Zen's Chinese Heritage: The Masters and Their Teachings (2 page)

SIXIN WUXIN, “HUANGLONG WUXIN”

WUZU FAYAN, “QINGYUAN”

ZHENXIE QINGLIAO, “CHANGLU”

HONGZHI ZHENGJUE, “TIANTONG”

Twenty-first Generation

YUANWU KEQIN, “FOGUO,” “SHAOJUE”

TAIPING HUIQIN, “FOJIAN”

FOYAN QINGYUAN, “LONGMEN”

KAIFU DAONING

TIANTONG ZONGJUE

Twenty-second Generation

DAHUI ZONGGAO, “FORI”

HUGUO JINGYUAN

ZHU’AN SHIGUI

YUE’AN SHANGUO, “DAGUI”

XUEDOU ZHIJIAN, “ZU’AN”

Twenty-third Generation

DAHONG ZUZHENG, “LAO NA”

TIANTONG RUJING

Twenty-fourth Generation

YUELIN SHIGUAN

Twenty-fifth Generation

WUMEN HUIKAI, “HUANGLONG,” “FOYAN”

Appendix

Select Bibliography

Romanization Tables

Notes

Index

About the Author

About Wisdom

Copyright Page

Foreword to the New Edition

FOR EVERYONE interested and intrigued, whether from the standpoint of scholarly research or experiential practice, by the early history of the quixotic yet inspirational teachings of Chan Buddhism in China extending from the end of the fifth through the thirteenth centuries that set the stage for the later development of Zen in Japan, it is gratifying to have in print this revised edition of
Zen’s Chinese Heritage,
impeccably translated by Andy Ferguson. As a perennial seeker of knowledge who has traveled extensively to ancient temples and sacred mountains as well as to modern universities and institutions of learning throughout China, and who has poured over the classical texts of the tradition for many years, Ferguson is ideally suited to the project of putting forth in English some of the most important—and, unfortunately, mostly neglected—materials about the formation and legacy of the Chan school. And this book is an ideal introduction to the topic and a volume that will be read and reread for many years. This new edition has significantly enhanced sections on Dayi Daoxuan, Huineng, and Baizhang Huaihai.

The Chan sayings translated in this volume, including dialogues, anecdotes, parables, epigrams, and
gongan
(Japanese:
kōan
) are primarily taken from the crucial collection called
Wudeng Huiyuan
(
Compendium of Five Lamps
). This collection, which dates from the mid-1200s, is a distillation by the monk Puji located at the major Lingyin Monastery in the Southern Song capital of Hangzhou of five previously composed “transmission of the lamp” records. These “lamp records” (based on the model of the
Biographies of Eminent Monks
, which had an edition issued in 988) began to be compiled at the beginning of the eleventh century, and gathered together the main sayings associated with particular teachers by following a generation-by-generation sequence that accommodates the multiple branches (the “five houses and seven streams”) of the Chan lineage. Because some of the stories contained in the earlier lamp records (particularly in the initial masterpiece of the genre,
The Record of the Transmission of the Lamp of the Jingde Era
) were sometimes left out of the
Wudeng Huiyuan
, Ferguson knowledgeably and appropriately supplements his translations in this volume with materials from these earlier texts.

One of the great benefits of this book is the way that Ferguson organizes the twenty-five generations of Chan masters into three main periods. The first is the Legendary Period (480–755), which covers the time from founding patriarch Bodhidharma through the direct disciples of sixth patriarch Huineng in the seventh generation. During this phase, the actual sense of historiography is rather sketchy and stories mixing myth and magic are blended with more philosophical fare. The second period is the Classical Period (755–950), that is, from the middle of the Tang dynasty until around the dawn of the Song dynasty, when the Southern school known for its blasphemous rhetoric and iconoclastic antics became prominent along with several other collateral lineages. Finally, there is the Literary Period (950–1260), when the records of the Chan masters’ sayings, which were initially probably oral teachings sometimes transcribed into notes by dedicated disciples, were composed and expanded into the recorded sayings (
yulu
) and paradigmatic cases or
gongan
.

