them, "Have you been here before?" "Yes," the latter replied. "Help
yourself to a cup of tea," he said. Then he asked another, "Have you
been here before?" "No, Your Reverence, this is my first visit here."
Chao-chou again said, "Help yourself to a cup of tea." The Prior of the
monastery took Chao-chou to task, saying, "The one had been here
before, and you gave him a cup of tea. The other had not been here, and
you gave him likewise a cup of tea. What is the meaning of this?" Chao-
chou called out, "Prior!" "Yes," responded the Prior. "Help yourself to
a cup of tea!_"21_
_
Behind this possibly deceptive simplicity, however, there must have
been a penetrating intelligence, for a very large number of his
anecdotes were important enough to become enshrined in those famous
collections of koans the Mumonkan and the Blue Cliff Record. One of the
best known is the following:
_A monk asked, "Since all things return to One, where does this One
return to?" "When I was in Tsing-chou, I had a robe made which weighed
seven chin [pounds]" replied the Master.22
_The answer is a perfect example of "no-thought," the anti-logic
condition in which rationality is disengaged. To attempt to subject it
to analysis would be to miss the entire point.
An even more famous koan, and one that has become the traditional
starting point for beginners, is the following:
_A monk asked Chao-chou, "Has a dog the Buddha Nature?" Chao-chou
answered, "Mu._"23_
_Here the word _mu_, meaning "nothingness" or "un," is an elegant
resolution of a perplexing Zen dilemma. Had Chao-chou answered in the
affirmative, he would have been tacitly instigating a dualistic view of
the universe, in which a dog and a man are allowed to be discussed as
separate objects. But to have responded negatively would have been to
even more strongly betray the Zen teaching of the Oneness permeating
all things. An answer was called for, but not an explanation. So the
master responded with a nonword--a sound that has been adopted in later
Zen practice as symbolic of the unity of all things.
This wisdom made Chao-chou such a legend in his own lifetime that many
monks from the south came north to try to test him, but he always
outwitted them, even when he was well past a hundred. Perhaps it would
be well to round out his story with a garland of some of the exchanges
he had with new monks:
_A new arrival said apologetically to the master, "I have come here
empty-handed!" "Lay it down then!" said the master. "Since I have
brought nothing with me, what can I lay down?" asked the visitor. "Then
go on carrying it!" said the master.24
One day Chao-chou fell down in the snow, and called out, "Help me up!
Help me up!" A monk came and lay down beside him. Chao-chou got up and
went away.25
A monk asked, "When a beggar comes, what shall we give him?" The master
answered, "He is lacking in nothing."26
When a monk asked him, "What is the real significance of Bodhidharma's
coming from the west?" his answer was, "The cypress tree in the
courtyard." When the monk protested that Chao-chou was only referring
to a mere object, the Abbot said, "No, I am not referring you to an
object." The monk then repeated again the question. "The cypress tree
in the courtyard!" said the Abbot once more.27
_
_A monk besought him to tell him the most vitally important principle
of Ch'an. The master excused himself by saying, "I must now go to make
water. Think even such a trifling thing I have to do in person."28
_Chao-chou was of a unique breed of "Golden Age" masters, who created
Ch'an's finest moment. Even Chao-chou knew this, for he is quoted as
recognizing that Ch'an had already passed through its most dynamic
epoch.
_"Ninety years ago," he said, "I saw more than eighty enlightened
masters in the lineage of Ma-tsu; all of them were creative spirits. Of
late years, the pursuit of Ch'an has become more and more trivialized
and ramified. Removed ever farther from the original spirit of men of
supreme wisdom, the process of degeneration will go on from generation
to generation._"29_
_
Chao-chou died in his one hundred and twentieth year, surely one of the
most venerable Ch'an masters. Fortunately his pessimistic assessment of
Ch'an's future was only partly correct. Although he himself had no
illustrious heirs, there were other Southern Ch'an masters who would
extend the lineage of Ma-tsu into what would one day be the Rinzai
school, among these a layman named P'ang and the master Huang-po.
Chapter Nine
P'ANG AND HAN-SHAN:
LAYMAN AND POET
_Han-shan
_
Each of the better-known disciples of Ma-tsu exemplified some
particular aspect of Ch'an: Whereas Po-chang Huai-hai advanced Ch'an's
organizational and analytical side, Nan-ch'uan embodied the illogical,
psychologically jolting approach to the teaching. But what about the
Ch'an outside the monasteries? Did Ma-tsu's influence extend to the lay
community? Although little has been preserved to help answer these
questions, we do have the stories of two Ch'an poets who operated
outside the monastic system: Layman P'ang (740?-811) and Han-shan
(760?-840?). They were part of a movement called _chu-shih_, lay
believers who were drawn to Buddhism but rejected the formal practices,
preferring to remain outside the establishment and seek enlightenment
on their own.1 However, P'ang studied under Ma-tsu himself, and Han-shan
sometimes echoed the master's teachings in his verse.
Layman P'ang
The man known to history as Layman P'ang was born in the mid-eighth
century.2 He grew to manhood in the city of Heng-yang, where his
Confucianist father served as a middle-level official. Although he was
educated in all the classics, he became a practicing Buddhist early and
never faltered in his devotion. Sometime after marrying he became so
obsessed with the classic Chinese ideal of a spiritual-poetic hermitage
that he actually had a thatched cottage built adjacent to his house.
Here he spent time with his wife--and now a daughter and son--meditating,
composing poetry, and engaging in characteristically Chinese musings. A
story relates that he was sitting in his thatched cottage one day when
he became exasperated with the difficulties of his path and declared,
"How difficult it is! How difficult it is! My studies are like drying
the fibers of ten thousand pounds of flax by hanging them in the sun."
His wife overheard this outburst and contradicted him, "Easy, easy,
easy. It's like touching your feet to the ground when you get out of
bed. I have found the teaching right in the tops of flowering plants."
His daughter, Ling-chao, heard both outbursts and showed them the truth
with her assertion, "My study is neither difficult nor easy. When I am
hungry I eat. When I am tired I rest."3
Then one day, thought to have been sometime between the years 785 and
790, P'ang decided to go the final step and sever his ties with the
materialism that weighed him down. After donating his house for a
temple, he loaded his remaining possessions into a boat--which he
proceeded to maneuver into the middle of a river and sink.
