History of the Development of Chinese Chan Thought 9819956854, 9789819956852

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Tianxiang Ma

History of the Development of Chinese Chan Thought

History of the Development of Chinese Chan Thought

Tianxiang Ma

History of the Development of Chinese Chan Thought

Tianxiang Ma Department of Philosophy Wuhan University Wuhan, China Translated by John Alexander Jorgensen Melbourne, Australia

ISBN 978-981-99-5685-2 ISBN 978-981-99-5686-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-5686-9 Jointly published with Higher Education Press Limited Company The print edition is not for sale in China (Mainland). Customers from China (Mainland) please order the print book from: Higher Education Press Limited Company. ISBN of the Co-Publisher’s edition: 978-730-70-5298-7 Supported by Chinese Fund for the Humanities and Social Sciences (本书获中华社会科学基金资助) (Granted no. 15WZX006) Translation from the Chinese Simplified language edition: “中国禅宗思想发展史” by Tianxiang Ma, © Wuhan University Press 2007. Published by Wuhan University Press. All Rights Reserved. © Higher Education Press Limited Company 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publishers, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publishers nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publishers remain neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Foreword I

For some years, every time there is mention of Chan, there are sure to be stories told imbued with the hues of supernatural tales such as the Buddha picking up a flower and K¯as´yapa smiling slightly; of Bodhidharma crossing the Yangtze on a single rush, facing a wall, and returning west with only one sandal; and of Huike cutting off his arm; and of the conferral of the robe onto Huineng at night, and the transmission from mind to mind, and so on. Although these have eminent literary, artistic and aesthetic values, from the perspective of history these are totally fictional and did not happen. History values verification, it does not ask for extraordinary deeds. If one does not use the base of historical reality for the development of thought, then although that thought can delight the mind and gratify the sight, and make people accept it as perfection, it is still only myth and literature, and is not the history of the development of thought. In reality, the origins of Chan thought are not the marvels related by Chan monks of later periods. Everyone is clear on that. Possibly there is no great objection to saying that philosophical Daoism influenced the formation of Chan thought. Yet, if one says that Chan thought is doing as one pleases freely and easily, and that Chinese intellectuals familiar with philosophical Daoism borrowed the name of Buddhism and reordered Daoist thought, in particular that of Zhuangzi, in order to give it a popularized exposition, or speaking directly, that Chan thought is a popularized Daoist philosophy, then, in general, the overwhelming majority of people could not agree. However, that was what happened. The introduction of Buddhism brought fresh air to the stagnant scholarly atmosphere engendered by the study of the classics in the Han dynasty; the translation of the Buddhist scriptures functioned to make waves, especially in the rampant Xuanxue (Dark Learning) thought; and following this philosophical Daoism flourished again in the scholarly world. By the Wei and Jin dynasties, a Daoistic tendency (xuanfeng) exploded. Famous monks and famous scholars used philosophical Daoism to exalt each other, which originally began due to the acceptance of Indian yoga and dhy¯ana, and the Pali jh¯ana, and they borrowed the idea of Zhuangzi and applied this to the word “chan,” in the end bestowing a rich content on it. They took “ding” (to be firm, v

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steady) to be an evident quality of the method of Indian dhy¯ana, and at one stroke it filled the sphere of Chinese Chan learning1 with philosophical Daoist principles and a speculative disposition. Without the slightest doubt, the emergence of the word “chan” was not as a transcription of a concept in Indian Buddhism, nor as a translation of a meaning. Rather, using the pretext of “chan” being present in the translations, they consciously appropriated the words of Zhuangzi, giving the word “chan” the implication of a mystery hard to know, a thought that is profound and of deep understanding, and it continued on as a creative translation. It was exactly this creative and expanded translation, and Daoist thought that enabled an uninterrupted and increasing familiarity. First, An Shigao, then, Kang Senghui, and later Daoan and other eminent monks through the ages gave the character “chan” a philosophical Daoist style of interpretation. Then Daosheng, Sengzhao, Huijiao and other monk thinkers formed another new thought, giving it a basis in Daoist philosophical theory, which molded a number of primal modes of thinking such as “this very intrinsic reality is formless, this very reality is precisely function, calm emptiness and empty numinosity, the Buddha-nature intrinsically exists, suddenly enlightened to become buddha” and so forth. Later, through Niutou Farong and others, there was a further advance in theory, promoting a transformation in respect of the aspect of the mind-nature. This was also done by Huineng, which in the end led to the formation of the Platform Sutra as a representative and systematic Chan thought. Its foundation was the standpoint of Zhuangzi and Laozi’s naturalism, with seeing nature and becoming Buddha as its core tenet. It took the external transcendence of reverting to nature and changed it into an inward pursuit that rather sought back in the mind, and used the speculative form of the fish trap, the hoof prints, fish and rabbit, in which one forgets the object once one has gotten the meaning (Tr. all references to stories in Zhuangzi), and the negative thinking which appears as distinctly apart from characteristics, is apart from thought, and is apart from words, to really stress the divergent paths of “chan” and “ding.” This is not the Indian entry into sam¯adhi (ding) or method of entry into calm. It was vastly different from Bodhidharma’s “facing the wall and contemplating the mind,” and of course, it is not also the same as the learning of the La˙nka School2 masters after Bodhidharma. Chan is: Purely Sinified, and also is a popularized philosophical Daoist philosophy. Its beginnings were not with Bodhidharma, and its transmission also was not via the single lineage of “direct pointing and transmission from mind to mind” of Bodhidharma to Hongren. The formation of Chan thought is premised on creative translation, an incessant and extensive adoption of the thought of Zhuangzi and Laozi, and by forming a foundation on Daosheng and Sengzhao, it culminated in the systematized and popularized insight of a philosopher in the Platform Sutra.

1

Tr. Chanxue, the study of Chan or the learning of Chan. In parallel with Fojiao (the teachings of Buddhism, Buddhism in general) and Foxue, the scholarship and learning of Buddhism. 2 Tr. a group or lineage of masters of the sixth and seventh centuries, vaguely affiliated with Bodhidharma and his heirs, who studied and venerated the La˙nk¯avat¯ara S¯utra.

