Who Has the Last Word in Chan? Transmission, Secrecy and Reading During the Northern Song Dynasty

Journal of Chinese Religions 37 (2009) 1 Who Has the Last Word in Chan? Transmission, Secrecy and Reading During the Northern Song Dynasty JUHN Y. AHN University of Toronto For more than a decade, Juefan Huihong 覺範慧洪 (1071-1128)—monk, poet, and astute historian of Chan—collected stories about noteworthy Chan luminaries from the distant and not-so-distant past. Unlike other better-known Chan compilations such as the Jingde chuandeng lu 景德傳燈錄 (1004), the purpose of Juefan’s collection was to glorify neither a particular Chan lineage nor the Chan mythology of mind-to-mind transmission in general. Instead, Juefan had embarked on the task of collecting this rich anecdotal material primarily, it seems, to correct misperceptions about Chan and to document good learning habits from the past. Due perhaps to a mixture of diligence and good company, Juefan’s collection eventually grew to about three hundred or so tales and by then it must have seemed clear to Juefan that the time to properly collate and publish the collection was long overdue. Indeed, with a preface prepared in 1107 by the famed (Jiangxi school) poet Xie Yi 謝逸 (1069-1113) from Linchuan 臨川 county in present day Jiangxi province, the collection was finally edited into two volumes by Juefan’s otherwise little-known student Benming 本明 (d.u.) and published under the title Linjian lu 林間錄 or Tales From the [Chan] Grove.1 While Juefan’s collection as a whole deserves our careful attention, there is one story in particular that warrants a closer look here. We begin with the following example because it seems to neatly capture some of the larger issues that this article will attempt to address.2 The story goes something like this. Chan master Daguan Tanying 達觀曇穎 (989-1060)3 used to The author would like to thank James A. Benn, T. Griffith Foulk, Robert H. Sharf, and Amanda Goodman for their kind comments and suggestions. 1 For the Linjian lu, see XZJ148.585a1-67a7. For a discussion of the contents of this text and the conditions under which it was compiled, see Keyworth III, “Transmitting the Lamp of Learning in Classical Chan Buddhism,” esp. chapter 5. 2 For the entire story, see the Linjian lu (XZJ148.606b17-607a6). 3 Juefan showed great interest in Daguan and especially in the latter’s collection of the teachings of the so-called five houses of Chan known as the Wujia zongpai 五家宗派; for instance, see the Linjian lu (XZJ148.592a9 and 646a3-4). Daguan’s motivation for compiling this collection may have something to do with his decision to change lineage affiliation mid-career. Daguan had first studied under Chan 2 Journal of Chinese Religions laugh at those men of Chan [chanzhe 禪者] who do not raise questions about the underlying meaning [daoli 道理] of Chan teachings and simply take what they see for granted. Within the teachings of Chan, the story tells us, there is something called the four hidden spear-tips [si cangfeng 四藏鋒], namely (1) engaging in principle [jiuli 就理], (2) engaging in phenomena [jiushi 就事], (3) entering by engaging in both principle and phenomena [rujiu 入 就], and (4) emerging by engaging in neither principle nor phenomena [chujiu 出就].4 But those Chan men who do not take care in inspecting the brushstrokes of the characters readily mistake xiuli 袖裏 [“inside the sleeves”] for jiuli, chuxiu 出袖 [“emerging from the sleeves”] for chujiu, and ruxiu 入袖 [“entering the sleeves”] for rujiu.5 In fact, these mistakes, as Juefan points out in his comments on this story, can be witnessed in a recently published collection of the sayings of a number of Chan patriarchs known as the Deshan sijia yulu 德山四家語錄. As a consequence, students—presumably the careless variety—have come to wonder if the four hidden spear-tips refer to some actual thing in the sleeves of the old abbots [zhanglao 長 老]. For such clueless (and illiterate?) students, Chan master Huitang Zuxin 晦堂祖心 (10251100 ), according to our story, apparently had only this to say: “that [monk] must have left home and taken refuge in a teacher who recites [song 誦] the Bayang jing 八陽經 [for a living]!”6 master Dayang Jingxuan 大陽警玄 (943-1027) but later became the dharma heir of Chan master Guyin Wencong 谷隱溫聰 (965-1032), who belonged to a different Chan lineage; see Daguan...