Also called Chengyin. A Chan master of the Linji school and one of the most eminent monks in the Ming dynasty, Deqing was a native of Quanjiao (in present-day Anhui). His family name was Cai. At the age of 12, he devoted himself to learning Buddhist scriptures and Confucian classics with the master Xilin Yongning (1453–1535) at Bao’en Temple. At the age of 19, he turned to the study of Chan with the master Yungu Fahui (d.u.) at Mount Xixia, and he was officially ordained. He also listened to the lecture on the Huayan texts by Wuji Mingxin (1512–1574). At the age of 26, he started his pilgrimage. In 1573, he visited Mount Wutai. Impressed by the serenity of Mount Han in northern Wutai, he gave himself the name Hanshan. In 1581, he organized an “unrestricted dharma congregation (wuzhe dahui)” on Mount Wutai, which was also used to pray for the genealogical prosperity of the royal family. In 1583, he moved to Mount Lao (in present-day Shandong). The empress dowager provided patronage, building Haiyin Temple for him. Due to losing favor with Emperor Shenzong (r. 1572–1620), Deqing was put in jail and later exiled to Laizhou (in present Guagndong) for about 20 years. Even during his exile, he involved himself in restoring Huineng’s legacy, the Baolin Temple in Caoxi. In 1616, he went to Wuru Peak on Mount Lu, then returned to Caoxi in 1622. He died at the age of 78 and was mummified at Caoxi.
Because of his prolific writing, his disciples collected all his works into a 55-fascicle Hanshan Laoren Mengyou Quanji (Complete Works of the Dream Journey of Old Man Hanshan). In his teaching, he used the Chan notion of one mind to unify all three Chinese learnings of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism; to unify all Buddhist schools and doctrines; and to reconcile Chan and Pure Land. He borrowed the Tiantai notion of the three contemplations of the empty, the provisional, and the middle in one mind to interpret the nianfo Chan (Chan of reciting the Buddha’s name). In contrast to Zhuhong’s stress on the Pure Land practice, Deqing reemphasized the realization of the pure mind through the nianfo as opposed to focusing on one’s future life. His syncretism of the three Chinese traditions displayed a uniquely pragmatic perspective of integrating the practices of different traditions to meet different human existential needs. This perspective was best expressed in Deqing’s famous dictum that one must be equipped with all three teachings, since one cannot involve oneself in the world without understanding Confucius’s Spring and Autumn Annals, cannot be forgetful of the world without familiarizing oneself with Laozi and Zhuangzi, and cannot transcend the world without studying Chan.
Temple of “Cold Mountain.” Located at the town of Fengqiao outside the Chang Gate of the city of Suzhou in Jiangsu Province in China, it was also called Fengqiao Temple. Built during the Tianjian Era (502–519) of the Liang dynasty, its original name was Miaoli Puming Tayuan. It was said that during the Zhen’guan era (627–649) of the Tang dynasty, the two famous iconoclast poet-monks, Hanshan and Shide, came from Guoqing Temple of Mount Tiantai to live there, causing it to be renamed Hanshan Temple. The Tang poet Zhangji’s (ca. 715–779) poem Night Harboring in Fengqiao (Fengqiao Yepo), depicting the scenery and the sound of the bell at Hanshan Temple, was one of the most popular Tang poems for generations. In 976, a local official, Sun Chengyou (936–985), built a seven-floored pagoda there. During the Jiayou era (1056–1063) of the Song dynasty, the temple was renamed Puming Chan Monastery. During the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties, the temple was destroyed and rebuilt several times. Many calligraphical works and stone inscriptions survived to modern times.
A Chan master of the Linji school in the Ming dynasty and a disciple of Miyun Yuanwu, Fazang was born into the Su family in Wuxi. At the age of nine, he decided to join the Buddhist order after reading Yunqi Zhuhong’s essay on releasing animals. At age 15, he became a novice at Deqing Monastery, and at 29, he received precepts from Zhuhong. When he was 37, he received full ordination. He achieved enlightenment by himself through studying the recorded sayings of Gaofeng Yuanmiao, and he claimed that it was verified by his reading of Juefan Huihong. When he met with Miyun Yuanwu, he was already an influential master. Having agreed to recognize Fazang as his dharma heir, Yuanwu let him be his assistant. Later, Fazang took abbacy at Sanfeng Qingliang Temple in Suzhou. Fazang’s teaching was quite heavily influenced by Dahui Zonggao’s kanhua Chan. In 1625, Fazang wrote the Wuzong Yuan (Origins of the Five Chan Schools), in which he argued that all five Chan schools had their distinctive principles, and criticized his teacher Miyun Yuanwu for reducing principles into just beating and shouting. This caused a public debate between the two masters and their disciples. After Fazang’s death, his lineage continued to grow. However, in the early 18th century, the Qing emperor Yongzheng sided with Miyun Yuanwu and his disciples and condemned Fazang’s lineage.
