Lv Cheng was gifted and intelligent since childhood, and studied hard. After graduating from the primary normal school, he was able to read the Encyclopedia Britannica by himself. His dedication to Buddhism and his peerless genius made him proficient in languages such as Vatican, Bali, Tibetan, Japanese, English and French. Through these handy basic tools, Lu Cheng made brilliant achievements in interpreting and collating the original Buddhist scriptures of Vatican and Tibetan, and further understood the research trends of Buddhism in the world, breaking through the limitation that China scholars have always relied on the traditional Chinese translation of Tibetan scriptures for Buddhist origin.
In 1911, Yang Renshan, the "father of modern Buddhism in China" and the founder of Jinling Scripture Carving Office, passed away. Ouyang Jian (unexpectedly) succeeded him and took charge of the work of the Scripture Carving Office. In 1914, Ouyang Jian set up a research department in Jinling, and Lv Cheng was the first batch of scholars. A year later, Lu Cheng went to Japan to study, entered the Japanese preparatory school for further study, and then specialized in fine arts at the Japan Academy of Fine Arts.
In 1915, Lv Cheng dropped out of school and returned to China because he and the students studying in Japan opposed Japanese aggression against China. Mr. Liu Haisu was appointed as the dean of Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts at the age of 2. Lv Cheng worked in Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts for about two years. During this period, he compiled a variety of fine arts monographs in combination with his teaching. For example, An Introduction to Aesthetics, A Brief Introduction to Aesthetics, Modern Aesthetic Thoughts, History of Western Art, and Outline of Chromatics were published by the Commercial Press in 1931-1933.
At the beginning of the 2th century, Fan Shoukang, Lv Cheng, Zong Baihua and other Chinese thinkers strongly advocated "life aesthetics", and it was Lv Cheng who first put forward the slogan of reform in the field of fine arts. In 1918, Lv Cheng published an article entitled "Art Revolution" in the No.1 volume 6 of New Youth, pointing out that Chinese and Western fine arts should be treated fairly, objectively and equally, especially emphasizing that we should not only pay attention to the historical changes of European and American fine arts, but also study the fashionable new-school art and China's inherent fine arts, which is particularly commendable when China fine arts circles are hesitating and hesitating in the face of the impact of Western art.
During the May 4th Movement, there were many ideological trends, and profound enlightenment was also launched in the field of humanities and religion, among which Cai Yuanpei's slogan of "replacing religion with aesthetic education" had a profound influence. In fact, Chen's thoughts were first inspired by Lu Cheng. Chen Duxiu personally wrote an article "Art Revolution Answering a Letter from Lu Cheng", loudly calling for learning the realistic spirit of western painting: "If you want to improve Chinese painting, you must first change the life of Wang Hua. Because we want to improve Chinese painting, we must adopt the spirit of realism in foreign painting. " If Wang Hua is not overthrown, "it is really the biggest obstacle to improve Chinese painting by importing realism."
The slogan of "Art Revolution" has aroused unprecedented fierce contention in China's art circles, forming two camps of "Innovators" and "Chinese quintessence". The disparity in power between the two factions is obvious. Relying on the strong impact of western civilization on China's traditional culture and the historical trend of the May 4th New Culture Movement, the "reformists" held an overwhelming advantage at that time.
This has aroused another association for me: our followers in the church talked about Li Shutong's appearance in La Traviata, painting western oil paintings, quoting mannequins and creating western music, and praised him as a peerless genius in the art world, so much so that Li Shutong, who later became a master of Hongyi, became legendary. However, if we talk about their contributions to art history, art history and ideological history, the competition between them is self-evident. I'm not here to belittle Li Shutong with Lv Cheng. I just want to say that Master Hongyi didn't imagine that "all fields have reached the heights that others can't reach", and as a mage, he shouldn't have such a strong mythical color.
In 1918, Ouyang Jian wanted to set up the "zhina Inner College" in the Jingjing Division. At his invitation, Lv Cheng went to work in the research department of Jinling Jingjing Division to help Mr. Jing Wu set up the zhina Inner College. From then on, Lv Cheng learned that he had abandoned his old school and devoted himself to the study of Buddhism for life.
