Flagship temples like Nanhua, in relatively rich Southern China don’t lack financial support. Rich patrons who have made fortunes in export trading have lavished funds on some of them, and Nanhua, due to the fame of the Sixth Ancestor, may be the richest temple in all of China. The new guesthouse suggests this. With more than two hundred rooms, it is the size of a big hotel. Yet even during the current big celebration there are not more than a handful of people staying here. Most of the crowds of people at the temple are local day-trippers.
I settle into my new digs and pull out a bag of ground coffee beans. I’m surprised to find that my guesthouse room is new and equipped with a Western bath and new furniture. It’s hardly different from a hotel room, with two comfortable beds instead of the usual four or more typical of Chinese monastery guestrooms. Most amazing, the room has an Internet connection. I spend a half hour or so trying to get connected, eventually appealing to the building attendant to help me. She claims it’s all working fine, but finally she realizes that she’s turned off the server in a different part of the building.
An hour or so later, Guo Zhi returns and offers to give me a tour of the temple. I’m interested to see what’s new, so we set off.
Nanhua Temple holds perhaps the most sacred relic of Chinese Zen, the “True Body” of the Sixth Ancestor himself. It’s traditional for devout Buddhists upon arriving at the temple to first go to the hall of the Sixth Ancestor at the rear of the temple and bow to him before going back to the central Buddha Hall and bowing to the Buddha or any other statues. Even on a normal day, the temple is crowded with visitors from near and far, but special occasions like this make the crowds exceptional. Not that many foreigners come to Nanhua, so I get the requisite number of stares from people who hardly ever see a lao wai, literally “old outsider.” (Don’t get the wrong idea from these words. The word old in China is always meant as a compliment, a sort of honorific that is analogous to the word honored.)
I’m happy to note that the statue of Ji Gong (I mentioned this figure during my visit to Hualin Temple) remains in front of one of the windows inside the Buddha Hall. He’s still showing up late for morning services! I manage a surreptitious photo in violation of the sign against photo taking.
Guo Zhi tells me that the temple abbot won’t be able to meet me, as he is caught up in activities related to the ceremonies at hand. But I’m happy that I’m offered a chance to meet the temple superintendant, a young monk named Fa Qi (pronounced Fa-chee) at a reception room in the new Zen Academy located on the temple grounds. Such academies are all over China, both connected and unconnected to major temples. It’s not clear exactly what the curriculum is in these places. Some, like the one at Cypress Grove Temple in North China, publish books of old Zen records, or at least they used to before the Internet became the preferred medium for disseminating Buddhism in the country.
The meeting will be first thing the next morning, so I spend some time writing and researching from the Chinese Internet.
The Chinese Buddhist Internet is a lively place with thousands of related Web sites and galaxies of information about events, Buddhist history, scholarly papers, sutras, and an array of related information. If someone invents high-quality automatic translation software for Chinese to English, then Western practitioners are in for a shock about how big the Buddhist electronic community in China really is and what a vast information ocean it offers.
The next morning Fa Qi welcomes me very warmly, and I can see he’s a different sort than Guo Zhi. On the table in the reception room, there is a traditional Chinese tea set up, a slotted bamboo tea basin, on which sits a Yixing (pronounced Yee-sing) tea pot and two cups. Yixing tea pots are made with special clay from the city of Yixing in Jiangsu Province. Though plain and unglazed, when properly fired this clay is ideal for making tea pots because it retains heat very well. The material is also slightly porous, and if a pot is used for a long time to brew one type of tea, the residue in the clay can be used to brew tea even if you have run out of tea leaves.
