by Youru Wang
Very little was known about what Bodhidharma taught, except for a text called Treatise on the Two Entrances and Four Practices (Erru Sixing Lun), which was attributed to him and had a preface by a lay follower, Tanlin (not identical with Monk Lin). The text, probably written by Tanlin, summarized the doctrines taught by Bodhidharma as remembered by the disciples. The doctrines involve two major aspects: to realize enlightenment through principle (liru) and through practices (xingru). The first aspect teaches a student to experience one’s true nature through meditation and go beyond written teachings. The second aspect involves the practices of accepting past karma, non-attachment, the cessation of craving, and the six perfections in daily activities. Both aspects lead to the final awakening to principle (li), which equals one’s true or pure nature. In elaborating on these approaches, the text used the teachings of emptiness, non-duality, and Buddha-nature from the perfection of wisdom literature, Madhyamaka philosophy, and the tathāgatagarbha tradition of Indian Buddhism.
BUDDHA-DHARMA (Ch. fofa)
This Sanskrit term designates the entirety of Buddhist teachings or Buddhist truths.
See also .
BUDDHA-NATURE (Ch. foxing)
In its original Chinese form, this term is equivalent to the Sanskrit term tathāgatagarbha. Another Chinese translation of tathāgatagarbha is rulaizang (the embryo container of Buddha). Rulaizang and foxing (Buddha-nature) are synonyms, mutually exchangeable, and often used together in Chinese Buddhist texts.
The tathāgatagarbha thought of Indian Mahayana Buddhism was developed, in some connection with the Yogācāra school, to affirm the possibility and potential of attaining enlightenment by revealing the intrinsic link between sentient beings wandering in the samsaric world and their soteriological goal of becoming Buddha. This intrinsic link is the Buddha-nature within sentient beings themselves, which is originally pure but is unfortunately covered by defilements.
The use of the term tathāgatagarbha in Indian Mahayana Buddhist texts often involves two basic meanings: the cause (hetu) of Buddha and the nature (dhātu/svabhāva) of Buddha. On the one hand, this Buddha-nature is considered the cause for sentient beings to long for enlightenment and to avoid suffering and ignorance. On the other hand, this Buddha-nature is described as something like the “essence” of Buddha and as ultimate reality, which is permanent, responsible not only for the final liberation, but also for samsaric lives.
Different Indian tathāgatagarbha texts emphasize different meanings of Buddha-nature. Some texts interpret Buddha-nature as identical with emptiness, with the causal chain of interdependent arising, and with the Middle Way. Others explain the notion of Buddha-nature as a temporary expedient. These views reflect the efforts of desubstantializing Buddha-nature. However, some texts of tathāgatagarbha thought assert that Buddha-nature has the virtues or characteristics of permanence, happiness, self-existence, and purity, which are both empty and not empty in terms of the Middle Way.
Chinese Buddhism, including Chan, embraces and assimilates Indian tathāgatagarbha thought through its inherited belief from Confucianism that every human being can be a sage. Among the influential texts of tathāgatagarbha thought, an apocryphal treatise, The Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana (Dasheng Qixin Lun), plays a central role. This treatise describes Buddha-nature as “one mind (yixin)” with two differentiated aspects of the true and the deluded. Although this one mind is the overall condition and source of all things and beings, it is identified with the mind of the sentient being. This notion provides Chan with the inspiration that the realization of Buddha-nature be seen as the existential transformation of the human mind in everyday situations.
Chan notions such as self-nature (zixing), original mind (benxin), and original nature (benxing) can all be regarded as variations on the teaching of Buddha-nature. A distinctive Chan contribution to the understanding of Buddha-nature is the Chan elaboration on the inseparableness of the realization of Buddha-nature and everyday activities. While using various notions of Buddha-nature, classical Chan also showed that Buddha-nature, like all other soteriological terms, is an expedient means only and cannot be substantialized.
See also .
BU’ER
See .
BULI WENZI
See .
