Just Awakening, by Jessica X. Zu (chapter 4)

4

Buddhability as Humanity

The raison d’être of humans is that they can become buddhas.

眾生之存在價值, 謂其能成佛耳. Therefore, only humans can be the support for this world.

故勘為世間依止者唯人 . Humans can spread Dharma. Apart from spreading Dharma, there are no other human affairs.

人能弘道, 弘道外無人事.

Lü Cheng, 1943

Making a new society necessarily begins with a new vision of what humans are, can become, and ought to do. As the epigraphs show, Lü redefined the value of human existence as the ability to achieve buddhahood and refashioned human affairs as the actions of practicing and spreading Dharma. In doing so, Lü fundamentally changed the terms of debate on what makes a person human from the ontological perspective of human being to the Yogācāra-informed processual view of human propensity, whose renewal is effected by the way that the situation (of actions and coactions) tends to lean (French: pencher).1 Simultaneously coming into view was the action-oriented moral reasoning of human interconditioning.2 Lü’s new paradigm of Buddhisized human propensity, which I term “Buddhability-cumhumanity,” has broad implications for ongoing discussions about how to build a livable future.3

As the first of three core strands in Lü’s social process philosophy of building a just, nonviolent society, Buddhability-cum-humanity was Lü’s way of engaging with the global debate about how to become modern. Although Charles Taylor has approached the question of being human in modern times by tracing the modern notion of “what it is to be a human agent” in Anglo-European cultures, I broaden the inquiry into humanity by highlighting the overlooked notions of doing and living in the making of modern China.4 Indeed, from the renowned

philosopher-cum-reformer and the progenitor of Chinese nationalism Liang Qichao’s (1873–1929) essay “On New People” (Xinmin shuo 新民說; 1902) to the Chinese Communist discourse on the “New Man,” historical actors who wished to reshape Chinese culture, society, and the state integrated into their projects different answers to the enduring question of what makes a person human.5 While the details of the proposals vary, the core Chinese belief in human perfectibility seems only to become stronger. Lü is no exception to this enduring pattern. By merging bodhisattva ideal with the Chinese model of sages and saints (shengxian 聖賢), Lü’s liberation Buddhology Buddhisized human perfectibility and offered a highly adaptable psychological framework in which the entire perceptual world of experiences and actions could be evaluated.

Lü’s Buddhability-cum-humanity hinges crucially on a curious reversal of a widely accepted doctrine that Dharma is the support ( yi 依) for the world. As seen in the epigraphs to the chapter, Lü turned this cherished teaching on its head. He matter-of-factly stated that humans, not Dharma, are the support for the world. It is worth noting that Lü made similar statements during his lectures on Five Disciplines in Three phases (wuke sanzhou 五科三週; henceforth, Five Disciplines). To downplay the subversiveness of this reversal, Lü performed sophisticated interpretational gymnastics and cited many Pāli, Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Chinese canonical sources to demonstrate the alignment of his liberation Buddhology with traditional values. I will stitch together these textual threads to present a fuller understanding of the karma-informed, actionoriented moral reasoning in Lü’s socio-soteriology.

Five Disciplines and Three Phases: A Sketch

In October 1943, eight months after his teacher Ouyang Jingwu had passed away, Lü became the leader of the China Inner Learning Institute and launched his own training program, Five Disciplines (see table 4.1 for the curriculum). In his opening lecture, Lü identified his program as “Yuanxue” 院學, that is, the Institute’s Learning. In doing so, he announced his institution-building intention. Lü defined Yuanxue as a revival of the famous monastic learning center in ancient India, Nālandā, where the Chinese monks and translators Xuanzang (602– 664 CE) and Yijing (635–713 CE) had studied.6 In Lü’s imagined lineage, Xuanzang and Yijing were the pivotal figures who had brought the complete Buddhist teachings from India to China.7 Lü also announced the goal of Yuanxue: to launch a bodhisattva enterprise of saving oneself and helping all living beings achieve buddhahood.8

The Lectures of Five Disciplines are established according to our late teacher [Ouyang Jingwu]’s treatise On Teaching. The aim is to directly point to the essential and the subtle so that one can pursue advanced studies step by step. For this reason, [I] have edited and arranged many texts and divided them into three phases. Each phase is organized under one central theme. If [one] studies them frequently and analyzes them repeatedly, after three to five years, one will surely enter the Dao.

五科講習乃依先師釋教之說而立，意在直指精微，以階深造，故編次群書，三周區 別。周各以一要義貫通，反覆研尋，曆三五載，亦可入道矣. 9

This passage lays out the Institute’s Learning as a soteriological path in three phases. This path must be trod sequentially and with the end goal of entering the Way. It is important to note that Lü designed this directly pointing (zhizhi 直指) path to the essential and the subtle ( jingwei 精微) to be accessible to all in a limited time frame (three to five years) in this very life. Compared to the premodern bodhisattva ideal that demands eons of practices over many lifetimes, Lü’s training program represents a fast track.10

Lü presented Five Disciplines as the root of Yuanxue and a systematic integration of Buddhology into soteriology.11 At first glance, readers might mistake Five Disciplines for a program to train Buddhologists because all of the texts were selected from the high-quality scholarly editions in Essentials. However, as shown in the aforementioned quotation, the goal of Five Disciplines is clearly soteriological: that is, to orient experiences and guide actions to “enter the Dao.” The significance of Lü’s systemization of inner learning was immediately recognized by contemporaneous Buddhist intellectuals as “the stroke that dotted the eye of the dragon,” an idiom emphasizing the finishing touch on an artwork that gives the work a soul.12 In both its immediate reception in the 1940s and contemporary academic discourse, Lü’s project has been perceived as a return to Buddhism’s Indian origin: namely, the monastic and Tantric learning center named Nālandā (ca. 700−1200 CE). This reception is understandable as Ouyang and Lü themselves both asserted that they intended to reestablish genuine Buddhism modeled after Nālandā.

However, when looking beyond the rhetoric of genuine Buddhism, it becomes evident that Lü wove a new tapestry of disciplinary studies from Nālandā’s textual remains. As I argue in chapter 6, Lü employed the Nālandā model to build a new intellectual community motivated by the goal of producing knowledge for co-liberation. For now it suffices to note that in 1943, when Lü recounted the intentions of his earlier scholarship, especially his own work A Brief History of Indian Buddhism, he claimed that he ended the book with Nālandā because he wanted to underline “the fact that Indian Buddhist

table  4.1. Curriculum of Five Disciplines

The Third Phase

One Truereality Dharma Realm

Compendium of Dharma Treatise on Entering Abhidharma Treatise on the Four Noble Truths Selections from Kathāvatthu

The Great Perfection of Wisdom— The Mañjuśrī Chapter A Compendium of the Perfection of Wisdom Commentary on the Four Hundred [Stanzas of Madhyamaka] Jewels in the Hand Treatise

Seven Selected Chapters from the Avataṃsaka Sūtra Explanation of the Investigation of Objective Bases

The JewelArising Treatise on Establishing Consciousnessonly Selections from Establishing Consciousnessonly

The Second Phase

The First Phase

Essential Teaching Original Quiescence Revolutionizing Consciousness (Skt: āśrayaparivṛtti)

An Abhidharmic Reading of the Four Āgamas Root Verses of Abhidharmakośabhāṣya Root Verses of Mahāyānābhidharmasūtra Compendium of Abhidharma

The Vimalakīrti Sūtra The Sūtra on the Great Perfection of Wisdom The Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way

Noble Sūtra of the Explanation of the Profound Secrets Bodhisattvabhūmi Acclamation of the Holy Teaching Compendium of the Great Vehicle

