Wen Guangxi, "What Is to Be Done?"

⚠  Awaiting Peer Review  ⚠ This English translation is complete but has not yet undergone review by a language specialist.

Wen Guangxi (溫光熹) (1948), 〈做什麼？〉 [What Is to Be Done?], 《覺有情》 9.5: 2–7; & 9.6: 4–7. Reprinted: 《民國佛教期刊文獻集成》 89: 402–407; & 428–431.

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What Is to Be Done?

Wen Guangxi (溫光熹)

Table of Contents
A. "A Boatful of Mountain Shadows Sails Down to Yangzhou"
B. What Is It?
C. What Is to Be Done?

Foreword

I am deeply grateful to the lay Buddhist Chen Wuwo (陳无我) for kindly presenting me with several photographs of Master Hongyi (弘一大師) and some of his elegant calligraphy. Touched by such sincere and heartfelt goodwill, I felt that life truly has its different planes of attainment: in this benighted, tumultuous, and chaotic world, there really is still someone as cool and pure, as innocent and unaffected, as he!

For this reason, I have written this piece, as a way of thanking him.

Six or seven years ago, while spending the summer at Zhaojue Monastery (昭覺寺) in Chengdu (成都), I wrote a book to inspire faith in Avalokiteśvara for the monastery, as a way of repaying the generous hospitality shown to me over a month or two by the abbot Dinghui (定慧和尚) and the prior Hanxing (憨行監院) — looking back on it now, it strikes me as sorely dated. After that, I threw myself into military affairs, and, tied down day and night by matters of strategy and arms, I had long since stopped writing on Buddhist subjects. When I was at the Chongqing Buddhist Society (重慶佛學社), many old friends would repeatedly ask me, "Why have you not carried on these past years with the work of propagating the Dharma that you pursued for twenty years?" I felt deeply ashamed and had no answer to give. In truth, on reflecting on myself, I found myself sorely lacking: though I had written for twenty years, I could never shake off a base motive of seeking personal reputation, and I myself had not yet worked out clearly what it was I had to tell others.

Over these past six or seven years, the concepts of real-life social and political practice and the objective truths I have gained — "social being determines social consciousness" (Karl (卡爾): A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy) — have brought about a great "sudden transformation" in my thinking; and once this was reflected back onto my own Buddhist consciousness, it inevitably came to differ greatly from what it had been before. I do not mean, here, to sound off like some pulpit preacher blowing the Dharma-conch with deliberate intent; I am only setting down a little of my own view — perhaps it is no more than my own bias.

A. "A Boatful of Mountain Shadows Sails Down to Yangzhou"

"When autumn comes, there's no cure for wistful gloom;
I steal some ease from camp life for a little outing;
Clouds clear, sun glints, the waves stretch out and fade;
A boatful of mountain shadows sails down to Yangzhou."

This is a bit of doggerel verse I wrote in 1946, after being demobilized to Nanjing (南京), on a trip to Yangzhou (揚州).

In Chongqing, the hardships we endured were beyond what anyone could imagine; from morning to night it was meetings, receiving visitors, handling official business, until I had turned myself into something like a machine. It was only with great difficulty that, once the War of Resistance was finally won, I got the chance to go south again, to a region I had been away from for sixteen years. My plane landed in Nanjing, and the very next day I was summoned to the Ministry of National Defense (國防部) for an audience with Chairman Chiang (蔣主席); I also paid a call on Marshal Yun (芸帥), and met with various other people; and from then on I settled down in old, gloomy Nanjing.

I had been working in the Military Affairs Commission (軍事委員會), and I was transferred to the capital along with its demobilization and reorganization. The government, at least, treated me generously. When I first arrived in the capital my duties were light and few, so I found myself with some leisure time. Two young friends moved me deeply in that period. One was my young brother-friend Minyi (敏益), who, the moment he saw me arrive at the office, leapt up with a cry of delight, hurried forward to shake my hand, and made me the deepest of bows. The other was Fengwu (鳳舞), who often accompanied me on outings to see the scenery. This kind of sincere, guileless friendship is one I shall always treasure in memory. Minyi was busy with official duties and could not often come out with me. Fengwu, having made up his mind to leave the service, found himself with plenty of free time; and so we went together to view the red leaves at Qixia Mountain (棲霞山) and to pay our respects to a wise teacher at Yangzhou. I am by nature fond of ease and simplicity, and his temperament was the same as mine; he would carry my few belongings and follow along wherever I casually wandered. Sometimes we would also go to Shanghai (上海) to see friends, sometimes traveling first class, sometimes third class; all the while the light on the hills shone on the two of us, free of care, and we felt very much at ease.

The stretch of the journey where we boarded a boat at Zhenjiang (鎮江) and sailed to Yangzhou was truly like scenery out of a painting, a life out of a poem, in the manner of a wandering ascetic monk on pilgrimage.

It was a light, clear autumn. The sound of the water rippled on; far off, the light of the sky wrapped around white clouds. The boat moved quietly along the river. We had never been to Yangzhou before; it was only because we had long cherished, from works of literature, the memory of her past cultural relics, the beauty of her scenery, and the fame of Slender West Lake (瘦西湖) that we finally went there.

Chatting idly on the boat, Fengwu took out his fountain pen and said with a laugh, "Write a poem to mark the occasion!"

And so I wrote the doggerel verse given above.

"No one would ever have guessed you'd turn out like this — now one thing, now another. The curve of your life is a strange one indeed: a man who studies the Buddha-Dharma, who chants the Buddha's name, who sits in Chan meditation — and who has now gone and become a soldier as well." Fengwu laughed, leaning against the rail of the boat.

"Naturally — it's a long story to tell. People all seem to think I am someone infatuated with wealth and rank, greedy for office; but if you really knew the workings of my karma — that I have a home as dark as hell itself, one no one could ever guess at, and that I have lived through these years of sudden upheaval in society and human affairs — then you would understand that I had no choice in the matter. I have a bellyful of tears with nowhere to shed them." This was how I answered him.

The sound of the water rang out in the clear, open air; on either side, the slender silhouettes of the distant hills receded behind us. What a still and beautiful autumn day it was, and just at noon.

I went on telling him of everything I had been through; Fengwu was someone who understood me and felt for me. Not long after the War of Resistance began, I went from Chengdu to Chongqing, and at first I was taken in by someone and ended up as a mere "guest player" in a shabby little outfit no better than a village earth-god shrine, which let me experience firsthand just how corrupt society was and how treacherous the human heart could be. Fortunately, before long I got free of that life and formally entered government service; when I first joined the Military Affairs Commission I was ranked a colonel, and was later promoted to major general. Many people mistakenly took me for

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someone who worshiped power (since, after all, half of those in power were old friends of mine), but I paid them no mind. I lived in a small room at the sutra circulation office of the Chang'an Monastery Buddhist Society (長安寺佛學社佛經流通處). Once, Mr. Zhou Yawei (周亞衛), the director of the General Office of the Military Affairs Commission, came to my room, and, seeing how plainly everything was kept, suspected that I must be some monk who had returned to lay life.

"Just look at you — how on earth do you look like an army officer?" he said, laughing. "Major General Wen here is a monk who's gone back to secular life!" Mr. Zhou said this with exaggerated emphasis and burst out laughing. I laughed along with him.

Fengwu and I went on chatting idly this way and that while watching the hills, and before we knew it, we had arrived at a desolate little village somewhere near Yangzhou, so we went ashore.

