THE GOLDEN AGE OF ZEN
. . . . in which teachers of rural, Southern Ch'an begin to experiment
with new ways to precipitate the "sudden" enlightenment experience,
even bringing into question the role of meditation. Along with the
search for new techniques goes the attempt to define precisely what
enlightenment is and to formalize the transmission process. During this
time, Ch'an monasteries become independent organizations and Ch'an a
recognized, if eccentric, Buddhist sect. The iconoclastic, self-
supporting Ch'an establishments ride out a persecution of Buddhism in
the mid-ninth century that effectively destroys all other Buddhist
schools in China. This is the great creative era of Ch'an, in which the
sect secures its own identity and creates its own texts for use by
later generations.
Chapter Six
MA-TSU:
ORIGINATOR OF "SHOCK" ENLIGHTENMENT
_Ma-tsu (right) and Layman P'ang_
If Hui-neng was the Sixth Patriarch, then who was the seventh? Although
several of his followers are mentioned in the Platform Sutra, the only
one who seems to have made any difference in Ch'an history was Shen-hui
(670-762), who successfully destroyed the Northern school of Shen-hsiu
(605-706) and elevated Hui-neng. Although Shen-hui was given the
accolade of Seventh Patriarch in some parts of the north, history was
to be written elsewhere. Shen-hui's school of "Southern" Ch'an was soon
compromising with the remaining Northern Ch'anists--conceding that the
study of the sutras could go along hand in hand with sudden
enlightenment--and he seems to have enjoyed a little too much his role
as imperial socialite. The only member of Shen-hui's school to realize
any historical prominence was Tsung-mi (780-841), whose fame attaches
not to his original thought but rather to his scholarly writings
describing the various sects of Ch'an.1 A litterateur and friend of the
famous poet Po Chu-i (772-846), he also tried unsuccessfully to mediate
between the followers of the step-by-step sutra-reading Buddhists of
the cities and the all-at-once, anti-literary proponents of sudden
enlightenment in the country, but he succeeded only in bringing the
history of Northern Ch'an to a dignified close.2
The Chinese scholar Hu Shih skillfully pinpoints why the social success
of Shen-hui's new "Southern" school in the north actually contributed
to its decline. As he saw it: "The explanation is simple. Zennism could
not flourish as an officially patronized religion, but only as an
attitude of mind, a method of thinking and a mode of living. An
officially patronized teacher of Buddhism is obliged to perform all the
traditional rituals and ceremonies which the true Zennist despises.
Shen-hui succeeded in establishing Zennism as a state religion, but by
so doing he almost killed it. All further development of Chinese Zen
had to come from those great teachers who valued simple life and
intellectual freedom and independence more than worldly recognition."3
And in fact just such teachers had begun springing up like mushrooms.
On lonely mountaintops, teachers of sudden enlightenment were
experimenting with new ways to transmit wordless insight. They seem to
have despised traditional Buddhism, perhaps partly because Buddhism--by
which is meant the cultural elitists and aristocrats in the capitals of
Ch'ang-an and Loyang--had so long despised them. (Recall the Fifth
Patriarch's greeting to Hui-neng: "If you're from the south, you must
be a barbarian.") Although traditional Buddhism (including teachers of
_dhyana_) continued to flourish, and the city of Ch'ang-an remained a
model for Asian civilization, the political power of the T'ang
government in the north gradually withered. And as it declined, so too
did the fortunes of the traditional Ch'an establishments that had
flourished under imperial patronage.
The new Ch'an teachers of the Southern school may have felt smug in
their new prestige and independence, but they still were subject to the
ingrained Chinese desire for a lineage. (Perhaps in the land of
Confucius, spiritual ancestors were essential to dignity.) The triumph
of the legend of Hui-neng in the north had not been lost on the
Ch'anists elsewhere, and it effectively meant that for any Ch'an school
to have respectability nationwide, it had to be able to trace its
lineage back to this illiterate southerner and his temple at Ts'ao-
ch'i. Unfortunately this turned out to be difficult, since by the time
Hui-neng actually came to be recognized as the Sixth Patriarch, he had
been dead for half a century and there were few Chinese who even knew
firsthand of his existence--and none besides Shen-hui who ever claimed
to have studied under him. How then could he be made the founder of the
Ch'an schools blooming all over China?
The scholar Hu Shih has speculated somewhat knavishly on how Hui-neng's
"lineage" may have been created after the fact: "By the last quarter of
the eighth century, there began to be a great stampede of almost all
the Ch'an schools to get on the bandwagon of the school of Hui-neng. .
. . Hui-neng died early in the eighth century, and his disciples were
mostly unknown ascetics who lived and died in their hilly retreats. One
could easily have paid a visit to some of them. So in the last decades
of the century, some of those unknown names were remembered or
discovered. Two of the names thus exhumed from obscurity were Huai-jang
of the Heng Mountains in Hunan, and Hsing-ssu of the Ch'ing-yuan
Mountains of Kiangsi. Neither of these names appeared in earlier
versions of Hui-neng's life story."4
These two masters, Nan-yueh Huai-jang (677-744) of Hunan and Ch'ing-
yuan Hsing-ssu (d. 740) of Kiangsi, were made the missing links between
Hui-neng and the two schools of Ch'an that would one day become
Japanese Rinzai and Soto, respectively. Since the lineage most
important for the early years of Ch'an's Golden Age was that which
would one day be the Rinzai school, the tradition of Huai-jang will be
examined here first. As noted above, although the legend says that
Huai-jang once studied under the Sixth Patriarch, Hui-neng, supporting
historical evidence is not readily found. However, he is thought to
have studied under another follower of the Fifth Patriarch Hung-jen and
to have been a part of the general scene of Southern Ch'an.5 His actual
function may have been to supply a direct line of descent between Hui-
neng and the man who was to be the creator of Rinzai Zen as we know it
today.
That man is the famous Ma-tsu Tao-i (709-788), who even if not a direct
spiritual descendant of Hui-neng was certainly a product of the same
exciting period of intellectual ferment. According to the more or less
contemporary record left by the northern historian Tsung-mi, Ma-tsu
(which means "Patriarch Ma") was a native of Szechuan who was ordained
a monk at an early age by a Korean master in his home province.6 Young
Ma traveled on, as was common with beginning Ch'an monks, and (so say
the later legends) finally came to the monastery of Huai-jang, located
on Mt. Nan-yueh. The story of their first encounter became a standard
among later Ch'an masters, for it is a particularly effective
discrediting of that onetime Ch'an mainstay, meditation, which became
anathema to the more revolutionary Southern school.
As the story goes, Huai-jang one day came upon Ma-tsu absorbed in
meditation and proceeded to question the purpose of his long bouts of
_dhyana_. Ma-tsu immediately replied, "I want to become a Buddha, an
enlightened being."
Saying nothing, Huai-jang quietly picked up a brick and started rubbing
it on a stone. After a time Ma-tsu's curiosity bested him and he
inquired, "Why are you rubbing that brick on a stone?"
Huai-jang replied, "I am polishing it into a mirror."
Ma-tsu probably knew by this time that he had been set up, but he had
to follow through: "But how can you make a mirror by polishing a brick
on a stone?"
The celebrated answer was: "How can you become enlightened by sitting
in meditation?"
The point, driven home time and again throughout the eighth century,
was that enlightenment is an active, not a passive, condition. And Ma-
tsu himself was to become the foremost exponent of enlightenment as a
natural part of life.
