Asian Traditions of Meditation

by Halvor Eifring

  27. Cathy Cantwell notes that this text is “drawn from the long longevity practice of the Padma gling-pa tradition. [It] fills the necessary niche for such a section within a self-sufficient cycle, although in practice, it may be considered too short to be of more than symbolic value, and when needed, more substantial yogic practices for controlling the channels and air currents (rtsa rlung) from other Dudjom cycles may be done instead, such as from the mKha’ ’gro thugs thig (in Volume ma) or the gNam lcags spu gri (Volume da).” (Personal communication, 2007.)

  28. Wallace, Kālacakratantra.

  29. Cf. Moerman, Meaning; Wilce and Price, “Metaphors”; Samuel “Healing, Efficacy and the Spirits”; Samuel, “Inner Work”; and Samuel, “Healing in Tibetan Buddhism.”

  Bibliography

  Beyer, Stephan. The Cult of Tārā: Magic and Ritual in Tibet. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973.

  Buffetrille, Katia. The Halase-Maratika Caves (Eastern Nepal): A Sacred Place Claimed by Both Hindus and Buddhists. Pondy Papers in Social Science, 16. Pondicherry: Institut français de Pondichery, 1994.

  ———. Pèlerins, Lamas et Visionnaires: Sources orales et écrits sur les pèlerinages tibétains. Vienna: Arbeitskreis für tibetische und buddhistische Studien Universität Wien, 2000.

  Cantwell, Cathy, and Robert Mayer. “The Creation and Transmission of a Textual Corpus in the Twentieth Century: The ’Chi med srog thig.” In Edition, éditions: L‘écrit au Tibet, evolution et devenir [The evolution and future of writing in Tibet], edited by Anne Chayet, Cristina Scherrer-Schaub, Françoise Robin, and Jean-Luc Achard, 65–83. Munich: Indus-Verlag, 2010.

  Emmerick, R. E. The Sūtra of Golden Light. London: Luzac, 1970.

  Gerke, Barbara. Time and Longevity in a Tibetan Context. PhD diss., Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford, 2008.

  Gyatso, Janet. Apparitions of the Self: The Secret Autobiographies of a Tibetan Visionary: A Translation and Study of Jigme Lingpa’s Dancing Moon in the Water and Dāḳḳi’s Grand Secret-Talk. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998.

  ———. The Literary Transmission of the Traditions of Thang-stong rGyal-po: A Study of Visionary Buddhism in Tibet. PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1981.

  Hanna, Span. “Vast as the Sky: The Terma Tradition in Modern Tibet.” In Tantra and Popular Religion in Tibet, edited by Geoffrey Samuel, Hamish Gregor, and Elizabeth Stutchbury, 1–14. Śata-Piṭaka Series, 376. New Delhi: International Academy of Indian Culture and Aditya Prakashan, 1994.

  Jacoby, Sarah Hieatt. Consorts and Revelation in Eastern Tibet: The Auto/Biographical Writings of the Treasure Revealer Sera Khandro (1892–1940). PhDdiss., University of Virginia, 2007.

  Kohn, Richard J. Lord of the Dance: The Mani Rimdu Festival in Tibet and Nepal. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001.

  Mabbett, Ian W. “The Problem of the Historical Nāgārjuna Revisited.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 118 (1998): 332–346.

  Martin, Dan. Unearthing Bon Treasures: Life and Contested Legacy of a Tibetan Scripture Revealer, with a General Bibliography of Bon. Boston: Brill, 2001.

  Millard, Colin, and Geoffrey Samuel. “Precious Pills in the Bon Medical Tradition.” Paper for Seventh International Congress on Traditional Asian Medicine (ICTAM 7), Thimphu, Bhutan, September 7–11, 2008.

  Moerman, Daniel E. Meaning, Medicine and the “Placebo Effect.” New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

  Ray, Reginald A. “Nāgārjuna’s Longevity.” In Sacred Biography in the Buddhist Traditions of South and South Asia, edited by Juliane Schober and Mark Woodward, 129–159. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1997.

  Samuel, Geoffrey. “Amitāyus and the Development of Tantric Practices for Longevity and Health in Tibet.” In Transformations and Transfer of Tantra in Asia and Beyond, edited by István Keul, 263–286. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2012.

  ———. Civilized Shamans: Buddhism in Tibetan Societies. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993.

  ———. “Healing, Efficacy and the Spirits.” Journal of Ritual Studies 24, no. 2 (2010): 7–20. (The Efficacy of Rituals, Part 2. Second volume of two-volume special issue edited by William S. Sax and Johannes Quack.)