A stretch of autumn embankment, a sparse and verdant grove, a few thatched huts — this was a short, secluded mountain lane where few people ever set foot. When we arrived there we saw, on the far bank, a great monastery, its mountain gate and groves of trees reflected upside-down in the water, and over the jade-green surface of the river came the crisp calls of a few birds. It was nearly afternoon, and the sight of a row of sparse trees suddenly brought to mind a line by Wang Yuyang (王漁洋): "Just as when the sun slants low and the wind stills, half the river's red-leaved trees are alive with the selling of perch." Only here, there was no one selling fish.

A ferry boat was moored at the riverside, and we crossed over in it. Once ashore, we came to a great old monastery, its mountain gate quietly shut. After Fengwu explained our purpose to a monk standing by the gate, he very politely showed us in.

In the guest hall we met several monastic officers, all of whom received us most courteously. Though their robes were, one and all, worn and patched, and they looked ascetic and plain, I felt that each of them was full of a kind of moral and personal artistry — a sincere, kindly bearing and an old-world quality not to be found anywhere among the motorcar-and-mansion classes of the city.

After a moment, one of the monastic officers came and said, "The Venerable Old Monk will see you." We followed him. He said to us gravely, in a low voice, "It is no small thing that the two of you should be granted an audience with the Old Monk the moment you arrive. He does not see visitors casually and never engages in worldly social calls; whatever important personage, wealthy patron, or great lay Buddhist may come, he mostly declines to see them — unless it is someone truly engaged in cultivating the Way. It is because he heard that you have come from afar, and are not of the fame-seeking literary set, but have truly come to study the Way for the sake of birth and death, that he has agreed to see you."

We threaded our way through many rooms, everyone moving with the utmost reverence and gravity, treading softly step by step.

We came to a room where the light was very dim, with a heavy curtain of padded blue cloth hanging down. He lifted it gently and carefully to let us pass through, then let it fall slowly and carefully back into place.

It was a small room, with chairs set along either side and a heavy meditation platform in the middle. There were glass windows on both sides, letting in a cool, clear light from the sky.

A heavyset old monk, massive and weighty as a mountain. His clothes were shabby, his feet bare, wearing a pair of straw sandals bound with ragged cloth strips. His hair was black and glossy, but his beard was silver-white. His full, round face bore few wrinkles; his ears were large, his eyebrows long, and his eyes half-closed, so that they looked somewhat small. His black hair hung down over both shoulders. When he spoke, his voice was deep and heavy, neither hurried nor slow, with its own rhythm and cadence, and he spoke in a Hubei accent — it turned out he came from the same home region as Fengwu.

At the sight of this ancient, sincere, upright, kindly, and solemn figure of the old school, we could not help but feel our mood turn quite grave; it was no longer the carefree mood of sightseers among hills and rivers we had had a moment before. We at once bowed slowly and deeply.

"The two of you have come from afar — is there some instruction you wish to offer this monastery?" The Old Monk sat us down, and this was his very first remark.

"We would not presume so. We have come, out of admiration for you, venerable master, to seek the Way," I answered him at once.

Knowing that we had not come merely for social formality, he dispensed with further pleasantries, and Fengwu and I proceeded to ask him about certain points of Buddhist doctrine.

The Old Monk spoke to us in great detail, for over an hour. Fengwu practiced nianfo (chanting the Buddha's name), and the Old Monk's answers to him were very much in favor of that practice. When I asked about the Chan lineage — which was, after all, the Old Monk's own tradition and the house style of his monastery — he gave a forthright discourse, speaking from the standpoint of Chan: that naturally only the path of self-power was supreme, that there was no need to seek intellectual understanding of the patriarchs' kōans, and that the emphasis should be on practice, on holding fast to one's huatou, and similar teachings.

Fearing we were troubling him too much, we took our leave.

"Tonight you may come sit a stick of incense in the meditation hall, and look into it for yourselves in practice." The Old Monk rose to his feet and, with great earnestness, pronounced each word in his heavy voice.

Hearing further that we would not be staying long and were to leave the next day, he added, "Stay a few more days. Whatever business you have out there has nothing to do with your true self; only by staying here, one day at a time, will you gain something of real benefit."

We could not put into words just how moved we were, at that moment, by the old man's earnest and compassionate exhortation.

We withdrew to rest in a bedroom above the guest hall, a building erected over a large pond. The building was very ornate, with its beams, pillars, and window-railings all carved and gilded with floral patterns; the pond was large, with rockery and trees. We were told it had been built by a great lay Buddhist patron from Shanghai as an offering to the Old Monk, but that he had thought it far too extravagant, and since its completion had never once come to it — had not even come to look at it — and still lived in his own worn-down little room. He had not stepped outside the monastery gate in over ten years, and would not go no matter who invited him. Many disciples sent him clothing and food, but he accepted none of it, turning it all over to the storehouse for the use of the community. Year-round he wore his own old robes, patched over with countless mends, and ate the same plain fare as everyone else. Only in sitting meditation was he extremely exacting: he never once let anyone sit a stick of incense in his place, and would go around checking on everyone one by one and giving instruction. By our reckoning, he allowed himself little more than an hour's rest and sleep each day.

That evening, after we had eaten, we rested in the guest hall. Dusk had already deepened into pitch-black night. A single oil lamp's murky yellow light still could not break through the surrounding darkness. Even as we talked on, the stillness of the old monastery only grew heavier together with the night.

A burst of the wooden clapper rang out, clear and cold.

"Which two of you are the ones in military uniform?" a monk called in from outside.

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He came in carrying a candle. "The Old Monk has just given instructions that you two are also to come to the meditation hall. But you must change out of your uniforms, so as not to disturb everyone's eyes and unsettle their minds." As he spoke, he called for the guest-prefect to bring out two monastic robes and two pairs of monastic straw sandals for us to change into, telling us all this most solicitously.

I am ashamed to say that at the time I still felt some resistance in my heart: "Why insist on such rigid formality over mere outward appearance? Isn't this being too attached to form?" As it happened, we had both come out wearing our military uniforms, only with the collar insignia removed, simply to spare ourselves the trouble of having troops everywhere salute us on sight. And so, here, we found ourselves disguised as monks instead.

It was pitch-dark night, with a single candle-flame lighting the way ahead. Outside, the wooden clapper sounded ever more urgently; dark shadowy figures moved everywhere, some running out carrying wooden boards, others shouting, "Quick, quick!" At this point I was rather at a loss as to what was going on; Fengwu, worried that my nearsightedness would keep me from seeing the path and make me stumble, hurried me along, and we had no choice but to move quickly. Our long sleeves swept about us, and there seemed to be a faint chill in the air.

We turned through several corridors and doorways and came to a great, densely dark hall. In the middle stood a Buddha shrine, before it a single long stick of incense, and a dim Buddha-lamp that gave little light. People stood all around. A bell sounded outside as well. We followed the assembly, running in circles around the shrine, in great tension. Behind us people shouted wildly, "Quick, quick!" — and it sounded as if many people were being struck, boards clattering; if one fell even a step behind, the person following would trample one's very shoes off one's feet. Our blood raced and our pulses quickened. Yet we had no choice but to keep moving.

