An eminent Chan monk of modern times, Taixu was a native of Haining in Zhejiang. His family name was Lu. He lost his parents in his youth and was raised by his grandmother and uncle. At the age of 16, he entered his monastic life under the master Shida (d.u.) in Suzhou, and he was ordained at Tiantong Temple in Ningbo by the master Jing’an. He then studied the kanhua Chan and Buddhist scriptures, such as the Lotus Sūtra and Śūraṃgamasamādhi Sūtra, with the master Qichang (1853–1923). He also went to Xifang Temple to concentrate on reading the Buddhist canon. The following year, he met the reformist monk, Huashan (d.u.), and the revolutionary monk, Qiyun (d.u.), and started to accept the influence of books from various modernist movements and to think about a broad reform of Buddhist thought and practice. In 1909, he went to Zhihuan Jingshe, which was operated by the modernist Buddhist scholar Yang Wenhui (1837–1911), to study Buddhist scriptures, English, and modern literature. In 1910, he lectured at Foxue Jingshe in Guangzhou and became abbot at Shuangxi Temple. The publication of his lectures marked the beginning of his scholarly writing. He was involved in the organization Association for the Advancement of Buddhism and the Chinese General Buddhist Association. He then proposed three necessary reforms (or revolutions)—organizational, economical, and intellectual—for the movement to revitalize Chinese Buddhism. These included sharing the ownership of Buddhist properties with the whole monastic community, installing democracy, developing an educational system, and increasing economical self-reliance to survive in and meet the needs of modern society.
In 1918, Taixu founded, with others, the Bodhi Society (Jue She) in Shanghai, and edited the magazine Jueshe Congshu, which was renamed Haichao Yin and became a famous Buddhist periodical. Starting in 1922, he founded a number of Buddhist colleges, including Wuchang Buddhist College, Minnan Buddhist College, and Hanzang College of Buddhist Doctrines. He was actively involved in Buddhist ecumenism and the promotion of global peace, visiting Japan, Europe, North America, and South Asia and lecturing globally. Because of his contribution to China’s war against the Japanese invasion, Taixu was awarded the Victory Medal by the nationalist government in 1946. He died at the age of 59. His numerous publications were collected into the Taixu Dashi Quanshu (Complete Works of Great Master Taixu) of 64 volumes. They addressed various doctrinal, institutional and social issues, including his famous idea of Buddhism for human life (rensheng fojiao) and his influential notion that the characteristics of Chinese Buddhism lie in the school of Chan.
The Chinese term for this is rulai Chan. The use of the term rulai Chan was influenced by the Lengqie Jing (the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra), which analyzed four types of dhyāna. The last and highest dhyāna among the four was the dhyāna of the tathāgata (rulai Chan). The early Chinese Chan Buddhist understanding of tathāgata Chan was related to the notion of realizing “the pure mind of the self-nature of tathāgatagarbha (rulaizang zixing qingjingxin)” in the Lengqie Jing, which integrates the tathāgatagarbha theory of Buddha-nature as the pure origin and foundation of the universe with the Yogācāra theory of mind-only that explains the process of existence. Several early Chan texts demonstrate the use of rulai Chan. Zongmi, in his Chan Prolegomenon (Chanyuan Zhuquanji Duxu), defined the sudden awakening to one’s own original pure mind as the pure dhyāna of the tathāgata, which is also identical to the one-practice samādhi (yixing sanmei). For Zongmi, this tathāgata Chan was transmitted from Bodhidharma to Huieng and Shenhui. The Biography of Great Master Caoxi (Caoxi Dashi Zhuan), produced in 803, recorded that Heineng explained the pure dhyāna of the tathāgata as no-acquisition (wude) and no-verification (wuzheng), against just sitting, in terms of the Diamond Sūtra. Shenhui also interpreted the rulai Chan in terms of the Diamond Sūtra; associated the former with no-thought, the realization of self-nature, and no-acquisition; and contrasted it with Shenxiu and the Northern school’s Chan of contemplating the purity.
