There is a legend the Buddha was once handed a flower and asked to preach on the law (2024)

THE ZEN EXPERIENCE

Library Journal called it, “The best history of Zenever written.”

The truth of Zenhas always resided in individual experience rather than in theoreticalwritings. To give the modern reader access to understanding of this truth, THEZEN EXPERIENCE illumines Zen as it was created and shaped by the personalities,perceptions, and actions of its masters over the centuries.
Beginning with the twin roots of Zen in Indian Buddhism and Chinese Taoism, wefollow it through its initial flowering in China under the First PatriarchBodhidharma; its division into schools of “gradual” and “sudden” enlightenmentunder Shen-hsui and Shen-hui; the ushering in of its golden age by Hui-neng;the development of “shock” enlightenment by Ma-tsu; its poetic greatness in theperson of Han-shan; the perfection of the use of the koan by Ta-hui; themigration of Zen to Japan and its extraordinary growth there under a successionof towering Japanese spiritual leaders.
Rich in historical background, vivid in revealing anecdote and memorablequotation, this long-needed work succeeds admirably in taking Zen from thelibrary shelves and restoring its living, human form.

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THE

ZEN

EXPERIENCE

ThomasHoover

SIGNET,SIGNET CLASSICS, MENTOR, PLUME, MERIDIAN AND NAL BOOKS are published in theUnited States by The New American Library, Inc., 1633 Broadway, New York, NewYork 10019.

FirstPrinting, March, 1980

23456789

PRINTED INTHE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Library ofCongress Cataloging in Publication Data

BibliographyZen Buddhism—History. Priests, Zen—Biography.

ISBN0-452-25228-8

www.thomashoover.info

Keywords:

Author: Thomas Hoover

Title: The Zen Experience

Zen History, Buddhism, ZenBuddhism, Zen History, Seng-Chao, Tao-sheng, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Kuo Hsiang,Nagarjuna, Seng-chao, Tao-Sheng, Bodhidharma, Hui’ko, Seng-Ts’an, Tao-hsin,Fa-jung, Hung-jen, Shen-hsiu, Hui-neng, Ma-tsu, Huai-hai, Nan’chuan,Chao-Chou, P’ang, Han-shan, Huang-po, Lin-Chi, Rinzai, Soto, Tung-shan,Ts’ao-shan, Kuei-shan, Yun-men, Fa-yen, Ta-hui, Eisai, Dogen, Hakuin

PERMISSIONS

Selections from Zen and Zen Classics,Vols. I and II, by R. H. Blyth (Tokyo: The Hokuseido Press, copyright © 1960,1964 by R. H. Blyth, copyright © 1978 by Frederick Franck), reprinted bypermission of Joan Daves.

Selections from Cold Mountain by Han-shan, Burton Watson, trans.(New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), reprinted by permission ofpublisher.

Selections from The Recorded Sayingsof Layman Pang, Ruth Fuller Sasaki et al., trans. (New York: John Weatherhill), reprinted bypermission of publisher.

Selection from A History of ZenBuddhism by Heinrich S. J. Dumoulin, Paul Peachey, trans. (New York: PantheonBooks, 1962), reprinted by permission of publisher.

Selection by Ikkyu from Some JapanesePortraits by Donald Keene (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1979), reprinted bypermission of author.

Selections from Essays in ZenBuddhism by D. T. Suzuki (New York: Grove Press),reprinted by permission of publisher.

Selection from The Sutra of Hui-neng,Price and Wong, trans. (Boulder: Shambala Publications), reprintedby permission of publisher.

Selections from The Platform Sutra ofthe Sixth Patriarch, Philip Yamplosky, trans. (New York: Columbia University Press), reprinted by permission ofpublisher.

Selections from The Zen Master Hakuinby Philip Yamplosky (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971), reprinted bypermission of publisher.

Selections from The Golden Age of Zenby John C. H. Wu (Taipei, Taiwan: Hwakang Book Store), reprinted by permission of author.

Selections from The Zen Teaching ofthe Hui Hai on Sudden Illumination by John Blofeld (New York: Samuel Weiser,1972), reprinjted by permission of publisher.

Selections from Zen Master Dogen byYoho Yukoi (New York: John Weatherhill), reprinted bypermission of publisher.

Selections from Original Teachings ofCh'an Buddhism by Chang Chung-yuan (New York: Vintage, 1969), reprinted bypermission of publisher.

Selections from Zen-Man Ikkyu, a dissertation by JohnSanford, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, reprinted by permission ofauthor.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Heartfeltthanks go to Dr. Philip Yampolsky of Columbia University, who reviewed the manuscript indraft and clarified many points of fact and interpretation. I also am indebtedto the works of a number of Zen interpreters for the West, including D. T.Suzuki, John Blofeld, Chang Chung-yuan, and Charles Luk. In cases where thisfinger pointing at the moon mistakenly aims astray, I alone am responsible.

CONTENTS

Preface to Zen

Taoism: TheWay to Zen

Lao Tzu

Chuang Tzu

Kuo Hsiang:A Neo-Taoist

The SevenSages of the Bamboo Grove

The BuddhistRoots of Zen

The Buddha

Nagarjuna

Kumarajiva

Seng-chao

Tao-sheng

TheSynthesis

1.Bodhidharma: First Patriarch of Zen

2. Hui-k'o:Second Patriarch of Zen

3.Seng-Ts'an, Tao-hsin, Fa-jung, and Hung-jen: Four Early Masters

4. Shen-hsiuand Shen-hui: "Gradual" and

"Sudden"Masters

5. Hui-neng:Sixth Patriarch and Father of Modern Zen

6. Ma-tsu:Originator of "Shock" Enlightenment

7. Huai-hai:Father of Monastic Ch'an

8.Nan-ch'uan and Chao-chou: Masters of the Irrational

9. P'ang andHan-shan: Layman and Poet

10.Huang-po: Master of the Universal Mind

11. Lin-chi:Founder of Rinzai Zen

12.Tung-shan and Ts'ao-shan: Founders of Soto Zen

13.Kuei-shan, Yun-men, and Fa-yen: Three Minor Houses

14. Ta-hui:Master of the Koan

15. Eisai:The First Japanese Master

16. Dogen:Father of Japanese Soto Zen

17. Ikkyu:Zen Eccentric

18. Hakuin:Japanese Master of the Koan

19.Reflections

Notes

THE ZEN EXPERIENCE

The sole aim of Zen is to enable one to understand,realize,

and perfect his own mind.

Garma C. C. Chang

Lao Tzu, Buddha, Confucius

Some call it"seeing," some call it "knowing," and some describe it inreligious terms. Whatever the name, it is our reach for a new level ofconsciousness. Of the many forms this search has taken, perhaps the mostintriguing is Zen. Growing out of the wisdom of China, India, and Japan, Zen became a powerful movement to explore the lesser-knownreaches of the human mind. Today Zen has come westward, where we are rediscoveringmodern significance in its ancient insights. This book is an attempt toencounter Zen in its purest form, by returning to the greatest Zen masters.

Zen teachings often appear deceptively simple. Thismisconception is compounded by the Zen claim that explanations are meaningless.They are, of course, but merely because genuine Zen insights can arise onlyfrom individual experience. And although our experience can be described andeven analyzed, it cannot be transmitted or shared. At most, the "teachings"of Zen can only clear the way to our deeper consciousness. The rest is up tous.

Zen is based on the recognition of two incompatible types ofthought: rational and intuitive. Rationality employs language, logic, reason.Its precepts can be taught. Intuitive knowledge, however, is different. Itlurks embedded in our consciousness, beyond words. Unlike rational thought,intuition cannot be "taught" or even turned on. In fact, it isimpossible to find or manipulate this intuitive consciousness using ourrational mind—any more than we can grasp our own hand or see our own eye.

The Zen masters devised ways to reach this repressed area ofhuman consciousness. Some of their techniques—like meditation—were borrowedfrom Indian Buddhism, and some—like their antirational paradoxes—may have beenlearned from Chinese Taoists. But other inventions, like their jarring shoutsand blows, emerged from their own experience. Throughout it all, however, theirwords and actions were only a means, never an end.

That end is an intuitive realization of a single greatinsight—that we and the world around are one, both part of a largerencompassing absolute. Our rational intellect merely obscures this truth, andconsequently we must shut it off, if only for a moment. Rationality constrainsour mind; intuition releases it.

The irony is that the person glimpsing this moment of higherconsciousness, this Oneness, encounters the ultimate realization that there isnothing to realize. The world is still there, unchanged. But the difference isthat it is now an extension of our consciousness, seen directly and notanalytically. And since it is redundant to be attached to something already apart of you, there is a sudden sense of freedom from our agonizing bondage tothings.

Along with this also comes release from the constraints ofartificial values. Creating systems and categories is not unlike counting thecolors of a rainbow—both merely detract from our experience of reality, whileat the same time limiting our appreciation of the world's richness. And todeclare something right or wrong is similarly nearsighted. As Alan Watts onceobserved, "Zen unveils behind the urgent realm of good and evil a vastregion of oneself about which there need be no guilt or recrimination, where atlast the self is indistinguishable from God." And, we might add, where Godis also one with our consciousness, our self. In Zen all dualities dissolve,absorbed in the larger reality that simply is.

None of these things is taught explicitly in Zen. Instead theyare discovered waiting in our consciousness after all else has been swept away.A scornful twelfth-century Chinese scholar summarized the Zen method asfollows: "Since the Zen masters never run the risk of explaining anythingin plain language, their followers must do their own pondering andpuzzling—from which a real threshing-out results." In these pages we willwatch the threshing-out of Zen itself—as its masters unfold a new realm ofconsciousness, the Zen experience.

Taoism isthe original religion of ancient China.It is founded on the idea that a fundamental principle, the Tao, underlies allnature. Long before the appearance of Zen, Taoists were teaching thesuperiority of intuitive thought, using an anti-intellectualism that oftenridiculed the logic-bound limitations of conventional Chinese life and letters.However, Taoism was always upbeat and positive in its acceptance of reality, aquality that also rubbed off on Zen over the centuries. Furthermore, manyTaoist philosophers left writings whose world view seems almost Zen-like. Theearly Chinese teachers of meditation (called dhyana in Sanskrit andCh'an in Chinese) absorbed the Taoist tradition of intuitive wisdom, and laterZen masters often used Taoist expressions. It is fitting, therefore, that webriefly meet some of the most famous teachers of Chinese Taoism.

One of themost influential figures in ancient Chinese lore is remembered today merely asLao Tzu (Venerable Master). Taoist legends report he once disputed (andbettered) the scholarly Confucius, but that he finally despaired of the worldand rode an oxcart off into the west, pausing at the Han-ku Pass—on theinsistence of its keeper—to set down his insights in a five-thousand-characterpoem. This work, the Tao Te Ching (The Way and the Power), was an eloquent,organized, and lyrical statement of an important point of view in China of the sixth century B.C., an understanding later tobecome an essential element of Ch'an Buddhism.

The word "Tao" means many, many things—includingthe elan vital or life force of the universe, the harmonious structuringof human affairs, and—perhaps most important—a reality transcending words.Taoists declared there is a knowledge not accessible by language. As the Tao TeChing announces in its opening line, "The Tao that can be put into wordsis not the real Tao."

Also fundamental to the Tao is the unity of mind and matter,of the one who knows and the thing known. The understanding of a truth and thetruth itself cannot be separated. The Tao includes and unifies these into alarger "reality" encompassing both. The notion that our knowledge isdistinguishable from that known is an illusion.

Another teaching of the Tao Te Ching is that intuitiveinsight surpasses rational analysis. When we act on our spontaneous judgment,we are almost always better off. Chapter 19 declares, "Let the people befree from discernment and relinquish intellection . . . Hold to one's originalnature . . . Eliminate artificial learning and one will be free fromanxieties."¹ The wise defer to a realm of insight floating inour mind beyond its conscious state.

Taoists also questioned the value of social organization,holding that the best government is the one governing least and that "thewise deal with things through non-interference and teach throughno-words."² Taoists typically refused to draw value judgmentson others' behavior. Lao Tzu asks, "What is the difference between goodand bad?"³ and concludes, "Goodness often turns out to beevil."⁴ There is complete acceptance of what is, with no desireto make things "better." Lao Tzu believed "good" and"bad" were both part of Tao and therefore, "Even if a man isunworthy, Tao will never exclude him."⁵ If all things are one,there can be no critical differentiation of any part. This concentration oninner perception, to the exclusion of practical concerns, evoked a criticismfrom the third-century-B.C. Confucian philosopher Hsun Tzu that has a curiouslymodern ring of social consciousness. "Lao Tzu understood looking inward,but knew nothing of looking outward. . . . If there is merely inward-lookingand never outward-looking, there can be no distinction between what has valueand what has not, between what is precious and what is vile, between what is nobleand what is vulgar."⁶ But the refusal of Lao Tzu tointellectualize what is natural or to sit in judgment over the world was theperfect Chinese precedent for Ch'an.

The secondimportant figure in Taoism is the almost equally legendary teacher rememberedas Chuang Tzu, who is usually placed in the fourth century B.C., some twocenturies after Lao Tzu. An early historian tells that once Chuang Tzu wasinvited to the court to serve as a minister, an invitation he declined with atypical story: An ox is selected for a festival and fattened up for severalyears, living the life of wealth and indulgence—until the day he is led awayfor sacrifice. At that reckoning what would he give to return to the simplelife, where there was poverty but also freedom?

In Chuang Tzu's own book of wisdom, he also derided the faithin rationality common to Chinese scholars. To emphasize his point he devised avehicle for assaulting the apparatus of logic—that being a "nonsense"story whose point could only be understood intuitively., There has yet to befound a more deadly weapon against pompous intellectualizing, as the Ch'anBuddhists later proved with the koan. Chuang Tzu also knew how quickly comedycould deflate, and he used it with consummate skill, again paving the way forthe absurdist Zen masters. In fact, his dialogues often anticipate the Zen mondo,the exchanges between master and pupil that have comic/straight-man overtones.

In this regard, Chuang Tzu also sometimes anticipatestwentieth-century writers for the Theater of the Absurd, such as Beckett orIonesco. Significantly, the Columbia scholar Burton Watson suggests that themost fruitful path to Chuang Tzu "is not to attempt to subject histhoughts to rational and systematic analysis, but to read and reread his wordsuntil one has ceased to think of what he is saying and instead has developed anintuitive sense of the mind moving beyond the words, and of the world in whichit moves."⁷This is undoubtedly true. The effect of comicparody on logic is so telling that the only way to really understand themessage is to stop trying to "understand" it.

Concerning the limitations of verbal transmission, Chuang Tzutells a story of a wheelmaker who once advised his duke that the book ofancient thought the man was reading was "nothing but the lees and scum ofbygone men." The duke angrily demanded an explanation—and received aclassic defense of the superiority of intuitive understanding over language andlogic.

I look atthe matter in this way; when I am making a wheel, if my stroke is too slow,then it bites deep but is not steady; if my stroke is too fast, then it issteady, but does not go deep. The right pace, neither slow nor fast, cannot getinto the hand unless it comes from the heart. It is a thing that cannot be putinto words; there is an art in it that I cannot explain to my son. That is whyit is impossible for me to let him take over my work, and here I am at the ageof seventy, still making wheels. In my opinion, it must have been the same withthe men of old. All that was worth handing on died with them; the rest, theyput into their books.⁸

Chuang Tzu's parable that perhaps best illustrates the Taoistideal concerns a cook who had discovered one lives best by following nature'srhythms. The cook explained that his naturalness was easy after he learned tolet intuition guide his actions. This approach he called practicing the Tao,but it is in fact the objective of Zen practice as well.

PrinceWen Hui remarked, "How wonderfully you have mastered your art." Thecook laid down his knife and said, "What your servant really cares for isTao, which goes beyond mere art. When I first began to cut up oxen, I sawnothing but oxen. After three years of practicing, I no longer saw the ox as awhole. I now work with my spirit, not with my eyes. My senses stop functioningand my spirit takes over."⁹

What he described is the elimination of the rational mind,which he refers to as the senses, and the reliance upon the intuitive part ofhis mind, here called the spirit. He explained how this intuitive approachallowed him to work naturally.

A goodcook changes his knife once a year because he cuts, while a mediocre cook hasto change his every month because he hacks. I've had this knife of mine fornineteen years and have cut up thousands of oxen with it, and yet the edge isas if it were fresh from the grindstone. There are spaces between the joints.The blade of the knife has no thickness. That which has no thickness has plentyof room to pass through these spaces. Therefore, after nineteen years, my bladeis as sharp as ever.¹⁰

Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu did not see themselves as founders ofany formal religion. They merely described the obvious, encouraging others tobe a part of nature and not its antagonist. Their movement, now calledPhilosophical Taoism, was eclipsed during the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 220)in official circles by various other systems of thought, most particularlyConfucianism (which stressed obedience to authority—both that of elders and ofsuperiors—and reverence for formalized learning, not to mention the acceptanceof a structured hierarchy as part of one's larger social responsibility).However, toward the end of the Han era there arose two new types of Taoism: anEsoteric Taoism that used physical disciplines to manipulate consciousness, anda Popular Taoism that came close to being a religion in the traditional mold.The first was mystical Esoteric Taoism, which pursued the prolonging of lifeand vigor, but this gave way during later times to Popular Taoism, ametaphysical alternative to the comfortless, arid Confucianism of the scholarlyestablishment.

The post-Han era saw the Philosophical Taoism of Lao Tzu andChuang Tzu emerge anew among Chinese intellectuals, actually coming to vie withConfucianism. This whole era witnessed a turning away from the accepted valuesof society, as the well-organized government of the Han era dissolved intopolitical and intellectual confusion. Government was unstable and corrupt, andthe Confucianism which had been its philosophical underpinning was stilted andunsatisfying. Whenever a society breaks down, the belief system supporting itnaturally comes under question. This happened in China in the third and fourth centuries of the Christian era, andfrom it emerged a natural opposition to Confucianism. One form of thisopposition was the imported religion of Buddhism, which provided a spiritualsolace missing in the teachings of Confucius, while the other was a revivalamong intellectuals of Philosophical Taoism.

In thisdisruptive environment, certain intellectuals returned again to the insights ofLao Tzu and Chuang Tzu, creating a movement today known as Neo-Taoism. One ofthe thinkers who tried to reinterpret original Taoist ideas for the new timeswas Kuo Hsiang (d. ca. 312), who co-authored a major document of Neo-Taoismentitled Commentary on the Chuang Tzu. It focused on the important Taoist ideaof wu-wei, once explained as follows: " . . .to them the keyconcept of Taoism, wu (literally, nonexistence), is not nothingness, butpure being, which transcends forms and names, and precisely because it isabsolute and complete, can accomplish everything. The sage is not one whowithdraws into the life of a hermit, but a man of social and politicalachievements, although these achievements must be brought about through wu-wei,'nonaction' or 'taking no [unnatural] action.' ^1,11

This concept of wu-wei has also been described asabstaining from activity contrary to nature and acting in a spontaneous ratherthan calculated fashion. In Kuo Hsiang's words:

Being natural means to exist spontaneously without havingto take any action. . . . By taking no action is not meant folding one's armsand closing one's mouth. If we simply let everything act by itself, it will becontented with its nature and destiny. (12)

Kuo Hsiang'scommentary expanded on almost all the major ideas of Chuang Tzu, drawing outwith logic what originally had been set in absurdism. Criticizing this, a laterCh'an monk observed, "People say Kuo Hsiang wrote a commentary on ChuangTzu. I would say it was Chuang Tzu who wrote a commentary on Kuo Hsiang."¹³Nonetheless, the idea of wu-wei, processed through Buddhism, emerged indifferent guise in later Ch'an, influencing the concept of "no-mind."

THE SEVEN SAGES OF THE BAMBOO GROVE

Other Chinese were content merely to live the ideas ofNeo-Taoism. Among these were the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove, men part of alarger movement known as the School of Pure Conversation. Their favoritepastime was to gather north of Loyang on the estate of one of their members,where they engaged in refined conversation, wrote poetry and music, and (notincidentally) drank wine. To some extent they reflected the recluse ideal ofold, except that they found the satisfaction of the senses no impediment tointrospection. What they did forswear, however, was the world of getting andspending. Although men of distinction, they rejected fame, ambition, andworldly station.

There is a story that one of the Seven Sages, a man named LiuLing (ca. 221-330), habitually received guests while completely naked. Hisresponse to adverse comment was to declare, "I take the whole universe asmy house and my own room as my clothing. Why, then, do you enter here into mytrousers."¹⁴

It is also told that two of the sages (Juan Chi, 210-63, andhis nephew Juan Hsien) often sat drinking with their family in suchconviviality that they skipped the nuisance of cups and just drank directlyfrom a wine bowl on the ground. When pigs wandered by, these too were invitedto sip from the same chalice. If one exempts all nature—including pigs—fromdistinction, discrimination, and duality, why exclude them as drinkingcompanions?

But perhaps the most significant insight of the Seven Sagesof the Bamboo Grove was their recognition of the limited uses of language. Weare told, "They engaged in conversation 'til, as they put it, they reachedthe Unnameable, and 'stopped talking and silently understood each other with asmile.' "^1S

There is alegend the Buddha was once handed a flower and asked to preach on the law. Thestory says he received the blossom without a sound and silently wheeled it inhis hand. Then amid the hush his most perceptive follower, Kashyapa, suddenlyburst into a smile . . . and thus was born the wordless wisdom of Zen.

The understanding of this silent insight was passed down

through thecenturies, independent of the scriptures, finally emerging as the Chinese school of Ch'an, later called Zen by the Japanese. It is said the absence ofearly writings about the school is nothing more than would be expected of ateaching which was, by definition, beyond words. The master Wen-yu summed it upwhen he answered a demand for the First Principle of Ch'an with, "If wordscould tell you, it would become the Second Principle."

This version of Zen's origin is satisfying, and for all weknow it may even be true. But there are other, considerably more substantive,sources for the ideas that came to flower as Ch'an. Taoism, of course, hadplowed away at the Confucianist clutter restraining the Chinese mind, but itwas Buddhism that gave China the necessary new philosophical structure—thisbeing the metaphysical speculations of India. Pure Chinese naturalism metIndian abstraction, and the result was Ch'an. The school of Ch'an was in partthe grafting of fragile foreign ideas (Buddhism) onto a sturdy native speciesof understanding (Taoism). But its simplicity was in many ways a re-expressionof the Buddha's original insights.

THE BUDDHA

The historic Buddha was born to the high-caste familyGautama during the sixth century B.C. in the region that is today northeastIndia and Nepal. After a childhood and youth of indulgence he turned toasceticism and for over half a decade rigorously followed the traditionalIndian practices of fasting and meditation, only finally to reject these indespair. However, an auspicious dream and one final meditation at last broughttotal enlightenment. Gautama the seeker had become Buddha the Enlightened, andhe set out to preach.

It was not gods that concerned him, but the mind of man andits sorrowing. We are unhappy, he explained, because we are slaves to ourdesires. Extinguish desire and suffering goes with it. If people could betaught that the physical or phenomenal world is illusion, then they would ceasetheir attachment to it, thereby finding release from their self-destructivemental bondage.

The Buddha neglected to set down these ideas in written formhowever, perhaps unwisely leaving this task to later generations. His teachingssubsequently were recreated in the form of sermons or sutras. In later years,the Buddhist movement split into two separate philosophical camps, known todayas Theravada and Mahayana. The Theravada Buddhists—found primarily in southeastAsia, Sri Lanka, and Burma—venerate the early writings of Buddhism (known todayas the Pali Canon) and tend to content themselves with practicing thephilosophy of the Buddha rather than enlarging upon it with speculativecommentaries. By contrast, the followers of Mahayana—who include the bulk ofall Buddhists in China, Japan, and Tibet—left the simple prescriptions of theBuddha far behind in their creation of a vast new literature (in Sanskrit, Tibetan,and Chinese) of complex theologies. Chinese Ch'an grew out of Mahayana, as ofcourse did Japanese Zen.

NAGARJUNA

After the Buddha, perhaps the most important Buddhistfigure is the second-century A.D. Indian philosopher Nagarjuna. Some call himthe most important thinker Asia has produced. According to Tibetan legends hisparents sent him away from home at seven because an astrologer had predictedhis early death and they wished to be spared the sight. But he broke the spellby entering Buddhist orders, and went on to become the faith's foremostphilosopher.

Today Nagarjuna is famous for his analysis of the so-calledWisdom Books of Mahayana, a set of Sanskrit sutras composed between 100 B.C.and A.D. 100. (Included in this category are The Perfection of Wisdom in 8,000Lines, as well as the Diamond Sutra and Heart Sutra, both essential scripturesof Zen.) Nagarjuna was the originator of the Middle Path, so named because itstrove to define a middle ground between affirmation of the world and completenegation of existence.

Reality, said Nagarjuna, cannot be realized throughconceptual constructions, since concepts are contained inside reality, not viceversa. Consequently, only through the intuitive mind can reality be approached.His name for this "reality" beyond the mind's analysis was sunyata,usually translated as "emptiness" but sometimes as "theVoid." (Sunyata is perhaps an unprovable concept, but so too arethe ego and the unconscious, both hypothetical constructs useful in explainingreality but impossible to locate on the operating table.) Nagarjuna'smost-quoted manifesto has the logic-defying ring of a Zen : "Nothing comesinto existence nor does anything disappear. Nothing is eternal, nor hasanything any end. Nothing is identical or differentiated. Nothing moves hitherand thither."

As the Ch'an teachers interpreted the teaching of sunyata,the things of this world are all a mental creation, since external phenomenaare transient and only exist for us because of our perception. Consequently theyare actually "created" by our mind (or, if you will, a more universalentity called Mind). Consequently they do not exist outside our mind and henceare a void. Yet the

mind itself,which is the only thing real, is also a void since its thoughts cannot belocated by the five senses. The Void is therefore everything, since it includesboth the world and the mind. Hence, sunyata.

As a modern Nagarjuna scholar has described sunyata,or emptiness, it is a positive sense of freedom, not a deprivation

"Thisawareness of 'emptiness' is not a blank loss of consciousness, an inanimatespace; rather it is the cognition of daily life without the attachment to it.It is an awareness of distinct entities, of the self, of 'good' and 'bad' andother practical determinations; but it is aware of these as emptystructures."¹⁶

The Zenmasters found ways to achieve the cognition without attachment postulated byNagarjuna, and they paid him homage by making him one of the legendarytwenty-eight Indian Patriarchs of Zen by posthumous decree.

The Indianmissionary who transmitted the idea of Emptiness to China was Kumarajiva(344-413), a swashbuckling guru who, more than any other individual, wasresponsible for planting sophisticated Mahayana Buddhist ideas in Chinese soil.Before telling his story, however, it may be well to reflect briefly on howBuddhism got to China in the first place.

Although there are records of a Buddhist missionary in Chinaas early as A.D. 148, historians are hard pressed to find the name of anout-and-out native Chinese Buddhist before sometime in the third century.Buddhism, which at first apparently was confused with Taoism, seems to havecome into fashion after the Neo-Taoists ran out of creative steam. Shortlythereafter, around A.D. 209, intelligible Chinese translations of IndianMahayana sutras finally began to become available.

There were many things about Buddhism, however, that rubbedChinese the wrong way. First there were the practical matters: Buddhismallowed, if not encouraged, begging, celibacy, and neglect of ancestors—allpractices to rankle any traditional Chinese. Then there were fundamentalphilosophical differences: Buddhism offered to break one out of the Hindu cycleof rebirth, something the Chinese had not realized they needed; and Indianthought was naturally geared to cosmic time, with its endless cycles of eons,whereas the Chinese saw time as a line leading back to identifiable ancestors.Early missionaries tried to gain acceptability for Buddhism by explaining it inTaoist terms, including stretching the two enough to find "matchingconcepts" or ideas with superficial similarity, and they also let out themyth that the Buddha was actually Lao Tzu, who had gone on to India afterleaving China.

When barbarians sacked the Northern Chinese center of Loyangin the year 313 and took over North China's government, many of its influentialConfucianist scholars fled to the south. These emigres were disillusioned withthe social ideas of Confucianism and ready for a solace of the spirit. Thusthey turned for comfort to Buddhist ideas, but using Neo-Taoist terminology andoften treating Buddhism more as a subject for salon speculations than as areligion. By translating Buddhism into a Neo-Taoist framework, these southernintellectuals effectively avoided having to grapple with the new ideas inBuddhist metaphysics.

In North China, the Buddhists took advantage of the newabsence of competing Confucianists to move into ruling circles and assume therole of the literate class. They preached a simple form of Buddhism, oftenshamelessly dwelling on magic and incantations to arouse interest among thegreatest number of followers. The common people were drawn to Buddhism, sinceit provided for the first time in China a religion that seemed to care forpeople's suffering, their personal growth, their salvation in an afterlife.Thus Buddhism took hold in North China mainly because it provided hope andmagic for the masses and a political firewall against Confucianism for the newrulers. As late as the beginning of the fifth century, therefore, Buddhism wasmisunderstood and encouraged for the wrong reasons in both north and south.

Kumarajiva, who would change all this, was born in Kucha toan Indian father of the Brahmin caste and a mother of noble blood. When he wasseven he and his mother traveled to Kashmir to enter Buddhist orders together.After several years of studying the Theravada sutras, he moved on to Kashgar,where he turned his attention to Mahayana philosophy. At age twenty we find himback in Kucha, being ordained in the king's palace and sharpening hisunderstanding of the Mahayana scriptures. He also, we are told, sharpened hisnon-Buddhist amorous skills, perhaps finding consolation in the illusory worldof the senses for the hollow emptiness of sunyata.

In the year 382 or 383, he was taken captive andremoved to a remote area in northeastern China, where he was held prisoner foralmost two decades, much to the dismay of the rulers in Ch'ang-an, who wantednothing more than to have this teacher (who was by then a famous Buddhistscholar) for their own. After seventeen years their patience ran out and theysent an army to defeat his recalcitrant captors and bring him back. He arrivedin Ch'ang-an in the year 401 and immediately began a project crucial to thefuture of Chinese Buddhism. A modern scholar of Chinese religion tells whathappened next.

". . . Chinesemonks were assembled from far and near to work with him in translating thesacred texts. This was a 'highly structured project,' suggestive of thecooperative enterprises of scientists today. There were corps of specialists atall levels: those who discussed doctrinal questions with Kumarajiva, those whochecked the new translations against the old and imperfect ones, hundreds ofeditors, sub-editors, and copyists. The quality and quantity of thetranslations produced by these men in the space of eight years is trulyastounding. Thanks to their efforts the ideas of Mahayana Buddhism werepresented in Chinese with far greater clarity and precision than ever before.Sunyata—Nagar- juna's concept of the Void—was disentangled from the Taoistterminology that had obscured and distorted it, and this and other keydoctrines of Buddhism were made comprehensible enough to lay the intellectualfoundations of the great age of independent Chinese Buddhism that was tofollow."¹⁷

The Chinese rulers contrived to put Kumarajiva's otherdevotion to use as well, installing a harem of ten beautiful young Chinesegirls for him, through whom he was encouraged to perpetuate a lineage of hisown. This genetic experiment apparently came to nothing, but two native Chinesestudying under him, Seng-chao (384-414) and Tao-sheng (ca. 360-434), wouldcarry his contribution through the final steps needed to open the way for the development of Ch'an.

Theshort-lived Seng-chao was born to a humble family in the Ch'ang-an region,where he reportedly got his indispensable grounding in the Chinese classics byworking as a copyist. He originally was a confirmed Taoist, but after readingthe sutra of Vimalakirti (which described a pious nobleman who combined thesecular life of a bon vivant businessman with an inner existence of Buddhistenlightenment, a combination instantly attractive to the practical Chinese),Seng-chao turned Buddhist. In the year 398, at age fifteen, he traveled to thenorthwest to study personally under the famous Kumarajiva, and he laterreturned to Ch'ang-an with the master.

Conversant first in the Taoist and then in the Buddhistclassics, Seng-chao began the real synthesis of the two that would eventuallyevolve into Ch'an. The China scholar Walter Liebenthal has written that thedoctrine of Nagarjuna's Middle Path, sinicized by Seng-chao, emerged in thelater Ch'an thinkers cleansed of the traces of Indian origin. He declares,"Seng-chao interpreted Mahayana, [the Ch'an founders] Hui-neng andShen-hui re-thought it."¹⁸

Three of Seng-chao's treatises exist today as the Book ofChao (or Chao Lun), and they give an idea of how Chuang Tzu might have writtenhad he been a Buddhist. There is the distrust of words, the unmistakablepreference for immediate, intuitive knowledge, and the masterful use ofwordplay and paradox that leaves his meaning ambiguous. Most important of all,he believed that truth had to be experienced, not reasoned out. Truth was whatlay behind words; it should never be confused with the words themselves:

“A thingcalled up by a name may not appear as what it is expected to appear; a namecalling up a thing may not lead to the real thing. Therefore the sphere ofTruth is beyond the noise of verbal teaching. How then can it be made thesubject of discussion? Still I cannot remain silent.”¹⁹

The dean of Zen scholars, Heinrich Dumoulin, declares,"The relationship of Seng-chao to Zen is to be found in his orientationtoward the immediate and experiential perception of absolute truth, and revealsitself in his preference for the paradox as the means of expressing theinexpressible."²⁰ Dumoulin also notes that the Book of Chaoregards the way to enlightenment as one of gradual progress. However, the ideathat truth can be approached gradually was disputed by the other major pupil ofKumarajiva, whose insistence that enlightenment must arrive instantaneously hascaused some to declare him the ideological founder of Zen.

The famousTao-sheng was the first Chinese Buddhist to advance the idea of"sudden" enlightenment, and as a result he earned the enmity of hisimmediate colleagues—and lasting fame as having anticipated one of thefundamental innovations of Zen thought. He first studied Buddhism at Lu-shan,but in 405 he moved to Ch'ang-an, becoming for a while a part of the coteriesurrounding Kumarajiva. None of his writings survive, but the work of acolleague, Hui-yuan, is usually taken as representative of his ideas.

Tao-sheng is known today for two theories. The first was thatgood deeds do not automatically bring reward, a repudiation of the IndianBuddhist concept of merit. The other, and perhaps more important, deviation hepreached was that enlightenment was instantaneous. The reason, he said, wassimple: since Buddhists say the world is one, nothing is divisible, even truth,and therefore the subjective understanding of truth must come all at once ornot at all. Preparatory work and progress toward the goal of enlightenment,including study and meditation, could proceed step-by-step and are wholesomeand worthwhile, but to "reach the other shore," as the phrase in theHeart Sutra describes enlightenment, requires a leap over a gulf, a realizationthat must hit you with all its force the first time.

What exactly is it that you understand on the other shore?First you come to realize—as you can only realize intuitively and directly—thatenlightenment was within you all along. You become enlightened when you finallyrecognize that you already had it. The next realization is that there actuallyis no "other shore," since reaching it means realizing that there wasnothing to reach. As his thoughts have been quoted: "As to reaching theother shore, if one reaches it, one is not reaching the other shore. Bothnot-reaching and not-not-reaching are really reaching. . . . If one seesBuddha, one is not seeing Buddha. When one sees there is no Buddha, one isreally seeing Buddha."²¹

Little wonder Tao-sheng is sometimes credited as thespiritual father of Zen. He championed the idea of sudden enlightenment,something inimical to much of the Buddhism that had gone before, and hedistrusted words (comparing them to a net which, after it has caught the fishof truth, should be discarded). He identified the Taoist idea of wu-weior "nonaction" with the intuitive, spontaneous apprehension of truthwithout logic, opening the door for the Ch'an mainstay of "no-mind" asa way to ultimate truth.

Buddhism hasalways maintained a skeptical attitude toward reality and appearances,something obviously at odds with the wholehearted celebration of nature thatcharacterizes Taoism. Whereas Buddhism believes it would be best if we couldsimply ignore the world, the source of our psychic pain, the Taoists wantednothing so much as to have complete union with this same world. Buddhismteaches union with the Void, while Taoism teaches union with the Tao. At first theyseem opposite directions. But the synthesis of these doctrines appeared in Zen,which taught that the oneness of the Void, wherein all reality is subsumed,could be understood as an encompassing whole or continuum, as in the Tao. Bothare merely expressions of the Absolute. The Buddhists unite with the Void; theTaoists yearn to merge with the Tao. In Zen the two ideas reconcile.

With this philosophical prelude in place, we may now turn tothe masters who created the world of Zen.

PART I

THEEARLY MASTERS

. . . inwhich a sixth-century Indian teacher of meditation, Bodhidharma, arrivesin China to initiate what would become a Buddhist school of meditation calledCh'an. After several generations as wanderers, these Ch'an teachers settle intoa form of monastic life and gradually grow in prominence and recognition. Outof this prosperity emerges a split in the eighth-century Ch'an movement,between scholarly urban teachers who believe enlightenment is "gradual"and requires preparation in traditional Buddhism, and rural Ch'anists who scornsociety and insist enlightenment is experiential and "sudden," owinglittle to the prosperous Buddhist establishment. Then a popular teacher ofrural Ch'an, capitalizing on a civil disruption that momentarily weakens theurban elite, gains the upper hand and emasculates urban Ch'an through hispreaching that the authentic line of teaching must be traced to an obscureteacher in the rural south, now remembered as the Sixth Patriarch, Hui-neng.

CHAPTER ONE

BODHIDHARMA:FIRST PATRIARCH OF ZEN

There is aZen legend that a bearded Indian monk named Bodhidharma (ca. 470-532), son of aSouth Indian Brahmin king, appeared one day at the southern Chinese port cityof Canton, sometime around the year 520. From there he traveled northeast toNanking, near the mouth of the Yangtze River, to honor an invitation fromChina's most devout Buddhist, Emperor Wu of the Liang Dynasty. After a famousinterview in which his irreverence left the emperor dismayed, Bodhidharmapressed onward to the Buddhist centers of the north, finally settling in at theShao-lin monastery on Mt. Sung for nine years of meditation staring at a wall.He then transmitted his insights and a copy of the Lankavatara sutra to asuccessor and passed on—either physically, spiritually, or both. His devotionto meditation and to the aforementioned sutra were his legacies to China. Hewas later honored as father of the Chinese Dhyana, or"Meditation," school of Buddhism, called Ch'an.

Bodhidharma attracted little notice during his years inChina, and the first historical account of his life is a brief mention in achronicle compiled well over a hundred years after the fact, identifying himmerely as a practitioner of meditation. However, later stories of his lifebecame increasingly embellished, as he was slowly elevated to the office ofFirst Patriarch of Chinese Ch'an. His life was made to fulfill admirably therequirements of a legend, as it was slowly enveloped in symbolic anecdotesillustrating the truth more richly than did mere fact. However, most scholarsdo agree that there actually was a Bodhidharma, that he was a South Indian whocame to China, that he practiced an intensive form of meditation, and that ashort treatise ascribed to him is probably more or less authentic. Although thelegend attached to this unshaven Indian Buddhist tells us fully as much aboutearly Ch'an as it does about the man himself, it is nonetheless the first pagein the book of Zen.

[Bodhidharma],the Teacher of the Law, was the third son of a great Brahmin king in SouthIndia, of the Western Lands. He was a man of wonderful intelligence, bright andfar-reaching; he thoroughly understood everything that he had ever learned. Ashis ambition was to master the doctrine of the Mahayana, he abandoned the whitedress of a layman and put on the black robe of monkhood, wishing to cultivatethe seeds of holiness. He practiced contemplation and tranquillization; he knewwell what was the true significance of worldly affairs. Inside and outside hewas transpicuous; his virtues were more than a model to the world. He wasgrieved very much over the decline of the orthodox teaching of the Buddha inthe remoter parts of the earth. He finally made up his mind to cross over landand sea and come to China and preach his doctrine in the kingdom of Wei.¹

China at the time of Bodhidharma's arrival was a politicallydivided land, with the new faith of Buddhism often supplying a spiritual commondenominator. Bodhidharma happened to appear at a moment when an emperor in thenorthwest, the aforementioned Wu (reigned 502-49), had become a fanaticBuddhist. Shortly after taking power, Wu actually ordered his imperial householdand all associated with the court to take up Buddhism and abandon Taoism.Buddhist monks became court advisers, opening the imperial coffers to buildmany lavish and subsequently famous temples.

Emperor Wu led Buddhist assemblies, wrote learned commentarieson various sutras, and actually donated menial work at temples as a laydevotee. He also arranged to have all the Chinese commentaries on the sutrasassembled and catalogued. Concerned about the sanctity of life, he banishedmeat (and wine) from the imperial table and became so lax about enforcingcriminal statutes, particularly capital punishment, that critics credited hisgood nature with an increase in corruption and lawlessness. While the Taoistsunderstandably hated him and the Confucianists branded him a distractedineffectual sovereign, the Buddhists saw in him a model emperor. Quite simply,Emperor Wu was to southern Chinese Buddhism what Emperor Constantine was toChristianity.

The emperor was known for his hospitality to visiting Indianmonks, and it is entirely possible he did invite Bodhidharma for an audience.²According to the legend, Emperor Wu began almost immediately to regale hisvisiting dignitary with a checklist of his own dedication to the faith,mentioning temples built, clergy invested, sutras promulgated. The list waslong, but at last he paused, no doubt puzzled by his guest's indifference.Probing for a response, he asked, "Given all I have done, what Merit haveI earned?" Bodhidharma scowled, "None whatsoever, your majesty."The emperor was stunned by this reply, but he pressed on, trying anotherpopular question. "What is the most important principle of Buddhism?"This second point Bodhidharma reportedly answered with the abrupt "Vastemptiness."³ The emperor was equally puzzled by this answer andin desperation finally inquired who, exactly, was the bearded visitor standingbefore him—to which Bodhidharma cheerfully admitted he had no idea. Theinterview ended as abruptly as it began, with Bodhidharma excusing himself andpressing on. For his first miracle, he crossed the Yangtze just outside Nankingon a reed and headed north.

The legend of Bodhidharma picks up again in North China, nearthe city of Loyang. The stories differ, but the most enduring ones link hisname with the famous Shao-lin monastery on Mt. Sung. There, we are told, hemeditated for nine years facing a wall (thereby inventing "wallgazing") until at last, a pious version reports, his legs fell off. At onetime, relates another Zen story, he caught himself dozing and in a fit of ragetore off his eyelids and cast them contemptuously to the ground, whereuponbushes of the tea plant—Zen's sacramental drink—sprang forth. Another story hashim inventing a Chinese style of boxing as physical education for the weaklingmonks at Shao-lin, thereby founding a classic Chinese discipline. But the mostfamous episode surrounding his stay at the Shao-lin concerns the monk Hui-k'o,who was to be his successor. The story tells that Hui-k'o waited in the snowsoutside Shao-lin for days on end, hoping in vain to attract Bodhidharma'snotice, until finally in desperation he cut off his own arm to attract themaster's attention.

Bodhidharma advocated meditation, sutras, and the trappingsof traditional Buddhism as a way to see into one's own nature. His legendsrepresent Zen in its formative period, before the more unorthodox methods forshaking disciples into a new mode of consciousness had been devised. However,one of the stories attributed to him by later writers sounds suspiciously likea Zen mondo (the traditional consciousness-testing exchange between master andmonk). According to this story, the disciple Hui-k'o

entreatedBodhidharma, saying, "Master, I have not found peace of mind. I beg you topacify my mind for me." Bodhidharma replied, "Bring me your mind andI will pacify it for you." Hui-k'o was silent for a time, finallyconceding he could not actually find his mind. "There," saidBodhidharma, "I have pacified it for you." This symbolic storyillustrates eloquently the concept of the mind as a perceiver, something thatcannot itself be subject to analysis. Logical introspection is impossible. Themind cannot examine itself any more than the eye can see itself. Since the mindcannot become the object of its own perception, its existence can only beunderstood intuitively, as Hui-k'o realized when he tried to plumb itswhereabouts objectively.

The actual teachings of Bodhidharma are not fully known. Thefirst notice of the "blue-eyed barbarian" (as later Chinese calledhim) is in the Chinese Buddhist history entitled Further Biographies of EminentPriests, usually dated around the year 645, more than a century after he cameto China. This biography also contains the brief text of an essay attributed toBodhidharma. At the time it was compiled, Bodhidharma had not yet been anointedthe First Patriarch of Zen: rather he was merely one of a number of prieststeaching meditation. Accordingly there would have been no incentive toembellish his story with an apocryphal essay, and for this reason mostauthorities think it is authentic.⁴ A later, more detailed versionof the essay by Bodhidharma is contained in the Records of the Transmission ofthe Lamp (A.D. 1004). This latter text is usually the one quoted, and it isagreed to be the superior literary document.⁵ We are in good companyif we accept this essay as a more or less accurate record of the thoughts ofthe First Patriarch.

The text that Bodhidharma left was meant to show others theseveral ways to enlightenment.

There aremany ways to enter the Path, but briefly speaking, they are two sorts only. Theone is "Entrance by Reason" and the other "Entrance by Conduct."⁶

The first ofthese paths, the Entrance by Reason, might more properly be called entrance bypure insight. The path advocated seems a blending of Buddhism and Taoism, bywhich the sutras are used as a vehicle for leading the seeker first tomeditation, and then to a nonliterary state of consciousness in which alldualities, all sense of oneself as apart from the world, are erased. This is anearly and eloquent summary of Zen's objectives.

By"Entrance by Reason" we mean the realization of the spirit ofBuddhism by the aid of scriptural teaching. We then come to

have adeep faith in the True Nature which is one and the same in all sentient beings.The reason that it does not manifest itself is due to the overwrapping ofexternal objects and false thoughts. When one, abandoning the false andembracing the true, and in simpleness of thought, abides in pi-kuan [pure meditation or"wall-gazing"], one finds that there is neither selfhood norotherness, that the masses and the worthies are of one essence, and firmlyholds on to this belief and never moves away therefrom. He will not then beguided by any literary instructions, for he is in silent communication with theprinciple itself, free from conceptual discrimination, for he is serene andnot-acting.⁷

Bodhidharma is given credit for inventing the term pi-kuan,whose literal translation is "wall-gazing," but whose actual meaningis anyone's guess. Pi-kuan is sometimes called a metaphor for the mind'sconfrontation with the barrier of intellect—which must eventually be hurdled ifone is to reach enlightenment. In any case, this text is an unmistakableendorsem*nt of meditation as a means for tranquilizing the mind whilesimultaneously dissolving our impulse to discriminate between ourselves and theworld around us. It points out that literary instructions can go only so far,and at last they must be abandoned in favor of reliance on the intuitive mind.⁸

The other Path (or Tao) he described was called the"Entrance by Conduct" and invokes his Indian Buddhist origins. Thedescription of "conduct" was divided into four sections which, takentogether, were intended to subsume or include all the possible types ofBuddhist practice.

By"Entrance by Conduct" is meant the Four Acts in which all other actsare included. What are the four? 1. How to requite hatred; 2. To be obedient tokarma; 3. Not toseek after anything; and 4. To be in accord with the Dharma.⁹

The firstAct of Conduct counseled the believer to endure all hardships, since they arepayment for evil deeds committed in past existences.

What is meant by "How to requite hatred"? Those whodiscipline themselves in the Path should think thus when they have to strugglewith adverse conditions: During the innumerable past ages I have wanderedthrough multiplicity of existences, all the while giving myself to unimportantdetails of life at the expense of essentials, and thus creating infiniteoccasions for hate, ill-will, and wrong-doing. While no violations have beencommitted in this life, the fruits of evil deeds in the past are to be gatherednow. Neither gods nor men can foretell what is coming upon me. I will submitmyself willingly and patiently to all the ills that befall me, and I will neverbemoan or complain. In the Sutra it is said not to worry over ills that mayhappen to you. Why? Because through intelligence one can survey [the wholechain of causation]. When this thought arises, one is in concord with theprinciple because he makes the best use of hatred and turns it into the serviceof his advance towards the Path. This is called the "way to requitehatred."¹⁰

The secondRule of Conduct is to be reconciled to whatever comes, good or evil. It seemsto reflect the Taoist attitude that everything is what it is and consequentlyvalue judgments are irrelevant. If good comes, it is the result of meritoriousdeeds in a past existence and will vanish when the store of causative karma isexhausted. The important thing to realize is that none of it matters anyway.

We shouldknow that all sentient beings are produced by the interplay of karmicconditions, and as such there can be no real self in them. The mingled yarns ofpleasure and pain are all woven of the threads of conditioning causes. . . .Therefore, let gains and losses run their natural courses according to the everchanging conditions and circ*mstances of life, for the Mind itself does notincrease with the gains nor decrease with the losses. In this way, no gales ofself-complacency will arise, and your mind will remain in hidden harmony withthe Tao. It is in this sense that we must understand the rule of adaptation tothe variable conditions and circ*mstances of life.¹¹

The thirdRule of Conduct was the teaching of the Buddha that a cessation of seeking anda turning toward nonattachment brings peace.

Men ofthe world remain unawakened for life; everywhere we find them bound by theircraving and clinging. This is called "attachment." The wise, however,understand the truth, and their reason tells them to turn from the worldlyways. They enjoy peace of mind and perfect detachment. They adjust their bodilymovements to the vicissitudes of fortune, always aware of the emptiness of thephenomenal world, in which they find nothing to covet, nothing to delight in. .. . Everyone who has a body is an heir to suffering and a stranger to peace.Having comprehended this point, the wise are detached from all things of the phenomenalworld, with their minds free of desires and craving. As the scripture has it,"All sufferings spring from attachment; true joy arises fromdetachment." To know clearly the bliss of detachment is truly to walk onthe path of the Tao.¹²

The fourth Ruleof Conduct was to dissolve our perception of object-subject dualities and viewlife as a unified whole. This merging of self and exterior world Bodhidharmacalls pure mind or pure reason.

TheDharma is nothing else than Reason which is pure in its essence. This pureReason is the formless Form of all Forms; it is free of all defilements andattachments, and it knows of neither "self" nor "other."¹³

Having set forth this rather elegant statement of Zen andBuddhist ideals, as ascribed to Bodhidharma, it unfortunately is necessary toadd that it appears to have been taken directly from the Vajrasamadhi Sutra(attributing quotations from the sutras to Patriarchs was common), with thesole exception of the term pi-kuan.¹⁴ At the very least, thelegend at this time does not portray Bodhidharma as a despiser of the sutras.He was, in fact, using a sutra as a vehicle to promote his practice ofintensive meditation. It is not known what role meditation played in Buddhismat this time. However, the scholar Hu Shih questions how well it wasunderstood. "[An early Buddhist historian's] Biographies, which coveredthe whole period of early Buddhism in China from the first century to the year519, contained only 21 names of 'practitioners of dhyana (meditation)'out of a total of about 450. And practically all of the 21dhyana monkswere recorded because of their remarkable asceticism and miraculous powers.This shows that in spite of the numerous yoga manuals in translation, and inspite of the high respect paid by intellectual Buddhists to the doctrine andpractice of dhyana, there were, as late as 500, practically no ChineseBuddhists who really understood or seriously practiced dhyana orZen."¹⁵

Perhaps Bodhidharma, arriving in 520, felt his praise ofmeditation, using the words of an existing sutra, could rouse Chinese interestin this form of Buddhism. As it turned out, he was successful beyond anythinghe could have imagined, although his success took several centuries. As D. T.Suzuki sums it up, "While there was nothing specifically Zen in hisdoctrine of 'Two Entrances and Four Acts,' the teaching of pi-kuan,wall-contemplation, was what made Bodhidharma the first patriarch of ZenBuddhism in China."¹⁶ Suzuki interprets pi-kuan asreferring to the mind in a thoughtless state, in which meditation has permittedthe rational mind to be suppressed entirely. The use of meditation for thisgoal instead of for developing magical powers, as had been the goal of earlier dhyanamasters, seems to have been the profound new idea introduced to China byBodhidharma.¹⁷

The passage of Bodhidharma is also swathed in legend. Whateventually happened to this traveling Indian guru? Did he die of poison, as onelegend says; or did he wander off to Central Asia, as another reports; or didhe go to Japan, as still another story would have it? The story that has beenthe most enduring (recorded in a Sung work, Ching-te ch'uan-teng-lu)tells that after nine years at the Shao-lin monastery decided to return toIndia and called together his disciples to test their attainment. The firstdisciple reportedly said, "As I view it, to realize the truth we shouldneither rely entirely on words and letters nor dispense with them entirely, butrather we should use them as an instrument of the Way." To this,Bodhidharma replied, "You have got my skin."

Next a nun came forward and said, "As I view it, theTruth is like an auspicious sighting of the Buddhist Paradise; it is seen onceand never again." To this Bodhidharma replied, "You have attained myflesh."

The third disciple said, "The four great elements areempty and the five skandhas [constituents of the personality: body,feelings, perception, will, and consciousness] are nonexistent. There is, infact, nothing that can be grasped." To this Bodhidharma replied, "Youhave attained my bones."

