Guo Gu

Guo Gu

Guo Gu (Dr. Jimmy Yu) is the founder of the Tallahassee Chan Center (www.tallahasseechan.com) and is also the guiding teacher for the Western Dharma Teachers Training course at the Chan Meditation Center in New York and the Dharma Drum Lineage. He is one of the late Master Sheng Yen’s (1930–2009) senior and closest disciples, and assisted him in leading intensive retreats throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. Guo Gu has edited and translated a number of Master Sheng Yen’s books from Chinese to English. He is also a professor of Buddhism and East Asian religions at Florida State University, Tallahassee.

Guo Gu

Guo Gu (Dr. Jimmy Yu) is the founder of the Tallahassee Chan Center (www.tallahasseechan.com) and is also the guiding teacher for the Western Dharma Teachers Training course at the Chan Meditation Center in New York and the Dharma Drum Lineage. He is one of the late Master Sheng Yen’s (1930–2009) senior and closest disciples, and assisted him in leading intensive retreats throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. Guo Gu has edited and translated a number of Master Sheng Yen’s books from Chinese to English. He is also a professor of Buddhism and East Asian religions at Florida State University, Tallahassee.

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GUIDES

Silent Illumination as Natural Awakening

A Parable for Silent Illumination

Silent Illumination
An excerpt from Silent Illumination

Natural awakening is inherent within everyone—it is not something produced through practice. Hongzhi eloquently described it as the “vacant and open field,” the “lucid lake,” our “original home.” The point of Chan practice, then, is to regain our original freedom by clearing away our emotional afflictions and negative habitual patterns (i.e., craving, aversion, and ignorance and our tendency to perpetuate them), the accumulation of which have concealed who we are:

It [silent illumination] cannot be practiced nor actualized because it is something intrinsically full and complete. Others cannot defile it; it is thoroughly pure to its depth. Precisely at the place where purity is full and complete is where you must open your eyes and recognize it. When illumination is thorough, [self] is relinquished completely— when experiencing is clear, your steps are then solid and grounded.

Elsewhere he states:

The correct way of practice is to simply sit in stillness and silently investigate; deep down one reaches a state where externally one is no longer swayed by causes and conditions. The mind being empty, it is all-embracing; its luminosity being wondrous, it is precisely apt and impartial.

Chan practice is about investigating our intrinsic awakened nature. It requires us to remove the obscurations—self-attachment and all of its emotional afflictions and negative habitual patterns—that conceal our inherent freedom so we can express it in the midst of daily life.

The transliteration of the Chinese characters Hongzhi used for “investigation” are jiu and can. Both have the meaning of “partaking,” “integrating,” and “thoroughly penetrating.” Sometimes he combined the word investigation with the term ti, which means “embodiment” or “experiencing.” For Hongzhi, investigation is not an intellectual process but embodied, actualized, and lived experiencing. Thus, while silent illumination as our original awakened nature “is something intrinsically full and complete,” we must personally recognize and live it.

“Silence” is the metaphor for the wisdom of emptiness. So are quiescence, formlessness, spaciousness, stillness. These are all Hongzhi’s poetic terms for the Mahayana teaching of selflessness. “Illumination” refers to the wondrous activity of this selfless wisdom that, in Buddhism, is none other than compassion. Just as wisdom and compassion are inseparable, so are silence and illumination. They are simply two aspects of our natural awakened buddha-nature within.

Chan teaches that we are already free—we are buddhas.

At the same time, we’re bogged down by delusion, emotional afflictions, and negative habitual patterns, so we don’t realize our freedom. An analogy for this is the room that you occupy right now. The room—its spaciousness—cannot be defined by the furniture contained in it or the presence or absence of people. Nor is the nature of the room affected by its level of cleanliness. Similarly, our buddha-nature is not defined by the presence or absence of our emotional afflictions. Like the spacious room, buddha-nature has always been empty, free of disturbance. At the same time, buddha-nature is not a thing apart from emotional afflictions. It is through the vexations of our lives that we realize freedom. By working with our thoughts, feelings, and mental states, we come to realize that we are the dynamic expression of buddha-nature.

The spaciousness or emptiness of the room is the “silence” in silent illumination. The ability of the room to accommodate all sorts of furniture is the “illumination” of silent illumination. Our true mind has no delineating borders, and it has infinite potential; we have the ability to respond to the needs of all beings creatively, immeasurably. Just as space is not the result of our moving the furniture around the room, awakening is not something that we gain from our efforts in “practice.” If awakening were gained from practice, then it would be just an additional piece of furniture! Whatever can be gained is also subject to loss. Our buddha-nature has nothing to do with having or lacking, gaining or losing.

Yet, by working with the furniture—fixing the dilapidated pieces, recycling the old ones, and clearing up the clutter—it’s more likely that we’ll recognize the spaciousness of the room.

The pieces of furniture in our heart-mind are all the ever-changing constructs, narratives, knowledge, and personal experiences. For the purpose of this book, I will use “mind” or “heart-mind” to refer to the workings of our whole being. While our modern sensibilities tell us that body and mind are separate—that there are distinct functions of heart, brain, and mind—in Chan usage, all of these functions are interconnected, synonymous. As for the furniture there is a vitality to their transiency, where nothing is fixed and everything is possible. Furniture can be rearranged and recycled endlessly. We may take a particular piece of furniture as who we are, but there really is no permanent “me” apart from our mental construct of it. There is no self that experiences; there’s just moment-to-moment experiencing. The problem is really not with the furniture but with our rigid fixation on it. We are attached to all the things we experience and have allowed them to define, shape, and manipulate us.

