Also called Zibo Zhenke. A Chan master and one of the most eminent monks in the Ming dynasty, Zhenke was a native of Wujiang (in present-day Jiangsu). His family name was Shen. He became a monk at the age of 17 in Huqiu, Suzhou, and was ordained at the age of 20. He then traveled to many places, including Mount Wutai and the capital, to visit good teachers. One day he had great doubts about his practice, when he heard a poem by Zhangzhuo (d.u.), the lay disciple of the Tang master Shishuang Qingzhu (807–888), saying that “cutting off deluded thoughts extends sicknesses, and striving for true suchness is also heresy.” After working out his doubts, he attained awakening, and he was later verified by the Chan master Bianrong (d.u.) in the capital. Zhenke resolved to revitalize Chan and involved himself in fund-raising for the printing of a new Buddhist canon, which was started in 1589 and was called Jiaxing Zang or Jingshan Zang. His extensive connection with literati and officials in the capital, as well as his involvement in politics, did not come without trouble, however, and he died in prison in 1603. Nevertheless, his followers, monastic or lay, upper class or lower, were numerous, even though he never took abbacy or gave sermons.
Like his contemporaries Hanshan Deqing and Yunqi Zhuhong, Zhenke was syncretistic toward Chan and Pure Land, Chan and Buddhist doctrines, and all three Chinese traditions. He pointed out that, although the doors and walls of the three traditions are different (menqiang suiyi), their grounds—namely, the learning of the mind (xinxue)—are the same (ben xiangtong). However, he was most emphatic about the importance of letters and words and attempts to justify the wenzi Chan in terms of the non-dualistic relation of Chan and words. To some extent, Zhenke promoted social activism in Chan and Chinese Buddhism through his interpretations and his actions. He refuted the misunderstanding of Buddhism as the way of emptiness by reemphasizing that the teaching of emptiness is only a medicine for curing attachment, and that the Chan notion of original no-thingness (benlai wuyiwu) should not be understood as non-existence of the world. In addition, Zhenke clarified that his Buddhism could aid the Confucian way of the sagely king. Based on this awareness, he was determined to let himself face the ups and downs of the world (yushi chenfu) rather than escaping and would even die for his political involvement. He left us with the 30-fascicle Zibo Zunzhe Quanji (Complete Works of Worthy Zibo).
A Chan master of the Caogong school in the Song dynasty, Bao’en was born into a traditional Confucian family in Liyang (in present-day Henan). His family name was Liu. At the age of 18, he was appointed as an official, but his desire to study Buddhism grew stronger, leading him to quit his job and become a monk after the court approved his resignation. Having traveled to various places, he heard of the fame of Touzi Yiqin and went to Shuzhou to study with Yiqing. Under Yiqing’s instruction, he attained awakening. After his teacher’s death, he visited two Yumen Chan masters, Fayun Faxiu (1027–1090) and Yuanzhao Zongben (1020–1099). In 1086, former prime minister Hanzhen (1019–1097) invited Bao’en to be abbot at Shaolin Temple. In 1095, Bao’en was appointed abbot of Lingfeng Temple in Mount Dahong in Suizhou. Within nine years, Bao’en had converted this Vinaya temple into a famous Chan temple. He invited the statesman Zhang Shangying (1043–1121) to document this accomplishment. In 1103, Bao’en was appointed by Emperor Huizong (r. 1100–1126) to be abbot at Fayun Chan Monastery in the capital, Kaifeng. His request for release from this post was approved the next year. In 1106, he was appointed again as the abbot of Lingfeng Temple at Mount Dahong. He died there in 1111. It was reported that he ordained 131 people, and 13 of his dharma heirs served as abbots at public monasteries. In addition to his yulu, Bao’en compiled Caodong Zongpai Lu (Record of the Caodong Lineages), as well as two other texts regarding precepts and ceremonies, but none of them are extant.
One of the famous Chan masters in the Song dynasty, Zonggao became a novice at the age of 16 and was ordained the next year. After consulting several Chan masters, he became a disciple of the Linji master Zhantang Wenzhun (1061–1115) in the lineage of Huanglong Huinan. Dahui compiled Wenzhun’s recorded sayings when he passed away and asked one of the famous literati, Zhang Shangying (1043–1121, who gave Dahui the sobriquet “Miaoxi”), to write an epitaph for his teacher. His next teacher was Yuanwu Keqin, with whom he experienced his own enlightenment. As Keqin’s senior assistant, he continued to develop his connection with many elites. Even before taking any abbacy, he was given a purple robe and the honor of Fori Dashi (“Great Master of Buddha-sun”) by the imperial court in 1126.
