Zongmi on Chan

1. For the demon simile, see “Genpō Rōshi no meigen sono ichi, monku kei,” http://www.marino.ne.jp/%7Erendaico/kuromakuron/genpo.htm. For a biography of Genpō, see Obigane Mitsutoshi, Sairai: Yamamoto Genpō den (Tokyo: Daihōrin kaku, 2002).

2. Zengaku daijiten hensansho, ed., Zengaku daijiten (Tokyo: Taishūkan shoten, 1978), 2:1100. The slogan is “furyū monji kyōge betsuden.”

3. The term “Knowing” (zhi), a translation equivalent of the Sanskrit term jñāna (Hirakawa, 885), is the core of Zongmi’s Chan. In both Buddhist and non-Buddhist Indian contexts jñāna (“sacred knowledge” or “abstract knowledge”) is contrasted with vijñāna (“practical knowledge” or “applied knowledge”). Zongmi (Chan Prolegomenon, section 24) says of this Knowing: “The mind of voidness and calm is a spiritual Knowing that never darkens. It is precisely this Knowing of voidness and calm that is your true nature. No matter whether you are deluded or awakened, mind from the outset is spontaneously Knowing. [Knowing] is not produced by conditions, nor does it arise in dependence on any sense object. The one word ‘Knowing’ is the gate of all excellence.” I would like to thank F. Stanley Jones for suggesting the term “prolegomenon.”

4. The following biography, including the division into phases, is based on Peter N. Gregory, Tsung-mi and the Sinification of Buddhism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991), 27–90. See Gregory for details and information on sources. I have at nodal points quoted Pei Xiu’s funerary inscription for Zongmi, the Guifeng chanshi beiming bing xu.

5. Pei Xiu’s inscription for Zongmi, the Guifeng chanshi beiming bing xu, begins: “Chan Master Guifeng, name Zongmi, of the He family [xing Heshi], was a man of Xichong county in Guo prefecture [Guozhou Xichong xian ren]…. The Great Master was originally of a wealthy and powerful family [haojia]” (Shūmitsu, 49–50; QTW 16:743.9730b18 and 9731a16–17). Zongmi’s given name is not recorded. His birthplace is just east of present-day Nanchong county in Sichuan province, about 110 miles east of Chengdu, the provincial capital.

6. Such schools, which ran on public or private money, were established in local areas. The Righteousness Learning Academy (Yixueyuan) was in Suizhou on the west bank of the Fu River (Fujiang), not far from Zongmi’s home in Guozhou.

7. Pei’s Guifeng chanshi beiming bing xu reports: “When young he was conversant with Confucian books, and he wanted to make a life in the world, but by chance he called on [ou ye] Suizhou [Daoyuan]. Before Suizhou had said anything, [Zongmi] retired to become one of his followers…. In Yuanhe 2 [807] he received the sealed mind from [yinxin yu] Preceptor [Dao]yuan” (Shūmitsu, 50–51; QTW 16:743.9731a17–18 and 9732b6–7).

8. Pei’s Guifeng chanshi beiming bing xu reports that Zongmi first encountered this sutra at a vegetarian banquet in Sichuan: “At the beginning in Sichuan, at the time of a vegetarian banquet [yin zhai ci], he received sutras and got the Perfect Awakening in thirteen chapters. He had a deep comprehension of its principles and subsequently transmitted the Perfect Awakening” (Shūmitsu, 50; QTW 16:743.9731b3–4). T no. 842, the Da fangguang yuanjue xiuduoluo liaoyi jing, purports to be a translation by Buddhatara/Buddhatrata done in 693, but it is thought to be a Chinese apocryphon based on the Heroic Progress Samadhi Sutra (T no. 945) and the Awakening of Faith (T no. 1666) (Daizōkyō, 247–248). Yanagida Seizan, ed. and trans., Chūgoku senjutsu kyōten 1 Engakukyō, Bukkyō kyōten-sen 13 (Tokyo: Chikuma shobō, 1987) has Chinese text, modern Japanese translation, and notes. For an English translation, see Charles Muller, “The Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment (Yuanjuejing),” http://www.acmuller.net/bud-canon/sutra_of_perfect_enlightenment.html. Muller’s description (2–3) is useful: “The Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment is arranged in twelve chapters, plus the short convocation. The convocation section describes the scene of the sermon and lists the major participants. The location is a state of deep meditative concentration (samādhi) and the participants are the Buddha and one hundred thousand great bodhisattvas, among whom twelve eminent bodhisattvas act as spokesmen. Each one of the twelve gets up one by one and asks the Buddha a set of questions about doctrine, practice, and enlightenment. The structure of the sutra is such that the most ‘essential’ and suddenistic discussions occur in the earlier chapters and the more ‘functional’ and gradualistic dialogues occur later…. In the first two chapters (the chapters of Mañjuśrī and Samantabhadra), the Buddha holds very strictly to the sudden position, denying the possibility of enlightenment through gradual practice. In the third chapter [the chapter of Universal Vision/Puyan Bodhisattva] he begins to allow for a bit of a gradual view, and the next several chapters become mixtures of the two. The final few chapters offer a fully gradualistic perspective” (italics mine). In the second chapter (T 17:913c23–914a4) Samantabhadra asks how one can use illusion to come back to practice cultivation in the midst of illusion (yi huan huan xiu yu huan). After remarking that if sentient beings never practice, then in the midst of the rebirth process they will always find themselves in illusion transformation (changju huanhua), Samantabhadra asks what teaching device for gradual practice (jianci xiuxi) will allow sentient beings in the end period of the dharma eternally to escape illusion. Given this theme, it is little wonder this sutra remained the main object of Zongmi’s commentarial energies throughout his career. An autobiographical comment contained in one of Zongmi’s numerous commentaries on this sutra, the Da fangguang yuanjue xiuduoluo liaoyi jing lueshu zhu (T 39:524b20–23), is revealing: “When a child with hair hanging down and tied I specialized in the ‘commandments of Lu’ [that is, the Confucian classics]. At the age of putting on a cap [twenty] I inquired into the Indian mounds [of Buddhist texts]. In both cases I drowned in the fish net, stealing a glance downward and getting only the flavor of husks and dregs. Fortunately, at the Fu [River I met Daoyuan, and my disposition] responded to him like a needle [attracted by a magnet] or a particle [attracted by amber]. In Chan I encountered the Southern lineage. In the teachings I had a rendezvous with this [Perfect Awakening] classic. At one word [from Daoyuan] my mind ground opened all the way up. In the midst of one scroll [containing this sutra] the principles [of the teachings] became clear and bright like the heavens.”

9. Gregory, Tsung-mi, 48. Gregory has solved the vexing problem of Zongmi’s Chan filiation.

10. Zongmi’s first letter to Chengguan of October 4, 811, is contained in his Da fangguang yuanjue xiuduoluo liaoyi jing lueshu zhu (T 39:576c1–577c8). Zongmi begins by describing himself as “originally a low-status scholar from Sichuan.” He relates his meeting with Reverend Daoyuan and Heze Chan, his encountering Chengguan’s commentaries on the Huayan Sutra in Xiangyang, his trip to the eastern capital Luoyang to bow at the stupa of the patriarchal master Shenhui (li zushi ta), and the story of the monk Taihong who cut off his arm. He closes with a request for instruction: “In prostration I beg for your compassion. If you would specially grant your assistance, my good fortune would be extreme. Your unprepared apprentice Zongmi is terrified and does a hundred obeisances.” Chengguan’s answer of November 1 (577c9–24) says that he accepts Zongmi and will certainly transmit the teaching to him. Zongmi’s second letter of November 12 is also included (577c26–578a6). In it Zongmi says he will rush to get to Chengguan in order to serve him.

11. Pei Xiu’s inscription for Chengguan, the Qingliang guoshi shi miaojue ta ji, states: “Of disciples who left home [under Chengguan] and became teachers of men there were thirty-eight. Haian Xuji was at the head. Students who had received [Chengguan’s] teaching reached the number of one thousand, but just Sengrui of the eastern capital and Guifeng Zongmi alone attained its inner recesses” (Kamata Shigeo, Chūgoku Kegon shisō-shi no kenkyū [Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1965], 158). This makes its sound as if Zongmi was not a member of the inner circle of disciples but merely one of the very best of a large number of students who came to Chengguan. Pei’s inscription for Zongmi, the Guifeng chanshi beiming bing xu, reports Chengguan’s assessment of Zongmi: “Guan said: ‘It is you who can accompany me roaming in the flower womb of Vairocana!’” (Shūmitsu, 50; QTW 16:743.9731b3).

12. The chart in Zongmi’s Chan Letter (Kamata, 290; section 7) lists Chengguan (called the Huayan Commentary Master) as a disciple of Fucha Wuming (=Wuming of the eastern capital Luoyang = Wuming of Mt. Wutai in Shanxi province). Wuming was a collateral disciple of Heze Shenhui. Pei Xiu’s inscription for Chengguan (Kamata, Chūgoku Kegon, 157) states that he “also trained under the Great Master Wuming.” The Song gaoseng zhuan (T 50:737a18–20) adds to this Heze experience contact with Niutou and Northern Chan: “He also had audiences with Master [Hui]zhong of Mt. Niutou, Master [Fa]qin of Mt. Jing, and Master Wuming of Luoyang, in which he surveyed the dharma of the Chan of the Southern lineage. He also saw Chan Master Huiyun and understood the profound principle of the Northern lineage.” In his Da fangguang fohuayan jing suishu yanyi chao (T 36:62b1–4), Chengguan places Chan in the fourth of the five teachings of Huayan, the all-at-once teaching (dunjiao): “[As to saying that the all-at-once teaching] accords with the Chan axiom, Bodhidharma’s taking mind to transmit mind is precisely this teaching. If [Chan] did not point to one word and thereby directly preach mind is buddha [ruo bu zhi yi yan yi zhi shuo jixin shi fo], how could [Chan] be transmitted? Therefore, relying on wordlessness [referring to Vimalakīrti’s silence in the Vimalakīrti Sutra, T 14:551c22: “At that time Vimalakīrti was silent and wordless (moran wuyan)”] and taking that as the word, [Chan] directly expresses the principle of cutting off words. The [all-at-once] teaching is also [thereby] clarified. Therefore, the Chan of the Southern and Northern lineages does not go beyond the all-at-once teaching.” This is subcommentary on a passage in a commentary on the Huayan, the Da fangguang fohuayan jing shu (T 35:512c4–5). Thus, both Southern and Northern Chan rank below Huayan, the fifth or perfect teaching (yuanjiao). Later in the Yanyi chao (T 36:224a21–23), he remarks: “[As to saying that] the exhaustion of feelings and manifestation of principle is called making a buddha, this accords with the Chan axiom. It is the gate of the non-obstruction of phenomena and principle [shili wuai men]. According to the Samantabhadra gate, truly Huayan is the gate of the non-obstruction of phenomenon and phenomenon [shishi wuai men].” Hence, in the schema of the four dharma spheres, Chan ranks as the third, the non-obstruction of phenomena and principle, and Huayan as the highest, the fourth dharma sphere of the non-obstruction of phenomenon and phenomenon. See Yoshizu Yoshihide, Kegon Zen no shisō-shi teki kenkyū (Tokyo: Daitō shuppansha, 1985), 224 and 237–38. Chengguan makes Chan as a whole subordinate to Huayan.

13. The titles are: (1) Qixinlun shu; (2) Jingang banruo jing shulun zuanyao; (3) Yuanjuejing lueshu; (4) Yuanjuejing lueshu chao; (5) Yuanjuejing daochang xiuzheng yi; (6) Yuanjuejing dashu; (7) Yuanjuejing dashu chao; (8) Huayan lunguan (not extant); (9) Sifenlü shu (not extant); (10) Yuanjuejing zuanyao (not extant); and (11) Weishisong shu (not extant) and Weishisong shu chao (not extant). The Nirvana Sutra commentary below is Niepanjing shu (not extant). For information on these works, see the reconstruction of Zongmi’s oeuvre in Gregory, Tsung-mi, 315–25.

14. Gregory, Tsung-mi, 315–25, shows thirty-one titles, though some works are listed twice under different titles. The Dunhuang manuscript fragment of the Chan Prolegomenon, which is dated 952, closes with a catalogue of twenty-five Zongmi works. At the end of this early list, compiled 111 years after Zongmi’s death, is the line: “Altogether two-hundred and fifty rolls [plus] charts.” This list shows Zongmi’s affinity for charts, since we find:

• Chart of the Three Teachings

• Chart of the Awakening of Faith in One Roll

• Chart of Eighteen Commentaries on the Thunderbolt-Cutter Sutra

• Chart of the Perfect Awakening Complete Meaning Sutra

• Chart of the Genealogy of the Patriarchal Masters from Generation to Generation (Leidai zushi xuemai tu = Chan Letter)

To these we could add the Chan Prolegomenon itself, which includes a chart (section 54). For a reproduction of this Dunhuang list, see Lin Shitian and others, eds., Dunhuang Chanzong wenxian jicheng (Beijing: Quanguo tushuguan wenxian suowei fuzhi zhongxin, 1998), 1:488–89; for an edition and discussion, see Tanaka Ryōshō, Tonkō Zenshū bunken no kenkyū (Tokyo: Daitō shuppansha, 1983), 437–42.

15. For all information on Pei Xiu and the other literati around Zongmi, see Gregory, Tsung-mi, 73–85. The funerary inscription, the Guifeng chanshi beiming bing xu, ends with Pei’s description of their relationship: “As for me and the Great Master, in the dharma we were older brother and younger brother; in righteousness we were intimate friends; in my deepest thoughts he was my guide [shan zhishi]; and for the teachings we were internal and external protectors [neiwai hu]. Therefore, I am able to present him in detail. As to other people [I could] not [present them] in [such] detail” (Shūmitsu, 51; QTW 16:743.9733a5–6). For a thorough treatment of Pei’s biography, see Yoshikawa Tadao, “Hai Kyū den: Tōdai no ichi shidaifu to Bukkyō,” Tōho gakuhō 64 (March 1992): 115–277.

17. Liu Xu and others, comps., Jiu Tangshu (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1975), 7:177.4594. This high assessment of Pei’s abilities in the literary arts is noteworthy, but it is the praise of his calligraphy (zicheng bifa) that stands out. For an example of Pei’s calligraphy in regular style, see the reproduction of a rubbing of his funerary inscription for Zongmi in Pei Xiu, Tang Pei Xiu shu Guifeng chanshi bei (Taipei: Xinshi chubanshe, 1981). To this day his calligraphy is emulated in Japan. He is one of twenty-eight calligraphers used as exemplars for the Tang period in the calligraphy dictionary entitled Character Types in Five Styles: Takada Takeyama, ed., Gotai jirui, 3rd ed. (Tokyo: Nigashi-higashi shobō, 2002). Many of the Pei Xiu entries are in running style.

18. On the morning of December 14 it was announced at court that sweet dew (ganlu), an auspicious omen, had fallen on a palace courtyard, where armed men lay in wait for the chief eunuchs. The eunuchs were ordered to investigate and report back. Something went afoul, and the eunuchs became aware of what was afoot. Eunuch forces then counterattacked, carrying out systematic executions of high officials and their clans. The biography of Li Xun, a key plotter, in the Old Tang History (Liu, Jiu Tangshu, 7:169.4398) says: “On that day Xun clenched his fists and fell to the ground. Knowing that the matter [of the coup] had not been accomplished, he then raced on horseback alone into Mt. Zhongnan [southwest of the capital Chang’an]. He flung himself before the monastery monk Zongmi. Xun’s [relationship] with Zongmi heretofore had been good. [Zongmi] wanted to shave his hair and hide him away, but his followers would not permit it, and so [Xun] hastened to Fengxiang [northwest of the capital], desiring to rely on Zheng Zhu. [Xun] came out of the mountains and was apprehended by Zhou Zhi and Commander of the Garrison Zong Chu. [Xun] was sent bound into the capital. They arrived at Kunming Pond, and Xun, fearing that he would enter the army camp and undergo special torture, said to the soldiers: ‘You soldiers right here! Having apprehended me you will get riches and honor, but it will not be as good as going in holding up my head. [That way] you will avoid having me snatched away from you.’ They then beheaded Xun and went in carrying the head. Xun’s younger brother Zhongjing and his cousin Auxiliary Secretary of the Bureau of Finances Yuangao both suffered the extreme penalty. Because Zongmi had taken in Li Xun, [the eunuch] Chou Shiliang had him sent bound into the Left Army camp. He charged [Zongmi] with the crime of withholding information [bugao zhi zui] and was going to execute him. Zongmi said with composure [yiran]: ‘I have known Xun for many years, and I even knew he was in rebellion. However, according to the teachings of my root master, I must alleviate any suffering I encounter. I am not in love with my own life, and I will assuredly die with a sweet heart [ganxin].’ [This was perhaps a dangerous pun on “ganlu”/“sweet dew.”] Chief of the Army Yu Hongzhi admired this and sent up a memorial releasing him from the crime.” The New Tang History account is substantially the same. See Ouyang Xiu and others, comps., Xin Tangshu (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1975), 17:179.5313–14. Zongmi’s entry in the Song gaoseng zhuan (T 50:742a–b), gives the story of Zongmi’s arrest. Zongmi’s words in the face of imminent execution evoke the man of courage spoken of in the Mencius, 6.1: “The man of will never forgets that [he might end up thrown away] in a ditch; the courageous man never forgets he might lose his head.” There is also a bit of the loyal official (zhongchen), loyal to Emperor Wenzong, in his stance. After the abortive coup, Emperor Wenzong expressed his sense of isolation in a quatrain entitled “Theme in the Palace” that is found in Complete Tang Poems (Quan Tangshi [Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1979] 1:4.48):

On the road of the imperial carriage spring vegetation is sprouting.

