as parts of the world of illusion to be transcended, the Buddhist monk might
be regarded as living the life of philosophy at its extreme. Even religion in its
conventional sense, with its categories of salvation, immortality, and the sacred,
constitutes no more than another set of attachments to be understood for what
they are and thereby transcended. Buddhist enlightenment might itself be seen
as the pure emotional energy of creative consciousness, detached from all
contents and transformed to the highest voltage by focusing on itself. Reflexive
insight is raised to the status of a sacred act.
All this rested on supporting conditions in the material world. Monasteries
had to have sources of revenue if monks were to devote themselves to medi-
tation; Buddhist life at some level was always entwined with the mundane
realities of economics, politics, and social status. The social causality cut both
ways. Not only can we trace the outward-to-inward flow of material conditions
on the formation of Buddhist intellectual networks; but also we find a profound
transformation of Chinese society resulting from the spread of monasteries.
Corporations recruiting universally and operating outside the family-based
structures of patrimonial society, the monasteries became centers of economic
accumulation and the cutting edge of structural change. If Europe with its
bureaucratic and capitalist structures was built upon Christianity—first of all
the monastic Christianity of the Middle Ages—China was no less shaped by
an organizational revolution that was due in considerable part to medieval
Buddhism. Both Europe and China, too, ended their period of medieval takeoff
with downsizing reformations. As the secular economy overflowed the monas-
tic sector and state administration built on the new resources, the monasteries
were plundered and their rituals were displaced. Buddhist property was confis-
cated for lay ends; it was not lost, however, but turned into new channels, just
as Buddhist intellectual sophistication was circulated in a new guise by the
Neo-Confucians.
The middle level of causality has a dynamic of its own. Buddhist organiza-
tional growth not only affected the intellectuals within but also transformed
the surrounding political and economic structure. This did not happen without
a fight. Confucianism, and to some extent Taoism, grounded in the older
structures, became bitter rivals of Buddhism. The political struggles that ensued
shaped the contours of intellectual life. Because its organizational base pro-
vided more autonomy for abstract philosophy, Buddhists dominated the intel-
lectual attention space for many generations. Political attacks from external
enemies had indirect effects. When the organizational base of court Buddhism
began to crumble, the Ch’an (Zen) movement broke out in the branch of
Buddhism which moved to a safer base; still later, Neo-Confucianism repre-
sented the intellectual creativity of transition when the Confucian literati
regained control of the means of intellectual production.
Revolutions: Buddhist and Neo-Confucian China • 273