Dahui Zonggao

Dahui Zonggao was a 12th century Chan master best known as a keen advocate of the use of koans to achieve enlightenment. He successfully created an ‘orthodoxy’ of teaching through koans which influenced all subsequent teachers in the Linji tradition of koan practice in China and Japan. Although he saw koan practice as the most effective method to enlightenment, he saw this practice in his time as becoming a superficial literary study and, in a radical move, he ordered the suppression of his own teacher’s masterly collection of koans, The ''Blue Cliff Record'' , burning all copies and the wooden blocks to print them, effectively taking the venerated text out of circulation for the next two centuries.

Dahui was a disciple of Yuanwu Keqin and was the 12th generation of the Linji line of Chan. He was a vigorous critic of what he called the "heretical Ch'an of silent illumination" of the Caodong school. His teaching became known as the "Ch'an of kung-an introspection" . Although he believed that koans were the best way to achieve enlightenment, he also recognized the teaching of Confucius and Lao-tzu as valuable, saying, "If one achieves a genuine breakthrough, then a Confucian is no different from a Buddhist, and a Buddhist is no different from a Confucian; a monk is no different from a layman, and a layman is no different from a monk; an ordinary man is no different from a sage, and a sage is no different from an ordinary man."

Biography

Dahui was born in Hsuan Ch’eng, Anwhei Province, to the Hsi family. He left home at sixteen and became a Buddhist monk at seventeen. His initiatory name was Tsung Kao. Following the tradition of the day, he wandered from Chan community to community, seeking instruction. He studied under a Caodong master and mastered the essentials of the Five Ranks of the House of Caodong in two years. He studied all the records of the Five Houses of Chan, being particularly drawn to the words of Yunmen Wenyan , 864-949, founder of one of the "Five Houses" of Chan. He sought out instruction on the sayings of the old masters collected and commented on by Xuedou Chongxian which became the basis for the koan collection, the ''Blue Cliff Record.''

Dissatisfied with intellectual study, at the age of twenty-one he went to Treasure Peak, near the modern city of Nanchang in Jiangxi Province, to study with Zhan Tangzhun , a master of the Huang-lung branch of the Linji School. Although Dahui developed a great intellectual understanding of Chan, enlightenment eluded him. Recognizing his potential and great intellectual abilities, Zhan Tangzhun made Dahui his personal attendant. One day Tangzhou asked Dahui, "Why are your nostrils boundless today?" Dahui replied, " I’m at your place." Tangzhou retorted, "You phony Chan man."

Another time, when Dahui was twenty-six, Tangzhou called him over and said,
"You can talk about Ch'an very well; you can quote the sayings of former masters and write commentaries on them. You are eloquent in giving sermons and quick with the exchanges during interviews. But there is one thing which you still do not know".
Ta-hui asked what it was.

Tangzhou answered, "What you do not have is the awakening. Thus, when I talk with you in my room, you have Chan. But as soon as you leave the room, you lose it. When you are awake and attentive, you have Chan. But as soon as you fall asleep, you lose it. If you continue like this, how can you ever conquer life and death?"

Dahui agreed, saying, "This is precisely my point of doubt."
Later, after Dahui achieved the great breakthrough, enlightenment experience as the answer to the riddle of life and death and the great doubt necessary to have the determination to break through became central to Dahui’s teaching.

When Tangzhou was ill, Dahui asked him to whom he could turn to continue his studies. Tangzhou said, "There’s a fellow from Szechuan named Ch’in . Although I don’t know him, you must place your reliance on him, and you’ll be able to complete your affair."

On his way to T’ien Ning Monastery in the old imperial city of Pien, Dahui vowed to work with Yuanwu for nine years and if he did not achieve enlightenment or if Yuanwu turned out to be a false teacher, giving approval too easily, Dahui would give up and turn to writing scriptures or treatises.