This name refers to the lineage of Heze Shenhui and his disciples in the Tang dynasty. Shenhui studied with both Shenxiu and Huineng, but later started a campaign against Shenxiu and the so-called Northern school. This campaign helped legitimize Huineng as the sixth patriarch and the founder of the Southern school, and Shenhui as the dharma heir of Huineng and the Southern school. Shenhui had many students; among them, more than 20 were his direct disciples. His lineage continued for five generations. The patriarchs for the lineage after Shenhui were Cizhou Zhiru (723–811), Yizhou Nanyin (705–782), Suizhou Daoyuan (d.u.), and Guifeng Zongmi. None of these disciples was renowned except for Zongmi. It was Zongmi who called the lineage of Shenhui the Heze school and distinguished it from the Northern school, the Ox-Head school, and the Hongzhou school. Zongmi saw his Heze school as more synthetic and perfect than the other schools, although he did acknowledge the relative value of the other schools’ approaches. He justified and developed Shenhui’s view of sudden enlightenment followed by gradual cultivation. He also summarized the “one word of intuitive cognition (zhizhi yizi)” as the key to the teaching of the Heze school. This aspect of Shenhui’s teaching, in fact, invited criticism from the other schools. Although Shenhui’s subitist rhetoric had a huge impact on the later generations of the Southern school, the Heze school did not become mainstream and in fact died out with Zongmi.
A Chinese Chan monk of the Tang dynasty, and the initiator of the Northern–Southern school controversy, Shenhui was regarded as the dharma heir of the sixth patriarch Huineng and the founder of the Heze school by his followers. He had a great impact on the rhetoric of classical Chan Buddhism. According to some historical sources, Shenhui was attracted to Buddhism from his very youth. He studied, respectively, with Shenxiu and Huineng in different periods of his early years and went to Chang’an to take full ordination at the age of 20. When Huineng died in 713 at Chaoxi, Shenhui was about 30 years old and had been there for some years. The Platform Sūtra places Shenhui among Huineng’s top 10 disciples. In 720, Shenhui started to teach at Longxing Temple in Nanyang (in modern Hubei province).
Around 732, about two decades after Huineng’s death, Shenhui went to the north to wage his campaign against the Northern school by publicly attacking the teachings and legitimacy of Shenxiu and his disciples. In his sermons, and in the many debates he participated in, especially the famous debate at Huatai with the master Chongyuan (d.u.), an influential figure of the Northern school, Shenhui subverted the Northern school’s establishment of Shenxiu as the sixth patriarch of Chan and declared the supremacy of the Southern school and the legitimacy of Huineng as the true sixth patriarch. Shenhui provided one of the justifications for this assertion in a dramatic and unprecedented fashion by inventing the story of the transmission of Bodhidharma’s robe from Hongren to Huineng. He also revised the early Chan theory of transmission by strictly limiting it to a one-to-one patriarchal succession from Bodhidharma to Huineng and making up a list of Indian patriarchs. In 745, Shenhui was invited to take residence at Heze Temple in Luoyang, but due to the influence of his opponents, he was banished from the capital in 753. Because he had helped in the Tang government’s fund-raising by selling certificates of ordination, to aid the military crackdown on the An Lushan rebellion, Emperor Suzong (r. 756–762) awarded him imperial patronage and a special Chan building in his temple. After his death, he was further granted the title of National Teacher and made the seventh patriarch of Chan.
However, his Heze school did not last long enough to become the main line of classical Chan Buddhism. While it is true that Shenhui’s legacy—his emphasis on sudden enlightenment, his use of apophatic rhetoric, his criticism of dualistic formulations of the Northern school and its static tendency, his invention of a new theory of Chan genealogy, and his claim for the orthodoxy of Huineng—was well carried on by the later generations of Chan Buddhism, his attempt to “establish awareness and cognition (li zhijian)” in his teaching still left room for privileging intuitive knowledge over ordinary activities, the ti (essence or the whole) over the yong (function), and therefore invited criticism from the other Chan sects and individuals. As a central controversial figure during his time, Shenhui was soon marginalized by the development of classical Chan. The later generations of Chan were not interested in following his sectarianism of separating the Northern and Southern schools, and a form of Chan ecumenism and inclusivism that tolerated multilineal transmission emerged with the members of the Hongzhou school.