Abhidharma Dhammapada The Heart of Abhidharma

The Diamond Sūtra Root Verses of Resources for Bodhi

The Great Ornament Sūtra Verses Distinguishing the Middle and the Extremes

Prajñā

Yogācāra

The Great Cloud Sūtra— The Chapter on the Great Assembly The Sūtra on the Invisible Splendor of the Mahāyāna Treatise on the BuddhaStage Sūtra

The Lotus Sūtra Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra— The Chapter of True Dharma Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra Stanzas from the Treatise of the Ultimate OneVehicle Jewel Lineage

Nirvāṇa The Sūtra of the Lion’s Roar of Queen Śrīmālā Treatise on the Nonduality of Mahāyāna Dharmadhātu

The Inquiry of the Householder Ugra Collection of Six Perfections Sūtra Deeds of the Buddha

Vinaya Vaipulya Sūtra of the Pure Vinaya Yoga Bodhisattva Prātimokṣa and Karman

Selected Passages from Compendium of Validities Sūtra of the Questions of Bodhisattva Ākāśagarbha— The Section on Deciding and Selecting

Introduction to Logic Flower Ornament Sūtra—The Chapter on Cultivating Compassion

Supplementary Readings The Path of Liberation Six Doors of Teaching Dhyāna

Learning ended here [with Nālandā] and Chinese Buddhist Learning started from here [Nālandā].”13 Lü actualized this earlier claim with his careful design of Five Disciplines and meticulous selection of texts. According to Lü’s outline, the five disciplines include four disciplines of teaching ( jiao 教), namely, Abhidharma, Prajñā, Yogācāra, and Nirvāṇa, and a fifth discipline of precepts ( jie 戒), Vinaya.14

Equally important, as seen in the list of supplementary readings associated with each phase, Lü combined trainings in meditation and reasoning into one method to complement the textual learning at each phase. Notably, the disciplines that constitute Lü’s program differ from the five disciplines of Nālandā: Hetuvidyā, Abhidharma, Prajñā, Yogācāra, and Vinaya.15 Lü’s blueprint also diverges from Ouyang’s curriculum, in which textual studies (wenzi 文字) and meditative absorption (Ch: sanmei 三昧 ; Skt: samādhi) are two separate categories and teachings and precepts are divided into two bounded yet related forms of training.16 Lü even claimed that in the earliest Buddhist discourses, there was no distinction between sūtra and vinaya and that this separation was a later development.17

In Five Disciplines, textual analysis, meditative training, precepts, and teaching are remixed into five disciplines and arranged into three progressive phases: (1) the first phase, which aims at realizing original quiescence (xingji 性 寂), (2) the second phase, which focuses on revolutionizing consciousness (Ch: zhuanyi 轉依; Skt: āśrayaparivṛtti; Tib: gnas yongs su ‘gyur pa), and (3) the third phase, which brings forth one true-reality dharma realm ( yizhen fajie 一真法界).

Most pertinent to understanding Lü’s innovation of Buddhability-cumhumanity is that in Five Disciplines, hetuvidyā (Buddhist logic) is no longer an independent subject but is integrated into the meditative training spread across all three phases in the form of supplemental readings. A new discipline named Nirvāṇa replaced hetuvidyā to become the fifth discipline.

The Discipline of Nirvāṇa

By design, all teachings in Five Disciplines converge to a new interpretation of nirvāṇa and cohere in a new discipline called Nirvāṇa. The springboard for this path is original quiescence (the essence of the first phase)—nirvāṇa as cause, that is, the aspect of nirvāṇa that can be accessed by the conditioned. Diverse teachings are consolidated into one path by āśrayaparivṛtti (revolutionizing consciousness), the essence of the second phase. The perfection of this path is one true-reality dharma realm (the essence of the third phase)—nirvāṇa as outcome, that is, the unconditioned, ultimate liberation. Note that one true-reality

dharma realm, in Lü’s paradigm, is nondual, especially regarding the duality of individuality and society. Instead, it connotes something inherent to streams of consciousnesses (xin xiangxu 心相續) that is manifested through shared phenomena (wei gongxiang zhi suo xian ye 為共相之所顯也).18 In short, the new discipline Nirvāṇa embodies a transpersonal doctrinal oneness, which is the alpha and omega of the ongoing process of revolutionizing consciousness. The actualization of this doctrinal oneness is none other than one true-reality dharma realm, which calls to mind Lü’s intersubjective oneness as an aesthetic society.

In Lü’s own words, nirvāṇa marks both the root ( genben 根本) and the ultimate goal ( guisu 歸宿) of this bodhisattva path of co-liberation and hence legitimizes the dynamic wholeness of his training program.19 Immediately after making this claim, Lü Cheng identified the disciplines of Prajñā and Yogācāra as both the pragmatic application (shijian 實踐) and the finger that points toward home (zhigui 指歸), that is, an experience-based, action-oriented ethical training. As the root cause, nirvāṇa is manifested as the originally quiescent consciousness (xingji zhi xin 性寂之心).20 As the ultimate goal, nirvāṇa is manifested as the achievement of intersubjective buddhahood, which is synonymous with one true-reality dharma realm:

The fundamental nature of the buddha is the dharma realm. The dharma realm is the realm of nirvāṇa. That is to say, the fundamental nature of the buddha is nirvāṇa. This clarifies why a buddha is a buddha.

佛以法界為體性, 法界即涅槃界, 是即以涅槃為體性, 乃明佛之所以為佛也. 21

Here, nirvāṇa itself is reimagined as a path, including both the beginning and the end, both the cause and the effect, enabled by and enabling diverse social and historical configurations in different space-times. Simultaneously, the realm of nirvāṇa, a.k.a. buddhahood, is precisely one true-reality dharma realm that includes all beings (hence transpersonal) bounded by karmic processes and the processes of purification, or a nirvāṇic interconditioning.22 Readers familiar with the vast literature on the pan-Asian debates about Yogācāra and Tathāgatagarbha might feel that Lü’s reading of nirvāṇa is too similar to that of the sworn enemy of Yogācāra (as portrayed in mainstream scholarship on East Asian Buddhism), the Tathāgatagarbha school.23 To fully capture Lü’s position in this complex debate would require an independent book-length study; for the purposes of the current chapter, it suffices to note that Lü stayed within the bounds of a weak Tathāgatagarbha reading.24 His key terms such as original quiescence, nirvāṇa, original purity, buddhahood, and dharmakāya (dharma body) all refer to the unconditioned dharma that can be made accessible to commoners through the bodhisattvas’ subsequent awareness.

Furthermore, for Lü, the discipline of Nirvāṇa marked both the culmination of Buddhism and the authenticity of the Chinese transmission. On the one hand, he expanded the traditional meaning of buddhahood to include all social and historical configurations and made buddhahood a foundation for a transpersonal and intersubjective oneness. In this way, Lü revealed his social imagination of infinite spiritual co-progress. On the other hand, Lü further substantiated his claim that this “genuine” interpretation of buddhahood as intersubjective oneness was preserved in Chinese Yogācāra thanks only to Xuanzang’s effort. He singled out two texts in this discipline of the third phase, Dacheng miyan jing 大乘密嚴經 (The Sūtra on the Invisible Splendor of the Mahāyāna; Skt: Ghanavyūha Sūtra; T.681), which Lü attributed to Dharmapāla, and Fodi jinglun 佛地經論 (Treatise on the Buddha-Stage Sūtra; Skt: Buddhabhūmi-sūtra-śāstra; T.1530), which Lü attributed to Śīlabhadra. Note that both Dharmapāla and Śīlabhadra, according to Chinese Yogācāra traditions, were Xuanzang’s master teachers at Nālandā. As captured in table 4.1, Lü asserted,

These two texts were the final conclusion of Nālandā learning and the beginning of the Chinese translation of Nālandā learning. Xuanzang’s learning originates here [from these two texts].

