{"collection":"Sacred Texts: Buddhism","full_text_available":false,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/sacred_texts_v1_bud_bb_bb05_htm/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/sacred_texts_v1_bud_bb_bb05_htm","id":"sacred_texts_v1_bud_bb_bb05_htm","license":"unknown_pending_legal_review","rights_basis":"sacred_texts_v1_preview_gate_primary_text_only; acquisition-method/ToS and compilation-copyright questions still open, not resolved by this gate","source":"sacred_texts_v1","source_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/bud/bb/bb05.htm","summary":"This is a scholarly historical essay \u2014 likely a book chapter \u2014 tracing the transmission of Indian Buddhism into China and its transformation into Chan (Zen) Buddhism through contact with Confucianism and Taoism, written in a tradition of early 20th-century Western Buddhist scholarship. The central argument is that over roughly five centuries, Indian Buddhism remained a foreign import in China until it collided and fused with indigenous Taoist and Confucian thought, producing a distinctly Chinese form of Buddhism by around the 4th\u20139th centuries CE. The author characterizes Confucianism as ultimately hostile to Buddhism \u2014 conservative, ego-affirming, and nationalistic \u2014 while Taoism, despite its \"easy-going laissez-faire\" naturalism, shared enough structural affinity with Buddhist thought (especially around mind-concentration and concepts like Tao/Buddha) that the two became deeply intertwined, sometimes indistinguishably so. A key claim is that the outcome was fortunate: Buddhism absorbed Taoism rather than the reverse, shedding Indian philosophical excess and \"sentimental personalisations\" to recover something closer to Shakyamuni's original practical emphasis. The author takes sides against scholar Hu-shih (who frames the encounter as \"Taoist revolt\") in favor of Suzuki's view of natural Buddhist evolution \u2014 while also writing with personal investment, mentioning their own Chan master and a verse received as instruction. The text reads as a synthesis aimed at educated Western readers interested in Zen's origins, blending historical narrative with doctrinal comparison and occasional first-person anecdote.","tags":["Dwight Goddard","Taoism and Zen","Zen Buddhism"],"text":null,"title":"A Buddhist Bible: History of Ch'an Buddhism Previous to t...","tradition":"Sacred Texts: Buddhism","translated_text":null,"word_count":5308}