Zongmi on Chan. By Jeffrey Lyle Broughton. Columbia University Press, 2009. 376 pages. $45.00.
摘要
In his much-welcomed book, Zongmi on Chan, Jeffrey Broughton makes an original and valuable contribution to the rewriting of the history of Chinese Chan Buddhism that has been taking place over especially the last four or five decades. Much of this new scholarship on Chan has focused on placing into critical historical context Chan's iconic self-representation as a tradition rooted in highly charged and graphically spontaneous encounters between Chan masters and their students—a tradition expressing a “mind to mind transmission, not relying on words and letters.” Zongmi on Chan takes a different tack, making a case for questioning whether this self-representation of Chan was in fact normative for Chan as a whole during the late Tang and early Song dynasties when it was first formulated and putatively took hold. Featuring translations of three key texts written by Guifeng Zongmi (780–841) and an extensive (sixty-seven page) introduction, Zongmi on Chan invites careful consideration of the possibility that it was instead “sutra-based” Chan that was normative throughout East Asia, even during the so-called golden ages of Chan.
Zongmi on Chan opens with a brief recounting of Zongmi's early life in Sichuan province, his training in both Chan meditation and textual studies—the former under Heze Chan master Daoyuan and the latter under the tutelage of Chengguan, the premier Huayan exegete of the early ninth century—and the general arc of his career as a Buddhist practitioner and writer. Following this biographical sketch is a critical discussion of Zongmi's key Chan writings: the Chan Notes, Chan Letter, Chan Prolegomenon, and Chan Canon (no longer extant). Professor Broughton clearly lays out the internal structure of these …