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Understanding it like this, the transmission lineage through six generations was really a distortion or was a product of later Chan monks establishing themselves by riding on the coattails of more brilliant people and magnifying their own myth. To clarify this point, it is useful to understand the universal significance of Chan thought and its contributions to society and culture, particularly to understand the reasons why Chan thought for the most part was easily and constantly in rapport with traditional culture. In the more than a millennium since the idea of Chan entered China, when translations began, through to the formation of Chan thought onwards, the “chan” of the Indian chan (meditation) method was never completely abandoned, and it co-existed with the “chan” of Chan thought, and at times they were confused. One may also say that the reason why these two “chan” were not divided was because these two different types of “chan” had not been seen as different from the time when Bodhidharma founded the school until the theory of the transmission of the six generations of transmission of the mind was established. Therefore, it is necessary to explain here that what is being discussed is only the “chan” of Chan thought. This is so that there can be no further confusion between the two. However, what then is Chan? How did this popularized philosophy of Daoism form and come into being? This book will work, through a method of the combination of history and logic, to provide an objective and complete exposition of these questions. From an objective perspective, no single theory is sufficient to deal with the living environment. Buddhists also view human life as a process of suffering. However, they recognize that the cause of suffering lies not in the external environment, but in the production out of the ignorance of human beings themselves of the dualistic opposing concepts of others and self, right and wrong, high and low, victory and defeat, many and one, good and evil, life and death, and attachments to self and attachments to dharmas, or the grasping for self and dharmas. If one grasps the above-described concepts, then one’s desires will be insatiable, one will desire to excel over others, unite with one’s own faction and fight those who differ, and in minor cases, there are the squabbles of the wife and the mother-in-law, and in major cases, the corpses of the people killed will fill the plains, and so on. Therefore, Buddhists stress that the pursuit of the best living environments for humanity is not through the exertion directed externally, but by the making of effort directed internally, lying solely in the work related to the activities of thinking. In reality, the so-called “chan” of the typically Sinified Chan School refers to the following: A kind of mood (sphere of mental activity). A kind of sphere of mental activity that uses effort to shake off the bonds of thought, transcend oppositions, contain oppositions, and to roam freely.

Since it is a kind of mental sphere, it is also difficult to describe. Therefore, Chan followers often regard language and letters as being the basis for obstacles to the Way and stress that the meaning lies beyond words, that mind is transmitted to mind, and that it is creative thinking that does its utmost to include heaven and earth. Therefore, the idea of Chan is even more vague and unfathomable.

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However, people still need to use language and letters to communicate, and to give and receive the experience and mental results of Chan. Nevertheless, this is a kind of dependence on intuition and not on logic, a reliance on the sphere of enlightenment that is illogical and complacent, and so it is not difficult to understand that there are individual differences according to the results experienced and that there are different expressions in language of high and low, hard and easy, detailed and brief according to the person speaking. “Chan” is a transcription of the Sanskrit word dhy¯ana and originally had no connection with its Chinese meaning. Later its content was changed and incessantly enriched, and it gradually came to be a linguistic sign and philosophic category bearing a specific meaning. This idea is not seen in the earliest text translated into Chinese, the S¯utra in Forty-two Chapters (Sishier zhang jing), but the so-called “practice of the Way” (xingdao) of each chapter in this text seems to be an old translation of “chan” (dhy¯ana). In late Han, An Shigao transmitted the method of meditation (chan) to north China, and the Anban shouyi jing that he translated frequently talks of the work of “chan,” and this was honored by students of Buddhism from the Han to the Wei period. And so anban, the counting of breathes, resembled the inhaling and exhaling of the magicians ( fangshi) (Xiang Xu of the end of the Han, always sat on a bench, which over a long time became the posture of kneeling on one’s feet). Also, the method of “protecting the one” of the Taiping jing also could be a method of meditation (chan). One can see that the meaning of “chan” in this period really had the sense of a method of divine thought and entering fixity (ding/sam¯adhi), and was not the insightful contemplation that manifests prajñ¯a (wisdom). The legend of Bodhidharma’s facing a wall is properly the manifestation of the efficacy of “ding” (sam¯adhi). The earliest systematic explanation of “chan” is at the end of the section on “the practice of meditation” (xichan) in fascicle 11 of Huijiao’s Lives of Eminent Monks (Gaoseng zhuan), which says, Chan is a word for marveling (miao) at (comprehending thoroughly) the myriad things. Therefore, it can be that there is no dharma that is not conditioned [by it], and no cognitive object that is not examined. Thus, the conditioning of dharmas and the examination of the cognitive objects are only clarified by calm. It is like a deep pond in which the waves have stopped, and one can clearly see down to the fish and stones. Once the water of the mind is clarified, then the illumination that is formed hides nothing.

Huijiao’s understanding of “chan” is “a marveling at the myriad things,” which means because one has been able to clearly see and understand all sense-objects, one can then produce all things, and the reason it can do this is simply that the mind is “calm.” In other words, the “chan” that Huijiao spoke of is a pathway to cognize intrinsic reality, and also is the cause of the production of the myriad things, and is the intrinsic reality itself that is examined via all the sentient-objects. Also, the pathways of intrinsic reality and the comprehension of intrinsic reality are equally realized via “calm.” He also took the example of the relationship of a deep pond and the stones and fish in it to explain that if the mind is clarified then it could form an illumination of everything, and at the same time as he explained the functions of

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the intrinsic reality, he also stressed the important form of the “chan” of “ding”. In summary, Huijiao’s “chan” is, Calm and radiant, and being radiant marvels at (comprehend) the myriad things.

