by Youru Wang
CHAN SCHOOL
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CHANYUAN QINGGUI
Rules of Purity for the Chan Monastery, the earliest surviving text of a comprehensive Chan monastic code compiled in 1103 during the Northern Song dynasty (960–1127) by the Yunmen Chan abbot Changlu Zongze. The code features a wide-ranging coverage of almost every aspect of life in the large public monasteries of the time. For example, it specifies guidelines for traveling monks, emphasizes the importance of studying under masters at various monasteries, prescribes the protocol for attending retreats, and details the procedure for requesting an abbot’s instruction. A considerable portion of the code addresses the administrative hierarchy within the monastery, including the duties and powers of different monastic officers. Many rules indicate proper social manners for the interaction of monks of various ranks at a range of functions from tea ceremonies to chanting rituals and monastic auctions. The text even details the proper procedures for mundane activities such as packing one’s belongings for travel or bathing. The impact of this comprehensive monastic code on later compilers of regulatory texts in the Song and Yuan dynasties was enormous. Prior to this text, all monastic codes were very limited and scattered, not intended to be definitive codes for Chan Buddhism. Other extensive codes that might have existed had been lost. This text was also extremely influential overseas; in Japan, it served as the model for generations of monastic codes. Dōgen (1200–1253), for instance, paraphrased many of its passages in his works.
Notwithstanding its due place in the long evolutionary progression of monastic regulations, the contents of the Chanyuan Qinggui do show numerous borrowings and assimilations from many earlier works on monastic regulations. The most recent study of the Chanyuan Qinggui has traced these borrowings and assimilations directly back to the Indian Vinaya (jielü) texts and to the early Sangha regulations (senggui), compiled by Chinese monks such as the Vinaya advocate Daoan (312–385) and the Lü master Daoxuan (596–667). Although the Chanyuan Qinggui is still seen as the culmination of early endeavors in developing a monastic code, all these borrowings and assimilations have helped refute the traditional claim that this kind of collection of rules of purity is solely a Chan invention by Baizhang Huaihai’s groundbreaking work. In addition, the Chanyuan Qinggui includes elements incorporated from Chinese governmental policies and from traditional cultural customs and practices. For instance, the text conforms to state decrees concerning travel permits, the sale of tonsure and titular certificates, the election of abbots, the conversion of public monasteries into private ones, and so forth. It also echoes court protocol in monastic ceremonies and borrows popular and Confucian ritual customs.
CHANZONG
This term refers to “the school of Chan” in Chinese Buddhism, but it is difficult to fully translate the meaning of zong in this context as “school.” The Chinese character zong has a variety of connotations other than just “school” (or zongbai) that emphasize the practice of meditation. The zong originally depicted an ancestral hall (zongmiao), in which a clan’s ancestor, or ancestors, were enshrined and the tablets for ancestors (zuzong paiwei) were kept. The zong involves the meanings of “clan” (zongmen or zongzhu), “[the same] ancestor,” “[the same] patriarch-predecessor” (zuxian), “origin,” “source” (benyuan), and “revere” (zunchong). These meanings help reveal the genealogical sense of the Chanzong in its Chinese context.
The institution of Chanzong is precisely defined by its tradition as a genealogical system, a lineal succession of patriarchs and dharma heirs (fasi), who transmit (chuan) enlightenmental experience or engender the echoing (qihui) of this kind of experience between their minds and the minds of their disciples (the so-called yixin chuanxin), rather than transmitting skills of meditation or scriptural teachings. This lineage of patriarchs, masters, and dharma heirs is an elite core of the Chan school. The great majority of the monks, nuns, lay followers, and patrons who live and train in Chan monasteries are not members of this lineage. They are members of the Chan school and could aspire to succeed to the lineage, but only a select few eventually receive the transmission. Thus, from an institutional perspective, the Chan school involves everyone who believes in the Chan lineage, acquires inspiration from its stories, reveres its patriarchs, and follows the masters or abbots who are the living Buddhas and patriarchs; everything evolves from this live lineage.
