Inventing Chinese Buddhas: Identity, Authority, and Liberation in Song-Dynasty Chan Buddhism Kevin Buckelew Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2018 © 2018 Kevin Buckelew All rights reserved Abstract Inventing Chinese Buddhas: Identity, Authority, and Liberation in Song-Dynasty Chan Buddhism Kevin Buckelew This dissertation explores how Chan Buddhists made the unprecedented claim to a level of religious authority on par with the historical Buddha Śākyamuni and, in the process, invented what it means to be a buddha in China. This claim helped propel the Chan tradition to dominance of elite monastic Buddhism during the Song dynasty (960–1279), licensed an outpouring of Chan literature treated as equivalent to scripture, and changed the way Chinese Buddhists understood their own capacity for religious authority in relation to the historical Buddha and the Indian homeland of Buddhism. But the claim itself was fraught with complication. After all, according to canonical Buddhist scriptures, the Buddha was easily recognizable by the “marks of the great man” that adorned his body, while the same could not be said for Chan masters in the Song. What, then, distinguished Chan masters from everyone else? What authorized their elite status and granted them the authority of buddhas? According to what normative ideals did Chan aspirants pursue liberation, and by what standards did Chan masters evaluate their students to determine who was worthy of admission into an elite Chan lineage? How, in short, could one recognize a buddha in Song-dynasty China? The Chan tradition never answered this question once and for all; instead, the question broadly animated Chan rituals, institutional norms, literary practices, and visual cultures. My dissertation takes a performative approach to the analysis of Chan hagiographies, discourse records, commentarial collections, and visual materials, mobilizing the tradition’s rich archive to measure how Chan interventions in Buddhist tradition changed the landscape of elite Chinese Buddhism and participated in the epochal changes attending China’s Tang-to- Song transition. Table of Contents List of Figures ................................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgments ............................................................................................................. v Introduction: Discerning Buddhas in China .................................................................. 1 How to recognize a buddha ............................................................................................. 1 Buddhas, buddhahood, and the making of Chan identity ............................................... 5 Shifting paradigms of authority in Chinese Buddhist history ....................................... 35 Methodological considerations: performance, identity, discernment ........................... 45 Chapter overview .......................................................................................................... 58 Signs of Authority and the “Marks of the Great Man” .............................................. 63 Great men with unusual bodies: Huangbo Xiyun and the “marks of the great man” in Tang-dynasty Chan .............................................................................................. 65 Immanence, invisibility, and the uṣṇīṣa in Song-dynasty Chan ................................... 80 Encountering Chinese buddhas: “marks of the great man” and the negotiation of authority ............................................................................................................... 91 Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 106 The Heroic “Great Man” ............................................................................................. 109 “Towering and majestic” ............................................................................................ 112 The “great man” and the rejection of specialized excellence ..................................... 122 Three of a kind: general, minister, Chan master ......................................................... 127 Martial heroism, exemplary models, and state power ................................................ 140 Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 151 i Buddhahood, Sovereignty, and the Chan Master ...................................................... 153 The Chan master as cosmic sovereign ........................................................................ 156 Rivals for buddhahood on the battlefield of encounter dialogue ................................ 178 Killing the Buddha, carrying out the command: sovereignty and the vanishing point of authority .................................................................................................... 192 Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 201 The Consistency of a “Great Man” ............................................................................. 203 The sovereign self ....................................................................................................... 206 Possessed by the words of another .............................................................................. 219 Authenticity and artifice ............................................................................................. 232 The gender of buddhahood ......................................................................................... 242 Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 258 Farming, Rusticity, and the Chan Work Ethic .......................................................... 262 Baizhang Huaihai and the advent of “farming Chan” ................................................ 265 Aesthetic rusticity and Chan identity .......................................................................... 274 Herding an ox, being an ox ......................................................................................... 284 Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 299 Conclusion: A Discerning Age ..................................................................................... 306 Figures ............................................................................................................................ 315 Bibliography .................................................................................................................. 325 ii List of Figures Figure 1. “The Fifth Patriarch Carrying a Hoe” (Wuzu hechu tu 五祖荷鋤圖) ............. 315 Figure 2. “Chan master Xuansha Bei of Fuzhou” (Fuzhou Xuansha Bei chanshi 福州⽞ 沙備禪師) ............................................................................................................... 316 Figure 3. “Fisherman on a Cold Lake” (Hanjiang dudiao tu 寒江獨釣圖), detail. ....... 316 Figure 4. “Herdboy Riding Buffalo Beneath Bamboo” (Zhuxia niubei mutong tu ⽵下⽜ 背牧童圖), detail .................................................................................................... 317 Figure 5. Sixth of ten sequential paintings from Guo’an Shiyuan’s 廓庵師遠 (fl. ca. 12th c.) Chan Buddhist ox-herding sequence, which illustrates the stage “riding the ox home” ...................................................................................................................... 317 Figure 6. “Herdboy Taming the Ox” (Xun niu tu 馴⽜圖), detail .................................. 318 Figure 7. Fourth of ten sequential paintings from Guo’an Shiyuan’s ox-herding sequence, which illustrates the stage “catching the ox” .......................................................... 318 Figure 8. “Yellow-Ox Zheng” (Zheng Huangniu tu 政黃⽜圖) .................................... 319 Figure 9. “Laozi Riding an Ox” (Laozi qiniu tu 老⼦騎⽜圖) ....................................... 320 Figure 10. “Riding a Donkey” (Qilu tu 騎驢圖) ............................................................ 321 Figure 11. “Du Zimei” (Du Zimei tu 杜⼦美圖) ............................................................ 322 Figure 12. “Li Yuan and Master Yuanze” (Li Yuan yu Yuanze fashi tu 李源與圓澤法師 圖) ........................................................................................................................... 323 Figure 13. “Li Yuan and Yuanze” (Li Yuan Yuanze tu 李源圓澤圖) ............................ 323 iii Figure 14. Tenth of ten sequential paintings from Guo’an Shiyuan’s Chan Buddhist ox- herding sequence, which illustrates the stage “returning to the marketplace and lowering one’s hands” ............................................................................................. 324 iv Acknowledgments It’s a pleasure to finally get the chance to thank all those who have provided help, support, friendship, and camaraderie during graduate school and over the course of this dissertation’s slow formation. First, I would like to thank my advisors at Columbia. Chün-fang Yü advised me from the start of graduate school, initiating me into the academic study of Buddhism, reading Chinese Buddhist texts together in small seminars each semester, introducing