Although the interpretations of the rulai Chan are not unified, as some emphasize the Lengqie Jing and others the Diamond Sūtra, the positive meaning of the term is clear. However, as Chan movements evolved, the positive meaning of the term was changed to the negative. The rulai Chan was no longer the highest Chan, but was inferior to patriarch Chan (zushi Chan), a term invented and popularized in the late Tang dynasty and the Five Dynasties. The rulai Chan was no longer referred to as the orthodox transmission from Bodhidharma to Huineng, but instead designated the attachment to any gradual path of cultivation and realization, similar to Shenxiu and the Northern school. The new Chan movements seemed dissatisfied with the rulai Chan and used “patriarch Chan” as part of their iconoclastic rhetoric, emphasizing the transcendence of the Buddhas (chaofo) and scriptural teachings and promoting direct transmission from the patriarch’s mind to the disciple’s mind. There is still confusion among modern scholars about the differences between these two terms, and whom or which group each term targets. For example, should Huineng be subsumed under tathāgata Chan or patriarch Chan? Some believe the zushi Chan includes Huineng, since the later movements of Chan all claimed to be his successors. Others argued that the zushi Chan designated the more radical movements after Huineng, and that Huineng belonged to the rulai Chan. The interpretation depends on how the categories are defined, and their meanings are fluid in various Chan texts.
The pictures of oxherding are a series of pictures illustrating the relationship between a herdsman and an untamed ox in the process of oxherding. Chan teachers and practitioners historically used these pictures to symbolize the progressive relationship between a Chan student and his undisciplined mind in the process of Chan training, which could eventually help the student to realize and verify the enlightenment. There are two extant versions of the oxherding pictures. The Song Linji Chan master Guo’an Shiyuan (d.u.) created the earlier one. It included 10 pictures with the author’s poems: (1) searching for the ox, (2) seeing the traces, (3) discovering the ox, (4) taming the ox, (5) herding the ox, (6) riding the ox home, (7) forgetting the ox, (8) forgetting both the ox and the person, (9) returning to the origin and source, and (10) entering the world to bestow gifts. Also attached was the author’s preface, which mentioned two earlier, different versions of the oxherding pictures. The other extant series of 10 oxherding pictures, which shared some similarities and differences with the earlier version, was made by Puming (d.u.), also distributed with his poems, and published in China in the 16th century.
This is an abridged English translation of the Chinese words sanxuan sanyao, a heuristic formula highly valued by the Linji school and attributed to Linji Yixuan in the Linji Lu and other Song texts. The complete statement referring to this formula in the Linji Lu reads as follows: “Each phrase must comprise the gates of three mysteries (sanxuan), and the gate of each mystery must comprise three essentials (sanyao).” However, the text itself does not provide any explanation of what the three mysteries and three essentials are. Later on, Song commentators wrote down their interpretations of the meanings of sanxuan sanyao. Three mysteries and three essentials have been made equivalent to the three bodies of Buddha; to the three concepts of principle (li), wisdom (zhi), and function (yong); or to other things. But the exact meanings have never been made clear, since the commentators either used allegorical expressions for their understandings, avoiding discussing them plainly (e.g., Fenyang Shanzhao), or used their comments as opportunities to elaborate on their own ideas (such as Jianfu Chenggu), which often made the meanings even more complicated. As one of the commentators, Juefan Huihong, suggested, the main emphasis of sanxuan sanyao was that in teaching the dharma of Chan, every phrase must point to its profound/inexplicable meanings (xuan) and convey their essentials (yao). It was not necessary to find out and count how many mysteries and essentials there were; that was not the original intent. Attention should be paid to the nature of all teachings as provisional expedients (quan) and to their functions (yong), as they are indicated in the text.
