Zen's Chinese Heritage: The Masters and Their Teachings (8 page)

A poem entitled “Faith in Mind” is attributed to Sengcan by later Zen generations
²⁰
and is included in an appendix to this book. Many phrases of this poem are repeated in the texts and teachings of later masters, and the spirit of the work lies close to the heart of the Caodong Zen school.

DAYI DAOXIN

DAYI DAOXIN (580–651) was a student of the Third Ancestor, Jianzhi Sengcan. He is the Fourth Ancestor of the traditional Chinese Zen line. Daoxin’s first meeting with Sengcan, described above, resulted in his awakening to the way. He then served as attendant to Sengcan for nine years. They parted while Daoxin was still in his early twenties.

The East Mountain school is the name applied to Daoxin, his student Hongren, and their disciples. Daoxin made a key contribution to Zen history by introducing the tradition’s teachings to a large segment of Chinese society.

Daoxin established a monastery at the foot of Broken Top Mountain in Huangmei (Yellow Plum) province. That location, called Zhengjue (“True Enlightenment”) Temple appears to have been the first successful monastic community established in connection with Bodhidharma’s Zen lineage. Prior to the time of Daoxin, it appears that Huike and Sengcan lived in monasteries established by others. This was perhaps an inevitable result of Bodhidharma’s avoidance of imperial patronage.

To help remain independent from the throne, Daoxin’s monastery may have directly undertaken agricultural activities. Here, economic necessity may have led to a change in monastic lifestyle, a change that reached to the heart of the Buddhist precepts themselves. Gardening, after all, naturally involves the killing of insects and other pests in the processes of planting and cultivation. Such actions violate the traditional Buddhist precepts that forbade a home-leaving monk from harming sentient life or living on other than donations. What is clear is that over time, various Zen monastic communities accepted the need to support themselves by farming. By the late eighth century this trend appears to have been firmly established at the monasteries of the famous Zen teachers Baizhang Huaihai and his disciple Guishan Lingyou. Daoxin’s True Enlightenment Temple, at the foot of Broken Top Mountain, likely started this trend.

Daoxin appears to have begun other critical innovations for the Bodhidharma Zen tradition. He may have been the first to mix Bodhidharma’s Zen with other popular Buddhist traditions, and thus broadened its appeal. The modern Buddhist teacher and scholar Yin Hsun states that Daoxin, influenced in particular by the Sanlun and Tiantai Buddhist schools, made three contributions to Zen that have remained vital parts of the tradition since his time.
²¹
These contributions were:

1. The unification of Zen practice with acceptance of the bodhisattva precepts;

2. The unification of the teachings of the Lankavatara Sutra with those of the Mahaprajnaparamita literature, which includes the well-known Heart Sutra and Diamond Sutra;
²²

3. The incorporation of chanting, including chanting the name of Buddha, into Zen practice.

An early eighth century text entitled
Record of the Lankavatara Masters
, by the Northern school Zen monk Jingjue (b. 683), provides evidence about how Daoxin carried out the changes indicated above. In that text, Jingjue quotes from a now-lost text by Daoxin called the
Essential Expedient Dharma Gate for Entering the Way and Calming the Mind
. The passages quoted from that lost text indicate that Daoxin emphasized and wrote a commentary on the bodhisattva precepts. Daoxin is also quoted to have said that he took the Lankavatara Sutra as his fundamental text, and he equated the observation of the mind, a practice attributed to Bodhidharma, with the Prajnaparamita Sutra’s “single-practice samadhi.” Jingjue indicates how Daoxin interpreted certain scriptures to support this single essential practice, showing that Daoxin regarded different streams of Buddhist doctrine and terminology to simply be different ways of describing “observing mind.” Daoxin is quoted to say, “If only one sees this mind, it is the same as the true Dharma nature of the Tathagata, and it is called the True Dharma, or it is called Buddha Nature, or the True Nature of All Dharmas, or reality, or the Pure Land, or bodhi, or diamond samadhi, or fundamental enlightenment, or the nirvana realm, or prajna, and so on. Although there are unlimited names for it, they are all a single body that can’t be observed [with characteristics], and [these terms] are [just varied] descriptions of the [practice of] observing.”

