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LIVING KARMA
SHENG YEN SERIES IN CHINESE BUDDHISM
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THE SHENG YEN SERIES IN CHINESE BUDDHIST STUDIES
CHÜN-FANG YÜ, SERIES EDITOR
Following the endowment of the Sheng Yen Professorship in Chinese Buddhist Studies, the Sheng Yen
Education Foundation and the Chung-Hwa Institute of Buddhist Studies in Taiwan jointly endowed a
publication series, the Sheng Yen Series in Chinese Studies , at Columbia University Press. Its purpose is to
publish monographs containing new scholarship and English translations of classical texts in Chinese
Buddhism.
Scholars of Chinese Buddhism have traditionally approached the subject through philology, philosophy, and
history. In recent decades, however, they have increasingly adopted an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on
anthropology, archaeology, art history, religious studies, and gender studies, among other disciplines. This
series aims to provide a home for such pioneering studies in the field of Chinese Buddhism.
Michael J. Walsh, Sacred Economies: Buddhist Business and Religiosity in Medieval China
Koichi Shinohara, Spells, Images, and Maalas: Tracing the Evolution of Esoteric Buddhist Rituals
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BEVERLEY FOULKS MCGUIRE
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
NEW YORK
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Columbia University Press
Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex
cup.columbia.edu
Copyright © 2014 Columbia University Press
All rights reserved
E-ISBN 978-0-231-53777-3
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McGuire, Beverley Foulks, author.
Living karma : the religious practices of Ouyi Zhixu / Beverley Foulks McGuire.
pages cm. — (The Sheng Yen series in Chinese Buddhist studies)
Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-231-16802-1 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-231-53777-3
(electronic) 1. Karma. 2. Zhixu, 1599-1655. 3. Spiritual life—Buddhism. 4. Buddhist literature, Chinese—History and
criticism. I. Title.
BQ4435.M43 2014
294.3'92092—dc23
2013036854
A Columbia University Press E-book.
CUP would be pleased to hear about your reading experience with this e-book at
CONTENTS
Illustrations
Acknowledgments
INTRODUCTION
1. KARMA AS A NARRATIVE DEVICE IN OUYI’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY
2. DIVINATION AS A KARMIC DIAGNOSTIC
3. REPENTANCE RITUALS FOR ELIMINATING KARMA
4. VOWING TO ASSUME THE KARMA OF OTHERS
5. SLICING, BURNING, AND BLOOD WRITING: KARMIC TRANSFORMATIONS OF BODIES
CONCLUSION
Appendix 1. A Translation of Ouyi’s Autobiography
Appendix 2. A Map of Ouyi’s Life
Notes
Glossary of Terms, People, Places, and Titles of Texts
Bibliography
Index
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ILLUSTRATIONS
Figure 2.1 Set of wheel tops used in the Divination Sutra.
Figure 3.1 Dizang Tower, Jiuhuashan.
Figure 5.1 Pillar from Qing dynasty stupa, Lingfeng Temple.
Figure 5.2 Rebuilt stupa, Lingfeng Temple.
Figure 5.3 Memorial Hall for Ouyi, Lingfeng Temple.
Figure AP2.1 Map of Ouyi’s life.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
T SEEMS fitting to begin a book on karma by acknowledging the causes and conditions that led
to its production. I would first like to thank Dharma Drum Buddhist College and the
I Chung-Hwa Institute of Buddhist Studies for their support in the beginning stages of the project
and its final completion: Dharma Drum Buddhist College hosted me as a visiting scholar while I was
in Taiwan from 2007–2008, and the Chung-Hwa Institute awarded me a grant to revise my
manuscript in 2010–2011. Living Karma builds on Master Shengyan’s encyclopedic study of Ouyi
Zhixu published in Japanese and translated into Chinese, and I have felt a particular “karmic
affinity” with Master Shengyan and Dharma Drum Mountain because of this connection.