We do not know if his wife and son welcomed this final freedom from
material enslavement, but his daughter seems to have approved, for she
helped him wend his now-penurious way through the world by assisting
him in making and selling bamboo household articles. Free at last,
P'ang traveled about from place to place with no fixed abode, living,
so the legends say, "like a leaf." The image of P'ang and his daughter
as itinerant peddlers, wandering from place to place, made a searing
impression on the Chinese mind, and for centuries he has been admired
in China--admired, but not necessarily emulated.
Whom did P'ang go to visit? He seems to have known personally every
major Ch'an figure in China. The first master visited was the famous
Shih-t'ou (700-790), sometime rival of Ma-tsu. (It will be recalled
that the Sixth Patriarch, Hui-neng, had among his disciples a master
called Huai-jang (677-744), teacher of Ma-tsu and head of the lineage
of now Japanese Rinzai. Another of the Sixth Patriarch's legendary
followers was Hsing-ssu [d. 740], whose pupil Shih-t'ou is connected to
the line that became Japanese Soto. Ma-tsu and Shih-t'ou headed the two
major movements of Southern Ch'an in the eighth century.)4 In 786 P'ang
appeared at the retreat of Shih-t'ou on the mountain called Nan-yueh.
He greeted Shih-t'ou by asking him one of the standard Ch'an questions,
which Shih-t'ou answered by quietly placing a hand over P'ang's mouth--
causing the Layman's first enlightenment experience. P'ang studied
under Shih-t'ou--although probably in a nonmonastic capacity--for some
time, until one day Shih-t'ou decided to test him.
"Tell me," began Shih-t'ou, "how have you practiced Ch'an after coming
here to this mountain?"
P'ang shot back in a characteristic manner, saying, "There is really
nothing words can reveal about my daily life."
Shih-t'ou continued, "It is just because I know words cannot that I ask
you now."
At this, P'ang was moved to offer a verse:
_My daily activities are not unusual,
I'm just naturally in harmony with them.
Grasping nothing, discarding nothing,
In every place there's no hindrance, no conflict.
[My] supernatural power and marvelous activity:
Drawing water and carrying firewood.(5)
_
The declaration that drawing water and carrying firewood were
miraculous acts demonstrated P'ang's understanding of "everyday-
mindedness"--the teaching of no-teaching, the approach of no-approach.6
The story says that Shih-t'ou acknowledged the Layman's enlightenment,
and went on to inquire whether P'ang wished to exchange his pauper's
robe of white for a monk's raiment of black. P'ang reputedly answered
him with an abrupt "I will do what I like." Apparently concluding that
he had absorbed all of Shih-t'ou's teaching, P'ang arose and absented
himself, heading for Kiangsi and the master Ma-tsu.
P'ang's adventures with Ma-tsu are not particularly well
recorded, given the two years he reportedly studied under the master.
However, the account of their meeting has become a Ch'an standard.
According to the story, P'ang asked Ma-tsu, "What kind of
man is he who has no companion among all things?"
Ma-tsu answered, "After you swallow all the water in the West
River in one gulp, I will tell you." It is said that when P'ang heard
this, he was suddenly aware of the essence of Ch'an.7
If this exchange seems puzzling, with its subtle wordplay that weaves
in and out between realism and symbolism, what about another recorded
exchange between the two:
_One day the Layman addressed Ma-tsu, saying: "A man of unobscured
original nature asks you please to look upward."
Ma-tsu looked straight down.
The Layman said: "You alone play marvelously on the stringless ch'in
[lute]."
Ma-tsu looked straight up.
The Layman bowed low. Ma-tsu returned to his quarters.
"Just now bungled it trying to be smart," then said the Layman.8
_
The modern master Charles Luk speculates that P'ang's request to Ma-tsu
to look up at an enlightened man was intended to trap the old master:
"In reply Ma-tsu looked down to reveal the functioning of the
enlightened mind. P'ang then praised the master for playing so well on
the stringless lute. Thereat Ma-tsu looked up to return functioning to
the enlightened mind. . . . In Ch'an parlance, looking down is
'function,' which means the mind wandering outside to deliver living
beings, and looking up is returning function to 'substance' (the mind)
after the work of salvation has been done. P'ang's act of prostrating
is 'function' and Ma-tsu's return to the abbot's room means returning
function to 'substance' to end the dialogue, for nothing further can be
added to reveal substance and function."9
Although the Layman declined monastic orders, he apparently could hold
his own with the best of Ma-tsu's followers, as well as with other
Ch'an monks he encountered in his travels. Often monks sought him out
merely to match wits. A typical exchange is reported with a follower of
Shih-t'ou named P'u-chi, who once came to test P'ang:
_One day P'u-chi visited the Layman.
"I recall that when I was in my mother's womb I had a certain
word," said the Layman. "I'll show it to you, but you mustn't hold it
as a principle."
"You're still separated from life," said P'u-chi.
"I just said you mustn't hold it as a principle," rejoined the
Layman.
"How can I not be awed by a word that astounds people?" said
P'u-chi.
"Understanding such as yours is enough to astonish people,"
replied the Layman.
"The very statement 'don't hold it as a principle' has become
a principle," said P'u-chi.
"You're separated not only by one or two lives," said the
Layman.
"It's all right for you to reprove a rice-gruel [-eating] monk
[like me]," returned P'u-chi.
The Layman snapped his fingers three times.10
_
The precise meaning of this exchange will not be tackled here,
but P'ang apparently came off on top. Now and then, however, P'ang
seems to have been equaled or bested. There is a story of an exchange
he had with one of the monks at Ma-tsu's monastery, named Shih-lin.
_
One day Shih-lin said to the Layman: "I have a question I'd like to
ask. Don't spare your words."
"Please go on," said the Layman.
"How you do spare words!" exclaimed Shih-lin.
"Unwittingly by this discussion we've fallen into a snare [of words],"
said the Layman.
Shih-lin covered his ears.
"You adept, you adept!" cried the Layman.11
_
Another time P'ang is reminiscent of Chao-chou in demonstrating that it
is possible to hold one's own without the use of words.