Finally, it was Hui-k'o's turn. But he only bowed to themaster and stood silent at his place. To him Bodhidharma said, "You haveattained my marrow."¹⁸

According to a competing story, Bodhidharma died of poisoningat the age of 150 and was buried in the mountains of Honan.¹⁹ Nottoo long thereafter a lay Buddhist named Sung Yun, who was returning to Chinaafter a trip to India to gather sutras, met Bodhidharma in the mountains ofTurkestan. The First Patriarch, who was walking barefoot carrying a singleshoe, announced he was returning to India and that a native Chinese would ariseto continue his teaching. Sung Yun reported this to Bodhidharma's disciples onhis return and they opened the master's grave, only to find it empty save forthe other shoe.

How much of the story of Bodhidharma is legend? The answerdoes not really matter all that much. As with Moses, if Bodhidharma had notexisted it would have been necessary to

invent him.Although his first full biography (ca. 645) makes no particular fuss over him,less than a century after this, he was declared the founder of Zen, providedwith a lineage stretching directly back through Nagarjuna to the Buddha, andfurnished an exciting anecdotal history. Yet as founders go, he was a worthyenough individual. He does seem to have devised a strain of Buddhist thoughtthat could successfully be grafted onto the hardy native Chinese Taoistorganism. He also left an active disciple, later to be known as the SecondPatriarch, Hui-k'o, so he must have had either a charismatic personality or aphilosophical position that distinguished him from the general run ofmeditation masters.

It is important to keep in mind that Bodhidharma, man andmyth, was the product of an early form of Zen. The later masters needed alineage, and he was tapped for the role of First Patriarch. The major problemwith Bodhidharma was that many of his ideas were in direct contradiction to theposition adopted by later Zen teachings. For instance, recall that he promotedthe reliance on a sutra (the Lankavatara); and he heavily stressed meditation(something later Zen masters would partially circumvent). The Jesuit scholarHeinrich Dumoulin has declared that Bodhidharma's attributed teaching in no waydeviates from the great Mahayana sutras.²⁰ It is, in fact, a far cryfrom later Zen ideas, says John Wu, the Chinese authority.²¹Finally, he left no claim to patriarchy, nor did his first biographer offer todo this for him.

Perhaps the evolution of Zen is best demonstrated by the slowchange in the paintings of Bodhidharma, culminating in the latter-dayportrayals of him as a scowling grump. His image became successively moremisanthropic through the centuries, perhaps as a way of underscoring the laterZen practice of establishing a rather dehumanized relationship between the Zenmaster and pupil, as the master shouts, beats a monk, and destroys his egothrough merciless question-and-answer sessions. For all we know, the"wall-gazing Brahmin" of ancient China may have had a wry smile to goalong with his droll sense of humor. Perhaps it is fitting to close with themost lasting apocrypha associated with his name, to wit the stanza that latermasters attributed to him as an alleged summary of his teaching, but which he,promulgator of the Lankavatara Sutra, would undoubtedly have disowned:

A specialtransmission outside the sutras;

Noreliance upon words and letters;

Directpointing to the very mind;

Seeinginto one's own nature.

HUI-K'O: SECOND PATRIARCH OF ZEN

Hui-k'o(487-593) first enters the history of Zen as an eager Chinese scholar devotedto meditation. Wishing to become a disciple of the famous Indian monk who hadrecently installed himself at the Shao-lin monastery, Hui-k'o set up a vigiloutside the gate. Time passed and the snows began to fall, but stillBodhidharma ignored him, declaring, "The incomparable doctrine of Buddhismcan only be comprehended after a long hard discipline, by enduring what is mostdifficult to endure and by practicing what is most difficult to practice. Menof inferior virtue are not allowed to understand anything about it."¹Finally Hui-k'o despaired and resorted to an extreme measure todemonstrate his sincerity: he cut off his own arm and offered it to the master.(This act reportedly has been repeated since by an occasional overenthusiasticZen novice.) Even a singleminded master of meditation like Bodhidharma couldnot ignore such a gesture, and he agreed to accept Hui-k'o as his first Chinesedisciple.

Unlike Bodhidharma, Hui-k'o is not a mysterious, legendaryfigure, but rather is remembered by a detailed history that interactsperiodically with known events in Chinese history.²He came from theChi family and was originally named Seng-k'o, only later becoming known asHui-k'o. The most reliable report has him coming from Wu-lao, with a reputationas a scholarly intellectual preceding him. Indeed he seems to have been aChinese scholar in the finest sense, with a deep appreciation of all threemajor philosophies: Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. It was toward the last,however, that he

slowlygravitated, finally abandoning his scholarly secular life and becoming aBuddhist monk. He was around age forty, in the prime of what was to be a verylong life, when he first encountered Bodhidharma at the Shao-lin monastery.Whether he lost his arm by self-mutilation, as the later Zen chronicles say, orwhether it was severed in a fight with bandits, as the earliest historyreports, may never be determined.³ The later story is certainly morepious, but the earlier would seem more plausible.

For six years he studied meditation with Bodhidharma,gradually retreating from the life of the scholar as he turned away fromintellectualism and toward pure experience. When Bodhidharma finally decided todepart, he called in all his disciples for the famous testing of theirattainment recounted in Chapter l.⁴ Hui-k'o, by simply bowing insilence when asked what he had attained, proved that his understanding of themaster's wordless teaching was superior, and it was he who received theLankavatara Sutra. The event reportedly was sealed by a short refrain, nowuniversally declared to be spurious, in which Bodhidharma predicted the laterdivision of Ch'an into five schools:

OriginallyI came to this land

Totransmit the Dharma and to save all from error

A flowerwith five petals opens;

Of itselfthe fruit will ripen.⁵

As the story goes, Hui-k'o remained at the Shao-lin for awhile longer and then went underground, supporting himself through menial workand learning about Chinese peasant life firsthand. Reportedly, he wanted totranquilize his mind, to acquire the humility necessary in a great teacher, andnot incidentally to absorb the Lankavatara Sutra. When asked why he, anenlightened teacher, chose to live among menial laborers, he would reply tartlythat this life was best for his mind and in any case what he did was his ownaffair. It was a hard existence, but one he believed proper. Perhaps it was inthis formative period that the inner strength of Ch'an's first Chinese masterwas forged.

Hui-k'o's major concern during this period must inevitablyhave been the study of the Lankavatara Sutra entrusted him by Bodhidharma. TheLankavatara was not written by a Zen master, nor did it come out of the Zentradition, but it was the primary scripture of the first two hundred years ofCh'an. As

D. T. Suzukihas noted, there were at least three Chinese translations of this Sanskritsutra by the time Bodhidharma came to China.⁶ However, he is usuallygiven credit, at least in Zen records, for originating the movement later knownas the Lankavatara school. As the sutra was described by a non-Ch'an Chinesescholar in the year 645, "The entire emphasis of its teaching is placed onPrajna (highest intuitive knowledge), which transcends literary expression.Bodhidharma, the Zen master, propagated this doctrine in the south as well asin the north, the gist of which teaching consists in attaining theunattainable, which is to have right insight into the truth itself byforgetting word and thought. Later it grew and flourished in the middle part ofthe country. Hui-k'o was the first who attained to the essential understandingof it. Those addicted to the literary teaching of Buddhism in Wei were averseto becoming associated with these spiritual seers."⁷

The Lankavatara purportedly relays the thoughts of the Buddhawhile ensconced on a mountain peak in Sri Lanka. Although the work isnotoriously disorganized, vague, and obscure, it was to be the stone on whichHui-k'o sharpened his penetrating enlightenment. The major concept it advancesis that of Mind, characterized by D. T. Suzuki as "absolute mind, to bedistinguished from an empirical mind which is the subject of psychologicalstudy. When it begins with a capital letter, it is the ultimate reality onwhich the entire world of individual objects depends for its value."⁸On the question of Mind, the Lankavatara has the following to say:

. . . theignorant and the simple minded, not knowing that the world is what is seen ofMind itself, cling to the multitudinousness of external objects, cling to thenotions of being and non-being, oneness and otherness, bothness andnot-bothness, existence and non-existence, eternity and non-eternity. . . .⁹

According to the Lankavatara, the world and our perception ofit are both part of a larger conceptual entity. The teachings of theLankavatara cast the gravest doubt on the actual existence of the things wethink we see. Discrimination between oneself and the rest of the world can onlybe false, since both are merely manifestations of the same encompassingessence, Mind. Our perception is too easily deceived, and this is the reason wemust not implicitly trust the images that reach our consciousness.

. . .[I]t is like those water bubbles in a rainfall which have the appearance ofcrystal gems, and the ignorant taking them for real crystal gems run afterthem. . . . [T]hey are no more than water bubbles, they are not gems, nor are theynot-gems, because of their being so comprehended [by one party] and not beingso comprehended [by another].¹⁰

Reality liesbeyond these petty discriminations. The intellect, too, is powerless todistinguish the real from the illusory, since all things are both and neitherat the same time. This conviction of the Lankavatara remained at the core ofZen, even after the sutra itself was supplanted by simpler, more easilyapproached literary works.

As Hui-k'o studied the Lankavatara and preached, he graduallyacquired a reputation for insight that transcended his deliberatelyunpretentious appearance. Throughout it all, he led an itinerant life,traveling about North China. It is reported that he found his way to thecapital of the eastern half of the Wei kingdom after its division in the year534. Here, in the city of Yeh-tu, he taught his version of dhyana andopened the way to enlightenment for many people. Though unassuming in mannerand dress, he nonetheless aroused antagonism from established Buddhist circlesbecause of his success, encountering particular opposition from a conventional dhyanateacher named Tao-huan. According to Further Biographies of the EminentPriests (645), Tao-huan was a jealous teacher who had his own following ofas many as a thousand, and who resented deeply the nonscriptural approachHui-k'o advocated. This spiteful priest sent various of his followers tomonitor Hui-k'o's teaching, perhaps with an eye to accusing him of heresy, butall those sent were so impressed that none ever returned. Then one day theantagonistic dhyana master met one of those former pupils who had beenwon over by Hui-k'o's teachings. D. T. Suzuki translates the encounter asfollows:

WhenTao-huan happened to meet his first messenger, he asked: "How was it thatI had to send for you so many times? Did I not open your eye after taking painsso much on my part?" The former disciple, however, mystically answered:"My eye has been right from the first, and it was through you that it cameto squint."¹¹

The messagewould seem to be that Hui-k'o taught a return to

one'soriginal nature, to the primal man without artificial learning or doctrinalpretense. Out of resentment the jealous dhyana master reportedly causedHui-k'o to undergo official persecution.

In later years, beginning around 574, there was a temporarybut thorough persecution of Buddhism in the capital city of Ch'ang-an. Sometimeearlier, an ambitious sorcerer and apostate Buddhist named Wei had decided togain a bit of notoriety for himself by attacking Buddhism, then a powerfulforce in Ch'ang-an. In the year 567 he presented a document to the emperorclaiming that Buddhism had allowed unsavory social types to enter themonasteries. He also attacked worship of the Buddha image on the ground that itwas un-Chinese idolatry. Instead, he proposed a secularized church that wouldinclude all citizens, with the gullible emperor suggested for the role of"pope." The emperor was taken with the idea and after several yearsof complex political maneuvering, he proscribed Buddhism in North China.

As a result, Hui-k'o was forced to flee to the south, wherehe took up temporary residence in the mountainous regions of the Yangtze River.The persecution was short-lived, since the emperor responsible died soon afterhis decree, whereupon Hui-k'o returned to Ch'ang-an. However, thesepersecutions may have actually contributed to the spread of his teaching, byforcing him to travel into the countryside.

The only authentic fragment of Hui-k'o's thought that hassurvived records his answer to an inquiry sent by a lay devotee named Hsiang,who reportedly was seeking spiritual attainment alone in the jungle. Theinquiry, which seems more a statement than a question, went as follows:

. . . hewho aspires to Buddhahood thinking it to be independent of the nature ofsentient beings is to be likened to one who tries to listen to an echo bydeadening its original sound. Therefore the ignorant and the enlightened arewalking in one passageway; the vulgar and the wise are not to be differentiatedfrom each other. Where there are no names, we create names, and because ofthese names, judgments are formed. Where there is no theorizing, we theorize,and because of this theorizing, disputes arise. They are all phantom creationsand not realities, and who knows who is right and who is wrong? They are allempty, no substantialities have they, and who knows what is and

what isnot? So we realize that our gain is not real gain and our loss not real loss.This is my view and may I be enlightened if I am at fault?¹²

This"question," if such it is, sounds suspiciously like a sermon andstands, in fact, as an eloquent statement of Zen concerns. Hui-k'o reportedlyanswered as follows, in a fragment of a letter that is his only known extantwork.

You havetruly comprehended the Dharma as it is; the deepest truth lies in the principleof identity. It is due to one's ignorance that the mani-jewel is taken for apiece of brick, but lo! when one is suddenly awakened to self-enlightenment itis realized that one is in possession of the real jewel. The ignorant and theenlightened are of one essence, they are not really to be separated. We shouldknow that all things are such as they are. Those who entertain a dualistic viewof the world are to be pitied, and I write this letter for them. When we knowthat between this body and the Buddha, there is nothing to separate one fromthe other, what is the use of seeking after Nirvana [as something external toourselves]?¹³

Hui-k'o insists that all things spring from the one Mind, andconsequently the ideas of duality, of attachment to this or that phenomenon, oreven the possibility of choice, are equally absurd. Although he knew all toowell that enlightenment could not be obtained from teaching, he still did notadvocate a radical break with the traditional methods of the Buddhist dhyanamasters. His style was unorthodox, but his teaching methods were still confinedto lectures and meditation. This low-key approach was still closer to thetradition of the Buddha than to the jarring techniques of "suddenenlightenment" destined to erupt out of Chinese Ch'an.

Toward the end of his life, Hui-k'o was back in Ch'ang-an,living and teaching in the same unassuming manner. His free-lance style seemsto have continued to outrage the more conventional teachers, and a later storyrecords a martyr's death for him.¹⁴ One day, while a learned masterwas preaching inside the K'uang-chou Temple, Hui-k'o chanced by and started tochat with the passersby outside. Gradually a crowd started to collect, untileventually the lecture hall of the revered priest was emptied. This famouspriest, remembered as Pien-ho, accused the ragged Hui-k'o to the magistrate CheCh'ung-j'an as a teacher of false doctrine. As a result he was arrested andsubsequently executed, an impious 106-year-old revolutionary.

Chapter Three

SENG-TS'AN,TAO-HSIN, FA-JUNG, AND HUNG-JEN:

FOUR EARLY MASTERS

TheFifth Patriarch,Hung-jen (left)

The master succeeding Hui-k'o was Seng-ts'an (d. 606),who then taught Fa-jung (594-657) and Tao-hsin (580-651), the latter in turnpassing the robe of the patriarchy to Hung-jen (601-74). The mastersSeng-ts'an, Tao-hsin, and Hung-jen are honored today as the Third, Fourth, andFifth Patriarchs, respectively, and revered as the torchbearers of Ch'an'sformative years. Yet when we look for information about their lives, we findthe sources thin and diffuse. One reason probably is that before 700 nobodyrealized that these men would one day be elevated to founding fathers, andconsequently no one bothered recording details of their lives.

During the seventh century the scattered teachers of dhyanaseem to have gradually coalesced into a sort of ad hoc movement—with sizablefollowings growing up around the better-known figures. A certain amount ofrespectability also emerged, if we can believe the references to imperialnotice that start appearing in the chronicles. It would seem that the dhyanaor Ch'an movement became a more or less coherent sect, a recognizable ifloosely defined school of Buddhism. However, what the movement apparently wasstriving to become was not so much a branch of Buddhism in China as a Chineseversion of Buddhism. The men later remembered as the Third, Fourth, and FifthPatriarchs have in common a struggle to bend Buddhist thought to Chineseintellectual requirements, to sinicize Buddhism. Whereas they succeeded only insetting the stage for this transformation (whose realization would await otherhands), they did establish a personality pattern that would set apart all latermasters: a blithe irreverence that owed as much to Chuang Tzu as toBodhidharma.

When reading the biographies that follow, it is useful tokeep in mind that the explicit details may well have been cooked up in lateryears to satisfy a natural Chinese yearning for anecdotes, with or withoutsupporting information. Yet the fact that the dhyana practitionerseventually became a movement in need of a history is itself proof that thesem*n and their stories were not complete inventions. In any case, they wereremembered, honored, and quoted in later years as the legendary founders ofCh'an.

SENG-TSAN, THE THIRD PATRIARCH (d.606)

The questionof the Second Patriarch Hui-k'o's successor was troublesome even for theancient Ch'an historians. The earliest version of his biography (written in645, before the sect of Ch'an and its need for a history existed) declares,"Before [Hui-k'o] had established a lineage he died, leaving no worthy heirs."When it later became necessary for Ch'an to have an uninterrupted patriarchy, arevised history was prepared which supplied him an heir named Seng-ts'an, towhom he is said to have transmitted the doctrine.¹ The story oftheir meeting recalls Hui-k'o's first exchange with Bodhidharma, save that theroles are reversed. The text implies that Seng-ts'an was suffering from leprosywhen he first encountered Hui-k'o, and that he implored the Master for reliefin a most un-Zenlike way, saying: "I am in great suffering from thisdisease; please take away my sins."

Hui-k'o responded with, "Bring me your sins, and I willtake them away."

After a long silence, Seng-ts'an confessed, "I'velooked, but I cannot find them."

To which Hui-k'o replied, echoing Bodhidharma's classicrejoinder, "Behold, you have just been cleansed."

Another version of the story says Hui-k'o greeted Seng-ts'anwith the words, "You are suffering from leprosy; why should you want tosee me?"

To this Seng-ts'an responded, "Although my body is sick,the mind of a sick man and your own mind are no different."

Whatever actually happened, it was enough to convince Hui-k'othat he had found an enlightened being, one who perceived the unity of allthings, and he forthwith transmitted to Seng-ts'an the symbols of thepatriarchy—the robe and begging bowl of Bodhidharma—telling him that he shouldtake refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma (the universal truth proclaimed byBuddha), and the Sangha (the Buddhist organization or priesthood). Seng-ts'anreplied that he knew of the Sangha, but what was meant by the Buddha and theDharma? The answer was that all three were expressions of Mind.²

This exchange seems to have taken place while Hui-k'o was inthe northern Wei capital of Yeh-tu.³ In later years Seng-ts'an foundit necessary to feign madness (to escape persecution during the anti-Buddhistmovement of 574), and finally he went to hide on Huan-kung mountain for tenyears, where his mere presence reportedly was enough to tame the wild tigerswho had terrorized the people there. The only surviving work that purportedlyrelays his teaching is a poem, said to be one of the earliest Ch'an treatises,which is called the Hsin-hsin-ming, or "On the BelievingMind."⁴It starts off in a lyrical, almost Taoist, voice worthyof Chuang Tzu, as it celebrates man's original nature and the folly ofstriving.

There isnothing difficult about the Great Way

But,avoid choosing!

Only whenyou neither love nor hate,

Does itappear in all clarity.

Do not beanti- or pro- anything.

Theconflict of longing and loathing,

This isthe disease of the mind.

Notknowing the profound meaning of things,

Wedisturb our (original) peace of mind to no purpose.⁵

Next, the poem turns to an acknowledgment of the Mahayanistconcept of the all-encompassing Mind, the greatest single truth of theuniverse, and of Nagarjuna's Void, the cosmic emptiness of sunyata.

Thingsare things because of the Mind.

The Mindis the Mind because of things.

If youwish to know what these two are,

They areoriginally one Emptiness.

In thisVoid both (Mind and things) are one,

All themyriad phenomena contained in both.⁶

The poem closes with an affirmation of the Ch'an credo ofunity and the absence of duality as a sign of enlightenment.

In theWorld of Reality

There isno self, no other-than-self.

. . .

All thatcan be said is "No Duality!"

Whenthere is no duality, all things are one,

There isnothing that is not included.

. . .

Thebelieving mind is not dual;

What isdual is not the believing mind.

Beyondall language,

For itthere is no past, no present, no future.⁷

Since the earliest historical sources maintain thatSeng-ts'an left no writings, some have questioned the attribution of thislilting work to the Third Patriarch. Whatever its authorship, the realimportance of the poem lies in its subtle merging of Taoism and Buddhism. Wecan watch as the voices of ancient China and ancient India are blended togetherinto a perfect harmony until the parts are inseparable. It was a noble attemptto reconcile Buddhist metaphysics with Chinese philosophical concepts, and itwas successful in a limited way. As for Seng-ts'an, the legends tell that hefinally was overcome by his longing for the south and, handing down the symbolsof the patriarchy to a priest named Tao-hsin, he vanished.

TAO-HSIN, THE FOURTH PATRIARCH(580-651)

China, whosepolitical turmoil had sent the early Patriarchs scurrying from one smallkingdom to another, found unity and the beginnings of stability under a dynastyknown as the Sui (581-618), the first in three and a half centuries (since theend of the Han in 220) able to unify the land.⁸ This brief dynasty(which soon was replaced by the resplendent T'ang) came to be dominated by theEmperor Yang, a crafty politician who maneuvered the throne away from an elderbrother—partially, it is said, by demonstrating to his parents his independenceof mind by abandoning all the children he begat in the ladies' quarters.Whereas his father had undertaken the renovation of the North Chinese capital ofCh'ang-an—not incidentally creating one of the glories of the ancient world andthe site of the finest moments of the later T'ang Dynasty—Emperor Yang decidedto reconstruct the city of Loyang, some two hundred miles to the east. Theresult was a "Western Capital" at Ch'ang-an and an "EasternCapital" at Loyang, the latter city soon to be the location of somepivotal episodes in Ch'an history.

For the construction of Loyang, a fairyland of palaces andgardens, millions of citizens were conscripted and tens of thousands died underforced labor. Emperor Yang's other monument was a grand canal, linking theYellow River in the north with the rich agricultural deltas of the Yangtze inthe south, near Nanking. The emperor loved to be barged down this vast waterway—journeysthat unsympathetic historians have claimed were merely excuses to seek sexualdiversions away from the capital. In any case, his extravagances bankrupted thecountry and brought about his overthrow by the man who would become the founderof the T'ang Dynasty, later to reign under the name of Emperor T'ai-tsung(ruled 626-49).

The T'ang is universally regarded as one of the great ages ofman, and it is also considered the Golden Age of Ch'an. The founding emperor,T'ai-tsung, was a wise and beneficent "Son of Heaven," as Chineserulers were styled.⁹ Under his influence, the capital city ofCh'ang-an became the most cosmopolitan metropolis in the ancient world, withsuch widespread influence that when the first visiting Japanese came upon it,they were so dazzled they returned home and built a replica for their owncapital city. The city was laid out as a grid, with lavish vermilion imperialpalaces and gardens clustered regally at one end. Its inhabitants numberedupward of two million, while its international markets and fleshpots werecrowded with traders from the farthest reaches of Asia and Europe, echoing witha truly astounding cacophony of tongues: Indian, Japanese, Turkish, Persian,Roman Latin, and Arabic, not to mention the many dialects of Chinese.Christians moved among the Buddhists, as did Muslims and Jews. Artisans workedwith silver, gold, jewels, silks, and porcelains, even as poets gathered inwine shops to nibble fruits and relax with round-eyed foreign serving girls.Such were the worldly attractions of Ch'ang-an during the early seventhcentury. This new sophistication and urbanization, as well as the politicalstability that made it all possible, was also reflected in the change inCh'an—from a concern chiefly of nomadic dhyana teachers hiding in themountains to the focus of settled agricultural communities centered inmonasteries.

The growth in Ch'an toward an established place in Chineselife began to consolidate under the Fourth Patriarch, Tao-hsin, the man whoselife spanned the Sui and the early T'ang dynasties. He is best remembered todayfor two things: First, he was particularly dedicated to meditation, practicingit more avidly than had any dhyana master since Bodhidharma; and second,he is credited with beginning the true monastic tradition for Ch'an. Hisformation of a self-supporting monastic community with its own agriculturalbase undoubtedly brought Ch'an a long way toward respectability in Chineseeyes, since it reduced the dependence on begging. Itinerant mendicants, even ifteachers of dhyana, had never elicited the admiration in China theytraditionally enjoyed in the Indian homeland of the Buddha. Begging wasbelieved to fashion character, however, and it never disappeared from Ch'andiscipline. Indeed, Ch'an is said to have encouraged begging more than did anyof the other Chinese Buddhist sects, but as a closely regulated form of moraltraining.

Tao-hsin, whose family name was Ssu-ma, came from Honan, buthe left home at seven to study Buddhism and met the Third Patriarch,Seng-ts'an, while still in his teens. When Seng-ts'an decided to drop out ofsight, he asked this brilliant pupil to take up the teaching of dhyanaand Bodhidharma's Lankavatara Sutra at a monastery on Mt. Lu. Tao-hsin agreedand remained for a number of years, attracting followers and reportedlyperforming at least one notable miracle. The story says that he saved a walledcity from being starved out by bandits by organizing a program of public sutrachanting among its people. We are told that the robbers retired of their ownaccord while, as though by magic, previously dry wells in the city flowedagain. One day not too long thereafter Tao-hsin noticed an unusual purple cloudhanging over a nearby mountain. Taking this as a sign, he proceeded to settlethere (the mountain later became known as Shuang-feng or "TwinPeaks") and found the first Ch'an community, presiding over a virtual armyof some five hundred followers for the next thirty years.

He is remembered today as a charismatic teacher who finallystabilized dhyana teaching. In an age of political turmoil, manyintellectuals flocked to the new school of Ch'an, with its promise of tranquilmeditation in uneasy times. Tao-hsin apparently encouraged his disciples tooperate a form of commune, in which agriculture and its administration weremerged with the practice of meditation.¹⁰ In so doing, he seems notonly to have revolutionized the respectability of dhyana practice, butalso to have become something of a national figure himself. This, at any rate,is what we may surmise from one of the more durable legends, which has himdefying an imperial decree to appear before the emperor, T'ai-tsung.

This legend concerns an episode which allegedly took placearound the year 645. As the story goes, an imperial messenger arrived one dayat the mountain retreat to summon him to the palace, but Tao-hsin turned himdown cold. When the messenger reported this to the emperor, the response was tosend back a renewed invitation. Again the messenger was met with a refusal,along with a challenge.

"If you wish my head, cut it off and take it with you.It may go but my mind will never go."

When this reply reached the emperor, he again dispatched themessenger, this time bearing a sealed sword and a summons for the master'shead. But he also included a contradictory decree requiring that Tao-hsin notbe harmed. When the master refused a third time to come to the palace, themessenger read the decree that his head should be severed. Tao-hsin obliginglybent over, with the command "Cut it off." But the messengerhesitated, admitting that the imperial orders also forbade harming him. Onhearing this Tao-hsin reportedly roared with laughter, saying, "You mustknow that you possess human qualities."¹¹

The Fourth Patriarch's teachings are not well known, otherthan for the fact that he supposedly devised and promoted new techniques tohelp novices achieve intensive meditation. The following excerpt of histeaching illustrates his fervor for dhyana.

Sitearnestly in meditation! The sitting in meditation is basic to all else. By thetime you have done this for three to five years, you will be able to ward offstarvation with a bit of meal. Close the door and sit! Do not read the sutras,and speak to no man! If you will so exercise yourself and persist in it for along time, the fruit will be sweet like the meat which a monkey takes from thenutshell. But such people are very rare.¹²

The de-emphasis on the sutras points the way to later Ch'an.Interestingly, however, the usefulness of sitting in meditation would also comeunder review in only a few short years, when the new style of Ch'an appeared.

The reports of Tao-hsin say that Hung-jen, who was to becomethe Fifth Patriarch, was one of his followers and grasped the inner meaning ofhis teaching. It was Hung-jen whom he asked to construct a mausoleum in themountainside, the site of his final repose, and when it was finished he retiredthere for his last meditation. After he passed away, his body was wrapped in

lacqueredcloth, presenting a vision so magnificent that no one could bear to close themausoleum.

Aside from his historical place as the founder of the firstreal community for Ch'an, there is little that can be said with assurance aboutTao-hsin. However, a manuscript discovered early in this century in theBuddhist caves at Tun-huang purportedly contains a sermon by the FourthPatriarch entitled "Abandoning the Body."

Themethod of abandoning the body consists first in meditating on Emptiness,whereby the [conscious] mind is emptied. Let the mind together with its worldbe quieted down to a perfect state of tranquility; let thought be cast in themystery of quietude, so that the mind is kept from wandering from one thing toanother. When the mind is tranquilized in its deepest abode, its entanglementsare cut asunder. . . . The mind in its absolute purity is like the Void itself.¹³

The textgoes on to quote both Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu, as well as some of the oldersutras, and there is a considerable reference to Nagarjuna's Emptiness. Thistext, real or spurious, is one more element in the merging of Taoism andBuddhism that was early Ch'an, even as its analysis of the mind state achievedin meditation anticipates later Ch'an teachings.

FA-JUNG, THE ST. FRANCIS OF ZEN (594-657)

In theparade of Patriarchs, we should not overlook the maverick Fa-jung, a master whowas never officially crowned a Patriarch, but whose humanity made him a legend.¹⁴Fa-jung (594-657), whose family name was Wei, was born in a province on the southbank of the Yangtze River and in his early years was a student of Confucianthought. But before long his yearning for spiritual challenge led him toBuddhism. He finally settled in a rock cave in the side of a cliff near afamous monastery on Mt. Niu-t'ou, where his sanctity reportedly caused birds toappear with offerings of flowers.

According to the Zen chronicle Transmission of the Lamp (1004),sometime between 627 and 649 the Fourth Patriarch, Tao-hsin, sensed that afamous Buddhist was living on Mt. Niu-t'ou and went there to search out theman. After many days of seeking, he finally came upon a holy figure seated atopa rock. As the two meditation masters were becoming acquainted, there suddenlycame the roar of a tiger from the bramble farther up the mountain. Tao-hsin wasvisibly startled, causing Fa-jung—friend of the animals—to observe wryly,"I see it is still with you." His meaning, of course, was thatTao-hsin was still enslaved by the phenomenal world, was not yet wholly detachedfrom his fears and perceptions.

After they had chatted a while longer, Fa-jung found occasionto leave his seat and attend nature at a detached location. During his absenceTao-hsin wrote the Chinese character for the Buddha's name on the very rockwhere he had been sitting. When Fa-jung returned to resume his place, he wasmomentarily brought up short by the prospect of sitting on the Buddha's name.Expecting this, Tao-hsin smiled and said, "I see it is still withyou."

He had shown that Fa-jung was still intimidated by thetrappings of classical Buddhism and had not yet become a completely detachedmaster of the pure Mind. The story says that Fa-jung failed to understand hiscomment and implored Tao-hsin to teach him Ch'an, which the Fourth Patriarchproceeded to do.

Tao-hsin's message, once again, was to counselnondistinction, nonattachment, nondiscrimination; he said to abjure emotions,values, striving. Just be natural and be what you are, for that is the part ofyou that is closest to the Buddhist ideal of mental freedom.

There isnothing lacking in you, and you yourself are no different from the Buddha.There is no way of achieving Buddhahood other than letting your mind be free tobe itself. You should not contemplate nor should you purify your mind. Let therebe no craving and hatred, and have no anxiety or fear. Be boundless andabsolutely free from all conditions. Be free to go in any direction you like.Do not act to do good, nor to pursue evil. Whether you walk or stay, sit or liedown, and whatever you see happen to you, all are the wonderful activity of theGreat Enlightened One. It is all joy, free from anxiety—it is called Buddha.¹⁵

After Tao-hsin's visit, the birds offering flowers no longerappeared: evidence, said the later Ch'an teachers, that Fa-jung's physicalbeing had entirely vanished. His school on Mt. Niu-t'ou flourished for a time,teaching that the goals of Ch'an practice could be realized by contemplatingthe Void of Nagarjuna. As Fa-jung interpreted the teachings of the Middle Path:

All talkhas nothing to do with one's Original Nature, which can only be reached throughsunyata.No-thought is the Absolute Reality, in which the mind ceases to act. When one'smind is free from thoughts, one's nature has reached the Absolute.¹⁶

Although Fa-jung'steachings happened to be transmitted to Japan in later years, through theaccident of a passing Japanese pilgrim, his school did not endure in eithercountry beyond the eighth century. His was the first splinter group of Zen, andperhaps it lacked the innovation necessary to survive, because it clung toomuch to traditional Buddhism.

As Fa-jung's years advanced, he was encouraged to come downfrom his mountain and live in a monastery, which his better judgment eventuallycompelled him to do. It is reported that after his final farewell to hisdisciples he was followed down the mountain by the laments of all its birds andanimals. A more ordinary teacher would have been forgotten, but this belovedSt. Francis of Zen became the topic of lectures and a master remembered withreverence ever after.

HUNG-JEN, THE FIFTH PATRIARCH (601-74)

The otherwell-known disciple of the Fourth Patriarch, Tao-hsin, was the man history hasgiven the title of Fifth Patriarch, Hung-jen (601-74). The chronicles say thathe came from Tao-hsin's own province and impressed the master deeply when, atage fourteen, he held his own with the Fourth Patriarch in an introductoryinterview. As the exchange has been described, Tao-hsin asked the youngwould-be disciple his family name, but since the word for "familyname" is pronounced the same as that for "nature," Hung-jenanswered the question as though it had been, "What is your'nature'?"—deliberately misinterpreting it in order to say, "My 'nature'is not ordinary; it is the Buddha-nature."

Tao-hsin reportedly inquired, "But don't you have a'family name'?"

To which Hung-jen cleverly replied, "No, for theteachings say that our 'nature' is empty."¹⁷

Hung-jen went on to become the successor to the FourthPatriarch, with an establishment where several hundred followers gathered. Thechronicles have little to say about the actual life and teachings of the FifthPatriarch, but no matter. His place in history is secured not so much for whathe said—there is actually very little that can reliably be attributed tohim—but rather for his accidental appearance at the great crossroads of Zen.Hung-jen and his monastery became the symbol of a great philosophical debatethat occupied the first half of the eighth century, a conflict to be examinedin detail in the two chapters to follow. Suffice it to say here that thechronicles at least agree that he was an eminent priest and well respected, aman to whom an early-eighth-century document attributes eleven disciples ofnote.¹⁸ Among those listed who are particularly important to theevents that follow are a monk named Shen-hsiu and another named Hui-neng, themen whose names would one day be associated with a celebrated midnight poetrycontest in Hung-jen's monastery.

This contest eventually came to symbolize the conflictbetween the teachings of gradual enlightenment and sudden enlightenment,between intellectual and intuitive knowledge, between sophisticated urbanBuddhism and unlettered rural teachers, and between promoters of the abstrusebut challenging Lankavatara Sutra sanctioned by Bodhidharma and the crypticDiamond Sutra. Quite simply, it was a battle between what would eventually beknown as the Northern and Southern schools of Ch'an, and it concerned twofundamentally opposing views of the functions of the human mind. As thingsturned out, the gradual, Northern, Lankavatara Sutra faction went on for yearsthinking it had won—or perhaps not really aware that there was a battle inprogress—while the anti-intellectual, Southern, Diamond Sutra faction wasgathering its strength in the hinterlands for a final surge to victory. Whenthe Southern school did strike, it won the war handily and then proceeded torecast the history of what had gone before, even going so far as to putposthumous words of praise for itself into the mouths of the once-haughtyNorthern masters. Thus the mighty were eventually brought low and the humblelifted up in the annals of Ch'an. It is to the two masters whose names areassociated with this battle that we must turn next.

Chapter Four

SHEN-HSIU AND SHEN-HUI:

"GRADUAL" AND "SUDDEN" MASTERS

Whereas theCh'an Patriarchs of earlier times had been, more often than not, fractiousteachers ignored by emperors and gentry alike, the T'ang Dynasty saw Ch'anmasters rise to official eminence, receiving honors from the highest office inChina. The first half of the eighth century witnessed what was to be thegreatest battle within the school of Ch'an, but it was also the time when Ch'anwas finally recognized by Chinese ruling circles. The name most oftenassociated with this imperial recognition is the famous, or perhaps infamous,Empress Wu.¹

Wu was not born to royalty, but in the year 638, when she wasthirteen, she was placed in Emperor T'ai-tsung's harem as a concubine ofrelatively low rank. Disapproving historians claim that one day she managed tocatch the crown prince, the heir apparent to the aging emperor, in what wetoday might euphemistically call the bathroom, and seduced him at a moment whenhe was without benefit of trousers. Thus she was already on familiar terms withthe next emperor when her official husband, Emperor T'ai-tsung, went to hisancestors in the summer of 649. Although she was only twenty-four years old,custom required that she join all the deceased emperor's concubines inretirement at a monastery—which ordinarily would have been the last anyoneheard of her. As it happened, however, the new emperor's first wife waschildless, with the effect that he began devoting increasing attention to afavorite concubine. Knowing of the emperor's earlier acquaintance andinfatuation with Wu, the barren empress recalled her from the convent,intending to divert the emperor from his current favorite. The cure, however,turned out to be far more deadly than the ailment.

Through an intrigue that apparently included murdering herown child by the emperor and then blaming the empress, Wu soon had both theempress and the competing concubine in prison. Not content with mere imprisonmentfor her rivals, she went on to have them both boiled alive—after firstamputating their hands and feet, eliciting a dying curse from the concubinethat she would return as a cat to haunt Wu. To escape this curse, Wupermanently banned cats from the imperial compound, and eventually persuadedthe emperor to move the government from Ch'ang-an to Loyang, where for the nexthalf century she tried to exorcise the memory of her deed. In late 683 Wu'shusband, the emperor, died, and for a time she allowed his son, the true heir,to occupy the throne—until she could find a pretext to take over the governmentcompletely.

A couple of years after the emperor's death, when Wu was agedsixty, she became infatuated with a lusty peddler of cosmetics andaphrodisiacs, a man whose virility had made him a favorite with various servingladies around the palace. To give him a respectable post, she appointed himabbot of the major Buddhist monastery of Loyang—enabling him to satisfy, as itwere, a double office in the service of the state. His antics and those of hisfollowers did the cause of Buddhism little good over the next few years. Whenin 695 his arrogance finally became too much even for Wu, she had him strangledby the court ladies and his body sent back to the monastery in a cart. AlthoughWu is remembered today as an ardent Buddhist, some have suggested that herdevotions turned as much to the claims of fortune telling by Buddhist nuns(some of whose organizations in Loyang reportedly ran brothels on the side) asto a pious concern with Indian philosophy.

It is knownthat around 701 Empress Wu invited an aging Ch'an monk named Shen-hsiu,follower of the Lankavatara school of Bodhidharma, to come north to theimperial capital from his monastery in central China.² He was overninety at the time and had amassed a lifelong reputation for his rigorouspractice of dhyana. Shen-hsiu agreed reluctantly, reportedly having tobe

carried on a pallet into the presence of the empress. Itis said that Wu curtsied to him, an unusual act for a head of state, andimmediately moved him into the palace, where he seems to have become thepriest-in-residence. As for why Empress Wu would have chosen to honor a lineageof Ch'an Buddhism, it has been pointed out that she was at the time attemptingto supplant the established T'ang Dynasty of her late husband with one of herown. And since the T'ang emperors had honored a Buddhist lineage, it wasessential that she do the same—but one of a different school. Shen-hsiu wasboth eminent and unclaimed, an ideal candidate to become the court Buddhist forher fledgling dynasty—which, needless to say, was never established.Nonetheless, Shen-hsiu was given the title of "Lord of the law of Ch'ang-anand Loyang," and he preached to vast crowds drawn from the entire northernregions. To solidify his eminence, Wu had monasteries built in his honor at hisbirthplace, at his mountain retreat, and in the capital.

Shen-hsiu, who briefly reigned as the Sixth Patriarch ofCh'an, was described in the early chronicles as a sensitive and bright childwho, out of despair for the world, early on turned away from Confucianism tobecome a Buddhist monk. At age forty-six he finally found his way to the EastMountain retreat of the Fifth Patriarch, Hung-jen, where he studied under themaster until achieving enlightenment. As noted previously he was among theeleven most prominent individuals remembered from the monastery of the FifthPatriarch. He later left the monastery and traveled for almost two decades,during which time another of the students of Hung-jen, Fa-ju, eclipsed him infame and followers. However, Shen-hsiu seems to have been the best knownMaster, eventually becoming the titular head of the Lankavatara faction, alsoto be known as the Northern school—possibly because Shen-hsiu brought it to theurbanized, sophisticated capitals of North China, Loyang and Ch'ang-an. Thiswas Ch'an's most imperial moment, and no less than a state minister composedthe memorial epitaph for Shen-hsiu's gravestone. Although his specificteachings are not well known, a verse survives from one of his sermons thatseems to suggest that the teachings of Ch'an were really teachings of the mindand owed little to traditional Buddhism.

Theteaching of all the Buddhas

In one'sown Mind originally exists:

To seekthe Mind without one's Self,

Is likerunning away from the father.³

After hedied a pupil named P'u-chi (d. 739) carried on his organization in the capital.This was the high point of official Ch'an, signifying the moment of theLankavatara school's greatest prestige.

Perhaps most important, the success of Shen-hsiu was also thesuccess of Ch'an, or what appeared to be success. The sect had risen from beingthe passion of homeless teachers of dhyana to the object of imperialhonors in the midst of China's finest moment, the T'ang Dynasty. The T'ang wasan era to be remembered forever for its poetry, its art, its architecture, itscultural brilliance.⁴ Unfortunately for Northern Ch'an, thiscultural brilliance was beginning to be the province of groups other than theblueblooded gentry that traditionally had controlled China's culture. Theglories of the T'ang were to some degree the creation of the non-gentry, and anoutcast warrior would before long bring the government to its knees, even as anobscure Ch'an master from the rural south was soon to erase Shen-hsiu'sseemingly permanent place in history.

The David to Shen-hsiu's Goliath was a master with a similar-sounding name: Shen-hui. This theological street fighter was a native of theprovince of Hupeh, some distance south of the lavish twin T'ang captials ofCh'ang-an and Loyang.⁵ He began as a Taoist scholar, but laterturned to Buddhism, traveling even farther south around his fortieth year tobecome the disciple of a priest named Hui-neng, whose temple was Ts'ao-ch'i,just north of the southern port city of Canton in Kuangtung province. It willbe remembered that Hui-neng (whose legend we will explore in the next chapter)had also been a disciple of the Fifth Patriarch, Hung-jen, studying alongsideShen-hsiu. Shen-hui is thought to have studied under Hui-neng for around fiveyears, until the latter's death in 713. After this he traveled about China,ending up at Hua-t'ai, slightly northeast of the capital of Loyang. He seems tohave been a man of charismatic presence, one who inspired followers easily.Then, in the year 732, at a convocation of Ch'an worthies at the temple, he mountedthe platform and, in a historic moment, declared that the great Ch'anorganizations of China, heretofore beholden to Shen-hsiu as Sixth Patriarch,were following a false master.⁶

Thehistorical significance of this convocation and Shen-hui's attack might belikened to the defiant act of Martin Luther, when he challenged churchhierarchy in sixteenth-century Germany. With superb audacity, Shen-hui went onto spell out a new history of Ch'an that supported his claims. His revisedchronicle culminated with the name of his old teacher Hui-neng, theretofore anobscure follower of the Fifth Patriarch, Hung-jen, whom he declared SixthPatriarch. He insisted that Shen-hsiu, the man honored by Empress Wu, had posedfalsely as the heir of Hung-jen. The Northern school of Shen-hsiu and his heir,P'u-chi, had perpetrated a historical deceit, said Shen-hui, robbing the trueSixth Patriarch, the southerner Hui-neng, of his due recognition. For Shen-huito have challenged the hand-picked school of the ruling family was anincredibly courageous act, but perhaps one that was just audacious enough towin public sympathy.

He touted this new proposition more or less full-time betweenthe years 732 and 745, as he traveled about North China and got to know theofficials of the T'ang regime. His political standing gradually improved and hewas eventually invited (in 745, at age seventy-seven) to Loyang to assumeleadership of the great Ho-tse temple. Although the particular object of hiscriticism, Shen-hsiu's disciple P'u-chi, had died in 739, Shen-hui's attacks onthe lineage continued undiminished. Politics finally caught up with him,however, when a follower of Shen-hsiu's "Northern" Ch'an named Lu I,who just happened to be chief of imperial censors, accused him of plottingagainst the government (citing as evidence the large crowds he routinelyattracted). Finally, Emperor Hsuan-tsung (grandson of Empress Wu) himselfsummoned Shen-hui from Loyang to Ch'ang-an, where he questioned the master andfinally sent him into exile in the deep south. This was about 753. It was atthis point that Chinese political history and Ch'an collide, for the throne wassoon to need Shen-hui's help.

Emperor Hsuan-tsung (reigned 712-756) has been credited bymany with the wreck of the T'ang Dynasty. At the beginning of his reign thecapital had been in the east at Loyang (where Empress Wu had moved it. toescape her memories), but the aristocracy in the west successfully pressuredhim to bring it back to Ch'ang-an. In his declining years Hsuan-tsung becameinfatuated with the wife of his son, a lady now infamous in Chinese history asYang Kuei-fei. She subsequently was divorced by her husband and became a memberof the emperor's harem in 738, coming to enjoy enormous influence in affairs ofstate. She had first been brought to the emperor's attention by one of herrelatives, and in typical Chinese style she procured government posts for allavailable members of her family. As the poet Tu Fu (712-770) described hermachinations:

So manycourtiers now throng around the court

Thathonest men must tremble;

And it'ssaid that the gold plate from the treasury

Has goneto the kinsmen of Lady Yang.⁷

Although none of these blood relatives ever rose to therich opportunities the situation afforded, another of her favorites compensatedabundantly for their political ineptitude.

His name was An Lu-shan, a "barbarian" of Turkishextraction, born in 703, who first entered China as a slave to an officer in anorthern garrison of the empire. After distinguishing himself as a soldier, hecame to the attention of Yang Kuei-fei, who was so charmed by the man that sheadopted him as her son. Before long he was a familiar figure at the court,reportedly very fat and possessing a flair for entertaining the boredaristocracy by his flippancy. Eventually he was made governor of a frontierprovince, where under pretense of a foreign threat he proceeded to recruit anarmy of alarming proportions and questionable allegiance.

Meanwhile, back in the capital, Lady Yang and her relativeshad taken over the government, whereupon they unwisely decided that An Lu-shanshould be brought under firmer control. With their hostility providing him justthe pretext needed, he marched his new army toward Ch'ang-an, pausing only longenough to conquer Loyang and proclaim himself emperor. This was in January 756.By July he had also taken Ch'ang-an, from which the royal family had alreadyfled. Conditions deteriorated sufficiently that the troops supporting thethrone demanded, and got, the head of Lady Yang Kuei-fei as the price forcontinued support. (On imperial orders she was strangled by a eunuch.) In themeantime, the imperial T'ang forces found reinforcements, including some Arabmercenaries. After a battle outside Ch'ang-an which left An Lu-shan's forces indisarray, the rebel was murdered, some say by his own son. Soon thereafter thevictorious mercenaries sacked and looted Loyang, ending forever its prominencein Chinese history. The government of the T'ang survived, but it was pennilessafter the many war years in which it could not enforce taxation.⁸

The time was now 757, some four years after Shen-hui'sbanishment. The destitute government, desperate for money, decided to set upordination platforms in the major cities across China and raise cash by sellingcertificates of investiture for

Buddhistmonks. (Since entry into the priesthood removed an individual from the taxrolls, it was accepted practice for the Chinese government to require anadvance compensation.) Shen-hui's oratorical gifts were suddenly remembered bysome of his former followers, and the old heretic was recalled to assist in thefundraising. He was such an effective fundraiser in the ruined city of Loyangthat the government commissioned special quarters to be built for him on thegrounds of his old temple, the Ho-tse. (He was later to be remembered as theMaster of Ho-tse.)

The price for his cooperation seems to have been the officialacceptance of his version of Ch'an's history. In his battle with the Northernschool of Ch'an he had outlived his opponents and through a bizarre turn ofevents had finally won the day. Solely through his persistence, the obscureSouthern Ch'an monk Hui-neng was installed as Sixth Patriarch in Ch'anhistories (replacing Shen-hsiu), and one history went so far as to declareShen-hui himself the Seventh Patriarch.

The philosophical significance of what Shen-hui's"Southern" doctrine brought to Ch'an has been described as nothingless than a revolution. A modern Zen scholar has claimed that Shen-hui'srevolution produced a complete replacement of Indian Buddhism with Chinesephilosophy, keeping only the name. Shen-hui, he claims, swept aside all formsof meditation or dhyana and replaced it with a concept called no-mind:the doctrines of "absence of thought" and "seeing into one'soriginal nature."⁹

Perhaps this philosophical coup d'etat may best beunderstood by comparing the Northern and Southern teachings. The discreditedNorthern school of Shen-hsiu had preached that the road to enlightenment mustbe traversed "step by step," that there were in fact two stages ofthe mind—the first being a "false mind" which perceives the worlderroneously in dualities, and the second a "true mind" which is pureand transcends all discriminations and dualities, perceiving the world simplyas a unity. One proceeds from the "false mind" to the "truemind" step by step, through the suppression of erroneous thought processesby the practice of dhyana or meditation, in which the mind and the sensesslowly reach a state of absolute quietude.

The Southern school took issue with this theory of the mindon a number of points. To begin, they said that if there really is no dualityin the world, then how can the mind be divided into "false" and"true"? They argued that the answer quite simply is that there isonly one mind, whose many functions are all merely expressions of single truereality. The unity of all things is the true reality; our minds are also partof this reality; and upon realizing this, you have achieved the sameenlightenment experience once realized by the Buddha. There is no "falsemind" and "true mind," nor is there any need for a long programof dhyana to slowly suppress false thoughts. All that is needed is topractice "absence of thought" and thereby intuitively to realize asimple truth: One unity pervades everything. This realization they calledBuddha-mind, and it could only happen "all at once" (not "stepby step"), at any time and without warning. This moment of primal realizationthey called "seeing into one's original nature."

Although Shen-hui is somewhat vague about exactly whatpractice should replace meditation, the scholar Walter Liebenthal has inferredthe following about Shen-hui's attitude toward "sudden enlightenment"as a replacement for meditation: "He seems to have rejected meditation inthe technical sense of the word. Instead of methodical endeavors designed topromote religious progress he recommends a change of point of view leading tonon-attachment. . . . Non-attachment in this case means that external objectsare not allowed to catch our fancy.. . .

[A] thing recollected is isolated, it is singled out of thewhole, and is thus an illusion; for all short of the undifferentiated continuumis illusive. The senses work as usual . . . but 'no desire is aroused.' . . .This change happens suddenly, that is, it is not dependent upon precedingexertions; it can be brought about without first passing through the stages ofa career. That is why it is called 'sudden awakening.' "¹⁰

Liebenthal interprets Shen-hui as saying that whereas thepurpose of meditation should be merely to erase our attachment to physicalthings, it also removes our cognizance of them, which is not necessarily arequirement for nonattachment. It should be possible for us to be aware of theworld without being attached to it and enslaved by it. According to Shen-hui'ssermon:

When thus my friends are told to discard as useless all they have learnedbefore, then those who have spent fifty or more, or only twenty yearspracticing meditation, hearing this, might be very much puzzled. . . . Friends,listen attentively, I speak to you of self-deception. What does self-deceptionmean? You, who have assembled in this place today, are craving for riches andpleasures of intercourse with males and females; you are thinking of gardensand houses. . . . The Nirvana Sutra says, "To get rid of your passions isnot Nirvana; to look upon them as no matter of yours, that is Nirvana."¹¹

So far sogood; but how do we reach this state of recognition without attachment?Apparently the way is to somehow find our original state, in which we werenaturally unattached to the surrounding world. The way is to mentallydisassociate ourselves from the turmoil of society that surrounds us and lookinward, touching our original nature. In this way, both prajna and samadhi,awareness and noninvolvement, which have been described as the active andpassive sides of meditation, are achieved simultaneously.

Now, letus penetrate to that state in which we are not attached. What do we get toknow? Not being attached we are tranquil and guileless. This state underlyingall motions and passions is called samadhi. Penetrating to this fundamentalstate we encounter a natural wisdom that is conscious of this originaltranquility and guilelessness. This wisdom is called prajna. The intimate relationbetween samadhi and prajna is thus defined.

. . . If now you penetrate to that state in which your mindis not attached, and yet remains open to impressions, and thus are conscious ofthe fact that your mind is not attached, then you have reached the state oforiginal blankness and tranquility. From that state of blankness andtranquility there arises an inner knowledge through which blue, yellow, red,and white things in this world are well distinguished. That is prajna. Yet no desires arise fromthese distinctions. That is samadhi.

