30 spiritual effort (gongfu), 45, 141, 184, 213, 249 spiritual excellence, 57, 58, 75, 111, 174, 200, 207 spiritual states ( jingjie), 66, 131, 132, 168, 172, 173, 213, 223, 224, 232–233 Spring and Autumn Annals, 29 Śrīmālādevī-sūtra, 111 śrutavāsanā. See perfuming: by hearing “statecraft group” ( jingshi pai), 29 storehouse consciousness (alaiye shi, laiye shi ), 105, 106, 107, 113, 114, 115, 119, 159, 221 Strauss, Leo, 174, 199 subjectivity, 14, 101, 161, 169, 176, 183, 203, 206, 237, 250 humans as objects with, 183

276

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substance (ti), 167–171, 181, 184, 189, 190, 192–193, 194, 214–215, 222–223, 227–229 substantialism (shitizhuyi), 214–215 suchness (ru, ruxiang, zhenru), 68–69, 100, 111–112, 120, 127, 128, 134, 140, 142, 149, 164, 175, 192, 193 “frozen suchness” (ningran zhenru), 193 suiji mojiao, 130 suiyuan bubian. See True Mind: as changeless and following conditions summum bonum ( yuanshan) (also see happiness: coincidence of virtue and), 200 supporting cause. See buddha-nature: as supporting cause sutras (also see Flower Garland Sutra, Lotus Sutra, Nirvana Sutra, Perfection of Prajñā sutras, Śrīmālādevīsūtra, Vimalakirti Sutra), 69, 70–90, 93–102, 108, 113–118, 124, 126–132, 137, 142, 146, 149, 157, 169, 170, 190–191 function (zuoyong) in, 81 as functionally perfect (zuoyong de yuan), 83 and ontology (cunyoulun), 81–82 and ontological perfection (cunyoulun de yuan), 83–84 Taiping rebellion, 10, 20, 22 Taixu, 16, 106, 225 Tang dynasty, 51, 224 Tang Junyi, 35, 53, 106, 131, 201 Tang Yongtong, 67, 106 Tan Sitong, 2, 25, 30, 32, 41 tathāgatagarbha (also see dependent arising: tathāgatagarbha-arising), 66, 99, 105, 115–116, 119, 120, 128, 133, 137, 171 tathāgatagarbha principle (rulaizang li ), 137 temporality. See forms and categories Thoraval, Joël, 33, 49, 51 Thrasymachus, 174 tiandao, 159 tianli. See heavenly principle Tiantai, 4, 7, 8, 15, 19, 46, 61, 64, 66, 67–68, 71–72, 76, 78, 84, 87–90, 91–92, 94, 118, 119, 134, 136–137, 140, 141–144, 146, 147, 150–153, 154, 158, 169–172, 179, 181, 185, 186, 189–190, 194–195, 198, 204–205, 210, 212–213, 215, 218, 226–229, 231–233, 239–242, 244 doxography. See ranking of the teachings

original insight ( yuanchu de dongjian) of, 180 shanwai faction, 136 texts of interest to Mou, 136 Tiantai jiao yu Qixin lun ronghui zhang, 136 Tiantai sijiao yi, 136 Tiantai Zhiyi. See Zhiyi tiduan. See buddhas, status of Tillman, Hoyt, 4 ti xunxi. See perfuming: by True Mind or True Thusness theodicy, 7 theology, 1, 2, 8, 13, 59–61, 78, 158, 181–182, 212, 239 things-in-themselves (wu zishen), 62, 64, 205, 218, 228 three-vehicle (sansheng jiujing) theory, 108, 125, 220–222 tongjiao. See Common Theory traces ( ji ), root (ben) and, 138, 139, 171, 184 transcendent, 43, 63–64, 69, 70, 76, 94, 104, 109–112, 119, 121, 124, 135, 136, 143, 149, 151, 158, 160, 164, 179, 184, 189, 194, 218–220, 222, 223, 227–228, 233–235, 243, 246–248 transcendental analysis, 104 transformation body (huashen) (also see responding body), 86, 117, 127, 138 Treatise on the Summum Bonum (Yuanshan lun), 46, 180, 241 Tripitaka Theory (also see Hīnayāna), 78, 92–93, 94, 99, 125, 223–224; as limited to the three worlds with respect to its merit (gong qi jienei), see Common Theory, as limited to the three worlds with respect to its merit triyāna. See three-vehicle theory true character (shixiang) (also see zhongdao shixiang li), 82, 84, 95, 96, 118, 137, 142, 143–145, 150–151, 171 True Mind (zhenxin), 14, 104, 105, 113, 114, 116–136, 138, 143, 152–155, 168, 183–184, 193–194, 196, 214, 241 as changeless (bubian) and following conditions (suiyuan), 129, 130–131 as empty but not empty (kong bukong), 128 school of thought (also see Separation Theory: Mature), 114, 124, 126, 183–184, 193 as source or cause of all things, 118–123, 131, 153–154 as the stuff of all dharmas (yiqie famen zhiti ), 133

