ZEN LEAVES CHINA: KOREA AND VIETNAM
SOMETIME in the seventh century two Buddhist monks from the Korean Peninsula set forth on a pilgrimage to China. They traveled on foot through rural villages and rugged forests toward a port on the Yellow Sea.
But one evening a hard rain came down relentlessly, and there was no shelter to be found. There was no moon, no stars, just rain and mud in a black night. Soaked and miserable, the monks stumbled on.
They found a simple structure—a shed, perhaps?—and crawled inside. Their shelter was damp, and they had no dry wood for a fire, but at least they weren’t being pelted by rain. They got some sleep. But in the morning the two monks realized they had spent the night in a tomb.
In a later version of the story, as they settled down in the pitch dark to sleep, one of the monks felt something—a gourd, partly filled with rainwater. He enjoyed a refreshing drink. But in the morning the monk realized he hadn’t found a gourd at all. He had found a skull, and the rainwater he had been drinking was roiling with maggots.
The monk, filled with revulsion, experienced a powerful insight into how mind creates what we think of as “reality.” The three worlds are only mind! he thought. All phenomena arise from mind. If all we can know is mind, why look for truth outside of mind? And why go to China?
The water-drinking monk was Wonhyo (617–86), whose commentary on Awakening of Faith would profoundly influence East Asian Buddhism. Wonhyo’s pilgrimage to China ended that day. The other monk, Uisang (625–702), continued to China, where he studied with the revered Huayan master Zhiyan (602–68) and was senior to the previously mentioned Fazang.
Buddhism Introduced to Korea
When Wonhyo and Uisang set off on their pilgrimage, Buddhism had been in what later came to be Korea for nearly three centuries. It had been formally introduced in 372 C.E ., when a Chinese monk named Shundao (in Korean, Sundo) was welcomed at the court of Goguryeo, a kingdom that dominated the northern part of the Korean Peninsula at the time. Shundao came bearing sutras and Buddha images, courtesy of Fu Jian of the Former Qin dynasty of north China, whom you might remember from chapter 2.
This introduction took place during the Three Kingdoms period of Korean history, 57 B.C.E .–668 C.E . The other two kingdoms occupied the southern tip of the peninsula—Baekje in the southwest and Silla in the southeast. For a time there was also a small, independent confederation at the very south-central tip of the peninsula called Gaya, which was absorbed into Silla in the sixth century.
In 384 C.E . a monk from Gandhara named Malananda (Marananta in Korean) brought the buddha-dharma to Baekje. By all accounts Shundao and Malananda were well received at the courts of Goguryeo and Baekje, and elements of Buddhism were soon blended into the older shamanistic religions of those kingdoms.
Silla took longer to approve of Buddhism because of opposition by the ruling aristocracy. According to legend, in 527 a high court official and Buddhist monk named Ich’adon drew the wrath of the aristocracy and was sentenced to death. Korean Buddhist legend holds that, before the execution, the monk prophesied that at his death his blood would run white instead of red and that his severed head would fly to the top of a nearby sacred mountain. Understandably, the subsequent sight of the spouting white blood and flying head inspired the aristocrats to convert.
The Korean monarchs found Buddhism to be enormously useful. Three Kingdom kings had long based their authority to rule on the claim that they were gods. By the time Buddhism came along, however, the people were losing the faith; their kings were too obviously human. So, after conversion, the kings claimed to be buddhas. Further, the doctrine of karma seemed to justify the privilege of ruling aristocracies, who must have deserved an exalted rebirth. The kings built many temples and put monastics to work praying for their good health.
In Silla, Buddhism also came to be associated with the hwarang, or “flower boys,” legendary warriors trained from childhood to be defenders of the kingdom and the people. They are remembered as something like King Arthur’s knights with Asian martial arts skills. A Buddhist monk named Won Gwang gave the young warriors five secular commandments: be loyal to your lord; love and respect your parents; trust your friends; never retreat; never take a life without a just cause.
Our illustrious monks Wonhyo and Uisang also were from Silla. After completing his studies in China, Uisang brought Huayan Buddhism back to Korea and established the Hwaeom school.
Wonhyo, in the meantime, returned to Silla from his aborted pilgrimage and threw himself into writing commentaries on the many new scriptures flowing into Silla from China. He left the monastic order after an affair with a widowed princess resulted in a son, but he remained dedicated to Buddhism.