I am also profoundly grateful to colleagues who offered feedback and constructive criticism of the
manuscript in its various iterations, including Robert Gimello, Anne Monius, Michael Puett, Michael
Szonyi, Daniel Stevenson, Raoul Birnbaum, Lynn Struve, Walt Conser, Diana Pasulka, Justin
Ritzinger, Eyal Aviv, Jason Clower, Ryan Overbey, Ching Keng, Weijen Teng, Alan Wagner,
Brooks Jessup, Erik Hammerstrom, and my reviewers from Columbia University Press.
I would like to express my appreciation to several institutions that supported me during my
research and writing. In the early stages of the project, the Fulbright Program (IIE) funded a year of
research in Taiwan from 2007–2008; a Frederick Sheldon Travel Fellowship from Harvard
University allowed me to pursue two months of field research in mainland China during the summer
of 2008; and a fellowship from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and American Council of
Learned Societies supported my writing from 2008–2009. More recently, the University of North
Carolina Wilmington awarded me a Summer Research Initiative Award and an International Travel
Grant that supported writing and revisions during the summer of 2011.
Last but not least, I give special thanks to family and friends who encouraged and supported me
throughout the process.
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INTRODUCTION
ARMA is a fundamental idea in Buddhist ethics but a contentious topic for scholars of
Buddhist ethics. Although it undergirds most academic introductions to Buddhist ethics,1
K scholars disagree on how best to approach the study of karma in Buddhist traditions. Those
focused on systematizing Buddhist theories of ethical action and moral choice have approached
karma through moral philosophy, and they have largely debated whether Buddhist ethics represents
a form of consequentialism or virtue ethics.2 A few scholars—notably Charles Hallisey, Anne
Hansen, and Maria Heim—have advocated a different approach to Buddhist ethics that incorporates
other methodologies including literary studies, anthropology, and ethnography, and they have
examined particular Buddhist views of what it means to be a moral subject.
Although proponents of the philosophical approach argue it enables them to move beyond
descriptive ethics to analyze Buddhist moral logic, patterns of justification, and ethical discourse,
advocates of the latter approach contend that it overlooks significant aspects of Buddhist moral
reasoning—such as feelings and motivations—and fails to attend to particular circumstances that
impinge on moral decision making. As Charles Hallisey and Anne Hansen note, “The abstract
analysis of the doctrine of karma gives us little insight into what it feels like to live in a world
structured by karma.”3 Narratives allow for a portrayal of karma in all of its obscurity by sharing life
experiences in all of their complexity and contradiction. Maria Heim echoes their concern: “To take
seriously what it is to be human in a karmic reality is to be profoundly aware of a person in time,
formed by past events and enmeshed in complicated entanglements with others in past and present.”4
Buddhists interpret their moral agency as having capacities and limitations according to their
particular karmic heritage, stage of life, and history: one must attend to the conditioned reality of
human experience to adequately capture their moral understanding.
This book gives a detailed account of how one particular Chinese Buddhist monk interpreted the
capacities and limitations of his life and morality. His belief in karma shaped his everyday
experiences, which in turn provide an incredibly rich portrait of his “world structured by
karma”—one that was likely shared by many other Chinese Buddhists. The individual in
question—Ouyi Zhixu (1599–1655)—is a seminal but largely overlooked figure in Chinese Buddhist
history. Although he is typically recognized as one of the “four great Buddhist masters of the Ming
dynasty,”5 unlike the other masters Yunqi Zhuhong (1535–1615),6 Zibo Zhenke (1543–1604),7 and
Hanshan Deqing (1546–1623),8 there have been no in-depth studies of Ouyi in any Western
language, and there is only one book written about him in Japanese.9 This can be explained in part
by the general neglect of scholarship of Buddhism in the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), a period
previously considered one of decline for Buddhism10 and recently reevaluated as a time of “renewal”
11 when lay associations were further developed and monasteries became sites for an emerging
“gentry society.”12 Ouyi has also left an indelible print on modern and contemporary Buddhists such
as Hongyi (1880–1942), considered one of the foremost Vinaya masters of the modern period, Taixu
(1889–1947), an activist educator and promoter of Human Life Buddhism, and Shengyan
(1930–2009), a Chan master and founder of one of the most prominent Buddhist organizations in
Taiwan. Indeed, Shengyan considered Ouyi to be one of the four great modern Buddhist figures
alongside Taixu, Ouyang Jingwu (1872–1944), and Yinshun (1906–2005).13
Instead of assessing his impact on Chinese Buddhism or offering a detailed chronology of life, I
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focus on the way Ouyi’s religious practices and written works were influenced by his belief in
karma. I base my discussion on Ouyi’s ritual texts and personal writings, grappling with questions
that cross a variety of disciplines including comparative religious ethics, religious studies, ritual
studies, and literary studies, such as: What does it mean to be human and have a body? How does
one make sense of experiences of illness and suffering? What does it mean to live in a karmic
universe? How does karma operate as a lens for interpreting one’s life? How does writing represent
a karmic and religious practice?
