Zongmi on Chan

The Song dynasty (960–1279) is the age of woodblock-printed books, often products of subtle refinement and beauty admired and imitated throughout East Asia. Some Chan followers worked to assemble what remained of the Tang manuscript tradition of Chan books. Over time an extensive printed Chan literature came into wide circulation, including intact Tang texts (such as the Chan Prolegomenon and Pei Xiu’s Essentials of the Dharma of Mind Transmission), Tang materials reworked and burnished by Song editors (such as the Record of Linji), and new Song books (such as the Record of [Pure Talk] in the Forest [Linjianlu]). Zongmi’s influence on Chan in Song times was not as a speaking and acting Tang Chan master who sprang to life from the pages of a Song xylograph of his sayings record. It was the orientation, theoretical structures, and striking similes of his Chan Prolegomenon and Chan Letter that exerted the influence on Song Chan. And our view of post-Tang Chan has failed to take that influence into account.

Part of the reason for that failure may lie in the fact that no Chan record of Zongmi’s sayings and activities was compiled or published during the Song. In a sense, a Chan sayings record created its Chan master, rather than the other way around. The editors of the Patriarchal Hall Collection (Zutangji) of 952, for instance, unequivocally state that they have been unable to find any such record for Zongmi and so cannot relate a typical Chan career for him.⁸⁰ And the Zongmi entry in the Jingde Era Record of the Transmission of the Lamp (Jingde chuandeng lu) of 1004 is little more than a pastiche of quotations from the Chan Prolegomenon and works related to Zongmi, containing no Zongmi sayings or anecdotes.⁸¹

So far as I have been able to determine, we have but one Zongmi saying, found buried in Yanshou’s Mind Mirror (exactly where we would expect it), and in its Buddhist allusion and literary language it is utterly different from the earthy and colloquial Chan utterances so admired in Song Chan: “Preceptor Caotang says: ‘Well, Indra’s net is not yet stretched out, so how can we see the thousands of jewel ornaments [at each of the myriad knots]? Suddenly the grand headrope of the net is activated, and ten thousand eyes spontaneously open up.’”⁸² This saying is based on a Huayan simile for the layer-on-layer inexhaustibility of the Buddhist causation formula, origination by dependence. At each of the knots of the god Indra’s jewel net, which hangs from the ceiling of his palace, a jewel is attached. Each jewel reflects all the other jewels, and the jewels in the reflections also reflect.

Yanshou’s Mind Mirror served as a channel through which the ideas and models of Zongmi’s Chan Prolegomenon were widely disseminated to the Song world. During the Yuanfeng era (1078–1085) of the Northern Song, a woodblock-printed edition of the Mind Mirror was carried out and distributed to various monasteries.⁸³ Another edition was executed during the Yuanyou era (1086–1093) at the Song capital Kaifeng, and before long Yanshou’s collection was included in the Song Canon (the Chan Prolegomenon was not). Many xylograph copies of the Mind Mirror circulated during the Song, and many compilations of extracts and catalogues of it were published.⁸⁴ The range of its influence was exceptionally broad, extending to Buddhism outside the Chan orbit, and even to non-Buddhist Song learning.

The Mind Mirror conveyed to Song Chan the most fundamental elements of Zongmi’s Chan Prolegomenon, sometimes in Zongmi’s wording or close paraphrases: (1) the necessity for Chan transmitters to rely upon the sutras and treatises as the definitive standard or norm; (2) the true mind of clear and constant Knowing that is the substance of all the teachings and Chan; (3) the assumption that the nature axiom is the pinnacle of the teachings; (4) the use of the terminological pair zong-jiao or a synonym to denote the dichotomy of Chan and the word, and (5) the championing of the model of all-at-once awakening followed by step-by-step practice. We see every one of these themes in the following scattered passages from the Mind Mirror:

Question: An ancient worthy said: “If you make me set up an axiom and establish a fixed purport [li zong ding zhi], it is like looking for hair on a tortoise or seeking horns on a rabbit.” A Lanka Descent Sutra verse says that all dharmas are non-arising and you should not establish any axiom. So why do you give this [first] chapter [of your Mind Mirror] the title Designating-the-Axiom Section [biaozong zhang]? Answer: The words [of my title are designed to] dispel [misunderstandings]. In the case of the [Chan] axiom that is a non-axiom [wuzong zhi zong], axiom and theory [zong shuo] merge without impediment. The Chan axiom opens the path of singularity. You must not grasp at the teaching devices [of the sutras and treatises] and miss the great purport [= the Chan axiom]. But you also must not discard those teaching devices, cutting off the later explanations [of the teachings]…. This is the substance of the minds of all sentient beings. It is a spiritual Knowing that never darkens [lingzhi bumei], quiescent and illuminating without omission. It is not just the Huayan axiom—it is the substance of all the teachings…. Take the noble words [of the sutras and treatises] as the definitive source of knowledge, for the false is difficult to remove. Use the best teachings as your guidebook, a standard to be relied upon [yiping you ju]. Therefore, Preceptor Guifeng [in section 11 of the Chan Prolegomenon] says: “The first patriarch of all the [Chan] lineages is Śākyamuni. The sutras are buddha word, while Chan is the intention of the buddhas. The mouth and mind of the buddhas cannot possibly be contradictory.” … The true mind [zhenxin] in its self substance is inexpressible by words. It is clear like limitless space. It is a mirror of purity with a jade-like perfect brightness…. What is discussed at present in this Mind Mirror is not the setting up of existence of the dharma characteristics [teaching]. Nor is it the reversion to voidness of the eradicating characteristics [teaching]. It merely clarifies correct principle in accordance with the perfect teaching [yuanjiao] of the nature axiom [xingzong]…. The true mind is clear, quiescent, and illuminating. It does not arise from sense objects. It is empty and gives free rein to conditions. It has never involved mental activity. It is bright and never darkening, a clear and constant Knowing…. This [treatise, the Mind Mirror,] discusses seeing the nature and clarifying mind. It does not widely divide up [Chan] axioms and judge teachings. It solely holds up direct entrance into all-at-once awakening and perfect practice. It does not seek a liberation free of the [fish] traps and [rabbit] nets, nor does it ever grasp the written word and become deluded about the basic axiom [=the nature axiom].⁸⁵ When it relies on the teachings [yijiao], it is Huayan,⁸⁶ showing the broad, great texts of the one mind. When it relies on the axiom [yizong], it is Bodhidharma [Chan], the purport of directly revealing sentient beings’ mind nature [using the wording of Zongmi’s third Chan axiom]…. Therefore, the Mind Mirror in summary has two ideas: the first is all-at-once awakening to the axiom of Knowing [dunwu zhi zong], and the second is perfectly cultivating the [gradual] work…. One must first get an original awakening into the non-arising non-disappearing of one’s own true mind as cause and after that take this non-arising purport to [gradually] cure everything everywhere.⁸⁷

