Chen Mingshu, "Letter to Mao on the Buddhadharma"
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⚠ Awaiting Peer Review ⚠ This English translation is complete but has not yet undergone review by a language specialist. |
Chen Mingshu (陳銘樞) (1949). 〈陳銘樞先生致 毛主席論佛法書〉 [Mr. Chen Mingshu's Letter to Chairman Mao on the Buddhadharma]. 《覺訊月刊》 3.8: 2–3. Reprinted: 《民國佛教期刊文獻集成・補編》 78: 470–471.
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Mr. Chen Mingshu's Letter to Chairman Mao on the Buddhadharma
Dear Mr. Runzhi (潤之):[1] for your gracious attention. Yesterday I had the honor of a long conversation with you, in the course of which I was able to speak my mind fully, bringing me immeasurable comfort. Our conversation touched on questions of Buddhist scholarship, a matter that weighs especially heavily on my mind. Because the Buddhadharma has declined and its clergy have grown corrupt and dissolute, the world has come to regard Buddhism with indifference, unaware that there exists a Buddhist scholarship as vast as a boundless sea and as profound as it is expansive. I am privately grieved by this. I, Mingshu,[2] have devoted myself to this study for nearly forty years, and believe I have been able to bring the subtle meaning of the Tripiṭaka (the "Three Baskets" of Buddhist scripture) into accord with the realities of human life. Allow me to set out for you, in summary, its essential points as they concern society, human life, scholarship, and culture:
(1) The Buddhadharma (佛法, a term particular to Buddhism, encompassing the dual senses of Buddhist scholarship [佛學] and Buddhism as an organized religion [佛敎])[3] is a teaching that breaks down the unequal, hierarchical system by which one person oppresses another. Apart from its doctrinal content, nothing is more central to its revolution against Brahmanism[4] than this point. Its assertion that "all things are equal, with nothing higher or lower" establishes, on doctrinal grounds, the most thoroughgoing attitude of equality toward human life.
(2) The Buddhadharma is progressive. Its progress extends without limit into the boundless future; were it to have a limit, that limit would itself constitute an obstruction, and to generate an obstruction is to contradict its own true nature. Likewise, the Buddhadharma is creative; were it not creative, it would stagnate and fall into staleness, and stagnation and staleness likewise contradict true reality. Since the Song and Ming dynasties, Buddhist adherents have often been confined by traditional Chinese doctrines that carelessly interpret the Buddhadharma through a cyclical view of history. This is a grave error, and one that still awaits correction; it arises because such interpreters have failed to bring refined doctrine into accord with the practice of human life.
(3) In the Buddhadharma, saving others takes precedence over saving oneself. Those who practice as bodhisattvas hold no view of self; they take the body of sentient beings as their own body. They know no suffering apart from that of sentient beings, and take the suffering of sentient beings as their own suffering. They make no distinction between foe and kin, delivering — that is, saving — those whom they resent with greater urgency than they deliver their own kin. They make no distinction of rank or intelligence, delivering the lowly and the ignorant with greater urgency than they deliver the eminent and the wise. This is the ultimate attainment of great compassion, great mercy, great joy, and great equanimity, called the Four Immeasurable Minds (四無量心).[5]
(4) The Buddhadharma seeks to liberate not only the human mind but also human conduct; indeed, without the liberation of conduct one cannot attain genuine knowledge. Knowledge and conduct are not to be regarded as two separate things, but as one: what is called "cultivating compassion and wisdom together" in fact means that compassion and wisdom share a single source. This principle was well understood by the Confucian scholar Wang Yangming (王陽明),[6] whose teachings themselves derive from the Buddhadharma, though I will not elaborate on this here. As for proletarian philosophy, wherever theory and practice fail to correspond, it falls into formalism, sectarianism, mechanical idealism (many who style themselves dialectical materialists fall into subjective idealism without realizing it), and so forth — all of which stem from this same failure. Twenty years ago, when I first began to study dialectical materialism, I had already come to see this. Now I am fortunate to witness the Chinese Communist Party, under your leadership, sinify Marxism-Leninism, fully demonstrating the unity of theory and practice, and thereby achieve, up to this very day, the goal of liberating China. I can plainly see the successful beginning of the construction of a new China — truly a great event of this age, and one that fills me with far more than mere gratification and joy.