_The Layman was once lying on his couch reading a sutra. A monk saw him
and said: "Layman! You must maintain dignity when reading a sutra."
The Layman raised up one leg.
The monk had nothing to say.12
_
Layman P'ang studied under Ma-tsu for two years, but he finally decided
to resume his life as a wandering student of Ch'an. He left Ma-tsu
declaring the family his source of strength, or so it would seem from
his parting verse presented to the master.
_I've a boy who has no bride,
I've a girl who has no groom;
Forming a happy family circle,
We speak about Birthless.13
_
And off he went to travel, a completely enlightened man after his stay
in Kiangsi. He turned increasingly to poetry during these years of
wandering across the central part of China, composing some of his most
sensitive verse. One poem in particular seems to capture the carefree
spirit of these years of wanderings:
_The wise man, perceiving wealth and lust,
Knows them to be empty illusion;
Food and clothes sustain body and life--
I advise you to learn being as is.
When it's time, I move my hermitage and go,
And there's nothing to be left behind.14
_
One of Layman P'ang's most enduring companions was the monk Tan-hsia
T'ien-jan, known for his irreverence. The following is typical of the
exchanges recorded between the two:
_When the Layman was walking with Tan-hsia one day he saw a deep pool
of clear water. Pointing to it with his hand, he said: "Being as it is
we can't differentiate it."
"Of course we can't," replied Tan-hsia.
The Layman scooped up and threw two handfuls of water on Tan-hsia.
"Don't do that, don't do that!" cried Tan-hsia.
"I have to, I have to!" exclaimed the Layman.
Whereupon Tan-hsia scooped up and threw three handfuls of water on the
Layman, saying: "What can you do now?"
"Nothing else," replied the Layman.
"One seldom wins by a fluke," said Tan-hsia.
"Who lost by a fluke?" returned the Layman.15
_
To attempt to explicate this exchange would be to ride the wind. They
are in a completely different reality from that in which mere books are
written and read.
What occupied Madam P'ang during the Layman's wanderings is not known.
However, she seems well on the way to enlightenment herself. A story
says that one day she went to a Buddhist temple to make an offering of
food. The priest asked her the purpose of the offering so that he could
post the customary notice identifying the name of a donor and the date
and purpose of the gift. This was called "transferring merit," since
the knowledge of her good deed would be "transferred" from herself to
others. It is reported that Mrs. P'ang took her comb, stuck it in the
back of her hair, and announced to the stunned priest, "Transference of
merit is accomplished."16 She seemed a part of P'ang's enlightenment,
even if not a companion in his travels.
Eventually P'ang and his daughter, Ling-chao, ended up back in the
north, near Hsiang-yang, the city of his birth, which he had left when
a very small child. But instead of moving into the town, they lived in
a cave about twenty miles to the south. And to this cave often
journeyed a distinguished visitor--Prefect Yu Ti of Hsiang province, an
important official who had learned of P'ang's verse and his reputation
for Ch'an teaching. Originally a vicious and arrogant dictator who
delighted in persecuting Buddhists, he had been converted by a Ch'an
monk and had become a strong supporter of the faith. In fact, it is Yu
Ti whom we must thank for our knowledge of P'ang, for it was he who
collected the poetry and stories of the Layman after his death.
P'ang lived in his cave with Ling-chao for two years, and then he
suddenly declared that it was time to die. In a dramatic gesture, he
assumed a meditating posture and asked Ling-chao to go outside and tell
him when the sun reached high noon, at which time he would pass on. She
went out, but quickly returned to announce that it was already noon but
that there was an eclipse. P'ang jumped up and ran out to see this
event, but while he was gone Ling-chao seated herself in his place,
folded her hands, and died herself. P'ang returned from her
diversionary announcement, saw what had happened, and declared, "Her
way was always swift. Now she has gone ahead of me." In respect he
postponed his own death for a week.17
Hearing of this episode, Prefect Yu Ti rushed to the scene. The Layman
addressed him with, "I pray you to hold all that is thought to be real
as empty, and never take that which is empty as being real. Farewell.
The world is merely a shadow, an echo."18 He then laid his head on the
prefect's knee and died. He left a request that his body be cremated
and his ashes scattered across the waters of nearby lakes and rivers.
When P'ang's wife heard of the death of her husband and daughter, she
said, "That stupid girl and ignorant old man have gone away without
telling me. How unbearable."19 She then relayed the news to her son, who
was in the fields hoeing. He too subsequently died miraculously, while
still standing up. For her own part, Madam P'ang journeyed about the
countryside bidding her friends farewell, and then secluded herself,
where it was never known. And with her passing ends the saga of Layman
P'ang. This real-life individual was honored as China's answer to the
mythical Indian businessman Vimalakirti, who combined enlightenment
with the life of the market.
Han Shan
An even more elusive figure is the hermit Han-shan, whose name means
"Cold Mountain," the site where he supposedly resided. He is an almost
totally lengendary character, for we actually know nothing for sure
about when he lived (the current best guess is late eighth to early
ninth century). Almost everything known about him has been gleaned from
his poems and from a presumably contemporaneous preface to these poems
composed by a mysterious hand untraceable to any historical Chinese
individual. His was some of the most confessional, yet joyous, verse
penned in T'ang China, and he has been claimed by the Ch'anists as one
of theirs--although he might just as easily have been a Taoist
conversant in Buddhist jargon. Han-shan embodied the archetypal hero of
the Chinese imagination: a member of the rural gentry who gave up his
staid family life and some sort of scholarly career to become a
wandering poet. As he describes his own early life in the years before
his wanderings:
_From my father and mother I inherited land enough
And need not envy others' orchards and fields
Creak, creak goes the sound of my wife's loom;
Back and forth my children prattle at their play.
* * *
The mountain fruits child in hand I pluck;
My paddy field along with my wife I hoe.
And what have I got inside my house?
Nothing at all but one stand of books.20_
So we have a gentleman scholar, comfortably well off, with wife and
children and an idyllic life undisturbed by the incursions of the
world. It is all too perfect by half, and sure enough sometime before
his thirtieth year his life was disrupted by an (undescribed) event so
catastrophic that his wife and family turned him out:
_I took along books when I hoed the fields,
In my youth, when I lived with my older brother.