In the Shanglin Park it is the time when flowers open up.

Looking off into the distance, how could there be limits to my thoughts?

But there are no longer officials at my side to know them.

19. Pei’s inscription, the Guifeng chanshi beiming bing xu, reports: “On the sixth day of the first month of Huichang 1 [February 1, 841] in sitting posture he expired at the Xingfu [Monastery’s] Stupa Compound [Xingfu tayuan]. He was majestic as if alive, his countenance all the more pleased. After seven days they shifted the body to a coffin. His realization power could be known. On the twenty-second day of that month [February 17] monks and laypeople presented the corpse at Guifeng. On the thirteen day of the second month [March 9] he was cremated, and they initially got ten grains of relics [śarīra]” (Shūmitsu, 51; QTW 16:743.9732b8–11). According to the Liang jing xinji (New Record of the Two Capitals, fascicle 3) Xingfu Monastery was in the northwest corner of the Xiude Lane (Xiude fang xibei yu Xingfu si), just west of the imperial palace (gongcheng) in the northern part of the city (Hiraoka Takeo, Chōan to Rakuyō: Shiryō, Tōdai kenkyū no shiori [T’ang Civilization Reference Series] 6 [Kyoto: Kyoto daigaku jinbun kagaku kenkyūjo, 1956], 182).

20. Pei’s inscription, the Guifeng chanshi beiming bing xu, reports: “The present emperor [Xuanzong] further expounded the true axiom, bestowing the posthumous title ‘Samadhi-Prajna Chan Master’ [Dinghui chanshi] and the ‘Stupa of the Blue Lotus’ [Qinglian zhi ta]” (Shūmitsu, 51; QTW 16:743.9732b17–18).

21. The Chan sacred history Lengjia shizi ji, which dates to about 719 or 720, says (T 85:1289b11–14 and 1290a28–b2; Yanagida I, 268 and 298): “The sixth [patriarch], the Great Master, named Hongren, of Yuju Monastery on Mt. Shuangfeng in Qizhou of the Tang dynasty, received the succession from Chan Master [Dao]xin. The dharma that Hongren transmitted was a wonderful dharma. People honored it and at the time called it the ‘East Mountain Purity Gate [Dongshan jingmen].’ Also, the monks and laypeople of the capital and [Luo]yang extolled it, sighing: ‘East Mountain in Qizhou has many people who have obtained the fruit.’ This is why they called it ‘East Mountain Dharma Gate [Dongshan famen].’ … In Dazu 1 [701] [Shenxiu] was invited to enter the eastern capital. He followed the [imperial] carriage back and forth [between the two capitals]. In the two capitals he gave instruction in the teachings and personally served as Imperial Teacher. The Great Sagely Empress Zetian questioned Chan Master Shenxiu: ‘In your transmitted dharma, of what house is the axiom purport?’ He answered: ‘I have received the East Mountain Dharma Gate of Qizhou.’”

22. The Chan Notes refers to the theory, the doctrinal aspect, with the following terminology: idea (yi); axiom purport (zongzhi); dharma idea (fayi); and principle awakened to (suowu li). It calls the practical aspect: practice or cultivation (xiuxing/xing/xiu); the path practiced (suoxiu zhi dao); and practice gate (xingmen).

23. The Tibetans call the view part “lta ba’i cha” and the praxis part “spyod pa’i cha.” See Alex Wayman, “Nāgārjuna: Moralist Reformer of Buddhism,” in Untying the Knots in Buddhism: Selected Essays, Buddhist Tradition Series 28 (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1997), 75–76; and Ferdinand D. Lessing and Alex Wayman, eds. and trans., Mkhas grub rje’s Fundamentals of the Buddhist Tantras (The Hague: Mouton, 1968), 81–99. Mainstream (Hinayana) Buddhism is the first wheel. For the second wheel, the view is the treatises of Nagarjuna and the second half of Aryadeva’s Four Hundred Verses, and practice is the first half of Aryadeva’s treatise. For the third, the Adornment of Mahayana Sutras equally expounds view and practice; the “Chapter on Reality” of Asanga’s Bodhisattva Stages expounds only view; and the remaining chapters of that treatise are concerned with practice.

24. In selecting “renxin” (“give free rein to mind”) to describe Hongzhou practice, I think Zongmi probably was thinking of a passage in the “Discussion on the Art of Writing” (Zongshu) chapter of the Wenxin diaolong. In the translation of Vincent Yuchung Shih: “Therefore, when one plies this art as the rein with which he guides his composition, he may be likened to a good chess player who knows his moves and the inevitable results of them. But the one who abandons the art for the whims of his own mind [qishu renxin] is like a gambler whose success is a matter of luck” (Vincent Yu-chung Shih, trans., The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons: A Study of Thought and Pattern in Chinese Literature [New York: Columbia University Press, 1959], 231). The first element (“chulei”) of this Hongzhou slogan is one of a set of idioms. See Iriya Yoshitaka and Koga Hidehiko, Zengo jiten (Kyoto: Shibunkaku shuppan, 1991), 275–76; and Jiang Lansheng and Cao Guangshun, eds., Tang Wudai yuyan cidian (Shanghai: Shanghai jiaoyu chubanshe, 1997), 66.

• Chart of the Genealogy of the Patriarchal Masters from Generation to Generation (Leidai zushi xuemai tu).

Listed in a catalogue of Zongmi works at the end of a Dunhuang manuscript dated 952. Lin, Dunhuang Chanzong wenxian jicheng, 1:489; Tanaka, Tonkō Zenshū bunken no kenkyū, 438.

• Guifeng Answers Minister Pei’s Letter on the Purports of the [Chan] Lineages (Guifeng da Pei Xiangguo zongqu zhuang)

Cited in the 1107 Linjianlu (ZZ 2B.21.4.296d; CBETA Wan Xuzangjing vol. 87, no. 1624:248c15[06]–16[06]).

• Imperial Redactor Pei Xiu’s Inquiry (Hai Kyū shūi mon; Pei Xiu shiyi wen).

The existence of a 1241 manuscript under this title at the Shingon temple Shinpuku-ji in Nagoya was mentioned in a 1936 catalogue of the temple’s holdings, but its introduction to the scholarly world was not until the publication of Ishii’s article “Shinpuku-ji bunko shozō no Hai Kyū shūi mon no honkoku” in 1981. The edition in Shinpuku-ji includes at the end three additional sections: Zongmi’s comments on views presented to him by Xiao Xianggong; Zongmi’s answers to ten questions of Shi Shanren; and Zongmi’s answers to questions of Wen Shangshu of Shannan). For a modern Japa nese translation, see Ishii Shudō, trans., Zen goroku, Daijō butten Chūgoku Nihon hen 12 (Tokyo: Chuōkōronsha, 1992), 41–90.

• Guishan Answers Pei Xiu’s Letter of Inquiry (Keizan to Hai Kyū monsho; Guishan da Pei Xiu wenshu).

Cited in the 1255 Zenshū kōmoku of Shōjō (1194–?). Kamata Shigeo and Tanaka Hisao, eds., Kamakura kyū Bukkyō, Nihon shisō taikei 15 (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1971), 185.

• Chart of the Master-Disciple Succession of the Chan Gate that Transmits the Mind Ground in China (Chūka denshinji zenmon shiji shōshū zu; Zhonghua chuanxindi chanmen shizi chengxi tu).

Undated text discovered in 1910 at the Nichiren Dai-honzan Myōken-ji in Kyoto and subsequently included in the Manji zoku-zōkyō (ZZ 2.15.5; CBETA Wan Xujangjing vol. 63, no. 1225).

• Collection of [Zongmi’s] Responses to [Questions from] Monks and Laypeople (Daosu chouda wenji).

Listed in a catalogue of Zongmi’s works at the end of a Dunhuang manuscript dated 952. It is described as in ten rolls. Lin, Dunhuang Chanzong wenxian jicheng, 1:489; Tanaka, Tonkō Zenshū bunken no kenkyū, 438. See Jan Yün-hua, “Tsung-mi chu Tao-su ch’ou-ta wen-chi te yen-chiu,” Hwakang Buddhist Journal 4 (1980): 132–66.

Cited in a letter by the Tiantai monk Zhili (960–1028) found in the 1202 Teachings and Practice Record of the Honorable One of Siming (Siming zunzhe jiaoxinglu; T 46:894c29–895a6): “But you are unaware that this comes from the Posthumous Collection of Guifeng…. A printed edition of this Posthumous Collection is extant [yinben jianzun]. It is transmitted in both the South and the North; its circulation has been uninterrupted [liuxing bu jue].” Since this letter dates to sometime between 1010 and Zhili/Siming’s death in 1028 (judging from the fact that Siming identifies himself as the head priest of Yanqing Yuan at the beginning of his letter [T 46:894c18], and the name Baoen Yuan was changed by imperial order to Yanqing Yuan in 1010 [T 46:857c10–12]), we know that a woodblock-printed edition of a posthumous Zongmi collection containing the Chan Letter was in circulation in various regions of China around 1010 through 1030.

• Essentials of Chan Master Caotang’s Letters (Caotang chanshi jianyao).

Quoted in the 1107 Linjianlu (ZZ 2B.21.4.296d–297a; CBETA Wan Xuzangjing vol. 87, no. 1624:248c18[00]–249a02[02]).

It is unclear whether or not we are dealing with one collection or several, and the last may even be another title for the Chan Letter standing alone rather than a collection containing it.

26. Ui Hakuju, Zenshū-shi kenkyū (1935; repr., Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1966), 3:48.

27. The Chan Letter uses not just the idea and purport of the earlier work, but understanding (suojie/jie) and view (suojian/jianjie) as well.

28. The sutra says: “Good sons! It is like the pure treasure jewel that reflects the five colors, manifesting [different colors] according to what is facing it. The foolish ones see that jewel as really having the five colors” (T 17:914c; Yanagida, Engakukyō, 56; Muller, “The Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment [Yuanjuejing],” 10).

29. For these two Hongzhou figures, see Mario Poceski, Ordinary Mind as the Way: The Hongzhou School and the Growth of Chan Buddhism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 63–67. Poceski says: “Among them [disciples of Mazu], Huaihui and Weikuan had the greatest impact on the Hongzhou school’s fortunes in Chang’an and beyond…. Dayi, Weikuan, and Huaihui were the best-known monks associated with the Hongzhou school to teach in Chang’an, but not the only ones. Other disciples of Mazu active in Chang’an were Huayan Zhizang, Haozhi (who, like Weikuan, resided at Anguo monastery), Caotang, and Xingping.” For biographical information, see Poceski’s note 143.

30. Chan Prolegomenon, section 24, has a parallel passage that clarifies the abbreviated form of Pei’s question: “Your potentiality right now to talk, act, [experience] passion, anger, friendliness, patience, create good or bad and receive suffering or joy, etc., is your buddha nature [ji ru foxing]. By virtue of this you have been a buddha from the outset. There is no other buddha than this.”

31. For an example of these books (gongguo zhuang), see Ouyang, Xin Tangshu, 4:46.1190–91.

32. This accords with Poceski, Ordinary Mind as the Way, 11: “Once we move beyond this sort of ‘evidence’ [iconoclastic stories in Song texts] and look instead at extant Tang sources, the unabashed iconoclasm habitually associated with the Hongzhou school gives way to a more complex and nuanced historical reality. The historical image of Mazu and his disciples we are confronted with is not simply that of a radical religious movement bent on subverting established norms and traditions. Instead, as we will see, the Hongzhou school comes across as being much closer to the mainstream of Buddhism—and to early Chan—than Zen apologetics would have us believe.”

33. Bai Juyi, Bai Juyi ji (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1979), 3:41.912; and Jingde chuandeng lu, T 51:255a29–b2. See Poceski, Ordinary Mind as the Way, 65n. 130.

34. Yanagida Seizan was the first to suggest that Zongmi’s criticism of Hongzhou was taken over intact by the Song neo-Confucians as the basis of their criticism of Buddhism. See Iriya Yoshitaka, ed. and trans., Denshin hōyō Enryōroku, Zen no goroku 8 (Tokyo: Chikuma shobō, 1969), 162.

37. Pei Xiu’s preface to his record of Xiyun, which is dated October 22–29, 857, provides a detailed account of the genesis of the text: “In Huichang 2 [842] I was stationed as Commissioner of Inspection in Zhongling, and I welcomed [the Master Xiyun] from [Huangbo] Mountain [in Gao’an county, Jiangxi] to [Hong]zhou [northwest of Zhongling] to take repose [that is, become abbot] at Longxing Monastery. Day and night I inquired of him about the path. In Dazhong 2 [848] when I was stationed as Commissioner of Inspection at Wanling [in Jiangxi] I again went to do obeisance in welcoming him to the administrative department and had him dwell peacefully at the Kaiyuan Monastery, day and night receiving his dharma. I withdrew to record it [his talks], but out of ten I got but one or two. I wore it at my waist as a mind-seal pendant, not daring to publish it. But now I have come to fear that its divine, pure meaning may not be heard in the future. At last I took it out and handed it over to his monk disciples Taizhou and Fajian. They took it back to Guangtang Monastery on the old mountain [that is, Xiyun’s original Mt. Huangbo in coastal Fuzhou] and asked the venerables and dharma assembly how it differed from what they had personally heard constantly in the past” (T 48:379c5–12; Iriya, Denshin hōyō, 3). On the colloquial nature of this Xiyun record, Iriya (foreword, 4) remarks: “The question-and-answer portion of the text, as a whole, is an account in spoken-language format. The spoken language of the day is freely used. A modern Japanese translation of it is all the easier, but the kundoku method of reading it used up until now [that is, the traditional Japanese system for reading literary Chinese], in short, the method of directly reading it as literary language on purpose, makes no sense in the first place.” This aspect of the Chuanxin fayao-Wanlinglu led Henri Maspero to include it as one of the five texts used in his pioneering study of “ancient spoken Chinese” published in 1914: Henri Maspero, “Sur Quelques Textes Anciens de Chinois Parlé,” Bulletin de l‘École Française d‘Estrème-Orient 14, no. 4 (1914): 1–36. This article was translated into English in an unpublished paper: Yoshitaka Iriya, Ruth F. Sasaki, and Burton F. Watson, “On Some Texts of Ancient Spoken Chinese with Comments and Emendations” (photocopy, Kyoto, 1954).

38. I have adopted this term from the modern Chinese-Japanese dictionary: Aichi daigaku Chū-Nichi daijiten hensansho, ed., Chū-Nichi daijiten, 2nd ed. (Tokyo: Taishūkan shoten, 1999), 10. Ping Chen, Modern Chinese: History and Sociolinguistics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 68–69, provides a good description, referring to it as traditional baihua: “By the end of the Tang dynasty, as an increasing number of words and grammatical constructions from the vernacular found their way into writing, a new type of written language, baihua ‘vernacular literary language’ (literally ‘unadorned speech’), emerged and matured. Baihua differed from wenyan in that it was much closer to the contemporary vernacular. While wenyan remained supreme as the standard written language, baihua served all low-culture functions such as transcriptions of Buddhist admonitions, and scripts for folk stories and plays…. Baihua gained in currency from the end of the Tang dynasty, providing the medium for many representative literary works of the later periods…. For a long period, there co-existed two types of written Chinese, wenyan and baihua. Due to the conservatism prevalent among the ruling class and the literati, wenyan was considered refined and elegant, thus ideal for high-culture functions, while baihua was despised as coarse and vulgar, suitable only for low-culture functions…. The language used in such writings [vernacular verse, stories, and novels] known later as traditional baihua in contrast to the modern baihua as used in the twentieth century, was quite well established as a written language for informal purposes such as keeping diaries and writing casual essays, and on specific occasions which required a text that approximated as far as possible what was actually being said, as in the recording of court proceedings, official negotiations, etc.”