. . . It follows that freedom from attachment (to externalthings, which replaces meditation in Ch'an Buddhism), enables you to look intothe heart of all the Buddhas of the past, and yet it is nothing else than whatyou yourselves experience today.¹²

Perhaps the most revolutionary thing about this approach wasthat it seemed to eliminate the need for all the traditional apparatus ofBuddhism. It had little or nothing to do with organized religion, and even lessconnection with the mountains of Indian philosophy that had gone before. Athousand years of Indian thought had been distilled down to a single truth: Therealization of our original nature comprises enlightenment. If this were takenat face value, then there was no longer any need for the Buddhist community,the sutras, the chanting, even meditation. There was, in fact, no longer anyneed for Buddhism. It had been reduced, as the Chinese scholar Wing-tsit Chanhas observed, to a concern for the mind alone.

By redefining meditation, Shen-hui had "laid thefoundations of Chinese Zen which was no Zen at all."¹³ AsShen-hui now described meditation or dhyana: Sitting motionless is no dhyana;introspection into your own mind is no dhyana; and looking inward atyour own calmness is no dhyana.¹⁴. . . Here in my school, tohave no thoughts is sitting, and to see one's original nature is dhyana(Ch'an).¹⁵

What happened to Indian meditation? No wonder thescholar Hu Shih has described this new teaching as a Chinese revolt againstBuddhism.

The political triumph of Shen-hui made Southern Ch'an theofficial sect, but it also meant that he, now one of the leading religiousfigures in China, had necessarily become a part of the ruling establishment.Little wonder that the actual future of Ch'an soon reverted back to ruralteachers, men who could more convincingly claim to despise the ways of theworld, as they meditated in their secluded mountain retreats far from imperialpatronage. Shen-hui's school of "Southern" Ch'an of Ho-tse temple,which had established dominance in the north, was soon to be eclipsed by thesenew vigorous but unlettered rural Ch'anists.¹⁶Interestingly, theofficial recognition of the court seemed to quickly extinguish any school ofCh'an that received it. Shen-hsiu was honored by Empress Wu, and his school wasthen supplanted by that of Shen-hui, whose own imperial recognition and honorswere soon to be dust in the history of Ch'an, as the new rural school burst onthe scene and effectively took over.¹⁷

The disorders surrounding and following the rebellion of AnLu-shan are commonly considered today as signaling the decline of the great ageof the T'ang Dynasty. They certainly signified the atrophy of the war-tornNorth Chinese capitals as the political power in China. Loyang and Ch'ang-ancame to be replaced in economic influence by the south, a region relativelyuntouched by the constant struggles North China had to mount against barbarianinvaders. Northern scholars retired to the pastoral south, where they lazed inpeaceful gardens and recalled the great poets of the early T'ang. Thus Northernurban Ch'an followed the general demise of North Chinese political strength.

Was Shen-hui really the father of the new"meditationless" Ch'an of the mind? Some traditional scholars claimit was not really Shen-hui who revolutionized Ch'an, but rather his master, theSouthern teacher Hui-neng. For example, D. T. Suzuki believed that whereasShen-hui was correct in equating meditation with the primal knowledge of selfcalled prajna, he actually taught that this knowledge came about throughrational understanding rather than intuition.¹⁸ It was Hui-neng,said Suzuki, who correctly understood that prajna was intuition and whoknew that it could be realized only through the "sudden" path ratherthan through the "step-by-step" path. This may well have been true.Just as the Apostle Paul interpreted the teachings of an obscure provincialteacher, Jesus of Nazareth, and popularized them among the urban centers of theRoman Empire, so Shen-hui dispensed the ideas of Hui-neng in northern cities,possibly tempering them where necessary to gain acceptance from the more rationallyinclined urban Ch'anists. To continue the analogy, Shen-hui (like Paul) neverquotes his mentor directly in his writings—something he certainly would havedone if there had been anything to quote—but in a few decades there would be afull autobiography of Hui-neng complete with a "sermon." Shen-hui'sown contribution was to open the way for the anti-meditation rural school totake over Ch'an. We may now turn to the legendary Hui-neng, remembered as the"Sixth Patriarch."

Chapter Five

HUI-NENG:

THE SIXTH PATRIARCH AND FATHER OF MODERN ZEN

The masterhonored today as the father of modern Zen was an impoverished country lad fromSouth China, whose attributed autobiography, The Platform Sutra of Hui-neng, isthe only "sutra" of Buddhism written by a Chinese.¹ Inthis work, Hui-neng (638-713) told the story of his rise from obscurity tofame. He described his father as a high Chinese official who, unjustly banishedand reduced to a commoner, died of shame while Hui-neng was still a smallchild. To survive, the fatherless boy and his mother sold wood in themarketplace at Han-hai, near Canton in South China. Then one day he chanced tooverhear a man reciting a passage from the Diamond Sutra. Hui-neng stopped tolisten, and when he heard the phrase "Let your mind function freely,without abiding anywhere or in anything," he was suddenly awakened. Uponinquiry, he discovered that the reciter was a follower of the Fifth Patriarch,Hung-jen. This teacher, the stranger said, taught that by reciting the DiamondSutra it was possible to see into one's own nature and to directly experienceenlightenment.

The Diamond Sutra (sometimes called the Vajracchedika Sutra)became the passion of Hui-neng as well as the touchstone for the new ChineseCh'an. An unusually brief work, it has been called the ultimate distillation ofthe Buddhist Wisdom Literature. The following excerpt is representative of itsteaching.

All themind's arbitrary concepts of matter, phenomena, and of all conditioning factorsand all conceptions and ideas relating thereto are like a dream, a phantasm, abubble, a shadow, the evanescent dew, the lightning's flash. Every truedisciple should thus look upon all phenomena and upon all the activities of themind, and keep his mind empty and selfless and tranquil.²

The DiamondSutra does not search the philosophic heights of the Lankavatara Sutra, thetreatise revered by the early dhyana school of Bodhidharma, andprecisely for this reason it appealed to the Southern school—whose goal was thesimplification of Ch'an. Hui-neng could not resist the call and immediately setout for the East Mountain monastery of the Fifth Patriarch.

When he arrived, Hung-jen opened the interview by asking thenewcomer his origin. Hearing that he was from the Canton region, the old priestsighed, "If you're from the south you must be a barbarian. How do youexpect to become enlightened?" To this Hui-neng shot back, "Thepeople in the north and south may be different, but enlightenment is the samein both regions." Although this impertinence caused the master toimmediately recognize Hui-neng's mental gifts, he said nothing and simply puthim to work threshing and pounding rice. (This exchange, incidentally, will berecognized as the memorable first encounter between two generations of masters,an obligatory element in all the legends of the early Patriarchs.)

For the next eight months, the young novice toiled inobscurity, never so much as seeing the Fifth Patriarch. Then one day the oldpriest called an assembly and announced that he was ready to pass on the robeof the patriarchy to the one who could compose a verse showing an intuitiveunderstanding of his own inner nature. The disciples talked over this challengeamong themselves and decided, "The robe is certain to be handed down toShen-hsiu, who is head monk and the natural heir. He will be a worthy successorto the master, so we will not bother composing a verse."

Shen-hsiu, the same master later exalted by the Empress Wu inLoyang, knew what was expected of him and began struggling to compose theverse. After several days' effort, he found the courage to write an unsigned gathaon a corridor wall in the dark of night.

Our bodyis the Bodhi-tree

And ourmind a mirror bright.

Carefullywe wipe them hour by hour,

And letno dust alight.³

When the Fifth Patriarch saw the verse, he convenedan assembly in the corridor, burned incense, and declared that they all shouldrecite the anonymous passage. Afterward, however, he summoned Shen-hsiu to hisprivate quarters and inquired if he was author of the verse. Receiving anaffirmative reply, the master said, "This verse does not demonstrate thatyou have yet achieved true understanding of your original nature. You havereached the front gate, but you have not yet entered into full understanding.Prepare your mind more fully and when you are ready, submit another gatha."It is a Ch'an commonplace that Shen-hsiu's verse stressed methodical practiceand was perfectly logical—just the opposite of the sudden, anti-logical leap ofintuition that is true enlightenment. Shen-hsiu departed, but try as he mighthe could not produce the second gatha.

In the meantime, Hui-neng overheard the monks recitingShen-hsiu's lines. Although he recognized that its author had yet to grasp hisown original nature, Hui-neng asked to be shown the verse and allowed to dohomage to it. After he was led to the hall, the illiterate lad from thebarbarian south asked to have a gatha of his own inscribed next to theone on the wall.

There isno Bodhi-tree

Nor standof a mirror bright.

Since allis void,

Where canthe dust alight?⁴

Although the assembly was electrified by the insightcontained in this gatha, the diplomatic old Fifth Patriarch publiclydeclared that its author lacked full understanding. During the night, however,he summoned young Hui-neng to the darkened meditation hall, where he expoundedthe Diamond Sutra to him and then ceremonially passed to him the robe ofBodhidharma, symbol of the patriarchy. He also advised him to travel immediatelyto the south, to stay underground for a time in the interest of safety, andthen to preach the Dharma to all who would listen. Hui-neng departed that verynight, crossing the Yangtze and heading south—the anointed Sixth Patriarch atage twenty-four.

When the other monks realized what had happened, they hastilyorganized a party to retrieve Hui-neng and the Ch'an relics. Finally one of thepursuers, a burly former soldier, reached the new Sixth Patriarch in hishideaway. Suddenly overcome by the presence of Hui-neng, he found himselfasking not for the return of the robe but rather for instruction. Hui-nengobliged him with, "Not thinking of good, not thinking of evil, tell mewhat was your original face before your mother and father were born." Thiscelebrated question—which dramatizes the Zen concept of an original nature inevery person that precedes and transcends artificial values such as good andevil—caused the pursuer to be enlightened on the spot.

For the next several years Hui-neng sought seclusion, livingamong hunters in the south and concealing his identity. The legends say hiskindly nature caused him sometimes to secretly release animals from thehunters' traps and that he would accept only vegetables from their stewpots.But this life as an anonymous vagabond, a Patriarch while not even a priest,could not be his final calling. One day when the time felt right (in 676, as heneared forty), he renounced the life of a refugee and ventured into Canton tovisit the Fa-hsing temple. One afternoon as he lingered in the guise of ananonymous guest, he overheard a group of monks arguing about a banner flappingin the breeze.

One monk declared, "The banner is moving."

Another insisted, "No, it is the wind that ismoving."

Although he was only a lay observer, Hui-neng could notcontain himself, and he interrupted them with his dramatic manifesto, "Youare both wrong. It is your mind that moves."

The abbot of the temple, standing nearby, was dumbstruck bythe profound insight of this stranger, and on the spot offered to become hispupil. Hui-neng declined the honor, however, requesting instead that his headbe shaved and he be allowed to enter Buddhist orders, a priest at last. He wasshortly acclaimed by one and all as the Sixth Patriarch, and after a few monthsin Canton he decided to move to a temple of his own at Ts'ao-ch'i, where hetaught for the next four decades. From this monastery came the teachings thatwould define the faith.

The foregoing story, perhaps the most famous in the Zencanon, is drawn mainly from the aforementioned Platform Sutra of Hui-neng,purportedly an autobiography and sermon presented to an assembly in his lateryears.⁵ (The setting was a temple near his monastery, where he wasinvited to lecture one day by the local abbot. It was transcribed by one of hisdisciples, ince Hui-neng traditionally was said to have been illiterate.) Thedocument has come down to us in three parts. The first part is the story justsummarized: a poetry contest at the monastery of the Fifth Patriarch in whichthe man later to lead Northern Ch'an is humiliated by a bumpkin, who himselfmust then flee the wrath of the Ch'an establishment and wait for recognition inthe south. The second part is a lecture that scholars believe probablyrepresents the general outline of Hui-neng's views on man's original nature.The third part is a highly embellished account of his later years, usuallydismissed as the pious invention of a more recent date.

The real life of Hui-neng is a historical puzzle that maywell never be resolved. For example, it is common to note that the later Ch'anwriters took great pains to render Hui-neng as illiterate and unlettered aspossible, the more to emphasize his egalitarianism. (This in spite of the factthat the sermon attributed to him refers to at least seven different sutras.)The facts were adjusted to make a point: If a simple illiterate wood peddlercould become Patriarch, what better proof that the faith is open to all people?Many of the traditional anecdotes surrounding his early years are similarlysuspect, and in fact the most respected Hui-neng scholar has declared, "Ifwe consider all the available material, and eliminate patiently all theinconsistencies by picking the most likely legends, we can arrive at a fairlycredible biography of Hui-neng. If, on the other hand, we eliminate the legendsand the undocumented references to the Sixth Patriarch, we may conclude thatthere is, in fact, almost nothing that we can really say about him."⁶Yet does it really matter whether the legend is meticulously faithful to thefacts? Hui-neng is as much a symbol as a historical individual, and it wasessential that his life have legendary qualities. In his case, art may havehelped life along a bit, but it was for a larger purpose.

The purpose was to formalize the new philosophical ideas ofSouthern Ch'an. The second part of the Platform Sutra, which details hisphilosophical position, has been characterized as a masterpiece of Chinesethought, the work not of a scholar but of a natural sage whose wisdom flowedspontaneously from deep within. Yet it is commonly conceded that the uniquenessof his message lies not so much in its being original (which most agree it isnot) but in its rendering of the basic ideas of Buddhism into Chinese terms.⁷Buddhism itself seems at times to be in question, as the Sixth Patriarchdiscounts traditional observances, even

suggestingthat the Buddhist Western Paradise, known as the Pure Land, might be merely astate of mind.

Thedeluded person concentrates on Buddha and wishes to be born in the other land;the awakened person makes pure his own mind. . . . If only the mind has noimpurity, the Western Land is not far. If the mind gives rise to impurities,even though you invoke the Buddha and seek to be reborn in the West, it will bedifficult to reach . . . but if you practice straightforward mind, you willarrive there in an instant.⁸

Hui-neng also questioned the traditional Ch'an practice ofsitting in meditation, declaring it to be more a mind-set than a physical act(if his Sutra is authentic, then he predates his pupil Shen-hui on this point).He also broke it apart into two different categories: the sitting and themeditation.

. . .what is this teaching that we call "sitting in meditation"? In this teaching"sitting" means without any obstruction anywhere, outwardly and underall circ*mstances, not to activate thoughts. "Meditation" isinternally to see the original nature and not become confused.⁹

Elsewhere heis quoted as declaring that protracted sitting only shackles the body withoutprofiting the mind.¹⁰ Although Hui-neng severely took to task thosewho depended on meditation, there is no evidence that he forbade it entirely.What he did reject was a fixation on meditation, a confusion—to use a later Zenexpression—of the finger pointing at the moon with the moon itself. Even so,this was a radical move. Hui-neng presents us with the startling prospect of a dhyanateacher questioning the function of dhyana—until then the very basisof the school.

Yet the sutra is far from being all negative. It has a numberof positive messages, including the following: All people are born in anenlightened state, a condition in which good and evil are not distinguished.Nor are there distracting discriminations, attachments, and perturbations ofthe spirit in this primal estate. (A very similar view is found throughout thepoetry of William Wordsworth, to give only one example from Western thought.¹¹)But if man's original nature is pure and unstained, how then does evil enterinto a person's character? He faces this classic theological question head-on:

Goodfriends, although the nature of people in this world is from the outset pure initself, the ten thousand things are all within their own natures. If people thinkof all the evil things, then they will practice evil; if they think of all thegood things, then they will practice good. Thus it is clear that in this wayall the dharmas (aspectsof humanity) are within your own natures, yet your own natures are always pure.The sun and moon are always bright, yet if they are covered by clouds, althoughthey are bright, below they are darkened, and the sun, moon, stars, and planetscannot be seen clearly. But if suddenly the wind of wisdom should blow and rollaway the clouds and mists, all forms in the universe appear at once. . . . [I]fa single thought of good evolves, intuitive wisdom is born. As one lamp servesto dispel a thousand years of darkness, so one flash of wisdom destroys tenthousand years of ignorance.¹²

As Hui-nengviewed it, there is latent within us all the condition of enlightenment, thestate that precedes our concern with good and evil. It can be reclaimed throughan intuitive acquaintance with our own inner natures. This is well summarizedby the Hui-neng scholar Philip Yampolsky: "The Platform Sutra maintainsthat the nature of man is from the outset pure, but that his purity has noform. But by self-practice, by endeavoring for himself, man can gain insightinto this purity. Meditation, prajna, true reality, purity, the originalnature, self-nature, the Buddha nature, all these terms, which are usedconstantly throughout the sermon, indicate the same undefined Absolute, whichwhen seen and experienced by the individual himself, constitutes enlightenment."¹³

This condition of original innocence that is enlightenmentcan be reclaimed through "no-thought," a state in which the mindfloats, unattached to what it encounters, moving freely through phenomena,unperturbed by the incursions and attractions of the world, liberated becauseit is its own master, tranquil because it is pure. This is the condition inwhich we were born and it is the condition to which we can return by practicing"no-thought." Although it happens to be similar to the condition thatcan be realized through arduous meditation, Hui-neng apparently did not believethat meditation was required. This primal condition of the mind, this glimpseinto our original nature, could be realized instantaneously if our mind werereceptive. But what is this state called "no-thought"? According toHui-neng:

To beunstained in all environments is called no-thought. If on the basis of your ownthoughts you separate from environment, then, in regard to things, thoughts arenot produced. If you stop thinking of the myriad things, and cast aside allthoughts, as soon as one instant of thought is cut off, you will be reborn inanother realm. . . . Because man in his delusion has thoughts in relation tohis environment, heterodox ideas stemming from these thoughts arise, andpassions and false views are produced from them.¹⁴

Yampolskycharacterizes "no-thought" as follows: "Thoughts are conceivedas advancing in progression from past to present to future, in an unendingchain of successive thoughts. Attachment to one instant of thought leads toattachment to a succession of thoughts, and thus to bondage. By cutting offattachment to one instant of thought, one may, by a process unexplained, cutoff attachment to a succession of thoughts and thus attain to no-thought, whichis the state of enlightenment."¹⁵ Precisely how this conditionof "no-thought" enlightenment is achieved is not explained in thePlatform Sutra and in fact has been the major concern of Zen ever since. Theone thing that all will agree is that the harder one tries to attain it, themore difficult it becomes. It is there inside, waiting to be released, but itcan be reached only through the intuitive mind. And it happens suddenly, whenwe least expect.

The master Hui-neng stands at the watershed of Zen history.Indeed he may be the watershed, in the embodied form of a legend. There seemsreason to suspect that he was canonized well after the fact, as wasBodhidharma. But whereas Bodhidharma provided an anchor for the originalformation of a separate Dhyana sect in Chinese Buddhism, Hui-neng becamethe rallying symbol for a new type of Ch'an, one wholly Chinese, and one thatseemed to discount Bodhidharma's old mainstay, meditation. He became theChinese answer to the Indian Bodhidharma.

Hui-neng redefined the specific characteristics of the Ch'angoal and described in nontheological terms the mind state in which duality isbanished. But he failed to go the next step and explain how to get there. Allhe did was point out (to use the terminology of logic) that meditation not onlywas not a sufficient condition for enlightenment, it might not even be anecessary condition. What then was required? The answer to this question was tobe worked out during the next phase of Ch'an, the so-called Golden Age of Zen,when a new school of Southern Ch'an exploded (to use a common description) inthe south and went on to take over all of Ch'an. These new teachers seem tohave accepted Hui-neng as their patron, although the direct connection is notentirely clear. These masters learned how to impose a torture chamber on thelogical mind, bringing to it such humiliations that it finally annihilated egoor self and surrendered to prajna, intuitive wisdom. They devisedsystematic ways to produce the state of "no-thought" that Hui-nengand Shen-hui apparently could only invoke.

PART II

THE GOLDEN AGE OF ZEN

. . . . inwhich teachers of rural, Southern Ch'an begin to experiment with new ways toprecipitate the "sudden" enlightenment experience, even bringing intoquestion the role of meditation. Along with the search for new techniques goesthe attempt to define precisely what enlightenment is and to formalize thetransmission process. During this time, Ch'an monasteries become independentorganizations and Ch'an a recognized, if eccentric, Buddhist sect. Theiconoclastic, self-supporting Ch'an establishments ride out a persecution ofBuddhism in the mid-ninth century that effectively destroys all other Buddhistschools in China. This is the great creative era of Ch'an, in which the sectsecures its own identity and creates its own texts for use by latergenerations.

ChapterSix

MA-TSU:

ORIGINATOR OF "SHOCK" ENLIGHTENMENT

Ma-tsu(right) and Layman P’ang

If Hui-nengwas the Sixth Patriarch, then who was the seventh? Although several of hisfollowers are mentioned in the Platform Sutra, the only one who seems to havemade any difference in Ch'an history was Shen-hui (670-762), who successfullydestroyed the Northern school of Shen-hsiu (605-706) and elevated Hui-neng.Although Shen-hui was given the accolade of Seventh Patriarch in some parts ofthe north, history was to be written elsewhere. Shen-hui's school of "Southern"Ch'an was soon compromising with the remaining Northern Ch'anists—concedingthat the study of the sutras could go along hand in hand with suddenenlightenment—and he seems to have enjoyed a little too much his role asimperial socialite. The only member of Shen-hui's school to realize anyhistorical prominence was Tsung-mi (780-841), whose fame attaches not to hisoriginal thought but rather to his scholarly writings describing the varioussects of Ch'an.¹ A litterateur and friend of the famous poet Po Chu-i(772-846), he also tried unsuccessfully to mediate between the followers of thestep-by-step sutra-reading Buddhists of the cities and the all-at-once,anti-literary proponents of sudden enlightenment in the country, but hesucceeded only in bringing the history of Northern Ch'an to a dignified close.²

The Chinese scholar Hu Shih skillfully pinpoints why thesocial success of Shen-hui's new "Southern" school in the northactually contributed to its decline. As he saw it: "The explanation issimple. Zennism could not flourish as an officially patronized religion, butonly as an attitude of mind, a method of thinking and a mode of living. Anofficially patronized teacher of Buddhism is obliged to perform all thetraditional rituals and ceremonies which the true Zennist despises. Shen-huisucceeded in establishing Zennism as a state religion, but by so doing healmost killed it. All further development of Chinese Zen had to come from thosegreat teachers who valued simple life and intellectual freedom and independencemore than worldly recognition."³ And in fact just such teachershad begun springing up like mushrooms. On lonely mountaintops, teachers ofsudden enlightenment were experimenting with new ways to transmit wordlessinsight. They seem to have despised traditional Buddhism, perhaps partlybecause Buddhism—by which is meant the cultural elitists and aristocrats in thecapitals of Ch'ang-an and Loyang—had so long despised them. (Recall the FifthPatriarch's greeting to Hui-neng: "If you're from the south, you must be abarbarian.") Although traditional Buddhism (including teachers of dhyana)continued to flourish, and the city of Ch'ang-an remained a model for Asiancivilization, the political power of the T'ang government in the northgradually withered. And as it declined, so too did the fortunes of thetraditional Ch'an establishments that had flourished under imperial patronage.

The new Ch'an teachers of the Southern school may have feltsmug in their new prestige and independence, but they still were subject to theingrained Chinese desire for a lineage. (Perhaps in the land of Confucius,spiritual ancestors were essential to dignity.) The triumph of the legend ofHui-neng in the north had not been lost on the Ch'anists elsewhere, and iteffectively meant that for any Ch'an school to have respectability nationwide,it had to be able to trace its lineage back to this illiterate southerner andhis temple at Ts'ao-ch'i. Unfortunately this turned out to be difficult, sinceby the time Hui-neng actually came to be recognized as the Sixth Patriarch, hehad been dead for half a century and there were few Chinese who even knewfirsthand of his existence—and none besides Shen-hui who ever claimed to havestudied under him. How then could he be made the founder of the Ch'an schoolsblooming all over China?

The scholar Hu Shih has speculated somewhat knavishly on howHui-neng's "lineage" may have been created after the fact: "Bythe last quarter of the eighth century, there began to be a great stampede ofalmost all the Ch'an schools to get on the bandwagon of the school of Hui-neng.. . . Hui-neng died early in the eighth century, and his disciples were mostlyunknown ascetics who lived and died in their hilly retreats. One could easilyhave paid a visit to some of them. So in the last decades of the century, someof those unknown names were remembered or discovered. Two of the names thusexhumed from obscurity were Huai-jang of the Heng Mountains in Hunan, andHsing-ssu of the Ch'ing-yuan Mountains of Kiangsi. Neither of these namesappeared in earlier versions of Hui-neng's life story."⁴

These two masters, Nan-yueh Huai-jang (677-744) of Hunan andCh'ing-yuan Hsing-ssu (d. 740) of Kiangsi, were made the missing links betweenHui-neng and the two schools of Ch'an that would one day become Japanese Rinzaiand Soto, respectively. Since the lineage most important for the early years ofCh'an's Golden Age was that which would one day be the Rinzai school, thetradition of Huai-jang will be examined here first. As noted above, althoughthe legend says that Huai-jang once studied under the Sixth Patriarch,Hui-neng, supporting historical evidence is not readily found. However, he isthought to have studied under another follower of the Fifth Patriarch Hung-jenand to have been a part of the general scene of Southern Ch'an.⁵ Hisactual function may have been to supply a direct line of descent betweenHui-neng and the man who was to be the creator of Rinzai Zen as we know ittoday.

That man is the famous Ma-tsu Tao-i (709-788), who even ifnot a direct spiritual descendant of Hui-neng was certainly a product of thesame exciting period of intellectual ferment. According to the more or lesscontemporary record left by the northern historian Tsung-mi, Ma-tsu (whichmeans "Patriarch Ma") was a native of Szechuan who was ordained amonk at an early age by a Korean master in his home province.⁶ YoungMa traveled on, as was common with beginning Ch'an monks, and (so say the laterlegends) finally came to the monastery of Huai-jang, located on Mt. Nan-yueh.The story of their first encounter became a standard among later Ch'an masters,for it is a particularly effective discrediting of that onetime Ch'an mainstay,meditation, which became anathema to the more revolutionary Southern school.

As the story goes, Huai-jang one day came upon Ma-tsuabsorbed in meditation and proceeded to question the purpose of his long boutsof dhyana. Ma-tsu immediately replied, "I want to become a Buddha,an enlightened being."

Saying nothing, Huai-jang quietly picked up a brick andstarted rubbing it on a stone. After a time Ma-tsu's curiosity bested him andhe inquired, "Why are you rubbing that brick on a stone?"

Huai-jang replied, "I am polishing it into amirror."

Ma-tsu probably knew by this time that he had been set up,but he had to follow through: "But how can you make a mirror by polishinga brick on a stone?"

The celebrated answer was: "How can you becomeenlightened by sitting in meditation?"

The point, driven home time and again throughout the eighthcentury, was that enlightenment is an active, not a passive, condition. AndMa-tsu himself was to become the foremost exponent of enlightenment as anatural part of life.

Ma-tsu always made a profound impression on hiscontemporaries, and no small part may be attributable to his peculiar physicaltraits. As The Transmission of the Lamp describes him:

Inappearance and bearing he was most striking. He glared as a tiger does and heambled like a cow. He could touch his nose with his tongue, and on the soles ofhis feet were wheel-shaped marks [physical qualities also attributed to theBuddha]. During the period [of 713-41] he studied the dhyana . . . under MasterHuai-jang, who then had nine disciples. Of these only [Ma-tsu] received thesacred mind seal.⁷

However, hisreal immortality derives from his contribution to the arsenal of methods forshocking novices into enlightenment. It will be recalled that the legendarySixth Patriarch, Hui-neng, neglected to explain exactly what a person should doto "see into one's own nature." Ma-tsu apparently was the firstmaster who developed non-meditative tricks for nudging a disciple into thestate of "no-thought." He was an experimenter, and he pioneered anumber of methods that later were perfected by his followers and thedescendants of his followers. He was the first master to ask a novice anunanswerable question, and then while the person struggled for an answer, toshout in his ear (he liked the syllable "Ho!")—hoping to jolt thepupil into a non-dualistic mind state. Another similar technique was to callout someone's name just as the person was leaving the room, a surprise thatseemed to bring the person up short and cause him to suddenly experience hisoriginal nature. A similar device was to deliver the student a sharp blow as hepondered a point, using violence to focus his attention completely on realityand abort ratiocination. Other tricks included responding to a question with aseemingly irrelevant answer, causing the student to sense the irrelevancy ofhis question. He would also sometimes send a pupil on a "goose chase"between himself and some other enlightened individual at the monastery, perhapsin the hope that bouncing the novice from one personality to another wouldsomehow shake his complacency. Whatever the technique, his goal was always toforce a novice to uncover his original nature for himself. He did this by nevergiving a straight answer or a predictable response and therefore never allowinga disciple to lapse into a passive mental mode.

Ma-tsu also seems to have simplified the idea of whatconstitutes enlightenment. As he defined it, "seeing into one's ownnature" simply meant understanding (intuitively, not rationally) who youare and what you are. This truth could be taught with whatever method seemedappropriate at a given moment. As Hu Shih so eloquently describes his teaching,

". . . any gesture or motion, or even silence, might beused to communicate a truth. [Recall the Buddha once enlightened a follower byholding up a flower.] Ma-tsu developed this idea into a pedagogical method forthe new Zen. There is no need to seek any special faculty in the mind for theenlightenment. Every behavior is the mind, the manifestation of theBuddha-nature. Snapping a finger, frowning or stretching the brow, coughing,smiling, anger, sorrow, or desire . . . is the functioning of the Buddhahead:it is the Tao, the Way. There is no need to perform any special act, be itdhyana orworship, in order to achieve the Tao. To be natural is the Way. Walk naturally,sit naturally, sleep naturally, live naturally—that is the Way. Let the mind befree: do not purposely do evil; nor purposely do good. There is no Law toabide, no Buddhahood to attain. Maintain a free mind and cling to nothing: thatis Tao."⁸

Thus it seems that the most preeminent Ch'an master of theeighth century not only repudiated all the apparatus of traditional Buddhism,he also simplified enlightenment down to a quite secular condition ofacceptance of the natural state of human affairs. For instance, although he wasfamiliar with the great Mahayana sutras, Ma-tsu never mentions Hui-neng or theDiamond Sutra. His Ch'an, expressed in simple everyday language, seems merelyso many ways of finding out who you are and what you are. Furthermore, thereseems to be nothing specifically that you can do to accelerate the occurrenceof sudden enlightenment, other than use traditional practices to make yourpsyche as uncomplicated as possible and then wait for the moment to strike (he,of course, experimented to find ways to accelerate the arrival of that moment).But he has nothing encouraging to say about the effectiveness of meditation asan aid to finding the desired non-rational insight, which he sometimesdescribed using the borrowed term "Tao":

Cultivationis of no use for the attainment of Tao. The only

thingthat one can do is to be free of defilement. When one's

mind isstained with thoughts of life and death, or deliberate action, that isdefilement. The grasping of the Truth is the function of everyday-mindedness.Everyday-mindedness is free from intentional action, free from concepts ofright and wrong, taking and giving, the finite or the infinite. . . . All ourdaily activities—walking, standing, sitting, lying down—all response to situations,our dealings with circ*mstances as they arise: all this is Tao.⁹

Ma-tsu eventually left Huai-jang (if, in fact, heever met him in the first place) and presided over a community of Ch'andisciples at K'ai-yuan temple in Kiangsi. This was to be the incubator for thegreatest thinkers of the eighth century, and the setting for some of the finestCh'an anecdotes. The anecdote, incidentally, is the perfect Ch'an teachingdevice, since it forces the listener to find its meaning in his own inner experience.The sermon provided the theoretical basis for an idea, but the anecdote showedthe theory in action and made the listener share in a real experience, if onlyvicariously. But first we will begin with a sermon credited to him, in which hesummarizes the philosophical position he held. There was nothing particularlynew about his understanding; it was his method that was novel. His sermon said,in essence, that reality is merely our mind, and that enlightenment comprisedthe nonrational recognition of this.

All ofyou should realize that your own mind is Buddha, that is, this mind is Buddha'sMind. . . . Those who seek for the Truth should realize that there is nothingto seek. There is no Buddha but Mind; there is no Mind but Buddha.¹⁰

Again thereis the counsel against discriminations between good and evil, since theoriginal Mind transcends these:

Do notchoose what is good, nor reject what is evil, but rather be free from purityand defilement. Then you will realize the emptiness of sin.¹¹

This is nota preachment of values; rather it is the insight that there is a reality beyondour puny discriminations. If you can achieve this larger perspective, then goodand evil become an inconsequential part of the larger flow of life.

His sermon then returns to the theme of the mind as thearbiter of reality, recalling the Void of Nagarjuna and pointing out that eventhe workings of the mind are ephemeral and possess no self-nature.

Thoughtsperpetually change and cannot be grasped because they possess no self-nature.The Triple World [of desire, form, and beyond-form] is nothing more than one'smind. The multitudinous universe is nothing but the testimony of one Dharma[truth]. What are seen as forms are the reflections of the mind. The mind doesnot exist by itself; its existence is manifested through forms. . . . If youare aware of this mind, you will dress, eat, and act spontaneously in life asit transpires, and thereby cultivate your spiritual nature. There is nothingmore that I can teach you.¹²

The essenceof this teaching is that reality is, for us, merely what our mind says it is,and "enlightenment" or "becoming a Buddha" is merely comingto terms with ourselves and with this tricky mind that constantly devises ourreality for us.

This credo is remembered most vividly in two anecdotes thatwere later enshrined in a famous collection of koans called the Wu-men Kuan (orMumonkan in Japanese). In both of these anecdotes, Ma-tsu is asked, "Whatis Buddha?"—meaning what is the spirituality that all seek. In one hereplied, "Mind is Buddha" (Mumonkan, Case 30), and in the otheranecdote he said, "No mind, no Buddha" (Mumonkan, Case 33), whichmerely affirms that spirituality is in the mind, and for its realization onemust realize the mind.¹³ In either instance he is merely followingthe earlier idea that there is no reality and thus no enlightenment outside themind.

These two exchanges are part of a single anecdote of Ma-tsurecorded in the chronicles.

A monkasked why the Master maintained, "The Mind is the Buddha." The Masteranswered, "Because I want to stop the crying of a baby." The monkpersisted, "When the crying has stopped, what is it then?" "NotMind, not Buddha," was the answer. "How do you teach a man who doesnot uphold either of these?" The Master said, "I would tell him, 'Notthings.' " The monk again questioned, "If you met a man free fromattachment to all things, what would you tell him?" The Master replied,"I would let him experience the Great Tao."¹⁴

As the scholar John Wu has pointed out, "This dialoguereveals an important secret about Ma-tsu's art of teaching. Sometimes he used apositive formula, sometimes he used a negative formula. On the surface they arecontradictory to each other. But when we remember that he was using them inanswering persons of different grades of attainments and intelligence, thecontradiction disappears at once in the light of a higher unity of purpose,which was in all cases to lead the questioner to transcend his presentstate."¹⁵Another example of a seemingly contradictory positionis recorded as a koan in another famous collection, the Blue Cliff Record (Case3). In this anecdote, Ma-tsu is asked one day about his health, and heresponded with, "Sun-faced Buddhas, Moon-faced Buddhas."¹⁶According to a Buddhist tradition, a Sun-faced Buddha lives for eighteenhundred years, a Moon-faced Buddha lives only a day and a night. Perhaps he wasproposing these two contradictory cases to demonstrate the irrelevance of aninquiry after his physical state. It would have been far better if the questionhad concerned his mind.

A story describing how Ma-tsu handled other teachers whowandered by depicts very well the way that he could undermine logic andcategorization. In a particularly famous anecdote, a visiting teacher proposeda condition of duality, a condition equivalent to that of a switch that can beeither off or on. Having permitted the teacher to adopt this very un-Zenposition, Ma-tsu proceeds to demolish him. The story goes as follows:

A monkwho lectured on Buddhism came to the Master and asked, "What is theteaching advocated by the Ch'an masters?" Ma-tsu posed a counterquestion:"What teachings do you maintain?" The monk replied that he hadlectured on more than twenty sutras and sastras. The Master exclaimed,"Are you not a lion?" The monk said, "I do not venture to saythat." The Master puffed twice and the monk commented, "This is theway to teach Ch'an." Ma-tsu retorted, "What way do you mean?"and the monk said, "The way the lion leaves the den." The Masterbecame silent. Immediately the monk remarked, "This is also the way ofCh'an teaching." At this the Master again asked, "What way do youmean?" "The lion remains in his den." "When there isneither going out nor remaining in, what way would you say this was?" Themonk made no answer. . . .¹⁷

Ma-tsu hadposed a seemingly unanswerable question, at least a question that logic couldnot answer. This provocative exchange, later to be known as a mondo, was a newteaching technique that departed significantly from the earlier methods ofHui-neng and Shen-hui, who mounted a platform, gave a sermon, and then politelyreceived questions from the audience.

But how did Ma-tsu handle this question when it was presentedto him? He fell back on the fact that reality is what we make it, and allthings return to the mind. He once handled essentially the same question thathe put to the visiting monk, showing how it can be done. His response is theessence of Zen.

A monkonce drew four lines in front of Ma-tsu. The top line was long and theremaining three were short. He then demanded of the Master, "Besidessaying that one line is long and the other three are short, what else could yousay?" Ma-tsu drew one line on the ground and said, "This could becalled either long or short. That is my answer."¹⁸

Language isdeceptive. But if it is used to construct an anti-logical question, it canequally be used to construct an anti-logical reply.

Ma-tsu discovered and refined what seems to have eluded theearlier teachers such as Hui-neng and Huai-jang: namely, the trigger mechanismfor sudden enlightenment. As noted earlier, he originated the use of shoutingand blows to precipitate enlightenment, techniques to become celebrated inlater decades in the hands of men such as Huang-po and Lin-chi, masters whoshaped the Rinzai sect. As a typical example, there is the story of a monkcoming to him to ask, "What was the purpose of Bodhidharma's coming fromthe West?" which is Ch'an parlance for "What is the basic principleof Zen?" As the monk bowed reverently before the old master waiting forthe reply that would bring it all together, Ma-tsu knocked him to the ground,saying, "If I do not strike you, people all over the country will laugh atme." The hapless monk picked himself up off the ground and—suddenlyrealizing he had just tasted the only reality there is—was enlightened on thespot.¹⁹Obviously, every boxer does not experience enlightenmentwhen he receives a knockout punch. The blow of enlightenment is meant to rattlethe questioning mind and to disrupt, if only for an instant, its clinging toabstractions and logic. It seems almost as though enlightenment were a physicalphenomenon that sometimes can best be achieved by a physical process—such as ablow or a shout.

The violence seemed to work both ways, for the monks oftengave him a dose of his own medicine. An example is reported in the followingstory:

Ithappened once that his disciple Yin-feng was pushing along a cart, while Ma-tsuwas sitting on the road with his feet stretched out. Yin-feng requested him todraw back his feet, but Ma-tsu said, "What is stretched out is not to bedrawn back again!" Yin-feng retorted, "Once advanced, there is noturning backward!'' Disregarding the master, he kept pushing the cart until itran over and injured his feet. Ma-tsu returned to the hall with an axe in hishand, saying, "Let the one who a few moments ago injured my feet with hiscart come forward!" Yin-feng, not to be daunted, came forward stretchinghis neck in front of the master. The master [peacefully] put down his axe.²⁰

Thesignificance of this story, if it has any significance, is that it conveys theatmosphere of Ch'an monasteries around 750. It demonstrates that the leader ofa monastery had to win his spurs. He had to be tougher, more audacious, andfaster than anybody else.

During the T'ang it was common to use the ox as a metaphorfor all that is uncontrollable in human nature. The ox was not necessarily bad;it just had to be governed. The rigor with which this control was applied atMa-tsu's monastery is illustrated in the story concerning one of the disciples,a former hunter who Ma-tsu encountered one day working in the monasterykitchen.

"What are you doing?" asked the master—a questionthat never got a straight answer from an enlightened Ch'an monk.

"I amherding an ox," the man replied, a metaphorical way of saying he wastrying to discipline himself. "And how," shot back Ma-tsu, "doyou go about tending it?" The monk replied, "Whenever it starts to goto grass [i.e., self-indulgence], I yank it back by the nostrils [the tenderpart of the great animal]."

To which Ma-tsu admiringly replied, "If you really cando that by yourself, then I may as well retire."²¹

This story illustrates the emphasis on self-control that wasa part of the Ch'an monasteries. Yet self-control was only to be practiced forwhat it gave in return. There were no value judgments or rules that had to befollowed. The point was to do what seemed the most rewarding. For example,there is a story that a local governor asked Ma-tsu, "Master, should I eatmeat and drink wine?" The master did not give him a reply that implied avalue judgment, but rather outlined the rewards of the two possible paths:"To eat and drink is your natural right, to abstain from meat and wine isyour chance for greater blessedness."²²

Ma-tsu often used the structure of language, with its naturalcapacity for parallels, as a teaching tool in itself.

Anothertime a monk asked, what is the meaning of Bodhidharma coming from theWest?" "What is the meaning [of your asking] at this moment?"replied the Master.²³

The monk wasinterested in abstract issues (using the Ch'an metaphor for enlightenment'smeaning); Ma-tsu reminded him that the only reality that mattered was his ownbeing, his own needs. And he did it using almost identical language.

Ma-tsu was constantly testing his disciples, keeping them ontheir toes and reinforcing their enlightenment. There is the story that oneevening while enjoying the moonlight with three of his disciples (including thetwo most famous, Huai-hai and Nan- ch'uan), he asked them the question"what should we do right now, this very moment?"—a typical Zenchallenge. One of the monks said, "It would be best to be studying the sutrasof the ancients who have achieved enlightenment." The monk Huai-hai, whowas later to receive Ma-tsu's mantle, countered, "It would be good topractice meditation."

At that point Nan-ch'uan, the third monk, simply rose, shookthe sleeves of his robe, and silently walked away. Ma-tsu acknowledged this asthe right answer and declared, "The sutra scriptures are returnable to theBuddhist canon, and meditation to the undifferentiated ocean, but Nan-ch'uanalone leaps over and transcends these."²⁴ Nan-ch'uan's responsewas a triumph of physical action and simplicity over religiosity andabstraction.

Ma-tsu isreported in the chronicles to have had 139 enlightened disciples, many of whomwent on to become Ch'an leaders in their own districts. The most outstandingwere the monks Huai-hai and Nan-ch'uan and a layman named P'ang—all three ofwhom are today remembered in anecdotes that have become Ch'an scriptures. Butothers were probably just as active and enlightened. Southern Ch'an wasexpanding, with mountaintop retreats blossoming everywhere. Many teachersprobably have been forgotten only because they had no disciples who took thepains to transcribe and preserve their teachings. Ma-tsu himself alsoapparently wrote nothing, but he was more fortunate in his disciples. In anycase, he reportedly died in the typical Ch'an way. He predicted his death amonth in advance, and when the time came, he bathed, assumed the meditationposture, and silently passed on.

ChapterSeven

HUAI-HAI:

FATHER OF MONASTIC CH'AN

Among themany celebrated disciples of Ma-tsu, the man whose influence has been mostpervasive throughout the succeeding centuries was Po-chang Huai-hai (720-814).He is the master credited with founding the first wholly Ch'an monastery, withdevising a special set of rules for Ch'an discipline, and with writing aclosely argued treatise on sudden enlightenment. Whereas Ma-tsu and others ofhis disciples such as Nan-ch'uan experimented with ways to help novices breakthrough the barrier of reason, Huai-hai examined the phenomenon ofenlightenment itself and described the mental state of preparedness necessaryto reach the Other Shore. Huai-hai has been somewhat unjustifiably neglected bythe modern Zen movement, perhaps because his expository style did not lend itselfto memorable anecdotes or koan cases.

The accounts of Huai-hai's origin are contradictory, but heseems to have begun his Buddhist studies early, becoming the pupil of a masternamed Tao-chih in a small town in the present-day province of Chekiang.¹(It was this master who gave him the religious name Huai-hai, or "Ocean ofWisdom.") After he came to maturity, the story goes, he heard of the greatmaster Ma-tsu in the province of Kiangsi, and he traveled there to study.

Among the many anecdotes surrounding Huai-hai's stay withMa-tsu, perhaps the finest is that of the auspicious first encounter. The storysays that when Huai-hai arrived, the old master immediately asked what previoustemple he had traveled from, followed by: "What do you come here to find?"

Huai-hai replied, "I have come to discover the truth ofBuddha."

To this Ma-tsu replied, "What can you expect to learnfrom me? Why do you ignore the treasure in your own house and wander so farabroad?"

Understandably puzzled, Huai-hai asked, "What is thistreasure that I have been ignoring?"

To which came the celebrated reply: "The one whoquestions me at this moment is your treasure. Everything is complete in it. Itis lacking in nothing, and furthermore the things it possesses areinexhaustible. Considering that you can use this treasure freely, why then doyou persist in wandering abroad?" It is said that with these wordsHuai-hai suddenly had an intuitive, non-rational acquaintance with his ownmind.²

Among the other classic tales of Huai-hai's apprenticeshipunder Ma-tsu is the often repeated account of the day the two of them werewalking together along a path when suddenly a flock of migratory geese washeard passing overhead. Ma-tsu turned to his pupil and asked, "What wasthat sound?" Huai-hai innocently replied, "It was the cry of wildgeese." Ma-tsu paused and then demanded of his pupil, "Where havethey gone?" Huai-hai said, "They have flown away."

This was an unacceptably drab, straightforward answer for aZen man, and in disgust Ma-tsu whirled, grabbed Huai-hai's nose, and twisted ituntil his disciple cried out in panic, causing Ma-tsu to observe, "So youthought they had flown away. Yet they were here all the time."³

The legends say that this exchange, in the typical harshstyle of Ma-tsu, caused Huai-hai to confront his original nature. What Ma-tsuhad done was to give his pupil a vivid lesson in the concept of an indivisibleunity which pervades the world; things do not come and go—they are therealways, part of a permanent fabric. Huai-hai was being invited to stop viewingthe world as a fragmented collection of elements and see it rather as a unifiedwhole.

The interactions of master and novice were always dynamic.For example, another story says that one day Ma-tsu asked Huai-hai how he wouldteach Ch'an. Huai-hai responded by holding up a dust whisk vertically. Ma-tsucontinued by asking him, "Is this all there is? Is there nothingmore?" Huai-hai replied by throwing down the whisk. (One interpreter hassaid that raising the dust whisk revealed the mind's function, whereas throwingit down returned function to the mind's substance.)⁴ According tosome versions of this episode, Ma-tsu responded by shouting at the top of hislungs, rendering Huai-hai deaf for three days. This shout is said to have beenthe occasion of Huai-hai's final enlightenment.

Huai-hai seems to have been a kindly man, warm andpersonable, not given to the roughhouse methods of some of his contemporaries.Instead of flamboyance, we find a friendly type who concentrated on guiding acommunity of disciples (sometimes called a "Zen forest") and giving ahelping hand to all. We will pass over the many other anecdotes involving hisstay with Ma-tsu and turn instead to his more significant contributions to thegrowth of Ch'an.⁵ These fall into two major categories: First, hefounded the first wholly Ch'an monastery and for it formulated a set ofmonastic rules that are today still respected in Zen monasteries; and second,he was one of the first Southern Ch'an masters to explore the psychology of"sudden enlightenment" and to write a lucid analysis of the mentalpreparation it required.

Before detailing Huai-hai's contribution to monastic Ch'an,perhaps it would be well to recall briefly the character of the traditionalBuddhist monastery in China during the T'ang (618-907) era. Buddhistmonasteries had long been governed by a set of rules known as the vinaya.These rules prescribed everything from the color of the robes for thepriesthood to the penalties attached to eating onions or garlic (forbiddenprimarily because they were thought to be stimulants, not necessarily becauseof their social liabilities in close quarters). There were also some specificand quite solemn commandments—for example, monks or nuns could be expelled fromthe community for stealing, killing, lying, or sexual congress. Originating inIndia, these rules had been subsequently transplanted to China, where theygradually were made even more strict, although their enforcement apparently wasnot always rigorous. Perhaps because of this laxity the T'ang regimeestablished penalties even more severe than those imposed by the Buddhistauthorities. For example, whereas the vinaya indirectly countenanced theeating of meat (through the loophole that all charitable gifts must be acceptedsince they give the laity merit, and if a gift happened to be meat it still hadto be consumed for the sake of the donor), the T'ang government prescribedthirty days of hard labor for monks caught partaking. Since citizens entering Buddhistorders were taken off the tax rolls, the government took pains to ensure thatmonastic life was rigorous enough to discourage simple tax dodgers.⁷Although the Chinese Buddhist schools were almost all members of the side ofBuddhism known as Mahayana, they apparently followed the rules of TheravadaBuddhism, since the latter were clearer and more easily understood.⁸Huai-hai decided to merge the two sets of rules and from them to devise a newset of guidelines specifically for Ch'an, thereby creating a code of monasticdiscipline that eventually would rule Zen behavior throughout the world.

The record concerning how the Ch'an monastic system initiallywas established is less detailed than we might wish. The legendary FourthPatriarch, Tao-hsin, was said to have been the first dhyana master tosettle down in one place and nurture a band of disciples. Dhyanateachers seem to have allied themselves with the conventional Buddhists in thedecades that followed, living in their monasteries much as the hermit crabfinds a home in the shells of other species. If their numbers were large theymight have their own separate quarters, but they still had to respect the rulesof their host sect, which more often than not was the Vinaya school.⁹Gradually, however, a transformation occurred, as Ch'an masters becameincreasingly distinguishable from the leaders of other sects and Ch'an itselfgrew to increasing proportions, particularly in the south.

It is not surprising that the man who made monastic Ch'an areality was Ma-tsu's pupil Po-chang Huai-hai. In the recorded anecdotesHuai-hai is characterized as a level-headed, pragmatic man whom one can easilyimagine having superior administrative ability. As John Wu characterizes hisrules, "It was this rule [of Huai-hai] that instituted for the first timethe Zen monastic system. In its emphasis on moral discipline and its matter offactness, it is comparable to the Holy Rule of St. Benedict. The duties of theAbbot and various functionaries under him are meticulously defined. The dailylife of the monks is regulated in detail. Of particular interest are the ritesof taking vows and the universal duty of working in the fields."¹⁰

It is difficult to say exactly what was the nature of therules Huai-hai formulated, since his original precepts have been recast anumber of times down through the years, with the earliest surviving versionbeing that preserved in a 1282 Chinese Yuan Dynasty document called "theHoly Rule of Po-chang [Huai-hai]." If we look beyond the details, however,we see that his emphasis on the creation of a self-supporting monasticestablishment was in a sense a further sinicization of Indian Buddhism, throughthe rejection of begging as the primary means of support. (Begging was notabandoned entirely, since it is valuable for teaching humility; instead it wasretained in a regulated, symbolic form, but made a second line of economicdefense.) The monasteries were intended to survive on their own, since Huai-haiinsisted that meditation and worship be integrated with physical labor. Whereasthe ideal Indian holy man was one who relied on begging, Huai-hai believed thatin China it was holier to work for a living. This was the core of histeachings, as symbolized in his famous manifesto: "A day without work is aday without food." Nothing could have been more sympathetically receivedamong the Chinese, and Huai-hai is probably rightly credited with inoculatingCh'an against the governmental persecution of 845 that destroyed so many otherBuddhist sects. He practiced what he preached, and even when he reached old agehe continued to toil in the fields. In fact, his disciples finally became soconcerned for his health that they took the unprecedented step of hiding hisgardening hoe. But true to his rule, he refused to eat until it was returned.

Perhaps we can infer something of Huai-hai's regulations fromthe routine in contemporary Zen monasteries (of the Rinzai sect).¹¹Monks rise well before light (before they can see the lines in the palm oftheir hand), and after their morning toilet they gather in the main hall forsunrise devotions—in this case rapid chanting of scriptures, a device more fordeveloping powers of concentration than for piety. They then return to themeditation hall, where chanting resumes. Next comes breakfast, usually plainrice with a modest vegetable garnish, and then back to the meditation hall forceremonial tea and announcements of the day's schedule. Afterward each monkmeets individually with the master in his quarters, where the monk'senlightenment is tested and a koan may be assigned. (The master, incidentally,enjoys a private room; the monks sleep together in a common hall, arrangedaccording to rank.) After this, the monks attend to the garden and grounds ofthe monastery, and later in the morning there may be begging or visits to laypatrons for donations. After lunch (the main meal; its leftovers are supper)there is more work in the garden of the monastery, planting and harvesting, aswell as repairing the buildings or other maintenance chores. Later on there maybe more chanting, as well as cleaning and upkeep of the interior of thebuildings. And in between there may be meditation. Then as nightfall descendsthe evening bell rings out to signify the work day's ending. During the eveningthe monk may meditate more or receive further instruction from the master orhis brothers. Finally, late in the evening, to bed—at the end of a long day. Itshould be noted that there are also many special days on which meals,ceremonies, or activities may assume a different character.

