Essays in Zen Buddhism: First Series

While this intellectual assimilation was going on on the one hand, the practical side of Buddhism was also assiduously studied. Some were followers of the Vinaya texts, and others devoted themselves to the mastery of dhyana. But what was here known as dhyana was not the dhyana of Zen Buddhism, it was a meditation, concentrating one’s thought on some ideas such as impermanence, egolessness of things, chain of causation, or the attributes of the Buddha, Even Bodhi-Dharma, the founder of Zen Buddhism, was regarded by historians as belonging to this class of dhyana-adepts, his peculiar merits as teacher of an entirely novel school of Buddhism were not fully appreciated. This was inevitable, the people of China were not yet quite ready to accept the new form; for they had only inadequately grasped the doctrine of Enlightenment in all its bearings.

The importance of Enlightenment in its practical aspects, however, was not altogether overlooked in the maze of doctrinal intricacies. Chi-i (Chigi, 522–597), one of the founders of the T‘ien Tai school and the greatest Buddhist philosopher in China, was fully awake to the significance of dhyana as the means of attaining Enlightenment. With all his analytical powers, his speculation had room enough for the practice of dhyana. His work on “Tranquillisation and Contemplation” is explicit on this point. His idea was to carry out intellectual and spiritual exercises in perfect harmony, and not partially to emphasise either one of the two, Samādhi or Prajñā, at the expense of the other. Unfortunately, his followers grew more and more one-sided until they neglected the dhyana practice for the sake of intellection. Hence their antagonistic attitude later towards advocates of Zen Buddhism, for which however the latter were to a certain extent to be responsible, too.

It was due to Bodhi-Dharma (died 528)f47 that Zen came to be the Buddhism of China. It was he that started this movement which proved so fruitful among a people given up to the practical affairs of life. When he declared his message, it was still tinged with Indian colours, he could not be entirely independent of the traditional Buddhist metaphysics of the times. His allusion to the Vajrasamādhi and the Laṅkāvatāra was natural, but the seeds of Zen were sown by his hands. It now remained with his native disciples to see to it that these seeds grew up in harmony with the soil and climate. It took about two hundred years for the Zen seeds to bear fruit, rich and vigorous in life, and fully naturalised while retaining intact the essence of what makes up Buddhism.

Hui-nêng (637–713) who was the sixth patriarch after Bodhi-Dharma, was the real Chinese founder of Zen; for it was through him and his direct followers that Zen could cast off the garment borrowed from India and began to put on one cut and sewn by the native hands. The spirit of Zen was of course the same as the one that came to China transmitted without interruption from the Buddha, but the form of expression was thoroughly Chinese, for it was their own creation. The rise of Zen after this, was phenomenal. The latent energy that had been stored up during the time of naturalisation suddenly broke out in active work, and Zen had almost a triumphal march through the whole land of Cathay. During the T‘ang dynasty (618–906) when Chinese culture reached its consummation, great Zen masters succeeded one after another in building up monasteries and educating monks as well as lay-disciples who were learned not only in the Confucian classics but in the Mahayana lore of Buddhism. The emperors too were not behind them in paying respects to these Zen seers, who were invited to come to the court in order to give sermons to these august personages. When for political reasons Buddhism was persecuted, which caused the loss of many valuable documents, works of art, and the decline of some schools, Zen was always the first to recover itself and to renew its activities with redoubled energy and enthusiasm.

Throughout the Five Dynasties, in the first half of the tenth century, when China was torn up into minor kingdoms again, and general political situations seemed to be unfavourable to the thriving of religious sentiments, Zen prospered as before and the masters kept up their monastic centers undisturbed.

With the rise of the Sung dynasty (960–1279) Zen reached the height of its development and influence, while the other sects of Buddhism showed signs of rapid decline. When history opens on the pages of the Yüan (1280–1367) and the Ming (1368–1661) dynasty, Buddhism is found identified with Zen. The Kegon (Avataṁsaka), Tendai (T‘ien-tai), Sanron (San-lun), Kusha (Abhidharma-kośa), Hosso (Yogācāra) and Shingon (Mantra), if they were not completely wiped out through persecution, suffered tremendously from the lack of fresh blood. Perhaps they were to die out anyway on account of their not having been completely assimilated by Chinese thought and feeling; there was too much of an Indian element which prevented them from being fully acclimatised. In any event Zen as the essence of the Buddha’s mind continued to flourish so that any Chinese minds at all inclined towards Buddhism came to study Zen and neglected the rest of the Buddhist schools still in existence though at the last stage of their productive activity. The only form of Buddhism that retains its vitality to a certain extent even to this day, is Zen, more or less modified to accommodate the Pure Land tendency, that had been growing soon after the introduction of Buddhism into China.