39. These include: the miscellany of abstract statements and sayings loosely called the Bodhidharma Anthology (Damo lun); sacred histories tracing the transmission of Bodhidharma Chan by a sequence of biographies of its patriarchs, such as the Annals of the Transmission of the Dharma Treasure (Chuan fabao ji), Record of the Lanka Masters and Disciples (Lengjia shizi ji), and Record of the Dharma Treasure Through the Generations (Lidai fabao ji); treatises on Chan method and teachings, often in question-and-answer format, such as the Essentials of Mind Cultivation (Xiuxin yaolun), On Cutting Off Examining (Jueguanlun), and Essential Judgments on All-at-Once Awakening to the True Axiom (Dunwu zhenzong yaojue); Heze Shenhui’s lectures and discourses, such as his Platform Talks (Tanyu); and apocryphal sutras closely associated with the growing Chan movement, such as the Chan Gate Sutra (Chanmenjing). The best introduction to this corpus is Shinohara Hisao and Tanaka Ryōshō, eds., Tonkō butten to Zen, Tonkō kōza 8 (Tokyo: Daitō shuppansha, 1980).

40. A good place to begin to get a sense of the baihua overlap between transformation texts, tales, traditions of strange matters, poetry, etc., and Chan texts is this dictionary of Tang–Five Dynasties language: Jiang and Cao eds., Tang Wudai yuyan cidian.

41. For a history of the text (T no. 1988), see Urs App, “The Making of a Chan Record,” Zen bunka kenkyūjo kiyō 17 (1991): 1–90.

42. There is a link between the suyu (the meaning runs from colloquial set phrases through popular language, slang, and vernacular) of the southeast coastal area of Zhejiang and Fujian (Wu, Yue, and Min) and the language of Chan texts in the post-Tang period. Zhejiang/Fujian speech rhythms, modal particle usage, interjections, onomatopoetic words, idioms, and perhaps even profanities surely found their way into Chan texts. And thus what is often thought of as (enigmatic) “Chan language” may, to some extent at least, be Zhejiang/Fujian suyu. This area was the center of gravity of Chan (and the production of Chan texts) in the post-Tang period. One cannot help but thinking that in texts like the Extensive Record of Yunmen we are hearing something of the voices of the common people of the farms, towns, shops, and markets of Wu, Yue, and Min. Zongmi’s speech, on the other hand, was surely the elite vernacular of the metropolitan Chang’an area in the faraway northwest.

• The earliest reference is in the catalogue of Zongmi works at the end of the Dunhuang manuscript fragment of the Chan Prolegomenon, dated 952, where it is described as “Collected Essentials of the Discourses on the Chan Source [Ji chanyuan zhulun guanyao] in 130 Rolls” (Lin, Dunhuang Chanzong wenxian jicheng, 1:489; Tanaka, Tonkō Zenshū bunken no kenkyū, 438).

• The New Tang History lists it as “Zongmi’s Collection of Expressions of the Chan Source [Chanyuan zhuquanji] in 101 Rolls” (Ouyang, Xin Tangshu, 5:59.1530).

• The Enbun 3 (1358) Gozan edition of the Chan Prolegomenon in a question (section 57) not found in other editions mentions that the Chan Canon “in number surpasses one-hundred rolls (one-hundred sixty rolls)” (Ishii [10], 70).

• A late-eighteenth-century Korean commentary on the Chan Prolegomenon, the Sŏnwŏn jejŏnjip tosŏ kwamok pyŏngip sagi by Yŏndam Yuil, remarks (Shūmitsu, 270) that “the Collection of Expressions of the Chan Source in one-hundred rolls at present is not transmitted in Korea.”

44. Pei makes this point in both his preface to the Chan Prolegomenon (T 48:398b7–8; Kamata, 3; translation in appendix 2) and in his inscription for Zongmi (Shūmitsu, 50; QTW 16:743.9731b7). The former opens with: “Chan Master Guifeng collected the Expressions of the Chan Source as a Chan basket [chanzang] and did a prolegomenon to it. Hedong Pei Xiu says: ‘There has never been such a thing!’” For a modern Japanese translation of Pei’s preface with annotations, see Ishii (2), 39–51.

45. Kamata, 358. Kamata feels that Zongmi planned to compile the Chan Canon but probably never got around to writing out a copy.

46. This short work, found at the beginning of the Bodhidharma Anthology, appears to be the ur-text of Chan literature. The “two entrances” are entrance by principle (liru) and entrance by practice (xingru). Of the former it is said: “Entrance by principle means that one by means of the teachings awakens to the axiom [ji jiao wu zong] and deeply believes that all beings, common and noble, are identical to the true nature [tongyi zhenxing]; that it is merely because of the unreal covering of adventitious dust that [the true nature] is not revealed.” The four practices are: the practice of requiting injury (baoyuan xing); the practice of following conditions (suiyuan xing); the practice of nothing to be sought (wusuoqiu xing); and the practice of according with dharma (chengfa xing). See Yanagida Seizan, ed. and trans., Daruma no goroku, Zen no goroku 1 (Tokyo: Chikuma shobō, 1969), 31–32.

47. Yanshou has biographical entries at Song gaoseng zhuan, T 50:887a29–b16, and Jingde chuandeng lu, T 51:421c8–422a20. The Zongjinglu is T no. 2016. The traditional date for its completion is Jianlong 2 (961) of the Song. According to prefaces (T 48:415a1 and b13) it was also called the Zongjianlu (Record of the Axiom Mirror) and Xinjinglu (Record of the Mind Mirror). Therefore, zong (“axiom”) =xin (“mind”). Perhaps Yanshou derived the title for his great compendium from a passage in Zongmi’s Chan Prolegomenon. Yanshou’s own preface to his work explains his title as follows (T 48:417a19–22): “Now, to clearly understand the great ideas of the [Chan] patriarchs and the buddhas and the correct axiom of the sutras and treatises, I will pare down the complicated texts, seek out just their essential purports, set up imaginary questions and answers, and widely quote proofs and clarifications. I will raise the one mind as the axiom [ju yixin wei zong] and illuminate the ten thousand dharmas as if in a mirror [zhao wanfa ru jing]. I will arrange the profound meanings of the ancient [literary] productions and scoop up an abridgement of the perfect explanations of the treasure storehouse. Displaying all of this in common, I will call it a record and divide it into one-hundred rolls.” I think this takes off from Chan Prolegomenon, section 18: “The nature and characteristics are without obstruction; together they are one mind [yixin]. If you lose your way here, any direction you go you will face a wall. If you are awake to this, then the ten-thousand dharmas [will appear as if] in a mirror [wanfa lin jing].” (See also Chan Prolegomenon, section 53: “I will now provide a chart that sketches out these things in order to make the common-person and noble-once sequences and the axioms of the great storehouse of sutras appear at a single time in the mind mirror [xinjing].”) Yün-hua Jan, “Two Problems Concerning Tsung-mi’s Compilation of Ch’an-tsang,” Transactions of the International Conference of Orientalists in Japan 19 (1974): 46, remarks that Sekiguchi Shindai first suggested in a conversation that Zongmi’s Chan Canon had been absorbed into Yanshou’s Zongjinglu. Fascicles 94 to 100 may contain quotations from the Chan Canon. At the beginning of that section Yanshou states (T 48:924a14–16): “Now, I will for the sake of those whose faith power is not yet deep and whose minute doubts are not yet severed further quote one hundred twenty Mahayana sutras, one hundred twenty books of the sayings of the [Chan] patriarchs [zhuzuyu yibai ershi ben], and sixty collections of the worthies and noble ones, altogether the subtle words of three hundred books.” Fascicles 97 and 98 (T 48:937c1–947b6) consist of a large block of Chan sayings: a verse from each of the twenty-eight Indian patriarchs; a quotation from Bodhidharmatara’s (Putidamoduoluo) Dharma Gate of Quieting Mind (Anxin famen); sayings for the second through sixth patriarchs of China (the Sixth Patriarch being the Great Master Huineng); sayings for the Great Master [Huai]rang and the Great Master [Hongzhou] Ma; and finally a very long set of Chan sayings, the order of which appears to be somewhat jumbled, coming from various periods and lineages in early Chan. Perhaps at least some of these sayings derive ultimately from Zongmi’s collecting efforts about a century earlier in the north.

48. Yi-Hsun Huang, Integrating Chinese Buddhism: A Study of Yongming Yanshou’s Guanxin Xuanshu, Series of the Chung-Hwa Institute of Buddhist Studies 43 (Taipei: Dharma Drum Publishing Corporation, 2005), 47 and 56–57. A SAT Daizōkyō Text Database (http://2ldzk.l.u<->tokyo.ac.jp/SAT/) search for the term “fayan” (“dharma eye”) in the Zongjinglu gives twenty-five hits, always in the traditional Buddhist sense of “obtain the dharma eye,” “incapable of fathoming the dharma eye,” “open the dharma eye,” and so forth. It never denotes the Chan house of that name.

49. A thorough search via the SAT Daizōkyō Text Database or CBETA will be necessary, but the following lists just a few quotations and paraphrases of the Chan Prolegomenon found in the Zongjinglu:

50. The Chan Prolegomenon (section 58) speaks of the tripartite structure of the Chan Canon: “Therefore, as to the order of the present [Chan Canon] collection: First, I record Bodhidharma’s one axiom [Damo yi zong =mind/one mind]; next come the miscellaneous writings of the [Chan] houses [zhujia zashu]; and, lastly, I have copied out the noble teachings [= sutras and treatises] that seal the [Chan] axioms [yin zong shengjiao].” The tripartite structure of the Zongjinglu is: first the Designating-the-Axiom Section [biaozong zhang = the first half of fascicle 1]; next the Questions-and-Answers Section [wenda zhang = from midpoint in fascicle 1 through fascicle 93]; and lastly the Quotations-to-Authenticate Section [yinzheng zhang = from fascicle 94 through fascicle 100]. Though not a perfect fit, there is some congruency.

52. Zhuangzi, Waiwu: “The reason for the fish trap lies in the fish; you get the fish and forget the trap. The reason for the rabbit net lies in the rabbit; you get the rabbit and forget the net.”

54. We can definitely trace the Chan Prolegomenon from Zongmi in the Chang’an area to the Hangzhou area, where Yanshou spent his entire career, through the undated Song-dynasty colophon reproduced in the Wanli 4 (1576) Korean edition (Kamata, 260). For a translation, see appendix 3. According to this colophon, an 857 copy of the Chan Prolegomenon in Pei Xiu’s hand just over a century later wound up in the hands of a layman in the Hangzhou area, who arranged for a woodblock printing. The Weijing mentioned in this colophon as part of the transmission to the Hangzhou printing is Nanyue Weijing, a disciple of Xuefeng Yizun (822–908). In the early 930s Yanshou took ordination under another disciple of Yizun. All of the monasteries that Yanshou was associated with throughout his career were in the Hangzhou area. In short, Yanshou was in the right place at the right time with the right connections to come across a copy not only of the Chan Prolegomenon but perhaps the Chan Canon (or at least some fragments of it) as well.

55. For an example of esoteric Buddhist fu drawings, see the (possibly apocryphal) Huiji jingang jin baibianfa jing (T no. 1129), a sutra representative of the cult of the vidyārāja (“King of Magical Knowledge”) Ucchusma, who has the power to transform filth into purity by means of fire. It contains a number of strange fu drawings with instructions beneath. These drawings were in red and are similar to those in the Baopuzi of Ge Hong of the Jin period.

57. 1. miyi yixing shuoxiang jiao; 2. miyi poxiang xianxing jiao; and 3. xianshi zhenxin jixing jiao.

58. For information on these sutras and treatises as well as those of c., see the notes to section 25.

59. a. rentian yinguo jiao; b. duanhuo mieku jiao; and c. jiangshi pojing jiao.

61. Zongmi always refers to this sutra as the Foding jing (Buddha Top-knot Sutra), but it is commonly known as the Shoulengyan jing (Heroic Progress [Samadhi] Sutra). The full title is Da foding rulai miyin xiuzheng liaoyi zhupusa wanxing shoulengyan jing.

62. For information on these sutras and treatises (a few are Chinese apocrypha), see the notes to section 29.

65. The first meaning issues from tongzu (“having a common ancestor”), found in standard dictionaries such as Hanyu dacidian, Cihai, etc. Here it is a synonym of jia (“house/family”), as in the seven Chan houses of the Chan Notes. The second meaning, zong as a translation equivalent for siddhānta (Hirakawa, 375), is working from the extended meaning of zong as benzhi (“basic purport”) or zhuzhi (“main purport”) found in Hanyu dacidian, Wang Li gu Hanyu zidian, Ciyuan, and so forth.

66. T 16:499b27–c6; zongtong ji shuotong = siddhānta-naya deśanā = Tibetan grub pa’i mtha’ dang bstan pa (“established conclusion and teachings”).

67. Zhang Yisun and others, eds., Bod-Rgya tshig mdzod chen mo (1993; repr., Beijing: Minzu chubanshe, 2000), 1:403, gives for “grub mtha’”: “‹siddhānta› phyi nang gi chos lugs so so’i lta ba ‘dzin tshul te” (“The diverse views upheld by the Buddhist and non-Buddhist doctrinal traditions”). The four Buddhist philosophical systems are referred to as grub mtha’ smra ba bzhi and given (404) as: (1) bye brag smra ba; (2) mdo sde pa; (3) sems tsam pa; and (4) dbu ma pa.

68. The Chan Prolegomenon (section 33) mentions the opposition between existence and voidness: “The above three teachings take in all of the sutras spoken by the Tathagata in the course of his lifetime and all of the treatises composed by the bodhisattvas. A close examination of dharma and principles will reveal that the three principles [san yi = three teachings = three axioms] are completely different, while the one dharma is without difference. Of the three principles the first and second are opposed as existence is to voidness [kong you xiangdui], and the third and the first are opposed as nature is to characteristics. Both of these [oppositions] are easily seen, even from a distance.” An early discussion of this opposition between existence and voidness is in Fazang’s Dasheng qixin lun yiji (T 44:242a29–b27). Fazang relates that he got his information on this topic from questioning the Central Indian master Divakara, who worked in Chang’an and Luoyang from 680 to 688. Divakara informed Fazang that at India’s Nālandā (Nalantuo) Monastery in the recent period there were simultaneously two great treatise masters, the Yogācārin Silabhadra (Jiexian) and the Mādhyamika Jnanaprabha (Zhiguang). Fazang lays out the three-tiered schemas of these Indian pandits.

70. 1. xiwang xiuxin zong; 2. minjue wuji zong; and 3. zhixian xinxing zong.

71. For information on these Chan houses and those below (with the exception of Shitou), see the notes to Chan Notes.

72. “yiti qi xing xiu er wu xiu.” Zongmi quotes the apocryphal Jingang sanmei jing (Vajrasamadhi Sutra) about the one-practice samadhi (yixing sanmei): “Chan is movement. No movement, no Chan. This is non-arising Chan [chan jishi dong bu dong bu chan shi wusheng chan].” See Chan Prolegomenon, n. 179.

73. Heze “dan de wunian zhi xin” and Hongzhou “dan renxin.” On the pejorative aspect of the term “renxin,” see note 24.

74. “zhuji dun” and “huayi dun.” This terminological pair is adapted from Fazang’s Huayan yisheng jiaoyi fenji zhang (T 45:482b18–c8). See the translation of the Chan Prolegomenon, n. 241.

75. For information on these two texts, see Chan Prolegomenon, nn. 250 and 167.

77. For information on all these sutras, see Chan Prolegomenon, nn. 157–61. Also see note 248. Note that this list of sutras for one type of the all-at-once teaching is the same as the list of sutras for the nature axiom (= third teaching) with two differences: the nature axiom has the whole of the Huayan Sutra rather than one part; and the nature axiom includes the Lotus Sutra and Nirvana Sutra, which are missing here.

