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104 ChaPteR 5 A Dog Has No Buddha-Nature Kanhua Chan and Dahui Zonggao’s Attacks on Silent Illumination the Caodong tradition underwent, as we have seen, a remarkable revival and reinvention beginning in the late eleventh century that propelled it onto the national stage and made it one of the leading groups of elite Buddhism . the dharma brothers Furong daokai and dahong Baoen were the coarchitects of this new Caodong tradition, although daokai quickly came to be seen as the paragon of the Caodong revival, partly due to the achievements of his many disciples. the great success of the emerging Caodong tradition was widely noted in daokai and Baoen’s own time, as witnessed by various comments in extant Song literature. But to the contemporaries of hongzhi and Qingliao a few decades later, the Caodong revival was even more apparent. By that time, the Caodong tradition was no longer limited to a few extraordinary individuals; rather, between them, the two generations after daokai and Baoen had produced at least a hundred active Chan masters. many of these were high-profile Buddhist monks (and even some nuns) who forged close ties with powerful officials and literati, as well as with the imperial court, and who gained considerable prestige and influence. this quite sudden rise of the new Caodong tradition can be associated, i will argue, with a series of events that had a momentous impact on Chan society and profoundly affected doctrinal and sectarian developments within Chan Buddhism. the dominance of the Yunmen and Linji traditions in Chan Buddhism began to be challenged with the emergence of the new Caodong tradition. thus, the scholar and official Ye mengde noted in 1135 that before daokai, people who were interested in Chan paid attention only to the Yunmen and Linji traditions, but after daokai became known, everyone began to think of Yunmen and Linji as inadequate and abandoned them to follow daokai instead. as a result, Ye explained, in his day, at least three out of ten Chan enthusiasts followed Caodong.1 it should not surprise us if the sudden success of the Caodong tradition appeared somewhat disruptive and threatening to the Chan transmission families that had been dominant. as we have seen, the support of officials and literati was necessary for Chan masters and their lineages to survive and prosper, especially in the Southern Song after state support for elite Buddhism and Chan started to wane and the literati a dog has no Buddha-nature 105 became more involved in local government. Ye mengde was clearly referring to members of the literati, and if considerable resources were being channeled away from Linji and Yunmen masters and shifted over to Caodong masters, as Ye suggests, some reaction was perhaps inevitable. the reaction that materialized seems to have begun during the time of daokai and Baoen in rather a muted fashion and reached a crescendo with the wellknown Linji master dahui Zonggao. in this chapter, i will discuss dahui’s famous attacks on silent illumination and his equally famous creation of kanhua Chan, which dahui saw as an answer to, and cure for, silent illumination.2 dahui used strong and forceful language both in his advocacy of kanhua Chan and in his attacks on those who taught silent illumination. Since dahui never named those he had in mind outright when he criticized silent illumination, there has been no scholarly consensus regarding who exactly dahui was attacking. in the next chapter, i shall therefore discuss in detail evidence showing that the new Caodong tradition was indeed the direct target of silent illumination attacks by dahui and other Linji masters. in chapter 7, i shall then explore the teachings of the new Caodong tradition and argue that it did in fact teach an approach to enlightenment and practice that reasonably can be called “silent illumination” and that is recognizable in the attacks of dahui and others. Because it clarifies a number of issues to place silent illumination within the context of dahui’s criticism, however, i will first present a discussion of dahui’s invention of kanhua Chan and his attacks on silent illumination.3 The Career of Dahui Zonggao dahui Zonggao is easily the most famous Chan master of the Song dynasty, and indeed one of the most famous Chan masters of all time. although dahui held the position of abbot at a public monastery for a relatively short period, he was an active preacher and writer throughout his life, and his extant recorded...

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