As a layman, he is remembered for living among common people to teach them the dharma. He spent a large part of his life wandering from village to village carrying a geomungo, a traditional Korean zither, which he would play to attract an audience. He made up catchy songs with Buddhist pointers and taught people to sing them. It’s said children danced after Wonhyo through village streets as he kept time on a gourd.
Wonhyo also is remembered as a foremost scholar of Korean Buddhism and the author of several significant treatises, including his influential commentary on Awakening of Faith. A thread running through all his work is hwajaeng, “reconciling doctrinal controversies,” which attempted to syncretize the conflicting doctrines of the Buddhist schools being introduced to Korea.
Buddhism in Unified Silla
Wonhyo and Uisang lived during a volatile time in Korean history. Through much of the seventh century, Goguryeo, the larger kingdom to the north of Silla and Baekje, was pounded by invasions from China: first Sui China, then Tang. The Three Kingdoms also were at war with each other. A Tang China–Silla alliance conquered Baekje in 660. Goguryeo defended itself from Tang and Silla only to collapse in 668 because of a power struggle in the court. And then, more remarkably, victorious Silla managed to keep most of the Korean Peninsula independent of Tang China. By 676, today’s South Korea and roughly the lower half of today’s North Korea were under Silla control. The new regime would be called Unified Silla or Later Silla.
North of Unified Silla was the kingdom of Balhae, located in the upper Korean Peninsula and reaching into what is now northeast China. Buddhism flourished there also, but most major developments regarding Zen occurred in Silla.
Buddhism thrived in Unified Silla, in part because it was allowed to become a conduit of the dharma instead of just a political tool for maintaining aristocratic privilege. Monks of Unified Silla traveled to China, India, and central Asia to study, and they brought a broad spectrum of Buddhist teachings back with them. Despite this influx of diverse Buddhist influences, Unified Silla Buddhism did not develop into rival schools.
The ecumenical nature of Korean Buddhism was largely the work of Wonhyo and Uisang. Uisang’s Huayan/Hwaeom school, which emphasized the harmonious interconnection of all beings, became the standard of Buddhism in Unified Silla. At the center of Uisang’s teaching was wonyung, the perfect interpenetration of all phenomena. “The wǒnyung doctrine contributed, immediately after unification, to regions and classes being able to spiritually overcome conflicts and feuds and inspired a spirit of unity in the hearts of the people,” wrote the historian Jinwung Kim. 1 Wonhyo’s hwajaeng and Uisang’s wonyung teachings laid the foundation for a uniquely Korean Buddhism.
Buddhism in the Unified Silla period was characterized by an emphasis on scholarship and doctrinal study. By the eighth century the “five orthodox sects” dominated Korean Buddhism. These were the Vinaya school, which was not so much a doctrinal school but a designation for temples that focused on monastic discipline; Uisang’s Hwaeom school; Wonhyo’s syncretic school; a school based on the tathagatagarbha teachings of the Nirvana Sutra; and a school that focused primarily on Yogacara. Of these, Hwaeom was most prominent. There is evidence of esoteric Buddhism being practiced in Unified Silla as well. The orthodox sects came to be known collectively as gyo or gyojong, “doctrinal school.”
Nine Mountains: Zen Comes to Silla
At roughly the same time as Uisang and Wonhyo set out on their pilgrimage, a Silla monk named Pomnang or Beomnang is said to have traveled to China to study with the Fourth Patriarch, Dayi Daoxin. Pomnang is credited with introducing Zen to Silla when he returned, although it was barely noticed at the time.
Interest in Zen grew in the ninth century, when nine Zen temples hosting nine Zen lineages were established on nine Korean mountains. At least seven—some sources say eight—of the nine temples were founded by Korean dharma descendants of Mazu Daoyi. The odd temple out was the last established; its founder had most likely studied with a teacher in the Caodong tradition. The Nine Mountains of Son, or Soen, became a significant presence on the Korean Peninsula. And here is where the story of Korean Zen truly begins.
Zen in ninth-century Korea was predominantly Mazu Daoyi’s Hongzhou school Zen. It was post–Platform Sutra Zen that accepted Huineng as the sixth and last patriarch and the Diamond Sutra as the most important scripture.
The first Hongzhou Zen teacher to return to Silla was Toui (d. 825), who had received transmission from Mazu’s heir Xitang Zhizang (735–814). Toui’s memorial inscription suggests that the Soen master met with resistance from the scholastic establishment. “People of his time only revered the teachings of the scriptures,” the memorial said. They weren’t ready for the direct approach of Zen, which did not depend on incremental steps.
