Buddhism and Chinese Religion: Comments on your papers, 11th March, 2011

First, something that didn't appear in anyone's paper: extracts from Mou Tzu's "Disposition of Error". I mentioned in class that there was no time to read it then, but that it was a useful source for the paper. Nobody used it! I'm the person who grades your papers. When I give you something to read, and tell you that it will be useful for the paper, you should pay close attention. When we read something in class, I'm trying to show you how to extract useful information from a primary text, hoping that you will then apply this skill yourself without my help. You had a great opportunity with the "Disposition of Error"; many points that people did make could have been supported by evidence from this source.

Understanding and Similarity:

This paper was all about understanding the process by which religions change and spread. Here is one theory:

Buddhism was bound to be practiced sooner or later in China because of its similarity with one of the established religions, Taoism.

"Bound to be" is an example of a strong claim. It suggests inevitability. "It is bound to rain today" is strong; "It will probably rain today" a little less strong, "It might rain today" is weak. You have to think carefully about when to make strong claims and when to make weak claims. In this case, the claim is too strong. Rugby is a game that is similar to American Football. Is it inevitable that people will play Rugby in the USA? No. American Football is firmly established, what reason do people have to turn to a new game? Usually, we change not to adopt something that is the same, but something that is better. Hinduism is similar in some ways to Catholicism. That does not make it inevitable that Hinduism will spread in Panama. Of course, there is a growing Hindu community here in Panama, but to explain this, we need to look at more than a similarity between Hinduism and Catholicism. We need to consider historical facts, like the presence of the Panama Canal, and the reason that this attracted many people from India who brought their religion with them. Of course, Buddhist missionaries in China took advantage of the similarity. It was useful to their missionary activity, but the similarity alone is not sufficient to explain the spread of Buddhism.

In this instance, the fact that the claim is too strong is not just a problem with this sentence. It means that a partial explanation is presented as though it were the whole story.

A large part of the grade for understanding involves consideration of causal processes.  Beware the fallacy of  post hoc ergo propter hoc. That's a Latin phrase meaning "after this therefore because of this". The point is that it is a fallacy to suppose that if B happens after A then B was caused by A. Suppose that every morning, when I'm drinking my coffee, my dog wakes up and starts to bark. Just because the sequence is always coffee/dog barking it doesn't follow that the coffee is making the dog bark.

Now, here's an example from a paper:


There are also Confucian elements in Zen Buddhism, like the communal nature of monastery life and the transmission of realization from master to disciple.

Yes, these are similarities between Buddhism and Confucianism. But calling these Confucian elements in Zen Buddhism implies that they became part of Zen Buddhism as a result of Confucian influence - after this, therefore because of this. The problem is, these were features of Buddhism before it came to China: from the beginnings, Buddhism was a monastic faith. The early Buddhist stories that we looked at are full of stories in which the Buddha passes on realization to his disciples. When you are thinking about how Buddhism changed in China, you have to keep track of which elements of Chinese Buddhism date back to Buddhism's origins in India.

Also, take care to get your facts right. One paper contained the following statement:

The metaphysical concept of the 'tao' and the Buddhism's enlightenment and nirvana share several concepts: both are known as the ultimate peace for people, but one that cannot be described. The similarities between both give some light to the theory that Lao Tzu was actually a teacher to Siddhartha Gotama. And Lao Tzu was a follower of Confucius, the founder of Confucianism, whose ideas of deep meditation and the importance of one ancestors are highly marked in Buddhism today. [Confucianism vs. Taoism]

I've included a link to the source that was used. It isn't a very good source - it seems to be an essay written by a college student; not a bad effort, but you should be looking for peer-reviewed sources, not this kind of material. But if you do use this as a source, read it carefully. Nowhere does it say that Lao Tzu was a student of Confucius. There is a legend about the two of them meeting, but in the legend, it is Confucius who shows deference to the wisdom of Lao Tzu, since Lao Tzu was the older of the two. As I also explained in class, many scholars doubt that Lao Tzu really existed, in which case he could not have been disciple or teacher to either Confucius or the Buddha, both of whom were real historical individuals. You might disagree with the theory that Lao Tzu was not a real person, but you shouldn't simply ignore it. That gives the impression that you are not paying attention in class.

But let me leave this misunderstanding aside. Let us suppose that Lao Tzu was a real person, and that he was a student of Confucius. Even if this were true, the evidence cited above does not support the theory that Lao Tzu taught the Buddha.

What is the evidence? First, the similarity of the Tao and Nirvana. As the writer points out, one similarity is that both the Tao and Nirvana are considered to be indefinable. But that, in turn, makes it hard to establish that there is any similarity. If they are indescribable, how can we be sure that they share 'several concepts'? We know that they are both indescribable, and that they are both proposed as the goal of human existence. Is that sufficient to show that one was derived from the other? No. Many people do not feel satisfied with their life, and aspire for something better, different, but hard to describe. This is such a common feeling that it is not surprising that two religious leaders, from different cultures, should have proposed, independently, different names for the indescribable goal of human longing. To give another example, violence is, unfortunately, a pervasive feature of human societies. Lots of different cultures have some image of a war-god - a god who embodies the impulse to violence, and is pictured as the Ultimate Warrior. Just because two religions both contain a war-god, it does not follow that one religion copied the idea directly from the other - that is a possibility, but we would need a lot more evidence (for example, if they both gave the War-God the same name, or both thought that he has three horns, a red mustache, and likes to eat cheese).

The second piece of evidence is that deep meditation and worship of ancestors are Confucian ideas that are important in Buddhism today. But we do not find in The Analects any great importance attached to the form of meditation that is typical of Buddhism - sitting in silent meditation trying to empty your mind. Confucius believed more in filling the mind, not emptying it. As for veneration of the ancestors, that has become a feature of Chinese Buddhism, but this is because, over time, Buddhism adapted to Chinese culture.

So earlier, I argued that the existence of Zen monasteries does not constitute Confucian influence on Buddhism, because Buddhists had monasteries before they came to China. Now I am arguing that ancestor-veneration is not evidence for the Buddha himself having studied with a disciple of Confucius, because ancestor-veneration was not part of Buddhism in its earliest phase. Think about the chronology.

The most important point I note is that there is a general tendency to jump to conclusions based on an observation that two things are similar. I can see why this happens. Very often in class, I ask "What does this remind you of?" "What is this similar to?" It is important to be able to spot similarities. But the fact that two things are similar cannot be used to prove anything you want to prove. It does not prove that one caused the other, or that one would inevitably spread to the area where the other was.

Look back over some of the primary sources. In the Bodhidharma Anthology, we see not merely that there are some similarities between Bodhidharma's thought and that of Daoism, he actually quotes directly from Daoist sources. That is evidence of influence. In the same way, the 'Disposition of Error' provides direct evidence that Buddhists sometimes quoted Confucian scriptures. It tells us which scriptures they quoted, and why. This is not just a vague similarity.

So, by all means, look for and pay attention to similarities. But spotting a similarity is only the first stage - it should lead to more questions, and your questions should be ever more precise.

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