Shenhui’s main works were recovered from the Dunhuang documents in the 20th century, including the Nanyang Heshang Wenda Zazhengyi (The Nanyang Monk’s Question-Answer Examination of Various Points of Doctrine), the Nanyang Heshang Dunjiao Jietuo Chanmen Zhiliaoxing Tanyu (The Platform Sermon of Nanyang Monk on the Chan Gate of Sudden Teaching and Liberation and Directly Realizing the Nature), and the Putidamo Nanzong Dingshifei Lun (Treatise on Establishing the True and False According to the Southern school of Bodhidharma). Chinese and Japanese scholars have completed extensive editorial work on these documents of Shenhui discovered from Dunhuang, the most recent being Shenhui Heshang Chanhua Lu by Yang Zengwen.
A disciple of Daoxin and the fifth patriarch of Chan Buddhism, Hongren was born in Huangmei (in present-day Hubei). His family name was Zhou. At the age of 7, he started his monastic life, and at the age of 12, he became Daoxin’s student. In 651, he took over leadership of the Huangmei community following Daoxin’s death. No details of his life are available for the time between his assumption of this leadership and his death in 674. His biographies from the sources of the early 8th century focused on his unusual personality: silent, tolerant, hard working in menial labor and sitting meditation, and never reading scriptures by himself. Once selected as the successor to Daoxin, Hongren immediately demonstrated his profound understanding of doctrine and his skillful and spontaneous style of teaching—a prototype for the more popular story about Huineng later in the Platform Sūtra.
It seems clear that Hongren’s personal brilliance is a determining force behind the first Chan community at Huangmei—the East Mountain tradition (Dongshan Famen)—that he and his teacher Daoxin established. The number of direct disciples increased from Daoxin’s half-dozen to about 25, including the “ten great disciples.” Among these, Shenxiu, Faru, Hui’an, and Xuanze (d.u.) are the most prominent, according to the early sources. Faru’s epitaph indicates that he may be the first in Chan history to formulate a Chan lineage from Bodhidharma to Hongren and himself. Hui’an was among the most influential in the capitals and at the imperial court. Xuanze was famous for authoring the Lengqie Renfa Zhi (Records of Men and Methods [in the Transmission] of the Laṅkā[vatāra]). By the second half of the 7th century, this community had gained national recognition as a center of meditation training.
Like his teacher Daoxin, Hongren taught his approach of meditation without writing any words. It was his students who recorded his teaching and created the basis for a text called Xiuxin Yaolun (Treatise on the Essentials of Cultivating the Mind), which is attributed to him. The text was discovered among the Dunhuang documents in the 20th century. An important idea of this text is “maintaining [the awareness of] the mind” (shouxin). It means to be constantly aware of the true mind or Buddha-nature. By maintaining the awareness of the mind without false thoughts or illusions, this true mind will, like the sun, shine forth naturally. To achieve shouxin requires vigorous effort in meditation, involving the visualization of the golden orb of the sun (the image of Buddha-nature or enlightenment) and calmly observing the clouds, or dusts of ignorance, that cover the sun until they cease to function.
This is the Chinese title of The Records of Hongzhi, the extant Song edition of the recorded sayings (yulu) of Chan master Hongzhi Zhengjue, which was taken to Japan by Dōgen Kigen and became the source for several later Japanese editions, including the widely used Taishō version known as The Extensive Records of Chan Master Hongzhi (Hongzhi Chanshi Guanglu). In China, only a Ming dynasty edition of Hongzhi’s yulu survived. The Hongzhi Lu is one of the largest extant yulu collections of individual Chan masters, with a wide range of texts, from shangtang (ascending the hall) sermons and informal sermons (xiaocan) to commentaries on 100 gong’an cases, written instructions (fayu), poems (jisong), and portrait inscriptions from various periods of Hongzhi’s career at different monasteries. These texts were gathered in a loose collection of six volumes, with no division of fascicles. The collection also involves a complete biography of Hongzhi (xingyie ji) by his contemporary, Wang Boxiang (1106–1173). Most interestingly, this edition includes several original prefaces, postfaces, and publication notes, which are quite rare in the other extant Song yulu compilations. These materials help to reveal when and how the different parts of the yulu were first published, and how they were later put together. It is therefore quite clear that much of the material in this edition was first published during Hongzhi’s own lifetime.