In 1922, zhina Inner College was established, with Ouyang Jian as the dean and Lv Cheng as the director of the academic affairs office. Because Lv Chengzi is Qiu Zi, Ouyang Jian once called him "Zhuizi", which is a Chinese translation of Sharifutsu, a disciple of Sakyamuni Buddha. This shows that Master Ouyang relied heavily on Lv Cheng. Ouyang gradually once said, "I have been instructed by my teacher for more than ten years that I can arrange the sensitive and meticulous autumn, and that I can promote the well-off Huangshuyin, and I am almost ordinary!"
Zangyao and other Buddhist scriptures published by zhina Inner College are the most refined versions of Buddhist scriptures so far, and they are the great contributions made by Inner College to the development of modern Buddhism. This work was initiated and presided over by Mr. Jing Wu, who personally wrote a preface with great academic value for more than 2 kinds of Confucian classics, and the collation of each Confucian classics was entrusted to Lu Cheng. Mr. Lu contributed the most to the collation and publication of Tibetan essentials. As Mr. Wu has said: "If my husband carries forward the past and builds the foundation of the country, he has lived in Ning for twenty-five years and stayed at home. Those who have stayed with him are Lu Qiuyi, who has made Tibetan Essentials, whose teachings are clear, whose books are gathered, and whose accomplishments are won." (Origin of Classic Books Exhibition)
In addition to administrative teaching, Lv Cheng also engaged in a lot of basic Buddhist research, collation and collation of Buddhist scriptures. During this period, Lv Cheng wrote A Summary of Miscellaneous agama Publications, A Brief Statement, A General Introduction to Buddhist Scriptures, A Study Method of Buddhism, A Brief History of Indian Buddhism and An Outline of Inming.
In 1925, Lv Cheng helped Mr. Jing Wu to set up the "Fafa University" in the research department of Inner College, and the first batch of students enrolled reached 64. Lu Cheng made an important speech at the opening ceremony, stating that the purpose of founding Fafa University is to seek "the whole of pure Buddhism" and "not limited to one Dharma".
After 1926, due to the "Northern Expedition", zhina Inner College and Wuchang Buddhist College, another important Buddhist research town at that time, were closed for military occupation, leaving only space for storing scriptures and daily work and rest in Jinling, more than a hundred houses, and only Lv Cheng and Qiu Ximing were left in zhina Inner College to accompany Ouyang Jian to continue their research work.
in 1937, the sino-Japanese war broke out, and soon the war spread to the south. Ouyang Jian led some of his disciples to Sichuan with a large number of important materials escorted by Lv Cheng, and set up the "Shuyuan" of zhina Inner College in Jiangjin. Shuyuan did not enroll students, but continued to write and study. In addition to dealing with hospital affairs, Lu Cheng devoted himself to academic research.
In February 1943, Ouyang Jian died, and disciples from all walks of life went back to Jiangjin to attend the funeral. His disciples organized a hospital friendship meeting, and Lu Cheng was elected as the dean, and Wang Enyang was appointed as the director of the hospital friendship meeting.
following the behest of his teacher, Lv Cheng continued to run the Shu Academy and began to gather people to give lectures. His teaching method is different. He divides Buddhism into five disciplines (later called "five disciplines of Buddhism"), and the internal college school is composed of Bitan, Prajna, yoga, nirvana and precepts. This teaching system covers the whole Indian Buddhism, which is a pioneering work in the history of modern Buddhism teaching. In the meantime, he co-edited the Historical Collection of Sino-Tibetan Buddhist Relations with institute of chinese studies of West China University. In the years since he entered Sichuan, Lv Cheng's interpretation of Sanskrit and Tibetan classics has gone deep into the hall and made outstanding achievements. Collate Tibetan Buddhist scriptures such as The Mahayana Theory, The Theory of Zhenglimen, and the Sanskrit Lenga Sutra, and complete several important academic papers.
in 1949, the new China was founded, and the following year, "zhina Inner College" was renamed "China Inner College", and Lv Cheng continued to take charge of the hospital affairs. Three years later (in 1952), the Friends' Association of the Academy decided to suspend its operation on its own. Since then, zhina Inner College, which has been founded for more than 3 years and is known as the "First Buddhist College in China", has been dissolved.
In 1953, the Chinese Buddhist Association was established in Beijing, and Lv Cheng, one of the founders, was elected as the executive director. Two years later, Sri Lankan Buddhists initiated the compilation of the Encyclopedia of Buddhism in English to commemorate the Buddha's Nirvana for 2,5 years, and invited Buddhist scholars from all over the world to cooperate. The Chinese Buddhist Association immediately established the "China Buddhist Encyclopedia Compilation Committee", elected Zhao Puchu as the editor-in-chief, and appointed Lv Cheng as the deputy editor-in-chief, and hired domestic Buddhist scholars to write articles. Lv Cheng also compiled a million-word "China Buddhism". After the book Encyclopedia of Buddhism in English was written, the world Buddhist community recognized that the Buddhist part of China had the highest level of manuscripts and won international honor for China.
In 1956, Lv Cheng was a member of the Department of Philosophy and Social Sciences of China Academy of Sciences and a researcher at the Institute of Philosophy. In 1961, entrusted by the Ministry of Science, Lv Cheng started a five-year Buddhist class in Nanjing, offering two courses, namely "Buddhism in China" and "Buddhism in India". After that, he sorted out his lecture notes and compiled them into books such as A Brief Introduction to the Origin and Development of Buddhism in China, A Brief Introduction to the Origin and Development of Buddhism in India, and Explaining the Theory of Getting Right from the Right.
in 1962, while sorting out Buddhist scriptures and editing Tibetan essentials, Lv Cheng realized that there were many problems in the old version of the Tripitaka, so he decided to edit and publish a Chinese-language Tripitaka that exceeded the level of Chinese and foreign Tripitaka. The following year, he began to compile the New Collection of Chinese Tripitaka Scriptures, which was the painstaking efforts of Lv Cheng in reading the Scriptures for decades. It not only classified the contents of the Scriptures, but also collected 177 Buddhist scriptures, which took three years to complete. Later, due to the "Cultural Revolution" in mainland China, the plan to compile and publish Tibetan scriptures was forced to be suspended, but it was a short loss.
in 1966, impacted by the "cultural revolution", Buddhist classes were closed, and many years of research data were also lost. Seventy-one-year-old Lv Cheng retired from his former residence in Jiangsu, and then moved to tsinghua campus, Beijing, until his death in July 1989. During these 3 years, he retired and no more Buddhist works were published.
At present, in the Buddhist circles in Chinese mainland, Lv Cheng's works are juxtaposed with "books suspected of feudal superstition, cults, apocryphal classics, and books that confuse people's opinions", and it is forbidden to print and circulate them in the religion as a sign of "upholding the right law".
Forgetting Lv Cheng is the most serious regret in the field of Chinese Buddhism.
Lu Cheng's lifelong study of Buddhism is to clean up the source of Buddhism. In the related study of Buddhism in the sense of pure literature, the most important and crucial things are "Buddhist scriptures are comparable" and "Buddhist scriptures are falsified". Mr. Lu has compiled 177 Buddhist records alone, which is unprecedented in the history of Buddhism. Today, the Buddhist community has not adopted his comparable achievements!
However, his achievements in the identification of Buddhist scriptures have caused great controversy, so that he has been ignored or rejected by the teaching community.
It seems that the main reason why Lv Cheng's monograph has aroused strong reflection in teaching is not due to different academic views-there have always been views and monographs that are unfavorable to Buddhism in academic circles (especially under the ultra-left ideology), such as Fan Wenlan's Buddhism in the Tang Dynasty, Hu Shi's Zen study (he completely denied the historical position of Hui Neng, the sixth ancestor, and carried God beyond measure) and his doubts about the Chronicle of the Monks in the Virtual Cloud.
Is it Lv Cheng's status as a layman that caused such a big controversy?
Up to now, both academic and teaching circles agree with Lv Cheng's status as a layman. Therefore, Lv Cheng's achievements in Buddhism are not from the hands of pure scholars who flaunt "academic neutrality", but from the comprehensive introspection of believers in Buddhism in China. Therefore, we can't simply regard it as an academic research achievement. It is precisely because Lv Cheng's status as a layman makes dissidents in the church feel embarrassed, so those who attack him deliberately avoid his status as a believer, saying that he is just a scholar confined to textual research and has no Buddhist beliefs. However, Lv Cheng once told Xiong Shili, an important object of his argument, that he "gains, teaches with heart, and is tempered", which is by no means the word "theory of governing classics" that Xiong imagined.
We must realize that isolating and closing Lv Cheng can't put his Buddhist thoughts on the shelf or abandon them. The Buddhist community must change the current ambiguous attitude and face up to the Buddhist legacy left by Lv Cheng.