Zongmi on Chan

In the context of Tang Chan masters, two aspects of Zongmi’s biography stand out: his enrollment in his twenties at an elite academy where the curriculum was based on the classics; and, after becoming a Chan monk, his attainment of a high level of erudition in Buddhist literature as a whole. Such a career trajectory does not fit the usual profile. Tang Chan masters as a rule in their youth did not attend academies in preparation for the examination system. Rather, they typically began their contact with the Buddhist monastic world in childhood or during their early teens. Also, during their Chan careers they did not function as learned exegetes and commentators on the Buddhist sutra and treatise literature. The biography of Zongmi breaks down into six phases.⁴

Zongmi was born in 780 into a provincial elite family of wealth and power, the He, in Guozhou, Xichong county (present-day Sichuan province).⁵ From the age of six to fifteen or sixteen he worked at typical classical studies, and from seventeen to twenty or twenty-one, perhaps because of the death of his father, he studied some Buddhist texts. From twenty-two to twenty-four he was enrolled at the nearby Righteousness Learning Academy.⁶ There he surely deepened his exposure to such books as the Classic of Poetry, Changes, Zhou Rites, Analects, Mencius, Xunzi, Sima Quian’s Shiji, and so forth, building up a substantial memory corpus. Later he fused this corpus based on the core works of Chinese learning with an enormous one based on Buddhist learning.

In 804, at the age of twenty-four, Zongmi’s career path took an abrupt turn. In Suizhou, the site of the Righteousness Learning Academy and the Dayun Monastery, he happened to meet Chan Master Daoyuan of the Dayun. Zongmi promptly left home, training under Daoyuan for two or three years until he received “the sealed mind” from Daoyuan in 807.⁷ It was also during this phase that he encountered a copy of the apocryphal Perfect Awakening Sutra (Yuanjuejing), a sutra whose very structure is built on the model of sudden awakening followed by gradual practice, and had an awakening experience.⁸ The Perfect Awakening always remained his favorite sutra. Zongmi traced his Chan lineage as follows:

Huineng, the sixth patriarch

↓

Heze Shenhui, the seventh patriarch

↓

Cizhou Zhiru

↓

Yizhou Nanyin (=Weizhong)

↓

Suizhou Daoyuan

Zongmi’s claim of Heze descent has been questioned in modern scholarship, but, in fact, the confusion lies with Yizhou Nanyin’s self-presentation, not Zongmi’s. During his career Nanyin had contact with two different Shenhuis: the one associated with the Heze Monastery in the eastern capital Luoyang listed above (probably through his disciple Cizhou Zhiru); and Jingzhong Shenhui, a pillar of the Jingzhong (Pure Assembly) lineage of Chan that flourished around the Jingzhong Monastery in the city of Chengdu, Sichuan. Zongmi sometimes referred to the latter Shenhui as Yizhou Shi, probably to make clear the distinction between these two Shenhuis. Nanyin first trained under Heze Shenhui or his disciple Cizhou Zhiru before going to Sichuan and becoming one of Jingzhong Shenhui’s important disciples.

Nanyin was installed as abbot of Shengshou Monastery in Chengdu in 807, the same year in which Zongmi obtained the sealed mind from Nanyin’s disciple Daoyuan. Shengshou was nominally a branch of the Jingzhong school, but Nanyin must have stressed his connection to Heze. As the American scholar Peter Gregory states: “The identification of the Sheng-shou tradition with Hotse Shen-hui [Heze Shenhui] did not originate with Tsung-mi [Zongmi].”⁹ In other words, Daoyuan continued his master’s emphasis on Heze rather than Jingzhong and passed this emphasis on to his student Zongmi. Thus, we could call Zongmi’s Chan Shengshou Chan or Sichuanese Heze Chan.

In 810 Zongmi left Sichuan for good, passing through Xiangyang in Hubei and the eastern capital of Luoyang before proceeding on to the western capital Chang’an. He speaks of these events in a letter to Qingliang Chengguan (738–839) sent in the autumn of 811.¹⁰ Zongmi had been studying Chengguan’s Huayan commentaries, some of the most intricate commentarial literature of scholastic Buddhism, and he begged the great Huayan exegete of Chang’an to accept him as an apprentice. Once accepted, he went to Chengguan and studied under him for two years (812–813), later remaining in consultation with him. It was a case of a practicing Chan monk taking up the in-depth study of difficult texts under the foremost Buddhist pandit of the day.

And the staggeringly erudite Chengguan recognized the talent of the newcomer. Of the myriad students around Chengguan, only Zongmi and a Sengrui are said to have penetrated to the inner sanctum of the master’s teachings.¹¹ Chengguan, who wrote voluminous commentaries on the Huayan Sutra, had some experience with Chan and incorporated Chan into the vast edifice of Huayan.¹² Zongmi’s masterpiece, the Chan Prolegomenon, uses some key elements from the works of Chengguan and Fazang to discuss Chan and identifies the Huayan Sutra (as well as the Perfect Awakening Sutra) with the highest level of Chan. Chengguan, of course, considered Huayan higher than all forms of Chan.