An encounter between Toui and a Silla Hwaeom master is recorded in the Patriarch’s Hall Anthology. Toui explained that such teaching tools as recitation of scriptures and veneration of Buddha images were useful expedient means that might lead to enlightenment eventually but that Zen offered direct access to the wisdom of the dharma.
Muyom (799–888), who received transmission from Mazu’s student Mayu Baoche (n.d.), compared the scholastic and the Zen approach in a treatise called the Museold o-ron (“Treatise on the tongueless realm”). Teaching the dharma through intellectual knowledge is the tongued realm, Muyom wrote. This is a provisional means. Zen, the tongueless approach, does not use provisional means but instead enables the direct actualization of enlightenment. 2
Furthermore, as far as the Buddha-realm is concerned, wearing the clothes of samādhi and prajñā one first enters the cave of glowing lamps; then, removing the clothes of samādhi and prajñā, one stands in the arcane land. Therefore, it still has traces. The realm of the patriarchs is originally free from liberation or bondage. There one does not wear even one strand of thread. Hence it is vastly different from the Buddha-realm. 3
Prajna is Sanskrit for “wisdom,” in particular the wisdom of the realization of sunyata. The point of both teachers was that the doctrinal, scholastic approach was OK for people of lesser capacity, but Zen is the only true way. In other words, Zen must have been as welcome in Silla’s harmonious Buddhist establishment as a bear at a picnic.
The interconnections between Chinese and Korean Zen in the ninth and tenth centuries are illustrated by the Patriarch’s Hall Anthology, which is as much a Korean record as a Chinese one, providing biographies and anecdotes of a number of the Nine Mountain teachers. In fact, the text was lost in China for centuries, although scholars found mention of it in other records. It was discovered in the 1930s in old woodblocks stored in a Korean monastery. The work is often cited in academic sources by its Korean name, Chodang chip. The compilers may have been expatriate Koreans training in China, or perhaps the old woodblocks represented a Korean edition of the Chinese text. 4
Buddhism in Goryo
Unified Silla came to be challenged by power struggles and warring factions, and it broke apart toward the end of the ninth century. The next major historic period of Korean history is the Goryo, 918–1392, from which the name Korea is taken.
The Goryo period is still considered the golden age of Korean Buddhism. Wang Kon, also called T’aego, founder of the Goryo dynasty, declared that all the enterprises of his kingdom depended upon the protective powers of the buddhas. As in earlier times, kings became patrons of Buddhism in the hope that all the buddhas would protect the kings and the country.
Temple and state were not separate. Men and women needed permission from the government to be ordained. Goryo established monk examinations that were similar to civil service examinations. There were two exams: one for the gyozong, or scholastic monks, and another for Zen monks. Monks with the highest grades became advisers to the royal household. I regret that the scholarly sources I consulted did not bother to describe what sort of written exam might have been given to Zen monks.
Nuns came to be excluded from the examinations and were not eligible for official positions. On the other hand, the women of the Goryo aristocracy tended to be devout Buddhists who exerted enormous influence on Goryo Buddhism as sponsors of scholarship and temples.
Often, aristocratic women became nuns themselves. It was common for upper-class women to seek ordination after being widowed so that they wouldn’t be forced into an arranged second marriage. Poor women also sought ordination after widowhood to avoid destitution. These life circumstances didn’t necessarily mean their devotion to Buddhism was insincere, and as nuns many aristocratic women drew upon private wealth to benefit Buddhist work. 5
Korean Buddhist monks were not exactly idle, as temples engaged in money-lending businesses and other fundraising enterprises, such as liquor distillation, even though such activities are violations of the Vinaya. “Temples essentially acted as the corporate conglomerates of the day,” writes Jinwung Kim. 6 And to protect their growing wealth, some temples organized monks into private armies.
Where there is wealth and power, there is corruption. The scholar Robert E. Buswell Jr. notes that “the ranks of the monks were swelled by people pursuing wealth and position on the one hand and avoiding the hardships of peasant life and the dangers of military service on the other.” 7 Beginning in 1059, the government initiated restrictive measures to reduce the influence of monks and their families in matters of state. These restrictions included limiting the number of sons from the same family who could be ordained. And to encourage monks to stay in their monasteries, they were forbidden from lodging overnight elsewhere.
Nuns were not so restricted. Ironically, their lesser importance allowed them greater freedom, since the government was not so concerned about what women were up to.