In fact, Buddhism originally was a negation of intrinsic reality and its idea of emptiness is not the non-existence taught by the philosophical Daoists. It was an expression of the production of dharmas by causation and a negation of an essence (zixing). Huijiao’s basic idea of “there is no dharma that is not conditioned” is evidently an idea of “chan” that had already been influenced by philosophical Daoism as well as by the speculative thought about the fundamental and derivative (benmo) of Dark Learning thinkers. Nevertheless, his emphasis on “calm” was nothing more than in the sense of the sam¯adhi (ding) that penetrates insight of the meditators of his day. We can also see in this paragraph that this relates to a footnote to chapter twenty-five of Laozi (“Calm and formless, it stands alone and does not change; it courses around untiringly and can be the mother of all under heaven”). It is easy to see that, at that time, and before, Chan’s learning had been influenced by philosophical Daoist thought as seen through the lens of Dark Learning. India took sam¯adhi to be a chan that centered on the mind, but this chan had already begun to tend towards meaning a mental sphere of insight, which had transformed it into a Chinese chan. Although “the Buddha-patriarch picked up a flower and K¯as´yapa smiled subtly” is a preposterous story, it was a forced interpretation of history that was transformed by Chan into a basis for the lineage transmission of later Chan followers; it reflects that Chan was a transformation from a method into a mental sphere, that a concrete idea had evolved into a philosophical category, and the meditative counting had developed into an ideological and logical relationship with Chinese Chan learning. Niutou Farong (594–657), a student of Daoxin (580–651), used “Emptiness is the basis of the Way” to stress that “no-mind accords with the Way,” which was clearly a thorough rebuilding of “chan” even further via the theories of Laozi and Zhuangzi. What stands out in this are “no-mind” and “no-form/characteristic,” which are Way-like categories that transcend the mind and things. The differences between Huineng (trad.d. 613) and Shenxiu (d. 706) lie exactly in how they took a Niutou Chan that had taken on features from Dark Learning and introduced it into their own systems of thought, and then formed specific Chan philosophical categories and a Chinese Chan learning system that was not the same as, and was independent of, the Indian method of chan/meditation. In the Platform Sutra Huineng says, Not giving rise to thoughts in respect of any sense-objects is sitting; seeing the intrinsic nature and not being confused is Chan. Externally being free from characteristics is Chan. Internally not being confused is ding/ sam¯adhi.

Here he is saying that the three ideas of sitting, chan, and ding have not only newly defined the traditional “sitting in chan/meditation” and “chanding/sam¯adhi,” but have also further divided chan and ding into different ideas. In this way, the separation of chan and ding established firmly a creative category of “chan.”

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Foreword I Externally not giving rise to thoughts about any sense-objects is sitting. Internally not being confused is called ding. Being externally free from characteristics and internally seeing the nature is Chan.

Sitting is not the usual understanding of sitting; it is not giving rise to thoughts, and not giving rise to thoughts is not being confused. Therefore, sitting is also ding. Sitting and ding certainly are related to chan, but chan is no-thought about thought; it not only needs ding, but it also needs transcendence of ding, and through that one sees the intrinsic nature of no-characteristics. In the separation of chan and ding, chan is not again the fruitless sitting of the magicians’ inhaling and exhaling or Bodhidharma’s facing a wall, but is rather the obtaining of the intrinsic mind, a transcendent sphere of mind that is free of all characteristics. Simply speaking, the core ideas and objectives of Chinese Chan thought that was created by Huineng and revealed by the Platform Sutra were “free from characteristics,” “no-thought,” and “seeing the nature.” These evidently form a lineage of transmission via philosophical Daoist naturalism, the idea of “equalizing things,” Sengzhao and Daosheng’s intrinsic reality having no characteristics, this reality is function, not existing and not non-existing, the Buddha-nature intrinsically exists, through to Niutou’s “No-mind accords with the Way” and so on. “Free from characteristics” is “to be free from characteristics in characteristics, freedom from emptiness in emptiness,” “leaving and entering while free of two sides,” which requires that all dualistic antitheses be negated in thinking. The thirtysix antitheses mentioned in the Platform Sutra are intended to explain seeing the nature, all antitheses of internal and external such as external sense-objects, language, and characteristics of dharmas being the results of “attachment to emptiness” and “attachments to characteristics.” The truth of Chan lies in the negation of these sorts of antitheses, the transcendence of these antitheses, and not being attached to the sphere of the absolute transcendence of both sides. Its essential quality is negation! “No thought” is “not thinking in thought,” “not abiding thought by thought,” and “continuity thought by thought.” Looking at this, there are a number of contradictions, which really is Huineng’s form of thinking. “No-thought” is definitely not “removing all forms of thought,” but is the recognition that one’s intrinsic nature is pure of itself, and therefore there are thoughts that accord with the conditions, “that do not dwell on any dharmas,” and are “not defiled by any sense-object,” which is not to dwell on any characteristic. This is why he says “continuity thought by thought.” This really is “returning to obtain one’s intrinsic mind,” in which the intrinsic mind transcends all antitheses. The format of this in respect of one’s own mind is the affirmation of the intrinsic nature, which is called “according to conditions.” However, in content, it is still in the form of the denial of the thinking of dualistic antithesis. The negation that transcends antithesis and the affirmation that accords with the intrinsic mind are the two pillars that mutually support the two bases that constructed the Chan School system of thought. For the later development of Chan thought, whether the mainstream of course, or the divergent paths, whether the adherence to what one was taught, or the newly created theories, in all cases they developed following the way of thinking of “free from characteristics” and “no-thought.”

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The basis for the mainstream of Chan thought was still the idea of “leaving and entering while free of the two sides,” that used the intrinsic mind to understand the natural world. In society and human life, it fully brought into play the transcendent spirit of the critical significance that it possessed, and it strove to use this inclusive phenomenal world and limitless cognition; and simultaneously on the foundation of “one’s own nature is intrinsic awakening,” it used the speculative form of “in accord with conditions” to merge Confucianism and Daoism, and to advance the unity of the three teachings and the union of Chan and reality, which was a trend of engagement with the world. Even though this spirit of negation developed into abusing the patriarchs and reviling the buddhas, even to the extremes of having no country and no humanity, its spirit of engagement with the world resulted in the “own mind is the Pure Land” that married Chan to “the Pure Land of the human world,” but Chan did not change the basis of its form of untrammeled thought and its transcendent disposition, and also it had a positive function in respect of the development of human thought, philosophical reform and improvement, and social improvement and everyday ethics. Yet that is not to deny these extraordinary forms of thinking, “free from characteristics” and ”no-thought,” could very easily lead to differing interpretations of their meaning and the use of them by opportunists. From Huineng onwards, especially among the disciples of the five houses and seven lineages of Chan,3 Chan overemphasized “being free from characteristics in characteristics” as a form of thinking that transcends antitheses and the ineffability of the sphere that one needs to arrive at, and it overemphasized the functions of marvelous enlightenment, and consequently, the non-reliance on letters and the technique (gongfu) of great effort in which the Way eliminates language, whereupon there was a proliferation of recorded sayings, and gongan (cases of precedents) appeared one after another, and there was talk of the raising of eyebrows and blinking of eyes, and the barbed opportunities of the staff-blow and the shout. This circuitous talk of Chan became even more circuitous and remote, and the more circuitous it became the more people could not understand it. In summary, the originally easy and plain Chan thought was made to diverge into the side road of mysticism. The “no-thought” and “according with conditions” that had originally been erected on the transcendental spirit had been converted into the absolute affirmation of “all that is manifest is perfection,” taking away the negation and criticism of reality and surreptitiously making it into unconditional compliance and eulogy. Through this, the governments that treated the peasants as straw dogs used Chan to make fools of the common people, and the opportunistic later, inferior followers of Chan also boasted of skillful means or deliberately used promotional gimmicks to seek undeserved publicity. This thus changed Chan, with later Chan people undoubtedly creating misunderstandings.