Then people began to talk;
Even my wife turned against me.
Now I've broken my ties with the world of red dust;
I spend my time wandering and read all I want.
Who will lend a dipper of water
To save a fish in a carriage rut.21
_
Just when this sad event took place we do not know. However, by the
time Han-shan was thirty he found himself on Cold Mountain, part of the
T'ien-tai mountain range and near the town of T'ang-hsing.
_Thirty years ago I was born into the world.
A thousand, ten thousand miles I've roamed,
By rivers where the green grass lies thick,
Beyond the border where the red sands fly.
I brewed potions in a vain search for life everlasting.
I read books, I sang songs of history,
And today I've come home to Cold Mountain
To pillow my head on the stream and wash my ears.22
_
He described his life in the mountains in a number of verses that often
seem more Taoist than Buddhist. One of the most lyrical follows:
_Ever since the time when I hid in the Cold Mountain
I have kept alive by eating the mountain fruits.
From day to day what is there to trouble me?
This my life follows a destined course.
The days and months flow ceaseless as a stream;
Our time is brief as the flash struck on a stone.
If Heaven and Earth shift, then let them shift;
I shall still be sitting happy among the rocks.23
_
He was a contradictory individual, one minute solemn in his search for
Mind, and the next minute a buoyant bon vivant, writing verses that
seem almost a T'ang version of our own carpe diem:
_Of course there are some people who are careful of money,
But not I among them.
Because I dance too much, my garment of thin cloth is worn.
My bottle is empty, for I spurt out the wine when we sing.
Eat a full meal.
Don't tire your feet.
The day when weeds are sprouting through your skull,
You will regret what you have been.24
_
The life he describes for himself is one immersed in poetry. He is the
compleat poet, whose only concern is writing (not publishing) verse.
_Once at Cold Mountain, troubles cease--
No more tangled, hung-up mind,
I idly scribble poems on the rock cliff,
Taking whatever comes, like a drifting boat.25
_But if his poems were written on a rock cliff, how then were they
preserved? Thereon hangs a tale, or more likely a legend. At some
unknown time, Han-shan's verses (some three hundred) were collected and
supplied with a "preface."26 The person who takes credit for saving Han-
shan from a country poet's oblivion identifies himself as Lu-ch'iu Yin,
a high official. As it happens, the T'ang Chinese were very fussy about
keeping records on such things as high officials, and a Lu-ch'iu Yin is
not remembered among their ranks. Consequently, some have speculated
that the author of the preface was in fact a Buddhist priest who wished
to remain anonymous. At any rate, according to the story, our official
first heard of Han-shan upon becoming ill just before a planned trip to
a new prefecture and, after failing to be helped by a doctor, was cured
by a wandering priest, who then told him that in the prefecture of his
destination he would need further protection from bodily ills. Lu-ch'iu
Yin asked him for the name of a master, and the priest told him to be
on the lookout for two eccentric-appearing kitchen servants at the Kuo-
ch'ing monastery dining hall, named Han-shan and Shih-te.
When he arrived at his new post, he immediately sought out this
monastery and was amazed to learn the story was true. People around the
temple said, "Yes, there is a Han-shan. He lives alone in the hills at
a place called Cold Mountain, but he often comes down to the temple to
visit his friend, Shih-te. The cook, Shih-te, it turned out, saved
leftovers for his friend Han-shan, who would come and take them away in
a bamboo tube, merrily laughing and joking along the length of the
temple veranda as he carted away his booty. Once the monks caught him
and exposed his system, but he only laughed all the more. His
appearance was that of a starving beggar, but his wisdom was that of a
man of enlightenment.
Lu-ch'iu Yin anxiously pressed on to the kitchen, where sure enough he
found Han-shan and Shih-te, tending the stoves and warming themselves
over the fire. When he bowed low to them, they broke into gales of
laughter and shouted "HO" back at him. The other monks were scandalized
and wondered aloud why a distinguished official would bow to a pair of
ne'er-do-wells. But before he could explain, the pair clasped hands and
bolted out of the temple. (The giggling Han-shan and Shih-te became a
staple of Zen art for a millennium thereafter.) Determined to retrieve
them, he arranged for the monastery to provide them permanent
accommodations and left a package of clothes and incense for them. When
they failed to reappear, he had a bearer carry his gifts and accompany
him up into the mountains. Finally they glimpsed Han-shan, who yelled,
"Thief! Thief!" at them and retreated to the opening of a cave. He then
bade them farewell with, "Each of you men should strive to your
utmost!" Whereupon he disappeared into the cave, which itself then
closed upon him, leaving no trace. The preface says Han-shan was never
seen again. In homage the disappointed Lu-ch'iu Yin had his poems
collected from where they had been composed--on scraps of bamboo, wood,
stones, cliffs, and on the walls of houses. Thus there came to be the
collected _oeuvre _of Han-shan.
Han-shan's poems support at least part of this somewhat fanciful story.
He does seem to have been Buddhist in outlook, and as one of his
translators, Burton Watson, has declared, ". . . to judge from his
poetry, Han-shan was a follower of the Ch'an sect, which placed great
emphasis on individual effort and was less wary of emotionalism than
earlier Buddhism had been. . . . Though he writes at times in a mood of
serenity, at other times he appears despondent, angry, arrogant, or
wildly elated. . . ,"27
As did Layman P'ang, Han-shan seems to have believed that the Way is
found in everyday-mindedness, a point of view most forcefully expounded
by Ma-tsu. As Han-shan declares in one of his poems:
_As for me, I delight in the everyday Way,
Among mist-wrapped vines and rocky caves.
Here in the wilderness I am completely free,
With my friends, the white clouds, idling forever.
There are roads, but they do not reach the world;
Since I am mindless, who can rouse my thoughts?
On a bed of stone I sit, alone in the night,
While the round moon climbs up Cold Mountain.28 _
Many of his verses reinforce the belief that he was indeed a follower
of Southern Ch'an. For example, he seemed to believe that the mind
itself is the Buddha that all seek.
_Talking about food won't make you full,
Babbling of clothes won't keep out the cold.