The
Wudeng Huiyuan
, the text from which
Zen’s Chinese Heritage
is primarily drawn, is in many ways the pinnacle of the tradition of accumulating the teachings of diverse masters set in various genres of transmission of the lamp records, recorded sayings of individual teachers, and
gongan
collections. Many of the sayings here are familiar to readers from other sources, sometimes in slightly different versions, which is itself an issue that is enjoyable and challenging to sort out. The
Compendium of Five Lamps
is an incredibly rich resource that is very deserving of this new edition.

Steven Heine
Florida International University
Miami, Florida

STEVEN HEINE is professor and director of Asian Studies at Florida International University. He has published over twenty books dealing with the history and thought of Zen Buddhism as well as contemporary East Asian religiosity, including
Did Dogen Go to China? What He Wrote and When He Wrote It
and
Zen Skin, Zen Marrow: Will the Real Zen Buddhism Please Stand Up?

Foreword

THANKS TO the incomparably kind and careful efforts of Andy Ferguson and his skillful collaborators, we now have before us this wonderful collection of sublime Zen stories. These stories are essentially concerned with enlightened compassion, for the ultimate intention of Zen teaching and training is to develop a profound insight that purifies our love and devotion to all living beings. Zen is part of the Mahayana, the Great Vehicle, the universal movement—the movement of the universe—which is fundamentally committed to liberating all living beings from suffering and working to realize their greatest happiness. When our compassion is purified and has no limits we can work together with all beings for the welfare of all.

In order to liberate beings from suffering it is necessary to realize its origin. What is the origin of suffering? Although it has been taught many times and in many different ways, clinging to our deluded stories of who and what we are is the origin of our suffering. Clinging to the idea that we are really separate from each other is our deluded story of the self. Therefore, if we want to work most effectively for the welfare of all beings, we must forget all about our own stories. If we wish to understand Buddha’s liberating teaching, we must completely let go of our own narrative about reality.

The stories presented here for our study and inquiry offer virtually endless opportunities to free ourselves from our habitual stories. The shift from our habitual stories of the self to new ones is part of the process of liberation, but it does not stop there; we must even go beyond such liberation. It’s not that the old stories are delusion and the new ones are enlightenment; rather it’s that clinging to the old stories is deluding and not clinging to them is enlightening. By forgetting our old cherished stories, then each and every story that arrives at our doorstep enlightens us. But if we attach to these enlightening stories, delusion and suffering are reestablished.

What is this story that many of us tell ourselves and hold on to almost all the time? It goes something like this—I’m here and you are over there, my life is separate from yours, the objects of my awareness are external to me. This story is almost instinctive. Once it arises, it is almost impossible not to grasp it as real. Attaching to it as real is the origin of our suffering. With this story we are well equipped with anxiety but not necessarily well equipped to face it, so we embark on a career of trying to avoid anxiety and blaming it on others instead.

Here is another story. All the buddhas throughout space and time are practicing together along with each of us. I’m not really over here separate from you and all the buddhas, and you are not really out there on your own; there really is no here and there; you are not a threat to me, and I’m not a threat to you; we support each other, and we have no separate life; there is nothing out there to be afraid of, and everything that comes brings us our life; our true body is the entire universe; and to have a chance to live is something to be grateful for no matter what form it takes. That’s the story.

It’s not that one of these stories is true and the other is false, and it’s not that one is better than the other. The two are intimately connected, and the one liberates us from the other. Zen practice is not about preferring one of these stories over the other; it’s about letting go of both of them.

How can you live today without attachment to your own stories, how can you care for life? The response to this question given by Shakyamuni Buddha and Zen teachers is to train yourself
thus
. This is the teaching and the practice of the way you are, the teaching to simply be the way you have come to be. I propose to the reader of these Zen stories that, in the midst of the practice of
thusness,
you will be relieved of all your old stories and enlightened by these others.