It is significant that the monasteries of early Ch'an aresaid not to have had a Buddha hall or a place for worship; rather they had onlya Dharma or lecture hall, in which the master gave a talk, followed by sharpexchanges with his disciples, who often were rowdy and sometimes left at willto demonstrate their independence of mind. These were places of irreverence andunfettered intellectual inquiry; and apparently there was no enforced study ofthe traditional Buddhist literature. With monasteries of their own where theycould do as they pleased, the Ch'an masters found their rebellion complete.Theirs now was an unhampered search for the perennial philosophy.

With this in mind we may now turn to the psychologicalteachings of the lawgiver Huai-hai. Unlike the piecemeal story of hiscontribution to monastic life, which is preserved in spirit more than inletter, the writings on enlightenment that bear his name are rather firmlyattributed. This is, in fact, a significant new aspect of Ch'an history, sincehis work represents one of the oldest documents actually composed by amaster—as compared to a sermon transcribed and edited by some follower.According to the extant writings, after Huai-hai had studied with Ma-tsu forseveral years, he returned to his home temple to care for his first master,Tao-chih, who was by then aged and ill—an act of duty any Chinese wouldimmediately understand. It was during this return visit with his old masterthat he composed a treatise setting forth the theoretical basis of suddenenlightenment. It is said that when this document was shown to Ma-tsu, hecompared Huai-hai to a great pearl whose luster penetrated all time and space.(Curiously, Ma-tsu himself appears not to have made a great fuss about themeaning of sudden enlightenment, seemingly taking the "theory" forgranted and moving along to the "practice.")

"The Zen Teaching of Huai-hai on SuddenIllumination" was

composed inthe form of an imaginary question-and-answer session, in which Huai-haieffectively interviewed himself on the question of sudden enlightenment and thespecific problems a person might encounter in trying to prepare for it. Hestressed that one of the most important things to do was to suspend makingvalue judgments about things, since this leads almost directly to splittingthings into camps of good and bad, likes and dislikes. This opens one to theworld of categories and dualities, just the opposite from oneness. According toHuai-hai, the first thing to do is strive for:

. . .total relinquishment of ideas as to the dual nature of good and bad, being andnon-being, love and aversion, void and non-void, concentration and distraction,pure and impure. By giving all of them up, we attain to a state in which allopposites are seen as void. . . . Once we attain that state, not a single formcan be discerned. Why? Because our self-nature is immaterial and does not catcha single thing foreign to itself. That which contains no single thing is trueReality. . . .¹²

The desire to avoid love and aversion is inextricably tiedwith the freedom from distinctions, duality, judgments, or prejudices:

Wisdom meansthe ability to distinguish every sort of good and evil; dhyana meansthat, though making these distinctions, you remain wholly unaffected by love oraversion for them.¹³

Elsewhere hedescribes this goal as:

Beingable to behold men, women and all the various sorts of appearances whileremaining as free from love and aversion as if they were actually not seen at all.. . .¹⁴

In thismanner we can operate on the principle of unity, even in a world whereappearances have multiplicity.

But how exactly can we say that all things are one? It is notsomething that can be fully understood with the rational mind, and initially itmust be taken partly on faith, as a holding action until we can understand itintuitively. His translator John Blofeld uses the traditional Buddhist analogyof the sea, which is both constantly changing and yet eternally changeless:"Contemplation of the movement and shifting composition of sea-waves is auseful symbolical approach; for, not only are the waves and the sea identicalin substance, but also a given wave does not preserve its individual identityfor a single moment as the water composing it is never for an instant entirelythe same; thus, by the time it reaches us from a distance, every drop itcontains will be other than the drops composing it when we saw it first. On theother hand, sea-water is sea-water and the wave is entirely composed of that.Each wave is void—a mere fluctuating appearance identical in substance withevery other wave and with the entire ocean. . . ."¹⁵ Waves area perfect metaphor for the idea of everything and nothing at once, since theyare both ephemeral and part of a larger reality, the sea, out of which theyemerge, assume a physical appearance, and then dissolve. They seem to exist,yet you cannot grasp and hold them. They are both existing and nonexistent.Thus they resemble the Void, a kind of energy that manifests itself throughdiverse illusory objects of the senses, but which is itself ungraspable,changeless unity. With this in mind, perhaps it is easier to understandHuai-hai when he declares:

Thenature of the Absolute is void and yet not void. How so? The marvellous"substance" of the Absolute, having neither form nor shape, istherefore undiscoverable; hence it is void. Nevertheless, that immaterial,formless "substance" contains functions as numerous as the sands ofthe Ganges, functions which respond unfailingly to circ*mstances, so it is alsodescribed as not void.¹⁶

By focusing on this idea of unity in an Absolute, we alsointeract with our own perception of time. Since it is important that the mindnot dwell on anything, naturally enough this applies to time as well as space.

If youwant to understand the non-dwelling mind very clearly, while you are actuallysitting in meditation, you must be cognizant only of the mind. . . . Whateveris past is past, so do not sit in judgment upon it; for when minding about thepast ceases of itself, it can be said that there is no longer any past.Whatever is in the future is not here yet, so do not direct your hopes andlongings towards it; for, when minding about the future ceases of itself, itcan be said that there is no future. Whatever is present is now at hand; justbe conscious of your non-attachment to everything—non-attachment in the senseof not allowing any love or aversion for anything to enter your mind; for, whenminding the present ceases of itself, we may say that there is no present.¹⁷

He has taken the idea of the "now" to aninteresting new dimension. By cutting off thoughts of past and future, you notonly save yourself mental anguish, you also no longer need distinguish the ideaof the "present" . . . and you have just eliminated a major aspect ofattachment.

Huai-hai is not blind to the difficulty of such rigorous mindcontrol, and he offers some of the first practical advice from a Ch'an masterfor controlling the mind. Not surprisingly, it is an admonition to stop tryingso hard, to just focus on goals rather than forcing the mind's behavior. Forexample, if you are meditating and your mind wants to meander and look forsomething to dwell on, what should you do?

Shouldyour mind wander away, do not follow it, whereupon your wandering mind willstop wandering of its own accord. Should your mind desire to linger somewhere,do not follow it and do not dwell there, whereupon your mind's questing for adwelling place will cease of its own accord. Thereby, you will come to possessa non-dwelling mind—a mind which remains in the state of non-dwelling. If youare fully aware in yourself of a non-dwelling mind, you will discover thatthere is just the fact of dwelling, with nothing to dwell upon or not to dwellupon. This full awareness in yourself of a mind dwelling upon nothing is knownas having a clear perception of your own mind or, in other words, as having aclear perception of your own nature.¹⁸

By way ofwrapping up his treatise, he summarizes his technique for sudden illuminationin a bold manifesto:

Youshould know that setting forth the principle of deliverance in its entiretyamounts only to this—WHEN THINGS HAPPEN, MAKE NO RESPONSE: KEEP YOUR MINDS FROMDWELLING ON ANY THING WHATSOEVER: KEEP THEM FOREVER STILL AS THE VOID ANDUTTERLY PURE.¹⁹

Perhaps it is time we asked what exactly is the point of allthis. When we have achieved his goal, we have effectively cut off allattachments, rationality, discernment, values, sensations. But why would wewant to do this in the first place? Huai-hai answers that by releasingourselves from this enslaving bondage to our ego and its attachments, we becomethe masters of our own being, free to experience the world but no longer at itsmercy. And furthermore we no longer have even to think about being in the stateof "no-thought." It is this natural state of wisdom that is our goal.

Concentration(dhyana) involvesthe stilling of your mind . . . so that you remain wholly unmoved bysurrounding phenomena. Wisdom means that your stillness of mind is notdisturbed by your giving any thought to that stillness, that your purity isunmarred by your entertaining any thought of purity and that, in the midst ofsuch pairs of opposites as good and evil, you are able to distinguish betweenthem without being stained by them and, in this way, to reach the state ofbeing perfectly at ease and free of all dependence.²⁰

This is the state called enlightenment, a new way ofexperiencing reality that relies entirely upon intuition. Then we realize thatall this time our rational mind has been leading us along, telling us thatappearances are real and yet keeping us from really experiencing thingsfirsthand, since the rational mind believes in names, categories, duality. Consequently,before this sudden moment of intuitive understanding, we saw the world asthrough a glass darkly, with ourselves as subject and the falsely perceivedexterior world as object. After this experience we see things clearly, but weperceive them for what they really are—creations of mind as devoid of genuinesubstance as the world we create in our dreams or the ocean's waves that we cansee but cannot hold. Knowing this, we can regard the world dispassionately, nolonger caught in the web of ego involvement that enslaves those not yetenlightened. Since this whole world view only can be understood intuitively, itis not surprising that it must one day "dawn on you" when you leastexpect, like a sudden inspiration that hits you after logic has failed.Huai-hai's instructions are intended to be preparations for this moment,attributes to adopt that will make you ready and receptive when your"sudden" enlightenment hits.

Chapter Ten

HUANG-PO:

MASTER OF THE UNIVERSAL MIND

Perhaps themost thoughtful Zen philosopher of them all was Huang-po (d. 850?), who pickedup where the earlier teachers had left off and brought to a close the greatcreative era of Ch'an. He also stood at the very edge of the tumultuouswatershed in Chinese Buddhism, barely living past the 845 Great Persecutionthat smashed the power of all the Buddhist schools except that of the reclusiveSouthern Ch'anists.

Originally named Hsi-yun, the master moved at a young agefrom his birthplace in present-day f*ckien to Mt. Huang-po in the same province,the locale that gave him his Ch'an title. His biography declares that his voicewas articulate and mellifluous, his character open and simple.¹ Helater decided to make a pilgrimage to see the famous Ma-tsu, but when hearrived in Kiangsi he was told that the master had died.² Po-changHuai-hai was still there, however, and consequently Huang-po settled down tostudy with him instead.

Huang-po is known to us today primarily through the accidentof having a follower obsessed by the written word. This man, Pei Hsiu, was alsoa high Chinese official who served as governor in two of the provinces whereHuang-po at various times resided. He studied under Huang-po both times (allday and night, so he claimed) and later produced an anecdotal summary of themaster's teachings now known as On the Transmission of Mind.³This document was extensive, representing one of the most detailed descriptionsof an early master's thoughts. Pei Hsiu also reports in his preface (dated 858)that he sent his work back to Kuang T'ang monastery on Mt. Huang-po to have itauthenticated by the old monks there who still remembered the sayings of themaster.⁴

By the time of Huang-po the issue of"gradual" versus "sudden" enlightenment was decisivelyresolved in favor of the latter. He therefore turned instead to two majorremaining questions: 1) how enlightenment fits into the mental world, and 2)how this intuitive insight can be transmitted. Before he was through he hadadvanced these issues significantly and had laid the philosophical basis forthe next phase of Ch'an in China—to be dominated by the school of his pupilLin-chi.

Huang-po struggled with a fundamental dilemma of Ch'an: howthe wordless wisdom of intuition can be passed from generation to generation.Enlightenment necessarily has to be intuitive, and that means traditionalteaching methods are useless. There are no conceptual formulations or"concepts." It is by definition wordless. It has to be realizedintuitively by the novice, by himself. The masters had isolated a type ofknowledge that words could not transmit. It was this transmission of wordlessinsight, of Mind, that obsessed Huang-po.

His teachings are well summarized by his biographer Pei Hsiu,who declared: "Holding in esteem only the intuitive method of the HighestVehicle, which cannot be communicated in words, he taught nothing but thedoctrine of the One Mind; holding that there is nothing else to teach, in thatboth mind and substance are void. . . . To those who have realized the natureof Reality, there is nothing old or new, and conceptions of shallowness anddepth are meaningless. Those who speak of it do not attempt to explain it,establish no sects, and open no doors or windows. That which is before you isit. Begin to reason about it and you will at once fall into error."⁵

He seems to have been preoccupied with the issue oftransmission even during the early days of studying under Huai-hai. His veryfirst question to the older master reportedly was "How did the early Ch'anmasters guide their followers?" Huai-hai answered this very un-Ch'anquestion with silence, an implied rebuke. When Huang-po pressed the point,Huai-hai called him a disappointing disciple and said he had best beware or he(Huang-po) would be the man who lost Ch'an.⁶

In a later episode, however, Huai-hai designates Huang-po asa successor in Dharma, via a famous transmission exchange in which Huang-pofinally demonstrates wordless communication.

One dayHuai-hai asked Huang-po, "Where have you been?"

Theanswer was that he had been at the foot of the Ta-hsiung

Mountainpicking mushrooms. Huai-hai continued, "Have you seen any tigers?"Huang-po immediately roared like a tiger. Huai-hai picked up an ax as if tochop the tiger. Huang-po suddenly slapped Huai-hai's face. Huai-hai laughedheartily, and then returned to his temple and said to the assembly, "Atthe foot of the Ta-hsiung Mountain there is a tiger. You people should watchout. I have already been bitten today."⁷

This enigmatic utterance by Huai-hai has been taken by manyto signify that Huang-po was being acknowledged as a worthy being, perhaps evena successor. The scholar Chang Chung-yuan has observed that the genius of thisresponse was its freedom from the trap of logical assertion or negation.⁸The act signified freedom from the alternatives of words or silence. Could itbe that with this incident we have finally captured a wordless transmission?

Huang-po also had a number of exchanges in later years withNan-ch'uan (738-824), another of his seniors who had studied at the feet of oldMa-tsu. As the story is reported in The Transmission of the Lamp:

Some timelater Huang-po was with Nan-ch'uan. All the monks in Nan-ch'uan's monasterywere going out to harvest cabbage. Nan-ch'uan asked Huang-po, "Where areyou going?" Huang-po answered, "I am going to pick cabbage."Nan-ch'uan went on, "What do you use to pick cabbage?" Huang-polifted his sickle. Nan-ch'uan remarked, "You take the objective positionas a guest, but you do not know how to preside as a host in the subjectiveposition." Huang-po thereupon knocked on the ground three times with his sickle.⁹

When Blofeldtranslates this puzzling episode from On the Transmission of Mind, hecomments that he has been unable to find a modern Zen master who could explainits meaning.¹⁰However, Nan-ch'uan's final remark questions thedegree of Huang-po's enlightenment, and some assume the latter knocked on theground to signify defeat.¹¹

As did other masters, Huang-po also employed silence as ateaching device, using it to teach wordless insight by example. Oneparticularly pointed story involves none other than his biographer, theofficial Pei Hsiu. In Pei Hsiu's introduction to his transcript of Huang-po'steachings he says that they first met in 843 when he invited the master tolecture at Lung-hsing Temple in Chung-ling, the district which he governed. Sixyears later, in 849, the governor was in charge of Wan-ling, and he againinvited the master to come and teach, this time at the local K'ai-yan temple.¹²

When Huang-po arrived in Wan-ling, for what was to be thesecond teaching session with Pei Hsiu, the story says that the governor madethe mistake of presenting the master with a written exposition of the teachingsof Ch'an. Huang-po greeted this with silence, his "exposition" ofCh'an.

The PrimeMinister invited the Master to the city and presented his own writteninterpretation of Ch'an to him. The Master took it and put it on the table. Hedid not read it. After a short silence, he asked the Prime Minister, "Doyou understand?" The minister answered, "I do not understand."The Master said, "It would be better if you could understand immediatelythrough inner experience. If it is expressed in words, it won't be ourteaching."¹³

TheTransmission of the Lampreports that after this episode at Wan-ling, the spirit of Huang-po's schoolbecame widespread south of the Yangtze River.¹⁴

This exchange brings out the essence of Huang-po's concerns.His most insistent conviction was that Ch'an cannot be taught, that it must besomehow gained intuitively. He was contemptuous of conceptual thought,believing it to be the greatest hindrance to achieving intuitive insight. Theproblem is the mistaken belief that Zen can somehow be taught and understood ifonly one grasps the concepts. But concepts only serve to obstruct intuition;Zen intuition can work only outside concepts. As Huang-po phrased it:

Since Zenwas first transmitted, it has never taught that men should seek for learning orform concepts. "Studying the Way" is just a figure of speech. It is amethod of arousing people's interest in the early stages of their development.In fact, the Way is not something which can be studied. Study leads to theretention of concepts and so the Way is entirely misunderstood.¹⁵

The use of the rational mind in the study of Ch'an is onlymeaningful at the beginning. But once the fish of intuitive insight has beensnared in the net of the rational mind's ken, the net must be discarded.Elsewhere he likens the extended use of analytical thought to the shoveling ofdung.¹⁶Concepts, it turns out, are only one of the mind's manyconstructs. The mind also provides our perception of concrete objects, thereby"creating" them to suit its needs.

Hills arehills. Water is water. Monks are monks. Laymen are laymen. But these mountains,these rivers, the whole world itself, together with the sun, moon, andstars—not one of them exists outside your minds! . . . Phenomena do not ariseindependently, but rely upon (the mental) environment (we create).¹⁷

Since reality is created by the mind, we will never know whatis "real" and what is illusion. Examples of this are commonplace. Theelectron is both a wave and a particle, depending upon our point of view. Whichis "reality"? Furthermore, concepts limit. By treating the worldusing rational constructs, we force it into a limited cage. But when we dealwith it directly, it is much more complex and authentic. To continue theexample, the electron may be something much more complex than either a wave ora particle, since it behaves at times like either or both. It may in fact besomething for which our rationality-bound mind has no "concept."

The illusory world we think we see around us, deceptivelybrought to us by our untrustworthy senses, leads us to conceptual thought andto logical categories as a means to attempt its "understanding." Theresulting intellectual turmoil is just the opposite of the tranquility that isCh'an. But avoidance of conceptual thought leads to a serene, direct, andmeaningful understanding of the world around us, without unsettling mentalinvolvement.

Ordinarypeople all indulge in conceptual thought based on environmental phenomena,hence they feel desire and hatred. To eliminate environmental phenomena, justput an end to your conceptual thinking. When this ceases, environmentalphenomena are void; and when these are void, thought ceases. But if you try toeliminate environment without first putting a stop to conceptual thought, youwill not succeed, but merely increase its power to disturb you.¹⁸

What isworse, reliance on misleading perception blocks out our experience of our ownpure mind.

People inthe world cannot identify their own mind. They believe that what they see, orhear, or feel, or know, is mind. They are blocked by the visual, the auditory,the tactile, and the mental, so they cannot see the brilliant spirit of theiroriginal mind.¹⁹

When he was asked why Zen students should not form conceptsas other people do, he replied, "Concepts are related to the senses, andwhen feeling takes place, wisdom is shut out."²⁰ Huang-po is soadamant against the deceiving world of the senses he even comes down hard onthe pleasures of the gourmet.

Thus,there is sensual eating and wise eating. When the body suffers the pangs ofhunger and accordingly you provide it with food, but without greed, that iscalled wise eating. On the other hand, if you gluttonously delight in purityand flavour, you are permitting the distinctions which arise from wrongthinking. Merely seeking to gratify the organ of taste without realizing whenyou have taken enough is called sensual eating.²¹

The pointhere seems to be that the use of the senses for pleasure is an abuse anddistracts one from the illusion of the world, which itself obscures our mindfrom us. The ideal man he describes in terms of one who can remain passive evenwhen confronted by a manifestation of good or of evil. He commends the personwho has the character to remain aloof, even when in the Buddhist heaven or theBuddhist hell:

If heshould behold the glorious sight of all the Buddhas coming to welcome him,surrounded by every kind of gorgeous manifestation, he would feel no desire toapproach them. If he should behold all sorts of horrific forms surrounding him,he would experience no terror. He would just be himself, oblivious ofconceptual thought and one with the Absolute. He would have attained the stateof unconditioned being.²²

Truth is elusive. It is impossible to find it by looking forit. And the world of the senses and the conceptual thought it engenders areactually impediments to discovering real truth. He provides an analogy in thestory of a man who searches abroad for something that he had all along.

Suppose awarrior, forgetting that he was already wearing his pearl on his forehead, wereto seek for it elsewhere, he could

travelthe whole world without finding it. But if someone who knew what was wrong wereto point it out to him, the warrior would immediately realize that the pearlhad been there all the time.²³

He concludesthat the warrior's finding his pearl had nothing to do with his searching forit, just as the final realization of intuitive wisdom has nothing to do withthe graduated practice of the traditional Buddhists.

So, ifyou students of the Way are mistaken about your own real Mind . . . you willindulge in various achievements and practices and expect to attain realizationby such graduated practices. But, even after aeons of diligent searching, youwill not be able to attain to the Way. These methods cannot be compared to thesudden elimination of conceptual thought, the certain knowledge that there isnothing at all which has absolute existence, nothing on which to lay hold,nothing on which to rely, nothing in which to abide, nothing subjective orobjective. It is by preventing the rise of conceptual thought that you willrealize Bodhi (enlightenment); and, when you do, you will just be realizing theBuddha who has always existed in your own Mind!²⁴

Thetraditional practices neither help nor hinder finding the way, since they areunrelated to the final flash of sudden enlightenment—which is in your mind fromthe beginning, ready to be released.

What then did he teach, if there is nothing to be taught? Theanswer seems to be to stop seeking, for only then does wisdom come.Furthermore, to study a doctrine of nonattachment puts you in the compromisingposition of becoming attached to nonattachment itself.

If youstudents of the Way wish to become Buddhas, you need study no doctrineswhatever, but learn only how to avoid seeking for and attaching yourselves toanything. . . . Relinquishment of everything is the Dharma, and he whounderstands this is a Buddha, but the relinquishment of ALL delusions leaves noDharma on which to lay hold.²⁵

But just howdoes Huang-po manage to practice what he preaches?

. . .[M]ost students of Zen cling to all sorts of sounds and forms. Why do they notcopy me by letting each thought go as though it were nothing, or as though itwere a piece of rotten wood, a stone, or the cold ashes of a dead fire? Orelse, by just making whatever slight response is suited to each occasion?²⁶

His final admonitions were organized by Pei Hsiu andsummarized in the following list, reported as Huang-po's answer to the questionof what guidance he had to offer those who found his teaching difficult.

I haveNOTHING to offer. . . . All you need to remember are the following:

First,learn how to be entirely unreceptive to sensations arising from external forms,thereby purging your bodies of receptivity to externals.

Second,learn not to pay attention to any distinctions between this and that arisingfrom your sensations, thereby purging your bodies of useless discernmentsbetween one phenomenon and another.

Third,take great care to avoid discriminating in terms of pleasant and unpleasantsensations, thereby purging your bodies of vain discriminations.

Fourth,avoid pondering things in your mind, thereby purging your bodies ofdiscriminatory cognition.²⁷

Huang-po struggled mightily with the problem of transmission.Since the doctrine was passed "mind-to-mind," he was obliged to finda transmission that somehow circumvented the need for words, something to bringa novice up against his own original nature. His contribution here was notrevolutionary: He mainly advocated the techniques perfected by Ma-tsu,including roars and shouts, beatings, calling out a disciple's nameunexpectedly, or just remaining silent at a critical moment to underscore theinability of words to assist. He also used the technique of continuallycontradicting a pupil, until the pupil finally realized that all his talkinghad been just so many obscuring concepts.

But just what was this mind that was being transmitted? Hisanswer was that nothing was transmitted, since the whole point was just to jarloose the intuition of the person being "taught."

OnceHuang-po was asked, "If you say that mind can be transmitted, then how canyou say it is nothing?" He answered, "To achieve nothing is to havethe mind transmitted to you." The questioner pressed, "If there isnothing and no mind, then how can it be transmitted?" Huang-po answered,"You have heard the expression 'transmission of the mind' and so you thinkthere must be something transmitted. You are wrong. Thus Bodhidharma said thatwhen the nature of the mind is realized, it is not possible to express itverbally. Clearly, then, nothing is obtained in the transmission of the mind,or if anything is obtained, it is certainly not knowledge."²⁸

He finallyconcludes that the subject cannot really even be discussed, since there are noterms for the process that transpires. Just as sunyata—that"emptiness" or Void whose existence means that conceptual thought isempty and rational constructs inadequate—is not something that can betransmitted as a concept, so too is the Dharma or teaching, as well as Mind,that essence we share with a larger reality. Even statements that concepts arepointless must fall back on language and consequently are actually themselvesmerely make-do approximations, as are all descriptions of the process oftransmission. He finally gives up on words entirely, declaring that none of theterms he has used has any meaning.

Atransmission of Void cannot be made through words. A transmission in concreteterms cannot be the Dharma. . . In fact, however, Mind is not Mind andtransmission is not really transmission.²⁹

He was working on the very real problem of the transmissionof understanding that operates in a part of the mind where speech and logiccannot enter. As John Wu has pointed out, in a sense Huang-po had come backfull circle to the insights of Chuang Tzu: good and evil are meaningless;intuitive knowledge is more profound than speech-bound logic; there is anunderlying unity (for Chuang Tzu it was the Tao or Way; for Huang-po, theUniversal Mind) that represents the ineffable absolute.³⁰

In effect, Huang-po laid it all out, cleared the way, anddefined Ch'an once and for all. The Perennial Philosophy was never morestrongly stated. The experimental age of Ch'an thus drew to a close, its jobfinished. With his death at the midpoint of the ninth century, there was littlemore to be invented.³¹ It was time now for Ch'an to formalize itsdialectic, as well as to meet society and make its mark in the world. The firstwas taken care of by Huang-po's star pupil, Lin-chi, and the second wasprecipitated by the forces of destiny.

The death of Huang-po coincided with a critical instant inChinese history whose consequences for future generations were enormous. Oncebefore Chinese politics had affected Ch'an, producing a situation in whichSouthern Ch'an would steal the march on Northern Ch'an. And now anothertraumatic episode in Chinese affairs would effectively destroy all Buddhistsects except Southern Ch'an, leaving the way clear for this pursuit ofintuitive wisdom—once relegated to wandering teachers of dhyana—tobecome the only vital Buddhist sect left in China.

As noted previously, resentment toward Buddhism had alwayssmoldered in Chinese society. Periodically the conservative Chinese tried todrive this foreign belief system from their soil, or failing that, at least tobring it under control. The usual complaints revolved around the monasteries'holdings of tax-free lands, their removal of able-bodied men and women fromsociety into nonproductive monastic life, and the monastic vows of celibacy soantithetical to the Chinese ideals of the family.

The Ch'an monasteries, deliberately or not, worked hard todefuse many of these complaints. Indeed, some would say that Ch'an managed tochange Buddhism into something the Chinese could partially stomach. Ch'anistswere just the opposite of parasitical on society, since they practiced Po-changHuai-hai's injunction of a day without work being a day without food. Also, theunthinking piety of traditional Buddhists was reviled by Ch'anists.Furthermore, Ch'an dispensed with much of the rigmarole and paraphernaliafavored by the Buddhist sects that stuck to its Indian origins more closely.

The resentment felt toward Buddhists was summarized in adocument issued in 819 by a scholar-bureaucrat named Han Yu.³²Hisrecital of Buddhism's failings came down particularly hard on the fact that theBuddha had not been Chinese. Han Yu advocated a complete suppression of thispernicious establishment: "Restore its people to human living! Burn itsbooks! And convert its buildings to human dwellings!"³³ Asresentment toward the worldly influence of Buddhism grew during the ninthcentury, there came to power an emperor who decided to act.

The Emperor Wu-tsang (r. 841-46) is now thought to have gonemad as a prelude to his persecution of the Buddhists. But his edicts wereeffective nonetheless. The state had begun tightening its grip on Buddhism whenhe came into power in 841, but in August 845 he issued the edict thatultimately had the effect of destroying traditional Buddhism and urbanizedNorthern Ch'an in China. Over a period of two years he destroyed 4,600 bigtemples and monasteries and over 40,000 smaller temples and retreats. He freed150,000 male and female slaves or temple attendants and evicted some 265,000monks and nuns, forcing them back into secular life. (This was out of a totalChinese population estimated to be around 27 million.) And not incidentally,the state reclaimed several million acres of property that had belonged to themonasteries. The effect of this was to obliterate virtually all the greatBuddhist establishments, including the Buddhist strongholds in the capitals ofChang-an and Loyang, which were reduced to only two temples and thirty monks ineach of the two cities.³⁴

The irony of the Great Persecution was that it actuallyseemed to invigorate Southern Ch'an. For one thing, these rural Ch'an teachershad long been iconoclasts and outcasts themselves, as they disownedostentatious temples and even the scriptures. Almost as much a philosophy as a religion,Southern Ch'an had long known how to do without imperial favor and largess. Andwhen a further edict came down demanding that all Buddhist paraphernalia,including statues and paintings, be burned, the outcast Ch'an monasteries hadthe least to lose, since they had even done a bit of burning themselves—if weare to believe the story of Tan-hsia (738-824), a famous Ch'an monk who onceburned a Buddhist statue for warmth. Southern Ch'an teachers just melted for atime back into secular life, from which they had never been far in any case.³⁵

The result of all this was that after 846 the only sect ofBuddhism with any strength at all was rural Ch'an. Chinese Buddhism literallybecame synonymous with Southern Ch'an—a far cry from the almost fugitive existenceof the sect in earlier years. And when Buddhism became fashionable again duringthe Sung, Southern Ch'an became a house religion, as Northern had once been.The result was that Ch'an gradually lost its iconoclastic character. But out ofthis last phase of Ch'an developed one of the most powerful tools ever forenlightenment, the famous Zen koan, whose creation preserved something out ofthe dynamism of Ch'an's early centuries.

PART III

SECTARIANISMAND THE KOAN

. . . inwhich the Ch'an movement diversifies into a variety of schools, each beholdento a master or masters advocating an individualized path to enlightenment. Fromthis period of personality and experimentation gradually emerge two main Ch'anpaths, the Lin-chi and the Ts'ao-tung (later called Rinzai and Soto in Japan).The Lin-chi school concludes that enlightenment can be precipitated in aprepared novice through shouts, jolts, and mental paradoxes. The Ts'ao-tungrelies more heavily on the traditional practice of meditation to graduallyrelease enlightenment. The faith grows in numbers, but quality declines. Tomaintain Ch'an's intellectual vigor, there emerges a new technique, called thekoan, which uses episodes from Ch'an's Golden Age to challenge novices' mentalcomplacency. This invention becomes the hallmark of the later Lin-chi sect, andthrough the refinement of the koan technique Ch'an enjoys a renaissance ofcreativity in China.

Chapter Eleven

LIN-CHI:

FOUNDER OF RINZAI ZEN

The GreatPersecution of 845 brought to a close the creative Golden Age of Ch'an, whilealso leaving Ch'an as the dominant form of Chinese Buddhism. In the absence ofan establishment Buddhism for Ch'an to distinguish itself against, the sectproceeded to evolve its own internal sectarianism. There arose what are todayknown as the "five houses," regional versions of Ch'an that differedin minor but significant ways.¹ Yet there was no animosity among theschools, merely a friendly rivalry. In fact, the teachers themselves referredback to the prophecy attributed to Bodhidharma that the flower of dhyanaBuddhism would one day have five petals.

The masters who founded the five schools were allindividualists of idiosyncratic character. Yet the times were such that for themost part their flowers bloomed gloriously only a few decades before slowlyfading. However, two of the sects did prosper and eventually went on to takeover the garden. These two houses, the Lin-chi and the Ts'ao-tung, both wereconcerned with dialectics and became the forerunners of the two Zen sects(Rinzai and Soto) eventually to flourish in Japan. Of the two, the Lin-chi ismost directly traceable back to the earlier masters, since its founder actuallystudied under the master Huang-po.

The master known today as Lin-chi (d. 866?) was born in theprefecture of Nan-hua, in what today is Shantung province.² Hereportedly was brilliant, well behaved, and filled with the filial devotionexpected of good Chinese boys. Drawn early to Buddhism, although notnecessarily to Ch'an, he shaved his head and became a monk while still young.His early studies were of the sutras, as well as the vinaya or Buddhistrules and the sastra or commentaries. But in his early twenties he decidedthat he was

moreinterested in intuitive wisdom than orthodoxy and consequently took the road insearch of a master.

Thus he arrived at the monastery of Huang-po already a fullyordained monk. But his learning was traditional and his personality that of atimorous fledgling monk. For three years he dutifully attended the master'ssermons and practiced all the observances of the mountain community, but hisadvancement was minimal. Finally the head disciple suggested that he visitHuang-po for an interview to try to gain insight. The young man obligingly wentin to see the master and asked him the standard opener: "What is the realmeaning of Bodhidharma's coming from the West?" Huang-po's wordlessresponse was to lay him low with a blow of his stick.

Lin-chi scurried away in perplexity and related the story tothe head disciple, who encouraged him to return, which he did twice more. Buteach time he received the same harsh reception. He was finally so demoralizedthat he announced plans to leave the monastery and seek enlightenmentelsewhere. The head monk related this to Huang-po together with the opinionthat this young novice showed significant promise. So when Lin-chi came to bidHuang-po farewell, the master sympathetically directed him to the monastery ofa kindly nearby teacher, the master Ta-yu.

Perhaps it was all planned, but when Lin-chi arrived at thesecond monastery and related his unhappy treatment at the hands of Huang-po themaster Ta-yu listened patiently and then declared, "Huang-po treated youwith great compassion. He merely wanted to relieve your distress." Uponhearing this Lin-chi suddenly understood that Huang-po was transmitting thewordless insight to him, the understanding that Ch'an lies not in the wordsproduced in the abbot's room but rather in the realization of his intuitivemind. It suddenly was all so obvious that the young monk could not contain hisjoy and declared, "So Huang-po's Buddhism is actually very simple; there'snothing to it after all!" This struck the master Ta-yu as eitherimpertinent or a significant breakthrough, so he grabbed Lin-chi and yelled,"You scamp! A minute ago you complained that Huang-po's teaching wasimpossible to understand and now you say there is nothing to it. What is it youjust realized? Speak quickly!" (Only in a spontaneous utterance is therereal, uncalculated evidence of enlightenment.)

Lin-chi's answer was to pummel Ta-yu in the ribs three timeswith his fist. The older master then discharged him (or perhaps kicked him out)with the observation, "Your teacher is Huang-po, and therefore you do notconcern me." Thus the enlightened young novice trudged back up themountain to Huang-po's monastery. The master greeted him with the puzzledobservation: "Haven't you come back a bit too soon? You only justleft." In response Lin-chi bowed and said, "It's because you've beenso kind to me that I came back so quickly," and he proceeded to relate thestory of his sudden enlightenment. To which Huang-po declared, "What a bigmouth that old man has. The next time I see him I'll give him a taste of mystaff." To this Lin-chi yelled, "Why wait! I can give it to younow," and proceeded to slap the master's face. The startled Huang-podeclared, "This crazy monk is plucking the tiger's whiskers."Whereupon Lin-chi emitted the first of what was to be a lifetime of shouts,affirming his wordless insight. The satisfied Huang-po called an attendant andsaid, "Take this crazy fellow to the assembly hall."

This is a perfect example of "sudden" enlightenmentthat took many years to achieve. Lin-chi had been a plodding, earnest young manuntil the moment of his "sudden" enlightenment, which occurred over aseemingly uncalculated remark by a teacher not even his own master. In fact,all Huang-po had done was to assail him with a staff. But Lin-chi wastransformed suddenly from a milksop to the founder of a school, probably thegreatest radicalization since the Apostle Paul was struck down on the road toDamascus.³ Still, Lin-chi's "sudden" enlightenment hadcome about at the end of a highly disciplined period of preparation. As helater described it:

In bygonedays I devoted myself to the vinaya and also delved into the sutras and sastras.Later, when I realized that they were medicines for salvation and displays of doctrinesin written words, I once and for all threw them away, and searching for theWay, I practiced meditation. Still later I met great teachers. Then it was,with my Dharma Eye becoming clear, that I could discern all the old teachersunder Heaven and tell the false ones from the true. It is not that I understoodfrom the moment I was born of my mother, but that, after exhaustiveinvestigation and grinding discipline, in an instant I knew of myself.⁴

Likea reformed addict, he railed most against his own recent practices. Heproceeded to denounce all the trappings of Buddhism, even the Ch'an Patriarchsthemselves, as he shattered the chains of his former beliefs:

Followersof the Way, if you want insight into Dharma as is, just don't be taken in bythe deluded views of others. Whatever you encounter, either within or without,slay it at once: on meeting a buddha slay the buddha, on meeting a patriarchslay the patriarch, on meeting an arhat slay the arhat, on meeting your parentsslay your parents, on meeting your kinsman slay your kinsman, and you attainemancipation. By not cleaving to things, you freely pass through.⁵

After his enlightenment, he had many exchanges with Huang-poin which he came off ahead as often as not. It is also interesting that many ofthe interactions involved the manual labor of the monastery, an indication ofthe significance of work in Ch'an life. One famous joust between Lin-chi andHuang-po went as follows:

One day Master Lin-chi went with Huang-po to do some work inwhich all the monks participated. Lin-chi followed his master who, turning hishead, noticed that Lin-chi was carrying nothing in his hand.

"Where is your hoe?"

"Somebody took it away."

"Come here: let us discuss something," commandedHuang-po and as Lin-chi drew nearer, he thrust his hoe into the ground andcontinued, "There is no one in the world who can pick up my hoe."

However, Lin-chi seized the tool, lifted it up, andexclaimed, "How then could it be in my hands?"

"Today we have another hand with us; it is not necessaryfor me to join in."

And Huang-po returned to the temple.⁶

Thisstory can be interpreted many ways. John Wu says, "Obviously he was usingthe hoe as a pointer to the great function of teaching and transmitting thelamp of Ch'an. . . . [This was] a symbolic way of saying that in a mysteriousmanner the charge was now in his hands."⁷ However, as Freudonce remarked concerning the celebrated phallic symbolism of his stogie,"Sometimes, madam, it's just a cigar," and one suspects that in thislittle slapstick episode, the hoe might possibly be just a hoe.

Another exchange between Huang-po and Lin-chi may have moredialectical significance. According to the story:

One day Huang-po ordered all the monks of the temple to workin the tea garden. He himself was the last to arrive. Lin-chi greeted him, butstood there with his hands resting on the hoe.

"Are you tired?" asked Huang-po

"I just started working; how can you say that I amtired?"

Huang-po immediately lifted his stick and struck Lin-chi, whothen seized the stick, and with a push, made his master fall to the ground.Huang-po called the supervisor to help him up. After doing so, the supervisorasked, "Master, how can you let such a madman insult you like that?"Huang-po picked up the stick and struck the supervisor. Lin-chi, digging theground by himself, made this remark: "Let all other places use cremation; here I will bury youalive."⁸

Of Lin-chi's final quip, which tends to take the edge off areally first-rate absurdist anecdote, John Wu makes the following observation,"This was a tremendous utterance, the first authentic roaring, as it were,of a young lion. It was tantamount to declaring that his old conventional selfwas now dead and buried, with only the True Self living in him; that this deathmay and should take place long before one's physical decease; that it is whenthis death has taken place that one becomes one's True Self which, beingunborn, cannot die. From that time on, there could no longer be any doubt in Huang-po'smind that his disciple was thoroughly enlightened, destined to carry on andbrighten the torch of Ch'an."⁹Whether this is true or not, itdoes seem clear that Lin-chi's pronounced personality appealed to old Huang-po,who loved to match wits with him as he came and went around the monastery. Heeven allowed the young master liberties he denied others. For example, Lin-chionce showed up during the middle of a summer meditation retreat, somethingstrictly forbidden. He then decided to leave before it was over, somethingequally unprecedented:

One day after half the summer session had already passed,Lin-chi went up the mountain to visit his master Huang-po whom he found readinga sutra. Lin-chi said to him:

"I thought you were the perfect man, but here you areapparently a dull old monk, swallowing black beans [Chinese characters]."

Lin-chi stayed only a few days and then bid farewell toHuang-po, who said:

"You came here after the summer session had started, andnow you are leaving before the summer session is over."

"I came here simply to visit you, Master!"

Without ado, Huang-po struck him and chased him away. Afterhaving walked a few li, Lin-chi began to doubt his enlightenment in Ch'an, sohe returned to Huang-po for the rest of the summer.¹⁰

Some time after Lin-chi received the seal of enlightenmentfrom Huang-po, he decided to go his own way and departed for the province ofHopei, where he became the priest of a small temple on the banks of a river.This little temple was called "Overlooking the Ford," or lin-chiin Chinese, and it was from this locale that he took his name. After he wasthere for a time, however, some local fighting broke out, forcing him toabandon his pastoral riverbank location. (This disturbance may well have beenconnected with the disruptions of the 845 persecution of Buddhism.) But evenwhen in the middle of a war he seems to have always been a man of Ch'an. Thereis an episode that strongly resembles the eighteenth-century essayist Dr.Samuel Johnson's kicking a stone to refute Berkeley's proposition that matteris nonexistent:

One day the Master entered an army camp to attend a feast. Atthe gate he saw a staff officer. Pointing to an open-air pillar, he asked:"Is this secular or sacred?"

The officer had no reply.

Striking the pillar, the Master said: "Even if you couldspeak, this is still only a wooden post." Then he went in.¹¹

Fortunately, Ch'an was not a sect that required a lot ofparaphernalia, and Lin-chi merely moved into the nearby town, where the grandmarshal donated his house for a temple. He even hung up a plaque with the name"Lin-chi," just to make the master feel at home. But things may haveheated up too much, for Lin-chi later traveled south to the prefecture of Ho,where the governor, Counselor Wang, honored him as a master. There is a tellingconversation between the two that reveals much about the teaching of Ch'an atthe time. Apparently the Ch'anists had completely abandoned even any pretenseof traditional Buddhism—again a fortuitous development, considering traditionalBuddhism's imminent destruction.

One day the Counselor Wang visited the Master. When he metthe Master in front of the Monks' Hall, he asked: "Do the monks of thismonastery read the sutras?"

"No, they don't read sutras," said the Master.

"Then do they learn meditation?" asked theCounselor.

"No, they don't learn meditation," answered theMaster.

"If they neither read sutras nor learn meditation, whatin the world are they doing?" asked the Counselor.

"All I do is make them become buddhas andpatriarchs," said the Master.¹²

Lin-chi eventually traveled on, finally settling at theHsing-hua temple in Taming prefecture, where he took up his final residence. Itwas here that a record of his sermons was transcribed by a "humbleheir" named Ts'un-chiang. The result was The Record of Lin-chi, oneof the purest exercises in the dialectics of the nondialectical understanding.But, as Heinrich Dumoulin observed, "Zen has never existed in pureexperience only, without admixture of theoretical teachings or methodicalpractice, as it has sometimes been idealized. It could not exist in thatfashion, for mysticism, like all other human experience, is dependent on theactual conditions of human life."¹³ Indeed, Lin-chi was one ofthe first to develop what might be called a dialectic of irrationality. Heloved categories and analysis in the service of nonconceptual inquiry, and whathe created were guides to the uncharted seas of the intuitive mind.

Lin-chi is best known for his use of the shout. He shared theconcern of Huang-po and Ma-tsu with the problem of wordless transmission and totheir repertory of beatings and silences he added the yell, another way toaffirm insights that cannot be reasoned. We may speculate that the shout wasrather like a watered-down version of the beating, requiring less effort butstill able to startle at a critical instant.¹⁴ He seems to have beenparticularly fond of classifying things into groups of four, and one of hismost famous classifications was of the shout itself. He once demonstrated theshout to a hapless monk as follows:

The Master asked a monk: "Sometimes a shout is like thejeweled sword of a spirit King [i.e., extremely hard and durable]; sometimes ashout is like the golden-haired lion crouching on the ground [i.e., strong,taut, and powerful]; sometimes a shout is like a weed-tipped fishing pole[i.e., probing and attracting the unwary]; and sometimes a shout doesn'tfunction as a shout. How do you understand this?"

As the monk fumbled for an answer, Lin-chi gave a shout.¹⁵

Hisphilosophy of the shout as a device for cutting off sequential reasoning wasthus demonstrated by example. But the question those who relate this storynever resolve is: Which of the four shouts was the shout he used on the student?[John Wu in The Golden Age of Zen speculates that this shout was of thefirst category, since it was meant to "cut off" the monk's sequentialthought, but that seems a rather simplistic mixing of the metaphorical with theconcrete.¹⁶)

Lin-chi also was not averse to the use of the stick in the pursuit of reality,as the following example illustrates. The story also shows that the use of thestick was meaningful only if it was unexpected.

Once the Master addressed the assembly.

"Listen, all of you! He who wants to learn Dharma mustnever worry about the loss of his own life. When I was with Master Huang-po Iasked three times for the real meaning of Buddhism, and three times I wasstruck as if tall reeds whipped me in the wind. I want those blows again, butwho can give them to me now?"

A monk came forth from the crowd, answering: "I can givethem to you!"

Master Lin-chi picked up a stick and handed it to him. Whenthe monk tried to grab it, the Master struck him instead.¹⁷

There alsois a story indicating that Lin-chi believed that when the shout failed to work,the stick might be required.

The Master took the high seat in the Hall. A monk asked,"What about the cardinal principle of the Buddha-dharma?"

The Master raised his whisk.

The monk shouted. The Master struck him.

Another monk asked: "What about the cardinal principleof the Buddha-dharma?"

Again the Master raised his whisk.

The monk shouted. The Master also shouted.

The monk faltered; the Master struck him.¹⁸

Yet anotherseries of exchanges sounds a similar theme.

The Master asked a monk, "Where do you come from?"

The monk shouted.

The master saluted him and motioned him to sit down. The monkhestitated. The Master hit him.

Seeing another monk coming, the Master raised his whisk.

The monk bowed low. The Master hit him.

Seeing still another monk coming, the Master again raised hiswhisk. The monk paid no attention. The Master hit him too.¹⁹

He was alsochallenged by a nun, one of the few recorded

instances ofa master actually matching wits with a woman who had taken Ch'an orders.

TheMaster asked a nun: "Well-come or ill-come?"

The nunshouted.

"Goon, go on, speak!" cried the Master, taking up his stick.

Again thenun shouted. The Master hit her.²⁰

What Lin-chi also brought to Ch'an was a dialectical inquiryinto the relationship between master and pupil, together with a similaranalysis of the mind states that lead to enlightenment. He seems remarkablysophisticated for the ninth century, and indeed we would be hard pressed tofind this kind of psychological analysis anywhere in the West that early. Thepuzzling, contradictory quality about all this is that Lin-chi believedfervently in intuitive intelligence, and in the uselessness of words—evenwarning that questions were irrelevant:

Doesanyone have a question? If so, let him ask it now. But the instant you openyour mouth you are already way off.²¹

Among his dialectical creations were various fourfoldcategorizations of the intangible. We have already seen his four categories ofthe shout. He also created the four categories of relationship between subjectand object, also sometimes called the Four Processes of Liberation fromSubjectivity and Objectivity. Some believe this served to structure the"four standpoints or points of view which Lin-chi used in instructing hisstudents."²² Lin-chi's original proposition, the basis of allthe later commentary, is provided in The Record of Lin-chi as follows:

At theevening gathering the Master addressed the assembly, saying: "Sometimes Itake away man and do not take away the surroundings; sometimes I take away thesurroundings and do not take away man; sometimes I take away both man and thesurroundings; sometimes I take away neither man nor the surroundings."²³

As Chang Chung-yuan describes these four arrangements, thefirst is to "take away the man but not his objective situation,"i.e., to take away all interpretation and just experience the world withoutsubjective associations.²⁴ (This is quite similar to the approach ofthe Japanese haiku poem, in which a description of something is providedcompletely devoid of interpretation or explicit emotional response.)

The second arrangement is to let the man remain but take awayobjectivity. As John Wu interprets this, "In the second stage, people ofnormal vision, who see mountains as mountains and rivers as rivers, must bereminded of the part that their own mind contributes to the appearance ofthings, and that what they naively take for objectivity is inextricably mixedwith subjectivity. Once aware of subjectivity, one is initiated into the firststages of Ch'an, when one no longer sees mountains as mountains and rivers asrivers."²⁵ This is merely the Ch'an commonplace that"non-attachment or objectivity liberates one's self from bondage to theoutside and thus leads to enlightenment."²⁶ As Dumoulindescribes these, "In the first and second stages, illusion departs firstfrom the subject and then from the object; clinging to subjective intellectualperception and to the objective world is overcome."²⁷

Lin-chi's third stage is to "take away both the man andhis objective situation. In other words, it is liberation from . . . theattachments of both subjectivity and objectivity. Lin-chi's famous 'Ho!' . . .often served this purpose."²⁸ In a blow of a master's staff ora shout there is nothing one can grasp, either objectively or subjectively.This is the next-to-last stage in the progression toward liberation from themind's tyranny.

In the fourth stage we find the final condition, in which objectivityand subjectivity cease to be distinguishable. What this means is that there isno intellectuation at all, that the world simply is. As Dumoulin declares,"reality is comprehended in its final oneness."²⁹ Or asthe story says: Before enlightenment, mountains are mountains and rivers arerivers; during the study of Zen, mountains are not mountains and rivers are notrivers; but when there finally is enlightenment, mountains are again mountainsand rivers are rivers. In this final state the distinction and confrontation ofsubject and object dissolve, as we are finally at one with the nameless world.

Another of Lin-chi's famous dialectical categories is his"Fourfold Relationship possible Between Questioner and Answerer or BetweenGuest and Host." The point of the structure he sets up is to elucidate theinteraction of master and novice, but he does so using metaphor of host andguest—where the host represents the universal Self and the guest the ego-formself.³⁰Lin-chi's sermon on the subject went as follows:

A true student gives a shout, and to start with holds out a

stickylacquer tray. The teacher, not discerning that this is an

objectivecirc*mstance, goes after it and performs a lot of antics with it. The studentagain shouts but still the teacher is unwilling to let go. This is . . . called"the guest examines the host."

Sometimes a teacher will proffer nothing, but the instant astudent asks a question, robs him of it. The student, having been robbed,resists to the death and will not let go; this is called "the hostexamines the guest."

Sometimes a student comes forth before a teacher inconformity with a state of purity. The teacher, discerning that this is anobjective circ*mstance, seizes it and flings it into a pit. "What anexcellent teacher!" exclaims the student, and the teacher replies,"Bah! You can't tell good from bad!" Thereupon the student makes adeep bow; this is called "the host examines the host."

Or again, a student will appear before a teacher wearing acangue and bound with chains. The teacher fastens on still more chains andcangues for him. The student is so delighted that he can't tell what is what:this is called "the guest examines the guest."³¹

In the first category, according to Chang Chung-yuan, the egomeets the universal Self.³² In the second category the universalSelf encounters the ego-form self. In the third category, the universal Self ofone meets the universal Self of another, and in the fourth category the ego ofone encounters the ego of another. Or if we are to interpret this in theconcrete, in the first encounter, an enlightened master meets an unenlightenednovice; in the second an enlightened novice meets an unenlightened master(which did happen); in the third an enlightened master meets an enlightened novice;and in the fourth category an unenlightened master meets an unenlightenednovice, to the mutual delusion of both.³³

Lin-chi has been called the most powerful master in theentire history of Ch'an, and not without reason. His mind was capable of operatingat several levels simultaneously, enabling him to overlay very practicalinstruction with a comprehensive dialectic. He believed in completespontaneity, total freedom of thought and deed, and a teaching approach thathas been called the "lightning" method—because it was swift andunpredictable. He was uncompromising in his approach, and he was also extremelycritical of the state of Ch'an in his time—a criticism probably justified. Hefound both monks and masters wanting. It seems that Ch' an had becomefashionable, with the result that there were

many masterswho were more followers of the trend than followers of the Way. So whereasHuang-po often railed against other sects of Buddhism, Lin-chi reserved his irefor other followers of Ch'an (there being few other Buddhist sects left tocriticize).

He even denounced his own students, who often mimicked hisshouting without perceiving his discernment in its use. He finally had to setstandards for this, announcing to the assembly one day that henceforth onlythose who could tell the enlightened from the unenlightened would have theright to shout.

"You all imitate my shouting," he said, "but let me give you atest now. One person comes out from the eastern hall. Another person comes outfrom the western hall. At their meeting, they simultaneously shout. Do youpossess enough discernment to distinguish the guest from the host [i.e., theunenlightened from the enlightened]? If you have no such discernment, you areforbidden hereafter to imitate my shouting.³⁴

His majorconcern seems to have been that his students resist intellection. Lin-chihimself was able to speculate philosophically while still a natural man, usingconceptual thought only when it served his purpose. But perhaps his studentscould not, for he constantly had to remind them that striving and learning werecounterproductive.

"Followersof Tao!" Lin-chi said, "the way of Buddhism admits of no artificialeffort; it only consists in doing the ordinary things without any fuss—going tothe stool, making water, putting on clothes, taking a meal, sleeping whentired. Let the fools laugh at me. Only the wise know what I mean."³⁵

Or as hesaid at another time:

Themoment a student blinks his eyes, he's already way off. The moment he tries tothink, he's already differed. The moment he arouses a thought, he's alreadydeviated. But for the man who understands, it's always right here before hiseyes.³⁶

The problem, he believed, was that too many teachers hadstarted "teaching" and explaining rather than forcing students toexperience truth for themselves. Thus these teachers had no right

to criticizetheir monks, since they themselves had failed in their responsibility.