(5) People commonly misread the Buddhadharma's teaching that "the three realms are mind-only" (三界唯心) as a form of idealism in the sense understood by Western philosophy. This is in fact mistaken. In the Buddhadharma, "mind-only" functions to break the attachment we generate toward the objective realms arising from our own minds; it does not assert that the cognizing mind we generate is itself real. Not only is this mind not real, it is held to be the most dangerous and least reliable of things. Hence the Nirvana Sutra (涅槃經)[7] states, "one may take the mind as one's teacher, but must not take instruction from the [ordinary] mind" — to "take the mind as teacher" here means what we today would call learning from the masses. Should one instead take instruction from the ordinary mind, all the subjective, mechanical idealism described above would follow from it; one would then steal the fine names of worldly morality and benevolence to conceal one's own feudal and obstinate conduct — calling a deer a horse, turning white into black, inverting right and wrong, stopping at nothing. All of this likewise stems from this same error. The "mind" to which the Buddhadharma refers, then, is not the mind as ordinarily understood; if one insists it is this mind, then this mind must be liberated — that is, one must, as the Buddhadharma puts it, "transcend the measure of mind" and "depart from mind, intellect, and consciousness" in order to attain true reality. This principle is extremely subtle, and a thousand upon ten thousand words could not exhaust it; let me illustrate it briefly. In the Buddhadharma, all cognition takes even one's own mind as an objective object, without generating the slightest attachment; only in this way can one attain the true reality of things, that is, objective reality. Objective reality may properly be called pure objectivity, or equally "no-mind" (無心); for if any subjective element is mixed in, the object one cognizes becomes merely the subjective image each individual generates, and is certainly not the true reality of the object itself. The Buddhadharma therefore does not deny the world, nor does it deny any phenomenon of the universe; but one must break through the subjective views — that is, the attachments — that we generate toward the world and all phenomena, in order to attain objective reality. For this reason, the Buddhadharma applies to the cognition of every single thing a formula of "three propositions,"[8] as follows: "what is called Chen Mingshu is not Chen Mingshu; it is [merely] named Chen Mingshu."
(6) Following on from the preceding point, the Buddhadharma holds that all our conduct in the world, and all phenomena of the universe that we cognize, belong to conditioned dharmas (有爲法).[9] Conditioned dharmas are relative; they are illusory, like a phantasm, and not truly real. What is truly real is the unconditioned dharma, which is absolute. Yet apart from the illusory, phantasm-like conditioned dharmas (the relative), there is no separate unconditioned dharma (the absolute) to be found elsewhere. In other words, the unconditioned dharma exists within the conditioned dharma; the two are not two separate things. Likewise, the absolute exists within the relative — it is simply that, once caught up in the relative, one cannot see that there is an absolute at all. It is like a single object having two sides, front and back: seen from the reverse side it is relative, but seen from the obverse side it becomes absolute. As in the "three propositions" formula given above: "what is called Chen Mingshu" is one thing; "is not Chen Mingshu" removes the attachment generated by consciousness, that is, the relative side; and the third proposition, "is [merely] named Chen Mingshu," is the objective reality, the absolute side. Is this not still, after all, the very thing that is Chen Mingshu?
(7) If one argues purely from the standpoint of conditioned dharmas (that is, the relative side), then the Buddhadharma's principle of momentary arising and ceasing, instant by instant (刹那生滅),[10] is, in substance, no different from the principle of development through contradiction. The formula of thesis-antithesis-synthesis is likewise consonant with the "three propositions" formula given above.
(8) Following on from the notion of equality raised in the first point, the Buddhadharma breaks down the concept of God. If one were to say the Buddha is God, then everyone could become a Buddha, meaning everyone would be God. Furthermore, the Buddhadharma is a religion without gods. When people see the many buddhas and bodhisattvas arranged in temples, they mistakenly take this for polytheism, not realizing that the buddhas and bodhisattvas so established represent the exemplary models of the process by which every person becomes a Buddha, a goal every person must attain. To pay reverence to the buddhas and bodhisattvas is thus to pay reverence to oneself (because one is oneself a buddha or bodhisattva; to have faith in the buddhas and bodhisattvas is precisely to have faith in oneself) — hence it is properly called a godless religion. Furthermore, considered from the side of conditioned dharmas (the relative), the Buddhadharma may be called a pluralism; considered from the side of the unconditioned dharma (the absolute), it may be called a monism; and considered from the fact that apart from conditioned dharmas there is no unconditioned dharma at all, it may also be called a doctrine of no fixed principle (無元論).