There was reason for this state of things in the religious history of China, and it was this that Zen dispensed with the images and concepts and modes of thinking that were imported from India along with Buddhist thought; and out of its own consciousness Zen created an original literature best adapted to the exposition of the truth of Enlightenment. This literature was unique in many senses, but it was in perfect accordance with the Chinese mental modus operandi and naturally powerfully moved them to the core. Bodhi-Dharma taught his disciples to look directly into the essence of the teaching of the Buddha discarding the outward manners of presentation, he told them not to follow the conceptual and analytical interpretation of the doctrine of Enlightenment. Literary adherents of the Sutras objected to this and did all they could to prevent the growth of the teaching of Dharma. But it grew on in spite of oppositions. The disciples mastered the art of grasping the central fact of Buddhism. When this was accomplished, they proceeded to demonstrate it according to their own methods, using their own terminology, regardless of the traditional or rather imported way of expression. They did not entirely abandon the old manner of speaking; for they refer to Buddha, Tathagata, Nirvana, Bodhi, Trikāya, Karma, transmigration, emancipation, and many other ideas making up the body of Buddhism; but they make no mention of the Twelvefold Chain of Origination, the Fourfold Noble Truth, or the Eightfold Righteous Path.

When we read Zen literature without being told of its relation to Buddhism, we may almost fail to recognise in it such things as are generally regarded as specifically Buddhist. When Yakusan (Yüeh-shan, 751–834) saw a monk, he asked,[2.8] “Where do you come from?” “I come from south of the Lake.” “Is the Lake over-flowing with water?” “No, sir, it is not yet overflowing.” “Strange,” said the master, “after so much rain why does it not overflow?” To this last query, the monk failed to give a satisfactory answer, whereupon Ungan (Yün-yen), one of Yakusan’s disciples, said, “Overflowing, indeed!” while Dosan (Tung-shan), another of his disciples, exclaimed, “In what kalpa did it ever fail to overflow?” In these dialogues do we detect any trace of Buddhism? Do they not look as if they were talking about an affair of most ordinary occurrence? But, according to the masters, their talks are brimful of Zen, and Zen literature is indeed abound in such apparent trivialities. In fact, as far as its phraseology and manner of demonstration are concerned, Zen looks as if it had nothing to do with Buddhism, and some critics are almost justified in designating Zen as a Chinese anomaly of Buddhism as was referred to at the beginning of this Essay.

In the history of Chinese literature, Zen writings known as Yü-lu (Goroku) form a class by themselves, and it is due to them that the Chinese colloquialism of the T‘ang and the early Sung dynasty has been preserved. Men of letters in China despised to write except in classical style, deliberately choosing such words, phrases, and expressions as enhanced the grace of the composition. All the literature we have of those early days of Chinese culture therefore is the model of such a cultivated style. The Zen masters were not necessarily despisers of classicism, they took to fine literature as much as their contemporaries, they were well-educated and learned too; but they found colloquialism a better and more powerful medium for the utterance of their inner experiences. This is generally the case with spiritual reformers, who want to express themselves through the medium most intimate to their feelings and best suited for their original ways of viewing things. They avoid wherever possible such nomenclature as has been in use and filled with old associations which are apt to lack in living purposes and therefore in vivifying effects. Living experiences ought to be told in a living language and not in worn-out images and concepts. The Zen masters therefore did what they could not help doing and made free use of the living words and phrases of the day. Does this not prove that in China Buddhism through Zen ceased to be a foreign importation and was transformed into an original creation of the native mind?

And just because Zen could turn itself into a native product, it survived all the other schools of Buddhism. In other words, Zen was the only form in which the Chinese mind could accommodate, appreciate, and assimilate the Buddhist doctrine of Enlightenment.