Paired with another Chinese word, yong, it is one of the most frequently used categories of Chinese philosophy. While yong is correctly translated as “function” or “use,” ti is often misleadingly translated as “essence” or “substance.” This translation is misleading simply because the Chinese word ti has never had the meaning of essence as opposed to accidents, or substance as opposed to attributes, which dominates in Western metaphysics. The typical Western meaning is absent from both the neo-Daoist and Chinese Buddhist uses of this term. First employed in the neo-Daoist Wang Bi’s philosophy, the Chinese character ti originally meant body, whole body, or whole existence. Gradually, the use of ti grew closer to the use of the word ben (root, source) in interpreting the way of the universe (dao) or non-being (wu) itself, which is in contrast to the various functions (yong) of the universe. Both aspects are united in dao or non-being. Chinese Buddhism, including Chan, favors the use of the category of ti and yong to interpret Buddhist teachings while developing its own non-dualistic perspective on ti and yong.
In Chinese Buddhist usage, ti is often related to the dharma-body (fashen or fati) or the true suchness (zhenru), which is identical with enlightenment or the realization of Buddha-nature. The Chan Buddhist usage of ti is more often demonstrated in such compounds as xinti (the mind-whole) or xingti (the nature-whole). Xin usually refers to Buddha-mind (foxin), the original mind (benxin) or “one mind” (yixin), while xing refers to Buddha-nature (foxing), emptiness, or self-nature (zixing). The xinti or xingti designates the non-objective dimension of the whole or the network of a concrete life-world, a holistic dimension that the human mind may attain or experience through enlightenment. This non-substantialistic concept of xinti or xingti can even be distinguished from the English word “subjectivity,” which involves the meaning of substance in modern Western philosophy.
The yong designates the functions and traces of the whole, including individual events and activities, and therefore is conceptually different from the ti. However, the yong cannot be separated from the ti, since the yong is the function of the whole—the ti itself, not the function of something else. Many early and classical Chan teachings illustrated this non-dualistic understanding of ti and yong. For example, the Hongzhou school used the non-duality of ti and yong to emphasize that, outside the yong or everyday activities, there would be no ti or Buddha-nature.
A Chan master of the Tang dynasty, Daowu is a controversial figure because there has been disagreement about who his mentor was and whether there was another master called Daowu. The Song Gaoseng Zhuan’s biography of Daowu, which was based on his epitaph written by Fu Zai (760–?), stated that Daowu had three great teachers: Jingshan Faqin of the Ox-Head school, Mazu Daoyi, and Shitou Xiqian. However, the transmission of the lamp literature since the Zutang Ji and Jingde Chuandeng Lu, and a version of Fu Zai’s written epitaph collected in the Complete Writings of Tang (Quan Tang Wen), identified Daowu as the disciple of Shitou Xiqian exclusively, while another epitaph of Daowu, attributed to Qiu Xuansu (d.u.) and discovered in Song, claimed that Daowu was Mazu’s disciple only.
Recent Chan historians’ revisiting of this controversy shows that the Zutang Ji and Jingde Chuandeng Lu’s biographies of Daowu include forged stories about Daowu’s radical behavior, and that the version of the epitaph included in the Quan Tang Wen copied an abridged version with materials rewritten by Nianchang (d.u.) from his Fozu Lidai Tongzai (General Records of Buddhist Patriarchs through the Ages) of the Yuan dynasty. They are not reliable. The epitaph attributed to Qiu Xuansu also shows signs of a later forgery. Therefore, the only reliable source is the Song Gaoseng Zhuan. According to this book, Daowu’s family name was Zhang, and he was a native of Wuzhou (in present-day Jinhua, Zhejiang). He started his monastic life at the age of 14 and was ordained at Zhulin Temple in Hangzhou at the age of 25. After studying, respectively, with Faqin, Mazu, and Shitou, he went to Liyang, Jingkou, and Mount Chaizi of Dangyang to preach. Later, he was invited to the capital of Jingzhou to teach and took up residence in Tianghuang Temple. His instruction won the support of a local official, Peigong (d.u.), and it was unusually successful. The biography described Daowu as a master whose action complied with the precepts and whose intention was to teach scriptures, such as the Huayan Jing, a very different picture from the images presented by the later Chan texts. Daowu died at the age of 60.