His connection with statesmen and literati such as Zhang Jun (1097–1164) and Zhang Jiucheng (1092–1159) brought him the abbacy at Jingshan Temple, one of the most prestigious monasteries in the Southern Song, as well as political troubles. He was defrocked and exiled for 14 years when his associates’ pro-war activities against the Jin policy fell out of imperial grace. In 1156, he was appointed to the abbacy at Ayuwang Temple in Zhejiang. A few years later, he returned to his old seat at Jingshan Temple, eventually retiring in 1161. At the peak of his abbacy, the members of his monastic community numbered more than 1,000, and estimated visitors numbered over 10,000. The new emperor, Xiaozong (r. 1162–1189), granted him the honorific name “Dahui” in 1162. When Zonggao died at the age of 74, Xiaozong conferred the posthumous name “Pujue” on him.
Dahui is best known for his advocacy of kanhua chan, a new meditation technique simplifying the gong’an practice into observing and inspecting the key phrase (huatou) of a chosen gong’an. This kanhua method has been adopted by the later generations of Chan masters down to modern times and throughout East Asia. In addition, his teaching enriches many subject areas of Chan soteriology. His strong emphasis on integrating Chan practice with secular activity attracted many laypeople in his time and continued to be influential. Unlike many other Chan masters, who tended to be elusive, Dahui often gave clear, sharp, and on-the-mark advice to Chan practitioners. He was unusually outspoken and critical of what he saw as heretical approaches, most notably the silent illumination Chan (mazhao chan) of the Caodong school. He was also a prolific writer, penning numerous letters to his lay followers, including many literati and elites. His success and the prosperity of his lineage (Dahui pai) have been acclaimed as the renaissance of the Linji school in the Song. His extant recorded sayings, sermons, commentaries on gong’an, and personal letters are extensive. They are included in the Dahui Pujue Chanshi Yulu, the Dahui Pujue Chanshi Zongmen Wuku, the Dahui Chanshi Chanzong Zaduhai, and the Zhengfayan Zang.
This is an abbreviation of the original Chinese title Dahui Pujue Chanshi Yulu for the 30-fascicle collection of the recorded sayings of the Chan master Dahui Zonggao. The collection was compiled eight years after Dahui’s death and was included in one of the Song dynasty Buddhist canons in 1172. The collection includes Dahui’s recorded sayings through extensive periods of his life, at various temples in Jiangxi, Fujian, and Zhejiang, and even the time he spent assisting his teacher Yuanwu Keqin in instruction. Many of his commentaries on various gong’an stories and his poems (gāthā or ji) are also included. The collection also contains the Dahui Pushuo (General Sermons of Dahui) and the Dahui Shu (Letters of Dahui); the latter has been circulated separately from time to time.
In contrast to many recorded sayings of Tang Chan masters that were compiled or published during the Song dynasty, Dahui’s yulu was directly completed by his students, and some of his yulu circulated even before his death. A year-by-year chronological biography (nianpu) of Dahui was attached to this collection in the Ming edition, which was compiled 20 years after Dahui’s death; much of its detailed information is confirmed by the stories that Dahui himself told through his recorded sayings. The collection is thus a reliable source for the study of Dahui as an exemplary Song Chan master who demonstrated a kind of refined manner and sophistication to which his literati contemporaries aspired and whose teaching style made a path forward crystal clear, who championed the importance of enlightenment experience, and who defined an orthopraxy of Chan. His recorded sayings can also be found in three other collections compiled by his students: the Dahui Pujue Chanshi Zongmen Wuku, the Dahui Chanshi Chanzong Zaduhai, and the Zhengfayan Zang. They can be found in several “lamp transmission” histories of the Song dynasty as well.
A Chan master of the Tang dynasty and a disciple of Mazu Daoyi, he was born into a Zhen family in Xiangyang in present-day Hubei. He became a novice monk at Yuquan Temple in his youth and was ordained at the age of 20 in Longxing Temple. In 796, he moved to Mount Damei in Yuyao of Mingzhou (in present-day Zhejiang), and he spent the rest of his life there. In 836, he was able to build a large temple on the mountain and enjoyed a community of several hundred followers. His best-known disciple was Hangzhou Tianlong (d.u.). He also taught a few monks from Korea. He died in 839. The story of his enlightenment after hearing Mazu’s teaching “mind is Buddha” is popular in Chan literature, and so is the story about his refusal to blindly follow Mazu’s later teaching “there is neither mind nor Buddha.” However, the traditional sources never told when and how long Damei studied with Mazu. The earliest source Song Gaoseng Zhuan (The Song Edition of Biographies of Eminent Monks) did not even mention that Damei was Mazu’s disciple. Moreover, the versions of the story about Damei’s refusal of Mazu’s later teaching vary regarding whether the praise of “the plum (damei) is now ripe” was spoken by Mazu or by another person. The story’s historicity is thus open to doubt. There is a more comprehensive text, entitled Mingzhou Dameishan Chang Chanshi Yulu, which was discovered in Japan, but some scholars have shown that it includes traces of a later creation.
