PART I_The Zen Experience

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THE ZEN EXPERIENCE

_Library Journal_ called it, "The best history of Zen ever written."

_The truth of Zen has always resided in individual experience rather

than in theoretical writings. To give the modern reader access to

understanding of this truth, THE ZEN 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, we follow it through its initial flowering in China under the

First Patriarch Bodhidharma; its division into schools of "gradual" and

"sudden" enlightenment under 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 the person of Han-shan; the perfection

of the use of the koan by Ta-hui; the migration of Zen to Japan and its

extraordinary growth there under a succession of towering Japanese

spiritual leaders.

Rich in historical background, vivid in revealing anecdote and

memorable quotation, this long-needed work succeeds admirably in taking

Zen from the library shelves and restoring its living, human form.

BOOKS BY THOMAS HOOVER

Nonfiction

Zen Culture

The Zen Experience

Fiction

The Moghul

Caribbee

Wall Street Samurai

(The _Samurai_ Strategy)

Project Daedalus

Project Cyclops

Life Blood

Syndrome

All free as e-books at

www.thomashoover.info

THE

ZEN

EXPERIENCE

Thomas Hoover

SIGNET, SIGNET CLASSICS, MENTOR, PLUME, MERIDIAN AND NAL BOOKS are

published in the United States by The New American Library, Inc., 1633

Broadway, New York, New York 10019.

First Printing, March, 1980

23456789

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Bibliography Zen Buddhism--History. Priests, Zen--Biography.

ISBN 0-452-25228-8

www.thomashoover.info

Key words:

Author: Thomas Hoover

Title: The Zen Experience

Zen History, Buddhism, Zen Buddhism, 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

Daves.

Selections from Cold Mountain by Han-shan, Burton Watson, trans. (New

York: Columbia University Press, 1970), reprinted by permission of

publisher.

Selections from The Recorded Sayings of Layman Pang, Ruth Fuller Sasaki

et al., trans. (New York: John Weatherhill), reprinted by permission of

publisher.

Selections from Anthology of Chinese Literature, Cyril Birch, ed., Gary

Press), reprinted by permission of publisher.

Selections from Tao: A New Way of Thinking by Chang Chung-yuan, (New

yuan), reprinted by permission of publisher.

Selection from A History of Zen Buddhism by Heinrich S. J. Dumoulin,

Paul Peachey, trans. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1962), reprinted by

permission of publisher.

Selection by Ikkyu from Some Japanese Portraits by Donald Keene (Tokyo:

Kodansha International, 1979), reprinted by permission of author.

Selections from Essays in Zen Buddhism 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), reprinted by permission of publisher.

Selections from The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch, Philip

Yamplosky, trans. (New York: Columbia University Press), reprinted by

permission of publisher.

Selections from The Zen Master Hakuin by Philip Yamplosky (New York:

Columbia University Press, 1971), reprinted by permission of publisher.

Selections from The Golden Age of Zen by John C. H. Wu (Taipei, Taiwan:

Hwakang Book Store), reprinted by permission of author.

Selections from The Zen Teaching of the Hui Hai on Sudden Illumination

by John Blofeld (New York: Samuel Weiser, 1972), reprinjted by

permission of publisher.

Selections from Zen Master Dogen by Yoho Yukoi (New York: John

Weatherhill), reprinted by permission of publisher.

Selections from Original Teachings of Ch'an Buddhism by Chang Chung-

yuan (New York: Vintage, 1969), reprinted by permission of publisher.

Selections from Swampland Flowers by Christopher Cleary (New York:

permission of publisher.

Selections from The Zen Teaching of Huang Po on the Transmission of

Blofeld), reprinted by permission of publisher.

Selections from Zen-Man Ikkyu, a dissertation by John Sanford,

University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, reprinted by permission of

author.

Selections from Zen is Eternal Life by Roshi Jiyu-Kennett (Dharma

permission of author).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Heartfelt thanks go to Dr. Philip Yampolsky of Columbia University, who

reviewed the manuscript in draft and clarified many points of fact and

interpretation. I also am indebted to 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 this finger pointing at the

moon mistakenly aims astray, I alone am responsible.

CONTENTS

Preface to Zen

Taoism: The Way to Zen

Lao Tzu

Chuang Tzu

Kuo Hsiang: A Neo-Taoist

The Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove

The Buddhist Roots of Zen

The Buddha

Nagarjuna

Kumarajiva

Seng-chao

Tao-sheng

The Synthesis

PART I. THE EARLY MASTERS

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-hsiu and Shen-hui: "Gradual" and

"Sudden" Masters

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

PART II. THE GOLDEN AGE OF 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 and Han-shan: Layman and Poet

10. Huang-po: Master of the Universal Mind

PART III. SECTARIANISM AND THE KOAN

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

PART IV. ZEN IN JAPAN

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

Bibliography

THE ZEN EXPERIENCE

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

and perfect his own mind.

_Garma C. C. Chang

PREFACE TO ZEN

_Lao Tzu, Buddha, Confucius

Some call it "seeing," some call it "knowing," and some describe it in

religious terms. Whatever the name, it is our reach for a new level of

consciousness. Of the many forms this search has taken, perhaps the

most intriguing is Zen. Growing out of the wisdom of China, India, and

Japan, Zen became a powerful movement to explore the lesser-known

reaches of the human mind. Today Zen has come westward, where we are

rediscovering modern significance in its ancient insights. This book is

an attempt to encounter Zen in its purest form, by returning to the

greatest Zen masters.

Zen teachings often appear deceptively simple. This misconception is

compounded by the Zen claim that explanations are meaningless. They

are, of course, but merely because genuine Zen insights can arise only

from individual experience. And although our experience can be

described and even 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 to us.

Zen is based on the recognition of two incompatible types of thought:

rational and intuitive. Rationality employs language, logic, reason.

Its precepts can be taught. Intuitive knowledge, however, is different.

It lurks embedded in our consciousness, beyond words. Unlike rational

thought, intuition cannot be "taught" or even turned on. In fact, it is

impossible to find or manipulate this intuitive consciousness using our

rational 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 of human

consciousness. Some of their techniques--like meditation--were borrowed

from Indian Buddhism, and some--like their antirational paradoxes--may

have been learned from Chinese Taoists. But other inventions, like

their jarring shouts and blows, emerged from their own experience.

Throughout it all, however, their words and actions were only a means,

never an end.

That end is an intuitive realization of a single great insight--that we

and the world around are one, both part of a larger encompassing

absolute. Our rational intellect merely obscures this truth, and

consequently we must shut it off, if only for a moment. Rationality

constrains our mind; intuition releases it.

The irony is that the person glimpsing this moment of higher

consciousness, this Oneness, encounters the ultimate realization that

there is nothing to realize. The world is still there, unchanged. But

the difference is that it is now an extension of our consciousness,

seen directly and not analytically. And since it is redundant to be

attached to something already a part of you, there is a sudden sense of

freedom from our agonizing bondage to things.

Along with this also comes release from the constraints of artificial

values. Creating systems and categories is not unlike counting the

colors of a rainbow--both merely detract from our experience of reality,

while at the same time limiting our appreciation of the world's

richness. And to declare something right or wrong is similarly

nearsighted. As Alan Watts once observed, "Zen unveils behind the

urgent realm of good and evil a vast region of oneself about which

there need be no guilt or recrimination, where at last the self is

indistinguishable from God." And, we might add, where God is 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 they are

discovered waiting in our consciousness after all else has been swept

away. A scornful twelfth-century Chinese scholar summarized the Zen

method as follows: "Since the Zen masters never run the risk of

explaining anything in plain language, their followers must do their

own pondering and puzzling--from which a real threshing-out results." In

these pages we will watch the threshing-out of Zen itself--as its

masters unfold a new realm of consciousness, the Zen experience.

TAOISM: THE WAY TO ZEN

Taoism is the original religion of ancient China. It is founded on the

idea that a fundamental principle, the Tao, underlies all nature. Long

before the appearance of Zen, Taoists were teaching the superiority of

intuitive thought, using an anti-intellectualism that often ridiculed

the logic-bound limitations of conventional Chinese life and letters.

However, Taoism was always upbeat and positive in its acceptance of

reality, a quality that also rubbed off on Zen over the centuries.

Furthermore, many Taoist philosophers left writings whose world view

seems almost Zen-like. The early Chinese teachers of meditation (called

_dhyana _in Sanskrit and Ch'an in Chinese) absorbed the Taoist

tradition of intuitive wisdom, and later Zen masters often used Taoist

expressions. It is fitting, therefore, that we briefly meet some of the

most famous teachers of Chinese Taoism.

LAO TZU

One of the most influential figures in ancient Chinese lore is

remembered today merely as Lao Tzu (Venerable Master). Taoist legends

report he once disputed (and bettered) the scholarly Confucius, but

that he finally despaired of the world and rode an oxcart off into the

west, pausing at the Han-ku Pass--on the insistence of its keeper--to set

down his insights in a five-thousand-character poem. 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 to become an essential element of

Ch'an Buddhism.

The word "Tao" means many, many things--including the _elan vital _or

life force of the universe, the harmonious structuring of human

affairs, and--perhaps most important--a reality transcending words.

Taoists declared there is a knowledge not accessible by language. As

the Tao Te Ching announces in its opening line, "The Tao that can be

put into words is 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 the

truth itself cannot be separated. The Tao includes and unifies these

into a larger "reality" encompassing both. The notion that our

knowledge is distinguishable from that known is an illusion.

Another teaching of the Tao Te Ching is that intuitive insight

surpasses rational analysis. When we act on our spontaneous judgment,

we are almost always better off. Chapter 19 declares, "Let the people

be free from discernment and relinquish intellection . . . Hold to

one's original nature . . . Eliminate artificial learning and one will

be free from anxieties."1 The wise defer to a realm of insight floating

in our 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 "the wise deal

with things through non-interference and teach through no-words."2

Taoists typically refused to draw value judgments on others' behavior.

Lao Tzu asks, "What is the difference between good and bad?"3 and

concludes, "Goodness often turns out to be evil."4 There is complete

acceptance of what is, with no desire to make things "better." Lao Tzu

believed "good" and "bad" were both part of Tao and therefore, "Even if

a man is unworthy, Tao will never exclude him."5 If all things are one,

there can be no critical differentiation of any part. This

concentration on inner perception, to the exclusion of practical

concerns, evoked a criticism from the third-century-B.C. Confucian

philosopher Hsun Tzu that has a curiously modern ring of social

consciousness. "Lao Tzu understood looking inward, but knew nothing of

looking outward. . . . If there is merely inward-looking and never

outward-looking, there can be no distinction between what has value and

what has not, between what is precious and what is vile, between what

is noble and what is vulgar."6 But the refusal of Lao Tzu to

intellectualize what is natural or to sit in judgment over the world

was the perfect Chinese precedent for Ch'an.

CHUANG TZU

The second important figure in Taoism is the almost equally legendary

teacher remembered as Chuang Tzu, who is usually placed in the fourth

century B.C., some two centuries after Lao Tzu. An early historian

tells that once Chuang Tzu was invited to the court to serve as a

minister, an invitation he declined with a typical story: An ox is

selected for a festival and fattened up for several years, living the

life of wealth and indulgence--until the day he is led away for

sacrifice. At that reckoning what would he give to return to the simple

life, where there was poverty but also freedom?

In Chuang Tzu's own book of wisdom, he also derided the faith in

rationality common to Chinese scholars. To emphasize his point he

devised a vehicle for assaulting the apparatus of logic--that being a

"nonsense" story whose point could only be understood intuitively.,

There has yet to be found a more deadly weapon against pompous

intellectualizing, as the Ch'an Buddhists later proved with the koan.

Chuang Tzu also knew how quickly comedy could deflate, and he used it

with consummate skill, again paving the way for the 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 anticipates twentieth-century

writers for the Theater of the Absurd, such as Beckett or Ionesco.

Significantly, the Columbia scholar Burton Watson suggests that the

most fruitful path to Chuang Tzu "is not to attempt to subject his

thoughts to rational and systematic analysis, but to read and reread

his words until one has ceased to think of what he is saying and

instead has developed an intuitive sense of the mind moving beyond the

words, and of the world in which it moves."7 This is undoubtedly true.

The effect of comic parody on logic is so telling that the only way to

really understand the message is to stop trying to "understand" it.

Concerning the limitations of verbal transmission, Chuang Tzu tells a

story of a wheelmaker who once advised his duke that the book of

ancient thought the man was reading was "nothing but the lees and scum

of bygone men." The duke angrily demanded an explanation--and received a

classic defense of the superiority of intuitive understanding over

language and logic.

_I look at the 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 is steady, but does not go deep. The right pace,

neither slow nor fast, cannot get into the hand unless it comes from

the heart. It is a thing that cannot be put into words; there is an art

in it that I cannot explain to my son. That is why it is impossible for

me to let him take over my work, and here I am at the age of seventy,

still making wheels. In my opinion, it must have been the same with the

men of old. All that was worth handing on died with them; the rest,

they put into their books.8

Chuang Tzu's parable that perhaps best illustrates the Taoist ideal

concerns a cook who had discovered one lives best by following nature's

rhythms. The cook explained that his naturalness was easy after he

learned to let intuition guide his actions. This approach he called

practicing the Tao, but it is in fact the objective of Zen practice as

well.

_Prince Wen Hui remarked, "How wonderfully you have mastered your art."

The cook laid down his knife and said, "What your servant really cares

for is Tao, which goes beyond mere art. When I first began to cut up

oxen, I saw nothing but oxen. After three years of practicing, I no

longer saw the ox as a whole. I now work with my spirit, not with my

eyes. My senses stop functioning and 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 of

his mind, here called the spirit. He explained how this intuitive

approach allowed him to work naturally.

