Six schools of Chinese Mahayana

Alekseev-Apraksin Anatolii Mikhailovich Doctor of Cultural Studies Professor, Department of Comparative Studies of Spiritual Traditions, Specifics of their Cultures and Interreligious Dialogue, UNESCO 191180, Russia, g. Saint Petersburg, per. Dzhambula, 13 apraksin.spb@gmail.com

Li Linsong Master's degree, graduate student. Institute of Philosophy, St. Petersburg State University 190068, Russia, g. 190068, ul. Dekabristov, 30 flutells@foxmail.com

Introduction

     Buddhism penetrated into China along several routes, now known as the Great Silk Road. One of them originated in Central Asia, and the other in Southeast Asia. The very first contacts of the Chinese with Buddhism, according to the historiography of the end of the era of the Six Dynasties, can be attributed to the III century BC. Further acquaintance with Buddhism from Central Asia was probably connected with the military campaigns of the Han Wu-di. This is also confirmed by archaeological finds of recent decades, which show the prevalence of Buddhist subjects in the funerary art of the Late Han. In turn, the penetration of Buddhism from the South-Eastern direction is associated with the appearance of the first Buddhist community in China, patronized by Prince Liu-Ying. It is also known that during these years, Emperor Ming-di very warmly received the Buddhist mentor Kashyapa Matanga (She Moten). For him and for the storage of the relics brought by him, the first Buddhist temple and monastery of the "White Horse" (68) was built in the capital's suburbs, which has survived to this day.

     The period of adaptation of Buddhism falls on the era of the Six Dynasties. At this time, monastic communities are being formed, translations of Buddhist sutras are being conducted. In the II-III centuries, the authority of Buddhism increases among different segments of the population, and it begins to exert an increasing influence on artistic culture and, in general, on the intellectual environment of the Celestial Empire. "Under Western Jin, 32 Buddhist sanctuaries operated on the territory of Luoyang and its environs. During the Three Kingdoms period, 253 were translated, and 491 compositions were translated for the Western Jin. However ... the heterogeneity of sources together with linguistic difficulties ... predetermined the initial eclecticism of the theoretical constructions of Chinese Buddhist thinkers, which led to a distorted, and in some cases, incorrect understanding of Buddhist concepts by them" ^{[16, pp. 94-95]}. Nevertheless, the development of the dharma continued and already in the fourth century, Buddhist theoretical thought has reached a new level. The social positions and authority of Buddhism have increased even more. This is confirmed by the formation of the Chinese Buddhist schools of Theravada traditions ^[3] and Mahayana. In this article it is proposed to consider the main schools of Chinese Mahayana: Tiantai-zong, Huayang-zong, Chan-zong, Jingtu-zong, Sanlun-zong and Fasyan-zong.

Tiantai-zong School (?))

     The higher teachings in the Tiantai school are based on the Saddharma-pundarika Sutra, the Mahaparinirvana Sutra and Nagarjuna's treatise Mahaprajnaparamita-upadesa. The basis of the practices is "Mo he zhi guan" ("Mahashamatha and Vipashyana"), in Russian, "The Great Treatise on the cessation of agitation of consciousness and analytical contemplation." The spread of these teachings in China was due to the activities of the great ascetics Huiwen and Huisa. The founder of the school is considered to be their student Zhiyi (538-597). The school got its name from the name of the Tiantaishan Mountain (literally "platform of the sky") located in the east of China (modern prov. Zhejiang) ^{[14, pp. 333-334]}. Mentor Zhiyi, revered as the third patriarch of this school, lived and taught there for a long time. The colossal merit of the meditation master Zhiyi and his followers was that they were able to organize and summarize a huge layer of Buddhist literature translated into Chinese in previous centuries. Texts relating to different chariots, which seemed contradictory, and sometimes incomplete. Over the next two centuries, the Buddhists of the Tiantai school identified semantic gaps, ordered and linked a variety of Buddhist views into a single system. The highest position in this system was occupied by the Lotus Sutra, so another name for this school is the "Lotus Sutra school" (Chinese fahua—tsung) ^[22]. Developing the ideas of Madhyamaka Nagarjuna and the theory of Tathagata-garbha (Chinese Zhulai tsang), the followers of Tiantai claim that not only living beings are endowed with Buddha nature, but also "inanimate nature", which distinguishes their view from other Buddhist schools that recognize the objective world only as a correlate of santana (the flow of life of living beings). Among the main concepts of the Tiantai school: "in one [act] of consciousness there are three thousand [worlds]" (Kit. and nian san qian) and the concept of "one mind/ consciousness" (Kit. and xin, Skt. ekachitta) ^[20]. These concepts are also connected with the cosmological ideas of Buddhists, according to which each type of living beings and its "abode" can be considered in two ways: as a special level of consciousness unfolding and as a corresponding world. The practice in this school is based on the idea of zhi guan ("cessation and contemplation"), a special form of shamatha (calming the mind) and vipashyana (clear consciousness) exercises. It should also be noted that if earlier Chinese Buddhism was guided by Indian sources and Indian lines of transmission of practice, then thanks to the Tiantai school, Chinese analytics proper appeared, which included in its sphere the classification of the Buddha's teachings by five periods, eight types of teaching, etc. The Tiantai "Heavenly Platform" largely ensured the further development of Chinese Buddhist thought, the appearance of original authors and directions. It should be noted that the peculiar Tiantai pantheism had a huge impact on the artistic life of the entire Far East, especially on the poetry and painting of China and Japan. To Him we owe a lot of expressive works imbued with the experience of nature as diverse manifestations of the one absolute nature of the Buddha. The school itself Tiantai flourished in China until the middle of the IX century, after which it gradually declined, having experienced a period of brief revival in the XI–XII centuries. At the beginning of the IX century. monk Site (767-822) began to spread this teaching in Japan, where it was called Tendai. In the XIII century, the sub-school of the monk Nichiren (1222-1282) emerged from Tendai, which flourishes in Japan to the present day ^[15].