Ma-tsu always made a profound impression on his contemporaries, and no
small part may be attributable to his peculiar physical traits. As _The
Transmission of the Lamp _describes him:
_In appearance and bearing he was most striking. He glared as a tiger
does and he ambled like a cow. He could touch his nose with his tongue,
and on the soles of his feet were wheel-shaped marks [physical
qualities also attributed to the Buddha]. During the period [of 713-41]
he studied the dhyana . . . under Master Huai-jang, who then had nine
disciples. Of these only [Ma-tsu] received the sacred mind seal.7
_
However, his real immortality derives from his contribution to the
arsenal of methods for shocking novices into enlightenment. It will be
recalled that the legendary Sixth Patriarch, Hui-neng, neglected to
explain exactly what a person should do to "see into one's own nature."
Ma-tsu apparently was the first master who developed non-meditative
tricks for nudging a disciple into the state of "no-thought." He was an
experimenter, and he pioneered a number of methods that later were
perfected by his followers and the descendants of his followers. He was
the first master to ask a novice an unanswerable question, and then
while the person struggled for an answer, to shout in his ear (he liked
the syllable "Ho!")--hoping to jolt the pupil into a non-dualistic mind
state. Another similar technique was to call out someone's name just as
the person was leaving the room, a surprise that seemed to bring the
person up short and cause him to suddenly experience his original
nature. A similar device was to deliver the student a sharp blow as he
pondered a point, using violence to focus his attention completely on
reality and abort ratiocination. Other tricks included responding to a
question with a seemingly irrelevant answer, causing the student to
sense the irrelevancy of his question. He would also sometimes send a
pupil on a "goose chase" between himself and some other enlightened
individual at the monastery, perhaps in the hope that bouncing the
novice from one personality to another would somehow shake his
complacency. Whatever the technique, his goal was always to force a
novice to uncover his original nature for himself. He did this by never
giving a straight answer or a predictable response and therefore never
allowing a disciple to lapse into a passive mental mode.
Ma-tsu also seems to have simplified the idea of what constitutes
enlightenment. As he defined it, "seeing into one's own nature" simply
meant understanding (intuitively, not rationally) who you are and what
you are. This truth could be taught with whatever method seemed
appropriate at a given moment. As Hu Shih so eloquently describes his
teaching,
_ ". . . any gesture or motion, or even silence, might be used to
communicate a truth. [Recall the Buddha once enlightened a follower by
holding up a flower.] Ma-tsu developed this idea into a pedagogical
method for the new Zen. There is no need to seek any special faculty in
the mind for the enlightenment. Every behavior is the mind, the
manifestation of the Buddha-nature. Snapping a finger, frowning or
stretching the brow, coughing, smiling, anger, sorrow, or desire . . .
is the functioning of the Buddhahead: it is the Tao, the Way. There is
no need to perform any special act, be it dhyana_ _or worship, in order
to achieve the Tao. To be natural is the Way. Walk naturally, sit
naturally, sleep naturally, live naturally--that is the Way. Let the
mind be free: do not purposely do evil; nor purposely do good. There is
no Law to abide, no Buddhahood to attain. Maintain a free mind and
cling to nothing: that is Tao._"8_
_
Thus it seems that the most preeminent Ch'an master of the eighth
century not only repudiated all the apparatus of traditional Buddhism,
he also simplified enlightenment down to a quite secular condition of
acceptance of the natural state of human affairs. For instance,
although he was familiar with the great Mahayana sutras, Ma-tsu never
mentions Hui-neng or the Diamond Sutra. His Ch'an, expressed in simple
everyday language, seems merely so many ways of finding out who you are
and what you are. Furthermore, there seems to be nothing specifically
that you can do to accelerate the occurrence of sudden enlightenment,
other than use traditional practices to make your psyche as
uncomplicated as possible and then wait for the moment to strike (he,
of course, experimented to find ways to accelerate the arrival of that
moment). But he has nothing encouraging to say about the effectiveness
of meditation as an aid to finding the desired non-rational insight,
which he sometimes described using the borrowed term "Tao":
_Cultivation is of no use for the attainment of Tao. The only
thing that one can do is to be free of defilement. When one's
mind is stained with thoughts of life and death, or deliberate action,
that is defilement. The grasping of the Truth is the function of
everyday-mindedness. Everyday-mindedness is free from intentional
action, free from concepts of right and wrong, taking and giving, the
finite or the infinite. . . . All our daily activities--walking,
standing, sitting, lying down--all response to situations, our dealings
with circumstances as they arise: all this is Tao.9
_Ma-tsu eventually left Huai-jang (if, in fact, he ever met him in the
first place) and presided over a community of Ch'an disciples at K'ai-
yuan temple in Kiangsi. This was to be the incubator for the greatest
thinkers of the eighth century, and the setting for some of the finest
Ch'an anecdotes. The anecdote, incidentally, is the perfect Ch'an
teaching device, since it forces the listener to find its meaning in
his own inner experience. The sermon provided the theoretical basis for
an idea, but the anecdote showed the theory in action and made the
listener share in a real experience, if only vicariously. But first we
will begin with a sermon credited to him, in which he summarizes the
philosophical position he held. There was nothing particularly new
about his understanding; it was his method that was novel. His sermon
said, in essence, that reality is merely our mind, and that
enlightenment comprised the nonrational recognition of this.
_All of you should realize that your own mind is Buddha, that is, this
mind is Buddha's Mind. . . . Those who seek for the Truth should
realize that there is nothing to seek. There is no Buddha but Mind;
there is no Mind but Buddha.10
_
Again there is the counsel against discriminations between good and
evil, since the original Mind transcends these:
_Do not choose what is good, nor reject what is evil, but rather be
free from purity and defilement. Then you will realize the emptiness of
sin.11
_This is not a preachment of values; rather it is the insight that
there is a reality beyond our puny discriminations. If you can achieve
this larger perspective, then good and evil become an inconsequential
part of the larger flow of life.
His sermon then returns to the theme of the mind as the arbiter of
reality, recalling the Void of Nagarjuna and pointing out that even the
workings of the mind are ephemeral and possess no self-nature.
_Thoughts perpetually change and cannot be grasped because they possess
no self-nature. The Triple World [of desire, form, and beyond-form] is
nothing more than one's mind. The multitudinous universe is nothing but
the testimony of one Dharma [truth]. What are seen as forms are the
reflections of the mind. The mind does not exist by itself; its
existence is manifested through forms. . . . If you are aware of this
mind, you will dress, eat, and act spontaneously in life as it
transpires, and thereby cultivate your spiritual nature. There is
nothing more that I can teach you.12
_
The essence of this teaching is that reality is, for us, merely what
our mind says it is, and "enlightenment" or "becoming a Buddha" is
merely coming to terms with ourselves and with this tricky mind that
constantly devises our reality for us.
This credo is remembered most vividly in two anecdotes that were later
enshrined in a famous collection of koans called the Wu-men Kuan (or
Mumonkan in Japanese). In both of these anecdotes, Ma-tsu is asked,
"What is Buddha?"--meaning what is the spirituality that all seek. In
one he replied, "Mind is Buddha" (Mumonkan, Case 30), and in the other
anecdote he said, "No mind, no Buddha" (Mumonkan, Case 33), which
merely affirms that spirituality is in the mind, and for its
realization one must realize the mind.13 In either instance he is merely
following the earlier idea that there is no reality and thus no
enlightenment outside the mind.
These two exchanges are part of a single anecdote of Ma-tsu recorded in
the chronicles.