Fa Qi draws hot water from an electric water bottle and performs his tea kong fu, the traditional way of pouring tea for a guest. He is about thirty-something years old, well-spoken, and obviously well-educated. I give him a short introduction about my purposes on this trip. He then goes into a fairly long recitation about the role of Nanhua Temple in Chinese Buddhism, the importance of the Sixth Ancestor, and how this place is “representative” of the essence of Chinese Buddhism. At one point he says that in the Chinese Buddhist world there are still very many people who are hazy on this issue. I reveal some surprise at this idea and relate how in the first college class I ever had on the subject of Chinese Buddhism, the main thing taught was the importance of the Sixth Ancestor Huineng. I also say that it’s my impression that North American practitioners of Zen would be unanimous in recognizing the importance of Huineng in the tradition. At some point he realizes that I didn’t just fall off the rice wagon, and he pauses for a thoughtful moment. Then he says, “During the Cultural Revolution, this tradition was completely wiped out. Now it’s fallen to us, the younger generation, to find whatever pieces are left and put the tradition back together. You can say we’re still ”mo shitou guo be,“ (literally, ”probing the rocks to cross the river”).
I sympathize with his problem. I once met a famous Buddhist master named Tiguang (“Body of Light”) who lived at the ancient Dharma seat of Zen Master Qingyuan (Japanese: Seigen; died in 740), one of the main students of Huineng. I asked him, “Wasn’t the persecution of Buddhism during the Cultural Revolution like that that occurred in the Northern Zhou dynasty, or during the suppression that occurred in the late Tang dynasty?”
“Not the same!” he glowered. “Back then there was not the complete destruction of the religion. During the Cultural Revolution, everything was destroyed, and all monks and nuns were laicized. They didn’t just come once to the temple and close it down. They repeatedly came and destroyed everything they could lay their hands on. Nothing like that had ever happened before.”
At Nanhua Temple, the destruction was like what Master Tiguang described to me. However, through courage and luck, certain temple treasures were saved. The “True Body” of the Sixth Ancestor, according to a story I’ve heard a few times, was dragged through the streets of nearby Shaoguan City by the Red Guards, who decried it as a fake. Someone threw rocks that hit the lacquered body, breaking off a piece of its shoulder and damaging its stomach. A piece of bone was exposed. This scared even the Red Guards, who realized that this was an actual body that had apparently remained intact for fifteen centuries. Even they were superstitious about what might happen for damaging a real corpse, so they dragged it back to the temple and left it there. Secretly, a senior monk named Foyuan retrieved the body and hid it in a cave on the mountain behind Nanhua Temple. After the Cultural Revolution had passed, the body, along with the hidden lacquered bodies of two other historic abbots of the temple, were again brought out and put back on public display.
Perhaps the fact that Chairman Mao had once praised the Sixth Ancestor Huineng influenced the Red Guards’ decision to not destroy the body. According to old records, Huineng lived among and highly praised the common people. Chairman Mao once quoted Huineng as having taught a leftish-sounding teaching: “Among the lowest people is the highest wisdom.” ( ) Foyuan and other monks saved other famous Nanhua Temple relics as well. Among them was a large sign over the monk’s dining hall that was famously painted by “China’s Shakespeare,” a Song dynasty poet-statesman named Su Dongpo, about eight hundred years ago. A monk quick-wittedly retrieved the sign when the Red Guards came, saving it by using it as a bed board under his thin mattress during those times of chaos.
Fa Qi is indeed like other young Buddhist monks I’ve met in China. He tells me he was a businessman, but in his late twenties decided to become a monk. Now, despite his age, he has a position of considerable responsibility in one of China’s most important temples. He seems enthusiastic about the task the
lies before him.
After two cups of tea, I excuse myself. I know Fa Qi has a lot to do. In the afternoon the main ceremonies of the Water and Land Festival will be under way. He thanks me for coming and tells me he will be happy to welcome any groups that I bring to the new guesthouse.
Back in that guesthouse, I get my camera and make ready to observe the main ceremony that will start soon. I make my way to the big Buddha Hall once again and find that things already seem to be in full swing. The Buddha Hall is full, and the onlooking crowd is surrounding the place. Once the monks and lay practitioners are inside, no one is allowed to enter or leave until the ceremony is finished. But the front doors of the big hall remain open, and so I join the spectators who are all standing there taking photographs, pointedly ignoring signs that say no pictures are allowed.
