Chinese Buddhism; confession-repentance practice; Baoshan; Chan/Zen
摘要
This article addresses the multivalence of confession-repentance practice (chanhui) in Chinese Buddhism of the sixth and seventh centuries in light of the polemical reformation of repentance practice in Chan texts of the eighth century. Drawing from her research on the Sui-Tang Buddhist site known as Baoshan (Treasure Mountain) in present-day Henan, the author first discusses inscribed passages from the MahƘPƘ\Ƙ-sǍtra (Mohemoye jing) and the Vinayaviniğcaya-UpƘliparipΩcchƘ- VǍtra (Jueding pini jing 㰢⭂㮀⯤䴻), supplemented by verses ascribed to Lingyu 曰塽 (518–605), one of the co-founders of Baoshan. Subsequent sections focus on passages from early Chan texts, tracing shifts in the soteriological rationalization of chanhui versus Chan practice. In previous work, the author discussed ways that fifth and sixth-century precepts and repentance liturgies, as well as texts on spiritual causes and remedies for disease, contributed the emergence of a distinctive Chan ideology of practice in the eighth century. In this article, further expanding on connections between repentance ritual, buddha-response, and buddha-nature, the author discusses different modes of confessional “addressing the mind.” Buddhist concern with volition and kleĞa (deep-seated karmic effects) is also briefly compared with Foucault’s discussion of psychoanalytic confession; the author proposes that what links these disparate confessional modes is the creation of enhanced awareness of the elusiveness of the causal power that shapes the self. Finally, the author proposes that the logic of practice at work in repentance liturgies and Chan anti-liturgical rhetoric is not really so different as it may appear.