There areteachers all around who can't distinguish the false from the true. Whenstudents come asking about . . . the [objective] surroundings and the[subjective] mind, the blind old teachers immediately start explaining to them.When they're railed at by the students they grab their sticks and hit them,[shouting], "What insolent talk!" Obviously you teachers yourselvesare without an eye so you've no right to get angry with them.³⁷

And finally, in his old age, Lin-chi became something of amonument himself, a testing point for enlightenment in a world where true teacherswere rare. He even complained about it.

Hearingeverywhere of old man Lin-chi, you come here intending to bait me withdifficult questions and make it impossible for me to answer. Faced with ademonstration of the activity of my whole body, you students just stare blanklyand can't move your mouths at all; you're at such a loss you don't know how toanswer me. You go around everywhere thumping your own chests and whacking yourown ribs, saying, "I understand Ch'an! I understand the Way!" But lettwo or three of you come here and you can't do a thing. Bah! Carrying that bodyand mind of yours, you go around everywhere flapping your lips like winnowingfans and deceiving villagers.³⁸

His school prospered, becoming the leading expression ofCh'an in China as well as a vital force in the Zen that later arose amongJapan's samurai. And his dialectical teachings became the philosophical basisfor later Zen, something he himself probably would have deplored. (Laterteachers seem to have given Lin-chi's categories more importance than heactually intended, for he professed to loathe systems and was in fact much moreconcerned with enlightenment as pure experience.) In any case, when he decidedthat his days were through he put on his finest robes, seated himself in themeditation posture, made a brief statement, and passed on. The year is said tohave been 866 or 867.

Chapter Twelve

TUNG-SHAN AND TS’AO-SHAN:

FOUNDERS OF SOTO ZEN

Tung-shan

Virtuallyall the masters encountered up to this point have been traceable to Ma-tsu,descendant in Dharma of the legendary Huai-jang and his master, the SixthPatriarch, Hui-neng. This was the line that became Japanese Rinzai Zen, manycenturies later. However, Hui-neng had another follower, a shadowy figureremembered as Ch'ing-yuan Hsing-ssu (d. 740) whose line also was perpetuated topresent-day Japan.¹ His foremost pupil was Shih-t'ou (700-90), and acommon description of the eighth-cen- tury Ch'an establishment was: "InKiangsi the master was Ma-tsu; in Hunan the master was Shih-t'ou. People wentback and forth between them all the time, and those who never met these twogreat masters were completely ignorant."² Shih-t'ou joustedwith Ma-tsu, and they often swapped students. Ma-tsu sent his pupils on theirway with a wink and the advice that Shih-t'ou was "slippery."³This legendary master was forebear of three of the five "houses" ofCh'an arising after the Great Persecution of 845, although the only one of thethree surviving is the Ts'ao-tung, which arose during the later T'ang (618-907)and early Five Dynasties (907-960) period and remains today as Japanese Soto.

One of the cofounders of the Ts'ao-tung house was known asTung-shan Liang-chieh (807-869), who was born in present day Chekiang buteventually found his way to what is now northern Kiangsi province.⁴As did most great masters, he took Buddhist orders early, and one of the mostenduring stories of his life has him confounding his elders—an event common tomany spiritual biographies. He began as a novice in the Vinaya sect, an

organizationoften more concerned with the letter of the law than its spirit. One day he wasasked to recite the Heart Sutra, but when he came to the phrase "There isno eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, or mind," he wonderingly touched his ownface and then inquired of his master, "I have eyes, ears, nose, tongue,and so forth; how, then, can the sutra say there are no such things?"⁵The Vinaya master was dumbfounded by his iconoclasm and suggested that his bentof mind would be more readily cultivated in the Ch'an sect. So off he went toMt. Sung, where he subsequently was ordained at the precocious age oftwenty-one.

Afterward he traveled across China, typical for young monksof the age. Ironically enough, considering that his line eventually rivaledMa-tsu's, his first stop was the monastery of Nan-ch'uan, one of the foremostdisciples of Ma-tsu. As he arrived, Nan-ch'uan was announcing a memorialservice to be conducted the next day on the anniversary of his master's death,a standard Chinese custom.

Nan-ch'uanremarked, "When we serve food for Master Ma-tsu tomorrow, I do wonderwhether he will come for it." None of the monks made a reply but[Tung-shan] came forth out of the crowd and said, "As soon as he hascompanions he will come." Hearing this, Nan-ch'uan praised him:"Although this man is young, he is worthy of being trained.'' [Tung-shan]said to him, "Master, you should not make a slave out of an honorableperson."⁶

Tung-shan studied briefly with Nan-ch'uan making a name forhimself in the process and then traveled on. He later landed at the monasteryof a teacher named Yun-yen, but after a successful period of study he announcedhis intention to again continue down the road. Yun-yen, however, protestedlosing his star pupil.

"After you leave here, it will be very hard for us tosee each other again," said Master Yun-yen.

"It will be very hard for us not to see each otheragain," answered [Tung-shan]. . . . Then Yun-yen said to him, "Youmust be very careful, as you are carrying this great thing."

[Tung-shan] was puzzled. Later when he was crossing the waterand saw his image reflected, he suddenly understood the teaching of Yun-yen.⁷

By the year 860 Tung-shan had a monastery of his own and wasbesieged by disciples. He subsequently moved to Tung-shan (Mt. Tung) in what istoday Kiangsi province, the locale that provided his historic name. His respectfor Yun-yen's enigmatic wisdom was explained years later.

One day, when the Master was conducting the annual memorialservice for Master Yun-yen, a monk asked him:

"What instruction did you receive from the late MasterYun-yen?"

"Although I was there with him, he gave me noinstruction," answered the Master.

"Then why should you conduct the memorial service forhim, if he did not instruct you?" persisted the monk. . . .

"It is neither for his moral character nor his teachingof Dharma that I respect him. What I consider important is that he never toldme anything openly."⁸

Yet Tung-shan does not seem completely against thecultivation of enlightenment, as were some of the other, more radicalCh'anists. Take, for example, the following reported encounter:

Agovernment officer wanted to know whether there was anyone approaching Ch'anthrough cultivation. The Master answered: "When you become a laborer, thenthere will be someone to do cultivation."⁹

The officer's question would have elicited a shout fromLin-chi, a blow from Huang-po, and advice from Chao-chou to go wash his ricebowl.

Although Tung-shan may have avoided the deliberateabsurdities of the Lin-chi masters, his utterances are often puzzlingnonetheless. Part of the reason is that he preferred the metaphor to theconcrete example. Unlike the repartee of the absurdist Lin-chi masters, his exchangesare not deliberately illogical. Instead we find a simple reluctance to sayanything straight. But if you follow the symbolic language, you realize it ismerely another clever way of never teaching with words, while still usinglanguage. His frequent speaking in metaphors can be appreciated by thefollowing exchange, which uses language emeshed in symbols.

Monk:"With what man of Tao should one associate, so that one will hearconstantly what one has never heard?"

TheMaster: "That which is under the same coverlet with you."

Monk:"This is still what you, Master, can hear yourself. What is it that onewill hear constantly which one has never heard?"

TheMaster: "It is not the same as wood and stone." . . .

Monk:"Who is he in our country that holds a sword in his hand?"

TheMaster: "It is Ts'ao-shan."

Monk:"Whom do you want to kill?"

The Master: "All those who are alive will die."

Monk: "When you happen to meet your parents, what should

you do?"

The Master: "Why should you have any choice?"

Monk: "How about yourself?"

The Master: "Who can do anything to me?"

Monk: "Why should you not kill yourself, too?"

The Master: "There is no place on which I can lay myhands."¹⁰

The Ch'an teachers deliberately avoided specifics, sincethese might cause students to start worrying about the precise definition ofwords and end up bogged down in conceptual quandries, neglecting their realnature—which cannot be reached using words.¹¹ But further than this,the monk thinks he will trap the master by asking him if his injunction to killincludes his own parents. (Remember Lin-chi's "On meeting your parents,slay your parents.") But Tung-shan answered by accusing themonk—indirectly—of making discriminations. As for self-murder, Tung- shanmaintains his immaterial self-nature is indestructible.¹²

The dialectic of Tung-shan, subsequently elaborated by hisstar pupil, Ts'ao-shan, represents one of the last great expressions of Chinesemetaphysical thought. He defined a system of five positions or relationsbetween the Particular or Relative and the Universal or Absolute, defined asfollows.¹³

In the first state, called the Universal within theParticular, the Absolute is hidden and obscured by our preoccupation with theworld of appearances. However, the world of appearances is in fact a part ofthe larger world of Absolute reality. When we have achieved a trueunderstanding of the objective world we realize that it is no more real thanour senses make it, and consequently it represents not absolute reality butmerely our perception. This realization leads to the second phase.

In the second state, called the Particular within theUniversal, we recognize that objective reality must always be perceived throughour subjective apparatus, just as the Absolute must be approached through therelative, since all particularities merely exemplify the Absolute. Even goodand bad are part of this same Universality. It is all real, but simply that—novalues are attached, since it is all part of existence. This, says the scholarJohn Wu, is the state of enlightenment.¹⁴

In dialectical terms, this rounds out the comparison of theParticular and the Universal, with each shown to be part of the other. But theymust ultimately be resolved back into sunyata, the Void that encompasseseverything. Neither the Universal or Absolute, nor the particulars that give itphysical form, are the ultimate reality. They both are merely systems in theall-encompassing Void.

The third and fourth stages he defines exemplify achievingenlightenment by Universality alone and achieving enlightenment byParticularity alone. The third stage, enlightenment through Universality, leadsone to meditate on the Absolute, upon the single wordless truth that definesthe particular around us as part of itself. (It sounds remarkably similar tothe Tao.) This meditation is done without props, language, or any of thephysical world (the particular) surrounding us.

Enlightenment through the Particular, through experience withthe phenomenal world, was the fourth stage. This received the most attentionfrom the Lin-chi sect—whose masters would answer the question "What is themeaning of Ch'an?" with "The cypress tree in the courtyard" or"Three pounds of flax."¹⁵

At the fifth stage, enlightenment reaches the Void, the statethat cannot be contained in a concept, since all concepts are inside it. Whenyou finally reach this state of wordless insight, you realize that both wordsand wordlessness are merely part of this larger reality. Action and nonactionare equally legitimate responses to the world. Tung-shan demonstrated this whenhe was asked, "When a snake is swallowing a frog, should you save thefrog's life?" To this he answered, "To save the frog is to be blind[i.e., to ultimate oneness and therefore to discriminate between frog andsnake]; not to save the frog is not to let form and shadow appear [i.e., toignore the phenomena].¹⁶ Perhaps Tung-shan was demonstrating that hewas free of discrimination between either option.¹⁷

The question of the subjective and the objective, the Universaland the Particular, permeated Tung-shan's teachings.

Once the Master asked a monk what his name was. The monkanswered that his name was so-and-so. The Master then asked: "What one isyour real self?"

"The one who is just facing you."

"What a pity! What a pity! The men of the present dayare all like this. They take what is in the front of an ass or at the back of ahorse and call it themselves. This illustrates the downfall of Buddhism. If youcannot recognize your real self objectively, how can you see your real selfsubjectively?"

"How do you see your real self subjectively?" themonk immediately asked.

"You have to tell me that yourself."

"If I were to tell you myself, it would be seeing myselfobjectively. What is the self that is known subjectively?"

"To talk about it in such a way is easy to do, but tocontinue our talking makes it impossible to reach the truth."¹⁸

There also is a poem, known as the Pao-ching San-mei,traditionally attributed to Tung-shan.¹⁹ One quatrain will give theflavor of the verse:

The manof wood sings,

The womanof stone gets up and dances,

Thiscannot be done by passion or learning,

It cannotbe done by reasoning.²⁰

This hasbeen interpreted as the idea of Universality penetrating into Particularity.The wooden man singing and the stone maiden dancing are explained as evidenceof the power of Universality.²¹Tung-shan had a number ofdistinguishing qualities. He often used Taoist language in his teachings,quoting Chuang Tzu to make a point. Reportedly he never used the shout or thestick to shock a novice into self-awareness. And whereas his dialogues oftenused metaphors that at first appear obscure, there are never the deliberateabsurdities of the Lin-chi masters, who frequently answered a perfectly reasonablequestion with a deliberate inanity merely to demonstrate the absurdity ofwords. Unlike the Lin-chi masters, he seems less concerned with the process oftransmission than with what exactly is transmitted. Tung-shan viewed words asdid Chuang Tzu, namely as the net in which to catch the fish. Whereas theLin-chi masters viewed enlightenment as a totality, Tung-shan teachers believedthat enlightenment arrived in stages, and they were concerned with identifyingwhat these stages were. This was, in fact, the purpose of his five categoriesof Particularity and Universality, which became a part of the historicdialectic of Zen enlightenment. Ironically, with the emergence of the idea ofstages, we seem back to a concept of "gradual" enlightenment—arrivedat because the Chinese mind could not resist theoretical speculations.

Tung-shan's deathbed scene was almost worthy of comic opera.One day in the third month of 869 he made known his resolve to die and, shavinghis head and donning his formal robes, ordered the gong to be struck as heseated himself in meditation. But his disciples began sobbing so disturbinglythat he finally despaired of dying in peace and, opening his eyes, chided them.

Those whoare Buddhists should not attach themselves to externalities. This is the realself-cultivation. In living they work hard; in death they are at rest. Whyshould there be any grief?²²

He theninstructed the head monk to prepare "offerings of food to ignorance"for everyone at the monastery, intending to shame all those who still clung tothe emotions of the flesh. The monks took a full week to prepare the meal,knowing it was to be his last supper. And sure enough, upon dining he bade themfarewell and, after a ceremonial bath, passed on.

The most famous disciple of Tung-shan, Master Ts'ao-shan(840-901), was born as Pen-chi on the f*ckien coast. Passing through an earlyinterest in Confucianism, he left home at nineteen and became a Buddhist. Hewas ordained at age twenty-five and seems to have found frequent occasion toVisit Tung-shan. Then one day they had an encounter that catapulted Ts'ao-shaninto the position of favored pupil. The exchange began with a question byTung-shan:

"Whatis your name?"

"Myname is [Ts'ao-shan]."

"Saysomething toward Ultimate Reality."

"Iwill not say anything."

"Whydon't you speak of it?"

"Itis not called [Ts'ao-shan]."²³

It is saidthat Tung-shan gave Ts'ao-shan private instruction after this and regarded hiscapability highly. The anecdote, if we may venture a guess, seems to assertthat the Universal cannot be reached through language, and hence he could onlyconverse about his objective, physical form.

After several years of study, Ts'ao-shan decided to strikeout on his own, and he announced this intention to Tung-shan. The older masterthen inquired:

"Whereare you going?"

"Igo where it is changeless."

"Howcan you go where it is changeless?"

"Mygoing is no change.”²⁴

Ts'ao-shansubsequently left his master and went wandering and teaching. Finally, in latesummer of 901, the story says that Ts'ao-shan one evening inquired about thedate, and early the next morning he died.

Although the recorded exchanges between Tung-shan andTs'ao-shan are limited to the two rather brief encounters given, the youngermaster actually seems to have been the moving force behind the dialecticalconstructions of the Ts'ao-tung school. The ancient records, such as TheTransmission of the Lamp, all declare that Ts'ao-shan was inspired by theFive States of Universality and Particularity to become a great Buddhist. AsDumoulin judges, "It was [Ts'ao-shan] who first, in the spirit of and inaccordance with the master's teachings, arranged the five ranks in theirtransmuted form and explained them in many ways. . . . The fundamentalprinciples, however, stem from [Tung-shan], who for that reason must beconsidered to be their originator."²⁵

The ultimate concern of both the Ts'ao-tung and Lin-chidoctrines was enlightenment. The difference was that Ts'ao-tung mastersbelieved quiet meditation was the way, rather than the mind-shatteringtechniques of Lin-chi. Ts'ao-tung (Soto Zen) strives to soothe the spiritrather than deliberately instigate psychic turmoil, as sometimes does theLin-chi (Rinzai). The aim is to be in the world but not of it; to occupy thephysical world but transcend it mentally, aloof and serene.

A further difference has been identified by the Britishscholar Sir Charles Eliot, who concludes that whereas Lin-chi "regards theknowledge of the Buddha nature ... as an end in itself, all-satisfying andall-engrossing, the [Ts'ao-tung] . . . held that it is necessary to haveenlightenment after Enlightenment, that is to say that the inner illuminationmust display itself in a good life."²⁶Thus Eliot suggests theTs'ao-tung took something of an interest in what you do, in distinction to theLin-chi school, which preferred to focus on inner wisdom.

The Ts'ao-tung sect, at least in its early forms, was fullyas dialectical in outlook as was the Lin-chi. In this it was merely carryingon, to some extent, the example of its forebear Shih-t'ou, who was himselfremembered as deeply interested in theoretical and intellectual speculations.Today the Ts'ao-tung sect is differentiated from the Lin-chi primarily by itsmethods for teaching novices. There is no disagreement about the goal, merelyabout the path.

It is interesting that the whole business of the Five Ranksseems not to have survived the Sung Dynasty. Ts'ao-tung's real contribution wasessentially to revive the approach of Northern Ch'an, with its stress onmeditation, intellectual inquiry, stages of enlightenment, and the idea thatCh'an is not entirely inner- directed but may also have some place in the worldat large. This is the real achievement of Ts'ao-tung, and the quality thatenabled it to survive and become Soto.

Chapter Thirteen

KUEI-SHAN, YUN-MEN, AND FA-YEN:

THE YUN-MEN SECT

The MasterYun-men (862/4-949) was born in Kiangsu province (some say Chekiang) to afamily whose circ*mstances forced them to place him in a Vinaya temple as anovice. But his inquiring mind eventually turned to Ch'an, and off he went to amaster, with his first target being the famous Mu-chou, disciple of Huang-po.(Mu-chou is remembered as the monk who sent Lin-chi in for his first threewithering interviews with Huang-po.) For two days running, Yun-men tried togain entry to see the master, but each time he was ejected. The third day hesucceeded in reaching Mu-chou, who grabbed him and demanded, "Speak!Speak!" But before Yun-men could open his mouth, the master shoved him outof the room and slammed the door, catching his leg and breaking it in theprocess. The unexpected bolt of pain shooting through Yun-men's body suddenlybrought his first enlightenment.¹²

He journeyed on, studying with several famous masters, untilfinally he inherited a monastery from a retiring master who sensed his genius.Yun-men was one of the best-known figures from Ch'an's waning Golden Age, andstories of his exchanges with monks became a major source of koans.¹³He loathed words and forbade his followers to take notes or write down hissermons. (However, his talks were secretly recorded by a follower who attendedin a paper robe and kept notes on the garment.) As did the earlier masters, hestruggled mightily with the problem of how to prevent novices from becomingattached to his words and phrases.

[Yun-men]came to the assembly again and said: "My work here is something that Icannot help. When I tell you to penetrate directly into all things and to benon-attached to them, I have already concealed what is within you. Yet you allcontinue looking for Ch'an among my words, so that you may achieveenlightenment. With myriad deviations and artificialities, you raise endlessquestions and arguments. Thus, you merely gain temporary satisfactions fromverbal contests, repeatedly quarrel with words, and deviate even further fromCh'an. When will you obtain it, and rest?"¹⁴

Hefirmly believed that all teaching was useless; that all explanations do moreharm than good; and that, in fact, nothing worthwhile can ever be taught.

TheMaster said, "If I should give you a statement that would teach you how toachieve Ch'an immediately, dirt would already be spread on top of your head. .. . To grasp Ch'an, you must experience it. If you have not experienced it, donot pretend to know. You should withdraw inwardly and search for the groundupon which you stand; thereby you will find out what Truth is."¹⁵

One of Yun-men's sermons reveals much about the growing painsof Ch'an. The seriousness of the novices seems to have been steadilydeteriorating, and his characterization of the run-of-the- mill novices of histime presents a picture of waning dynamism. Success was clearly bringing a morefrivolous student to the monasteries, and we sense here the warning of a manwho rightly feared for the future quality of Ch'an.

Furthermore,some monks, idle and not serious in their studies, gather together trying tolearn the sayings of the ancients, and attempt to reveal their own naturethrough memorizing, imagining, prophesying. These people often claim that theyunderstand what Dharma is. What they actually do is simply talk themselves intoendless entanglements and use meditation to pass the time.¹⁶

He also felt the traditional pilgrimages from master tomaster had become hardly more than a glorified version of sightseeing.

Do notwaste your time wandering thousands of [miles], through this town and that,with your staff on your shoulder, wintering in one place and spending thesummer in another. Do not seek out beautiful mountains and rivers tocontemplate. . . . [T]he fundamental thing for you to do is to obtain theessence of Ch'an. Then your travels will not have been in vain. If you find away to guide your understanding under a severe master . . . wake up, hang upyour bowl-bag, and break your staff. Spend ten or twenty years of study underhim until you are thoroughly enlightened.¹⁷

He alsoadvised that they try to simplify their search, that they try to realize howuncomplicated Ch'an really is.

Let metell you that anything you can directly point at will not lead you to the righttrail. . . . Besides dressing, eating, moving bowels, releasing water, whatelse is there to do?¹⁸

Yun-men was one of the most dynamic masters of the late ninthand early tenth century, providing new twists to the historic problem ofnonlanguage transmission. His celebrated solution was the so-called one-wordanswer. Several of these are preserved in the two major koan collections oflater years. Two of the better-known follow:

A monkasked Yun-men, "What is the teaching that transcends the Buddha andpatriarchs?" Yun-men said, "A sesame bun."¹⁹

A monkasked Yun-men, "What is Buddha?" Yun-men replied, "A dried pieceof sh*t."²⁰

The"one-word" was his version of the blow and the shout. R. H. Blyth isparticularly fond of Yun-men and suggests he may have had the keenest intellectof any Ch'an master—and even goes so far as to declare him the greatest manChina has produced.²¹

At the very least Yun-men was in the great tradition of theiconoclastic T'ang masters, with a touch that bears comparison to Huang-po. Andhe probably was wise in attempting to stop copyists, for his teachingseventually were reduced to yet another abominable system, as seemedirresistible to the Chinese followers of the five houses. A later discipleproduced what is known as the "Three propositions of the house ofYun-men." It is not difficult to imagine the barnyard response Yun-menwould have had to this "systematization" of his thought.²²The school of this "most eloquent of Ch'an masters" lasted throughthe Sung dynasty, but its failure to find a transplant in Japan eventuallymeant that history would pass it by. Nonetheless, the cutting intellect ofYun-men was one of the bright stars in the constellation of Ch'an, providingwhat is possibly its purest antirational statement.

The masterknown as Fa-yen (885-958), founder of the third short-lived house of Ch'an,need not detain us long. Fa-yen's novel method for triggering enlightenment wasto repeat back the

questioner'sown query, thereby isolating the words and draining them of their meaning. Itwas his version of the shout, the silence, the single word. And whereas theLin-chi school was concerned with the Four Processes of Liberation fromSubjectivity and Objectivity and the Ts'ao-tung school constructed the fiverelations between Particularity and Universality, the Fa-yen school inventedthe Six Attributes of Being.²³ The Six Attributes of Being (totalityand differentiation, sameness and difference, becoming and disappearing) wereadapted from the doctrine of another Buddhist sect, and in fact later attemptsby one of Fa-yen's disciples to combine Ch'an and Pure Land Buddhism have beencredited with accelerating the disappearance of his school.

According to The Transmission of the Lamp, the masterremembered as Fa-yen was born as Wen-i, near Hangchow. He became a Ch'an noviceat age seven and was ordained at twenty. Learned in both Buddhist andConfucianist literature (though not, significantly enough, in the Taoistclassics), he then got the wanderlust, as was common, and headed south to seekout more Ch'an teachers. He ended up in Kiangsi province in the city of Fuchou,where to escape the floodings of a rainstorm he found himself one evening in alocal monastery. He struck up a conversation with the master there, whosuddenly asked him:

"Whereare you going, sir?"

"Ishall continue my foot travels along the road."

"Whatis that which is called foot travel?"

"Ido not know."

"Not-knowingmost closely approaches the Truth."²⁴

The Transmission of the Lamp states that he wasenlightened on the spot and decided to settle down for a period of study. Heeventually became a famous teacher himself, shepherding as many as a thousandstudents at one time.

One of his most often repeated exchanges concerned thequestion of the difference between the "moon" (i.e., enlightenment)and the "finger pointing at the moon," (i.e., the teaching leading toenlightenment). It was a common observation that students confused the fingerpointing at the moon with the moon itself, which is to say they confused talkabout enlightenment with the state. One day a monk came along who thought hewas smart enough to get around the dilemma.

A monk asked, "As for the finger, I willnot ask you about it. But what is the moon?"

The Master said, "Where is the finger that you do notask about?"

So the monk asked, "As for the moon, I will not ask youabout it. But what is the finger?"

The Master said, "The moon!"

The monk challenged him, "I asked about the finger; whyshould you answer me, 'the moon'?"

The Master replied, "Because you asked about the finger."²⁵

At age seventy-four Fa-yen died in the manner of other greatmasters, calmly and seated in the meditation posture. Part of the lineage ofShih-t'ou and an offshoot of the branch of Ch'an that would become Soto, he wasa kindly individual with none of the violence and histrionics of the liveliermasters. However, his school lasted only briefly before passing into history.Nonetheless, a number of disciples initially perpetuated his memory, and hiswisdom is preserved in various Sung-period compilations of Ch'an sermons.

Chapter Fourteen

TA-HUI:

MASTER OF THE KOAN

To confront the koan—the most discussed, least understoodteaching concept of the East—is to address the very essence of Zen itself. Insimple terms the koan is merely a brief story—all the encounters between twomonks related here could be koans. During the Sung Dynasty (960-1279) thesestories were organized into collections, commented upon, and structured into asystem of study—which involved meditating on a koan and arriving at an intuitive"answer" acceptable to a Zen master. Faced with the threateningintellectualism of the Sung scholars, Ch'anists created the koan out of theexperience of the older masters, much the way a liferaft might be constructedfrom the timbers of a storm-torn ship. But before we examine this raft, itwould be well to look again at the ship.

It will be recalled that Ch'an grew out of both Buddhism andTaoism, extracting from them the belief that a fundamental unifying qualitytranscends all the diversity of the world, including things that appear to beopposite. However, Ch'an taught that this cannot be understood usingintellectualism, which rationally makes distinctions and relates to the worldby reducing it to concepts and systems. One reason is that all rationality andconcepts are merely part of a larger, encompassing Reality; and trying to reachthis Reality intellectually is like trying to describe the outside of abuilding while trapped inside.

There is, however, a kind of thought—not beholden to concepts,systems, discriminations, or rationality—that can reach this new understanding.It is intuition, which operates in a mode entirely different from rationality.It is holistic, not linear; it is unself-conscious and noncritical; and itdoesn't bother with any of the rational systems of analysis we have inventedfor ourselves. But since we can't call on it at our pleasure, the next bestthing we can do is clear the way for it to operate—by shutting off the rationalpart of the mind. Then intuition starts hesitantly coming out of the shadows.Now, if we carefully wait for the right moment and then suddenly create adisturbance that momentarily short-circuits the rational mind—the way shocksuppresses our sense of pain in the first moments of a serious accident—we mayget a glimpse of the intuitive mind in full flower. In that instant weintuitively understand the oneness of the world, the Void, the greater Realitythat words and rationality have never allowed us to experience.

The Zen teachers have a very efficient technique for makingall this happen. They first discredit rationality for a novice by making himfeel foolish for using it. Each time the novice submits a rational solution toa koan, he receives a humiliating rebuff. After a while the strain begins totell. In the same way that a military boot camp destroys the ego andself-identity of a recruit, the Zen master slowly erodes the novice'sconfidence in his own logical powers.

At this point his intuitive mind begins overcoming itsprevious repression. Distinctions slowly start to seem absurd, because everytime he makes one he is ridiculed. Little by little he dissolves his sense ofobject and subject, knower and known. The fruit now is almost ready to fallfrom the tree. (Although enlightenment cannot be made to happen, it can be madepossible.) Enter at this point the unexpected blow, the shout, the click ofbamboo, the broken leg. If the student is caught unawares, rationality may bemomentarily short-circuited and suddenly he glimpses—Reality.

The irony is that what he glimpses is no different from whathe saw before, only now he understands it intuitively and realizes howsimplistic and confining are rational categories and distinctions. Mountainsare once again mountains; rivers are once again rivers. But with one vitaldifference: Now he is not attached to them. He travels through the world justas always, but now he is at one with it: no distinctions, no criticaljudgments, no tension. After all that preparatory mental anguish there is noapparent external change. But internally he is enlightened: He thinksdifferently, he understands differently, and ultimately he lives differently.

Ch'an began by working out the question of what thisenlightenment really is. Prior to Ma-tsu the search was more for the nature ofenlightenment than for its transmission. This was the doctrinal phase of Ch'an.As time went by, however, the concern shifted more and more from definingenlightenment—which the Ch'an masters believed had been done sufficiently—tostruggling with the process. After Ma-tsu, Ch'an turned its attention to"auxiliary means" for helping along transmission: paradoxical wordsand actions, shouts, beatings, and eventually the koan.¹

The koan, then, is the final step in the "auxiliarymeans." A succinct analysis of the koan technique is provided by Ruth F.Sasaki in Zen Dust: "Briefly, [koans] consisted of questions theearly masters had asked individual students, together with the answers given bythe students; questions put to the masters by students in personal talks or inthe course of the masters' lectures, together with the masters' answers;statements of formulas in which the masters had pointed to the profoundPrinciple; anecdotes from the daily life of the masters in which theirattitudes or actions illustrated the functioning of the Principle; andoccasionally a phrase from a sutra in which the Principle or some aspect of itwas crystallized in words. By presenting a student with one or another of thesekoans and observing his reaction to it, the degree or depth of his realizationcould be judged. The koans were the criteria of attainment."²

Called kung-an in Chinese (meaning a "case"or a problem), the koan was a response to two major challenges that beset Ch'anin the Sung era: First, the large number of students that appeared at Ch'anmonasteries as a result of the demise of other sects meant that some new meanswas needed to preserve personalized attention (some masters reportedly had onethousand or even two thousand followers at a monastery); and second, there wasa noticeable decline in the spontaneity of both novices and masters. Themasters had lost much of the creative fire of Ch'an's Golden Age, and thenovices were caught up in the intellectual, literary world of the Sung, to thepoint that intellectualism actually threatened the vitality of the sect.

The koan, then, was the answer to this dilemma. Itsystematized instruction such that large numbers of students could be treatedto the finest antirational tradition of the Ch'an sect, and it rescued thedynamism of the earlier centuries. Although mention of kung-an occurs in theCh'an literature before the end of the T'ang era (618-907), the reference wasto a master's use of a particularly effectual question on more than onestudent. This was still an instance of a master using his own questions orparadoxes. The koan in its true form—that is, the use of a classic incidentfrom the literature, posed as a conundrum—is said to have been created when adescendant of Lin-chi, in the third generation, interviewed a novice about someof Lin-chi's sayings.³ This systematic use of the existingliterature was found effective, and soon a new teaching technique was in themaking.

Examples of classic koans already have been seenthroughout this book, since many of the exchanges of the early masters werelater isolated for use as kung-an. But there are many, many others, Perhaps thebest-known koan of all time is the exchange between Chao-chou (778-897) and amonk:

A monkasked Chao-chou. "Does a dog have Buddha nature [i.e., is a dog capable ofbeing enlightened]?" Chao-chou answered, “Mu [a word whose strict meaningis "nothingness"]."⁴

Quick, what does it mean? Speak! Speak! If you were a Ch'annovice, a master would be glaring at you demanding an immediate, intuitiveanswer. (A favored resolution of this, incidentally, is simply "Mu,"but bellowed with all the force of the universe's inherent Oneness behind it.And if you try to fake it, the master will know.) Or take another koan, drawncompletely at random.

When themonks assembled before the noon meal to hear his lecture, the Master Fa-yen[885-958] pointed at the bamboo blinds. Two monks simultaneously went androlled them up. Fa-yen said, "One gain, one loss."⁵

Don't think!Respond instantly! Don't say a word unless it's right, Don't make a move thatisn't intuitive. And above all, don't analyze.

Yun-men[862/4-949] asked a monk, "Where have you come here from?" The monksaid, "From Hsi-ch'an." Yun-men said, "What words are beingoffered at Hsi-ch'an these days?" The monk stretched out his hands.Yun-men struck him. The monk said, "I haven't finished talking."Yun-men then extended his own hands. The monk was silent, so Yun-men struckhim.⁶

You weren't there. You're not the monk. But now you've got todo something to show the master you grasp what went on in that exchange. Whatwas spontaneous to the older masters you must grasp in a secondhand,systematized situation. And if you can't answer the koan right (it should bestressed, incidentally, there is not necessarily a fixed answer), you had bestgo and meditate, try to grasp it nonintellectually, and return tomorrow to tryagain.

Off you go to meditate on "Mu" or "One gain,one loss," and the mental tension starts building. Even though you knowyou aren't supposed to, you analyze it intellectually from every angle. Butthat just heightens your exasperation. Then suddenly one day something dawns onyou. Elated, you go to the master. You yell at him, or bark like a dog, or kickhis staff, or stand on your hands, or recite a poem, or declare, "Thecypress tree in the courtyard," or perhaps you just remain silent. He willknow (intuitively) if you have broken through the bonds of reason, if you havetranscended the intellect.

There's nothing quite like the koan in the literature of theworld: historical episodes that have to be relived intuitively and respondedto. As Ruth F. Sasaki notes, "Collections of 'old cases,' as the koanswere sometimes called, as well as attempts to put the koans into a fixed formand to systematize them to some extent, were already being made by the middleof the tenth century. We also find a few masters giving their own alternateanswers to some of the old koans and occasionally appending verses to them. Inmany cases these alternate answers and verses ultimately became attached to theoriginal koans and were handled as koans supplementary to them."⁷Ironically, koans became so useful, indeed essential, in the perpetuation ofCh'an that they soon were revered as texts. Collections of the better koansappeared, and next came accretions of supporting commentaries—when the wholepoint was supposed to be circumventing reliance on words! But commentariesalways seemed to develop spontaneously out of Ch'an.

Today two major collections of koans are generally used bystudents of Zen. These are the Mumonkan (to use the more familiar Japanesename) and the Hekiganroku (again the Japanese name) or Blue Cliff Record.⁸Masters may work a student through both these collections as he travels theroad to enlightenment, with a new koan being assigned after each previous onehas been successfully resolved.

The Blue Cliff Record was the first of the twocollections. It began as a grouping of one hundred kung-an by a master namedHsueh-tou Ch'ung-hsien (980-1052) of the school of Yun-men. This master alsoattached a small poem to each koan, intended to direct the student toward itsmeaning. The book enjoyed sizable circulation throughout the latter part of theeleventh century, and sometime thereafter a Lin-chi master named Yuan-wuK'o-ch'in (1063-1135) decided to embellish it by adding an introduction to eachkoan and a long-winded commentary on both the koan and the poem supplied by theprevious collector. (In the case of the poem we now have commentary oncommentary—the ultimate achievement of the theologian's art! However, masterstoday often omit Yuan-wu's commentaries, giving their own interpretationinstead.⁹) The commentator, Yuan-wu, was the teacher of Ta-hui, thedynamic master of the Lin-chi lineage whom we will meet here.

The Mumonkan, a shorter work, was assembled in 1228 by theCh'an monk Wu-men Hui-k'ai (1183-1260) and consists of forty-eight koans,together with an explanatory comment and a verse. Some of the koans in theMumonkan also appear in the Blue Cliff Record. The Mumonkan is usuallypreferred in the Japanese summer, since its koans are briefer and lessfatiguing.¹⁰

The koan was an invention of the Sung Dynasty (960-1279), anera of consolidation in the Chinese empire after the demise of the T'ang andpassage of a war-torn interlude known as the Five Dynasties (907-60). AlthoughSung Ch'an seemed to be booming, Buddhism in general continued the decline thatbegan with the Great Persecution of 845. For example, the number of registeredmonks dropped from around 400,000 in 1021 to approximately half that number ascant half-century later.¹¹ But the monks who did come probably hadhigher education than previously, for the Sung educational system was theworld's best at the time. Colleges were established nationwide, not just in thesophisticated metropolitan areas, and scholarship flourished. Whether this wasgood for Ch'an is not a simple question. The hardy rural monks who had passedbeyond the Buddhist scriptures made Ch'an what it was. Could the powers of theantirational be preserved in an atmosphere where the greatest respect wasreserved for those who spent years memorizing the Chinese classics? The answerto this was to rest with the koan.

The Ch'an master Ta-hui (1089-1163), who perfected the koantechnique, was rumored to be a reincarnation of Lin-chi. Born in Anhweiprovince, located about halfway between the older capitals of the north and theCh'an centers in the south, he was said to be both pious and precocious, becominga devoted monk at age seventeen while assiduously reading and absorbing theteachings of the five houses.¹² At age nineteen, he began hisobligatory travels, roaming from master to master. One of his first teachersreportedly interviewed him on the koans in the collection now known as the BlueCliff Record, but he did so by not speaking a word and thereby forcingTa-hui to work them out for himself. Ta-hui also experimented with theTs'ao-tung teachings, but early on began to question the straitlaced, quietisticapproach of that house. He finally was directed to the Szechuan teacher Yuan-wuK'o-ch'in of the Lin-chi school, beginning the association that would move himto the forefront of the struggle to save Ch'an via the koan.

Ta-hui experienced his first enlightenment under Yuan-wu, inthe master's temple in the Northern Sung capital of Pien-liang. As the story isreported:

One daywhen Yuan-wu had taken the high seat in the lecture hall, he said: "A monkasked Yun-men: 'From whence come all the buddhas?' Yun-men answered: 'The EastMountain walks over the water.' But if I were asked, I would not answer thatway. 'From whence come all the buddhas?' A fragrant breeze comes of itself fromthe south, and in the palace pavilion a refreshing coolness stirs." Atthese words [Ta-hui] suddenly attained enlightenment.¹³

After thishe grew in experience and wisdom, eventually taking over many temple dutiesfrom Yuan-wu. He soon became a part of the Ch'an establishment in the north andin 1126 was even presented with an official robe and title from a minister.

Then suddenly, in the midst of this tranquillity, outsideforces intervened to change dramatically the course of Chinese history. Formany years previous, China had been threatened by nomadic peoples from the northand west, peoples whom the Chinese haughtily identified as"barbarians." The Sung emperors, cloistered gentlemen in the worstsense of the term, had maintained peace in their slowly shrinking domain bybuying off belligerent neighbors and occasionally even ceding borderterritories. They thought their troubles finally might be easing somewhat whentheir hostile neighbors were overwhelmed by a new warring tribe from Manchuria.But after a series of humiliating incidents, the Chinese found themselves withmerely a new enemy, this time more powerful than any before. China was at laston the verge of being overwhelmed, something it had forestalled for manycenturies. Even the invention of gunpowder, which the Chinese now used to firerocket-propelled arrows, could not save them. Before long the barbariansmarched on the capital, and after some years of Chinese attempts atappeasem*nt, the invaders carried off the emperor and his entire court toManchuria. The year was 1127, which marked the end of the Chinese dynasty nowknown as the Northern Sung (960-1127).

After this disheartening setback a son of the former emperormoved south and set up a new capital in the coastal city of Hangchow, whosecharms the Chinese were fond of comparing

favorablywith heaven (in the refrain, "Heaven above; Hangchow below"). Thisnew regime, known as the Southern Sung (1127-1279), witnessed yet anothertransformation of Ch'an. Among other things, Southern Ch'an came to resembleeighth-century Northern Ch'an, in its close association with the court and theintelligentsia.

When political discord forced the Northern Sung government toflee south, the master Yuan-wu was assigned a monastery in the southernprovince of Kiangsi by the emperor, and Ta-hui accompanied him there, again as headmonk. After four years, Ta-hui again decided to migrate—this time alone—toSzechuan and there to build a secluded hermitage. After another move he wassummoned in 1137 by the prime minister, himself also a former pupil of Yuan-wu,to come and establish a temple near the new southern capital of Hangchow.Before long he had collected almost two thousand disciples and was becomingknown as the reincarnation of Lin-chi, possibly because he was giving new lifeto the Lin-chi sect. But then his politics got him in trouble and he wasbanished for almost fifteen years to various remote outposts, during which timehe began to write extensively.¹⁴ Finally, in 1158, he was orderedback to Hangchow to take over his old temple. Since by then old age wasencroaching, he was permitted to retire at this temple and live off imperialpatronage. It is said that his pupils swelled to seventeen hundred when hereturned and that when he died in 1163 he left ninety-four enlightened heirs.¹⁵

Ta-hui is regarded today as the great champion of the koanmethod, and he was celebrated during his life for a running disagreement he hadwith the Ts'ao-tung (later Soto) school. In a sense, this dispute drew thedistinctions that still divide Zen into two camps. The issue seems to have boileddown to the matter of what one does with one's mind while meditating. TheTs'ao-tung masters advocated what they called Silent Illumination (mo-chao)Ch'an, which Ta-hui preferred to call Silent Illumination Heterodox (mo-chao-hsieh)Ch'an. The Ts'ao-tung master Cheng-chueh, with whom he argued, believed thatenlightenment could be achieved through sitting motionless and slowly bringingtranquillity and empty nonattachment to the mind. The koans were recognized tobe useful in preserving the original spirit of Ch'an, but their brain-fatiguingconvolutions were not permitted to disturb the mental repose of meditation.Ta-hui, in contrast, believed that this silent meditation lacked the dynamismso essential to the sudden experience of enlightenment. His own approach toenlightenment came to be called Introspecting-the-Koan (k'an-hua) Ch'an,in which meditation focused on a koan.¹⁶

Anotherof Ta-hui's objections to the Silent Illumination school seems to have been itsnatural drift toward quietism, toward the divorcing of men from the world ofaffairs. This he believed led nowhere and was merely renouncing humanity ratherthan illuminating it.

Thesedays there's a breed of shaven-headed outsiders [i.e., rival masters] whose owneyes are not clear, who just teach people to stop and rest and play dead. . . .They teach people to "keep the mind still," to "forgetfeelings" according to circ*mstances, to practice "silentillumination." . . . To say that when one has put things to rest to thepoint that he is unawares and unknowing, like earth, wood, tile, or stone, thisis not unknowing silence—this is a view of wrongly taking too literally wordsthat were (only) expedient means to free bonds.¹⁷

He seemed to be counseling never to forget that meditation isonly a means, not an end. Instead Ta-hui advocated meditating deeper and everdeeper into a koan, focusing on the words until they "lose theirflavor." Then finally the bottom falls out of the bucket and enlightenmenthits you. This "Introspecting the Koan" form of Ch'an (called KannaZen by the Japanese) became the standard for the Rinzai sect, whose studentswere encouraged to meditate on a koan until it gradually infiltrated the mind.As one commentator has explained, "The essential is to immerse oneself patientlyand wholeheartedly in the koan, with unwavering attention. One must not belooking for an answer but looking at the koan. The 'answer,' if it comes, willcome of its own accord."¹⁸ As described by Ta-hui:

Juststeadily go on with your koan every moment of your life. . . . Whether walkingor sitting, let your attention be fixed upon it without interruption. When youbegin to find it entirely devoid of flavor, the final moment is approaching: donot let it slip out of your grasp. When all of a sudden something flashes outin your mind, its light will illumine the entire universe, and you will see thespiritual land of the Enlightened Ones. . . .¹⁹

The important thing is to concentrate totally on a koan. Thisconcentration need not necessarily be confined to meditation, as Ta-huiillustrates using one of the more celebrated one-word statements of Yun-men.

A monkasked Yun-Men, "What is Buddha?" Yun-Men said, "A dry piece ofsh*t." Just bring up this saying. . . .Don't ask to draw realization fromthe words or try in your confusion to assess and explain. . . . Just take yourconfused unhappy mind and shift it onto "A dry piece of sh*t." Onceyou hold it there, then the mind . . . will naturally no longer operate. Whenyou become aware that it's not operating, don't be afraid of falling intoemptiness. . . . In the conduct of your daily activities, just always let goand make yourself vast and expansive. Whether you're in quiet or noisy places,constantly arouse yourself with the saying "A dry piece of sh*t." Asthe days and months come and go, of itself your potential will be purified andripen. Above all you must not arouse any external doubts besides: when yourdoubts about "A dry piece of sh*t" are smashed, then at once doubtsnumerous as the sands of the Ganges are all smashed.²⁰

Although Ta-hui was a strong advocate of the koan, he wasstaunchly against its being used in a literary sense. Whenever a student startsanalyzing koans intellectually, comparing one against another, trying tounderstand rationally how they affect his nonrational intelligence, he missesthe whole point. The only way it can work is if it is fresh. Only then does itelicit a response from our spontaneous intelligence, our intuitive mind.

But the Sung trend toward intellectualism was almostirresistible. The prestige of the Chinese "gentleman"—who could quotethe ancient poets, compose verse himself, and analyze enlightenment—was thegreat nemesis of Ch'an.

Gentlemen of affairs who study the path often understandrationally without getting to the reality. Without discussion and thought theyare at a loss, with no place to put their hands and feet—they won't believethat where there is no place to put one's hands and feet is really a goodsituation. They just want to get there in their minds by thinking and in theirmouths to understand by talking—they scarcely realize they've already gonewrong.²¹

Equally badwas the Ch'an student who memorized koans rather than trying to understand themintuitively.

A gentleman reads widely in many books basically in orderto augment his innate knowledge. Instead, you have taken to memorizing thewords of the ancients, accumulating them in

yourbreast, making this your task, depending on them for something to take hold ofin conversation. You are far from knowing the intent of the sages in expoundingthe teachings. This is what is called counting the treasure of others all daylong without having half a cent of your own.²²

Ta-huirightly recognized in such scholarship an impending destruction of Ch'an'sinnate vigor. At one point, in desperation, he even destroyed the originalprinting blocks for the best-known koan collection of the time, the BlueCliff Record compiled by his master, Yuan-wu.²³ But the trendcontinued nonetheless.

Ch'an was not over yet, however. It turns out that the sectdid not continue to fly apart and diversify as might be suspected, but ratherit actually consolidated. Although the Kuei-yang and Fa-yen houses fizzledcomparatively quickly, the Yun-men lasted considerably longer, with anidentifiable line of transmission lasting virtually throughout the SungDynasty. The Ts'ao-tung house languished for a while, but with SilentIllumination Ch'an it came back strongly during the Sung Dynasty. Lin-chi splitinto two factions in the early eleventh century, when two pupils of the masterCh'u-yuan (986-1036) decided to go their own way, One of these masters, knownas Huang-lung Hui-nan (1002-1069), started a school which subsequently wastransmitted to Japan by the Japanese master Eisai, where it became known asOryo Zen. However, this school did not last long in China or Japan, becomingmoribund after a few generations. The other disciple of Ch'u-yuan was a masternamed Yang-ch'i Fang-hui (992-1049), whose school (known in Japanese as YogiZen) eventually became the only school of Chinese Ch'an, absorbing all othersects when the faith went into its final decline after the Sung. Ta-hui waspart of this school, and it was the branch of the Lin-chi sect that eventuallytook hold in Japan.

In closing our journey through Chinese Ch'an we must notethat the faith continued on strongly through the Sung largely because thegovernment began selling ordinations for its own profit. Ch'an also continuedto flourish during the Mongol-dominated Yuan Dynasty (1279-1309), with manypriests from Japan coming to China for study. During the Ming Dynasty(1368-1644), it merged with another school of Buddhism, the Pure LandSalvationist sect, and changed drastically. Although Ming-style Chinese Ch'an stillpersists today, mainly outside China, its practice bears scant resemblance tothe original teachings. For the practice of the classical Ch'an described herewe must now turn to Japan.

PART IV

ZEN INJAPAN

. . . inwhich Ch'an is imported to Japan by traditional Buddhists disillusioned withthe spiritual decadence of existing Japanese sects. Through a fortuitousassociation with the rising military class, Ch'an is eventually elevated to themost influential religion of Japan. Before long, however, it evolves into apolitical and cultural rather than a spiritual force. Although some Japaneseattempt to restore Ch'an's original vigor by deliberately attacking its"High Church" institutions, few Japanese Zen teachers respect itsoriginal teachings and practice. Japanese teachers contribute little to theCh'an (Zen) experience until finally, in the eighteenth century, a spiritualleader appears who not only restores the original vitality of the faith, butgoes on to refine the koan practice and revolutionize the relationship of Zento the common people. This inspired teacher, Hakuin, creates modern Zen.

EISAI:

THE FIRST JAPANESE MASTER

There is atwelfth-century story that the first Japanese monk who journeyed to China tostudy Ch'an returned home to find a summons from the Japanese court. There, ina meeting reminiscent of the Chinese sovereign Wu and the Indian Bodhidharmasome seven hundred years before, Japan's emperor commanded him to describe theteachings of this strange new cult. The bemused monk (remembered by the nameKakua) replied with nothing more than a melody on his flute, leaving the courtflabbergasted.¹ But what more ideal expression of China's wordlessdoctrine?

As in the China entered by Bodhidharma, medieval Japanalready knew the teachings of Buddhism. In fact, the Japanese ruling classeshad been Buddhist for half a millennium before Ch'an officially came to theirattention. However, contacts with China were suspended midway during this time,leaving Japanese Buddhists out of touch with the many changes in China—the mostsignificant being Ch'an's rise to the dominant Buddhist sect.²Consequentlythe Japanese had heard almost nothing about this sect when contacts resumed inthe twelfth century. To their amazement they discovered that Chinese Buddhismhad become Ch'an. The story of Ch'an's transplant in Japan is also the story ofits preservation, since it was destined to wither away in China.

Perhaps we should review briefly how traditional Buddhism gotto Japan in the first place. During the sixth century, about the time ofBodhidharma, a statue of the Buddha and some sutras were transmitted to Japanas a gift/bribe from a Korean monarch seeking military aid. He claimed Buddhismwas very powerful although difficult to understand. Not all Japanese, however,were overjoyed with the appearance of a new faith. The least pleased were thoseemployed by the existing religion, the Japanese cult of Shinto, and theysuccessfully discredited Buddhism for several decades. But a number of courtintrigues were underway at the time, and one faction got the idea that Buddhismwould be helpful in undermining the Shinto-based ruling clique. Eventually thisnew faction triumphed, and by the middle of the seventh century, the Japanesewere constructing Buddhist temples and pagodas.³

Other imports connected with these early mainland contactswere Chinese writing and the Chinese style of government. The Japanese evenrecreated the T'ang capital of Ch'ang-an, consecrated at the beginning of theeighth century as Nara, their first real city. The growing Buddhistestablishment soon overwhelmed Nara with a host of sects and temples,culminating in 752 with the unveiling of a bronze meditating Buddha larger thanany statue in the world.

Japan was now awash in thirdhand Buddhism, as Chinesemissionaries patronizingly expounded Sanskrit scriptures they themselves onlyvaguely understood. Buddhism's reputation for powerful magic soon demoralizedthe simple religion of Shinto, with its unpretentious shrines and rites, andthis benign nature reverence was increasingly pushed into the background. Theimpact of Buddhism became so overwhelming that the alarmed emperor finallyabandoned Nara entirely to the Buddhists, and at the close of the eighthcentury set up a new capital in central Japan, known today as Kyoto.

The emperor also decided to discredit the Nara Buddhists ontheir own terms, sending to China for new, competing sects. Back cameemissaries with two new schools, which soon assumed dominance of JapaneseBuddhism. The first of these was Tendai, named after the Chinese T'ien-t'aischool. Its teachings centered on the Lotus Sutra, which taught that the humanBuddha personified a universal spirit, evidence of the oneness permeating allthings. The Tendai school was installed on Mt. Hiei, in the outskirts of Kyoto,giving birth to an establishment eventually to number several thousandbuildings. The monks on Mt. Hiei became the authority on Buddhist matters inJapan for several centuries thereafter, and later they also began meddling inaffairs of state, sometimes even resorting to arms. Tendai was, and perhaps tosome degree still is, a faith for the fortunate few. It did not stress anidealized hereafter, since it served a class—the idle aristocracy—perfectlycomfortable in the present world. In any case, it became the major JapaneseBuddhist sect during the Heian era (794-1185), a time of aristocratic rule.