One of the most influential Chan masters of the Caodong school in the Song dynasty. Born into a Buddhist family, Hongzhi became a novice at the age of 11 and was officially ordained three years later. He started to visit different Chan masters from the age of 18. With the Caodong master Danxia Zichun, he reached enlightenment when he was 23. In the following decade, he served in various administrative offices, assisting the abbacies of different Caodong masters at a number of monasteries while his fame grew. In 1124, he was appointed the abbot of Puzhao Temple in Sizhou (in modern northern Jiangsu) with the recommendation of the official Xiang Zizhen (1085–1152).
During the next few years he moved around, taking abbacies at different monasteries, including the abbacy at Mount Changlu (in Jiangsu) with the recommendation of the Linji Chan master Yuanwu Keqin and the official Zhao Lingjin (d.u.). In 1129, Hongzhi arrived in the Zhejiang area, trying to evade the Jin army. When he passed by the Tiantong Temple, the congregation and local officials there persuaded him to take up the abbacy. He stayed there for almost 30 years until his death, with only a short break of being abbot at Lingying Temple in present-day Hangzhou for several months. During his final days in 1157, he asked the Linji master Dahui Zonggao to take care of his after-death affairs. The Southern Song emperor Gaozong (r. 1127–1162) granted him the posthumous title “Chan Master of Vast Wisdom” (Hongzhi Chanshi). It has been reported that he had about 280 official disciples, and that more than 20 of them were famous.
Hongzhi’s name is most closely related to the approach of “silent illumination Chan (mozhao chan),” which, as opposed to the kanhua chan, has become one of the two dominant trainings of Song Chan. His poetic writing, Mozhao Ming (“Guidepost of Silent Illumination”), is, among others, the most illustrious text for his silent illumination Chan. This approach simplifies Chan practice by placing the strongest emphasis on quiet sitting meditation and teaches that one’s inherent Buddha-nature will manifest itself naturally in this state of stillness. The silent illumination thought synthesizes several Mahayana traditions with the Chinese notion of Buddha-nature functioning through all things and the Caodong doctrine of the interacting (huihu) of the ultimate and phenomenal. It integrates these traditional teachings into its suggestive, figurative, and poetic vocabulary, including the skillful use of nature imagery.
The method and style of this silent illumination approach was highly effective in attracting literati and elites of Southern Song society. Probably due to this success, the silent illumination Chan received severe criticism from the Linji master Dahui Zonggao, with whom Hongzhi maintained a personal friendship. Hongzhi’s sermons, informal talks, dialogues, and poems are preserved extensively in the collection of his recorded sayings, the extant Song edition of which is called Hongzhi Lu. Although his approach recommends quiet sitting in stillness, throughout his life he frequently used gong’an and even compiled the collections of gong’an with his own comments.
This was a very influential sect of Chinese Chan Buddhism, which started with Mazu Daoyi and was named after the place where Mazu taught before his death, in what is now Jiangxi province in southern China. Throughout his teaching career spanning over four decades, Mazu attracted and trained a great number of followers and led a large Chan community. Many of Mazu’s disciples who themselves were famous Chan masters are associated with this sect, including Xitang Zhizang, Baizhang Huaihai, Dazhu Huihai, Ehu Dayi, Nanquan Puyuan, and Xingshan Weikuan. Some of them have their own famous disciples, such as Huangbo Xiyun and Guishan Lingyou, both disciples of Baizhang Huaihai, and Zhaozhou Congshen, the disciple of Nanquan Puyuan. These talented disciples spread the Hongzhou teaching beyond Jiangxi and the south, to the central and northern parts of China, including the two capitals, Chang’an and Luoyang. Following in their teacher’s footsteps, they sustained a good relationship with literati and government officials. This helped the Hongzhou school’s rise to national prominence, particularly as other schools of early Chan were in decline at the time.