Moreover, the function of this lineal institution is shaped by its mythology about the lineage. The success and prosperity of various Chan sects depends, to a great extent, on their contribution to the establishment of Chan narrative on the legitimation of the lineage coming down to them. This narrative becomes the source of authority and identity needed for each rival faction within Chan. The earliest theories of the Chan lineal transmission were produced by the texts of the Dongshan Famen, which constructed a six-generation lineage of Chan patriarchs. Shenhui, in setting up the authority of his teacher Huineng as the true sixth patriarch of Chan and overturning the Dongshan Famen and the Northern school’s lineage theory, made a new list of strict one-to-one patriarchal succession for Chan Buddhsm and added a list of Indian patriarchs.
The parallel attempts made by other Chan sects culminated in the Baolin Zhuan’s version of 28 Indian patriarchs in addition to 6 Chinese patriarchs, which became an orthodox “history” of Chan lineal transmission from India to China that was followed by all later Chan texts. This and other texts of the Hongzhou school also created a new tradition of Chan ecumenism, opposing the divisive sectarianism of separating the Southern and Northern schools, and recognizing the Chan lineage after Huineng as evolving from the unilineal transmission to the multilineal transmission. The various lineages were accommodated and seen as belonging to the same extended family. This huge Chan clan thus came to embody familial relationships. The masters and disciples in a lineage were related like spiritual fathers and sons or grandfathers and grandsons. They were also related to practitioners of the other Chan lineages like siblings, cousins, uncles, and nephews.
From a different, more doctrinal, perspective, the meaning of the zong as source or origin (benyuan) lends itself to the exploration of the source and principle (zongzhi) of the Chan school. For some, to study the Chan school is to study this source and principle of Chan. Any lineal transmission is the transmission of “something,” no matter how different the interpretation of this “something” would be, and the principle of Chan holds this family together. One prominent example along this line of thinking is Yongming Yanshou’s Zongjing Lu (Records of the Source-Mirror). In that book, he identifies the one mind as the underlying and universal principle that transcends and unifies all sectarian divisions, all kinds of scriptural teachings and spiritual practices, and all provisional articulations of this principle itself. It is the source and foundation of a myriad of things and beings, of all existence, and of liberation and enlightenment. Yanshou’s view is obviously based on the classical Chan notion of the one mind, which assimilates the tathāgatagarbha/Buddha-nature theory and the Yogācāra mind-only theory. One of the purposes of this metaphysical explanation on the principle of Chan is to clarify Chan ideology and to do away with a sectarian identity based on an esoteric transmission between the minds. However, since this universal “one mind” transcends all historical conditions and is ineffable, it still leaves room for esotericism.
CHIXIU BAIZHANG QINGGUI
“Imperial Edition of the Baizhang Rules of Purity,” deemed the most authoritative text of Chan monastic code and compiled by the Chan abbot Dongyang Dehui (d.u.) from Mount Baizhang in 1335–1336, who was appointed by Emperor Huizong (r. 1333–1370) of the Yuan dynasty to lead the compilation. The main motive was to unify all existing Chan monastic regulations and to reconcile the discrepancies produced by different editions of the Chan rules of purity that had come into existence after the compilation of Chanyuan Qinggui. Dehui based his compilation and revision of existing regulations on three major sources: the Conglin Jiaoding Qinggui Zongyao (also called J
iaoding Qinggui, compiled by Jinhua Weimian in 1274), the Chanlin Beiyong Qinggui (also called Beiyong Qinggui, compiled by Zeshan Yixian in 1311), and the Chanyuan Qinggui.
The result was a more comprehensive collection, with wider establishment and elaboration of Chan monastic regulations. The text is divided into nine chapters: “Festivities and the Observance of Rites,” “Discharging Indebtedness to the State,” “Discharging Indebtedness to Buddha (the Root of Buddhism),” “Honoring the Patriarchs,” “The Abbot,” “The Dual Order Offices,” “The Practitioners,” “The Annual Celebration Calendar,” and “The Monastic Sound Instruments.” Because of this imperial edition’s comprehensiveness and definitiveness, it had far-reaching effects in the subsequent Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1912) dynasties. The Ming imperial court repeatedly decreed that this text was the standard for all Chan monasteries and must be strictly followed by all practitioners. In 1442, the Ming imperial court authorized its reprint edition, on which the Taishō Tripitaka edition relied while consulting its Japanese Five Monasteries Edition (Gozanban), published in 1356. Despite the fact that this comprehensive monastic code had gone far beyond its alleged origin, the so-called ancient rules of purity (guquinggui) of Baizhang, the imperial edition restored the title “Baizhang Rules of Purity” to assert its lineage and authority. Baizhang was praised as one of the greatest patriarchs of Chan; his image was ordered to be placed just to the right of Bodhidharma—the founding patriarch of Chan—and the conducting of a memorial ritual for him was also prescribed.