_A good cook changes his knife once a year because he cuts, while a

mediocre cook has to change his every month because he hacks. I've had

this knife of mine for nineteen years and have cut up thousands of oxen

with it, and yet the edge is as 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 plenty of room to pass

through these spaces. Therefore, after nineteen years, my blade is as

sharp as ever.10

_Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu did not see themselves as founders of any

formal religion. They merely described the obvious, encouraging others

to be a part of nature and not its antagonist. Their movement, now

called Philosophical Taoism, was eclipsed during the Han Dynasty (206

B.C.-A.D. 220) in official circles by various other systems of thought,

most particularly Confucianism (which stressed obedience to authority--

both that of elders and of superiors--and reverence for formalized

learning, not to mention the acceptance of 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: an Esoteric Taoism

that used physical disciplines to manipulate consciousness, and a

Popular Taoism that came close to being a religion in the traditional

mold. The first was mystical Esoteric Taoism, which pursued the

prolonging of life and vigor, but this gave way during later times to

Popular Taoism, a metaphysical alternative to the comfortless, arid

Confucianism of the scholarly establishment.

The post-Han era saw the Philosophical Taoism of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu

emerge anew among Chinese intellectuals, actually coming to vie with

Confucianism. This whole era witnessed a turning away from the accepted

values of society, as the well-organized government of the Han era

dissolved into political and intellectual confusion. Government was

unstable and corrupt, and the Confucianism which had been its

philosophical underpinning was stilted and unsatisfying. Whenever a

society breaks down, the belief system supporting it naturally comes

under question. This happened in China in the third and fourth

centuries of the Christian era, and from it emerged a natural

opposition to Confucianism. One form of this opposition was the

imported religion of Buddhism, which provided a spiritual solace

missing in the teachings of Confucius, while the other was a revival

among intellectuals of Philosophical Taoism.

KUO HSIANG: A NEO-TAOIST

In this disruptive environment, certain intellectuals returned again to

the insights of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu, creating a movement today known

as Neo-Taoism. One of the thinkers who tried to reinterpret original

Taoist ideas for the new times was Kuo Hsiang (d. ca. 312), who co-

authored a major document of Neo-Taoism entitled Commentary on the

Chuang Tzu. It focused on the important Taoist idea of _wu-wei_, once

explained as follows: " . . .to them the key concept of Taoism, _wu

_(literally, nonexistence), is not nothingness, but pure being, which

transcends forms and names, and precisely because it is absolute and

complete, can accomplish everything. The sage is not one who withdraws

into the life of a hermit, but a man of social and political

achievements, 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 as abstaining from

activity contrary to nature and acting in a spontaneous rather than

calculated fashion. In Kuo Hsiang's words:

_Being natural means to exist spontaneously without having to take any

action. . . . By taking no action is not meant folding one's arms and

closing one's mouth. If we simply let everything act by itself, it will

be contented with its nature and destiny. (12)

Kuo Hsiang's commentary expanded on almost all the major ideas of

Chuang Tzu, drawing out with logic what originally had been set in

absurdism. Criticizing this, a later Ch'an monk observed, "People say

Kuo Hsiang wrote a commentary on Chuang Tzu. I would say it was Chuang

Tzu who wrote a commentary on Kuo Hsiang."13 Nonetheless, the idea of

_wu-wei_, processed through Buddhism, emerged in different 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 of Neo-Taoism.

Among these were the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove, men part of a

larger movement known as the School of Pure Conversation. Their

favorite pastime 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 (not incidentally) drank wine. To some extent they

reflected the recluse ideal of old, except that they found the

satisfaction of the senses no impediment to introspection. What they

did forswear, however, was the world of getting and spending. Although

men of distinction, they rejected fame, ambition, and worldly station.

There is a story that one of the Seven Sages, a man named Liu Ling (ca.

221-330), habitually received guests while completely naked. His

response to adverse comment was to declare, "I take the whole universe

as my house and my own room as my clothing. Why, then, do you enter

here into my trousers."14

It is also told that two of the sages (Juan Chi, 210-63, and his nephew

Juan Hsien) often sat drinking with their family in such conviviality

that they skipped the nuisance of cups and just drank directly from a

wine bowl on the ground. When pigs wandered by, these too were invited

to sip from the same chalice. If one exempts all nature--including pigs--

from distinction, discrimination, and duality, why exclude them as

drinking companions?

But perhaps the most significant insight of the Seven Sages of the

Bamboo Grove was their recognition of the limited uses of language. We

are told, "They engaged in conversation 'til, as they put it, they

reached the Unnameable, and 'stopped talking and silently understood

each other with a smile.' "1S

THE BUDDHIST ROOTS OF ZEN

There is a legend the Buddha was once handed a flower and asked to

preach on the law. The story says he received the blossom without a

sound and silently wheeled it in his hand. Then amid the hush his most

perceptive follower, Kashyapa, suddenly burst into a smile . . . and

thus was born the wordless wisdom of Zen.

The understanding of this silent insight was passed down

through the centuries, independent of the scriptures, finally emerging

as the Chinese school of Ch'an, later called Zen by the Japanese. It is

said the absence of early writings about the school is nothing more

than would be expected of a teaching which was, by definition, beyond

words. The master Wen-yu summed it up when he answered a demand for the

First Principle of Ch'an with, "If words could tell you, it would

become the Second Principle."

This version of Zen's origin is satisfying, and for all we know 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,

had plowed away at the Confucianist clutter restraining the Chinese

mind, but it was Buddhism that gave China the necessary new

philosophical structure--this being the metaphysical speculations of

India. Pure Chinese naturalism met Indian abstraction, and the result

was Ch'an. The school of Ch'an was in part the grafting of fragile

foreign ideas (Buddhism) onto a sturdy native species of understanding

(Taoism). But its simplicity was in many ways a re-expression of the

Buddha's original insights.

THE BUDDHA

The historic Buddha was born to the high-caste family Gautama during

the sixth century B.C. in the region that is today northeast India and

Nepal. After a childhood and youth of indulgence he turned to

asceticism and for over half a decade rigorously followed the

traditional Indian practices of fasting and meditation, only finally to

reject these in despair. However, an auspicious dream and one final

meditation at last brought total enlightenment. Gautama the seeker had

become Buddha the Enlightened, and he set out to preach.

It was not gods that concerned him, but the mind of man and its

sorrowing. We are unhappy, he explained, because we are slaves to our

desires. Extinguish desire and suffering goes with it. If people could

be taught that the physical or phenomenal world is illusion, then they

would cease their attachment to it, thereby finding release from their

self-destructive mental bondage.

The Buddha neglected to set down these ideas in written form however,

perhaps unwisely leaving this task to later generations. His teachings

subsequently were recreated in the form of sermons or sutras. In later

years, the Buddhist movement split into two separate philosophical

camps, known today as Theravada and Mahayana. The Theravada Buddhists--

found primarily in southeast Asia, Sri Lanka, and Burma--venerate the

early writings of Buddhism (known today as the Pali Canon) and tend to

content themselves with practicing the philosophy of the Buddha rather

than enlarging upon it with speculative commentaries. By contrast, the

followers of Mahayana--who include the bulk of all Buddhists in China,

Japan, and Tibet--left the simple prescriptions of the Buddha 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

of course did Japanese Zen.

NAGARJUNA

After the Buddha, perhaps the most important Buddhist figure is the

second-century A.D. Indian philosopher Nagarjuna. Some call him the

most important thinker Asia has produced. According to Tibetan legends

his parents sent him away from home at seven because an astrologer had

predicted his early death and they wished to be spared the sight. But

he broke the spell by entering Buddhist orders, and went on to become

the faith's foremost philosopher.

Today Nagarjuna is famous for his analysis of the so-called Wisdom

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 8,000 Lines, as well as the Diamond Sutra and Heart Sutra, both

essential scriptures of Zen.) Nagarjuna was the originator of the

Middle Path, so named because it strove to define a middle ground

between affirmation of the world and complete negation of existence.

Reality, said Nagarjuna, cannot be realized through conceptual

constructions, since concepts are contained inside reality, not vice

versa. 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 "the

Void." (_Sunyata _is perhaps an unprovable concept, but so too are the

ego and the unconscious, both hypothetical constructs useful in

explaining reality but impossible to locate on the operating table.)

Nagarjuna's most-quoted manifesto has the logic-defying ring of a Zen :

"Nothing comes into existence nor does anything disappear. Nothing is

eternal, nor has anything any end. Nothing is identical or

differentiated. Nothing moves hither and thither."

As the Ch'an teachers interpreted the teaching of _sunyata_, the things

of this world are all a mental creation, since external phenomena are

transient and only exist for us because of our perception. Consequently

they are actually "created" by our mind (or, if you will, a more

universal entity called Mind). Consequently they do not exist outside

our mind and hence are a void. Yet the

mind itself, which is the only thing real, is also a void since its

thoughts cannot be located by the five senses. The Void is therefore

everything, since it includes both 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

_ "This awareness of 'emptiness' is not a blank loss of consciousness,

an inanimate space; 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' and other practical determinations; but it is

aware of these as empty structures."16

The Zen masters found ways to achieve the cognition without attachment

postulated by Nagarjuna, and they paid him homage by making him one of

the legendary twenty-eight Indian Patriarchs of Zen by posthumous

decree.

KUMARAJIVA

The Indian missionary who transmitted the idea of Emptiness to China

was Kumarajiva (344-413), a swashbuckling guru who, more than any other

individual, was responsible for planting sophisticated Mahayana

Buddhist ideas in Chinese soil. Before telling his story, however, it

may be well to reflect briefly on how Buddhism got to China in the

first place.

Although there are records of a Buddhist missionary in China as early

as A.D. 148, historians are hard pressed to find the name of an out-

and-out native Chinese Buddhist before sometime in the third century.

Buddhism, which at first apparently was confused with Taoism, seems to

have come into fashion after the Neo-Taoists ran out of creative steam.

Shortly thereafter, around A.D. 209, intelligible Chinese translations

of Indian Mahayana sutras finally began to become available.

There were many things about Buddhism, however, that rubbed Chinese the

wrong way. First there were the practical matters: Buddhism allowed, if

not encouraged, begging, celibacy, and neglect of ancestors--all

practices to rankle any traditional Chinese. Then there were

fundamental philosophical differences: Buddhism offered to break one

out of the Hindu cycle of rebirth, something the Chinese had not

realized they needed; and Indian thought 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 in Taoist terms,

including stretching the two enough to find "matching concepts" or

ideas with superficial similarity, and they also let out the myth that

the Buddha was actually Lao Tzu, who had gone on to India after leaving

China.

When barbarians sacked the Northern Chinese center of Loyang in the

year 313 and took over North China's government, many of its

influential Confucianist scholars fled to the south. These emigres were

disillusioned with the social ideas of Confucianism and ready for a

solace of the spirit. Thus they turned for comfort to Buddhist ideas,

but using Neo-Taoist terminology and often treating Buddhism more as a

subject for salon speculations than as a religion. By translating

Buddhism into a Neo-Taoist framework, these southern intellectuals

effectively avoided having to grapple with the new ideas in Buddhist

metaphysics.

In North China, the Buddhists took advantage of the new absence of

competing Confucianists to move into ruling circles and assume the role

of the literate class. They preached a simple form of Buddhism, often

shamelessly dwelling on magic and incantations to arouse interest among

the greatest number of followers. The common people were drawn to

Buddhism, since it provided for the first time in China a religion that

seemed to care for people's suffering, their personal growth, their

salvation in an afterlife. Thus Buddhism took hold in North China

mainly because it provided hope and magic for the masses and a

political firewall against Confucianism for the new rulers. As late as

the beginning of the fifth century, therefore, Buddhism was

misunderstood and encouraged for the wrong reasons in both north and

south.

Kumarajiva, who would change all this, was born in Kucha to an Indian

father of the Brahmin caste and a mother of noble blood. When he was

seven 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 him back in Kucha, being ordained in

the king's palace and sharpening his understanding of the Mahayana

scriptures. He also, we are told, sharpened his non-Buddhist amorous

skills, perhaps finding consolation in the illusory world of the senses

for the hollow emptiness of _sunyata_.

In the year 382 or 383, he was taken captive and removed to a remote

area in northeastern China, where he was held prisoner for almost two

decades, much to the dismay of the rulers in Ch'ang-an, who wanted

nothing more than to have this teacher (who was by then a famous

Buddhist scholar) for their own. After seventeen years their patience

ran out and they sent an army to defeat his recalcitrant captors and

bring him back. He arrived in Ch'ang-an in the year 401 and immediately

began a project crucial to the future of Chinese Buddhism. A modern

scholar of Chinese religion tells what happened next.

_". . . Chinese monks were assembled from far and near to work with him

in translating the sacred texts. This was a 'highly structured

project,' suggestive of the cooperative enterprises of scientists

today. There were corps of specialists at all levels: those who

discussed doctrinal questions with Kumarajiva, those who checked the

new translations against the old and imperfect ones, hundreds of

editors, sub-editors, and copyists. The quality and quantity of the

translations produced by these men in the space of eight years is truly

astounding. Thanks to their efforts the ideas of Mahayana Buddhism were

presented in Chinese with far greater clarity and precision than ever

before. Sunyata--Nagar- juna's concept of the Void--was disentangled from

the Taoist terminology that had obscured and distorted it, and this and

other key doctrines of Buddhism were made comprehensible enough to lay

the intellectual foundations of the great age of independent Chinese

Buddhism that was to follow."17

The Chinese rulers contrived to put Kumarajiva's other devotion to use

as well, installing a harem of ten beautiful young Chinese girls for

him, through whom he was encouraged to perpetuate a lineage of his own.

This genetic experiment apparently came to nothing, but two native

Chinese studying under him, Seng-chao (384-414) and Tao-sheng (ca. 360-

434), would carry his contribution through the final steps needed to

open the way for the development of Ch'an.

SENG-CHAO

The short-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 by working as a copyist. He originally was a confirmed

Taoist, but after reading the sutra of Vimalakirti (which described a

pious nobleman who combined the secular life of a bon vivant

businessman with an inner existence of Buddhist enlightenment, a

combination instantly attractive to the practical Chinese), Seng-chao

turned Buddhist. In the year 398, at age fifteen, he traveled to the

northwest to study personally under the famous Kumarajiva, and he later

returned to Ch'ang-an with the master.