The Meditation (Dhyana) Sutra of Dharmatrāta, a scripture on meditation accredited to Dharmatrāta (ca. 4th century CE), the Kashmirian patriarch of the Sarvāstivāda school of Indian Buddhism. The Indian monk Buddhabhadra (Ch. Fotuobatuoluo) (359–429), by request of Lushan Huiyuan (334–416), translated this scripture into Chinese around 413 CE while staying at Mount Lu. The scripture has two fascicles and 17 chapters. It teaches a gradual process and various methods of meditation, including the mindfulness of inhaling and exhaling (ānāpānasmṛti) and the contemplation on the impure (aśubhabhāvanā), on the elements of existence (skandha, āyatana and dhātu), and on the twelvefold chain of dependent origination (pratītya-samutpāda). This teaching demonstrates the Hinayana style approach to meditation and was influential in early Chinese practices of dhyāna. The scripture also includes a genealogical list of Indian dhyāna masters from Mahākāśyapa, Ānanda, Madhyāntika, Śaṇavāsa, Upagupta, Vasumitra, Saṅgharakṣa, and Dharmatrāta to Puṇyamitra. It lent the idea of Indian patriarchal transmission to the early Chinese invention of Chan genealogical history in an attempt to establish the identity of Chan Buddhism and enhance its legitimacy.
A Chan master of the Tang dynasty, he is famous for his iconoclastic behavior, reiterated by many Chan texts. No information is available on his family name and his place of birth. The Song Gaoseng Zhuan (The Song Edition of Biographies of Eminent Monks) reports that Tianran entered monastic life when he was just a child. He first studied for three years with Shitou Xiqian, who named him Tianran. After receiving full ordination from the Vinaya master Xi in Mount Heng, Tianran visited Mazu Daoyi and then stayed at Mount Tiantai for three years. He later visited Jingshan Faqin of the Ox-Head school. From 806 to 820, Tianran stayed at Xiangshan Temple in Luoyang and became a close friend of Funiu Zizai (741–821), another disciple of Mazu. It is during this period that Tianran burned a wooden Buddha statue to fight the cold weather in Huilin Temple and lay on a bridge while saying, “I am a monk who has nothing to do,” refusing to stay away from Regent Zheng (746–820) while Zheng was passing. In 820, he went to Mount Danxia in Nanyang (in present-day Henan). He died at the age of 86. He was conferred the posthumous title Zhitong Chanshi (“Chan Master of Penetrating Wisdom”).” The Song Gaoseng Zhuan biography of Tianran was based on his epitaph, written by Liu Ke (d.u.), which is believed by modern scholars to be a reliable source. However, later Chan texts such as the Zutang Ji and Jingde Chuandeng Lu added more stories to Tianran’s biography, identified him as the disciple of Shitou Xiqian exclusively, and attributed six poems to him. These materials are considered inauthentic by contemporary scholars.
A Chan master of the Caodong school in the Song dynasty, Zichun was a native of Jianzhou (in present-day Sichuan). His family name was Jia. He entered monastic life in his youth and was ordained at the age of 27. On his pilgrimage, he visited two Linji Chan masters—Zhenru Muji (?–1095) and Zhenjing Kewen—and the Caodong master Dahong Bao’en. Finally, he became the disciple of Furong Daokai and was enlightened under Daokai’s instruction. In 1104, Zichun was invited to be abbot at Tianran Temple on Mount Danxia (in present-day Henan). Later he retired to West Hermitage (Xi An) on Mount Dasheng in Tangzhou. In 1115, he was invited to take residence at Baoshou Chan Temple on Mount Dahong. He died at the age of 54. His teachings inherited Furong Daokai’s emphasis on resting (xiuxie) in sitting meditation, which pioneered the later development of the silent illumination Chan (mozhao Chan). Among his disciples, Hongzhi Zhengjue and Zhenxie Qingliao were the most famous for their teaching of the silent illumination Chan. In addition to his recorded sayings, Zichun compiled his own Songgu Baize (Poetic Commentaries on One Hundred Gongan Cases), which was further commented on by the Yuan Caodong Master Linquan Conglun and became the Xutang Ji (Anthology from Empty Hall) of six fascicles.
It literally means “way” or “path.” Although several Chinese, or even East Asian, religions use this term, different religious traditions use it in different contexts. For example, Confucianism and Daoism have different concepts of dao. In the Chan Buddhist context, dao designates both the path or practice of Buddhism and the goal of Buddhism: enlightenment, the realization of Buddha-nature.
The name “Daoism” can refer to two different kinds of Daoism. One is philosophical Daoism, and the other is religious Daoism. Religious Daoism (Daojiao) is a formally organized religion that existed as early as the second century CE, and gradually developed its pantheon, rituals, symbols, priests, practices of meditation, fasting and alchemy, and a huge body of sacred scriptures. It is a rival religion to Chinese Buddhism, including Chan. Philosophical Daoism (Daojia) emerged much earlier than religious Daoism. It provided much of the foundation for religious Daoism, but itself involved no formal religious organization. Philosophical Daoism is especially affiliated with two famous texts—the Dao De Jing and the Zhuangzi—and the ensuing commentaries on them, such as those of the neo-Daoism (Xin Daojia) of the Wei Jin period (220–420). Compared to religious Daoism, philosophical Daoism had a deeper, broader, and more enduring impact on Chinese culture and Chinese people’s intellectual and spiritual lives. Although Chan Buddhism historically received influence from some texts of religious Daoism, such as the notion of “shouyi (maintaining the one)” in the Taiping Jing (Scripture on Peace), it was philosophical Daoism that offered the main inspiration to the formation of the ideology of Chan Buddhism.