Modern scholarship on the Hongzhou school, based on the Song narratives of classical Chan, has been dominated by two interrelated perspectives. First, it has seen Mazu and his Hongzhou school as a revolutionary, or iconoclastic, movement that breaks away from Buddhist traditions and subverts established norms and practices. Second, it has regarded Mazu and his disciples as starting a new and independent religion and initiating a new form of practice widely known as encounter dialogues. These two perspectives have been seriously challenged by contemporary scholarship on the Hongzhou school. The radical iconoclastic image of the Hongzhou masters, portrayed by the stories of Chan encounter dialogues, was basically a Song editorial revision and addition to the raw materials of the “recorded saying (yulu)” texts originally circulated, many of which could not be seen by later generations. By critically analyzing and separating those more reliable parts of the Hongzhou texts, such as Mazu’s sermons, Dazhu Huihai’s Dunwu Yaomen, the Baizhang Guanglu, and the Guishan Jingce, from those later produced and less reliable materials, especially those encounter dialogues attributed to these masters, contemporary scholars demonstrate that Mazu and his major disciples are not radical enough to be called iconoclasts.
Rather than spontaneously reacting and using unconventional rhetoric and pedagogical means, which characterize most mature encounter dialogues that first emerged from the mid-9th to the mid-10th centuries, in these early texts the Hongzhou masters straightforwardly instructed students, used relatively conservative rhetoric preexisting in early Chan, and frequently quoted and alluded to scriptural passages. They advised students to comply with monastic precepts, follow mentors, accumulate good karma, and practice other cultivations, including meditation. In a word, their teachings and practices operated within the broader tradition of Chinese Buddhism. Furthermore, the traditionally claimed Hongzhou school’s independent spirit, in contrast to the heavy reliance on imperial and aristocratic patronage characteristic of early Chan and elite Chinese Buddhism, is no longer convincing. From its very beginning, the Hongzhou school was a recipient of strong support from local government officials, and soon afterward it received state approval and imperial patronage. Similarly, the legendary Baizhang “Rules of Purity” (Baizhang Qinggui), adopted by the later Chan tradition, in fact followed the Vinaya rules and those of early Chinese Buddhism, especially the school of precepts (Lüzong).
However, the Hongzhou school’s working within tradition does not mean that there was a lack of innovation or creative reformulation of Buddhist teaching, in terms of practical needs in this school. Mazu’s notions “this mind is Buddha” and “the ordinary mind is the way” had a wide appeal to Chan Buddhists and Chinese people, which contributed to the popularity of this school. Through these notions, the school emphasized that enlightenment cannot be sought outside the human mind and its everyday activities. The everyday activities or functions of the human mind, including its ignorance and delusion, are necessary conditions and presuppositions for enlightenment. This was a strictly relational perspective on enlightenment, which could be justified by the teachings of Mahayana scriptures, but was formulated in fresh idiomatic terms. The masters did employ more colloquial language and many simplified kataphatic expressions in their sermons and teachings that were synthetic to Mahayana Buddhist doctrines and scriptures. The Hongzhou school as such was neither merely a foreseeable continuation of the received tradition nor a dramatic shifting of paradigm prompted by an iconoclastic atmosphere, owing to the masters’ great capacity to carry out the middle way as opposed to pursuing the extremes of either conformism or iconoclasm.
The middle-way approach of the Hongzhou school is also demonstrated in its attempt to balance between configuring the new orthodoxy of Chan and the divisive sectarianism influenced by Shenhui’s campaign against the Northern school. This balanced attitude can be seen in Ehu Dayi and Xingshan Weikuan’s epitaphs, produced in the early 9th century, and the Biographies from the Treasure Groves [Temple] (Baolin Zhuan), compiled in 801. The Baolin Zhuan adopted a pluralistic position, describing the Chan lineage after the sixth patriarch as having evolved from the unilinear transmission to the multilinear transmission. Although the text ended with Mazu as the leading master of his generation, it simultaneously included figures outside the Hongzhou lineage and those of the preceding generation, such as Shenhui, Nanyang Huizhong, and Shitou Xiqian. The ecumenical and inclusive attitude is even clearer in Dayi and Weikuan’s epitaphs. Although they acknowledged Huineng as the major heir of Hongreng, they also recognized the lineages of Shenxiu and Niutou Farong as authentic branches of Chan Buddhism, in addition to the Heze and the Hongzhou lineages, without asserting the superiority of Hongzhou. They criticized the followers of Shenhui for their divisive sectarianism and their attachment to the distinction of the Southern and Northern schools. The various Chan lineages were seen as belonging to the same extended family, and each distinctive group as being part of the larger Chan movement, reflecting the changing atmosphere of Chan ecumenism as the Hongzhou school became widely accepted as the carrier of Chan orthodoxy.