The other important, and also aristocratic, version ofBuddhism preceding Zen was called Shingon, from the Chinese school Chen-yen, amagical-mystery sect thriving on secrecy and esoteric symbolism. It appealedless to the intellect than did Tendai and more to the taste for entertainmentamong the bored aristocrats. Although Shingon monasteries often were situatedin remote mountainous areas, the intrigue of their engaging ceremonies(featuring efflorescent iconography, chants, and complex liturgies) and theirevocative mandalas (geometrical paintings full of symbolism) made this sect atheatrical success. This so-called Esoteric Buddhism of Shingon grew so popularthat the sober Tendai sect was obliged to start adding ritualistic complexityinto its own practices.⁴

The Japanese government broke off relations with China less thana hundred years after the founding of Kyoto, around the middle of the ninthcentury. From then until the mid-twelfth century mainland contacts virtuallyceased, and consequently both Japanese culture and Japanese Buddhism graduallyevolved away from their Chinese models. The Japanese aristocracy becameobsessed with aesthetics, finery, and refined lovemaking accompanied by poetry,perfumes, and flowers.⁵ They distilled the vigorous T'ang cultureto a refined essence, rather like extracting a delicate liqueur from a stoutpotion.

The Buddhist church also grew decadent, even as it grew evermore powerful and ominous. The priesthood became the appointment of last resortfor otherwise unemployable courtiers, and indeed Buddhism finally degeneratedlargely into an entertainment for the ruling class, whose members were amusedand diverted by its rites. This carefree aristocracy also allowed increasingamounts of wealth and land to slip into the hands of corrupt religiousestablishments. For their own part, the Buddhists began forming armies of monksto protect their new wealth, and they eventually went on to engage ininter-temple wars and threaten the civil government.

During this time, the Japanese aristocracy preserved itsprivileged position through the unwise policy of using an emerging militaryclass to maintain order. These professional soldiers seem to have arisen fromthe aristocacy itself. Japanese emperors had a large number of women at theirdisposal, through whom they scattered a host of progeny, not all of which couldbe maintained idle in Kyoto. A number of these were sent to the provinces,where they were to govern untamed outlying areas. This continued until one daythe court in Kyoto awoke to find that Japan was in fact controlled by these ruralclans and their mounted warriors, the samurai.⁶

In the middle of the twelfth century, the samurai effectivelyseized Japan, and their strongman invented for himself the title of shogun,proceeding to institute what became almost eight centuries of unbroken warriorrule. The age of the common man had arrived, and one of the shogun's firstacts was to transfer the government away from aristocratic Kyoto, whosesophisticated society made him uncomfortable, to a warrior camp calledKamakura, near the site of modern Tokyo. The rule of Japan passed fromperfumed, poetry-writing aesthetes to fierce, often illiterate swordsmen.

Coincident with this coup, the decadence and irrelevance oftraditional Buddhism had begun to weigh heavily upon a new group of spiritual reformers.Before long Tendai and Shingon were challenged by new faiths recognizing theexistence and spiritual needs of the common people. One form this reformationtook was the appearance of new sects providing spiritual comfort to the massesand the possibility of eternal salvation through some simple act, usually therepetition of a sacred chant. One, and later two, such sects (Jodo and JodoShin) focused on the Buddhist figure Amida, whose Paradise or "PureLand" in the hereafter was open to all those calling upon his name (bychanting a sort of Buddhist "Hail Mary" called the nembutsu,"Praise to Amida Buddha"). Another simplified sect preached afundamentalist return to the Lotus Sutra and was led by a firebrand namedNichiren, who also created a chant for his largely illiterate followers. Aformula guaranteeing Paradise had particular appeal to the samurai, whoseday-to-day existence was dangerous and uncertain. The scandalized Tendai monksvigorously opposed this home-grown populist movement, occasionally even burningdown temples to discourage its growth. But the Pure Land and Nichiren sectscontinued to flourish, since the common people finally had a Buddhism all theirown.

There were others, however, who believed that thearistocratic sects could be reformed from within—by importing them afresh fromChina, from the source. These reformers hoped that Buddhism in China hadmaintained its integrity and discipline during the several centuries ofseparation. And by fortunate coincidence, Japanese contacts with the mainlandwere being reopened, making it again allowable to undertake the perilous seavoyage to China. But when the first twelfth-century Japanese pilgrims reachedthe mainland, they were stunned to find that traditional Buddhism had been almostcompletely supplanted by Ch'an. Consequently, the Japanese pilgrims returningfrom China perforce returned with Zen, since little else remained. However, Zenwas not originally brought back to replace traditional Buddhism, but rather asa stimulant to restore the rigor that had drained out of monastic life,including formal meditation and respect or discipline.⁷

Credit for the introduction of Lin-chi Zen (called Rinzai) inJapan is traditionally given to the aristocratic priest and traveler MyoanEisai (1141-1215).⁸ He began his career as a young monk in theTendai complex near Kyoto, but in the summer of 1168 he accompanied a Shingonpriest on a trip to China, largely to sightsee and to visit the home of theT'ien-t'ai sect as a pilgrim. However, the T'ien-t'ai school must have been amere shadow of its former self by this time, and naturally enough Eisai becamefamiliar with Ch'an. But he was hardly a firebrand for Zen, for when hereturned to Japan he continued practice of traditional Buddhism.

Some twenty years later, in 1187, Eisai again journeyed toChina, this time planning a pilgrimage on to India and the Buddhist holyplaces. But the Chinese refused him permission to travel beyond their borders,leaving Eisai no choice but to study there. He finally attached himself to anaging Ch'an monk on Mt. T'ien-t'ai and managed to receive the seal ofenlightenment before returning to Japan in 1191, quite probably the firstJapanese ever certified by a Chinese Ch'an master. He was not, however, totallycommitted to Zen. His Ch'an teacher was also occupied with other Buddhistschools, and what Eisai brought back was a Buddhist co*cktail blended fromseveral different traditions.⁹ But he did proceed to build a templeto the Huang-lung (Japanese Oryo) branch of the Lin-chi sect on thesouthernmost Japanese island, Kyushu (the location nearest China), in theprovincial town of Hakata. Almost as important, he also brought back the teaplant (whose brew was used in China to keep drowsy monks awake duringmeditation), thereby instituting the long marriage of Zen and tea.

Although his provincial temple went unchallenged, laterattempts to introduce this new sect into Kyoto, the stronghold of traditionalBuddhism, met fierce resistance from the establishment, particularly Tendai.But Eisai contended that Zen was a useful sect and that the government wouldreap practical benefits from its protection. His spirited defense of Zen,entitled "Propagation of Zen for the Protection of the Country,"argued that its encouragement would be good for Japanese Buddhism and thereforegood for Japan.¹⁰

As inIndia, so in China its teaching has attracted followers and disciples in greatnumbers. It propagates the Truth as the ancient Buddha did, with the robe ofauthentic transmission passing from one man to the next. In the matter ofreligious discipline, it practices the genuine method of the sages of old. Thusthe Truth it teaches, both in substance and appearance, perfects therelationships of master and disciple. In its rules of action and discipline,there is no confusion of right and wrong. . . . Studying it, one discovers thekey to all forms of Buddhism; practicing it, one's life is brought tofulfillment in the attainment of enlightenment. Outwardly it favors disciplineover doctrine, inwardly it brings the Highest Inner Wisdom. This is what theZen sect stands for.¹¹

He alsopointed out how un-Japanese it would be to deny Zen a hearing: Japan has beenopen-minded in the past, why should she reject a new faith now?

In ourcountry the [emperor] shines in splendor and the influence of his virtuouswisdom spreads far and wide. Emissaries from the distant lands of South andCentral Asia pay their respects to his court. Lay ministers conduct the affairsof government; priests and monks spread abroad religious truth. Even the truthsof the Four Hindu Vedas are not neglected. Why then reject the five schools ofZen Buddhism?¹²

Eisai was the classic tactician, knowing well when to fightand when to retire, and he decided in 1199 on a diversionary retreat toKamakura, leaving behind the hostile, competitive atmosphere of aristocraticKyoto. Through his political connections, he managed to get installed as headof a new temple in Kamakura, beginning Zen's long association with the Japanesewarrior class.

Eisai seems to have done well in Kamakura, for not long afterhe arrived, the current strongman gave him financing for a Zen temple in Kyoto,named Kennin-ji and completed in 1205. Eisai returned the favor by assisting inthe repair of temples ravaged by the recent wars. It was reportedly for alater, hard-drinking ruler that Eisai composed his second classic work,"Drink Tea and Prolong Life," which championed the medicinalproperties of this exotic Chinese beverage, declaring it a restorative thattuned up the body and strengthened the heart.

In thegreat country of China they drink tea, as a result of which there is no hearttrouble and people live long lives. Our country is full of sickly-looking,skinny persons, and this is simply because we do not drink tea. Whenever one isin poor spirits, one should drink tea. This will put the heart in order anddispel all illness. When the heart is vigorous, then even if the other organsare ailing, no great pain will be felt. . . . The heart is the sovereign of thefive organs, tea is the chief of the bitter foods, and bitter is the chief ofthe tastes. For this reason the heart loves bitter things, and when it is doingwell all the other organs are properly regulated. . . . When, however, thewhole body feels weak, devitalized, and depressed, it is a sign that the heartis ailing. Drink lots of tea, and one's energy and spirits will be restored tofull strength.¹³

This first Zen teacher was certainly no Lin-chi. He wasmerely a Tendai priest who imported Lin-chi's sect from China hoping to bringdiscipline to his school; he established an ecumenical monastery at which bothZen and esoteric Tendai practices were taught; he consorted with leaders whoseplace was owed to a military coup d'etat; and he appeared to advocate Zen ontransparently practical, sometimes almost political, grounds. He compromisedwith the existing cults to the end, even refusing to lend aid to other, morepure-minded advocates of Ch'an who had risen in Kyoto in the meantime.¹⁴But Eisai was a colorful figure whom history has chosen to remember as thefounder of Zen in Japan, as well as (perhaps equally important) the father ofthe cult of tea.

Eisai ended his days as abbot of the Kyoto temple ofKennin-ji and leader of a small Zen community that was careful not to quarrelwith the powers of Tendai and Shingon, which also had altars in the temple.Eisai's "Zen" began in Japan as a minor infusion of Buddhism'soriginal discipline, but through an accommodation with the warrior establishment,he accidentally planted the seeds of Ch'an in fertile soil. Gradually thenumber of Zen practitioners grew, as more and more of the samurai recognized inZen a practical philosophy that accorded well with their needs. As Paul Varleyhas explained: "Zen . . . stresses cultivation of the intuitive facultiesand places a high premium on discipline and self-control. It rejects rationaldecision-making as artificial and delusory, and insists that action must comefrom emotion. As such, Zen proved particularly congenial to the medievalsamurai, who lived with violence and imminent death and who sought to developsuch things as 'spontaneity of conduct' and a 'tranquility of heart' to meetthe rigours of his profession. Under the influence of Zen, later samurai theoristsespecially asserted that the true warrior must be constantly prepared to makethe ultimate sacrifice of his life in the service of his lord—without amoment's reflection or conscious consideration."¹⁵

It can only be ironic that what began in China as a school ofmeditation, then became an iconoclastic movement using koans to beat down theanalytical faculties finally emerged (in an amalgam with other teachings) inJapan as a psychological mainstay for the soldiers of a military dictatorship.There was, however, another Japanese school of Zen that introduced its practicein a form more closely resembling original Ch'an. This was the movement startedby Dogen, whose life we may now examine.

DOGEN:

FATHER OF JAPANESE SOTO ZEN

The Sotomaster Dogen (1200-53) is probably the most revered figure in all Japanese Zen.Yet until recently he has been comparatively unknown abroad, perhaps becausethat great popularizer of Zen in the West, D. T. Suzuki, followed the Rinzaischool and managed to essentially ignore Dogen throughout his voluminouswritings. But it was Dogen who first insisted on intensive meditation, whoproduced the first Japanese writings explaining Zen practice, and whoconstructed the first real Zen monastery in Japan, establishing a set ofmonastic rules still observed. Moreover, the strength of his character hasinspired many Zen masters to follow. Indeed, it is hard to contradict thescholar Dumoulin, who declared him "the strongest and most original thinkerthat Japan has so far produced."¹

Born January 2 of the year 1200 an illegitimate son of anoble Fujiwara mother and a princely father, Dogen's circ*mstances from thestart were aristocratic.² Around him swirled the literary life ofthe court, the powerful centuries-old position of the Fujiwara, and the refineddecadence of ancient Kyoto. Although his father died when he was two, hisprivileged education continued at the hands of his mother and half-brother. Hemost certainly learned to read and write classical Chinese, as well as toversify and debate—all skills that he would one day put to extensive use. Hispoetic sensitivity (something traditionally prized by the Japanese above logicand precision of thought) was encouraged by all he met in the hothouse atmosphereof ancient Kyoto. This idyllic, protected life was shattered at age seven withthe sudden death of his mother. But she set the course of his life when, at thelast, she bade him become a monk and reach out to suffering mankind. A populartradition has it that at his mother's funeral Dogen sensed in the risingincense the impermanence of all things. After the shock of his mother's deathhe was adopted by an uncle as family heir and set on the way to a reluctantcareer in statecraft. But as he approached age twelve, the time when a formalceremony would signify his entry into the male circle of aristocracy, hisreservations overwhelmed him and he slipped away to visit another uncle, apriest living in the foothills of Mt. Hiei. When Dogen begged to be allowed toturn his back on the aristocratic world of Kyoto and fulfill his mother's dyingwish by becoming a monk the family was dismayed. But finally they relented, andhe was ordained the following year as a Tendai brother on Mt. Hiei.

Already a scholar of the Chinese classics, he now turned tothe literature of Tendai Buddhism. But soon he was snagged on a problem thathas haunted theologians East and West for many centuries. In Christian terms itis the Calvinist question of whether man is already saved by predestination orwhether he must earn his salvation. Dogen formulated this in a Buddhist contextas follows:

As Istudy both the exoteric and the esoteric schools of Buddhism, they maintainthat man is endowed with the Dharma-nature by birth. If this is the case, whyhad the Buddhas of all ages—undoubtedly in possession of enlightenment—to seekenlightenment and engage in spiritual practice?³

In other words, if man already has the Buddha nature, whymust he struggle to realize it by arduous disciplines? Conversely, if theBuddha nature must be acquired, how can it be inherent in all things, as wastaught?

This perplexing paradox, which no one in Japan's Tendai"Vatican" on Mt. Hiei could resolve, finally drove Dogen wandering insearch of other teachers. He initially stopped at Eisai's temple, Kennin-ji,long enough to be taught the basics of Rinzai Zen practice, but then hetraveled on. Eventually, though, he returned to Kennin-ji, and in 1217, beganZen study under Eisai's disciple, Myozen (1184-1225). Of his relationship withthis Rinzai master he later declared:

Eversince I awakened to the Bodhi-mind and sought the supreme Truth I made manyvisits to Buddhist masters throughout the country. It was thus that I happenedto meet the Venerable Myozen at Kennin-ji. Nine years quickly passed as Istudied the Way under him. During that period I had the opportunity to learnfrom him, to some extent, the training methods of the Rinzai Zen sect. To theVenerable Myozen, leading disciple of my late master Eisai, was rightlytransmitted the highest supreme Law and he was unparalleled among his fellowdisciples in learning and virtue.⁴

Dogen mayhave been impressed as much by the legend of Eisai as by the shouting andbeating of the Rinzai sect, for he often sprinkled stories about Eisai throughhis writings and sermons thereafter.

But Dogen still could not find contentment, even with theRinzai he received at Kennin-ji, and at age twenty-three he resolved to go toChina and experience Ch'an teachings firsthand. So in the spring of 1223 he andMyozen shipped out for China, intending to visit Buddhist establishments there.(Another reason for his hasty decision to go to China for study may have been aseries of political upheavals involving armed monks, which resulted in some ofhis high-placed relations being banished—while a series of executions tookplace.)⁵

After a rough but speedy voyage across the East China Sea,they arrived at Ming-chou, down the coast from the Sung capital of Hangchow.Myozen could not wait and headed straight for the Ch'an complex on Mt.T'ien-t'ung. However, the more cautious Dogen chose to stay aboard ship untilmidsummer, easing himself into Chinese life slowly. But even there heexperienced an example of Ch'an fervor and devotion that impressed him deeply,if only because it was so different from what he had seen in Japan. This lessonwas at the hands of a sixty-year-old Chinese cook from a Ch'an monastery whovisited the ship to purchase some Japanese mushrooms. Dogen became involved inan animated conversation with the old monk and, since his monastery was overten miles away, out of courtesy invited him to stay the night on board ship.However, the old tenzo monk (one in charge of monastery meals) insisted onreturning, saying duty called. But, Dogen pressed, surely there must be otherswho could cook in such a large monastery, and besides cooking was hardly thepoint of Zen. As Dogen later recalled his own words:

"Venerable sir! Why don't you do zazen [Zen meditation] or studythe koan of ancient masters? What is the use of working so hard as a tenzomonk?"

On hearing my remarks, he broke into laughter and said,"Good foreigner! You seem to be ignorant of the true training and meaningof Buddhism." In a moment, ashamed and surprised at his remark, I said tohim, "What are they?"

"If you understand the true meaning of your question,you will have already realized the true meaning of Buddhism," he answered.At that time, however, I was unable to understand what he meant.⁶

Such were theexchanges between Japanese Buddhist scholars and Ch'an monastery cooks in theearly thirteenth century.

In midsummer of 1223, Dogen finally moved ashore and enteredthe temple on Mt. T'ien-t'ung called Ching-te-ssu. His intense study brought noseal of enlightenment, but it did engender severe disappointment with thestandards of Ch'an monasteries in China. Although the school that Dogen foundwas a branch of Lin-chi traceable back to the koan master Ta-hui, differentfrom the fading school Eisai had encountered, Dogen later would denounceimpartially the general run of all Ch'an masters he met in China.

Althoughthere are in China a great number of those who profess themselves to be thedescendants of the Buddhas and patriarchs, there are few who study truth andaccordingly there are few who teach truth. . . . Thus those people who have notthe slightest idea of what the great Way of the Buddhas and patriarchs is nowbecome the masters of monks. . . . Reciting a few words of Lin-chi and Yun-menthey take them for the whole truth of Buddhism. If Buddhism had been exhaustedby a few words of Lin-chi and Yun-men, it could not have survived till today.⁷

Afterstudying for two years while simultaneously nosing about other nearbymonasteries, Dogen finally decided to travel, hoping others of the "fivehouses" had maintained discipline. (He also seems to have experienced somediscrimination as a foreigner in China.) But the farther he went, the moredespondent he became; nowhere in China could he find a teacher worthy tosucceed the ancient masters. He finally resolved to abandon China and return toJapan.

But at this moment fate took a turn that—in retrospect—hadenormous importance for the future of Japanese Buddhism. A monk he met on theroad told him that T'ien-t'ung now had a new

abbot, atruly enlightened master namd Ju-ching (1163-1228). Dogen returned to see andwas received warmly, being invited by Ju-ching to ignore ceremony and approachhim as an equal. The twenty-five-year-old Japanese monk was elated, and settleddown at last to undertake the study he had come to China for. The masterJu-ching became Dogen's ideal of what a Zen teacher should be, and thehabits—perhaps even the eccentricities—of this aging teacher were translated byDogen into the model for monks in Japan.

Ju-ching was, above all things, uncompromising in hisadvocacy of meditation or zazen. He might even have challengedBodhidharma for the title of its all-time practitioner, and it was fromJu-ching's Ch'an (which may also have included koan study) that Dogen took hiscue. Although Ch'an was still widespread, Ju-ching seems to have been the onlyremaining advocate of intensive meditation in China, and a chance intersectionof history brought this teaching to Japan. Significantly, he was one of the fewTs'ao-tung masters ever to lead the important T'ien-t'ung monastery,traditionally headed by a member of the Lin-chi school. Ju-ching was a modelmaster: strict but kindly; simple in habits, diet, dress; immune to theattractions of court recognition; and an uncompromising advocate of virtuallyround-the-clock meditation.

But he never asked anything of his monks he did not alsodemand of himself, even when advanced in years. He would strike nodding monksto refresh their attention, while lamenting that age had so diminished thestrength in his arm it was eroding his ability to create good monks. Ju-chingwould meditate until eleven in the evening and then be up again by two-thirtyor three the next morning, back at zazen. He frequently developed soreson his backside from such perpetual sitting, but nothing deterred him. He evendeclared the pain made him love zazen all the more.

The story of Dogen's final enlightenment at the hands ofJu-ching is a classic of Japanese Zen. In the meditation hall one early morningall the monks were sitting in meditation when the man next to Dogen dozed off—acommon enough occurrence in early-morning sessions. But when Ju-ching came byon a routine inspection and saw the sleeping monk, he was for some reason particularlyrankled and roared out, "Zazen means the dropping away of mind andbody! What will you get by sleeping?" Dogen, sitting nearby, was at firststartled, but then an indescribable calm, an ecstatic joy washed over him.Could it be that this was the moment he had been hoping for? Could it be thatthe fruit had been ready to fall from the tree, with this just the shakeneeded?

Dogen rushed to Ju-ching's room afterward and burned incense,to signify his enlightenment experience. Throwing himself at the master's feet,he declared, "I have experienced the dropping away of mind and body."

Ju-ching immediately recognized his enlightenment to begenuine (modern masters reportedly can discern a novice's state merely by theway he rings a gong) and he replied, "You have indeed dropped body andmind."

"But wait a minute," Dogen cautioned. "Don'tsanction me so easily. How do you really know I've achievedenlightenment?"

To which Ju-ching replied simply, "Body and mind havedropped away."

Dogen bowed in acknowledgment of his acknowledgment. Andthus, in May 1225, was the greatest Zen teacher in Japan enlightened. In thefall Ju-ching conferred upon Dogen the seal of patriarchal succession of hisline of the Ts'ao-tung sect.⁸

Dogen stayed on for two more years studying under Ju-ching,but finally he decided to return again to Japan. When they parted, Ju-chinggave his Japanese protege the patriarchal robe, his own portrait (called chinso,a symbol of transmission), and bade him farewell. So did Dogen return to Japanin the fall of 1227, taking with him the koan collection Blue Cliff Record,which he copied his last night in China. But he also brought the fire of apowerful idea, pure meditation, that formed the basis for the Japanese Sotoschool of Zen.

Dogen returned to Eisai's old temple of Kennin-ji, where heproceeded to write the minor classic A Universal Recommendation for Zazen,introducing the idea of intense meditation to his countrymen.

Youshould pay attention to the fact that even the Buddha Sakyamuni had to practice zazen for six years. It is alsosaid that Bodhidharma had to do zazen at Shao-lin temple for nine yearsin order to transmit the Buddha-mind. Since these ancient sages were sodiligent, how can present-day trainees do without the practice of zazen?You should stop pursuing words and letters and learn to withdraw and reflect onyourself. When you do so, your body and mind will naturally fall away, and youroriginal Buddha-nature will appear.⁹

It was the opening shot in a campaign to make pure Zen themeaningful alternative to the decadent traditional Buddhism of the aristocracyand the new Salvationist sect of Pure Land. But first the Japanese had to betaught how to meditate, so he wrote a meditation "handbook" thatexplained exactly how and where to undertake this traditional Buddhistpractice. His directions are worth quoting at length.

Now, in doing zazen it is desirable to have a quiet room. You should betemperate in eating and drinking, forsaking all delusive relationships. Settingeverything aside, think neither of good nor evil, right nor wrong. Thus, havingstopped the various functions of your mind, give up the idea of becoming aBuddha. This holds true not only for zazen but for all your dailyactions.

Usually a thick square mat is put on the floor where you sitand a round cushion on top of that. You may sit in either the full or halflotus position. In the former, first put your right foot on your left thigh andthen your left foot on your right thigh. In the latter, only put your left footon the right thigh. Your clothing should be worn loosely but neatly. Next, putyour right hand on your left foot and your left palm on the right palm, thetips of the thumbs lightly touching. Sit upright, leaning to neither left norright, front nor back. Your ears should be on the same plane as your shouldersand your nose in line with your navel. Your tongue should be placed against theroof of your mouth and your lips and teeth closed firmly. With your eyes keptcontinuously open, breathe quietly through your nostrils. Finally, havingregulated your body and mind in this way, take a deep breath, sway your body toleft and right, then sit firmly as a rock. Think of nonthinking. How is thisdone? By thinking beyond thinking and nonthinking. This is the very basis of zazen.¹⁰

This first little essay was meant to provide Japan a taste ofthe real Zen he had experienced in China, and it was the beginning of anastounding literary output. Dogen asserted that since the Buddha had meditatedand Bodhidharma had meditated, the most valuable thing to do is meditate. Notsurprisingly, he received a cold response from the other schools in Kyoto, boththe Tendai sects and the other "Zen" teachers who, like Eisai, taughta "syncretic" Zen of compromise with establishment Buddhism. Hisrigid doctrine was socially awkward for the syncretic Zen monks atKennin-ji—who seasoned their practice with chants and esoteric ceremonies—andDogen finally decided to spare them further embarrassment by retiring to amountain retreat.

Off he went to another temple, An'yoin, where he began toelaborate on the role of meditation in Zen practice, writing another essay,entitled "Bendowa" or "Lecture on Training," designed toprovide a more dialectical defense for zazen. Written in the form of eighteenquestions and answers, the "Lecture on Training" was intended tofurther justify the intense meditation he had described earlier. This essaylater became the initial section of a massive book today known as the Shobogenzo(Treasure of Knowledge Regarding the True Dharma), which was guardedas a secret treasure of the Soto school for many centuries.

Question:. . . For most people the natural way to enlightenment is to read thescriptures and recite the nembutsu [Praise to Amida Buddha]. Since you donothing more than sit cross-legged, how can this mere sitting be a means ofgaining enlightenment?

Answer: .. . Of what use is it to read the scriptures and recite the nembutsu? It is useless to imaginethat the merits of Buddhism come merely from using one's tongue or voice; ifyou think such things embrace all of Buddhism, the Truth is a long way fromyou. You should only read the scriptures so as to learn that the Buddha wasteaching the necessity of gradual and sudden training and that from this youcan realise enlightenment; do not read them so as to make a show of wisdom withuseless intellection. . . . Just to continually repeat the nembutsu isequally useless, for it is a frog who croaks both day and night in some field.. . . They who do nothing . . . more than study the scriptures . . . neverunderstand this, so just stop it and thereby cure your delusions and doubts.Just follow the teachings of a true master and, through the power of Zazen,find the utterly joyful enlightenment of Buddha.¹¹

It is not surprising to find Dogen firm in thebelief that meditation is superior to the practices of two competing movements:the traditional sutra veneration of the Tendai sect and the Pure Land schools'chanting of the nembutsu to Amida Buddha. But what about the Rinzai Zenteaching that enlightenment is sudden and cannot be induced by gradualpractice? He next attacks this position:

Question:Both in India and China, from the beginning of time to the present day, someZen teachers have been enlightened by such things as the sound of stonesstriking bamboos, whilst the color of plum blossoms cleared the minds ofothers. The [Buddha] was enlightened at the sight of the morning star, whilst[his follower] Ananda understood the Truth through seeing a stick fall. As wellas these, many Zen teachers of the five schools after the Sixth Patriarch wereenlightened by only so much as a word. Did all of them practise Zazen?

Answer:From olden times down to the present day, all who were ever enlightened, eitherby colors or sounds, practised Zazen without Zazen and became instantaneouslyenlightened.¹²

What exactlyis he saying here? It would seem that he is convoluting the early teaching ofthe Southern sect, which proposed that "meditation" is a mind processthat might also be duplicated by other means. Dogen seems to be arguing thatzazen is efficacious since all who became enlightened were really"meditating" in daily life, whether they realized it or not. TheSouthern school claimed that dhyana could be anything and therefore itseemed ancillary; Dogen claims it could be anything and therefore it isessential.

Dogen also came back to his original doctrinal dilemma, thequestion that had sent him wandering from teacher to teacher in Japan whilestill a youth: Why strive for enlightenment if all creatures are Buddhas tobegin with? He finally felt qualified to address his own quandary.

Question: There are those who say that one has only tounderstand that this mind itself is the Buddha in order to understand Buddhism,and that there is no need to recite the scriptures or undergo bodily training.If you understand that Buddhism is inherent in yourself, you are already fullyenlightened and there is no need to seek for anything further from anywhere. Ifthis is so, is there any sense in taking the trouble to practice Zazen?

Answer:This is a very grievous mistake, and even if it should be true and the sagesshould teach it, it is impossible for you to understand it. If you would trulystudy Buddhism, you must transcend all opinions of subject and object. If it ispossible to be enlightened simply by knowing that the self is, in itsself-nature, the Buddha, then there was no need for Shakyamuni to try sodiligently to teach the Way.¹

Whether this answer resolves the paradox will be left to thejudgment of others. But for all his intensities and eccentricities, Dogen wascertainly a powerful new thinker, clearly the strongest dialectician in thehistory of Japanese Zen. He was also a magnetic personality who attracted manyfollowers, and by 1233 he had so outgrown the space at An'yoin that a largertemple was imperative (which became available thanks to his aristocraticconnections). His next move was to Kosho-ji, a temple near Kyoto, where hespent the succeeding ten years in intense literary creativity, where heconstructed the first truly independent Zen monastery in Japan, and where hefound a worthy disciple, Koun Ejo (1198-1280), who served as head monk andultimately as his successor. It was here, beginning in 1233, that Dogen finallyrecreated Chinese Ch'an totally in Japan, right down to an architecturalreplica of a Sung-style monastery and an uncompromising discipline reminiscentof his old Chinese master Ju-ching.

After settling in at Kosho-ji he began, in late 1235, afundraising drive for the purpose of building the first Zen-style monks' hall (sodo)in Japan. He believed that this building, viewed by the lawgiver Po-changHuai-hai as the heart of a Ch'an monstery, was essential if he were toeffectively teach meditation. The doors would be open to all, since the onetimearistocrat Dogen was now very much a man of the people, welcoming rich andpoor, monks and laymen, men and women.¹⁴

When the meditation hall opened in 1236, Dogen signaled theoccasion by posting a set of rules for behavior reminiscent of Huai-hai's lawsset down in eighth-century China. A quick skim of these rules tells much aboutthe character of the master Dogen.

No monkshall be admitted to this meditation hall unless he has an earnest desire forthe Way and a strong determination not to seek fame and profit. . . . All monksin this hall should try to live in harmony with one another, just as milkblends well with water. . . . You should not walk about in the outside world;but if unavoidable, it is permissible to do so once a month. . . . Keep thesupervisor of this hall informed of your whereabouts at all times. . . .Neverspeak ill of others nor find fault with them. . . . Never loiter in the hall. .. . Wear only robes of plain material. . . . Never enter the hall drunk withwine. . . . Never disturb the training of other monks by inviting outsiders,lay or clerical, into the hall. . . .¹⁵

Dogenmaintained this first pure Zen monastery for a decade, during which time hecomposed forty more sections of his classic Shobogenzo. And during this timethe tree of Zen took root in Japanese soil firmly and surely.

But things could not go smoothly forever. Dogen's powerfulfriends at court protected him as long as they could, but eventually hispopularity became too much for the jealous Tendai monks on Mt. Hiei to bear. Tofight their censure he appealed to the emperor, claiming (as had Eisai beforehim) that Zen was good for Japan. But the other schools immediately filedopposing briefs with the emperor and the court, culminating in a judiciaryproceeding with distinguished clerics being convened to hear both sides. Asmight have been expected they ruled against Dogen, criticizing him for beingobsessed with zazen and ignoring the sutras, etc. It probably was thispolitical setback that persuaded him to quit the Kyoto vicinity in 1243 andmove to the provinces, where he could teach in peace.¹⁶

He camped out in various small Tendai monasteries (where hewrote another twenty-nine chapters of the Shobogenzo) until his finaltemple, called Eihei-ji, or Eternal Peace, was completed in the mountains ofpresent-day f*ckui prefecture. This site became the center of Soto Zen in Japan,the principal monastery of the sect. Dogen himself was approaching elderstatesmanhood, and in 1247 he was summoned to the warrior headquarters ofKamakura by none other than the most powerful man in Japan, the warrior HojoTokiyori. The ruler wanted to learn about Zen, and Dogen correctly perceived itwould be unhealthy to refuse the invitation.

The warriors in Kamakura would most likely have been familiarwith the syncretic Rinzai Zen of Eisai, which focused on the use of the koan.For his own part, Dogen did not reject the koan out of hand (he left acollection of three hundred); rather he judged it a device intended to create amomentary glimpse of satori, or enlightenment, whose real value was mainly as ametaphor for the enlightenment experience—an experience he believed could berealized in full only through gradual practice.

In thepursuit of the Way [Buddhism] the prime essential is sitting (zazen). . . . By reflecting uponvarious "public-cases" (koan) and dialogues of the patriarchs, onemay perhaps get the sense of them but it will only result in one's being led astrayfrom the way of the Buddha, our founder. Just to pass the time in sittingstraight, without any thought of acquisition, without any sense of achievingenlightenment—this is the way of the Founder. It is true that our predecessorsrecommended both the koan and sitting, but it was the sitting that theyparticularly insisted upon. There have been some who attained enlightenmentthrough the test of the koan, but the true cause of their enlightenment was themerit and effectiveness of sitting. Truly the merit lies in the sitting.¹⁷

Dogen spent the winter of 1247-48 in Kamakura teachingmeditation, and was in turn offered the post of abbot in a new Zen monasterybeing built for the warrior capital. But Dogen politely declined, perhapsbelieving the Salvationist sects and the syncretic Zen of Eisai were still toostrong among the samurai for his pure meditation to catch hold.¹⁸ Orpossibly he sensed his health was beginning to fail and he wanted to retire tohis beloved mountain monastery, where the politics of Kyoto and Kamakura couldnot reach.

Maybe Dogen's many nights of intense meditation in heat andcold had taken their toll, or the long hours of writing and rewriting hismanual of Zen had sapped his strength. In any case, his health deterioratedrapidly after Kamakura until finally, in 1253, all realized that the end wasnear. He appointed the faithful head monk Ejo his successor at Eihei-ji, and onthe insistence of his disciples was then taken to Kyoto for medical care.However, nothing could be done, and on August 28 he said farewell, dying in thegrand tradition—sitting in zazen.

In the long run, Dogen seems the one we should acknowledge asthe true founder of Zen in Japan; pure Zen first had to be introduced before itcould grow. But at the time of Dogen's death it was not at all obvious thatSoto Zen, or any Zen for that matter, would ever survive to become anindependent sect in Japan.¹⁹ Perhaps Dogen felt this too, for hislater writings became increasingly strident in their denunciation of the Salvationistsects and the syncretic Rinzai schools. He thought of himself as abovesectarianism, claiming that zazen was not a sect but rather anexpression of pure Buddhism. And perhaps it was after all only an accident thatthe teacher who had taught him to meditate happened to be a member of theTs'ao-tung school.

After Dogen's death, his small community persevered in themountains, isolated and at first preserving his teaching. But

eventuallyinternal disputes pulled the community apart, and the temple fell inactive fora time. Furthermore, his teaching of intensive meditation was soon diluted bythe introduction of rituals from the esoteric schools of traditional Buddhism.In this new form it began to proselytize and spread outward, particularly inprovincial areas, where its simplicity appealed to common folk.²⁰ Italso welcomed women, something not necessarily stressed in all the Buddhistsects. Although Soto was by this time pretty much a thing of the past in China,with the last recognized Chinese Soto master dying about a century after Dogen,the school prospered in Japan, where today it has three followers for every oneof Rinzai.

Ch'an still had Rinzai masters in China, however, and in thenext phase of Zen they would start emigrating to teach the Japanese inKamakura. The result was that Soto became the low-key home-grown Zen, whileRinzai became a vehicle for importing Chinese culture to the warrior class. Itis to this dynamic period of warrior Rinzai Zen that we must now look for thenext great masters.

IKKYU:

ZEN ECCENTRIC

The earliestJapanese masters brought Ch'an from China in the hope that its discipline wouldrevitalize traditional Buddhism. Since Eisai's temple was the first to includeCh'an practice, he has received credit for founding Japanese Rinzai Zen.History, however, has glorified matters somewhat, for in fact Eisai was littlemore than a Tendai priest who dabbled a bit in Ch'an practice and enjoyed agift for advancing himself with the Kamakura warlords. Nor was Dogen inspiredto establish the Soto sect in Japan. He too was merely a reformer who chancedacross a Chinese Soto master devoted to meditation. It was the powerfuldiscipline of meditation that Dogen sought to introduce into Japan, not asectarian branch of Zen. Only later did Dogen's movement become a proselytizingZen sect. These and other thirteenth-century Japanese reformers imported Ch'anfor the simple reason that it was the purest expression of Buddhism left inChina. During the early era Zen focused on Kyoto and Kamakura and was mainly areformation within the Tendai school. The Japanese understanding of Ch'an washesitant and inconclusive—to the point that few Japanese of the mid-thirteenthcentury actually realized a new form of Buddhism was in the making.¹

Over the next century and a half, however, a revolutionbegan, as Zen at first gradually and then precipitously became thepreoccupation of Japan's ruling class. The Zen explosion came about via acombination of circ*mstances. We have seen that the warrior ruler Hojo Tokiyori(1227-63) was interested in the school and offered Dogen a temple in Kamakura,an invitation Dogen refused. However, in 1246 an emigre Ch'an master from theChinese mainland named Lan-ch'i (1212-78) appeared in Japan uninvited, havingheard of Japanese interest in Ch'an. He went first to Kyoto, where he found Zenstill subject to hostile sectarianism, and then to Kamakura, where he managedin 1249 to meet Tokiyori. The Japanese strongman was delighted and proceeded tohave the temple of another sect converted to a Zen establishment, makingLan-ch'i abbot. Shortly after, Tokiyori completed construction of a Sung-styleZen monastery in Kamakura, again putting Lan-ch'i in charge. This Chinese monk,merely one of many in his native China, had become head of the leading Zentemple in Japan. When word got back, a host of enterprising Chinese clericsbegan pouring into the island nation seeking their fortune.²

Thus began the next phase of early Japanese Zen, fueled bythe invasion of Chinese Ch'an monks. This movement occupied the remainder ofthe thirteenth century and was spurred along by unsettled conditions inChina—namely the imminent fall of the Southern Sung Dynasty to the Mongols anda concurrent power struggle within Ch'an itself, which induced monks from theless powerful establishments to seek greener pastures.³ In 1263 asenior Ch'an cleric named Wu-an (1197-1276) arrived in Kamakura and was alsomade an abbot by Tokiyori.⁴ The first monk, Lan-ch'i, thereuponmoved to Kyoto and began proselytizing in the old capital. Wu-an subsequentlycertified Tokiyori with a seal of enlightenment, making the military strongmanof Japan an acknowledged Ch'an master. Tokiyori's interest in Zen did not gounnoticed by the warriors around him, and his advocacy, combined with theinflux of Chinese monks appearing to teach, initiated the Zen bandwagon inKamakura.

Tokiyori died in 1263, and his young son Tokimune (1251—84),who came to power five years later, initially showed no interest in Zenpractice. But he was still in his teens in 1268 when there appeared in Japanenvoys from Kublai Khan demanding tribute. The Mongols were at that momentcompleting their sack of China, and Japan seemed the next step. Undeterred, theJapanese answered all Mongol demands with haughty insults, with thenot-unexpected result that in 1274 Kublai launched an invasion fleet. Althoughhis ships foundered in a fortuitous streak of bad weather, the Japanese knewthat there would be more. It was then that Tokimune began strengthening hisdiscipline through Zen meditation and toughening his instincts with koans. Hestudied under a newly arrived Chinese master whose limited Japanesenecessitated their communicating through a translator. (When the enlightenedChinese found cause to strike his all-powerful student, he prudently pummeledthe interpreter instead.)⁵ The samurai also began to take aninterest in Zen, which naturally appealed to the warrior mentality because ofits emphasis on discipline, on experience over education, and on arough-and-tumble practice including debates with a master and blows for theloser—all congenial to men of simple, unschooled tastes. For their own part,the perceptive Chinese missionaries, hampered by the language barrier, renderedZen as simplistic as possible to help the faith compete with the Salvationistsects among the often illiterate warriors.

In 1281 the Mongols launched another invasion force, thistime 100,000 men strong, but they were held off several weeks by thesteel-nerved samurai until a typhoon (later named the Kamikaze or "DivineWind") providentially sank the fleet. The extent to which Zen trainingaided this victory can be debated, but the courage of Tokimune and his soldiersundoubtedly benefited from its rigorous discipline. The Japanese ruler himselfgave Zen heavy credit and immediately began building a commemorative Zenmonastery in Kamakura.

By the time of Tokimuni's premature death in 1284, Rinzai Zenhad been effectively established as the faith of the Kamakura rulers. Hissuccessor continued the development of Zen establishments, supported by newChinese masters who also began teaching Chinese culture (calligraphy,literature, ink painting, philosophy) to the Kamakura warriors along with theirZen. Since the faith was definitely beginning to boom, the government prudentlypublished a list of restrictions for Zen monasteries, including an abolition ofarms (a traditional problem with the other sects) and a limit on the number ofpretty boys (novices) that could be quartered in a compound to tempt the monks.The maximum number of monks in each monastery also was prescribed, and severerules were established governing discipline. Out of this era in the latethirteenth century evolved an organization of Zen temples in Kyoto and Kamakurabased on the Sung Chinese model of five main monasteries (called the "fivemountains" or gozan) and a network of ten officially recognizedsubsidiary temples. Furthermore, Chinese culture became so fashionable inKamakura that collections of Sung art began appearing among the illiterateprovincial warriors—an early harbinger of the Japanese evolution of Zen fromasceticism to aesthetics.⁶

The creation of the gozan system at the end of thethirteenth century gave Zen a formal role in the religious structure of Japan.Zen was now fashionable and had powerful friends, a perfect

combinationto foster growth and influence. On the sometimes pointed urging of thegovernment, temples from other sects were converted to Zen establishments bylocal authorities throughout Japan.⁷ The court and aristocracy inKyoto also began taking an interest in pure, Sung-style Rinzai. Temples werebuilt in Kyoto (or converted from other sects), and even the cloisteredemperors began to meditate (perhaps searching less for enlightenment than forthe rumored occult powers). When the Kamakura regime collapsed in themid-fourteenth century and warriors of the newly ascendent Ashikaga clanreturned the seat of government to Kyoto, the old capital was already wellacquainted with Zen's political importance. However, although Rinzai Zen hadmade much visible headway in Japan—the ruling classes increasingly meditated onkoans, and Chinese monks operated new Sung-style monasteries—the depth ofunderstanding seems disappointingly superficial overall. The gozan systemsoon turned so political, as monasteries competed for official favor, thatbefore long establishment Zen was almost devoid of spiritual content. In manyways, Japanese Zen became decadent almost from the start. The immense prestigeof imported Chinese art and ideas, together with the powerful role of the Zenclerics as virtually the only group sufficiently educated to oversee relationswith the continent, meant that early on, Zen's cultural role became as tellingas its spiritual place.

Perhaps the condition of Zen is best illustrated by notingthat the most famous priest of the era, Muso Soseki (1275-1351), was actually apowerful political figure. This Zen prelate, who never visited China, came toprominence when he served first an ill-fated emperor—subsequently deposed—andlater the Ashikaga warrior who deposed him. Muso was instrumental in theJapanese government's establishment of regular trade with the mainland. He wasalso responsible for a revision of the gozan administrative system,establishing (in 1338) official Zen temples in all sixty-six provinces of Japanand spreading the power base of the faith. Although Muso is today honored as animportant Japanese master, he actually preferred a "syncretic" Zenintermingled with esoteric rites and apparently understood very little of realZen. A prototype for many Zen leaders to come, he was a scholar, aesthetician,and architect of some of the great cultural monuments in Kyoto, personallydesigning several of the capital's finest temples and landscape gardens.

Thus by the mid-fourteenth century Zen had become hardly morethan an umbrella for the import of Chinese technology, art,

andphilosophy.⁸ The monks were, by Muso's own admission, more oftenthan not "shaven-headed laymen" who came to Zen to learn painting andto write a stilted form of Chinese verse as part of a gozan literarymovement. The overall situation has been well summarized by Philip Yampolsky:"The monks in temples were all poets and literary figures.. . . [T]he useof koans, particularly those derived from the [Blue Cliff Record],became a literary and educational device rather than a method for the practiceof Zen."⁹He further notes that ". . . with the gozan systemfrozen in a bureaucratic mold, priests with administrative talents gained inascendency. In the headquarters temples men interested in literary pursuitswithdrew completely from temple affairs and devoted themselves exclusively toliterature. To be sure, priests gave lectures and continued to writecommentaries. But the gozan priests seemed to concern themselves moreand more with trivialities. By the mid-fifteenth century Zen teaching hadvirtually disappeared in the temples, and the priests devoted themselves mainlyto ceremonial and administrative duties."¹⁰ Authentic Zenpractice had become almost completely emasculated, overshadowed by the rise ofa Zen-inspired cultural movement far outstripping Chinese prototypes.

The political convolutions of fourteenth-century Japan, aswell as the organizational shenanigans of the official Rinzai Zen sect, neednot detain us further.¹¹ We need only note that the gozan system,which so effectively gave Zen an official presence throughout Japan, also meantthat the institution present was Zen in name only. Significantly, however, afew major monasteries elected not to participate in the official system. One ofthe most important was the Daitoku-ji in Kyoto, which managed, by not becomingpart of the establishment, to maintain some authenticity in its practice. Andout of the Daitoku-ji tradition there came from time to time a few Zen monkswho still understood what Zen was supposed to be about, who understood it wasmore than painting, gardens, poetry, and power. Perhaps the most celebrated ofthese iconoclastic throwbacks to authentic Zen was the legendary Ikkyu Sojun(1394-1481).

The master Ikkyu, a breath of fresh air in the stifling,hypocritical world of institutionalized Zen, seems almost a reincarnation ofthe early Ch'an masters of the T'ang.¹² However, his penchant fordrinking and womanizing is more reminiscent of the Taoists than the Buddhists.Historical information on Ikkyu and his writings is spread among variousdocuments of uneven reliability. The major source is a pious chronicleallegedly compiled by his disciple Bokusai from firsthand information. Whereasthis document has the virtue of being contemporaneous with his life, it has thedrawback of being abbreviated and selectively edited to omit unflatteringfacts. Then there is a collection of tales from the Tokugawa era (1615-1868)which are heavily embellished when not totally apocryphal. The picaresquecharacter created in the Tokugawa Tales led one commentator to liken Ikkyu tothe fabulous Sufi philosopher-vagabond Nasrudin, who also became a vehicle totransmit folk wisdom.¹³ These tales seem to have developed aroundIkkyu simply because his devil-may-care attitude, combined with hisantischolarly pose, made him a perfect peg on which to hang all sorts ofdidactic (not to mention Rabelaisian) anecdotes. Finally, there is a vast bodyof his own poetry and prose, as well as a collection of calligraphy now widelyadmired for its spontaneity and power.

Bokusai's chronicle identifies Ikkyu's mother as alady-in-waiting at the imperial palace of Emperor Gokomatsu, who chose fromtime to time to "show her favor." When she was discovered to be withchild, the empress had her sent away, charging that she was sympathetic to acompeting political faction. Consequently, the master Ikkyu was born in thehouse of a commoner on New Year's Day of the year 1394, the natural son of anemperor and a daughter of the warrior class.

At age five his mother made him acolyte in a Zen monastery, amove some suggest was for his physical safety, lest the shogun decide to doaway with this emperor's son as a potential threat. His schooling in this gozanera was aristocratic and classical, founded on Chinese literature and theBuddhist sutras. By age eleven he was studying the Vimalakirti Sutra and by thirteenhe was intensively reading and writing Chinese poetry. One of his works,written at age fifteen and entitled "Spring Finery," demonstrates adelicate sensibility reminiscent of John Keats:

How manypassions cling to this wanderer's sleeves?

Multitudesof falling blossoms mark the passion of Heaven and Earth.

Aperfumed breeze across my pillow; Am I asleep or awake?

Here andnow melt into an indistinct Spring dream.¹⁴

The poethere has returned from a walk only to find the perfume of flowers clinging tohis clothes, confusing his sense of reality and place. It recalls Keats'nightingale—"Fled is that music:—Do I

wake orsleep?" In this early poem we catch a glimpse of the sensualist Ikkyuwould one day become.

At age eighteen he became a novice to a reclusive monk of theMyoshin-ji branch of Zen in Kyoto; but when his mentor died two years later hewandered for a time disconsolate and suicide-prone. Then at twenty-two hedecided to try for an interview with Kaso Soton (1352-1428), the Daitoku-ji-trainedmaster known to be the sternest teacher in Japan. As was traditional, themaster at first shut him out and refused an audience. Ikkyu resolved to waitoutside until death, "taking the dew for his roof and the grasses for hisbed." He slept at night under an empty boat and stood all day in front ofKaso's retreat. After Kaso repeatedly failed to discourage him, even oncedousing him with water, the master relented and invited Ikkyu in for aninterview. They were made for each other and for many years thereafter Ikkyuand Kaso "pursued deep matters tirelessly."

Ikkyu came to revere Kaso, probably one of the few authenticmasters of the age, and he stayed to serve this teacher for almost a decade,even though life with Kaso was arduous. Since they lived near a major lake,Ikkyu would each night meditate in a borrowed fisherman's boat until dawn. Whenhis purse "went flat," he would journey to the capital and sellincense or cheap clothing to poor housewives—afterwards returning to themonastery in the same straw sandals, hat, and cloak.¹⁵ After threeyears Kaso gave him the Zen name Ikkyu, a recognition of his progress.

Ikkyu's enlightenment occurred in his twenty-sixth year when,while meditating in the boat, he was startled by the cry of a crow. He rushed backat dawn and reported this to his master.

Kaso responded, "You have reached the stage of an arhat[one who has overcome ego], but not that of a Master, novice."

Ikkyu replied, "Then I'm perfectly happy as an arhat anddon't need to be a Master."

Kaso responded, "Well, then, you really are a Masterafter all."¹⁶

Although it was customary for monks to receive a certificatefrom their master attesting to their enlightenment, the matter of Ikkyu'scertificate is problematical. He himself refused to give out certificates, andhe is depicted in Bokusai's chronicle as periodically taking out his own andrequesting it be destroyed by his disciples—after which it seemed tomiraculously appear again several years later. The quantity of invention andaccretion attached to Ikkyu's disappearing certificate has fostered speculationthat he never, in fact, actually received a seal.

In any case, he probably would have destroyed his own seal ofenlightenment in later years. His life grew progressively more unconventional withtime, just the opposite of most. Beginning as a classicist in the finest Kyototradition, he had gone on to become a spiritual recluse in the mountains undera harsh meditation master. After all this training he then took the road,becoming a wandering monk in the traditional T'ang mode.

Well, almost in the traditional mode. He seemed to wanderinto brothels and wine shops almost as often as into Zen temples. He consortedwith high and low, merchant and commoner, male and female. Our record of theseexplorations, both geographic and social, is in his writings, particularly hispoetry. He also harbored a vendetta against the complacency and corruption ofJapanese Zen and its masters, particularly the new abbot of Daitoku-ji, anolder man named Yoso who had once been a fellow disciple of his beloved Kaso.

When Ikkyu was forty-six he was invited by Yoso to head asubtemple in the Daitoku-ji compound. He accepted, much to the delight of hisadmirers, who began bringing the temple donations in gratitude. However, afteronly ten days Ikkyu concluded that Daitoku-ji too had become more concernedwith ceremony than with the preservation of Zen, and he wrote a famous protestpoem as a parting gesture—claiming he could find more of Zen in the meat,drink, and sex traditionally forbidden Buddhists.

For tendays in this temple my mind's been in turmoil,

My feetare entangled in endless red tape.

If someday you get around to looking for me,

Try thefish-shop, the wine parlor, or the brothel.¹⁷

Ikkyu's attack on the commercialization of Zen was notwithout cause. The scholar Jan Covell observes that in Ikkyu's time,"Rinzai Zen had sunk to a low point and enlightenment was 'sold,'particularly by those temples associated with the Shogunate. Zen temples alsomade money in sake-brewing and through usury. In the mid-fifteenth century oneZen temple, Shokoku-ji, furnished all the advisers to the Shogunate'sgovernment and received most of the bribes. The imperial-sanctioned temple ofDaitoku-ji was only on the fringe of this corruption, but Ikkyu felt he couldnot criticize it enough."¹⁸

Ironically, Ikkyu also attacked the writing of"Zen" poetry—in his poems. He was really attacking the literary gozanmovement, the preoccupation of monks who forsook Zen to concentrate on producingforgettable verse in formal Chinese. They put their poetry before, indeed inplace of, Zen practice. Ikkyu used his poetry (later collected as the"Crazy Cloud Poems" or Kyoun-shu) as a means of expressing hisenlightenment, as well as his criticism of the establishment. It also, as oftenas not, celebrated sensual over spiritual pleasures.