Conversant first in the Taoist and then in the Buddhist classics, Seng-

chao began the real synthesis of the two that would eventually evolve

into Ch'an. The China scholar Walter Liebenthal has written that the

doctrine of Nagarjuna's Middle Path, sinicized by Seng-chao, emerged in

the later Ch'an thinkers cleansed of the traces of Indian origin. He

declares, "Seng-chao interpreted Mahayana, [the Ch'an founders] Hui-

neng and Shen-hui re-thought it."18

Three of Seng-chao's treatises exist today as the Book of Chao (or Chao

Lun), and they give an idea of how Chuang Tzu might have written had he

been a Buddhist. There is the distrust of words, the unmistakable

preference for immediate, intuitive knowledge, and the masterful use of

wordplay and paradox that leaves his meaning ambiguous. Most important

of all, he believed that truth had to be experienced, not reasoned out.

Truth was what lay behind words; it should never be confused with the

words themselves:

_"A thing called up by a name may not appear as what it is expected to

appear; a name calling up a thing may not lead to the real thing.

Therefore the sphere of Truth is beyond the noise of verbal teaching.

How then can it be made the subject 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 orientation

toward the immediate and experiential perception of absolute truth, and

reveals itself in his preference for the paradox as the means of

expressing the inexpressible."20 Dumoulin also notes that the Book of

Chao regards the way to enlightenment as one of gradual progress.

However, the idea that truth can be approached gradually was disputed

by the other major pupil of Kumarajiva, whose insistence that

enlightenment must arrive instantaneously has caused some to declare

him the ideological founder of Zen.

TAO-SHENG

The famous Tao-sheng was the first Chinese Buddhist to advance the idea

of "sudden" enlightenment, and as a result he earned the enmity of his

immediate colleagues--and lasting fame as having anticipated one of the

fundamental 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 coterie surrounding Kumarajiva. None of his writings survive,

but the work of a colleague, Hui-yuan, is usually taken as

representative of his ideas.

Tao-sheng is known today for two theories. The first was that good

deeds do not automatically bring reward, a repudiation of the Indian

Buddhist concept of merit. The other, and perhaps more important,

deviation he preached was that enlightenment was instantaneous. The

reason, he said, was simple: since Buddhists say the world is one,

nothing is divisible, even truth, and therefore the subjective

understanding of truth must come all at once or not at all. Preparatory

work and progress toward the goal of enlightenment, including study and

meditation, could proceed step-by-step and are wholesome and

worthwhile, but to "reach the other shore," as the phrase in the Heart

Sutra describes enlightenment, requires a leap over a gulf, a

realization that 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--that

enlightenment was within you all along. You become enlightened when you

finally recognize that you already had it. The next realization is that

there actually is no "other shore," since reaching it means realizing

that there was nothing to reach. As his thoughts have been quoted: "As

to reaching the other shore, if one reaches it, one is not reaching the

other shore. Both not-reaching and not-not-reaching are really

reaching. . . . If one sees Buddha, one is not seeing Buddha. When one

sees there is no Buddha, one is really seeing Buddha."21

Little wonder Tao-sheng is sometimes credited as the spiritual father

of Zen. He championed the idea of sudden enlightenment, something

inimical to much of the Buddhism that had gone before, and he

distrusted words (comparing them to a net which, after it has caught

the fish of truth, should be discarded). He identified the Taoist idea

of _wu-wei_ or "nonaction" with the intuitive, spontaneous apprehension

of truth without logic, opening the door for the Ch'an mainstay of "no-

mind" as a way to ultimate truth.

THE SYNTHESIS

Buddhism has always maintained a skeptical attitude toward reality and

appearances, something obviously at odds with the wholehearted

celebration of nature that characterizes Taoism. Whereas Buddhism

believes it would be best if we could simply ignore the world, the

source of our psychic pain, the Taoists wanted nothing so much as to

have complete union with this same world. Buddhism teaches union with

the Void, while Taoism teaches union with the Tao. At first they seem

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. Both are merely expressions of the Absolute. The Buddhists

unite with the Void; the Taoists yearn to merge with the Tao. In Zen

the two ideas reconcile.

With this philosophical prelude in place, we may now turn to the

masters who created the world of Zen.

PART I

THE EARLY MASTERS

. . . in which a sixth-century Indian teacher of meditation,

Bodhidharma, arrives in China to initiate what would become a Buddhist

school of meditation called Ch'an. After several generations as

wanderers, these Ch'an teachers settle into a form of monastic life and

gradually grow in prominence and recognition. Out of 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 scorn

society and insist enlightenment is experiential and "sudden," owing

little to the prosperous Buddhist establishment. Then a popular teacher

of rural Ch'an, capitalizing on a civil disruption that momentarily

weakens the urban elite, gains the upper hand and emasculates urban

Ch'an through his preaching that the authentic line of teaching must be

traced to an obscure teacher in the rural south, now remembered as the

Sixth Patriarch, Hui-neng.

CHAPTER ONE

BODHIDHARMA: FIRST PATRIARCH OF ZEN

There is a Zen legend that a bearded Indian monk named Bodhidharma (ca.

470-532), son of a South Indian Brahmin king, appeared one day at the

southern Chinese port city of Canton, sometime around the year 520.

From there he traveled northeast to Nanking, near the mouth of the

Yangtze River, to honor an invitation from China's most devout

Buddhist, Emperor Wu of the Liang Dynasty. After a famous interview in

which his irreverence left the emperor dismayed, Bodhidharma pressed

onward to the Buddhist centers of the north, finally settling in at the

Shao-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 a successor and passed on--either physically, spiritually, or

both. His devotion to meditation and to the aforementioned sutra were

his legacies to China. He was later honored as father of the Chinese

_Dhyana_, or "Meditation," school of Buddhism, called Ch'an.

Bodhidharma attracted little notice during his years in China, and the

first historical account of his life is a brief mention in a chronicle

compiled well over a hundred years after the fact, identifying him

merely as a practitioner of meditation. However, later stories of his

life became increasingly embellished, as he was slowly elevated to the

office of First Patriarch of Chinese Ch'an. His life was made to

fulfill admirably the requirements of a legend, as it was slowly

enveloped in symbolic anecdotes illustrating the truth more richly than

did mere fact. However, most scholars do agree that there actually was

a Bodhidharma, that he was a South Indian who came to China, that he

practiced an intensive form of meditation, and that a short treatise

ascribed to him is probably more or less authentic. Although the legend

attached to this unshaven Indian Buddhist tells us fully as much about

early Ch'an as it does about the man himself, it is nonetheless the

first page in the book of Zen.

_[Bodhidharma], the Teacher of the Law, was the third son of a great

Brahmin king in South India, of the Western Lands. He was a man of

wonderful intelligence, bright and far-reaching; he thoroughly

understood everything that he had ever learned. As his ambition was to

master the doctrine of the Mahayana, he abandoned the white dress of a

layman and put on the black robe of monkhood, wishing to cultivate the

seeds of holiness. He practiced contemplation and tranquillization; he

knew well what was the true significance of worldly affairs. Inside and

outside he was transpicuous; his virtues were more than a model to the

world. He was grieved very much over the decline of the orthodox

teaching of the Buddha in the remoter parts of the earth. He finally

made up his mind to cross over land and 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 politically divided

land, with the new faith of Buddhism often supplying a spiritual common

denominator. Bodhidharma happened to appear at a moment when an emperor

in the northwest, the aforementioned Wu (reigned 502-49), had become a

fanatic Buddhist. Shortly after taking power, Wu actually ordered his

imperial household and all associated with the court to take up

Buddhism and abandon Taoism. Buddhist monks became court advisers,

opening the imperial coffers to build many lavish and subsequently

famous temples.

Emperor Wu led Buddhist assemblies, wrote learned commentaries on

various sutras, and actually donated menial work at temples as a lay

devotee. He also arranged to have all the Chinese commentaries on the

sutras assembled and catalogued. Concerned about the sanctity of life,

he banished meat (and wine) from the imperial table and became so lax

about enforcing criminal statutes, particularly capital punishment,

that critics credited his good nature with an increase in corruption

and lawlessness. While the Taoists understandably hated him and the

Confucianists branded him a distracted ineffectual sovereign, the

Buddhists saw in him a model emperor. Quite simply, Emperor Wu was to

southern Chinese Buddhism what Emperor Constantine was to Christianity.

The emperor was known for his hospitality to visiting Indian monks, and

it is entirely possible he did invite Bodhidharma for an audience.2

According to the legend, Emperor Wu began almost immediately to regale

his visiting dignitary with a checklist of his own dedication to the

faith, mentioning temples built, clergy invested, sutras promulgated.

The list was long, 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 have I earned?" Bodhidharma scowled, "None

whatsoever, your majesty." The emperor was stunned by this reply, but

he pressed on, trying another popular question. "What is the most

important principle of Buddhism?" This second point Bodhidharma

reportedly answered with the abrupt "Vast emptiness."3 The emperor was

equally puzzled by this answer and in desperation finally inquired who,

exactly, was the bearded visitor standing before him--to which

Bodhidharma cheerfully admitted he had no idea. The interview ended as

abruptly as it began, with Bodhidharma excusing himself and pressing

on. For his first miracle, he crossed the Yangtze just outside Nanking

on a reed and headed north.

The legend of Bodhidharma picks up again in North China, near the city

of Loyang. The stories differ, but the most enduring ones link his name

with the famous Shao-lin monastery on Mt. Sung. There, we are told, he

meditated for nine years facing a wall (thereby inventing "wall

gazing") until at last, a pious version reports, his legs fell off. At

one time, relates another Zen story, he caught himself dozing and in a

fit of rage tore off his eyelids and cast them contemptuously to the

ground, whereupon bushes of the tea plant--Zen's sacramental drink--

sprang forth. Another story has him inventing a Chinese style of boxing

as physical education for the weakling monks at Shao-lin, thereby

founding a classic Chinese discipline. But the most famous 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 snows

outside Shao-lin for days on end, hoping in vain to attract

Bodhidharma's notice, until finally in desperation he cut off his own

arm to attract the master's attention.

Bodhidharma advocated meditation, sutras, and the trappings of

traditional Buddhism as a way to see into one's own nature. His legends

represent Zen in its formative period, before the more unorthodox

methods for shaking disciples into a new mode of consciousness had been

devised. However, one of the stories attributed to him by later writers

sounds suspiciously like a Zen mondo (the traditional consciousness-

testing exchange between master and monk). According to this story, the

disciple Hui-k'o

entreated Bodhidharma, saying, "Master, I have not found peace of mind.

I beg you to pacify my mind for me." Bodhidharma replied, "Bring me

your mind and I will pacify it for you." Hui-k'o was silent for a time,

finally conceding he could not actually find his mind. "There," said

Bodhidharma, "I have pacified it for you." This symbolic story

illustrates eloquently the concept of the mind as a perceiver,

something that cannot itself be subject to analysis. Logical

introspection is impossible. The mind cannot examine itself any more

than the eye can see itself. Since the mind cannot become the object of

its own perception, its existence can only be understood intuitively,

as Hui-k'o realized when he tried to plumb its whereabouts objectively.

The actual teachings of Bodhidharma are not fully known. The first

notice of the "blue-eyed barbarian" (as later Chinese called him) is in

the Chinese Buddhist history entitled Further Biographies of Eminent

Priests, usually dated around the year 645, more than a century after

he came to China. This biography also contains the brief text of an

essay attributed to Bodhidharma. At the time it was compiled,

Bodhidharma had not yet been anointed the First Patriarch of Zen:

rather he was merely one of a number of priests teaching meditation.

Accordingly there would have been no incentive to embellish his story

with an apocryphal essay, and for this reason most authorities think it

is authentic.4 A later, more detailed version of the essay by

Bodhidharma is contained in the Records of the Transmission of the Lamp

(A.D. 1004). This latter text is usually the one quoted, and it is

agreed to be the superior literary document.5 We are in good company if

we accept this essay as a more or less accurate record of the thoughts

of the First Patriarch.

The text that Bodhidharma left was meant to show others the several

ways to enlightenment.

_There are many ways to enter the Path, but briefly speaking, they are

two sorts only. The one is "Entrance by Reason" and the other "Entrance

by Conduct._"6_

The first of these paths, the Entrance by Reason, might more properly

be called entrance by pure insight. The path advocated seems a blending

of Buddhism and Taoism, by which the sutras are used as a vehicle for

leading the seeker first to meditation, and then to a nonliterary state

of consciousness in which all dualities, all sense of oneself as apart

from the world, are erased. This is an early and eloquent summary of

Zen's objectives.

_By "Entrance by Reason" we mean the realization of the spirit of

Buddhism by the aid of scriptural teaching. We then come to

have a deep 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 of external objects and false thoughts. When one,

abandoning the false and embracing the true, and in simpleness of

thought, abides in _pi-kuan _[pure meditation or "wall-gazing"], one

finds that there is neither selfhood nor otherness, that the masses and

the worthies are of one essence, and firmly holds on to this belief and

never moves away therefrom. He will not then be guided by any literary

instructions, for he is in silent communication with the principle

itself, free from conceptual discrimination, for he is serene and not-

acting.7_

Bodhidharma is given credit for inventing the term _pi-kuan_, whose

literal translation is "wall-gazing," but whose actual meaning is

anyone's guess. _Pi-kuan_ is sometimes called a metaphor for the mind's

confrontation with the barrier of intellect--which must eventually be

hurdled if one is to reach enlightenment. In any case, this text is an

unmistakable endorsement of meditation as a means for tranquilizing the

mind while simultaneously dissolving our impulse to discriminate

between ourselves and the world 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. The description of

"conduct" was divided into four sections which, taken together, were

intended to subsume or include all the possible types of Buddhist

practice.

_By "Entrance by Conduct" is meant the Four Acts in which all other

acts are included. What are the four? 1. How to requite hatred; 2. To

be obedient to _karma_; 3. Not to seek after anything; and 4. To be in

accord with the _Dharma_.9

The first Act of Conduct counseled the believer to endure all

hardships, since they are payment for evil deeds committed in past

existences.

_What is meant by "How to requite hatred"? Those who discipline

themselves in the Path should think thus when they have to struggle

with adverse conditions: During the innumerable past ages I have

wandered through multiplicity of existences, all the while giving

myself to unimportant details of life at the expense of essentials, and

thus creating infinite occasions for hate, ill-will, and wrong-doing.

