Chan & Politics

Ultimate Truth as a Construct in Sung Dynasty China

Dave DeFrank
REL 655 Final Paper
12/13/15
 My first experience with Zen did not do much to attract me to the religion, and was

actually pretty off putting. After having sat with an informal Americanized Buddhist group in

New York for a year, I was intrigued by the idea of temporary residential practice and visited the

Fire Lotus Temple in downtown Brooklyn for morning sit and service. Instead of the casual

greeting and friendly people sitting around a bare studio space I was used to, I walked in to find

people in robes sitting stiffly around imposing columns. Instead of welcoming small talk I had

stone faced monks directing me in hushed voices on where to stand, how to walk, and when to

bow. I was immediately writing off the place in my head as a contrived formal religion far

removed from the free forest spirituality I had thought Buddhism should be, when (with the help

of a monitor who showed me the right way to hold the chant book and where to find the page)

we started chanting the Heart Sutra. Despite my discomfort with the place and the people, the

words on the page and in my mouth struck me instantly as the most inexplicably true thing I’d

ever heard or said. I didn’t go back to the temple after that day, and remained wary of Zen for a

long time, but I was affected deeply by the experience.

It makes sense that Zen would be a little off putting. It is part of a practice by which

ultimate truth has been transmitted down the ages for 2,500 years. What form could a practice of

ultimate truth fit into that could hold its integrity and not seem a little out of place in a world

composed of human ambition and ignorance? This is not a new problem. As Buddhism has

travelled from country to country throughout its history, the struggle to separate the truth from

the form and mold it into new appropriate forms while still being capable of transmitting the

truth has beguiled practitioners every time. This question is made more difficult by one of the

lines in the Heart Sutra that so affected me that day, “form is emptiness, emptiness is form.” If
the truth embodied by the forms that are being passed down is inseparable from that form, how

can a new society mold it to fit their own time and place while still being true to the truth itself?

While pre-modern China and 21st Century America are in many ways diametrically

opposed in culture, the problems encountered in trying to bring Zen here is very much the same

problem encountered there as Buddhism spread in that country and formed Zen’s precursor,

Chan. The alien-ness a suspicious American like me felt in a proper Zen temple in Brooklyn, is

much the same feeling an 11th century Confucian educated member of the literati would have

felt encountering Indian style Buddhism and working with ancient Indian texts. Trying to make

the truth of Buddhism relevant to that time and place is what resulted in the formation of Chan

and the Zen we know today.

The success of these efforts is readily seen in the flourishing of Chan as the dominant

religion of Sung era China. It is hard enough for any one person to comprehend or cultivate

ultimate truth, and it is a very strange and impressive thing that it was allowed to become the

recognized guiding principle of a rigid imperial state. The message of this religion is that the

truth of the world is ultimately emptiness. It says that this truth is fundamental to all things, can

be experienced by anyone regardless of status, and that once this truth is realized one will see the

illusory nature of all things, including the forms of social structure itself.

This paper is an attempt to look at the Sinification of Buddhism and how it shaped the

formation of Chan. In seeing how it was molded to fit into that society I will be trying to answer

the question of what benefit a religion of pure ultimate truth held for a controlling imperial

regime like the Sung dynasty and how its purity of intent was able to be maintained through that

transformation.
 I will make the argument that what allowed Chan to flourish in the Sung is the same thing

that vouches for its authenticity. By grounding itself without compromise in the truth that all

forms are ultimately empty, it was able to adapt to the needs of its time and place, and therefore

prove equally useful to both the clergy and practitioners hungry for an authentic spirituality, and

the state and society that supported them. First I will discuss the background of the foundational

doctrines of Chan, namely sudden awakening to the truth that all form is ultimately empty. Then

I will look at how the innovations that were unique to Chan by virtue of its commitment to pure

expression of that doctrine put it in a unique position to be of value to the literati and other state

supporters. Throughout this exploration I will be attempting to uncover what value those

expressions held for the Sung state bureaucracy and how this related to the practice of its

adherents.