A bowl of rice is what fills the belly;
It takes a suit of clothing to make you warm.
And yet, without stopping to consider this,
You complain that Buddha is hard to find.
Turn your mind within! There he is!
Why look for him abroad?29
_
Interestingly enough, for all his rather traditional Ch'an sentiments
and admonitions, he was much more in touch with
human concerns than were most followers of Ch'an. For one thing, he
lived alone in the mountains, an isolated ascetic cut off from human
contact, and the resulting loneliness was something those caught up in
the riotous give-and-take of a Ch'an monastery never knew. He gives
voice to this loneliness in a touching poem.
_I look far off at T'ien-t'ai's summit,
Alone and high above the crowding peaks.
Pines and bamboos sing in the wind that sways them
Sea tides wash beneath the shining moon.
I gaze at the mountain's green borders below
And discuss philosophy with the white clouds.
In the wilderness, mountains and seas are all right,
But I wish I had a companion in my search for the Way.30
_
The admission of loneliness and near-despair in many of his verses has
always been a troublesome point for Zen commentators. The enlightened
man is supposed to be immune to the misgivings of the heart, focused as
he is on oneness and nondistinction. But Han-shan worried a good bit
about old age, and he also missed his family, as he admits, albeit
through the medium of a dream:
_Last night in a dream I returned to my old home
And saw my wife weaving at her loom.
She held her shuttle poised, as though lost in thought,
As though she had no strength to lift it further.
I called. She turned her head to look,
But her eyes were blank--she didn't know me.
So many years we've been parted
The hair at my temples has lost its old color.31
_
But perhaps it is this non-Ch'an quality, this mortal touch, that
elevates Han-shan to the rank of a great lyrical poet. He actually
manages to be both a plausible Buddhist and a vulnerable human being.
Few other poets in Chinese letters managed to combine genuine Buddhism
with such memorable verse. As Burton Watson has observed, "In the works
of most first-rate Chinese poets, Buddhism figures very slightly,
usually as little more than a vague mood of resignation or a
picturesque embellishment in the landscape--the mountain temple falling
into melancholy ruin, the old monk one visits on an outing in the
hills. Han-shan, however, is a striking exception to this rule. The
collection of poetry attributed to him . . . is permeated with deep and
compelling religious feeling. For this reason he holds a place of
special importance in Chinese literature. He proved that it was
possible to write great poetry on Buddhist, as well as Confucian and
Taoist, themes; that the cold abstractions of Mahayana philosophy could
be transformed into personal and impassioned literature. . . . The
language of his poems is simple, often colloquial or even slangy . . .
[but] many of his images and terms are drawn from the Buddhist sutras
or the sayings of the Southern School of Zen, whose doctrine of the
Buddha as present in the minds of all men--of Buddha as the mind itself--
he so often refers to. At the same time he is solidly within the
Chinese poetic tradition, his language again and again echoing the
works of earlier poets. . . ."32
With Han-shan we return repeatedly to the world of Cold Mountain, which
was--as another of his translators, Arthur Waley, has pointed out--as
much a state of mind as a locality. It was this, together with his
advice to look within, that finally gives Han-shan his haunting voice
of Ch'an. He seems not to have cared for the supercilious "masters" who
dominated the competitive world of the monasteries. He invited them to
join him in the rigorous but rewarding world of "Cold Mountain," where
the mind was Buddha and the heart was home.
_When men see Han-shan
They all say he's crazy
And not much to look at--
Dressed in rags and hides.
They don't get what I say
& I don't talk their language.
All I can say to those I meet:
"Try and make it to Cold Mountain._"33_
_
Chapter Ten
HUANG-PO:
MASTER OF THE UNIVERSAL MIND
Perhaps the most thoughtful Zen philosopher of them all was Huang-po
(d. 850?), who picked up where the earlier teachers had left off and
brought to a close the great creative era of Ch'an. He also stood at
the very edge of the tumultuous watershed in Chinese Buddhism, barely
living past the 845 Great Persecution that smashed the power of all the
Buddhist schools except that of the reclusive Southern Ch'anists.
Originally named Hsi-yun, the master moved at a young age from his
birthplace in present-day Fukien to Mt. Huang-po in the same province,
the locale that gave him his Ch'an title. His biography declares that
his voice was articulate and mellifluous, his character open and
simple.1 He later decided to make a pilgrimage to see the famous Ma-tsu,
but when he arrived in Kiangsi he was told that the master had died.2
Po-chang Huai-hai was still there, however, and consequently Huang-po
settled down to study with him instead.
Huang-po is known to us today primarily through the accident of having
a follower obsessed by the written word. This man, Pei Hsiu, was also a
high Chinese official who served as governor in two of the provinces
where Huang-po at various times resided. He studied under Huang-po both
times (all day and night, so he claimed) and later produced an
anecdotal summary of the master's teachings now known as _On the
Transmission of Mind_.3 This document was extensive, representing one of
the most detailed descriptions of an early master's thoughts. Pei Hsiu
also reports in his preface (dated 858) that he sent his work back to
Kuang T'ang monastery on Mt. Huang-po to have it authenticated by the
old monks there who still remembered the sayings of the master.4
By the time of Huang-po the issue of "gradual" versus "sudden"
enlightenment was decisively resolved in favor of the latter. He
therefore turned instead to two major remaining questions: 1) how
enlightenment fits into the mental world, and 2) how this intuitive
insight can be transmitted. Before he was through he had advanced these
issues significantly and had laid the philosophical basis for the next
phase of Ch'an in China--to be dominated by the school of his pupil Lin-
chi.
Huang-po struggled with a fundamental dilemma of Ch'an: how the
wordless wisdom of intuition can be passed from generation to
generation. Enlightenment necessarily has to be intuitive, and that
means traditional teaching methods are useless. There are no conceptual
formulations or "concepts." It is by definition wordless. It has to be
realized intuitively by the novice, by himself. The masters had
isolated a type of knowledge that words could not transmit. It was this
transmission of wordless insight, of Mind, that obsessed Huang-po.
