Dilemma and Breakthrough of Buddhist Filial Piety in The Chinese Culture: A Case Study of Emperor Wu of The Liang Dynasty
Date Issued
2012
Date
2012
Author(s)
Huang, Fu-Kuei
Abstract
This essay emphasizes on the issue of filial piety during the sinicization of Buddhism, aiming to investigate, in the context of the encounter between the Buddhist monasticism and the conventional Chinese filial piety, the integration and conflict between both, which, once integrated, leads to the emergence of the Buddhist filial piety. Unlike other researches that, mostly, set their eyes on Tang, Song dynasty when discussing the Buddhist filial piety, I attempt to trace further to Early Medieval China in order to inquire the origin of the integration and the subsequent social, political influences of contemporary China. I focus on the Buddhist gentries to consider how they discourse filial piety with their dual identities, and through so to investigate what Buddhist doctrinal recourses were applied in the discourse of integration with filial piety.
Among all Buddhist gentries in Early Medieval China, Emperor Wu of Liang is the centerpiece of the research. How he, with his trio identity, a filial son, a piety Buddhist, and a ruler of Liang Dynasty, discourse and practice filial piety, of which Buddhist doctrines were frequently applied in his thoughts of filial piety and were relied as both fundamental intellectual contents and political ideological foundations, is rarely discussed by modern studies on Emperor Wu of Liang. In order to analyze this ignored subject, i.e. the emperor’s thoughts and govern policies and their affinity with Buddhist filial piety, I devote to historical narrative and contemporary literatures that records and reflects the emperor’s role.
This essay is composed in four parts. The first part discusses the emperor’s dilemma between Buddhist doctrines and filial piety before coronation. The discussion would consider the Confucian legacy of filial piety inherited by the emperor, the emperor’s fierce filial sentiment, and how filial piety was practiced in political field at the time. I suggest that these three phases is the intellectual background of the emperor’s concept of filial piety in later years.
The second part is tracing. I traced back to Hang dynasty to inquire how filial piety is political practiced, and that such practices lasted and influenced the world of Emperor Wu of Liang. Here the Classic of Filial Piety serves to be an important intermediate to understand the doctrine and the definition of filial piety in Hang dynasty. Through analyzing the Classic of Filial Piety, I propose that the government of Hang encouraged filial piety as the arch virtue, and that filial piety is highly woven with political institutions.
The third part returned to the world after the coronation of the Emperor Wu of Liang. This part emphasized on how Buddhist doctrines were applied in the practice of filial piety, which mainly represented in four faces: 佛寺追思, 神不滅, 素食施行, 菩薩戒. This investigation how the importance of filial sentiments in Buddhist filial piety, through the emperor, transformed into the motivation and mobility of political, social reformation.
The forth part turns to the combination between the emperor’s Buddhist filial piety thoughts and his political reformation, discussing how Buddhist filial piety replaces the conventional political filial piety inherited from Hang dynasty. This part of investigation presents that the Buddhist filial piety thoughts of the emperor is not restricted to personal sentiments alone, quite contrary, it expanded to the constitution of the Liang dynasty, and hence influenced the Buddhists inhabited in the empire.
As the result of this research, I suggest to reconsider the periodization of current studies of Buddhist filial piety. Through investigating the interpretation and integration between Buddhist doctrine and filial piety, which nourishes the Buddhist filial piety, of Emperor Wu of Liang, I suggest that the integration of Buddhist monasticism and filial piety, i.e. the birth of Buddhist filial piety, has occurred in the Early Medieval China, due to Buddhists’ pursuit of the sentiment of filial piety and their application of Buddhist doctrines to enrich the contents of filial piety that eventually compensate the original absence of sentiment in filial piety. In this aspect, I suggest the other notion of the research of Buddhist filial piety. During the integration, Buddhist gentries played important roles in discoursing Buddhist filial piety. They, familiar with both ends of knowledge, applied Buddhist doctrines to nourish the conventional concept of filial piety, hence created the conceptual encounter of Buddhist monasticism and filial piety. Meanwhile, this encounter can be represented by the political practice of Buddhist filial piety of Emperor Wu of Liang’s political reformation. Buddhist filial piety, as fruit of the integration, not only changed the conventional concept of filial piety, but it also became new ideal political virtue to be practiced.
Subjects
Emperor Wu of Liang
Buddhist Filial Piety
The Classic of Filial Piety
Governing through Family Reverence
Emotion of Filial Piety
Type
thesis
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