Buddhism’s influences on Chinese culture are not like what general people
thought that it’s just within the religion. Actually, it has gone far
beyond the religion and has influenced many aspects such as literature,
philosophy, art and etc. I’d like to focus on the two aspects: literature
& philosophy, since I think they have some relations with each other.
1 the influences on literature:
The golden time of Buddhist scriptures’ translation was from late Han to
the “Brilliant Emperor”, which crossed about 600 years. Among the
translators Xuanzhang was the most outstanding on
journeyed to India and returned with Buddhist texts and devoted his rest
life to the translation project. Due to his contribution, Chinese
literature changed in 3 aspects:
① Chinese vocabulary was enlarged
In the early period of translation, translators just translated the
scriptures word by word. And those words, which were not existed in
Chinese, were translated according to their sounds. With the development
of study, people found that “old words” & “new meanings” couldn’t go with
each other very well and would cause misunderstanding or misleading. So,
translators began to invite new words to express the meanings. Although
they are originally invited for the
translation, they are not on
Buddhist works. Some new words, which are easy to understand and
meaningful, can be found in the Chinese daily writing and speaking, such
as “前生”, which means “previous” and the 2nd “life” Buddhist words relating
to karma(因果报应) and reincarnation(再生). When something happened in daily
life, Chinese people would use these words to interpret it. And many
phrases have taken root in a Buddhist origin for example “to hold the foot
of Buddha at the moment”. The act
vocabulary.
② Played an imp
Due to the wonderful translation of the scriptures, the articles are so
beautiful that Chinese ancient literators always used them to increase
their imagination and improve their writing styles. This directly effected
the development of Chinese literature. In the Tang Dynasty, poets had
already used Buddhist idea or their understanding of Buddhism in their
poetries to express their feeling. Take Wang Wei for example, he and Bai
Juyi were Buddhists, on
“空门” is a
Buddhist expr
effected Wang. For him, being a monk was the on
relieve from the worldly sufferings. Later, in Song Dynasty, Shu Dongpo,
Zhu Xi and other masters were all influenced by Buddhism.
③ Changed Chinese grammar and structures
Buddhist scriptures are different from other books. In the scriptures the
prominent feature is that there has not Zhi, Hu, Zhe, Ye. It also created
a variety of writing structures and writing skills. In that time, it was a
novel form of writing. Since the Tang Dynasty, Buddhism has an
ever-lasting influence on literary form.
2 the influences on philosophy
With the popularizing of Buddhism, it had an exchange whit Daoism &
Confucianism. In the Tang Dynasty some scholars had already used Buddhist
idea to explain Daoism and vice versa. And later, in the Song & Ming
dynasties, the combination of Buddhism and Confucianism led to the
formation of Li Xue, the Neo-Confucian school of idealist philosophy. And
the Neo-Confucianism was divided into branches like “the school of
principle”, of which the thinker was Zhu Xi and “the school of mind”, of
which the thinker was Wang Yang-ming. Both schools agreed that the world
consisted of two realms: the realm of principle (li), and the realm of
material force (qi). Principle governs material force and material force
makes manifest principle; the ultimate origin of principle is in a single
principle called the Great Ultimate (taiji), which emanates from Heaven.
This period in the history was called the Confucian Revival. And the
extension of the examination system for choosing government officials was
on
In a word, Buddhism has profound influences on Chinese culture and has a
deep root in Chinese people. It enriched our culture. Such kind of culture
exchanges is imp
still strongly feel them.
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