78. Zongmi surely studied this classic during his early student years. The full passage from the Book of Rites, Music Record, runs: “Music is the unchangeableness of the feelings. Ritual is the immutability of principle. Music gathers in sameness, and ritual distinguishes difference. The teachings of ritual and music discipline human feelings [guan hu renqing yi].” Zongmi’s “Confucian” side was not so much a matter of abstract thought patterns as an affinity for the discipline of ritual.

80. Yanagida Seizan, ed., Sodōshū, Zengaku sōsho 4 (Kyoto: Chūbun shuppansha, 1974), 114a: “For Zongmi we have seen no activities record [wei du xinglu] and so cannot provide a complete narrative.”

82. T 48:944b24–26. See the “Glossary of Chinese Characters” under fu Digang.

84. Komazawa daigaku toshokan, ed., Shinsan Zenseki mokuroku (Tokyo: Komazawa daigaku toshokan, 1962), 224, lists five ancillary works for the Zongjinglu dating to the Song period.

85. See note 52. Yanshou is saying that his treatise does use fish traps and rabbit snares (the sutras and treatises) to catch the fish and rabbits (liberation) but teaches that once the goal is realized, the means or expedients are to be forgotten, with no attachment to the words themselves. This is consistent with Zongmi’s Chan Prolegomenon.

86. Zongmi never uses the term Huayan in this context—he uses “nature axiom” (xingzong; Chan Prolegomenon, section 33) to refer to the third teaching (jiao) or third principle (yi).

87. T 48:417b15–20; 417c11–13; 418b4–6; 426b27–29; 440a24–26; 499a20–22; 614a14–17; 653b19–20; and c20–21.

88. Albert Welter, “The Problem with Orthodoxy in Zen Buddhism: Yongming Yanshou’s Notion of Zong in the Zongjinglu (Records of the Source Mirror),” Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 31, no. 1 (2002): 5–9. Note that in the above quotation from the Zongjinglu (417b18), Yanshou uses the pair zong-shuo (axiom and theory/teachings), which comes from the Lanka Descent Sutra (see note 66), as a substitute for zong-jiao.

89. An exception is: Wang Tsui-ling, “Yōmei Enju no Zenshū-kan ni tsuite,” Indogaku Bukkyōgaku kenkyū 47, no. 1 (December 1998): 201–4. Wang states (204): “Yongming Yanshou’s views fundamentally follow the theories of Guifeng Zongmi, but at the same time differences between two are visible—Zongmi keeps coming back to exerting himself in doing various classifications of the factions of zong [Chan] and jiao [the teachings]…. Against these various theories of Zongmi, Yanshou simply adopts as his basis the theory of the Chan Prolegomenon. In essence, an obvious difference is visible between Yanshou’s attitude toward Chan and Zongmi’s attitude of striving to prove that the Heze lineage is the mainline of [the sixth patriarch] Caoqi. Did not Yanshou take the position that the whole of Chan is one school? And so he did not do a detailed classification of Chan and make distinctions such as ‘collateral’ and ‘orthodox’ in the manner of Zongmi’s Chan Notes and Chan Letter. In a word, Yanshou stresses ‘bringing together’ [hehui] and Zongmi stresses ‘checking and verifying’ [kanhui].” Actually, it is more accurate to say that Zongmi stresses “bringing together” in the Chan Prolegomenon and “checking and verifyng” in the Chan Letter and Chan Notes.

90. On the Perfect Awakening’s sudden awakening–gradual practice structure, see note 8. The Heroic Progress Samadhi Sutra (T no. 945; considered an apocrypal in part) is found in the tantric (Mikkyō) section of the Taishō Canon. Its structure is somewhat similar to that of the Perfect Awakening. In a concise statement of the sudden awakening–gradual practice model, the Heroic Progress Samadhi says (T 19:155a8–9): “As to principle, one all-at-once awakens; riding this awakening, [false thoughts] are merged into annulment [li ze dunwu chengwu bingxiao]. But phenomena are not all-at-once removed; [only] by a graduated sequence are they exhausted [shi fei dunchu yin cidi jin].” In fascicles 5 and 6, the Heroic Progress Samadhi expounds perfect penetration (yuantong). Twenty-five bodhisattvas and arhats speak (T 29:124b7–132c26), and the culmination is Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva’s attainment of perfect penetration via the gate of the wonderful ear (miaoer men). Nakamura Hajime and others, eds., Iwanami Bukkyō jiten, 2nd ed. (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 2002), 490, says of the Heroic Progress Samadhi Sutra: “However, it accompanied the development of the Zen school and, from the Song period onward, together with the Perfect Awakening Sutra (also an apocryphon), saw wide circulation. Especially in the Ming period it was emphasized as a sutra that provided the basis for the sudden awakening-gradual practice that was the fundamental position of the Zen school of the time.” Reflections of the prominence of these two sutras during the Song are found in Zhu Xi’s Classified Conversations of Master Zhu (Zhuzi yulei) and in Kigen Dōgen’s Hōkyōki. In the Zhuzi yulei (fascicle 124), Zhu Xi in passing talks of these two sutras and one Chan case topic (huatou) as if they were utterly representative of the Chan of his day: “It is like Chan sayings such as cylinder-of-dried-shit. On top of [the saying] there is no further meaning, nor can you think of any logic to it. When you check and stabilize this thought completely, after a long time there will suddenly be a lucid and lively locus, and that is called getting it…. Zhuzhang said to me: ‘Old [Dahui Zong]gao’s Chan learning really has good points.’ I asked him: ‘Vice President! Have you really seen any good points?’ But he said: ‘I have not.’ At present Jinxi’s [Lu Xiangshan’s] learning is truly Chan. Qinfu and Bogong have not read Buddhist books, and that is why they have not seen through them. I am the only one who knows them. For instance, if you give books like the Heroic Progress Samadhi and the Perfect Awakening a single perusal, you should be able to estimate their overall meaning. With Buddhist learning, for the most part, if you see right through it, you will cope with a thousand evils—there is no end to it” (Li Jingde, ed., Zhuzi yulei, vol. 8 [Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1986], 2973). Dōgen’s Hōkyōki, which dates to 1225 through 1227 of the Southern Song when Dōgen was in China, has the following in answer to a question about these two sutras: “From of old there have been doubts about the Heroic Progress Samadhi Sutra, that is, was this sutra fabricated by later people? The patriarchal masters of former generations never saw this sutra. In recent times stupid and dim people read it and love it. This is also the case with the Perfect Awakening Sutra. The structure of composition [of these two sutras] is somewhat similar” (Ōkubo Dōchū, ed., Dōgen zenji zenshū [1970; repr., Kyoto: Rinsen shoten, 1989], 2:375).

91. See Chan Prolegomenon, nn. 158–59 and 248. For references for the numerous quotations from these two sutras in the Zongjinglu, see Daizōkyō gakujutsu yōgo kenkyūkai, ed., Taishō shinshū daizōkyō sakuin shoshūbu 3, vol. 27 (Tokyo: Daizōkyō gakujutsu yōgo kenkyūkai, 1983), 34 and 173. A SAT Daizōkyō Text Database search shows 21 Perfect Awakening quotations and 50 Heroic Progress Samadhi quotations.

92. Yunmen Kuangzhen chanshi guanglu, T 47:545c24–25, 548b2–3, 550b15, 550b27–29, and 550c27–28. See note 41. The record of Yunmen Wenyan (864–949) and the Zhenzhou Linji Huizhao chanshi yulu (T no. 1985), the record of Linji Yixuan (d. 866), are two of the core texts of Song rhetorical Chan. Both come to us from the editorial hands of the southern editor Yuanjue Zongyan (1074–1146), who was in the Yunmen line. The Taishō Canon Yunmen record in the colophons to each fascicle says: “Collated and edited by Yuanjue Zongyan of Mt. Gu in Fuzhou.” Zongyan’s 1120 “reprint” of the Linji record, which was actually a reworking, has been the standard text of that record down to today (see Iriya Yoshitaka, ed. and trans., Rinzairoku [Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1989], 227). These two records share certain characteristics in language style:

2. Scatological and iconoclastic rhetoric: The Yunmen record uses the word “shit” (shi) twenty-seven times and “cylinder of dried shit” (ganshijue) six (one in the quotation here); the Linji record uses the former four times and the latter once (the famous “the true man of no rank is a cylinder of dried shit!” [T 47:496c13]). For references, see Urs App, ed., Concordance to the Record of Yunmen, Hanazono Concordance Series vol. 15 (Kyoto: International Research Institute for Zen Buddhism Hanazono University, 1996), 183; and Urs App, ed., Concordance to the Record of Linji (Rinzai) (Kyoto: International Research Institute for Zen Buddhism Hanazono University, 1993), 119. The Linji record also has: “arhats and private buddhas are like privy waste [cehui]” (497c10–11); “the three vehicles and twelve divisions of the teachings are old toilet paper that wipes away filth [shi bujing guzhi]” (499c20); and “do not take the Buddha as the ultimate—I see him as like a privy hole [cekong]” (502c5–6).

3. Use of the slogan “separate transmission outside the teachings” (jiaowai biechuan), which occurs in the Yunmen material quoted here and in the memorial inscription at the end of the Linji record (T 47:506c11; Iriya, Rinzairoku, 213): Albert Welter, “The Formation of the Linji lu: An Examination of the Guangdeng lu/Sijia yulu and Linji Huizhao Chanshi yulu Versions of the Linji lu in Historical Context,” www.skb.or.kr/2006/down/papers/063.pdf, says: “Ultimately, ‘a separate practice outside the teaching’ [jiaowai biexing] became a catchphrase of the Song Linji faction, and a crowning definition of Linji Chan identity…. There is no verifiable usage of the term jiaowai biechuan until well after the end of the Tang dynasty, and it did not achieve common status until the Song. It clearly represents a retrospective attribution by Song Linji faction proponents on to their alleged founding patriarch, used as a device to affirm contemporary factional identity.” For more on the record of Linji in this sort of light, see Albert Welter, The Linji Lu and the Creation of Chan Orthodoxy: The Development of Chan’s Records of Sayings Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). For a heavily annotated English translation of the Linjilu originally done in Japan by an international team of scholars including Iriya Yoshitaka, Yanagida Seizan, Philip Yampolsky, and Burton Watson, see Thomas Yuho Kirchner, ed., The Record of Linji (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2008).

None of the above three characteristics shows up in the Chan Prolegomenon or the Zongjinglu, the core texts of Song moderate Chan.

93. The Record of Linji proclaims: “And the three vehicles and twelve divisions of the teachings are old toilet paper that wipes away filth [shi bujing guzhi]. The Buddha is an illusionary transformation body, and the patriarchs are old monks. You were born from women, were you not? If you seek buddhas, then you will be gathered in by buddha-Evil Ones. If you seek the patriarchs, then you will be bound by patriarch-Evil Ones. If you have any seeking at all, then everything will be suffering. It’s better to have nothing to do” (T 47:499c20–23; Iriya, Rinzairoku, 83). The passage on the Linji’s encounter with a lecture specialist occurs near the beginning of the Record of Linji: “There was a Director of Lecturing [zuozhu] who asked: ‘The three vehicles and twelve divisions of the teachings certainly enlighten concerning the buddha nature.’ The Master [Linji] said: ‘The wild grass [of ignorance/avidyā] has never been cut.’ The Director said: ‘How could the Buddha deceive people?’ The Master said: ‘Where is the Buddha?’ The Director was silent. The Master said: ‘Are you about to hide the truth from me [niman laoseng] right in front of the Constant Attendant? Get back! Get back! You are blocking the others from asking questions.’ … ‘Because your faith is insufficient [there is] today’s kudzu [jinri geteng]. I fear you are causing trouble for the Constant Attendant and his officials, darkening their buddha nature. It’s better that I withdraw.’ He gave a shout, saying: ‘For those of shallow roots of faith, there will never be a day when it is settled. [I appreciate your] standing for so long. Take good care of yourselves’” (T 47:496b20–c3; Iriya, Rinzairoku, 17–19).

96. For references, see the index of Robert E. Buswell Jr., The Korean Approach to Zen: The Collected Works of Chinul (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1983), 465.

97. See K 1499 in Lewis R. Lancaster and others, eds., The Korean Buddhist Canon: A Descriptive Catalogue (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 477.

98. Mangen Shiban’s 1702 Honchō kōsōden (Biographies of Eminent Monks of Our Country; fascicle 19) says: “Shōkō of Chinzei came to attend Nōnin’s assembly and asked about essential passages of the Sugyōroku [=Zongjinglu]” (Suzuki gakujutsu zaidan, ed., Dai Nihon Bukkyō zensho [Tokyo: Suzuki gakujutsu zaidan, 1972], 63:121). Also see Bernard Faure, “The Daruma-shū, Dōgen, and Sōtō Zen,” Monumenta Nipponica 42, no. 1 (Spring 1987): 28. For a synoptic treatment of parallels in the Zongjinglu and the Jōtōshōgakuron, see Ishii Shudō, Dōgen Zen no seiritsu-shi teki kenkyū (Tokyo: Daizō shuppan, 1991), 649–64. Nōnin’s reliance on the Zongjinglu, which advocates the sudden awakening–gradual practice model of Guifeng Chan, seems, on the surface at least, not to fit with the Daruma lineage’s image among its critics as an extremist school denying all practice. For instance, Myōan Yōsai’s Kōzen gokoku ron of 1198 says (T 80:7c26–8a3): “Question: ‘Some falsely call the Zen lineage the Daruma lineage and say of themselves: “There is neither practice nor cultivation [mugyō mushu]; from the outset there are no depravities; and from the beginning it is awakening. Therefore, there is no need to adhere to the precepts and no need to engage in practice. You just need to lie down on your back [and do nothing]. Why trouble yourself over practicing nenbutsu, making offerings to sacred relics, giving vegetarian meals, etc.? What is the benefit [of that sort of thing]?” ’ [Yōsai] answers: ‘There is no evil that this type does not commit. These are the people described in the sacred teachings as those of the [extreme] voidness view. You should not talk or associate with these people. You should stay light-years away from them.’”

99. For Mind Mirror citations in the Kōzen gokoku ron, see T 80:7c2; 7c8; 8a26; and 11b17. On Enni and the Mind Mirror, see Carl Bielefeldt, “Filling the Zen shū: Notes on the Jisshū Yōdō Ki,” in Chan Buddhism in Ritual Context, ed. Bernard Faure (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), 191.

100. Ichiki Takeo, Gozan bungaku yōgo jiten (Tokyo: Zokugun shorui kansei kai, 2002), 231–32. Bonsen, for instance, in 1342 printed the Muchū mondō shū of Musō Soseki (1275-1351), which until the Edo period remained one of the most popular of all Zen works by native Japanese authors.

101. For Myōha’s Chan Prolegomenon, see Kawase Kazuma, Gozanban no kenkyū (Tokyo: Nihon koshosekishō kyōkai [The Antiquarian Booksellers Association of Japan], 1970), 1:404. For a photograph of its first and last pages, see Kawase, Gozanban no kenkyū, 2:69. Ishii (1–10) contains this edition. Also see Ishii Shudō, “Daiei toshokan shozō no Gozanban Zengen shosenshū tojo ni tsuite,” Indogaku Bukkyōgaku kenkyū 44, no. 2 (March 1996): 117–24. Komazawa daigaku toshokan, Shinsan Zenseki mokuroku, 253, lists an undated woodblock-print edition done by a Tahara Jinzaemon of Kyoto (Komazawa University No. 121–2). Kamata, 373, speculates that this Tahara edition may have been based on Myōha’s 1358 edition. For Myōha’s Zongjinglu, see Kawase, Gozanban no kenkyū, 1:398. For photographs of one of the covers, the end, and the beginning, see Kawase, Gozanban no kenkyū, 2:77–79. Some of the names of the carvers of this Zongjinglu appear to be Chinese (for instance, the craftsmen in charge named Jiangnan Chen and Meng Rong). This edition is listed in Komazawa daigaku toshokan, Shinsan Zenseki mokuroku, 224. Shun’oku Myōha was a disciple of the Gozan fountainhead Musō Soseki and a teacher of Zekkai Chūshin (1336–1405), usually considered the greatest of the Gozan poet-monks. Taguchi Akiyoshi of the late Edo period was the first to use the term Gozanban (“Gozan editions”).