When we fully appreciate the natural expression of mind as experiencing, all things become alive, fluid, intimately connected to one another. This is the realization of no-self or selflessness. The true nature of our mind is free. This freedom is also our true nature. Thoughts and passing emotions liberate themselves, moment after moment after moment. We don’t have to do anything to make them disappear. They liberate themselves if we let go of what we’re grasping.

Our true nature has infinite potential.

It is able to respond to circumstances and the needs of all beings. Expressed as the natural functioning of the mind, our experiencing is both empty and aware. It is able to respond in any and all ways, freely and dynamically, adapting and accommodating to all conditions with effortless flexibility. Just as our eyes see and ears hear—because that is their inherent function—buddha-nature simply experiences, moment to moment, because this is its inherent function.

When we are aligned with our buddha-nature, we are like a mirror selflessly reflecting images before it. We respond to complex situations and interact with others effortlessly, and the reason we can function perfectly well without a fixed, rigid sense of self or “experiencer” is because, in reality, there is no such thing and there never was. Self as a permanent entity doesn’t exist. In our confusion, we think that the objects of our minds—thoughts and feelings—arise from the “I” that is the subject standing in opposition to the rest of the world.

Our attachment to a fixed sense of I is unnecessary. We can actually function better without it, adapting to changes when faced with obstacles. But when we fixate on this sense of me, I, and mine and inject it into our daily interactions with others, we hinder the natural expression of our buddha-nature as experiencing and cause suffering for ourselves and others. Why? Because it’s contrary to how we actually are: free and open, wondrously changing and with great potential. To understand silent illumination is to appreciate our true nature as already free—the natural awakening of who we are.

The reason we don’t feel liberated is because we attach to these notions of me, I, and mine. We have taken our thinking and feeling—the objects of experiencing—as who we are. The truth is, if we fill a glass with murky water and then we set the glass down and allow the silt to settle, the water naturally becomes clear. The nature of water is originally clear. It only appears to be temporarily muddied by the silt that it contains. Silent illumination is who we are. Clarity has always been present. This is called intrinsic awakening, or what I call natural awakening. Usually, realization of this truth happens suddenly. This is experiential awakening. Water holds the silt particles without resisting their presence or changing its true nature, and the same is true of the heart-mind. If it did not have freedom as its intrinsic nature, how could it liberate itself?

In Buddhism, when intrinsic awakening is experientially realized, it is called selfless wisdom, or prajna. Because this wisdom operates freely, without self-referential obstructions, it responds skillfully to the needs of sentient beings. This is called great compassion. Thus, wisdom and compassion are the same thing, just expressed differently. They are inseparable, as are silence and illumination.

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Related Books

Silent Illumination

$16.95 - Paperback

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Attaining the Way

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Passing Through the Gateless Barrier

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The Essence of Chan

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By: Guo Gu

Guo GuGuo Gu (Dr. Jimmy Yu) is the founder of the Tallahassee Chan Center and is also the guiding teacher for the Western Dharma Teachers Training course at the Chan Meditation Center in New York and the Dharma Drum Lineage. He is one of the late Master Sheng Yen’s (1930–2009) senior and closest disciples, and assisted him in leading intensive retreats throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. Guo Gu has edited and translated a number of Master Sheng Yen’s books from Chinese to English. He is also a professor of Buddhism and East Asian religions at Florida State University, Tallahassee.

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The Works of Zen in the Song Dynasty

The Works of Zen in the Song Dynasty

circle of the way

 

 

This is part of a series of articles on the arc of Zen thought, practice, and history, as presented in The Circle of the Way: A Concise History of Zen from the Buddha to the Modern WorldYou can start at the beginning of this series or simply explore from here. 

Shakyamuni-song-dynasty-cleveland

Explore Zen Buddhism: A Reader's Guide to the Great Works 

Overview

Chan in China

> The Works of Zen in the Song Dynasty (960 - 1279)

Zen in Korea

Zen in Japan

Additional Resources

The great translator Thomas Cleary contrasts the Zen works in the Song dynasties from its predecessor, the Tang, in his Classics of Buddhism and Zen, Volume 1,

If the Tang dynasty, from the early seventh through the ninth centuries, may be called the classical period of Chinese Zen, the Song dynasty may be called its baroque period, characterized by complexity of form and ingenious imagery with multiple meaning. In contrast to the relatively plain and straightforward Zen literature of the Tang dynasty, Song dynasty Zen literature is convoluted and artful. This is not regarded, in Zen terms, as a development in Zen, but as a response to a more complex and pressured society and individual. The Zen adepts of Song times did not regard the reality of Zen as any different in its essence from that of classical times, but considered the function of Zen to have become complicated by the complexity of the contemporary mind and the rampant spread of artificial Zen based on imitations of a few Zen practices.

The Song Dynasty saw the great koan collections we know today formalized and these are so important and extensive that rather than including them here, they are the subject of the next article: The Great Koan Collections.

Below are some of the works we publish that relate to this time period.

zen letters

Zen Letters: Teachings of Yuanwu

By Yuanwu
Translated by J. C. Cleary and  Thomas Cleary

This book collects the letters of the primary author of the Blue Cliff Record, Yuanwu (1063–1135).

Zen Letters presents the teachings of this great Chinese master highlighted in The Circle of the Way as the author of the annotations and commentary in the Blue Cliff Record.  In this book, his letters transmit direct, person-to-person lessons, intimately revealing the inner workings of the psychology of enlightenment. These teachings are drawn from letters written by Yuanwu to various fellow teachers, disciples, and lay students—to women as well as men, to people with families and worldly careers as well as monks and nuns, to advanced adepts as well as beginning students. His letters, here in English for the first time, are among the great treasures of Zen literature.