We ran on for a while. Then came the heavy crack of a board, and at once everything fell into a deathly stillness — everyone stopped in place, unmoving. One person after another received a blow across the back; a sharp "crack" startled me when it struck my own body, though it did not actually hurt. It turned out the Old Monk himself was carrying the large board, walking along with his slow, heavy tread and striking each person in turn.

Once the striking was finished, he told the assembly to sit down, and everyone did. All around were meditation cushions, but not enough for everyone, so some sat directly on the floor. There was one large seat right at the center, facing the back of the hall, which was the Old Monk's own place; he directed us to sit beside him. After we had sat a while, the Old Monk rose and paced slowly back and forth around the shrine with his heavy tread, giving instruction to the assembly as he walked.

"Do you know what good there is in human life? Dog dung, foul as it is, still has its uses — it can even be sold for money. But a human being, once dead, rots and stinks unbearably; what use is that? Not even as good as dog dung! And yet, before death, a person is far more useful than dog dung. Why is that? Because he can walk, can speak, can eat, can act, and can also learn to recite the Buddha's name. A person's good points are far too many to count: he can put an end to birth and death, can study to become a Buddha, can stand as a hero between heaven and earth, can aspire to sagehood and worthiness. But then — what is it that produces all this function? Is it the body? Haven't we just said that once dead, the body rots away, worse than dog dung? Is it the mind? Once dead, where does the mind go? You must know, you must understand: who is this? You must inquire into who it is that recites the Buddha's name. Everyone, look carefully into this: who, in the end, is this one capable of such action, capable of becoming a sage, a worthy, a Buddha, this one reciting the Buddha's name?"

The Old Monk went on speaking without pause, and then cried out loudly: "Who — is — it? Who — in the end — is it?"

At that moment, I do not know quite how, but for an instant I forgot everything. If I were to exaggerate a little, I might say that all conditioned attachments fell away.

Yet I set great store by this momentary state, this still and beautiful mode of being.

When I was in my teens and twenties, the death of my step-grandmother, to whom I owed such deep and toilsome gratitude, was a great shock to me, and I began reading Buddhist texts. From then on I studied Yogācāra doctrine, the teachings of the Prajñā and Vaipulya sūtras, and the doctrines of both the Mahāyāna and Hīnayāna; I also practiced reciting the Buddha's name, and wrote a good many books on Buddhist teachings. Later, inspired by Mr. Shu Cifan (舒次范), I also took up the Chan lineage, reading a great many recorded sayings and kōans of the school, and spent close to ten years in painful, dogged inquiry, to the point of abandoning all worldly affairs and sacrificing family, fame, and fortune. In the end, my faculties proved too dull; in the end, though I called upon many teachers of renown throughout the land, I never once managed to gain clarity — and I can honestly say I had never before experienced even a moment's true benefit such as this.

It suddenly dawned on me, there, that this was the "gate of practice" (行門) — who, after all, says that Chan does not require practice?

A moment later the board sounded again, and everyone stirred and began to move once more. After circling a while longer, we filed out one by one.

That night, we slept very soundly.

At daybreak, because our worldly cravings still weighed on us — we wanted to go sightsee the famous spots of Yangzhou, and had to catch the night train to Shanghai — we left, even though the Old Monk urged us to stay. For fear of troubling the old man further, we did not go in again to take our leave; we ate the morning gruel, and the guest-prefect saw us out through the monastery gate.

Outside the gate, the boat lay quietly moored at the bank. A gust of clear autumn air brushed against our sleeves.

It felt as though we had set down a hundred-and-fifty-catty burden there; body and mind both felt much lighter and more at ease.

I hold this rational trial of truth in the very highest regard, and have found it of real use.

Later I received a letter from the Old Monk, in which he kindly, out of compassion, invited me to come stay again for a time and devote myself wholly to the inquiry; fearing also that I might lack the means, he added that I could stay at the monastery long-term without paying for my meals.

Ever since then, held in his compassionate embrace, I have often found, in the midst of silent sitting, that his mountain-heavy body, his black hair hanging over both shoulders, his narrow eyes, his round white-bearded face … rise up before me.

Because the Old Monk once wrote to tell me that what he fears most is the trouble of worldly social engagement, I beg the reader's indulgence that I cannot set down his Dharma-name here. This patriarch has no need of a name; still less is he some sort of external, proselytizing missionary — and yet, among those genuine adepts with the eye to see, his name has long resounded like thunder — he has no need of us mere outsiders to sing his praises. I can only sketch his outline here.

It is here that I have come to a synthesis, a confluence of the Buddha-Dharma with the scientific philosophies of dialectical materialism and historical materialism, together with the laws of society and the principles of politics. Some may object that this is a monstrous mismatch of categories; let them think what they will — I can only answer as follows: according to one of the three great laws of materialist dialectics, the accumulation of quantity will bring about a sudden transformation in quality. This is the reason my present understanding of the Buddha-Dharma differs so greatly from the views expressed in my earlier writings.

B. What Is It?

I am very much astonished that a good many people, without ever having studied the "New Philosophy" at all, should nevertheless go about criticizing it — even using the Buddha-Dharma to refute it. We know that truth is at once relative and absolute, so it will not do to say that such people are simply wrong across the board. And yet their own understanding of the Buddha-Dharma is likewise inadequate; on that basis, to go discussing the Dharma is a grave error. What is more, we have seen that the materialism such people set out to refute is in fact

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only naïve or "vulgar" materialism, and yet they imagine they have thereby overthrown dialectical materialism itself. This is, at the very least, a case of answering a question no one asked.

In truth, once the Buddha-Dharma is truly understood, it not only does not conflict with dialectical materialism, but the two can actually "bring out the best in one another." We have seen Master Ouyang Jingwu's (歐陽竟無) preface to the Great Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra, where he writes, with brilliant insight, that Prajñā is a discourse on function. Once one grasps this point, one understands the marvel of the saying, "Reach out casually and open the inexhaustible treasury — every brick and tile turns out to be a rare jewel." If one truly understands what the Buddha-Dharma is for, then, once its spirit of great compassion, great vows, great heroism, and great power is joined together with dialectical materialism, one may gain a great many objective truths and real benefits for practical life, which, when applied to the political struggle of revolution, will shine with an even greater brilliance. Jianwen (鑑聞) had his doubts about this point as well; I discussed it with him last year, and he now understands it even better than I do.

We ought to understand that the movement from naïve materialism to idealism represents one historical law of negation, and that it is only by way of idealism that one arrives at modern [dialectical] materialism. The very essence of the doctrine has thus evolved along with history; the old naïve materialism was long ago selected against by the times and superseded. This is not the place for a specialized treatise, and there is no room here to go into detail; suffice it to point out, simply, the following basic feature: modern materialism, too, is concerned with function — its center of gravity lies in function. "The world develops according to the laws of the motion of matter, and has no need of any 'world spirit'" (in the words of Stalin (史大林)). As for this latter statement, anyone who has ever studied the Buddha-Dharma — such as the Buddha's refutation of the theistic doctrines of the non-Buddhist schools — will find nothing at all strange in it. As for the former statement, that is the very reason the whole of materialist philosophy came into being. As Engels (恩格斯) once put it:

"The materialist outlook on the world means nothing more than understanding nature just as it is in itself, without adding anything imported from outside." (Marx and Engels, Complete Works [Chinese edition], vol. 14, p. 651.)