3

The five houses are those of the Weiyang, Linji, Caodong, Yunmen, and Fayan lineages. These, plus the split of the Linji lineage into the Yangqi and Huanglong branches, are called the seven lineages.

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In fact, a pupil of Huineng in a later generation, Zongmi (780–841) had already begun to complicate Chan, and through this, he pushed Chan onto the path of mystification. In his Chanyuan zhuquanji duxu (General Preface to the Collection Describing the Sources of Chan) he explained Chan as follows: [Chan] is a joint term for ding/sam¯adhi and insight…. The root source is the principle of Chan, and matching it by forgetting thought is Chan practice…. At present, there are those who simply view the true nature to be Chan, which is to not discern its teachings of principle and practice…. However, there is also no separate reality of Chan apart from the true nature…. This true nature is not only the source of the Chan gateway, it is also the source of all dharmas. Therefore, it is called dharma-nature. It is also the source of the delusions and enlightenment of sentient beings. Therefore, it is called the store consciousness and tath¯agatagarbha (store of the Thus Come One). It is also the source of the myriad virtues of the buddhas. Therefore, it is called Buddha-nature. It is also the source of the myriad practices of the bodhisattvas. Therefore, it is called the mind-ground.

Zongmi traced the understanding of Chan in terms of principle (theory) and practice back to Bodhidharma. Therefore, he also shows a tendency to confuse the “chan” of chanding (sam¯adhi and dhy¯ana) with the “chan” of Chan School thought and he also made Bodhidharma the founding ancestor of the school. He thought that only seeing the true nature to be Chan was an incomplete understanding. Yet he also stressed that the true nature is not only the source of the Chan gateway, but that it was also the source of the delusion and enlightenment of sentient beings and the source of the myriad merits of the buddhas and the myriad practices of the bodhisattvas. He also said that since true nature is the natural intrinsic nature (dharma-nature), it is also the intrinsic reality of human nature (the store consciousness), and the intrinsic reality of the virtues of the Way (Buddha-nature) and the intrinsic reality of behavior (the mind-ground). What he called “true nature” is evidently what Huineng called the pristine self-nature. He also made a detailed explanation of its position in terms of ontology, epistemology, methodology, and morality, but it was still fundamentally at one with what he was taught. Yet he complicated Chan and definitely functioned to promote the convergence of the lineages, but he also pioneered the mystification of Chan. He also said, “The myriad practices do not go beyond the six p¯aramit¯as,4 the Chan (meditation) gateway is simply one of the six, being the fifth. How can one view the true nature to be a practice of chan?” Here he also divides chan/ meditation into five sorts; non-Buddhist, common person, Lesser Vehicle, Greater Vehicle (Mahayana), and Tath¯agata pristine chan, thinking that the first four are the four chan/dhy¯ana and eight ding/sam¯adhi, including among them the three s´amatha (zhi) and three vipa´syan¯a (guan)5 of the Tiantai School, which even though they are perfectly marvelous, are equally not the Supreme Vehicle. Only the Tath¯agata pristine chan transmitted by Bodhidharma is the Supreme Vehicle chan, which is also “transmitted from a person to one person,” and “a thousand lamplights with a thousand illuminations” (Tr. there is enlightenment at every transmission). Zongmi’s 4

Tr. The six perfections convey one to the other shore of nirvana. The six are donation, moral conduct, patience or forbearance, energetic practice or perseverance, dhy¯ana or meditation, and prajñ¯a or wisdom. 5 Tr. zhi literally is to stop, to calm the mind and guan is to contemplate and analyze.

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explanation thus was a grandmotherly kindness, yet it had lost the features of simple clarity and direct search for the source that had marked Chan when it was founded, and it opened up a bad precedent for later people when speaking of Chan. It really was a misdirection relating to Chan thought. Following this there were the Chan teachings of the three mysteries and three essentials, the four selections, four guests and hosts, four illuminations and functions, three shouts, three laments, three smiles, seven items that accompany the body, ten wisdoms that are identical with the truth, thirteen sentences, and eighteen questions of Linji Chan; the five ranks of lord and subject, the five ranks of biased and proper, the five ranks of merit and honor, the five ranks of king and prince, the three contaminating defilements, the three regulatory essentials, the three kinds of rush flower, and the three gates of release of the Caodong Lineage; the arising and cause of the circle diagram and the diagram of the ninety-six kinds of circle of the Weiyang Lineage; the three sentences and eight essentials of the Yunmen Lineage; and the four opportunities and six forms of Fayan… as well as severing the finger and cutting the cat in half, the comparison with a donkey and metaphor of a dog, and also there were the rich poetry and obscene language, and the lust and feminine charm that was used for huatou (point of the story) investigation. It can truly be called playing new tricks again and again. The best of them were still able to arrive at the transcendental sphere, where nothing is present and nothing is not present, through these forms of winning by surprise, cut-logic thinking, and illogicality. The lesser people only remained in the empty and profound forms of the barbed gongan (case), fighting over the strange and competing in skill, playing at the unfathomable, deceiving themselves and others as their duties, and some spoke of playing in sam¯adhi, creating tricks that deluded themselves and others. In another respect, oversimplifying, all one had to do was say “The everyday mind is the Way,” “Every day is a good day,” “The yellow [thing] is paper, the black is letters,” “Ever so green the emerald bamboo, it is entirely the Dharma-body; ever so lush the yellow flowers, there is nothing that is not prajñ¯a,” through to “carting water and toting firewood,” “eat and sleep,” which is “putting it down is right.” Even though this thought in which “all that is manifested is perfection” developed out of the Chan ideas of “no-thought” and “accord with conditions,” its original intention was to point out the sublimation in the process of cognition and the erection of the return to the original face of “[that which is] manifested [is] perfection” on the transcendental foundation of the negation of negation. The “thirty years of looking on mountains as mountains and seeing water as water” is talking of two sorts of “manifested perfection” that are not the same constitutionally. Nevertheless, later Chan monks took this one extraordinary process of rationalized speculation and transformed it into a pure sensation that tallied with actuality as the absolute, and absolutely affirmed the actuality of “all that is manifested is perfection.” In this way, Chan, which possessed a strong critical consciousness, was changed into a hypocrite who just accorded with the world by displaying no independence. From the Song dynasty onwards, Chan had already become a tendency like ducks taking to water, and the meaning of Chan was further profusely elaborated in different theories. A dried turd is OK, eating, shitting, sleeping, carrying water and splitting