This is also included in Classics of Buddhism and Zen, Volume II.

minding mind

Minding Mind: A Course in Basic Meditation

Translated by Thomas Cleary

Two of the seven meditation manuals in this work are from the Song Dynasty.

Models for Sitting Meditation was composed by Chan Buddhist Master Cijiao of Changlu in late eleventh-century China. Little is known of Cijiao, except that he was not only a master of the powerful Linji school of Chan Buddhism but also a patriarch of popular Pure Land Buddhism.

The second, Guidelines for Sitting Meditation, was written by Foxin Bencai, a younger contemporary of Cijiao. The instructions of Foxin and Cijiao, both quite brief, address problems of deterioration in the quality of meditation practices and prescribe simple remedies to counteract confusion and misalignment in order to foster the proper state of mind.

Silent Illumination

Hongzhi Zhengjue (1091–1157) taught a form of meditation called mozhao chan, or “silent illumination chan.” As O'Brien writes in The Circle of the Way,

Early Buddhism identified two kinds of meditation, called in Sanskrit shamatha (“dwelling in peace”) and vipashyana (“clear seeing”). Shamatha techniques are about pacifying the mind and cultivating serenity, while vipashyana is about fostering insight. Hongzhi said that silent illumination represents a balance between the two. In his “Guidepost of Silent Illumination” he wrote that “if illumination neglects serenity aggressiveness appears,” and “if serenity neglects illumination, murkiness leads to wasted dharma.”  Mozhao chan, then, is about entering a serene illumination.

We have two books on this system of practice.

method of no-method

The Method of No-Method: The Chan Practice of Silent Illumination

By Chan Master Sheng Yen

Here Master Sheng Yen explains that Silent Illumination begins with nothing more than putting aside all thoughts except the awareness of oneself “just sitting.” It’s so simple in execution that it has sometimes been called the “method of no-method”—yet simple as it is, the practice is subtle and profound, with the potential for ever subtler refinements as the practitioner moves toward mastery of it. When fully penetrated, this radical form of emptying one’s busy mind-stream leads to perception of the vast ocean of pure awareness.

Silent Illumination

Silent Illumination: A Chan Buddhist Path to Natural Awakening

By Guo Gu

Our natural awakening—or buddha-nature—is inherent within all of us and waiting to be realized. Buddha-nature has the qualities of both silence and illumination, and by working with silent illumination meditation you can find your own awakening. Distinguished Chan Buddhist teacher Guo Gu introduces you to the significance and methods of this practice through in-depth explanations and guided instructions. To help establish a foundation for realizing silent illumination, he has translated twenty-five teachings from the influential master Hongzhi Zhengjue into English, accompanied by his personal commentary. This book will be an indispensable resource for meditators interested in beginning or deepening their silent illumination practice.

zen lessons

Zen Lessons: The Art of Leadership

Translated by Thomas Cleary

The author of this work, Dahui Zonggao (1089–1163) had a different take on Silent Illumination which is described in The Circle of the Way and is also covered by Guo Gu in this video.

This guide to enlightened conduct for people in positions of authority is based on the teachings of several great Chinese Zen masters. Drawing on private records, letters, and long-lost documents of the Song dynasty (tenth to thirteenth centuries), Zen Lessons consists of short excerpts written in language that is accessible to the reader without any background in Eastern philosophy. This book serves as a guide to recognizing the qualities of a genuine Zen teacher; it also serves as a study of the character and conduct necessary for the mastery of any position of power and authority—whether religious, social, political, or organizational.

In the original Chinese, Zen Lessons is entitled Chanlin baoxun, or Chanmen baoxun, ‘‘Precious Lessons from the Chan (Zen) Schools.’’ It was originally compiled in the early twelfth century by two outstanding Chinese Zen masters, Miaoxi (better known as Dahui) and Zhu-an. In the late twelfth century it was further expanded by a Zen master named Jingshan, into the form in which the text exists today. Several commentaries on the text were written in China over the next five hundred years. It was first published in Japan in 1279, about one hundred years after its recompilation. Zen Lessons draws on the personal teachings of great Zen masters of the early Song dynasty, many from unusual sources, difficult to obtain or no longer extant, often originally available only through direct contact with the network of Chinese Zen schools. Some selections are not attributed to any written source and may have been written by one or another of the compilers, based on material derived from current oral tradition. Affording rare glimpses of the personalities of distinguished masters, Zen Lessons preserves a large body of special Zen lore that would otherwise have been lost to posterity.

 

Riding the Ox Home

Riding the Ox Home: Stages on the Path of Enlightenment

By John Daido Loori

In The Circle of the Way, the author describes the famous Oxherding pictures:

Today’s visitors to Zen centers and temples might notice a series of ten drawings involving an ox and a boy displayed somewhere. It was sometime in the twelfth century that a teacher of the Linji house, Kuoan Shiyuan (dates unknown) drew a series of ten pictures with accompanying verses called the Shiniu tu, or “ox-herding pictures.” Through a story of a boy and an ox, the ten pictures depict the path to enlightenment. There are other series of ox-herding pictures, but Kuoan is credited with first creating the sequence and verses most Western Zen students will recognize today.

To explain these metaphorical aids, Zen teacher John Daido Loori wrote Riding the Ox Home: Stages on the Path of Enlightenment.

The ten Ox-Herding Pictures, the accompanying ancient poems, and a modern commentary by Daido Loori, sketch the spiritual path encountered in Zen training, a path of exhaustive study of the self and the realization of the ultimate nature of reality. The Ox-Herding Pictures can be our companion on the Way of self-discovery, our compass and perspective when we need one. They are a bottomless source of mysterious wisdom to which we can return again and again for inspiration, and they translate easily into the gritty reality of spiritual practice that emerges from and grounds us in the inescapable relevance of our daily lives.