Although he was a prolific writer and erudite scholastic, Ouyi lived a relatively quiet, uneventful
life—one that was not especially dramatic or worthy of repentance. He expresses remorse for writing
anti-Buddhist tracts in his youth, for not being a filial son, and for not receiving the precepts in
accordance with monastic rules, even though he burned his anti-Buddhist writings soon after writing
them, he ostensibly never mistreated his parents, and he shows perennial concern for the Vinaya.
Nonetheless, his writing and religious practices frequently emphasize the need for penitence and
self-discipline, suggesting a sense of guilt for things he may have done in a previous life. All of this
is expressed in karmic terminology familiar to Chinese Buddhists.
Karma serves as an ideal “bridge concept” to consider the various ways that Buddhists make sense
of themselves, their lives, and their world. Comparative religious ethicists have become increasingly
14
concerned with viable categories of comparison, and Aaron Stalnaker has proposed “bridge
concepts” as relatively “thin” specifications of a given topic to guide comparison and enable
15
interpreters “to thematize disparate materials and order details around these anchoring terms.”
Although karma may initially seem too “thick” or culturally embedded to serve as a comparative
category, in fact, it has already become a contested term in Buddhist ethics. There is no uniform
cross-cultural or transhistorical understanding of karma in Buddhism, yet its prevalence and
prominence in Buddhist studies scholarship suggests it may prove useful as a means of comparing
how Buddhist practitioners view themselves and their worlds. We may discover not only that
Buddhists understand karma differently according to their particular cultural, historical, and religious
context but also that individual Buddhists hold multiple—even contradictory—understandings of
karma simultaneously.
For example, Ouyi occasionally speaks of karma in retributive terms but more often portrays
karma as organic and malleable. He uses divination as a karmic diagnostic technique, but he does
not resign himself to his karmic fate. Instead of viewing karma as inevitable and inescapable, Ouyi
tries to change his karma by performing repentance rituals to eliminate his karma, by pronouncing
vows to bind him to a good karmic future, and by engaging in burning, blood writing, and other
ascetic acts as a means of marking that future commitment. Ouyi views his body as a site for
revealing and redressing past karma; just as bodily illness signals retribution for previous
transgressions, bodily asceticism enables him to rectify his past karma.
This book examines the textual, ethical, and somatic dimensions of karma in Ouyi’s ritual
writings. First, it explores karma as a live option for Chinese Buddhists struggling to understand
themselves and their world. Karma serves as an ethic to guide their behavior, a hermeneutic to
interpret their lives, and a narrative device to structure their writing. Second, it considers the way
karma impinges on Ouyi’s religious and ethical life. Ouyi’s ritual writings offer a glimpse into how
karma is lived. Third, it analyzes the way in which Ouyi views his own body as a living result of
previous karma. Instead of bifurcating thinking and doing—a tendency in ritual studies that has been
16
deftly criticized by Catherine Bell —Ouyi assumes an interdependent relationship between thought
and action. By paying attention to the textual dimensions of his ritual writing—including genre,
audience, and literary tropes—we unearth a nuanced ritual theory in which certain cognitive states
enable ritual activity, and other ritual acts engender cognitive states. For example, divination rituals
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