Part 1: Introduction

_full_alt_author_running_head (neem stramien B2 voor dit chapter en nul 0 in hierna): 0 _full_articletitle_deel (kopregel rechts, vul hierna in): Introduction _full_article_language: en indien anders: engelse articletitle: 0 IntroductionIntroduction 1 Part 1: Introduction Encounters often inspire change. Religious-ideological encounters, in particu- lar, paradoxically stimulate both mutual emulations, borrowings, and hybrid- ization, which bring them mimetically closer together; as well as fervent competition, polemics—and occasionally actual warfare—which pull them further apart. Such shifts may be easily spotted in the so-called “love-hate” relationship between Buddhism and Neo-Confucianism.1 On the one hand, both Neo-Confucianism and Sinitic Buddhism are commonly seen as amalgama- tions of one another, with Neo-Confucianism borrowing soteriological prac- tices from Buddhism and new Chinese Buddhist schools adopting Confucian ideals such as loyalty, filial piety, and an emphasis on economic self-sufficiency. On the other hand, both traditions also attempted to create differentiating identities in contrast to one another. Buddhism in China, for instance, became more strictly vegetarian to mark itself as distinct from Confucianism, while Neo-Confucians stressed their local continuity with the ancient customs of the sages, in contrast to the “foreign” Buddhists.2 At times, this encounter seems to have resembled the dynamic between rational-secularists and religionists, and yet, at other times, it was like the rift between separatists and universalists. Just as some of the bloodiest armed conflicts in history were civil wars, polemics between religions that closely resemble one another are often particularly bit- ter and severe. As we shall see, some of the Neo-Confucians clearly acknowl- edged this, warning that Buddhism was especially dangerous precisely because it appeared to be so similar to their own tradition. The polemic encounter between Buddhism and Neo-Confucianism has thus far been studied mainly from one perspective: that of the Neo-Confucians. The essays by their most notorious proponent, Han Yu (768–824), have been repeatedly translated into modern languages, and the anti-Buddhist polemic voiced by the Cheng brothers, Zhu Xi, and the Chosŏn Korean Neo-Confucians is often depicted in introductory works. When it comes to the Buddhist 1 Charles Wei-Hsun Fu suggested that the Neo-Confucian encounter with Buddhism has been the most significant ideological “love-and-hate” relationship in Chinese history. See: Charles Wei-Hsun Fu, “Morality and Beyond: The Neo-Confucian Confrontation with Mahayana Buddhism,” Philosophy East and West 23.3 (1973): 375–96. 2 It was suggested that Buddhist identity in India developed in relation to a vegetarian tradition (Jainism) and was thus not completely vegetarian, but after reaching China, Buddhists stressed their vegetarian identity in contrast to the Confucians and Daoists, neither of whom were vegetarian. See Erik Greene, “A Reassessment of the Early History of Chinese Buddhist Vegetarianism,” Asia Major 29.1 (2016): 1–43. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004407886_002 2 Introduction responses to these criticisms, however, the scholarly world has been silent to such an extent that the impression one may get is of a one-sided attack on a tradition that was more concerned with serene meditation than with heated religious debate. If there is any truth to this portrayal, it certainly does not con- vey the full story. In fact, roughly two dozen apologetic essays have been written by Buddhists in China, Korea, and Japan in response to the Neo-Confucian disapprovals. This book offers an introduction to this Buddhist literary genre. It centers on full translations of two key apologetic works: one written by a lay Buddhist and prominent politician in twelfth-century China, and the other by an anonymous monk in fifteenth-century Korea. Put together, these two essays demonstrate both the wide range of creative polemical strategies adopted against the Neo-Confucians, as well as the international intertextuality, cross- referencing, and gradual accruement of a unified East Asian Buddhist apologetic genre. The first translated essay, Zhang Shangying’s (1043–1121) “In Defense of the Dharma” (Hufa lun, 護法論), has been one of the most widely circulated Bud- dhist responses to the Confucian critiques of Han Yu and Ouyang Xiu. It has made its way into the official Buddhist canon and was disseminated and repeatedly cited across East Asia for several centuries. Aside from countering the reproaches raised against Buddhism by the Neo-Confucians—finding fault in their scholarship, reasoning, and personal characters—“In Defense of the Dharma” carefully delineates the differences between Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism, and argues for the superiority of the latter. The second translated essay, “Probing the Doubts and Concerns between Confucianism and Buddhism”3 (Yusŏk chirŭi non, 儒釋質疑論), is one of the longest, most com- prehensive Buddhist apologias ever written in East Asia. It reads like a com- pendium of Buddhist apologetics, formulated around nineteen Confucian questions with extensive replies that illustrate the expansion of Buddhist defense strategies found in Chinese treatises from the fourth century onwards, supplemented with a plethora of additional—often quite pungent—new polemics. It includes lengthy clarifications of Buddhist cosmology, history, and geography, but its most remarkable and original contribution to the genre is its intriguing attempt to use Sinitic numerology, extracted from the Classic of Changes, the Yellow River Diagram (Hetu, 河圖), and the Luo River Square (Luoshu, 洛書), in order to explain and apologize for Shakyamuni’s birth story, Buddhist mudras, Chan transmission, kalpas, Buddhist charity, and mantra practice. 3 I am grateful to Sem Vermeersch for his insightful suggestion for an elegant English title to this essay. .

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