RIJKSUNIVERSITEIT GRONINGEN The Other Neng Topography and Hagiography of the Sixth Ancestor Proefschrift ter verkrijging van het doctoraat in de Godgeleerdheid en Godsdienstwetenschap aan de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen op gezag van de Rector Magnificus, dr. D.F.J. Bosscher, in het openbaar te verdedigen op donderdag 21 februari 2002 om 16.00 uur door Cornelis Jan Kuiken geboren op 11 oktober 1954 te Leeuwarden PROMOTORES: Prof. dr. J.N. Bremmer Prof. T.H. Barrett Ph.D. BEOORDELINGSCOMMISSIE: Prof. dr. H.T. Bakker Prof. dr. B.J. ter Haar Prof. dr. R.T. Segers ISBN: 90-71809-59-5 Prelude and Refuge 'If you want fiction, you must write the truth.' John Irving * 'VT QVASI EIVS CORPORALEM PRESENCIAM DEMONSTRARENT' Bertrand du Guesclin, Chronicle of St Denis (A.D. 1389), quoted in Carlo Ginzburg, Occhiacchi di legno * 'What matters? Stones or ideas?' David Hare, Via Dolorosa This study is titled 'The Other Neng' because it is not primarily concerned with the familiar hagiography of the Sixth Ancestor in the Chan or Zen patrilineage as it has taken shape in the Chinese tradition and as it has been appreciated by Japanese, Korean and western scholars of Buddhism. This study is even less concerned with the appraisal of the doctrinary innovations ascribed by these traditions to a supposedly illiterate saint whose 'trueeffigy'isstillveneratedinan outlying monastery in China's deep south, a site appropriatelyknownas'SouthChinaAbbey'. The problem investigated here is the cult of the praesentia realis of the late eighth-century holy man Huineng ofShaozhouinthelocalcontextofthatabbeywhichhas flourished as a 'Sixth Ancestor Theme Park' on the shore of Cao's Brook, some 30 kilometerssouthofthecityofShaoguan.Inepistemologicalterms,the praesentia realis of a saint at a pilgrimage site is a fiction. It can (and will) be argued that it is a fiction in the sense of the classical fictio of the legal philosophy of ancient Rome that, according to some, actually derives from a religious paradigm: substitution. In plain English: the Sixth Ancestor has been worshipped at South China Abbey for many centuries as if he were still there. Historical records of this worship include evidence from both native and western sources that it involved for some years processions during which a life-size statue, allegedly a mummy, was carried around. The primary orientation of this investigation is topographical rather than hagiographical. The overall objective will not be to ascertain who or what the Sixth Ancestor really was, but where to look for traces of his praesentia, firstly in the local landscape and secondly in Buddhist literature. I hope to have realized this twofold objective by the following means: 1. An opening essay describing the worship of the praesentia realis of Buddhist saints in China; introducing the notions of ancestral worship, of fiction, and of the worship of Buddhist saints as if they were fictional ancestors. 2. A bibliographical introduction of topographical and hagiographical sources on the cult of these Buddhist saints, followed by a critical anthology of the oldest texts describing Huineng and his cult during the first century after his death in 713, and by an essay on the rhetoric of Chinese (and Japanese) hagiography. 3. AnanalysisofapoembytheexiledcourtpoetSongZhiwen(d.713): From Hengyang to Shaozhou: An audience with meditation teacher Neng, which is mentioned in Zanning's vita of Huineng, but largely ignored by later hagio- graphers and researchers. It is, however, the only possibly contemporary account of a meeting with the meditation teacher who would be the 'Sixth Ancestor'. This 'close encounter' is analyzed in the context of Song Zhiwen's literary and Buddhist affiliations and of his several southbound journeys. My conclusion is that an encounter between the poet and the monk would have taken place at Mt Heng in Hunan rather than at Cao's Brook in Shaozhou. 4. A topographical study of the development of the Huineng cult in Shaozhou between 716, when Shaozhou was connected to the imperial post road net- work, and 816, when the 'Sixth Ancestor ' was recommended for an official posthumous title - the nearest equivalent of a canonization. Chapter 4.4. is atopographicalanalysisofthe'PreciousForestattheTwinPeaks' mentioned in one early vita but ignored in later canonical hagiography, and of the hypothetical link of this topos with Buddhist communities in Hunan. Chapter 4.5. is a periodization of the topos of the 'true effigy' (or mummy) that was the object of processions reported in the 10th and 17th centuries. 