I hope I have shown how Buddhism, that is, the doctrine of Enlightenment had to be transformed into Zen in China, and through this transformation Zen survived the other schools of Buddhism. Let us now take up the second point, as referred to before, in which we will see how Zen came to create the Sung philosophy. When I say that Buddhism did not really affect Chinese thought until it was converted into Zen through which the creative genius of China began to formulate its philosophy along a much deeper and more idealistic line of thought than that of the Ante-Ch‘in period, there will be many who will object to this view. It is true that Buddhism began to make its influence felt among Chinese thinkers even during the Latter Han dynasty as we see, for instance, in Mou-tzŭ’s “Essay on Reason and Error” written between 190–220 A.D. After this there were many writers who discussed the Buddhist doctrines of Karma and Causation and Immortality; for these were some of the ideas introduced from India through Buddhism. It was with the Taoists, however, the Buddhists had much heated controversy from the sixth century on. The way Buddhism exerted its influence over Taoism was not only in the form of controversy but in actually moulding their thought and literature.

There were so many points of contact between Taoism and Buddhism: and naturally the first object against which Buddhism worked, as it grew in importance and power not only as a religious system but as philosophy and the possessor of an inexhaustible wealth of knowledge, was Taoism; while it was admitted that Buddhism in its turn borrowed many things from Taoism in order to make itself more easily acceptable to the native minds. On the whole, Taoism owes more to Buddhism as far as its organisation, rituals, literature and philosophy are concerned. Taoism systematised after the Buddhist model all the popular superstitions native to China and built up a religious medley in which the Indian elements are found more or less incongruously blended with Laotzuanism and the popular desire for immortality, worldly welfare, and what they call “purity.”

But Taoism as it is believed popularly is so full of superstitions that it is not in vital contact with the main current of orthodox Chinese thought which is represented, maintained, and cherished by the literati including the government officials. To a greater extent Taoism is the popular and superstitious Chinese rendering of Buddhism, but there will be many critics, the present writer for one, who rather hesitate to consider the essence of Buddhism sufficiently transcribed in terms of the Taoists. Unless the Confucians were not moved to assimilate Buddhist thought in their system, so naturally that they attempted to reconstruct the whole frame of Confucian ideas, not merely for the sake of reconciliation, but for the sake of deepening, enriching, and resuscitating it, we cannot say that Buddhism entered into the life of Chinese thought and became the real possession of the Chinese mind. But this was done during the Sung dynasty when the Confucian philosophers took in Buddhist ideas into their teaching and reconstructed the whole system on a new basis, which, however, was considered by them to be the necessary course of growth for Confucianism. Whatever this was, there is no doubt that the Sung philosophy was enriched and deepened by absorbing Buddhist views. In this, all the historians of Chinese intellectual development agree.

There is a question, however, one may ask concerning this general reconstruction of Confucianism on the idealistic Buddhist scheme. If Zen did not grow up in China as the native interpretation of the Doctrine of Enlightenment and prepared the way for the rise of such great Confucian writers as Chou Tun-I (1017–1073),[2.9] the Ch‘eng brothers, Ch‘eng Hao (1032–1085) and Ch‘eng I (1035–1107), and Chu Hsi (1130–1200), would there have been a Sung revival of the orthodox Chinese teaching? To my view, without Zen the Sung dynasty would not have seen the phenomenal uprising of what the Chinese historians call the “Science of Reason.” As we already said, Zen was the only form in which Buddhism could enter into the Chinese mind. This being the case, whatever they later produced in the realm of thought, could not but be tinged with Zen. See how the psychological school of Yogācāra was received by the native thinkers. It was first advocated, propounded, and commented by Hsüan-chuang and his great disciples, but this profound study of the human mind was too analytical even for the best minds of China, and did not thrive very long after Hsüan-chuang. Then how did the Prajñā-Pāramitā philosophy fare? It was brought into China in the first century soon after the introduction of Buddhism itself and later most ably supported and interpreted by Kumārajīva and his Chinese pupils. It had a better prospect than the Yogācāra, because its Chinese counterpart was found in the teaching of Lao-tzŭ and his followers.

Those two groups of philosophers, Buddhist and Laotzŭan, may be classed as belonging to the same type of thought; but even in this case the Chinese did not show any great disposition to embrace this Śūnyatā system. Why was this? The reason was obvious, seeing that in spite of a certain agreement between the two schools on a very broad basis, the Śūnyatā mode of thinking was altogether too metaphysical, too high-flown, or, from the Chinese point of view, too much in nubibus, and the practical tendency of the native minds naturally failed to grow on it; even in the disciples of Lao-tzŭ and Chwang-tzŭ there was the taint or virtue of utilitarianism which is deeply ingrained in all the Chinese modes of feeling.