To understand this fully, one would need to study the five basic forms of the material relations of production that human society has passed through since its origin (that is, from primitive communism through to socialism), together with prehistoric anthropology, human evolution, and the geological evidence for ancient human remains. This has long since been set out in the major works on the subject. Why do we say that its center of gravity lies in function? Consider, for instance, Ilyich's [i.e., Lenin's] remark: "Dialectics, in its proper sense, is the study of the contradiction within the very essence of the object itself" (Lenin, Philosophical Notebooks, p. 263). This can then be applied to the general laws of social evolution and history — such as the emergence of classes, or the irreconcilable contradictions internal to society that give rise to revolution, and so forth — which not only explain the laws by which history arises, develops, and passes away, but can also arm our knowledge for struggle and strengthen the work of human progress, driving it toward a rational social system. That is to say, they call upon us to seek progress without cease. If we understand that there is no isolated phenomenon in the world,

Viewing the Peach Blossoms at Longhua Temple in Shanghai with Cuidi, on the Qingming Festival of the Wuzi Year, 1948 Wen Guangxi To turn heaven and earth upside down is no small task — a true man yields to no one in this. Despair is no way to make revolution; nourishing one's vital energy is itself a springtime outing. Heaven and earth can hardly forget me; it is streams and hills that move me most. Now that I have met with [the kōan of] Lingyun, I feel ever closer, after all, to the old patriarchs. (Lingyun refers to the kōan of seeing peach blossoms [and attaining awakening]. Just at this time I had received the recorded sayings of the Venerable Chan Master Lai; the book had been printed by a certain monastery nine years before, and the old master, keeping it secret from the world, had specially sent me a copy.)

all historical phenomena are never isolated from one another, but are mutually connected, mutually conditioning, and in mutual motion. It follows, then, quite plainly, that one ought not to take up the standpoint of "eternal justice" or some other such preconceived notion — as historians so often do — but rather the standpoint of the conditions that gave rise to this particular system, this particular social movement, and to which it remains bound. This — how could it possibly conflict with the Buddha-Dharma's teaching of the universal manifestation of Avalokiteśvara (普門示現) and its principle of teaching according to the capacities of the audience (應機設教)? The Buddha never taught any single fixed doctrine for people to cling to; he only wished for people to seek progress without cease. Hence the Prajñā and Madhyamaka teachings, as well as the Yogācāra doctrine, all contain the theory of dependent origination (緣起), which explains that there is no isolated phenomenon in the world ("mind does not arise in isolation; phenomena are sustained by conditions"). Here, let me set out the basic features of this theory:

▲ On dialectical materialism.

"Dialectics derives from the Greek word dialego, meaning to carry on a conversation, to engage in debate. (Buddhist logic [因明] serves a similar purpose, which is why we so often find logical, argumentative structures in works such as the Abhidharmakośa and Yogācāra treatises and their commentaries. — Wen) The ancients understood dialectics as the art of arriving at truth by exposing the contradictions in an opponent's argument and overcoming those contradictions. Some ancient philosophers held that the exposure of contradictions in thought, and the clash of opposing views, was the best method for discovering truth. This dialectical mode of thought was later extended to phenomena in nature, viewed as being in eternal motion and eternal change, so that the development of nature came to be seen as the result of the development of various contradictions within nature, the result of the mutual influence of opposing forces within nature." (Stalin, "On Dialectical and Historical Materialism," in Problems of Leninism, Chinese edition trans. Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute, Moscow, 1914 [sic], p. 604.)

▲ On historical materialism.

"Historical materialism is simply the extension of the principles of dialectical materialism to the study of social life; it is the application of the principles of dialectical materialism to the phenomena of social life, to the study of society, to the study of social history." (Ibid., p. 607.) (For these two basic features, the reader is best advised to consult the full text of Stalin's work, pp. 607–637.)

If we understand that the Bodhisattva's training is to be sought within the Five Sciences, then we need not harbor any doubts about dialectics or the philosophy of historical materialism.

However, generally speaking, what confuses many people is that they constantly conflate Buddhist terminology with the terminology of materialism. For instance: what does "first principle" (第一義) mean within the Buddha-Dharma? It means the ultimate or final truth (as frequently seen in texts such as the Vimalakīrti Sūtra and the Sūtra Explaining the Profound Secrets). What does "first principle" mean in materialist philosophy? It means that which comes first in time (as in the works of Marx and Engels). To say that matter is of the "first principle" and spirit of the "second" is to speak of temporal priority, not of superiority or inferiority (nor is it a matter of ultimacy versus non-ultimacy). Hence it is said that matter is primary, and spirit is derivative,

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secondary. Why must one insist on speaking this way? Because it has already been demonstrated by every law of historiography, geology, and the evolution of the human species. Marx himself, moreover, once said that derivative phenomena such as spirit and will — abstract thought — are the highest products of the matter of the brain; he never once denied spirit, and indeed acknowledged spirit as an advance in the evolution of matter. Yet some Buddhist scholars take this to mean an erasure of the "first principle" mind-dharma. In fact, it is simply that neither side has clearly sorted out just whose terminology belongs to whom.

In the same way, those who generally speak of materialist philosophy also frequently mistake the "mind" of the Buddha-Dharma for Western idealism — quite unaware that the "mind-only" (唯心) of the Buddha-Dharma is by no means idealism, still less a religion; it is a mind that encompasses both idealism and materialism. We ought to know that the Buddha taught no single fixed doctrine — whatever cures the illness is good medicine — as can be seen everywhere throughout the sūtras. Moreover, Buddhist teaching is chiefly oriented toward a view of human life, with its emphasis on countering mental afflictions, prescribing whichever teaching suits whichever state of mind. Hence, whether the discourse turns on mind or on matter, it is always a matter of teaching suited to the occasion, never a fixed doctrine or an interpretation of objective truth as such. That is why, for our present purposes of working against the afflictions and attachments of the mind, Buddhist learning is useful; there is no need whatsoever to insist on venerating it as a religion, still less to force it forward into some revolutionary doctrine — for to strain and force such analogies would only do harm to the true nature of Buddhist learning. Take, for example, the claim that a fully scientific view was already discovered long ago: the kōan of "the wind moves, the boat moves," as refuted by the contemporary writer Ai Siqi (艾思奇) in his Popular Philosophy, chapter 3, section 12, p. 97 — this is, in fact, a garbled version of the kōan from the Platform Sūtra of the Sixth Patriarch concerning the wind and the banner, and whether it is the wind, the banner, or the mind of "the venerable one" that moves — but the original book Ai cites mistakenly turns it into two monks arguing by a riverbank and then going to ask Śākyamuni Buddha about it. This story was, in its original context, a piece of Buddhist teaching suited to the occasion (its purpose being to keep the mind from turning outward), but Mr. Ai mistakenly treats it as a discussion of science, and so ends up attacking the Buddha-Dharma on that basis as well; in truth, it is Mr. Ai who has misunderstood.

