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UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara Texts Within UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara Texts within Texts: The Avataṃsaka in Yongming Yanshou’s Records of the Source-Mirror A Thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts in Asian Studies by Lotus H. Lee Committee in charge: Professor Dominic Steavu-Balint, Chair Professor Fabio Rambelli Professor Xiaowei Zheng September 2018 The thesis of Lotus H. Lee is approved. _____________________________________________ Dominic Steavu-Balint, Committee Chair _____________________________________________ Xiaowei Zheng _____________________________________________ Fabio Rambelli September 2018 Texts within Texts: The Avataṃsaka in Yongming Yanshou’s Records of the Source-mirror Copyright © 2018 by Lotus H. Lee iii ABSTRACT Texts within Texts: The Avataṃsaka in Yongming Yanshou’s Records of the Source-mirror by Lotus H. Lee In this project, I use the case study of the monk Yongming Yanshou 永明延壽 (904– 976) of the state of Wuyue 吳越 to discuss the relationship between hagiographies and factional categorization, and I examine the ways he understood, related to, and used textual sources from other Buddhist doctrines in his writing. I extrapolate a definition of Chan Buddhism for Yanshou’s case specifically, and I argue that the perceived and portrayed boundaries of Chinese Buddhism during this time, doctrinal, textual, factional, or otherwise, were much more fluid and dynamic than they were recently understood to be. I argue that our understanding of Chan Buddhism should be reframed as a polythetic class to reflect the plurality of Chan and Buddhism in general. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS I. Introduction ............................................................................................................................................. 1 II. Chapter 1: Yongming Yanshou ............................................................................................................ 5 A. Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 5 B. Hagiographies ............................................................................................................................ 6 C. Interpreting Hagiographical Evidence .................................................................................... 14 D. Contemporary Views ................................................................................................................ 16 E. Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 19 III. Chapter 2: Yongming Yanshou’s Chan Buddhism ......................................................................... 21 A. Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 21 B. The Records .............................................................................................................................. 21 C. Lineage ..................................................................................................................................... 31 D. Buddhist Scholasticism ............................................................................................................ 33 E. Tathāgatagarbha ...................................................................................................................... 35 F. Antinomianism and Views on Language................................................................................. 40 F. Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 48 IV. Chapter 3: The Records and the Avataṃsaka ................................................................................... 49 A. Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 49 B. Huayan Foundations ............................................................................................................... 51 C. The Avataṃsaka in the Records .............................................................................................. 58 D. Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 72 V. Concluding Remarks ........................................................................................................................... 75 VI. References ........................................................................................................................................... 79 VII. Appendices ......................................................................................................................................... 82 v I. Introduction “What is Chan Buddhism?” is a question that has held considerable attention in Buddhist studies in recent years. As a religious phenomenon, Chan thought is described to have come into being in the religious landscape of early 8th century Tang China, and later rose to institutional and textual prominence. The study of Chan is an important window into the development of Chinese Buddhism and Chinese religion. Moreover, due to the constructed nature of many Chan narratives and hagiographies, critical examination of Chan texts is particularly illuminating with regards to the goals and motivations of their writers, how these images compare to actual history, and the lives and intents of the subjects found in these narratives. This project follows in the footsteps of earlier works on the formation and origins of the Chan tradition, such as Bernard Faure’s The Will of Orthodoxy, Wendy Adamek’s The Mystique of Transmission, and John McRae’s Seeing through Zen. These works problematize an uncritical reading of Chan narrative, and revise our historical understanding of Chan texts, their writers, and their subjects. For instance, Faure’s volume discusses the formation of the so-called “Northern” school of Chan Buddhism during the 8th century CE and problematizes the traditional narrative of the Northern school as the proponent of incorrect teachings and the malicious enemy of the supposedly orthodox Southern school. Blindly following this oversimplification, which was a result of polemic discourse intended to create a narrative containing an orthodox element and the embodiment of qualities that were to be avoided, prevents us from seeing the doctrinal continuity that actually existed between the two entities of “North” and “South”, and glosses over the diversity of Chan thought during that time.1 1 Faure, The Will to Orthodoxy, pg. 5. 1 Instead, Faure argues that the better approach would be to do away with sharply drawn lines between factions and frame the discussion in terms of several Northern and Southern schools to allow for the portrayal of diverse trends and possibilities that existed during that time. Examining early hagiographies, Faure argues that the very creation of a patriarchal genealogy was the product of a marginal population’s desperate desire to become orthodox and to be viewed as such, creating a way to define themselves to others.2 Thus, Faure points out the inaccuracy of a fundamental narrative of Chan thought, and attempts to remedy it by offering both an alternative view of history and a new framework of thinking about diversity underneath a larger label. Studies such have these have highlighted the importance of reevaluating past understandings of Buddhist institutions and examining the external factors that influenced the compositions of their narratives. Building upon their analysis and problematization of Chan popular narrative, in this project I begin with a similar suspicious attitude towards hagiographic portrayals of Yongming Yanshou and apply a similar examination to Yanshou and the narratives regarding him. Early scholarship in Chan studies used popular hagiographical literature to describe Chan historical narratives as linear and possessing discrete lineages. In these hagiographical sources, Chan monks were organized according to the lineages they were said to have belonged and were also portrayed as sharing historically consistent frameworks of practice and thought.3 However, recent literature has shown this understanding to be partially misleading. In reality, during this time, monks that would be considered within the category 2 Faure, The Will to Orthodoxy, pg. 9. 3 As Bernard Faure eloquently describes, the prevalence of Chan hagiographies served to establish a foundational “tradition,” which implies the presence of something that is transmitted continuously over time; however, the retroactive creation of a narrative that involves a tradition is often a sign of un-continuity and an attempt to deny this lack of continuity, an endeavor to close an insurmountable gap between a present whose significance is undercut and a past whose value is idealized. (Faure, Chan Insights and Oversights, pg. 9, 119) 2 of Chan, both from the perspective of both modern scholars and the primary sources which portrayed them as such, were not always confined to discrete lineages. Nor did they necessarily even identify with the lineages that were ascribed to them in later times—more often than not, they were not limited to specific doctrinal or practical traditions, for plurality in thought and orientation was a widespread norm. This study takes as its subject the monk Yongming Yanshou
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