Discipline and Enlightenment: Hanyue Fazang 漢月法藏 and the Spread of the Triple Platform Ordination Ceremony in Seventeenth-Century China

Abstract

This chapter explores the resurfacing of tension between Chan Buddhism and the Vinaya tradition in the seventeenth century when Chan Buddhism reemerged as a reformative force in Chinese Buddhist communities. Around the same time, the Vinaya tradition was also revived in response to the lack of monastic discipline and proper ordination ceremonies, leading to the invention of the Triple Platform Ordination Ceremony (santan dajie 三壇大戒), which is still used today in Chinese monastic communities. The rise of Chan and Vinaya and their coexistence within the monastic setting thus encouraged new attempts to negotiate the relationship between the goal of enlightenment and the need for discipline, two seemingly contradictory spiritual agendas. This chapter focuses on a two-fascicle text entitled Ritual Procedures of Propagating the Ordination Ceremony (Hongjie fayi 弘戒法儀) authored by Hanyue Fazang 漢月法藏 (1573–1635), a crucial figure in both the Chan and Vinaya traditions. In this chapter, I introduce the textual history of this work, its role in the formation of the Triple Platform Ordination Ceremony, and Hanyue Fazang’s synthesis of Chan and Vinaya. I also give the text a humanistic reading in light of the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben’s work on monastic rules and what he calls “Form-of-Life.”