  ———. “Healing in Tibetan Buddhism.” In The Wiley Blackwell Companion to East and Inner Asian Buddhism, edited by Mario Poceski, 278–296. Chichester, UK: John Wiley, 2014.

  ———. “Inner Work and the Connection between Anthropological and Psychological Analysis.” In “The Varieties of Ritual Experience,” edited by Jan Weinhold and Geoffrey Samuel, a section of Ritual Dynamics and the Science of Ritual, vol. 2, Body, Performance, Agency and Experience, edited by Axel Michaels et al., 301–316. Wiesbaden, Germany: Harrassowitz, 2010.

  ———. The Origins of Yoga and Tantra: Indic Religions to the Thirteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

  ———. “A Short History of Indo-Tibetan Alchemy.” In Studies of Medical Pluralism in Tibetan History and Society, edited by Sienna Craig, Mingji Cuomu, Frances Garrett, and Mona Schrempf, 221–233. Proceedings of the Eleventh Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies (PIATS), Königswinter, 2006. Andiast, Switzerland: International Institute for Tibetan and Buddhist Studies GmbH, 2011.

  ———. Tantric Revisionings: New Understandings of Tibetan Buddhism and Indian Religion. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass / London: Ashgate, 2005.

  ———. “Tibetan Longevity Practice and the Ecology of Mind.” Paper for the Society for the Anthropology of Religion/Society for Psychological Anthropology Joint Spring Meeting, “Moments of Crisis: Decision, Transformation, Catharsis, Critique,” March 27–29, 2009, Asilomar, California.

  Schipper, Kristofer. The Taoist Body. Translated by Karen C. Duval. Taipei: SMC Publishing, 1994. First published in 1982 as Le corps taoïste by Librairie Arthème Fayard, Paris.

  Shawn, Arthur. “Life without Grains: Bigu and the Daoist Body.” In Daoist Body Cultivation: Traditional Models and Contemporary Practices, edited by Livia Kohn, 91–122. St Petersburg, FL: Three Pines Press, 2006.

  Thondup, Tulku. Hidden Teachings of Tibet: An Explanation of the Terma Tradition of the Nyingma School of Buddhism. London: Wisdom Publications, 1986.

  Wallace, Vesna A., transl. The Kālacakratantra: The Chapter on the Individual Together with the Vimalaprabhā. New York: American Institute of Buddhist Studies at Columbia University / Columbia University Center for Buddhist Studies and Tibet House US, 2004. Wilce, James M. and Price, Laurie J. “Metaphors Our Bodyminds Live By.” In Social and Cultural Lives of Immune Systems, edited by James M. Wilce, 50–81. London: Routledge, 2003.

  9 MORTEN SCHLÜTTER

  Kànhuà Meditation in Chinese Zen

  Over the many centuries that Buddhism developed in East Asia, several distinctive styles of meditation appeared. None, however, is more unique and apparently idiosyncratic than the meditative focus on seemingly impossible questions or bizarre dialogues that originated in the Chinese Chán school (in Korea called Sŏn, but best known under its Japanese name Zen). Nevertheless, this became a standard meditation practice, and for centuries Zen practitioners all over East Asia have meditated on questions such as “What was your original face before your parents gave birth to you?”1 or on exchanges such as the one where a monk asks Yúnmén Wényǎn (864–949) about whether there can be any fault when one is not giving rise to any thought and Yúnmén answers, “Mount Sumeru.”2

  This form of meditation took shape during the middle of the Sòng dynasty (960–1279) and has come to be known as kànhuà Chán (lit. “Chán of observing the keyword”), sometimes referred to as “kōan introspection.” The development of Kànhuà Chán began with the puzzling, sometimes shocking, or even violent “encounter dialogues;” brief stories about great ancient Chán masters that seem to have first started to circulate in the ninth and tenth centuries, and that involve a Chán master and interlocutor, typically a monastic st
udent, a Buddhist master from another tradition, or a lay visitor.3 Encounter dialogues quickly came to be the hallmark of Chán literature; they were seen as direct expressions of the enlightened mind of a Chán master, that could inspire enlightenment in others by their retelling. Chán masters from the tenth century onward would often quote and comment on encounter dialogues, which then became known as gōng’àn (public cases; Jap. kōan; Kor. kongan).4 Eventually some masters began to assign gōng’àn to their students to mull over during meditation, but it was the famous Dàhuì Zōnggǎo (1089–1163), a master in the Línjì (Jap. Rinzai) tradition, who fully developed kànhuà Chán and established it as a distinct form of meditation.5

