The Zen Experience Part 43

9.Yampolsky, Ibid., p. 140

10.Wu, Golden Age of Zen, p. 82.

11.See especially "Intimations of Immortality":

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, and cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come . . .

12.Yampolsky, Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch, pp. 141-42.

13.Ibid., p. 117.

14.From ibid., pp. 138-39. For interpretive comment see D. T. Suzuki, The Zen Doctrine of No Mind (New York: Samuel Weiser, 1972).

15.Yampolsky, Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch, pp. 116-17.

16.

6. MA-TSU: ORIGINATOR OF "SHOCK" ENLIGHTENMENT

1.See Broughton, Kuei-feng Tsung-mi: The Convergence of Ch'an and the Teachings. It was also around this time that the idea of twenty-eight Indian Patriarchs of Zen, culminating in Bodhidharma, was finally ironed out and made part of the Zen tradition.

2.See Arthur Waley, The Life and Times of Po Chu-i (London: Allen & Unwin, 1949).

3.Hu s.h.i.+h, "Development of Zen Buddhism in China," p. 497.

4.Hu-s.h.i.+n, "Ch'an (Zen) Buddhism in China," p. 18.

5.For some of Huai-jang's attributed teachings, see Charles Luk, The Transmission of the Mind Outside the Teaching (New York: Grove Press, 1975), pp. 32-37. The reliability of this text should be questioned, however, if we accept Philip Yampolsky's essay in Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch, p. 53: "Huai-jang (677-744) . . . is known as a disciple of Hui-neng. Information about him is based on sources composed much later than his death; no mention is made of him in any eighth-century work. . . ."

6.Jeffrey Broughton ("Kuei-feng Tsung-mi," p. 27) points out that Ma- tsu's master's technique for achieving "no-mind" was to chant a phrase until running out of breath, at which time the activities of the mind would seem to terminate--a reaction the more skeptical might call physiological. Breath control and breath exercises, it will be recalled, have always figured largely in Indian meditative practices.

7.Chang Chung-yuan, Original Teachings of Ch'an Buddhism, p. 148. The discussion of Ma-tsu in this volume supplied valuable background for the a.n.a.lysis provided here.

8.Hu s.h.i.+h, "Development of Zen Buddhism in China," p. 498.

9.Chang Chung-yuan, Original Teachings of Ch'an Buddhism, p. 130.

10.Ibid., p. 149.

11.Ibid.

12.Ibid.

13.There are many translations of the Mumonkan. One of the more recent and scholarly is by Zenkai s.h.i.+bayama, Zen Comments on the Mumonkan (New York: New American Library, 1975).

14.Chang Chung-yuan, Original Teachings of Ch'an Buddhism, p. 150.

15.Wu, Golden Age of Zen, p. 95.

16.The most recent and the most detailed translation of the Blue Cliff Record is by Thomas and J. C. Cleary, The Blue CI iff Record, 3 vols.

(Berkeley, Calif.: Shambhala, 1977).

17.Chang Chung-yuan, Original Teachings of Ch'an Buddhism, p. 151.

18.Ibid., p.151.

19.This story is recounted in Wu, Golden Age of Zen, p. 100.

20.Ibid., p. 102.

21.Recounted in Ibid., p. 102.

22.See Chang Chung-yuan, Original Teachings of Ch'ari Buddhism, pp.

150-52.

23.Ibid., p. 150.

24.See Luk, Transmission of the Mind Outside the Teaching, p. 46.

25.

7. HUAI-HAI: FATHER OF MONASTIC CH'AN

1.This location is given by John Blofeld in The Zen Teaching of Hui-Hai on Sudden Illumination (London: Ryder & Co., 1962; paperback reprint, New York: Weiser, 1972), p. 29. Charles Luk (Transmission of the Mind Outside the Teaching, p. 50) says: "Huai-hai, the Dharma-successor of Ma Tsu, was also called Pai Chang [Po Ch'ang] after the mountain where he stayed at Hung Chou (now Nanchang, capital of Kiangsi province). Pai Chang means: Pai, one hundred, and Chang, a measure of ten feet, i.e., One-thousand-foot mountain." However, Luk identifies the birthplace of Huai-hai as Chang Lo in modern f.u.kien province, as does Chou Hsiang- kuang in _Dhyana_ Buddhism in China.

2.This story is repeated in various places, including Wu, Golden Age of Zen; and Blofeld, Zen Teaching of Hui Hai on Sudden Illumination. This latter reference is as part of a doc.u.ment known as the Tsung-ching Record, being a recorded dialogue of the master taken down by a monk named Tsung-ching, who was a contemporary of Huai-hai.

3.This story is Case 53 of the Hekiganroku or Blue Cliff Record, a Sung Dynasty period collection of Ch'an stories and their interpretation.

The best current translation is probably in Cleary and Cleary, Blue Cliff Record, Vol. 2, p. 357.

4.See Luk, Transmission of the Mind Outside the Teaching, p. 46.

5.Stories involving him may be found in the Mumonkan, Cases 2 and 40, and in the Hekiganroku or Blue Cliff Record, Cases 53, 70, 71, 72. The most complete accounting of anecdotes may be found in Blofeld, Zen Teachings of Hui-Hai on Sudden Illumination; and Thomas Cleary, Sayings and Doings of Pai-chang (Los Angeles: Center Publicatons, 1979).

6.Kenneth K. S. Ch'en, (The Chinese Transformation of Buddhism [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973], p. 95) says, "Besides the Vinaya controlling the conduct of the Buddhist clergy, the basic code governing Buddhist and Taoist monks and nuns during the T'ang Dynasty was the Tao-seng-ke (Rules concerning Buddhist and Taoist clergy), formulated during the Chen-kuan era, probably 637. This Tao- seng-ke is no longer extant, however, but the j.a.panese work Soni-ryo, which governs the conduct of the community of monks and nuns in j.a.pan, was based on it. Therefore a study of the Soni-ryo would give us a good idea of the contents of the Tao-seng-ke. . . . [Certain] provisions of the T'ang codes superseded the monastic code and called for penalties for offenses which went beyond those specified in the Soni-ryo or the Buddhist Vinaya."

7.For a scholarly discussion of the economic role of Buddhism in T'ang China, see D. C. Twitchett, "Monastic Estates in T'ang China," Asia Major, (1955-56), pp. 123-46. He explains that the T'ang government was always a trifle uneasy about the presence of un-taxed monastic establishments, and not without reason. Buddhism in T'ang China was big business. The large monasteries were beneficiaries of gifts and bequests from the aristocracy, as well as from the palace itself.

(Eunuchs, along with palace ladies, were particularly generous.) Laymen often would bequeath their lands to a monastery, sometimes including in the will a curse on anyone who might later wish to take the land away from the church. These gifts were thought to ensure better fortunes in the world to come, while simultaneously resolving tax difficulties for the donor. For the monasteries themselves this wealth could only acc.u.mulate, since it never had to be divided among sons. After An Lu- shan's rebellion, a flavor of feudalism had penetrated Chinese society, and huge tracts came to be held by the Buddhist monasteries, to which entire estates were sometimes donated. As a result, the Buddhists had enormous economic power, although we may suspect the iconoclastic _dhyana_ establishments in the south enjoyed little of it.

8.See Dumoulin, History of Zen Buddhism, pp. 102-03.

9.See Heinrich Dumoulin and Ruth Fuller Sasaki, The Development of Chinese Zen (New York: First Zen Inst.i.tute of America, 1953), p.13.