A very famous and influential master of classical Chan Buddhism, he started his monastic life at a very young age on Mount Huangbo in Fujian province. After traveling to several places to study Chan, he became Baizhang Huihai’s disciple and was able to carry on the lineage of Mazu Daoyi and Hongzhou school, as some biographical writings on Huangbo have traditionally claimed. He then became a Chan teacher in a temple on Mount Lingjiu in Jiangxi province, which was also named Huangbo after the one in Fujian where he took his first vows. His fame rose rapidly, and he attracted a huge number of followers. Soon after his death in 855 (according to Fozu Tongji, but there is no consensus among scholars), his lay disciple Pei Xiu edited and published his recorded sayings, namely, the Chuanxin Fayao and Wanling Lu, which became indispensable sources for the study of classical Chan and was translated into Western languages in the late 1950s. Huangbo’s most well-known disciple is Linji Yixuan, the founder of the Linji school. Huangbo’s unique teaching and language style holds a special position in the transition from Mazu and Baizhang’s Hongzhou school to a more stylistic Linji school.
A Chan master of the Song dynasty and the founder of the Huanglong branch (Huanglong pai) of the Linji school, Huinan was a native of Xinzhou (in present-day Jiangxi). His family name was Zhang. He became a monk at the age of 11 and was ordained at age 19. As a student, he followed a master of the Yunmen school named Huaicheng (d.u.), but later decided to change to Shishuang Chuyuan of the Linji school. With the help of Chuyuan, he reached enlightenment at the age of 35. He taught at a number of temples in Jiangxi and eventually settled down on Mount Huanglong. He instructed many students, including 76 dharma heirs who carried his teaching to many places and made his lineage a dominating branch in the Song Linji school, although this lineage only continued for about 150 years. Huinan died at the age of 68. His posthumous title was Pujue Chanshi.
The style of the Huanglong branch is illustrated by the “three gates of Huanglong (Huanglong sanguan).” This strategy uses three kinds of “turning speech” (zhuanyu) or “living sentence” (huoju) to test student understanding of the relationships between life and death, between ordinary persons and Buddhas, and between sentient beings and non-sentient beings. It was influenced by the strategies of Baizhang Huaihai and Yunmen Wenyan, but further developed diverse use of language to overcome the “dead” limits of language in Chan soteriological practice. The lineage of Huanglong was also the first of the Chinese Chan lineages to be transmitted to Japan by the Japanese monk Myōan Eisai.
Also called Lao’an or Dao’an. A Chan master of the Sui and Tang dynasties, Hui’an was a native of Zhijiang, Jingzhou (in present-day Hubei). His family name was Wei. It was said that in 597 he went into the forests to escape the Sui government’s campaign against those without official ordinations. During this time, as people were suffering from canal construction, he traveled around to beg food for the sick and poor. To avoid being summoned to court, he hid himself on Mount Taihe. In 616, he went to Mount Heng and practiced asceticism (toutuo) there. Between 627 and 649, he went to Huangmei to study with Hongreng. According to some sources, Hongreng ranked him and Shenxiu highest among his 10 great disciples. In 664, he took up residence at Mount Zhongnan, and he moved to Huatai in 683. After an unknown period of wandering, he moved to Shaolin Temple. Different sources give different dates for his first gaining access to the imperial court. Later, he received gifts from Emperor Zhongzong (r. 684, 705–710) and was invited to court again. He died at Shaolin Temple and left several successful disciples, who were acknowledged by the later orthodox Chan lamp histories along with their teacher. An epitaph for one of his disciples even elevated him as the sixth patriarch after Hongren. His teachings were not recorded, but some later Chan masters of the Southern school were reported to have studied with him, for example, Nanyue Huairang.
The worst persecution of Buddhism in ancient Chinese history happened during the Huichang period (841–846) of the Tang dynasty. After a number of years of anti-Buddhist policies, Emperor Wuzong (r. 840–846) issued an imperial edict in 845 to abolish the practice of Buddhism and its institutions. This resulted in the destruction of numerous Buddhist temples, the confiscation of the money and estates of the monasteries, and the forced return of the monks and nuns to lay life. The unprecedented persecution was ended in 846, when Wuzong died and was succeeded by a more pro-Buddhist emperor, Xuanzong (r. 846–859). The Huichang persecution was almost a fatal blow to those schools of Chinese Buddhism with more intellectual and exegetical orientations, such as Tiantai, Huayan, and Faxiang. However, the Chan lineages of Mazu Daoyi and Shitou Xiqian in the south and in some less controlled areas of the north survived, grew quickly, and developed into “five houses” in the late Tang and Five Dynasties, occupying vacancies left by other Buddhist schools.