BUSHUOPO
Literally “never tell too plainly” or “never explain things in too plain language,” it is an important Chan strategy for master-student communications and especially for edifying or instructing students. The best-known reference to the strategy of bushuopo was made by Dongshan Liangjie and recorded in the Zutang Ji and Jingde Chuandeng Lu. Dongshan highly praised his teacher, not for the teacher’s virtue or teaching, but for his strategy of bushuopo, which contributed to Dongshan’s enlightenment. A similar praise for this kind of strategy can be found in the biography of Xiangyan Zhixian, a disciple of Guishan Lingyou. In modern times, Hu Shi attempted to call attention to this peculiar method of Chan instruction. However, bushuopo as a pedagogical method was dismissed by other modern scholars, such as D. T. Suzuki (1870–1966), to focus on the unique Chan experience of enlightenment itself. Recent studies of Chan have revisited this Hu Shi–Suzuki debate. Although Suzuki’s point that there is no fixed method for Chan has been well received, his understanding of Chan experience as self-identical and his dismissal of the study of Chan linguistic strategies have been critically questioned.
In terms of contemporary studies of Chan, bushuopo involves insight into the indirectness of communication in Chan practice, which differs significantly from the “direct” conveyance of information or objective knowledge. The existential-practical goal of transforming personhood determines that the experience, realization, or resonance of enlightenment is called transmission or communication (yiqi weichuan) in Chan. This definition of Chan communication requires the subversion of conventional hierarchy between speaker and listener, transmitter and receiver. The Chan teacher must “listen” and respond to the different situations of the students. The master must avoid satisfying himself or herself with simply giving lectures, describing things, or explaining principles to students and avoid misleading them or hindering their realizations by offering unified, straightforward advice. The master must inspire or arouse the students’ own actions. In this sense even plain words function indirectly, although various indirect strategies serve the purpose of Chan practice better. That explains why many Chan masters prefer using indirect words: they fit the deep structure of bushuopo, instructing or helping students to search their own enlightenment only indirectly, although plain words are not excluded from use.
C
CAODONG SCHOOL (Ch. Caodong zong)
One of the major schools of Chan, which emerged in the late Tang dynasty and became one of the two dominant schools of Chan in China after the Song dynasty. The name of this school is often understood as deriving from the first character of the names of its two founders: Dongshan Liangjie and his disciple, Caoshan Benji. However, the character “Cao” prior to “Dong” does not mean that Caoshan was more important than Dongshan. Rather, the “Cao” designates “Caoxi,” a name being used for the sixth patriarch, Huineng, which is also the origin of the name “Caoshan” itself, as the Chan legend tells that Benji changed Mount Heyu, where he resided, to Mount Cao when memorizing Huineng. The name “Coadong” thus could refer to the lineage from Huineng to Dongshan, including Qingyuan Xingsi, Shitou Siqian, Yaoshan Weiyan, and Yunyan Tansheng (782–841), distinguished from other Chan lineages. One important distinction of this early Caodong lineage, made by Dongshan and his disciples, was to associate the sect with the line of Shitou Siqian rather than Mazu Daoyi in such a way as to better serve the sect’s legitimacy and its independence from other established schools, despite the fact that Dongshan studied with Mazu’s several disciples. It also helped to form the traditional narrative on the “two main lines” of Mazu and Shitou in the development of the Southern school of Chan.
In addition to the establishment of a new li
neage, Dongshan and his disciples demonstrated some form of “house style (jiafeng)” different from other masters and schools. For example, unlike Linji’s famous use of shock methods including shouting and hitting, Dongshan’s style was gentler and subtler, more witty and dexterous in using a few words to hint at the reality of suchness and inspire students. One of the principles of these methods in his responsiveness to situations, as Dongshan himself called it, was “never tell too plainly (bushuopo)”—the indirect way of communication and instruction. The methods were based on the understanding that although the reality of suchness manifests itself through all things, including non-sentient beings, it can only be experienced in person and beyond objectification and conceptualization. The other well-known means attributed to Dongshan and characterized the Caodong house (menting shishe) was the “five ranks (wuwei),” which introduced five kinds of interrelationship between the correct (zheng) and the partial (pian), or principle (li) and phenomena (shi), as five perspectives to guide students in experiencing reality.
The Caodong lineage continued with the line of Dongshan’s disciple Yunju Daoying, according to the orthodox Song narrative on the Caodong transmission. However, in the early 11th century, with Dayang Jingxuan, the fourth-generation descendant of Yunju, the Caodong lineage underwent a severe crisis after years of declining. Dayang had to ask Linji master Fayuan (991–1067) to find an heir for Caodong from his able disciples. Thus Fayuan’s disciple Touzi Yiqing later became the legitimate receiver of Dayang’s dharma and the sixth-generation descendant of Dongshan in the rewritten narrative of the Caodong lineage created by Yiqing’s disciples.
