PACIFIC WORLD - The Institute of Buddhist Studies

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Pacific World
and completed at the beginning of summer, 511. 13 According to statements
in Daoxuan’s (, 596–667) Xu Gaoseng zhuan (, hereafter XGSZ),
or Continued Biographies of Eminent Monks, completed in 667, differences of
opinion arose between Bodhiruci and Ratnamati over the interpretation, and
thus presumably the translation, of passages in the text. As a result, two,
or possibly three, different versions were produced. Only later were these
versions combined into a single text by Ratnamati’s subsequent disciple
Huiguang. 14 This conflated edition of the Shidi jinglun (), as the
translation was known in Chinese, is the only version now extant.
These three monks figure much more prominently, however, in later
Chinese Buddhist history than simply being the translators of the Ten Stages
Commentary. They, together with Huiguang, Bodhiruci’s disciple Daochong
(, fl. 520s), and Ratnamati and Buddha/bhadra’s disciple Sengchou (
, 480–560) either stand at the head of, or mark an important turning point
in, a number of significant trends in later Chinese Buddhism.
Doctrinally, they provided translations of a significant number of Indian
Yogācāra (Mind Only) and Tathāgatagarbha (Buddha-Nature < Womb of
the Tathāgata) texts. In addition to the Ten Stages Commentary, we might
mention also the Sandhinirmocana-sūtra (Shenmi jietuo jing, ), the
Mahāyāna-samgraha (She dacheng lun, ), the Jin’gang xian lun (
), and the Anunatvāpurṇatvānirdeśa-parivarta (Buzeng bujian jing,
).
Second, from Bodhiruci’s disciple Daochong and Ratnamati’s disciple
Huiguang were formed two “schools” of early Chinese Yogācāra exegesis
and practice known as North of the Road (daobei, ) and South of the
Road (daonan, ) respectively. Both of these “schools,” known collectively
as the Ten Stages (Dilun) lineages, focused not only on an analysis
of the ten stages of the bodhisattva’s path of practice as found in the Ten
Stages Commentary, and how this path was to be understood in terms of
Yogācāra theories of the mind, but also on how this bodhisattva path was
to be implemented in ritual and meditative practice. While both analysis
and practice were necessary to tread this path, in my view, for most monks
within these lineage traditions exegesis and doctrine were to a significant
degree praxis driven. I part with traditional and modern wisdom on this
point. The point of much of my work on the Ten Stages lineages, and one
of the main points of this article, is that we cannot really understand Buddhism
in northeastern China during the sixth and early seventh centuries
unless we recognize the nature of the meditative and ritual practices that
these lineages had.
Through imperial patronage, first in the Northern Wei (, 439–534), and
later under the Eastern Wei (535–549) and Northern Qi (, 550–577) dynasties,
the influence of these two “schools,” and especially those lineages that
stemmed from Huiguang and his disciples, spread throughout the region