Monasticism in Chinese Buddhism

Monasticism in Chinese Buddhism:
“The World According to Sharf”
by Bhikshu Tenzin Sherab
(a.k.a. Br. Sean Hillman)
University of Toronto
East Asian Studies
March 2007

When making observations regarding monasticism in Zen Buddhism, one can find elements that are common to all the myriad cultural manifestations of the discipline, as well as those that are unique to Zen. Both the shared and Zen-specific aspects of monasticism provide ample material for a thought experiment which explores how religious scholar Robert H. Sharf might see monasticism in Zen Buddhism.
Sharf’s quoting Buddhism as having a teaching of “the extinction of self” (Sharf, p. 96) might indicate a particular slant on monasticism as being an active practise of self-denial that can be played out in the practise of mortification. There is a precedent in Buddhist monastic practise in general to support this, found in the thirteen extra penances outlined in the Vinaya whereby a monk can engage in such practices as taking a tree as their only shelter and never lying prone and so on, and specifically in Zen communities there are trainings that go beyond the recommendations of the Vinaya that include the admonishing “insults, [and] blows” (Foulk, p.179) of the abbot which come hand in hand with the choice to gain admission into the cloistered community of brothers. The scholar’s use of the term “extinction” which one would associate with an event or process of coming to not-be, is less indicative of selflessness as a view of the way in which the self exists or does not exist (the lack of inherent existence of the self being typically translated as the Buddhist “doctrine of Anatman”) but perhaps more along the lines of using the rigours of community life, in the context of shared appearance and behaviours and in selfless service, to destroy individuality. In these ways, firstly, mortification and secondly, behaviour versus philosophical position hinted at by the term “extinction,” Sharf might see monasticism as being more an external practise than an inner process of transforming emotions and wrong ideas.
To continue along these lines, Sharf also spends a great deal of time making the distinction between the internal and external, that which is not observable nor scientifically verifiable and that which is (Sharf p.95), when describing the phenomenon that we call “experience.” The “glorious pure life” (Pandit Atisha, “Lamp on the Path to Enlightenment”) that an ordained person actively engages in with the keeping of vows is said in Vinaya commentaries to be a way of becoming an Arya by behaving externally in the way an actual Arya does. A being who has realised emptiness would naturally behave in this way, whether they had formally taken the Pratimoksha vows or not. In the Vinaya, 253 personal liberation precepts guide the Bhikshus and, in addition to these, Zen communities add even more rules of conduct such as making certain activities forbidden in the sangha hall, (Foulk, p.186) among many other regulations not found in the Vinaya. These are external behaviours that are observable and a practitioner can be judged by another as to how well they are keeping the vows and community-specific extra rules. On the other hand, the Arya-being would behave externally in the very same manner but not by conscious adherence to vows that had been ceremoniously given to them by their preceptor, but rather from the power of their inner realisation. Likewise, another way in which inner experience drives virtuous behaviour is displayed in the the Vinaya when it is made clear that there are cases where a monk’s vow is not broken by a physical action alone, such as the mere touching of a woman, but must also be accompanied by wrong intention for the vow to be broken. In our example here, the monk would have to couple his physical action with the mental action of being desirous. Sharf seems to habitually lend more credence to the external. This is shown in his enthusiastic mis-statement that “rarely if ever do the authors of these compendiums [outlining meditative states] claim to base their expositions on their own experience” (Sharf, p.99) but rather on external sources such as scripture. His statement is negated in one of the very texts he cites as a reference, where in the Lam Rim Chen Mo (Great Exposition on the Stages of the Path) the peerless Tibetan scholar-monk Lama Tsong Khapa states time and time again, “I, the Yogi, have practised like this. You, my child, should do likewise.” Again his obsession with the external is reinforced by his back-pedalling “thou doth protest too much” personal denfense of “I am not trying to deny subjective experience.” (Sharf, p.113) From this it is safe to say that Sharf would see the external practise of vow and rule adherence as more important than the monastic’s intention, or even the presence of realisations such as those gained by an Arya being. In addition, when we consider the Zen tradition as one that follows the bodhisattva path, the idea that a Vinaya rule could be potentially be broken out of a compassionate intention to remove another’s suffering would be enough, I feel, to short circuit Sharf’s poor, scholarly neurons!