The Liminality of Language in Daoism and Chan Buddhism 1. Introduction

Working Title: Ineffability: The Liminality of Language in Daoism and Chan Buddhism 1. Introduction and thesis statement 1.1. Thesis: The roots of the concept of liminality in Chinese schools of Buddhism can be linked to indigenous religious ideas within early religious Daoism. 2. Concept of liminality in early sources 2.1. Indigenous Chinese roots for such a core concept may be found in the first line of Laozi’s Daodejing: “Dao that can be spoken of is not the Dao” 2.2. Even earlier, diviners believed oracle bones prepared in a proper religious ritual may provide insights into the future. 2.3. Inward Training, the first text advocating a specifically Daoist religious ritual practice, develops indigenous Chinese notions of ultimate reality as the undifferentiated oneness of all things in the Dao: qi, ‘vital essence of all.’ 2.4. The seemingly contradictory descriptions of qi in Inward Training contributes to Chinese discourse on ultimate reality as vast, timeless, and well beyond normal human convention or comprehension. 2.5. Zhuangzi, dreaming he was a butterfly, takes notion of ineffable ultimate reality to the extreme, questioning the reality of mundane, everyday life. The illusory nature of physical reality now, then, sets the stage for the adoption and adaptation of Indian Buddhist doctrine in a Chinese context. 3. Dependent origination 3.1. Dependent origination, a fundamental Buddhist doctrine, finds its way into Chinese religious discourses via religious pilgrims and travelers along the Silk Road, eventually 1 finding common ground with Daoism with regards to the undifferentiated oneness of all phenomena. Correlative cosmology may be seen as a direct synthesis between early Chinese mystical folk Daoism and the introduction of Buddhist notions of oneness and causation. 3.2. The Buddhist doctrine of emptiness, translated from the Sanskrit word sunyata, shown to intersect with Zhuangzi’s concept of everyday life as illusory, and ultimate reality as transcendently incomprehensible, though seemingly deviating from the far more material practices of correlative cosmology, makes a grand introduction to China via early translations of the Mahaprajnaparamita Sutra, advocating: ‘Form is emptiness, and emptiness is form.’ 3.3. The seeming contradictory nature of this widely popularized saying of the Buddha struck a chord in China, with its history of complicating word play and superficially meaningless rhetorical circles, especially in the Zhuangzi. 4. Meditation and the development of Zen 4.1. Also taking root in China, with origins in the same Sutra, the practice of meditation upon devotional recitation of the name of the Buddha, inspired by ancestral worship practices from ancient China, came to eventually define another Buddhist school in China: Pure Land. 4.2. Though this school developed more fully and popularly in China than Chan, which really flourished in Japan as Zen, the legacy of early Chan doctrine, especially as transmitted via the Diamond Sutra, is central to it. 2 5. The importance of liminality in early China 5.1. In modern philosophical terms, the liminality of language of, or the ineffability of, ultimate, transcendent reality is complicated to say the least. That ancient Chinese and Indian sages were able to transmit these complex notions orally for dozens of centuries must say something for their value. 5.2. Though value is a subjective evaluation, and a concepts mere perpetuation over a long period of time says nothing about its veracity, the insights gained through the doctrines espoused by these mystical, esoteric traditions go beyond usefulness. 5.3. Ultimately, it is clear that the skill with which ideas are presented is more important than the actual idea, and the Buddhist elevation of such a universal notion speaks wonders to the reality that the success of a religion has more to do with the social environment in which it exists than the ideas actually presented. 6. Buddhist Adaptations in Pure Land and Chan 6.1. As Buddhism spread to China, though it had a long and complicated history of Indian origin, only the ideas that were already valued in a strongly Daoist culture were adopted, and then adapted to the times. 6.2. Such adaptations, though superficially subtle, developed into distinctly Chinese schools of Buddhism, known as Pure Land and Chan. 3 .

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