Yuanwu gave Dahui Yunmen’s saying, "East Mountain walks on the water" as a koan to work through. Dahui threw himself into the koan and struggled with it day and night, giving forty-nine answers to the koan, but all were rejected by his teacher. Finally, on May 13, 1125, he broke through. Later, he recalled the event:

Master Yuan-wu ascended the high seat in the lecture hall at the request of Madame Chang K'ang-kuo. He said, "Once a monk asked Yun-men this question, 'where do all the come from?' Yun-men answered. 'The East Mountain walks over the water' . But if I were he, I would have given a different answer. 'Where do all the Buddhas come from?' 'As the fragrant breeze comes from the south, a slight coolness naturally stirs in the palace pavilion.' When I heard this, all of a sudden there was no more before and after. Time stopped. I ceased to feel any disturbance in my mind, and remained in a state of utter calmness.

As it turned out, Yuanwu did not give approval too easily. He said, "It is indeed not easy to arrive at your present state of mind. But unfortunately, you have only died but are not yet reborn. Your greatest problem is that you do not doubt words enough. Don't you remember this saying? 'When you let go your hold on the precipice, you become the master of your own fate; to die and afterward come to life again, no one can then deceive you."

Yuanwu gave Dahui the koan, "To be and not to be --- it is like a wisteria leaning on a tree" to work on and after six months, Dahui achieved the final breakthrough and was recognized by Yuanwu as a Dharma-heir in the Linji tradition. Yuanwu assigned teaching duties to Dahui and Dahui’s fame spread far and wide. A high ranking government official, the Minister of the Right, Lu Shun, gave Dahui a purple robe and the honorific, "Fo-jih", the Sun of Buddhism. The following year, 1126, the Nu-chen Tartars captured the Emperors Hui-tsung and Chin-tsung and the capital was moved to the south and the Southern Song dynasty began.

Dahui also moved south and taught both monks and laymen. It was at this time that he began his severe criticism of the "heretical Ch'an of silent illumination" of the Caodong school which he would continue for the rest of his life. He became a great favorite of the educated and literate classes as well as Chan monks and in 1137, at the age of forty-nine, the prime minister, Chang Chun, a student of Dahui, appointed Dahui as abbot of Ching-shan monastery in the Southern Song capital of Lin-an . Within a few years his ''sangha'' grew to two thousand and among his lay followers were many high ranking officials. Dahui became the acknowledged leader of Buddhism of the Southern Song dynasty.

However, disaster was about to befall him. Because of his association with a high official who fell out of favor with the prime minister, all Dahui’s imperial honors and his ordination certificate were stripped from him and he was sent in exile to Heng-chou in the year 1141. At the age of sixty-two he was transferred to present day Guangdong, a place notorious in those days for plagues and hostile elements. Some fifty of Dahui’s monks died there in a plague. Throughout these difficult years, Dahui continued teaching in the Linji tradition of Chan Buddhism, attracting both gentry and commoners. Finally, in 1155, Dahui was pardoned and was allowed to return to his former monastery at Ching-shan where he continued his teaching until he died five years later on the 10 August 1163. He wrote a final verse for his disciples, saying, "Without a verse, I couldn’t die."
::Birth is thus
::Death is thus
::Verse or no verse
::What’s the fuss?

He had been a Chan monk for fifty-eight years and the Emperor Xiaozong bestowed upon him the posthumous title "Chan Master of Great Wisdom," from which the name Dahui derives.

Teachings

Only one work can be attributed to Dahui, a collection of koans entitled ''Cheng-fa yen-tsang'' 正法眼藏 . He also compiled the ''Ch'an-lin pao-hsun'' 禪林寶訓 , instructions of former Chan abbots about the virtues and ideals of monastic life, in collaboration with another monk, Ta-kuei. A disciple of Dahui, Tsu-yung, compiled a collection of Dahui’s life and teaching called ''Ta-hui Pu-chueh Ch'an-shih nien-pu'' . The ''Chih-yueh lu'', compiled by Chu Ju-chi of the Ming, also contains information on Dahui’s teachings and is the basis of the J. C. Cleary translation ''Swampland Flowers,'' of which the majority is a collection of letters Dahui wrote to his students.