Zongmi took up residence on Mt. Zhongnan, southwest of the imperial capital Chang’an in Shaanxi, eventually settling at Caotang Monastery at the foot of one of the peaks of Zhongnan, Guifeng. Hence he acquired the name Guifeng Zongmi. From the north face of Mt. Zhongnan, the metropolis of Chang’an was visible. Centuries earlier Caotang had been the site of Kumarajiva’s translating activities, and it became Zongmi’s base. In 828 he was summoned to the court of Emperor Wenzong, where he received such honors as the purple robe and the title Great Worthy (dade). During this phase Zongmi produced many technical Buddhist works; this makes him unique among major Chan masters of the Tang. A list of extant and lost exegetical works that can be dated with some certainty to this period includes:

1. Commentary on the Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana

2. Commentary on the Thunderbolt-Cutter Perfection of Wisdom Sutra

3. Abridged commentary to the Perfect Awakening Sutra

4. Subcommentary to the above abridged commentary

5. Procedural manual on conditions for praxis, methods of worship, and cross-legged dhyana sitting according to the Perfect Awakening Sutra

6. Commentary on the Perfect Awakening Sutra

7. Subcommentary to the above commentary

8. Essay on the Huayan Sutra

9. Commentary on the Dharmagupta-vinaya

10. Compilation of passages from commentaries to the Perfect Awakening Sutra

11. Commentary and subcommentary on Vasubandhu’s Thirty Verses on Consciousness Only.¹³

I could add to this list a commentary on the Nirvana Sutra that may be datable to this phase. Amazingly, this list is just a portion of Zongmi’s total oeuvre.¹⁴

At this time Zongmi was in contact with many literati and politicians, sometimes answering their queries on Buddhist topics, and some of this material was gathered together in a collection or in various collections after his death. By far the most famous layman mentioned in connection with Zongmi was the poet Bai Juyi (772–846), with whom Zongmi socialized during a visit to the eastern capital Luoyang in 833. But the absolutely central figure around Zongmi was his slightly younger disciple and personal friend Pei Xiu (791–864). Until the master’s death in 841, Pei and Zongmi were exceptionally close, with Pei writing prefaces to a number of Zongmi’s works as well as his funerary inscription.¹⁵

Zongmi wrote a preface to Pei Xiu’s Encouraging the Production of the Thought of Awakening (Quan fa putixin wen) in which he mentions their long association in the practice of the Buddhist way: “In the end period [of the dharma] people are of little faith. At this time there is Mr. Pei of Hedong, a superior scholar of the Confucian gate, who faces this with humaneness. Pei and I have been intertwined in the buddha path for a long time.”¹⁶ I imagine that Pei, until the end of his life, in spite of contact with numerous other Buddhist masters, considered Zongmi his foremost teacher. And I also imagine that Zongmi considered Pei his foremost student.

The Old Tang History (Jiu Tangshu) biographical entry for Pei portrays a fusion of active and competent official, accomplished man of letters, outstanding calligrapher, and fervent Buddhist practitioner:

[Pei was] good at the literary arts, excelled at letter writing, and formed his own unique style in the art of calligraphy. His family had for generations embraced Buddhism. Xiu was even deeper into Buddhist books. Taiyuan [in Shanxi] and Fengxiang [in Shaanxi] are near famous mountains with many Buddhist monasteries. On the pretext of sightseeing he would wander on walks through the mountains and forests, carrying on discussions with Buddhist monks learned in the Buddhist doctrinal systems in search of the principles of Buddhism. After his middle years he did not eat garlic, onions, and meat, always observing the precepts of vegetarianism, and he put aside lustful desires. Incense burners and precious [Buddhist] books were always about his study. He took songs and chants of praise as music of the dharma. Both he and President of the Department of Affairs of State He Ganzhi took dharma names. People of the time respected his high purity but scorned his excessiveness [in matters Buddhist]. Many told stories ridiculing him, but Xiu did not consider these things something from which to deviate.¹⁷

Zongmi’s major Chan works took shape during this phase of his career, and the timing is significant since it suggests that these works were in some way connected to the influential elite of the capital and court. He was broadcasting Chan to a very important metropolitan audience. The Chan Letter, known under various titles, the most common in modern scholarship being Chart of the Master-Disciple Succession of the Chan Gate That Transmits the Mind Ground in China (Zhonghua chuanxindi chanmen shizi chengxi tu), is a short text consisting of Zongmi’s answers to questions about Chan sent in letter form to him by Pei Xiu, whose sophistication in Buddhist matters would be hard to overestimate. The Chan Canon or Collection of Expressions of the Chan Source (Chanyuan zhuquanji) was an enormous repository of Chan lore, a collection of extracts (and perhaps whole works) drawn from the literatures of all the Chan houses. We can assume that during this phase Zongmi was absorbed in compiling the Chan Canon, but it is possible that well before this time he had been engaged in assembling and copying all sorts of Chan materials for his collection. The Chan Canon is lost, but we do have his comprehensive introduction to its content, the Chan Prolegomenon or Prolegomenon to the Collection of Expressions of the Chan Source (Chanyuan zhuquanji duxu). Without question, the surviving Chan Prolegomenon stands as Zongmi’s magnum opus. In this work he brings together all the themes of his career in a masterly presentation.

In 835, through his friendship with the politician Li Xun, a chief minister, Zongmi became implicated in a failed attempt, dubbed the Sweet Dew Incident, to oust the eunuchs from power at the court of Emperor Wenzong.¹⁸ In the midst of the debacle, the plotter Li Xun sought refuge from the inevitable eunuch counterattack in the mountains at Caotang Monastery, and Zongmi was willing to secrete him as a shaven-head Buddhist monk. For this Zongmi was arrested but eventually released; apparently his forthright testimony and personal courage in the face of possible execution impressed a general of the eunuch forces. The Chan master passed his last years in obscurity, perhaps forced retirement. He died in cross-legged sitting posture at the Xingfu Monastery’s Stupa Compound, which was in the northwest sector of Chang’an, not far from the imperial residence, on the sixth day of the first month of Huichang 1 (February 1, 841); on February 17 his body was returned in a coffin to Guifeng and on March 9 cremated.¹⁹ In 853 Emperor Xuanzong awarded Zongmi the posthumous title “Concentration-Wisdom Chan Master,” and a “Stupa of the Blue Lotus” was erected to hold his remains.²⁰