Sacred Texts: Buddhism

A Buddhist Bible: History of Ch'an Buddhism Previous to t...

Dwight GoddardTaoism and ZenZen Buddhism

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This is a scholarly historical essay — likely a book chapter — 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–9th centuries CE. The author characterizes Confucianism as ultimately hostile to Buddhism — conservative, ego-affirming, and nationalistic — 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 — 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.

A Buddhist Bible: History of Ch'an Buddhism Previous to t...

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