This is a modern English translation of the Chinese term fangzhang, referring to the specific buildings or rooms of a Chan monastery, in which an abbot would live and conduct activities. Fangzhang, literally “ten foot square [room],” was derived from the Vimalakīrti Sūtra’s description of the layman Vimalakīrti’s room, which despite its small size was able to accommodate a great number of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and displayed various magical powers and qualities.
According to some historical sources, the abbot’s quarters in major public Chan monasteries starting in the Song dynasty included a reception hall, a private room, and a meditation room. The reception hall was used for minor convocations or ceremonies, as opposed to the major ones held in the dharma hall. In either type of convocation, the abbot played the role of a living Buddha or patriarch and was worshiped with prostrations and offerings of incense. The audience could include many people, such as the great assembly of monks, the monastic officers, and on occasion, government officials and lay patrons. In most cases, when only monks were there, the abbot would discuss matters of monastic discipline.
The abbot’s quarters were also used for the ritual of “entering the [abbot’s] room (rushi),” in which the abbot’s personal disciples came to see him one after the other, each asking for instruction in a formal but semiprivate atmosphere. Taking turns, the disciples made prostrations and offered incense when approaching the abbot, bowed, and stood at the southwest corner of his meditation seat. The disciple then spoke his mind and the abbot would reply. The conversations were similar to those that took place in the dharma hall, a ritual reenactment of the relationship or encounter between Chan master and disciple, as prototyped by the transmission of the lamp literature. The only difference is that these more private conversations were not included in the abbot’s recorded sayings (yulu) for publication.
Sutra of Maintaining the Awareness of Inhalation and Exhalation (Ānāpānasmṛti Sūtra), an influential Indian Buddhist scripture in the early Chinese practice of Buddhist meditation, was compiled and translated by An Shigao (d.u.), an early Buddhist missionary and translator (from Arsakes of Parthia) in the 2nd century during the Later Han dynasty. It is not exactly an original scripture, but rather a compilation from earlier Indian sources on the method of meditation that focuses on one’s inhalation and exhalation (shuxi guan). It introduces, among other things, the six wondrous gates (liu miaomen) of this meditation: counting inhalation and exhalation, following inhalation and exhalation, calming the mind, contemplating numerical categories such as the five aggregates, turning to contemplating four noble truths, and purification. The text is intermixed with some comments and explanatory notes. In translating Indian scriptural materials into Chinese, An Shigao appealed to indigenous Chinese terms, especially Daoist ones. The extant text also includes a preface written by Kang Senghui (?–280), a Sogdian Buddhist missionary and translator in China.
The notion of “authentic person without rank” is found in several collections of the recorded sayings of Linji Yixuan, including the Linji Lu and other earlier sources such as the Zutang Ji and Jingde Chuangdeng Lu, and became one of Linji’s most famous sayings. The use of the word zhenren (authentic person) can be found notably in Daoist philosopher Zhuangzi’s writings as well as in other Daoist texts. Despite the source of the term, Linji uses “authentic person without rank” in a Chan Buddhist context. As an expedient means, it designates the potential within every human being—that is, Buddha-nature, self-nature, or simply Buddha within each individual—and the goal of becoming an enlightened person who is able to transcend all kinds of distinctions and achieve spiritual freedom while living through daily activities. It was taught to his students to realize the possibility and necessity of the existential transformation of personhood. The term does not denote the reality of any metaphysical self or absolutized subjectivity, since it does not acknowledge any fixed differences between this “authentic person” (whether it is a Buddha or patriarch) and any ordinary individual (yu fozu bubie).
Contemporary scholars have debated Linji’s notion of authentic person without rank. Some criticize this notion as something metaphysical, similar to the Hindu notion of ātman, which obviously deviates from the Buddhist teaching of no-self (anātman). Others argue that Linji used it as expedient means only and have pointed out that Linji himself, in the same anecdote, even performed a deconstructive operation on this notion by telling his students clearly, “What kind of shitty ass-wiper this authentic person without rank is!” A recent study of the Linji Lu also reveals the evolving editorial change in the rhetoric and details of the story from its initial version to the later ones by its Song compilers, which makes Linji’s image more lively, shocking, and enigmatic, to serve the Linji school’s need for establishing its own identity and rising to prominence.