2020/10/16 by Friederike Assandri · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Chinese history and philosophy
paper · doi:10.1163/9789004439245_009
openalex publication_date 2020/10/16 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2025/11/06
In her contribution, Friederike Assandri investigates Daoist Twofold Mystery (chongxuan) which was a popular Daoist teaching in the late 6th and 7th centuries, predominantly in Chang’an and Sichuan. Daoists who elaborated on Twofold Mystery teaching utilized various Buddhist concepts, most conspicuously the logic of the tetra lemma, which had become known in China mainly through the translations of Madhyamaka texts by Kumārajīva. Yet, however much Twofold Mystery’s main characteristic is the use of Buddhist logic and concepts, these concepts are used within a distinctively Daoist worldview, starting with the premise that the indefinable Dao is ontological substrate and origin of all being. The aim of cultivation is to reach Dao, which is construed as a return, retracing the cosmogonic process back to its origin. Twofold Mystery thinkers argue that Dao exists in the microcosm as in the macrocosm, and is thus present in every being as true inner nature, interpreted as “Dao-nature”, the spark of Dao, which is not lost in the cosmogonic process of “becoming,” but is “covered” and “clouded” by the movements of the mind. Salvation and return to Dao then consists in realizing this true inner nature by making the mind still by stopping movement arising from feelings and discriminative thinking. The scope of quieting the mind and the feelings harks back to notions like the “mind like dead ashes” in the Zhuangzi, but it also builds on notions of the functioning of the mind that had become known in China through Buddhism, like for example the concept of pañca-skandha. Twofold Mystery teaching exemplifies a dialogue between Daoist and Buddhist traditions, a dialogue, which with its strong focus on cultivation of the mind might have been also a backdrop for the emergence of the 8th century Buddhist texts like the Treasure Store Treatise, which have been characterized as early Chan or “proto-Chan”.