While no violations have been committed in this life, the fruits of

evil deeds in the past are to be gathered now. Neither gods nor men can

foretell what is coming upon me. I will submit myself willingly and

patiently to all the ills that befall me, and I will never bemoan or

complain. In the Sutra it is said not to worry over ills that may

happen to you. Why? Because through intelligence one can survey [the

whole chain of causation]. When this thought arises, one is in concord

with the principle because he makes the best use of hatred and turns it

into the service of his advance towards the Path. This is called the

"way to requite hatred._"10_

The second Rule of Conduct is to be reconciled to whatever comes, good

or evil. It seems to reflect the Taoist attitude that everything is

what it is and consequently value judgments are irrelevant. If good

comes, it is the result of meritorious deeds in a past existence and

will vanish when the store of causative karma is exhausted. The

important thing to realize is that none of it matters anyway.

_We should know that all sentient beings are produced by the interplay

of karmic conditions, and as such there can be no real self in them.

The mingled yarns of pleasure and pain are all woven of the threads of

conditioning causes. . . . Therefore, let gains and losses run their

natural courses according to the ever changing conditions and

circumstances of life, for the Mind itself does not increase with the

gains nor decrease with the losses. In this way, no gales of self-

complacency will arise, and your mind will remain in hidden harmony

with the Tao. It is in this sense that we must understand the rule of

adaptation to the variable conditions and circumstances of life.11

The third Rule of Conduct was the teaching of the Buddha that a

cessation of seeking and a turning toward nonattachment brings peace.

_Men of the world remain unawakened for life; everywhere we find them

bound by their craving and clinging. This is called "attachment." The

wise, however, understand the truth, and their reason tells them to

turn from the worldly ways. They enjoy peace of mind and perfect

detachment. They adjust their bodily movements to the vicissitudes of

fortune, always aware of the emptiness of the phenomenal 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

phenomenal world, with their minds free of desires and craving. As the

scripture has it, "All sufferings spring from attachment; true joy

arises from detachment." To know clearly the bliss of detachment is

truly to walk on the path of the Tao.12

The fourth Rule of Conduct was to dissolve our perception of object-

subject dualities and view life as a unified whole. This merging of

self and exterior world Bodhidharma calls pure mind or pure reason.

_The Dharma is nothing else than Reason which is pure in its essence.

This pure Reason is the formless Form of all Forms; it is free of all

defilements and attachments, and it knows of neither "self" nor

"other."13

_Having set forth this rather elegant statement of Zen and Buddhist

ideals, as ascribed to Bodhidharma, it unfortunately is necessary to

add that it appears to have been taken directly from the Vajrasamadhi

Sutra (attributing quotations from the sutras to Patriarchs was

common), with the sole exception of the term _pi-kuan_.14 At the very

least, the legend 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 of intensive meditation. It is not known what role

meditation played in Buddhism at this time. However, the scholar Hu

Shih questions how well it was understood. "[An early Buddhist

historian's] Biographies, which covered the whole period of early

Buddhism in China from the first century to the year 519, contained

only 21 names of 'practitioners of _dhyana _(meditation)' out of a

total of about 450. And practically all of the 21_dhyana _monks were

recorded because of their remarkable asceticism and miraculous powers.

This shows that in spite of the numerous yoga manuals in translation,

and in spite of the high respect paid by intellectual Buddhists to the

doctrine and practice of _dhyana_, there were, as late as 500,

practically no Chinese Buddhists who really understood or seriously

practiced _dhyana _or Zen."15

Perhaps Bodhidharma, arriving in 520, felt his praise of meditation,

using the words of an existing sutra, could rouse Chinese interest in

this form of Buddhism. As it turned out, he was successful beyond

anything he could have imagined, although his success took several

centuries. As D. T. Suzuki sums it up, "While there was nothing

specifically Zen in his doctrine of 'Two Entrances and Four Acts,' the

teaching of _pi-kuan_, wall-contemplation, was what made Bodhidharma

the first patriarch of Zen Buddhism in China."16 Suzuki interprets _pi-

kuan _as referring to the mind in a thoughtless state, in which

meditation has permitted the rational mind to be suppressed entirely.

The use of meditation for this goal instead of for developing magical

powers, as had been the goal of earlier _dhyana _masters, seems to have

been the profound new idea introduced to China by Bodhidharma.17

The passage of Bodhidharma is also swathed in legend. What eventually

happened to this traveling Indian guru? Did he die of poison, as one

legend says; or did he wander off to Central Asia, as another reports;

or did he go to Japan, as still another story would have it? The story

that has been the 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 to India and called together his disciples to test

their attainment. The first disciple reportedly said, "As I view it, to

realize the truth we should neither rely entirely on words and letters

nor dispense with them entirely, but rather 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, the Truth is like an

auspicious sighting of the Buddhist Paradise; it is seen once and never

again." To this Bodhidharma replied, "You have attained my flesh."

The third disciple said, "The four great elements are empty and the

five _skandhas_ [constituents of the personality: body, feelings,

perception, will, and consciousness] are nonexistent. There is, in

fact, nothing that can be grasped." To this Bodhidharma replied, "You

have attained my bones."

Finally, it was Hui-k'o's turn. But he only bowed to the master and

stood silent at his place. To him Bodhidharma said, "You have attained

my marrow."18

According to a competing story, Bodhidharma died of poisoning at the

age of 150 and was buried in the mountains of Honan.19 Not too long

thereafter a lay Buddhist named Sung Yun, who was returning to China

after a trip to India to gather sutras, met Bodhidharma in the

mountains of Turkestan. The First Patriarch, who was walking barefoot

carrying a single shoe, announced he was returning to India and that a

native Chinese would arise to continue his teaching. Sung Yun reported

this to Bodhidharma's disciples on his return and they opened the

master's grave, only to find it empty save for the other shoe.

How much of the story of Bodhidharma is legend? The answer does not

really matter all that much. As with Moses, if Bodhidharma had not

existed 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, provided with a lineage stretching

directly back through Nagarjuna to the Buddha, and furnished an

exciting anecdotal history. Yet as founders go, he was a worthy enough

individual. He does seem to have devised a strain of Buddhist thought

that could successfully be grafted onto the hardy native Chinese Taoist

organism. He also left an active disciple, later to be known as the

Second Patriarch, Hui-k'o, so he must have had either a charismatic

personality or a philosophical position that distinguished him from the

general run of meditation masters.

It is important to keep in mind that Bodhidharma, man and myth, was the

product of an early form of Zen. The later masters needed a lineage,

and he was tapped for the role of First Patriarch. The major problem

with Bodhidharma was that many of his ideas were in direct

contradiction to the position adopted by later Zen teachings. For

instance, recall that he promoted the reliance on a sutra (the

Lankavatara); and he heavily stressed meditation (something later Zen

masters would partially circumvent). The Jesuit scholar Heinrich

Dumoulin has declared that Bodhidharma's attributed teaching in no way

deviates from the great Mahayana sutras.20 It is, in fact, a far cry

from later Zen ideas, says John Wu, the Chinese authority.21 Finally, he

left no claim to patriarchy, nor did his first biographer offer to do

this for him.

Perhaps the evolution of Zen is best demonstrated by the slow change in

the paintings of Bodhidharma, culminating in the latter-day portrayals

of him as a scowling grump. His image became successively more

misanthropic through the centuries, perhaps as a way of underscoring

the later Zen practice of establishing a rather dehumanized

relationship between the Zen master and pupil, as the master shouts,

beats a monk, and destroys his ego through merciless question-and-

answer sessions. For all we know, the "wall-gazing Brahmin" of ancient

China may have had a wry smile to go along with his droll sense of

humor. Perhaps it is fitting to close with the most lasting apocrypha

associated with his name, to wit the stanza that later masters

attributed to him as an alleged summary of his teaching, but which he,

promulgator of the Lankavatara Sutra, would undoubtedly have disowned:

_A special transmission outside the sutras;

No reliance upon words and letters;

Direct pointing to the very mind;

Seeing into one's own nature._

Chapter Two

HUI-K'O: SECOND PATRIARCH OF ZEN

Hui-k'o (487-593) first enters the history of Zen as an eager Chinese

scholar devoted to meditation. Wishing to become a disciple of the

famous Indian monk who had recently installed himself at the Shao-lin

monastery, Hui-k'o set up a vigil outside the gate. Time passed and the

snows began to fall, but still Bodhidharma ignored him, declaring, "The

incomparable doctrine of Buddhism can only be comprehended after a long

hard discipline, by enduring what is most difficult to endure and by

practicing what is most difficult to practice. Men of inferior virtue

are not allowed to understand anything about it."1 Finally Hui-k'o

despaired and resorted to an extreme measure to demonstrate his

sincerity: he cut off his own arm and offered it to the master. (This

act reportedly has been repeated since by an occasional

overenthusiastic Zen novice.) Even a singleminded master of meditation

like Bodhidharma could not ignore such a gesture, and he agreed to

accept Hui-k'o as his first Chinese disciple.

Unlike Bodhidharma, Hui-k'o is not a mysterious, legendary figure, but

rather is remembered by a detailed history that interacts periodically

with known events in Chinese history.2 He came from the Chi family and

was originally named Seng-k'o, only later becoming known as Hui-k'o.

The most reliable report has him coming from Wu-lao, with a reputation

as a scholarly intellectual preceding him. Indeed he seems to have been

a Chinese scholar in the finest sense, with a deep appreciation of all

three major philosophies: Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. It was

toward the last, however, that he

slowly gravitated, finally abandoning his scholarly secular life and

becoming a Buddhist monk. He was around age forty, in the prime of what

was to be a very long 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, or whether it was severed in a fight with

bandits, as the earliest history reports, may never be determined.3 The

later story is certainly more pious, 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 from

intellectualism and toward pure experience. When Bodhidharma finally

decided to depart, he called in all his disciples for the famous

testing of their attainment recounted in Chapter l.4 Hui-k'o, by simply

bowing in silence when asked what he had attained, proved that his

understanding of the master's wordless teaching was superior, and it

was he who received the Lankavatara Sutra. The event reportedly was

sealed by a short refrain, now universally declared to be spurious, in

which Bodhidharma predicted the later division of Ch'an into five

schools:

_Originally I came to this land

To transmit the Dharma and to save all from error

A flower with five petals opens;

Of itself the fruit will ripen.5

As the story goes, Hui-k'o remained at the Shao-lin for a while longer

and then went underground, supporting himself through menial work and

learning about Chinese peasant life firsthand. Reportedly, he wanted to

tranquilize his mind, to acquire the humility necessary in a great

teacher, and not incidentally to absorb the Lankavatara Sutra. When

asked why he, an enlightened teacher, chose to live among menial

laborers, he would reply tartly that this life was best for his mind

and in any case what he did was his own affair. It was a hard

existence, but one he believed proper. Perhaps it was in this formative

period that the inner strength of Ch'an's first Chinese master was

forged.

Hui-k'o's major concern during this period must inevitably have been

the study of the Lankavatara Sutra entrusted him by Bodhidharma. The

Lankavatara was not written by a Zen master, nor did it come out of the

Zen tradition, but it was the primary scripture of the first two

hundred years of Ch'an. As

D. T. Suzuki has noted, there were at least three Chinese translations

of this Sanskrit sutra by the time Bodhidharma came to China.6 However,

he is usually given credit, at least in Zen records, for originating

the movement later known as the Lankavatara school. As the sutra was

described by a non-Ch'an Chinese scholar in the year 645, "The entire

emphasis of its teaching is placed on Prajna (highest intuitive

knowledge), which transcends literary expression. Bodhidharma, the Zen

master, propagated this doctrine in the south as well as in the north,

the gist of which teaching consists in attaining the unattainable,

which is to have right insight into the truth itself by forgetting word

and thought. Later it grew and flourished in the middle part of the

country. Hui-k'o was the first who attained to the essential

understanding of it. Those addicted to the literary teaching of

Buddhism in Wei were averse to becoming associated with these spiritual

seers."7

The Lankavatara purportedly relays the thoughts of the Buddha while

ensconced on a mountain peak in Sri Lanka. Although the work is

notoriously disorganized, vague, and obscure, it was to be the stone on

which Hui-k'o sharpened his penetrating enlightenment. The major

concept it advances is that of Mind, characterized by D. T. Suzuki as

"absolute mind, to be distinguished from an empirical mind which is the

subject of psychological study. When it begins with a capital letter,

it is the ultimate reality on which the entire world of individual

objects depends for its value."8 On the question of Mind, the

Lankavatara has the following to say:

_. . . the ignorant and the simple minded, not knowing that the world

is what is seen of Mind itself, cling to the multitudinousness of

external objects, cling to the notions of being and non-being, oneness

and otherness, bothness and not-bothness, existence and non-existence,

eternity and non-eternity. . . .9

According to the Lankavatara, the world and our perception of it are

both part of a larger conceptual entity. The teachings of the

Lankavatara cast the gravest doubt on the actual existence of the

things we think we see. Discrimination between oneself and the rest of

the world can only be false, since both are merely manifestations of

the same encompassing essence, Mind. Our perception is too easily

deceived, and this is the reason we must not implicitly trust the

images that reach our consciousness.

_. . . [I]t is like those water bubbles in a rainfall which have the

appearance of crystal gems, and the ignorant taking them for real

crystal gems run after them. . . . [T]hey are no more than water

bubbles, they are not gems, nor are they not-gems, because of their

being so comprehended [by one party] and not being so comprehended [by

another].10

Reality lies beyond these petty discriminations. The intellect, too, is

powerless to distinguish the real from the illusory, since all things

are both and neither at the same time. This conviction of the

Lankavatara remained at the core of Zen, even after the sutra itself

was supplanted by simpler, more easily approached literary works.