The exquisite versions of the pictures found in the book are traditional Chinese nanga brush paintings by Gyokusei Jikihara Sensei, a modern Japanese master of calligraphy and a teacher in the Obaku School of Zen. The traditional verses accompanying them have been translated by John Daido Loori and Kazuaki Tanahashi.

Shattering Great Doubt

Shattering the Great Doubt: The Chan Practice of Huatou

By Chan Master Sheng Yen

Huatou is a skillful method for breaking through the prison of mental habits into the spacious mind of enlightenment. The huatou is a confounding question much like a Zen koan. Typical ones are "What is wu [nothingness]?" or "What was my original face before birth-and-death?" But a huatou is unlike a koan in that the aim is not to come up with an answer. The practice is simple: ask yourself your huatou relentlessly, in meditation as well as in every other activity. Don't give up on it; don't try to think your way to an answer. Resolve to live with the sensation of doubt that arises, and it will pervade your entire existence with a sense of profound wonder, ultimately leading to the shattering of the sense of an independent self.

Master Sheng Yen brings the traditional practice to life in this practical guide based on talks he gave during a series of huatou retreats. He teaches the method in detail, giving advice for dealing with the typical pitfalls and problems that arise, and answering retreat participants' questions as they experience the practice themselves. He then offers commentary on four classic huatou texts, grounding his instructions in the teaching of the great Chan masters.

Zen and the Art of Insight

Zen and the Art of Insight

Translated by Thomas Cleary

The Prajnaparamita ("perfection of wisdom") sutras are one of the great legacies of Mahayana Buddhism, giving eloquent expression to some of that school's central concerns: the perception of shunyata, the essential emptiness of all phenomena; and the ideal of the bodhisattva, one who postpones his or her own enlightenment in order to work for the salvation of all beings.

The Prajnaparamita literature consists of a number of texts composed in Buddhist India between 100 BCE and 100 CE. Originally written in Sanskrit, but surviving today mostly in their Chinese versions, the texts are concerned with the experience of profound insight that cannot be conveyed by concepts or in intellectual terms. The material remains important today in Mahayana Buddhism and Zen.

This work includes two Song Dynasty contributions:

Key selections from the Prajnaparamita literature are presented here, along with Thomas Cleary's illuminating commentary, as a means of demonstrating the intrinsic limitations of discursive thought, and of pointing to the profound wisdom that lies beyond it.

This work includes two important works that were translated or written during the Song and appear with Thomas Cleary's commentary.

  • The Scripture on Perfect Insight Awakening to Essence, translated into Chinese by Weijing of the Song dynasty (960–1279). Either a retranslation of the original or a reworking of an older translation, this text contains some useful nonstandard terminology and adroitly connects the Prajnaparamita and Yogachara teachings of Buddhism
  • Key Teachings of the Great Scripture on Perfect Insight is a systematic reduction of Xuanzang’s gigantic six-hundred-scroll Chinese translation of the scripture, made by Dayin of the Song dynasty.

Continue to the next article in the Series: The Great Koan Collections >

...
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The Works of the Chan & Zen Patriarchs

The Works of the Chan & Zen Patriarchs

circle of the way

 

 

This is part of a series of articles on the arc of Zen thought, practice, and history, as presented in The Circle of the Way: A Concise History of Zen from the Buddha to the Modern WorldYou can start at the beginning of this series or simply explore from here. 

Early Zen and the Zen Patriarchs

The traditional story of the birth of Zen begins with the arrival of Bodhidharma, who became known as the First Patriarch and continues through the lives of five more patriarchs. Each of these revered sages, the story goes, chose his best student to succeed him as patriarch of the lineage—a rite of passage marked by passing on the robe and bowl of Bodhidharma. This tradition ended with the sixth and last patriarch, Dajian Huineng, who died in 713.
—The Circle of the Way

Below are some of the works we publish that relate to this time period.

Early Chan in China

Zen Enlightenment

Zen Enlightenment: Origins and Meaning

By Heinrich Dumoulin

This is a complement to The Circle of the Way, and has a nice overview of the early roots of Chan in China.  Here, the renowned scholar Heinrich Dumoulin traces the development of Zen and the concept of enlightenment from its origins in India through its development in China to its fruition in Japan. Delineating the Buddhist origins, as well as the Taoist and yogic influences, he traces the historical path Zen has followed.

In both this work and The Circle of the Way, there are great overviews of Buddhism's arrival in China, it great translators like the peripatetic polyglot Dharmaraksha (ca. 230–307) and the Kuchan-raised and Kashmir-educated Kumarajiva (344–413), and the Zen Patriarchs.

Zen Dawn

Zen Dawn: Early Zen Texts from Tun Huang

Translated by J. C. Cleary

This important book brings together three long-lost texts from the first half of the eighth century, the earliest known writings on Zen.

  • Records of the Teachers and Students of the Lanka presents a complete set of biographies of the Zen patriarchs.
  • Bodhidharma's Treatise on Contemplating Mind— written in the form of a dialogue between the first Zen patriarch, Bodhidharma, and his successor, Huke—views all the various practices of the Bodhisattva path from the perspective of cultivating mind.
  • Treatise on Sudden Enlightenment presents a series of questions and answers illuminating the true nature of "sudden enlightenment" as pure, undifferentiated mind.

Chan or Taoism?