Dahui’s letters to lay people reveal a compassionate teacher who believed that the enlightenment promised by the Buddha was available to all people, regardless of their daily activities and that the best way to achieve this was through the use of koans as a daily meditation device. Although there were hundreds of koans available, Dahui used only a few, believing that deep penetration of one or two koans would be enough to attain enlightenment. To achieve this, one had to work assiduously and with great determination, like someone whose "head is on fire". It mattered little to Dahui whether a person was particularly intelligent or not---liberation was available to all. He wrote: "It doesn’t matter whether your rational understanding is sharp or dull; it has nothing to do with matters of sharpness or dullness, nor does it have anything to do with quiet or confusion."

Dahui often used the famous koan, "A monk asked Zhàozhōu, ‘Does a dog have Buddha-nature?’ Zhàozhōu replied, ‘No’ , the first koan in ''The Gateless Gate.'' He taught that This one word ‘no’ is a knife to sunder the doubting mind of birth and death. The handle of this knife is in one’s own hand alone: you can’t have anyone else wield it for you…You consent to take hold of it yourself only if you can abandon your life. If you cannot abandon your life, just keep to where your doubt remains unbroken for a while: suddenly you’ll consent to abandon your life, and then you’ll be done. The concept of ‘doubt’ was very important in Dahui’s teaching and he warned his students that they must ‘doubt’ words to not be fooled by them. Furthermore, they needed to ‘doubt’ their very existence. He said, "Many students today do not doubt themselves, but they doubt others. And so it is said, ‘Within great doubt there necessarily exists great enlightenment.’" This was taken up five hundred years later by the great Japanese Rinzai teacher, Hakuin, who also taught great doubt as necessary to awaken.

Another important aspect of Dahui’s teachings was his relentless and merciless attacks on the practice of "silent illumination", that is, sitting in meditation in tranquility and quietness. He labeled teachers of this type of meditation practice as "heretical" and complained, They just sit in a ghostly cave on a dark mountain after their meals. They call this practice "silent illumination", "dying the great death", "the state before the birth of one's parents." They sit there until calluses appear on their bottoms, yet they still do not dare to move." He felt that this type of practice just leads to drowsiness, blankness and intellectualization and conceptualization of Chan Buddhism rather than enlightenment. He thought that teachers who taught this method of meditation had "never awakened themselves, they don’t believe anyone has awakened." For Dahui, koans were the only way to enlightenment and without koans, one would "be like a blind man without a walking stick: unable to take even one step." But koans had to be penetrated fully, not intellectualized. It was this fear of superficiality and intellectualization of old koans that led him to destroy all copies of his own teacher’s masterpiece, the ''Blue Cliff Record,'' to save Chan and to authenticate proper koan practice. By all accounts, Dahui was a remarkable teacher.

Further reading

Cleary, J.C., 1997 , Swampland Flowers: the letters and lectures of Zen master Ta Hui, Shambhala, ISBN 13: 978-1-59030-318-4

Cleary, T. & Cleary, J.C., 1977, The Blue Cliff Record, Shambhala, ISBN 0-87773-622-7

Cleary, T. & Cleary, J.C., 1994, Zen Letters: teachings of Yuanwu, Shambhala, ISBN 0-87773-931-5

Dumoulin, Heinrich Zen Buddhism: A History, Volume I, India and China, Simon & Schuster and Prentice Hall International ISBN 0 02 897109 4

Ferguson, Andy Zen’s Chinese Heritage: the masters and their teachings, Wisdom Publications, ISBN 0-86171-163-7

Foster, Nelson & Shoemaker, Jack , 1996, The Roaring Stream: a new Zen reader, The Ecco Press, Hopewell, ISBN 0-88001-344-3

Heine, Steven & Wright, Dale S., 2000, The Koan: texts and contexts in Zen Buddhism, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-511749-2

, 1991, Cultivating the Empty Field: the silent illumination of Zen master Hongzhi, North Point Press, ISBN 0-86547-475-3

Watson, Burton, 1993, The Zen Teachings of Master Lin-Chi, Shambhala, ISBN 0-87773-891-2

Chun-Fang Yu, 1979, , Journal of Chinese Philosophy, v. 6, p. 211-235

Itsunen Shoyu

Itsunen Shoyu is famous as a monk and painter who helped to establish in Japan.

In 1642 he travelled to as a trader in Chinese medicine, and in 1644 entered Kōfuku-ji, becoming its 3rd abbot in 1645. In 1654 after multiple requests he succeeded in persuading Yinyuan Longqi , the 33rd abbot of Wanfu Temple to emigrate to Japan, where he founded , the third and final major Japanese Zen .