The chanting and bowing in the main Buddha Hall proceeds for a long while. The sounds of sutra chanting and prayers are broadcast through speakers with terrible acoustics, and even though I speak Chinese, I can’t understand what’s being said. This goes on for nearly an hour, and I’m getting tired of standing on the pavement listening to what I don’t understand. Then I hear a traditional Chinese band start to play near the Heavenly Kings Hall a distance away. I go over to investigate and find a line of people and objects preparing for the final procession that will be the culmination of the ceremonies. Hundreds of lay Buddhists are gathered around a traditional instrument band that is making a ruckus. The music and chanting all crescendo for another twenty minutes, until it finally and suddenly stops. Then the monks who were leading the ceremonies in the Buddha Hall emerge in a procession that moves toward the front of the temple. At the front of the procession, paper-mache figures of the Heavenly Kings on horseback and a big paper boat with a statue of Kwan Yin at its helm are held aloft by lay people. The senior monks, dressed in bright yellow robes and special hats, trail behind the statues that are lifted aloft. As the colorful figures and monks proceed, the other monks of the temple and crowds of lay people fall behind them in a parade, myself among them.
The procession of three hundred or so monks from inside the Buddha Hall, along with the crowd of lay people, move south toward the temple gate. Generally, monks in China do not wear hats. But for this ceremony, the leading monks wear the same crown as that worn by Dizang, the bodhisattva that has specially vowed to liberate beings from hell. They also walk under large yellow umbrellas festooned with auspicious Chinese characters held by their assistants. The Chinese band has fallen in and now serenades the scene with the din of Chinese funeral music.
Cymbal and drum players punctuate the squeal of the brass suona, a trumpetlike instrument, as the spectacle marches along. We all pass to the far side of the wide plaza that stretches a couple of hundred feet in front of the temple gate, arriving at the highway that runs past the front of the area.
At the front of the parade is the paper-mache boat, about twenty feet long, that carries Kwan Yin. The idea is that she will captain the craft on its mission into the lower realms and ferry the benighted beings there across the bitter sea to the shore of happiness. The Heavenly King figures precede the boat to protect it. There is also a statue of Guan Gong, China’s most famous historical army general from the Three Kingdoms era. I know that the Taoists long ago deified Guan Gong, but I don’t remember seeing him around many Buddhist temples. He probably shows up for special occasions. Today, all the gods are pitching in for a good cause.
The high squeal of the suonas sends a message to denizens of the hell realms that we’re coming to set them free. At the highway the long line turns right and makes a short trip alongside the road. It then crosses the road at a place where all traffic has already been stopped by a police barricade and enters a large field that contains a long, wide cement slab. Hundreds of people in the long line file into the area, and the paper boat and figures of the gods are placed on the cement area and made ready for their send-off to the lower realms. People scramble back and forth taking pictures of the spectacle. A lot of people in the crowd come up and heap “hell money” on and around Kwan Yin’s ferry boat. That special printed money is meant to be conveyed on the craft to hungry ghosts and others on the other side who can use it for whatever essential goods and services are for sale in hell.
As the statues are made ready, the leading monks beneath the big yellow umbrellas bless messages that are also placed on the boat. When the boat is full to the point of capsizing, additional boxes of more hell money get placed next to it, along with personal messages of good will to deceased relatives. Finally everyone steps back and a flame is produced. Within seconds, the boat, figures, money, and messages are emitting flames that shoot skyward, conveying the compassion of this world to the other five realms. The bodhisattva Kwan Yin, for a few moments, stands tall amidst the fire and smoke that consumes the boat, then is consumed in the conflagration to rise in the big column of smoke into the sky.
I’m standing fairly close to the flaming boat trying to get some good photos. Suddenly a blast of heat strikes me like a wave, and I’m forced to jump back so as to avoid being an inadvertent offering. To add drama, someone has placed a long string of very loud firecrackers in the ship. Reaching a more distant vantage point, I turn to watch a massive cloud of smoke rise over the picturesque farmlands in front of Nanhua Temple. A timeless ceremony in a timeless valley.