102. Ikkyū’s year-by-year biography, the Tōkai Ikkyū oshō nenpu, which is attributed to the painter-monk Motsurin Shōtō (Bokusai), records the following event for the year Bummei 12/1480 (Ikkyū’s eighty-seventh year): “Hosokawa Yūtenkyū [who could be Hosokawa Masumoto, son of Hosokawa Katsumoto, the leader of one side in the Ōnin War] brought paper and requested [Ikkyū] to write the character ‘no’ [muji]. Beneath it [Ikkyū] wrote a verse and gave it to him. Thereupon [Hosokawa] gave him as a farewell present a copy of the Sugyōroku” (Hirano Sōjō, ed. and trans., Ikkyū oshō zenshū, vol. 3 [Tokyo: Shunjūsha, 2003], 102 and 74).

103. Tangut = Chinese Dangxiang. For a general treatment, see Ruth W. Dunnell, The Great State of White and High: Buddhism and State Formation in Eleventh-Century Xia (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1996). A classic work on Xixia language and script is: Nishida Tatsuo, Seikago no kenkyū, 2 vols. (Tokyo: Zauhō, 1966).

104. K. B. Kepping, “Mi-nia (Tangut) Self-Appellation and Self-Portraiture in Khara Khoto Materials,” Manuscripta Orientalia: International Journal for Oriental Manuscript Research 7 (2001): 37. Kepping remarks: “But the tradition of using the foreign designations is so stable that, despite the fact that today these indigenous terms are quite familiar to the scholars, the foreign designations are still preferred.” Mi-nia = Chinese Miyao = Tibetan Mi nyag. The Chinese literally rendered the name of the state as Da Baigaoguo.

107. Shi Jinbo, Xixia Fojiao shilüe (Yinchuan: Ningxia renmin chubanshe: 1988), 334 and 336.

108. For a survey of the extant Tangut Buddhist materials, see E. I. Kychanov, Katalog Tangutskikh Buddiyskikh pamyatnikov Instituta vostokovedeniya Rossiyskoi akademii nauk (Catalogue of the Tangut Buddhist Texts from the Collection of the Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences] (Kyoto: Kyoto daigaku, 1999). The following list of Zongmi-related texts is based on K. J. Solonin, “Tangut Chan Buddhism and Guifeng Zong-mi,” Zhonghua Foxue xuebao 11 (July 1998): 371–95; Xixia, 60; and Nishida Tatsuo, Seikabun Kegonkyō (Kyoto: Kyoto daigaku bungaku-bu, 1977), 3:26, 30, 36, and 56. The catalogue numbers are those of the St. Petersburg Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, as given by Solonin (Tangut = Tang.):

1. Tangut 227-735 is a Zhushuo chanyuanji duxu zhi jie (Explanation of the Chan Prolegomenon), a translation of the first fascicle of the Chan Prolegomenon preceded by an Explanation. Solonin says it is a woodblock edition and that the Explanation is actually Pei Xiu’s preface. Nishida 026-091 is a Zhushuo chanyuanji duxu listed as Tangut 227, and his 026-093 is a Zhushuo chanyuanji duxu zhi jie (Explanation of the Chan Prolegomenon) listed as British Museum 2239. See the discussion at Nishida, Seikabun Kegonkyō, 1:18–19.

2. Tangut 292-7119 is a Chanyuan xia (Chan Source Second Roll), a translation of the the first and second part of the last fascicle of the Chan Prolegomenon. Solonin says only fragments of this woodblock edition survived. See the discussion at Nishida, Seikabun Kegonkyō, 1:18–19.

3. Tangut 227-4736 is a Zhushuo chanyuanji duxu luewen (Outline of the Chan Prolegomenon), a schematic commentary on the Chan Prolegomenon. Solonin says that the extant portion deals with the last fascicle and that it is a woodblock edition. He suggests that the Chinese tradition did not preserve this text, and so it was probably composed at the Guifeng community of Xixia. Nishida 026-092 is a Zhushuo chanyuanji duxu gangwen (Programme of the Chan Prolegomenon), which Nishida describes as translated from Chinese, a fragment of a printed edition. He lists it as Tangut 227-4736, British Museum 2239.

4. Tangut 227-5172 is a Zhushuo chanyuanji duxu faju ji (Issuing-the-Torch Record of the Chan Prolegomenon), a Chan Prolegomenon commentary. Solonin says it is a woodblock edition of an unknown, probably originally Tangut commentary. Nishida 026-094 is a Zhushuo chanyuanji duxu zeju ji (Selecting-the-Torch Record of the Chan Prolegomenon), which Nishida describes as translated from Chinese and lists as Tangut 227-5172, 7754.

5. Tangut 421-113 bears the abridged Tangut title Chart of Passing and Receiving the Teaching. Solonin says it is a woodblock edition of a translation of the Chan Letter and that this text exists in both Chinese and Tangut versions. Nishida 080-119 is a Zhonghua xindichuan chanmen shizi chengxi tu yijuan (Chart of the Master-Disciple Succession of the Chan Gate that Transmits the Mind Ground in China in One Roll), which Nishida describes as translated from Chinese. See the discussion at Nishida, Seikabun Kegonkyō, 1:19–21.

6. Tangut 398 is a Pei Xiu chanshi suiyuan ji (Collection of Encounters of Pei Xiu and the Chan Masters), an unknown record by Zongmi’s disciple and friend Pei Xiu. Solonin says it is a woodblock edition in two fascicles and that it seems extant only in this Tangut version. He describes it as a record of Pei Xiu’s travels about Buddhist places and his encounters with various Chan masters, adding that it seems to contain unique information on late Tang Buddhism. Nishida 181-159 is a Pei Xiu chanshi suiyuan ji (Collection of Encounters of Pei Xiu and the Chan Masters), which Nishida describes as translated from Chinese, middle fascicle and last fascicle fragment, printed edition, and lists as Tangut 398.

7. Tangut 421-113 (not in Nishida) is most of a work entitled The Mirror (Jing), an exposition of Chan teachings accompanied by the author’s critiques. Solonin says it is a woodblock edition with no colophon, and his comments on the Zongmi connection are worth quoting: “The identification of Shenhui as the Seventh Patriarch [The Mirror quotes the sixth and seventh patriarchs] seems adequate, since The Mirror definitely belongs to the Huayan-Guifeng lineage: the text is abundant in quotations from the Huayan master Chengguan, the former Zongmi teacher, Zongmi himself, especially his Chan Preface, and Chan master Huangbo, who could be somehow related to the Zongmi school through Pei Xiu. The structure of The Mirror resembles the scheme of Zongmi’s Chan Preface.”

8. Tangut 111-2529 is a Hongzhou zongshi jiaoyi (Teachings and Rituals of the Hongzhou Lineage Masters), a short dialogue between Daji (Hongzhou Ma) and some of his disciples. See Xixia, appendix 1, for a tentative translation. It serves as the root text for the commentary below. Solonin proposes the native Tangut origin of both the root text and commentary. Nishida 226-291 is a Hongzhou zongshi jiaoyi (Teachings and Rituals of the Hongzhou Lineage Masters), which he describes as translated from Chinese.

9. Tangut 112-2540 is a Hongzhou zongqu zhujie minghu ji (Record of the Hongzhou Axiom with Commentary and Clarification), the root text above with the commentary of an unknown figure by the name of Fayong. Solonin describes the Fayong commentary as an attempt to render the Hongzhou teaching through the prism of Huayan and to demonstrate the unity of the teachings of Hongzhou Ma (“everything is the real [yiqie shi zhen/yiqie jie zhen]”) and Shenhui’s “Knowing.” See Xixia, appendix 2, for a tentative translation. Solonin proposes the native Tangut origin of both the root text and commentary. Nishida 226-290 is a Hongzhou zongshi qu zhu kaiming yaoji (Essential Record of the Purport of the Hongzhou Lineage Masters with Commentary and Clarification), which he describes as translated from Chinese.

10. Tangut 183-2848 (not in Nishida) is a Jiujing yisheng yuanming xin yi (Meaning of the Perfectly Enlightened Mind of the Ultimate One Vehicle). Xixia, 60, says that it could be another source for research into Zongmi’s doctrine in Xixia and that the text still awaits research.

Two other Tangut translations should be noted. Nishida’s catalogue lists two versions (Nishida 204-241/Tangut 324 and Nishida 204-242/Tangut 395) of one of Zongmi’s Huayan works, the Commentary on the Huayan Dharma Sphere Discernment Gate (Zhu huayan fajie guanmen; T no. 1884). This is Zongmi’s commentary on the Huayan Dharma Sphere Discernment Gate attributed to Dushun. The former is described as a manuscript scroll. Solonin, “Tangut Chan Buddhism,” 372, mentions that one of these copies originated from the imperial residence of the Xia king. Secondly, Solonin, “Tangut Chan Buddhism,” 394, mentions (without catalogue number) a text with the deduced Chinese title Tang Chang’an guoshi gongnei chuanfa yao (Essentials of the Transmission of Dharma Within the Palace of the National Teacher of the Tang [Capital] Chang’an) and remarks: “This text was also quite widespread, but despite this fact, I [have] failed to identify its authorship and origin.” Perhaps it is related to Pei Xiu’s Essentials of the Dharma of Mind Transmission (Chuanxin fayao). All in all, this is an amazing cache of valuable material.

111. Xixia, 60. Solonin goes so far as to say: “Even a surface scan of Tangut Buddhist texts reveals the substantial presence of the Chan-Huayan tradition of Zongmi in Xixia, while the doctrinal writings of other Chinese schools are almost completely absent. Further evidence of Huayan popularity is provided by the so-called Tangut ‘Odes,’ in one of which Huayan is mentioned as a synonym for Buddhism itself. Bearing all this in mind, one is inclined to assume the exclusive role of the Huayan tradition in the formation of a national Tangut Buddhism” (59).

112. See nos. 7, 9, and 10 in note 108. The title of no. 2 here is according to Solonin.

113. This is is a Huayan term. Chengguan’s Da fangguang fohuayan jing suishu yanyi chao (T 36:615a16–18) says: “This nature origination itself has two aspects. The first is non-substantiality [asvabhāva] due to dependence on conditions and so nature origination [xingqi]. The second is the dharma nature [dharmatā] accords with conditions and so nature origination.” The Chan Prolegomenon (section 18) explains nature origination as follows: “Grounded in the nature, characteristics are originated [yixing qi xiang] through causation.” This is the second of Chengguan’s two aspects.

115. Solonin reconstructs the name of this unknown master as Kaiyuan Ming shi. I have not traced the following quotation.

116. T 32:576a10–13. Zongmi uses this quotation as the caption under Inexpressible in the chart of sentient-being mind in the Chan Prolegomenon (section 54).

117. T 48:379c15–16; Iriya, Denshin hōyō, 6. This quotation from Pei Xiu’s Chuanxin fayao (Essentials of the Dharma of Mind Transmission) suggests that in Xixia Pei Xiu’s work was part of the corpus of Guifeng Chan. If so, this probably reflects the situation in China itself. There is also the unknown Tangut text entitled Pei Xiu chanshi suiyuan ji (Collection of Encounters of Pei Xiu and the Chan Masters). See note 108, no. 6.

118. Solonin reconstructs this term as “xinjing.” Chengguan’s Da fangguang fohuayan jing suishu yanyi chao (T 36:261c6) says: “Mind’s constant calmness [xin chang jijing] is the buddha-in-embryo [tathagatagarbha].”

120. “wunian nian zhe ji nian zhenru.” Tōdai goroku kenkyūhan, ed., Jinne no goroku: Dango (Kyoto: Zen bunka kenkyūjo, 2006), 169. It is possible that a Tangut translation of Shenhui’s Platform Talks circulated alongside Zongmi’s Chan works in Xixia.

121. T 17:914a21–23; Yanagida, Engakukyō, 38; Muller, “The Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment (Yuanjuejing),” 8. This, of course, is Zongmi’s favorite sutra.

122. Solonin reconstructs this term as “xingqi.” Judging from the wording of the Bodhidharma Anthology (Yanagida, Daruma no goroku, 25) perhaps it should be “faxing.”

124. This Chinese master and commentary are unknown. The reconstructed Chinese title is Yuanjue zhushu. This comment suggests that there was a Chinese prototype behind the Tangut formulation of three teachings.

125. Solonin (411 and 415) gives Tangut [mǐou-nwə] = Chinese zizhi. These are graphs no. 1245 and 2699 in Li Fanwen, Xia-Han zidian (Beijing: Zhonghua shehui kexue chubanshe, 1997), 238 and 508. The Mirror shows us that the “Knowing” of Shenhui’s Platform Talks and Zongmi’s Chan works played a role in Xixia Buddhism. Is it possible that this teaching of “Knowing” had reached Tibet somewhat earlier? Xixia acted as a cultural intermediary between China and Tibet and translated many Tibetan Buddhist books into Tangut. The source of Rdzogs chen teachings in Tibet is one of the mysteries of early Tibetan Buddhism—the later Tibetan tradition and Indic-oriented modern scholarship both predictably claim that Rdzogs chen originated in Indian Vajrayāna sources. Judging from two of the earliest extant Rdzogs chen documents, the six verses of the Rig pa’i khu byug (Cuckoo of Knowing), which is found in the Tibetan Dunhuang manuscript Stein Tibetan 647, and the opening statement of the Rdzogs chen section of the central Tibetan text Bsam gtan mig sgron (Lamp of the Eye of Dhyana), Rdzogs chen teachings originally centered on spontaneous perfection (lhun rdzogs pa) and a “Knowing” (rig pa) or spontaneous “Knowing” (rang rig pa) that knows the substance (ngo bo/ngo bo nyid) directly (mgon sum), not through intellection or conceptual thought. Samten Gyaltsen Karmay, The Great Perfection (Rdzogs-chen): A Philosophical and Meditative Teaching in Tibetan Buddhism (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1988), 41–59 and 106–20, treats these documents as central to early Rdzogs chen. Karmay (56 and photographs at the end) gives a transliteration and reproduction of Stein Tibetan 647, fol. 1a1–3, and at 108 a transliteration of the relevant passage of the Bsam gtan mig sgron. For the original of the latter, see Gnubs-chen Sans-rgyas-ye-śes, Rnal ‘byor mig gi bsam gtan or Bsam gtan mig sgron, Smanrtsis shesrig spendzod 74 (Leh, Ladakh: S. W. Tashigangpa, 1974), fols. 290.6–292.1. The Tibetan Dunhuang manuscript Pelliot Tibetan 116, which is in part an anthology of Chinese Chan materials, contains a chunk (fols. 60.3–63.2) from a work called the Bsam brtan gyi mkhan po Shinho’i bsam brtan gyi mdo (Chan Book of Chan Master Shinho [=Shenhui]). This extract from the Chan Book of Chan Master Shinho also appears in Pelliot Tibetan 813, fol. ka 8b4–ka 9b1 and fol. ka 17b4–5. (See Obata Hironobu, “Pelliot tib. n. 116 bunken ni mieru shozenji no kenkyū,” Zen bunka kenkyūjo kiyō 8 [August 1976]: 28–30.) Materials like the Chan Book of Chan Master Shinho probably circulated in Tibetan-occupied Dunhuang and perhaps made it to central Tibet in one form or another, as many other Chan materials found in Pelliot Tibetan 116 did. The Chan Book of Chan Master Shinho as found in Pelliot Tibetan 116 appears to have been a digest of Shenhui’s Platform Talks, picking up scattered elements of the Chinese original and pasting them together (just as the Xixia Mirror quotes from the Platform Talks). In the Chinese original the elements are concentrated at: Hu Shih, ed., Shenhui heshang yiji (Taipei: Hu Shi jinian guan, 1968), 232–47; Suzuki Daisetsu, Suzuki Daisetsu zenshū (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1968), 3:310–13; and Tōdai goroku kenkyūhan, Jinne no goroku: Dango, 51–112. Chan Master Shinho (Shenhui) preaches that Knowing/spontaneous Knowing (rig pa = zhi/rang gis rig pa = ziran zhi) knows the calm substance (zhi ba’i ngo bo nyid = jijing ti) directly (mngon sum du = zhi), with no mental activity (yid la bya ba myed = buzuoyi), and that the calm substance constitutes spontaneous perfection (lhun kyis rdzogs pa = benzi juzu?). One can see that all the major points of early Rdzogs chen teaching as found in both the Rig pa’i khu byug (Cuckoo of Knowing) and the Bsam gtan mig sgron (Lamp of the Eye of Dhyana) are found in this Chan Book of Chan Master Shinho excerpt. Is it possible that Shenhui’s “Knowing” is the prototype of Rdzogs chen’s rig pa?

126. The tripod simile sounds similar to the Chan Prolegomenon (section 20): “[My reasoning is best explained by] reference to the three round marks of the [triangular] letter i. Three marks standing apart would not constitute an i. If the three [Chan] axioms ran counter to each other, how could they make buddhas?” The three round marks of the letter i (yuanyi san dian) refers to the short i vowel in the Indic script known as siddham (xitan).