Huayang-zong School ()

    The Huayang School (Wreath of Flowers) owes its name to the Avatamsaka Sutra (kit. Hua yan jing, Russian. The Flower Garland Sutra) translated into Chinese around 420 and became one of the most revered texts. The followers of this school also attach great importance to the Mahaparinirvana Sutra (kit. Nepan-ching, Russian. Nirvana Sutra) and "Mahayana shraddhotpada shastre" (kit. Da Cheng qi xin lun, Russian. A treatise on the awakening of faith in Mahayana) ^[27]. The first patriarch of the Huayan school is traditionally considered Dushun (557-640), his second disciple Zhiyan. However, the founder of the school, as a social institution, is considered to be its third patriarch Fazan (643-712). The Huayan School acquired its completed classical form under his successors: the fourth Patriarch Chengguan (760-820) and the fifth Patriarch Zongmi (780-841).

     In the representations of this school, everything that exists, all the worlds of the past, present and future are nothing but the manifestation of the Vairocana Buddha. Special emphasis is placed here on the interdependence of all people and phenomena, and the activities of bodhisattvas aimed at the benefit of all living beings. Thanks to the fusion of the ideas of the Avatamsaka Sutra and the treatise "Awakening of Faith in Mahayana", Huayan Buddhism has developed an original interpretation of the concepts of "emptiness" and "self". The original Buddhist idea that the "I" does not exist has been transformed into the idea that the individual "I" does not exist, but there is a kind of transpersonal "I" (one mind), the projections of which are all transitory and ontologically interdependent aspects of reality. This is where the key postulate of Huayang originates — "one is all, and all is one." One of the figurative mythologies of the Avatamsaka Sutra, which is often used by Buddhists to illustrate the interdependence of all things, is the Indra network. In this ancient, possibly pre-Buddhist myth, the god Indra has a worldwide network at each intersection of the threads of which there is a precious stone. Each piece of jewelry is so perfect that it reflects all the other jewels ^[26]. Just as every thing in the world depends for its existence and its identity on every other existing thing. Since the only thing that exists is reality, the world of illusions (Samsara) is not ontologically different from Nirvana. In other words, Samsara is simply an erroneous perception of the same Higher Reality experienced in enlightenment ^[25]. Master Fazang wrote that it is not necessary to deny or lose sight of the fact that human reality consists of individuals. However, it is necessary to understand that in fact there are no separate stable individuals. All that really exists is a complete network of interdependent entities (dharmas), and this network (stretched through all time and space) changes every fraction of a second, but as a principle it is eternal and unchangeable.

     In addition to studying the theory, the followers of Huayang practice the observance of vows, and a system of meditative exercises, which is divided into three categories: comprehension of the essence of true emptiness; comprehension of the absence of barriers between things and the absolute; comprehension of the universal and complete interpenetration of Samsara and Nirvana. A person who has achieved enlightenment realizes the unity of the world and his identity with the universe as a "single consciousness", emerging, as a result, from the illusory world of births and deaths. The followers of the Huayang school regarded their teaching as the highest and most perfect and called it the "only chariot" (and cheng) of Buddhism. The doctrines of the other schools were considered as steps to the comprehension of Huayan philosophy or its particular aspects. After Zongmi, the Huayan school remained the main Buddhist school in China for several centuries, second only to the Chan school in influence. The views of this school had a significant impact on the formation of neo-Confucianism. In Japan, it is known as Kagon ^[13].