His teachings are well summarized by his biographer Pei Hsiu, who
declared: "Holding in esteem only the intuitive method of the Highest
Vehicle, which cannot be communicated in words, he taught nothing but
the doctrine of the One Mind; holding that there is nothing else to
teach, in that both mind and substance are void. . . . To those who
have realized the nature of Reality, there is nothing old or new, and
conceptions of shallowness and depth are meaningless. Those who speak
of it do not attempt to explain it, establish no sects, and open no
doors or windows. That which is before you is it. Begin to reason about
it and you will at once fall into error."5
He seems to have been preoccupied with the issue of transmission even
during the early days of studying under Huai-hai. His very first
question to the older master reportedly was "How did the early Ch'an
masters guide their followers?" Huai-hai answered this very un-Ch'an
question with silence, an implied rebuke. When Huang-po pressed the
point, Huai-hai called him a disappointing disciple and said he had
best beware or he (Huang-po) would be the man who lost Ch'an.6
In a later episode, however, Huai-hai designates Huang-po as a
successor in Dharma, via a famous transmission exchange in which Huang-
po finally demonstrates wordless communication.
_One day Huai-hai asked Huang-po, "Where have you been?"
The answer was that he had been at the foot of the Ta-hsiung
Mountain picking mushrooms. Huai-hai continued, "Have you seen any
tigers?" Huang-po immediately roared like a tiger. Huai-hai picked up
an ax as if to chop the tiger. Huang-po suddenly slapped Huai-hai's
face. Huai-hai laughed heartily, and then returned to his temple and
said to the assembly, "At the foot of the Ta-hsiung Mountain there is a
tiger. You people should watch out. I have already been bitten today_."7
_
_This enigmatic utterance by Huai-hai has been taken by many to signify
that Huang-po was being acknowledged as a worthy being, perhaps even a
successor. The scholar Chang Chung-yuan has observed that the genius of
this response was its freedom from the trap of logical assertion or
negation.8 The act signified freedom from the alternatives of words or
silence. Could it be that with this incident we have finally captured a
wordless transmission?
Huang-po also had a number of exchanges in later years with Nan-ch'uan
(738-824), another of his seniors who had studied at the feet of old
Ma-tsu. As the story is reported in _The Transmission of the Lamp_:
_Some time later Huang-po was with Nan-ch'uan. All the monks in Nan-
ch'uan's monastery were going out to harvest cabbage. Nan-ch'uan asked
Huang-po, "Where are you going?" Huang-po answered, "I am going to pick
cabbage." Nan-ch'uan went on, "What do you use to pick cabbage?" Huang-
po lifted his sickle. Nan-ch'uan remarked, "You take the objective
position as a guest, but you do not know how to preside as a host in
the subjective position." Huang-po thereupon knocked on the ground
three times with his sickle.9
_
When Blofeld translates this puzzling episode from _On the Transmission
of Mind_, he comments that he has been unable to find a modern Zen
master who could explain its meaning.10 However, Nan-ch'uan's final
remark questions the degree of Huang-po's enlightenment, and some
assume the latter knocked on the ground to signify defeat.11
As did other masters, Huang-po also employed silence as a teaching
device, using it to teach wordless insight by example. One particularly
pointed story involves none other than his biographer, the official Pei
Hsiu. In Pei Hsiu's introduction to his transcript of Huang-po's
teachings he says that they first met in 843 when he invited the master
to lecture at Lung-hsing Temple in Chung-ling, the district which he
governed. Six years later, in 849, the governor was in charge of Wan-
ling, and he again invited the master to come and teach, this time at
the local K'ai-yan temple.12
When Huang-po arrived in Wan-ling, for what was to be the second
teaching session with Pei Hsiu, the story says that the governor made
the mistake of presenting the master with a written exposition of the
teachings of Ch'an. Huang-po greeted this with silence, his
"exposition" of Ch'an.
_The Prime Minister invited the Master to the city and presented his
own written interpretation of Ch'an to him. The Master took it and put
it on the table. He did not read it. After a short silence, he asked
the Prime Minister, "Do you understand?" The minister answered, "I do
not understand." The Master said, "It would be better if you could
understand immediately through inner experience. If it is expressed in
words, it won't be our teaching._"13_
_
_The Transmission of the Lamp_ reports that after this episode at Wan-
ling, the spirit of Huang-po's school became widespread south of the
Yangtze River.14
This exchange brings out the essence of Huang-po's concerns. His most
insistent conviction was that Ch'an cannot be taught, that it must be
somehow gained intuitively. He was contemptuous of conceptual thought,
believing it to be the greatest hindrance to achieving intuitive
insight. The problem is the mistaken belief that Zen can somehow be
taught and understood if only one grasps the concepts. But concepts
only serve to obstruct intuition; Zen intuition can work only outside
concepts. As Huang-po phrased it:
_Since Zen was first transmitted, it has never taught that men should
seek for learning or form concepts. "Studying the Way" is just a figure
of speech. It is a method of arousing people's interest in the early
stages of their development. In fact, the Way is not something which
can be studied. Study leads to the retention of concepts and so the Way
is entirely misunderstood.15
_
The use of the rational mind in the study of Ch'an is only meaningful
at the beginning. But once the fish of intuitive insight has been
snared in the net of the rational mind's ken, the net must be
discarded. Elsewhere he likens the extended use of analytical thought
to the shoveling of dung.16 Concepts, it turns out, are only one of the
mind's many constructs. The mind also provides our perception of
concrete objects, thereby "creating" them to suit its needs.
_Hills are hills. Water is water. Monks are monks. Laymen are laymen.
But these mountains, these rivers, the whole world itself, together
with the sun, moon, and stars--not one of them exists outside your
minds! . . . Phenomena do not arise independently, but rely upon (the
mental) environment (we create).17
_
Since reality is created by the mind, we will never know what is "real"
and what is illusion. Examples of this are commonplace. The electron is
both a wave and a particle, depending upon our point of view. Which is
"reality"? Furthermore, concepts limit. By treating the world using
rational constructs, we force it into a limited cage. But when we deal
with it directly, it is much more complex and authentic. To continue
the example, the electron may be something much more complex than
either a wave or a particle, since it behaves at times like either or
both. It may in fact be something for which our rationality-bound mind
has no "concept."