As Hui-k'o studied the Lankavatara and preached, he gradually acquired

a reputation for insight that transcended his deliberately

unpretentious appearance. Throughout it all, he led an itinerant life,

traveling about North China. It is reported that he found his way to

the capital of the eastern half of the Wei kingdom after its division

in the year 534. Here, in the city of Yeh-tu, he taught his version of

_dhyana_ and opened the way to enlightenment for many people. Though

unassuming in manner and dress, he nonetheless aroused antagonism from

established Buddhist circles because of his success, encountering

particular opposition from a conventional _dhyana _teacher named Tao-

huan. According to _Further Biographies of the Eminent Priests (645)_,

Tao-huan was a jealous teacher who had his own following of as many as

a thousand, and who resented deeply the nonscriptural approach Hui-k'o

advocated. This spiteful priest sent various of his followers to

monitor Hui-k'o's teaching, perhaps with an eye to accusing him of

heresy, but all those sent were so impressed that none ever returned.

Then one day the antagonistic _dhyana_ master met one of those former

pupils who had been won over by Hui-k'o's teachings. D. T. Suzuki

translates the encounter as follows:

_When Tao-huan happened to meet his first messenger, he asked: "How was

it that I had to send for you so many times? Did I not open your eye

after taking pains so 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 came to squint._"11_

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

one's original nature, to the primal man without artificial learning or

doctrinal pretense. Out of resentment the jealous _dhyana _master

reportedly caused Hui-k'o to undergo official persecution.

In later years, beginning around 574, there was a temporary but

thorough persecution of Buddhism in the capital city of Ch'ang-an.

Sometime earlier, an ambitious sorcerer and apostate Buddhist named Wei

had decided to gain a bit of notoriety for himself by attacking

Buddhism, then a powerful force in Ch'ang-an. In the year 567 he

presented a document to the emperor claiming that Buddhism had allowed

unsavory social types to enter the monasteries. He also attacked

worship of the Buddha image on the ground that it was un-Chinese

idolatry. Instead, he proposed a secularized church that would include

all citizens, with the gullible emperor suggested for the role of

"pope." The emperor was taken with the idea and after several years of

complex political maneuvering, he proscribed Buddhism in North China.

As a result, Hui-k'o was forced to flee to the south, where he took up

temporary residence in the mountainous regions of the Yangtze River.

The persecution was short-lived, since the emperor responsible died

soon after his decree, whereupon Hui-k'o returned to Ch'ang-an.

However, these persecutions may have actually contributed to the spread

of his teaching, by forcing him to travel into the countryside.

The only authentic fragment of Hui-k'o's thought that has survived

records his answer to an inquiry sent by a lay devotee named Hsiang,

who reportedly was seeking spiritual attainment alone in the jungle.

The inquiry, which seems more a statement than a question, went as

follows:

_. . . he who aspires to Buddhahood thinking it to be independent of

the nature of sentient beings is to be likened to one who tries to

listen to an echo by deadening its original sound. Therefore the

ignorant and the enlightened are walking in one passageway; the vulgar

and the wise are not to be differentiated from each other. Where there

are no names, we create names, and because of these names, judgments

are formed. Where there is no theorizing, we theorize, and because of

this theorizing, disputes arise. They are all phantom creations and not

realities, and who knows who is right and who is wrong? They are all

empty, no substantialities have they, and who knows what is and

what is not? 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 and

stands, in fact, as an eloquent statement of Zen concerns. Hui-k'o

reportedly answered as follows, in a fragment of a letter that is his

only known extant work.

_You have truly comprehended the Dharma as it is; the deepest truth

lies in the principle of identity. It is due to one's ignorance that

the mani-jewel is taken for a piece of brick, but lo! when one is

suddenly awakened to self-enlightenment it is realized that one is in

possession of the real jewel. The ignorant and the enlightened are of

one essence, they are not really to be separated. We should know that

all things are such as they are. Those who entertain a dualistic view

of the world are to be pitied, and I write this letter for them. When

we know that between this body and the Buddha, there is nothing to

separate one from the other, what is the use of seeking after Nirvana

[as something external to ourselves]?13

Hui-k'o insists that all things spring from the one Mind, and

consequently the ideas of duality, of attachment to this or that

phenomenon, or even the possibility of choice, are equally absurd.

Although he knew all too well that enlightenment could not be obtained

from teaching, he still did not advocate a radical break with the

traditional methods of the Buddhist _dhyana_ masters. His style was

unorthodox, but his teaching methods were still confined to lectures

and meditation. This low-key approach was still closer to the tradition

of the Buddha than to the jarring techniques of "sudden enlightenment"

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 seems to

have continued to outrage the more conventional teachers, and a later

story records a martyr's death for him.14 One day, while a learned

master was preaching inside the K'uang-chou Temple, Hui-k'o chanced by

and started to chat with the passersby outside. Gradually a crowd

started to collect, until eventually the lecture hall of the revered

priest was emptied. This famous priest, remembered as Pien-ho, accused

the ragged Hui-k'o to the magistrate Che Ch'ung-j'an as a teacher of

false doctrine. As a result he was arrested and subsequently executed,

an impious 106-year-old revolutionary.

Chapter Three

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

FOUR EARLY MASTERS

_The Fifth 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 turn passing

the robe of the patriarchy to Hung-jen (601-74). The masters Seng-

ts'an, Tao-hsin, and Hung-jen are honored today as the Third, Fourth,

and Fifth Patriarchs, respectively, and revered as the torchbearers of

Ch'an's formative years. Yet when we look for information about their

lives, we find the sources thin and diffuse. One reason probably is

that before 700 nobody realized that these men would one day be

elevated to founding fathers, and consequently no one bothered

recording details of their lives.

During the seventh century the scattered teachers of _dhyana _seem to

have gradually coalesced into a sort of ad hoc movement--with sizable

followings growing up around the better-known figures. A certain amount

of respectability also emerged, if we can believe the references to

imperial notice that start appearing in the chronicles. It would seem

that the _dhyana_ or Ch'an movement became a more or less coherent

sect, a recognizable if loosely defined school of Buddhism. However,

what the movement apparently was striving to become was not so much a

branch of Buddhism in China as a Chinese version of Buddhism. The men

later remembered as the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Patriarchs have in

common a struggle to bend Buddhist thought to Chinese intellectual

requirements, to sinicize Buddhism. Whereas they succeeded only in

setting the stage for this transformation (whose realization would

await other hands), they did establish a personality pattern that would

set apart all later masters: a blithe irreverence that owed as much to

Chuang Tzu as to Bodhidharma.

When reading the biographies that follow, it is useful to keep in mind

that the explicit details may well have been cooked up in later years

to satisfy a natural Chinese yearning for anecdotes, with or without

supporting information. Yet the fact that the _dhyana _practitioners

eventually became a movement in need of a history is itself proof that

these men and their stories were not complete inventions. In any case,

they were remembered, honored, and quoted in later years as the

legendary founders of Ch'an.

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

The question of the Second Patriarch Hui-k'o's successor was

troublesome even for the ancient Ch'an historians. The earliest version

of his biography (written in 645, 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, a revised

history was prepared which supplied him an heir named Seng-ts'an, to

whom he is said to have transmitted the doctrine.1 The story of their

meeting recalls Hui-k'o's first exchange with Bodhidharma, save that

the roles are reversed. The text implies that Seng-ts'an was suffering

from leprosy when he first encountered Hui-k'o, and that he implored

the Master for relief in a most un-Zenlike way, saying: "I am in great

suffering from this disease; please take away my sins."

Hui-k'o responded with, "Bring me your sins, and I will take them

away."

After a long silence, Seng-ts'an confessed, "I've looked, but I cannot

find them."

To which Hui-k'o replied, echoing Bodhidharma's classic rejoinder,

"Behold, you have just been cleansed."

Another version of the story says Hui-k'o greeted Seng-ts'an with the

words, "You are suffering from leprosy; why should you want to see 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'o that he

had found an enlightened being, one who perceived the unity of all

things, and he forthwith transmitted to Seng-ts'an the symbols of the

patriarchy--the robe and begging bowl of Bodhidharma--telling him that he

should take refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma (the universal truth

proclaimed by Buddha), and the Sangha (the Buddhist organization or

priesthood). Seng-ts'an replied that he knew of the Sangha, but what

was meant by the Buddha and the Dharma? The answer was that all three

were expressions of Mind.2

This exchange seems to have taken place while Hui-k'o was in the

northern Wei capital of Yeh-tu.3 In later years Seng-ts'an found it

necessary to feign madness (to escape persecution during the anti-

Buddhist movement of 574), and finally he went to hide on Huan-kung

mountain for ten years, where his mere presence reportedly was enough

to tame the wild tigers who had terrorized the people there. The only

surviving work that purportedly relays 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 Believing Mind."4 It starts off in a lyrical, almost

Taoist, voice worthy of Chuang Tzu, as it celebrates man's original

nature and the folly of striving.

_There is nothing difficult about the Great Way

But, avoid choosing!

Only when you neither love nor hate,

Does it appear in all clarity.

Do not be anti- or pro- anything.

The conflict of longing and loathing,

This is the disease of the mind.

Not knowing the profound meaning of things,

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

_Next, the poem turns to an acknowledgment of the Mahayanist concept of

the all-encompassing Mind, the greatest single truth of the universe,

and of Nagarjuna's Void, the cosmic emptiness of _sunyata_.

_Things are things because of the Mind.

The Mind is the Mind because of things.

If you wish to know what these two are,

They are originally one Emptiness.

In this Void both (Mind and things) are one,

All the myriad phenomena contained in both.6

The poem closes with an affirmation of the Ch'an credo of unity and the

absence of duality as a sign of enlightenment.

In the World of Reality

There is no self, no other-than-self.

. . .

All that can be said is "No Duality!"

When there is no duality, all things are one,

There is nothing that is not included.

. . .

The believing mind is not dual;

What is dual is not the believing mind.

Beyond all language,

For it there is no past, no present, no future.7

Since the earliest historical sources maintain that Seng-ts'an left no

writings, some have questioned the attribution of this lilting work to

the Third Patriarch. Whatever its authorship, the real importance of

the poem lies in its subtle merging of Taoism and Buddhism. We can

watch as the voices of ancient China and ancient India are blended

together into a perfect harmony until the parts are inseparable. It was

a noble attempt to reconcile Buddhist metaphysics with Chinese

philosophical concepts, and it was successful in a limited way. As for

Seng-ts'an, the legends tell that he finally was overcome by his

longing for the south and, handing down the symbols of the patriarchy

to a priest named Tao-hsin, he vanished.

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

China, whose political turmoil had sent the early Patriarchs scurrying

from one small kingdom to another, found unity and the beginnings of

stability under a dynasty known as the Sui (581-618), the first in

three and a half centuries (since the end 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 the Emperor Yang, a crafty

politician who maneuvered the throne away from an elder brother--

partially, it is said, by demonstrating to his parents his independence

of mind by abandoning all the children he begat in the ladies'

quarters. Whereas his father had undertaken the renovation of the North

Chinese capital of Ch'ang-an--not incidentally creating one of the

glories of the ancient world and the site of the finest moments of the

later T'ang Dynasty--Emperor Yang decided to reconstruct the city of

Loyang, some two hundred miles to the east. The result was a "Western

Capital" at Ch'ang-an and an "Eastern Capital" at Loyang, the latter

city soon to be the location of some pivotal episodes in Ch'an history.

For the construction of Loyang, a fairyland of palaces and gardens,

millions of citizens were conscripted and tens of thousands died under

forced labor. Emperor Yang's other monument was a grand canal, linking

the Yellow River in the north with the rich agricultural deltas of the

Yangtze in the south, near Nanking. The emperor loved to be barged down

this vast waterway--journeys that unsympathetic historians have claimed

were merely excuses to seek sexual diversions away from the capital. In

any case, his extravagances bankrupted the country and brought about

his overthrow by the man who would become the founder of 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 of man, 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 Chinese

rulers were styled.9 Under his influence, the capital city of Ch'ang-an

became the most cosmopolitan metropolis in the ancient world, with such

widespread influence that when the first visiting Japanese came upon

it, they were so dazzled they returned home and built a replica for

their own capital city. The city was laid out as a grid, with lavish

vermilion imperial palaces and gardens clustered regally at one end.

Its inhabitants numbered upward of two million, while its international

markets and fleshpots were crowded with traders from the farthest

reaches of Asia and Europe, echoing with a 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 worked with

silver, gold, jewels, silks, and porcelains, even as poets gathered in

wine shops to nibble fruits and relax with round-eyed foreign serving

girls. Such were the worldly attractions of Ch'ang-an during the early

seventh century. This new sophistication and urbanization, as well as

the political stability that made it all possible, was also reflected

in the change in Ch'an--from a concern chiefly of nomadic _dhyana

_teachers hiding in the mountains to the focus of settled agricultural

communities centered in monasteries.

The growth in Ch'an toward an established place in Chinese life began

to consolidate under the Fourth Patriarch, Tao-hsin, the man whose life

spanned the Sui and the early T'ang dynasties. He is best remembered

today for two things: First, he was particularly dedicated to

meditation, practicing it more avidly than had any _dhyana _master

since Bodhidharma; and second, he is credited with beginning the true

monastic tradition for Ch'an. His formation of a self-supporting

monastic community with its own agricultural base undoubtedly brought

Ch'an a long way toward respectability in Chinese eyes, since it

reduced the dependence on begging. Itinerant mendicants, even if

teachers of _dhyana_, had never elicited the admiration in China they

traditionally enjoyed in the Indian homeland of the Buddha. Begging was

believed to fashion character, however, and it never disappeared from

Ch'an discipline. Indeed, Ch'an is said to have encouraged begging more

than did any of the other Chinese Buddhist sects, but as a closely

regulated form of moral training.

Tao-hsin, whose family name was Ssu-ma, came from Honan, but he 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 of

sight, he asked this brilliant pupil to take up the teaching of

_dhyana_ and Bodhidharma's Lankavatara Sutra at a monastery on Mt. Lu.

Tao-hsin agreed and remained for a number of years, attracting

followers and reportedly performing at least one notable miracle. The

story says that he saved a walled city from being starved out by

bandits by organizing a program of public sutra chanting among its

people. We are told that the robbers retired of their own accord while,

as though by magic, previously dry wells in the city flowed again. One

day not too long thereafter Tao-hsin noticed an unusual purple cloud

hanging over a nearby mountain. Taking this as a sign, he proceeded to

settle there (the mountain later became known as Shuang-feng or "Twin

Peaks") and found the first Ch'an community, presiding over a virtual

army of some five hundred followers for the next thirty years.