An Attempt at Reconciliation between Gyojong and Zen
Uicheon (1055–1101) was the fourth son of a king of Goryo and a dedicated scholar of Buddhism. Against his father’s wishes he found passage to Song China on a trading ship so that he could study with Chinese teachers of the several schools. He returned with many texts that hadn’t yet been introduced to Goryo, and he spent the next several years studying, teaching, collecting, and publishing texts from all schools of East Asian Buddhism—except Zen. Uicheon saw Zen as heretical.
Uicheon is credited with introducing Tiantai to Goryo, where it was called Cheontae. Along with its devotion to the Lotus Sutra, Tiantai is known for creating classifications of Buddhist doctrines to explain discrepancies among the many schools and synthesize all doctrines into a coherent whole. Uicheon argued that Tiantai reconciled the differences between Zen, with its focus on meditation practice, and the various scholastic Gyojong schools and thus offered a way for Zen to be brought into the orthodox fold.
Uicheon died at age forty-seven and was not able to see the unification project through. And it failed. But a precedent for the project had been set, and a century later, another teacher would succeed.
Pojo Jinul: Awakening and Cultivation
Zen came to Korea in the ninth century full of iconoclastic zeal. We don’t need no samadhi and prajna, it proclaimed from its “tongueless” realm of naked practice awareness. By the twelfth century, both Zen and the scholastic schools were bogged down in commercial activity, building projects, politics, clashing personal ambitions, and the corruptions that inevitably eat away at institutions. Buddhism in Korea was ready for reform.
Pojo Jinul (1158–1210), the son of an upper-class family, was ordained at age fifteen. His Zen teacher of record, Chongwhi, was a distant dharma descendant of Mazu. However, Jinul seems not to have had a close relationship with his teacher, and he never received formal transmission. Instead, he broke with tradition and designed his own practice through reading scripture. Robert Buswell writes, “In the spirit of self-reliance that is central to Buddhism, he took responsibility for his own spiritual development and followed the path of practice outlined in the scriptures and confirmed through his own Sŏn meditation.” 8
In 1182 Jinul traveled to the Goryo capital, Kaesong, to take the Soen monk examination. He passed, but he was dismayed by the worldliness and sectarian rancor he encountered. At some point he and other idealistic young monks must have fallen into mutual commiseration about the degenerate state of the monastic sangha, and they vowed that at some future date they would establish a retreat community that supported a purer practice of dharma. For reasons that are not clear, they weren’t able to take that step just yet.
After the examination, Jinul took up residence in a monastery called Chongwonsa in southwest Goryo, in modern-day South Jeolla Province. 9 He would have been near commercial seaports, and it’s speculated that he chose to live where he might connect with travelers from Song China. One day while at Chongwonsa Jinul read this passage in the Platform Sutra:
Figure 8. Portrait of Jinul in Donghwasa Temple, date unknown.
Treasure of South Korea No. 1639. Cultural Heritage Administration of Korea. The Picture Art Collection / Alamy Stock Photo.
The self-nature of suchness gives rise to thoughts. But even though the six sense-faculties see, hear, sense, and know, it is not tainted by the myriads of images. The true nature is constantly free and self-reliant. 10
On reading these words, Jinul had a profound awakening. Overcome with joy, he walked the halls of the monastery reciting the passage.
In 1185 he moved to another monastery, Pomunsa, in southeastern Korea (present-day North Gyeongsang Province, South Korea). There he spent time in retreat on a nearby mountain, contemplating Mazu’s “mind is Buddha” and studying scripture. He had a second awakening experience while reading the Avatamsaka Sutra.
Clearly, Jinul was not averse to words and letters. Study of scripture was not contradictory to Zen, he decided, but complementary to it. Jinul wrote, “ ‘What the World Honored One said with his mouth are the teachings. What the patriarchs transmitted with their minds is Sŏn.’ The mouth of the Buddha and the minds of the patriarchs can certainly not be contradictory.” 11 This insight showed Jinul a way to unify the contentious factions in the Goryo monastic sangha.
The Samadhi and Prajna Retreat Society
In 1188 Jinul received a letter from one of the idealistic monks he had met while taking the monk exam. More than eight years had passed, but the monk, Tukchae, had not forgotten the vow the group had taken. Tukchae persuaded Jinul to join him at a monastery called Kojosa, also in present-day North Gyeongsang Province, and there they launched the first Samadhi and Prajna Retreat Society. Only a small number of the original idealistic monks were able to join them, but it was a start.
