Lingyin Jing Modern Reading

Author: Dongfangqiao
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-11-01
Features: Dongfangqiao is a pen name of a Taiwanese scholar. I only learned his real name and surname more than ten years after knowing Dongfangqiao. In the early 1980s, the library acquired a batch of books from Hong Kong and Taiwan, including a hardcover, exquisitely bound book titled Chinese Principles of Logic and Western Logic, written by Dr. Tang Hua. At that time, I was involved in writing the national "Six-Five" planning project "History of Chinese Logic," and many scholars in Chinese academia held the view that ancient China had no logic. Unexpectedly, even across the Taiwan Strait, there were people who were passionate about the exploration, organization, and study of ancient Chinese logic. The name "Tang Hua" and the uniquely styled author photo in the book deeply impressed me.
During the Sui and Tang dynasties, the practice of Zen meditation swept through all social strata. The Lengyan Sutra, also known as the Great Bodhi Sutra, emerged in this historical context. Due to its use of accessible language to categorize and explain various "upside-down" views that might arise during meditation practice and their methods of resolution, as well as its sequential introduction of the stages for achieving "supreme enlightenment" through the self-narratives of over 20 Buddhist disciples like Avalokiteshvara, it gained prominence among both monastic and lay communities and was widely used as a guide for Zen practice. This modern reading of the Lengyan Sutra not only preserves the original content of the book through categorization and translation but also interprets and evaluates it from the perspectives of natural science and life experience, catering to the diverse needs of readers.