| 提要 | While previous research concentrated mainly on Zhuhong’s (袾宏, 1535-1615) ideas on Pure Land Buddhist practice, this thesis intends to take a closer look at Zhuhong’s interpretation of popular Buddhist notions of Refraining from killing and Releasing of life as presented in one of Zhuhong’s works: “Essay on Refraining from Killing and Releasing of Living Beings” (Jiesha fangsheng wen 戒殺放生文). Although the genre of Jiesha fangsheng wen became especially popular during the Ming dynasty (1368 to 1644), the origins of both the practice and special literary genre associated with it can be traced to a much earlier period and might be considered one of the characteristic features of the Chinese Buddhism. That is, the complex of ideas connected with the practice of Refraining from killing and Releasing of life might be viewed as one of the channels through which the interaction between Buddhism and traditional Chinese values was carried out. Therefore, this research intends to analyze how Zhuhong introduced the basic Buddhist ideas of retribution and compassion into the fabric of Chinese culture and the framework of traditional Chinese values, making them accessible to an audience which shared a traditional Chinese, and not Buddhist, worldview. Jiesha fangsheng wen by Zhuhong is not a philosophical or theoretical treatise, but rather a collection of edited sermons in which Zhuhong combined Buddhist and Chinese traditional postulates, accompanying them with popular quasi-historical anecdotes. Thus this text is representative of the mode according to which Buddhism was functioning on the everyday level and how its values might have been appreciated during Late Ming China by the lay believers. |
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