又此二籍為那寺講學最後之結論. 而為華譯那寺學說之開端. 奘師之學即從此出也. 25

Further, readers can sense the significance of the discipline of Nirvāṇa in how Lü shortened the program when pressed for time. In August 1945, after Japan unexpectedly surrendered to China, Lü and his colleagues made plans to move the Inner Learning Institute back to Nanjing. At the time, Lü was already halfway through the first phase of his program. But present circumstances required that he shorten this three-phase training. After completing all five disciplines of the first phase, he skipped directly to the discipline of Nirvāṇa in the second phase.26 He finished lecturing on three of the four texts outlined in the discipline of Nirvāṇa of the second phase, aborted the training, and never had the chance to teach it again. Yet the parting words of this abortive program, located in the discipline of Nirvāṇa, gesture toward the heart of Lü’s revolutionary nonviolence.27

Revolutionizing Consciousness in Three Phases

While the discipline of Nirvāṇa gestures toward the ultimate teaching, the three phases in Five Disciplines manifest the path of Lü’s Yogācāra sociosoteriology, which is zhuanyi 轉依 (Skt: āśrayaparivṛtti; Tib: gnas yongs su ‘gyur

pa).28 This path is firmly grounded in Yogācāra soteriology. The focus in this section is the relationship between this three-phase āśrayaparivṛtti and Lü’s revolutionary nonviolence.29

I translate Lü’s use of āśrayaparivṛtti as “revolutionizing consciousness” to throw into relief his lifetime endeavor to remake the world through nonviolent strategies such as scholarship, self-cultivation, and transformative epistemology.30 In Yogācāra classics, āśrayaparivṛtti, its Tibetan translation gnas yongs su ‘gyur pa, and its Chinese translation all referred to a fundamental transformation of the mental basis. In Xuanzang’s Chinese translation, zhuan 轉 indicates “turn away” or “turn to” and yi 依 means “basis” or “support.” Whereas the sense of “fundamental” is implied in the Sanskrit and Chinese terms, the Tibetan translation makes it explicit as yongs su (totally), which captures more Lü’s use of it. My use of “revolutionizing consciousness” is intended to foreground Lü’s consistent interpretation of revolution not as a violent political movement but as a fundamental change of attitude toward all living beings and living processes, from his 1920s quest for an aesthetic uprising to the making of the Institute’s Learning in 1943 and to the 1950s when he paraphrased zhuanyi as a new paradigm (xin fanchou 新範疇) of liberation ( jietuo 解脫), i.e., remaking this world (zhuanshi 轉世).31 Notably, the term yi is part of Lü’s siyiren 四依人, which refers to the four kinds of humans as the worldly support. Reading these two terms together, one can readily recognize the resonance between revolutionizing consciousness and transforming the worldly support. This parallel underscores that Five Disciplines is the fruit of the seeds of aesthetic revolution, which matured into a path of co-liberation in three phases (see table 4.1).

The first phase grounds the path of liberation directly in the realization of the original quiescence of consciousness, with nirvāṇa as the cause of liberation:

The first phase is focused on the original quiescence of consciousness. Once [one] realizes that the [originally quiescent] consciousness exists [at this moment], then this learning happens. Therefore, if there is the [realization of this originally quiescent] consciousness, then this learning exists. It is different from what permeates from the outside. This is called knowing the root.

初周, 主於心性本寂, 自覺有此心, 而後有此學, 故心存則學存, 異於外鑠, 此之謂 知本 . 32

Importantly, Lü saw learning and the meditative realization as interconditioned: if one arises, the other arises. Notably, original quiescence, in Ouyang and Lü’s interpretation, was a synthesis of different concepts such as original purity and nirvāṇa in Yogācāra hermeneutics.33 Knowledge and practice are

thus also interconditioned, a point that undercuts the dominant reading of Lü’s Buddhology as purely objective scholarship. To substantiate his aforementioned claim, in the rest of the outline, Lü Cheng first equated original quiescence with the early Indian Buddhist claim, “The nature of the mind-heart is originally pure but defiled by guest dust” (xinxing benjing kechen suoran 心性本淨 客塵所染).34

In fact, by performing years of meticulous multilingual comparative analysis, Lü had identified this passage as the foundation of all Buddhist teachings. He integrated this concept into his explications of the five sūtras and seven treatises in the first phase. Lü contended that once one realized this original quiescence, this original quiescence (an unconditioned dharma) would no longer be different from the momentarily arising and disappearing of psychological events in ālayavijñāna. By grafting learning onto an unconditioned and originally quiescent consciousness inherent in all living beings, Lü differentiated Yuanxue from other imported education models such as Cai Yuanpei’s aesthetic education, which Lü criticized as a form of environmental determinism that served only to perpetuate Darwinist devolution.

Learning is more than acquiring objective knowledge. Lü grounded learning in a path motivated by a moral purpose. On the one hand, this approach calls to mind the contemporary feminist injunction to engage with ameliorative projects in scholarship.35 On the other hand, because Lü melded the training and textual analysis with meditative insight, this approach reflects a continuation of the Nālandā scholastic-soteriological quest. Lü was confident that this initial realization of original quiescence would inspire one to emulate the sages ( jianxian siqi 見賢思齊), alluding to the enduring Chinese belief in human perfectibility. At the same time, it hearkened back to his 1920s notion of aesthetic awakening as a means to emulate artists and art critics—that is, the leaders of the joint-awakening enterprise. In 1943 Lü not only reframed the notions of awakening and revolution in Buddhist terms but also argued that if one could maintain this insight of original quiescence without forgetting, then Buddhist learning indeed sprung from searching deep within instead of acquiring external knowledge.36

Lü presented this reweaving of scholastic effort and meditative insight in the very first text in his curriculum, Dhammapada , a variant translation that parallels the Chinese translation- compilation the Forty-Two Sections Sūtra . 37 It is telling that Lü began his program with the Chinese translation of a sūtra outside the four Āgamas.38 Lü justified his choice by arguing that because the language was plain, accessible, and rich in meaning, the text must be an accurate record of the Buddha’s words.39 However, to unpack the unsaid meanings in Lü’s discourse, one must understand two subtexts. First, the Forty-Two

Sections Sūtra had long been seen by Chinese Buddhists as an authentic translation, and the very first Buddhist scripture translated into Chinese whose preface records its own transmission history: namely, the legend of how Emperor Ming of Han (28–75 CE) dreamed about the Buddha. Second, the 1750 French translation of the Forty-Two Sections Sūtra by Joseph de Guignes is the earliest European translation of Buddhist texts and was believed to be representative of the “original teaching” in early European Buddhological circles.40

By starting Five Disciplines with an earlier version of this legendary text that was accepted by both Chinese Buddhists and European Buddhologists as fundamental, Lü Cheng made an implicit claim to the legitimacy of both Chinese translations and Yuanxue: only the careful comparative studies of the Chinese translations of Dhammapada alongside their extant Pāli and classical Tibetan parallels as well as Sanskrit fragments could uncover the true history of transmitted texts and to extract the genuine principles of the Buddha.41

Doctrinally, Dhammapada enabled Lü to graft his own interpretation of original quiescence onto what contemporaneous Buddhists and Buddhologists deemed the earliest layer of transmitted Buddhist teaching. He opened his lecture on Dhammapada by pointing out that the central tenet of this text is precisely the “originally pure heart defiled by guest dust.”42 Simultaneously, Lü retooled this well-known phrase for establishing bodhisattva learning by presenting “perfuming through hearing” (Ch: wenxun 聞熏; Skt: śrutavāsanā) as the most proper method of washing off guest dust.43

To further tie Dhammapada to what he had identified as the foundational tenet— original quiescence—Lü Cheng linked Dhammapada’s teaching of original purity to Bian zhongbian lun 辯中邊論 (Distinguishing the middle from the extremes; Skt: Madhyāntavibhāga ; T.1600; henceforth, MAV), a multilayered text whose root verses are attributed to Maitreya and whose commentary is attributed to Vasubandhu. MAV is a critical text in Lü’s discipline of Yogācāra of the first phase. Lü argued that MAV reframes the original purity of consciousness in terms of relinquishment ( jimie 寂滅) and quiescence ( jijing 寂 靜).44 By borrowing arguments in MAV, Lü Cheng mapped out a progression from the earlier limited teaching of original purity to a more developed concept of original quiescence that culminates in the Yogācāra teaching of the perfected nature. As expected of a Buddhologist, Lü buried this argument in an interlinear note:

The Perfected Nature: In old translations, the perfected is actualized-ness. This is to say it is quiescent by nature. It is not other things that make it quiescent. This is known as its innate nature, which is actualized purity and cleanness.

