Zhi Dun on Freedom: Synthesizing Daoism and Buddhism

Zhi Dun was a well-known “gentleman-monk” during the Eastern Jin period. As an adept of Xuanxue, Zhi specialized in the method of exegesis concerning the Mahayanic understanding of prajna, based on the idea of “New Buddhist Mysteries”, a form of synthetic reconstruction of Buddhism and Xuanxue. In this chapter, I will explicate how Zhi’s appropriation of Zhuangzi’s idea of “free rambling” is influenced by his understanding of Buddhism, and how it marked Zhi’s argument on the relationship between Zhuangzi’s self-so-ness and the Buddhist doctrine of “the identity of emptiness with form.” For Zhi Dun, the Daoist idea of freedom, or “free rambling in the mysterious” should be understood as being fully engaged in the immediacy of individual things while at the same time having a non-attached mind during such dealing. I will conclude the chapter by contending that Zhi Dun has transformed “Daoist mysteries” into “Buddhist mysteries” when he uses the Buddhist concept of emptiness-qua-dependent-origination to understand the Daoist ideas of no-thing-ness, no-trace, and no-mind.