Ceremonies like this have probably gone on here since before recorded history. People of the assembled crowd, having seen it all before, begin to retreat before the last of the firecrackers have popped under the afternoon autumn sky.
SHAOGUAN CITY
The taxi driver in Shaoguan City is perplexed. I’ve told him the hotel I’m looking for is called the Handy Economic Hotel and its address is at the corner of Feng Cai (“Graceful Bearing”) Street and Xin Zhonghua (“New China”) Street. He knows Feng Cai Street well enough, since part of that road is the main pedestrian shopping street in Shaoguan City. But New China Street seems to be a mystery. We ask another cab driver who points us down a side street called Feng Du (“Wind Passing,” but not in its pejorative sense) Street. There we find a tiny paifang over an alley that says NEW CHINA STREET on top. However, there’s no hotel called “Handy Economic” to be seen. Maybe my source for this information was an Internet dead end, a Web site abandoned years ago. I decide to hop out of the taxi and look around and then notice a big greeting sign over the door at a different building that says NANA EUROPEAN-STYLE HOTEL and decide to check it out. It turns out to be a smallish but clean and respectable-looking place, with scores of European art prints framed on the walls and a campy Romanesque nude female statue prominently displayed on the second-floor landing. There’s no lift, but the price is right. A decent double room, Internet-ready computer included, is about $23 a night.
An hour or so later, I get the call I’m expecting from Everny, the music teacher who crashed the lunch at Great Buddha Temple. She had sent me a message through Jimmy Lin that she was going to visit her Buddhist teacher at Yunmen Temple and asked if I wanted to go there with her. Yunmen Temple is about an hour from Shaoguan. I’d like to visit there again, so I agreed to meet her at the bus station where we can take the local fourteen-seat minibus directly to Ruyuan City, a short taxi ride from the temple.
12. Yunmen Temple
ZEN MASTER YUNMEN was among the most uncompromising of all the old Zen masters. He adamantly rejected metaphysical and mystical thinking among his students. He even scolded people for hanging around temples, criticizing them for searching out any religious claptrap that some teachers have “chewed on and spit out” and then “putting it in their own mouth.” Here’s an example of how Yunmen talked:Yunmen said to the monks, “Why are you wandering around here looking for something? I just know how to eat and shit. What else is there that needs to be explained?
“You here have taken pilgrimages everywhere, studying Zen and asking about Tao. But now I ask you all, what exactly have you learned in all these places you’ve visit
ed? Bring it out for us to see, and we’ll check it out! And after all this, what is it that the master of your own house has attained? You’ve all chased after some old teachers, picking up something they have already chewed on and spit on the ground, then putting it in your own mouth and calling it your own. Then you say, ‘I understand Zen!’ or ‘I understand Tao!’ I want to ask you—even if you can recite the whole Buddhist canon, what can you do with it?
“The ancients didn’t know when to quit. They looked at you running around, and [to try to help you] they said ‘bodhi’ and ‘nirvana,’ but this just covered you up and staked you down. Then when they saw you didn’t get it, they said ‘no bodhi’ or ‘no nirvana.’ They should have made it clear from the beginning that this can only go around and around! Now all you do is look for commentaries and explanations!
“When you act like this, you destroy our school. You’ve been carrying on like this without stopping, and I want to know, where has it gotten you?
“Back when I was going around on pilgrimages, there were teachers who gave me explanations. They meant well. But then one day I completely saw through what they were doing. They’re just laughingstocks. If I manage to live a while longer, I’ll break the legs of those teachers who destroy our sect! These days there’re plenty of affairs to get involved with. Why don’t you go and do them? Why are you looking for a piece of dried shit around here?”
Yunmen then got down from the Dharma seat and chased the monks from the hall with his staff.
Of course some people might think that chasing the monks out of the hall with his monk’s staff is a bit over the top. Much is made about such seemingly erratic behavior by old Zen masters like Yunmen. Scholars use a fancy word to describe such strange behavior, calling it antinomian. The word describes the behavior of religious people who think their understanding of the truth entitles them to act with disregard toward religious convention or conventional morality.
Tracking Bodhidharma Page 9