_A monk asked why the Master maintained, "The Mind is the Buddha." The
Master answered, "Because I want to stop the crying of a baby." The
monk persisted, "When the crying has stopped, what is it then?" "Not
Mind, not Buddha," was the answer. "How do you teach a man who does not
uphold either of these?" The Master said, "I would tell him, 'Not
things.' " The monk again questioned, "If you met a man free from
attachment to all things, what would you tell him?" The Master replied,
"I would let him experience the Great Tao._"14_
_As the scholar John Wu has pointed out, "This dialogue reveals an
important secret about Ma-tsu's art of teaching. Sometimes he used a
positive formula, sometimes he used a negative formula. On the surface
they are contradictory to each other. But when we remember that he was
using them in answering persons of different grades of attainments and
intelligence, the contradiction disappears at once in the light of a
higher unity of purpose, which was in all cases to lead the questioner
to transcend his present state."15 Another example of a seemingly
contradictory position is recorded as a koan in another famous
collection, the Blue Cliff Record (Case 3). In this anecdote, Ma-tsu is
asked one day about his health, and he responded with, "Sun-faced
Buddhas, Moon-faced Buddhas."16 According to a Buddhist tradition, a
Sun-faced Buddha lives for eighteen hundred years, a Moon-faced Buddha
lives only a day and a night. Perhaps he was proposing these two
contradictory cases to demonstrate the irrelevance of an inquiry after
his physical state. It would have been far better if the question had
concerned his mind.
A story describing how Ma-tsu handled other teachers who wandered by
depicts very well the way that he could undermine logic and
categorization. In a particularly famous anecdote, a visiting teacher
proposed a condition of duality, a condition equivalent to that of a
switch that can be either off or on. Having permitted the teacher to
adopt this very un-Zen position, Ma-tsu proceeds to demolish him. The
story goes as follows:
_A monk who lectured on Buddhism came to the Master and asked, "What is
the teaching advocated by the Ch'an masters?" Ma-tsu posed a
counterquestion: "What teachings do you maintain?" The monk replied
that he had lectured on more than twenty sutras and sastras. The Master
exclaimed, "Are you not a lion?" The monk said, "I do not venture to
say that." The Master puffed twice and the monk commented, "This is the
way to teach Ch'an." Ma-tsu retorted, "What way do you mean?" and the
monk said, "The way the lion leaves the den." The Master became silent.
Immediately the monk remarked, "This is also the way of Ch'an
teaching." At this the Master again asked, "What way do you mean?" "The
lion remains in his den." "When there is neither going out nor
remaining in, what way would you say this was?" The monk made no
answer. . . .17
_
Ma-tsu had posed a seemingly unanswerable question, at least a question
that logic could not answer. This provocative exchange, later to be
known as a mondo, was a new teaching technique that departed
significantly from the earlier methods of Hui-neng and Shen-hui, who
mounted a platform, gave a sermon, and then politely received questions
from the audience.
But how did Ma-tsu handle this question when it was presented to him?
He fell back on the fact that reality is what we make it, and all
things return to the mind. He once handled essentially the same
question that he put to the visiting monk, showing how it can be done.
His response is the essence of Zen.
_A monk once drew four lines in front of Ma-tsu. The top line was long
and the remaining three were short. He then demanded of the Master,
"Besides saying that one line is long and the other three are short,
what else could you say?" Ma-tsu drew one line on the ground and said,
"This could be called either long or short. That is my answer._"18_
_Language is deceptive. But if it is used to construct an anti-logical
question, it can equally be used to construct an anti-logical reply.
Ma-tsu discovered and refined what seems to have eluded the earlier
teachers such as Hui-neng and Huai-jang: namely, the trigger mechanism
for sudden enlightenment. As noted earlier, he originated the use of
shouting and blows to precipitate enlightenment, techniques to become
celebrated in later decades in the hands of men such as Huang-po and
Lin-chi, masters who shaped the Rinzai sect. As a typical example,
there is the story of a monk coming to him to ask, "What was the
purpose of Bodhidharma's coming from the West?" which is Ch'an parlance
for "What is the basic principle of Zen?" As the monk bowed reverently
before the old master waiting for the reply that would bring it all
together, Ma-tsu knocked him to the ground, saying, "If I do not strike
you, people all over the country will laugh at me." The hapless monk
picked himself up off the ground and--suddenly realizing he had just
tasted the only reality there is--was enlightened on the spot.19
Obviously, every boxer does not experience enlightenment when he
receives a knockout punch. The blow of enlightenment is meant to rattle
the questioning mind and to disrupt, if only for an instant, its
clinging to abstractions and logic. It seems almost as though
enlightenment were a physical phenomenon that sometimes can best be
achieved by a physical process--such as a blow or a shout.
The violence seemed to work both ways, for the monks often gave him a
dose of his own medicine. An example is reported in the following
story:
_It happened once that his disciple Yin-feng was pushing along a cart,
while Ma-tsu was sitting on the road with his feet stretched out. Yin-
feng requested him to draw back his feet, but Ma-tsu said, "What is
stretched out is not to be drawn back again!" Yin-feng retorted, "Once
advanced, there is no turning backward!'' Disregarding the master, he
kept pushing the cart until it ran over and injured his feet. Ma-tsu
returned to the hall with an axe in his hand, saying, "Let the one who
a few moments ago injured my feet with his cart come forward!" Yin-
feng, not to be daunted, came forward stretching his neck in front of
the master. The master [peacefully] put down his axe.20
_
The significance of this story, if it has any significance, is that it
conveys the atmosphere of Ch'an monasteries around 750. It demonstrates
that the leader of a monastery had to win his spurs. He had to be
tougher, more audacious, and faster than anybody else.
During the T'ang it was common to use the ox as a metaphor for all that
is uncontrollable in human nature. The ox was not necessarily bad; it
just had to be governed. The rigor with which this control was applied
at Ma-tsu's monastery is illustrated in the story concerning one of the
disciples, a former hunter who Ma-tsu encountered one day working in
the monastery kitchen.
"What are you doing?" asked the master--a question that never got a
straight answer from an enlightened Ch'an monk.
"I am herding an ox," the man replied, a metaphorical way of saying he
was trying to discipline himself. "And how," shot back Ma-tsu, "do you
go about tending it?" The monk replied, "Whenever it starts to go to
grass [i.e., self-indulgence], I yank it back by the nostrils [the
tender part of the great animal]."
To which Ma-tsu admiringly replied, "If you really can do that by
yourself, then I may as well retire."21
This story illustrates the emphasis on self-control that was a part of
the Ch'an monasteries. Yet self-control was only to be practiced for
what it gave in return. There were no value judgments or rules that had
to be followed. The point was to do what seemed the most rewarding. For
example, there is a story that a local governor asked Ma-tsu, "Master,
should I eat meat and drink wine?" The master did not give him a reply
that implied a value judgment, but rather outlined the rewards of the
two possible paths: "To eat and drink is your natural right, to abstain
from meat and wine is your chance for greater blessedness."22
Ma-tsu often used the structure of language, with its natural capacity
for parallels, as a teaching tool in itself.
_Another time a monk asked, what is the meaning of Bodhidharma coming
from the West?" "What is the meaning [of your asking] at this moment?"
replied the Master.23
_
The monk was interested in abstract issues (using the Ch'an metaphor
for enlightenment's meaning); Ma-tsu reminded him that the only reality
that mattered was his own being, his own needs. And he did it using
almost identical language.
Ma-tsu was constantly testing his disciples, keeping them on their toes
and reinforcing their enlightenment. There is the story that one
evening while enjoying the moonlight with three of his disciples
(including the two most famous, Huai-hai and Nan- ch'uan), he asked
them the question "what should we do right now, this very moment?"--a
typical Zen challenge. One of the monks said, "It would be best to be
studying the sutras of the ancients who have achieved enlightenment."
The monk Huai-hai, who was later to receive Ma-tsu's mantle, countered,
"It would be good to practice meditation."
