Holistic Cognitive Style, Chinese Culture, and the Sinification of Buddhism

According to many experiments in cross-cultural psychology, East Asians exhibit holistic cognitive style typ-ified by use of resemblance heuristics, field dependence, external sources of causation, intuitive forms of reasoning , interdependent forms of social thinking. Holistic cog-nitive style contrasts with analytic cognitive style, which is common to Westerners. Section 1 presents information on the background of Buddhism's entry into , treatment by China. Section 2 discusses experimental evidence for the representation of holistic cognitive style in contemporary East Asians. Section 3 presents preliminary evidence for the interaction between holistic cognitive style and the history of ideas in China at large. Section 4 analyzes two discussions of the same philosophical problem conducted by Chinese Buddhist philosopher Fazang and Indian Vedic philosopher Shankara. It is provisionally argued that the interpretive strategies displayed by Fazang interact with several components of holistic cognitive style, in contrast with Shankara. Implications are discussed.