The scholar of Song Chan Albert Welter has said that by Song times the zong-jiao terminology had become a commonplace—to the point where monasteries were officially designated as either one or the other.⁸⁸ He has also argued that in the early Song two contrasting styles of Chan, “moderate” (Yanshou) and “rhetorical” (centering on the Linji house), represented “the poles between which a potential interpretation of Chan swung…. [This polarity is] indicative of the range of possibilities for interpretation available to all Chan masters.” As far as labels go, I prefer “sutra- and treatise-based Chan” (or perhaps “natureaxiom Chan”) for the Guifeng-Yanshou orientation. It is unfortunate that treatments of Yanshou seldom emphasize how much he owes to the Zongmi of the Chan Prolegomenon (as opposed to the Chan Letter).⁸⁹ Zongmi was the Tang dynasty grandfather of Yanshou Chan.

This Guifeng-Yanshou style of Chan, sometimes called canonical written-word Chan (wenzi chan), advocated the nature axiom and sudden awakening–gradual practice of the Perfect Awakening Sutra and the Heroic Progress Samadhi Sutra (= Buddha Top-knot Sutra). These two sutras, both apocryphal (at least in part for the latter), are built on the sudden awakening–gradual practice model.⁹⁰ Zongmi’s Chan Prolegomenon designates these sutras as (1) sutras of the nature axiom/third teaching (tallies with the third Chan axiom) and (2) expressions of the all-at-once teaching of the Buddhas’s responding throughout his teaching career to beings of the highest dispositon (tallies with the Chan all-at-once gate). They are thus quintessential Chan sutras. Yanshou’s Mind Mirror repeatedly quotes both of them.⁹¹

The rhetorical pole of Song Chan gave this written-word Chan the pejorative label “kudzu Chan” (geteng chan). The kudzu is a tendrilled vine, used as a metaphor for things that become entangled and thus for the utter complexity, confusion, and futility of the word. We see the rhetorical pole’s stance reflected in the Extensive Record of Yunmen, the collected sayings of one of the rhetorical pole’s favorite literary figures:

[The Master Yunmen said:] “If this matter [ci ge shi] lay in words—the three vehicles and the twelve divisions of the teachings are most definitely not lacking for words—for what reason would there be the slogan separate transmission outside the teachings [jiaowai biechuan]?” … [The Master] ascended the hall and said: “Just at the moment a single word is raised and the thousand differentiations fall [nicely] into place, drawing in every minute dust mote, it is still [nothing but] a verbal explanation/theory of the teachings approach [huamen zhi shuo]. What is a patch-robed Chan monk to do?” … Question: “What is the body of Śākyamuni like?” Answer: “A cylinder of dried shit [ganshijue].” … [The Master] ascended the hall and said: “Vasubandhu Bodhisattva for no reason transforms into a chestnut-wood staff.” Then with his staff he drew a line on the ground and said: “The buddhas, numberless as dust motes or grains of sand, are all in here speaking kudzu [shuo geteng].” He then got down from his seat…. [The Master] ascended the hall and said: “Today I am going to speak kudzu with you: ‘Shit, ash, piss, fire, muddy pigs, scabby dogs.’ Not knowing what to love and what to detest, you are making your livelihood in a shit pit [shikeng li].”⁹²

For Yunmen “this matter” is a separate transmission outside the thousands upon thousands of words in the three vehicles and the twelve divisions of the Buddhist canon. The Record of Linji, which has an old-baihua style akin to that of the Extensive Record of Yunmen (they had the same Song editor), says “the three vehicles and twelve divisions of the teachings are old toilet paper that wipes away filth” and describes an exchange between Linji and a specialist in the three vehicles and twelve divisions of the teachings in which the lecture specialist is driven into silence and rudely rebuked.⁹³

Not only did the Mind Mirror pass on the central ideas of the Chan Prolegomenon to the Chan enclaves of Song dynasty China; it performed the same function for Korea and Japan. Welter speaks of moderate Chan’s “persistent influence over Chan and the spread of Chan throughout East Asia, to Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, in spite of the persistent claims of contemporary [Japanese] Rinzai [Zen] orthodoxy to the contrary.”⁹⁴ Setting aside the question of what role Rinzai Zen has played in shunting the Mind Mirror with its Zongmi assumptions into the historical shadows and elevating the rhetorical style of texts like the Record of Linji and Extensive Record of Yunmen to prominence, it is more than fair to say that the Mind Mirror was highly influential in Koryŏ Korea and Kamakura-Muromachi Japan.

For example, in Korea a Koryŏ king saw a copy of the Mind Mirror (Chonggyŏng nok) and dispatched messengers bearing gifts to obtain it.⁹⁵ And the Chan works of Chinul, the dominant figure in the Chan of the later Koryŏ period (ca. 1200–1400), extensively quote the Mind Mirror.⁹⁶ In Chinul’s Chan, Zongmi’s Chan works and Yanshou’s Mind Mirror went hand in hand, and Chinul was nothing less than instrumental in the formation of the entire Korean Sŏn tradition. The Mind Mirror was included in the famous Koryŏ Canon of 1251,⁹⁷ but the Chan Prolegomenon was not, just as was the case with the Song Canon in China.