圓成實自性 (舊譯圓成為成就性 , 谓其自性本寂, 非餘法使然, 即本性成就清

淨之谓) . 45

None of his chosen terms deviates from those used in earlier Chinese translations. Nevertheless, the new conceptual construct of doctrinal unfolding is evident: from Dhammapada’s original purity to original quiescence in MAV, and finally to the Yogācāra doctrine of the perfected nature. Long before making this claim, Lü had devoted his time and energy to substantiating this invented discourse of doctrinal unfolding by making historical and philosophical connections.

Indeed, he had started this task as early as 1924 when he first wrote about comparative hermeneutics. In this essay, Lü described the significance of the “cross- examination of similar terminologies rendered in different sūtras” ( yijing tongshi zhi bijiao 異經同事之比較 ), which required a chronological comparison of all variant interpretations of ālayavijñāna , from original purity to Tathāgatagarbha , the Buddha nature; to nirvāṇa as the outcome of liberation; and to many other ontological synonyms of the unconditioned dharmas.46 In 1943 the import of this case study in Lü’s 1924 methodological reflections became fully manifested: original quiescence is innate to consciousness, the latter of which also lies at the heart of Lü’s curriculum of co-liberation.

While the first phase puts Yuanxue on firm textual ground, the second phase paints a bright future for practitioners on the path: once original quiescence manifests itself in the first instance, consciousness itself will “naturally” propel one toward the unstoppable process of abandoning afflictions and approaching purity. According to Lü,

This second phase is to exhaust the function of consciousness. Once the characteristics of quiescence become manifest, then true wisdom abundantly swells. Thus, [the process] of discarding afflictions and turning toward purity will surely be set on the track of revolutionizing consciousness and thus become unstoppable.

次周，盡心之用，寂相著明，則真智沛發，捨染趨淨必循軌轉依而不可遏. 47

The significance of this passage should not be underestimated. Lü regarded the texts of the second phase as the authentic doctrinal lineage (zhengzong 正 宗).48 For Lü, the function of original quiescence was to spark the long-term process of āśrayaparivṛtti. However, for one who is still in the afflicted state, the only path by which to arrive at a momentary realization of original quiescence is via the interconditioned copoiesis of perfuming through hearing. According to Lü, once one gained this momentary insight, this originally

quiescent consciousness would make the process of revolutionary nonviolence irresistible.

Thusly, Lü Cheng presented the revolution of consciousness in terms of a continuous balancing act between nature and nurture. For him, the basis (Ch: yi 依; Skt: āśraya) was precisely ālayavijñāna. In Lü’s interpretation, even though consciousness is quiescent by nature, for one who is currently afflicted, it functions as the basis of all worldly suffering and perpetuates this actual life. Therefore, perfuming through hearing is the only means to create an opportunity of direct realization of this original quiescence. After the initial manifestation of original quiescence, if one continues to hold this meditative insight in mind, then original quiescence itself will guarantee one’s continual action of abandoning affliction and transitioning toward nirvāṇa. This process is precisely what Lü deemed “revolution” (Ch: zhuan 轉; Skt: parivṛtti), an abandoning of the deluded ālayavijñāna and a manifestation of the perfected nature that can be momentarily accessed by deluded beings as original quiescence.49

In this way, āśrayaparivṛtti allowed Lü to naturalize his nonviolent, noncompetitive social evolutionary theory in terms of Yogācāra soteriology. In this training of revolutionizing consciousness, original quiescence and nirvāṇa were presented as a Möbius band. When viewed locally, there are always two sides: the cause that is in the distant past, original quiescence (the unconditioned among the conditioned), and the effect that is in the distant future, nirvāṇa (the unconditioned that is fully actualized). When viewed globally, there is only one side. This global oneness and local duality enabled Lü to justify this new path of co-liberation: because of the oneness of cause and effect, liberation is bound to happen; because of the temporary duality due to the limitedness of mortals, original quiescence is a natural propensity (ziran zhi shi 自然 之勢) whose revolution is, like a bountiful river ( jianghe peiran 江河沛然), unstoppable.50 While the image of a bountiful river as the propensity of kindness has a productive literary life in Chinese culture, in Lü’s socio-soteriology, it metamorphosized into a notion of agentless agency, one that invokes the Buddhist agency of relations and aggregated karmic processes. In contrast to the deadly myths of the survival of the fittest that glorified competition and self-interest, the metaphor of a bountiful river augmented Lü’s revolutionary nonviolence as an idyllic flow of compassion destined to wash away all worldly suffering.

In the third phase, one clearly sees the social characteristics of Lü’s project. Posited as the unconditioned, the essence of the third phase is one dharma realm ( yifajie 一法界), a.k.a. one true-reality dharma realm, which includes both the material environment (living processes and natural cycles) and the sentient realm (all living beings). According to Lü,

The third phase is to expand the reach of the function of [original quiescence]. Both buddhas and sentient beings possess this consciousness. Interconnective stimulations and dependent co-arisings rely on the same base and are thus equal. This is called “one dharma realm.” The ultimate goal of this learning is to apply great vows without limit and to aspire for the perfection and purification of the whole realm.

三周，充用之量，佛與眾生遍具此心，交感緣起，依等而相同，謂之一法界，弘願行 於無極，期全界之圓淨，斯乃此學之終鵠也. 51

Here, instead of the apophatic understanding of nirvāṇa as the relinquishment of afflictions, Lü portrayed the fruition of revolutionizing consciousness from the cataphatic perspective of manifesting dharmakāya. In Xuanzang’s treatise, this dharmakāya is equated with one true-reality dharma realm, otherwise known as dharma-realm dependent co-arising ( fajie yuanqi 法界緣起).52 It foretells an ever-expanding community of interwoven sentient beings in a distant yet reassuringly bright future, calling forth the metaphor he used during his aesthetic revolution, “a blossoming field in a mountainside” with abundant flowers in all hues of color.53

The phrase “interconnective stimulations and dependent arisings” is important for appreciating Lü’s innovative refashioning of nirvāṇa as co-liberation. The phrase combines the Chinese processual coaction paradigm of ganying 感應 (stimulus and response) with the Buddhist process philosophy of dependent arising.54 This was not the first time that the two paradigms had been combined to fashion a new form of soteriology. As argued by Wendi Adamek, since sixthcentury China, Chinese Yogācārins at Baoshan had been fashioning a practice tradition grounded in the “agency of relations,” where “constructions—textual, visual, and reflexive—emerge out of processes of intention and action and in turn have efficacy within these processes.”55 While the paradigms share the important features of formulating an agentless agency and giving relations themselves more agentive force in the mycelial meshwork of actions and coactions, Lü’s unique phrase jiaogan yuanqi combines the Chinese paradigm of coaction ( jiaogan) with the Buddhist paradigm of dependent co-arising ( yuanqi) to drive home the point that the relata or the end points of relations, buddhas, bodhisattvas, human beings, other sentient or insentient beings, are mere outcomes of causally constitutive and interconditioning chains of actions.