In 1190, the thirty-three-year-old Jinul wrote the first of his major works, Kwon su chonghye kyolsa mun, or Encouragement to Practice: The Compact of the Samadhi and Prajna Community . Encouragement to Practice was both a statement of purpose and an invitation to all reform-minded monks to join the community. Most of all, the text urged a return to the fundamentals of Buddhist practice. 12 Virtuous men of all backgrounds—Zen, scholastic, Daoist, and Confucian—were welcome to the retreat as long as they were willing to renounce wordly things and devote themselves to cultivating samadhi and prajna.
In very few years so many men had joined the retreat that there was no more room for them, and Kojosa could not be expanded further. A disciple named Suu was tasked with finding a new location. Suu found a neglected temple on Mount Songgwang, or Songgwangsan, in today’s South Jeolla Province. The temple itself wasn’t much, but all around were sweet springs, lush mountains, and fertile land that could support a large community.
Suu sent word that he had found the perfect property, and in 1197 Jinul and a few companions journeyed to Songgwangsan to inspect the site. On the way, the travelers stopped at a hermitage on Mount Chiri, or Chirisan, the second highest mountain in South Korea. While there, Jinul took time for private contemplation and to read the recorded sayings of Dahui Zonggao. Once again, reading triggered a powerful enlightenment experience.
The group continued to Songgwangsan and approved what Suu was doing. With the collective work of the members of the Samadhi and Prajna Retreat Society and help from devout neighbors, in 1205 construction of the new monastery complex was finished. The king of Goryo, an admirer of Jinul, ordered 120 days of celebration to observe the auspicious event. Today, this monastery is called Songgwangsa, and it is one of the jewels of Korean Buddhism.
The larger point is that Jinul and the Samadhi and Prajna Retreat Society together created the synthesis of Gyo and Soen that had been desired for so long. The retreat laid the foundation of the Jogye order of Soen, which became the dominant Buddhist school of Goryo. This is a highly simplified explanation of what happened, of course, and the scholastic schools maintained their separate institutions for some time. But as we’ll see, within a few centuries the Jogye order would be the only school of Buddhism left standing on the Korean Peninsula.
Jinul’s Approach to Dharma
Jinul’s path of practice did not entirely fit the pattern established in Chinese Chan or earlier Korean Soen. Unlike earlier Korean teachers, such as Toui and Muyom, Jinul did not presume that studying texts was an inferior practice and that all one needed was meditation. Meditation was his practice; the scriptural canon was his guide. He saw no problem with using the theoretical aids of the scholastic schools to support Zen’s path of direct realization. He spoke of “sudden enlightenment followed by gradual cultivation,” by which he meant the direct insight of meditation was to be deepened and confirmed through text study and other “indirect” practices.
Jinul’s reading of Dahui’s recorded sayings piqued his interest in huatou contemplation, called hwadu in Korean, and he began to include hwadu in his teachings. Jinul considered hwadu to be an excellent practice for advanced students but not necessarily for everyone.
Jinul’s chief disciple Chin’gak Hyesim (1178–1234), who became leader of the retreat society at Jinul’s death, was a fervent promoter of hwadu contemplation for all students. Under his leadership, hwadu became the principle meditation form of the Jogye order. Hyesim also compiled the first Korean gongan collection.
Women’s Enlightenment: The Controversy
Chin’gak Hyesim is remembered for offering teaching to nuns. From his writings, it appears Hyesim held the unusually liberal (for his day) view that a woman could realize enlightenment within her present lifetime, without being reborn as a man first.
The prerequisite of maleness for enlightenment has been a persistent belief throughout Buddhist Asia. There are passages in some Mahayana sutras that can be interpreted to support this theory, although I don’t believe there is any such prerequisite in the older scriptures of the Tripitaka. In Silla and Goryo (and, to be fair, just about everywhere in Asia) it appears to have been widely accepted that women could not realize enlightenment, even though the Buddha had said otherwise. 13 There was disagreement over whether women even benefited from practice except to give them a more fortunate (male) rebirth.
Hyesim actively encouraged both nuns and laywomen to practice and gave them the same training he gave men, including hwadu to contemplate. He allowed nuns to participate in summer retreats with monks. When teaching nuns and laywomen, he often cited the examples of enlightened women from the early scriptures and from Zen records, such as the Tang dynasty nun Moshan Liaoran, whom we met in chapter 4.