Chan-tsung School ()

     Chan is perhaps the most widespread and well-known Chinese school of Buddhism in the world. According to traditional beliefs, she traces her line of succession from Shakyamuni Buddha and Nagarjuna. These teachings were brought to China by the Indian meditation master Bodhidharma, in Chinese Putidamo () or abbreviated Damo () at the beginning of the VI century. Putidamo was the twenty-eighth Indian and first Chinese patriarch of this school. As you know, the name Chan is essentially a transliteration of the Sanskrit term "dhyana", which means contemplation, meditation. Among the important centers of the spread of Chan in China, it is customary to call the Shaolin Monastery. Here they taught to stay in meditative concentration and compassion for all living things, while engaging in any kind of activity, up to martial arts. This approach in Buddhist practice has significantly enriched literature, art and other types of culture, throughout the area of distribution of this school. It is known that Bodhidharma taught about the identity of samsara and nirvana.  He also said that the truth is transmitted "from heart to heart" outside of writings and speeches. This served to establish a specific line of transmission from teacher to student. Following the experience of Indian teachers, the first six Chinese patriarchs developed new ways to awaken the minds of students and destroy the duality of thinking. At the time of the sixth patriarch, the school split into two branches: North and South. The first was headed by Shenxiu, a supporter of the methods of gradual enlightenment, the second was headed by Huineng, who develops methods of sudden enlightenment, he approved the tradition of transferring experience outside the scriptures, knowledge not based on words and letters. By the 10th century, many autonomous Chan schools were formed, known in history as the "Five Houses". The two most influential houses of Linji (yap. rinzai) and Caodong (yap. soto) have survived to the present day ^[11]. In the transmission of Linji, paradoxical texts of wen-da (yap. mondo) are used — question-answer forms of a conversation devoid of logic and gong'an (yap. koans)—perplexing statements that encourage the practitioner to go beyond the duality of perception, conceptual mind and the realization of sudden awakening ^[21]. In Caodong, the doctrine of the five ranks arose, in which correlates from the Chinese book of changes were selected for the texts of the Prajnaparamita. In this school, a lot of attention is paid to "sitting meditation" and a gradual approach in learning to recognize the true nature of one's mind by practitioners.

     Denying the importance of studying texts to achieve enlightenment ^[32] (the famous sixth Patriarch Huineng could not read or write at all) ^[1], the followers of Chan left perhaps the richest literary heritage among other schools of Chinese Buddhism. The early Chan masters relied on the Lankavatara Sutra and the sutras of the Prajnaparamita (transcendental wisdom) cycle, such as the Vazhrachchedika Sutra. Later they also borrowed the idea of the tathagatagarbha, or "essence of the Buddha," which all sentient beings possess. In the Chinese Chan school, the Shurangama Sutra and the Ashvaghoshi shastra on Awakening Faith in Mahayana are very popular. And of course, many of his own works appeared, in which the fundamental tenets of Chan were captured, such as "Linji-lu" (Recordings of conversations of the mentor Linji) and "Liu-tzu tan-ching" (The Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch's Platform) ^[7]. Most Korean and many Chinese followers of Chan still study madhyamaka, the philosophy of the middle way.

     Various branches of Chan Buddhism have spread widely in the countries of the Pacific region. In the VI century, the Vietnamese school of Thien was formed, in the VI–VII century. — the Korean school of Song, in the XII century. — Japanese Zen school ^[9]. Dogen Zenji and Mean Eisai played a key role in spreading the teachings and practices of Chan in XIII century Japan. In the XX century. thanks to the Japanese, such as Suzuki, the Zen teaching became incredibly popular in Europe and America. Its spread as a universal type of East Asian humanism and a strong alternative to inhuman scientism can hardly be overestimated. Acquaintance with Chan, seriously influenced the development of psychology, literature and modern popular culture.

