Introduction This book [Zongmi’s Chan Prolegomenon] is not only a means for com- ing to know of matters related to Zen; it is also a book that is valuable for coming to know Buddhism in general. —Ui Hakuju, Zengen shosenshu tojo (1939) Modern Japa nese Zen has tended to foster a rather one- dimensional character- ization of the Chan/Zen school’s slogan “mind- to- mind transmission; no in- volvement with the written word [yi xin chuan xin bu li wenzi].” For Japa nese Zen it is common to imply that textual learning (gakumon) in Buddhism in general and personal experience (taiken) in Zen are separate realms. For in- stance, Yamamoto Genpo (1866– 1961), the most famous Rinzai Zen master of early Showa Japan and sometimes called the second coming of Hakuin Ekaku (1685– 1768), said that the crucial requirement for a Zen monk is the “mind of the Way” (doshin), and that adding learning (gakumon) to this is like making a ferocious demon hold a metal cudgel (oni ni kanabo). Supplying a cudgel is like adding superfl uous strength to a demon that is already strong.1 Even in Zen scholarship such a dichotomy between Zen mind and the word shows up. The Great Dictionary of Zen Studies (Zengaku daijiten), a multivolume Zen diction- ary published by the Soto Zen school in Japan in the 1970s, begins its entry for “no involvement with the written word” with the following: The slogan “no involvement with the written word; a separate transmission outside the canonical teachings” is spoken of as a special characteristic of the Zen school. Scholars of the teachings took as the main thing only the written Brought to you by | Cambridge University Library Authenticated Download Date | 7/18/17 1:29 PM 2 introduction words and theories of the sutras and treatises and thereby lost the true spirit of Buddhism. In the Zen school, the true dharma as real Buddhism does not depend upon the mere written word and the sutra teachings but is something transmitted from mind to mind. And so, valuing personal experience [tai- ken], Zen advocated the slogan “no involvement with the written word; a separate transmission outside the canonical teachings.”2 The career and writings of the Tang dynasty Chan master Guifeng Zongmi (780– 841) serve to undermine the foundational assumptions of this commonly accepted model of the separateness of Zen mind and canonical word. Zongmi, a renowned Chan master as well as one of China’s greatest scholars of the Bud- dhist scriptures, with many years of rigorous Chan practice at his mountain hermitage, held that the fi rst patriarch of Chan in China, Bodhidharma, propa- gated the slogan “a mind- to- mind transmission; no involvement with the writ- ten word” in order to inform his Chinese audience, bogged down in Buddhist writings, that the moon does not lie in the fi nger pointing at the moon (Chan Prolegomenon, section 11). Zongmi explained Bodhidharma’s silent mind trans- mission as a silent pointing to “Knowing” (zhi),3 the very substance of mind, but held that Bodhidharma did not eschew all words (Chan Prolegomenon, sec- tion 30): It was just because this land [of China] was deluded about mind and grasped the written word, took the name for the substance, that Bodhidharma’s good skill [in teaching devices] was to select the phrase “transmission of mind.” He raised this term (“mind” is a term), but was silent about its substance (Knowing is its substance). To the very end, [Bodhidharma] did not give others the previously mentioned word “Knowing.” He simply waited for them to awaken of their own accord and then, for the fi rst time, said: ‘That is how it really is [fang yan zhenshi shi]!’ Only when they had personally re- alized the substance [qin zheng qi ti] did he seal them, cutting off remaining doubts. This is why [his teaching] was called “silent transmission of the mind seal [mo chuan xinyin].” The word “silent” means only that he was si- lent about the word “Knowing,” not that he did not say anything [fei zong bu yan]. Zongmi cogently and persuasively argued that Chan realizations are identi- cal to the teachings embedded in canonical word and that one who transmits Chan must use the sutras and treatises as a standard (Chan Prolegomenon, sec- tion 13). In fact, the teachings serve as pre ce dents that legitimize the Chan real- izations (Chan Prolegomenon, section 49). He strongly favored the model of Brought to you by | Cambridge University Library Authenticated Download Date | 7/18/17 1:29 PM Introduction 3 all- at- once (sudden) awakening (to Knowing) followed by step- by- step (gradual) practice found in the Perfect Awakening Sutra (Yuanjuejing). But Japa nese Rin- zai Zen has, since the Edo period, marginalized the sutra- based Chan of sud- den