The warden Shinshū had lost the Patriarchate and with it the spiritual
headship of Zen. But as a compensation Fate had in store for him
worldly triumphs of the most dazzling kind. Leaving the rural monastery
of Kōnin, he entered the Temple of the Jade fountain in the great
city of Kingchau. His fame soon spread over central China. He was a
man of “huge stature, bushy eyebrows and shapely ears.” The Empress
Wu Hou, who had usurped the throne of China, notoriously cultivated
the society of handsome priests. About 684 A.D. she summoned
him to the Capital. Instead of commanding his presence at Court she
came in a litter to his lodgings and actually knelt down before him.
The friendship of this murderous and fiendishly cruel woman procured
for him temporal dignities which in the eyes of the world completely
outshone the rustic piety of the Sixth Patriarch. Shinshū at the
Capital became as it were the Temporal Father of Zen, while Enō at his
country monastery remained its spiritual pope. The successors of Enō
became known as the Fathers of the Southern School; while the courtly
and social Zen of Shinshū is called Zen of the North.
Was it in sincere goodwill or with the desire to discredit his rival
that Shinshū invited Enō to join him at the Capital? In any case Enō
had the good sense to refuse. “I am a man of low stature and humble
appearance,” he replied; “I fear that the men of the North would
despise me and my doctrines”--thus hinting (with just that touch of
malice which so often spices the unworldly) that Shinshū’s pre-eminence
in the North was due to outward rather than to spiritual graces.
Shinshū died in 706, outliving his august patroness by a year. To
perpetuate his name a palace was turned into a memorial monastery; the
Emperor’s brother wrote his epitaph; his obsequies were celebrated with
stupendous pomp.
His successor, Fujaku, at first remained at the Kingchau monastery
where he had been Shinshū’s pupil. But in 724 the irresolute Emperor
Ming-huang, who had proscribed Buddhism ten years before, summoned
Fujaku to the Imperial City. Here princes and grandees vied with one
another in doing him honour. “The secret of his success,” says the
historian,[7] “was that he seldom spoke and generally looked cross.
Hence his rare words and occasional smiles acquired in the eyes of his
admirers an unmerited value.” He died at the age of 89. On the day of
his interment the great streets of Ch’ang-an were empty. The whole city
had joined in the funeral procession. The Governor of Honan (one of
the greatest functionaries in the State), together with his wife and
children, all of them clad in monastic vestments, followed the bier,
mingling with the promiscuous crowd of his admirers and disciples.
[7] _Old T’ang History_, 191.
Religion was at that time fashionable in the high society of Ch’ang-an,
as it is to-day in the great Catholic capitals of Munich, Vienna or
Seville. When I read of Fujaku’s burial another scene at once sprang
into my mind, the funeral of a great Bavarian dignitary, where I saw
the noblemen of Munich walk hooded and barefoot through the streets.
I shall not refer again to the Northern School of Zen. One wonders
whether the founders of religions are forced by fate to watch the
posthumous development of their creeds. If so, theirs must be the very
blackest pit of Hell.
Let us return to the Southern School, always regarded as the true
repository of Zen tradition.