Itsunen was a talented late style painter of Buddhist figural subjects, and is known to have copied works by Chen Xian brought to Japan by Yinyuan Longqi.

Hsu Yun

Hsu Yun was a renowned Chán master and one of the most influential teachers of the and centuries. This article attempts to give an accurate biography, based largely on his own writings and those of his colleagues and successors in Dharma.

Early life

Ven. Master Hsu Yun was born on April 26th in Fukien, in . After his mother died during childbirth, he was and made heir to his childless uncle. Ultimately, his grandmother decided he should take two wives, to continue both lines of the family.

His first exposure to Buddhism was during the funeral of his grandmother. Soon afterward he began reading the Sutras, and later made a pilgrimage to Nanyo. When he was fourteen years old, he announced that he wished to renounce the material world in favour of monastic life. His father did not approve of Buddhism and had him instructed in Taoism instead. He found two girls to be his wives. Hsu Yun lived with them, but did not consummate either marriage. From the start, Hsu Yun was dissatisfied with Taoism, which he felt could not reach the deeper truths of existence. He secretly studied the sutras and taught Dharma to his wives.

When he was nineteen, Hsu Yun fled with his cousin F.U. Kuo to Kushan monastery. It was here that his head was shaved and he received ordination as a monk. When his father sent agents to find him, Hsu Yun concealed himself in a grotto behind the monastery, where he lived in austere solitude for three years. At the age of twenty-five, Hsu Yun learned that his father had died, and his stepmother and two wives had entered a nunnery.

During his years as a hermit, Hsu Yun made some of his most profound discoveries. He visited the old master Yung Ching, who encouraged him to abandon his extreme asceticism in favor of temperance. He instructed the young monk in the sutras and told him to be mindful of the hua tou, "Who is dragging this corpse of mine?" In his thirty-sixth year, at the encouragement of Yung Ching, Hsu Yun went on a seven-year pilgrimage to off the coast of Ningpo, a place regarded by Buddhists as the bodhimandala of Avalokiteshvara. He went on to visit the monastery of King Asoka, and various other Chán holy places.

Middle Age

At age forty-three, Hsu Yun reflected on his achievements. He regretted his abandonment of his family, and went on a pilgrimage to the Mount Wutai of the northwest, the bodhimandala of Manjushri. Here, he prayed for the rebirth of his family members in the Pure Land. Along the way, Hsu Yun is said to have met a beggar called Wen Chi, who twice saved his life. After talking with the monks at the Five-Peaked Mountain, Hsu Yun came to believe that the beggar had been an incarnation of Manjushri.

Having achieved singleness of mind, Hsu Yun traveled west and south, making his way through Tibet. He visited many monasteries and holy places, including the Potala, the seat of the Dalai Lama, and Tashi Lunpo, the monastery of the Panchen Lama. He traveled through India and Ceylon, and then across the sea to Burma. During this time of wandering, Hsu Yun felt his mind clearing and his health growing stronger.

Hsu Yun composed a large number of poems during this period.

Old Age and Enlightenment

After returning to China, the fifty-five year-old Hsu Yun stayed at the monastery of Gao Min at Yangzhou, where he studied the sutras. One day he slipped and fell in a river, and was caught in a fisherman's net. He was carried to a nearby temple, where he was revived and treated for his injuries. Feeling ill, he nevertheless returned to Yangzhou. When asked by Gao Ming whether he would participate in the upcoming weeks of meditation, he politely declined, without revealing his illness. The temple had rules that those who were invited had to attend or else face punishment. In the end, Gao Ming had Hsu Yun beaten with a wooden ruler. He willingly accepted this punishment, although it worsened his condition.

For the next several days, Hsu Yun sat in continuous meditation. In his autobiography, he wrote: " the purity of my singleness of mind, I forgot all about my body. Twenty days later my illness vanished completely. From that moment, with all my thoughts entirely wiped out, my practice took effect throughout the day and night. My steps were as swift as if I was flying in the air. One evening, after meditation, I opened my eyes and suddenly saw I was in brightness similar to broad daylight in which I could see everything within and without the monastery..." Soon, Hsu Yun claimed to have achieved , which he described as being like "waking from a dream".