awakening– gradual practice propounded in Zongmi’s Chan Prolegomenon and continued in its successor text, the Mind Mirror (Zongjinglu) of Yongming Yanshou (904– 976), favoring instead the rhetorical and iconoclastic Chan found in such texts as the Record of Linji (Linjilu) and the Extensive Record of Yunmen (Yunmen guanglu). In the rhetoric of the Record of Linji the sutras are just old toilet paper. Many modern Rinzai Zen masters, including Yamamoto Genpo mentioned above, have thoroughly immersed themselves in the Record of Linji (Genpo, in fact, vowed to read it one hundred times), and modern Rinzai schol- arship has produced a stream of translations and studies of this text (leading to a stream of translations into En glish, French, and German). Since the West, because of developments in modern East Asian history, has received its overall impression of the Chinese Chan tradition from Japa nese Zen, the Western perspective as now constituted refl ects the emphases, shadings, deletions, and blindspots of its Japa nese in for mant. The fi rst step toward reevaluating the history of Chan in East Asia as a whole is to read Zongmi (and Yanshou) and then look afresh at the Chinese Chan of the Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties, as well as regional traditions such as Ko- rean Son, Tangut/Xixia Chan, and the neglected Five Mountains Zen of Ashikaga Japan (a text- based form of Rinzai Zen not emphasized in the modern Rinzai Zen genealogy). The outcome of such a reevaluation is likely to be a growing realization that Zongmi- style sutra- based Chan was much more nor- mative in East Asia than we have been led to believe. In time this approach would surely lead to a revised version of Chan history that has less shouting, hitting, tearing up of the sutras, scatological sayings, and so on, and more sober sutra study combined with a highly ritualized practice gradually carried out over time. This introduction will examine Zongmi’s career, the content of his theoretical works on Chan, and his effects on Chinese Chan, Tangut/Xixia Chan, Korean Son, and Japa nese Five Mountains Zen. Following this intro- duction are complete translations of his three surviving Chan works. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF GUIFENG ZONGMI: AN ERUDITE CHAN MONK In the context of Tang Chan masters, two aspects of Zongmi’s biography stand out: his enrollment in his twenties at an elite academy where the Brought to you by | Cambridge University Library Authenticated Download Date | 7/18/17 1:29 PM 4 introduction curriculum was based on the classics; and, after becoming a Chan monk, his attainment of a high level of erudition in Buddhist literature as a whole. Such a career trajectory does not fi t the usual profi le. Tang Chan masters as a rule in their youth did not attend academies in preparation for the examination system. Rather, they typically began their contact with the Buddhist monastic world in childhood or during their early teens. Also, during their Chan ca- reers they did not function as learned exegetes and commentators on the Bud- dhist sutra and treatise literature. The biography of Zongmi breaks down into six phases.4 birth and youthful classical education (780– 804) Zongmi was born in 780 into a provincial elite family of wealth and power, the He, in Guozhou, Xichong county (present- day Sichuan province).5 From the age of six to fi fteen or sixteen he worked at typical classical studies, and from seventeen to twenty or twenty- one, perhaps because of the death of his father, he studied some Buddhist texts. From twenty- two to twenty-four he was en- rolled at the nearby Righ teousness Learning Academy.6 There he surely deep- ened his exposure to such books as the Classic of Poetry, Changes, Zhou Rites, Analects, Mencius, Xunzi, Sima Quian’s Shiji, and so forth, building up a sub- stantial memory corpus. Later he fused this corpus based on the core works of Chinese learning with an enormous one based on Buddhist learning. a young man’s commitment to chan practice (804– 810) In 804, at the age of twenty- four, Zongmi’s career path took an abrupt turn. In Suizhou, the site of the Righ teousness Learning Academy and the Dayun Mon- astery, he happened to meet Chan Master Daoyuan of the Dayun. Zongmi promptly left home, training under Daoyuan for two or three years until he re- ceived “the sealed mind” from Daoyuan in 807.7 It was also during this phase that he encountered a copy of the apocryphal Perfect Awakening Sutra (Yuan- juejing), a sutra whose very structure is built on the model of sudden awakening followed by gradual practice, and had an awakening experience.8 The Perfect Awakening always remained his favorite sutra.