Jingtu-zong School ()

     Among the most widespread Buddhist traditions in China and East Asia, one should also name the school of the "Pure Land" (Kit. jingtu, Yap. jedo). For the first time with the teachings of Buddha Amitabha (kit. Amitafo, yap. Amida) met in China during the Han dynasty, in the second century AD, when the Kushan monk Lokaxema (kit. Loujiacheng) began translating the Buddhist sutras of the "Pure Land" into Chinese ^[12]. However, these teachings did not receive recognition immediately. This early branch of Mahayana Buddhism began to form into a special school in China only in the IV–V century, thanks to the activities of Hui Yuan (334-416) and the foundation of the Donglin Temple on Mount Lu in 402 ^[36].   The Pure Land School is based on the Small and Large Sukhavativyuha Sutras, the Amitayurdhyana Sutra and Nagarjuna's commentary on the sutra "Ten Stages of Spiritual Growth", one of the chapters of which "easy practice" contains ethical, theoretical and other postulates of this religious trend.

     Special emphasis in this school is placed on the contemplation of Buddha Amitabha, the repetition of his mantras and the development of the desire to be born in the heavenly land of Sukhavati ^[23]. In this heavenly abode there is no suffering, there is no ego-illusion, but there are all the necessary conditions for unhindered practice and achieving final awakening. It should be noted that Sukhavati, created by the Buddha of the West Amitabha out of sympathy for followers, is interpreted by practitioners not only as a place, but also as the uncontaminated nature of human consciousness. Chinese Zhiyi scholars, Hanshan Deqing and Ou-yi Zhixiu, have written many commentaries on Sanskrit texts and developed practices aimed at achieving serenity and comprehension of the nature of reality through meditation ^[19].

     The growth of its popularity, perhaps, is due to the image of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara — the ideal of active compassion and boundless empathy. "In China, the image of the bodhisattva superimposed on the image of the local goddess of love of children and childbirth, took the female form of Guan-yin" ^[5]. After the 9th century, the practice of the Pure Land was incorporated into many other Chinese schools, and today in many Chinese monasteries, including Vajrayana schools in Tibet, the teachings on the transfer of consciousness to the Pure Land of Sukhavati (tib. Devachen). Very popular in Taiwan, the "easiest" method of achieving liberation, was transferred from China to Japan, Korea and Vietnam.

Sanlun-zong School (?))

     The Sanlong school is based on the philosophy of madhyamaka and the sutras of the Prajnaparamita cycle (transcendental wisdom). Teachers of this tradition already in the III century . They settled in Buddhist monasteries in Central Asia (south of modern Xinjiang). According to traditional ideas, at the turn of the IV–V century, during the time of Emperor Wu-di of the southern Liang dynasty, the great Indian translator Kumarajiva (334-413) visited China. Having settled in the capital Chang'an, he created a translation center for Buddhist texts ^[4]. According to legend, in the company of eight hundred students, he translated 35 fundamental monuments of Mahayana thought into Chinese. In 512, the monk Sanlan founded a school on this philosophical basis — Shelin xiangchuan ("The School of succession in the She Mountains"). His successor Zizang (549-623) reformed it and formed a new Sanlun school (literally three treatises) ^[24]. The center of the school was the Huizhisi Monastery near Chang'an. The second way of spreading the teachings of Madhyamaka from India ran through the Himalayas to Tibet, where followers of all schools study Madhyamaka in more or less detail. As for Sanlun, then, perhaps, in this school, the ideas of shunyavada (the doctrine of voidness), ideas about the freedom of all things from self-existence and the unreality of everything singular were perceived most fully of all the schools of Chinese Buddhism.

     The Sanlun school bases its views on the texts of Nagarjuna "Mulamadhyamaka-karike" (kit. "Zhong guan lun", "On the middle vision"), "Dvadashanikaya-shastra" (kit. "Shier men lun", "Shastra on the twelve gates") Nagarjuna and the work of Nagarjuna Aryadeva's disciple "Shataka-shastra" (kit. "Bai lun", "Shastra in a hundred verses"). Sometimes the fourth main text of the Sanlun school is called "Mahaprajnaparamita-upadesa" by Nagarjuna ("Da zhidu lun", "Discourses on the Great Knowledge of the Crossing [to Nirvana]"). Because of this, the Sanlun school is sometimes called Xilun — "four treatises". Initially, all of them were written in Sanskrit, but their originals have not reached our days. Only Kumarajiva's translations have survived.