The Daoist influence on Chan ideology involved at least the following aspects. First, the philosophical category of the ti (the whole) and the yong (function), and the affirmation of their unification, developed by the neo-Daoist Wang Bi’s (226–249) study of Laozi, became a favorite theme and expression in numerous Chan recorded sayings to explain the non-dualistic relationship between Buddha-nature, or true suchness, and everyday activities and events. The non-dualistic ti-yong relationship was a useful tool, or a skillful means, for mainstream Chan masters to teach their viewpoint that Buddha-nature or the ti cannot be realized or experienced outside of the function or yong of Buddha-nature. Second, the notion of the dao penetrating into, or moving along with, the infinite interchange (tong) of all opposite things and distinctions, in the Zhuangzi, fostered the Chan understanding of enlightenment as unimpeded flowing together with thoughts and things in all everyday circumstances. This kind of understanding is best demonstrated in the notions of free-flowing-dao (dao xu tongliu) and non-abiding in the Platform Sūtra, and in the notion of renyun (following along with the movement of all things or circumstances), used by masters of the Hongzhou school.
Third, the classical Chan notion of no-mind (wuxin) as the absence of any kind of discriminating mind or the absence of attachment to any conceptual thought obviously benefited from the earliest mention of no-mind and the criticism of privileging mind (chengxin) and calculative mind (jixin) in the Zhuangzi. Both the Chan Buddhist and Zhuangzian views of no-mind cannot be confused with the stopping of the function of the ordinary mind, but are ways of transforming the ordinary mind to the enlightened mind. A person who accomplishes this kind of existential-practical transformation of the mind and personhood is called “authentic person” (zhenren) in the Zhuangzi. Linji Yixuan’s wuwei zhenren (authentic person without rank) is the best example in Chan, reminiscent of Zhuangzi’s impact. It is not an exaggeration to say that the Zhuangzian emphasis on the existential-practical transformation of the mind and personhood prefigured the Chan approach to the issue of enlightenment as the transformation of the human mind and the attainment of Buddhahood, despite their contextual differences.
Fourth, the Dao De Jing, the Zhuangzi, and the philosophy of neo-Daoism provided Chan Buddhism not only with their profound insights into the limits of language and the necessity of negotiating with them, but also with their exemplary strategies of “the teaching of non-speaking (buyan zhijiao)” and “the speaking of non-speaking (yan wuyan),” to perform linguistic twisting and detouring as a way to play at the boundaries of language, including the use of double negation, paradox, and irony. Chan Buddhism inherited these insights and linguistic strategies, combined them with its own legacy of Mahayana Buddhist insights and linguistic strategies, further developed the non-dualistic perspective on the relation between speaking and non-speaking, and produced a vast body of texts that taught Chan by a detour (raolu shuochan). Of these texts, the most illustrative were the texts of Chan gong’an, which often employed shock effects on the students’ conventional ways of thinking in order to trigger their awakening through the use of elusive, enigmatic, or ironic language.
A Chan master in the Sui dynasty (581–618) and Tang dynasty (618–907), he was considered the dharma heir to Sengcan and the fourth patriarch of Chan Buddhism. He was born in Henei (in present-day Qinyang, Henan). His family name was Sima. He entered monastic life as a boy, disciplining himself with Buddhist precepts even though his teacher was quite undisciplined. Around 590, he went to Mount Wangong in Shuzhou (in present-day Anhui) and studied with Sengcan for about 10 years. After Sengcan left him for Mount Luofu, Daoxin traveled around for some time, and started to teach people. In 607, he was officially ordained as a monk. During the war at the end of the Sui, Daoxin took residence in Dalin Temple on Mount Lu. In 624, he arrived at Mount Shuangfeng in Huangmei (in present-day Hubei); he taught there for about 27 years. He died in 651. He had about half a dozen disciples. Some of them had biographies in the Xu Gaoseng Zhuan. The most prominent among them was Hongren, who was appointed by the dying Daoxin as his dharma heir. Contemporary scholars generally agree that Daoxin and Hongren should be seen as the real founders of early Chan Buddhism, in contrast to the proto-Chan figures such as Bodhidharma and Huike.