  Dàhuì was highly successful in his own lifetime, and his teachings had an enormous impact on the development of Chinese Buddhism, and of Buddhism in Korea and Japan as well. Due to Dàhuì’s success, kànhuà Chán became widely used in the centuries after his death, even within the competing Cáodòng (Jap. Sōtō) tradition that Dàhuì had strongly criticized. However, although Dàhuì’s teachings on kànhuà Chán have been studied quite extensively, very little scholarship has focused on the development of this type of meditation in the subsequent centuries. This chapter will therefore first outline Dàhuì’s approach to kànhuà meditation and then discuss the development of this meditation technique through the Yuán (1279–1368) and Míng (1368–1644) dynasties.6

  Dàhuì and his Kànhuà Chán

  Dàhuì Zōnggǎo is, after the semimythical Sixth Patriarch Huìnéng (638–713), perhaps the most famous Chinese Chán master of all times, and his influence on his contemporaries and on the subsequent development of Chinese Chán was immense. Dàhuì is especially known as the tireless advocate of kànhuà Chán, an innovative meditation technique. But Dàhuì also became famous for his attacks on approaches to Chán that he felt were mistaken, especially that of “silent illumination” (mòzhào), which he associated with the Cáodòng tradition of Chán (which had become a rival to his own Línjì tradition), and which he repeatedly attacked in the years after 1134, when he seems to first have become aware of it. In fact, Dàhuì’s creation of kànhuà Chán also dates to after 1134 and must, at least in part, be understood as an answer or antidote to the silent illumination meditation that was advocated in the Cáodòng tradition at the time, most prominently by the famous master Hóngzhì Zhèngjué (1091–1157). This again must be placed in the context of competition among Chán lineages for patronage from the educated lay elite, the literati (shìdàfū).7

  Dàhuì was an active teacher and writer throughout his life, and a large corpus of his recorded sayings, sermons, and writings is still extant.8 Especially interesting in the context of this chapter are the many sermons and letters in which Dàhuì directly addresses members of the literati class, because it is here that he most often discusses kànhuà Chán.9

  Dahui’s approach to Chán meditation involves focusing intensely on the huàtóu, that is, the “keyword” or “punch line” of a gōng’àn story.10 The story that Dàhuì most often told his students for this purpose was the very simple one of the response Zhàozhōu Cóngshěn (778–897) is said to have given to someone asking whether a dog had the Buddha nature. Thus, in a written sermon addressed to a scholar-official, Dàhuì writes,

  A monk asked Zhàozhōu: “Does even a dog have the Buddha nature?” Zhàozhōu answered: “No!” [wú]. Whether you are walking or standing, sitting or lying down, you must not for a moment cease [to hold this “no/wú” in your mind]. When deluded thoughts arise, you must also not suppress them with your mind. Only just hold up this huàtóu [= the keyword “no/wú”]. When you want to meditate (“do quiet sitting,” jìngzuò) and you begin to feel dull and muddled, you must muster all your energies and hold up this word. Then suddenly you will be like the old blind woman who blows [so diligently] at the fire that her eyebrows and lashes are burned right off.11

  The gōng’àn here is the short exchange between Zhàozhōu and the monk, while the huàtóu is the single word “no/wú.” Kànhuà is simply an abbreviation of kàn huàtóu, “observing the keyword”; however, Dàhuì himself never uses the terms kànhuà or “kànhuà Chán,” and instead usually simply talks about the method of using the term huàtóu (keyword).

  Zhàozhōu’s dog was Dàhuì’s favorite story for use in kànhuà meditation, and he returns to it again and again. In another sermon written for a member of the literati, Dàhuì first presents a scathing criticism of the silent illumination that sadly has ensnared some members of the literati and then goes on to advocate kànhuà Chán and explain a bit about the mental technique:

  A monk asked Zhàozhōu: “Does even a dog have the Buddha nature?” Zhàozhōu answered: “No!” When you observe it do not ponder it widely, do not try to understand every word, do not try to analyze it, do not consider it to be at the place where you open your mouth [about to say it out loud], do not reason that it is at the place [in your mind] where you hold it up, do not fall into a vacuous state, do not hold on to “mind” and await enlightenment, do not try to experience it through the words of your teacher, and do not get stuck in a shell of unconcern. Just at all times, whether walking or standing, sitting or lying down, hold on to this [no/wú]. “Does even a dog have Buddha nature or not [wú]?” If you hold on to this “no/wú” to a point where it becomes ripe, when no discussion or consideration can reach it, and you are as if caught in a place of one square inch, and when it has no flavor as if you were chewing on a raw iron cudgel, and you get so close to it you cannot pull back,—when you are able to be like this, then that really is good news!12