127. I have not been able to trace the following Zongmi quotation, but the same idea is found in the Chan Letter (section 22): “Even though you all-at-once awaken to the realization that the true mind of the dharma body is identical to the buddhas, nevertheless, for many eons you have [engaged in] unreal grasping of the four elements as a self, and the habit energy has become your nature. Because finally this is difficult to eliminate all-at-once [zu nan dunchu], you must [engage in] a step-by-step practice grounded in awakening [yiwu jianxiu].”

128. My translation of these scattered passages from The Mirror is an adaptation from the translation in Solonin, “Tangut Chan Buddhism,” 396–409. I have made changes in Solonin’s rendering of the Tangut by consulting the Chinese originals.

129. Xixia, appendix 2, pp. 2b and 4a. The Chinese equivalents are: “yiqie jie zhen” and “chulei shi dao.” Solonin has an erroneous Chinese reconstruction for the second slogan—it comes from Zongmi’s Chan Notes, section 4. The following discussion is based on Xixia, 61–77 and the translation in Xixia, appendix 2.

130. Xixia, appendix 2, pp. 6a–b, 10b–11a, 14a–b, 15a, 17b, and 19a. The Chinese equivalents are: (1) ciwai chan/juwai chan; (2) cisui chan/jusui chan [sic]; and (3) da gubaoyin. Xixia, 75, gives Xixia [gjwi-niow śjã] =Chinese juwai chan. These are graphs no. 3195, 1906, and 3504 in Li, Xia-Han zidian, 598, 364, and 652. Li’s dictionary actually gives two Chinese equivalents for no. 3195, ci (character combination/word) and ju (phrase/line), citing an entry in the Xixia lexicon Sea of Characters (Wenhai 11.222).

131. The metaphor of the open eye and the closed eye may be related to a passage in the Chan Prolegomenon (section 35): “The voidness axiom with its unidirectional eye [yixiang mu] regards the original source of all dharmas as the [lack of self-]nature [or voidness of self-nature], while the nature axiom with its multiple eyes [duomu] regards the original source of all dharmas as mind.” Note also Zongjinglu, T 48:660a9–12: “Generally, scholars who consult with profundity must possess two eyes [xu ju er yan]. One is the eye of self that is enlightened to the axiom, and the second is the eye of wisdom that distinguishes delusions. Therefore, the Chan axiom says: ‘Single enlightenment to the self without understanding what is in front of one—this sort of person possesses just one eye [zhi ju yi yan]. Principle will be isolated and phenomena scant, and he will never have perfect penetration.’”

132. Xixia, appendix 2, pp. 2a–b, 4a, 6a–7a, 10b, 14b, and 19a. I have adapted Solonin’s translation of the Tangut. For the root text standing alone, see note 108, no. 8.

134. For a recent edition, see Pojo sasang yŏn’guwon, ed., Pojo chŏnsŏ (Seoul: Puril ch’ulp’ansa, 1989), 103–65. For an English translation, see Buswell, The Korean Approach to Zen, 262–374.

135. We can surmise that Chinul is here referring specifically to Zongmi’s teachings because the phrasing is repeated (with the inclusion of Zongmi’s name) near the very end of the Excerpts (Pojo sasang yon’guwon, Pojo chŏnsŏ, 164): “For this sort of type, it is still better to rely on Master Mi’s oral teachings concerning things as they really are [ŭi Mil sa yŏshil ŏnkyo] and zealously practice reflection.”

136. Pojo sasang yon’guwon, Pojo chŏnsŏ, 103. For Buswell’s translation of this passage, see Buswell, The Korean Approach to Zen, 263–64. For a comparative chart of Zongmi’s Chan Letter and Chinul’s Excerpts, see Shūmitsu, 391–410.

137. The Excerpts says: “The all-at-once awakening and step-by-step practice that is esteemed at the present time, in terms of the teachings, is the all-at-once of responding to beings of the highest disposition. It is practiced by ordinary beings of superior faculties and sharp intellect…. [All-at-once awakening and all-at-once practice] is not as good as the gate of all-at-once awakening and step-by-step practice that has been set up for ordinary beings of great aspiration at the present time” (Pojo sasang yon’guwon, Pojo chŏnsŏ, 127 and 132).

140. T 48: 1006b23–24 and c11–18; for another English translation, see Buswell, The Korean Approach to Zen, 143–44.

141. Kuroda Ryō, Chosen kyūsho kō (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1940), 122–25, lists ten Korean editions he personally inspected, three of them in his own collection. Komazawa daigaku toshokan, Shinsan Zenseki mokuroku, 253, lists thirteen Korean editions.

143. Kamata Shigeo, ed. and trans., Genninron (Tokyo: Meitoku shuppansha, 1973), 25. This importance is illustrated by the fact that we have two commentaries on the Chan Prolegomenon by eighteenth-century Korean scholars (see Kamata, 374, and Komazawa daigaku toshokan, Shinsan Zenseki mokuroku, 254). The two commentaries are (1) Sŏnwŏnjip tosŏ ch’akpyŏng (Grasping the Power of the Chan Prolegomenon) by Hoeam Chŏnghye (1685–1741): There is a woodblock-print edition in Komazawa University Library (No. 121-4). According to Shūmitsu, 266, it merely divides the text into sections and is not really a detailed commentary. Chŏnghye also did a commentary on Chinul’s Excerpts entitled Pyŏrhaeng nok sagi hwajok (edition in Shūmitsu, 410–32); (2) Sŏnwŏn jejŏnjip tosŏ kwamok pyŏngip sagi (Headings of the Chan Prolegomenon with Inserted Personal Notes) by Yŏndam Yuil (1720–1799)

This second Chan Prolegomenon commentary contains schematics and some useful paraphrases of Zongmi. Yuil aptly sums up the main thread of the Chan Prolegomenon (Shūmitsu, 276): “To broadly and clearly bring together the three [Chan] axioms into one taste and resolve all-at-once and step-by-step into one practice is the axiom of the Prolegomenon.” There is a woodblock-print edition at Seoul University, a handwritten copy (1944) in Komazawa University Library (kotsu-1195), and an edition of the Komazawa handwritten copy in Shūmitsu, 267–292. At the end it gives the date of mid-spring 1796. Yuil also did a commentary on Chinul’s Excerpts entitled Pŏpchip pyŏrhaeng nok chŏryo kwamok pyŏngip sagi. According to Buswell, The Korean Approach to Zen, 423, there is a woodblock print of Taehŭng-sa dated 1916 in the Tongguk University archives.

144. Robert E. Buswell Jr., The Zen Monastic Experience: Buddhist Practice in Contemporary Korea (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992), 95–99. The Dahui Pujue chanshi shu is T 47:916b8–943b4; for a modern Japanese translation, see Araki Kengo, ed. and trans., Daie sho, Zen no goroku 17 (Tokyo: Chikuma shobō, 1969). In these letters to laymen the Song-period Linji master Dahui Zonggao (1089–1163) strongly advocates his method. The Gaofeng Yuanmiao chanshi chanyao is ZZ 2.27.4; CBETA Wan Xuzangjing vol. 70, no. 1401. It consists of various types of talks by the Song-Yuan-period Linji master Yuanmiao (1238–95) on such subjects as the one doubt. Thus, the Chogye school course of study based on the Fourfold Collection is an amalgam of (1) Dahui’s practice of gazing at the topic, (2) Yuanmiao’s sayings, and (3) Zongmi’s “Knowing,” that is, suddenly awakening to “Knowing” followed by a gradual practice grounded in “Knowing.”

145. A preface to the Chan Prolegomenon in the Taishō Canon by the otherwise unknown Jia Ruzhou (T 48:398a19–21) states: “The Empress Dowager of Emperor Chong of the Liao court in Qingning 8 [1062] did a printing and promulgated a definitive edition [dingben] for all-under-heaven.” Connections between Khitan Buddhism and Mi-nia Buddhism remain unclear. Another example of an affinity between the Chan Prolegomenon and non-Han peoples of the north centers on the Mongol ruler Khubilai khan and the Buddhist preceptors around him at his court in the Yuan dynasty capital Dadu (modern Beijing). A preface to the Chan Prolegomenon in the Taishō Canon by Deng Wenyuan (T 48:397c20–22) states: “In Zhiyuan 12 [1275] of the national court [Emperor] Shizu [that is, Khubilai khan] in his Guanghan Hall wished to inquire about the essential meaning of the Chan teaching. The Imperial Teacher [the Tibetan monk ‘Phags pa Blo gros rgyal mtshan (1235–1280)] and various venerable worthies took the Expressions of the Chan Source [that is, the Chan Prolegomenon] as their reply. The emperor was pleased and ordered a woodblock printing to circulate in the world.” Jia Ruzhou’s preface (398a12–17) also mentions this event. Deng Wenyuan’s dates are 1259–1328; for information on him, see Ishii (10), 87.

146. For a study of Shōjō and his Zenshū kōmoku, see Shūmitsu, 609–37. Kamata and Tanaka, Kamakura kyū Bukkyō, 160–88, is a kanbun kakikudashi (without the original text) of the Zenshū kōmoku. Shōjō states at the end: “I received personal instruction from the Shōnin [Myōe] over twelve years and transmission of the exoteric and esoteric [teachings], not just one time. Subsequently, in the winter of Jōō 2 [1223], in the Zen dharma he transmitted secret judgments [hiketsu] another time. My feelings of doubt melted like ice; my original mind manifested itself like the moon. The purport of his [secret] oral transmission [kuden] is not something that can be recorded with brush and ink. Now I am presenting a grand summary and quoting texts for an explanation. Transmitters! Do not even slightly pollute it with other views. Recorded in the third month, late spring of Kenchō 7 [1255]. Zenshū kōmoku ends” (187–88).

147. Kamata and Tanaka, Kamakura kyū Bukkyō, 160. The five gates are: (1) kyōzen dōi, (2) kyōge betsuden, (3) kenshō jōbutsu, (4) goshu zenton, and (5) shoryū kenge.

148. Joseph D. Parker, Zen Buddhist Landscape Arts of Early Muromachi Japan (1336–1573) (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), 11, 18, and 209. For a peek into the Gozan world via its ink paintings and their inscriptions, see the ground-breaking Shimada Shūjirō and Iriya Yoshitaka, eds., Zenrin gasan: Chūsei suibokuga o yomu (Tokyo: Mainichi shinbunsha, 1987).

150. This is the first of the “four items” (si jie) spoken by Purity Bodhisattva in the Perfect Awakening Sutra: “Good sons! All obstructions [such as the one Myōha’s teacher Musō had been speaking of] are ultimate awakening. Whether you have obtained mindfulness or lost mindfulness, there is nothing that is not liberation…. Good sons! It is just that all the bodhisattvas and sentient beings of the end period, [1] wherever they are at any time, do not produce false thoughts [ju yiqie shi bu qi wangnian]; [2] in the midst of false thoughts do not [attempt to] extinguish them [yu zhu wangxin yi bu ximie]; [3] even while dwelling in sense objects of false thought, do not attempt to understand them [zhu wangxiang jing bu jia liaozhi]; and [4] do not analyze lack of understanding itself as reality [yu wu liaozhi bu bian zhenshi]” (T 17:917b2–11; Yanagida, Engakukyō, 133–37; and Muller, “The Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment [Yuanjuejing],” 23). Yanagida (137) remarks in a note that the four items were popular in Song dynasty Chan circles. These four eight-character sayings seem similar in style to the two eight-character sayings on sudden awakening–gradual practice in the Heroic Progress Samadhi Sutra, which were also popular in Song dynasty Chan circles (see note 90). Both suggest the influence of Guifeng-style Chan on Chan in the Song.

151. Chikaku Fumyō kokushi goroku, T 80:719a19–21. For Zongmi’s similar experience with the Perfect Awakening as recounted by Pei Xiu, see note 8.

152. For a biographical treatment of Kiyō, see Parker, Zen Buddhist Landscape Arts, 74–77; and Tamamura Takeji, Gozan Zensō denki shūsei (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1983), 70–71. Parker has a portrait of Kiyō from Reiun-in in Kyoto (75).

153. “zen furi kyō kyō furi zen.” The piece is contained in his literary collection entitled Funi ikō (Non-Duality’s Bequeathed Draft Copy). Kiyō was also known as Man-of-the-Path Non-Duality (Funi dōjin). See Uemura Kankō, Gozan bungaku zenshū (Tokyo: Teikoku kyōikukai shuppanbu, 1936), 3:950. Among his accomplishments, he did the Japanese reading marks for Shushi’s Shisho shūchū (Commentary on the Collection of the Four Books), which became the core curriculum in schools established by the state during the Tokugawa period, and compiled the Hekiganroku Funi shō (Non-Duality’s Extracts from the Blue-Green Cliff Record). For the last, which because of its scholarly approach (much like that of Zongmi) is still useful to modern Zen studies as a dictionary of Zen words, see Zen bunka kenkyūjo, ed., Zengo jisho ruiju 3: Hekiganroku Funi shō (Kyoto: Zen bunka kenkyūjo, 1993).

154. Komazawa daigaku toshokan, Shinsan Zenseki mokuroku, 254. These are the Hiranoya Sabē edition done in Kyoto during the Tenna (1681–1684) and Genroku (1688–1704) eras (Komazawa University No. 121-19) and the edition executed in Genroku 11 (1698) at the Sōtō Zen monastery Seishō-ji in Edo by its abbot, Tangai Kiun (Ōtani University and Matsugaoka Bunko in Kamakura).

155. Ui Hakuju, ed. and trans., Zengen shosenshū tojo (1939; repr., Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1943). This pocket volume is no. 1888–1890 in the Iwanami Bunko series.

156. Ui’s book was followed three decades later by Kamata Shigeo’s edition and translation of the Chan Prolegomenon and Chan Letter in the Zen no goroku series published in the late 1960s and 1970s: Kamata Shigeo, ed. and trans., Zengen shosenshū tojo, Zen no goroku 9 (Tokyo: Chikuma shobō, 1971). Since this series was intended to cover about twenty of the most important texts of Chinese Chan (roughly half Tang and half post-Tang), the inclusion of Zongmi’s Chan Prolegomenon in the Tang half is significant. During the 1990’s Ishii Shudō and Ogawa Takashi published an edition and translation of the Chan Prolegomenon in ten installments (abbreviated as Ishii [1–10]). (In 1981 Ishii had published a Kamakura manuscript of the Chan Letter that was discovered at Shinpuku-ji in Nagoya.) Interestingly, all these scholars are associated with Sōtō Zen and its university Komazawa. Ui was a Sōtō Zen priest who taught at one point at Sōtōshū University (now Komazawa); Kamata graduated in Buddhist Studies from Komazawa; and Ishii is a professor at Komazawa.

159. For instance, Zengaku daijiten hensansho, Zengaku daijiten, 1:494, uses the term “union of the teachings and Zen” (kyōzen itchi) in its Zongmi entry. As an example of the tendency to contextualize him as the last patriarch of the Kegon school there is a set of portraits of Chinese Huayan patriarchal masters preserved at Kumida-dera in Osaka prefecture. The set, which dates to around 1400, includes Dushun, Fazang, Chengguan, and Zongmi (Zhiyan’s portrait was missing by the time of a restoration in Meiwa 2 [1765]). For photographs, see Kishiwada-shiritsu kyōdo shiryōkan, Kumida-dera no rekishi to bijutsu: Butsuga to chūsei bunsho o chūshin ni (Kishiwada-shi: Kishiwada-shiritsu kyōdo shiryōkan, 1999), 14–15. The four portraits have disparate conventions. While Fazang sits at a low lectern and Chengguan on a small sitting platform, Zongmi sits in a chair, holding a whisk. See frontispiece. The conventions of the Zongmi portrait, from which an inscription at the top may have been cropped, are similar to those of a typical Kamakura-Muromachi Zen chinzō, such as the one of Lanxi Daolong (dated 1271) at Kenchō-ji in Kamakura (see Tokyo kokuritsu hakubutsukan, Kenchō-ji: Zen no genryū [Tokyo: Nihon keizai shinbunsha, 2003], 36) or the one of Kiyō Hōshū at Reiun-in in Kyoto (see Parker, Zen Buddhist Landscape Arts, 75). If the inscriptions at the top of these two were cropped off, the remaining proportions would be similar to those of the Zongmi portrait. Further examples of the contextualizing of Zongmi as a Kegon patriarch are found in Japanese Buddhist dictionaries. The venerable Oda Tokuno, ed., Bukkyō daijiten (1917; repr., Tokyo: Daizō shuppan, 2005), 820, begins its Zongmi entry by describing him as “a Kegon patriarch of the Tang.” The more recent Nakamura, Iwanami Bukkyō jiten, 490, begins its Zongmi entry by describing him as “the fifth patriarch of the Kegon lineage.” A 1950s handcopy of the Chan Prolegomenon—Takamine Ryōshū, ed., Zengen shosenshū tojo (Nara: Tōdai-ji Kangakuin, 1955), postface—states that “Zongmi has come to be designated the fifth patriarch of the transmission of the Kegon lamp in China.” The syncretic label “Kegon Zen” is a modern Japanese coinage (it appears as “so-called Kegon Zen” in Mochizuki’s entry for “Kegon lineage”: Mochizuki Shinkō, ed., Bukkyō daijiten [Tokyo: Sekai seiten kankō kyōkai, 1958–1963], 1:870). At every occurrence of the term “Huayan” in the Chan Letter, Chan Prolegomenon, and Chan Notes, it means the “Huayan Sutra” or a commentary on that sutra. It is never used to designate the third and highest of the Chan Prolegomenon’s three teachings, the nature teaching/nature axiom. If someone had asked Zongmi to label his Chan, he probably would have replied with “Heze Chan” or the “Chan of the Seventh Patriarch” (Chan Letter, section 5).