From that time until his death, Hsu Yun worked as a bodhisattva, teaching the precepts, explaining sutras, and restoring old temples. He worked throughout Asia and did not confine himself to one country. His large following was spread across Burma, Thailand, , and Vietnam, as well as Tibet and China. Hsu Yun remained in China during World War II and following the rise of the People's Republic of China, rather than retreat to the safety of Hong Kong or Taiwan.

Shortly before his death, Hsu Yun requested of his attendant: "After my death and cremation, please mix my ashes with sugar, flour and , knead all this into nine balls and throw them into the river as an offering to living beings in the water. If you help me to fulfill my vow, I shall thank you for ever." He died the following day on October 13th, 1959, reputedly at the age of one hundred and twenty.

Significance

Hsu Yun was one of the most influential Chán masters of the past two centuries, and arguably the most important in modern Chinese history. Unlike Catholicism and other branches of Christianity, there was no organization in China that embraced all monastics in China, nor even all monastics within the same sect. Traditionally each monastery was autonomous, with authority resting on each respective abbot. This changed with the rule of the Communist Party. In 1953, the was established at a meeting with 121 delegates in Beijing. The meeting also elected a chairman, 4 honorary chairmen, 7 vice-chairmen, a secretary general, 3 deputy secretaries-general, 18 members of a standing committee, and 93 directors. The 4 elected honorary chairmen were the Dalai Lama, the Panchen Lama, the Grand Lama of Inner Mongolia, and Hsu Yun himself. .


Though Chán is less well known in the West compared to Japanese Zen, the teachings of Hsu Yun have persisted within Asia, and he is still a major figure of Pure Land Buddhism in East Asia. Outside of China, the influence of his teachings is strongest in Southeast Asia, particularly in Vietnam and Myanmar, as well as the Americas, where his teachings were transmitted through well known monastic students such as Venerable Hsuan Hua and Venerable Jy Din Shakya.

Guang Qin

Venerable Master Guang Qin was a renowned Buddhist monk, teacher and cultivator.

Born Huang Wenlai in 1892 in Huian County, Fukien Province, China. Due to his family's extreme poverty, he was sold to the Li family. The Lei were not wealthy either and had a fruit growing business that allowed them to barely scrape together a living. His parents died in 1902 when he was only 11 years old. He realied how impermanent human life was and took refuge with Master Rui Fang of the famous Cheng Tian Chan Monastery. In 1927, he took ordination at the same monastery.

From the very beginning, Guang Qin was an ascetic practitioner. In the monastery, one of his duties was to ring the morning wake-up bell. One morning, he accidentally over-slept and missed ringing the bell at the correct time. After that, he never lay down to sleep for the rest of his life and sat up in his sleep.

In 1985 at the age of 95, on the first day of the Chinese New Year, he called together all of his disciples who were in charge of his different monasteries. He told them that he would pass away soon and that they should divide his relics among Cheng Tian Temple and other temples, monasteries and nunneries. He later went to Miao Tong Temple, the place where he would manifest stillness.

On the fifth day of Chinese New Year, with all his disciples gathered around him he told them to recite Amitabha Buddha's name. He said, "There is no coming and no going, nothing is happening." Then he smiled at his disciples and closed his eyes. He was so still that his disciples checked and discovered that he had died amidst the Amitabha chanting. Guang Qin died at the age of 95 in 1986.

Photos that were taken by an anonymous disciple from Guang Qin's funeral displayed auspicious signs, such as lights pointing down at Guang Qin's casket and supposedly a faint silhouette which appears to look like Amitabha shine down upon the casket. Also, clouds forming a lotus flower was supposedly seen in the sky.

One of Guang Qin's relics is among one of the relics being toured with the Maitreya Project Heart Relic Tour.

Dao Zheng

Dao Zheng was a Buddhist nun from the Republic of China, known for her various writings and dharma talks. Dao Zheng is well known for her famous painting of Amitabha, which she painted while bedridden with cancer. Prior to entering monastichood, she was a medical student and researcher.