He is remembered today as a charismatic teacher who finally stabilized

_dhyana_ teaching. In an age of political turmoil, many intellectuals

flocked to the new school of Ch'an, with its promise of tranquil

meditation in uneasy times. Tao-hsin apparently encouraged his

disciples to operate a form of commune, in which agriculture and its

administration were merged with the practice of meditation.10 In so

doing, he seems not only to have revolutionized the respectability of

_dhyana _practice, but also 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 him defying an imperial decree to

appear before the emperor, T'ai-tsung.

This legend concerns an episode which allegedly took place around the

year 645. As the story goes, an imperial messenger arrived one day at

the mountain retreat to summon him to the palace, but Tao-hsin turned

him down cold. When the messenger reported this to the emperor, the

response was to send 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 the messenger,

this time bearing a sealed sword and a summons for the master's head.

But he also included a contradictory decree requiring that Tao-hsin not

be harmed. When the master refused a third time to come to the palace,

the messenger read the decree that his head should be severed. Tao-hsin

obligingly bent over, with the command "Cut it off." But the messenger

hesitated, admitting that the imperial orders also forbade harming him.

On hearing this Tao-hsin reportedly roared with laughter, saying, "You

must know that you possess human qualities."11

The Fourth Patriarch's teachings are not well known, other than for the

fact that he supposedly devised and promoted new techniques to help

novices achieve intensive meditation. The following excerpt of his

teaching illustrates his fervor for _dhyana_.

Sit earnestly in meditation! The sitting in meditation is basic to all

else. By the time you have done this for three to five years, you will

be able to ward off starvation 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 a long time, the fruit will be

sweet like the meat which a monkey takes from the nutshell. 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 come under 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 become the Fifth

Patriarch, was one of his followers and grasped the inner meaning of

his teaching. It was Hung-jen whom he asked to construct a mausoleum in

the mountainside, the site of his final repose, and when it was

finished he retired there for his last meditation. After he passed

away, his body was wrapped in

lacquered cloth, presenting a vision so magnificent that no one could

bear to close the mausoleum.

Aside from his historical place as the founder of the first real

community for Ch'an, there is little that can be said with assurance

about Tao-hsin. However, a manuscript discovered early in this century

in the Buddhist caves at Tun-huang purportedly contains a sermon by the

Fourth Patriarch entitled "Abandoning the Body."

_The method of abandoning the body consists first in meditating on

Emptiness, whereby the [conscious] mind is emptied. Let the mind

together with its world be quieted down to a perfect state of

tranquility; let thought be cast in the mystery of quietude, so that

the mind is kept from wandering from one thing to another. When the

mind is tranquilized in its deepest abode, its entanglements are cut

asunder. . . . The mind in its absolute purity is like the Void

itself.13

_The text goes on to quote both Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu, as well as some

of the older sutras, and there is a considerable reference to

Nagarjuna's Emptiness. This text, real or spurious, is one more element

in the merging of Taoism and Buddhism that was early Ch'an, even as its

analysis of the mind state achieved in meditation anticipates later

Ch'an teachings.

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

In the parade of Patriarchs, we should not overlook the maverick Fa-

jung, a master who was never officially crowned a Patriarch, but whose

humanity made him a legend.14 Fa-jung (594-657), whose family name was

Wei, was born in a province on the south bank of the Yangtze River and

in his early years was a student of Confucian thought. But before long

his yearning for spiritual challenge led him to Buddhism. He finally

settled in a rock cave in the side of a cliff near a famous monastery

on Mt. Niu-t'ou, where his sanctity reportedly caused birds to appear

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 a famous Buddhist was living on Mt. Niu-t'ou and went there to

search out the man. After many days of seeking, he finally came upon a

holy figure seated atop a rock. As the two meditation masters were

becoming acquainted, there suddenly came the roar of a tiger from the

bramble farther up the mountain. Tao-hsin was visibly startled, causing

Fa-jung--friend of the animals--to observe wryly, "I see it is still with

you." His meaning, of course, was that Tao-hsin was still enslaved by

the phenomenal world, was not yet wholly detached from his fears and

perceptions.

After they had chatted a while longer, Fa-jung found occasion to leave

his seat and attend nature at a detached location. During his absence

Tao-hsin wrote the Chinese character for the Buddha's name on the very

rock where he had been sitting. When Fa-jung returned to resume his

place, he was momentarily 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 with you."

He had shown that Fa-jung was still intimidated by the trappings of

classical Buddhism and had not yet become a completely detached master

of the pure Mind. The story says that Fa-jung failed to understand his

comment and implored Tao-hsin to teach him Ch'an, which the Fourth

Patriarch proceeded to do.

Tao-hsin's message, once again, was to counsel nondistinction,

nonattachment, nondiscrimination; he said to abjure emotions, values,

striving. Just be natural and be what you are, for that is the part of

you that is closest to the Buddhist ideal of mental freedom.

_There is nothing 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 to be itself. You should not contemplate nor

should you purify your mind. Let there be no craving and hatred, and

have no anxiety or fear. Be boundless and absolutely 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 lie down,

and whatever you see happen to you, all are the wonderful activity of

the Great Enlightened One. It is all joy, free from anxiety--it is

called Buddha.15

After Tao-hsin's visit, the birds offering flowers no longer appeared:

evidence, said the later Ch'an teachers, that Fa-jung's physical being

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

contemplating the Void of Nagarjuna. As Fa-jung interpreted the

teachings of the Middle Path:

_All talk has nothing to do with one's Original Nature, which can only

be reached through _sunyata_. No-thought is the Absolute Reality, in

which the mind ceases to act. When one's mind is free from thoughts,

one's nature has reached the Absolute.16

_Although Fa-jung's teachings happened to be transmitted to Japan in

later years, through the accident of a passing Japanese pilgrim, his

school did not endure in either country beyond the eighth century. His

was the first splinter group of Zen, and perhaps it lacked the

innovation necessary to survive, because it clung too much to

traditional Buddhism.

As Fa-jung's years advanced, he was encouraged to come down from his

mountain and live in a monastery, which his better judgment eventually

compelled him to do. It is reported that after his final farewell to

his disciples he was followed down the mountain by the laments of all

its birds and animals. A more ordinary teacher would have been

forgotten, but this beloved St. Francis of Zen became the topic of

lectures and a master remembered with reverence ever after.

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

The other well-known disciple of the Fourth Patriarch, Tao-hsin, was

the man history has given the title of Fifth Patriarch, Hung-jen (601-

74). The chronicles say that he came from Tao-hsin's own province and

impressed the master deeply when, at age fourteen, he held his own with

the Fourth Patriarch in an introductory interview. As the exchange has

been described, Tao-hsin asked the young would-be disciple his family

name, but since the word for "family name" is pronounced the same as

that for "nature," Hung-jen answered 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 the teachings say that our

'nature' is empty."17

Hung-jen went on to become the successor to the Fourth Patriarch, with

an establishment where several hundred followers gathered. The

chronicles have little to say about the actual life and teachings of

the Fifth Patriarch, but no matter. His place in history is secured not

so much for what he said--there is actually very little that can

reliably be attributed to him--but rather for his accidental appearance

at the great crossroads of Zen. Hung-jen and his monastery became the

symbol of a great philosophical debate that occupied the first half of

the eighth century, a conflict to be examined in detail in the two

chapters to follow. Suffice it to say here that the chronicles at least

agree that he was an eminent priest and well respected, a man to whom

an early-eighth-century document attributes eleven disciples of note.18

Among those listed who are particularly important to the events that

follow are a monk named Shen-hsiu and another named Hui-neng, the men

whose names would one day be associated with a celebrated midnight

poetry contest in Hung-jen's monastery.

This contest eventually came to symbolize the conflict between the

teachings of gradual enlightenment and sudden enlightenment, between

intellectual and intuitive knowledge, between sophisticated urban

Buddhism and unlettered rural teachers, and between promoters of the

abstruse but challenging Lankavatara Sutra sanctioned by Bodhidharma

and the cryptic Diamond Sutra. Quite simply, it was a battle between

what would eventually be known as the Northern and Southern schools of

Ch'an, and it concerned two fundamentally opposing views of the

functions of the human mind. As things turned out, the gradual,

Northern, Lankavatara Sutra faction went on for years thinking it had

won--or perhaps not really aware that there was a battle in progress--

while the anti-intellectual, Southern, Diamond Sutra faction was

gathering its strength in the hinterlands for a final surge to victory.

When the Southern school did strike, it won the war handily and then

proceeded to recast the history of what had gone before, even going so

far as to put posthumous words of praise for itself into the mouths of

the once-haughty Northern masters. Thus the mighty were eventually

brought low and the humble lifted up in the annals of Ch'an. It is to

the two masters whose names are associated with this battle that we

must turn next.

Chapter Four

SHEN-HSIU AND SHEN-HUI:

"GRADUAL" AND "SUDDEN" MASTERS

Whereas the Ch'an Patriarchs of earlier times had been, more often than

not, fractious teachers ignored by emperors and gentry alike, the T'ang

Dynasty saw Ch'an masters rise to official eminence, receiving honors

from the highest office in China. The first half of the eighth century

witnessed what was to be the greatest battle within the school of

Ch'an, but it was also the time when Ch'an was finally recognized by

Chinese ruling circles. The name most often associated 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 was thirteen,

she was placed in Emperor T'ai-tsung's harem as a concubine of

relatively low rank. Disapproving historians claim that one day she

managed to catch the crown prince, the heir apparent to the aging

emperor, in what we today might euphemistically call the bathroom, and

seduced him at a moment when he was without benefit of trousers. Thus

she was already on familiar terms with the next emperor when her

official husband, Emperor T'ai-tsung, went to his ancestors in the

summer of 649. Although she was only twenty-four years old, custom

required that she join all the deceased emperor's concubines in

retirement at a monastery--which ordinarily would have been the last

anyone heard of her. As it happened, however, the new emperor's first

wife was childless, with the effect that he began devoting increasing

attention to a favorite concubine. Knowing of the emperor's earlier

acquaintance and infatuation 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 her own child by

the emperor and then blaming the empress, Wu soon had both the empress

and the competing concubine in prison. Not content with mere

imprisonment for her rivals, she went on to have them both boiled

alive--after first amputating their hands and feet, eliciting a dying

curse from the concubine that she would return as a cat to haunt Wu. To

escape this curse, Wu permanently banned cats from the imperial

compound, and eventually persuaded the emperor to move the government

from Ch'ang-an to Loyang, where for the next half century she tried to

exorcise the memory of her deed. In late 683 Wu's husband, 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 government

completely.

A couple of years after the emperor's death, when Wu was aged sixty,

she became infatuated with a lusty peddler of cosmetics and

aphrodisiacs, a man whose virility had made him a favorite with various

serving ladies around the palace. To give him a respectable post, she

appointed him abbot of the major Buddhist monastery of Loyang--enabling

him to satisfy, as it were, a double office in the service of the

state. His antics and those of his followers did the cause of Buddhism

little good over the next few years. When in 695 his arrogance finally

became too much even for Wu, she had him strangled by the court ladies

and his body sent back to the monastery in a cart. Although Wu is

remembered today as an ardent Buddhist, some have suggested that her

devotions turned as much to the claims of fortune telling by Buddhist

nuns (some of whose organizations in Loyang reportedly ran brothels on

the side) as to a pious concern with Indian philosophy.

SHEN-HSIU (605-706), THE FIRST "SIXTH PATRIARCH"

It is known that around 701 Empress Wu invited an aging Ch'an monk

named Shen-hsiu, follower of the Lankavatara school of Bodhidharma, to

come north to the imperial capital from his monastery in central China.2

He was over ninety at the time and had amassed a lifelong reputation

for his rigorous practice of _dhyana_. Shen-hsiu agreed reluctantly,

reportedly having to be

carried on a pallet into the presence of the empress. It is said that

Wu curtsied to him, an unusual act for a head of state, and immediately

moved him into the palace, where he seems to have become the priest-in-

residence. As for why Empress Wu would have chosen to honor a lineage

of Ch'an Buddhism, it has been pointed out that she was at the time

attempting to supplant the established T'ang Dynasty of her late

husband with one of her own. And since the T'ang emperors had honored a

Buddhist lineage, it was essential that she do the same--but one of a

different school. Shen-hsiu was both eminent and unclaimed, an ideal

candidate to become the court Buddhist for her fledgling dynasty--which,

needless to say, was never established. Nonetheless, Shen-hsiu was

given the title of "Lord of the law of Ch'ang-an and Loyang," and he

preached to vast crowds drawn from the entire northern regions. To

solidify his eminence, Wu had monasteries built in his honor at his

birthplace, at his mountain retreat, and in the capital.

Shen-hsiu, who briefly reigned as the Sixth Patriarch of Ch'an, was

described in the early chronicles as a sensitive and bright child who,

out of despair for the world, early on turned away from Confucianism to

become a Buddhist monk. At age forty-six he finally found his way to

the East Mountain retreat of the Fifth Patriarch, Hung-jen, where he

studied under the master until achieving enlightenment. As noted

previously he was among the eleven most prominent individuals

remembered from the monastery of the Fifth Patriarch. 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 in fame and

followers. However, Shen-hsiu seems to have been the best known Master,

eventually becoming the titular head of the Lankavatara faction, also

to be known as the Northern school--possibly because Shen-hsiu brought

it to the urbanized, sophisticated capitals of North China, Loyang and

Ch'ang-an. This was Ch'an's most imperial moment, and no less than a

state minister composed the memorial epitaph for Shen-hsiu's

gravestone. Although his specific teachings are not well known, a verse

survives from one of his sermons that seems to suggest that the

teachings of Ch'an were really teachings of the mind and owed little to

traditional Buddhism.

_The teaching of all the Buddhas

In one's own Mind originally exists:

To seek the Mind without one's Self,

Is like running away from the father.3

After he died 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 the Lankavatara school's greatest prestige.