There is no need to belabor the point further here; put simply, the "mind-only" spoken of in the Buddha-Dharma is the unifying baseline that integrates both mind and matter, and it carries a great purpose all its own. To put it more concretely: suppose someone is in the grip of suffering, and you wish to counsel him to take a broader view of things, on the grounds that everything arises from the mind — this may well ease his suffering somewhat; but if instead you describe the external cause of his suffering as utterly real and solid, his suffering will never come to an end. Or suppose someone indulges in empty fantasy — like Don Quixote — you should tell him that objective conditions matter, and that he must not indulge merely in the idealism of "schematism"; this, too, can help him make progress. The former is the use of idealism, the latter the use of materialism. In the same way, to lean too heavily on the former easily turns into idealism proper, while to incline too far toward the latter easily degenerates into a mechanical fatalism — neither is good. To know only the mechanical, material side of life while neglecting spirit and will is vulgar, naïve materialism; to know only thought while neglecting reality is religious idealism. If we are to wage this two-front struggle and forge a philosophy of armed revolution suited to the opportunity of the age, the two must be combined in proper measure — and it is precisely in this space between them that the Buddha-Dharma has been named "mind-only," which is to say, falls within the category of a "new materialism." This, it seems to me, is something we ought to see clearly. All the recent debates for and against Buddhism have stemmed from a failure to grasp precisely this crucial point of convergence and divergence. And if it be said that this account of ours distorts or vulgarizes the Buddha-Dharma, then, without further ado, a single verse from the Thirty Verses on Consciousness-Only offers an eloquent reply:

"Before one has realized that objects are mind-only, all manner of discriminations arise — (this is idealism)

Once one has realized that mind is itself objects, discrimination, too, ceases to arise." — (this is materialism)

Just in this, we can arrive at the following conclusion: Western idealism corresponds, within Yogācāra doctrine, only to the sixth consciousness (mano-vijñāna) (at most reaching the perceiving aspect of the seventh consciousness), while materialism corresponds to the first five sense-consciousnesses. The "mind" spoken of in the Buddha-Dharma is the eighth consciousness, the ālayavijñāna or "store-consciousness," which contains within it every realm of sentient and insentient existence, and which is the very root of the first seven consciousnesses; once the consciousnesses are transformed into wisdom, it becomes the perfect and marvelous mind. All this is plain to anyone who so much as glances at the Buddha-Dharma's Yogācāra treatises. And so, at present, some materialist philosophers, the moment they hear the phrase "the Three Realms are mind-only" (三界唯心), take it straightaway for Western idealism or an unknowable religious consciousness, and attack it on that basis; while Buddhist scholars, the moment they hear of materialist philosophy, assume it to be utterly incompatible with the Buddha-Dharma, and go so far as to assert the primacy of spirit and will, leaning toward abstract thought — even proclaiming the omnipotence of religion (which amounts to placing themselves on the same footing as Christianity and the like. In fact, the Buddha long ago refuted the religions of the non-Buddhist schools, as in the various sects enumerated in the Cycle of the Formation of the Schismatic Doctrines, which are extensively refuted in such treatises as the Yogācārabhūmi and the Vijñaptimātratāsiddhi [Cheng Weishi Lun]). Once this point is understood, we may recognize that the Buddha-Dharma is not only not out of step with the times, but is in fact a great and most progressive system of doctrine in full accord with the laws of historical evolution, one that fully incorporates the materialist dialectic and the materialist conception of history; though it is not itself the creator of science, it fully accords with science. Its function is this: it can enrich human life and endow it with the highest products of the matter of the brain — that is, abstract thought, will, and spirit. It is not superstition, and it is not a religion; and, seen from the standpoint of its universal embrace, the "four modes of birth and nine abodes of sentient beings," the beings of the whole Dharma-realm, are all objects of its salvific compassion. From texts such as the Sūtra for Humane Kings Who Wish to Protect Their States and the Treatise on the Correct Principles of Kingship, one can see, moreover, that it stands as an extremely democratic, combative, revolutionary theory on the side of the proletarian class. It is especially sympathetic toward the suffering classes; it is an extremely rational form of socialist thought.

It is a pity that this teaching has so often been twisted by certain people into a mysterious religion, even taking on some of the superstitious, theocratic habits of thought of feudal dynasties, to the point where it has come to be mistaken for a product of the leisured classes — the aristocracy or the petty urban property-owners. This causes people to forget that it is, in truth, a democratic political philosophy for the broad masses of the people. To give a small example: Ilyich [Lenin] held that "he who does not work shall not eat," which social scientists regard as a hallmark of the highest truth — yet Baizhang (百丈) had already put into practice, long before, the principle that "a day without work is a day without food." Some mistakenly believe that the Buddha-Dharma serves as an instrument of religious propaganda for feudal dynasties and the bourgeoisie; in fact, the Buddha did not preach the doctrine of karmic retribution to the proletariat alone — unlike, say, the early-nineteenth-century English clergyman Malthus and those like him, who held that the parasites who thrived under the system of exploitation were all Heaven's "invited guests at the feast," while everyone else deserved to suffer (see A. Leontiev, Lectures on Political Economy, Zhang Zhongshi's Chinese translation, p. 301); or the Metropolitan Filaret of tsarist Russia, who openly argued that serfdom was sanctioned by holy scripture (Lenin, Selected Works, vol. 10, p. 405). The Buddhist scriptures, by contrast, everywhere warn those who enjoy worldly good fortune that it is impermanent, and that the enjoyment gained through exploitation is a "blessing that brings harm" (惱害福), no different from poisoned sugar; they also say that "it is hard to study the Way amid wealth and rank," and that enjoying the pleasures of the heavenly realms makes one all the more liable to fall. There are far too many such sayings to list. We find that many ancient patriarchs held not only wealth and rank, but even emperors and kings, in no regard whatsoever. Zhaozhou (趙州), for instance, did not rise to receive the King of Zhao when he came to visit, saying only, "Having eaten vegetarian fare since childhood, my body has grown lazy; when people come, I no longer have the strength to get down from my

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meditation seat." Zibo (紫柏) refused the purple robe offered to him by the Empress Dowager, composing a verse that reads: "Ashamed that my poor bones are unfit to wear purple, I give it to a worthier man, whose merit is the greater for it." From ancient times down to the present, there have been very many such truly great masters within the gates of Buddhism; even Śākyamuni himself had no wish to become a crown prince, and willingly went into the mountains to practice austerities, thereby opening up the highest wisdom of humankind — yet how many of his latter-day monastic descendants have no idea that such was ever his way!

Last autumn in Nanjing, the general manager of a certain bank, who also studied the Buddha-Dharma, wrote a book and went about seeking out celebrities to endorse it. One day he came to visit me and asked me for the addresses of such people so that he could send them copies. In the course of our conversation, he happened to mention someone he knew (I no longer recall the name), describing how that person put on airs, how he lived his own life, and yet how, in the books he wrote to exhort others, he could never resist dropping in phrases like "my friend, [some celebrity] —," or having his photograph taken standing beside some eminent master, then showing it about everywhere to demonstrate how extraordinary his own background was. He said to me, "Look how many people in Buddhist circles behave this way today — isn't it pathetic?" I laughed and said, "There is nothing strange in this. It does not diminish the true worth of Buddhism in the slightest; anyone with real discernment sees through it at a glance." I do not say this merely to sound unconcerned; let me tell you: I have seen no small number of genuine lay Buddhists who possess the bearing of the ancient worthies. Does not the austerity of that old monk near Yangzhou, mentioned above — his refusal of fame, his living and studying together with the community — offer ample proof of this? Or take the book I wrote, A Record of the Venerable Elder Shu's Career (舒次老行業記): the amusing episodes it recounts of the Venerable Shu's utter indifference to wealth and power were all things I witnessed with my own eyes.

