Zen's Chinese Heritage: The Masters and Their Teachings (160 page)

A clear sky and shining sun,
A great thunderclap,
Instantly all beings’ eyes are opened,
And the myriad things come together.

The following day, Wumen entered Yuelin’s room to gain confirmation of his experience.

Yuelin said, “Where did you see these gods and devils?”

Wumen shouted.

Yuelin also shouted.

Wumen shouted again.

In this exchange Wumen’s enlightenment was confirmed.

Wumen Huikai is particularly remembered for compiling and annotating the famous Zen collection of kōans called the
Gateless Gate
. This collection of forty-eight kōans, published in 1229, has been extensively used in kōan practice from the time of its appearance down to the present. Each kōan is offered with Wumen’s commentary.

In 1246, Wumen was appointed by Emperor Li Zong to establish the Huguo Renwang (“Protecting the Country Benevolent Sovereign”) Temple. Later, during a drought, the emperor called on Wumen to perform ceremonies to bring rain. Instead, Wumen sat in continuous silent meditation. When an envoy from the emperor asked Wumen what he was doing to bring rain, he replied, “Silently not influencing [anything].” Immediately after this exchange, the rains came and spread throughout the country. As a result, the emperor bestowed on Wumen the honorific name Foyan (“Buddha Eye”).

In 1249,
The Record of Zen Master Wumen Huikai
was published in two volumes and widely circulated. The texts are also known as
The Record of Zen Master Foyan
. In the first book are ten Dharma lectures that Wumen gave when he resided at various temples after the year 1217. The second text contains commentaries by Wumen, and his accounts of the buddhas and ancestors.

Appendix

FAITH IN MIND

(ATTRIBUTED TO THE THIRD ANCESTOR, JIANZHI SENGCAN)

Attaining the Way is not difficult,
Just avoid picking and choosing.
If you have neither aversion nor desire,
You’ll thoroughly understand.
A hair’s breadth difference
Is the gap between heaven and earth.
If you want it to come forth,
Let there be no positive and negative,
For such comparisons
Are a sickness of the mind.
Without knowing the Great Mystery
Quiet practice is useless.
The great perfection is the same as vast space,
Lacking nothing, nothing extra.
Due to picking up and discarding
You will not know it.
Don’t chase the conditioned
Nor abide in forbearing emptiness.
In singular equanimity
The self is extinguished.
Ceasing movement and returning to stillness,
This is complete movement.
But only suppress the two aspects
How can you realize unity?
Not penetrating the one,
The two lose their life.
Reject existence and you fall into it,
Pursue emptiness and you move away from it.
With many words and thoughts
You miss what is right before you.
Cutting off words and thought
Nothing remains unpenetrated.
Return to the root and attain the essence,
For if you chase the light you’ll lose the Way.
But if you reflect the light for but a moment,
All previous shadows are dispelled.
All previous shadows are transformed
Because they were all due to delusive views.
It’s no use to seek truth,
Just let false views cease.
Don’t abide in duality
And take care not to seek,
For as soon as there is yes and no,
The mind is lost in confusion.
Two comes forth from one,
But don’t hold even the one,
For when even the one mind is unborn,
The myriad things are flawless
Without flaws, without things.
With no birth, no mind,
Function is lost to conditions,
Conditions perish in function,
Conditions arise from function,
Function is actualized from conditions.
You should know that duality
Is originally one emptiness,
And one emptiness unifies duality,
Encompassing the myriad forms.
Not perceiving refined or vulgar
Is there any prejudice?
The Great Tao is vast,
With neither ease nor difficulty.
If you have biased views and doubts,
And move too fast or slow,
Grasping the world without measure,
Then your mind has taken a wayward path.
Let it all naturally drop away
And embody no coming or going.
In accord with your fundamental nature unite with Tao
And wander the world without cares.
Being tied by thought runs counter to Truth,
But sinking into a daze is not good.
Don’t belabor the spirit.
Why adhere to intimate or distant?
If you want to experience the one vehicle,
Don’t malign the senses,
For when the senses are not maligned
That itself is perfect awakening.
The wise do not move,
But the ignorant bind themselves.
Though one Dharma differs not from another
The deluded self desires each,
Objectifying the mind to realize mind.
Is this not a great error?
Delusion gives rise to quietness or chaos,
But enlightenment has no positive and negative.
The duality of existence
Is born from false discrimination,
Flourishing dreams and empty illusions.
Why try to grab them?
Gain and loss, true and false,
Drop them all in one moment.
If the eyes don’t sleep
All dreams disappear.
If the mind does not go astray
The myriad dharmas are but One,
And the One encompasses the Mystery.
In stillness, conditioned existence is forgotten,
And the myriad things are seen equally,
Naturally returning to each one’s own nature.
When all dharmas are extinguished
It is immeasurable.
Cease movement and no movement exists,
When movement stops there is no cessation.
Since two are not manifest
How is there even one?
Finally, ultimately,
Principles do not exist.
Bring forth the mind of equanimity
And all activities will be put to rest,
All doubts extinguished.
True faith is upright,
And nothing then remains,
Nothing is remembered,
And the empty brightness shines naturally
Without effort of mind.
There, not a thought can be measured,
Reason and emotion can’t conceive it.
In the Dharma realm of true thusness
There is neither other, nor self;
One should hasten to behold it.
Just say, “Not two,”
For in “not two” all things are united,
And there is nothing not included.
The wise ones of the ten directions
Have entered this great understanding,
An understanding that neither hastens nor tarries.
In ten thousand years, a single thought,
Not to be found within “existence and nonexistence,”
But meeting the eye in the ten directions.
The smallest is no different from the largest.
Eliminating boundaries,
The largest is the same as the smallest.
Not seeing divisions,
Existence is but emptiness,
Emptiness, existence.
That which is not of this principle
Must not be preserved.
The one is everything,
Everything, the one.
If your understanding is thus,
What is left to accomplish?
Faith and mind are undivided,
Nonduality is both faith and mind.
The way of words is cut off,
Leaving no past, no future, no present.

