sciousness-Only, Ch’an, and finally Hua-yen itself as the highest stage of
enlightenment. Tsung-mi, broadening the synthesis even to external religious
allies, added Confucianism as the first step on the philosophical-religious path.
Tsung-mi’s is the creativity of amalgamation in time of weakness. Having
studied with Confucians, a Ch’an lineage as well as Hua-yen, he combined all
the positions, downplaying Ch’an antinomianism. The Ch’an school, now
becoming increasingly institutionalized, was transforming its initially anti-
intellectual and anti-scriptural attitude into an intellectualism of its own;
Tsung-mi’s doctrines were widely adopted in the Ch’an school, and survived
there after his death, when the Hua-yen succession was broken and its major
texts lost.^6
The paradox of Ch’an anti-intellectualism combining with Hua-yen intel-
lectuality is not so great as it might seem. Both in their own ways were at the
tip of a hierarchy. Hua-yen crowned the networks of philosophical lineages
which had been building up in China. Its vision of the interpenetration of every
level of reality was a synthesis at the highest level of reflexive awareness on
the interpenetration of Buddhist doctrines. Ch’an, for all its surface anti-intel-
lectualism, arose from a high level of intellectual reflexivity as well. The two
reflexivities merged without difficulty because the level of vision was much
the same.
The Ch’an (Zen) Revolution
Ch’an originally meant “meditation” (Sanskrit dhyana, “concentration”),
which was, after all, the original basis of Buddhism. The fact that there was a
specific meditation school in China, unlike in Indian Buddhism, indicates the
extent to which the practice had become marginalized in the early centuries.
The popular and politically influential schools, especially in the north, empha-
sized magic and liturgy; in the gentry-intellectual circles of the south, clever
conversation largely displaced meditation (Zürcher, 1959: 33, 114, 127, 146,
180). The development of the intellectual schools, from Three Treatise to
Consciousness-Only, made salvation a matter of insight, although the T’ien-t’ai
and Hua-yen schools did incorporate considerable emphasis on meditation.
What was distinctive about the Ch’an school in its full flowering was its
emphasis on meditation as a form of life—rather than as deep trance—together
with its hostility to all other forms of Buddhist practice.
This anti-intellectual and anti-ritual theme appeared only after meditation
specialists had maintained a Chinese lineage for five or six generations. The
Ch’an lineage is traced retrospectively back to Bodhidharma (ca. 500 c.e.,
possibly mythical), and a number of successors are listed. It appears that there
may be a break between the alleged “third patriarch” and the fourth (213 and
290 • (^) Intellectual Communities: Asian Paths