     Like the Indian predecessors, the followers of Sanlong claim that the phenomena of the world can only be determined relative to each other. In other words, something is revealed only if there is a reference point, which in turn is set only relative to another reference point, and so on indefinitely. Thus, one singular exists only relative to another singular. Sanlong theorists and practitioners have analyzed in detail the categories of cause and effect, movement, rest, substance, quality, time, and so on. They proved that nothing exists independently, because everything is based on an infinite sequence of causes and effects. Having inherited the methods of disputing and argumentation from Indian logicians, the followers of Sanlong emerged victorious in any disputes. Without putting forward their own arguments and adhering to the discourse of the "Buddhist tetraleme: A is B, And there is not B, there is neither A nor B, there is neither not-A nor not-B" ^[5] and other logical techniques, they brought down any categories and systems of opponents. By doing this, they demonstrated the highest wisdom and showed compassion, helping to free confused philosophers from false ideas and dogmatic judgments. In China, since the eighth century, the school as a social institution has declined, and its intellectual heritage has been developed in Tiantai-tsung and Tendai-xiu, which exist to this day. The Tibetan Geluk school is also considered to be the direct heir of the Madhyamaka-prasangika teachings. In Japan, the Sanlun school is known as Sanron ^[8].

Fasyan-zong School ()

     The Buddhist practice of the Fasyan school is based on the "Sandhinirmochana Sutra" / "Tse shen mi jing" (Sutra of untying knots [comprehension] of the deepest mystery), "Avatamsaki Sutras" (Garland of sutras), "Ratna-kuta Sutras" (Precious collection of sutras), "Yogacharabhumi-shastra" / "Yujia shi di lun" Asangi (Asenjia, Wu-zhu [Heavenly] lands of yoga practitioners) and other sutras and shastras ^[19]. The intellectual basis of the Fasyan school is the Yogachara-Vijnanavada philosophy, which justifies and interprets a new cycle of Mahayana sutras.

     The famous traveler Xuanzang (602-664) is recognized as the founder of the transmission line of these teachings in China. During his travels in India, he met, mastered and translated into his native language the important Buddhist treatises Maitreyanatha, Asanga and Vasubandhu, and based on them, together with his disciple Kuiji (632-692), created the Fasyan school. The school got its name due to one of its central concepts, according to which it is necessary to recognize the reality not of the dharmas themselves (fa), but only of their representations (xiang) in consciousness, since only awareness is real. The founders of the school lived in the Datsyensy Monastery (the Abode of Great Kindness and Mercy), the capital of Chang'an of the Tang Empire, so the school was also called (Qien zong) ^[10]. Another name of the Weishi school is the "Mind Only" school.

     Yogacara introduced the ideas of the three bodies of the Buddha into Mahayana Buddhism (nirmana-kaya — the body of incarnation, sambhoga-kaya — the body of bliss, and dharma-kaya — the body of teaching). She introduced into the Buddhist discourse about consciousness (consisting of five types of consciousness of sensory perception, thinking (mano-vijnana) and mind (manas)), the eighth type of consciousness — Alaya-vijnana (Treasury of consciousness, which has been storing karmic imprints of every living being in an indistinguishable (advaya), undifferentiated form since time immemorial).  The Fasyan school also shared the concept of "Three Natures" (Tri-svabhava), which implied the ability to distinguish between "imaginary" (associated with naming things and attributing reality to them), "dependent" (conditioned by another, i.e. if there is one, then there is another) and "perfect" (true) reality. These ideas and other concepts have developed into a coherent philosophical system, in which there is ontology, soteriology, epistemology, ethics, logic.

     The Fasyan school reinforced the original Vijnanavadin interpretation of the entire sphere of experience as different states of consciousness (kit. shi) ^[18]. These developments were subsequently developed by representatives of many schools in China, Tibet, Mongolia, Japan and continue to develop to this day. It should be noted that the theories in the Fasyan school and other directions of yogachara were derived from the practice of mastering yogic practices, from meditation aimed at working to change states of consciousness. More precisely, the goal of the practice in Fasyan (including the passage of the ten stages described in detail [lands] of the bodhisattva's path of self-improvement) was understood as achieving the stability of the "absolute consciousness" "purified" in the process of meditation in its own initially clear, calm and unclouded nature of the mind, which, in fact, is equivalent to gaining Awakening and entering Nirvana (kit. Nepan).

Conclusion

     The spread of Buddhism in China was of lasting importance for the formation of its distinctive culture. A significant role in this process was played by the Silk Road, along the roads of which the most powerful cultural diffusion was carried out: subject-material, symbolic and ideological exchange was carried out ^[2]. In the course of more than two thousand years of history, China has adopted all the directions of Buddhist thought and practice of Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana. An overview of the main Mahayana schools allows us to observe their continuity and at the same time cultural forms of adaptation and independent development. In addition, this story points to China's role in the transmission of Buddhism to neighboring countries. Reveals the conceptual kinship of Chinese and Russian Buddhism. In addition, the study showed the openness of Buddhism to the new, its non-dogmatism, tolerance and incredible ideological resources for the implementation of cultural synthesis.