Daoxin left behind a work called Rudao Anxin Yao Fangbian Famen (The Expedient Teaching of the Essentials of Entering the Path and Pacifying the Mind), which was included in his biography in the Lengqie Shizi Ji by Jingjue. One of Daoxin’s main teachings on the approach of meditation is the idea of “maintaining the one without wavering (shouyi buyi).” Borrowing from Daoist terminology, this idea instructs the student to contemplate on any individual thing, or any single component of one’s mental and physical existence, as the object of meditation with unfaltering attention until one realizes emptiness or the true nature of things, which is the manifestation of the Buddha-mind. The idea is not very different from the insight-oriented Mahayana meditation but possesses a simplified style and less appeal to gradations. It meets the expectation of later generations of Chan. However, a recent study on Daoxin and Hongren has argued that Daoxin’s work was produced by followers of the East Mountain teaching (Dongshan Famen), at a later time than Hongren’s Treatise on the Essentials of Cultivating the Mind (Xiuxin Yaolun). Due to the retrospective nature of these texts attributed to the two Chan masters, there is therefore no direct evolution of ideas from Daoxin to Hongren.
Dasheng Qixin Lun (The Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana) is a short treatise elaborating on Mahayana thought. It was attributed to the Indian Buddhist thinker and poet Aśvaghoṣa and rendered by the then famous Indian translator Paramārtha from Sanskrit (title: Mahāyāna-śraddhotpāda Śāstra) into Chinese in 550 CE. No Sanskrit original was ever discovered. Many scholars believe it is an apocryphal work, reflecting the Chinese appropriation of the tathāgatagarbha (rulaizang/Buddha-nature) thought. Ingeniously blending many of the major Mahayana ideas together, the text makes distinctions between “original enlightenment” and “acquired enlightenment,” the true and the deluded aspects of the one mind, and assimilates the categories of the ti (essence or the whole) and the yong (function) into its system. Some contemporary scholars have suggested that this text contributed to the substantialization of Buddha-nature in East Asia. Others have contended that by acknowledging the limits of all these conceptual distinctions and identifying the one mind of suchness with “the mind of the sentient being,” it has contributed to the de-substantialization of Buddha-nature, although it does place emphasis on the mind of suchness, the ti, and its purity.
The treatise brought enormous impetus as well as theoretical problems to Chinese Buddhist schools and their doctrines, including Chan schools and their ideologies. Not only did Shenxiu’s idea of linian (being free from thoughts) and his privileging of the true mind, of the motionlessness and its purity, originate from the Awakening of Faith, but Shenhui’s stress on the intuitive knowledge of the original tranquility (the ti) was also a variation on the central theme of the Awakening of Faith. However, the more radical movements within the Hongzhou school and classical Chan began to deconstruct certain influences of the Awakening of Faith, such as its privileging of the ti over the yong, by emphasizing that outside of everyday activities and functions there would be no Buddha-nature.
A Chan master of the Caodong school in the Song dynasty, Jingxuan was a native of Jiangxia (in present-day Wuchang of Hubei Province). His family name was Zhang. He entered monastic life at Chongxiao Temple in Nanjing and was ordained there at the age of 19, under his uncle Zhitong, who was the abbot. He soon demonstrated a thorough understanding of the emptiness and started to travel under his uncle’s recommendation. He studied with the Caodong master Yuanguan (d.u.) at Liangshan Temple in Dingzhou and experienced awakening. In 1000, he went to Dayang Temple in Hubei to study with another Caodong master, Huijian (d.u.), and accepted an invitation to succeed to Huijian’s abbacy. At the age of 80, he asked his friend, the Linji Chan master Fushan Fayuan (991–1067), to find an heir for the Caodong lineage, since he felt that no student of his own was eligible. This anecdote reflects the crisis of the Caodong school during that time. Jingxuan died at the age of 85. His posthumous title was “Great Master of Illuminating Peace” (ming’an dashi), and his teachings were preserved in his one-fascicle record of sayings, the Dayang Ming’an Dashi Shibaban Miaoyu.
A Chan master in the Tang dynasty and one of the major disciples of Mazu Daoyi, he was originally a disciple of master Daozhi (d.u.) at Dayun Temple in Yuezhou (present-day Shaoxing of Zhejiang province). He later went to Jiangxi and studied with Mazu. After six years, he went back to Yuezhou to help the aged Daozhi. A couple texts of recorded sayings including the Dunwu Yaomen are attributed to him. His biography recounts that Mazu was very happy with his Dunwu Yaomen, calling him the “great pearl (dazhu).” In terms of its themes and literary and rhetorical style, contemporary scholars have regarded the Dunwu Yaomen (especially the first part of the extant version) as a transitional text between early and classical Chan. The influence of early Chan rhetoric such as Shenhui’s terminology is clearly adopted, although some content does resonate with the teachings of Mazu and his followers of the Hongzhou school. Thus, with some reservation, the Dunwu Yaomen is still considered an important text for the study of the Hongzhou school. A different view on the Dunwu Yaomen is that, considering the early marks of its themes and rhetoric, and based on the study of related historical materials, the extant version of Dunwu Yaomen might be confused with Dazhu’s early teacher Daozhi’s Dayun Yaofa, which could possibly have been edited by Dazhu. The original version of the Dunwu Yaomen could be those sermons and dialogues still preserved in fascicle 28—Yuezhou Dazhu Huihai Heshang Yu—of the Jingde Chuandeng Lu, the contents of which are more in accord with Mazu’s sermons and other reliable Hongzhou texts.
