‘Essence-function’ (ti-yong 體用), also called ‘substance-function,’ has been a constant topic of debate in monastic and academic communities in China. One group of scholars insists that the concept is derived from the Confucian tradition, while the other maintains that it originates with the Buddhist tradition. These opposing opinions are not merely the arguments of antiquity, but have persisted to our present time. This paper investigates the concept of ‘essence-function,’ focusing on its origin and conceptual development in the Buddhist and the Confucian traditions. This concept has become a basic framework of Chinese religions. Its root appears already in ancient Confucian and Daoist works such as the Xunzi and the Zhouyi cantong qi. It is, however, through the influence of Buddhism that ‘essence’ and ‘function’ became a paradigm used as an exegetical, hermeneutical and syncretic tool for interpreting Chinese philosophical works. This dual concept played a central role not only in the assimilation of Indian Buddhism in China during its earlier phases but also in the formation of Neo-Confucianism in medieval times. This paper shows that the paradigm constituted by ‘essence’ and ‘function’ resulted not from the doctrinal conflicts between Confucianism and Buddhism but from the interactions between them.
In the later Indian Yogācāra school, yogipratyaks : a, the cognition of yogins is a key concept used to explain the Buddhist goal of enlightenment. It arises through the practice of meditation upon the Four Noble Truths. The method of the practice is to contemplate their aspects with attention (sādara), without interruption (nairantarya), and over a long period of time (dīrghakāla). A problem occurs in this position since Buddhists hold the theory of momentariness: how is possible that a yogin attains yogipratyaks : a even when everything arises and perishes moment by moment. It is not possible for the momentary mind to fix on the object. Neither is the intensification of the practice possible in a stream composed of cognitions different at each moment. To provide a solution of this problem, a renown eleventh century Buddhist logician, Jñānaśrīmitra, assures us that momentariness is incompatible with duration (sthāyitā), but not with the occurrence of dissimilarity (visadr : śotpāda). Even if cognitions are momentary, the vividness of an object continues to intensify in the course of each preceding cognition-moment producing, in turn, its following moment. Jñānaśrīmitra discusses the attainment of yogipratyaks : a in terms of Buddhist ontological distinctions of moment (ks : an : a) and continuum (santāna). At the level of the continuum, the process of enlightenment is considered gradual. By retaining a strict adherence to the final moment of the practice, on the other hand, the process is considered sudden.
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