A Chan master of the Linji school in the Yuan dynasty and a disciple of Zhongfeng Mingben, Weize was born in Yongxin in Ji’an Prefecture (in present-day Jiangxi). His family name was Tan. He became a monk at Mount He when he was young. Later, he went to Mount Tianmu to study with Zhongfeng Mingben and received the dharma transmission from Mingben. He taught students in the area of Jiangsu and gradually gained fame, acquiring support from local officials. In 1342, his disciples built a temple at Shizilin in Suzhou for him, and he taught there for about 13 years. He died in 1354 and was granted the posthumous title Foxin Puji Wenhui Dabian Chanshi (“Chan Master of Buddha-mind, Universal Compassion, Illuminating Wisdom and Great Eloquence”). His teachings and writings were preserved in the Shizilin Tianru Heshang Yulu, edited by his disciple, Shanyu. Weize is noticeable for developing his teacher Mingben’s approach of practicing both Chan and Pure Land (Chanjing shuangxiu) and for advocating jingtu Chan (Chan of Pure Land) or nianfo Chan (Chan of reciting Buddha’s name), which integrated various methods of the Pure Land school into Chan practice.
Expanded Record of the Lamp from the Tiansheng Era, a book in the Chan lamp history (dengshi) genre, compiled by Li Zunxu (988–1038), a literatus and a member of the imperial court who was related to several emperors in the Northern Song dynasty. The book was completed in 1036 and issued with imperial approval. Li was also a lay Chan Buddhist and a disciple of the Linji Chan master Guyin Yuncong (965–1032), the dharma heir of Shoushan Shengnian. Another close friend of Li was the Linji Chan master Shishuang Chuyuan. As Li admitted, he intended this expansion of the lamp record to document the accomplishments of the contemporary Linji Chan sect. One of the differences between this book and the previous Jingde Chuandeng Lu is that the recorded sayings (yulu) and biographies of the Chan masters in the Linji school were greatly expanded and increased, compared to the materials on other Chan schools. Linji was established as a major Chan patriarch; his yulu and Baizhang Huaihai’s, for the first time, were included along with Mazu Daoyi’s and Huangbo Xiyun’s, which became the foundation for the later Sijia Yulu (Recorded Sayings of Four Houses), an anthology promoting the legitimacy of the Hongzhou-Linji lineage.
Moreover, the Tiansheng Guangdeng Lu tended to highlight the new Chan identity and orthodoxy as “separate transmission outside scriptural teaching,” a radical interpretation of jiaowai biechuan, and drew the line at some notions of harmonizing Chan principle and the tradition of scriptural exegesis, as was promoted by some members of the competing Fayan and Yunmen schools. The Tiansheng Guangdeng Lu added some completely new details to the story of Sākyamuni’s secret and silent transmission of the dharma to Mahākāśyapa and placed this story in such a context that the superiority of this secret transmission over the Buddha’s exoteric preaching, as characterized in the three vehicles by the Lotus Sūtra, became quite obvious. The Tiansheng Guangdeng Lu thus sent out the message of Chan exclusivism with this new identity and orthodoxy, which was inherited by the later generations and carried down to modern times. The Tiansheng Guangdeng Lu continued the lamp history genre of the Jingde Chuandeng Lu, kept the lineage theory of 28 Indian patriarchs and 6 Chinese patriarchs, and followed the two main lines of Nanyue Huairang and Qingyuan Xingsi and the “five houses” to collect the biographies and recorded sayings of Chan masters. It further formed the lamp history genre and influenced all later works in this genre.
