Zhang, Qing

My research tends to analyze the Body Perspectives of Chinese Buddhist Scriptures based on the Spread of Indian and Chinese Buddhist Scriptures on ancient Silk Road. The Chinese Buddhist Scriptures are not only the treasure of Chinese culture but also the wealth of ancient Indian culture. Its spread witnessed the close exchanges between China and India on the ancient Silk Road. The early Chinese Buddhist Scriptures focused on life and its absolve. They regarded the human being as the subject of “Five Skandhas”, “Six Places” and “Twelve Ru”. The early Chinese Buddhist Scriptures emphasized the superiority of soul over the body, many expressions such as “the myriad dharmas are made from the mind alone”, “spiritualism in triloka”(The Avatamsaka Sutra ) all belittled the body, even denied and rejected it. The body is regarded as an unclean thing in Samyutta Nikaya. Man of practice needs to give up his attachment to the body and desire, give up unnecessary greed to get physical and mental stability. Although the body is unclean, the practice of the body plays an important role in Buddhist Scriptures, like the “breathing method”, which trains one’s awareness by observing the breath. Based on this, we can find that there are both incarnated and non-incarnated bodies in the Chinese Buddhist scriptures. Although body and soul are detached, they are unified in the practice subject itself, and the body is dominated by the soul. Then there is also the moralized body which has received the disciplines for attaining a higher status.