The illusory world we think we see around us, deceptively brought to us
by our untrustworthy senses, leads us to conceptual thought and to
logical categories as a means to attempt its "understanding." The
resulting intellectual turmoil is just the opposite of the tranquility
that is Ch'an. But avoidance of conceptual thought leads to a serene,
direct, and meaningful understanding of the world around us, without
unsettling mental involvement.
_Ordinary people all indulge in conceptual thought based on
environmental phenomena, hence they feel desire and hatred. To
eliminate environmental phenomena, just put an end to your conceptual
thinking. When this ceases, environmental phenomena are void; and when
these are void, thought ceases. But if you try to eliminate environment
without first putting a stop to conceptual thought, you will not
succeed, but merely increase its power to disturb you.18
_
What is worse, reliance on misleading perception blocks out our
experience of our own pure mind.
_People in the world cannot identify their own mind. They believe that
what they see, or hear, or feel, or know, is mind. They are blocked by
the visual, the auditory, the tactile, and the mental, so they cannot
see the brilliant spirit of their original mind.19
_When he was asked why Zen students should not form concepts as other
people do, he replied, "Concepts are related to the senses, and when
feeling takes place, wisdom is shut out."20 Huang-po is so adamant
against the deceiving world of the senses he even comes down hard on
the pleasures of the gourmet.
_Thus, there is sensual eating and wise eating. When the body suffers
the pangs of hunger and accordingly you provide it with food, but
without greed, that is called wise eating. On the other hand, if you
gluttonously delight in purity and flavour, you are permitting the
distinctions which arise from wrong thinking. Merely seeking to gratify
the organ of taste without realizing when you have taken enough is
called sensual eating.21
_
The point here seems to be that the use of the senses for pleasure is
an abuse and distracts one from the illusion of the world, which itself
obscures our mind from us. The ideal man he describes in terms of one
who can remain passive even when confronted by a manifestation of good
or of evil. He commends the person who has the character to remain
aloof, even when in the Buddhist heaven or the Buddhist hell:
_If he should behold the glorious sight of all the Buddhas coming to
welcome him, surrounded by every kind of gorgeous manifestation, he
would feel no desire to approach them. If he should behold all sorts of
horrific forms surrounding him, he would experience no terror. He would
just be himself, oblivious of conceptual thought and one with the
Absolute. He would have attained the state of unconditioned being.22
_
Truth is elusive. It is impossible to find it by looking for it. And
the world of the senses and the conceptual thought it engenders are
actually impediments to discovering real truth. He provides an analogy
in the story of a man who searches abroad for something that he had all
along.
_Suppose a warrior, forgetting that he was already wearing his pearl on
his forehead, were to seek for it elsewhere, he could
travel the whole world without finding it. But if someone who knew what
was wrong were to point it out to him, the warrior would immediately
realize that the pearl had been there all the time.23
_He concludes that the warrior's finding his pearl had nothing to do
with his searching for it, just as the final realization of intuitive
wisdom has nothing to do with the graduated practice of the traditional
Buddhists.
_So, if you students of the Way are mistaken about your own real Mind .
. . you will indulge in various achievements and practices and expect
to attain realization by such graduated practices. But, even after
aeons of diligent searching, you will not be able to attain to the Way.
These methods cannot be compared to the sudden elimination of
conceptual thought, the certain knowledge that there is nothing at all
which has absolute existence, nothing on which to lay hold, nothing on
which to rely, nothing in which to abide, nothing subjective or
objective. It is by preventing the rise of conceptual thought that you
will realize Bodhi (enlightenment); and, when you do, you will just be
realizing the Buddha who has always existed in your own Mind!24
_
The traditional practices neither help nor hinder finding the way,
since they are unrelated to the final flash of sudden enlightenment--
which is in your mind from the beginning, ready to be released.
What then did he teach, if there is nothing to be taught? The answer
seems to be to stop seeking, for only then does wisdom come.
Furthermore, to study a doctrine of nonattachment puts you in the
compromising position of becoming attached to nonattachment itself.
_If you students of the Way wish to become Buddhas, you need study no
doctrines whatever, but learn only how to avoid seeking for and
attaching yourselves to anything. . . . Relinquishment of everything is
the Dharma, and he who understands this is a Buddha, but the
relinquishment of ALL delusions leaves no Dharma on which to lay hold.25
_
But just how does Huang-po manage to practice what he preaches?
_. . . [M]ost students of Zen cling to all sorts of sounds and forms.
Why do they not copy me by letting each thought go as though it were
nothing, or as though it were a piece of rotten wood, a stone, or the
cold ashes of a dead fire? Or else, by just making whatever slight
response is suited to each occasion?26
_
His final admonitions were organized by Pei Hsiu and summarized in the
following list, reported as Huang-po's answer to the question of what
guidance he had to offer those who found his teaching difficult.
_
I have NOTHING to offer. . . . All you need to remember are the
following:
First, learn how to be entirely unreceptive to sensations arising from
external forms, thereby purging your bodies of receptivity to
externals.
Second, learn not to pay attention to any distinctions between this and
that arising from your sensations, thereby purging your bodies of
useless discernments between one phenomenon and another.
Third, take great care to avoid discriminating in terms of pleasant and
unpleasant sensations, thereby purging your bodies of vain
discriminations.
Fourth, avoid pondering things in your mind, thereby purging your
bodies of discriminatory cognition.27
_
Huang-po struggled mightily with the problem of transmission. Since the
doctrine was passed "mind-to-mind," he was obliged to find a
transmission that somehow circumvented the need for words, something to
bring a novice up against his own original nature. His contribution
here was not revolutionary: He mainly advocated the techniques
perfected by Ma-tsu, including roars and shouts, beatings, calling out
a disciple's name unexpectedly, or just remaining silent at a critical
moment to underscore the inability of words to assist. He also used the
technique of continually contradicting a pupil, until the pupil finally
realized that all his talking had been just so many obscuring concepts.
But just what was this mind that was being transmitted? His answer was
that nothing was transmitted, since the whole point was just to jar
loose the intuition of the person being "taught."