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There is one more point I might add here — not in order to defend Buddhism (some ten years ago in Chengdu, I spoke up on behalf of Master Changyuan (昌圓法師) and others, and on behalf of the monastic communities of the Sichuan Buddhist Association (四川佛敎會) and their temples, protesting against an injustice — in particular, the case of young nuns in Wenjiang County (溫江縣) who were forcibly compelled to return to lay life by the regional commissioner's office (專署), which caused an uproar as nuns throughout the surrounding countryside suffered vile local abuse; I opposed the commissioner's office over this, and as a result many people in authority took me for something I was not — thus I suffered no small consequences on that account. Even Chairman Lin of the National Government (國府林主席) and Liang Hancao (梁寒操) and others, during the War of Resistance in Chongqing, all took me for a champion of Buddhism, practically a kind of professional litigator on Buddhism's behalf) — in fact, I have done no more than point out, for everyone's own critical judgment, those places where the monastic establishment has distorted and vulgarized the Buddha-Dharma. Take, for example, the fact that many modern scholars have come to suspect that Buddhism is a religion that holds women's personhood, rights, and freedom in contempt — an instrument, arising out of the sinful patriarchal family of the age of feudal lords and carried forward through feudalism, capitalism, and on into imperialist society, for the oppression of women — since one so often finds, in the sūtras, vinaya, and treatises, women reviled as inherently possessed of "seven kinds of leakage" (七漏), and many restrictions placed on women within monastic discipline. This looks like a fact as solid as iron. Even the great Japanese scholar Kuriyagawa Hakuson (廚川白村) has had a good deal to say along these lines in his "Demonic Religion." In fact, however, the Buddha did not single out women for reproach — did he not reprove men in the very same way? It was only in order to suit the occasion of his teaching, and for the sake of "guarding against affliction" (防護煩惱) within the rules of monastic life, that certain doctrines were established that appear especially harsh toward women; some of these were, naturally, inevitably colored by the provocations of their own age, and were further aggravated later on by the monastic establishment's distortion and vulgarization of them.

I once came across a work of world authority — an introductory work on the sociology of socialism — Sociology of Marriage and the Family (結婚和家庭的社會學) by Volfson, dean of the Faculties of Law and Economics at the Belarusian State University in Minsk — known in its Japanese translation as A Materialist View of Love (唯物戀愛觀), a title retained in the Chinese translation by Zhizhi (執之), published by Life Bookstore in 1939 — which, in discussing "Christian sexual morality" and the critiques of women offered by the three great philosophers Kant, Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer, finds them all converging on much the same conclusion: that "woman is the gateway of the devil" (Janua diaboli) — words on the subject of women attributed to Tertullian, as cited in A Materialist View of Love, chapter 2, p. 34. This led me to wonder whether the reviling of women's bodies as possessed of "seven leakages" in the Buddhist sūtras was really the same sort of thing. On reflection, I came to feel it was not the same at all: the one springs from a psychology of loathing, the other from a psychology of compassion; the one is a male authority speaking on behalf of religious privilege, the other is a reproach delivered, suited to the occasion, for the sake of countering affliction, in the manner of a parent's loving rebuke of a child (outwardly the same, but utterly different in substance). If this were not so, I would ask: there are three well-known examples in the Buddhist sūtras concerning women that anyone may examine for themselves:

(1) The Lotus Sūtra: is not the Dragon Princess a woman? She offers up a single jewel and attains buddhahood on the spot. This proves that she had cultivated roots of goodness over many kalpas, such that even an eight-year-old girl could attain buddhahood. How, then, can it be said that women cannot become Buddhas?

(2) The Vimalakīrti Sūtra: the Goddess scatters flowers and expounds the Dharma. The Goddess is herself a great Bodhisattva; someone asks her, "Since you are already a great Bodhisattva, why do you remain in a woman's body? Why not transform into a male body?" She answers, "For twelve years now I have not perceived any 'female form' — from what, then, would I transform?" Why does the Goddess refuse to transform into a male body? (This proves all the more that women, too, can realize the highest wisdom of emptiness within the Buddha-Dharma.)

(3) Among texts addressed to male lay Buddhists there is the Sūtra of Ugra the Householder (郁伽長者經); among those addressed to female lay Buddhists there is the Śrīmālā Sūtra (勝鬘經). Women have Lady Śrīmālā, who brings glory to her sex — is this not equality between men and women?

These three women alone are enough to prove that the Buddha never held women in contempt; on the contrary, he singled out, with great respect, great encouragement, and great honor, three towering figures from among women. Moreover, throughout the sūtras, women's gentleness and compassion are everywhere praised, and within the esoteric (tantric) tradition the supreme excellence of the Buddha-mother of the Lotus family is highly extolled; and in the cultivation of bodhicitta (the aspiration for enlightenment) — as in Master Atiśa's sevenfold instruction on recognizing all beings as one's mother, recollecting their kindness, and so on — it is precisely the figure of the mother, that is, of woman, that serves as the primary object of contemplation. From this it is clear that the reproach of women is nothing more than an expression of compassionate intent, meant to admonish practitioners and safeguard monastic discipline, and cannot be viewed in the way Kuriyagawa Hakuson views the Buddha. (As for the way in which the later monastic establishment exaggerated, distorted, and vulgarized this teaching, that has nothing to do with the Buddha himself.)

These few examples, offered here more or less at random, are enough to prove that I have no wish to plead a case on Buddhism's behalf, nor do I genuinely wish to pander to the fashions of the day by dressing the Buddha up in a Western suit (note well: I have, moreover, repeatedly pointed out in my writings that the contemporary notion of the "Pure Land on Earth" (人間淨土) ought to be treated purely as an expedient suited to the present age, and must on no account be placed within the actual body of Pure Land doctrine proper — since the intent of Pure Land teaching lies in setting aside both mind and object, and its particular marvel lies in taking "other-power" as the object; setting aside the object matters enormously to the practice of transcending birth and death, and to conflate the two would affect the mental disposition required for the practice of nianfo, amounting to a destruction of the Dharma. I have pointed this out repeatedly before now. I am utterly opposed to treating the "Pure Land on Earth" as if it were the doctrine of the Pure Land school itself — which shows that I have no wish to force analogies onto Buddhism out of mere personal design). I am simply speaking with an even mind, pointing things out for everyone to see. In the same way, my own New Materialism (新唯物論), which I wrote on the basis of Yogācāra Buddhist thought, was likewise, for these same reasons, no more than an expedient teaching suited to the occasion.

But let me return to the point, before I stray too far. As stated above, the mind that unifies mind and matter is precisely the "mind" meant by the Buddha-Dharma's teaching that "the Three Realms are mind-only" — this much, at least, is common knowledge we ought to possess. I,

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forgetting my own naivety and my tendency toward easy accommodation, wrote a work called New Materialism last year, precisely as my overall answer to this question. Today, we all constantly proclaim our wish to propagate the Dharma and save the world, to establish a world culture upon the foundation of Buddhist thought, so as to clear the way for society, politics, economics, science, and the rest — and this basic level of understanding is a necessary condition for us. To truly understand it, one must, of course, go on to practice and study it within the fabric of daily life, just as that old monk described. This helps us understand why an ancient worthy once posed the question, "Not mind, not matter — then what is it?" and told people to inquire into it themselves. Once one grasps the point of this teaching, one can say that those who lack a proper understanding of either the Buddha-Dharma or materialist philosophy will say it is not mind, and say it is not matter either; will say it is both mind and matter, and also that it is neither; and will say it is neither mind nor matter, and also that it is not not either.