In the case of medieval Japan we find the Mind Mirror (Sugyōroku) at the very beginnings of Kamakura-period Zen, the Daruma lineage, which spread in the Nara and Kyoto areas during the late 1100s. Its founder, Dainichi Nōnin, is said in a biographical notice to have fielded questions about important passages in the Mind Mirror at one of his assemblies, and a key work of the Daruma lineage, the On Perfect Awakening (Jōtōshōgakuron), is heavily based upon chunks from the Mind Mirror.⁹⁸ In fact, quotations of the Great Master Nichi, Dainichi Nōnin himself, in On Perfect Awakening are actually material from the Mind Mirror. Nōnin’s interest in the Mind Mirror was not a singularity in Kamakura Zen. Two major Zen figures in the Tendai esoteric mold, Myōan Yōsai (1141–1215) and Enni Ben’en (1202–1280), used the Mind Mirror. Yōsai’s apologia Propagate Zen and Protect the Country (Kōzen gokoku ron) repeatedly cites the Mind Mirror, and Enni had a reputation among his contemporaries as an expert on Yanshou’s treatise.⁹⁹ In short, the Mind Mirror was very much present in Kamakura Zen.

In the subsequent Ashikaga period, the Mind Mirror circulated widely in Five Mountains (Gozan) Zen circles. Five Mountains was one of the great eras of printing in Japan, mainly reprints of Song and Yuan dynasty editions but including works by Japanese authors. In content, Gozan editions consisted mainly of Chinese Chan books plus Tang and Song poetry and prose collections, Chinese rhyme books, Chinese classics and histories, and so on. The central Gozan figure Shun’oku Myōha (1311–88) early in his career studied printing operations, as well as poetry styles and musical chanting of sutras, under the expatriate Chinese master Zhuxian Fanxian (Jikusen Bonsen; 1292-1348).¹⁰⁰ Myōha, who carried on Bonsen’s emphasis on publishing, arranged in Enbun 3 (1358) for a woodblock printing of the Chan Prolegomenon and in Ōan 4 (1371) commissioned an edition of the Mind Mirror. Of note is the fact that the number of skilled woodblock carvers involved in the latter project was the greatest number recorded for any Five Mountains edition.¹⁰¹ Such a concentration of resources suggests the great prestige of the Mind Mirror at the time. And just over a century later in 1480, the Rinzai monk Ikkyū Sōjun (1394–1481) received as a gift a precious xylograph copy of the Mind Mirror, presumably Myōha’s edition, from a prominent layman in return for writing out the single character “no” (muji), quite a big present (about 800,000 characters) in return for such a tiny courtesy.¹⁰²

THE KINGDOM OF XIXIA: TANGUT TRANSLATIONS OF THE CHAN PROLEGOMENON AND CHAN LETTER

In the history of Inner Asia for romantic aura there are few cultures that surpass that of Xixia, a multiethnic state located in the Ordos and Gansu corridor in the northwest from the eleventh to thirteenth centuries. Known almost universally by the Chinese name Xixia (“Western Xia”), its Tibeto-Burman language and people are always designated as Tangut, originally a Mongol term.¹⁰³ Its population included Tanguts, Hans, Tibetans, and Uighurs. After a number of campaigns, in 1227 Chinggis khan’s Mongol forces utterly extinguished this state. Today there is a small reminder of this brilliant culture in the current name for the region, the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region.

But the self-designation of this people was Mi or Mi-nia, and they called their state the “State of White and High” or “Great State of White and High,” the meaning of which has eluded scholars for some time.¹⁰⁴ The Chinese scholar Nie Hongyin has suggested that the answer may lie in two native Mi-nia (Tangut-language) poems.¹⁰⁵ In an epic poem on the origins of the Mi-nia, “white” indicates the West as the birthplace of the Mi-nia nationality; in a set of verses on the creation of the Mi-nia script, “high” indicates the highlands in the west in contrast to the Chinese lowlands in the east. Thus, the name of the state in the Mi-nia language probably meant the “Great State on the Highlands in the West.”

In 1908 an expedition of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society led by Peter Kuzmitsch Kozlov discovered the remains of an outpost of the Great State on the Highlands in the West at Khara-khoto in present-day Inner Mongolia, about fifty miles northeast of Dunhuang, and brought a massive corpus of Minia (Tangut) woodblock-printed books and manuscripts back to St. Petersburg. This collection shows that the Great State on the Highlands in the West was a sophisticated Buddhist kingdom with a fascinating orthography of its own making. In 1036, to commemorate the official announcement of the indigenous script the era name was changed.¹⁰⁶ Two years later, the Mi-nia began to translate the entire Chinese Buddhist canon, and this project was completed in 1090.¹⁰⁷

The Buddhism of the Great State on the Highlands in the West was based on Mi-nia (Tangut) translations of a wide spectrum of Chinese and Tibetan Buddhist texts: Mahayana sutras and treatises, tantric manuals and dharani works, Chan and Huayan works (particularly those of Zongmi), and so forth. The Russian collection contains multiple fragments of the Chan Prolegomenon and the Chan Letter; commentaries on the Chan Prolegomenon; a record of Chan encounters by Zongmi’s disciple Pei Xiu; and a strange text that synthesizes Hongzhou Chan and Guifeng Chan from the perspective of the latter.¹⁰⁸ The last two are unknown to the Chinese Chan tradition as we have it.

The Russian scholar K. J. Solonin cautions that, as of now, all we have is random glimpses of Tangut Buddhism, the general nature of which is unclear:

Since the known Tangut texts comprise neither a systematic library nor a canon, thus [sic] glimpses of a Tangut Buddhist tradition come merely through various, discrete texts. We cannot as yet determine their basic or entire meanings, nor place them in a general framework. These texts represent occasional “things at hand,” mainly those placed inside the Khara-Khoto stupa on the eve of the Mongol occupation of this remote outpost of Tangut civilization on the Mongolian steppe…. Study of the extant Tangut Buddhist materials reveals that the Xixia state was a safe haven for Huayan Buddhism, even after this tradition had supposedly disappeared in China. What the term “Huayan” implies is not only the classic Chinese school of Fazang (643–712), but also a heterogeneous tradition of the late-Tang master Guifeng Zongmi (780–841), many of whose works are to be found among the Khara-Khoto texts. The continued existence of Zongmi’s tradition is attested by several presumably primary Tangut texts (that is, those for which no Chinese version can be located or even deduced).¹⁰⁹