Daoxin also offered five aspects of realizing this essential practice and the path leading to be a teacher as follows:

1. Upon realizing the essential mind, [also knowing] its nature is pure.

2. Understanding the function of mind; that mind manifests Dharma jewels which arise in temporal solitude, [and] the ten thousand delusions are all just this.

3. Unceasing eternal enlightenment, with the enlightened mind right before [one], [yet] the enlightenment Dharma signless.

4. Constant observation of the empty solitary body that permeates “inside” and “outside,” the entry body at the center of the realm of dharmas, within which there have never been impediments.

5. Safeguarding the One unmoving that forever abides in movement or stillness, causing students to clearly see buddha nature, and quickly enter the gate of samadhi.

The effect of Daoxin’s teaching was to equate chanting Buddha’s name with Zen practice. This may seem strange, given that Zen practice is otherwise defined as “observing” mind, or meditating on its nature. Yet an imprecision in the Chinese language facilitated the odd unity of what otherwise seem divergent means of practice: the two-word Chinese compound
nian fo
has two meanings, namely, (1) to think of Buddha (without speech or sound) and (2) chant Buddha (i.e., to chant Buddha’s name). Thus the phrase could apply to either silent meditators, or to persons chanting the Buddha’s name either singularly or in unison. This word play thus serves to unite different practices using the same terminology. Jingjue quotes Daoxin to say:

This essential practice of mine is in accordance with the Lankavatara Sutra’s “The mind of all buddhas is the first principle,” and also in accordance with the Prajnaparamita Sutra expounded by Manjushri’s “single-practice samadhi,” [which is that] those who think [nian fo] of Buddha mind are [themselves] buddhas, while those who think deluded thoughts are ordinary people.

Whether the
nian fo
quoted in this passage should be interpreted as “think of Buddha” or “chant Buddha” is somewhat ambiguous, and the two practices are largely undifferentiated in the Chinese Buddhist tradition.

By combining Zen practice with more broadly appealing acts of religious piety, Daoxin created a religion that took root in the broad population of Chinese society. Since his time, acceptance of the precepts, chanting the Heart Sutra, and participating in monastic work have been a part of life in East Asian Zen temples.

For the broader masses, Zen moved closer to being a full-featured religion. Its new form and appeal to different levels of society brought it to a foremost position among the schools of Chinese Buddhism.

While still in his thirties, Daoxin lived for ten years at Great Woods Temple on Mt. Lu. The founder of that temple, Zhikai, was an adept of the Tiantai and Sanlun schools of Buddhism. Zhikai also used elements of Pure Land practice, especially the chanting of Buddha’s name, as a component of his teachings and practice. Yin Hsun points out that Daoxin was thus heavily influenced by these other Buddhist schools.

A measure of Daoxin’s association with new practices is found in a traditional story from the lamp records. Daoxin once saved a walled city under siege by bandits by teaching its inhabitants to recite the Mahaprajnaparamita Sutra. The wondrous powers of the scripture caused the bandits to give up their siege.

Daoxin lived and taught at Great Enlightenment Temple on Potou Shan, “Broken Head Mountain,” for thirty years. There he gathered a large number of students, including his prominent disciple and principal Dharma heir, Daman Hongren.

According to legend, Daoxin’s meeting with a monk named Farong led to the establishment of the Oxhead (Niutou) school, a unique school in China’s Zen tradition. Controversy exists about whether the meeting between Daoxin and Farong actually occurred, since the traditional story of their meeting (provided in the section on Niutou Farong below) is regarded as apocryphal. Yet there is indirect evidence that these two teachers met. An early written account of the Oxhead master’s burial stele, for instance, relates that Farong traveled to meet with Daoxin three times. In any case, Daoxin is widely regarded as the link between Bodhidharma Zen and the Oxhead school. Although not listed among the famous five houses of Zen, the Oxhead school remained prominent in China for the following two centuries.

The traditional account of Daoxin’s life in the
Compendium of Five Lamps
is as follows: