The Hongzhou School of Chan Buddhism in Eighth- through Tenth-Century China

1 BIOGRAPHY OF MAZU DAOYI

Chapter One BIOGRAPHY OF MAZU DAOYI 11 Mazu Daoyi (709–788), who was acknowledged as the founding patriarch of the Hongzhou school of Chan Buddhism by his successors, is generally regarded as a key figure in Chan tradition. During his eighty years, Mazu witnessed almost all of the important events of the eighth century. His two training periods as novice monk and Chan practitioner fell in the Kaiyuan reign-period (713–741) of Emperor Xuanzong (r. 712–756), a time marked by political stablility, economic prosperity, and military expansion. His career as a Chan teacher began with the Tianbao reign-period (742–756) of the same emperor, a period that still looked powerful and prosperous on the surface but gradually developed potential crises. During the seven-year turmoil of the An Lushan rebellion (755–763), Mazu continued to teach in the remote mountains of Jiangxi and was therefore less affected by wars. He successfully gathered a large community in Hongzhou during the early post-rebellion period and enjoyed the patronage of local political and military magnates, who became more and more powerful and independent after the rebellion as the central government gradually lost its control. Although modern scholars have made significant efforts toward reconstructing Mazu’s biography,1 it remains incomplete. Many important events in his life have not been clearly or accurately described. In this chapter, based on other scholars’ studies and drawing upon a variety of available sources, I provide a new, complete biography of Mazu, which describes the various stages of training and teaching in his life, in order to facilitate further studies of the Hongzhou school. The most important sources for Mazu’s life are three Tang stele inscriptions . The first is the epitaph written by Bao Ji (ca. 727–792) in 788, when Mazu had just passed away. Although the original text is no longer extant, it is almost completely preserved in the hagiography of Mazu in the SGSZ.2 The second is the “Tang gu Hongzhou Kaiyuansi Shimen Daoyi chanshi taming bingxu” (Stūpa Inscription and Preface for Daoyi, the Deceased Chan Master of Kaiyuansi and Shimenshan in Hongzhou; hereafter cited as “Daoyi Stūpa”) written by Quan Deyu (761–818) in 791, three years after Mazu’s 12 CHAN BUDDHISM IN EIGHTH- THROUGH TENTH-CENTURY CHINA death.3 The third is a short inscription inscribed on the stone case of Mazu’s relics in 791, which was unearthed in 1966 underneath Mazu’s stūpa in the Baofengsi in Jing’anxian. This text will be cited as “Stone Case Inscription.”4 Other reliable but scattered references to Mazu are found in stele inscriptions and biographies of his disciples, as well as Zongmi’s (779–841) works. The entries on Mazu in the ZTJ and CDL contain some events that do not appear in other sources.5 The compilers of these two texts seem to have relied on sources other than the inscriptions, possibly the Yuben (Discourse Text) or Yulu (Discourse Record) attributed to Mazu and the Baolin zhuan, which was compiled by Mazu’s disciple(s) in 801.6 Because of the fictitious nature of these sources, they are used with caution and critical restraint.7 The Jiangxi Mazu Daoyi chanshi yulu (Discourse Records of Chan Master Mazu Daoyi in Jiangxi, hereafter cited as Mazu yulu) compiled by Huinan (1002–1069) in the mid-Northern Song dynasty contains no new biographical information,8 and therefore will not be used in this chapter. MA ZU ’S YOUTH IN SICHUAN (709–CA. 7 29) Mazu’s family name is Ma, from which the appellation Mazu (Patriarch Ma) is derived. He was born in the third year of the Jinglong reign-period (709) in Shifangxian of Hanzhou (also called Deyangjun in the Tang, in present-day Sichuan).9 The two inscriptions describe Mazu as having an unusual appearance: “He was stalwart like a standing mountain, deep and clear like a still river. His tongue, broad and long, could cover his nose. On the soles of his feet, there were marks which formed characters”;10 “he had the walking gait of a bull, and the gaze of a tiger.”11 Later sources add more extraordinary features, such as wheel-signs on his soles. A broad and long tongue and wheel-signs on the soles are among the thirty-two physical marks of the Buddha.12 This kind of hagiographic feature is a convention of biographies of eminent monks and should not be taken as accurate historical...