In The Circle of the Way, O'Brien takes on the notion that Taoism fundamentally changed Buddhism as it arrived in China.  She says,

Although Zen and Daoism do share points of agreement, Zen is best understood within the context of Mahayana Buddhism. Although Zen in China sometimes adopted Daoist vocabulary and iconography, it’s important to be aware that the perspectives behind the words and images differed from Daoist ones. I believe making too much of the Daoist-Zen connection gets in the way of understanding Zen, and no doubt it gets in the way of understanding Daoism as well.

To read a counter argument that Taoism is indeed profoundly influential on Chan, look no further than sinologist and poet David Hinton's China Root: Taoism, Ch’an, and Original Zen.

In this work, Hinton describes Ch’an as a kind of anti-Buddhism, a radical and wild practice aspiring to a deeply ecological liberation: the integration of individual consciousness with landscape and with a Cosmos seen as harmonious and alive.

He presents this original form of Zen with his trademark clarity and elegance, each chapter exploring in enlightening ways a core Ch’an concept—such as meditation, mind, Buddha, awakening—as it was originally understood and practiced in ancient China. Finally, by examining a range of standard translations in the appendix, he shows how this original understanding and practice of Ch’an/Zen is almost entirely missing in contemporary American Zen, because it was lost in Ch’an’s migration from China through Japan and on to the West.

China Root

$19.95 - Paperback

The Birth of Ch'an

In a similar light, in The Way of Ch'an, Hinton describes the birth of Ch'an in south China among steeply graded mountains and vast forests. According to Hinton, "Ch'an arose as part of a broad cultural movement establishing mountain landscape as the heart of Chinese spiritual and artistic practice." Likewise, Ch'an was forged by four primary figures including two Buddhist philosophers, Seng Chao (Sangha-Fundament) and Tao Sheng (Way-Born) along with two poets, Hsieh Ling-yün and T'ao Ch'ien. Hinton explains that the meeting of these extraordinary individuals was facilitated by Hui Yüan (Prajna-Distance), the abbot of East-Forest. Hui Yüan was an influential figure that aspired to combine Buddhism and Taoist Dark-Enigma Learning.

Discussing this integration of Buddhism and Taoism, Hinton writes:

"Ch’an is not a religious project; it is a philosophical one. For all four of these figures, as for virtually all artist-intellectuals at the time, Dark-Enigma Learning operated as the body of assumptions defining their intellectual framework. The two philosophers explicitly reinvented Buddhist principles as Taoist principles, forging Ch’an by transforming Dhyana Buddhism into an extension of Dark-Enigma Learning. This philosophical project continues Dark-Enigma Learning’s focus on deep cosmological/ontological dimensions of consciousness and Cosmos, combining it with Buddhist thought and practice. Like Dark-Enigma Learning itself, it is sometimes challenging, sentence after sentence reading like complex philosophical aphorisms requiring sustained attention. But this complexity opens depths that allow later Ch’an to develop more accessible ways of cultivating those depths as immediate everyday experience."

Way od Chan

$27.95 - Paperback

Sidebar: Chan and Taosim

However, if you want to go beyond the polemics of Taoism's relationship with Chan, there is no better place to turn than Master of the Three Ways: Reflections of a Chinese Sage on Living a Satisfying Life by Hung Ying-ming.  The "Three Ways" referred to are of course Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism and this author, nearly one thousand years after the patriarchs, presents a beautiful work that will leave you with a deep appreciation of how these streams were not so much at odds but formed a coherent whole.

In the foreword, Red Pine (Bill Porter) describes how Chinese society reconciles these streams:

Even where individuals have chosen to emphasize one over the others in their own lives, they have rarely turned their back on the others. This is because they have recognized that each addresses a different aspect of the human condition: Taoism seeks the harmony of the body, Confucianism seeks the harmony of society, and Buddhism seeks the harmony of the mind.

The Six Zen Patriarchs

And now for the Zen Patriarchs themselves.

There are traditionally listed as follows, though there is a lot more to the story you will discover in The Circle of the Way.

  1. Bodhidharma (5th/6th century)
  2. Dazu Huike (487–593)
  3. Jianzhi Sengcan (529–606)
  4. Dayi Daoxin (580–651)
  5. Daman Hongren (601–74)
  6. Dajian Huineng (638–713)
The Buddhist Partriarchs, Korea,  17th-18th century
The Los Angeles County Museum

 

Bodhidharma

In The Circle of the Way, O'Brien relates,

Four sermons attributed to Bodhidharma survive to the present day. Of those, the brief Two Entrances and Four Practices, prefaced by Tanlin in the sixth century and discovered at Dunhuang, has the strongest claim to being a genuine work of Bodhidharma’s. The authorship of the others is disputed, in part because they don’t appear to be old enough to have been composed by Bodhidharma.

The Essence of Chan: A Guide to Life and Practice according to the Teachings of Bodhidharma

by Guo Gu

This book, a translation and commentary on one of Bodhidharma’s most important texts, Two Entries and Four Practices,  explores Bodhidharma’s revolutionary teachings. Guo Gu, both a reknownded teacher of Chan and professor at Florida State University, weaves his commentary through modern and relatable contexts, showing that this centuries-old wisdom is just as crucial for life now as it was when it first came to be.

huike
Huike sitting behind Bodhidharma
Cleveland Mueum of Art

Huike

Dazu Huike was the second Patriarch and comes up in many of our books, but is covered most thoroughly in The Circle of the Way where O'Brien recounts his famous meeting at Shaolin with Bodhidharma that is recorded in the Wumenguan, or Gateless Barrier. After lamenting how little he comes up in the encounters of most modern-day Zen students, she gives a wonderful account of him over the next six pages. Briefly,

The scholar turned to Buddhism after the deaths of his parents. In 519, when he was thirty-two years old, he was ordained a Buddhist monk in a temple near Luoyang. About eight years later, he left in search of Bodhidharma, and he found the old monk in his cave near Shaolin Temple. At the time of this meeting, Huike was about forty years old. Huike studied with Bodhidharma for six years and became Bodhidharma’s chief dharma heir and successor.