Starting with Furong Daokai, the next generation, and within the two generations of his disciples, the Caodong school achieved a remarkable revival, which involved its success in elite circles in the 12th-century Song, and therefore became a major force in Chan monastic communities. The culmination of this prominence came with several of Daokai’s second-generation disciples, including the well-known Hongzhi Zhengjue and Zhenxie Qingliao, whose third-generation disciple Tiantong Rujing was the teacher of the Japanese Sōtō Zen founder Dōgen Kigen.
The 12th-century Caodong tradition not only produced the orthodox narrative on its lineage, but also invented a new approach of “silent illumination Chan (mozhao Chan)” with its distinctive vocabulary. The new approach started with Furong Daokai and his disciples and culminated in Hongzhi Zengjie. Recent study of this silent illumination Chan indicates that the meditation technique this new approach used and its doctrinal foundation of inherent Buddha-nature are all familiar things that have existed within the Chan tradition. What makes this approach unique is its new stress on stillness and sitting meditation as the manifestation of inherent Buddha-nature or as an end in itself; its de-emphasis on enlightenment as a sudden and crucial moment of experience; and its thorough deconstruction of dualism between practice and enlightenment, or means and goal.
The new Caodong approach is quite successful in attracting elites, and this might be one of the reasons for the Linji Chan master Dahui Zonggao’s attack on it and for the further development of Dahui’s own approach—kanhua Chan (literally “Chan of observing the key phrase”). Because Dahui’s attack has considerable influence, the silent illumination approach has often been seen as less orthodox than the Linji school’s kanhua practice. Nevertheless, this Caodong legacy is still preserved in many ways in present-day East Asia.
CAODONG ZONG
See .
CAOSHAN BENJI (840–901)
A Chan master of the Tang dynasty, a disciple of Dongshan Liangjie and considered the second founder of the Caodong school. Born into a Huang family in the area of Quanzhou in present-day Fujian province, China, he became a monk at the age of 19 in Fuzhou and was officially ordained at the age of 25. He studied with Dongshan for about 10 years. When he was leaving, according to a 12th-century text and texts published afterward, Dongshan secretly transmitted to him a number of works that Dongshan had received from his own teacher, Yunyan Tansheng (782–841), including “The Jewel Mirror Samadhi,” “Verses on the Five Ranks of Lord and Vassal,” and others. The story signifies the traditional acknowledgment of Caoshan as Dongshan’s legitimate dharma heir. Caoshan visited Caoxi (in Guangdong) to pay respect to the sixth patriarch, Huineng’s, pagoda. He then started to teach students in Fuzhou, Jiangxi, settling on Mount Heyu and changing its name to Mount Cao when memorizing Huineng (hence people called him Caoshan Benji). Caoshan had about 14 disciples in his lifetime, but after four generations, his lineage was ended. Although the Caodong school continued with the line of Dongshan’s senior disciple Yunju Daoying, Caoshan was seen by the tradition as the cofounder with Dongshan.
Caoshan’s authority in explaining Dongshan’s doctrine of five ranks is demonstrated by a number of his commentaries, including “The Essentials of the Five Ranks of Lord and Vassal” (Wuwei Junchen Zhijue), “Explanations of Dongshan’s Essentials of Five Ranks” (Jieshi Dongshan Wuwei Xianjue), and others. However, these works, along with Dongshan’s own works on the five ranks, were introduced much later by a text of the early 12th century. There are no other earlier reliable sources to verify what was written by Caoshan and Dongshan themselves. The numerous dialogues between Caoshan and his students preserved in the earlier transmission of the lamp anthologies, such as the Zutang Ji and the Jingde Chuandeng Lu, rather than in the Ming edition of Caoshan Yulu, are relatively more reliable for the study of Caoshan’s teachings. They illustrate a kind of subtle and witty style that he inherited from his teacher Dongshan in responding to situations and inspiring students to realize self-nature or experience suchness.