A Chan master in the Northern Wei dynasty (439–534) and the Northern Qi dynasty (552–577), he was considered the dharma heir to Bodhidharma and the second patriarch of Chinese Chan Buddhism. Several stories about Huike and his teacher Bodhidharma were very popular throughout Chan history, but they have no historical basis. He was a native of Hulao (in present-day Henan). His family name was Ji. During his youth, he extensively studied the Chinese classics and Buddhist scriptures. He attained a certain level of enlightenment by himself but was criticized for having no teacher. At the age of 40, Huike met Bodhidharma in the area of Mount Song and Luoyang and studied with him for six years, coming to a deep understanding of the teaching of “one vehicle (yisheng).” In 534–537, he moved to the capital, Ye, where his practice encountered hostility from those who concentrated on scriptural exegesis. He later left the area of Ye and became a mendicant. A loosely associated group of followers and practitioners surrounded him from time to time at various locations in north China, as mentioned in the early sources, and characterized this stage of the “proto-Chan” movement. Among these followers, Sengcan was later regarded as Huike’s dharma heir.
Very little information has been passed down about what he taught. It seems he emphasized meditation and affirmed those teachings about Buddha-nature, emptiness, non-attachment to words, and the non-duality between sentient beings and Buddha. These teachings are consistent with what Bodhidharma taught, as recorded in the Erru Sixing Lun. However, the Xu Gaoseng Zhuan claimed that Bodhidharma transmitted the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra to Huike, and Huike did the same to his students. Scholars have pointed out that there is no direct evidence from any other early source to support such a use of, or any emphasis on, the scripture by Bodhidharma and Huike, despite the fact that later sources accept it as truth.
A Chan master of the Tang dynasty, Huineng was regarded as the sixth patriarch of Chan Buddhism and the founder of the Southern school by Chan tradition. In 816, Emperor Xianzong (r. 805–820) granted him the posthumous title “Chan Master of Great Mirror” (Dajian Chanshi). Many of his disciples, including Heze Shenhui, Nanyang Huizong, Qingyuan Xingsi, and Nanyue Huairang, were crucial figures in the development of Chan Buddhism. However, historically Huineng is a very obscure figure. Little can be found about his life in the writings of his contemporaries or any historical documents. He was included in the list of Hongren’s 10 great disciples by the texts of the Dongshan Famen. During that time, he was still a marginal figure on the national stage and at most had only some local influence, since he taught at Caoxi of Shaozhou (in modern Guangdong province) in the remote south. What we now know about the details of Huineng’s life comes almost entirely from the famous Platform Sūtra.
According to the legends presented by the Sūtra, Huineng grew up in poverty, living with his widowed mother, surviving by collecting firewood and selling it at the market. Despite his illiteracy and lack of any social privileges, Huineng was endowed with very great ability to understand Buddhist teachings. When he joined Hongren’s monastery at Mount Huangmei, he was assigned to menial work as a layperson there. Despite his juniority, Huineng won a verse competition over the senior monk Shenxiu by deconstructing the latter’s verse about enlightenment. Impressed by Huineng’s radical non-dualistic understanding of enlightenment, the fifth patriarch, Hongren, chose him to be the heir; handed down the robe and bowl of Bodhidharma, the founding patriarch of Chan; and secretly sent him south, away from the potential harm of rivals, to preserve and spread the true dharma. Huineng then taught at Baolin Temple in Caoxi to the end of his days.
These legends, supplemented by other hagiographical writings about Huineng outside the Platform Sūtra, vividly conveyed the Buddhist message about virtue and insight in general and established an ideal image of the enlightened Chan master in particular. Although the narrative is charmingly instructive and pedagogically effective and helps define the movements of Chan, many details are thoughtful fabrications without historical basis. Contemporary scholars have revealed that it was Shenhui who broke public silence about Huineng in the two decades after Huineng’s death; who named Huineng as the true sixth patriarch of Chan, the founder of the Southern school, not Shenxiu and the Northern school; and who made up stories about Huineng, such as the receipt of Bodhidharma’s robe and bowl from Hongren. The Platform Sūtra adopted the outline of Huineng’s biography from Shenhui’s texts with additional information, including Huineng’s winning over Shenxiu in that verse contest about the understanding of enlightenment and other stories of a dramatic nature. The authenticity of these stories about Huineng cannot be verified by any historical documents. The only early text close to a historical document is an epitaph for Huineng, written by the famous Tang poet Wang Wei (701–761), commissioned by Shenhui, and even this text shows important differences from Shenhui’s account of Huineng and those in the Platform Sūtra.