Solonin surmises that Zongmi’s lineage had not been interrupted after the Huichang Suppression of foreign religions in the 840s, as has generally been assumed, but continued developing in northwestern China and prospered in the Great State on the Highlands in the West at least until the middle of the twelfth century.¹¹⁰ His speculation on the affinity between the Tanguts and Zongmi is also worth quoting:

The most interesting problem is to explain the apparent affection the Tanguts held for Zongmi. This is perhaps best discussed in terms of cultural geography rather than religious studies: the center of Zongmi’s tradition at the Straw Hut Temple (Caotang si) near Chang’an was probably one of the few Chinese Buddhist centers known to the Tanguts in this period…. Several accounts suggest that the Straw Hut Temple was active all through the period of Jin rule (1115–1234), and even later. Therefore, the impact of this temple on the formation of Tangut Buddhism may well have been considerable and continuous.¹¹¹

There is a distinct possibility that Mi-nia (Tangut) Chan was a direct continuation of the Guifeng Chan of China, that is, the Chan of Zongmi centered at Caotang Monastery in North China in the period after his death in 841. At least three Tangut-language texts may in time shed light on Guifeng Chan both in the Great State on the Highlands in the West and in China after the time of Zongmi:

This text of Mi-nia Buddhism, which is deeply rooted in the orientation of Guifeng Chan, in its opening section quotes the Chan Letter on the topic of one mind:

[The Chan Letter, section 9, says:] “Delusion produces all the depravities, but even these depravities are not divorced from this mind [= the first teaching of nature origination].¹¹³ Awakening produces limitless, excellent functions, but even these excellent functions are not divorced from this mind [ci xin]. Even though in terms of merits and demerits the excellent functions and the depravities are different, in awakening and in delusion, this mind remains undifferentiated. If you desire to seek the buddha path, then you must awaken to this mind. Therefore, down through the generations, the patriarchal lineage has just transmitted this.” … Further, Chan Master Guifeng said: “If you intend to attain the fruit of wisdom, knowledge of causes and conditions is necessary. If [the knowledge of] causes and conditions is false, the fruit will be false as well.”¹¹⁴ … Further, Master Ming of Kaiyuan¹¹⁵ said: “If you strive to attain the fruit with a fundamentally unenlightened mind, that produces the same exhaustion as squashing sand to get oil or burning your house during the cold season [to keep warm].” … The Awakening of Faith says: “All dharmas from the outset are free of the characteristics of speech, free of the characteristics of the written word, free of the characteristics of objective supports of mind, ultimately sameness, without change, and indestructible. Because it is just one mind [yixin], we call it thusness.”¹¹⁶ … In Huangbo’s Mind Transmission it is said: “All the buddhas and all sentient beings are just one mind [wei shi yixin], and there is no other dharma. This mind from without beginning has neither arisen nor disappeared.”¹¹⁷ … In the Chan Prolegomenon [section 4] it is said: “If one’s practice is based on having all-at-once awakened to the realization that one’s own mind is from the outset pure, that the depravities have never existed, that the nature of the wisdom without outflows is from the outset complete, that this mind is buddha [ci xin ji fo], that they are ultimately without difference, then it is dhyana of the highest vehicle. This type is also known by such names as tathagata-purity dhyana, etc.” … The second teaching is that of mind calmness.¹¹⁸ Bodhidharma said: “Quieting mind is wall viewing.”¹¹⁹ … Bodhidharma’s doctrine of mind calmness is the foundation and source of the multitude of doctrines of mind calmness…. The seventh patriarch [Shenhui in his Platform Talks] said: “The mindfulness of no mindfulness is being mindful of thusness.”¹²⁰ … The Perfect Awakening Sutra says: “All the bodhisattvas and sentient beings of the end period, [relying on this practice, are thus capable of] being eternally free of illusions.”¹²¹ … The third is the teaching of generating practice.¹²² Bodhidharma said: “Generating practice is the four practices.”¹²³ … Further, Chan Master Shiye in the Commentary on the Perfect Awakening Sutra had also expounded the three teachings.¹²⁴ His explanations generally coincide with the above descriptions, though retaining minor differences…. In such an awakening, one’s own mind eliminates deluded elements, and the perfect, true mind, possessing spontaneous Knowing [zizhi],¹²⁵ is attained…. Actually, it was Bodhidharma himself who propagated the three teachings of nature origination, mind calmness, and generating practice. [These three] resemble the three legs of a tripod.¹²⁶ If one is missing, the whole ceases to exist…. When the three ways are completed, miraculous perfection is attained. Question: Earlier it was said that in the way of nature origination originally there are no defilements, and the nature is awakened in itself. If there are no defilements, then why should they be removed? Answer: The Great Master Guifeng [Zongmi] once said¹²⁷: “Even though this truth is realized directly in its completeness, nevertheless defiled mind-perception is difficult to remove …”¹²⁸

The Record of the Hongzhou Axiom with Commentary and Clarification begins by attributing the slogans “everything is the real” and “everything is the Dao” to the founding master of Hongzhou, Hongzhou Ma.¹²⁹ But both of these sayings appear in Zongmi’s Chan Notes (section 4) and Chan Letter (11 and 13), and they are almost certainly encapsulations of Hongzhou coined by Zongmi rather than Hongzhou sayings picked up by Zongmi. This heavily layered text, which consists of a root text entitled Teachings and Rituals of the Hongzhou Lineage Masters accompanied by commentary and subcommentary, takes as its main theme a threefold division of Chan. The first two divisions are none other than the Chan Prolegomenon’s zong (realizing the siddhānta) and jiao (the siddhānta in words), and the third is a synonym of the wish-fulfilling gem of Knowing:

Here, the root text is in boldface, and for the sake of clarity the two commentaries are blurred:

The master said: The essence of my teaching…. These are words of the founding master of Hongzhou … is that everything is the real … everything is the Dao…. Chan Master Juehui awakened in his mind. He realized what is beyond words but did not realize what is in conformity with words. He became attached to what is beyond words and did not intend to attain that which is in conformity with words. He opened his right eye and closed the left eye.¹³¹ He did not realize both what is in conformity with words and what is beyond words. This is a mistake, because one part is missing. Among the people who are attached to this, none can be said to have complete Knowing. And immediately [Juehui] said: The Great Master Bodhidharma transmitted from mind to mind with no involvement with the written word…. Daji [that is, Hongzhou Ma] said: Do not speak like that. If there is the substance [ti = what is beyond words], but there is no functioning [yong = what is in conformity with words], this is not the true substance…. In compliance with the substance, functioning appears, and all the words [of the teachings] are in accord…. Juehui attained the ultimate awakening, awakening to the non-duality of what is beyond words and what is in conformity with words…. When the non-duality of what is in conformity with words and what is beyond words is realized, the Chan of the Great Ancient Treasure Seal is complete…. When we talk about the completeness of the tripartite Chan, this is to say that each of them must be realized.¹³²

The three teachings and the three Chan axioms are the dharma of one taste. Therefore, one must first, according to the three types of buddha teachings [= what is in conformity with words], realize the Chan minds of the three axioms [= what is beyond words],¹³³ and only after that will both Chan and the teachings be forgotten, both mind and buddha calmed [= the non-duality of what is beyond words and what is in conformity with words = the Great Ancient Treasure Seal]. When both are calmed, then thought after thought all is the buddha; there will not be a single thought that is not buddha mind. When both are forgotten, then line after line all is Chan; there will not be a single line that is not Chan teaching.

In the Record of the Hongzhou Axiom with Commentary and Clarification we have Hongzhou Ma defending the Zongmi position and rebuking an otherwise unknown Hongzhou follower, Juehui, for erroneously taking the Bodhidharma slogan “no involvement with the written word” to mean that just awakening to what is beyond words is sufficient for liberation. Juehui eventually advances to realize both the Chan beyond words and the Chan in conformity with words, attaining ultimate awakening, the Great Ancient Treasure Seal. Here Guifeng Chan subsumes Hongzhou Chan.

In the Tangut finds we have nothing less than the literary remains of a hitherto unknown non-Han regional variant of the Chan tradition. Who was behind such Tangut-language Chan texts as The Mirror and Record of the Hongzhou Axiom with Commentary and Clarification? We do not know as of now. The former, which is full of quotations from Zongmi’s Chan Prolegomenon and Chan Letter, Chengguan’s writings, and Zongmi’s favorite sutras and treatises, is a restatement of his Chan Prolegomenon’s true-mind teaching and sudden awakening–gradual practice. The latter is an imaginative treatment of the Chan Prolegomenon’s tally fit (fu) of Chan and the teachings. Everything suggests that Mi-nia Chan was, in the broadest sense, directly traceable to Guifeng Chan. A parallel to Mi-nia Chan that immediately comes to mind is far away from Xixia, which was located on the northwest fringe of the Chinese periphery: Korea, on the northeast fringe.

Zongmi found his most receptive environment, with the possible exception of Xixia, almost four hundred years after his time, on the Korean peninsula. The key Korean inheritor of Zongmi’s orientation was Chinul (1158–1210), also known by the posthumous name National Teacher Puril Pojo. Chinul never traveled to China but nevertheless absorbed the Chan works of Zongmi (Korean Chongmil) in both letter and spirit. Chinul’s magnum opus of 1209, Excerpts from the Separately Circulated Record of the Dharma Collection with Inserted Personal Notes (Pŏpchip pyŏrhaeng nok chŏryo pyŏngip sagi) is a guidebook designed by Chinul for the Sŏn sitters gathered around him.¹³⁴ This work, which was to have such a momentous influence on the overall outlook of Korean Buddhism, is an expression of sutra-based sudden awakening–gradual practice Guifeng Chan. First, its opaque title requires more than a little explanation.

Dharma Collection refers to one of the collections of Zongmi’s miscellaneous pieces that circulated in China and Korea. Another title for the same sort of collection was Posthumous Collection of Guifeng (Guifeng houji). These collections seem to have consisted primarily of Zongmi’s answers to questions submitted to him, and the Chan Letter, which consists of Zongmi’s answers to Pei Xiu’s questions, was one component of such collections. Record refers to the Chan Letter itself. When excerpting the Chan Letter, Chinul’s Excerpts introduces the quotation as “the Record says” or “the text says” (and sometimes with no introduction at all). Separately Circulated indicates that the Chan Letter has been extracted from the collection and thereby converted into an independent work that circulates on its own. Inserted Personal Notes refers to Chinul’s interspersed comments and many other quotations, from Zongmi’s Chan Prolegomenon, a Chengguan commentary on the Huayan Sutra, Yanshou’s Mind Mirror, the Sayings Record of Dahui (Dahui yulu), and so on. In his comments Chinul sometimes refers to himself as Moguja, Oxherder.

Chinul’s Excerpts essentially rests on two foundation stones, blocks of quotations from the Chan Letter, the centerpiece of which is Guifeng Chan’s Knowing (Korean chi), and, toward the end, blocks of quotations from the Sayings Record of Dahui on Dahui’s method of gazing-at-the-topic (Korean kanhwa). The Dahui method consists of holding up to attention (“gazing at”) twenty-four hours a day a single word or short phrase (the huatou or topic) from a Chan case (gong’an), and this is continuously carried out over time. In Chinul’s schema the sudden awakening is awakening to Guifeng Chan’s Knowing, and the gradual practice is cultivation of Dahui’s method of gazing-at-the-topic. The Excerpts stands as a creative hybrid of these two. Chinul’s preface says:

Moguja says: Heze Shenhui was a teacher of the view of Knowing. Although he was not the direct successor of [the sixth patriarch] Caoqi [note that Chinul has jettisoned the Chan Letter’s championing of Heze as the orthodox line], his understanding-awakening was high and bright and his distinctions clear. Because Master [Zong]mi received the purport of his lineage, within this Record [= Chan Letter] he extended and clarified it so that it could be clearly seen. Now, for the sake of those who rely on the teachings to awaken to mind [inkyo osim], I have pruned [the Chan Letter] down and produced a summary of excerpts. This will serve as a model for the practice of viewing. I note that mind cultivators of the present fail to rely on the written word as a guide, but just take [Chan] transmissions with a hidden meaning [milŭi sangchŏn ch’ŏ] as the path. In murkiness they take useless pains to do cross-legged sitting while dozing off. Sometimes in the midst of the practice of viewing they lose their minds in a mixed-up confusion. Therefore, they must rely on [Master Zongmi’s] oral teachings concerning things as they really are [ŭi yŏshil ŏnkyo] to make distinctions about the whole course of awakening and practice.¹³⁵ Taking [these teachings] to mirror their own minds, they will at all times engage in viewing-illumining and not pervert their efforts. Also, as to the content of the Record [as Zongmi arranged it], the various lineages, such as that of Shenxiu and so on, are at the beginning. The reason is that [Zongmi] was distinguishing [which lineages] hit the bull’s-eye and which miss it, proceeding from shallow to profound. Now I am putting the extracts from the Heze lineage [section of the Chan Letter] at the beginning, essentially to enable those engaged in the practice of viewing first to awaken to the realization that their own mind, whether in delusion or awakening, is a spiritual Knowing that never darkens [yŏngji pulmae] and is intrinsically immutable. Only afterwards will they successively peruse the [excerpts from the Chan Letter dealing with the teachings and practices of the] various lineages and realize that their purports all are deep in good skill [in teaching devices] with respect to the gate of people [of varying dispositions]. If at the beginning [trainees] do not apprehend the source [= the “Source” in the title of the Chan Prolegomenon = the Knowing of Heze Chan], then, with respect to purports of the other lineages, they will follow after verbal traces and falsely produce thoughts of seizing and rejecting. How then will they be able to fuse with understanding and take refuge in their own minds? Also, I fear that practitioners of viewing who are not yet capable of forgetting feelings and being empty and bright, [after suddenly awakening to Knowing] will stagnate on the theoretical expression [of Knowing], and, therefore, toward the end [of my text] I provide brief excerpts from sayings on the shortcut gate [of practicing gazing-at-the topic] by a master who was the real thing [Dahui Zonggao]. This is essentially to enable [those practitioners] to eliminate diseases [that may arise] connected to Knowing and come to know the live road of escape from self.¹³⁶

Chinul reprimands contemporary Korean practitioners for focussing exclusively on Chan transmissions of cryptic meaning while neglecting the guidance of the written word (of complete meaning). His antidote is reliance on Chongmil’s teachings to outline the correct program of awakening and practice. Chinul’s program is Chongmil’s program—with the addition of Dahui’s method. In the body of his Excerpts Chinul argues that sudden awakening followed by gradual practice is the appropriate model for Chan followers of high aspiration during the present age.¹³⁷ His slightly earlier work, the Formula for Cultivating Mind (Susim kyŏl) of 1203–1205, has three formulas: (1) enlightened mind seeks the Buddha; (2) sudden awakening and gradual practice; and (3) void and calm spiritual Knowing.¹³⁸ On the second theme it states:

As the [Heroic Progess Samadhi] Sutra says: “As to principle, one all-at-once awakens; riding this awakening, [thoughts of the unreal] are merged into annulment. But phenomena are not all-at-once removed; [only] by a graduated sequence are they exhausted.”¹³⁹ Therefore, Guifeng [Zongmi] deeply clarified the principle of first awakening and later practice [sŏno husu]…. As to sudden awakening [tono], when the ordinary being is deluded, [he assumes that] the four elements are his body and thought of the unreal is his mind. He is unaware that his self nature is the true dharma body. He is unaware that his own empty Knowing [hŏji] is the the true Buddha. He seeks the Buddha outside mind and is on a constant run. Suddenly entrance to the road is pointed out to him by a good guide. For one moment he retraces the light and sees his own self nature. The ground of this nature from the outset is free of the depravities; [it is] the no-outflows knowledge nature complete from the outset, not the slightest bit different from all the buddhas. Therefore, we speak of sudden awakening. As for gradual practice [chŏmsu], having suddenly awakened to the realization that the original nature is no different from the buddhas, the beginningless habit energy is difficult to eliminate finally, and, therefore, he relies on this awakening to practice. The results of this gradual perfuming mature, nourishing the sagely embryo. After a long time, he becomes a noble one, and, therefore, we speak of gradual practice.¹⁴⁰

It would be hard to exaggerate the importance of Chinul’s Excerpts and Formula for Cultivating Mind as well as Zongmi’s Chan Prolegomenon (Sŏnwŏn jejŏnjip tosŏ) and Chan Letter (submerged in the Excerpts) in the history of Korean Buddhism. The Chan Prolegomenon, for instance, has gone through a remarkable number of woodblock-print editions in the monasteries of Korea.¹⁴¹ A specialist in old Korean books, Kuroda Ryō, remarked: “In Korea the Chan Prolegomenon was one of the Buddhist books with the highest number of woodblock printings, done at frequent intervals at the monasteries in all the various regions.”¹⁴² In contrast to Japan, where the Chan Prolegomenon was neglected within the Zen fold after around 1500, in Korea it regularly emerged from the monastic printing establishments and was studied all over the peninsula. The Japanese Kegon scholar Kamata Shigeo has said that the Chan Prolegomenon “is one of the most highly regarded books in Korean Buddhism.”¹⁴³

Chinul’s later heirs in his Guifeng orientation were Kihwa (1376–1433) and Hyujŏng (1520–1604). Guifeng Chan has been at the center of the curriculum of Korea’s Chogye school since about 1700 in the form of the Fourfold Collection (Sajip): Letters of Chan Master Dahui Pujue (Dahui Pujue chanshi shu); Chan Master Gaofeng Yuanmiao’s Essentials of Chan (Gaofeng Yuanmiao chanshi chanyao); Chan Prolegomenon; and Chinul’s Excerpts.¹⁴⁴ Of all the Buddhist cultures on China’s periphery that produced woodblock-printed editions of the Chan Prolegomenon—the Khitans of the Liao state (907–1125),¹⁴⁵ the Mi-nia (Tanguts) of the Great State on the Highlands in the West (Xixia), the Koreans, and the Japanese—none surpassed the firmness of the Koreans in embracing all dimensions of Guifeng Chan.