160. For instance, the Zen dictionary of the Sōtō Zen school, Zengaku daijiten hensansho, Zengaku daijiten, 1:111, in its Yanshou entry devotes several lines to his fusion of Chan and nenbutsu practice: “He concurrently cultivated Zen and nenbutsu and at night on another peak took going around doing nenbutsu as a constant. King [Wuyi of Wu-yue] built a Hall of the Broad Teachings of [Amitābha’s Pure Land in] the West and had him dwell there.” But all that this entry says of his imposing Zongjinglu is that “it was honored by both monks and lay people.” In its entry on the Fayan lineage (2:1127) Zengaku daijiten says: “Yongming Yanshou aimed at a union of Pure Land thought and Zen; he also compiled the Mind Mirror in one-hundred fascicles, attempting a systematization the various schools.” In short, he was a Fayan patriarch and a syncretist, rather than a Bodhidharma Chanist in the broadest sense. Welter, “The Problem with Orthodoxy,” 13, mentions meeting with a leading Rinzai Zen academic in Japan and asking why little research was done on Yanshou in Japan. The response was that Zen scholars in Japan paid little attention to Yanshou because he was not a Zen master. The Zongjinglu’s actual position on buddha-recitation is the following (T 48:506a10–15): “Question: ‘As your previous analysis of principle and phenomena clarifies, outside of the Buddha there is no mind and outside mind no Buddha. Why do the teachings further erect a dharma gate of buddha-recitation [geng li nianfo famen]?’ Answer: ‘It is just for those who do not have faith in “one’s own mind is the Buddha [zhi wei bu xin zixin shi fo]” and rush around seeking on the outside [xiangwai chiqiu]. If they are of medium or inferior faculties, we provisionally make them gaze on a buddha’s form body and moor to coarse mindfulness, taking the external to reveal the internal. Step-by-step they awaken to their own minds. If they are of high ability, we make them gaze at the reality mark of the [Buddha] body. Gazing at a buddha is like this.’”

161. In Japan two definitions of pure Zen (jun Zen) have been (for the Sōtō school) Kigen Dōgen (1200–1253) and (for the Rinzai school) Ōtōkan, three masters beginning with Nanpo Jōmyō (1235–1308). The case of the Ming-dynasty Linji Chan monk Yinyuan Longqi (Ingen Ryūki; 1592–1673), who arrived in Nagasaki at the age of sixty-three, illustrates the power of this conception of pure Zen in Tokugawa Japan. Nakamura, Iwanami Bukkyō jiten, in its Ingen entry says: “There was a movement to welcome him as abbot of [the Rinzai Zen monastery] Myōshin-ji in Kyoto, but in Japan there was a tradition of pure Zen [jun Zen no dentō] since the Kamakura period, and even then the plan was not implemented due to the opposition of people like Gudō Tōshoku, who called [Ingen’s Linji Chan] Ming dynasty “nenbutsu Zen.” In 1661 at Uji Ōbakusan Manpuku-ji was erected, and Ingen became the founding patriarch of a [separate] Japanese Ōbaku school” (57–58).

162. The Record of Linji says: “Followers of the Way! The great teacher dares to slander the buddhas and patriarchs, pronounce the world right or wrong, discard the teachings of the canon [paichi sanzang jiao], curse small children, and, while sometimes going against [the world] and sometimes going along with it, seek out the [upright] person” (T 47:499b24–26; Iriya, Rinzairoku, 77–78).

164. T 47:920a6–16; Araki, Daie sho, 36 (translation follows Araki’s text). Dahui’s Letters repeatedly quotes the Heroic Progress Samadhi and Perfect Awakening Sutras; for citations, see Araki’s index (1 and 4). Chinul’s Susim kyŏl quotes the first portion of this Dahui passage in defense of the Guifeng-Yanshou sudden awakening–gradual practice model (T 48:1007b25-c7): “Ordinary people from without beginning over expansive eons have arrived at the present day, revolving through the five rebirth paths, coming to be born and going to die. They have firmly grasped the self characteristic, and thought of the unreal, topsy-turvy thinking, ignorance, and various habits have long become their nature. Although, upon arriving at the present life, they all-at-once awaken to the realization that self nature from the outset is void and calm and that they are no different from the buddhas, these old habits at last are difficult to eliminate. Therefore, when they encounter sense objects that go against them or accord with them, anger and joy, right and wrong, rise up and die down like a blaze. And their adventitious depravities are no different than before. If they do no exert effort through wisdom, how will they be able to counteract ignorance and arrive at the stage of great stopping and great rest? … And Chan Master [Dahui Zong] gao says: ‘Often people of sharp faculties, without expending a lot of effort, send this matter packing. They then produce easy-going thoughts and do not engage in [post-awakening] practice. Days and month pass, and they wander on as before without avoiding the wheel-turning [of the rebirth process].’ How could one, because of one phase of awakening, set aside later practice?” For Buswell’s translation, see Buswell, The Korean Approach to Zen, 148.

165. T 47:930c4–7; Araki, Daie sho, 130. This topic (huatou) comes from a case (gong’an) based on a passage in the Yunmen Kuangzhen chanshi guanglu (Extensive Record of Yunmen), T 47:550b15: “Question: ‘What is the body of Śākyamuni like?’ Answer: ‘A cylinder of dried shit [ganshijue].’” See note 92. Urs App, Master Yunmen: From the Record of the Chan Teacher “Gate of the Clouds” (New York: Kodansha International, 1994), 242, remarks that Yunmen cases are more numerous than those of any other master in the major case collections. He provides a table of Yunmen-related cases, including this one (243–45).

166. This all-at-once laying down of the self and world (yi nian fangxia shenxin shijie) and lifting up of this one moment (ti ci yi nian) is clearly working from Dahui Zonggao’s teachings on his huatou method. For example, see T 47:921c2–15; Araki, Daie sho, 50–51, where Dahui urges his reader to all-at-once lay down (yi shi anxia) the mind of intellection and discrimination and, at just the locus where he has laid down that discriminatory mind, gaze at the topic (kan ge huatou) or constantly lift the topic to attention (shishi tixi). Deqing mixes the Zongmi true mind/nature axiom with the Dahui huatou method, much in the manner of Chinul.

168. Hanshan laoren mengyouji, CBETA Wan Xuzangjing vol. 73, no. 1456:469c15[00]–18[00] and 557a20[03]–21[01]. See Iwaki Eiki, “Kanzan Tokushō no shisō,” Indogaku Bukkyōgaku kenkyū 46, no. 1 (December 1997): 223. As in the case of Yanshou, modern Japanese Zen studies chooses to emphasize Deqing’s dual practice of Chan and recitation of Amida Buddha’s name (nenbutsu). For instance, Zengaku daijiten hensansho, Zengaku daijiten, 2:951, says: “He advocated the dual practice of nenbutsu and gazing at the topic [of the kōan] and together with Zhuhong, Zhenke, and Zhixu is called one of the four great Buddhists of the late Ming.”

169. Deqing did the Yuanjuejing zhijie (ZZ 1.16; CBETA Wan Xuzangjing vol. 10, no. 258) and the Lengyan jing tongyi (ZZ 1.19; CBETA Wan Xuzangjing vol. 12, no. 279).

170. Yuanjuejing zhijie, CBETA Wan Xuzangjing vol. 10, no. 258:485a14[10]–20[02].

171. Solonin, “Tangut Chan Buddhism,” 396 and 400 (for the Perfect Awakening quotation, see note 121). It also mentions (403) an unknown commentary on the Perfect Awakening (see note 124). According to Xixia, 58, neither the Perfect Awakening Sutra nor Zongmi’s commentary, the Yuanjuejing dashu chao (Extracts from the Great Commentary on the Perfect Awakening Sutra), has yet been discovered among the Tangut holdings.

172. For citations of these two sutras in the Excerpts, see the index of Buswell, The Korean Approach to Zen, 463 and 468. For a quotation from the Heroic Progress Samadhi in the Formula for Cultivating Mind, see note 139. Chinul’s position sounds similar to that of Hanshan Deqing.

173. In the Gidō oshō goroku (T 80:523a2–7), Gidō quotes section 11 of the Chan Prolegomenon (perhaps via the Zongjinglu, T 48:418b6–8) on the identity of the sutras and Zen: “There was a Zen follower who commented: ‘Since Hekitan [Shūkō; 1291–1374] came over to our [Zen] lineage, we should just completely hold up the commands of the [Zen] patriarchs. Why should we still employ lecturing [on the sutras and treatises]?’ The Preceptor [Gidō] listened and then told this person: ‘You fail to see the path. The sutras are buddha word, while Zen is the mind of the buddhas. The words and mind of the buddhas cannot possibly be contradictory. Certainly, among the patriarchal masters of India from Mahākāśyapa through Upagupta all equally propagated the three baskets [of rules of discipline, sutra, and scholasticism].’” Hekitan Shūkō, an offspring of the Kamakura Hōjō family, originally became highly versed in Shingon secret teachings. During the Genkō Incident of 1331 he fled and entered Musō Soseki’s assembly, converting to Zen. In Gidō’s diary, the Abbreviated Collection of Flower-in-the Sky’s Everyday Practice (Kūge nichiyō kufū ryakushū), Gidō is frequently requested to give lectures on the Perfect Awakening or asked questions about it (Kageki Hideo, trans., Kunchū Kūge nichiyō kufū ryakushū: chūsei Zensō no seikatsu to bungaku [Kyoto: Shibunkaku, 1982], 25, 47, 110, 215, 220, 238, 272, 275–78, 286, 298–99, 301, and 303). His name, Kūge (Flower-in-the Sky), is a prominent term in that sutra. For references to the Heroic Progress Samadhi, see 47, 127, 173, 197, 274, 276, 277–281, 293, 298, 300, 308, 311, 317–18, 337, 350, and 365. The Mind Mirror (Sugyōroku) references are 142–44 and 298. See also Parker, Zen Buddhist Landscape Arts, 165n. 42. Zekkai Chūshin also often lectured on the Perfect Awakening and Heroic Progress Samadhi (Zekkai oshō goroku, T 80:759b1 and 759c8). The passage in his year-by-year biography (nenpu) giving his death poem (760a13–16) mentions that he read both sutras on a daily basis: “Verse of taking leave of the world: ‘Sky falls to earth, and Mars flies about in confusion. Toppled, I turn a somersault and suddenly pass beyond the ring of iron [mountains encircling Mt. Sumeru in the Buddhist cosmology].’ His everyday course of study was the Perfect Awakening and Heroic Progress Samadhi. The Master himself said: ‘I have experienced the Heroic Progress Samadhi—there are parts where I cannot help laughing.’” Chūshin has a quatrain dedicated to Zongmi at 750b17–20.

176. Yanagida, Daruma no goroku, 68; Zongjinglu, T 48:939b25–26. The Bodhidharma Anthology attributes the saying to Tripitaka Dharma Master (sanzang fashi). The Mind Mirror gives it as: “The master Bodhidharmatara stated the Dharma Gate of Quieting Mind [Anxin famen]: ‘When deluded, the person pursues dharmas [i.e., quickens his pace to catch up to dharmas]; when understanding, dharmas pursue the person [mi shi ren zhu fa jie shi fa zhu ren]. When understanding, consciousness [vijñāna] absorbs forms [rūpa]; when deluded, forms absorb consciousness [jie ze shi she se mi ze se she shi].’”

177. Shenhui’s Platform Talks, which dates to 720–730, says: “The sixth-generation patriarchal master [Huineng] had a mind-to-mind transmission because he separated from the written word” (Tōdai goroku kenkyūhan, Jinne no goroku: Dango, 47). One scenario would be that Zongmi as a master in the Heze line inherited Shenhui’s account, introduced a slight change in the second part, and made the attribution to Bodhidharma. Another early occurrence of the saying is in the Xuemailun (T 48:373b3–4), a so-called Bodhidharma apocryphon. Unfortunately, we have no dates for this text, but it probably emerged around Zongmi’s time. At the very least we can say that Zongmi was one of the first, if not the very first, to propagate the famous Bodhidharma slogan.

180. Bai Juyi ji, 2:31.698. The third couplet in italics is: “jinli wenzi fei zhongdao / chang zhu xukong shi xiaosheng.” Two other heptasyllabic regulated verse by Bai are of interest to students of Zongmi. The first (2:32.716), which is entitled “On Reading a Chan Sutra,” mentions “forgetting words” (wangyan) in a way reminiscent of the Chan Prolegomenon (section 8) and uses the same quotation from the apocryphal sutra Jingang sanmei jing (Vajrasamadhi Sutra) that Zongmi uses in section 31 in support of the one-practice samadhi:

You must know that all characteristics are non-characteristics.

If you are fixed in [the nirvana] without residue, it is with residue.

Suddenly to forget words is all-at-once understanding.

In a dream to speak dream is a twofold falsity.

With an illusionary flower in the sky why would you simultaneously try to get the fruit?

With the river willows all ablaze why would you keep looking for river fish?

Perturbations are Chan—Chan is movement.

No Chan, no movement—that is tathata.

The second (also 2:31.698), which is entitled “Seeing Off the Four Superior Men Zhao, Mi, Xian, and Shi,” celebrates the banquet in 833 that Bai gave at his Luoyang estate for Luoyang Shenzhao, Zongmi, and two of Shenzhao’s disciples. The Heze master Shenzhao, a fellow Sichuanese, was a fellow student of Zongmi’s master, Daoyuan, under Nanyin/Weizhong (see the chart in the Chan Letter, section 7). Bai, who had sought retirement in a “Luoyang assignment” as a court official, that is, a Regency official in the top echelons of the bureaucracy, spoke of himself as “a middle hermit” (zhongyin) between the great hermit who dwells at the court and in the market (active service in Chang’an) and the small hermit who retreats to a hut in the mountains (complete withdrawal from public life). See Stephen Owen, The Late Tang: Chinese Poetry of the Mid-Ninth Century (827–860) (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2006), 47–48. After the dinner, Bai muses about what to offer as a gift to the Chan monks:

A purple-robed court scholar, an old man with white hair,

Unfamiliar with the conventional world, but in touch with the path.

With official rank three times down to Luoyang,

In friendly contacts one half among monks.

Smelly, old rag of a world—in the end must get out;

Burning incense, pratītya-samutpāda [origination by dependence]—long vowed to unite with them.

After this vegetarian cuisine, what can I use to serve as an offering?

The west veranda’s spring and rocks, the north window’s breeze.

1. This is the title of the text in Kamata, 267. The section numbers are from Kamata; at the beginning of each section I have supplied a summary of its contents in my own words. Passages in italics within parentheses are Zongmi’s autocommentary.

2. This official title for a Buddhist monk (nei gongfeng) was established in Zhide 1 (=756) of the Tang.

4. In fact, not many years later, in the 840s, Pei did compose a Chan record dealing with the Hongzhou house (actually two), the Chuanxin fayao and Wanlinglu, but he did not publish this work until 857.