At that point Nan-ch'uan, the third monk, simply rose, shook the
sleeves of his robe, and silently walked away. Ma-tsu acknowledged this
as the right answer and declared, "The sutra scriptures are returnable
to the Buddhist canon, and meditation to the undifferentiated ocean,
but Nan-ch'uan alone leaps over and transcends these."24 Nan-ch'uan's
response was a triumph of physical action and simplicity over
religiosity and abstraction.
Ma-tsu is reported in the chronicles to have had 139 enlightened
disciples, many of whom went on to become Ch'an leaders in their own
districts. The most outstanding were the monks Huai-hai and Nan-ch'uan
and a layman named P'ang--all three of whom are today remembered in
anecdotes that have become Ch'an scriptures. But others were probably
just as active and enlightened. Southern Ch'an was expanding, with
mountaintop retreats blossoming everywhere. Many teachers probably have
been forgotten only because they had no disciples who took the pains to
transcribe and preserve their teachings. Ma-tsu himself also apparently
wrote nothing, but he was more fortunate in his disciples. In any case,
he reportedly died in the typical Ch'an way. He predicted his death a
month in advance, and when the time came, he bathed, assumed the
meditation posture, and silently passed on.
Chapter Seven
HUAI-HAI:
FATHER OF MONASTIC CH'AN
Among the many celebrated disciples of Ma-tsu, the man whose influence
has been most pervasive throughout the succeeding centuries was Po-
chang Huai-hai (720-814). He is the master credited with founding the
first wholly Ch'an monastery, with devising a special set of rules for
Ch'an discipline, and with writing a closely argued treatise on sudden
enlightenment. Whereas Ma-tsu and others of his disciples such as Nan-
ch'uan experimented with ways to help novices break through the barrier
of reason, Huai-hai examined the phenomenon of enlightenment itself and
described the mental state of preparedness necessary to reach the Other
Shore. Huai-hai has been somewhat unjustifiably neglected by the modern
Zen movement, perhaps because his expository style did not lend itself
to memorable anecdotes or koan cases.
The accounts of Huai-hai's origin are contradictory, but he seems to
have begun his Buddhist studies early, becoming the pupil of a master
named Tao-chih in a small town in the present-day province of Chekiang.1
(It was this master who gave him the religious name Huai-hai, or "Ocean
of Wisdom.") After he came to maturity, the story goes, he heard of the
great master Ma-tsu in the province of Kiangsi, and he traveled there
to study.
Among the many anecdotes surrounding Huai-hai's stay with Ma-tsu,
perhaps the finest is that of the auspicious first encounter. The story
says that when Huai-hai arrived, the old master immediately asked what
previous temple he had traveled from, followed by: "What do you come
here to find?"
Huai-hai replied, "I have come to discover the truth of Buddha."
To this Ma-tsu replied, "What can you expect to learn from me? Why do
you ignore the treasure in your own house and wander so far abroad?"
Understandably puzzled, Huai-hai asked, "What is this treasure that I
have been ignoring?"
To which came the celebrated reply: "The one who questions me at this
moment is your treasure. Everything is complete in it. It is lacking in
nothing, and furthermore the things it possesses are inexhaustible.
Considering that you can use this treasure freely, why then do you
persist in wandering abroad?" It is said that with these words Huai-hai
suddenly had an intuitive, non-rational acquaintance with his own mind.2
Among the other classic tales of Huai-hai's apprenticeship under Ma-tsu
is the often repeated account of the day the two of them were walking
together along a path when suddenly a flock of migratory geese was
heard passing overhead. Ma-tsu turned to his pupil and asked, "What was
that sound?" Huai-hai innocently replied, "It was the cry of wild
geese." Ma-tsu paused and then demanded of his pupil, "Where have they
gone?" Huai-hai said, "They have flown away."
This was an unacceptably drab, straightforward answer for a Zen man,
and in disgust Ma-tsu whirled, grabbed Huai-hai's nose, and twisted it
until his disciple cried out in panic, causing Ma-tsu to observe, "So
you thought they had flown away. Yet they were here all the time."3
The legends say that this exchange, in the typical harsh style of Ma-
tsu, caused Huai-hai to confront his original nature. What Ma-tsu had
done was to give his pupil a vivid lesson in the concept of an
indivisible unity which pervades the world; things do not come and go--
they are there always, part of a permanent fabric. Huai-hai was being
invited to stop viewing the world as a fragmented collection of
elements and see it rather as a unified whole.
The interactions of master and novice were always dynamic. For example,
another story says that one day Ma-tsu asked Huai-hai how he would
teach Ch'an. Huai-hai responded by holding up a dust whisk vertically.
Ma-tsu continued by asking him, "Is this all there is? Is there nothing
more?" Huai-hai replied by throwing down the whisk. (One interpreter
has said that raising the dust whisk revealed the mind's function,
whereas throwing it down returned function to the mind's substance.)4
According to some versions of this episode, Ma-tsu responded by
shouting at the top of his lungs, rendering Huai-hai deaf for three
days. This shout is said to have been the occasion of Huai-hai's final
enlightenment.
Huai-hai seems to have been a kindly man, warm and personable, not
given to the roughhouse methods of some of his contemporaries. Instead
of flamboyance, we find a friendly type who concentrated on guiding a
community of disciples (sometimes called a "Zen forest") and giving a
helping hand to all. We will pass over the many other anecdotes
involving his stay with Ma-tsu and turn instead to his more significant
contributions to the growth of Ch'an.5 These fall into two major
categories: First, he founded the first wholly Ch'an monastery and for
it formulated a set of monastic rules that are today still respected in
Zen monasteries; and second, he was one of the first Southern Ch'an
masters to explore the psychology of "sudden enlightenment" and to
write a lucid analysis of the mental preparation it required.
Before detailing Huai-hai's contribution to monastic Ch'an, perhaps it
would be well to recall briefly the character of the traditional
Buddhist monastery in China during the T'ang (618-907) era. Buddhist
monasteries had long been governed by a set of rules known as the
_vinaya_. These rules prescribed everything from the color of the robes
for the priesthood to the penalties attached to eating onions or garlic
(forbidden primarily because they were thought to be stimulants, not
necessarily because of their social liabilities in close quarters).
There were also some specific and quite solemn commandments--for
example, monks or nuns could be expelled from the community for
stealing, killing, lying, or sexual congress. Originating in India,
these rules had been subsequently transplanted to China, where they
gradually were made even more strict, although their enforcement
apparently was not always rigorous. Perhaps because of this laxity the
T'ang regime established penalties even more severe than those imposed
by the Buddhist authorities. For example, whereas the _vinaya_
indirectly countenanced the eating of meat (through the loophole that
all charitable gifts must be accepted since they give the laity merit,
and if a gift happened to be meat it still had to be consumed for the
sake of the donor), the T'ang government prescribed thirty days of hard
labor for monks caught partaking. Since citizens entering Buddhist
orders were taken off the tax rolls, the government took pains to
ensure that monastic life was rigorous enough to discourage simple tax
dodgers.7 Although the Chinese Buddhist schools were almost all members
of the side of Buddhism known as Mahayana, they apparently followed the
rules of Theravada Buddhism, since the latter were clearer and more
easily understood.8 Huai-hai decided to merge the two sets of rules and
from them to devise a new set of guidelines specifically for Ch'an,
thereby creating a code of monastic discipline that eventually would
rule Zen behavior throughout the world.
