Benjamin Brose's Patrons and Patriarchs: Regional Rulers and Chan Monks PDF

buyers and Patriarchs breaks new flooring within the research of clergy-court kin in the course of the tumultuous interval that spanned the cave in of the Tang dynasty (618–907) and the consolidation of the Northern track (960–1127). this period, referred to as the 5 Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, has ordinarily been characterised as a time of debilitating violence and instability, however it additionally introduced elevated fiscal prosperity, neighborhood improvement, and political autonomy to southern territories.
The booklet describes how the formation of latest states in southeastern China increased neighborhood Buddhist traditions and moved Chan (Zen) priests from the margins to the guts of chinese language society. Drawing on biographies, inscriptions, deepest histories, and executive files, it argues that the shift in imperial patronage from a various array of Buddhist clerics to contributors of particular Chan lineages was once pushed by means of political, social, and geographical reorientations set in movement by way of the cave in of the Tang dynasty and the consolidation of neighborhood powers throughout the 5 Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms. As monastic groups representing different arrays of idea, perform, and pedagogy allied with rival political factions, the result of energy struggles decided which clerical networks assumed positions of strength and which doctrines have been enshrined as orthodoxy. instead of view the ascent of Chan priests and their traditions as cases of highbrow hegemony, this booklet specializes in the bigger sociopolitical techniques that lifted individuals of Chan lineages onto the imperial degree. opposed to the historic backdrop of the 10th century, buyers and Patriarchs explores the character and serve as of Chan lineage structures, the relationships among monastic and lay households, and where of patronage in developing id and authority in monastic movements.