Perhaps most important, the success of Shen-hsiu was also the success

of Ch'an, or what appeared to be success. The sect had risen from being

the passion of homeless teachers of _dhyana _to the object of imperial

honors in the midst of China's finest moment, the T'ang Dynasty. The

T'ang was an era to be remembered forever for its poetry, its art, its

architecture, its cultural brilliance.4 Unfortunately for Northern

Ch'an, this cultural brilliance was beginning to be the province of

groups other than the blueblooded gentry that traditionally had

controlled China's culture. The glories of the T'ang were to some

degree the creation of the non-gentry, and an outcast warrior would

before long bring the government to its knees, even as an obscure Ch'an

master from the rural south was soon to erase Shen-hsiu's seemingly

permanent place in history.

SHEN-HUI (670-762), THE "MARTIN LUTHER" OF CH'AN

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 the

province of Hupeh, some distance south of the lavish twin T'ang

captials of Ch'ang-an and Loyang.5 He began as a Taoist scholar, but

later turned to Buddhism, traveling even farther south around his

fortieth year to become 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 will be 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 alongside Shen-hsiu. Shen-hui

is thought to have studied under Hui-neng for around five years, 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

to have 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 mounted the platform and, in a historic moment, declared

that the great Ch'an organizations of China, heretofore beholden to

Shen-hsiu as Sixth Patriarch, were following a false master.6

The historical significance of this convocation and Shen-hui's

attack might be likened to the defiant act of Martin Luther, when he

challenged church hierarchy in sixteenth-century Germany. With superb

audacity, Shen-hui went on to spell out a new history of Ch'an that

supported his claims. His revised chronicle culminated with the name of

his old teacher Hui-neng, theretofore an obscure follower of the Fifth

Patriarch, Hung-jen, whom he declared Sixth Patriarch. He insisted that

Shen-hsiu, the man honored by Empress Wu, had posed falsely 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 true

Sixth Patriarch, the southerner Hui-neng, of his due recognition. For

Shen-hui to have challenged the hand-picked school of the ruling family

was an incredibly courageous act, but perhaps one that was just

audacious enough to win public sympathy.

He touted this new proposition more or less full-time between the years

732 and 745, as he traveled about North China and got to know the

officials of the T'ang regime. His political standing gradually

improved and he was eventually invited (in 745, at age seventy-seven)

to Loyang to assume leadership of the great Ho-tse temple. Although the

particular object of his criticism, Shen-hsiu's disciple P'u-chi, had

died in 739, Shen-hui's attacks on the 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 plotting against the government

(citing as evidence the large crowds he routinely attracted). Finally,

Emperor Hsuan-tsung (grandson of Empress Wu) himself summoned Shen-hui

from Loyang to Ch'ang-an, where he questioned the master and finally

sent him into exile in the deep south. This was about 753. It was at

this point that Chinese political history and Ch'an collide, for the

throne was soon to need Shen-hui's help.

Emperor Hsuan-tsung (reigned 712-756) has been credited by many with

the wreck of the T'ang Dynasty. At the beginning of his reign the

capital had been in the east at Loyang (where Empress Wu had moved it.

to escape her memories), but the aristocracy in the west successfully

pressured him to bring it back to Ch'ang-an. In his declining years

Hsuan-tsung became infatuated with the wife of his son, a lady now

infamous in Chinese history as Yang Kuei-fei. She subsequently was

divorced by her husband and became a member of the emperor's harem in

738, coming to enjoy enormous influence in affairs of state. She had

first been brought to the emperor's attention by one of her relatives,

and in typical Chinese style she procured government posts for all

available members of her family. As the poet Tu Fu (712-770) described

her machinations:

_So many courtiers now throng around the court

That honest men must tremble;

And it's said that the gold plate from the treasury

Has gone to the kinsmen of Lady Yang.7

_Although none of these blood relatives ever rose to the rich

opportunities the situation afforded, another of her favorites

compensated abundantly for their political ineptitude.

His name was An Lu-shan, a "barbarian" of Turkish extraction, born in

703, who first entered China as a slave to an officer in a northern

garrison of the empire. After distinguishing himself as a soldier, he

came to the attention of Yang Kuei-fei, who was so charmed by the man

that she adopted him as her son. Before long he was a familiar figure

at the court, reportedly very fat and possessing a flair for

entertaining the bored aristocracy by his flippancy. Eventually he was

made governor of a frontier province, where under pretense of a foreign

threat he proceeded to recruit an army of alarming proportions and

questionable allegiance.

Meanwhile, back in the capital, Lady Yang and her relatives had taken

over the government, whereupon they unwisely decided that An Lu-shan

should be brought under firmer control. With their hostility providing

him just the pretext needed, he marched his new army toward Ch'ang-an,

pausing only long enough 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 already fled. Conditions deteriorated

sufficiently that the troops supporting the throne demanded, and got,

the head of Lady Yang Kuei-fei as the price for continued support. (On

imperial orders she was strangled by a eunuch.) In the meantime, the

imperial T'ang forces found reinforcements, including some Arab

mercenaries. After a battle outside Ch'ang-an which left An Lu-shan's

forces in disarray, the rebel was murdered, some say by his own son.

Soon thereafter the victorious mercenaries sacked and looted Loyang,

ending forever its prominence in Chinese history. The government of the

T'ang survived, but it was penniless after the many war years in which

it could not enforce taxation.8

The time was now 757, some four years after Shen-hui's banishment. The

destitute government, desperate for money, decided to set up ordination

platforms in the major cities across China and raise cash by selling

certificates of investiture for

Buddhist monks. (Since entry into the priesthood removed an individual

from the tax rolls, it was accepted practice for the Chinese government

to require an advance compensation.) Shen-hui's oratorical gifts were

suddenly remembered by some of his former followers, and the old

heretic was recalled to assist in the fundraising. He was such an

effective fundraiser in the ruined city of Loyang that the government

commissioned special quarters to be built for him on the grounds of his

old temple, the Ho-tse. (He was later to be remembered as the Master of

Ho-tse.)

The price for his cooperation seems to have been the official

acceptance of his version of Ch'an's history. In his battle with the

Northern school of Ch'an he had outlived his opponents and through a

bizarre turn of events had finally won the day. Solely through his

persistence, the obscure Southern Ch'an monk Hui-neng was installed as

Sixth Patriarch in Ch'an histories (replacing Shen-hsiu), and one

history went so far as to declare Shen-hui himself the Seventh

Patriarch.

The philosophical significance of what Shen-hui's "Southern" doctrine

brought to Ch'an has been described as nothing less than a revolution.

A modern Zen scholar has claimed that Shen-hui's revolution produced a

complete replacement of Indian Buddhism with Chinese philosophy,

keeping only the name. Shen-hui, he claims, swept aside all forms of

meditation or _dhyana _and replaced it with a concept called no-mind:

the doctrines of "absence of thought" and "seeing into one's original

nature."9

Perhaps this philosophical _coup d'etat _may best be understood by

comparing the Northern and Southern teachings. The discredited Northern

school of Shen-hsiu had preached that the road to enlightenment must be

traversed "step by step," that there were in fact two stages of the

mind--the first being a "false mind" which perceives the world

erroneously in dualities, and the second a "true mind" which is pure

and transcends all discriminations and dualities, perceiving the world

simply as a unity. One proceeds from the "false mind" to the "true

mind" step by step, through the suppression of erroneous thought

processes by the practice of _dhyana_ or meditation, in which the mind

and the senses slowly reach a state of absolute quietude.

The Southern school took issue with this theory of the mind on a number

of points. To begin, they said that if there really is no duality in

the world, then how can the mind be divided into "false" and "true"?

They argued that the answer quite simply is that there is only one

mind, whose many functions are all merely expressions of single true

reality. The unity of all things is the true reality; our minds are

also part of this reality; and upon realizing this, you have achieved

the same enlightenment experience once realized by the Buddha. There is

no "false mind" and "true mind," nor is there any need for a long

program of _dhyana _to slowly suppress false thoughts. All that is

needed is to practice "absence of thought" and thereby intuitively to

realize a simple truth: One unity pervades everything. This realization

they called Buddha-mind, and it could only happen "all at once" (not

"step by step"), at any time and without warning. This moment of primal

realization they called "seeing into one's original nature."

Although Shen-hui is somewhat vague about exactly what practice should

replace meditation, the scholar Walter Liebenthal has inferred the

following about Shen-hui's attitude toward "sudden enlightenment" as a

replacement for meditation: "He seems to have rejected meditation in

the technical sense of the word. Instead of methodical endeavors

designed to promote religious progress he recommends a change of point

of view leading to non-attachment. . . . Non-attachment in this case

means that external objects are not allowed to catch our fancy.. . .

_ [A] thing recollected is isolated, it is singled out of the whole,

and is thus an illusion; for all short of the undifferentiated

continuum is illusive. The senses work as usual . . . but 'no desire is

aroused.' . . . This change happens suddenly, that is, it is not

dependent upon preceding exertions; it can be brought about without

first passing through the stages of a career. That is why it is called

'sudden awakening.' _"10 _

Liebenthal interprets Shen-hui as saying that whereas the purpose of

meditation should be merely to erase our attachment to physical things,

it also removes our cognizance of them, which is not necessarily a

requirement for nonattachment. It should be possible for us to be aware

of the world without being attached to it and enslaved by it. According

to Shen-hui's sermon:

_ When thus my friends are told to discard as useless all they

have learned before, then those who have spent fifty or more, or only

twenty years practicing meditation, hearing this, might be very much

puzzled. . . . Friends, listen attentively, I speak to you of self-

deception. What does self-deception mean? You, who have assembled in

this place today, are craving for riches and pleasures of intercourse

with males and females; you are thinking of gardens and houses. . . .

The Nirvana Sutra says, "To get rid of your passions is not Nirvana; to

look upon them as no matter of yours, that is Nirvana._"11_

So far so good; but how do we reach this state of recognition without

attachment? Apparently the way is to somehow find our original state,

in which we were naturally unattached to the surrounding world. The way

is to mentally disassociate ourselves from the turmoil of society that

surrounds us and look inward, touching our original nature. In this

way, both _prajna _and _samadhi_, awareness and noninvolvement, which

have been described as the active and passive sides of meditation, are

achieved simultaneously.

_Now, let us penetrate to that state in which we are not attached. What

do we get to know? Not being attached we are tranquil and guileless.

This state underlying all motions and passions is called samadhi.

Penetrating to this fundamental state we encounter a natural wisdom

that is conscious of this original tranquility and guilelessness. This

wisdom is called _prajna_. The intimate relation between _samadhi _and

_prajna _is thus defined.

. . . If now you penetrate to that state in which your mind is not

attached, and yet remains open to impressions, and thus are conscious

of the fact that your mind is not attached, then you have reached the

state of original blankness and tranquility. From that state of

blankness and tranquility 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 from these

distinctions. That is _samadhi_.

. . . It follows that freedom from attachment (to external things,

which replaces meditation in Ch'an Buddhism), enables you to look into

the heart of all the Buddhas of the past, and yet it is nothing else

than what you yourselves experience today.12

Perhaps the most revolutionary thing about this approach was that it

seemed to eliminate the need for all the traditional apparatus of

Buddhism. It had little or nothing to do with organized religion, and

even less connection with the mountains of Indian philosophy that had

gone before. A thousand years of Indian thought had been distilled down

to a single truth: The realization of our original nature comprises

enlightenment. If this were taken at 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 any need for Buddhism.

It had been reduced, as the Chinese scholar Wing-tsit Chan has

observed, to a concern for the mind alone.

By redefining meditation, Shen-hui had "laid the foundations of Chinese

Zen which was no Zen at all."13 As Shen-hui now described meditation or

_dhyana_: Sitting motionless is no _dhyana_; introspection into your

own mind is no _dhyana_; and looking inward at your own calmness is no

_dhyana_.14. . . Here in my school, to have no thoughts is sitting, and

to see one's original nature is _dhyana_ (Ch'an).15

What happened to Indian meditation? No wonder the scholar Hu Shih has

described this new teaching as a Chinese revolt against Buddhism.

The political triumph of Shen-hui made Southern Ch'an the official

sect, but it also meant that he, now one of the leading religious

figures in China, had necessarily become a part of the ruling

establishment. Little wonder that the actual future of Ch'an soon

reverted back to rural teachers, men who could more convincingly claim

to despise the ways of the world, as they meditated in their secluded

mountain retreats far from imperial patronage. 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 these new vigorous but unlettered

rural Ch'anists.16 Interestingly, the official recognition of the court

seemed to quickly extinguish any school of Ch'an that received it.

Shen-hsiu was honored by Empress Wu, and his school was then supplanted

by that of Shen-hui, whose own imperial recognition and honors were

soon to be dust in the history of Ch'an, as the new rural school burst

on the scene and effectively took over.17

The disorders surrounding and following the rebellion of An Lu-shan are

commonly considered today as signaling the decline of the great age of

the T'ang Dynasty. They certainly signified the atrophy of the war-torn

North Chinese capitals as the political power in China. Loyang and

Ch'ang-an came to be replaced in economic influence by the south, a

region relatively untouched by the constant struggles North China had

to mount against barbarian invaders. Northern scholars retired to the

pastoral south, where they lazed in peaceful gardens and recalled the

great poets of the early T'ang. Thus Northern urban 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 claim it was not really Shen-hui who

revolutionized Ch'an, but rather his master, the Southern teacher Hui-

neng. For example, D. T. Suzuki believed that whereas Shen-hui was

correct in equating meditation with the primal knowledge of self called

_prajna_, he actually taught that this knowledge came about through

rational understanding rather than intuition.18 It was Hui-neng, said

Suzuki, who correctly understood that _prajna_ was intuition and who

knew that it could be realized only through the "sudden" path rather

than through the "step-by-step" path. This may well have been true.