The record concerning how the Ch'an monastic system initially was
established is less detailed than we might wish. The legendary Fourth
Patriarch, Tao-hsin, was said to have been the first _dhyana_ master to
settle down in one place and nurture a band of disciples. _Dhyana_
teachers seem to have allied themselves with the conventional Buddhists
in the decades that followed, living in their monasteries much as the
hermit crab finds a home in the shells of other species. If their
numbers were large they might have their own separate quarters, but
they still had to respect the rules of their host sect, which more
often than not was the Vinaya school.9 Gradually, however, a
transformation occurred, as Ch'an masters became increasingly
distinguishable from the leaders of other sects and Ch'an itself grew
to increasing proportions, particularly in the south.
It is not surprising that the man who made monastic Ch'an a reality was
Ma-tsu's pupil Po-chang Huai-hai. In the recorded anecdotes Huai-hai is
characterized as a level-headed, pragmatic man whom one can easily
imagine having superior administrative ability. As John Wu
characterizes his rules, "It was this rule [of Huai-hai] that
instituted for the first time the Zen monastic system. In its emphasis
on moral discipline and its matter of factness, it is comparable to the
Holy Rule of St. Benedict. The duties of the Abbot and various
functionaries under him are meticulously defined. The daily life of the
monks is regulated in detail. Of particular interest are the rites of
taking vows and the universal duty of working in the fields."10
It is difficult to say exactly what was the nature of the rules Huai-
hai formulated, since his original precepts have been recast a number
of times down through the years, with the earliest surviving version
being that preserved in a 1282 Chinese Yuan Dynasty document called
"the Holy Rule of Po-chang [Huai-hai]." If we look beyond the details,
however, we see that his emphasis on the creation of a self-supporting
monastic establishment was in a sense a further sinicization of Indian
Buddhism, through the rejection of begging as the primary means of
support. (Begging was not abandoned entirely, since it is valuable for
teaching humility; instead it was retained in a regulated, symbolic
form, but made a second line of economic defense.) The monasteries were
intended to survive on their own, since Huai-hai insisted that
meditation and worship be integrated with physical labor. Whereas the
ideal Indian holy man was one who relied on begging, Huai-hai believed
that in China it was holier to work for a living. This was the core of
his teachings, as symbolized in his famous manifesto: "A day without
work is a day without food." Nothing could have been more
sympathetically received among the Chinese, and Huai-hai is probably
rightly credited with inoculating Ch'an against the governmental
persecution of 845 that destroyed so many other Buddhist sects. He
practiced what he preached, and even when he reached old age he
continued to toil in the fields. In fact, his disciples finally became
so concerned for his health that they took the unprecedented step of
hiding his gardening hoe. But true to his rule, he refused to eat until
it was returned.
Perhaps we can infer something of Huai-hai's regulations from the
routine in contemporary Zen monasteries (of the Rinzai sect).11 Monks
rise well before light (before they can see the lines in the palm of
their hand), and after their morning toilet they gather in the main
hall for sunrise devotions--in this case rapid chanting of scriptures, a
device more for developing powers of concentration than for piety. They
then return to the meditation hall, where chanting resumes. Next comes
breakfast, usually plain rice with a modest vegetable garnish, and then
back to the meditation hall for ceremonial tea and announcements of the
day's schedule. Afterward each monk meets individually with the master
in his quarters, where the monk's enlightenment is tested and a koan
may be assigned. (The master, incidentally, enjoys a private room; the
monks sleep together in a common hall, arranged according to rank.)
After this, the monks attend to the garden and grounds of the
monastery, and later in the morning there may be begging or visits to
lay patrons for donations. After lunch (the main meal; its leftovers
are supper) there is more work in the garden of the monastery, planting
and harvesting, as well as repairing the buildings or other maintenance
chores. Later on there may be more chanting, as well as cleaning and
upkeep of the interior of the buildings. And in between there may be
meditation. Then as nightfall descends the evening bell rings out to
signify the work day's ending. During the evening the monk may meditate
more or receive further instruction from the master or his brothers.
Finally, late in the evening, to bed--at the end of a long day. It
should be noted that there are also many special days on which meals,
ceremonies, or activities may assume a different character.
It is significant that the monasteries of early Ch'an are said not to
have had a Buddha hall or a place for worship; rather they had only a
Dharma or lecture hall, in which the master gave a talk, followed by
sharp exchanges with his disciples, who often were rowdy and sometimes
left at will to demonstrate their independence of mind. These were
places of irreverence and unfettered intellectual inquiry; and
apparently there was no enforced study of the traditional Buddhist
literature. With monasteries of their own where they could do as they
pleased, the Ch'an masters found their rebellion complete. Theirs now
was an unhampered search for the perennial philosophy.
With this in mind we may now turn to the psychological teachings of the
lawgiver Huai-hai. Unlike the piecemeal story of his contribution to
monastic life, which is preserved in spirit more than in letter, the
writings on enlightenment that bear his name are rather firmly
attributed. This is, in fact, a significant new aspect of Ch'an
history, since his work represents one of the oldest documents actually
composed by a master--as compared to a sermon transcribed and edited by
some follower. According to the extant writings, after Huai-hai had
studied with Ma-tsu for several years, he returned to his home temple
to care for his first master, Tao-chih, who was by then aged and ill--an
act of duty any Chinese would immediately understand. It was during
this return visit with his old master that he composed a treatise
setting forth the theoretical basis of sudden enlightenment. It is said
that when this document was shown to Ma-tsu, he compared Huai-hai to a
great pearl whose luster penetrated all time and space. (Curiously, Ma-
tsu himself appears not to have made a great fuss about the meaning of
sudden enlightenment, seemingly taking the "theory" for granted and
moving along to the "practice.")
"The Zen Teaching of Huai-hai on Sudden Illumination" was
composed in the form of an imaginary question-and-answer session, in
which Huai-hai effectively interviewed himself on the question of
sudden enlightenment and the specific problems a person might encounter
in trying to prepare for it. He stressed that one of the most important
things to do was to suspend making value judgments about things, since
this leads almost directly to splitting things into camps of good and
bad, likes and dislikes. This opens one to the world of categories and
dualities, just the opposite from oneness. According to Huai-hai, the
first thing to do is strive for:
_. . . total relinquishment of ideas as to the dual nature of good and
bad, being and non-being, love and aversion, void and non-void,
concentration and distraction, pure and impure. By giving all of them
up, we attain to a state in which all opposites are seen as void. . . .
Once we attain that state, not a single form can be discerned. Why?
Because our self-nature is immaterial and does not catch a single thing
foreign to itself. That which contains no single thing is true Reality.
. . .12
_
The desire to avoid love and aversion is inextricably tied with the
freedom from distinctions, duality, judgments, or prejudices:
Wisdom means the ability to distinguish every sort of good and evil;
_dhyana_ means that, though making these distinctions, you remain
wholly unaffected by love or aversion for them.13
Elsewhere he describes this goal as:
_Being able to behold men, women and all the various sorts of
appearances while remaining as free from love and aversion as if they
were actually not seen at all. . . .14
_In this manner we can operate on the principle of unity, even in a
world where appearances have multiplicity.
But how exactly can we say that all things are one? It is not something
that can be fully understood with the rational mind, and initially it
must be taken partly on faith, as a holding action until we can
understand it intuitively. His translator John Blofeld uses the
traditional Buddhist analogy of the sea, which is both constantly
changing and yet eternally changeless: "Contemplation of the movement
and shifting composition of sea-waves is a useful symbolical approach;
for, not only are the waves and the sea identical in substance, but
also a given wave does not preserve its individual identity for a
single moment as the water composing it is never for an instant
entirely the same; thus, by the time it reaches us from a distance,
every drop it contains will be other than the drops composing it when
we saw it first. On the other hand, sea-water is sea-water and the wave
is entirely composed of that. Each wave is void--a mere fluctuating
appearance identical in substance with every other wave and with the
entire ocean. . . ."15 Waves are a perfect metaphor for the idea of
everything and nothing at once, since they are both ephemeral and part
of a larger reality, the sea, out of which they emerge, assume a
physical appearance, and then dissolve. They seem to exist, yet you
cannot grasp and hold them. They are both existing and nonexistent.