Hyesim appears to have considered gender mere appearance, which is empty of self-essence. He may have been persuaded by a passage in the Vimalakirti Sutra—found in chapter 7 in most translations—in which a goddess tells the disciple Shariputra that her female state cannot be found because it does not exist, and she swaps appearance with Shariputra to prove the point. Appearance, including gender, is not entirely real and not who we are. “The Buddha said, ‘In all things, there is neither male nor female,’ ” the goddess says.
Unfortunately, few teachers who came after Hyesim followed his example, and women were perceived as second-class practitioners again.
Mongol Occupation
Jinul lived during the Later Goryo period, which was marked by several political upheavals that led to a military coup d’état in 1170, eight years before Hyesim was born. And then, conditions got worse. Beginning about 1216, Ogedei Khan’s assault on Jin dynasty China caused waves of Khitan refugees to flee into Goryo territory. The Khitans caused considerable upheaval, and Goryo considered them a threat.
Goryo formed an alliance with the Mongols to defeat Khitans who were occupying a fortress east of Pyongyang. After that the Mongols demanded an outrageous tribute from Goryo, which Goryo refused to pay. To make a very long story short, after about twenty-five years of treachery, war, and ruin, Goryo was entirely defeated and became a tributary state of Kublai Khan’s Yuan dynasty of China. Goryo kings remained on the throne, but they were subservient to the great khan and compelled to take Yuan dynasty princesses as wives. Yuan dynasty Chinese referred to Goryo as “son-in-law land.”
Kublai Khan died in 1294, and his successors proved to be less skilled at hanging on to power. By the 1340s, revolts were breaking out throughout Yuan China and other Mongol-held territories. By the 1360s Mongol power was crumbling. In China, the Ming dynasty replaced the Yuan in 1368. Goryo was still occupied, but kings began to reassert their own sovereignty and take back control of their own territories.
Taego Pou
The Mongolian occupation was the backdrop of the life of Taego Pou (1301–82; the name means “grand ancient, universal stupidity”). Taego was the most significant Soen master in Korea in the fourteenth century.
As a young Soen monk he was assigned this question: The ten thousand things return to the one; to what does the one return? After several years of effort he broke through, and he wrote:
I swallowed up all the Buddhas and Patriarchs
Without ever using my mouth.
Taego was already considered an enlightened master when he traveled to China in 1346. He received transmission from the Linji teacher Shiwu Qinggong (1272–1352) and returned to Goryo in 1348. In 1356 he was named “royal preceptor,” or the king’s personal teacher, and was appointed abbot of the main Soen temple in the Goryo capital.
Among other things, Taego emphasized ceaseless practice, twenty-four hours a day.
The days and months go by like lightning: we should value the time. We pass from life to death in the time it takes to breathe in and breathe out: it’s hard to guarantee even a morning and an evening. Whether walking, standing, sitting, or lying down, do not waste even a minute of time. Be like our original teacher Shakyamuni, who kept on progressing energetically. 14
Goryo Ends, Joseon Begins
Although Goryo gradually freed itself from Chinese rule, it remained terribly weakened, and in 1392 the last Goryo ruler was deposed and replaced by the founder of the Joseon dynasty. This began the next major phase of Korean history. Joseon survived for five centuries, until 1897.
For our purposes, the most important aspect of Joseon was its suppression of Buddhism. “The Chosŏn [Joseon] kingdom launched a sweeping attack on Buddhism and its institutions, with profound and enduring effects on the character of subsequent civilization in Korea,” writes Jinwung Kim. “In place of Buddhism, Confucianism, particularly neo-Confucianism, was instituted as a state philosophy.” 15
King Sejong, who ruled from 1418 to 1450, forced all Buddhist sects to be combined into only two, Soen and Gyo. Although originally part of Gyo, by royal order Hwaeom (Huayan) was absorbed into Soen. Each sect was allowed to keep only eighteen temples of any significance, for a total of thirty-six Buddhist temples in all of Joseon. There had once been several thousand.
Not all Joseon rulers were antagonistic to Buddhism. Even Sejong took a personal interest in it and installed a Buddhist shrine in his palace, causing an uproar among the Confucian literati of his court. But other rulers had no sympathy for Buddhism. As a result, by the nineteenth century all of the old schools but the Jogye order had faded away.