5. The hagiographical piece de resistance is an English translation of a late 8th- century vita ofHuinengpreservedbyTendaimonksinJapan.Itwas acquiredinChinabySaicho(763-822)amongmanyothercredentials to prove his affiliations to several spiritual traditions, including the 'southern meditation school' associated with Huineng. This vita is much richer in topo- graphical detail, in strange omens, and in miracles than the roughly contemp- orary Platform Sutra. Another peculiarity of this vita is the inclusion of a cor- respondence between Huineng and his successors at Cao's Brook with the Tang imperial court - an insertion apparently derived from a different source. I would like to warn my more orthodox Buddhist readers that wherever topographical analysis and hagiographical exegesis appear to contradict each other, I will generally follow the lead of prima facie topographical evidence - as far as the rules of good scholarship will allow. When in the course of this investigation I happen to expose topographical contradictions among hagiographical sources, I will also make no attempt to synthesize these dissimilarities but treat them as instances of 'disputed locality' (not to be confused with the 'contested space' described in recent studies of Buddhist-Daoist coexistence at popular holy mountains). As to the topographical contradictions found in and among later topographical sources, I feel that further research, especially fieldwork, is most needed. Ma Yuan's seventeenth-century Current Gazetteer of Cao's Brook wouldbeanexcellentstartingpoint. Evam Buddham saranam gacchami Evam Dharmam saranam gacchami Evam Sangham saranam gacchami Acknowledgments All things are conditionally arising. This study has benefited greatly from the unconditional guidance, comment and support of my supervisors: Professor Dr Jan Bremmer, Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen; Professor Timothy Barrett, PhD, Department of Religion, School of Oriental and African Studies, London; my paranymphs Mrs. Tineke Scholtens and Richard M. Kaut, M.D.; and my parents Mr and Mrs Jan Kuiken of Sintjohannesga. If instead of defending my dissertation I were to give a sermon, like the Sixth Ancestor allegedly did on the High SeatoftheLawinMahabrahmanAbbey,itwouldstartlikethis: "Learned audience! My interest in early Zen (or Chan) Buddhism was kindled during my two working years in Hong Kong. I visited monasteries and read the Platform Scripture, allegedly a series of sermons by an illiterate Cantonese monk who is venerated as the "Sixth Patriarch" (or ancestor) of the Chan/Zen school. I noticed that the rhetoric of Chan squared well with the spirit of Hong Kong. I felt that Chan is indeed a genuine Hong Kong way of life. I enjoyed the lecture of Edward Schafer's The Vermilion Bird: T'ang Images of the South and found northern Chinese expatriated to Hong Kong to be as ill at ease in the south as the exile poems in that book show their expatriate authors to have been in Early Tang Lingnan. My own experience of the south was rather more joyful. I loved to listen to the early morning calls of francolins in the hazy green hills of Lantau Island and to the open-air night opera recitals in Temple Street, where singers occasionally turn into southern bodhisattvas. Back in Groningen, I published Het leven, het lijf, de liefde en de leer, a bundle of popular essays on Chinese religion, including a theater monologue based on the auto-biographical chapter of the Platform Sutra. Dr Harunaga Isaacson then introduced me to John McRae's study on The Northern School. From that book and from Bernard Faure's The Rhetoric of Immediacy , I learned to read Chan history as an invented tradition, driven by the ideological agendas of monks eager to please wealthy patrons and the imperial court. Further reading revealed to me the agendas of modern Chan researchers: the pragmatism ofHuShi;thenationalismofD.T. Suzuki; Bernard Faure's erudite deconstructivism; and the recently emerged regionalism of 'South China culturists'. When I was introduced to Professor Timothy Barrett in London, I started to think of a doctoral dissertation on Chan under his supervision. It was agreed that I would defend my thesis in Groningen with Professor Jan Bremmer as my upadhyaya and Prof. Barrett as the distinguished guest of the University. In November 1997, the three of us met in London. Jan Bremmer flew in from Chicago, I flew in from Amsterdam, and Tim Barrett had caught a train from Cambridge. It was decided that we would share a Chinese meal in Wardour Street and that each of us would pick a dish. Tim Barrett ordered a translation of a Japanese vita of the Great Teacher of Cao's Brook. I had an appetite for Song Zhiwen's poem From Hengyang to Shaozhou: an audience with meditation teacher Neng which I believed (and still believe) to be the only remaining potential eyewitness account of an encounter with Huineng of Shaozhou. Jan Bremmer having Peter Brown's Holy Man in Late Antiquity at heart, we also ordered a big serving of 'strangers par excellence in a local context'. We then enjoyed a meal of unusual flavorsandsparklingbeer. At some point I went to Leiden to see Prof. W.L. Idema on my translation of Song Zhiwen's poem. This made me feel like an illiterate southerner going to see the Fifth Ancestor, but I trust that in terms of my cultivation, the rice is done now. In December, 1996 and November, 1998 I visited South China Abbey at Cao's Brook near Shaoguan in Guangdong.