index truth: partial (quan), 88–90, 151, 152–153, 241 whole (shi), 88–90 Tu Wei-ming, 26, 59, 163, 191 ultimate value, 7, 68, 179–189, 192–193, 195, 196, 198, 203, 207, 215–216, 219, 229, 240, 245–247, 249 ultimate value/universe relations (also see paradoxical identity; Perfect Theory: as formal type; Separation Theory: as formal type), 181, 188–189 understanding (zhixing), 62, 69, 246 unity of knowledge and action (zhixing heyi ), 53 unlimited (wuxian), 66, 99, 119, 127, 143, 147, 167, 171–172, 185, 193, 194, 195, 199, 202, 234, 250 universalism (also see enlightenment: original), 84, 99–100, 121–122, 123, 124–125, 137, 219–222 and Beginning Separation Theory or Yogācāra, 219–222 Vairocana (Biluzhena). See dharma body: of Vairocana value, 1, 7–8, 21, 32, 36, 38, 40–44, 48–50, 54–55, 68, 77, 160, 179–190, 192, 195–197, 203, 207, 211, 215, 219, 228–229, 240, 244–249, 252 and being, 7–8, 38–39, 49–50, 52, 55, 160, 179–190, 194–197, 252 as posited by Heaven, 160–162 ultimate, see ultimate value variegation (chabie), 87, 88, 90, 106, 118–120, 123, 126–128, 133–134, 140–142, 148, 217–218, 246 without ignorance, 140 without variegation (cha er wucha), 142, 217 vāsanā. See perfuming Vasubandhu, 105–107, 109, 111–113, 125, 220, 250 vertical (zongguan) dimension, 189 Vimalakirti Sutra, 75, 79, 101, 126, 137, 146, 169, 185, 189 waiwang. See outward kingliness waiyuan. See enlightenment: external conditions for Wang Bi, 45, 48 Wang Enyang, 67 Wang Longxi, 158, 196

277

Wang Yangming, 3, 39, 53, 158, 164, 176, 193, 206 Warring States period, 199 Weimojing xuanshu, 136 Weimojing xuanyi. See Weimojing xuanshu weitan wo fo, 135 Wei Yuan, 25, 29 wenxun. See perfuming: by hearing Whitehead, Alfred North, 33, 182 “White Terror,” 27, 28 wulou zhong. See seed: pure or undefiled Wu Rujun. See Ng Yu-kwan wuqing you xing. See buddha-nature: in insentient things Wushi zizhu. See My Life at Fifty wuzheng. See indisputable statements wuzhi de cunyoulun. See ontology: without attachment wu zhi zai qi ziji. See things-in-themselves wuzhu ben. See dharmas: as founded upon the basis of non-abiding wu zishen. See things-in-themselves xianding xiang. See phenomena: delimited xianghao. See buddhas: marks of xiangxiang. See imagination Xianshou Fazang. See Fazang xianxiang. See phenomena Xianxiang yu wu zishen. See Phenomenon and Thing-in-Itself xiao niepan. See nirvana: minor Xie Daning, 5, 8, 62, 131, 143, 184, 194, 196 Xie Youwei, 35 xingju (also see entailment; mind: momentary mind of ignorance and dharma-nature; paradoxical identity). See nature, entailment by xingming tiandao, 159 xingti, 159 xinju (also see entailment; mind: momentary mind of ignorance and dharma-nature; paradoxical identity), 144 Xinti yu xingti. See Ontological Mind and Ontological Human Nature Xiong Shili, 2, 3, 32, 34, 35, 38, 51, 52, 57, 61, 62–63, 67, 69, 106, 107–108, 110, 170, 184, 185, 204, 212, 220, 224, 243 correspondence with Lü Cheng, 108 criticisms of Yogācāra, 107, 108, 110, 170–171, 220, 224 legacy in Mou’s buddhology, 106, 108, 110, 170–171, 220, 224 on substance (ti), 110, 170–171, 184

278

index

xuanxue. See Dark Learning Xuanzang, 67, 105, 192 Xu Fuguan, 35, 42

Yuan Shikai, 23 yuanyin foxing. See buddha-nature: as conditioning and completing causes