Besides the Mādhyamika school of Nāgārjuna and the Yogācāra school of Asanga both of which developed in the country of the Buddha itself, there were Chih-I’s Tendai philosophy and Hsien-shou’s (643–712) Avataṁsaka system of Buddhism. These latter were in a sense the creations of the native Buddhist thinkers, and if they were at all assimilable by their compatriots, they would not have been neglected, and their study, instead of being confined within a narrow circle of Buddhist specialists, would have overflowed into the Confucian as well as the Taoist boundaries. That they did not do so proves the fact that they were still foreign and a kind of translation, not literary indeed, but more or less conceptional. Therefore, there was no other way left for Buddhism but to be transformed into Zen before it could be thoroughly acclimatised and grow as a native plant. When this was achieved because it was in the inherent nature of Buddhism that this achievement was to take place, Zen became the flesh and bones of Chinese thought and inspired the Confucians of the Sung dynasty to reconstruct the foundation of their philosophy on the idealistic plans of Buddhism.

We may conclude now that Zen, in spite of the uncouthness and extraordinariness of its outward features, belongs to the general system of Buddhism. And by Buddhism we mean not only the teaching of the Buddha himself as recorded in the earliest Āgamas, but the later speculations, philosophical and religious, concerning the person and life of the Buddha. His personal greatness was such as occasionally made his disciples advance theories somewhat contrary to the advice supposed to have been given by their Master. This was inevitable. The world with all its contents, individually as well as as a whole, is subject to our subjective interpretation, not a capricious interpretation indeed, but growing out of our inner necessity, our religious yearnings. Even the Buddha as an object of one’s religious experience could not escape this, his personality was so constituted as to awaken in us every feeling and thought that goes under the name of Buddhism now. The most significant and fruitful ideas that were provoked by him were concerned with his Enlightenment and Nirvana. These two facts stood out most prominently in his long peaceful life of seventy-nine years, and all the theories and beliefs that are bound up with the Buddha are attempts to understand these facts in terms of our own religious experience. Thus Buddhism has grown to have a much wider meaning than is understood by most scholars.

The Buddha’s Enlightenment and Nirvana were two separate ideas in his life as it unfolded in history so many centuries ago, but from the religious point of view they are to be regarded as one idea. That is to say, to understand the content and the value of Enlightenment is the same as realising the signification of Nirvana. Taking a stand on this, the Mahayanists developed two currents of thought: the one was to rely on our intellectual efforts to the furthest extent they could reach, and the other, pursuing the practical method adopted by the Buddha himself, indeed by all Indian truth-seekers, endeavoured to find in the practice of dhyana something directly leading to Enlightenment. It goes without saying that in both of these efforts the original impulse lies in the inmost religious consciousness of pious Buddhists.

The Mahayana texts compiled during a few centuries after the Buddha testify to the view here presented. Of these, the one expressly composed to propagate the teaching of the Zen school is the Laṅkāvatāra, in which the content of Enlightenment is, as far as words admit, presented from a psychological, philosophical, and a practical point of view. When this was introduced into China and thoroughly assimilated according to the Chinese methods of thinking and feeling, the main thesis of the Sutra came to be demonstrated in such a way as is now considered characteristically Zen. The truth has many avenues of approach through which it makes itself known to the human mind. But the choice it makes depends on certain limitations under which it works. The superabundance of Indian imagination issued in supernaturalism and wonderful symbolism, and the Chinese sense of practicalness and its love for the solid everyday facts of life resulted in Zen Buddhism. We may now be able to understand, though only tentatively by most readers at present, the following definitions of Zen offered by its masters:

These being some of the definitions given to Zen by the masters, in what relationship did they conceive of Zen as standing to the doctrine of Enlightenment taught in the Sutras? Did they conceive it after the manner of the Laṅkāvatāra or after that of the Prajñā-pāramitā? No, Zen had to have its own way, the Chinese mind refused blindly to follow the Indian models. If this is still to be contested, read the following:

A monk asked Kan (Chien), who lived in Haryo (Pa-ling), “Is there any difference between the teaching of the Patriarch and that of the Sutras, or not?” Said the master, “When the cold weather comes, the fowl flies up in the trees while the wild duck goes down into water.” Hō-yen (Fa-yen) of Gosozan (Wu-tsu-shan) commented on this, saying, “The great teacher of Pa-ling has expressed only a half of the truth. I would not have it so. Mine is: When water is scooped in hands, the moon is reflected in them; when the flowers are handled, the scent soaks into the robe.”[2.12]