One way to train yourself to be thus is to say to yourself with your whole being, “Thank you very much, I have no complaint whatsoever!” Even if you are in a miserable prison of your old stories you say, “Thank you very much, I have no complaint whatsoever.” And no matter what you are, you are grateful for the opportunity to be thus. At this moment, in the middle of whatever is happening, you are grateful for the opportunity to care for what is happening, with no complaint. Even if you are complaining, you are grateful for the opportunity to not complain about your complaints. Even if everyone says they hate you and are disgusted with you or that they love you and admire you, you are grateful in the midst of hearing them. You are not grateful that they hate you or that they love you. You are grateful instead for the opportunity to let what you hear just be what you hear. You don’t grasp these words of hatred or love as anything more or less than words of hatred or love. You don’t grasp them at all when you let them just be what they are.

My prayer is that readers of these old Zen stories will enter thoroughly into their own stories, and become so intimate with them that they are forgotten. May your body and mind be open and deeply touched by these stories of liberation without attachment. May your heart gratefully embrace all life, free of prejudice and preference, and be filled with the truth of all things. May your love be purified, and may your wise methods be realized in full.

Tenshin Reb Anderson
Green Dragon Zen Temple
Chinese New Year, Year of the Iron Dragon, 2000

TENSHIN REB ANDERSON is a senior Dharma teacher and the former abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center.

Preface

THE COMPLETION OF this book depended on the work, wisdom, and scholarship of many people. Its fruition is also unimaginable without the fortunate convergence of streams of endeavor from different times, places, and technologies. Zen master Dachuan Lingyin Puji (1179–1253) at Lingyin Monastery in Hangzhou, China, compiled the
Wudeng Huiyan (Compendium of Five Lamps)
, the primary source for the translations of this volume. Although Puji’s work is itself a distillation of previous lamp records, it is a seminal text and an important cornerstone of Zen scholarship. I hereby gratefully acknowledge and remember him and his life. Many other scholars laid foundation stones for this work. No English-language work on Zen should fail to remember and pay tribute to the scholars and teachers who led us to this path and who continue to guide us. Among their contributions must be mentioned the many great works of Daisetz Suzuki, Isshu Miura and Ruth Fuller Sasaki’s
Zen Dust
, Chang Chung-yuan’s
Original Teachings of Chan Buddhism
, Heinrich Dumoulin’s
Zen Buddhism: A History
, the many wonderful and important works of translation and scholarship by Thomas Cleary, the vital works of J. C. Cleary, Sohaku Ogata’s
The Transmission of the Lamp: Early Masters
, Nelson Foster and Jack Shoemaker’s
The Roaring Stream: A New Zen Reader
, as well as influential books by Alan Watts, Robert Aitken, Burton Watson, Phillip Kapleau, and many others. Special words of remembrance and thanks go to the founder of San Francisco Zen Center, Shunryu Suzuki, and to the late Trudy Dixon, who compiled Suzuki Rōshi’s talks into
Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind
. I especially acknowledge the wonderful work of Urs App, Christian Wittern, and others at Hanazono University’s International Research Institute for Zen. Their work of digitizing many classical Zen texts has made searching and researching those volumes scandalously easy. Their scholarship cannot be praised too highly. Among a long list of Chinese-language works that helped shape this book, I first and foremost acknowledge the life and work of the great teacher Hsü Yun (“Empty Cloud”), a towering figure of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Chinese Buddhist teaching and scholarship, along with his principal translator, Charles Luk. Next, this book benefits from the life and works of Yin Hsün, the acclaimed contemporary Buddhist teacher and scholar. Among many other Chinese books that served as sources for this volume, I particularly wish to mention the works of a Chinese scholar currently unknown in the West, Yuan Bing, a professor at Shanghai Normal University. Yuan has edited an excellent book on Zen literature and grammar, which served as a valuable resource for my questions about Zen translation. Also, Yuan’s own translations of classical Zen discourses into modern Chinese are among the best available.