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WorkMingjiao Qisong

鐔津文集

(lit.: Collected Writings of Tanjin)

A Chan monk answers Song scholars' attacks on Buddhism in their own prose, arguing that the Buddha and Confucius teach one way.

by Mingjiao Qisong477 passages held

  • Chinese, the original language
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Chinese

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Overview

When Mingjiao Qisong settled in Hangzhou in the 1040s, the educated men of the region were writing in the plain "ancient style" of Han Yu, the Tang essayist who had cast Buddhism as foreign to Chinese life, and with the style they took up his contempt for the religion. This book is the monk's answer, and much else besides: his collected prose, gathered after his death and named after Tanjin, his birthplace in the far south, holding his essays and treatises, his memorials to the throne and his letters. Qisong was a Chan monk in the line of Yunmen Wenyan, and his central work, the Essays to Assist the Teaching, argues from inside the Confucian classics rather than against them. The five Buddhist precepts, he writes, are the five Confucian virtues under other names. Filial piety, the duty his critics said monks abandoned, is honoured by every teaching and by Buddhism most of all: a treatise of twelve chapters makes that case, and its preface recalls that it was his dying father who sent him into the monastery at the age of seven. He wrote commentary on the Doctrine of the Mean, one of the Confucian classics, to show he could read their books as well as they could, and thirty pieces under the title "Against Han Yu" to take on the master himself. Chen Shunyu, a friend who wrote his life in 1075, says the scholars loved the prose, could not answer the reasoning, became his friends and stopped their attacks. The collection also holds the long letter Qisong carried to the capital for Emperor Renzong, and letters to the chief ministers and to Ouyang Xiu, the leading prose writer of the age and a critic of Buddhism, who was born and died in the same years as Qisong, 1007 and 1072. Renzong had his books entered into the Buddhist canon and gave their author the title Mingjiao, "illuminator of the teaching", which Qisong twice tried to refuse. The Essays were reprinted in Japan in 1351, and the modern text follows a Ming edition of 1384.

Key concepts

What are the five precepts and the five constants?

The five precepts are the Buddhist layperson's vows: no killing, no stealing, no sexual misconduct, no lying, no intoxicants. The five constants are the lasting Confucian virtues: humaneness, righteousness, ritual propriety, wisdom and trustworthiness. Qisong matches them one to one, not killing is humaneness, not stealing is righteousness, and so on, so that a Confucian who attacks the precepts finds he is attacking his own virtues.

What does "one mind, different traces" mean?

It is Qisong's formula for how the teachings relate. The Buddha, Confucius and the other sages of antiquity share one mind, the wish that people do good; their traces, the visible teachings, rites and institutions each left behind, differ, because each worked on different people in different times. Arguing about the traces, he holds, misses that they come from the same place.

What is the "august ultimate" (huangji)?

It is a term from the Confucian Book of Documents for the standard a ruler sets at the centre of the realm. Qisong defines it as what keeps the realm central and upright, and ties it to the great common good, what the whole realm shares. He also reads it morally: blessings and calamities answer to whether a person's heart is in accord with it, which lets him set the Buddhist teaching of reward for good beside a Confucian classic.

What does Qisong mean by sincerity?

Sincerity is acting from what one truly is, so that the deed and the heart match. For Qisong it is what makes any virtue last: a son who feeds his parents without it will one day run dry, while a sincere son's care is complete and spills over onto other people and even onto animals. He plays on two words that sound alike in Chinese, sincerity as completion, piety as following through.

What do nature and feelings mean in Qisong's essays?

Nature is what a person has inwardly and at rest; feelings are what stirs when it meets things. Qisong traces birth and death back to them: death comes from birth, birth from feelings, and feelings from nature, so it is the feelings that tie beings to the round of rebirth. The sage, he says, looks back before birth to the cause, which is why the Buddha speaks of nature in a way the classics only begin to.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

One Way, Two Teachings

Scholars called the Buddha's teaching foreign and useless to the state. Whether a monk can answer them from inside their own classics, and what he would have to show to do it, is what this theme asks.

Qisong does not defend Buddhism as a rival. The five precepts, he argues, are the Confucian constants under other names, not killing being humaneness and not stealing righteousness, and the sages, Buddha and Confucius alike, share one mind and leave different traces. The precept against killing, he adds, asks more than abstaining from meat: it forbids harming anything that lives. Against Han Yu, who had cast the Buddha as a barbarian, he answers that the Buddha's homeland was not barbarian and that Han Yu's own writings praise monks.

  • buddhism
  • confucianism
  • religious pluralism
  • buddhist ethics
  • confucian ethics
  • virtue
  • virtue ethics
  • ethics
  • karma
  • dao
  • interpretation
  • skillful means

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Filial Piety as the First Precept

The heaviest charge against monks was that they abandon their parents. Whether leaving home can be a deeper way of honouring one's father and mother is the case his twelve-chapter treatise sets out to make.

Qisong quotes the Buddha's own words that filial piety is called precept, and makes it the root of every rule a monk keeps. A monk who keeps the precepts and forgets his parents has kept nothing. He grounds it in sincerity: feeding parents without it runs dry, while a sincere son treats every parent as his own and spares even insects. He recalls that the Buddha, after his awakening, went up to heaven to teach his dead mother, and he holds that a monk owes his parents mourning in his heart even when he cannot wear it.

  • filial piety
  • sincerity
  • moral cultivation
  • moral education
  • self-cultivation
  • moral psychology
  • human nature
  • ritual

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Governing from the Centre

A monk writes to the emperor and his ministers about rites, punishment and succession. What he thinks makes a government good, and why a monk may say so, is the question here.

In his essay on the august ultimate Qisong defines it plainly: what the whole realm shares is the great common good, and what keeps the realm central and upright is the august ultimate; a ruler who holds to it brings people's hearts together, and one who lets it go divides them. Short essays on rites, rewards, punishments and teaching follow, holding that good order depends more on the quality of rule than on inherited custom. His long letter to Emperor Renzong and letters to the chief ministers ask for the teaching's protection while lecturing them on government.

  • political philosophy
  • political ethics
  • governance
  • political authority
  • political legitimacy
  • religious authority
  • patronage
  • education

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Within this work

passages held
477
distinct concepts
622
by passages held, corpus-wide
#156

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “buddhism” and “confucianism”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 25 pairings. 81 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
buddhismconfucianism21
political ethicsritual13
buddhismmoral education10
moral educationpolitical philosophy10
human naturemoral education9
buddhismpolitical philosophy7
political philosophyritual7
political philosophyvirtue6
buddhismhuman nature4
confucianismhuman nature4
confucianismritual4
confucianismvirtue4
human naturepolitical philosophy4
moral educationpolitical ethics4
moral educationritual4
political ethicsvirtue4
buddhismpolitical ethics3
buddhismvirtue3
confucianismpolitical philosophy3
human naturevirtue3
moral educationvirtue3
ritualvirtue3
buddhismritual2
confucianismmoral education2
confucianismpolitical ethics2

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

  1. 鐔津文集 you are here ZH
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