Whereas the T'ang masters created illogic andstruggled with intuitive transmission, Ikkyu cheerfully gave in to theexistential life of the senses. In the introduction to one poem he told aparable explaining his priorities.

Once upona time there was an old woman who supported a retired hermit for some twentyyears. For a long time, she sent a young girl to serve his food. One day shetold the girl to throw her arms around the monk and ask him how he felt. Whenthe girl did so, the monk told her, "I am like a withered tree propped upagainst a cold boulder after three winters without warmth." The girl wentback to the old woman and made her report. "Twenty years wasted feeding aphony layman!" exclaimed the woman. Then she ran him off and burnt his hutto the ground.

The grandmotherly old woman tried togive that rascal a ladder.

Toprovide the pure monk with a nice bride.

Iftonight I were to be made such a proposition,

Thewithered willow would put forth new spring growth.¹⁹

Aparticularly lyrical exploration of sensuality is found in a poem entitled"A Woman's [Body] has the Fragrance of Narcissus," which celebratesthe essence of sexuality.

Oneshould gaze long at [the fairy] hill then ascend it.

Midnighton the Jade bed amid [Autumn] dreams

A floweropening beneath the thrust of the plum branch.

Rockinggently between the fairy's thighs.²⁰

Ikkyu's amours seem to have produced a number of natural progeny.In fact, there is the legend that one of Ikkyu's most devoted followers, a monknamed Jotei, was in fact his illegitimate son. According to the Tokugawa Tales,there was a once-rich fan

maker inSakai whose business had declined to the point that he had to sell his shop andstand on the streetcorner hawking fans. Then one day Ikkyu came by carryingsome fans decorated with his own famous calligraphy and asked the man to takethem on commission. Naturally they all sold immediately and, by subsequent merchandisingof Ikkyu's works, the man's business eventually was restored. In gratitude hegranted Ikkyu his daughter, from which union sprang Ikkyu's natural son, Jotei.

This story is questionable but it does illustrate thereputation Ikkyu enjoyed, both as artist and lover. Furthermore, he wrotetouching and suspiciously fatherly poems to a little girl named Shoko.

Watchingthis four-year-old girl sing and dance,

I feelthe pull of ties that are hard to dismiss,

Forgettingmy duties I slip into freedom.

MasterAbbot, whose Zen is this?²¹

When Ikkyu was in his seventies, during the disastrous civilconflict known as the Onin war, he had a love affair with a forty-year-oldtemple attendant named Mori. On languid afternoons she would play the Japanese kotoor harp and he the wistful-sounding shakuhachi, a long bamboo flutesometimes carried by monks as a weapon. This late-life love affair occasioned anumber of erotic poems, including one that claims her restoration of hisvirility (called by the Chinese euphemism "jade stalk") cheered hisdisciples.

How is myhand like Mori's hand?

Self confidence is the vassal, Freedom the master.

When I am ill she cures the jade stalk

Andbrings joy back to my followers.²²

Ikkyu also left a number of prose fables and sermons thatportray a more sober personality than does his often iconoclastic verse. Oneclassic work, written in 1457 and called "Skeletons," has become aZen classic. In the section given below he explores the Buddhist idea of theVoid and nothingness:

Let metell you something. Human birth is analogous to striking up a fire—the fatheris flint, the mother is stone and the child is the spark. Once the sparktouches a lamp wick it continues to exist through the "secondarysupport" of the fuel until that is exhausted. Then it flickers out. Thelovemaking of the parents is the equivalent of striking the spark. Since theparents too have "no beginning," in the end they, too, will flickerout. Everything grows out of empty space from which all forms derive. If onelets go the forms then he reaches what is called the "originalground." But since all sentient beings come from nothingness we can useeven the term "original ground" only as a temporary tag.²³

It seemsunfortunate that Ikkyu's prose is not better known today.²⁴In factthe best-known accounts of Ikkyu are the apocryphal tales that attached to himduring the Tokugawa era. A typical episode is the following, entitled"Ikkyu Does Magic," in which the picaresque Zen-man uses his naturalresources to thwart the bluster of a haughty priest from one of the scholarlyaristocratic sects—just the thing guaranteed to please the common man.

Once Ikkyu was taking the Yodo no Kawase ferry on his way toSakai. There was a yamabushi [mountain ascetic of Esoteric Buddhism] onboard who began to question him.

"Hey, Your Reverence, what sect are you?"

"I belong to the Zen sect," repliedIkkyu.

"I don't suppose your sect has miracles the way our sectdoes?"

"No, actually we have lots of miracles. But if it's miracles,why don't you show the sort of miracles that your people have?"

"Well," said the yamabushi, "By virtue of my magic powers I canpray up Fudo [a fierce guardian deity of Buddhism] before your very eyes andmake him stand right there on the prow of the boat."

And, with the beads of his rosary the man began to invokefirst Kongo and then Seitaka [Esoteric Buddhist deities]. At this, all thepassengers began to look back and forth wondering what was going to happen.Then, just as he had said, there on the prow of the boat, the form of Fudoappeared surrounded by a halo of dancing flames.

Then the yamabushimade a ferocious face and told him, "You'd all better offer him aprayer." This made the other passengers very uneasy—all that is but Ikkyu,who was completely unruffled.

"Well," spat out the yamabushi, "How about you,Zen monk? How are you going to deal with my miracle?"

"By producing a miracle of my own. From my very body Iwill cause water to issue forth and extinguish the flames of your Fudo. You'dbetter start your prayers up again." And Ikkyu began to pee mightily allover the flames until at last the yamabushi's magic was counteracted and the entire imagemelted away. Thereupon the passengers on the boat all bowed to Ikkyu for hiswonderful display.²⁵

Ironically, the real-life Ikkyu spent his twilight yearsrestoring Daitoku-ji after its destruction (along with the rest of Kyoto) fromthe ten-year Onin war (1467-77), by taking over the temple and using hiscontacts in the merchant community to raise funds. He had over a hundreddisciples at this time, a popularity that saddened him since earlier (and, hethought, more deserving) masters had had many fewer followers. Thus in the lastdecade of his life he finally exchanged his straw sandals and reed hat for therobes of a prestigious abbot over a major monastery. His own ambivalence onthis he confessed in a poem:

Fiftyyears a rustic wanderer,

Nowmortified in purple robes.²⁶

Ikkyu's contributions to Zen culture are also significant. Hehelped inspire the secular Zen ritual known today as the tea ceremony, byencouraging the man today remembered as its founder. He also supported one ofthe best-known dramatists of the No theater and was himself a mastercalligrapher, an art closely akin to painting in the Far East and regarded bymany as even more demanding.²⁷ He even created a soybean dish (natto)now a staple of Zen monastic cuisine.

But as his biographer James Sanford has pointed out, the reallife of this truly great Japanese master has all but eluded us. His poetry isin classical Chinese and virtually unknown; his prose lies largely unread; andthe Tokugawa legend of Ikkyu is almost entirely apocryphal. This last travestyhas extended even to fictionalizing his role as a child at the monastery; thereis now a popular television cartoon series in Japan about the irrepressibleacolyte Ikkyu. Sanford speculates that his attraction for contemporary Japaneseis that, in the legend of Ikkyu, "it is possible for the modern Japanesemind to re-discover 'native' examples of, and justification for,individualism—a term and concept whose full assimilation into modern Japaneseculture has for over fifty years been blocked by a legacy of residualNeo-Confucian norms left over from [Japan's repressive past]."²⁸

It does seem true that the Zen-man Ikkyu represents a safetyvalve in Japanese society, both then and now. He brought the impulsive candorof Zen to the world of affairs, demonstrating by example that afterenlightenment it is necessary to return to a world where mountains are againmountains, rivers again rivers. And by rejecting official "Zen,"Ikkyu may well have been the most Zenlike of all Japanese masters.

Chapter Eighteen

HAKUIN:

JAPANESE MASTER OF THE KOAN

The closingera of the Japanese middle ages, in the decades following Ikkyu's death, is nowknown as the Century of the Country at War. Japan became a land of quarrelingfiefdoms, and Zen, too, drifted for want of leadership and inspiration. Theeventual reunification of the country late in the sixteenth century was led bya brutal military strategist named Oda Nobunaga (1534-82). As part of histakeover he obliterated the militaristic Buddhist complex on Mt. Hiei by oneday simply slaughtering all its monks and burning the establishment to theground, thereby ending permanently the real influence of Buddhism in Japanesepolitics. Nobunaga was succeeded by an even more accomplished militarist,Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536-98), who brought to the shogunate a flair fordiplomacy and cunning compromise. Hideyoshi solidified Japan only to have yetanother warlord, Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542-1616), maneuver its rule into the handsof his own family—inaugurating the two and a half centuries of totalitarianisolationism known today as the Tokugawa era (1615-1868). He also moved thecapital to the city whose modern name is Tokyo, at last leaving historic Kyotoin repose.

Under the Tokugawa a new middle class of urban merchants andcraftsmen arose, and with it came a version of Zen for common people, withmasters who could touch the concerns of the working class. Among these belovedmasters must certainly be remembered the monk Takuan (1573-1645) from Ikkyu'srebuilt Daitoku-ji temple, who introduced Zen teachings to this new audience,and the wandering teacher Bankei (1622-93), whose kindly, mysticalinterpretation of oneness through zazen earned him wide fame. Overall,however, Rinzai Zen remained spiritually dormant until the middle of theTokugawa era, when there appeared one of the most truly inspired Zen teachersof all time.

The master Hakuin (1686-1769) was born as Sugiyama Iwajiro inHara, a small village at the base of Mt. Fuji. He was the youngest of fivechildren in a family of modest means, an origin that may have helped himunderstand the concerns of the poor. As he tells his story, he was seven oreight when his mother took him to hear a priest from the Salvationist Nichirensect preach on the tormenting Buddhist hells. He was terrified and secretlybegan day and night reciting the Lotus Sutra (which claims to protect from theperils of fire or water those who chant the proper incantation). The fear ofhell, with its boiling caldrons, so permeated his young mind that he evenbecame leary of the traditional Japanese bath, then often taken in a round tubfired from the bottom with wood. He claimed this fear of the bath finallyconvinced him to become a monk.

One day when I was taking a bath with my mother, she askedthat the water be made hotter and had the maid add wood to the fire. Graduallymy skin began to prickle with the heat and the iron bath-cauldron began torumble. Suddenly I recalled the descriptions of the hells that I had heard andI let out a cry of terror that resounded through the neighborhood.

From this time on I determined to myself that I would leavehome to become a monk. To this my parents would not consent, yet I wentconstantly to the temple to recite the sutras. . . .¹

But after several years of study and chanting, he wasdismayed to find he still felt pain (when he tested himself one day with a hotpoker). He resolved to intensify his devotion and at age fifteen he entered alocal Zen temple (against his parents' wishes) and was ordained as a monk.Hakuin pursued his study of the Lotus Sutra, the primary scripture venerated atthis temple (an illustration of how far Japanese Zen had traveled from itstradition of meditation and koans), but after a year he concluded it was justanother book, no different from the Confucian classics. He therefore began todrift from temple to temple until, at nineteen, he experienced anotherspiritual crisis. In a book of religious biographies he came across the storyof the Chinese monk Yen-t'ou (828-87), who had been attacked and murdered bybandits, causing him to emit screams heard a full three miles away. Hakuin wasplunged into depression.

Iwondered why such an enlightened monk was unable to escape the swords of thieves.If such a thing could happen to a man who was like a unicorn or phoenix amongmonks, a dragon in the sea of Buddhism, how was I to escape the staves of thedemons of hell after I died? What use was there in studying Zen?²

He thereupon took up his staff and set out as an itinerantseeker, only to meet disappointment after disappointment—until finally hedecided to put his future in the hands of chance. One day as the abbot of atemple was airing its library outside, Hakuin decided to select a book at randomand let it decide his fate. He picked a volume of biographies of Chinese Ch'anworthies and opening it read of an eleventh-century Lin-chi master who keptawake in meditation by boring into his own thigh with a wood drill. The storygalvanized Hakuin, and he vowed to pursue Zen training until enlightenment washis.

Hakuin claims that at age twenty-four he had hisfirst really moving satori experience. He was in a temple in Niigataprefecture, meditating on the "Mu" koan (Q: "Does a dog haveBuddha-nature? A: "Mu!"), and so intense was his concentration thathe even forgot sleeping and eating. Then one day . . .

Suddenly a great doubt manifested itself before me. It was asthough I were frozen solid in the midst of an ice sheet extending tens ofthousands of miles. A purity filled my breast and I could neither go forwardnor retreat. To all intents and purposes I was out of my mind and the Mu alone remained. Although I satin the Lecture Hall and listened to the Master's lecture, it was as though Iwere hearing a discussion from a distance outside the hall. At times it felt asthough I were floating through the air.

This state lasted for several days. Then I chanced to hearthe sound of the temple bell and I was suddenly transformed. It was as if asheet of ice had been smashed or a jade tower had fallen with a crash.³

Elated with his transformation, he immediately trekked backto an earlier master and presented a verse for approval. The master, however,was not impressed.

The Master, holding my verse up in his left hand, said to me:"This verse is what you have learned from study. Now show me what yourintuition has to say," and he held out his right hand.

I replied: "If there were something intuitive that Icould show you, I'd vomit it out," and I made a gagging sound.

The Master said: "How do you understand Chao-chou's Mu?"

I replied: "What sort of place does Mu have that one can attach armsand legs to it?"

The Master twisted my nose with his fingers and said:"Here's some place to attach arms and legs." I was nonplussed and theMaster gave a hearty laugh.⁴

Again and again he tried to extract a seal from this master,but always in vain. One of these fruitless exchanges even left him lying in amud puddle.

One evening the Master sat cooling himself on the veranda.Again I brought him a verse I had written. "Delusions and fancies,"the Master said. I shouted his words back at him in a loud voice, whereupon theMaster seized me and rained twenty or thirty blows with his fists on me, andthen pushed me off the veranda.

This was on the fourth day of the fifth month after a longspell of rain. I lay stretched out in the mud as though dead, scarcelybreathing and almost unconscious. I could not move; meanwhile the Master sat onthe veranda roaring with laughter.⁵

He finally despaired of receiving the seal of enlightenmentfrom this teacher, although he did have further spiritual experiences under theman's rigorous guidance—experiences Hakuin interpreted, perhaps rightly, as satori.Feeling wanderlust he again took to the road, everywhere experiencingincreasingly deep satori. In southern Ise he was enlightened whensuddenly swamped in a downpour. Near Osaka he was further enlightened oneevening in a temple monks' hall by the sound of falling snow. In Gifu prefecturehe had an even deeper experience during walking meditation in a monks' hall. Healso had a mental and physical collapse about this time, no doubt resultingfrom the strain of his intensive asceticism. After his father's death in 1716,he studied in Kyoto for a time, but the next year he returned to the Shoin-jitemple near his original home at Hara. Weary of life at thirty-two, he stillwas undecided about his future. Back at the temple where he had started, he nolonger had any idea of what to do. Then a revelation appeared:

One nightin a dream my mother came and presented me with a purple robe made of silk.When I lifted it, both sleeves seemed very heavy, and on examining them I foundan old mirror, five or six inches in diameter, in each sleeve. The reflectionfrom the mirror in the right sleeve penetrated to my heart and vital organs. Myown mind, mountains and rivers, the great earth seemed serene and bottomless. .. . After this, when I looked at all things, it was as though I were seeing my ownface. For the first time I understood the meaning of the saying, "The[enlightened spirit] sees the Buddha-nature within his eye."⁶

With thisdream he finally achieved full satori. He resolved that the oldramshackle temple would be his final home. He had found enlightenment there andthere he would stay, his own master at last.

And sure enough, Hakuin never moved again. Instead, thepeople of Japan—high and low—came to see him. His simple country temple becamea magnet for monks and laymen seeking real Zen. By force of his own character,and most certainly without his conscious intention, he gradually became theleading religious figure in Japan. By the end of his life he had brought thekoan practice back to a central place in Zen and had effectively created modernRinzai.

Hakuin was the legitimate heir of the Chinese koanmaster Ta-hui, and the first teacher since to actually expand the philosophicaldimensions of Zen. It will be recalled that Ta-hui advocated"Introspecting-the-Koan" meditation, called k'an-hua Ch'an inChinese and Kanna Zen in Japanese, which he put forth in opposition to the"Silent Illumination" meditation of the Soto school. Hakuin himselfclaimed that he first tried the quietistic approach of tranquil meditation(albeit on a koan), but he was unable to clear his mind of all distractions.

When Iwas young the content of my koan meditation was poor. I was convinced thatabsolute tranquility of the source of the mind was the Buddha Way. Thus Idespised activity and was fond of quietude. I would always seek out some darkand gloomy place and engage in dead sitting. Trivial and mundane matterspressed against my chest and a fire mounted in my heart. I was unable to enterwholeheartedly into the active practice of Zen.⁷

Thus Hakuinconcluded that merely following Ta-hui's injunction to meditate on a koan wasnot the entire answer. He then decided the only way that Zen could be linkedmeaningfully to daily life was if a practitioner could actually meditate whilegoing about daily affairs.

This idea was rather radical, although it probably would nothave unduly disturbed the T'ang masters. Hakuin was again extending both thedefinition of enlightenment, as it intersects with the real world, and themeans of its realization. He was saying to meditate on a koan in such a mannerthat you can continue your daily life but be oblivious to its distractions. Heinvoked the Chinese masters to support the idea.

The ZenMaster Ta-hui has said that meditation in the midst of activity is immeasurablysuperior to the quietistic approach. . . . What is most worthy of respect is apure koan meditation that neither knows nor is conscious of the two aspects,the quiet and the active. This is why it has been said that the true practicingmonk walks but does not know he is walking, sits but does not know he issitting.⁸

Hakuin redefined meditation to include a physically activeaspect as well as merely a quiet, sitting aspect. And under this new definitionanyone, even laymen, could meditate at any time, in any place. Hakuin did notexclude sitting in meditation; he tried to broaden the definition to includethe kind of thing he believed would really produce meaningful enlightenment. Inaddition, meditation in action takes away the excuse of most laymen for notpracticing introspection—and what is more, it brings respect from others.

Do notsay that worldly affairs and pressures of business leave you no time to studyZen under a Master, and that the confusions of daily life make it difficult foryou to continue your meditation. Everyone must realize that for the truepracticing monk there are no worldly cares or worries. Supposing a manaccidentally drops two or three gold coins in a crowded street swarming withpeople. Does he forget about the money because all eyes are upon him? ... Aperson who concentrates solely on meditation amid the press and worries ofeveryday life will be like the man who has dropped the gold coins and devoteshimself to seeking them. Who will not rejoice in such a person?⁹

Hakuin realized that meditating in the middle of distractionswas initially more difficult—with fewer short-term rewards—than sitting quietlyalone. However, if you want to make the heightened awareness of Zen a part ofyour life, then you must meditate in daily life from the very first. Just asyou cannot learn to swim in the ocean by sitting in a tub, you cannot relateyour Zen to the world's pressures, stress, and tensions if it is foreversheltered in silent, lonely isolation. If this is difficult at first, persevereand look toward the ultimate rewards.

Frequentlyyou may feel that you are getting nowhere with practice in the midst ofactivity, whereas the quietistic approach brings unexpected results. Yet restassured that those who use the quietistic approach can never hope to enter intomeditation in the midst of activity. Should by chance a person who uses thisapproach enter into the dusts and confusions of the world of activity, even thepower of ordinary understanding which he had seemingly attained will beentirely lost. Drained of all vitality, he will be inferior to any mediocre,talentless person. The most trivial matters will upset him, an inordinatecowardice will afflict his mind, and he will frequently behave in a mean andbase manner. What can you call accomplished about a man like this?¹⁰

Quietisticmeditation is easier, naturally, but a person who practices it will turn out tobe just as insecure and petty as someone not enlightened at all. What isequally important, "leisure-time" meditation that separates ourspiritual life from our activities is merely hiding from reality. You cannotcome home from the job and suddenly turn on a meditation experience. He citesthe case of someone who excuses himself to meditate, but who is then so harriedand tense it does no good.

Evenshould there be such a thing as . . . reaching a state where the greatillumination is released by means of dead sitting and silent illumination . . .people are so involved in the numerous duties of their household affairs that theyhave scarcely a moment in which to practice concentrated meditation. What theydo then is to plead illness and, neglecting their duties and casting asideresponsibilities for their family affairs, they shut themselves up in a roomfor several days, lock the door, arrange several cushions in a pile, set up astick of incense, and proceed to sit. Yet, because they are exhausted byordinary worldly cares, they sit in meditation for one minute and fall asleepfor a hundred, and during the little bit of meditation that they manage toaccomplish, their minds are beset by countless delusions.¹¹

But what isworse, these people then blame their careers, assuming they need moreisolation. But this is like the aspiring ocean swimmer in the tub mistakenlydesiring less water.

[They]furrow their brows, draw together their eyebrows, and before one knows it theyare crying out: "Our official duties interfere with our practice of theWay; our careers prevent our Zen meditation. It would be better to resign fromoffice, discard our seals, go to some place beside the water or under the treeswhere all is peaceful and quiet and no one is about, there in our own way topractice dhyana contemplation,and escape from the endless cycle of suffering." How mistaken these peopleare!¹²

Having determined meditation in the midst ofactivity is the only meaningful practice, he next addressed the question of howto go about it. He explained that we can do it by making our activities intomeditation.

What isthis true meditation? It is to make everything: coughing, swallowing, wavingthe arms, motion, stillness, words, action, the evil and the good, prosperityand shame, gain and loss, right and wrong, into one single koan.¹³

He gave anexample of how to change the implements of daily living into a Buddhistmetaphor, in this case by a warrior's making his clothes, sword, and saddleinto a meditation hall of the mind.

Make yourskirt and upper garments into the seven- or nine- striped monks' robe; makeyour two-edged sword into your resting board or desk. Make your saddle yoursitting cushion; make the mountains, rivers, and great earth the sittingplatform; make the whole universe your own personal meditation cave. . . .Thrusting forth the courageous mind derived from faith, combine it with thetrue practice of introspection.¹⁴

If meditation bears no relationship to life, what good is it?It is merely self-centered gratification. This he condemned, pointing out thatif everyone did nothing but meditate on his own inner concerns, society atlarge would fall apart. And ultimately Zen would be blamed. Furthermore, thisinner-directed preoccupation with self-awareness is bad Zen.

Hakuin similarly taught that a Zen which ignored society washollow and meaningless, and its monks of no use to anybody. He was particularlystern with conventional Zen students, who were content in their ownenlightenment and ignored the needs of others. "Meditation in action"for the monk meant the same as for a layman, with one significant difference.Whereas the layman could bring meditation to his obligatory life of affairs,the monk must bring the life of the world to his meditation. Just to hide andmeditate on your own original nature produces inadequate enlightenment, whilealso shutting you off from any chance to help other people, other sentientbeings. The ancient masters knew, said Hakuin, that a person truly enlightenedcould travel through the world and not be distracted by the so-called fivedesires (wealth, fame, food, sleep, and sex). The enlightened being is awareof, but not enticed by, sensual gratification.

The ThirdPatriarch [Seng-ts'an, d. 606] has said: "If one wishes to gain trueintimacy with enlightenment, one must not shun the objects of the senses."He does not mean here that one is to delight in the objects of the senses but,just as the wings of a waterfowl do not get wet even when it enters the water,one must establish a mind that will continue a true koan meditation withoutinterruption, neither clinging to nor rejecting the objects of the senses.¹⁵

But Hakuin asked something of a Zen novice even moredifficult than that asked by the Chinese masters of old—who merely demandedthat a monk reject the world, turn his back, and shut out its distractions. Incontrast, Hakuin insists that he meditate while out in the world, activelyimmersing himself in its attractions. The older Ch'an masters advised a monk toignore the world, to treat it merely as a backdrop to his preoccupation withinner awareness; Hakuin says to test your meditation outside, since otherwiseit serves for nothing. And today Rinzai monks are expected to silently meditateduring all activities, including working in the yard of the monastery,harvesting vegetables, or even walking through the town for their formal begging.

Hakuin not only redefined meditation, he also revitalizedkoan practice among full-time Zen monks and ultimately brought on a renaissanceof Rinzai Zen itself. He formalized the idea of several stages of enlightenment(based on his own experience of increasingly deep satori) as well as a practicethat supported this growth. But most of all Hakuin was dismayed by what heconsidered to be the complete misunderstanding of koan practice in Japan. Monkshad memorized so many anecdotes about the ancient Chinese masters that theythought they could signify the resolution of a koan by some insinceretheatrics.

[0]f themonks who move about like clouds and water, eight or nine out of ten will boastloudly that they have not the slightest doubt about the essential meaning ofany of the seventeen hundred koans that have been handed down. . . . If youtest them with one of these koans, some will raise their fists, others willshout "katsu,"but most of them will strike the floor with their hands. If you press them justa little bit, you will find that they have in no way seen into their ownnatures, have no learning whatsoever, and are only illiterate, boorish,sightless men.¹⁶

Hakuin breathed new life back into koan theory. For instance,he seems the first Japanese master to take a psychological interest in the koanand its workings. He believed a koan should engender a "great doubt"in the mind of a novice, and through this great doubt lead him to the firstenlightenment or kensho.¹⁷ Initially he had advocated the"Mu" koan for beginners, but late in life he came up with the famous"What is the sound of one hand clapping?"¹⁸ As hedescribed this koan in a letter to a laywoman:

What is the Sound of the Single Hand? When you clap togetherboth hands a sharp sound is heard; when you raise the one hand there is neithersound nor smell. . . .

This is something that can by no means be heard with the ear.If conceptions and discriminations are not mixed within it and it is quiteapart from seeing, hearing, perceiving, and knowing, and if, while walking,standing, sitting, and reclining, you proceed straightforwardly withoutinterruption in the study of this koan, then in the place where reason isexhausted and words are ended, you will suddenly . . . break down the cave ofignorance.. . . At this time the basis of mind, consciousness, and emotion issuddenly shattered.¹⁹

But this is not the end; rather it is the beginning. After adisciple has penetrated this koan, he receives koans of increasing difficulty.From Hakuin's own experience he knew that satori experiences could berepeated and could become ever deeper and more meaningful. Although he himselfnever chose to overtly systematize and categorize koans, his heirs did nothesitate to do so, creating the structure that is modern Rinzai Zen.

How did Zen finally emerge, after all the centuries and theconvolutions? As Hakuin's descendants taught Zen, a monk entering the monasterywas assigned a koan chosen by the master. He was expected to meditate on thiskoan until his kensho, his first glimmer of satori, which might requiretwo to three years. After this a new phase of study began. The monk was thenexpected to work his way through a program of koans, requiring as much as adecade more, after which he might meditate on his own, in seclusion, for a timelonger.²⁰

The master worked with monks individually (a practicereputedly left over from the time when Chinese-speaking masters had tocommunicate in writing) via a face-to-face interview (senzen)reminiscent of a Marine Corps drill instructor harassing a recruit. The monkwould bow to the master, seat himself, and

submit hisattempt at resolution of the koan. The master might either acknowledge hisinsight, give him some oblique guidance, or simply greet him with stony silenceand ring for the next recruit—signifying an unsatisfactory answer.

Hakuin made his disciples meditate; he made them strugglethrough koan after koan; he made monastic discipline as rigorous as possible;and he taught that it is not enough merely to be interested in yourself andyour own enlightenment. But he insisted that if you follow all his teachings,if you meditate the right way and work through increasingly difficult koans,you too can find the enlightenment he found, an enlightenment that expresseditself in an enormous physical vitality.

Eventhough I am past seventy now my vitality is ten times as great as it was when Iwas thirty or forty. My mind and body are strong and I never have the feelingthat I absolutely must lie down to rest. Should I want to I find no difficultyin refraining from sleep for two, three, or even seven days, without sufferingany decline in my mental powers. I am surrounded by three- to five-hundreddemanding students, and even though I lecture on the scriptures or on thecollections of the Masters' sayings for thirty to fifty days in a row, it doesnot exhaust me.²¹

Hakuin was a prolific writer and always aware of hisaudience. For his lay followers, he wrote in simple Japanese and related histeachings to the needs and limitations of secular life. For his monk discipleshe wrote in a more scholarly style. And finally, we have many long elegantletters composed for various dignitaries of government and the aristocracy.

He also was an artist of note, producing some of the mostpowerful Zen-style paintings of any Japanese. Like his writings, these worksare vigorous, impulsive, and dynamic. He seems to have been an inspiration formany later Zen artists, including Sengai (1750-1837) and the Zen poet Ryokan(1758-1831).²²

Hakuin died in his sleep at age eighty-three. During his lifehe had reestablished Rinzai Zen in Japan in a form fully as rigorous as everpracticed in the monasteries of T'ang and Sung China, and he had simultaneouslydiscovered a way this Zen could be made accessible to laymen, throughmeditation in activity. Whereas previous Japanese teachers had let koanpractice atrophy in order to attract a greater number of followers, Hakuinsimultaneously made Zen both more authentic and more popular. His genius therebysaved traditional Zen in its classical form, while at last making it accessibleand meaningful in modern life.

REFLECTIONS

What is theresilience of Zen that has allowed it to survive and flourish over all thecenturies, even though frequently at odds philosophically with its milieu? Andwhy have the insights of obscure rural teachers from the Chinese and JapaneseMiddle Ages remained pertinent to much of modern life in the West? On the otherhand, why has there been a consistent criticism of Zen (from early China to thepresent day) condemning it as a retreat from reality—or worse, a preoccupationwith self amidst a world that calls for social conscience?

These questions are complex, but they should be acknowledgedin any inquiry into Zen thought. They are also matters of opinion: thosewishing to see Zen as unwholesome are fixed in their critical views, just asthose committed to Zen practice are unshakably steadfast. What follows is alsoopinion, even though an attempt has been made to maintain balance.

Adistinguished modern Zen master was once asked if Zen followers looked onlyinward, with no concern for others. He replied that in Zen the distinctionbetween oneself and the world was the first thing to be dissolved.Consequently, mere self-love is impossible; it resolves naturally into a loveof all things. Stated in this way, Zen teachings become, in a twinkling, aprofound moral philosophy. Where there is no distinction between the universeand ourselves, the very concept of the ego is inappropriate. We cannot think ofourselves without simultaneously thinking of others. Zen is not, therefore, anobsession with the self, but rather an obsession with the universe, with allthings—from nature to the social betterment of all. Although Zen initiallyforces a novice to focus on his own mind, this is only to enable him or her toattain the insight to merge with all things, great and small. True Zenintrospection eventually must lead to the dissolution of the self. When thisoccurs, we no longer need the chiding of a Golden Rule.

It is fair to question whether this particular view of socialconscience, which might be described as more "passive" than"active," adequately refutes the charge of "me-ism" in Zen.But perhaps less is sometimes more in the long run. There is no great historyof Zen charity, but then there have been few if any bloody Zen Crusades andlittle of the religious persecution so common to Western moral systems. Perhapsthe humanism in Zen takes a gentler, less flamboyant form. In the scales ofharm and help it seems as noble as any of the world's other spiritualpractices.

Zen gainedfrom Taoism the insight that total reliance on logical thought stifles thehuman mind. Logic, they found, is best suited to analyzing andcategorizing—functions today increasingly delegated to the computer. Whereasthe logical mode of thought can only manipulate the world view of givenparadigm, intuition can inspire genuine creativity, since it is not shackled bythe nagging analytical mind, which often serves only to intimidate imaginativethought. Zen struggled relentlessly to deflate the pomposity of man'srationality, thereby releasing the potential of intuition. Although much researchhas arisen in recent times to pursue the same effect—from"brainstorming" to drugs—Zen challenged the problem many centuriesago, and its powerful tools of meditation and the koans still taunt our modernshortcuts.

That Zen ideasshould find a place in psychoanalysis is not surprising. Meditation has longbeen used to still the distraught mind. Japanese researchers have studied theeffects of meditation on brain activity for many years, and now similar studiesare also underway in the West. The connection between Zen"enlightenment" and a heightened state of "consciousness"has been examined by psychologists as diverse as Erich Fromm and RobertOrnstein. But perhaps most significantly, our recent research in thehemispheric specialization of the brain—which suggests our left hemisphere isthe seat of language and rationality while the right dominates intuition andcreativity— appears to validate centuries-old Zen insights into the dichotomyof thought. Zen "research" on the mind's complementary modes may welllight the path to a fuller understanding of the diverse powers of the humanmind.

At times theancient Chinese and Japanese art forms influenced by Zen seem actually toanticipate many of the aesthetic principles we now call "modern."Sixteenth-century Zen ceramics could easily pass as creations of a contemporarypotter, and ancient Chinese and Japanese inks and calligraphies recall themodern monochrome avant-garde. Zen stone gardens at times seem pure abstractexpressionism, and the Zen-influenced landscape gardens of Japan can manipulateour perception using tricks only recently understood in the West. Japanesehaiku poetry and No drama, created under Zen influence, anticipate our moderndistrust of language; and contemporary architecture often echoes traditionalJapanese design—with its preference for clean lines, open spaces, emphasis onnatural materials, simplicity, and the integration of house and garden.

Aesthetic ideals emerging from Zen art focus heavily onnaturalness, on the emphasis of man's relation to nature. The Zen artists, asdo many moderns, liked a sense of the materials and process of creation to comethrough in a work. But there is a subtle difference. The Zen artists frequentlyincluded in their works devices to ensure that the message reached the viewer.For example, Zen ceramics are always intended to force us to experience themdirectly and without analysis. The trick was to make the surface seem curiouslyimperfect, almost as though the artist were careless in the application of afinish, leaving it uneven and rough. At times the glaze seems still in theprocess of flowing over a piece, uneven and marred by ashes and lumps. There isno sense of "prettiness": instead they feel old and marred by longuse. But the artist consciously is forcing us to experience the piece foritself, not as just another item in the category of bowl. We are led into theprocess of creation, and our awareness of the piece is heightened—just as anunfinished painting beckons us to pick up a brush, This device of drawing usinto involvement, common to Zen arts from haiku to ink painting, is one of thegreat insights of Zen creativity, and it is something we in the West are onlynow learning to use effectively.

One of themajor insights of Zen is that the world should be perceived directly, not as anarray of embodied names. As noted, the Zen arts reinforce this attitude bydeliberately thwarting verbal or analytical appreciation. We are forced toapproach them with our logical faculties in abeyance. This insistence on directperception is one of the greatest gifts of Zen. No other major system ofthought champions this insight so clearly and forthrightly. Zen would have ourperception of the world, indeed our very thoughts, be nonverbal. Byexperiencing nature directly, and by thinking in pure ideas rather than with"internalized speech," we can immeasurably enrich our existence. Thedawn, the flower, the breeze are now experienced more exquisitely—in their fullreality. Zen worked hard to debunk the mysterious power we mistakenly ascribeto names and concepts, since the Zen masters knew these serve only to separateus from life. Shutting off the constant babble in our head is difficult, but therichness of experience and imagery that emerges is astounding. It is as thougha screen between us and our surroundings has suddenly dropped away, putting usin touch with the universe.

The heart ofZen is practice, "sitting," physical discipline. For those wishing toexperience Zen rather than merely speculate about it, there is no other way.Koans can be studied, but without the guidance of practice under a master, theyare hardly more than an intellectual exercise. Only in formal meditation canthere be the real beginning of understanding. Zen philosophy, and all that canbe transmitted in words, is an abomination to those who really understand.There's no escaping the Taoist adage, "Those who speak do not know, thosewho know do not speak." Words can point the way, but the path must betraveled in silence.

* * *

1. Chang Chung-yuan, Tao: A New Wayof Thinking (New York: Perennial Library, 1977), p. 4.

2. Ibid., p. 6.

3. Ibid., p. 50.

4. Ibid., p. 145.

5. Ibid., p. 153.

6. Quoted in Max Kaltenmark, LaoTzu and Taoism (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1969), p. 20.

7. Burton Watson, Introduction toThe Complete Works of Chuang Tzu (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968),p. 7.

8. Arthur Waley, Three Ways ofThought in Ancient China (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, undated reprint of1939 edition), p. 15.

9. Gai-fu Feng and Jane English,trans., Chuang Tsu (New York: Vintage Books, 1974), p. 55.

10. Ibid. 309

11. Wm. Theodore de Bary, Wing-tsitChan, and Burton Watson, Sources of Chinese Tradition, Vol. 1 (New York:Columbia University Press, 1960), p. 240.

12. Ibid., pp. 243-244.

13. Quoted by Fung Yu-lan, A ShortHistory of Chinese Philosophy (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1948),p. 230.

14. Quoted in ibid., p. 235.

15. D. Howard Smith, ChineseReligions (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968), p. 106.

16. Frederick J. Streng, Emptiness:A Study in Religious Meaning (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1967), pp. 159-60.

17. Arthur F. Wright, Buddhism inChinese History (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1959), p. 63.

18. Walter Liebenthal, Chao Lun: TheTreatises of Seng-chao (Hong Kong: hong Kong University Press, 1968), p. 62.

242 / NOTES10, 11)1(1,, pp. fifi f)7.

20. Helnrich Dumoulin, A History ofZen Badtihism (Boston: Beacon Press, 1000), |i. 60,

21. Quoted by Fung Yu Ian, ShortHistory of (Chinese Philosophy, p, 252,

1. BODHIDHARMA: FIRST PATRIARCH OF ZEN

1. Translated by D. T. Suzuki,Essays in Zen Buddhism, First Series (New York: Grove Press, 1961), p. 1 79.This is a translation of a passage from the Records of the Transmission of theLamp compiled in 1004 by Tao-yuan. A simpler version of the story can be foundin the original source document, the Further Biographies of Eminent Priests(Hsu kao-seng chuan), prepared around the year 645 by Tao hsuan, and translatedIn Cat's Yawn, published by the First Zen Institute of America, New York, 1947. The story is repeated also in the Ch'uan fg-pao chi, prepared ca, 700 10 byTu Fei,

2. The fact that this episodedoes not appear in the earliest story of Bodhidharma's life makes one skepticalabout its authenticity. It is known that Emperor Wu welcomed another famousIndian missionary, Paramartha, who landed in Canton in 540 (Smith, ChineseReligions, p. 120). This monk espoused the Idealistic school of Buddhism, whichwas at odds with the school of Ch'an. It seems possible that the story ofBodhidharma's meeting was constructed to counter the prestige that Wu'sInterest undoubtedly gave the Idealistic school.

3. The Buddhist concept of Meritmight be likened to a spiritual savings account, Merit accrues on the record ofone's good deeds and provides several forms of reward in this world and thenext, The Idea that good deeds do not engender Merit seems to have beenpioneered by Tao-sheng (ca, 360 434), the Chinese originator of the idea ofSudden Enlightenment, "Emptiness" is, of course, the teaching of theMiddle Path of Nagarjuna, The implication that Emperor Wu was startled by thisconcept is worth a raised eyebrow, Sunyata or "emptiness" was hardlyunknown In the Buddhist schools of the time.

This whole story is suspect, beingfirst found In the Ch'uan fa-pao chi of Tu Fei (ca. 700 10), but not in theearlier biography, the Hsu kao-seng chuan (Further Biographies of EminentPriests I, compiled by Tao-hsuan around 645, There is, incidentally, anothercompeting story of a monk named Bodhidharma in China, He was described as aPersian and was reported in Yang I Isuan-chih's Buddhist Monasteries In Loyang(Lo-yang Ch'leh-lan-chi), written In 547, to have been associated with theYung-ning monastery, which would have been possible only between the years 516and 528. This Persian figure apparently claimed to be 150 years in age, and hemost probably came to China via the trading port of Canton used by Persians.This fact has been used by some to cast doubt on the more accepted story of aSouth Indian monk named Bodhidharma arriving at Canton between 520 and 525. Perhapsa legendary Persian was transformed into a legendary Indian by the Dhyanaschool, or perhaps it was a different individual.

4. This is the conclusion of theleading Zen scholar today, Philip Yampolsky, in The Platform Sutra of The SixthPatriarch (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967), p. 10.

5. English translations of variousversions of this essay may be found In Cat's Yawn by the First Zen Institute ofAmerica; In I). T, Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism, First Series; and in John C.H. Wu, The Golden Age of Zen (Taipei: United Publishing Center, 1907).Concerning this essay, Philip Yampolsky (private communication) has noted,"Whereas a version exists In The Transmission of the Lamp, various textshave been found in the Tun-huang documents and elsewhere, so that a morecomplete version is available. It is considered authentic,"

6. Suzuki, Essays in Ann Buddhism,First Series, p. 180.

7. Ibid., pp. 180-81.

8. This point is enlargedconsiderably in an essay attributed to Bodhidharma but most likely apocryphal,which Is translated In D. T, Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism, Third Series (NewYork: Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1971) pp. 24-30,

9. Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism,First Series, p. 181.

10. Suzuki, Ibid.

11. Wu, Golden Age of Zen, pp. 4050.

12. Ibid., p. 50.

13. Ibid., p. 50.

14. Suzuki translates the passagefrom the Vajrasamadhi Sutra in Essays in Zen Buddhism, First Series, pp.183-84. Portions are as follows: "Said the Buddha: The two entrances are'Entrance by Reason' and 'Entrance by Conduct,' 'Entrance by Reason' means tohave a deep faith in that all sentient beings are identical in essence with thetrue nature which is neither unity nor multiplicity; only it is beclouded byexternal objects, The nature in itself neither departs nor comes. When a man insingleness of thought abides in chueh-kuan, he will clearly see into theBuddha-nature, of which we cannot say whether it exists or exists not, and inwhich there is neither selfhood nor otherness. . . ." Suzuki translatesthe term chueh-kuan as being "awakened" or "enlightened,"

15. Hu Shih, "The Developmentof Zen Buddhism in China," Chinese Social and Political Science Review,15,4 (January 1932), p. 483, Philip Yampolsky (private communication) hasquestioned this generalization of Hu Shih, noting, "There were fewpracticing 'Zen' Buddhists, but other Chinese Buddhists probably meditatedseriously, although not exclusively."

16. Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism,First Series, p, 186.

17. See Hu Shih, "Developmentof Zen Buddhism in China," p. 482: "But the whole system of dhyanapractice, even in its concise form as presented in the translated manuals, wasnot fully understood by the Chinese Buddhists. . . . The best proof of this isthe following quotation from Hui-chiao, the scholarly historian of Buddhism andauthor of the first series of Buddhist Biographies which was finished in 519.In his general summary of the biographies of practitioners of dhyana,Hui-chiao said: 'But the apparent utility of dhyana lies in theattainment of magic powers. . .'.'"

18. Suzuki (Essays in Zen Buddhism,First Series, p. 191), points out, "Nagarjuna says in his famouscommentary on the Prajnaparamita sutra, 'Moral conduct is the skin, meditationis the flesh, the higher understanding is the bone, and the mind subtle andgood is the marrow.' " Since this commentary must have been commonknowledge, the interest in Bodhidharma's alleged exchange with his discipleslies in his recasting of a common coinage.

19. From the Ch'uan fa-pao chi (ca.700-10) of Tu Fei, as described by Yampolsky, The Platform Sutra of the SixthPatriach. This story happens to parallel closely the posthumous capers ascribedto certain famous religious Taoists of the age.

20. Dumoulin, History of ZenBuddhism, p. 72.

21.Hu Shih,"Development of Zen Buddhism in China," p. 52.

2. HUI-K'O: SECOND PATRIARCH OF ZEN

1. Translated in Suzuki, Essays inZen Buddhism, First Series, p.190.

2. He is well documented inTao-hsuan's Hsu kao-seng chuan or Further Biographies of Eminent Priests (A.D.645). Selected portions of this biography are related in Yampolsky, PlatformSutra of the Sixth Patriarch; and Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism, First Series,which form the basis for much of the historical information reported here.Other useful sources are Dumoulin, History of Zen Buddhism; and ChouHsiang-kuang, Dhyana Buddhism in China (Allahabad, India: Indo-ChineseLiterature Publications, 1960).

3. The Further Biographies ofEminent Priests by Tao-hsuan declares that bandits were responsible forsevering his arm, but the 710 Chuan fa-pao chi of Tu Fei piously refutes thisversion, presumably since efforts were starting to get underway to construct aZen lineage, and dramatic episodes of interaction were essential. This laterwork was also the first to report that Bodhidharma was poisoned and then laterseen walking back to India.

4. As reported by Dumoulin(History of Zen Buddhism, p. 73), this story, which is typical of later Ch'anteaching methods, first appears some five hundred years after Bodhidharma'sdeath, in the Ching-te ch'uan-teng-lu (1004).

5. Dumoulin, History of ZenBuddhism, p. 74.

6. D. T. Suzuki, Studies in theLankavatara Sutra (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1930) pp. 4-7.

7. Ibid, p. 59.

8. D. T. Suzuki, Manual of ZenBuddhism (New York: Grove Press, 1960), pp. 50-51.

9. D. T. Suzuki, The LankavataraSutra (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1932), p. 79.

10. Ibid., p. 81.

11. Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism,First Series, p. 193.

12. Ibid., p. 194.

13. Ibid., pp. 194-95.

14. Chou Hsiang-kuang, DhyanaBuddhism in China, p. 24.

3. SENG-TS'AN, TAO-HSIN, FA-JUNG, ANDHUNG-JEN: FOUR EARLY MASTERS

1. As usual, the biography can betraced in three sources. The earliest, the Hsu kao-seng chuan of Tao-hsuan(645), apparently does not mention Seng-ts'an, or if it does so it gives him adifferent name. However, in the Ch'uan fa-pao chi of Tu Fei (710) he receives aperfunctory biography. The more embellished tale, giving exchanges and a copyof his supposed poem, is to be found in the later work, the Ching-te ch'uan-teng-lu(1004).

Dumoulin (History of Zen Buddhism) provides a discussion ofthe earliest historical notices of Seng-ts'an. The 710 version of the historyis translated in Cat's Yawn (p. 14) and the 1004 version is repeated in Suzuki,Essays in Zen Buddhism, First Series.

2. Suzuki, who recounts this laststory in Essays in Zen Buddhism, First Series (p. 195), points out identicalinsights in the third chapter of the Vimalakirti Sutra.

3. Reportedly Hui-k'o alsotransmitted his copy of the Lankavatara to Seng-ts'an, declaring that afteronly four more generations the sutra would cease to have any significance(Yampolsky, Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch, p. 11). As things turnedout, this was more or less what happened, as the Lankavatara was replaced inthe Ch'an schools by the more easily understood Diamond Sutra. The Lankavataraschool was destined to be short-lived and to provide nothing more than a sacredrelic for the dynamic Ch'an teachers who would follow.

4. Suzuki points out (Essays inZen Buddhism, First Series, p. 196) that the Chinese word hsin can meanmind, heart, soul, and spirit, beingall or any at a given time. He provides afull translation of the poem, as does R. H. Blyth in Zen and Zen Classics, Vol.1 (Tokyo: Hokuseido Press, 1960).

5. Blyth, Zen and Zen Classics,Vol. 1, p. 100.

6. Ibid., p. 101.

7. Ibid., p. 103.

8. A detailed discussion of thisera may be found in Woodbridge Bingham, The Founding of the T'ang Dynasty (NewYork: Octagon Books, 1970).

9. His biography may be found inC. P. Fitzgerald, Son of Heaven (New York: AMS Press Inc., 1971), reprint of1933 Cambridge University Press edition.

10. See Dumoulin, History of ZenBuddhism, p. 78.

11. This story is translated inCat's Yawn, p. 18.

12. Dumoulin, History of Zen Buddhism,pp. 78-79.

13. Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism,Third Series, p. 28.

14. A lucid account of Fa-jung maybe found in Chang Chung-yuan, trans., Original Teachings of Ch'an Buddhism (NewYork: Random House, 1969; paperback edition, Vintage, 1971), which is abeautiful translation of portions of The Transmission of the Lamp (Ching-tech'uan-teng-lu), the text from 1004. This text was a major source for theabbreviated biography given here.

15. Chang Chung-yuan, OriginalTeachings of Ch'an Buddhism, p. 19.

16. Ibid., p. 5.

17. A version of this exchange isgiven in Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism, First Series, p. 202.

18. See Yampolsky, Platform Sutra ofthe Sixth Patriarch, p. 16.

4. SHEN-HSIU AND SHEN-HUI:GRADUAL" AND "SUDDEN" MASTERS

1. For an excellent biography seeC. P. Fitzgerald, The Empress Wu (Vancouver: University of British Columbia,1968). Curiously, nowhere in this biography is there mention of her lionizingof the Ch'an master Shen-hsiu, something that figures largely in all Ch'anhistories.

2. A biography of Shen-hsiu fromCh'an sources may be found in Yampolsky, Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch.Further details may be found in Hu Shih, "Ch'an (Zen) Buddhism in China:Its History and Method," Philosophy East and West, 3, 1 (April 1953), pp.3-24. See also Kenneth Ch'en, Buddhism in China (Princeton: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1964).

3. Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism,First Series, p. 214.

4. Two books that give somethingof the intellectual atmosphere of T'ang China are biographies of its twoleading poets: Arthur Waley, The Poetry and Career of Li Po (London: GeorgeAllen & Unwin, Ltd., 1950); and A. R. Davis, Tu Fu (New York: TwaynePublishers, Inc., 1971).

5. For a detailed biography ofShen-hui, see Yampolsky, Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch.

6. The scholar who brought thesignificance of Shen-hui to the attention of the world was Hu Shih, whoselandmark English-language papers on Zen are "Ch'an (Zen) Buddhism inChina: Its History and Method" and "The Development of Zen Buddhismin China." These works draw upon the manuscripts discovered this centuryin the Tun-huang caves in the mountains of far northwest China. Thesemanuscripts clarified many of the mysteries surrounding the early history ofCh'an, enabling scholars for the first time to distinguish between real andmanufactured history—since some of the works were written before Ch'anhistorians began to embroider upon the known facts. A brief but useful accountof the finding of these caves and the subsequent removal of many of themanuscripts to the British Museum in London and the Bibliotheque Nationale inParis may be found in Cat's Yawn. The best discussion of the significance ofthese finds and of Hu Shih's lifelong interpretive work is provided byYampolsky, Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch.

Regarding the circ*mstances of this sermon, Walter Liebenthal("The Sermon of Shen-hui," Asia Major, N.S. 3, 2 [1952], p. 134)says, "There are only two opportunities to deliver addresses in the ritualof Buddhist monasteries, one during the uposatha ceremony held monthly when thepratimoksa rules are read to the members of the community and they areadmonished to confess their sins, one during the initiation ceremony held onceor twice a year. For the purpose of initiation special platforms are raised,one for monks and one for nuns, inside the compounds of some especiallyselected monasteries."

7. Quoted in Hilda Hookham, A ShortHistory of China (New York: St. Martin's Press, Inc., 1972; paperback edition,New York: New American Library, 1972), p. 175.

8. Discussions of the adventures ofAn Lu-shan may be found in most general surveys of Chinese history, includingHookham, Short History of China, Wolfram Eberhard, A History of China(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960); Kenneth Scott Latourette, TheChinese: Their History and Culture (New York: Macmillan, 1962); John A.Harrison, The Chinese Empire (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1972);and Rene Grousset, The Rise and Splendour of the Chinese Empire (Berkeley:University of California Press, 1962).

9. This is the interpretation of HuShih. For translations of the major works of Shen-hui, see Walter Liebenthal,"The Sermon of Shen-hui," pp. 132-55; and Wm. Theodore de Bary, ed.,Sources of Chinese Tradition, Vol. 1., pp. 356-60. Also see Edward Conze, ed.,Buddhist Texts Through the Ages (Oxford: Bruno Cassirer, 1954), excerpted inWade Baskin, ed., Classics in Chinese Philosophy (Totowa, N. J.: Littlefield,Adams, 1974). A short translation is also provided in Suzuki, Essays in ZenBuddhism, Third Series, pp. 37 ff. The fullest translation of the works ofShen-hui found in the Tun-huang caves is in Jacques Gernet, Entret/ens duMaitre de Dhyana Chen-houei du Ho-tso (Hanoi: Publications de l'ecolefrangaise d'Extreme-Orient, Vol. 31, 1949). An English translation of a portionof this text may be found in Wing-tsit Chan, A Source Book in ChinesePhilosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963).

10. Liebenthal, "Sermon ofShen-hui," pp. 136 ff.

11. Ibid., p. 144.

12. Ibid., pp. 146, 147, 149.

13. See Hu Shih, "Ch'an (Zen)Buddhism in China."

14. Hu Shih, "Development ofZen Buddhism in China," p. 493.

15. Hu Shih, "Ch'an (Zen)Buddhism in China," p. 11.

16. The differences between theNorthern and Southern schools of Ch'an during the eighth century are exploredin the works of Hu Shih, Philip Yampolsky, and Walter Liebenthal notedelsewhere in these notes. Other general surveys of Chinese religion and culturethat have useful analyses of the question include Wing-tsit Chan, Source Bookin Chinese Philosophy, pp. 425 ff., D. Howard Smith, Chinese Religions; andFung Yu-lan, Short History of Chinese Philosophy.

