Sammendrag
The present MA thesis is the first ever comprehensive study of Jìngzuò yàojúe 靜坐要訣 ( Meditation Essentials ), a Chinese meditation treatise authored by Confucian scholar-official Yuán Huáng (h. Liǎofán, 1533–1606) but largely based on a work lectured one millennium earlier by Buddhist Tiāntāi monk Zhìyǐ (538–597). Its main contribution is the discovery of a link between sitting meditation and the practice of keeping morality ledgers. The primary concern has been, through an analysis and contextualization of the text, to catch a glimpse of how Yuán Huáng conceptualizes and re-conceptualizes meditation, and what the answer to this question might impart in terms of new knowledge about the late Míng period (c. 1530–1644). One aspect in particular of this reconceptualization emerged as particularly significant, and thus became the argumentative focus. This is how meditation relates functionally to the author s other self-cultivation practices, i.e. what role it plays in what I call his program of self-cultivation. Yuán Huáng is today known mainly for his practice of merit accumulation through the keeping of daily Ledgers of Merit and Demerit . I argue that meditation as conceived by Yuán Huáng must be understood in relation to this practice, and that this relation consists in seeing meditation as an important prerequisite for the karmic efficacy of merit accumulation; meditation is, above all, a way to rid the mind of self-centred desire and cultivate humaneness (rén) in its place, thus instilling in the practitioner the selfless no-mind required for good deeds to result in good karma. Accordingly, the original soteriological goal of Buddhist meditation is partly lost; it is secularized and confucianized, in the sense that it becomes part of a self-cultivation program that aims for moral fulfilment and societal harmony in the here and now. This is demonstrated through a three-step process, with each step involving a progressively broadened perspective: First, I contrast the Meditation Essentials with the work on which it is based, pointing out the significant differences, as well as the likely underlying reasons for them. Second, I compare it to the author s works on merit accumulation, demonstrating the overriding concern with selfless virtues in both through a discussion of the three fundamental concepts no-desire , humaneness and no-mind . Finally, I use the resulting picture of Yuán Huáng s conception of meditation to uncover a similar approach to meditation latent in preceding and contemporaneous Neo-Confucian meditators, centring on Liú Zōngzhōu in particular. Thus ending the thesis on a note of wider implications, I contend not only that the relation between meditation and morality ledgers is not exclusive to Yuán Huáng, but furthermore that the perceived efficacy of sitting meditation for the purpose of weeding out self-centred desire and intentions was one significant reason for its introduction into Neo-Confucianism.