CHUAN FABAO JI
The English translation of this Chinese title is Annals of the Transmission of the Dharma Treasure. The Chuan Fabao Ji is an important text for the study of early Chan Buddhism in general and for the earliest theory about the transmission of dharma through patriarchal succession in particular. It is a short work authored by a layman, Du Fei (d.u.), who is reported by another source to be an early teacher of Shenxiu’s disciple Yifu (658–736), but whose other biographical information is almost non-existent. However, from this work and other limited information, one can see that Dufei had a close association with Shenxiu’s disciples. The work was composed sometime between 716 and 732 and was mentioned by Shenhui in his famous debate with Chongyuan (d.u.) of the Northern school in 732. Beyond that, it was soon forgotten by all later Chan texts. In the 1930s, it was discovered among the Dunhuang documents and published by Japanese scholars.
The Chuan Fabao Ji includes Du Fei’s preface and the biographies of Bodhidharma, Huike, Sengcan, Daoxin, Hongren, Faru, and Shenxiu. His preface is the first evidence of an attempt to trace the origin of Chinese patriarchs back to India in early Chan Buddhism, although the names of Indian patriarchs draw heavily on the Damo Duoluo Chanjing (the Meditation Sutra of Dharmatrāta). The biographies of Chinese patriarchs, on the other hand, draw largely on Daoxuan’s Xu Gaoseng Zhuan (Supplements to Biographies of Eminent Monks). However, one of the differences from the Xu Gaoseng Zhuan is that the thread running through these biographies in the Chuan Fabao Ji is a clear indication of the lineal transmission of the teachings from patriarch to patriarch from the perspective of the Northern school, one of the earliest evidences of this kind in early Chan. It accepts the position of Faru’s epitaph (“Tang Zhongyue Shamen Shi Faru Chanshi Xingzhuang”)—seeing Faru as Hongren’s dharma heir and placing him before Shenxiu, which is different from the other early sources such as the Lengqie Shizi Ji—and shows different perspectives on the orthodox lineage within the Northern school. The Chuan Fabao Ji is also the earliest work of hagiographical writing in Chan Buddhism, establishing the images of ideal Chan masters for religious practitioners.
CHUANFA ZHENGZONG JI
The English translation of this title is Record of the True Lineage of Dharma Transmission. It is a book of nine fascicles, concerning the genealogical history of Chan, written by the Song Chan master Qisong in 1061. The biographical accounts of the Buddha, 28 Indian patriarchs, and 6 Chinese patriarchs are included in the first six fascicles. The seventh and eighth fascicles provide short biographies of 1304 Chan masters who can track their lineages all the way back to Huineng. The last fascicle offers biographies of those Indian and Chinese masters before Huineng, who are not included in the aforementioned orthodox lineage, such as some disciples of the fifth patriarch, Hongren, and their descendants.
While maintaining the orthodox Chan lineage of 28 Indian patriarchs and 6 Chinese patriarchs in terms of the Baolin Zhuan and Jingde Chuandeng Lu, Qisong also attempted to correct as many errors as he could through the exegesis of scriptural sources. He acknowledged the lack of textual evidence in certain Chan genealogical narratives, and for that matter expressed his reluctance to accept some newly created accounts by the Tiansheng Guangdeng Lu (Tiansheng Extensive Record of the Lamp), even though he still believed that the intimacy of the mind-to-mind transmission of the dharma would not ensure the historical precision of all records. In his own account, he opposed the literal understanding of the notion of “a separate transmission from the scriptural teachings.” For Qisong, Chan transmission works within the broader scriptural tradition, and the only difference Chan makes is to verify teachings through the realization of the mind. In this respect, Qisong is in line with Guifeng Zongmi and Yongming Yanshou. The purpose of his book is to refute both the attack on the legitimacy of Chan lineage from the outside and the misunderstanding of Chan as separate from the scriptural teachings within the Chan circle. To serve this purpose, he also composed the Chuanfa Zhengzong Lun (Treatise on the True Lineage of Dharma Transmission) and the Chuanfa Zhengzong Dingzu Tu (Portraits of the Established Patriarchs of the True Lineage of Dharma Transmission).