During the first half of the thirteenth-century Chinese Chan of the Song dynasty was just beginning to stream into Kamakura Japan from the continent, and it was initially perceived by many Japanese as exceedingly newfangled and alien. The Chan works and sutra commentaries of Zongmi (Japanese Shūmitsu) found a reception within Kegon studies. Kegon was one of the schools of the so-called old Kamakura Buddhism, a term referring to those forms of Buddhism that had arrived much earlier than the Kamakura period (the Nara schools plus Tendai and Shingon). Because of the effect of the work of the Japanese medieval historan Kuroda Toshio, we now generally call this Buddhism “exoteric-esoteric Buddhism” (kenmitsu Bukkyō) and assume that it still remained the dominant form of Buddhism during the Kamakura period, in spite of the rise of the Pure Land, Zen, and Lotus (Nichiren) movements. For the initial transmission of Zongmi’s Chan works in this exoteric-esoteric Buddhist milieu, two key figures are the Shingon monk Kōben (also known as Myōe Shōnin; 1173–1232), who was deeply immersed in Kegon studies, and his disciple Shōjō (1194–?).

In the winter of 1223 Myōe transmitted to Shōjō a set of secret judgments (hiketsu) on Zen, perhaps involving the handing over of the Chan Letter and the Chan Prolegomenon (Zengen shosenshū tojo). This was an esoteric oral transmission (kuden) in the Shingon style. Shōjō gave literary form to this secret transmission in his 1255 Outline of the Zen Axiom (Zenshū kōmoku), which folds Zen into the Kegon system, using Zongmi’s Chan Letter as the tool for the job.¹⁴⁶ Outline of the Zen Axiom is a sort of Japanese exoteric-esoteric Buddhist analogue of Chinul’s use of the Chan Letter in his Excerpts. The two works are roughly contemporaneous; they both are based, to a considerable extent, on the Chan Letter; and they both advocate Guifeng Chan’s Knowing teaching and sudden awakening–gradual practice. We might say that both are reflections of the influence of the Chan Letter in Song China.

Shōjō’s work does not focus on contemporary Japanese developments in Zen but solely on the four lineages of Chan found in Zongmi’s Chan Letter. The Outline of the Zen Axiom opens with Shōjō’s responding to a request from laymen that is almost identical to the one Pei Xiu makes of Zongmi at the beginning of the Chan Letter. Shōjō’s preface states:

I have in Buddhism for a long time specialized in listening to Kegon [from my master Myōe]. On the side I have received consultation [from him] on the Zen gate [note that Zen is subsidiary in this exoteric-esoteric Buddhist context]. Now, as I am currently in contact with lay people, in passing my hand over the elephant it is difficult to discriminate [what part of the elephant I am touching]. I am no different from a lost sheep. Here two or three people who know me have secretly sounded me out: “The Zen gate of the present time is in a confused state, with many principles of right and wrong. We wish you would show us a guide and resolve our net of doubts.” Suddenly I was moved by these words, as if there were a karmic connection from a past birth. Accordingly, I do not calculate the transmission [of Zen] that I received as superficial, and I will imperfectly record what I previously heard. It is not the case that this must become an ornamental form on my ankle; my only desire is to anticipate a karmic connection in a future life. Truly, in opening this Outline of the Zen Axiom I will briefly differentiate five gates. The first is to distinguish sameness and difference between the teachings and Zen. The second is to clarify separate transmission outside the teachings. The third is to reveal seeing the nature and becoming a buddha. The fourth is to show step-by-step and all-at-once in awakening and practice. The fifth is to relate the views of the various streams of Zen.¹⁴⁷

The building materials for Outline of the Zen Axiom come largely from the Chan Letter, though there are many quotations from Chengguan’s commentaries and some from Yanshou’s Mind Mirror (once again showing the wide circulation of that compendium all across East Asia). Shōjō’s conclusions under the five rubrics are as follows:

1. The all-at-once teaching, the fourth of the five teachings of the Kegon schema (with Kegon as the fifth and perfect teaching), and the Zen axiom of Bodhidharma are essentially the same, though there are some differences—in other words, Zen is compatible with exoteric-esoteric Buddhism

2. Separate transmission outside the teachings; no involvement with the written word refers to the awakening on one’s own to the axiom (siddhānta) that is beyond words of the Lanka Descent Sutra—in other words, these slogans are grounded in canonical written word

3. See the nature and become a buddha refers to Shenhui’s teaching of Knowing as transmitted by Zongmi

4. Taking awakening in the sense of intellectual-understanding awakening, Zen belongs to the gate of all-at-once awakening and step-by-step practice (Zongmi’s model)

5. In discussing the views of the various streams of Zen, Shōjō completely follows the Chan Letter

Perhaps part of Shōjō’s agenda was to domesticate Chan for the Japanese exoteric-esoteric Buddhist scene. Once given its subordinate niche in the Kegon spectrum of five teachings, it could not become threatening in the manner of the slightly earlier Daruma lineage of Zen of Dainichi Nōnin or the radical Pure Land teachings that were gaining ground at the time under the banner of the exclusive nenbutsu, exclusive reliance on simple oral recitation of the name of Amida Buddha. Shōjō’s master, Myōe, was much alarmed at exclusive nenbutsu, which discarded all the traditional teachings and practices, and he tried to counter such a development with a competitive simplification rooted in exoteric-esoteric Buddhism. In this unstable situation (note that in the Outline of the Zen Axiom passage above it is mentioned that “the Zen gate of the present time is in a confused state”) it would be natural for representatives of exoteric-esoteric Buddhism to frame Zongmi as “a patriarchal master of the Kegon lineage.”