The most significant Soen master from the Joseon period was Hyujeong (1520–1604), sometimes also called Seosan Daesa. For a time (from about 1546 to 1553) during the reign of the queen regent Munjeong, Hyujeong was an adviser to the royal household. That position ended abruptly when her son, King Myeongjong, reached his twentieth birthday, and Buddhist monks were once again persona non grata at court.
Hyujeong attempted to draw together the scattered traditions of Joseon Buddhism. Along with Soen meditation he advocated recitation of the name of Amitabha Buddha and the study of scripture. He emphasized the similarities among the three great East Asian traditions of Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism. “This appeal to unity was actually a sign of the weakened state of Buddhism by the mid-sixteenth century as it was an implicit appeal for the tolerance of Buddhism by the Confucian establishment,” writes the Asian scholar James Huntley Grayson. 16
The Japanese warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi devised a plan to attack China that required moving troops across the Korean Peninsula. In 1592, after Joseon had declined Toyotomi’s request to occupy its territory, Toyotomi sent 158,000 troops in a surprise attack. Joseon was not prepared for war, and soon much of the Korean Peninsula was overrun and its people were being slaughtered.
Figure 9. Portrait of Hyujeong, or Seosan Daesa, seventeenth or eighteenth century.
Courtesy of Metropolitan Museum of Art, Seymour Fund, 1959.
Atrocities against civilians enraged the people of Joseon, and they unified to strike back at the invaders. Aristocrats and peasants, scholars, and slaves organized around local leaders to form militias. And bands of Buddhist monks joined in. Hyujeong led a monk army operating out of the mountains in South Jeolla Province that played a significant role in expelling the invaders, first in 1593 and again in 1598.
Even so, the government of Joseon continued to suppress Buddhism for three more centuries.
Buddhism in Vietnam
There is little one can say with certainty about early Vietnamese Buddhism. Buddhism may have reached Vietnam as early as the third century B.C.E . or as late as the second century C.E . It may have been brought there by missionaries from India, by monastics from China, or both.
The territory that is now Vietnam was controlled by China for much of the first millennium C.E . This accounts for the dominance of Mahayana Buddhism in a Southeast Asian country, although the Khmer people of Cambodia and Vietnam are primarily Theravada Buddhists.
Academia has yet to take a keen interest in the history of Vietnamese Zen, called Thien. Indeed, in the Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism (edited by Robert Buswell and Donald Lopez) we read,
The Thiền school is in reality a much more amorphous construct than it is in the rest of East Asia: in Vietnam, there is no obvious Chan monasticism, practices, or rituals as there were in China, Korea, and Japan. Thiền is instead more of an aesthetic approach or a way of life than an identifiable school of thought or practice. Some of the few recognizable influences of Thiền in Vietnam are the traces of Chan literary topoi in Vietnamese Buddhist literature. There is little else, whether physical sites, ecclesiastical institutions, or textual or praxis evidence, that points to a concrete school of Thiền in Vietnam. 17
Buswell and Lopez are serious scholars. Even so, they may be underestimating the Zen tradition in Vietnam. It’s clear that scholars have paid little attention to Vietnamese Thien, and Vietnamese Buddhism generally, compared to other Asian nations. More research may show us that it was not as “amorphous” as these scholars believe. For the time being, however, there is little scholarly research to go on. For that reason, we’ll be touching on Vietnam very briefly here. I apologize for providing only a glimpse of what must be a rich and wonderful story, and I hope a future storyteller will be able to do it justice.
Early Zen in Vietnam
According to the contemporary scholar Cuong Tu Nguyen, there are few written records of early Buddhism, including Zen, in Vietnam that date to before the tenth century. There is plenty of evidence that Buddhism was there, but for the most part the Vietnamese didn’t begin to write the story of Vietnamese Buddhism until the tenth century, when the region became independent from China. Earlier Vietnamese Buddhist history is largely a post hoc invention. 18
Tradition says that Zen was introduced to Vietnam in the late sixth century by Vinitaruci, a monk from either south or west India—possibly Kashmir—who had studied with the Third Patriarch, Sengcan. If you remember that Sengcan’s status as Third Patriarch has no basis in documented history, you will recognize why this story is a tad wobbly. Even so, a so-called Vinitaruci lineage survived for several centuries.
