Sudden and Gradual: Approaches to Enlightenment in Chinese Thought

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In whatever country Buddhism has taken firm root, it changes when the local devotees make Buddhism 'their own'; and here it is the case of China. The present work is notable for its contributors-who are train- ed language-wise and able to write convincingly of how Buddhism was transmuted into Chinese ways of thinking. The word Ch'an was especially used to indicate the Chinese adaptation of Buddhism, in particular with an argument of 'sudden' enlightenment and/or against the 'gradual' preparation. It was a happy decision to include two seminal essays by older scholars-Paul Demieville's "The Mirror of the Mind" and R.A. Stein's "Sudden Illumination or Simultaneous Comprehension".

While the promise of contents did not need any extensive portrayal of the earlier Indian tradition, the essay by Luis Gómez does manage to bring in some of the Indo-Tibetan attacks on the Chinese position, and this essay does differentiate fairly and clearly the rival positions. Gómez (p. 121) rejects Stein's explanation of yugapat as "simultaneous". Yet it might be the Indian point of view, as when the garland of mantras is in a circle because realized "all at once"; or when in the Buddhist Abhisamayalamkara exegesis, the Buddha realizes all the paths (of the three vehicles) in one moment's Thought. Granted that it takes two to quarrel; and eventually study of one side alone leaves the opponent unrepresented-a shadowy figure; so also when one studies only the Indian side.

Finally, we must admire how a young group of scholars has proceeded so intelligently in the Chinese Buddhist texts.

The present volume grew out of a conference organized by Robert M. Gimello and myself for the Kuroda Institute for the Study of Buddhism and Human Values. The conference was held in Los Angeles in May 1981 and made possible by funding from the American Council of Learned Societies. As the original title, "The Sudden/Gradual Polarity: A Recurrent Theme in Chinese Thought," was intended to suggest, a central impetus for the conference was the effort to place what had often been seen as a strictly Buddhist problematic within the broader context of Chinese thought and culture.

As expressed in the conference proposal, and later reported in volume 9 of the Journal of Chinese Philosophy in 1982, the underlying assumption was that:

while the controversy surrounding the sudden-gradual polarity was not without precedent in other Buddhist traditions, it assumed its greatest significance in the Chinese Buddhist tradition, where its articulation dis- played a number of characteristically Chinese features linking it to non- Buddhist modes of thought. The fact that this polarity assumed its particular importance in the Chinese Buddhist tradition suggests that it resonated with, or gave form to, a similar pre-existent polarity within Chinese thought. One of the main objectives of the conference, therefore, was to explore how this polarity formed part of a larger discourse in Chinese intellectual history.

The conference thus sought to take an approach different from those of previous discussions of the significance of the sudden-gradual controversy in Chinese Buddhism. Instead of trying to locate the source of the debate within the Indian Buddhist heritage, the conference attempted to provide a new perspective on the process of Buddhism's accommodation with some of the dominant themes in Chinese intellectual history, as well as Buddhism's effect upon that tradition.'