Furthermore, Lü’s deployment of interconnective stimulations, when read in the context of the predicate “rely on the same base and are thus equal,” reveals that Lü retooled both paradigms of agentless agency to build a realm sustained by equalized relations. In contrast to the historical use of both

paradigms to affirm the spiritual hierarchies of the buddhas and the commoners, in Lü’s program, these karma/action-oriented ethics are mobilized to democratize the path of liberation.

Importantly, conceiving of community in terms of motivated, recursive, organizational coactions redefines the fundamental meaning of community: contrary to the contemporary mainstream view of community as the sum of its members, community, as Lü theorized it, exists in its relationality, be it a joint striving for the interconnective stimulations to manifest one true-reality dharma realm or an ever-expanding process of co-liberation. In this way, a community is similar to a university where students, professors, and administrators come and go yet the university maintains its identity because of motivated, recursive, organizational actions: students learn, professors teach, and administrators grant degrees. Lü’s conception of community also echoes Taixu’s radical notion of civil society organizations discussed in chapter 3. At the risk of pointing out the obvious, Lü’s early quest of using art to make activism irresistible had morphed into a project of using Buddhism to make revolutionary nonviolence unstoppable.

The path interweaves two strands of action into a double helix: the strand of textual analysis works in tandem with the strand of vinaya practice, and the two are fused together by the supplemental method of critical thinking grounded in meditative absorption. Textual study provides interpersonal guidance for vinaya practice, and vinaya practice both purifies guest dust in the consciousness and actualizes soteriological insight gained from the textual analysis. Moreover, textual analysis precedes vinaya: one must know the correct path before putting knowledge into practice. For Lü, to actualize one true-reality dharma realm, one must “study each discipline in turn, know how to decide and select wisely” (zhuxi geke, shanzhi jueze 逐習各科, 善知抉擇).56 As for what counts as “wisely,” Lü claimed that worthy teachings always illuminate different means to benefit all sentient beings:

The ultimate Mahāyāna teachings illustrate the intimate relations between sentient beings and buddhas. They are not separable. They are one dharma realm. Therefore, the closer one approaches the ultimate, the more one becomes involved with sentient beings.

大乘之究竟在說生佛關係之密切，彼此不離，為一法界，故愈究竟，則愈近眾生. 57

Like his teacher Ouyang, Lü took it to be a self-evident truth that the core of Mahāyāna teaching is intimate engagement with living beings for the purpose of co-liberation, a merging of social action with soteriological practice.

Buddhability, Humanity, and Intersubjectivity

Precisely because Lü trusted that, at the ultimate level, buddhas and commoners are not two but one, Lü saw Buddhability and humanity as one and the same and claimed that even deluded commoners could be the support for the world. Given the centrality of nirvāṇa-cum-buddhahood in Five Disciplines, it is no surprise that most of Lü’s claims on this point appear in his lectures on the discipline of Nirvāṇa. As the evidence demonstrates, this reversal of the received doctrine showcases the first central strand by which Lü’s épistémè of compassion materialized into institutional configurations. Lü saw Buddhabilitycum-humanity as fundamental for building a community grounded in compassion and interdependence, one in which aspiring bodhisattvas, buddhas, sentient beings, and insentient beings are all provisional equilibriums sustained by recurring patterns of copoieses such as vows, purified consciousness, mental afflictions, and imputations. Of course, for Lü, to be closer to the commoners, aspiring bodhisattvas had to act as socially engaged and politically active Buddhists.

Dharmic Humans Are the Support for the World

The idea of a self-governed community of aspiring bodhisattvas hinges crucially on what Lü termed “four kinds of humans as the support [for this world]” (siyiren 四依人).58 As mentioned earlier, this statement of human support directly contradicts the well-known doctrine that one shall rely on Dharma, not on humans ( yifa buyiren 依法不依人). Ouyang first made this surprising reversal in 1941 in his Instructions for the Institute · On Teaching. In this short text, Ouyang asserted, “As for the four kinds of support (siyi 四依) today, Dharma exists because of human beings. Therefore, one shall rely on Dharmic humans.”59

Why did Ouyang and Lü promote a doctrine that directly contradicts conventional wisdom? Briefly speaking, Ouyang wished to establish his Inner Learning Institute as the model for a different kind of lay community with strict gender separation.60 To be sure, Ouyang’s claim had historical roots. Many commentaries penned by eminent monks such as Huiyuan 慧远 (334−416), Jizang 吉藏 (549−623), Daoxuan 道宣 (596−667), and Yuanzhao 元照 (1048−1116) promoted this doctrine for different reasons.61 In addition, this idea is repeated in the influential Buddhist encyclopedia, Forest of Gems in the Garden of the Dharma (Fayuan zhulin 法苑珠林) compiled in 668, under the section “Various Essentials.”62 All these texts refer to the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra as the scriptural

support for this provocative claim. Given the precedence, it is not difficult to see that Ouyang may have chosen this obscure teaching to promote a different kind of lay Buddhist organization.

If Ouyang had claimed so only in passing, Lü, in 1943, elevated this provocative claim to the focus of Yuanxue. In his lectures on the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra—The Chapter of True Dharma, the second text in the discipline of Nirvāṇa of the second phase, Lü emphasized the significance of the saṅgha jewel (sengbao 僧寶) section, where the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra claims that the saṅgha jewel refers to the four kinds of humans as worldly support. Lü saw this section of the sūtra as devoted to the discussion of people as the foundation of worldly support, and thus he labeled them “the eternal abiding of the saṅgha jewel” (sengbao changzhu 僧寶常住).63 To be sure, the exact phrase “siyiren” 四依人 does not appear in any of the Chinese translations. The closest phrasing is found in a passage in which the Buddha claims that “these four kinds of humans are the support for this world” (rushi siren wei shijian yi 如是四人為世間依).64 However, the notion itself frequently appears throughout this section, as these four kinds of humans are variously rendered as the support for this world, the foundation of refuge, the best among people, and those who can bring joy and happiness to humans and gods alike.65 In explicating this passage, Lü repackaged this doctrine to justify his experience-based, action-oriented moral training:

Saṅgha means the assembled disciples, that is, the four assemblies of the Buddha’s disciples. They can recite the words of the Buddha and practice what the buddhas practice. The eternity of the saṅgha jewel comes from the eternity of the Dharma jewel. . . . However, by itself, Dharma cannot function [in this world]. To activate [Dharma’s] efficacy, one must rely on humans who clarify [Dharma] and instruct [others]. Therefore, only humans can be the support for this world.

僧谓徒眾, 即佛四眾弟子, 能誦佛言行佛行者也. 僧寶之常, 由法寶之常而來 . . . .  然徒法不能自行, 必待人之闡明指示, 乃生效用, 故勘為世間依止者唯人 . 66

This passage underscores Lü’s redefinition of humanity in terms of actions and coactions: in this case, to activate and spread Dharma. First, Lü highlighted that the saṅgha, as a fourfold gathering, included laity. Second, he refashioned the essence of saṅgha based on actions alone: reciting the words of the Buddha and emulating the buddhas’ deeds. Third, Lü subordinated the saṅgha jewel to the Dharma jewel, rendering the Dharma jewel the foundation and the saṅgha jewel the activation of True Dharma, calling to mind both Ouyang’s use of tiyong 體用 (foundation and function) and the copoietic paradigm that allots agency to texts, Dharma, and humans in the spiderweb of

karmic processes. Lü concluded this passage by circling back to his earlier redefinition: humans become the support for the world only when they activate the True Dharma, hearkening back to the agency of relations implied in interconnective stimulations.

