On the seventh page of the People's Daily for April 15, 1958, Ma T'e published an article entitled "Discussions of Problems of Logic." In his conclusion he critically evaluates many people and even classifies me as a revisionist who must be criticized. I have studied this article closely and feel that it is shot through with difficulties.

Some of the authors of the essays on Chinese philosophers prefer the pin yin system of romanization for Chinese names and words, while others prefer the Wade‐Giles system. Given that both systems are in wide use today, important names and words are given in both their pin yin and Wade‐Giles formulations. The author's preference is printed first, followed by the alternative romanization within brackets.

One of the interpretive devices that Ch'eng-kuan (澄 觀) is famous for having employed to distill the essence of the vast Mahāvaipulya Buddhāvataṃsaka Sūtra (Tafang-kuang fo-hua-yen ching 《大方廣佛華嚴經》 was a series of variations on the contemplative theme (kuan-men 觀門) of the complete interfusion (yüan-jung 圓融) of the scripture's three chief protagonists (san-sheng 三聖) ── the Buddha Vairocana (Pi-lu-che-na 毘盧遮那) and the bodhisattvas Mañjuśrī (Wen-shu-shih-li 文殊師利) and Samantabhadra (P'u-hsien 普賢). By aligning these three powerful sacred persons with a number of (...) philosophical categories that he believed to be central to the sūtra ── categories like "cause" (yin 因 ), "fruition" (kuo 果 ), "faith" (hsin 信 ), "understanding" (chieh 解), "insight" (chih 智), "practice" (hsing 行), "principle" (li 理), etc. ── he provided a focal point at which the rich and vivid meditative and liturgical lives of Hua-yen devotees could be made to converge with their philosophical reflections. -/- Although Ch'eng-kuan invoked this device in several of his writings, his most concerted development of it is a short essay entitled San-sheng yüan-jung kuan-men, which appears to have been written relatively late in his long career. Like many important Hua-yen texts, this essay seems to have been lost in China not long after its author's death. However, it was preserved in Korea and Japan and from the latter country was reintroduced to China in the last years of nineteenth century. Neither in China nor in the West has it yet been adequately studied. -/- The core of the present article is a critical edition of the Chinese text of the essay based on a careful comparison of all available versions and presented together with a copiously annotated English translation. The edition translation are preceded by a brief interpretive introduction and followed by an appendix in which are given: a detailed discussion of the work's textual history, detailed accounts of its various editions, and descriptions of its several surviving paraphrases and commentaries. (shrink)

Buddhists see life and death as a whole with death as the beginning of another new life. Death is a fact of life for the Chinese, as it is for all people. When they think about death, many Chinese immediately call to mind the terms J ing Tu Zhong or, in recent times, Nian Fo. These Chinese terms are interchangeable and have been translated literally into English using the two words, "Pure Land". Because Jing Tu Zhong, "Pure Land" has been (...) imbedded in the Chinese point of view for thousands of years, most Chinese only think of Jing Tu in terms of saving people after they have died, so that they will go to the Pure Land. Most people forget the other, more important religious aspect of this concept, which is to prepare the living to enter the Pure Land after death. In fact, Nian Fo is an extremely important and worthy school of philosophy, which not only guides the living to prepare for death but also to guide the dying as they face and pass through the fear of death. This paper discusses the Chinese peoples' conception and meaning of the Pure Land by following the original history of the concept of the "Pure Land" and the related sutras. Additionally, this paper addresses the contemporary chanting ceremony of Amitabha's name, how chanting practices in the Pure Land School deals with concerns about dying and the human spirit, and the Pure Land ceremonies used in conjunction with chant before and after death. (shrink)

To give the necessary affirmation to the historical role played by the Legalists and to study and analyze the Legalists' writings from the Marxist point of view is a major task on the ideological front called for by the deepening of the Campaign to Criticize Lin Piao and Confucius. Han Fei was an outstanding representative of the Legalists of the late Warring States period. He summed up the experience, both positive and negative, of the newly emerging landlord class in the (...) process of instituting reform, and he criticized the reactionary Confucianism. He thus fully and theoretically formed a comprehensive system of Legalist thought which served as a direct theoretical preparation for the establishment of a unified feudal state under a centralized authority. The "Wu Tu" is representative of the more than one hundred thousand words of Han Fei's writings. This important political essay made a revolutionary criticism of the reactionary ideology hindering the progress of the newly emerging landlord class and outlined a theoretical program by which the landlord class could exercise an all-round dictatorship over the slave-owning class. Acquiring a clear understanding about this will help us see further through the ultra-Right essence of Lin Piao's practice of honoring Confucius and opposing Legalism. (shrink)