An understanding of emptiness as ultimate truth is not unique to Chan. All forms of

Buddhism will tell you that the self and the phenomena it encounters are empty, interdependent,

and that the individual forms we normally understand them in are ultimately illusory. What sets

Chan apart is how this understanding was expressed as doctrine, as specific modes of practice,

and in its literature. Many schools of Buddhism will intentionally not focus on, or at least seek to

delay any discussion or practice of emptiness, because it is usually said to be too difficult to

grasp, or too easily misunderstood, to be the basis of practice. Buddha himself is said to only

have taught about emptiness toward the end of his life when his followers were more advanced

and mature enough to understand the teaching. In the mean time he used “skillful means” to

teach. This became a broad blanket term for any teachings that allowed for a more relativist

understanding of the world even if not being in total alignment with ultimate truth.
 Since almost all manners of spiritual practice are rooted in an individual trying to attain a

new and deeper awareness, this means that almost all practices are relativist, and therefore not

pure embodiments of ultimately truth. A true understanding of the self as already empty would

mean there is no individual and therefore no deeper awareness one could attain. The same could

be said for written teachings, and almost any coherent written sentence, since language itself is

predicated on the idea of separating things into subjects and objects and a separate observer

understanding meaning through these distinctions. Once separations and distinctions are made

one is already dealing with a relative world. In an ultimate understanding of emptiness, all things

are interdependent aspects of one unified whole, so to make the distinctions language requires is

to create illusions and useful falsehoods at best.

The problem becomes how is one supposed to create a practice and teachings, let alone a

whole religious institution, when to create any of the necessary elements is to already not live up

to the truth of what you are trying to teach? The various answers to this problem are the living

history of Buddhism. Beginning with the prajna paramita literature, which the Heart Sutra came

out of, you see paradoxical language describing paradoxical practice in an attempt to break the

mind free of the illusion of its own existence. In the Heart Sutra, in the particular lines that gave

me goose bumps on that first temple vist, it is chanted, “no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no

body, no mind.” 1 It is your own eyes, ears, and tongue chanting their own non-existence. In the

2nd century this was furthered by Nagarjuna in his Mulamadhyamakakarika where he laid out a

detailed logical proof showing how all aspects of self and all phenomena inherently cannot be

said to exist. It is remarkable for a Buddhist text because nowhere does he recommend any forms

of practice or means of ending suffering. But reading it you can easily see why. Among the

phenomena he proves do not exist are suffering itself, and so no practice is necessary to end
1
Pine, The Heart Sutra, 100.
suffering if one simply understands it does not exist in the first place. Towards the end of the

work he gives one hint in his chapter “An Analysis of the 12 Fold Chain” where he states that if

ignorance does not arise, so to “does the entire mass of suffering completely cease.” 2 To create

modes of practice is to reinforce the delusion of self and so to increase ignorance itself and take

one further away from ultimate realization that is the only way to end suffering. The Indian

Madhyamika school that came out of Nagarjuna’s work was the most prominent example before

Chan of attempting to create a school around the paradox of a pure practice of emptiness.

In the 8th century this problem came to a head in India, Tibet, and China in the debate

over sudden versus gradual enlightenment. Gradual enlightenment adherents relied on the skillful

means of relative truth to cultivate a mind capable of understanding ultimate truth. Sudden

enlightenment proponents claimed that those means were counter productive and only reinforced

the deluded mind. One simply needed to immediately see the truth as it already exists to attain

liberation of suffering.

In India one can see both sides of the debate in the work of Santideva who took up the

mantle of Nagarjuna, and as part of the Madhyamika school wrote the paradoxical work the

Bodhicharyavatara. Unlike Nagarjuna, Santideva lays out a specific practice path with modes of

practice and necessary attitudes of mind needed to eliminate suffering and realize one’s true

nature by means of the bodhisattva path. But in its final chapters he then returns to a detailed

proof clearly borrowed from Nagarjuna to adamantly profess the deluded nature of all

phenomena including all the teachings he had spent the previous eight chapters exhorting

practitioners to follow. He says plainly that advanced people are able to see the truth

2
Siderits and Katsura, Nagarjuna’s Middle Way, 90.
immediately, but that common people will have to rely on relative and essentially deluded means

to cultivate a mind capable of eventually seeing the truth.3

In Tibet these ideas were debated at the council of Lhasa, in which the monk Moheyan

represented the side of sudden enlightenment and a monk named Kamalasila spoke for gradual

enlightenment. In the debate Moheyan was forced to admit what Santideva had said, that people

of lesser abilities would never be able to understand the truth immediately and would need to

work with relative means to cultivate a mind capable of attaining the truth. Because of this the

debate was decided in Kamalasila’s favor and Tibetan Buddhism has been marked by a

gradualist approach ever since, with a clearly structured practice path that first cultivates

attitudes of compassion and well being before allowing the student practices that contemplate

emptiness, finally culminating in Tantric practices said to bring about full enlightenment. 4