Just as the Apostle Paul interpreted the teachings of an obscure

provincial teacher, Jesus of Nazareth, and popularized them among the

urban centers of the Roman Empire, so Shen-hui dispensed the ideas of

Hui-neng in northern cities, possibly tempering them where necessary to

gain acceptance from the more rationally inclined urban Ch'anists. To

continue the analogy, Shen-hui (like Paul) never quotes his mentor

directly in his writings--something he certainly would have done if

there had been anything to quote--but in a few decades there would be a

full autobiography of Hui-neng complete with a "sermon." Shen-hui's own

contribution was to open the way for the anti-meditation rural school

to take 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 master honored today as the father of modern Zen was an

impoverished country lad from South China, whose attributed

autobiography, The Platform Sutra of Hui-neng, is the only "sutra" of

Buddhism written by a Chinese.1 In this work, Hui-neng (638-713) told

the story of his rise from obscurity to fame. He described his father

as a high Chinese official who, unjustly banished and reduced to a

commoner, died of shame while Hui-neng was still a small child. To

survive, the fatherless boy and his mother sold wood in the marketplace

at Han-hai, near Canton in South China. Then one day he chanced to

overhear a man reciting a passage from the Diamond Sutra. Hui-neng

stopped to listen, and when he heard the phrase "Let your mind function

freely, without abiding anywhere or in anything," he was suddenly

awakened. Upon inquiry, he discovered that the reciter was a follower

of the Fifth Patriarch, Hung-jen. This teacher, the stranger said,

taught that by reciting the Diamond Sutra it was possible to see into

one's own nature and to directly experience enlightenment.

The Diamond Sutra (sometimes called the Vajracchedika Sutra) became the

passion of Hui-neng as well as the touchstone for the new Chinese

Ch'an. An unusually brief work, it has been called the ultimate

distillation of the Buddhist Wisdom Literature. The following excerpt

is representative of its teaching.

_All the mind's arbitrary concepts of matter, phenomena, and of all

conditioning factors and all conceptions and ideas relating thereto are

like a dream, a phantasm, a bubble, a shadow, the evanescent dew, the

lightning's flash. Every true disciple should thus look upon all

phenomena and upon all the activities of the mind, and keep his mind

empty and selfless and tranquil.2

The Diamond Sutra does not search the philosophic heights of the

Lankavatara Sutra, the treatise revered by the early _dhyana _school of

Bodhidharma, and precisely for this reason it appealed to the Southern

school--whose goal was the simplification of Ch'an. Hui-neng could not

resist the call and immediately set out for the East Mountain monastery

of the Fifth Patriarch.

When he arrived, Hung-jen opened the interview by asking the newcomer

his origin. Hearing that he was from the Canton region, the old priest

sighed, "If you're from the south you must be a barbarian. How do you

expect to become enlightened?" To this Hui-neng shot back, "The people

in the north and south may be different, but enlightenment is the same

in both regions." Although this impertinence caused the master to

immediately recognize Hui-neng's mental gifts, he said nothing and

simply put him to work threshing and pounding rice. (This exchange,

incidentally, will be recognized 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 in obscurity, never

so much as seeing the Fifth Patriarch. Then one day the old priest

called an assembly and announced that he was ready to pass on the robe

of the patriarchy to the one who could compose a verse showing an

intuitive understanding of his own inner nature. The disciples talked

over this challenge among themselves and decided, "The robe is certain

to be handed down to Shen-hsiu, who is head monk and the natural heir.

He will be a worthy successor to the master, so we will not bother

composing a verse."

Shen-hsiu, the same master later exalted by the Empress Wu in Loyang,

knew what was expected of him and began struggling to compose the

verse. After several days' effort, he found the courage to write an

unsigned _gatha _on a corridor wall in the dark of night.

_Our body is the Bodhi-tree

And our mind a mirror bright.

Carefully we wipe them hour by hour,

And let no dust alight.3

_When the Fifth Patriarch saw the verse, he convened an assembly in the

corridor, burned incense, and declared that they all should recite the

anonymous passage. Afterward, however, he summoned Shen-hsiu to his

private quarters and inquired if he was author of the verse. Receiving

an affirmative reply, the master said, "This verse does not demonstrate

that you have yet achieved true understanding of your original nature.

You have reached 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 practice and was perfectly logical--just the

opposite of the sudden, anti-logical leap of intuition that is true

enlightenment. Shen-hsiu departed, but try as he might he could not

produce the second _gatha_.

In the meantime, Hui-neng overheard the monks reciting Shen-hsiu's

lines. Although he recognized that its author had yet to grasp his own

original nature, Hui-neng asked to be shown the verse and allowed to do

homage to it. After he was led to the hall, the illiterate lad from the

barbarian south asked to have a _gatha _of his own inscribed next to

the one on the wall.

_There is no Bodhi-tree

Nor stand of a mirror bright.

Since all is void,

Where can the dust alight?_4_

Although the assembly was electrified by the insight contained in this

_gatha_, the diplomatic old Fifth Patriarch publicly declared that its

author lacked full understanding. During the night, however, he

summoned young Hui-neng to the darkened meditation hall, where he

expounded the Diamond Sutra to him and then ceremonially passed to him

the robe of Bodhidharma, symbol of the patriarchy. He also advised him

to travel immediately to the south, to stay underground for a time in

the interest of safety, and then to preach the Dharma to all who would

listen. Hui-neng departed that very night, crossing the Yangtze and

heading south--the anointed Sixth Patriarch at age twenty-four.

When the other monks realized what had happened, they hastily organized

a party to retrieve Hui-neng and the Ch'an relics. Finally one of the

pursuers, a burly former soldier, reached the new Sixth Patriarch in

his hideaway. Suddenly overcome by the presence of Hui-neng, he found

himself asking not for the return of the robe but rather for

instruction. Hui-neng obliged him with, "Not thinking of good, not

thinking of evil, tell me what was your original face before your

mother and father were born." This celebrated question--which dramatizes

the Zen concept of an original nature in every person that precedes and

transcends artificial values such as good and evil--caused the pursuer

to be enlightened on the spot.

For the next several years Hui-neng sought seclusion, living among

hunters in the south and concealing his identity. The legends say his

kindly nature caused him sometimes to secretly release animals from the

hunters' 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 he neared forty), he renounced the life of a

refugee and ventured into Canton to visit the Fa-hsing temple. One

afternoon as he lingered in the guise of an anonymous guest, he

overheard a group of monks arguing about a banner flapping in the

breeze.

One monk declared, "The banner is moving."

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

Although he was only a lay observer, Hui-neng could not contain

himself, and he interrupted them with his dramatic manifesto, "You are

both wrong. It is your mind that moves."

The abbot of the temple, standing nearby, was dumbstruck by the

profound insight of this stranger, and on the spot offered to become

his pupil. Hui-neng declined the honor, however, requesting instead

that his head be shaved and he be allowed to enter Buddhist orders, a

priest at last. He was shortly acclaimed by one and all as the Sixth

Patriarch, and after a few months in Canton he decided to move to a

temple of his own at Ts'ao-ch'i, where he taught for the next four

decades. From this monastery came the teachings that would define the

faith.

The foregoing story, perhaps the most famous in the Zen canon, is drawn

mainly from the aforementioned Platform Sutra of Hui-neng, purportedly

an autobiography and sermon presented to an assembly in his later

years.5 (The setting was a temple near his monastery, where he was

invited to lecture one day by the local abbot. It was transcribed by

one of his disciples, ince Hui-neng traditionally was said to have been

illiterate.) The document has come down to us in three parts. The first

part is the story just summarized: a poetry contest at the monastery of

the Fifth Patriarch in which the man later to lead Northern Ch'an is

humiliated by a bumpkin, who himself must then flee the wrath of the

Ch'an establishment and wait for recognition in the south. The second

part is a lecture that scholars believe probably represents 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, usually dismissed as

the pious invention of a more recent date.

The real life of Hui-neng is a historical puzzle that may well never be

resolved. For example, it is common to note that the later Ch'an

writers took great pains to render Hui-neng as illiterate and

unlettered as possible, the more to emphasize his egalitarianism. (This

in spite of the fact that 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 peddler could become Patriarch, what better

proof that the faith is open to all people? Many of the traditional

anecdotes surrounding his early years are similarly suspect, and in

fact the most respected Hui-neng scholar has declared, "If we consider

all the available material, and eliminate patiently all the

inconsistencies by picking the most likely legends, we can arrive at a

fairly credible biography of Hui-neng. If, on the other hand, we

eliminate the legends and the undocumented references to the Sixth

Patriarch, we may conclude that there is, in fact, almost nothing that

we can really say about him."6 Yet does it really matter whether the

legend is meticulously faithful to the facts? Hui-neng is as much a

symbol as a historical individual, and it was essential that his life

have legendary qualities. In his case, art may have helped life along a

bit, but it was for a larger purpose.

The purpose was to formalize the new philosophical ideas of Southern

Ch'an. The second part of the Platform Sutra, which details his

philosophical position, has been characterized as a masterpiece of

Chinese thought, the work not of a scholar but of a natural sage whose

wisdom flowed spontaneously from deep within. Yet it is commonly

conceded that the uniqueness of his message lies not so much in its

being original (which most agree it is not) but in its rendering of the

basic ideas of Buddhism into Chinese terms.7 Buddhism itself seems at

times to be in question, as the Sixth Patriarch discounts traditional

observances, even

suggesting that the Buddhist Western Paradise, known as the Pure Land,

might be merely a state of mind.

_The deluded 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 no impurity, 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 be difficult to reach . . . but if you

practice straightforward mind, you will arrive there in an instant.8

_Hui-neng also questioned the traditional Ch'an practice of sitting 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 the meditation.

_. . . what is this teaching that we call "sitting in meditation"? In

this teaching "sitting" means without any obstruction anywhere,

outwardly and under all circumstances, not to activate thoughts.

"Meditation" is internally to see the original nature and not become

confused.9

Elsewhere he is quoted as declaring that protracted sitting only

shackles the body without profiting the mind.10 Although Hui-neng

severely took to task those who 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 Zen expression--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 _dhyana

_teacher questioning the function of _dhyana_--until then the very basis

of the school.

Yet the sutra is far from being all negative. It has a number of

positive messages, including the following: All people are born in an

enlightened state, a condition in which good and evil are not

distinguished. Nor are there distracting discriminations, attachments,

and perturbations of the spirit in this primal estate. (A very similar

view is found throughout the poetry 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 enter into a person's character?

He faces this classic theological question head-on:

_Good friends, although the nature of people in this world is from the

outset pure in itself, the ten thousand things are all within their own

natures. If people think of all the evil things, then they will

practice evil; if they think of all the good things, then they will

practice good. Thus it is clear that in this way all the _dharmas

_(aspects of 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, although they are bright, below they are

darkened, and the sun, moon, stars, and planets cannot be seen clearly.

But if suddenly the wind of wisdom should blow and roll away the clouds

and mists, all forms in the universe appear at once. . . . [I]f a

single thought of good evolves, intuitive wisdom is born. As one lamp

serves to dispel a thousand years of darkness, so one flash of wisdom

destroys ten thousand years of ignorance.12

As Hui-neng viewed it, there is latent within us all the condition of

enlightenment, the state that precedes our concern with good and evil.

It can be reclaimed through an intuitive acquaintance with our own

inner natures. This is well summarized by the Hui-neng scholar Philip

Yampolsky: "The Platform Sutra maintains that the nature of man is from

the outset pure, but that his purity has no form. But by self-practice,

by endeavoring for himself, man can gain insight into this purity.

Meditation, _prajna_, true reality, purity, the original nature, self-

nature, the Buddha nature, all these terms, which are used constantly

throughout the sermon, indicate the same undefined Absolute, which when

seen and experienced by the individual himself, constitutes

enlightenment."13

This condition of original innocence that is enlightenment can be

reclaimed through "no-thought," a state in which the mind floats,

unattached to what it encounters, moving freely through phenomena,

unperturbed by the incursions and attractions of the world, liberated

because it is its own master, tranquil because it is pure. This is the

condition in which 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 that can be realized through arduous meditation, Hui-neng

apparently did not believe that meditation was required. This primal

condition of the mind, this glimpse into our original nature, could be

realized instantaneously if our mind were receptive. But what is this

state called "no-thought"? According to Hui-neng:

_To be unstained in all environments is called no-thought. If on the

basis of your own thoughts you separate from environment, then, in

regard to things, thoughts are not produced. If you stop thinking of

the myriad things, and cast aside all thoughts, as soon as one instant

of thought is cut off, you will be reborn in another realm. . . .

Because man in his delusion has thoughts in relation to his

environment, heterodox ideas stemming from these thoughts arise, and

passions and false views are produced from them.14

Yampolsky characterizes "no-thought" as follows: "Thoughts are

conceived as advancing in progression from past to present to future,

in an unending chain of successive thoughts. Attachment to one instant

of thought leads to attachment to a succession of thoughts, and thus to

bondage. By cutting off attachment to one instant of thought, one may,

by a process unexplained, cut off attachment to a succession of

thoughts and thus attain to no-thought, which is the state of

enlightenment."15 Precisely how this condition of "no-thought"

enlightenment is achieved is not explained in the Platform Sutra and in

fact has been the major concern of Zen ever since. The one thing that

all will agree is that the harder one tries to attain it, the more

difficult it becomes. It is there inside, waiting to be released, but

it can be reached only through the intuitive mind. And it happens

suddenly, when we 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 seems

reason to suspect that he was canonized well after the fact, as was

Bodhidharma. But whereas Bodhidharma provided an anchor for the

original formation of a separate _Dhyana_ sect in Chinese Buddhism,

Hui-neng became the rallying symbol for a new type of Ch'an, one wholly

Chinese, and one that seemed to discount Bodhidharma's old mainstay,

meditation. He became the Chinese answer to the Indian Bodhidharma.

Hui-neng redefined the specific characteristics of the Ch'an goal and

described in nontheological terms the mind state in which duality is

banished. But he failed to go the next step and explain how to get

there. All he did was point out (to use the terminology of logic) that

meditation not only was not a sufficient condition for enlightenment,

it might not even be a necessary condition. What then was required? The

answer to this question was to be 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) in the south and went on

to take over all of Ch'an. These new teachers seem to have accepted

Hui-neng as their patron, although the direct connection is not

entirely clear. These masters learned how to impose a torture chamber

on the logical mind, bringing to it such humiliations that it finally

annihilated ego or self and surrendered to _prajna_, intuitive wisdom.

They devised systematic ways to produce the state of "no-thought" that

Hui-neng and Shen-hui apparently could only invoke.