Ch’an Buddhism in China
Its History and Method
part 1
- Part 1 : Shen-Hui and the establishment of chinese Ch’an
- Part 2 : Hui-Neng, The so-called Sixth Patriarch
- Part 3 : The 7 schools in the eighth century
- part 4 : the great persecution
- part 5 : development of the Ch’an method
Hu Shih
Philosophy East and West, Vol.. 3, No. 1 (January, 1953), pp. 3-24
© 1953 by University of Hawaii Press, Hawaii, USA
– Source www.thezensite.comIs Ch’an Beyond Our Understanding?
For more than a quarter of a century, my learned friend. Dr. Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, formerly of the Otani University, Kyoto, Japan, has been interpreting and introducing Zen Buddhism to the Western world. Through his untiring effort and through his many books on Zen, he has succeeded in winning an audience and a number of followers, notably in England.
As a, friend and as a historian of Chinese thought, I have followed Suzuki’s work with keen interest. But I have never concealed from him my disappointment in his method of approach. My greatest disappointment has been that, according to Suzuki and his disciples, Zen is illogical, irrational, and, therefore, beyond our intellectual understanding. In his book Living by Zen Suzuki tells us:
If we are to judge Zen from our common-sense view of things, we shall find the ground sinking away under our feet. Our so-called rationalistic way of thinking has apparently no use in evaluating the truth or untruth of Zen. It is altogether beyond the ken of human understanding. All that we can therefore state about Zen is that its uniqueness lies in its irrationality or its passing beyond our logical comprehension.
It is this denial of the capability of the human intelligence to understand and evaluate Zen that I emphatically refuse to accept. Is the so-called Ch’an or Zen really so illogical and irrational that it is “altogether beyond the ken of human understanding” and that our rational or rationalistic way of thinking is of no use “in evaluating the truth and untruth of Zen”?
The Ch’an (Zen) movement is an integral part of the history of Chinese Buddhism, and the history of Chinese Buddhism is an integral part of the general history of Chinese thought. Ch’an can be properly understood only in its historical setting just as any other Chinese philosophical school must be studied and understood in its historical setting.
The main trouble with the “irrational” interpreters of Zen has been that they deliberately ignore this historical approach. “Zen,” says Suzuki, “is above space-time relations, and naturally even above historical facts.” Any man who takes this unhistorical and anti-historical position can never understand the Zen movement or the teaching of the great Zen masters. Nor can he hope to make Zen properly understood by the people of the East or the West. The best he can do is to tell the world that Zen is Zen and is altogether beyond our logical comprehension.
But if we restore the Zen movement to its “space-time relations,” that is, place it in its proper historical setting, and study it and its seemingly strange teachings as “historical facts,” then, but not until then, an intelligent and rational understanding and appreciation of this great movement in Chinese intellectual and religious history may yet be achieved.
SHEN-HUI AND THE ESTABLISHMENT OF CHINESE CH’AN
What follows is a new history of the Chinese Ch’an (Zen) movement which I have reconstructed on the basis of authentic records hitherto neglected or distorted but now clarified and strongly supported by eighth- and ninth-century documents hidden away for over a thousand years in a scaled-cave library in the desert region of Tunhuang 敦煌 in modern Kansu and only recently edited and published in China and Japan. Both Suzuki and I have p. 5 taken part in the editing and publishing of some of the newly discovered materials.
The story will begin with the year A.D. 700, when the Empress Wu 武后 (who reigned as “Emperor” from 690 to 705 ) invited an old Ch’an monk of the La^nkaa School 楞伽宗 to pay her a visit at the capital city of Changan. The monk was Shen-hsiu 神秀, who was then already over ninety years old and had long been famous for his dhyaana (meditation) practice and ascetic life at his hilly retreat in the Wutang Mountains 武當山 in modern Hupei. The imperial invitation was so earnest and insistent that the aged monk finally accepted.
When he arrived in 701, he had to be carried in a chair to the imperial audience. The Empress was said to have done him the unusual honor of curtsying and making him a guest in one of her palaces. Her two emperor-sons (whom she had deposed successively in 684 and 690 ) and the whole Court worshipped him and sat at his feet. For four years he was honored as “the Lord of the Law at the Two National Capitals of Changan and Loyang, and the Teacher of Three Emperors.” When he died in 705, he was mourned by the Court and hundreds of thousands of the populace. By imperial order, three monasteries were built in his memory, one at the Capital, one at his birthplace in Honan, and one at the place of his ch’an life. A brother of the two emperors and Chang Yueh 張說, the great prose writer of the day, wrote his biographical monuments.