One of its most prominent masters was a nun, Diei Nhan (1043–1115). She is said to have been a princess of the ruling family of Dai Viet—“Great Viet,” what Vietnam was called at the time—who was married to a provincial governor. She received nun’s ordination after her husband died. Her teacher’s name was Chan Khong (d. 1100, the name means “true emptiness”), which is also the name of an admired expatriate Vietnamese Buddhist nun and peace activist (b. 1938) currently living in France. In time Diei Nhan was recognized for her mastery of dharma, and she attracted many students. What we have of Diei Nhan’s teachings shows us that Vietnamese Zen had kept up with developments in China. She answered a question about “sudden” and “gradual” enlightenment by citing a section of the Platform Sutra: “Good friends, in the Dharma there is no sudden or gradual, but among people some are keen and others dull…. Once enlightened, there is from the outset no distinction between these two methods.” 19 Diei Nhan added, “Return to your own mind and sudden and gradual are not different.” 20 On other occasions, she cited the Diamond Sutra to her students.
If we assume these records accurately reflect Diei Nhan’s teaching, this tells us that this particular lineage in eleventh-century Vietnam had been influenced by Zen in Tang and Song China and wasn’t just a continuation of the Zen of the early patriarchs. Diei Nhan lived during the Ly dynasty (1010–1225), which generously supported all forms of Buddhism. The Ly kings sent scholars to China to bring back scriptures and the newest commentaries. Diei Nhan may very well have been up to date with trends in Chinese Chan.
According to records written centuries after the possible fact, another early Zen lineage in Vietnam was that of Wu Yantong (d. 826). The Chinese Yantong was said to have been an heir of Baizhang Huaihai and came to Vietnam in about 820. The records describe Wu Yantong’s Vietnamese disciple Cam Thanh (d. 860) teaching his students Mazu Daoyi’s “mind is Buddha.”
Kings of the Tran dynasty (1225–1400) also were patrons of Buddhism. The dynasty’s founder, Tran Thai Ton (1218–77), is said to have abdicated in 1258 to live his last years as a Zen monk. His successor, Tran Nhan Ton (1258–1308), established a school of Buddhism called Truc Lam, or “bamboo grove,” which is often identified as Zen. Cuong Tu Nguyen describes Truc Lam’s use of encounter dialogues and the practice of transmission from teacher to student. 21 But it is also described as a fusion of Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism. Truc Lam merged the insight of Buddhism with the correct moral conduct of Confucianism and living in harmony with the Dao. Truc Lam may also have been connected to the Thao Du’o’ng school, which is sometimes described as a union of Zen and Pure Land practices established in about the eleventh century. Note, however, that Cuong Tu Nguyen questions whether Thao Du’o’ng was really much of a school, as the historical evidence of it is flimsy. 22
The Linji School in Vietnam
Let us briefly shift our attention back to China. The Ming dynasty that had replaced the Yuan in 1368 ended abruptly in April 1644 when the last Ming emperor, Chongzhen, retired to a garden pavilion in the Forbidden City and hanged himself. The Ming polity was crumbling under the pressure of both internal rebellion and external attacks. In June 1644 Manchu troops entered Beijing and the Forbidden City, took control of the vast palace complex that had been built by the Ming, and established the Qing dynasty. The Qing would rule China until 1912.
While China was wracked with war and upheaval, some Chinese sought refuge in Dai Viet. Some of those Chinese were Buddhist monastics, and so it was that in the seventeenth century the Linji school put down roots in Vietnam, where it was called Lam Te.
The founding teacher of this new branch of Linji is remembered in Vietnam as Nguyen Thieu (d. 1712). The Le dynasty of Dai Viet supported the new tradition, built temples, and sent Nguyen Thieu on a trip to China to gather Buddha images and sutras for Vietnam. The disciples of this school produced many commentaries on Awakening of Faith, the Lankavatara Sutra, the Diamond Sutra, and the Heart Sutra, which suggests that their approach to dharma reflected the Linji mainstream in China.
Lieu Quan (1670–1742) is considered one of the greatest masters of Lam Te as well as the founder of a uniquely Vietnamese Linji school that bears his name. He is credited with reforming Chinese Linji rituals and liturgy to make them more harmonious with his Vietnamese students. Among his innovations was a tradition of creating gathas (chanted verses) from the characters of the names of one’s lineage of teachers.
In the ninteenth century the territories that are now Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos became a colony of France, commonly called French Indochina. The relationships among the Vietnamese, the colonial government, and the many Catholic missionaries in Vietnam were complex and often rancorous, but by the 1930s there was a Vietnamese Catholic church with native Vietnamese priests and bishops. This development would have a significant impact on the Lieu Quan school in the 1950s and 1960s, which we will examine in the last chapter.