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firewood is all right; the ordinary as the secret is OK, being concise and perspicacious, and striking and shouting together are all right. Even though their aim was to cut out the usual logical thinking, fully exhibit the latent enlightened nature, and by the forms of negation reach the transcendence of reality, freedom, and the realm of doing everything while doing nothing, still this kind of method of not falling into verbal explanation and teaching wisdom, for rational people, and especially for modern people, is more like looking at flowers in a fog, something unfathomable. In this connection, hymns on old cases, old cases raised for comment, alternative answers, and evaluations arose in a race to speak of Chan in a round-about way, and kanhua Chan6 monopolized refinement in literature, while mozhao (silent illumination) Chan7 inclined towards the Indian method of meditation (chanding) and was a return to Bodhidharma’s methods of wall-contemplation (biguan) and calming the mind. The idea of “all that is manifested is perfection” not only made Chan monks ordinarily deal with kings and lords, taking the transcendent method of Chan and changing it into dependent imitation, at worst becoming a worldly method of “putting in order the techniques of present people” (words of Fozhao),8 it also made some eminent monks of great virtue drift into dissolution and disregard. The former added to the ambiguity and confusion about Chan, and the latter caused Chan to lose its essential qualities. In even more extreme cases, later inferior adherents of the Chan School went so far as to choose the wrong path (to buy a full jewelry box but return the contents), confusing the world simply by not understanding its marvelous forms; some being like blind men touching an elephant,9 not being able to analyze Chan anything like it is. No wonder that there are people who say that Chan wins fame by cheating the world, is arrant nonsense. The intense consciousness of participation in modern Buddhism has gradually rationalized and secularized the idea of Chan. Suzuki Daisetsu, titled the “Channist of the world,” inventively and directly said that this ineffable Chan is one’s own perfect mind, and that the limitless mind is the radius of a circle, which is the absolute affirmation of transcending dualistic antithesis. The modern monk-scholar Yinshun thought that Chan is ineffable, but yet is spoken of, and that it is a union of skillful means and the ultimate, a unification of form and content. With respect to saying that “Chan is an aestheticization of life,” this effectively gives an aesthetic value to it by seeing it from a broad perspective. As Chan Studies went to the West, English speakers translated chan as “meditation,” which is unlike the direct borrowing of and introduction of the word “Buddha” into the English system of vocabulary. The reason for this was that chan was not “dhy¯ana,” but was a product of China. And so “meditation” only reflected the form 6

Tr. a technique of intensely examining the point of a story or keywords in a gongan. This was created by Dahui Zonggao (1089-1163). 7 Tr. a technique of silent sitting and calming the mind used by the Caodong lineage that was attacked by Zonggao. 8 Tr. Fozhao Deguang (1121-1203), a disciple of Zonggao. 9 Tr. from famous metaphor in Buddhism of blind men feeling parts of an elephant; those touching its ears saying it like a large fan, those touching its legs thinking of pillars, and so on.

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of “ding,” and the meaning of chan that was deep and profound made them also transliterate chan as “Zen” or “Ch’an,” which then helped in understanding the essence of the “chan” of Chan School thought. The interpretation with the most modern meaning is generally that of Hu Shi. He said that Chan is “inexpressible,” “values self-attainment,” and he went further by taking a Chan School story to explain that Chan is the “acute insight” of “to conceive of a means in no-means.” This theory has a lot of logic, but it has strong and weak points and can be criticized and praised, and even though it was a wake-up call, it was still inevitably an arbitrary hypothesis. What then is Chan? The Chan School has a story that says that when the youth Sudhana was ordered by Mañju´sri to go out of the town to gather medicinal herbs, he realized that all of the environment is medicinal, so he plucked a stalk of wild grass and brought it back. Mañju´sri said, “As this grass can give life to people, it can also kill people.” The antinomian phenomenon embodied in this story is exactly a premise of the theories held by Chan masters about Chan. The existence of Nature in particular is an advancement of civilization, and in all cases, it shows that there is a duality, so that if one grasps one side one will lose its intrinsic truth; it is not creating harm to others, but is bringing suffering upon oneself. The sermon in the Platform Sutra on the thirty-six antitheses in which “leaving and entering are apart from the two sides” is an exposition of the Buddhist theories of “in principle transcending the tetralemma,10 and in essence cutting off a hundred negations,” and is further a transcendence of the duality of things. Of course, this has benefited from the dialectical thought of correct and reverse, misfortune and fortune, gain and loss, completion and destruction, and the greatest harm is inaction, all is enacted by inaction, ideas that were received from Laozi. Therefore, only when one transcends the forms of dualistic thinking will one be able to uproot individual suffering and social harm. First of all, from a fundamental viewpoint, Chan is a philosophical category that transcends dualistic antitheses, and is a form of thinking that does not fall into classes or is attached to the idea of two sides; it is a transcendent realm apart from characteristics and language. The thinking of ordinary people does not shake off the frameworks of the dualistic antitheses of thought such as existence and non-existence, right and wrong, true and false, non-eternal and eternal, one and many, small and large, life and death and so on. However, the world, especially human knowledge and the world of feelings, is varied and is not something that can be completely described via dualistic forms of thinking. For this reason, dualistic forms of thinking may be limited to occasional views or then to distortions of the original features of things. The unknowability of existence and the antimony brought about by Kant’s a priori reason speaks of exactly this idea. According to Buddhism, the suffering felt by people is sourced in human ignorance, and ignorance is precisely another name for dualistic thinking. Therefore, 10

Tr. the tetralemma or catus.kot.i are four propositions: is A, is not-A, is A and not-A, and is not-A and is not not-A; or exists, does not-exist, both exists and does not-exist, and does not-exist and does not not-exist.