What is it, then?

This is something that can only be understood, only be known, through a measure of honest, down-to-earth practice. A person who has come to know and understand it need not worry that his life and practice will fail to be that of someone genuinely committed, hard-working, and thoroughly proletarian in his forward-looking outlook.

A patriarch of old once gave this instruction:

"Before enlightenment, one sees mountains as not mountains, and rivers as not rivers; after enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains, and rivers are once again rivers."

We cannot, of course, presume to fathom a Chan turning-phrase through ordinary discursive thought; but, in order to render it into something approaching a philosophy for the masses, we may perhaps venture a popular gloss. This is much like the case of the old worthy who said, "Not a shred of cloud in the blue sky" — to which another eminent master replied, "Not yet there"; after years of painful inquiry, when he went and asked the eminent master again, the answer was still, "Not a shred of cloud in the blue sky" — a rather delightful bit of instruction. And so: to genuinely exhaust one's human effort (so long as one does not cling to it), and honestly to seek practice within the affairs of daily life — this is the Buddha-Dharma. Why does the Buddha-Dharma place such emphasis on "verification" (證)? The Buddha said, "As when a man drinks water, he alone knows whether it is warm or cool." Verification is precisely the practice of living itself. Engels said, "The proof of the pudding is in the eating" — and this is exactly the same principle.

We often hear the saying that "philosophy must have party spirit" (黨性) — why is this? It means that only a philosophy forged through practice, from the standpoint of "changing the world," can be a true philosophy. The most progressive philosophy must necessarily represent the most progressive standpoint of practice (a point for which we can find abundant illustration in the ascetic labors of countless Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, and patriarchs on behalf of propagating the Dharma and benefiting sentient beings); without a progressive standpoint, one can never arrive at progressive truth. This means not denying reality, exhausting human effort, and refusing to indulge in the empty utopianism of talking vaguely of gods and spirits. At the same time, we hold that the study of the law of cause and effect — for the Buddha-Dharma has its own true doctrine of causation: the Mahāyāna's six causes, four conditions, and five effects; the Hīnayāna's ten causes, four conditions, and five effects — must at all costs be kept from degenerating into the kind of preaching indulged in by religious functionaries in the West on behalf of the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie, the teaching of "officially licensed clergy" (as with the example given by the Soviet writer A. Leontiev in his Lectures on Political Economy, chapter 2 — Zhang Zhongshi's Chinese translation, p. 42 — namely, that Heaven, in its supreme wisdom, has arranged for the dead to be succeeded by two different lineages, one destined to be supported by others, the other duty-bound to support them). As is well known, social instability arises from defects in the social system itself; that is to say, only by abolishing the old relations of social production can society's contradictions — poverty, the suffering of labor, slavery, ignorance and brutishness, and the blatant accumulation of plunder, pillage, enslavement, conquest, and every manner of deception, narcotic stupefaction, and moral degradation bound up with this contradiction — be swept away (hence Ilyich [Lenin]'s remark: "To speak, after Marx, of any political economy that is not Marxist is merely to make fools of the citizenry").

The mast of the new age's ship of Buddhism has already risen above the horizon, and everyone ought to applaud its arrival.

If this ship is bound directly for the Western Pure Land, it must first pass through — no, it must necessarily first arrive at — humankind's happy "Kingdom of Freedom." The Larger Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtra (大彌陀經) speaks of three grades and nine ranks [of rebirth], most of which concern practice within the sphere of human ethical and worldly affairs — what is called "in life, entering the realm of benevolence and long life; in death, returning to the land of ultimate bliss." Many patriarchs' blessings for "a peaceful nation and a secure people" express much the same idea. Engels, in Anti-Dühring, speaks of "the leap from the realm of necessity into the realm of freedom," where labor is "no longer a means of enslaving people, but a means of liberating them," and where "productive labor, instead of being a burden, becomes a pleasure."

If we ourselves cannot yet claim to truly know this, then we had best set our own concerns aside and learn instead from the practice of that old monk's life near Yangzhou — for he paid the closest attention to living together in common with the community of those studying the Way, in such things as communal labor and communal meals.

C. What Is to Be Done?

In the Buddhist world today, there is one program we ought to be carrying out, namely this: what is needed is not the great lay patrons and great Dharma masters of the fame-seeking literary set, but rather the honest, down-to-earth application of the Buddha-Dharma's compassion, the Four Means of Attraction, the Six Perfections, and the whole teaching of profound insight (wisdom) and broad practice (the practice of vows) — carried out in an extremely popular, extremely progressive manner, in step with the line of dialectical and historical materialism, directed toward the improvement and reform of the living conditions of the broad masses of the people in society. If we do this, there will be no need to worry that the Buddha-Dharma will fail to flourish; it will, and indeed it must, join the tide of the world's new culture, and accomplish, for the benefit of the great majority, a magnificent and peaceful task in history.

Empty talk is of no use, nor is it enough merely to write a few books. One must learn with an open mind, and put it into practice by joining with real life to reform or improve it.

We know that, if we proceed this way, we will not be misunderstood. Marx said, "Religion is the opium of the people." The Japanese writer Kuriyagawa Hakuson's "The Demonic Religion" ("Divinity of hell!" — Shakespeare, Othello II.iii.362) — translated into Chinese by Liu Dajie (劉大杰) — as well as Ilyich [Lenin] and others, all attack the doctrines of religion. In my own view,

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this has nothing to do with the true Buddha-Dharma. The matter is simple: Master Ouyang, many years ago now, wrote "Buddhism Is Not a Religion" (佛法非宗教), and, quite recently, the lay Buddhist Chen Wuwo kindly gave me a copy of Recorded Lectures of the Old Man of Late Clearing (晚晴老人講演錄), which likewise argues for this same position. And yet there are still those who insist on lumping the propagation of the Dharma together with the preservation of religion as such. If this reflects the attitude of scholars genuinely engaged in study, we need not concern ourselves with it, since the laws of history teach us that human thought develops in reflection of, and in contradiction with, objective conditions — that is, unity within contradiction, and unity that is once again transformed, contradictorily, into something new. But if such people fancy themselves preachers of dogma, fixed and unchanging, arbitrarily pronouncing on everything, then there is nothing to be done but wait for the empty sky itself to nod its head in proof.

Let me add one more point of solemn clarification here: I am ashamed to say that I am neither a Buddhist scholar nor a great lay patron (whatever books I wrote in the past were nothing more than shallow displays), and cannot claim any real learning at all. Still less would I dare to show off my axe at Lu Ban's door and hold forth on lofty Buddhist doctrine here; I am only offering up a smattering of half-understanding, in the hope of receiving others' instruction. What we ought to emphasize, then, is not so much profound doctrine as certain quite ordinary questions concerning the actual conditions of everyday life — that is, how to arrange the Dharma, in a manner suited to the times and to science, so that it may take its place within present-day society.

We neither dare nor wish to distort and vulgarize the Buddha-Dharma. What is both possible and necessary, in fact, is to set it upon the path of the age. Last year, in Chengdu, several of us friends established a periodical called Enlightened Path (覺路), in which I published an article titled "On the Revolution of Buddhism" (佛教革命論) and another titled "The New Buddhist Movement" (新佛事運動), both of which argued that Buddhism must be placed outside the monastery gates and within society itself, taking as its object the broad masses of the poor and suffering, rather than serving as an item of leisured enjoyment and diversion for the idle classes, or even as a religious relic of the old category obstructing the dialectical-materialist advance of history.