This is an English translation of the Chinese words siju (alternative translation, “dead sentences”) or siyu (alternative translation, “dead speech”). The Chan notion of dead words is opposed to the Chan notion of living words (huoju or shengyu). When words cannot help to eschew fixed binary distinctions, cannot open the mind to flowing reality and unique situations, and cannot serve Chan soteriological purposes well, they are considered dead words. Therefore, living words are those that can help to shock Chan students away from conventional ways of thinking, to be responsive to or in tune with flowing reality, and to trigger enlightenment. Living words are those that can point to what is outside language or what is not spoken. Chan texts involve numerous examples of using living words, including poetic words, paradoxical words, and even tautological expressions.
A Chan master of the Tang dynasty, Xuanjian was a native of Jiannan in present-day Sichuan. His family name was Zhou. He started monastic life when he was a boy and studied Buddhist precepts, scriptures, and treatises extensively and deeply. Often expounding on the Diamond Sūtra, he was known as “Diamond Zhou.” He later met Longtan Chongxin (d.u.), the disciple of Tianhuang Daowu, in Lizhou, Hunan, and it was with Chongxin that he achieved awakening. He stayed with Chongxin for about 30 years. In 860, the governor of Langzhou invited him to be abbot at Gude Monastery on Mount De. He had about 1,000 students. Among his disciples, Xuefeng Yichun was the most prominent. Xuanjian died in 865 at the age of 84. His posthumous title was Jianxing Chanshi (“Chan Master of Realizing [Self] Nature”). One of Xuanjian’s famous styles of instruction was his use of the stick as a means for shock therapy. The Chan tradition usually compared Xuanjian with Linji by the juxtaposition of “Deshan’s stick” and “Linji’s shout.” Xuanjian’s emphasis on “wushi (having nothing special to do)” and “wuqiu (no-seeking)” is indeed very close to Linji’s teaching. Besides that, they both used iconoclastic expressions in the context of helping students’ detachment. Before the designation of the “five houses” became popular in the mid-Northern Song, Deshan Xuanjian was seen as one of the emerging houses of Chan with its own distinguished house style (jiafeng).
This Sanskrit term in its Buddhist use involves two basic meanings. One designates the entirety of Buddhist teachings or Buddhist truths, as is sometimes more clearly used in a compound “Buddha-dharma.” The other designates individual things, elements, or phenomena, either material or mental. Chan Buddhist texts inherit these two traditional uses of the term.
A Chan master of the Huanglong lineage of the Linji school in the Song dynasty, Changzong was a native of Jianzhou in present-day Fujian province. His family name was Shi. He entered monastic life at the age of 11 and received his official ordination eight years later with the preceptor Qisi at Dazhong Temple. Being attracted by Huanglong Huinan’s great fame, he went to Guizong Temple at Mount Lu to study with Huinan. After about 20 years, Changzong became the closest disciple of Huinan and gained his own fame. After Huinan’s death, he was invited to take up residence at Letan Temple. In 1080, the governor Wang Shao (1030–1081) requested Changzong to be the abbot of Donglin Temple at Mount Lu. In 1083, despite Changzong’s rejection of the imperial invitation to the abbacy at Zhihai Temple, Emperor Shenzong (r. 1067–1085) granted him the title “Chan Master of Extensive Benefit” (Guanghui Chanshi). In 1084, the famous literatus Su Shi (1037–1101) visited Donglin Temple and consulted Changzong for Buddhist dharma. In 1088, Emperor Zhezong (r. 1085–1100) granted Changzong the title “Chan Master of Illuminating Awakening” (Zhaojue Chanshi). During the 12 years of his abbacy at Dongli, he had more than 700 followers and many disciples. His teaching method inherited Huinan’s style of “ordinary and genuine Chan (pingshi Chan),” which originated from Linji’s emphasis on “doing nothing (wushi)” and “being just ordinary.” However, after Changzong’s dharma brother Zhenjing Kewen launched an influential criticism of wushi Chan, Changzong’s prominence declined in Chan history.
One of the most prominent Chan masters of the Tang dynasty, Liangjie is regarded as the founder of the Caodong school of Chan. Born in a place near Shaoxing in present-day Zhejiang Province of southern China, he became a novice in the local village’s Buddhist monastery at a very young age and soon left his family to study with a number of Chan masters. He first studied with Mazu Daoyi’s disciples Wuxie Lingmo (747–818), Nanquan Puyuan, and another Hongzhou master, Guishan Lingyou, and reached enlightenment after studying with Yunyan Tansheng (782–841), who was in the lineage of Shitou Siqian and Yaoshan Weiyan, according to the tradition. At the age of 53, he established his own temple on Cave Mountain (dongshan) in the area of Hongzhou (or Ruizhou in Song) in Jiangxi Province. Among his disciples, the two most famous were Yunju Daoying and Caoshan Benji. The latter is considered the second founder of the Caodong school, although Dongshan’s lineage only continues further with the branch of Yunju. Dongshan died at the age of 63 and was honored by the imperial court with the title of “Chan Master of Awakening to the Origin” (Wuben Chanshi).