5. Shinpuku-ji, 77, retains more of the epistolary trappings of the original correspondence.

6. There is a question as to whether zhuanji is the title of a text (the Transmission Record) or simply should be translated as “transmission records.” In the former case, the title probably is a lost record of the Shenhui line, and both Kamata, 269, and Ishii Shudō, trans., Zen goroku, Daijō butten Chūgoku Nihon hen 12 (Tokyo: Chuōkōronsha, 1992), 293, understand it this way. In the latter case, it could refer to various biographical records in circulation in Zongmi’s time, each giving an account only of its own line of descent. (Kamata, 279, thinks it is different from the Zuzong zhuanji mentioned in section 4.) Nishida Tatsuo, Seikabun Kegonkyō (Kyoto: Kyoto daigaku bungaku-bu, 1977), 1:21, gives a Japanese translation of the Tangut translation of this passage that reads: “Previous narrations are histories [that is, genealogies] of the sudden-sudden lineage.” I assume “sudden-sudden” refers to the Huineng line. In short, the passage is quite unclear but important.

7. Note the emphasis upon Chan teachings as oral teachings, teachings by word of mouth (yanjiao = pravacana). This term appears in the Lotus Sutra (T 9:5c1–3), where it refers to the preaching of the Buddha: “Śāriputra! Since I have become a buddha, through various conditions and various metaphors I have widely developed oral teachings, and through innumerable teaching devices I have led sentient beings to divorce from attachments.”

10. Zhiwei (646–722) has an entry in the Song gaoseng zhuan (T 50:758b–c). His master Fachi at thirteen heard of Hongren of East Mountain, visited him, and received instruction in his dharma essentials (Song gaoseng zhuan Fachi entry, T 50:757c4–5). This may be the beginning of the connection between the East Mountain and Niutou lineages.

11. Masu is also known as Xuansu or Yuansu (668–752). He has an entry in the Song gaoseng zhuan (T 50:761c–762b) and an inscription by Li Hua (QTW 7:320.4106b–4108b).

12. Jingshan Daoqin is also known as Faqin (714–793). He has an entry in the Song gaoseng zhuan (T 50:764b–765a) and an inscription by Li Jifu (QTW 11:512.6599a–6601a).

15. Presumably refers to the Yuanjuejing dashu chao, ZZ 1.14.3.277b5–6; CBETA Wan Xuzangjing, vol. 9, no. 245:532b20[01]. This commentary dates to about 823 or 824, about a decade earlier than the Chan Letter.

16. This Zuzong zhuanji appears to be a lost transmission record of the Heze lineage, corresponding to the transmission records of other lineages, such as the Lidai fabao ji, Lengjia shizi ji, etc. Much of this literature, which was probably extensive in the eighth and early ninth centuries, was lost. Some of it was retrieved from the manuscripts found in the Dunhuang cave complex in the early twentieth century.

17. This line (“zhe shaer zheng gan quci yu”) contains two elements of old baihua, the vernacular-based literary language so prevalent in Chan literature after the time of Zongmi. Jiang Lansheng and Cao Guangshun, eds., Tang Wudai yuyan cidian (Shanghai: Shanghai jiaoyu chubanshe, 1997), 436, states of “zhe”: “Used as a close indicating pronoun [“this”], pronounced zhe [in the falling/fourth tone].” This dictionary goes on to say that in Tang and Song times, three characters read “zhe” were used as “this” in a mixed-up way. Iriya Yoshitaka and Koga Hidehiko, Zengo jiten (Kyoto: Shibunkaku shuppan, 1991), 195, defines “quci” as “random”; “haphazard”; “wild”; “grandstand play”; “playing to the gallery”; “thoughtlessly”; “offhand.”

18. Yao and Shun are ancient sage-kings. Yao consulted Shun on all the affairs of state, examined his words, and found that they could be carried into practice. Previously Yao had given Shun his daughters in marriage in order to observe Shun’s behavior.

19. “Twenty years” is presumably a cryptic reference to Shenhui’s attack on the Northern lineage starting in Kaiyuan 20 (732).

20. The Sōkei daishi den (Biography of the Great Master Caoqi), a manuscript brought back to Japan by Saichō in 803 and stored at Enryaku-ji on Mt. Hiei, says of Xingtao: “In that year [713] the assembly requested the preeminent disciple Xingtao to guard the transmitted robe. [He did so] for forty-five years.” Ishii Shudō, “Sōkei daishi den kō,” Komazawa daigaku Bukkyō gakubu kenkyū kiyō 46 (March 1988): 103; Ishii, Zen goroku, 33. The Sōkei daishi den embodies the image of Huineng handed down within Xingtao’s line. Nothing is known of Chaosu. At its end the Dunhuang manuscript Platform Sutra claims Fahai as the compiler: “This Platform Sutra was compiled by the head monk Fahai, who on his death handed it over to his fellow student Daocan. After Daocan died it was handed over to his disciple Wuzhen. Wuzhen resides at the Faxing Temple at Mount Caoqi in Lingnan [Guangzhou-Guangxi], and as of now he is transmitting this dharma” (T 48:345b1–4; Philip B. Yampolsky, The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch [New York: Columbia University Press, 1967], 182). The two names in the Fahai line are unidentified. The Platform Sutra embodies the image of Huineng handed down within Fahai’s line.

21. “Seven temples” refers to the Chou system of state ancestral temples described in the Wangzhi section of the Book of Rites. The temple of the found er occupies the central position. Beneath his, the second, fourth, and sixth generations are arranged on the left and called “zhao”; the third, fifth, and seventh generations are arranged on the right and called “mu.”

22. The Wangzhi section of the Book of Rites states that the Son of Heaven is en-coffined on the seventh day and buried in the seventh month.

23. These are the seven buddhas of the past, Śākyamuni and the six who appeared before him. The first three are said to be the three buddhas of the past adornment kalpa, the last four the four buddhas of the present fortunate kalpa.

24. The Sukhavati Array Sutra, T 12:347b, says: “If there is a good son or good daughter who, hearing talk of Amitābha Buddha, holds to the name, whether for one day, two days, three days, four days, five days, six days, or seven days, with one mind undisturbed, for this person, on the verge of the end of life, Amitābha Buddha and the assembly of noble ones will appear before him, and this person’s mind at the end will not be topsyturvy. He will attain rebirth in the land of extreme joy of Amitābha Buddha.”

25. When someone is receiving the full precepts, a master to confer the precepts, a master to teach the regulations, a master to teach the ceremonies and forms, and seven ordained monks to serve as authenticators are necessary. These are referred to as the three masters and seven authenticators.

26. Perhaps this refers to the seven usages for governing the monks: censure, expulsion, etc.

27. The Lotus Sutra, T 9:61a, says: “They did the ceremony of touching Śākyamuni Buddha’s feet to their heads and circumambulated him to the right seven times.”

28. Yanagida Seizan, “Goroku no rekishi,” Tōhō gakuhō 57 (March 1985): 445 and n. 493, cites an inscription for Huijian (719–792), a Shenhui disciple listed by Zongmi in his chart (section 7) as Jian of the western capital. This inscription, the Tang gu Zhaosheng si dade Huijian chanshi beiming bing xu by Xu Dai (found in Xi’an beilin, Tuban 103), states: “Also, receiving an imperial command, together with venerables, they distinguished the false and the correct of the buddha-dharma and set in order the two lineages of Southern and Northern.” According to Yanagida, this is referring to Zongmi’s imperial proclamation setting up Shenhui as the seventh patriarch.

31. Again Chan teachings as oral teachings, teachings by word of mouth (yanjiao).

32. This slogan (“yi xin chuan xin bu li wenzi”) may have begun with Zongmi. Another early occurrence is in an early-ninth-century work attributed to Bodhidharma, the Xuemailun (T 48:373b3–4).

34. Vimalakīrti Sutra, T 14:543b: “The inexhaustible torch is like one torch lighting up a hundred thousand torches.”

37. According to Jiang and Cao eds., Tang Wudai yuyan cidian, 315, ranshi = “after this/after that.” A synonym is ranhou.

38. Again Chan teachings as oral teachings, teachings by word of mouth (yanjiao).

39. Zongmi is quoting Shenxiu’s verse in the Platform Sutra, though he nowhere in his Chan works mentions that text by title. See Yampolsky, The Platform Sutra, 130. Chengguan’s Da fangguang fohuayan jing suishu yanyi chao, T 36:164c, quotes the last two lines of both Shenxiu’s verse and Huineng’s verse, adding after the latter: “This is the sixth patriarch’s directly revealing the original nature and eradicating this gradual practice.”

40. Zhiyan’s Da fangguang fohuayan jing souxuan fenji tongzhi fanggui, T 35:62c25–27, says: “In dharma sphere origination-by-dependence there are many [aspects]. Now, using the gate of essentials, I will reduce them to two. The first is to distinguish origination-by-dependence according to the impure dharmas of the common person. The second is to clarify origination-by-dependence according to the pure portion of awakening.”

42. Zongmi has patched together two quotations from the sutra: T 16:510b4–5 and 512b16–17.

46. Corroboration of the vocabulary of Zongmi’s appraisal of Hongzhou can be found in two Hongzhou works by Zongmi’s lay disciple Pei Xiu, the Chuanxin fayao and Wanlinglu. For example, in Pei’s classic we find: “Do not take mind to pursue mind” (bu ke jiang xin geng qiu yu xin), etc.; “as it is everything is right” (zhixia bian shi); “give free rein to luck and don’t get caught up” (renyun bu ju); “all day long give free rein to luck and ascend energetically” (zhongri renyun tengteng); and “the mind nature is without difference” (xinxing bu yi). See T 48:380c9, 381b1, 382c14, 380b18, 384a17, 386c5–6, and 384b27–28; Iriya Yoshitaka, ed. and trans., Denshin hōyō Enryōroku, Zen no goroku 8 (Tokyo: Chikuma shobō, 1969), 20, 30, 61, 19, 90, 135, and 97. There is also a Jiangxi Mazu Daoyi chanshi yulu found in the Northern Song collection Sijia yulu (ZZ 2.24.5; CBETA Wan Xuzangjing vol. 69, no. 1321; Iriya Yoshitaka, ed. and trans., Baso no goroku [Kyoto: Zen bunka kenkyūjo, 1984], 1–119), and it also shows parallels to these themes. However, it seems not to have circulated as an independent text and is dated 1085.

49. The likely place to look for corroboration of this appraisal of Niutou is the Dunhuang text Jueguanlun, which is quoted under Niutou’s name in three tenth-century Chan texts: Zutangji (Yanagida, Sodōshū, 52b–53a); Yanshou’s Zongjinglu (T 48:463b10–13); and Yanshou’s Wanshan tonggui ji (T 48:974b5–6). Whether or not we accept this attribution, it is noteworthy that the Jueguanlun discusses wushi (“having nothing to do”), which Zongmi considered to be the essential idea of the Niutou house. See sections X.7–8 of Tokiwa Gishin and Yanagida Seizan, eds. and trans., Zekkanron (Kyoto: Zen bunka kenkyūjo, 1973), 93.

50. The term is “kanhui.” Ishii, Zen goroku, 60, renders this line: “My nature is such that I am not satisfied until I have corroborated something with my own eyes.”

51. Chengguan’s Huayan xinyao famen (ZZ 2.8.4.303a; CBETA Wan Xuxangjing vol. 58, no. 1005:426a10[00]–11[00]) opens with: “The ultimate path is rooted in the mind. Mind and dharmas are rooted in the non-abiding. The non-abiding mind substance is a spiritual Knowing that never darkens.” Heze Chan according to Zongmi is built on this Knowing, and we find it as Shenhui’s most basic teaching in his Platform Talks (Tanyu): “The basic substance is void and calm [benti kongji], and from that void and calm substance there arises Knowing [cong kongji ti shang qi zhi]” (Tōdai goroku kenkyūhan, ed., Jinne no goroku: Dango [Kyoto: Zen bunka kenkyūjo, 2006], 84).

52. Shinpuku-ji, 87, reads: “This Knowing of voidness and calm is precisely the mind of purity that Bodhidharma formerly transmitted.” In other words, the buddha-in-embryo or intrinsically pure mind of Bodhidharma’s teaching is identical to the Knowing of Heze Chan.

53. Chengguan’s Da fangguang fohuayan jing suishu yanyi chao, T 36:262a5, is an early instance of this slogan. In the background is Laozi, 1.

54. The earliest extant Chan cross-legged sitting manual, Zongze’s Zuochan yi, which is found in his Chanyuan qinggui of 1103, incorporates this line (“nian qi ji jue jue zhi ji wu”) as the essence of Chan sitting: “If a thought arises, be aware of it; once you are aware of it, it will be lost [nian qi ji jue jue zhi ji shi]. After you have for a long time forgotten objective supports, you will spontaneously become integrated [zicheng yipian]. This is the essential art [yaoshu] of Chan sitting” (Kagamishima Genryū and others, trans., Yakuchū Zen’en shingi [Tokyo: Sōtōshū shūmuchō, 1972], 281).

55. The themes of this section are corroborated by Shenhui’s Platform Talks. See Tōdai goroku kenkyūhan, ed., Jinne no goroku: Dango, 84.

57. The following is based on the thought-gem simile in the Yuanjuejing, T 17:914c. There the thought gem reflects five colors, and the ignorant ones think that the gem really has the five colors.

58. The mirror knowledge (dayuan jingzhi) is the first of the four types of knowledge that emerge from the eight consciousnesses when the defilements are destroyed and awakening attained. Mirror knowledge is the name given to the store-house consciousness, the eighth consciousness, in the stage of buddhahood when it is free from all possible defilements and is so called because it resembles a mirror that reflects all things in their true state.

60. Following Shinpuku-ji, 89. Jiang and Cao, eds., Tang Wudai yuyan cidian, 256, says of the old-baihua pronoun “mouyi”: “The first-person pronoun, equivalent to moujia, first appearing during the Tang period.”

68. Iriya and Koga, Zengo jiten, 334–35, defines “dangti” as “the very thing-in-itself,” adding that it was a technical term much favored from the late Tang to the Song.

70. In Pei Xiu’s Chuanxin fayao (T 48:381a22–23; Iriya, Denshin hōyō, 30) the Hongzhou master Huangbo Xiyun does use this term “lingjue”: “This spiritual awakening nature [ci lingjuexing] from time without beginning is as old as space. It has never arisen, never disappeared.” Also, Yanshou’s Zongjinglu (T 48:492a19) contains a lengthy Mazu saying with a very similar line: “But the nature of spiritual awakening [lingjue zhi xing] really has no arising-disappearing.” Obviously, Pei Xiu at this time, the early 830s, is already familiar with and somewhat sympathetic to Hongzhou teachings. This is well before his contact with Xiyun in the 840s after Zongmi’s death.

75. These are two of the three sources of knowledge (san liang) in Buddhist logic: inference (biliang); direct perception (xianliang); and buddha word (foyanliang).

79. This god inhabits the third heaven of the first dhyana in the realm of form.

81. The Da zhidu lun, T 25:134a1–2, lists them as: gold, silver, lapis lazuli, quartz, coral, emerald, and pearl. Lotus Sutra, T 9:8c18–19, has a slightly different list.

82. The five precepts are: no killing living things, no stealing, no illicit sexual activity, no speaking false words, and no intoxicants. The ten good actions are: no killing living things, no stealing, no illicit sexual activity, no speaking false words, no flowery language, no slander, no double-tongued speech, no greed, no hatred, and no false views.

84. From this point through note 86, the translation is working from Shinpuku-ji, 96.11–97.12.

86. From this point the translation reverts from Shinpuku-ji (97.12) to Kamata’s edition (341.8).

87. Buddhas and bodhisattvas in order to transform sentient beings rely on superhuman powers to manifest various forms and activities. Examples include: walking, standing, sitting, and lying in the sky; manifesting a gigantic body that fills the sky; etc. See Lotus Sutra, T 9:60a.

89. Shinpuku-ji, 98–104, includes three more sections of questions to Zongmi from three laymen. It concludes with the title Pei Xiu shiyi wen (Imperial Redactor Pei Xiu’s Inquiry).

Chan Prolegomenon (sections)	Zongjinglu (T 48:)
4	586b
11	418b; 660a7–8
21, 29 and 33–44	614a–617a
28	456a onward
39	quoted 616b; paraphrased 560a–b;
	terminology appears 449a, 610a, 621a, and 820a
45–46	627a–b
47	627b; also see 580b, 641a, and 657c
50–51	442c–443a

san zhong jiao	san zong
dunjiao	dunmen
jianjiao	jianmen
shishuo	foyi
[zu]yi	fo[xin]
[chan]wen	[fo]jing
dunwu	jianxiu
benjue/zhen	bujue/wang