FIVE MOUNTAINS (GOZAN) ZEN OF THE ASHIKAGA PERIOD: SHŪMITSU AS PROTOTYPE FOR SHUN’OKU MYŌHA AND KIYŌ HŌSHŪ

During the Ashikaga period from about 1300 to 1500, Five Mountains Zen, the Zen of the metropolitan Rinzai monasteries of Kyoto and Kamakura, was the engine of elite Japanese culture. This Five Mountains Zen, which in the past has often been dismissed as a sort of decadent, secularized Zen, a falling away from pure Zen, is only beginning to receive the positive reevaluation it deserves. Just as Zongmi had worked to broadcast Chan in a polished format to the literati and politicians of the court of Emperor Wenzong of the Tang dynasty, Five Mountains Zen monks in Japan during the Ashikaga era were broadcasting a Zen imbued with much contemporary elite Chinese culture to the military men and aristocrats of Kyoto’s shogunal and imperial courts. Given the similarity in audience composition and interests, it should come as no surprise that the two styles of presenting Chan and Zen show points of convergence.

The following description of Five Mountains Zen could be applied, without too much revision, to Guifeng Chan:

Japanese Five Mountains Zen … was not radical socially, since it took the form virtually of a state religion; it was clearly not iconoclastic in its reverence for the sages of several Zen lineages as well as of Chinese poetry and painting; it emphasized textual and literary study; and it practiced a highly allusive and indirect mode of producing meaning…. [Five Mountains Zen] writings might better be described as highly allusive and complex texts which assume a common knowledge of a broad range of intellectual, religious, and aesthetic treatises…. Finally, the Muromachi Five Mountains monks certainly provide us with still more evidence useful in rethinking characterizations of Zen as radically antitextual, individualistic, anti-institutional, paradoxical or mystical, and iconoclastic. For these Japanese monks, Zen Buddhist religious insight is inseparable from textual study, written expression in prose or poetry, cultural appreciation, and the mainstream social and institutional context for these behaviors.¹⁴⁸

The Chan Prolegomenon’s elegant literary style, broad erudition, allusiveness, and complexity meshed with the Chinese literary temperament of Five Mountains Zen. The Chan Prolegomenon’s successor text, Yanshou’s Mind Mirror, fit in nicely for the same reasons.

As mentioned earlier, the powerful and influential Rinzai Zen figure Shun’oku Myōha in 1358 arranged for a printing of the Chan Prolegomenon and in 1371 for a printing of the Mind Mirror.¹⁴⁹ And there is a striking parallel between an incident in Myōha’s early career and Zongmi. Myōha’s record, the National Teacher Chikaku Fumyō’s Sayings Record, says:

The Patriarch [Musō Soseki] frequently interrogated him [Myōha] with [stories of the] ancient worthies’ [responding to the varying] dispositions [of disciples] and the karmic conditions [of the encounters]. The Master [Myōha] was supposed to answer like an echo. The Master repeatedly presented his [level of] understanding and repeatedly met with a scolding: ‘Your inclinations are not poor, but it is just that your understanding is obstructed.’ Because of this [the Master] did not engage in literary pursuits with the writing brush, but just followed the patriarch’s [instructions] in singlemindedly applying himself to cross-legged sitting, not allowing his ribs to touch the mat. One day, as he was reading the Perfect Awakening Sutra, he arrived at [the first of the four items in the ‘Purity Bodhisattva Chapter’ that says] ‘wherever they are at any time, they do not produce false thoughts’¹⁵⁰ and suddenly ‘got it’ [kotsuzen utoku]. He composed two verses and presented them to the Patriarch. The Patriarch nodded.¹⁵¹

This incident exactly echoes Zongmi’s sudden awakening upon encountering the Perfect Awakening at a vegetarian banquet. One can easily imagine Myōha at a later stage in his career sitting in his study one afternoon perusing Zongmi’s Chan Prolegomenon with all its sutra quotations and its Perfect Awakening assumptions. Myōha’s editions of the Chan Prolegomenon and Mind Mirror allowed wide access in Kyoto’s Zen precincts to these classics of sutra-based Zen. This “classical Buddhist” aspect of Five Mountains Zen is often overlooked by its modern critics, who stress that the “secular” pursuits of these Five Mountains Zen monks, particularly the composition of Chinese poetry, squeezed the Buddhism out of their Zen. But Myōha’s edition of the Chan Prolegomenon (sections 1, 7, and 9) informed its Five Mountains readers that Chan texts, which tally with the sutras, are in some sense a form of Chinese poetry (juji).

Of the major Five Mountains Zen monks, one of the most learned in both the canonical sutra-treatise literature and Zen texts was Kiyō Hōshū (1361–1424), who, to use standard Buddhist parlance, was a sort of magical-creation body (nirmanakaya) of Zongmi.¹⁵² This erudite Rinzai Zen master, who was much attracted to Zongmi’s works, was close to the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, was a teacher of the syncretist thinker Ichijō Kanera, and even had contact with the Nō dramatist and theoretician Zeami Motokiyo. Kiyō wrote a piece on Zongmi containing an outline of Zongmi’s biography and encapsulating his Zen style with the following aphorism: “No Zen separate from the teachings; no teachings separate from Zen.”¹⁵³ This slogan shows that Kiyō had assimilated what Zongmi was saying in the Chan Prolegomenon. Even Kiyō’s reputation as the first in Japan to propagate Zhu Xi’s commentaries on the Confucian Four Books echoes Zongmi’s accommodating attitude toward the Confucian tradition.

The Ōnin War of 1467 through 1477 ravaged Kyoto and accelerated the dispersion of Five Mountains Zen culture outside the capital. But after the waning of Five Mountains Zen in Kyoto, study of the Chan Prolegomenon seems to have languished in Japan. Though there were two woodblock-printed editions done around the Genroku era in the late seventeenth century,¹⁵⁴ Zongmi’s text appears to have remained in relative obscurity until the modern period. The situation began to change only in 1939 when Ui Hakuju, an Indologist-Buddhologist who had trained in Sanskrit in Europe, published his edition and translation of both the Chan Prolegomenon and the Chan Letter.¹⁵⁵ As the epigraph at the beginning of this chapter illustrates, Ui was struck by the sophisticated way Zongmi’s great work integrated Zen and Buddhism in its entirety. By “Buddhism in general” (Bukkyō ippan), Ui meant the Indic sutras and treatises, the titles of which are sprinkled throughout the Chan Prolegomenon. Since the publication of Ui’s pioneering book, the world of Zen studies in Japan has gradually taken up study of the texts of Guifeng Chan.¹⁵⁶