As concerns content, the previously quoted passage is an accurate interpretation of the opening in the sixth fascicle of the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra, which Mark Blum translates as “there are four kinds of people who capably protect the true-dharma, promote the true-dharma, and keep the true-dharma in their thoughts . . . for they are the support for the world.”67 In the rest of the lecture, Lü Cheng drew upon a wide range of Buddhist metaphors, scriptures, and doctrines to justify his redefinition of the saṅgha jewel as humans voluntarily assembled together to practice and activate True Dharma.68

Importantly, the innovation of Lü’s Buddhability-cum-humanity becomes evident once the passage is situated within the swelling tide of the “New Man” discourse in modern China. Instead of merely reviving some ancient, genuine Buddhist traditions, Lü employed a Yogācāra causal framework to change the terms of the modern debate about what makes a person human. He openly criticized the Western practice of debasing humans as slaves (nuli 奴隸), oxen and horses (niuma 牛馬), and flesh cannonballs (roudan 肉彈).69 Published in the 1940s, this passage nonetheless shines a light on a striking condemnation of structural violence (probably widely shared among anticolonialists at the time), which Aimé Césaire in 1950 powerfully called “colonization = chosification.”70 Indeed, to both thinkers, the dark heart of colonialism lay in its thingification of living beings. Lü’s action- oriented ethics and human interconditioning, by centering actions and coactions, offers a compelling path out of the colonial agenda of thingification.

Lü also prioritized the aspirational agency of the Dharmic humans by claiming that aspiration alone distinguishes saints from commoners and commoners from animals.71 Although in some medieval practices, vows are crucial to accessing the agency of relations, in Lü’s socio-soteriology, the volitional power encoded in bodhisattva vows alone activates the interconditioning Buddhability.72 To become worldly support is not a birthright but a choice. Only through aspirations and actions to embark on the bodhisattva path can one become initiated into the team of worldly support.

Seen from the processual point of view, Dharma and humans are one, not two, in the sense that they both are mere provisional stases in a constantly changing yet mutually conditioning meshwork of events and actions. In his lecture on the chapter titled “Accepting True Dharma” in the Śrīmālādevī Siṃhanāda Sūtra, one of the two texts in the discipline of Nirvāṇa of the first

phase, Lü explicitly pointed out that the fundamental essence ( genbenyi 根本 義) of this text resides in its unique teaching that fuses Dharma with the Dharma-holders ( jiang fa yu chifazhe dacheng yipian 將法與持法者打成一片), echoing the epigraphs herein.73

Following the logic of process philosophy, Dharma and Dharmic humans are one because they both belong to the karmic mycelium of aggregated actions. The location of agency does not lie in some mythologized individual agents but instead flows in and out of dynamic stases that are conventionally designated as bounded agents such as humans, buddhas, bodhisattvas, or texts but in reality are produced by intentions and actions.74 For this reason, Lü valued humans and buddhas yet located the ultimate value in the teachings of the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra:

Humans are valuable because they can become buddhas. Buddhas are valuable because they can actualize this Dharma of nirvāṇa. Therefore, the Dharma of nirvāṇa is the most valuable.

人之所貴, 在能成佛, 佛之所貴, 則在能證此涅槃法, 故涅槃法最可貴也. 75

Having firmly grounded the sanctity of humanity in one’s propensity to become a buddha and resolve to enact True Dharma, Lü sought to prove that even commoners with mental afflictions could be part of the saṅgha jewel. Careful readers will have already inferred that Lü elevated the teachings of the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra to minimize the gap between buddhas and humans. Buddhas and humans are both valuable because they can actualize True Dharma. Under Lü’s philosophy of living, the difference between buddhas and humans is a time lapse: buddhas have already actualized True Dharma, whereas humans can become buddhas only after their propensity is accentuated by external conditions (waiyuan zengshang 外緣增上), where these conducive external conditions are precisely the teachings in the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra. 76

To prove that deluded commoners could be the worldly support, Lü again drew from the doctrinal elements already present in the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra. According to this sūtra, the first group of worldly support comprises those commoners who are above worldly affairs but whose consciousnesses are still afflicted.77 In many commentaries, the remaining groups are mapped onto different saints who have achieved one of the four realizations (siguo 四果) or the patriarchs of specific Dharma lineages. However, most extant commentaries agree that the first group of people consists of some sort of commoners, such as Buddhist commoners (neifan 内凡) or Buddhist commoners belonging to the families of those who have yet to enter the ten bodhisattva stages but are

endowed with understanding and practice (diqian zhongxing jiexing neifan 地前種

性解行内凡).78 Building upon the medieval commentarial tradition, Lü renamed the first group of people “commoners with awakened bodhicitta” ( youzhi fanfu 有 志凡夫 ).79 I translate Lü’s neologism as “aspiring bodhisattvas” to highlight these persons’ aspirational agency. Lü saw the value of these aspiring bodhisattvas as depending solely on whether they could preach True Dharma. Whether they were laity or ordained clergy, old or young, their observation or violation of some specific monastic precepts was seen as irrelevant.80

The social function of these aspiring bodhisattvas is undeniable. They are the saṅgha jewel precisely because they aspire both to achieve buddhahood themselves and to assist others in becoming buddhas. 81 This social function of bringing all to nirvāṇa predetermines another aspect of this new bodhisattva ideal: all aspiring bodhisattvas are voluntary icchantikas, or bodhisattva icchantika s ( pusa yichanti 菩薩一闡提 ).82 In conventional wisdom, icchantika refers to a sentient being who will never be exposed to Buddhist teaching and therefore cannot achieve buddhahood. Throughout medieval China, there were vehement debates on whether an icchantika could become a buddha. 83 Xuanzang is well known for his conviction that there exist icchantikas who cannot achieve buddhahood in the foreseeable future.84 In modern China, when Western democratic values became the prevailing wind, Xuanzang’s view came to be seen as problematic. To resolve this conflict, Lü redefined icchantikas in terms of their great vow to stay in saṃsāra. In doing so, Lü reinterpreted Xuanzang’s spiritual hierarchy as a matter of voluntary participation. For Lü, the essential quality of voluntary icchantikas was diligence. This quality distinguishes bodhisattva icchantikas from those who are lax and heedless, as suggested by the traditional interpretation. Once the characteristics of icchantika are reframed in terms of their volition, Xuanzang’s categorization becomes provisional, conditioned upon one’s willpower. Thus, in Lü’s paradigm, all humans, including the traditional icchantikas, have the potential to choose a different path and thereby transform themselves into voluntary icchantikas. 85

To further emphasize that buddhahood is open to all commoners to enact, Lü interpreted the Buddha Nature as preordained propensity for awakening:

Therefore, one knows that afflictions existed in the past but are cut off now and that true wisdom did not exist in the past but is born now. This is the meaning of the transformability of the Buddha nature. However, this transformation has a predetermined propensity.

故知煩惱昔有今斷, 正智昔無今生. 此即佛性有轉變之義, 而轉變又有一定之趨勢 也. 86

Precisely because of Lü’s faith in this destined transformative force of the Buddha nature, in his parting words preserved in his lecture on the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra, the third text in the discipline of Nirvāṇa of the second phase and the concluding text of Lü’s shortened lecture series, Lü implored the audience to become bodhisattva icchantikas. He concluded that the essence of Yuanxue was thus: whether one becomes a [lazy] icchantika or a buddha is entirely determined by one’s own [diligence and aspiration]. Therefore, one shall exhort oneself.87

In short, Lü democratized the ancient bodhisattva path, rendering it open to all aspiring learners. In his lectures, he sculpted an ideal learner who is skilled in textual analysis and meditative absorptions but is still afflicted by mental defilements. The aspiring bodhisattvas trust their natural propensity toward awakening. Because of their deep insight into True Dharma and their commitment to assist all sentient beings through learning and teaching, they become the worldly support in a troubled time. Because of their conviction, aspiring bodhisattvas are voluntary icchantikas who forgo the opportunity to quickly achieve buddhahood yet tirelessly acquire all kinds of soteriological knowledge suitable for assisting different kinds of sentient beings. Thus, Lü weaved different strands of traditional teachings into a new tapestry within which ancient doctrines accrued new relevance and became the very foundation of humanity. This newly minted Buddhability-cum-humanity was crucial to Lü’s socio-soteriology that wedded liberation Buddhology and democracy.