Yang Zebo, 6, 160, 186 Yang Zuhan, 19 Ye Shengtao, 28 yichanti. See icchantika Yijing. See Book of Changes yindi. See causal stage of practice yinian sanqian. See mind: momentary mind as entailing three thousand dharmas yinian wuming faxing xin. See mind: momentary mind of ignorance and dharma-nature yinian xin jiju sanqian fa. See mind: momentary mind as entailing three thousand dharmas Yinshun, 3, 60, 67, 94, 95, 106, 225 yiqie famen zhiti. See True Mind: as the stuff of all dharmas yisheng jiujing, see one-vehicle theory yixin ermen. See one Mind opening two gates yixin kai ermen. See one Mind opening two gates yiyi fa. See dharmas: significance dharmas yiyou de cunzai. See matter: as alreadyexisting existence Yogācāra (also see Separation Theory: Beginning), 2, 3, 32, 69, 78, 92, 104, 105–115, 135, 189, 192, 219–222, 244; seed theory of enlightenment, see seeds yong xunxi. See perfuming: by True Mind or True Thusness youhuan yishi. See concern consciousness You Huizhen, 19, 119, 163, 167, 170, 211, 213 yuanchu de dongjian. See Tiantai: original insight of yuanduan. See cutting off: perfect Yuan dynasty, 192 yuanjiao. See Perfect Theory yuanliao. See buddha-nature: as conditioning and completing causes yuanman wujin. See dharma body: as perfectly full and inexhaustible yuanrong wu’ai. See dharma body: as perfectly integrated without barriers yuanshan. See summum bonum Yuanshan lun. See Treatise on the Summum Bonum

zao. See mind: fabrication by zerun. See moral creation: nourishing by Zhang Binglin, 2, 30, 31, 32, 69 Zhang Dongsun, 51 Zhang Hengqu, 158, 194 Zhang Junmai (Carsun Chang), 32, 33, 35, 36, 51 in “Science vs. Metaphysics” debate, 32 Zhang Zai. See Zhang Hengqu Zhang Zhidong, 39 Zhanran, 68, 76, 106, 136, 140, 152, 154, 217 Zheng Jiadong, 6, 59–60, 161 zhengtong, 41 zhengyin foxing. See buddha-nature: as main cause zhenru yong xunxi. See perfuming: by True Mind or True Thusness zhenru zitixiang xunxi. See perfuming: by True Mind or True Thusness zhexueshi. See history of philosophy zhi de zhijue. See intellectual intuition Zhi de zhijue yu Zhongguo zhexue. See Intellectual Intuition and Chinese Philosophy zhi fu bu duan or zhi fu bu po. See ignorance: as merely suppressed and not destroyed Zhiguan fuxing chuanhong jue, 136 zhiju (also see entailment; mind: momentary mind of ignorance and dharma-nature; paradoxical identity), 144, 150–151 Zhili, 68, 129, 131, 136, 152–154, 170, 250 Zhina neixue yuan. See China Metaphysical Institute zhixing See understanding; zhixing ji se, see matter: non-duality with mind zhixing heyi. See unity of knowledge and action Zhiyan, 129 Zhiyi, 14, 48, 60, 62, 67, 68, 70–71, 73, 75, 78, 84, 92–94, 99, 100, 103–104, 110, 113–114, 128, 130, 136–139, 141, 143–147, 151, 152, 167, 169–170, 173, 180, 184, 211–214, 217, 226, 244, 250 zhongdao kong. See emptiness: from perspective of the Middle Way zhongdao shixiang li, 137, 142, 169

index Zhongguan lun. See Middle Verses Zhongguo guojia shehui dang. See Mou Zongsan: in Chinese National Social Party Zhongguo zhexue de tezhi, see Specialness of Chinese Philosophy Zhongguo zhexue shijiu jiang. See Nineteen Lectures on Chinese Philosophy zhongjiao, 130 Zhonglun. See Middle Verses zhongxing. See gotra Zhou Dunyi. See Zhou Lianxi Zhou Lianxi, 158 Zhuanshi lun, 115

279

Zhuangzi, 45, 48, 168 Zhu Xi, 158–159, 192–196, 206; “deviant teaching” (qichu zhi jiao) of, 192–193 zhuzi, 41 Ziporyn, Brook, 11, 95,104, 136, 151, 154, 170 ziqiang. See self-strengthening movement ziwo kanxian. See self-abnegation zixing. See emptiness: and self-nature zixing nengsheng wanfa. See nature: as able to give rise to all dharmas zongguan. See vertical dimension Zongmi, 155