Here is one glaring shortcoming: however lofty and grand Buddhism may be, it has, in the modern era, rarely been put to use in society. We constantly see the YMCA — Christianity has a Young Men's Christian Association organization covering the whole country, providing welfare for its members and drawing in the wider public. Buddhism, by contrast, has nothing of the kind. Beyond building monasteries, nothing at all is done. Is this not a shortcoming?

We believe that such an organization ought to be established without delay. Shanghai has no shortage of great lay Buddhist patrons, no shortage of people with resources, no shortage of people cultivated in Buddhist wisdom — and yet, that this most basic form of social organization is still lacking is truly a great pity. We believe Shanghai ought to act quickly, and set up something like the following kind of "Young Men's Association": (1) A Buddhist employment bureau. Talking to someone whose very livelihood is in danger about the Buddha-Dharma is not only unnecessary but repeats the very error of Malthus, and only breeds resentment of Buddhism. Time and again, a lay Buddhist in dire material want, once given some basis for his livelihood, will feel great gratitude and hold all the more firmly to right mindfulness; there will then be no cause to suspect that Buddhism is a refuge only for the destitute and desperate. (2) Collective industry or collective farms, which could draw on the model of the monastic community's communal "ascending the mountain," such as the "farming Chan" (農禪) model — conducting industry in the cities and agriculture in the countryside, so as to secure the means of production needed to sustain life. (3) First establishing consumer cooperatives, then expanding into producer cooperatives, so that Buddhist practitioners may progress from material sufficiency to spiritual sufficiency. (4) Buddhist vegetarian restaurants, which some have already founded; and Buddhist travel agencies, which are sorely needed to provide convenient travel and lodging for lay practitioners on pilgrimage — since ordinary inns are so often as noisy and disorderly as brothels, entirely unsuited to quiet cultivation, and traveling Buddhists constantly suffer the hardship of finding lodging. (5) Buddhist hospitals, shelters for the poor, homes for the elderly, homes for women and children, vocational schools, Buddhist libraries, popular lecture programs, and local Buddhist news agencies — all such institutions, by extension, ought to be established and expanded. These are all matters that urgently need to be carried out at once, and so I hope that the great lay patrons of Shanghai will do their best to pool their strength in these areas, so as to set an example for Buddhists across the whole country — rather than sitting in their Western-style mansions, living the life of company managers and idle young masters, writing a couple of books to make a name for themselves, chanting a phrase or two of the Buddha's name to feel at ease in body and mind, or even indulging in Don Quixote-like fantasies, and imagining that this is enough.

From the revelation of the Buddha's teaching, we can see that, so far as "profound insight" is concerned, what is needed is inner verification — honest, down-to-earth inner verification of the sort practiced by that old monk near Yangzhou; while, on the side of "broad practice," what is needed is to apply oneself to social work suited to the times. Speech that governs the world, and productive enterprise that sustains livelihood — so long as these are brought into the service of the Buddha-Dharma, are themselves Buddhist works.

Here it should be pointed out once more: what Buddhism needs today is not people given to lofty, mystical talk in religious, theocratic, or feudal-aristocratic forms of consciousness, but rather people who will get down to actual work — plain, ordinary work in real life, work that is inwardly grounded in the Buddha-Dharma and outwardly grounded in the science of dialectical and historical materialism, work whose practice, ordinary and popular, everyone can see and everyone can feel the benefit of, embracing society as a whole. In other words: In other words: the Hannibals of modern Buddhism — those bound by a sacred vow to its cause—ought to be people who learn from the life of the masses, walks the same path as the masses, serves the masses — one of the workers and peasants, the propertyless of city and countryside, someone who toils hard in the interest of the majority.

Though I understand little of the Buddha-Dharma myself (to put it plainly, I am an outsider to the field, and I am not afraid of being laughed at for saying that I am a mere man of arms — these years of military life have, moreover, left me still further estranged from books), I have no wish to pass myself off as a Buddhist scholar or a great lay patron either. All I have set down here is a little of what I have come to perceive and hear, through contact with society and with people of every walk of life, as the road that Buddhism must follow if it is to meet the demands of the masses along the lines proposed above — unless, that is, one has already resolved to fall behind the times and cut oneself off from all sentient beings. If some feel that these proposals are far too vulgarized, we shall simply pay them no mind; and if others, feigning piety, insist that

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"these are matters for the Great Vehicle alone, and that we of inferior capacity had best content ourselves with knocking the wooden fish and cultivating in hope of a future life, or simply aim for rebirth in the Western Pure Land and be done with it" — then I may boldly, even as a mere outsider, offer in reply a single line from the Vijñaptimātratāsiddhi [Cheng Weishi Lun]: "Bodhisattvas of the Ten Grounds retain the hindrance of affliction in order to aid their vow to be reborn [for the sake of sentient beings]."

I am in great distress; the demands of daily life leave me little occasion to take up my pen and write. Writing this piece took me a whole day, though in fact I only wrote for some four hours; in between, two or three visitors came, breaking the flow of my thought several times, so that what I have written comes out rather disjointed. These past years I have been caught up amid affliction and karmic burden, and to find, as I have today, a few hours to devote to writing has been extremely, extremely hard to come by. I have long thought that, were my circumstances to permit it, I might settle down at that remote monastery near Yangzhou mentioned above, and there set down my twenty years of outsider's reflections on the Buddha-Dharma for others' instruction — but I am ashamed to say that, having merely padded out a place in the ranks and idly accepted a rank and position bestowed by the state, in truth I have long wished, in vain, to change to another line of work; a life both poor and busy leaves me unable to realize my own ideal of proper study and practice. In the end, I remain no more than an ordinary sentient being, a plain and mediocre man; and human beings, after all, are creatures of feeling — there are times when I cannot help but shed a few clear tears (though, of course, this only shows that I have not yet emptied myself of attachment to self). For the sake of the world, and for the sake of my fellow countrymen now suffering the calamities of fire and flood and war in China, I am willing to dedicate my body and mind; I am willing to dedicate, and to take upon myself in their stead, the suffering that is mine alone to bear. All around me, Chinese society lies in boundless chaos and desolation — livelihood, livelihood! Prices are soaring, the masses have already been driven to the brink of starvation, and so many pitiable, innocent, good people are struggling to hold onto lives as fragile as a single thread; the present stage of society has brought fortune only to a handful of scoundrels — speculators, exploiters, hoarders, and those who bring ruin upon the nation and disaster upon its people. The whole vast earth is nothing but darkness, and it is no longer possible to find the same peace and leisure, the same appetite for life, that let me go, as I did two years ago, to sit a stick of incense by night near Yangzhou. It is only on writing this far that I come to understand why the Buddha-Dharma takes great compassion as its very root — for compassion (悲) means, precisely, the removal of suffering. Faced with suffering on such a scale, how could the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas fail to see it and act to relieve it? And so I find myself thinking, quite spontaneously, of Liu Yazi's (柳亞子) poem: "You pay homage to Śākyamuni Buddha; I put my faith in Marx … I wish only to take up an iron Chan staff, and strike down the traitors who would sell out our country." This, too, is the Buddha-Dharma; this is to grasp the very root of the Buddha-Dharma.

Written near the Jade Buddha Temple (玉佛寺), Shanghai, March 23, 1948