The "Ch'an School" and Its Place in the Buddhist Monastic Tradition (Zen, Japan, China).

Abstract

This dissertation calls into question some of the fundamental assumptions that inform modern Japanese research into the history of Ch'an. It examines the ways in which scholars have defined the Ch'an school as an object of historical study, and traces the modern conception back to its roots in the T'ang and Sung dynasty Ch'an annals. The dissertation challenges the modern scholarly belief that the Ch'an school in T'ang China was a sectarian entity that developed a unique set of institutional forms in opposition to the mainstream of Buddhist monasticism. That belief derives from an ideological conception of the early Ch'an school that was formulated in the Sung Ch'an histories, and has been h and ed down in the Ch'an and Zen traditions. The dissertation demonstrates the proper historiographic method for investigating the institutional arrangements of the early Ch'an school. Included are a translation and interpretation of the Ch'an-men kuei-shih, the single most important source for the history of early Ch'an monastic institutions. A comparative study of this text with earlier sources shows that many aspects of monastic organization and practice heretofore deemed the invention of the Ch'an school in fact had precedents in the mainstream Buddhist tradition.