Thus they resemble the Void, a kind of energy that manifests itself
through diverse illusory objects of the senses, but which is itself
ungraspable, changeless unity. With this in mind, perhaps it is easier
to understand Huai-hai when he declares:
_The nature of the Absolute is void and yet not void. How so? The
marvellous "substance" of the Absolute, having neither form nor shape,
is therefore undiscoverable; hence it is void. Nevertheless, that
immaterial, formless "substance" contains functions as numerous as the
sands of the Ganges, functions which respond unfailingly to
circumstances, so it is also described as not void.16
_
By focusing on this idea of unity in an Absolute, we also interact with
our own perception of time. Since it is important that the mind not
dwell on anything, naturally enough this applies to time as well as
space.
_If you want to understand the non-dwelling mind very clearly, while
you are actually sitting in meditation, you must be cognizant only of
the mind. . . . Whatever is past is past, so do not sit in judgment
upon it; for when minding about the past ceases of itself, it can be
said that there is no longer any past. Whatever is in the future is not
here yet, so do not direct your hopes and longings towards it; for,
when minding about the future ceases of itself, it can be said that
there is no future. Whatever is present is now at hand; just be
conscious of your non-attachment to everything--non-attachment in the
sense of not allowing any love or aversion for anything to enter your
mind; for, when minding the present ceases of itself, we may say that
there is no present.17
_
He has taken the idea of the "now" to an interesting new dimension. By
cutting off thoughts of past and future, you not only save yourself
mental anguish, you also no longer need distinguish the idea of the
"present" . . . and you have just eliminated a major aspect of
attachment.
Huai-hai is not blind to the difficulty of such rigorous mind control,
and he offers some of the first practical advice from a Ch'an master
for controlling the mind. Not surprisingly, it is an admonition to stop
trying so hard, to just focus on goals rather than forcing the mind's
behavior. For example, if you are meditating and your mind wants to
meander and look for something to dwell on, what should you do?
_Should your mind wander away, do not follow it, whereupon your
wandering mind will stop wandering of its own accord. Should your mind
desire to linger somewhere, do not follow it and do not dwell there,
whereupon your mind's questing for a dwelling place will cease of its
own accord. Thereby, you will come to possess a non-dwelling mind--a
mind which remains in the state of non-dwelling. If you are fully aware
in yourself of a non-dwelling mind, you will discover that there is
just the fact of dwelling, with nothing to dwell upon or not to dwell
upon. This full awareness in yourself of a mind dwelling upon nothing
is known as having a clear perception of your own mind or, in other
words, as having a clear perception of your own nature.18
_
By way of wrapping up his treatise, he summarizes his technique for
sudden illumination in a bold manifesto:
_You should know that setting forth the principle of deliverance in its
entirety amounts only to this--WHEN THINGS HAPPEN, MAKE NO RESPONSE:
KEEP YOUR MINDS FROM DWELLING ON ANY THING WHATSOEVER: KEEP THEM
FOREVER STILL AS THE VOID AND UTTERLY PURE.19
_Perhaps it is time we asked what exactly is the point of all this.
When we have achieved his goal, we have effectively cut off all
attachments, rationality, discernment, values, sensations. But why
would we want to do this in the first place? Huai-hai answers that by
releasing ourselves from this enslaving bondage to our ego and its
attachments, we become the masters of our own being, free to experience
the world but no longer at its mercy. And furthermore we no longer have
even to think about being in the state of "no-thought." It is this
natural state of wisdom that is our goal.
_Concentration (_dhyana_) involves the stilling of your mind . . . so
that you remain wholly unmoved by surrounding phenomena. Wisdom means
that your stillness of mind is not disturbed by your giving any thought
to that stillness, that your purity is unmarred by your entertaining
any thought of purity and that, in the midst of such pairs of opposites
as good and evil, you are able to distinguish between them without
being stained by them and, in this way, to reach the state of being
perfectly at ease and free of all dependence.20
_This is the state called enlightenment, a new way of experiencing
reality that relies entirely upon intuition. Then we realize that all
this time our rational mind has been leading us along, telling us that
appearances are real and yet keeping us from really experiencing things
firsthand, since the rational mind believes in names, categories,
duality. Consequently, before this sudden moment of intuitive
understanding, we saw the world as through a glass darkly, with
ourselves as subject and the falsely perceived exterior world as
object. After this experience we see things clearly, but we perceive
them for what they really are--creations of mind as devoid of genuine
substance as the world we create in our dreams or the ocean's waves
that we can see but cannot hold. Knowing this, we can regard the world
dispassionately, no longer caught in the web of ego involvement that
enslaves those not yet enlightened. Since this whole world view only
can be understood intuitively, it is not surprising that it must one
day "dawn on you" when you least expect, like a sudden inspiration that
hits you after logic has failed. Huai-hai's instructions are intended
to be preparations for this moment, attributes to adopt that will make
you ready and receptive when your "sudden" enlightenment hits.
Huai-hai's concept of sudden enlightenment was quite
straightforward, and it apparently was not absolutely necessary that
meditation be employed. (In fact, he has defined _dhyana _as a state of
mind, not an action.) Enlightenment is release from the ego, the
primary thing standing in the way of mental peace in a world of getting
and spending, of conflict and competition. The ancient Ch'an masters
knew well the griefs and mental distress that haunt the heart of man,
and thinkers such as Huai-hai explored its cure more fully than we
realize today.
Chapter Eight
NAN-CH'UAN AND CHAO-CHOU:
MASTERS OF THE IRRATIONAL
Nan-ch'uan P'u-yuan
The best-remembered disciple of Ma-tsu was Nan-ch'uan P'u-yuan (748-
835), founder of a famous monastery and a brilliant if short-lived
lineage whose finest example was his pupil Chao-chou Ts'ung-shen (778-
897). _The Transmission of the Lamp _reports that Nan-ch'uan was born
in the North China province of Honan.1 He began study of meditation at
age ten, and according to the _Biographies of Eminent Monks _compiled
in the Sung (_Sung kao-seng chuan_) he went to study Buddhism on Mt.
Sung, near Loyang, when he was thirty and became a priest of
traditional Buddhism, apparently of the Vinaya school.2 After his
ordination, he traveled to various of the better-known monasteries,
perfected his knowledge of Buddhist scriptures, and landed finally at
the mountain establishment of the Ch'an master Ma-tsu.
The legend says that although there were eight hundred followers of Ma-
tsu, the precocious Nan-ch'uan was immediately elevated to the position
of the foremost disciple, and none of the others ventured to debate
with him.3 He finally achieved his complete enlightenment under the old
master. It is not clear when he arrived or how long he stayed with Ma-
tsu, but he reportedly left the monastery in 795--as he neared fifty--and
founded his own community on Mt. Nan-ch'uan, a location in Anhwei
province north of Kiangsi, building the original lodging with his own
hands and attracting several hundred disciples. His most famous
follower, aside from the later master Chao-chou, was the layman Lu
Hsuan, the provincial governor of the Hsuan district. The story says
that after residing in his mountain retreat for thirty years, without
once venturing out, he finally acceded to the requests of the governor
to come down and teach Ch'an to the people on the plain. He thus
enjoyed a great fame as a teacher of Ch'an, although today he is
remembered by anecdotes rather than by any attributed writings.