CAOXI DASHI ZHUAN
Translated into English as the Biography of the Great Master of Caoxi, the Caoxi Dashi Zhuan is one of the hagiographies about the sixth patriarch, Huineng, produced in the early history of Chan Buddhism. Contemporary scholars have generally agreed on the date of its composition as 781, about 70 years after Huineng’s death. However, there is no plain evidence for the exact author of this text, so contemporary historians can only speculate about its possible authorship. A relatively convincing theory is that it was produced by a member of, or someone connected to, the Baolin Temple (Baolin Si) community at Caoxi, in the area of Shaozhou (in present-day Guangdong province), where Huineng preached and the lineage of his disciples continued. The text adds new materials about Huineng to the early hagiographical compositions by Shenhui and the Lidai Fabao Ji and influences the ensuing Dunhuang edition of the Platform Sūtra and the Baolin Zhuan. However, the Caoxi Dashi Zhuan’s contribution does not help to make Huineng’s biographical information any less conflicting. It instead demonstrates the competing stories about Huineng from different groups of his followers.
Contemporary scholars have analyzed a number of crucial differences between the Caoxi Dashi Zhuan and the stories about Huineng offered by the other texts. First, the verse competition between Huineng and Shenxiu, and its role in Huineng’s being chosen as the sixth patriarch, so popular with the Platform Sūtra and endorsed by Chan tradition, is absent from this biography of Huineng. Second, although the texts of Shenhui and the Platform Sūtra emphasize the central role of the Diamond Sūtra in Huineng’s enlightenment, the Caoxi Dashi Zhuan depicts Huineng as a master of the Nirvana Sūtra, through the stories about Huineng’s meeting with the nun Wujincang and the master Yinzong’s (627–713) attesting to Huineng’s perfect understanding of the Nirvana Sūtra. Third, the Caoxi Dashi Zhuan presents, for the first time, the full story of Huineng’s conversation about the banner and the wind, and his meeting with and later official ordination by Yinzong, which is not included in the Dunhuang edition of the Platform Sūtra but is absorbed by the later versions of the Platform Sūtra and the transmission of the lamp literature. Fourth, the Caoxi Dashi Zhuan rejects the relevance of Empress Wu (r. 690–705) to the transmission of Bodhidharma’s robe and the claim made by the Lidai Fabao Ji that the robe was given by Huineng to Empress Wu and was further passed to W
uzhu through Zhishen (609–702), Chuji (669–736 or 648–734), and Wuxiang. By asserting that only Baolin Temple holds the mummy of Huineng and the robe of transmission, and by mentioning imperial decrees as proof of recognition from the imperial court, the Caoxi Dashi Zhuan promotes the orthodoxy of the lineage at Baolin Temple. This limiting of the Chan heritage of Huineng to one single place seems different from the more ecumenical attitude adopted by the Dunhuang edition of the Platform Sūtra, especially the Baolin Zhuan. Despite these and other differences, the basic teachings of Huineng contained in this text do not run counter to those in the more popular Platform Sūtra.
CHAN
The word chan is often confused with the word Chanzong, which means “the school of Chan” or “Chan Buddhism.” Under many circumstance, people do use “Chan” to designate the Chan school in Chinese Buddhism. In such usage, “Chan” becomes an abbreviated form of Chanzong. However, chan was used before the advent of the Chan school. “Chan” could denote the practice of meditation (xichan), such as sitting meditation (zuochan), or the study of meditation (chanxue), apart from the school of Chan. The fact that Buddhist schools other than the Chan school practice meditation is also evident. Obviously, the term chan can be discussed separately from the term Chanzong.
Chan is a shortened form of the Chinese word channa, rendered from the Sanskrit word dhyāna, which denotes practices of the concentration of the mind through meditation or contemplation. Although rooted in the Indian tradition of yoga, which aims at the unification of the individual being with the divine, meditative concentration became integrated into the Buddhist path to enlightenment as one of the three learnings (sanxue) of Buddhism. Early Buddhist (or Hinayana Buddhist) scriptures include the teachings on forty objects of meditation, four foundations of mindfulness, four stages of meditation, four divine abodes, four formless meditations, the tranquility (samatha) and insight (vipassanā) meditations, and so forth. Buddhist communities commonly practiced these meditations, along with the moral disciplines and the study of the scriptures and doctrines to acquire wisdom. In this general context, some eminent monks might have composed scriptures/treatises for the training of meditation or have become more famous for meditation. Mahayana Buddhism continued the practice of meditation as one of the six perfections (or virtues) of the bodhisattva path. It inherited the essential methods of meditation from early Buddhism while at the same time diversifying them, attempting to overcome the tendency of escapism or quietism, and basing meditations on the Mahayana doctrines of emptiness, mind-only, non-duality, and Buddha-nature.