(9) With regard to truth (that is, to reality) and the practice of life, there is no more supreme or practical overarching principle that the Buddhadharma offers than the single phrase "having nothing, attaining nothing" (無所有，不可得). All our conduct and all our efforts should be attributed to what is objectively proper to be done, rather than claimed as something we ourselves possess or attain. If one has something or attains something, this falls into subjective grasping; and once the deluded thought of grasping arises, it becomes an obstruction and brings about annihilation. Obstruction and annihilation both amount to falling into emptiness. Thus, to have something and to attain something is to fall into emptiness; only by having nothing and attaining nothing can one avoid falling into emptiness.
(10) The nine points set forth above are all gleaned and summarized from the scriptures of Mahāyāna Buddhism. Mahāyāna theory frequently condemns the "outer" and the "lesser": by "outer" is meant non-Buddhist sects such as Brahmanism; by "lesser" is meant the Hīnayāna sects within Buddhism. If one speaks of the perfection of doctrine, only the Mahāyāna deserves the name; the scriptures of the Hīnayāna mostly present provisional, incomplete teachings, expounded so as to accommodate those of meager wisdom, weak capacity, shallow roots, and narrow minds, and cannot be called the true Buddhadharma. Whatever Buddhadharma I, Mingshu, speak of here is therefore Mahāyāna Buddhadharma. As for why Mahāyāna Buddhadharma, though it was extinguished early in India, has flourished so greatly in China, this surely shares a common source with the tradition of our country's Confucian teachings (with Laozi and Zhuangzi playing a secondary role); this matter requires separate discussion, and I will not address it here.
Buddhism entered China from the end of the Han dynasty onward, and its penetration throughout the entire country, gradually evolving into a national custom, has been so deep and pervasive that it may be called a national institution. Yet for over a thousand years, the belief of the ignorant common people, women, and children has amounted to nothing more than the observance of simple names and rituals, while the literati, though likewise vying to esteem it, feared its vast and profound scriptures and were unable to devote themselves to careful study.
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As a result, they remained muddled and confused, and its subtle truths gradually grew obscure, continuing down to the present day, so that those who genuinely investigate it have grown ever fewer, and it has come to be looked down upon by intellectuals generally. As for the daily decay of monastic discipline and the moral decline of the clergy, this has been still more thoroughly despised by intellectuals, a matter that has long grieved me. It was for this reason that, in our conversation yesterday, I briefly touched on the Buddhadharma and enclosed the Twelve Lectures on the Buddhadharma (佛法十二講)[11] that I delivered some years ago, hoping that you might come to appreciate the importance and distinctive character of the Buddhadharma with respect to the social life and cultural scholarship of our country. I have therefore, over the course of a single evening, set down this letter. The ten points enumerated above, though not presented systematically, nonetheless make clear the significant place the Buddhadharma occupies in human life and in cultural scholarship.
Recently, Venerable Juzan (巨賛法師)[12] brought to show me the letter he had submitted to you and to the various democratic parties; upon reading it, I found his proposal of the two slogans "scholarization" (學術化) and "productivization" (生產化) to be entirely apt. As for the matter of productivization, it should be understood in terms of reviving the decayed and corrupted monastic institutional system. The finest and most excellent monastic system was established by Patriarch Baizhang (百丈祖師)[13] in the late Tang dynasty — what is known as the Baizhang Pure Rules (百丈清規). Baizhang himself, setting the example through his own conduct, taught his monastic assembly with the maxim, "a day without labor is a day without food." From this we can see that the monastic institution was never meant to permit monks to sit idle and eat without working. If the monastic community were to observe Baizhang's bequeathed teaching that a day without labor is a day without food, and were to restore his Pure Rules, then the monasteries could become self-sufficient in production, the Buddhist institutional system could avoid falling into ruin, and the Buddhadharma could thereby be preserved. This is my proposal for maintaining and reconstituting the monasteries throughout the country, which are daily being encroached upon and destroyed; I hope you will give it your attention.
Furthermore, Chinese culture, from the Jin and Tang dynasties onward, was profoundly influenced by the Buddhadharma. Even the Neo-Confucian scholars (理學家) who rose to prominence in the Song and Ming dynasties, though they outwardly rejected Buddhism, were in spirit no different from captives of the Buddhadharma. Thus, when Hu Shi (胡適)[14] formerly wrote his History of Chinese Philosophy, his unfamiliarity with the Buddhadharma meant that he dared not put pen to paper once he reached the period after the Jin dynasty. Other scholars in the field of Chinese philosophy, whenever their writings touch on the Buddhadharma, are for the most part fragmentary, muddled, and confused — this is a major problem for scholarship. As far as I, Mingshu, am aware, the only person in contemporary China engaged in the study of Chinese Buddhadharma and of philosophy as a whole who has achieved correct and exceedingly rich results is Mr. Lü Cheng (呂澂), courtesy name Qiuyi (秋逸),[15] director of the China Inner Studies Institute in Nanjing. I have previously told you that Mr. Lü has deeply studied the teachings of both Confucius and the Buddha, and has broadly mastered the various philosophers and schools of thought; he has exhausted the depths of all the scriptures and treatises of the Tripiṭaka and of the world of translation, distinguishing the origins of the various sectarian differences (especially between the Chan school and the Neo-Confucians), drawing on his command of Pali, Sanskrit, and Tibetan to correct errors and confusions in the doctrines of India and China, all according to a method of historical research. Searching broadly and thinking deeply, savoring the finest essence of the tradition for nearly forty years, laboring without interruption down to the present day, accumulating year upon year of painstaking refinement, he has produced more than thirty works; but as the time is not yet ripe, these have not yet been published. I, Mingshu, studied together with Mr. Lü under Mr. Ouyang Jingwu (歐陽竟無),[16] former director of the Nanjing Inner Studies Institute, a relationship that likewise spans forty years. In the intervening years, owing to my involvement in military and official affairs, my studies were sometimes interrupted and sometimes resumed; yet there has not been a single day when my central convictions and my practice failed to correspond with his. As for accomplishment in Buddhist philosophy, I, Mingshu, fall short of Mr. Lü by no less than a tenth, indeed perhaps by one part in a hundred thousand or a million; this I know full well about myself, and it has long been my lifelong wish that Chinese scholarship and culture give him due recognition. Now, having had the good fortune to present this to you in person, it is truly a great occasion of my life, one that fills me with boundless joy. As for Mr. Lü's character and conduct, it stands as sheer and towering as a cliff a thousand fathoms high; his standing in the scholarly world is attested to by accomplished scholars north and south alike. Should you inquire of Professor Tang Yongtong (湯用彤)[17] and others, they will surely confirm that what I, Mingshu, say is not mere flattery.
Now, since among the representative units of the Preparatory Committee of the New Political Consultative Conference (新政協籌備會議)[18] there is an allocation of seven seats for religious organizations, I, Mingshu, specifically recommend Mr. Lü as one of these representatives. I hope you will graciously accept this recommendation and have it registered with Group [blank][19] of the Preparatory Committee — this would be a great favor indeed. Furthermore, among the seven seats allotted to religion, if they are to be divided among the three faiths of Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam, Buddhism ought properly to receive three seats; I hope you will likewise graciously refer this matter to Group One of the Preparatory Committee for discussion. Respectfully submitted, and I await news of your continued good health and successful governance.
Appendix: Mao Zedong's Reply
Central Party Literature Research Office of the CPC Central Committee (中共中央文献研究室) (Ed.) (1983/2003). 《毛泽东书信选集》 [Selected Letters of Mao Zedong]. Beijing: Central Party Literature Press (中央文献出版社).
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Dear Mr. Zhenru:[20]
I have given your esteemed work a cursory reading, but have not been able to study it in detail, and dare not offer any opinions on it. I do feel, however, that certain of its points seem to call for further consideration; I will discuss this with you again when time permits. It has lain on my desk for a long while, and I apologize for the delay in replying. With respectful wishes for your health and well-being,
- Mao Zedong
- The twelfth day of the sixth month[21]
Notes
- ↑ "Runzhi" (潤之) was the courtesy name (字) of Mao Zedong (毛澤東), and is used here as a term of respectful address, as was conventional in Chinese correspondence of the period.
- ↑ Chen Mingshu refers to himself throughout the letter by his given name, Mingshu (銘樞), a conventional mark of humility in Chinese epistolary style when addressing a social or political superior.
- ↑ The letter's argument depends on maintaining a three-way distinction among 佛法 (Buddhadharma, the teaching in its fullest sense), 佛學 (Buddhist scholarship or doctrinal study), and 佛敎 (Buddhism as an institutional religion). Chen repeatedly criticizes the decline of the latter while defending the enduring value of the former two.