_Once Huang-po was asked, "If you say that mind can be transmitted,
then how can you say it is nothing?" He answered, "To achieve nothing
is to have the mind transmitted to you." The questioner pressed, "If
there is nothing and no mind, then how can it be transmitted?" Huang-po
answered, "You have heard the expression 'transmission of the mind' and
so you think there must be something transmitted. You are wrong. Thus
Bodhidharma said that when the nature of the mind is realized, it is
not possible to express it verbally. Clearly, then, nothing is obtained
in the transmission of the mind, or if anything is obtained, it is
certainly not knowledge_."28
He finally concludes that the subject cannot really even be discussed,
since there are no terms for the process that transpires. Just as
_sunyata_--that "emptiness" or Void whose existence means that
conceptual thought is empty and rational constructs inadequate--is not
something that can be transmitted as a concept, so too is the Dharma or
teaching, as well as Mind, that essence we share with a larger reality.
Even statements that concepts are pointless must fall back on language
and consequently are actually themselves merely make-do approximations,
as are all descriptions of the process of transmission. He finally
gives up on words entirely, declaring that none of the terms he has
used has any meaning.
_A transmission of Void cannot be made through words. A transmission in
concrete terms cannot be the Dharma. . . In fact, however, Mind is not
Mind and transmission is not really transmission.29
_
He was working on the very real problem of the transmission of
understanding that operates in a part of the mind where speech and
logic cannot enter. As John Wu has pointed out, in a sense Huang-po had
come back full circle to the insights of Chuang Tzu: good and evil are
meaningless; intuitive knowledge is more profound than speech-bound
logic; there is an underlying unity (for Chuang Tzu it was the Tao or
Way; for Huang-po, the Universal Mind) that represents the ineffable
absolute.30
In effect, Huang-po laid it all out, cleared the way, and defined Ch'an
once and for all. The Perennial Philosophy was never more strongly
stated. The experimental age of Ch'an thus drew to a close, its job
finished. With his death at the midpoint of the ninth century, there
was little more to be invented.31 It was time now for Ch'an to formalize
its dialectic, as well as to meet society and make its mark in the
world. The first was taken care of by Huang-po's star pupil, Lin-chi,
and the second was precipitated by the forces of destiny.
The death of Huang-po coincided with a critical instant in Chinese
history whose consequences for future generations were enormous. Once
before Chinese politics had affected Ch'an, producing a situation in
which Southern Ch'an would steal the march on Northern Ch'an. And now
another traumatic episode in Chinese affairs would effectively destroy
all Buddhist sects except Southern Ch'an, leaving the way clear for
this pursuit of intuitive wisdom--once relegated to wandering teachers
of _dhyana_--to become the only vital Buddhist sect left in China.
As noted previously, resentment toward Buddhism had always smoldered in
Chinese society. Periodically the conservative Chinese tried to drive
this foreign belief system from their soil, or failing that, at least
to bring it under control. The usual complaints revolved around the
monasteries' holdings of tax-free lands, their removal of able-bodied
men and women from society into nonproductive monastic life, and the
monastic vows of celibacy so antithetical to the Chinese ideals of the
family.
The Ch'an monasteries, deliberately or not, worked hard to defuse many
of these complaints. Indeed, some would say that Ch'an managed to
change Buddhism into something the Chinese could partially stomach.
Ch'anists were just the opposite of parasitical on society, since they
practiced Po-chang Huai-hai's injunction of a day without work being a
day without food. Also, the unthinking piety of traditional Buddhists
was reviled by Ch'anists. Furthermore, Ch'an dispensed with much of the
rigmarole and paraphernalia favored by the Buddhist sects that stuck to
its Indian origins more closely.
The resentment felt toward Buddhists was summarized in a document
issued in 819 by a scholar-bureaucrat named Han Yu.32 His recital of
Buddhism's failings came down particularly hard on the fact that the
Buddha had not been Chinese. Han Yu advocated a complete suppression of
this pernicious establishment: "Restore its people to human living!
Burn its books! And convert its buildings to human dwellings!"33 As
resentment toward the worldly influence of Buddhism grew during the
ninth century, there came to power an emperor who decided to act.
The Emperor Wu-tsang (r. 841-46) is now thought to have gone mad as a
prelude to his persecution of the Buddhists. But his edicts were
effective nonetheless. The state had begun tightening its grip on
Buddhism when he came into power in 841, but in August 845 he issued
the edict that ultimately had the effect of destroying traditional
Buddhism and urbanized Northern Ch'an in China. Over a period of two
years he destroyed 4,600 big temples and monasteries and over 40,000
smaller temples and retreats. He freed 150,000 male and female slaves
or temple attendants and evicted some 265,000 monks and nuns, forcing
them back into secular life. (This was out of a total Chinese
population estimated to be around 27 million.) And not incidentally,
the state reclaimed several million acres of property that had belonged
to the monasteries. The effect of this was to obliterate virtually all
the great Buddhist establishments, including the Buddhist strongholds
in the capitals of Chang-an and Loyang, which were reduced to only two
temples and thirty monks in each of the two cities.34
The irony of the Great Persecution was that it actually seemed to
invigorate Southern Ch'an. For one thing, these rural Ch'an teachers
had long been iconoclasts and outcasts themselves, as they disowned
ostentatious temples and even the scriptures. Almost as much a
philosophy as a religion, Southern Ch'an had long known how to do
without imperial favor and largess. And when a further edict came down
demanding that all Buddhist paraphernalia, including statues and
paintings, be burned, the outcast Ch'an monasteries had the least to
lose, since they had even done a bit of burning themselves--if we are to
believe the story of Tan-hsia (738-824), a famous Ch'an monk who once
burned a Buddhist statue for warmth. Southern Ch'an teachers just
melted for a time back into secular life, from which they had never
been far in any case.35
The result of all this was that after 846 the only sect of Buddhism
with any strength at all was rural Ch'an. Chinese Buddhism literally
became synonymous with Southern Ch'an--a far cry from the almost
fugitive existence of the sect in earlier years. And when Buddhism
became fashionable again during the Sung, Southern Ch'an became a house
religion, as Northern had once been. The result was that Ch'an
gradually lost its iconoclastic character. But out of this last phase
of Ch'an developed one of the most powerful tools ever for
enlightenment, the famous Zen koan, whose creation preserved something
out of the dynamism of Ch'an's early centuries.