Buddhism; Taoism; eastern ethical; 社會運動=Social Movement
摘要
To Understand what lies beneath Eastern culture and moral practice it is necessary to know the three principal forms of thought prevailing in the East: Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. The first two are native to China, whereas the last is an importation from the neighboring country, India, in the first century of the Christian era. Confucianism is concerned chiefly with moral life and politically minded, there is much of religion in it, for instance, when it refers to the "Mysterious Mother". Buddhism, when it was first transplanted to China, encountered some resistance from the native scholars, chiefly the Confucians, but proved itself strong enough to be gradually recognized not only by the people but also by the intellectuals. The reason is that Buddhism has what the Chinese mind lacks--mataphysics ans spiritual feelings. This first fact repelled the Chinese but later attracted them. Besides, in the Taoist way of thinking and feeling there is something closely related to the Buddhist trends of thought: love of nature, poetic imaginaton, transcendentalism, a mystic appreciation of reality. Buddhism also has much thought affiliating itself with Confucianism, for instance, when it is not so amoralistic as Taoism. But it was the Taoists who first approached Buddhism and adopted a great deal of its way of life and finally developed a religious system akin to it. Not only that, but, when the Chinese began in the seventh century to establish their own forms of Buddhism, they exhibited a great deal of originality. The Ching-t'u/Jofo(淨土)、Hua-yen/Kegon(華嚴)、Ch'an/Zen(禪)、and T'ien-tai/Tendai(天台) are such forms. In them we can detect the imaginative depths of the Chinese mind as well as its speculative penetration. The Chinese perhaps did not realize that all these qualities lay dormant in them until the qualities were finally brought brilliantly to the surface of their consciousness. As I consider the Zen form of Buddhism more important in many ways than the other forms, such as the Jodo[Pure Land], I wish to regard Zen as representing Buddhism generally when I talk about the BUddhist influence over Eastern, and especially Japanese, moral life. Zen flourished in China from the seventh century throughout the T'ang(618-907) and the Sung(960-1278), and even down to the Ming(1368-1661). In Zen we find the best that Chinese culture can offer to the world harmoniously blended with the best of the Indian speculative mind. In the following, let me take up the Buddhist view of Emptiness and contrast it with the Western way of thinking, for Zen also bases its Welt- and Lebens-Anschauung on it.