Jianzhi Sengcan

The Third Patriarch is often considered retroactively inserted into the Patriarchs, but there is a wonderful text attributed to him.

Faith in Mind: A Commentary on Seng Ts'an's Classic

It begins with this verse:

The Supreme Way is not difficult
If only you do not pick and choose.
Neither love nor hate,
And you will clearly understand.
Be off by a hair,
And you are as far from it as heaven and earth.

These vivid lines begin one of the most beloved  of all Zen texts, the Hsin Hsin Ming (“Faith in Mind”). The Hsin Hsin Ming is a masterpiece of economy, expressing the profoundest truth of the enlightened mind in only a few short pages. In this work, 20th century Chan Master Sheng Yen’s offers an approach is unique among commentaries on the text: he views it as a supremely useful and practical guide to meditation practice. “I do not adopt a scholarly point of view or analytical approach,” he says. “Rather, I use the poem as a taking-off point to inspire the practitioner and deal with issues that arise during the course of practice. True faith in mind is the belief grounded in realization that we have a fundamental, unmoving, and unchanging mind. This mind is precisely Buddha mind.

Daoxin

From The Circle of the Way:

It’s believed Daoxin valued meditation as the most essential practice. “Sit earnestly in meditation!” he is reputed to have said. “The sitting in meditation is basic to all else.” Traditional sources associate Daoxin with the Lankavatara Sutra and also with the prajnaparamita sutras, known for their deep teachings on Madhyamaka.

While we do not publish any works directly authored by Daoxin, he is discussed in many books including Enlightenment Unfolds,

From the Treasury of the True Dharma Eye:

When Daoxin, who would later become Zen Master Dayi, the Fourth Chinese Ancestor, was fourteen, he met Sengcan, the Third Chinese Ancestor, and then labored for nine years. After inheriting the authentic teaching of buddha ancestors, Daoxin kept his mind gathered and did not sleep with his side on the mat for almost sixty years. In his guidance he did not discriminate between enemies and friends, so his virtue prevailed among humans and devas.

In the sixteenth year of the Zhenguan Era [642], Emperor Tai, in admiration of Daoxin’s flavor of the way, invited him to the capital, wishing to test the hue of his dharma. Daoxin respectfully declined three times, claiming ill health. At the fourth summons, the Emperor ordered the messenger to cut off Daoxin’s head if he declined again. The messenger saw Daoxin and relayed the imperial order to him. With complete composure Daoxin stretched out his neck and made ready for the sword. Extremely impressed, the messenger went back to the capital and wrote a report to the Emperor, who admired Daoxin even more. He expressed his appreciation by sending Daoxin a gift of rare silk.

Thus, the continuous practice of Daoxin, who was not attached to his bodily life as bodily life and tried to avoid becoming intimate with kings and ministers, is something rarely encountered in a thousand years. Because Emperor Tai was a just king, Daoxin had nothing against him. The Emperor admired Daoxin because he did not spare his own bodily life and was willing to die. Daoxin focused on his continuous practice, not without reason but with respect for the passage of time. Compared with the current tendency in this declining age when many people try to find favor with the emperors, Daoxin’s refusal of the three imperial requests is remarkable.

On the fourth day, the intercalary ninth month, the second year of the Yonghui Era [651] during the reign of Emperor Gao, Daoxin gave instruction to his students, saying, 'All things are liberated. You should guard your mind and teach future generations.'

After saying this, he sat at ease and passed away. He was seventy-two years old. A stupa was built for him on the mountain. On the eighth day of the fourth month of the following year, the door to the stupa opened of itself, and inside it, his body looked as if he were alive. After that his students kept the door open.

Know Daoxin’s words: All things are liberated. It is not merely that all things are empty or all things are all things, but that all things are liberated. Daoxin had continuous practice before and after entering the stupa. To assume that all living beings die is a narrow view. To assume that the dead do not perceive is a limited idea. Do not follow these views when you study the way. There may be those who go beyond death. There may be dead people who perceive.

Daman Hongren (601–674)

The fifth patriarch is described in The Circle of the Way:

Hongren spent his entire life around Mount Shuangfeng; he was born there, studied with Daoxin there, taught there, and died there. He broke with the tradition of striking out on his own after receiving transmission, and instead he stayed with Daoxin. Three years after Daoxin’s death, Hongren decided to establish another monastery. The new monastery was only a half-day’s walk east from Daoxin’s place, and it came to be called Dongshan, or “East Mountain.” Daoxin’s and Hongren’s legacy of instruction would come to be called the East Mountain teachings.

Minding Mind

This work consists of several meditation manuals from a wide period.  The first manual, Treatise on the Supreme Vehicle, is attributed to Hongren.

Dajian Huineng

The Circle of the Way gives a detailed account of the Sixth Patriarch. The title was initially attributed to Yuquan Shenxiu, but was later transferred to Huineng.