17. A study of the lastdistinguished member of Shen-hui's school, the scholar Tsung-mi (780-841), maybe found in Jeffrey Broughton, "Kuei-feng Tsung-mi: The Convergence ofCh'an and the Teachings" (Ph. D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1975).

18.D. T. Suzuki,"Zen: A Reply to Hu Shih," Philosophy East and West, 3, 1 (April1953), pp. 25-46.

5. HUI-NENG: THE SIXTH PATRIARCH AND FATHER OF MODERN ZEN

1. A number of English translationsof the Platform Sutra are in existence. Among the most authoritative mustcertainly be counted Yampolsky, Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch; andWing-tsit Chan, The Platform Scripture (New York: St. John's University Press,1963). A widely circulated translation is in A. F. Price and Wong Mou-Lam, TheDiamond Sutra and the Sutra of Hui-Neng (Berkeley, Calif.: Shambhala, 1969).Another well-known version is found in Charles Luk, Ch'an and Zen Teaching:Third Series (New York: Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1971). Two lesser-knowntranslations are Paul F. Fung and George D. Fung, The Sutra of the SixthPatriarch on the Pristine Orthodox Dharma (San Francisco: Buddha's UniversalChurch, 1964); and Hsuan Hua, The Sixth Patriarch's Dharma Jewel Platform Sutra(San Francisco: Buddhist Text Translation Society, 1971).

2. From the Diamond Sutra,contained in Dwight Goddard, ed., A Buddhist Bible (Boston: Beacon Press,1970), p. 102. Another version may be found in Price and Wong, Diamond Sutraand the Sutra of Hui-neng. An extended commentary may be found in Charles Luk,

Ch'an and Zen Teaching, First Series, pp. 149-208. LaterCh'anists have maintained that Hung-jen taught both the Diamond Sutra and theLankavatara Sutra, the respective scriptures of what came to be called Southernand Northern schools of Ch'an. However, most scholars today believe that hismajor emphasis was on the Lankavatara Sutra, not the Diamond Sutra as the legendof Hui-neng would have.

3. From Price and Wong, DiamondSutra and the Sutra of Hui-neng, p. 15.

4. Ibid., p. 18.

5. The earliest version of thePlatform Sutra is that found in the Tun-huang caves and translated by Yampolskyand Chan. This manuscript Yampolsky dates from the middle of the ninth century.A much later version, dated 1153, was found in a temple in Kyoto, Japan, in1934. This is said to be a copy of a version dating from 967. The standardversion up until this century was a much longer work which dates from 1291. Asa general rule of thumb with the early Ch'an writings, the shorter the work,the better the chance it is early and authentic. For this reason, the shorterTun-huang works are now believed to be the most authoritative and best accountof the thoughts of the Sixth Patriarch.

6. Yampolsky, Platform Sutra ofthe Sixth Patriarch, p. 69.

7. The most obvious problem withattribution of the Platform Sutra to Hui-neng is that many of the sections ofthe sermon appear almost verbatim in The Sermon of Shen-hui, indicating thateither one was a copy of the other or they had a common source (which couldhave been the simple setting down of a verbal tradition). It has been pointedout that Shen-hui, who praises Hui-neng to the skies in his sermon, neverclaims to be quoting the master. Instead, he pronounces as his own a number ofpassages that one day would be found in the work attributed to Hui-neng. Thescholar Hu Shih has drawn the most obvious conclusion and has declared thatShen-hui and his school more or less created the legend of Hui-neng—lock,stock, and sutra. Others refuse to go this far, preferring instead to concludethat Shen-hui and Hui-neng are merely two representatives of the same school.

8. Yampolsky, Platform Sutra ofthe Sixth Patriarch, p. 157.

9. Yampolsky, Ibid., p. 140

10. Wu, Golden Age of Zen, p. 82.

11. See especially "Intimationsof Immortality":

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The Soul thatrises with us, our life's Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, and cometh fromafar: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailingclouds of glory do we come . . .

12. Yampolsky, Platform Sutra of theSixth Patriarch, pp. 141-42.

13. Ibid., p. 117.

14. From ibid., pp. 138-39. Forinterpretive comment see D. T. Suzuki, The Zen Doctrine of No Mind (New York:Samuel Weiser, 1972).

15.Yampolsky,Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch, pp. 116-17.

6. MA-TSU: ORIGINATOR OF "SHOCK" ENLIGHTENMENT

1. See Broughton, Kuei-fengTsung-mi: The Convergence of Ch'an and the Teachings. It was also around thistime that the idea of twenty-eight Indian Patriarchs of Zen, culminating inBodhidharma, was finally ironed out and made part of the Zen tradition.

2. See Arthur Waley, The Life andTimes of Po Chu-i (London: Allen & Unwin, 1949).

3. Hu Shih, "Development ofZen Buddhism in China," p. 497.

4. Hu-Shin, "Ch'an (Zen)Buddhism in China," p. 18.

5. For some of Huai-jang'sattributed teachings, see Charles Luk, The Transmission of the Mind Outside theTeaching (New York: Grove Press, 1975), pp. 32-37. The reliability of this textshould be questioned, however, if we accept Philip Yampolsky's essay inPlatform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch, p. 53: "Huai-jang (677-744) . . .is known as a disciple of Hui-neng. Information about him is based on sourcescomposed much later than his death; no mention is made of him in anyeighth-century work. . . ."

6. Jeffrey Broughton("Kuei-feng Tsung-mi," p. 27) points out that Ma-tsu's master'stechnique for achieving "no-mind" was to chant a phrase until runningout of breath, at which time the activities of the mind would seem toterminate—a reaction the more skeptical might call physiological. Breathcontrol and breath exercises, it will be recalled, have always figured largelyin Indian meditative practices.

7. Chang Chung-yuan, OriginalTeachings of Ch'an Buddhism, p. 148. The discussion of Ma-tsu in this volumesupplied valuable background for the analysis provided here.

8. Hu Shih, "Development ofZen Buddhism in China," p. 498.

9. Chang Chung-yuan, OriginalTeachings of Ch'an Buddhism, p. 130.

10. Ibid., p. 149.

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid.

13. There are many translations ofthe Mumonkan. One of the more recent and scholarly is by Zenkai Shibayama, ZenComments on the Mumonkan (New York: New American Library, 1975).

14. Chang Chung-yuan, OriginalTeachings of Ch'an Buddhism, p. 150.

15. Wu, Golden Age of Zen, p. 95.

16. The most recent and the mostdetailed translation of the Blue Cliff Record is by Thomas and J. C. Cleary,The Blue CI iff Record, 3 vols. (Berkeley, Calif.: Shambhala, 1977).

17. Chang Chung-yuan, OriginalTeachings of Ch'an Buddhism, p. 151.

18. Ibid., p.151.

19. This story is recounted in Wu,Golden Age of Zen, p. 100.

20. Ibid., p. 102.

21. Recounted in Ibid., p. 102.

22. See Chang Chung-yuan, OriginalTeachings of Ch'ari Buddhism, pp. 150-52.

23. Ibid., p. 150.

24.See Luk,Transmission of the Mind Outside the Teaching, p. 46.

7.HUAI-HAI: FATHER OF MONASTIC CH'AN

1. This location is given by JohnBlofeld in The Zen Teaching of Hui-Hai on Sudden Illumination (London: Ryder& Co., 1962; paperback reprint, New York: Weiser, 1972), p. 29. Charles Luk(Transmission of the Mind Outside the Teaching, p. 50) says: "Huai-hai,the Dharma-successor of Ma Tsu, was also called Pai Chang [Po Ch'ang] after themountain where he stayed at Hung Chou (now Nanchang, capital of Kiangsiprovince). Pai Chang means: Pai, one hundred, and Chang, a measure of ten feet,i.e., One-thousand-foot mountain." However, Luk identifies the birthplaceof Huai-hai as Chang Lo in modern f*ckien province, as does Chou Hsiang-kuang inDhyana Buddhism in China.

2. This story is repeated invarious places, including Wu, Golden Age of Zen; and Blofeld, Zen Teaching ofHui Hai on Sudden Illumination. This latter reference is as part of a documentknown as the Tsung-ching Record, being a recorded dialogue of the master takendown by a monk named Tsung-ching, who was a contemporary of Huai-hai.

3. This story is Case 53 of theHekiganroku or Blue Cliff Record, a Sung Dynasty period collection of Ch'anstories and their interpretation. The best current translation is probably inCleary and Cleary, Blue Cliff Record, Vol. 2, p. 357.

4. See Luk, Transmission of theMind Outside the Teaching, p. 46.

5. Stories involving him may be foundin the Mumonkan, Cases 2 and 40, and in the Hekiganroku or Blue Cliff Record,Cases 53, 70, 71, 72. The most complete accounting of anecdotes may be found inBlofeld, Zen Teachings of Hui-Hai on Sudden Illumination; and Thomas Cleary,Sayings and Doings of Pai-chang (Los Angeles: Center Publicatons, 1979).

6. Kenneth K. S. Ch'en, (TheChinese Transformation of Buddhism [Princeton: Princeton University Press,1973], p. 95) says, "Besides the Vinaya controlling the conduct of theBuddhist clergy, the basic code governing Buddhist and Taoist monks and nunsduring the T'ang Dynasty was the Tao-seng-ke (Rules concerning Buddhist andTaoist clergy), formulated during the Chen-kuan era, probably 637. ThisTao-seng-ke is no longer extant, however, but the Japanese work Soni-ryo, whichgoverns the conduct of the community of monks and nuns in Japan, was based onit. Therefore a study of the Soni-ryo would give us a good idea of the contentsof the Tao-seng-ke. . . . [Certain] provisions of the T'ang codes supersededthe monastic code and called for penalties for offenses which went beyond thosespecified in the Soni-ryo or the Buddhist Vinaya."

7. For a scholarly discussion ofthe economic role of Buddhism in T'ang China, see D. C. Twitchett,"Monastic Estates in T'ang China," Asia Major, (1955-56), pp. 123-46.He explains that the T'ang government was always a trifle uneasy about thepresence of un-taxed monastic establishments, and not without reason. Buddhismin T'ang China was big business. The large monasteries were beneficiaries ofgifts and bequests from the aristocracy, as well as from the palace itself.(Eunuchs, along with palace ladies, were particularly generous.) Laymen oftenwould bequeath their lands to a monastery, sometimes including in the will a curseon anyone who might later wish to take the land away from the church. Thesegifts were thought to ensure better fortunes in the world to come, whilesimultaneously resolving tax difficulties for the donor. For the monasteriesthemselves this wealth could only accumulate, since it never had to be dividedamong sons. After An Lu-shan's rebellion, a flavor of feudalism had penetratedChinese society, and huge tracts came to be held by the Buddhist monasteries,to which entire estates were sometimes donated. As a result, the Buddhists hadenormous economic power, although we may suspect the iconoclastic dhyanaestablishments in the south enjoyed little of it.

8. See Dumoulin, History of ZenBuddhism, pp. 102-03.

9. See Heinrich Dumoulin and RuthFuller Sasaki, The Development of Chinese Zen (New York: First Zen Institute ofAmerica, 1953), p.13. Interestingly, the Vinaya sect, founded by Tao-hsuan(596-667), was primarily concerned with the laws of monastic discipline. Thefamiliarity of Ch'an teachers with the concerns of this sect may havecontributed to the desire to create rules for their own assemblies.

10. Wu, Golden Age of Zen, p. 109.

11. See D. T. Suzuki, The Zen Monk'sLife (New York: Olympia Press, 1972); Eshin Nishimura, Unsui: A Diary of ZenMonastic Life (Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1973); Suzuki, Essays inZen Buddhism, First Series, pp. 314-362; and Koji Sato, The Zen Life (New York:Weatherhill/Tankosha, 1977). A succinct summary of Zen monastic life is alsoprovided by Sir Charles Eliot in Japanese Buddhism (London: Routledge &Kegan Paul, 1935), p. 406.

12. See Blofeld, Zen Teaching ofHuiHai on Sudden Illumination, p. 52.

13. Ibid., pp. 60-61.

14. Ibid., p. 48.

15. Ibid., p. 133.

16. Ibid., p. 77.

17. Ibid., p. 55.

18. Ibid., p. 56.

19. Ibid., p. 78.

20. Ibid., p. 54.

8. NAN-CH'UAN AND CHAO-CHOU: MASTERSOF THE IRRATIONAL

1. Chang Chung-yuan, OriginalTeachings of Ch'an Buddhism, p. 153.

2. Ibid., p. 178.

3. According to a biographicalsketch of Nan-ch'uan given by Cleary and Cleary in Blue Cliff Record, p. 262.

4. See Chang Chung-yuan, OriginalTeachings of Ch'an Buddhism, p. 160. This was also incorporated in the BlueCliff Record as Case 40 (Ibid., p. 292), where the Sung-era commentary isactually more obscure than what it attempts to explain.

5. See Chang Chung-yuan, OriginalTeachings of Ch'an Buddhism, p. 136.

6. Ibid., p. 136.

7. Blyth, Zen and Zen Classics,Vol. 3, p. 57.

8. Chang Chung-yuan, OriginalTeachings of Ch'an Buddhism, p. 159.

9. Ibid., p. 157. This anecdote isalso Case 69 of the Blue Cliff Record.

10. Ibid., p. 161.

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid., p. 162.

13. Ibid., p. 164. Translation of aT'ang text, "The Sayings of Chao-chou," is provided by Yoel Hoffman,Radical Zen (Brookline, Mass.: Autumn Press, 1978).

14. Recounted by Garma C. C. Changin The Practice of Zen (New York: Harper & Row, 1959), p. 24. This is alsoCase 14 of the Mumonkan and Cases 63 and 64 of the Blue Cliff Record.

15. Wu, Golden Age of Zen, p. 127.This is also Case 19 of the Mumonkan.

16. Chang Chung-yuan, OriginalTeachings of Ch'an Buddhism, p. 159.

17. Wu, Golden Age of Zen, p. 129.

18. Ibid., p. 133.

19. Chang Chung-yuan, OriginalTeachings of Ch'an Buddhism, p. 169.

20. Ibid., p. 140.

21. Wu, Golden Age of Zen, p. 136.

22. Chang Chung-yuan, OriginalTeachings of Ch'an Buddhism, p. 171.

23. This is Case 1 of the Mumonkan,here quoted from a very readable new translation by Katsuki Sekida, Two ZenClassics: Mumonkan 6- Hekiganroku (New York: Weatherhill, 1977), p. 27.

24. Wu, Golden Age of Zen, pp. 144-45.

25. Blyth, Zen and Zen Classics,Vol. 3, p. 77.

26. Wu, Golden Age of Zen, p. 145.

27. Ibid., p. 139.

28. Ibid., p. 146.

29.Ibid., p. 144.

9. P'ANG AND HAN-SHAN: LAYMAN AND POET

1. See Burton Watson, ColdMountain (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), p. 13. This concept ofthe Zen layman has longbeen a part of Zen practice in Japan, and for thisreason both Layman P'ang and the poet Han-shan are favorite Ch'an figures withthe Japanese. In fact, the eighteenth-century Japanese master Hakuin wrote acommentary on Han-shan.

2. See Ruth Fuller Sasaki,Yosh*taka Iriya, and Dana R. Frasier, The Recorded Sayings of Layman P'ang (NewYork: Weatherhill, 1971), p. 18.

3. See Chang Chung-yuan, OriginalTeachings of Ch'an Buddhism, p. 145. This story is famous and found in manysources.

4. As evidenced by a common sayingof the time: "In Kiangsi the Master is Ma-tsu; in Hunan the Master isShih-t'ou. People go back and forth between them all the time, and those who donot know these two great Masters are completely ignorant." Yampolsky,Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch, p. 55.

5. Sasaki et al., Recorded Sayingsof Layman P'ang, p. 46.

6. See Chang Chung-yuan, OriginalTeachings of Ch'an Buddhism, p. 145.

7. See Ibid., p. 175.

8. Sasaki et al., Recorded Sayingsof Layman P'ang, p. 47.

9. Luk, Transmission of the MindOutside the Teaching, p. 42.

10. Sasaki et al., Recorded Sayingsof Layman P'ang, p. 58.

11. Ibid., p. 69.

12. Ibid., p. 71

13. Ibid., p.47.

14. Ibid., p. 88.

15. Ibid., pp. 54-55. The translatorsexplain the last two verses as follows: "This is derived from the oldChinese proverb: 'To win by a fluke is to fall into a fluke' (and thus to loseby a fluke)." Concerning the meaning of this exchange, it would seem thatwater is here being used as a metaphor for the undifferentiated Void, whichsubsumes the temporary individuality of its parts the way the sea isundifferentiated, yet contains waves. When Tan-hsia accepts this premise alittle too automatically, P'ang is forced to show him (via a splash) that water(and by extension, physical manifestations of the components of the Void) canalso assume a physical reality that impinges on daily life. Tan-hsia triesfeebly to respond by returning the splash, but he clearly lost the exchange.

16. Ibid.p. 73.

17. See Chang Chung-yuan, OriginalTeachings of Ch'an Buddhism, p. 176. Also see Sasaki et al., Recorded Sayingsof Lay man P'ang, p. 75.

18. Chang Chung-yuan, OriginalTeachings of Ch'an Buddhism, p. 177.

19. Sasakiet al., Recorded Sayings of Layman P'ang, p. 42. Watson, Cold Mountain, p. 50.Watson explains that the

20. Arthur Waley, "27 Poems by Han-shan,"Encounter, 3, 3 (September 1954), p. 3.

21.opening lineabout taking along books while hoeing in the field was "From the story ofan impoverished scholar of the former Han Dynasty who was so fond of learningthat he carried his copies of the Confucian classics along when he went to workin the fields." The last line is "An allusion to the perch, strandedin a carriage rut in the road, who asked the philosopher Chuang Tzu for adipperful of water so that he could go on living."

22.Ibid., p. 56.

23. Waley,"27 Poems by Han-shan," p. 6.

24. From WuChi-yu, "A Study of Han Shan," T'oung Pao, 45, 4-5 (1957), p. 432.

Gary Snyder, "Han-shan," In Cyril Birch, ed., Anthology of Chinese Literature, (New York: Grove Press, 1965), p. 201.
See Ibid., pp. 194-96.

27. See Watson, Cold Mountain, p. 14. Watson says, "Zencommentators have therefore been forced to regard Han-shan's professions ofloneliness, doubt, and discouragement not as revelations of his own feelingsbut as vicarious recitals of the ills of unenlightened men which he can stillsympathize with, though he himself has transcended them. He thus becomes thetraditional Bodhisattva figure—compassionate, in the world, but not ofit." Watson rejects this interpretation.

28. Ibid.,p. 67.

29. Ibid.,p. 88.

30. Ibid.,p. 78.

31. Ibid., p. 81.

32. Ibid.,pp. 11-12.

33. Snyder,"Han-shan," p. 202.

10.HUANG-PO: MASTER OF THE UNIVERSAL MIND

1. Chang Chung-yuan, OriginalTeachings of Ch'an Buddhism, p. 102.

2. This probably was during thelast decade of the eighth century, since Ma-tsu died in 788.

3. This volume actually consistsof two books, known as the Chun-chou Record (843) and the Wan-iing Record(849). They are translated and published together by John Blofeld as The ZenTeaching of Huang Po. (New York: Grove Press, 1958). This appears to have beenthe source for biographical and anecdotal material later included in TheTransmission of the Lamp, portions of which are translated in Chang Chung-yuan.Original Teachings of Ch'an Buddhism. Another translation of biographical,didactic, and anecdotal material may be found in Charles Luk, Transmission ofthe Mind Outside the Teaching, whose source is unattributed but which possiblycould be a translation of the 1602 work Records of Pointing at The Moon, acompilation of Ch'an materials.

4. Blofeld, Zen Teaching of HuangPo, p. 28.

5. Ibid., p. 27.

6. Chang Chung-yuan, OriginalTeachings of Ch'an Buddhism, p. 103.

7. Ibid.

8. Ibid., p. 90.

9. Ibid., p. 103.

10. Blofeld, Zen Teaching of HuangPo, p. 99.

11. This gesture of defeat isreported elsewhere to have been a triple prostration. Huang-po apparentlyclaimed victory in these exchanges when he either kept silent or walked away.

12. Wan-ling is reported by ChangChung-yuan to be the modern town of Hsuan-ch'eng in southern Anhwei province(Original Teachings of Ch'an Buddhism, p. 123). According to The Transmissionof the Lamp the prime minister built a monastery and invited Huang-po to comelecture there, which the master did. The monastery was then named after amountain where the master had once lived.

13. Ibid., p. 104.

14. Ibid.

15. Blofeld, Zen Teaching of HuangPo, p. 55.

16. Ibid., p. 130.

17. Ibid., pp. 81-82.

18. Ibid., p. 44

19. Chang Chung-yuan, OriginalTeachings of Ch'an Buddhism, p. 87.

20. Blofeld, Zen Teaching of HuangPo, p. 53.

21. Ibid., p. 39.

22. Ibid., p. 46.

23. Ibid., p. 37.

24. Ibid.

25. Ibid., p. 40.

26. Ibid., p. 61.

27. Ibid., p. 26.

28. Chang Chung-yuan, OriginalTeachings of Ch'an Buddhism, p. 85.

29. Blofeld, Zen Teachings of HuangPo, p. 50.

30. See Wu, Golden Age of Zen.

31. Chang Chung-yuan reports somedisagreement over the actual date of Huang-po's death. It seems that he isreported to have died in 849 in Records of Buddhas and Patriarchs in VariousDynasties, whereas the year of his death is given as 855 in the General Recordsof Buddhas and Patriarchs.

32. Excerpts from the Han Yutreatise are provided in Edwin O. Reischauer, Ennin's Travels in T'ang China(New York: Ronald Press, 1955), pp. 221 ff. Thisrecounting of a visit by a ninth-century Japanese monk to China revealsindirectly how lacking in influence the Ch'anists actually were. In a diary ofmany years Ch'an is mentioned only rarely, and then in tones of other thanrespect. He viewed the Ch'anists warily and described them as "extremelyunruly men at heart" (p. 173). However, his trip in China was severelydisturbed by the sudden eruption of the Great Persecution, making him sofearful that he actually destroyed the Buddhist art he had collected throughoutthe country.

33. See Hu Shih, "Ch'an (Zen)Buddhism in China."

34. See Ibid.

35.Kenneth Ch'en, in"The Economic Background of the Hui-Ch'ang Suppression of Buddhism,"Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 19 (1956), points out that the imperialdecree required the turning in only of statues made from metals having economicvalue. Those made from clay, wood, and stone could remain in the temples. He usesthis to support his contention that the main driving force behind the GreatPersecution was the inordinate economic power of the Buddhist establishments.

11. LIN-CHI: FOUNDER OF RINZAI ZEN

1. A discussion of the five housesof Ch'an may be found in Dumoulin, History of Zen Buddhism, pp. 106-22; andDumoulin and Sasaki, Development of Chinese Zen, pp. 17-32. Useful summaries oftheir teachings also may be found in Chou Hsiang-kuang, Dhyana Buddhismin China.

2. Accounts of Lin-chi's life arefound in The Record of Lin-chi, The Transmission of the Lamp, The Five LampsMeeting at the Source, and Finger Pointing at the Moon. The most reliablesource is probably The Record of Lin-chi, since this was compiled by hisfollower(s). The definitive translation of this work certainly must be that byRuth F. Sasaki, The Recorded Sayings of Ch'an Master Lin-chi Hui-chao of ChenPrefecture, (Kyoto, Japan: Institute of Zen Studies, 1975) and recentlyre-issued by Heian International, Inc., South San Francisco, Calif. Another version,The Zen Teachings of Rinzai, translated by Irmgard Schloegl (Berkeley, Calif.:Shambhala, 1976), is less satisfactory. The Lin-chi excerpts from TheTransmission of the Lamp may be found in Chang Chung-yuan, Original Teachingsof Ch'an Buddhism. Excerpts from The Five Lamps Meeting at the Source andFinger Pointing at the Moon are provided in Charles Luk, Ch'an and ZenTeaching, Second Series (Berkeley: Shambhala, 1971). Translations of hissermons, sayings, etc. together with commentary may also be found in Wu, GoldenAge of Zen; Chou Hsiang-kuang, Dhyana Buddhism in China; and Blyth, Zenand Zen Classics, Vol. 3.

3. R. H. Blyth is suspicious thatLin-chi's story was enhanced somewhat for dramatic purposes, claiming (Zen andZen Classics, Vol. 3, p. 151), "As in the case of the Sixth Patriarch,[Lin-chi's] enlightenment is recounted 'dramatically,' that is to sayminimizing his previous understanding of Zen in order to bring out the greatchange after enlightenment."

4. Sasaki, Recorded Sayings of Lin-chi,pp. 24-25.

5. Ibid., p. 25.

6. Chang Chung-yuan, OriginalTeachings of Ch'an Buddhism, pp. 117-18.

7. Wu, Golden Age of Zen, p. 194.

8. Chang Chung-yuan, OriginalTeachings of Ch'an Buddhism, p. 118.

9. Wu, Golden Age of Zen, p. 195.

10. Chang Chung-yuan, OriginalTeachings of Ch'an Buddhism, p. 119.

11. Sasaki, Recorded Sayings ofLin-chi, p. 43.

12. Ibid., p. 45.

13. Dumoulin, History of ZenBuddhism, p. 122.

14. Of Lin-chi's shout, R. H. Blythsays (Zen and Zen Classics, Vol. 3, p. 154): "[The shout] is a war-cry,but the fight is a sort of shadow-boxing. The universe shouts at us, we shoutback. We shout at the universe, and the echo comes back in the same way. Butthe shouting and the echoing are continuous, and, spiritually speaking,simultaneous. Thus the [shout] is not an expression of anything; it has no(separable) meaning. It is pure energy, without cause or effect, rhyme orreason."

15. After Sasaki, Recorded Sayingsof Lin-chi, p. 47.

16. See Wu, Golden Age of Zen, p.201.

17. Chang Chung-yuan, OriginalTeachings of Ch'an Buddhism, pp. 121-22.

18. Sasaki, Recorded Sayings ofLin-chi, p. 4.

19. Ibid., p. 41.

20. Ibid., p. 48.

21. Ibid., p. 2.

22. Ibid., p. 70.

23. Ibid., p. 6.

24. Chang Chung-yuan, OriginalTeachings of Ch'an Buddhism, p. 98.

25. Wu, Golden Age of Zen, pp.204-05.

26. Chang Chung-yuan, OriginalTeachings of Ch'an Buddhism, p. 99.

27. Dumoulin, Development of ChineseZen, p. 22.

28. Chang Chung-yuan, OriginalTeachings of Ch'an Buddhism, p. 99.

29. Dumoulin, Development of ChineseZen, p. 23.

30. See Chang Chung-yuan, OriginalTeachings ofCh'an Buddhism, p. 95.

31. Sasaki, Recorded Sayingso/Lin-chi, pp. 27-28.

32. See Chang Chung-yuan, OriginalTeachings of Ch'an Buddhism, p. 95.

33. Heinrich Dumoulin (Developmentof Chinese Zen, p. 22) notes that this is merely playing off the well-known"four propositions" of Ind ian Buddhist logic: existence,nonexistence, both existence and nonexistence, and neither existence nornonexistence.

34. Wu, Golden Age of Zen, p. 202.

35. Ibid., p. 203.

36. Sasaki, Recorded Sayings ofLin-chi. p. 29.

37. Ibid., p. 24.

38.Ibid., p. 38.

12. TUNG-SHAN AND TSAO-SHAN: FOUNDERS OF SOTO ZEN

1. Philip Yampolsky, in PlatformSutra of the Sixth Patriarch, alleges that Hsing-ssu was resurrected fromanonymity because Shih-t'ou (700-90) was in need of a connection to the SixthPatriarch. The mysterious master Hsing-ssu comes into prominence well over ahundred years after his death; his actual life was not chronicled by any of hiscontemporaries. Neither, for that matter, was the life of his pupil Shih-t'ou,although the latter left a heritage of disciples and a burgeoning movement toperpetuate his memory.

2. Ibid., p. 55.

3. The stories attached toShih-t'ou are varied and questioned by most authorities. For example, there isthe story that he was enlightened by reading Seng-chau's Chao-Jun (The Book ofChao) but that his philosophy came from Lao Tzu.

4. See Chang Chung-yuan, OriginalTeachings of Ch'an Buddhism, p. 58.

5. Wu, Golden Age of Zen, p. 171.

6. Chang Chung-yuan, OriginalTeachings of Ch'an Buddhism, p. 58.

7. Ibid., p. 60.

8. Ibid., pp. 61-62.

9. Ibid., pp. 64-65.

10. Ibid., p. 76.

11. This is elaborated by Luk, Ch'anand Zen Teaching, Second Series, p. 166.

12. Ibid., p. 174.

13. Extended discussions of thisconcept are provided by Chang Chung-yuan, Original Teachings of Ch'an Buddhism,pp. 41-57; and by Wu, Golden Age of Zen, pp. 177-82.

14. Wu, Golden Age of Zen, p. 179.

15. See Chang Chung-yuan, OriginalTeachings of Ch'an Buddhism, p. 49.

16. See Luk, Chan and Zen Teaching,Second Series, p. 139.

17. See Chang Chung-yuan, OriginalTeachings of Ch'an Buddhism, p. 50.

18. Ibid., p. 69.

19. When R. H. Blyth translates thispoem in Zen and Zen Classics, Vol. 2, called the Hokyozammai in Japanese, he includesa grand dose of skepticism concerning its real authorship, since he believesthe poem unworthy of the master (p. 152).

20. Ibid., p. 157.

21. See Chang Chung-yuan, OriginalTeachings of Ch'an Buddhism, p. 48.

22. Ibid., p. 70.

23. Ibid., p. 71.

24. Ibid., p. 72.

25. Dumoulin, Development of ChineseZen, p. 26.

27.Eliot, JapaneseBuddhism, p. 168.

13. KUEI-SHAN, YUN-MEN, AND FA-YEN:THREE MINOR HOUSES

1. Accounts of the lives andteachings of the masters of the Kuei-yang school can be found in a number oftranslations, including Chang Chung-yuan, Original Teachings of Ch'an Buddhism;and Luk, Ch'an and Zen Teachings, Second Series. Both provide translations fromThe Transmission of the Lamp. Other sources appear to be used in Wu, Golden Ageof Zen, which includes a lively discussion of Kuei-shan and the Kuei-yang sect.

2. Wu, Golden Age of Zen, p. 159.

3. Charles Luk (Ch'an and ZenTeaching, Second Series, p. 58) makes a valiant try at explication when hesays, "[Huai-hai] wanted him to perceive 'that which gave the order' and'that which obeyed it.' . . . [Huai-hai] continued to perform his greatfunction by pressing the student hard, insisting that the latter shouldperceive 'that' which arose from the seat, used the poker, raised a littlefire, showed it to him and said, 'Is this not fire?' . . . This time thestudent could actually perceive the reply by means of his self-nature. . . .Hence his enlightenment."

4. See Ibid., p. 58. Ssu-ma seemsto have had a good record in predicting monastic success, and he was much indemand. Although the reliance

on a fortuneteller seems somewhat out of character for aCh'an master, we should remember that fortunetelling and future prediction inChina are at least as old as the I Ching.

5. Chang Chung-yuan, OriginalTeachings of Ch'an Buddhism, p. 202.

6. Ibid., p. 204.

7. Luk,Ch'an and Zen Teaching, Second Series, p. 67.

8. Ibid.,p. 78.

9. Wu,Golden Age of Zen, p. 167.

10. Ibid., p. 167.

11. John Wu (Golden Age of Zen, p.165) says, "The style of the house of Kuei-yang has a charm all of itsown. It is not as steep and sharp-edged as the houses of Lin-chi and Yun-men,nor as close-knit and resourceful as the house of Ts'ao-tung nor as speculativeand broad as the house of Fa-yen, but it has greater depth than theothers."

12. See Chang Chung-yuan, OriginalTeachings of Ch'an Buddhism, p. 269. Other translations of Yun-men anecdotes,as well as interpretations and appreciations, can be found in Luk, Ch'an andZen Teaching, Second Series; Chou, Dhyana Buddhism in China; Wu, GoldenAge of Zen; and Blyth, Zen and Zen Classics, Vol. 2.

13. He had six koans out offorty-eight in the Mumonkan and eighteen koans out of a hundred in theHekiganroku. Perhaps his extensive representation in the second collection isattributable to the fact that its compiler, Ch'ung-hsien (980-1025), was one ofthe last surviving representatives of Yun-men's school.

14. Chang Chung-yuan, OriginalTeachings of Ch'an Buddhism p. 284.

15. Ibid., p. 286.

16. Ibid., p. 229.

17. Ibid., p. 228.

18. Ibid., p. 229.

19. Sekida, Two Zen Classics:Mumonkan & Hekiganroku, p. 349. This koan is from Hekiganroku, Case 77.

20. From the Mumonkan, Case 21. TheChinese term used was kan-shin chueh, which Chang Chung-yuan (OriginalTeachings of Ch'an Buddhism, p. 300) characterizes as follows: "This maybe translated either of two ways: a piece of dried excrement or a bamboo stickused for cleaning as toilet tissue is today."

21. Blyth, Zen and Zen Classics,Vol. 2, p. 142.

22. Those with insatiable curiositymay consult Wu, Golden Age of Zen, pp. 244 ff.

23. Translations of his teachingsfrom The Transmission of the Lamp are provided by Chang Chung^:yuanin Original Teachings of Ch'an Buddhism and by Charles Luk in Ch'an and ZenTeachings, Second Series. A translation of a completely different source, whichvaries significantly on all the major anecdotes, is provided in John Wu, GoldenAge of Zen. A translation, presumably from a Japanese source, of some of histeachings is supplied by R. H. Blyth in Zen and Zen Classics, Vol. 2. HeinrichDumoulin offers a brief assessment of his influence in his two books:Development of Chinese Zen and History of Zen Buddhism.

24. Chang Chung-yuan, OriginalTeachings of Ch'an Buddhism, p. 238. A completely different version may befound in Wu, Golden Age of Zen, pp. 232-33.

25.Buddhism ChangChung-yuan, Original Teachings of Ch'an, p. 242.

14. TA-HUI: MASTER OF THE KOAN

1. See Dumoulin, History of ZenBuddhism, p. 128.

2. Isshu Miura and Ruth FullerSasaki, Zen Dust (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1966), pp. 10-11.

3. Ibid., p. 10. This individualis identified as Nan-yuan Hui-yang (d. 930).

4. This is Case 1 in the Mumonkan,usually the first koan given to a beginning student.

5. This is Case 26 of theMumonkan. The version given here is after the translation in Sekida, Two ZenClassics: Mumonkan & Hekiganroku, p. 89.

6. This is Case 54 of theHekiganroku. The version given is after Ibid., p. 296, and Cleary and Cleary,Blue Cliff Record, p. 362.

7. Isshu and Sasaki, Zen Dust, p.13.

8. There are a number oftranslations of the Mumonkan currently available in English. The most recent isSekida, Two Zen Classics: Mumonkan & Hekiganroku; but perhaps the mostauthoritative is Zenkei Shibayama, Zen Comments on the Mumonkan, trans. SumikoKudo (New York: Harper £r Row, 1974; paperback edition, New York: New AmericanLibrary, 1975). Other translations are Nyogen Senzaki and Paul Reps, "TheGateless Gate," in Paul Reps, ed., Zen Flesh, Zen Bones (Rutland and Tokyo:Tuttle, 1957); Sohkau Ogata, "The Mu Mon Kwan," in Zen for the West(New York: Dial, 1959); and R. H. Blyth, Zen and Zen Classics, Vol. 4,"Mumonkan" (Tokyo: Hokuseido, 1966).

Three translations of the Blue Cliff Record are currentlyavailable in English. There is the early and unsatisfactory version by R. D. M.Shaw (London: Michael Joseph, 1961). A readable version is provided in Sekida,Two Zen Classics, although this excludes some of the traditional commentary.The authoritative version is certainly that by Cleary and Cleary, Blue CliffRecord.

9. This is the case with theversion provided in Sekida, Two Zen Classics.

10. See Dumoulin, History of ZenBuddhism, p. 128.

11. See L. Carrington Goodrich, AShort History of the Chinese People (New York: Harper & Row, 1943), p. 161.

12. The most comprehensivecollection of Ta-hui's writings is translated in Christopher Cleary, SwamplandFlowers: The Letters and Lectures of Zen Master Ta Hui (New York: Grove Press,1977). Excerpts are also translated by Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism, SecondSeries. Biographical information may also be found in Isshu and Sasaki, ZenDust.

13. Translated in Isshu and Sasaki,Zen Dust, p. 163.

14. A work known today as theCheng-fa-yen-tsang. See Isshu and Sasaki, Zen Dust, p. 163.

15. See Ibid.

16. See Ibid.

17. Translated by Cleary, SwamplandFlowers, pp. 129-30.

18. See Sekida, Two Zen Classics, p.17.

19. Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism,Second Series, p. 103.

20. Cleary, Swampland Flowers, p.64.

21. Ibid., p. 57.

22. Ibid., p. 14.

23.But he destroyedthem in vain. Around 1300 a monk managed to assemble most of the koans andcommentary from scattered sources and put the book back into print. The problemcontinues to this day; there is now available a book of "answers" toa number of koans—Yoel Hoffman, The Sound of One Hand Clapping (New York: BasicBooks, 1975). One reviewer of this book observed sadly, "Now if onlygetting the 'answer' were the same as getting the point."

15.EISAI: THE FIRST JAPANESE MASTER

1. This anecdote is in MartinCharles Collcutt, "The Zen Monastic Institution in Medieval Japan"(Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1975).

2. Although there were variousattempts to introduce Ch'an into Japan prior to the twelfth century, nothingever seemed to stick. Dumoulin (History of Zen Buddhism, pp. 138-39) summarizedthese efforts as follows: "The first certain information we possessregarding Zen in Japan goes back to the early period of her history. Theoutstanding Japanese Buddhist monk during that age, Dosho, was attracted to Zenthrough the influence of his Chinese teacher, Hsuan-tsang, under whom hestudied the Yogacara philosophy (653). . . . Dosho thus came into immediatecontact with the tradition of Bodhidharma and brought the Zen of the patriarchsto Japan. He built the first meditation hall, at a temple in Nara. . . .

"A century later, for the first time in history, aChinese Zen master came to Japan. This was Tao-hsuan, who belonged to thenorthern sect of Chinese Zen in the third generation after Shen-hsiu. Respondingto an invitation from Japanese Buddhist monks, he took up residence in Nara andcontributed to the growth of Japanese culture during the Tempyo period(729-749). . . . The contemplative element in the Tendai tradition, which heldan important place from the beginning, was strengthened in both China and Japanby repeated contacts with Zen.

"A further step in the spread of Zen occurred in thefollowing century when I-k'ung, a Chinese master of the Lin-chi sect, visitedJapan. He came at the invitation of the Empress Tachibana Kachiko, wife of theEmperor Saga, during the early part of the Showa era (834-848), to teach Zen,first at the imperial court and later at the Danrinji temple in Kyoto, whichthe empress had built for him. However, these first efforts in the systematicpropagation of Zen according to the Chinese pattern did not meet with lastingsuccess. I-k'ung was unable to launch a vigorous movement. Disappointed, hereturned to China, and for three centuries Zen was inactive in Japan."

Another opportunity for the Japanese to learn about Ch'an wasmissed by the famous Japanese pilgrim Ennin, who was in China to witness theGreat Persecution of 845, but who paid almost no attention to Ch'an, which heregarded as the obsession of unruly ne'er-do-wells.

3. A number of books provideinformation concerning early Japanese history and the circ*mstances surroundingthe introduction of Buddhism to Japan. General historical works of particularrelevance include: John Whitney Hall, Japan, from Prehistory to Modern Times(New York: Delacorte, 1970); Mikiso Hane, Japan, A Historical Survey (New York:Scribner's, 1972); Edwin O. Reischauer, Japan: Past and Present, 3rd ed. (NewYork: Knopf, 1964); and George B. Sansom, A History of Japan, 3 vols. (Stanford,Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1958-63).

Studies of early Japanese Buddhism may be found in: MasaharuAnesaki, History of Japanese Religion (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner,1930: reissue, Rutland, Vt.: Tuttle, 1963); William K. Bunce, Religions inJapan (Rutland, Vt.: Tuttle, 1955); Ch'en, Buddhism in China; Eliot, JapaneseBuddhism; Shinsho Hanayama, A History of Japanese Buddhism (Tokyo: Bukkyo DendoKyokai, 1966); and E. Dale Saunders, Buddhism in Japan (Philadelphia:University of Pennsylvania Press, 1964).

4. In fact, the popularity ofesoteric rituals was such that they were an important part of early Zenpractice in Japan.

5. This world is well described byIvan Morris in The World of the Shining Prince: Court Life in Ancient Japan(New York: Knopf, 1964). A discussion of the relation of this aesthetic life tothe formation of Japanese Zen may be found in Thomas Hoover, Zen Culture (NewYork: Random House, 1977; paperback edition, New York: Vintage, 1978).

6. One of the most readableaccounts of the rise of the Japanese military class may be found in PaulVarley, Samurai (New York: Delacorte, 1970; paperback edition, New York: Dell,1972).

7. This theory is advancedeloquently in Collcutt, "Zen Monastic Institution in Medieval Japan."In later years the Ch'an sect in China itself actually entered a phase ofdecadence, with the inclusion of esoteric rites and an ecumenical movement thatadvocated the chanting of the nembutsu by Ch'anists—some of whom claimed therewas great similarity between the psychological aspects of this mechanical chantand those of the koan.

8. Accounts of Eisai's life may befound in Dumoulin, History of Zen Buddhism; and in Collcutt, "Zen MonasticInstitution in Medieval Japan."

9. See Collcutt, "ZenMonastic Institution in Medieval Japan."

10. See Saunders, Buddhism in Japan,p. 221.

11. Translated in Wm. Theodore deBary, ed. Sources of Japanese Tradition, Vol. 1 (New York: Columbia UniversityPress, 1958), pp. 236-37.

12. Ibid., p. 237.

13. De Bary, Sources of Japanese Tradition,pp. 239-40.

14.Again the bestdiscussion of this intrigue is provided by Collcutt, "Zen MonasticInstitution in Medieval Japan."

15.Varley, Samurai,p. 45.

16. DOGEN: FATHER OF JAPANESE SOTO ZEN

1. Dumoulin, History of ZenBuddhism, p. 151. This statement may be faint praise, for Japan has never beenespecially noted for its religious thinkers. As philosophers, the Japanese havebeen great artists and poets. Perhaps no culture can do everything.

2. Biographical information onDogen may be found in Hee-Jin Kim, Dogen Kigen—Mystical Realist (Tucson:University of Arizona Press, 1975); Yuho Yokoi, Zen Master Dogen (New York:Weatherhill, 1976); and Dumoulin, History of Zen Buddhism. Translations of hiswritings maybe found in Dogen Kigen—Mystical Realist and Zen Master Dogen aswell as in Jiyu Kennett, Zen is Eternal Life (Emeryville, Calif.: Dharma,1976); Dogen, Record of Things Heard from the Treasury of the Eye of the TrueTeaching trans, by Thomas Cleary (Boulder, Colo.: Great Eastern Book Company,1978); Francis Dojun Cook, How to Raise an Ox (Los Angeles: CenterPublications, 1978); and Kosen Nishiyama and John Steven, Shobogenzo: The Eyeand Treasury of the True Law (New York: Weatherhill, 1977).

3. Kim, Dogen Kigen—MysticalRealist, p. 25.

4. Yokoi, Zen Master Dogen, p. 28.

5. See Collcutt, "Zen MonasticInstitution in Medieval Japan."

6. Kim, Dogen Kigen—MysticalRealist, p. 29.

7. Ibid., p. 35.

8. See Yokoi, Zen Master Dogen, p.32.

9. Ibid., pp. 45—46.

10. Ibid., p. 46.

11. Kennett, Zen Is Eternal Life,pp. 141-42.

12. Ibid., p. 152.

13. Ibid., pp. 150-51.

14. Dogen's attitude toward womenwas revolutionary for his time. A sampling is provided in Kim, DogenKigen—Mystical Realist, pp. 54-55: "Some people, foolish in the extreme,also think of woman as nothing but the object of sensual pleasures, and see herthis way without ever correcting their view. A Buddhist should not do so. Ifman detests woman as the sexual object, she must detest him for the samereason. Both man and woman become objects, thus being equally involved indefilement. . . . What charge is there against woman? What virtue is there inman? There are wicked men in the world; there are virtuous women in the world.The desire to hear Dharma and the search for enlightenment do not necessarilyrely on the difference in sex."

15. Yokoi, Zen Master Dogen, pp.35-36.

16. See Collcutt, "Zen MonasticTraining in Medieval Japan," p. 59.

17. Translated in de Bary, Sourcesof Japanese Tradition, Vol. 1., p. 247.

18. See Collcutt, "Zen MonasticInstitution in Medieval Japan," p. 62.

19. See Ibid., pp. 62 ff.

20.See Philip Yampolsky, trans., TheZen Master Hakuin: Selected Writings, (New York: Columbia University Press,1971), p. 5.

IKKYU: ZEN ECCENTRIC

1. This view is advancedconvincingly by Collcutt in "Zen Monastic Institution in MedievalJapan," p. 113 ff.

2. Ibid., p. 80.

3. This would seem to be one ofthe reasons for what became of a host of emigrating Ch'an teachers as sub-sectsof the Yogi branch struggled for ascendency over each other.

4. Wu-an's strength of mind isillustrated by a story related in Collcutt, "Zen Monastic Institution inMedieval Japan," p. 84: "Wu-an is said to have shocked the religioussensibilities of many warriors and monks when, in what has been interpreted asa deliberate attempt to sever the connection between Zen and prayer in Japaneseminds, he publicly refused to worship before the statue of ji*zo in the BuddhaHill of Kencho-ji on the grounds that whereas ji*zo was merely a Bodhisattva,he, Wu-an, was a Buddha."

5. Related in Ibid., p. 88.

6. Collcutt ("Zen MonasticInstitution in Medieval Japan," p. 114) points out that the warriorinterest in Zen and its Chinese cultural trappings should also be creditedpartly to their desire to stand up to the snobbery of the Kyoto aristocracy. Bymaking themselves emissaries of a prestigious foreign civilization, the warriorclass achieved a bit of cultural one-upmanship on the Kyoto snob set.

7. Collcutt ("Zen MonasticInstitution in Medieval Japan," p. 106) reports that this conversion oftemples to Zen was not always spontaneous. There is the story of one localgovernor who was called to Kamakura and in the course of a public assemblyasked pointedly whether his family had yet built a Zen monastery in their homeprovince. The terrified official declared he had built a monastery for ahundred Zen monks, and then raced home to start construction.

8. A discussion of the contributionof Zen to Japanese civilization may be found in Hoover, Zen Culture. An oldersurvey is D. T. Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture (Princeton, N. J.: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1959).

9. Yampolsky, Zen Master Hakuin, p.8.

10. Philip Yampolsky,"Muromachi Zen and the Gozan System," in John W. Hall and ToyodaTakeshi, eds., Japan in the Muromachi Age (Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress, 1977), p. 319.

11. One of the best politicalhistories of this era is Sansom, History of Japan. For the history of Zen, thebest work appears to be Martin Collcutt, The Zen Monastic Institution inMedieval Japan (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, in press), a revisedversion of the dissertation cited above.

12. English sources on Ikkyu areless common than might at first be supposed. The most exhaustive study andtranslation of original Ikkyu writings to date is certainly that of JamesSanford, "Zen-Man Ikkyu" (Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University,1972). There is also a lively and characteristically insightful essay by DonaldKeene, "The Portrait of Ikkyu," in Archives of Asian Art, Vol. 20 (1966-67),pp. 54-65. This essay has been collected in Donald Keene, Landscapes andPortraits (Palo Alto: Kodansha International, 1971). Another work of Ikkyuscholarship is Sonja Arntzen, "A Presentation of the Poet Ikkyu withTranslations from the Kyounshu 'Mad Cloud Anthology'" (Unpublished thesis,University of British Columbia, Vancouver, 1966).

13. See Thomas Cleary, The OriginalFace: An Anthology of Rinzai Zen (New York: Grove Press, 1978), p. 13. Anexample of a Nasrudin-esque parable told about Ikkyu is the story of hisapproaching the house of a rich man one day to beg for food wearing his tornrobes and straw sandals. The man drove him away, but when he returned thefollowing day in the luxurious robe of a Buddhist prelate, he was invited infor a banquet. But when the food arrived Ikkyu removed his robe and offered thefood to it.

14. Sanford, "Zen-ManIkkyu," p. 48.

15. Ibid., p. 68.

16. Ibid. pp. 80-81.

17. Translated by Keene, Landscapesand Portraits, p. 235. Professor Keene (personal communication) has provided a revisedand, he believes, more fully accurate translation of this verse as follows:

After ten days of living in this temple my mind's in turmoil;

Red strings, very long, tug at my feet.

If one day you get around to looking for me,

Try the restaurants, the drinking places or the brothels.

He notes that the "red strings" of the second linerefer to the ties of physical attachment to women that drew Ikkyu from thetemple to the pleasure quarters.

18. Jon Covell and Yamada Sobin, Zenat Daitoku-ji (New York: Kodansha International, 1974), p. 36.

19. Sanford, "Zen-ManIkkyu," p. 221.

20. Ibid., p. 226.

21. Ibid., p. 235.

22. Ibid., p. 225.

23. Ibid., pp. 253-54. A translationmay also be found in Cleary, Original Face; and in R. H. Blyth and N. A.Waddell, "Ikkyu's Skeletons," The Eastern Buddhist, N.S. 7, 3 (May1973), pp. 111-25. Also see Blyth, Zen and Zen Classics, Vol. 7.

24. Sanford claims ("Zen-ManIkkyu," p. 341) that Ikkyu's prose is "almost totally unknown"in Japan.

25. Ibid., pp. 326-27.

26. Ibid., p. 172.

27. Jan Covell (Zen at Daitoku-ji,p. 38) says, "Ikkyu's own ink paintings are unpretentious and seeminglyartless, always with the flung-ink technique. His calligraphy is ranked amonghistory's greatest . . ."

28.Sanford,"Zen-Man Ikkyu," p. 342.

18. HAKUIN: JAPANESE MASTER OF THE KOAN

1. Yampolsky, Zen Master Hakuin, p.116. This is undoubtedly the definitive work by and about Hakuin in English andhas been used for all the quotations that follow. Another translation of someof Hakuin's works is R. D. M. Shaw, The Embossed Teakettle (London: GeorgeAllen & Unwin, 1963). A short translation of Hakuin's writings may be foundin Cleary, Original Face. Perhaps the most incisive biographical andinterpretive material may be found, respectively, in Dumoulin, History of ZenBuddhism; and Isshu and Sasaki, Zen Dust.

2. Yampolsky, Zen Master Hakuin,p. 117.

3. Ibid., p. 18.

4. Ibid., pp. 118-19.

5. Ibid., p. 119.

6. Ibid., p. 121.

7. Ibid., pp. 31-32.

8. Ibid., p. 33.

9. Ibid., p. 49.

10. Ibid., p. 33.

11. Ibid., pp. 52-53.

12. Ibid., p. 53.

13. Ibid., p. 58.

14. Ibid.

15. Ibid., p. 35.

16. Ibid., pp. 63-64.

17. The "great ball ofdoubt," known in Chinese as i-t'uan, was a classic Zen phrase and has beentraced by Ruth Fuller Sasaki (Zen Dust, p. 247) back to a tenth-century Chinesemonk, who claimed in a poem, "The ball of doubt within my heart/Was as bigas a big wicker basket." Hakuin's analysis of the "great ball ofdoubt" is translated in Zen Dust, p. 43.

18. Hakuin's invention of his ownkoans, which were kept secret and never published, is a significant departurefrom the usual technique of simply taking situations from the classicl*terature, and demonstrates both his creativity and his intellectualindependence. It also raises the question of whether they really were"koans" under the traditional definition of "public case"or whether they should be given a different name.

19. Yampolsky, Zen Master Hakuin, p.164.

20. The koan system of Hakuin isdiscussed by Yampolsky in Zen Master Hakuin, p. 15; and by Sasaki, in The ZenKoan, pp. 27-30.

21. Yampolsky, Zen Master Hakuin, p.32.

22. See D. T. Suzuki, Sengai: TheZen Master (Greenwich, Conn.: New York Graphic Society, 1971); Burton Watson,Ryokan: Zen Monk-Poet of Japan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977); andJohn Stevens, One Robe, One Bowl: The Zen Poetry of Ryokan (New York:Weatherhill, 1977).

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