In Chang Yueh’s text, this genealogical line of Shen-hsiu’s Buddhist descent was made public:
- 1. Bodhidharma 菩提達摩
- 2. Hui-k’o 慧可
- 3. Seng Ts’an 僧粲
- 4. Tao-hsin 道信 (died 651)
- 5. Hung-jen 弘忍 (died 674)
- 6. Shen-hsiu 神秀
After Shen-hsiu’s death, two of his disciples, P’u-chi 普寂 (died 739) and I-fu 義福 (died 732), continued to be honored as National Teachers of the Empire. In their biographical monuments after death, the same genealogical line was mentioned. This list remained unchallenged for thirty years. It was probably accepted as one of the several lines of descent in the La^nkaa school since the days of Bodhidharma.
But in the year 734, when P’u-chi was still at the height of his power and prestige, a southern monk by the name of Shen-hui 神會 stood up at a large gathering in a monastery in Huatai 滑臺 in modern Honan and openly challenged the line of descent claimed by Shen-hsiu and his school as not true and not historical.
“Bodhidharma,” said this strange monk, “gave to Hui-k’o a robe (chia-sha 袈裟 ) as testimonial of the transmission of the true Law. This robe was handed down by Hui-k’o to his chosen successor, and in four generations it came to Hung-jen. But Hung-jen gave it, not to Shen-hsiu, but to Hui-neng 慧能 of Shaochou 韶州 in the South.” And he went on to say: “Even Shen-hsiu himself always said that the robe of transmission had gone to the South. That is why he never claimed in his life-time that he was the sixth successor. But now the Ch’an master P’u-chi claims that he is the seventh generation, thereby falsely establishing his teacher, Shen-hsiu, to be the sixth successor. That is not to be permitted.”
One monk at the meeting raised this warning: “You are attacking the Ch’an master P’u-chi who is nationally known and nationally honored. Are you not risking your own life?” To this Shen-hui replied: “I have called this solemn gathering for the sole purpose of determining the true teaching and settling a great question of right and wrong — for the benefit of all who desire to learn the Truth. I do not care for my own life.”
And he declared that the teaching of Shen-hsiu and P’u-chi was false, because it recognized only Gradual Enlightenment, while “the great teachers of the School, throughout six generations, have all taught ‘the sword must pierce directly through,’ directly pointing to the sudden realization of one’s nature: they never talked about gradations of enlightenment. All those who want to learn the Tao (Way) must achieve Sudden Enlightenment to be followed by Gradual Cultivation. It is like child-birth, which is a sudden p. 7 affair, but the child will require a long process of nurture and education before he attains his full bodily and intellectual growth.”
And he condemned the formula of dhyaana practice taught by P’u-chi and his fellow students of the great Shen-hsiu — a fourfold formula of “concentrating the mind in order to enter dhyaana, settling the mind in that state by watching its forms of purity, arousing the mind to shine in insight, and finally controlling the mind for its inner verification.” Shen-hui said all this is “hindrance to bodhi (enlightenment).” And he swept aside all forms of sitting in meditation (tso-ch’an 坐禪, Japanese, zazen) as entirely unnecessary. He said: “If it is right to sit in meditation, then why should Vimalakiirti scold Saariputta for sitting in meditation in the woods?” “Here in my school, to have no thoughts is meditation-sitting, and to see one’s original nature is dhyaana (ch’an).”
Thus Shen-hui proceeded from denunciation of the most highly honored school of the empire to a revolutionary pronouncement of a new Ch’an which renounces ch’an itself and is therefore no ch’an at all. This doctrine of Sudden Enlightenment he does not claim as his own theory or that of his teacher, the illiterate monk Hui-neng of Shaochou, but only as the true teaching of all the six generations of the school of Bodhidharma.
All this, according to the newly discovered documents, took place in 734 in a monastery in Huatai, which was a provincial capital fairly far away from the great cities of Changan and Loyang. In 739, the Ch’an master P’u-chi died. In his biographical monument written by the famous Li Yung 李邕 (678-747), the genealogical line from Bodhidharma to Shen-hsiu was repeated with the significant statement that, before his death, he told his disciples, “I was entrusted by my deceased Master with the transmission of the Secret Seal of the Law,” which had come down from Bodhidharma. Was this an indirect reply to Shen-hui’s attack by “deliberately emphasizing that the genealogical line was the only line of secret apostolic succession?
In 745, the heretic monk Shen-hui was called to the Ho-tse Monastery at Loyang, the eastern capital of the Empire, from which monastery was derived the title “The Master of Ho-tse 荷澤大師 ” by which Shen-hui has been known to posterity. He arrived at Loyang at the advanced age of seventy-seven and remained there more than eight years. From his exalted pulpit in a great monastery, he now repeated his open challenge that the line of transmission claimed by the school of Shen-hsiu, I-fu, and P’u-chi was not historical, and that their teaching of Gradual Enlightenment was false. He was an eloquent preacher and a dramatic storyteller. Many apocryphal stories about Bodhi-p. 8 dharma’s life, such as his interview with the Emperor of Liang and the tale of the second Patriarch’s cutting off his own arm to show his earnest desire for instruction, were first invented by him and later came to be further embellished and incorporated into the general traditional history of Chinese Ch’an.