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the sermons from the “eight negations” of early Buddhism, the Middle-Way view of India’s N¯ag¯arjuna, right through to the “entering and leaving apart from the two sides” of Chan are aimed exactly at this phenomenon. They recognize that the essence of things can also be called the truth, which does not reside in any one side of dualism, and can only be sought in transcendent, non-dualistic situations. The fundamental spirit of “principle transcends the tetralemma, carry out the elimination of the hundred negations” is what Chan says is “to be apart from characteristics while in characteristics, be apart from thoughts (nian) while in thoughts.” This is not existence, not non-existence, neither existence nor non-existence, and neither nonexistence nor not non-existence, which fully expresses Chan’s spirit of negation and transcendence. This seems not to be close to forms of reasoned thinking and clearly violates the rules of non-contradiction and excluded the middle of formal logic. Nevertheless, the universal laws of factual proof and formal logic have limitations and it cannot be agreed that this is a universal truth, but Chan thought to the contrary holds that this way of looking has a rational value. In the 1920s, the Polish scholar Jan Lukasiewicz issued a trivalent propositional calculus (of true, false, indeterminate) which he used to replace the classical bivalent logic, thinking that besides the dualistic propositions of true and false, there should also be a logical system of possible propositions. Later, he also obtained evidence from quantum mechanics and also developed a multi-valent logic that asserted that various possibilities beyond the propositions of true and false also exist and that the possibility may be true or may be false, or may not be true or may not be false. The laws of the excluded middle and of non-contradiction in this formal logic are not proven. Intuitionistic logic in particular was opposed to any form of formal logic, and not only recognized that the formula of the law of the excluded middle, AV-A (A or not A), is mistaken, but also recognized that it only applied to “limited sets.” For example, if A is not R(n), but not A is R(n), and n is a natural number, this is spoken of with respect to non-recursive predicates, and the law of the excluded middle is clearly not existent. This, and the forms of thinking of “being apart from characteristics” and “transcending the tetralemma” of Chan, are very similar. However, “being apart from characteristics” of Chan is a denial of both poles, while mathematical logic has its foundation in the affirmation of both poles, and that affirmation also has yet another form of existence. Even though this is so, it is also an existence beyond the dualistic antithesis, which presents fresh proof of the realm of transcendence sought by Chan. Suzuki Daisetsu again and again explained that Chan is a “negation of antitheses,” but Hu Shi considered this to be a kind of madness, yet he also had to acknowledge that “Madness is Method” and was not without meaning (Hu Shi, Zhongguo Chanxue zhi fazhan [Development of Zen Buddhism in China]). And yet, what Chan was seeking was a realm of transcendent emptiness, and what Suzuki was talking of was an affirmation of transcending dualism. In fact, the empty realm is a negation of negation, is a limitless transcendence; the affirmation is an affirmation by negation and is a limited transcendence, its force necessarily showing an attachment to an expression on another level. Thus, one can also see the gap between Suzuki’s Zen and Chinese Chan. Also, Professor Tang Yongtong expressed it well when he cited Spinoza’s words, “to call anything finite is a denial in part.” Chan’s essence lies in

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negation. It not only negates existence, but it also negates non-existence, and it also negates both existence and non-existence, and neither existence nor non-existence, and through this it advances to a complete spiritualization, or as some scholars say, a transcendent realm of aesthetics. Chan not only requires being apart from characteristics, for to be apart from characteristics needs to “be apart from words,” because language and text have a close relationship with logic and reason, and likewise possess limitations. That is to say, the function of language and text is limited, and therefore there is the saying, “If you speak about a thing you are not on target.” Therefore, Chan especially indicates that the Way is in marvelous enlightenment and is unrelated to the text. However, although language and text are not the required path to the Chan realm of personal realization, they are still the chief method of instruction, and can even be said to be the only means. Although the functions of language and text are limited, there is no other way than to abandon them. Therefore, Chan also needed to use text in order to express himself. Speaking precisely, it should be, “Do not fall into verbal description,” which is not to be attached to the biased nature of language and letters. Therefore, they say, do not base oneself on letters. Not that there is no need for letters, but one needs to shrug off the limitations of language and text, ceaselessly expanding its functions, making it precisely express the transcendence of opposition while not falling into the forms of thinking that there are two sides, thereby making students and audiences follow the same mental pathway to reach non-residing, no thought, and no characteristics, which is not to be attached to mental states of the ideas of reality (essence) and characteristics (tixiang). Naturally, although the realm of Chan lies in transcendence, still it is definitely not unrelated to real life. Buddhists have a saying that when matters of the world are realized it is just as if they are not realized, and that the dharmas beyond the world are indefinite (non-existent) dharmas, and if matters are just like this, how can people bear it? In the Honglou meng (Dream of the Red Chamber), Lady Xiaoxiang and Baoyu could not love each other, were unable to hate each other, were unwilling to abandon each other, as feelings of human beings, in particular, cannot be analyzed by the method of dualistic antitheses. One can see that existence itself also is certainly not a world of dualistic antitheses, but people also are very biased towards the antithetical forms of thinking, and so they fall into the warfare between profit and loss, gain and loss, glory and disgrace, success and failure, love and hate through to birth and death, and they cannot extricate themselves from it, confusing their own actuality with the unending pursuit of an external falsity. Thus, some lose their self, some forfeit their self. Chan’s negation and transcendence not only teach people to cross beyond antithesis and recognize their original self, but even more importantly guide people to recognize the relativity and ambiguity of things, and so do not again give excessive importance to external things. It is only through this that one can see through profit and loss, see through glory and disgrace, see through life and death, and then one can achieve the forgetting of the self, non-thought, and courageously advance in practice. “The everyday mind is the Way” and “all that is manifested is perfect” are premised on the transcendence of dualistic antithesis. Unlike “being apart from characteristics,”