The best work well-known work of Huineng is of course the Platform Sutra, also called the Sutra of Huineng.  We have two translations of this text,  The Sutra of Hui-neng, Grand Master of Zen, translated by Thomas Cleary, and The Diamond Sutra and The Sutra of Hui-neng, translated by Wong Mou-lam and A. F. Price.  The former has the benefit of having a full commentary by Huineng on the Diamond Sutra.

sutra of huineng

The Sutra of Hui-neng, Grand Master of Zen: With Hui-neng's Commentary on the Diamond Sutra

Translated by Thomas Cleary

Hui-neng (638–713) is perhaps the most beloved and respected figure in Zen Buddhism. An illiterate woodcutter who attained enlightenment in a flash, he became the Sixth Patriarch of Chinese Zen, and is regarded as the founder of the "Sudden Enlightenment" school. He is the supreme exemplar of the fact that neither education nor social background has any bearing on the attainment of enlightenment. This collection of his talks, also known as the Platform or Altar Sutra, is the only Zen record of its kind to be generally honored with the appellation sutra, or scripture.

The Sutra of Hui-neng is here accompanied by Hui-neng's verse-by-verse commentary on the Diamond Sutra—in its very first published English translation ever.

diamond

The Diamond Sutra and The Sutra of Hui-neng

Translated by Wong Mou-lam and A. F. Price

The Diamond Sutra, composed in India in the fourth century CE, is one of the most treasured works of Buddhist literature and is the oldest existing printed book in the world. It is known as the Diamond Sutra because its teachings are said to be like diamonds that cut away all dualistic thought, releasing one from the attachment to objects and bringing one to the further shore of enlightenment. The format of this important sutra is presented as a conversation between the Buddha and one of his disciples. The Sutra of Hui-neng, also known as the Platform Sutra, contains the autobiography of a pivotal figure in Zen history and some of the most profound passages of Zen literature. Hui-neng (638–713) was the sixth patriarch of Zen in China, but is often regarded as the true father of the Zen tradition. He was a poor, illiterate woodcutter who is said to have attained enlightenment upon hearing a recitation of the Diamond Sutra. Together, these two scriptures present the central teaching of the Zen Buddhist tradition and are essential reading for all students of Buddhism.

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The Great Koan Collections

The Great Koan Collections

circle of the way

 

 

This is part of a series of articles on the arc of Zen thought, practice, and history, as presented in The Circle of the Way: A Concise History of Zen from the Buddha to the Modern WorldYou can start at the beginning of this series or simply explore from here. 

Ox Gognan from the Met

It was during the Song Dynasty (960–1279 CE) that the great gongan (Chinese) or koan collections were put to paper: The Blue Cliff Record (Bìyán Lù or Hekiganroku), The Gateless Barrier (Wúménguān or Mumonkan), The Book of Serenity (Cóngróng lù or Shōyōroku), and The Record of Empty Hall, though the latter is less known to westerners.

The Circle of the Way gives a brief history of koan practice:

Xuedou Chongxian (980–1052) was a master of the Yunmen house who liked to write commentaries. It was said that he had a strong Confucian education before he became a Buddhist monk, and he applied a Confucian appreciation of literary scholarship to his study of Buddhism. One day he asked his teacher, “The ancient masters did not produce a single thought—where is the problem?” The teacher hit Xuedou twice with his whisk, and Xuedou became enlightened.

Among the texts attributed to Xuedou is a collection of one hundred gongan to which Xuedou added his own verses as commentary. This was the Xuedou heshang baice songgu or “Xuedou’s verses on the old cases.” These were probably not the first collection of “old cases,” but these cases would become the basis of the first of the great koan collections, the Biyan lu, known in English as the Blue Cliff Record.

Circle of the Way

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In The Way of Ch'an, David Hinton contextualizes the emergence of koan as follows:

"The other great innovation in Sung Dynasty Ch’an is the sangha-case collection. As we have seen, the Ch’an written tradition is composed primarily of prose works by and about Ch’an masters, records of their lives and teachings. These records contain a great deal of conventional explanatory teaching, which is necessary to prepare students for Ch’an’s wordless insight. That direct insight is conveyed in the more literary dimension of those records: poetry, which was perfectly suited to the quick, deep insights of Ch’an; and storytelling typified by poetic distillation—enigmatic sayings and wild antics intended to upend reason and tease mind past the limitations of logical thought. These are performative, rather than explanatory—enacting insight rather than talking about it. As such, they operate with poetic wildness and immediacy, rather than the usual explanatory or utilitarian discourse. In this, they come as close as language can to Ch’an’s transmission outside of words and teaching.

Ch’an teachers began drawing especially revealing moments from the records of earlier teachers, moments that distill the essential insights of Ch’an, and assigning them as puzzles for students to ponder.2 These scraps of story came to be known as kung-an (公案, now widely known in its Japanese pronunciation koan), a term that had come into use prior to the Sung, no later than the eighth century."

He further explains that

"Eventually, in tenth-century Sung China, teachers began gathering these sangha-cases into collections used for training students. Three of these collections established themselves as the enduring classics, perennially employed over the centuries in China, then Japan, and on into Zen practice around the world today: Blue-Cliff Record, Carefree-Ease Record, No-Gate Gateway. Such sangha-case collections are now generally considered mere collections of stories that provide an occasion for teaching. But in fact they are carefully constructed literary/philosophical texts designed to create—in and of themselves and without further explanation—a direct and immediate experience in the reader: the experience of enlightenment."

Way od Chan

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Below are some of the works we publish that relate to this time period.

Blue Cliff Record

The Blue Cliff Record

We have two works specific to the Blue Cliff Record.  There is Cleary's classic translation of the collection itself.

The Blue Cliff Record is a translation of the Pi Yen Lu, a collection of one hundred famous Zen koans accompanied by commentaries and verses from the teachings of Chinese Zen masters. Compiled in the twelfth century, it is considered one of the great treasures of Zen literature and an essential study manual for students of Zen.

