ADVAITA-L Digest - question?

Vidyasankar Sundaresan vidya at CCO.CALTECH.EDU
Thu Jun 13 01:16:14 CDT 1996


> Actually, I find that Zen Buddhism escaped this shunuyata arguments, atleast
> some of the masters like Bassui. Their arguments seem more directed towards
> self-realization.

I don't think there are any extant Buddhist schools that strictly follow
nAgArjuna. Tibetan Buddhism is a blend of vijnAnavAda buddhism with yogAcAra
and vajrAyana schools. Zen Buddhism itself is derived from the Chinese Chan
Buddhism, (dhyAna (sanskrit) => jhAna (prakrit) => chan (mandarin) => zen),
which picked up Taoist and Confucian inputs on the way. If there were any
purely madhyamaka buddhists in China, they have all been done away with by
the present regime there, or they are keeping an extremely low profile. Most
other countries, like Thailand, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Laos follow the
hinAyana schools.

Also, Zen Buddhism tends to avoid all discussion of ontology, which is why
they escape the complexities of SUnyatA. As D. T. Suzuki interprets it, Zen
seems extremely close to schools of yoga or vedAnta.



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