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they stress self-negation in the process of cognition. “After thirty years I see that mountains are mountains, and see waters as waters,” highlights that this is really the transcendence of the cognition of phenomena and the transcendence of the self, and is not a return to the beginning of the elimination of the holy and the abandoning of wisdom. Lastly, it also needs to be explained that Chan cannot be duplicated. It should be thought of as being the same as Heine’s mechanical man crying out loud to his creator, “give me a soul,” which not only explains the failings of the spirit of contemporary civilization, but also manifests the non-reproducibility of the spirit. Chan creates a world of thought, and that exists in every person’s mind, and also one must depend on one’s own realization, and this is what Chan says is the meaning of “to return to the original mind.” In short, Chan’s confrontation with the external realms and lack of attachment to external realms is due to the inception of the mind while not protecting one’s own mind. It calms the mind without deliberate action (wuwei) and allows it to be self-so, and allowing it to be self-so does not grasp any part, and not grasping any part it is sure to transcend antithesis, and transcending antithesis it includes the unlimited. That is: calm the mind without [deliberate] action the extent of the mind is vast

according with conditions it is allowed to operate

it roams in freedom

it does not grasp oppositions

transcends dualistic antithesis

Chan is this form of thinking and the mental sphere achieved by that sort of thinking. Speaking in terms of thinking, it is experiential; speaking in terms of the mental sphere, it is philosophical and aesthetic. People want fish, and also want bear’s paw (Tr. from Mencius); and modern humans who also want life and want meaning, in particular need such a mental state and mental attitude to face all the tensions and antitheses created by industrial civilization, electronic civilization, and the information civilization. Seeing through profit and loss, being composed and contented, with a little opposition, with much tolerance, removing some greed and adding some sincerity, will have some benefits for, and no harm for, our existence and space. This is due to one’s own mind being a pure land that builds a human pure land. One should also explain that after Chan thought was formed that it very rapidly emerged into a period of extravagant prosperity, and the school developed with the force of a blazing conflagration, yet it also nurtured the seeds of its own decline. In

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general, the Platform Sutra brought the development of Chan thought to its zenith, and later generations of Chan monks merely renewed it with variations in methods of practice. In addition, the ineffability of Chan itself made them place conditions on the non-reliance on letters, with the aspect of the Way eliminating language stirring up tricks, resulting in the inability to obtain the fish and forget the trap or get the rabbit and forget the snare, and be attached to the trap or the snare and lose the fish or the rabbit (Tr. images from Zhuangzi). The thinking of negation was diverted into mystical public cases (gongan), being apart from characteristics, and no thought (wunian), and further reverted to Indian-style dhy¯ana (ding) and the silent deadwood, dumb-sheep sitting. The crystallization of the thinking of negation such as seeing nature and becoming Buddha, according to the conditions and allowing it to operate, completely fell into the naturalism of “all that is manifested is perfection,” and a negation of all turned into an affirmation of all, and the transcendental spirit and critical consciousness of Chan was almost entirely wiped away in certain areas, at worst changing into a tool for making fools of stupid men and women and into a slave of feudalism. In addition, the Chan school expanded immensely, spreading rapidly, and the caliber of Chan monks went from bad to worse, many among them creating their own illiteracy, not knowing how to read, so how could they discuss the teachings of the sutras? Chan’s decline in essence had already formed a tendency that it could not reverse. And yet the formation of a kind of thought requires the assurance given by a set cultural form, but the development and contributions of thought do not lie in the stability of an original form, but lie in its structuring of the entire social culture and in the remolding of the human spirit. Therefore, despite the degeneration and sparsity of the school membership, Chan thought still relies on the strong power of infiltration, and in different stages of history it transformed each level of society and realized its own values. In particular, from Song times onwards, Chan thought continuously influenced the course of the development of Chinese thought and rich traditional thinking, remolded the philosophy of human life of the Chinese people and molded the aesthetic concepts of the intellectual class. The development of Chan thought gradually went from the Chan monasteries of the mountains and forests and entered society and the world of scholarly thought. Besides this, as previous people have described in detail, the early period of the development of Chan thought, including the lineage divisions of the Five Dynasties period, there is no need for me to repeat this, but only give an outline of the main points, introducing the results of the research of previous authors, and to make clear the differing viewpoints, placing the emphasis of this book on the period after the formation of Chan thought, in particular on the changes and developments from the Song to the present. The second and third chapters of the first section are entirely produced with the aim of simplifying complex matters described in the research results of my predecessors such as Hu Shi, Tang Yongtong, Hou Wailu, Ren Jiyu, and Yinshun. The day I finished writing, I especially felt a deep esteem for my predecessors and I extend a sincere thanks to them. Any errors in understanding are all my responsibility.