CHUANXIN FAYAO
This is the first part of the recorded sayings of Huangbo Xiyun. Its complete title is “Essential Teachings on the Transmission of Mind from Chan Master Duanji at Mount Huangbo” (Huangboshan Duanji Chanshi Chuanxin Fayao). It includes Huangbo’s sermons and his answers to the disciple’s questions, recorded during the late 840s and compiled with a preface by Pei Xiu, a high-ranking official and one of Huagnbo’s important lay disciples, in 857. It is one of the most influential and earliest texts of Chan recorded sayings, despite the fact that the text has no biographical summary and is therefore quite different from standard Chan recorded sayings literature. Although the Chuanxin Fayao underwent a long editorial process, like all collections of oral instructions in the genre of Chan recorded sayings (yulu), and although what we see now as the standard edition is from the Song dynasty, contemporary scholars are convinced that this text is more reliable than many other texts of Chan recorded sayings, whose historical origins are more vague and problematic.
Acknowledging that, in many aspects, this text lays the foundation for the further development of Chan, contemporary scholars also distinguish its use of the more traditional forms of sermons, its quoting and alluding to Buddhist scriptures, from the later Chan’s more radical iconoclastic approaches. The Chuanxin Fayao involves the most noticeable elaborations on such classical Chan teachings as the critique of conceptual (or cognitive) understanding (zhijian or zhijie), the non-duality (bu’er) between realizing self-nature (jianxing) and ordinary activities, “doing nothing special (wushi),” “no-seeking (wuqiu),” “no-mind (wuxin),” “forgetting mind (wangxin),” “transmission from mind to mind (yixin chuanxin),” “verification from mind to mind (yixin yinxin),” and “directly pointing to the human mind (zhizhi renxin), realizing one’s self-nature and becoming a Buddha (jianxing chengfo).” These teachings played a remarkable role in shaping the Chan tradition.
CONGRONG LU
Record of Equanimity, one of the best-known collections of the Chan gong’an, compiled by the early Yuan Chan master Wansong Xingxiu of the Caodong school in 1223, is Xingxiu’s commentary on the Song Caodong Chan master Hongzhi Zhengjue’s Songgu Baize (Verses on One Hundred Old Cases). The full title of this book is Wansong Laoren Pingchang Tiantong Heshang Songgu Congrong-an Lu (Record of Old Man Wansong’s
Promoting Commentary on Monk Tiantong’s Verses on Old Cases from the Temple of Equanimity). Basically following the format of the Song Linji Chan master Yuanwu Keqin’s Blue Cliff Record (Biyan Lu), each of the 100 cases in this book starts with a pointer (shizong similar to Biyan Lu’s chuishi), an overall suggestion for the study of this gong’an case, followed by the original case picked up (ju) by Zhengjue and his original verse. Xingxiu then adds his own pingchang, the promoting and guiding commentary, and inserts his zhuyu, the explanatory note to the sentences of the case description and its commenting verse. The Congrong Lu also gives each gong’an case a brief title. A preface written by Xingxiu’s lay disciple and the statesman Yelü Chucai (1190–1244), and a letter from Xingxiu, are attached to this book. The current version preserved in the Taisho (volume 48) is a Ming dynasty edition.
CUTTING OFF TWO OPPOSITES
The Baizhang Guanglu records Baizhang Huaihai’s teaching on how to avoid opposite concepts in Chan language. Baizhang advises his students that they must use a kind of sentence that cuts off two opposites (geduan liangtou ju). Through this kind of language, Baizhang suggests, one would not be caught on either side of opposites. For example, one should assert neither existence nor non-existence, neither profane nor holy, neither Buddha nor sentient beings, neither cultivation nor realization, and so forth. In this way, one eschews the oppositional way of thinking, follows the perspective of non-duality, and practices non-attachment and the Middle Way. Baizhang uses this kind of language as an example of “living words.” Baizhang’s teaching demonstrates the Chan appropriation of the paradoxical language of Mahayana Buddhism and the Chan simplification of that language within ordinary practical contexts.
