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Xuanzang (Chinese: 玄奘; ... the implied meaning being "Buddhism". "Sanzang" is the Chinese term for the Buddhist canon, ... He, however, does not call it India ...
Xuanzang (born 602, Goushi, Luozhou, now Yanshi, Henan province, China—died 664, Chang’an, now Xi’an, China) was a Buddhist monk and Chinese pilgrim to India who translated the sacred scriptures of Buddhism from Sanskrit into Chinese and founded in China the Buddhist Consciousness Only school. His fame rests mainly on the volume and ...
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Xuanzang’s Beginnings
- Pilgrimage to India
- His Return to China and Career as Translator
- The Faxiang School
- Conclusion
- References and Further Reading
Born of a family possessing erudition for generations in Yanshi prefecture of Henan province, Xuanzang, whose lay name was Chenhui, was the youngest of four children. His great-grandfather was an official serving as a prefect, his grand-father was appointed as Professor in the National College at the capital, and his father was a Confucianist of th...
An imperial decree by the Emperor Taizong (T’ai-tsung) forbade Xuanzang’s proposed visit to India on the grounds on preserving national security. Instead of feeling deterred from his long-standing dream, Xuanzang is said to have experienced a vision that strengthened resolve. In 629, defying imperial proscription, he secretly set out on his epochal...
Traditional sources report that Xuanzang’s arrival in Chang’an was greeted with an imperial audience and an offer of official position (which Xuanzang declined), followed by an assembly of all the Buddhist monks of the capital city, who accepted the manuscripts, relics, and statues brought back by the pilgrim and deposited them in the Temple of Gre...
a. The Development of Yogacara
The Chinese Faxiang School, derived from the Indian Yogacara (yoga practice) School, is based upon the writings of two brothers, Asanga and Vasubandhu, who explicated a course of practice wherein hindrances are removed according to a sequence of stages, from which it gets its name. The appellation of the school originated with the title of an important fourth- or fifth-century CE text of the school, theYogacarabhumi-sastra. Yogacara attacked both the provisional practical realism of the Madhy...
b. Metaphysics of Mere-Consciousness
Broadly speaking, Mere-Consciousness may cover the eight consciousnesses, the articulation of which forms one of the most seminal and distinctive aspects of the doctrine of the Yogacara School, transmitted to East Asia where it received the somewhat pejorative designations of Dharma-character School and Consciousness-only School. According to this doctrine, sentient beings possess eight distinct layers of consciousness, the first five — the visual consciousness, auditory consciousness, olfact...
c. Some Objections Answered
Certain objections were interposed to level at Yogacara’s doctrine of consciousness. Vasubhandhu, again in his Vimsatika, undertook to prove the invalidity of some of these: 1. Spatiotemporal determination would be impossible — experiences of object X are not occurrent everywhere and at every time so there must be some external basis for our experiences. 2. Many people experience X and not just one person, as in the case of a hallucination. 3. Hallucinations can be determined because they do...
As an early and influential Chinese Buddhist monk, Xuanzang embodies the tensions inherent in Chinese Buddhism: filial piety versus monastic discipline, Confucian orthodoxy versus Mahayana progressivism, etc. Such tensions can be seen not only in his personal legacies, which include the extremely popular Chinese novel based on his travels, Xiyouji ...
Bapat, P. V., and K. A. Nilakanta Sastri, eds.2500 Years of Buddhism. Delhi: Government of India Press, 1964.Bernstein, Richard.Ultimate Journey: Retracing the Path of an Ancient Buddhist Monk Who Crossed Asia in Search of Enlightenment: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001.Brown, Brian Edward. The Buddha Nature: A Study of the Tathagatagarbha and Alayavijnana. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1991.Ch’en, Kenneth K. S. Buddhism in China: A Historical Survey. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973.Xuanzang, world-famous for his sixteen-year pilgrimage to India and career as a translator of Buddhist scriptures, is one of the most illustrious figures in the history of scholastic Chinese Buddhism. Born of a family possessing erudition for generations in Yanshi prefecture of Henan province, Xuanzang, whose lay name was Chenhui, was the youngest of four
Ch'en 2 I 1. Xuanzang (J. Genjo; K. Hyonjang 玄奘) (fl. c. 602 – 664) was a Chinese Buddhist monk, scholar, and translator who travelled to India in the seventh century and described the interaction between Chinese Buddhism and Indian Buddhism during the early Tang dynasty. [1] [2] Born in what is now Henan province around 602, from boyhood ...
Below is the article summary. For the full article, see Xuanzang. Xuanzang, or Hsüan-tsang, (born 600, Guoshi, China—died 664, Chang’an), Chinese Buddhist monk and pilgrim to India. He received a classical Confucian education before converting to Buddhism. Troubled by discrepancies in the sacred texts, he left for India in 629 to study the ...
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Xuanzang (Chinese: 玄奘; pinyin: Xuánzàng; Wade–Giles: Hsüan-tsang Sanskrit: ह्वेनसांग) (c. 596 or 602 – 664), born Chen Hui (simplified Chinese: 陈袆; traditional Chinese: 陳褘; pinyin: Chén Huī) or Chen Yi (simplified Chinese: 陈祎; traditional Chinese: 禕; pinyin: Chén Yī), was a Chinese Buddhist monk, scholar, traveler, and translator who described the ...