Dongshan’s teachings and style are demonstrated in his numerous encounter dialogues with his teachers and students. These dialogues are preserved (or believed to be so) in the “transmission of the lamp” anthologies such as the Zutang Ji and Jingde Chuandeng Lu, which are among the earliest records and relatively more reliable. The extant Ming Dynasty edition of The Recorded Sayings of Dongshan Liangjie (Dongshan Yulu) is traditionally authoritative and includes some long poetic writings of Dongshan, such as “The Jewel Mirror Samadhi” (Baojing Sanmei). However, these added documents were never mentioned by any earlier sources other than an early 12th century text, and their origins are not clearly identifiable despite the fact that they have long been used as Dongshan’s own works.
Many of his dialogues and stories are related to the understanding and experience of reality, the suchness of the universal interconnection/interpenetration of things, or Buddha-nature. The central point of many dialogues is that this reality or suchness is everyone’s authentic being; “it” could be met everywhere and in everything due to its inherent closeness and intimacy to everyone, yet “it” also turns one farther away if one externalizes, objectifies, or conceptualizes “it.” Much of Dongshan’s attention is thus focused on how to convey the subtlety of this experience and how to inspire the students to realize suchness through their own experience in practicing non-attachment and overcoming the limitation of the conventional way of thinking and using language.
Although Dongshan shares with many other Chan masters the traditional teaching that suchness cannot be constructed by words, he makes it very clear that suchness is not the absence of words (fei wuyan). His strategy is distinctively summarized as “never tell too plainly (bushuopo)”—the strategy of indirect communication aiming only at edifying and provoking by using few words but extraordinary wit and mental dexterity. Distinguished from Linji’s shouting or Deshan’s hitting, Dongshan’s style is gentler and subtler, less disruptive but no less challenging, making skillful use of hinting and poetic words (“use drumming [on the side] and singing together”) to accommodate different people and situations.
The Caodoing tradition also attributes the doctrine of five ranks (wuwei) to Dongshan, based on “The Jewel Mirror Samadhi” and other documents. It is a doctrine about five kinds of interrelationship between the right/true (zheng) and the partial (pian), between universal and particular, or ultimate and apparent reality, and so forth, in the experience of the world, which could be seen as a Chan variation on Huayan Buddhism’s four relationships between principle (li) and phenomena/events (shi). This doctrine attracted many commentaries and exegetical works from later generations of Chan. Modern scholars have argued that it is just an expedient means or pedagogical schemata and should not hold central importance in his teachings. Furthermore, Dongshan’s teachings on suchness, its subtlety, and his unique approach can be well presented without resort to this doctrine of five ranks.
A Chan master of the Yunmen school of the Northern Song dynasty and the disciple of Yunmen Wenyan, Shouchu was a native of Fengxiang (in present-day Shaanxi province). His family name was Fu. At the age of 16, he entered his monastic life at Mount Kongtong in Weizhou (in present-day Gansu province); he later received official ordination at Sheli Temple in Jingzhou. He was not interested in the study of the precepts there and traveled from the North to the South. At Yunmen Temple in Shaozhou (in present-day Guangdong province), he studied with Yunmen Wenyan and attained awakening. In 948, Shouchu was invited to be abbot at Dongshan Temple in Xiangzhou (in present-day Hubei province), where he taught for more than 40 years. In 981, Emperor Taizong (r. 976–997) granted him a purple robe and the title “Great Master of Source Wisdom” (Zonghui Dashi). His teaching was preserved in the Xiangzhou Dongshan Dierdai Chu Chanshi Yulu, which could be found in the collection of the Guzunsu Yulu. Following his teacher Wenyan, Shouchu taught his students to experience and realize the dao through all everyday things and activities (suiwu tongzhen), and used obscure, extravagant, or even vulgar language to shock students away from conceptual reasoning while hinting at the point of his teaching. His answer, “Three pounds of hemp (ma sanjin),” to the question “What is Buddha,” became a famous gong’an and appeared in Chan gong’an anthologies. Shouchu was also the first to elucidate on the difference between huoju (“living words”) and siju (“dead words”),” which summarized the Yunmen teaching on the use of language and influenced the subsequent development of Song Chan Buddhism.