The governor seems to have been puzzled by some of the teachings of
Seng-chao (384-414), the early, pre-Ch'an Buddhist. He specifically
asked Nan-ch'uan the meaning of a statement in The Book of Chao that
all things come from the same source and accordingly there can be no
difference between right and wrong, which are themselves the same, by
virtue of a common origin. The story says that Nan-ch'uan pointed to a
patch of peonies in the garden and said, "Governor, when people of the
present day see these blossoms, it is as if they see them in a dream."4
The point seerns to be that the unenlightened cannot fully perceive the
flower as it really is, cannot experience it directly and purely.
Instead it is approached as an object apart from the viewer, the
subject. It is not seen as an extension of his or her own reality. The
ordinary mind permits this dichotomy of nature, but in the Zen mind,
man and flower become one, merged into a seamless fabric of life. This
is the kind of statement that in later years would be isolated from the
chronicles and made into a "public case" or koan, a teaching device for
novices. Its meaning is not meant to be discerned through the logical
processes, and even less through the medium of language. When a later
master was asked what Nan-ch'uan had meant, he answered with the
equally enigmatic "Pass me a brick."5
The other celebrated story about the governor is perhaps easier to
understand. The story says that one day Lu Hsuan posed the following
problem to Nan-ch'uan: "What if I told you that a man had raised a
goose in a bottle, watching it grow until one day he realized that it
had grown too large to pass through the bottle's neck? Since he did not
want to break the bottle or kill the goose, how would he get it out?"
Nan-ch'uan began quietly, "My esteemed governor," and then he shouted,
"THE GOOSE IS OUT!" The story says that Lu Hsuan suddenly was
enlightened on the spot.6 Nan-ch'uan had shown that one who posed a
hypothetical question could be answered by an equally hypothetical
response. There is a common Ch'an (and Taoist) reference to a truth
being caught in the net of words. Here Nan-ch'uan shows how to extract
truth from verbal encumbrances. Another anecdote recounts a similar
incident:
_A monk said to Nan-ch'uan, "There is a jewel in the sky; how can we
get hold of it?" Nan-ch'uan said, "Cut down bamboos and make a ladder,
put it up in the sky, and get hold of it!'' The monk said, "How can the
ladder be put up in the sky?" Nan-ch'uan said, "How can you doubt your
getting hold of the jewel?_"7_
_
Many of his finest exchanges with pupils are preserved in _The
Transmission of the Lamp_. For maximum impact it is perhaps best to
lean back and let his wordplay wash over the rational mind like a cool,
cleansing surf. As with the Taoist Chuang Tzu, the best way to
comprehend this antilogical phenomenon is to forget about trying to
grasp it intellectually, for only then can we understand.
_The Governor said, "There is a piece of stone in my house. Sometimes
it stands up and sometimes it lies down. Now, can it be carved into the
image of Buddha?" "Yes, it is possible," answered the Master. "But it
is impossible to do so?" countered the Governor."It is impossible! It
is impossible!" exclaimed the Master.8
_
This dialogue sounds almost as though it were from an undiscovered
scene from Waiting for Godot, as Vladimir and Estragon test the
meaninglessness of language. And for pure Ionesco, it is hard to top
the following incident:
_Once Master Nan-ch'uan told Kuei-tsung and Ma-yu that he was going to
take them with him to visit Nan-yang Hui-chung, the National Teacher.
Before they began their journey, Nan-ch'uan drew a circle on the road
and said, "As soon as you give a right answer we will be on our way."
Thereupon Kuei-tsung sat down inside the circle and Ma-yu bowed in
woman's fashion. The Master said to them, "Judging by this answer, it
will not be necessary to go._"9_
_
The attitude of Nan-ch'uan toward conventional pieties, as well as
toward the societal, rationalistic concerns of Confucianism, are
perhaps best illustrated by the farewell he gave to his distinguished
follower:
_When Governor Lu was about to return to his office in Hsuan-cheng, he
came to bid the Master good-bye. The latter asked him, "Governor, you
are going back to the capital. How will you govern the people?" The
Governor replied, "I will govern them through wisdom." The Master
remarked, "If this is true, the people will suffer for it._"10_
_
Nan-ch'uan had a refreshing lack of pomposity that would have well
served a good many other Zen masters, ancient and modern.
_When the Master was washing his clothes, a monk said, "Master! You
still are not free from 'this'?" Master Nan-ch'uan replied, lifting the
clothes, "What can you do about 'this'?_"11_
_This calls to mind the anecdote concerning Alexander the Great, who
when asked if he was a god as had been widely reported, responded by
suggesting that the question be directed to the man who carried out his
chamber pot.
His attitude toward the great Ch'an teachers of the past seems
similarly lacking in awe.
_A monk inquired, "From patriarch to patriarch there is a transmission.
What is it that they transmit to one another?" The Master said, "One,
two, three, four, five." The monk asked, "What is that which was
possessed by the ancients?" The Master said, "When it can be possessed,
I will tell you." The monk said dubiously, "Master, why should you
lie?" The Master replied, "I do not lie. [The Sixth Patriarch Hui-neng]
lied._"12_
_
Nan-ch'uan was accustomed to the rough-and-tumble of Ma-tsu's
monastery, a place of shouting, beating, harangues, insults, "mindless"
interviews, misleading clues, and mind-fatiguing "irrelevancies." Yet
it was all done with a high intensity and intended for the quite noble
purpose of forcing a disciple to find his own first nature, his own
enlightenment. The monastery as it developed under these wild men of
Southern Ch'an was nothing less than a high-pressure cell for those who
chose to enter. Although these new techniques for shaking
nonintellectual insights into Ch'an novices were essentially the
invention of Ma-tsu, they were transplanted, refined, and expanded by
men like Nan-ch'uan, whose new monastery seems to have had the same
deadly-serious zaniness as Ma-tsu's.
Chao-chou Ts'ung-shen
Some of the most instructive anecdotes associated with Nan-ch'uan are
those involving his star pupil, Chao-chou Ts'ung-shen (778-897), who
came to be one of the major figures of the Golden Age of Ch'an and one
of the best-remembered of the wild Southern masters. Although his real
name was Ts'ung-shen, he is remembered in history (as are many Ch'an
masters) by the name of the mountain where he held forth during his
mature years. He was born in Ts'ao-chou in Shantung and early on became
a novice monk at a local monastery. However, the urge to travel was
irresistible and he left before being ordained, arriving at Nan-
ch'uan's monastery while still a lad. The traditional first exchange
typifies their long and fruitful relationship. Nan-ch'uan opened with
the standard question:
_"Where have you just come from?"
"I have just left Shui-hsiang [named for a famous state of
Buddha]."
"Have you seen the standing image of Buddha?"
"What I see is not a standing image of Buddha but a supine Enlightened
One!"
"Are you your own master or not?"
"Yes, I am. [i.e., I already have a master.]"
"Where is this master of yours?"
"In the middle of the winter the weather becomes bitterly cold. I wish
all blessings on you, sir."
At this, Nan-ch'uan decided that this visitor was promising and
permitted him to become his disciple.13
_
Chao-chou's strange answer seems to have been his own way of signifying
he had chosen Nan-ch'uan as his future master. Nan-ch'uan, for his own
part, seems to have recognized in this quizzical repartee all the
makings of a great Ch'an worthy.
The exploits of Nan-ch'uan and Chao-chou form the core of the great
anecdotal literature of Ch'an's Golden Age. Neither was a great
innovator, a great writer, or a great organizer, but together they were
able to explore the highest limits of the dialogue as a vehicle for
enlightenment. And their dialogues, incidentally, did not always
necessarily require words.