A Chan master of the Fayan school in the Five Dynasties and in the early Northern Song dynasty, Deshao was a native of Longquan in Chuzhou (in present-day Zhejiang province). His family name was Chen. He entered his monastic life at the age of 17 and received official ordination at the age of 18. He then spent a considerable amount of time seeking spiritual guidance. He visited and studied with 54 Chan masters, including Touzi Datong (819–914) and Longya Judun (835–923) in the lineage of Shitou Xiqian. Finally, he went to Congshou Monastery in Linchuan (in present-day Jiangxi province) to study with Fayan Wenyi. When he heard Wenyi’s tautological answer to the question “What is the one drop of water from the origin of Caoxi [Huineng]?” he was suddenly enlightened and became Wenyi’s dharma heir. Later, to inherit Tiantai Zhiyi’s legacy, he visited Mount Tiantai and took up residence at Baisha Temple. The prince and later king, Qian Hongshu (r. 947–978) of Wuyue, invited Deshao to preach at Hangzhou and honored him as National Teacher. Using his good relationship with the king of Wuyue, Deshao also helped ensure the return of missing scriptures and commentaries from Korea for the Tiantai school. Deshao successfully led a huge community of the Fayan school after his teacher’s death. He had 49 disciples, including the famous Yongming Yanshou and Yong’an Daoyuan (d.u.).
Located on Mount Taibai in Ningbo in Zhejiang Province in China, this temple humbly originated as a hut built in 300 by the monk Yixing (d.u.). In 732, the monk Faxuan (d.u.) built a temple on the east side of the mountain. In 757, the monk Zongbi (d.u.) moved the temple to its current location in the foothills of Mount Taibai. It was named Tiantong Linglong Temple in 759, then renamed to Tianshou Temple in 869 and Jingde Chan Temple in 1007. The temple became famous during the Song dynasty. The Caodong master Hongzhi Zhengjue practiced and taught the mozhao Chan here. During the abbacy of Changweng Rujing, the Japanese monk Dōgen Kigen (1200–1253) became his student and transmitted the Caodong school to Japan. The Japanese Sōtō school thus regarded the temple as its “temple of patriarch (zuting).” During the Hongwu Era (1368–1398) of the Ming dynasty, it was renamed Tiantong Temple. In 1587, the temple was destroyed by a flood; it was rebuilt in 1631.
A Chan master of the Caodong school in the Song dynasty, Yiqing was born in Qingzhou (in present-day Shandong). His family name was Li. He entered his monastic life in Miaoxiang Temple at the age of 7 and was ordained at the age of 15 after passing the examination of the Lotus Sūtra. He then studied the Yogācāra doctrine and the Huayan Jing (Avataṃsaka Sūtra). Having realized that self-nature is beyond speech and doctrine, he turned to the study of Chan. He became the disciple of the Linji Chan master Fushan Fayuan (991–1067). With Fayuan, Yiqing attained awakening. Having remembered that the deceased Caodong Chan master Dayang Jingxuan entrusted Fayuan to look for the dharma heir for the Caodong ligeage, Fayuan started to teach Yiqing the essentials of Caodong Chan and became convinced that Yiqing was the right person to inherit the portrait, shoes, and robes that Jingxuan had left and to become Jingxuan’s dharma heir. After receiving this unusual transmission, Yiqing first stayed with the Yuman master Yuantong Faxiu (1027–1090), focusing on the study of the Buddhist Canon, and then took up residence in Haihui Chan Monastery in Shuzhou (in present-day Anhui). Eight years later, Yiqing went to Mount Touzi and became abbot at Shengyin Chan Monastery, staying there until his death. Of Yiqing’s disciples, two—Furong Daokai and Dahong Bao’en—became very successful, leading the Caodong school to its revival. Yiqing’s teachings were recorded in the two editions of his yulu, one of which was compiled by his disciple, Furong Daokai. Yiqing’s yulu included his Songgu Baize (Poetic Commentaries on One Hundred Old Cases), which was further commented on by the Caodong Chan master Linquan Conglun (d.u.), of the Yuan dynasty, and became a gong’an collection of six fascicles called Konggu Ji (Anthology of Empty Valley).