This is an abbreviation of the full Chinese title Ruizhou Dongshan Liangjie Chanshi Yulu for the earliest extant edition of The Recorded Sayings of Dongshan Liangjie. This Dongshan Yulu belongs to the genre of “recorded sayings” (yulu) in Chan literature, which differs from the “transmission of the lamp” genre in ways more suitable to educated elites and more attentive to individual masters’ style, among other things. The Dongshan Yulu was compiled by Yufeng Yuanxin (1571–1647) and Guo Ningzhi (d.u.) (though some believe it was actually compiled by Guo Ningzhi alone) in 1632, about 800 years after Dongshan’s death, as part of a collection of the recorded sayings of five houses (Wujia Yulu). Although many recorded stories of encounter dialogues between Dongshan and his teachers and students in this text have appeared in various forms in the Zutang Ji and Jingde Chuandeng Lu, the earliest “transmission of the lamp” anthologies, this edition includes some materials, specifically many verses (or gāthās), that could not be found within those early anthologies. These verses include “The Jewel Mirror Samadhi,” the longest poetic writing attributed to Dongshan and the most famous, due to its reference to the doctrine of five ranks, which is regarded by the Caodong school and other Chan schools as representative of Dongshan’s unique teaching and his house style (jiafeng).
Contemporary scholars tend to agree that no transmitted records of oral teachings could possibly be free from the compilers’ perspectives. Nevertheless, those stories and dialogues that have already appeared in the Zutang Ji, Jingde Chuandeng Lu, or Song Gaoseng Zhuan are relatively more reliable, whereas the materials of later additions should be used with more caution. “The Jewel Mirror Samadhi” and other documents on the doctrine of five ranks are never mentioned by any earlier sources before Juefan Huihong’s Chanlin Sengbao Zhuan (Biographies of the Monk Treasure of Chan Grove, compiled in 1119). Dongshan’s authorship of “The Jewel Mirror Samadhi” is also doubted by Juefan Huihong himself. These concerns raise inevitable questions about the historicity of the documents. However, the added materials, along with the whole edition, have long been used as Dongshan’s authentic work by the Chan tradition. Whether they are historically true or not, a different treatment of this text and other similar ones is to see them as narratives transmitted and shaped by the tradition exemplary of Chan lore.
A world-renowned place for Buddhist cave temples, the “Caves of the Thousand Buddhas,” enshrining numerous murals and statues in the desert area of northwestern China. The biggest and most famous one is the Mogao Cave, a group of 492 caves, located southeast of present-day Dunhuang County, Gansu Province. The excavation of the extant caves began as early as the 5th century and continued throughout the Wei Jin, Sui, Tang, Song, and Yuan dynasties. Dunhuang was at the terminal point of the Silk Road and became prosperous as a center for economic and cultural exchanges on the northwestern frontier of China. During the time when Buddhism flourished, many Buddhists contributed their wealth to the excavation of these caves. These surviving caves provide invaluable sources for the study of ancient arts, literature, religions, and so forth. In 1900, a cave (now registered as number 17) storing tons of written manuscripts, mostly Buddhist texts, was discovered by a Daoist monk, Wang Yuanlu. Western scholars later took many of these texts to the British Museum and the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, leaving behind only a small portion for the National Library in Peking. Among the numerous manuscripts discovered in Dunhuang are a large number of early Chan Buddhist texts, including the Chuan Fabao Ji, Lengjia Shizi Ji, Lidai Fabao Ji, and the extant earliest copy of the Platform Sūtra. These newly discovered Chan texts have shed light on many parts of the early history of Chan, which has been obscured for a long time.
A text of recorded sayings attributed to Dazhu Huihai, a senior disciple of Mazu Daoyi, the complete title of this work is Dunwu Rudao Yaomen Lun (“Essential Teachings of Sudden Enlightenment and Entering into the Dao”). Dazhu’s biography tells that when Mazu read the Dunwu Yaomen, he praised Dazhu as “a great pearl (dazhu).” Contemporary scholars have regarded the Dunwu Yaomen (especially the first part of the extant version) as a transitional text between early and classical Chan in terms of its themes and its literary and rhetorical style. The influence of early Chan expressions such as no-thought, terms frequently used by Shenhui and other early texts, is clearly adopted, but some content does resonate with the teachings of Mazu and his followers of the Hongzhou school. Thus, with some reservations, the Dunwu Yaomen is still considered an important text for the study of the Hongzhou school. A different view on the Dunwu Yaomen is that, considering the early marks of its themes and rhetoric, and based on the study of related historical materials, the extant version might be confused with Dazhu’s early teacher Daozhi’s text Dayun Yaofa, which could possibly have been edited by Dazhu. The original version of the Dunwu Yaomen could be those sermons and dialogues preserved in fascicle 28—Yuezhou Dazhu Huihai Heshang Yu—of the Jingde Chuandeng Lu, the contents of which are more in accord with Mazu’s sermons and other reliable Hongzhou texts. For example, Dazhu’s teachings on the non-attachment to the concept of karma, on the notion of no-cultivation (wuxiu), and on the non-duality of speech and silence are excellent and influential elaborations on Hongzhou and classical Chan thought.