Source:
Chanzong Baodian
, published by Hebei Chanxue Yanjiusuo, 1993.

Select Bibliography

Works and authors from Taiwan are offered with Wade-Giles romanization.

TEXTS IN ENGLISH

App, Urs.
Master Yunmen
. New York: Kodansha America, 1994.

Chang, Chung-yuan.
Original Teachings of Chan Buddhism
. New York: Vintage Books, 1971.

Chen, Kenneth.
Buddhism in China
:
A Historical Survey
. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1964.

Cleary, J. C.
Zen Dawn
. Boston and London: Shambhala, 1986.

Cleary, Thomas.
No Barrier: Unlocking the Zen Koan: A New Translation of the Zen Classic
Wumenguan
.
New York: Bantam Books, 1992.

de Bary, Theodore, Wing-tsit Chan, and Burton Watson.
Sources of Chinese Tradition
. New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1960.

Dumoulin, Heinrich.
Zen Buddhism: A History
. Vol. 1,
India and China
. New York: Macmillan, 1988.

Guifeng Zongmi.
Inquiry into the Origin of Humanity
. Translation with annotated commentary by Peter N. Gregory. Kuroda Institute. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1995.

Miura, Isshu, and Ruth Fuller Sasaki.
Zen Dust
. Kyoto: The First Zen Institute of America in Japan, 1966.

Ogata, Sohaku.
The Transmission of the Lamp: Early Masters
(the first ten fascicles of the Jingde Era
Transmission of the Lamp
translated into English). Durango: Longwood Academic, 1990.

Powell, William F., trans.
The Record of Tung-shan
. Kuroda Institute. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1986.

Red Pine, trans.
The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma
. San Francisco: North Point Press, 1989.

Suzuki, Daisetz Teitaro.
Studies in the Lankavatara Sutra
. Reprint. First Published by Routledge & Kegan Paul, London: 1930. Published by arrangement with the original publisher. Boulder: Prajna Press, Great Eastern Book Company, 1981.

Wansong.
Book of Serenity
. Translated by Thomas Cleary. Hudson, N.Y.: The Lindisfarne Press, 1990.

Watson, Burton, trans.
The Zen Teachings of Master Lin-chi
. Boston and London: Shambhala, 1993.

Wu, John C. H.
The Golden Age of Zen
. Taipei: United Publishing Center, 1975.

Yampolsky, Philip B.
The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch
. New York: Columbia University Press, 1967.

Yuanwu Keqin.
The Blue Cliff Record
. Translated by Thomas Cleary and J. C. Cleary. Boston: Shambhala, 1977.

MODERN TEXTS IN CHINESE

Du Xuwen and Wei Daoru.
Zhongguo Chanzong Tongshi (A Complete History of Chinese Chan).
Nanjing: Jiangsu Classics Publishing House, 1993.

Ge Zhaoguang.
Zhongguo Chan Sixiang Shi (History of Chinese Chan Thought).
Beijing: Beijing University Publishing House, 1995.

Hong Pimu.
Xinbian Baihua Chanzong Miaoyu (Wondrous Words of Chan Newly Compiled in Vernacular Chinese)
. Beijing: China United Literature Publishing Company, 1995.

Hong Xiuping.
Zhongguo Chanxue Sixiang Shiwang (Collected History of Chinese Chan Thought).
Beijing: Beijing University Publishing House, 1994.

Hsü Yun.
Tseng Ting Fo Tsu Tao Ying (Annotated Portraits of the Buddha Ancestors).
1946. Reprint, Taipei: Hsin Wen Fêng, 1975.

Jiang Yihua.
Hu Shi Xueshu Wenji (Collected Documents of the Scholarship of Hu Shi).
Beijing: China Publishing House, 1997.

Jing Hui.
Chanzong Baodian (Treasured Classics of Chan).
Zhaoxian: Hebei Research Institute for Chan Buddhism, 1993.

Kuan, Shih-ch’ien.
Chung-kuo Ch’an-tsung Shih (China’s Chan History).
Taipei: Great East Book Company, 1991.

Li Shan and Jiang Feng.
Chanzong Denglu Yijie (Interpretations of the Chan Lamp Records)
. Jinan: Shandong Peoples’ Publishing House, 1994.