Zen History: A Historiography Centered on Questions

Author: Gong Jun
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-08-01
Features: When Western Buddhist studies entered the era of "embracing the other" and listening to polyphonic voices, the Buddhist discourses in the Chinese context seemed to still remain confined to a relatively narrow historical and interpretive narrative. As a philosophical examination of Zen, although with the discovery of new materials at the beginning of the 20th century, especially the publication of Dunhuang manuscripts, scholars began to re-examine the reliability of traditional lamp histories and their historical context, hoping to reconstruct a new history of Zen thought. In terms of methodology, due to excessive reliance on the revolutionary insights brought by new historical materials, the methodological structure of primarily using historical documents supplemented by necessary philosophical interpretations became the basic paradigm of modern Chinese Zen studies. The value belief of "clear etymology leads to clear meaning" in Sinology, after being packaged with modern rationality, led scholars to believe that through the collation and interpretation of original documents and archaeological materials, the temporal and spatial distance of history could be filled, and the original face of traditional Zen could be reconstructed. This ambitious heroicism-inspired paradigm of documentary epistemology, on the one hand, led to a considerable expansion of historical document studies on Chinese Zen, especially textual studies on Tang Dynasty Zen, and together with Japanese scholars, it re-established the historical genealogy of early Zen development.