 

 

Secrets of theBlue Cliff

Secrets of the Blue Cliff Record: Zen Comments by Hakuin and Tenkei

Secrets of the Blue Cliff Record is a fresh translation featuring newly translated commentary from two of the greatest Zen masters of early modern Japan, Hakuin Ekaku (1685–1768) of the Rinzai sect of Zen and Tenkei Denson (1648–1735) of the Soto sect of Zen. This translation and commentary on The Blue Cliff Record sheds new light on the meaning of this central Zen text.

Gateless Barrier

The Gateless Barrier: Zen Comments on the Mumonkan

For more than seven centuries the Mumonkan has been used in Zen monasteries to train monks and to encourage the religious development of lay Buddhists. It contains forty-eight koans, or spiritual riddles, that must be explored during the course of Zen training. Shibayama Zenkei (1894–1974), an influential Japanese Zen teacher and calligrapher who traveled and lectured throughout the United States in the 60s and 70s, offers his own commentary alongside the classic text. The Gateless Barrier remains an essential text for all serious students of Buddhism.

 

Passing Through the Gateless Barrier

Passing Through the Gateless Barrier: Koan Practice for Real Life

Gateways to awakening surround us at every moment of our lives. The whole purpose of koan (gongan, in Chinese) practice is to keep us from missing these myriad opportunities by leading us to certain gates that have traditionally been effective for people to access that marvelous awakening. The forty-eight kōans of the Gateless Barrier (Chinese: Wumenguan; Japanese: Mumonkan) have been waking people up for well over eight hundred years. Chan teacher Guo Gu provides here a fresh translation of the classic text, along with the first English commentary by a teacher of the Chinese tradition from which it originated. He shows that the kōans in this text are not mere stories from a distant past, but are rather pointers to the places in our lives where we get stuck—and that each sticking point, when examined, can become a gateless barrier through which we can enter into profound wisdom.

No Gate Gateway

No-Gate Gateway: The Original Wu-Men Kuan

A monk asked: “A dog too has Buddha-nature, no?” And with the master’s enigmatic one-word response begins the great No-Gate Gateway (Wu-Men Kuan), ancient China’s classic foray into the inexpressible nature of mind and reality. For nearly eight hundred years, this text (also known by its Japanese name, Mumonkan) has been the most widely used koan collection in Zen Buddhism—and with its comic storytelling and wild poetry, it is also a remarkably compelling literary masterwork. In his radical new translation, David Hinton places this classic for the first time in the philosophical framework of its native China, in doing so revealing a new way of understanding Zen—in which generic “Zen perplexity” is transformed into a more approachable and earthy mystery. With the poetic abilities he has honed in his many translations, Hinton brilliantly conveys the book’s literary power, making it an irresistible reading experience capable of surprising readers into a sudden awakening that is beyond logic and explanation.

Two Zen Classics

Two Zen Classics: The Gateless Gate and the Blue Cliff Records

There is an excellent commentary on both The Blue Cliff Record and the Gateless Barrier by Katsuki Sekida (1893–1987), who began practicing in Japan but then taught in Hawaii and the UK.

Book of Serenity

Book of Serenity: One Hundred Zen Dialogues

The Book of Serenity is a translation of Shoyo Roku, a collection of one hundred Zen koans with commentaries that stands as a companion to the other great Chinese koan collection, the Blue Cliff Record (Pi Yen Lu). A classic of Chan (Chinese Zen) Buddhism, Book of Serenity has been skillfully rendered into English by the renowned translator Thomas Cleary.

Compiled in China in the twelfth century, the Book of Serenity is, in the words of Zen teacher Tenshin Reb Anderson, "an auspicious peak in the mountain range of Zen literature, a subtle flowing stream in the deep valleys of our teaching, a treasure house of inspiration and guidance in studying the ocean of Buddhist teachings." Each one of its one hundred chapters begins with an introduction, along with a main case, or koan, taken from Zen lore or Buddhist scripture. This is followed by commentary on the main case, verses inspired by it, and, finally, further commentary on all of these. The book contains a glossary of Zen/Chan terms and metaphors.

Recordof Empty Hall

The Record of Empty Hall: One Hundred Classic Koans

The Record of Empty Hall was written by Xutang Zhiyu (1185–1269), an important figure in  Chan Linji (Rinzai in Japan) Buddhism and in its transmission to Japan. Although previously little-known in the West, Xutang's work is on par with the other great koan collections of the era, such as The Blue Cliff Record and Book of Serenity.

Translated by Zen teacher Dosho Port from the original Chinese, The Record of Empty Hall opens new paths into the earthiness, humor, mystery, and multiplicity of meaning that are at the heart of koan inquiry. Inspired by the pithy, frank tone of Xutang's originals, Port also offers his own commentaries on the koans, helping readers to see the modern and relatable applications of these thirteenth-century encounter stories. Readers familiar with koans will recognize key figures, such as Bodhidharma, Nanquan, and Zhaozhou and will also be introduced to teaching icons not found in other koan collections. Through his commentaries, as well as a glossary of major figures and an appendix detailing the cases, Port not only opens up these remarkable koans but also illuminates their place in ancient Chinese, Japanese, and contemporary Zen practice.

Although the Blue Cliff Record and the Book of Serenity, two of the important collections in the Harada-Yasutani curriculum, share more than one-third of the same cases, only five cases from The Record of Empty Hall are from Blue Cliff Record and only one occurs in the Book of Serenity. In addition, the Blue Cliff Record, Book of Serenity, and the Gateless Barrier share many kōan and they also share from the same set of teachers. The Record of Empty Hall stands out both for sharing  cases both from what are now the most well-known kōan texts, and also for a selection of unusual teachers from the lamp collections. To name a few: Shíshì, Zhāngjìng, Sānjuéyìn, and Yèxiàn.

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