  Of course, in Chán understanding, like all other sentient beings, dogs do have the Buddha nature,13 and by employing this and other bewildering gōng’àn it appears that Dàhuì aimed for kànhuà Chán practice to bring the practitioner to a point where no thinking or conceptualizing of any kind is possible. As is clear from Dàhuì’s discussion, the objective was not to understand the story in any intellectual way, and the focus of contemplation was not the story itself but the huàtóu (keyword), here consisting of the single word “no,” or rather wú, which seems at this level to become devoid of linguistic content.

  Dàhuì appears to have developed this kind of meditation because he believed it was the most effective method for achieving enlightenment, and because other meditation techniques had come to be misused by “heretical” Chán masters. Dàhuì strongly insisted on the need for a decisive moment of enlightenment, without which a person would forever remain in the shadows of delusion, and his main reason for attacking other approaches to meditation such as silent illumination was that he felt that they did not lead to enlightenment.14

  It is important to be aware of the distinction between kànhuà Chán and the practice of using gōng’àn stories as a means of instruction, which is sometimes missed in the secondary literature. Dàhuì was far from the first or only Sòng dynasty Chán master to use gōng’àn stories in teaching his students. Much of the material in the recorded sayings of individual Sòng Chán masters, no matter what Chán tradition they belong to, consists of the master quoting (“raising,” jŭ) a piece of encounter dialogue centered on a famous past Chán figure and then offering his own comments on the story. The source was often the famous Chán transmission lineage history Jǐngdé chuándēng lù (Record of the transmission of the lamp from the Jǐngdé era; 1004–1008) published in 1009. It was these dialogues that came to be referred to as gōng’àn (Jap. kōan), which means something like “public case,” an expression that seems to have been borrowed from the language of law. The stories are often bizarre, shocking, or just plain puzzling, and Chán masters used them in sermons, letters, and commentaries to instruct their disciples and startle them out of habitual modes of thinking (as well, perhaps, as to demonstrate their own erudition and mastery of the Chán parlance). Some Chán masters, such as Dàhuì’s teacher Yuánwù Kèqín (1063—1135), also began assigning specific gōng’àn stories to their students to mull over i
n their daily activities and in meditation.

  But although gōng’àn were employed as teaching devices in all of Sòng Chán, Dàhuì’s use of gōng’àn goes far beyond anything that is attested in Chán literature before him. He was the first to insist on the necessity of an intense introspection directed toward the crucial punch line part of the gōng’àn, the keyword or huàtóu, and this makes his kànhuà Chán a unique as well as momentous development in Sòng Chán Buddhism.

  In the quotations above, Dàhuì emphasizes that kànhuà practice should be a constant endeavor as one goes about one’s daily activities and that one must hold the no/wú of the dog gōng’àn in mind “at all times, whether walking or standing, sitting or lying down.” This advice seems especially directed to literati, who usually held administrative jobs and could not engage in prolonged formal meditation practice the way a monastic might. But the question may be raised: If it is something to be practiced at all times in the midst of regular activities, is Dàhuì’s kànhuà Chán really “meditation”? I will not attempt a cross-cultural definition of the term “meditation” here, but clearly we usually think of meditation as something that is undertaken at specific times, associated with certain ritual (however minimal), and most commonly done in a seated position. But when Dàhuì mentions seated meditation in the first quote above, it almost seems as if he treats it as an additional, perhaps optional, practice. At the very least, kànhuà Chán is depicted as going much beyond seated meditation, perhaps even rendering seated meditation unnecessary.

  In fact, searching through Dàhuì’s extant writings it becomes clear that he almost never uses terms that we customarily translate as “meditation” in a positive sense. In almost all cases, Dàhuì seems to associate these terms with the dreaded silent illumination meditation technique, which he understands to consist of simply passively sitting and awaiting illumination of one’s inherent Buddha nature. We might get the impression that, to Dàhuì, seated meditation was something to be avoided, at best an unnecessary practice and potentially a harmful one. In this he follows the rhetoric attributed to earlier legendary Chán masters, who often denigrated meditation or reformulated the term as meaning something very different from just sitting in meditation, as the Sixth Patriarch Huìnéng is supposed to have done.15