唐五代禪宗悟道偈研究 — 從祖師禪到分燈禪之語境交涉及宗典詮釋=The Study of Zen Buddhist Enlightenment Gāthās in the Tang and Five Dynasties: Approach to Zu-shih Zen and Feng-deng Zen from the Perspectives of Contextual Dialectics and Hermeneutics of Zen Classics
Indian Zen was introduced to the central mainland China and had been guided by An Shigao’s Theravada-Buddhism；it had also been under the influence of the age of turbulence, passing through Han, Wei and the Western Jin Dynasties. It adopted the methods of breath-counting and mindfulness to attain meditative concentration and observance. With time passing by, while Master Dao An in Eastern Jin Dynasty proposed Doctrine of Prajna and Kumarajiva translated Mahayana sutras, Hui Yuan of Lu Mount just pushed the state in practicing Buddhism to Zen wisdom. In the promotion of the confluence of Buddhism and Taoist Buddhism in the Wei and Jin Dynasties, monks in the Eastern Jin Dynasty gradually employed the way of expressing the enlightened state or philosophies through Gāthās and songs. Despite Zhu Daosheng, the disciple of Kumara, introduced the philosophy of “attaining Buddhahood in the way of sudden enlightenment or epiphany” to the Southern Song Dynasty, the mainstream of practicing Buddhism, however, was still conducted via the conventional way of learning, thinking and debating, since there were no interactions between Bodhidharma and emperor the Liang Dynatsty. Master Zhi Yi in the Southern Chen Dynasty explained Gāthās’ main function was to offer as many interpretations as possible about the significance of dharma. Gāthā is four-line verse, and the original form of Gāthā was composed of 32 characters at most. Influenced by the verse forms of Dharmapqda, the Lotus Sutra, and other Buddhist works, many Buddhist masters, during the period of the northern and Southern Dynasties, propagated Buddhism through inscriptions, odes, mottos, and poems in Chinese literature to explicate dharma truth. Corresponding to the simple style of Chinese practical philosophy, agriculture Zen became mature in the Tang Dynasty. Agriculture Zen, founded by Daoxin and Hongren, was then promulgated by the Sixth Patriarch of Zen Buddhism, a woodsman from Lin-nan, who carried forward th