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Based on the afore-mentioned knowledge, I will provide an examination of the development of Chan thought that is naturally not limited to the monasteries of the Chan school, but also places it into the greater cultural context of society. Therefore, in the Song period, I will not only describe the changes in Chan school thought and the sudden rise of kanhua, silent illumination, hymns on ancient cases, evaluations of cases, and lettered Chan, but also examine in detail the infiltration of it into orthodox neo-Confucianism (Lixue), politics, and poetics. In the transformations of the Yuan and Ming periods, the important development was the influence of Chan thought on Quanzhen Daoism, the rampant spread of chanting-the-name-of-the-Buddha Chan (nianfo Chan) and the rapid emergence of the delight in Chan and the escapist Chan of the gentry and (Wang) Yangming-Chan. In the Qing period, the everyday intercourse with princes and nobles, the impulsive struggle between sectarian factions, and also the intervention of Emperor Yongzheng in monastic disputes, caused Chan thought to be completely brought into secular society. Its participatory spirit made it advance even further into social life, enabling it to renew itself, and its concepts of the school rules grew, causing the Chan school to decline even further. But the criticism of the Chan school and Chan thought by evidential scholars of the Qianlong and Jiaqing eras (1736–1820), and the transformations in and utilization of Chan thought by Chan monks and the New Text classicists and modern scholars also caused Chan thought to displace Buddhist studies, and it faced society and the future with a new look. The development of modern Chan thought in the main is via the research by the scholarly world into its history and the evidence of its vicissitudes, which means that these researches have propelled Chan thought into modern transformations. The historical evidence is that Chan thought, an important component of Chinese traditional culture, has produced an extremely great influence in the scholarly field of Chinese thought and in the social life of different periods, and it has left a mark in cultural psychology, especially having a social effect that cannot be ignored. Even though Chan thought has produced and is producing major changes since the 20th century, how much can we say that its participatory spirit and its tendency to be made purely scholarly has completely shaken off its ancient simplicity of oil lamps and Buddhist books? Yet its form of thinking by negation, its concentration on carefully examining nature, society and human life; its intense self-consciousness and its sublimation of intrinsic reality (benti), as well as its realm of transcendence of unification with intrinsic reality, and its aesthetic concepts and lifestyle-attitude of according with conditions and allowing things to operate, not only existing in China, but also in the Asia-Pacific Region, has caused the West and Japan that have developed a high degree of contemporary civilization to also pay increasing attention to it. Consequently, it has had a tendency to spread. The contemporary meaning of Chan thought and its development within contemporary society goes without saying. And yet in a pluralistic coexistence, and in the framework of a comprehensively developed contemporary culture, for Chan thought to seek a second efflorescence, it will not be easily obtainable. The speed of its development and the extent of its influence will not only hinge on scholarship and society’s compulsive transformation of it, but simultaneously, to a certain degree, also be influenced by the standing and

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conduct of its monks. If monks are unable to renew themselves and take responsibility for the historical mission of propagating Chan thought, themselves originally not focusing on the Chan thought that is proper to the Chan School, then necessarily in the continuous infiltration beyond itself, they will appear to have abandoned Daoist philosophy and to only venerate the Chan School, making people keep Chan thought fresh in mind but banish the Chan School from their minds. Beijing, China

Xueqin Li

Foreword II

Although the Chan School has a special place in Buddhist history and has exercised considerable influence on the development of Chinese thought and culture, there have not been many publications studying Chan from the perspective of domestic (Chinese) scholarship for some years. People have been delighted by the very recent publication of a number of books on this topic hot off the press, and each of these has advantages. This book, “History of the Development of Chinese Chan Thought” by Prof. Ma Tianxiang of Hunan Normal University has originality and a special clarity in its viewpoint and structure, making it a major contribution to research on Chan history. Professor Ma Tianxiang studied in the 1980s at Xibei (North Western) University and took his doctorate there under the guidance of the university president, Zhang Qizhi. Zhang Qizhi and I assisted Hou Wailu forty years ago in the compilation of the General History of Chinese Thought. I wrote the part on Chan’s history in volume four of that book. This was the first opportunity for me to be involved with research on the Chan School. The work of that time made me realize that one cannot ignore the Chan School in the investigation of the history and culture of China from the middle ages onward and that the principles of Chan are profound and its literature vast, and that it cannot be understood by those of shallow appreciation. Unfortunately, due to changes in my duties after that time I had very little contact with the Chan School again. Now, having read Professor Ma Tianxiang’s new book, I can see that he has made some pioneering achievements, and I cannot help bringing up a number of memories and trains of thought. Before writing this book, Prof. Ma Tianxiang had already devoted a number of years to research on Buddhist culture. His doctoral dissertation, “Late Qing Buddhism and Modern Social Thought” was published in 1992 by Taiwan’s Wenjin Publishing Company. It was in two volumes and close to 600 pages, and laid a deep foundation for his research on these topics. “The History of the Development of Chinese Chan Thought” is of a considerable size, and as I see it, there are a number of special points worth noting: First of all, as with Late Qing Buddhism and Modern Social Thought, The History of the Development of Chinese Chan Thought examines the rise and fall of the Chan xxiii

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School by putting it in the context of social history. The approach to intellectual history from the standpoint of social history was already promoted by the General History of Chinese Thought, but these two books are not the same in purely using the methodology of analysis via the domain of ideas. In this book, Professor Ma Tianxiang not only views the popularity of the Chan School as a form of social thought, he also enters deeply into a description of how that thought also came to influence society. As he says, it broadly penetrated and infiltrated every stratum of society and all cultural spheres. This book particularly emphasizes the Chinese sources of Chan thought, and this point is extraordinarily significant. Although it is said that the origins of the Chan School began with Bodhidharma, the main themes of Chan thought as it was transmitted from Sui and Tang times onward, in reality, were produced in China and were molded in China. Previous people discussed how the Chan School influenced neo-Confucianism (Lixue) and Wang Yangming Confucianism (Xinxue), and they used this to accuse it of being a “label” of the Confucians. In reality, it is possible that the Chan School and neo-Confucianism came out of a common ideological source, and that the Chan School definitely influenced neo-Confucianism and Wang Yangming Confucianism, and they in turn also influenced the Chan School. The relationship between Chan and neo-Confucianism is a major question of the intellectual and cultural history of the Song and Yuan and later periods. When past scholars investigated the history of Chan, they placed special emphasis on the foundation period from Bodhidharma through to Huineng and Shenhui. Due to the emergence of fairly numerous valuable materials among the scrolls discovered at Dunhuang that relate to this period, the eyes of scholars have all been drawn to them, while in fact the advances and glories of Chan lie in the later periods. The independent focus of The History of the Development of Chinese Chan Thought lies in the fact that the main sections are devoted to a discussion of the Chan thought of the Song, Yuan, Ming, Qing and following periods, which is a creative interpretation. This book demonstrates that intellectually the Chan School had its source in philosophical (Lao-Zhuang) Daoism, which should attract scholarly attention. In the history of Chinese thought there certainly were people who tried to create a unity of the three teachings from out of the situation of the coexistence of the three teachings of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism. From the Song and Ming onward, there were not a few features shared by Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism. This definitely was a product of the mutual influence and merging of the three teachings and was possibly due to the three teachings having shared intellectual sources. The source relationships between philosophical Daoism and Chan are greatly instructive for this research questio