Sociality and Yogācāra Intersubjectivity

However, to fuse humanity and sociality in a processual philosophical paradigm, one key component was still necessary: a reformulation of intersubjectivity. Without a convincing theory of how intersubjective exchanges can happen apart from presuming external objects, Lü’s socio-soteriology would have been untenable. Without a defensible processual social ontology, Lü’s program would have read just like any other individualistic soteriology or an idealist rendering of society as the expansion of an individual psyche, as was analyzed in chapter 3. As evidenced by this subsection, Lü refashioned buddhahoodcum-nirvāṇa as intersubjective oneness by redefining the imported category of sociality in terms of Yogācāra intersubjectivity.

One critical term in Lü’s sociality-cum-intersubjectivity is indirect ālambana. As was discussed in chapter 3, ālambana (objective basis) explains how mental karmic processes are perceived as if objectively existing outside consciousness. Indirect ālambana is the term coined by Xuanzang to explain intersubjective karmic influences. In Lü’s theory, indirect ālambana serves as the cornerstone

of an intersubjective sociality. Lü’s earliest interest in this doctrine became manifested during a 1923 debate at the Inner Learning Institute when his focus transitioned from aesthetic revolution to liberation Buddhology. 88 Recall from chapter 1 that at this early stage when Lü was simultaneously teaching Yogācāra and aesthetics, Lü’s goal of aesthetic revolution was to establish an intersubjective oneness cohered by aesthetic empathy and produced through intersubjective and cross-modality (e.g., from auditory to visual) translation.

Whereas in 1921 and 1922 Lü was still patching up different Western aesthetic theories to explain how aesthetic empathy could ground an intersubjective sociality, in this 1923 debate, Lü hinted that he now found Yogācāra intersubjectivity to be a more powerful toolbox to establish this intersubjective oneness. The central question in the fifth research conference in 1923 was whether Thusness (zhenru 真如) could be indirect ālambana. The debate started when Lü proposed discussing a question posed by another Buddhist revolutionary, Huang Jusu 黄居素 (1897−1986).89

In the debate, Lü took pains to prove that Thusness, both in its absolute sense (shixing zhenru 實性真如) and its objective aspect ( faxiang zhenru 法相真如), could be an indirectly perceived object.90 More important, Lü asserted that Thusness perceived by bodhisattvas who had achieved subsequent awareness (Ch: houdezhi 後得智; Skt: pṛṣṭha-labdha-jñāna) could be an indirect ālambana accessible to deluded commoners.91 The critical doctrinal underpinning of Lü Cheng’s position was that ālambana describes what can be grasped as if it is an objective substance, alluding to the Yogācāra critique of objectivity as a convenient fiction.92

Lü was alone in holding this position. At first glance, Chen Zhenru, another Buddhist revolutionary, seemed to support Lü’s position.93 Chen claimed that both Huang and Lü were right because absolute Thusness cannot be indirect ālambana (thereby affirming Huang’s point and misreading Lü’s point) and the objective aspect of Thusness can be an indirect ālambana. Wang Enyang, another reformer who had developed his own Yogācāra social theory, argued that both Huang and Lü were wrong in that they both mischaracterized the two kinds of Thusness. However, the central thrust of Chen’s, Huang’s, and Wang’s objections was similar: if Thusness as perceived by the subsequent awareness can be grasped by ordinary beings as indirect ālambana, then because indirect ālambana requires substance, to make Thusness available to be grasped as indirect ālambana necessitates equating Thusness with substance, which was a mark of heterodoxy.94 As outlined in chapter 3, this sort of debate is to be expected whenever a newly imported category needs to be explained in terms of received concepts. Without these internal debates and

irreconcilable differences, the Yogācāra tradition would lack depth. Furthermore, because each position can be justified by selective readings of the past and the present, the question of “authenticity” is moot. A more fruitful line of inquiry is to examine the purpose for which each position is proposed.

I argue that Lü Cheng invested heavily in his position because Thusness as indirect ālambana is central to theorizing an intersubjective sociality, a cornerstone of Lü’s revolutionary nonviolence. In this early phase of the revolution, Lü argued that universal beauty, as perceived by artists and materialized through their artwork, can awaken the innate aesthetic sensibility of viewers and thereby expand the viewers’ aesthetic potential. Art critics, similarly, by translating the visual and auditory experiences of beauty into verbal and textual expressions, can inspire future artists and expand the reach of artwork. If only the objective aspect of universal beauty—that is, a shadow—can be indirectly perceived by unenlightened beings, then commoners must experience a miraculous leap to grasp true beauty. Conversely, if other beings can indirectly perceive the universal as expressed through artists’ aesthetic sensibility, then commoners can access true beauty through reason and emotional connection with artwork. Seen in this light, Lü arguably insisted that Thusness could be indirect ālambana because he hoped that True Dharma, as embodied in the subsequent awareness of the bodhisattva, functioned as an indirectly perceivable object for commoners.

To deny direct access to True Dharma through other consciousnesses is to admit that sacred texts are mere shadows of Thusness in ink, the interpreters of the texts are mere chasers of elusive shadows, and commoners are mere prisoners of Plato’s cave. This renders scholarship devoid of salvific efficacy.95 It is little wonder, then, why Lü insisted that Thusness could be indirect ālambana. The result of this debate was underwhelming: all participants agreed to disagree.

But this debate did not end with the conclusion of the conference. The issue was too important to let go. Lü Cheng continued to labor on the “true meaning” of ālambana. To prove his point, in his 1927 essay “Guan suoyuan shilun huiyi”

觀所緣釋論會譯 (A comparative exposition of the [Chinese and Tibetan] translations of the Ālambana-parīkṣa), Lü Cheng identified all central passages supporting his interpretation by placing a circle beside the relevant Chinese characters.96 In the second collection of Essentials published eight years later, in 1935, in collating Yijing’s translation of Dharmapāla’s Ālambana-parīkṣa-vṛtti (Guan suoyuanyuan lun shi 觀所緣緣論釋, T.1168), Lü not only incorporated his 1927 findings but also systematically accentuated the passages that explain ālambana as an aspect of consciousness (Skt: vijñāna) but one that appears as if (ru 如) it exists outside of consciousness as substance. He highlighted these passages by

rendering other passages lower than these essential lemmas.97 In particular, to stress the centrality of consciousness-only doctrines, he used a footnote to equate shi 識 with vijñāna and then linked shi with a rephrase of Yogācāra causal enframing. The paraphrase in this footnote implies that even though indirectly perceived objects are termed zhi 質 (substance), these substances only appear as if they were substances. In reality, they are mere vijñāna. 98

Lü’s decade-long comparative study of this doctrine reveals the main tenet of liberation Buddhology: the possibility of collective liberation is achievable only through scholarly pursuit. Because he saw all authentic texts as narrated by buddhas and bodhisattvas with subsequent awareness before being written down, if Thusness could be indirectly perceived, then the texts would no longer be mere shadows in ink and ordinary beings would not be condemned to the eternal cave of darkness. Lü analyzed and compared all these textual interconnections over the years just to prove his 1924 argument that indirect ālambana merely describes that which can be grasped as objective support and is, in reality, a manifestation of other mental streams.

In sum, Lü employed indirect ālambana to explain how the mental streams of commoners could be enhanced and activated by conducive external conditions. Lü’s bodhisattva path requires that True Dharma as experienced by the buddhas and bodhisattvas and as later written down in the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra is indirect ālambana. Only in this way can the commoners, who have awakened the resolve to practice and spread True Dharma, activate their Buddhability and engage in transformative investigations that allow them to remake the world into one true-reality dharma realm.

