This paper discusses how anti-scholasticism was involved in the creation of Chan Buddhism. It first makes a further distinction between “textual authority” and “exegetical practice,” i.e., “scholasticism.” It then argues that the earliest Chan movement in China was not in fact a rejection of text, but quite the contrary – the movement was one of an integration of patriarchal legitimacy and textual authority, while casting off the necessity of exegetical tradition. A close reading of Buddhist monks’ biographies of representative Chan masters, namely Bodhidharma 菩提達摩 (ca. late fifth century), Huisi 慧思 (515-577), and Xinxing 信行 (540- 594), tells us that the perpetual dichotomy between scholasticism and real practice was embedded in the patriarchal image of Chan Buddhism. The image of these monks, which may be called the Chan ideal, features Buddhist worries over the Buddhist decline during the sixth century as well as the debate between Hīnayāna and Mahāyāna Buddhism. This religious background is the provenance of what may be called the Chan ideal. By contrasting Bodhidharma with Huisi and Xinxing in a wider context, this paper provides a reassessment of the debate between meditation and scholasticism and its influence on early Chan Buddhism.