Scholars have also cast doubt on the accuracy of Huineng’s teaching, preserved only through Shenhui’s speech and the Platform Sūtra, since it is quite difficult to distinguish between Huineng’s original teaching and its representation by Shenhui and his followers, who greatly influenced the formation of the Sūtra. The acknowledgment of these problems is not to deny the existence of Huineng and his teachings, but simply to admit that we have no way to know exactly what Huineng taught through the currently available documents. Despite these problems, the representation of Huineng’s teachings in the Platform Sūtra, such as the teaching of sudden enlightenment, the notion of no-thought (wunian), and the non-duality of concentration and wisdom (dinghui bu’er), has had universal significance for Chan practitioners throughout the ages.
“Living words” or “living sentences,” in contrast to “dead words” or “dead sentences” (siju).
A Chan master of the Yangqi branch of the Linji school in the Song dynasty, Shaolong was a native of Hezhou (in present-day Anhui). His family name is unknown. At the age of nine, he entered his monastic life, and he was ordained six years later. At the age of 21, he started his pilgrimage. He studied, respectively, with the Chan masters Changlu Congxin (d.u.), Zhantang Wenzhun (1061–1115), and Sixin Wuxin (1043–1115). Finally, he became the disciple of his desired teacher, Yuanwu Keqin, for about 20 years. After leaving Keqin, he preached at Kaisheng Temple in Hezhou, Zhangjiao Temple in Xuanzhou, and Yunyan Temple in Huqiu. His teachings at these three temples were recorded and collected by his students into the Huqiu Longheshang Yulu. He had more than 60 disciples, and his lineage was called Huqiu pai, competing with the Dahui pai (the lineage of Dahui Zonggao) within the Yangqi lineage. The later generations of his lineage continued to the modern age.
A modern Chinese scholar, Hu Shi was a native of Jixi in Anhui. He was admitted into Cornell University in the United States in 1910 and completed a PhD at Columbia University in 1917. Returning to China, he became a professor at Beijing University and was active in the new cultural movement. His early study of Chan was driven by his interest in the reform of classical Chinese language. In 1926, he discovered important Chan texts from the Dunhuang documents in the museums of Paris and London. In 1938, the Chinese government appointed him ambassador to the United States. In 1946, he became the president of Beijing University. He later went to Taiwan and became the president of the Academia Sinica. His contribution to the modern study of Chan lies not only in his rediscovery and redefining of Shenhui’s role in the history of Chinese Chan, but also in his application of critical method and relying on evidence in the study of Chan history. His critical and scientific method led to a famous debate with D. T. Suzuki, who believed that Hu Shi’s method could not do justice to the irrational and illogical nature of Chan. While Suzuki’s view dominated for several decades and was embraced by various Western scholars who romanticized Chan, contemporary critical historians of Chan in the West have revisited Hu Shi and favor his method, though not necessarily his conclusions.
Also called Fangyuan Shou (Elder of Square-Circle), Daoji’s more famous nicknames are Jigong (Sire Ji) and Jidian (Crazy Ji), as used by popular folklore, but he himself is hardly mentioned in Song and Yuan Buddhist literature. According to the only Buddhist source from a contemporary of Daoji, he was a native of Linhai (in present-day Zhejiang province). His family name was Li. At Lingyin Temple in Hangzhou, Daoji was ordained by the Chan master Xiatang Huiyuan (1103–1176) of the Yangqi lineage of the Linji school. Although he was a person of integrity and compassion, and outstanding in many aspects, including his delicate poetic skill, he did not comply with the accepted monastic norms. An eccentric personality, he was sharp, witty, unrestrained, and wild, and never stopped his habitual drinking. For four decades, he lived as a wandering and reclusive monk, while devoting his time to the healing of others. He died at Jingci Temple near West Lake. His behavioral transgressions alienated him from the monastic establishment but did not decrease his holiness in the eyes of laypeople. By the time of his death, he had become a renowned holy man. It was the laypeople, rather than his fellow monks, who stored his remains below the Twin Peak. The laypeople also transformed Daoji into a literary and dramatic hero, as well as a deity, and only under lay pressure did the monastic establishment, centuries later, accept him into its enshrinement.