A Spiritual Coevolution

Lü endeavored to recast human experiences and actions in the Yogācāra soteriological mold. As the renowned intellectual historian Wang Hui has pointed out, the heart of the May Fourth political imagination is “culture and morality.” The core project of May Fourth was to rediscover forgotten yet “natural” patterns (wen 文) to stimulate collective transformations (hua 化) that would call forth a new political subject and more egalitarian state politics.99 A key clash at this moment was between the “new” scientific worldview and the “old” Heavenly principle: whereas the new disenchanted everything and every relation into materiality and relations of interests and necessity for survival, the old enchanted all material relations as a matter of the mind-heart and ethicized every piece of knowledge into moral knowledge.100 This divergence set the scene

for a paradigm war: positivist knowledge, objective knowledge against moral, subjective knowledge.

Lü trod a less traveled path, integrating both paradigms into an intersubjective mutual conditioning. After briefly experimenting with aesthetic solutions to the crisis of the Republic, Lü turned to Yogācāra to construct new social patterns that would resolve the modern vices of Darwinist competition, excessive materialism, and rampant individualism. World War I was the stimulus for the cultural turn in the May Fourth era. Lü’s suffering during World War II, when he first lectured on Five Disciplines while Japanese bombs were raining down on Chongqing, only confirmed Lü’s diagnosis of the modern disease and his resolve to stop the tide of the unfolding Darwinist dystopia.

To contextualize Lü based on recognizable Buddhist doctrinal fine points is to willfully ignore the richness of Lü’s intervention and the multilayered debates he participated in. By adopting a socio-soteriological lens, we bring Lü’s social vision into view. Yogācāra causal enframing provided Lü and many likeminded thinkers with a narrative structure to imagine a different future, that is, a social imagination of nonviolence that would allow its followers to face the reality of cultural deaths with courage and to work for cultural rebirths with care.

The global flow of Darwinism and the philosophy of Buddhism overdetermined that Lü remade the central Buddhist doctrine of dependent arising into a social theory. In the late nineteenth century, when Yan Fu published his translations of Huxley’s and Spencer’s social Darwinism, he employed Yogācārainflected karmic theory to explain modern sociality. In the 1920s, Yogācāra causal theory provided Lü vital inspiration to rethink the notions of humanity and sociality. When Lü reframed Yogācāra causal enframing as social coevolution, intersubjectivity grounded in aesthetic resonances found a new formulation, that is, the dependent arising of one true-reality dharma realm. Without a doubt, Lü’s new theorization was driven by the pressing question of his time: how to build a democratic society that transcends the logic of capitalism and that dispels the dangerous monolithic narrative of Darwinist competition. As a result, the ancient teaching of dependent co-arising took a decisive social turn.

To launch his movement of revolutionary nonviolence, Lü defined learning as the chief means. Explicitly equating social engagement with Buddhist learning, he stated,

If learning exists in the cosmos, then it is Buddhist learning. If genuine human life exists, then it is a human life [in accordance with] the Buddha dharma. Nevertheless, one must acknowledge that [this genuine human life] arises out of one’s self-awakening. If one were confined to the Hīnayāna

teachings and if one were afraid of talking about the [genuine] ego, then one would consider sentient beings as floating duckweed drifting with the wind. Then, who could carry on the myriad deeds of six pāramitās and the limitless enterprise [of releasing all into nirvāṇa]?

宇宙間有學, 則佛學而已, 有真正人生, 則佛法人生而已. 然此出於人之自覺, 不可不

知也. 彼一往拘泥小乘之義, 而懼說我者, 視眾生有如水面浮萍, 隨風飄蕩, 六度萬行, 無

邊事業, 複伊誰負之哉. 101

This passage represents Lü Cheng’s impassioned call to revolutionize society through liberation Buddhology. Lü saw collective liberation as starting with textual analysis but aiming for social change. Some scholars of Buddhist philosophy might feel uneasy about Lü’s position on the teaching of a genuine ego. Instead of faulting Lü for championing “unorthodox” doctrines, his argument resonates with a recent one put forth by Joseph Walser. Walser analyzed Pāli texts and argued that the historical Buddha (or authors/reciters of early sūtras) preached different doctrines to brahmin and nonbrahmin followers.102 If this is the case, then it is entirely possible that different early Buddhist communities preserved different sets of teaching, which eventually developed into the schools and traditions we know today. Viewed from this longue durée perspective, Lü’s socio-soteriology is only one recent wavelet in the many currents and countercurrents that are lumped together under the umbrella term of Buddhism.

By the end of 1944, when Lü issued this call, the once-incessant Japanese air raids over Chongqing had eased up slightly. In hindsight, one cannot help but wonder how anyone could have continued studying ancient Buddhist texts as the bombs were falling. Yet this short passage reveals Lü’s deep conviction that only a Buddhist soteriology could lead all out of the living hell of Darwinist competition. Against the backdrop of wartime terror, for intellectuals like Lü, liberation Buddhology must have seemed not only relevant but also sorely needed.

“Jessica X. Zu’s work reveals the startlingly prescient social theories of the early twentieth-century Buddhist intellectual Lü Cheng. Zu captures the creativity and fervor of Chinese efforts to counter Western pseudoscientific theories that naturalized racism and colonialism. Skillfully contextualizing Lü’s aesthetic theories and practice program, Just Awakening takes his ‘socio-soteriology’ seriously as an antidote to ongoing social maladies.”

—WENDI ADAMEK, AUTHOR OF PRACTICESCAPES AND THE BUDDHISTS OF BAOSHAN

“Zu has produced a wonderfully stimulating book on liberation Buddhology that is as much philosophical treatise as it is intellectual history. Her clear and powerful account shows how thinkers drew upon resources from Buddhist Yoga –ca–ra social philosophy to imagine a democratic path forward for China that can also provide vigorous solutions to creating a just society today.”

—ERICA F. BRINDLEY, AUTHOR OF ANCIENT CHINA AND THE YUE: PERCEPTIONS AND IDENTITIES ON THE SOUTHERN FRONTIER, C. 400 BCE–50 CE

“This innovative study explores how modern Chinese intellectuals, in particular Lü Cheng, adapted Yoga –ca–ra Buddhism to envision a just society. It merges Yoga –ca–ra philosophy with social theory, creating a framework called socio-soteriology. This approach redefines social issues and justice through the lens of Buddhist soteriology, emphasizing intersubjectivity, compassion, and nonviolence.”

—JOHN MAKEHAM, EDITOR OF TRANSFORMING CONSCIOUSNESS: YOGA –CA –RA THOUGHT IN MODERN CHINA

“This groundbreaking work provides a much-needed critical and decidedly non-Western perspective—that of Yoga –ca–ra Buddhist ‘socio-soteriology’ as developed in early twentieth-century China—on issues troubling all modern societies about science and religion; race, ethnicity, and individualism; and democracy and social justice. It is a well-researched and engaging piece of intellectual history.”

—WILLIAM S. WALDRON, AUTHOR OF MAKING SENSE OF MIND-ONLY: WHY YOGA –CA –RA BUDDHISM MATTERS

“Just Awakening is a work of breakthrough scholarship, unprecedented not only in its elucidation of the historical role of Buddhism in Chinese revolutionary thought but also in its application of Buddhist methodology to our understanding of both history and social reality, providing an emancipatory intersubjective alternative to both objectivism and subjectivism.”

—BROOK ZIPORYN, AUTHOR OF EXPERIMENTS IN MYSTICAL ATHEISM: GODLESS EPIPHANIES FROM DAOISM TO SPINOZA AND BEYOND

JESSICA X. ZU is assistant professor of religion and East Asian languages and cultures at the University of Southern California, Dornsife.