His Discourses (Yulu 語錄 ) (in my edition of Shen-Hui Ho-Shang I-Chi 神會和尚遺集 of 1930 and in Suzuki’s edition of Ho-tse Shen-Hui Ch’an-Shih Yulu 荷澤神會禪師語錄 of 1934) shows that he was in friendly contact and discussion with a number of prominent literati and statesmen of the age. From this group he selected the poet Wang Wei 王維 (died 759) to be the biographer of his teacher, Hui-neng of Shaochou. In this, undoubtedly the earliest biography of Hui-neng (probably never cut on stone, but preserved in T’ang Wen Ts’ui 唐文粹 section 63), it was definitely stated that the Ch’an master Hung-jen regarded his Southern “barbarian” lay laborer as having alone understood his teaching and, when he was dying, gave him “the robe of the Patriarchs” and told him to go away.
Meanwhile, Shen-hui’s eloquence and popular teaching were attracting a tremendous following, so tremendous that in 753 the martyr-statesman Lu I 盧奕, Chief of Imperial Censors, memorialized the throne that the Abbot of the Ho-tse Monastery was “gathering large crowds of people around him and might be suspected of some conspiracy injurious to the interests of the State.” The Emperor Hsuan-tsung 玄宗 (reigned 713-756, died 762) sent for Shen-hui and, after an interview with him, exiled him to live in Iyang 弋陽 in Kiangsi, whence he was transferred to three other places in the next two years.
But at the end of his third year of exile (755-756), there broke out the great rebellion of General An Lu-shan 安祿山 which for a time threatened to overthrow the great T’ang Dynasty. The rebel armies, starting out from the northeastern provinces and sweeping across the northern plains, were able in a few months to capture the eastern capital (Loyang) and shatter all passes leading to Changan. The capital fell in July, 756. The Emperor hurriedly left the city in most pitiful and humiliating circumstances and fled to Chengtu, leaving the heir apparent in the northwest to take charge of affairs. The heir apparent was proclaimed the new sovereign and was able to organize a government and rally the loyal armies to fight the rebellion and save the Empire. In 757, both capitals were recovered. The rebellion was suppressed in the course of six years.
When the new government was formed in 756, the great problem was how to raise money to carry on the war. One of the emergency measures was to sell an increased number of Buddhist “licenses” (tu-tieh 度牒 ) for ordaining new p. 9 monks and nuns. To push the sales, it was necessary to hold preaching and proselyting meetings in the cities to open the hearts and the purses of men and women. The great eloquence and popularity of the exiled monk Shen-hui was remembered, probably by his Ch’an friends like Miao Chin-ch’ing 苗晉卿 and Fang Kuan 房琯 who had become leaders in the war government. So, at the age of 89, Shen-hui returned to the recaptured but ruined city of Loyang and preached to huge crowds. It was recorded that his preaching meetings were most successful in fund-raising, and made no mean contribution to the war effort.
The new Emperor, in appreciation of his work, invited him to visit him at his restored palace and ordered the Department of Works to accelerate the building of his quarters at the Ho-tse Monastery. The banished heretic became the honored guest of the Empire. He died in 760 at the age of ninety-two.
In 770, an imperial decree named his chapel “The Hall of Praj~naa (insight) Transmission of the True School.” The learned Ch’an historian Tsung-mi 宗密 (died 841) reports that in 796 Emperor Te-tsung 德宗 asked the heir apparent to call a council of Ch’an masters to determine the true teaching of Ch’an and settle the controversy about the direct and collateral lines of transmission. Subsequently an imperial decree was issued establishing “the Master of Ho-tse” (Shen-hui) as the Seventh Patriarch. This seems to have implied that his teacher, the illiterate monk Hui-neng of Shaochou, was recognized as the Sixth Patriarch.
In 815, at the request of the Viceroy of Lingnan, an imperial decree conferred posthumous honors on Hui-neng, who “had died 106 years ago” (which would date his death in 711 instead of the traditional date of 713 ). The decree designated him “The Master of Great Insight.” The local Buddhists and lay public requested two of the great writers of the age, Liu Tsung-yuan 柳宗元 (died 819) and Liu Yu-hsi 劉禹錫 (died 842), to write two biographical monuments in memory of Hui-neng. In both texts, the authors unhesitatingly referred to Hui-neng as the Sixth Patriarch after Bodhidharma. The controversy had long been over, and the victory of Shen-hui’s fight had been complete.
- Part 1 : Shen-Hui and the establishment of chinese Ch’an
- Part 2 : Hui-Neng, The so-called Sixth Patriarch
- Part 3 : The 7 schools in the eighth century
- part 4 : the great persecution
- part 5 : development of the Ch’an method
Hu Shih
Philosophy East and West, Vol.. 3, No. 1 (January, 1953), pp. 3-24
© 1953 by University of Hawaii Press, Hawaii, USA
– Source : www.thezensite.com