- ↑ Brahmanism (婆羅門敎) here refers to the pre-Buddhist religious and caste system of ancient India, against whose hierarchical ordering of society (encoded in the varṇa or caste system) early Buddhism is traditionally understood to have positioned itself.
- ↑ The Four Immeasurable Minds (四無量心, Skt. catvāri apramāṇāni) are four cultivated states central to Mahāyāna ethical practice: benevolence or great kindness (慈, maitrī), compassion (悲, karuṇā), sympathetic joy (喜, muditā), and equanimity (捨, upekṣā). Chen prefixes these with "great" (大) in the main text.
- ↑ Wang Yangming (王陽明, 1472–1529) was a Ming-dynasty Neo-Confucian philosopher best known for his doctrine of the "unity of knowledge and action" (知行合一), which Chen here traces to a Buddhist source.
- ↑ The 涅槃經 (Nirvāṇa Sūtra), most likely referring here to the Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra, is a foundational scripture in East Asian Buddhism, particularly associated with teachings on buddha-nature.
- ↑ This "three propositions" formula (三句法) echoes the well-known tetralemma-like structure found in the Diamond Sūtra (金剛經), which repeatedly employs statements of the pattern "what is called X is not X; it is [merely] named X" to indicate that conventional designations do not correspond to any fixed, independent essence.
- ↑ In Buddhist philosophical vocabulary, "conditioned dharmas" (有爲法, Skt. saṃskṛta-dharma) are phenomena that arise dependent on causes and conditions, in contrast to the "unconditioned dharma" (無爲法, Skt. asaṃskṛta-dharma), which does not arise or cease in this way and is traditionally identified with nirvāṇa or ultimate reality.
- ↑ Kṣaṇa (刹那) is the Buddhist term for an instant, the smallest unit of time; the doctrine of momentary arising-and-ceasing holds that all conditioned phenomena come into being and pass away in each such instant.
- ↑ A set of lectures on Buddhist teaching that Chen Mingshu had delivered in earlier years; no further publication details are known.
- ↑ Juzan (巨贊, 1908–1984) was a reform-minded Buddhist monk active in the late Republican and early PRC periods, known for advocating the modernization of Chinese Buddhism and for engaging directly with Communist Party leaders on questions of religious policy.
- ↑ Baizhang Huaihai (百丈懷海, 749–814) was a Tang-dynasty Chan master credited with establishing the first comprehensive code of monastic rules for Chan communities in China, known as the Baizhang Pure Rules (百丈清規), which mandated communal manual labor as part of monastic life.
- ↑ Hu Shi (胡適, 1891–1962) was a leading Republican-era intellectual and philosopher whose incomplete multi-volume History of Chinese Philosophy (中國哲學史) famously stopped short of covering the periods after the Wei-Jin era, a limitation often attributed to his unfamiliarity with Buddhist philosophy.
- ↑ Lü Cheng (呂澂, 1896–1989) was a prominent Buddhologist and, following Ouyang Jingwu's death, director of the China Inner Studies Institute (支那內學院) in Nanjing, a leading center for Buddhist textual and philological scholarship in Republican China.
- ↑ Ouyang Jingwu (歐陽竟無, 1871–1943) founded the China Inner Studies Institute (支那內學院) in Nanjing in 1922, which became one of the most influential centers of lay Buddhist scholarship in Republican China, and trained a generation of scholars including Lü Cheng.
- ↑ Tang Yongtong (湯用彤, 1893–1964) was a leading historian of Chinese Buddhism and one of the foremost academic authorities on the subject in Republican and early PRC China.
- ↑ The Preparatory Committee of the New Political Consultative Conference convened in mid-1949 to organize the founding session of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, which formally established the People's Republic of China later that year; its delegate seats were apportioned among political parties, mass organizations, and other designated groups, including religious bodies.
- ↑ The original text leaves a blank space here (第 組), apparently left open for a specific group number to be filled in.
- ↑ Mao addresses Chen Mingshu here by "Zhenru" (真如), which was Chen's Buddhist religious name; the term 真如 (Skt. tathatā, "suchness" or "thusness") denotes ultimate, unconditioned reality in Buddhist philosophy, making Mao's choice of address to a Buddhist correspondent especially pointed.
- ↑ No year is given in the original for Mao's reply, but presumably it is 1949.