_One day, in the monastery of Nan-chu'an, the monks of the east and
west wing had a dispute over the possession of a cat. They all came to
Nan-ch'uan for arbitration. Holding a knife in one hand and the cat in
the other, Nan-ch'uan said, "If any one of you can say the right thing,
this cat will be saved; otherwise it will be cut into two pieces." None
of the monks could say anything. Nan-ch'uan then killed the cat. In the
evening, when Chao-chou returned to the monastery, Nan-ch'uan asked him
what he would have said had he been there at the time. Chao-chou took
off his straw sandals, put them upon his head, and walked out.
Whereupon Nan-ch'uan commented, "Oh, if only you had been here, the cat
would have been saved._"14_
_
Chao-chou's response used no language and was devoid of distinctions,
being neither positive nor negative. This is one of the most celebrated
stories in _The Transmission of the Lamp_, and one that is probably
richer if we avoid subjecting it to too much commentary.
The point was specifically intended to be as simple as possible, but
this very simplicity is disturbing to the complicated intellectual
mind. There is a particularly telling story of the exchange Chao-chou
held with Nan-ch'uan concerning the Tao, meaning the way to
enlightenment:
_When Chao-chou asked his master, "What is the Tao?" the latter
replied, "Tao is nothing else than the ordinary mind." "Is there any
way to approach it?" pursued Chao-chou further. "Once you intend to
approach it," said Nan-ch'uan, "you are on the wrong track." "Barring
conscious intention," the disciple continued to inquire, "how can we
attain to a knowledge of the Tao?" To this the master replied, "Tao
belongs neither to knowledge nor to no-knowledge. For knowledge is but
illusive perception, while no-knowledge is mere confusion. If you
really attain true comprehension of the Tao, unshadowed by the
slightest doubt, your vision will be like the infinite space, free of
all limits and obstacles. Its truth or falsehood cannot be established
artificially by external proofs." At these words Chao-chou came to an
enlightenment. Only after this did he take his vows and become a
professed monk.15
_
Nan-ch'uan's assertion that Tao is nothing else than the ordinary mind,
but that it cannot be reached by deliberate searching, is the
longstanding commonplace of Ch'an. However, he here adds an interesting
new assertion: He claims here that although the person finding this
enlightenment has no doubt of its reality, it cannot be proved or
disproved by any objective tests. There is no way that the enlightened
person can be shown objectively to have achieved his goal. The Ch'an
masters could test enlightenment by matching the claimant's illogic
against their own; if his "craziness" matched, then the disciple
passed. But there is, by definition, no objective test of
enlightenment. But then, how do you test the ultimate realization that
there is nothing to realize other than what you knew all along? Quite
simply, the master's intuition is the final authority.
Their dialogues frequently were full of electricity, as witness another
exchange that ended quite differently:
_Chao-chou asked, "Tao is not external to things; the externality of
things is not Tao. Then what is the Tao that is beyond things?" The
master struck him. Thereupon Chao- chou took hold of the stick and
said, "From now on, do not strike a man by mistake." The Master said,
"We can easily differentiate between a dragon and a snake, but nobody
can fool a Ch'an monk._"10_
_
Chao-chou here seems to be declaring to Nan-ch'uan that his
enlightenment is genuine. And Nan-ch'uan, for his part, is asserting
that the Master's judgment, not the monk's, is the final criterion. In
another incident Chao-chou actually has the last word.
_Once Nan-ch'uan said to Chao-chou, "Nowadays it is best to live and
work among members of a different species from us." (This recalls the
Buddhist proverb: It is easier to save the beasts than to save
mankind.) Chao-chou, however, thought otherwise. He said, "Leaving
alone the question of 'different,' let me ask you what is 'species'
anyway?" Nan-ch'uan put both of his hands on the ground, to indicate
the species of the quadrupeds. Chao-chou, approaching him from behind,
trampled him to the ground, and then ran into the Nirvana Hall crying,
"I repent, I repent." Nan-ch'uan, who appreciated his act of trampling,
did not understand the reason of his repentance. So he sent his
attendant to ask the disciple what was he repenting for. Chao-chou
replied, "I repent that I did not trample him twice over._"17_
_
In spite of such occasional bursts of exuberance, Chao-chou seems
overall to have been comparatively mild-mannered for a Ch'an master. He
rarely chose to berate or beat his disciples, as did Ma-tsu or his own
master, Nan-ch'uan. In many ways, Chao-chou was the finest hope for the
lineage of Nan-ch'uan, but he seems not to have been overly concerned
with its continuation. In fact, it is somewhat ironic that Huai-hai,
who was more an organizer than a creator, ended up with a lineage
perpetuating his line down to the present day, whereas Nan-ch'uan's
lineage effectively ended with his disciple Chao-chou, although both
men were remarkable teachers. In fact, Chao-chou almost never did
settle down to run a monastery. After Nan-ch'uan died he resumed his
travels and for many years roamed across China, visiting with other
Ch'an masters. He seems to have gradually worked his way back north,
for it was in the north that he realized his most lasting fame and
influence. But his reputation was gained before he had a monastery of
his own and without the aid of permanent disciples. The real acclaim
seems to have been associated with a journey to a famous Buddhist
pilgrimage site, Mt. Wut'ai, in the northeastern edge of Shensi
province, where he preached a sermon that brought him wide recognition.
Although he loved nothing more than wandering the craggy mountains of
China, friends tried to convince him to settle down--as related in an
incident when he was near eighty, after many years of wandering:
_Once, as he was visiting Chu-yu, the latter said, "A man of your age
should try to find a place to settle down and teach." "Where is my
abiding place?" Chao-chou asked back. "What?" said his host, "With so
many years on your head, you have not even come to know where your
permanent home is!" Chao-chou said, "For thirty years I have roamed
freely on horseback. Today, for the first time I am kicked by an
ass!_"18_
_
He finally did settle down, at eighty, accepting an invitation to come
and live at the Kuan-yin monastery in Chao-chou in northeastern China,
where he stayed until his death some forty years later. His lack of
interest in worldly, administrative details is illustrated by the story
that during his forty years as abbot of the monastery he installed no
new furnishings and made no attempt to collect alms. Perhaps this tells
us why Huai-hai's line won the day. Yet Chao-chou was the popular
favorite. His preference for colloquial language endeared him to the
people. He tried to demonstrate that enlightenment can be found and
subsequently heightened through ordinary everyday activities. The
following anecdote suggests his idea of Buddhism had little to do with
the Buddha:
_Master Chao-chou was asked by a monk, "Who is the Buddha?" "The one in
the shrine," was the answer. "Isn't it a clay statue that sits in the
shrine?" the monk went on.
"Yes, that is right."
"Then who is the Buddha?" the monk repeated.
"The one in the shrine," replied the Master.
A monk asked, "What is my own self?"
"Have you finished your rice gruel?" asked the Master.
"Yes, I have finished it," replied the monk.
"Then go and wash your dishes," said the Master.
When the monk heard this, he was suddenly awakened.19
_
The thrust of this anecdote is that through the everyday doing of what
needs to be done, we can find authentic values and our original nature.
As the modern scholar Chang Chung-yuan points out, "This simple
activity of the Ch'an monk, washing the dishes after eating gruel, is
the most ordinary thing, the sort of activity that is completely
spontaneous and requires no mental effort. While engaged in it, a man
is free from assertion and negation."20
When we are doing manual tasks we experience them directly; we do not
have to intellectualize about them. This acting without thought,
without judgments of good or bad, is in fact a parable of
enlightenment. So it was that Chao-chou could so effectively use rote
tasks as a teaching device, for they showed a novice how he could free
his mind from its enslavement to opinions and values. This stress on
the meaningfulness of daily manual activities, as distinct from
philosophical speculation, seems to have been the major position of
Chao-chou. This attitude is particularly borne out in another
celebrated Chao-chou anecdote.