柳宗元と中唐の佛敎

Abstract

Of approximately 600 writings of Liu Tsung-yüan, a thinker and classical man of letters of the Mid-T'ang, 59 writings--nearly 10% of the entire work--are concerned with Buddhism, describing his association with Buddhists and the life in the temple, or discussing Buddhist doctrines. Today they are regarded as important features in the study of Liu Tsung-yüan, and not a few papers have been written on this theme. Most of these studies, however, center around Liu Tsung-yüan's thoughts on Buddhism in general--i. e., his ideas about the reverence for Buddha, the nature of Buddhist belief, the unification of Confucianism and Buddhism, and so on--as viewed in comparison with those of Han Yü 韓愈, his contemporary thinker and writer; virtually no investigation has been made, so far, as to the position he actually held in relation to Buddhism in the confused situation of those days. Yet I think such an approach is essential for the understanding of Liu Tsung-yüan's view of Buddhism, for the Buddhist circles in his days were muddled, with incessant uniting and splitting of various religious denominations and sects, and not all of them were accepted by him. It is a little-known fact, for example, that Liu Tsung-yüan attacked certain Buddhist sects as severely as the anti-Buddhist Han Yü did. Of the existing Buddhist sects in those days, the ones with which Liu Tsung-yüan was most intimately related, and which he supported most vigorously, were T'ien-t'ai 天台 and Ching-t'u 淨土, or the amal-gamate of the two, that is, Ching-t'u influenced by T'ien-t'ai doctrines. On the other hand, he denounced Ch'an-tsung 禪宗 quite drastically. Especially the two groups, Niu-t'ou Ch'an 牛頭禪 and Nan-tsung Ch'an 南宗禪, seem to have been the targets of his harshest attack, as far as one infers from the context of his criticisms. This attitude of Liu Tsung-yüan seems to me to suggest that, in his criticism and support, he took lines similar to those of the religious movement at that time promoted by the Ching-t'u believers influenced by Tz'ŭ-min 慈愍, such as Hui-jih 慧日, Ch'êng-yüan 承遠, and Fa-chao 法照, in the Buddhist world harassed by the antagonism between Ch'an-tsung and Ching-t'u.