In China the debate was ostensibly carried out within the early Chan school, with

Northern Chan representing the gradualist side and Southern Chan promoting a practice of

sudden enlightenment. In truth though, if one looks at Chan history critically it is plain that a

focus on sudden awareness was always the defining doctrine. Supposedly the debate was started

by Shenhui, a disciple of the sixth patriarch Huineng, when he began attacking the Northern

School descendants of the false sixth patriarch Shenxiu.5 His attacks were so effective that

Shenxiu was discredited and the label of gradual enlightenment was used as a derogatory term in

Chinese Buddhism from then on. This debate was written into cannon in The Platform Sutra

where Huineng is depicted as having beaten Shenxiu in a poetry contest. The traditional

interpretation is that Shenxiu was writing from the gradualist perspective and Huineng bested

him with a poem proving his superior sudden awareness. As John McCrae points out though this
3
Shantideva, The Way of the Bodhisattva, 107.
4
Shen, Wisdom In China And The West, 346.
5
McRæ, Seeing through Zen, 54.
understanding relies on a superficial reading of the Sutra and the poems themselves.6 Shenxiu’s

poem actually refers to a constant polishing of an already perfect mind that is “like a mirror

stand,” and not “letting dust collect.” The constant polishing and the present tense nature of not

“letting dust collect” implies that the mind is already clean to begin with free from the dust of

defilement, and that practice is about maintenance not gradual cultivation. Huineng’s poem,

saying that there never was a mirror stand or anywhere for dust to collect, is also notable in that

the entire poem is a response to Shenxiu’s and cannot stand on its own. Therefore, it can be said

that his understanding too rests on an assumption that some form of practice is necessary. When

looking at the East Mountain School where Shenxiu and Huineng both studied, it is quickly

noticed that the rhetoric used in the teachings there are very similar to Huineng’s in The Platform

Sutra, in that both are rooted in a pure understanding of the truth of emptiness as the only

effective mode of practice. 7

Through the example of this debate that was really no debate at all, we find two

characteristics that defined Chan from its beginning and would set the stage for all its later

developments leading up and into the Sung dynasty. The first is that Chan would only be

satisfied with a rhetoric and practice that represented a pure understanding of ultimate truth, and

any gradualist “skillful means” such as those employed by Santideva and the Tibetans would be

discredited. Second is that holding true to this ideal in a relative world of practice and written

teachings would always create a situation of inherent contradiction in which all teachings and

practices became suspect for not being entirely pure. It is easy to see why Santideva and the

Tibetans chose the paths they did. Rather than leave one’s religion constantly open to charges of

hypocrisy and corruption, better to admit that hypocrisy from the start and move on as effectively

6
Ibid., 64.
7
Ibid., 43.
as one can. Yet it was exactly because Chan chose the difficult path of attempted purity that it

was able to adapt, flourish, and come to dominance in China. At the same time the adaptability

and freedom allowed for in this approach is what also allowed it to be useful for the

governmental elite who supported it in large part as a social tool.

By the time of its flourishing in the Sung, Chan was commonly characterized by a few

innovations. First among these were its transmission histories as laid out in the Transmission of

the Lamp texts. This was part of a distinct literary tradition that came to include the common

sayings of renowned masters 8 and the koan collections. Also setting Chan apart were its

sometimes complimentary, sometimes opposing, practices of koan study or “viewing the phrase”

and non directed seated meditation sometimes referred to as “silent illumination.” Both the

literature and the practices were made possible through another distinction seemingly opposed to

having those first two forms, its insistence on not being reliant on written words and scriptures

and the often repeated ideal that enlightenment was not brought about through meditation

practice. On top of all of this was the odd and iconoclastic actions of its masters and teachers

which became commonplace sometimes to the point of caricature even within Chan’s own

heyday. All of these innovations can be traced back to the original insistence on sudden

awakening to ultimate truth as the only true path.

The Transmission of the Lamp texts are probably the most singularly effective product of

Chan Buddhism that allowed for it to flourish in China. These texts traced the lineages of Sung

era masters in an unbroken line all the way back to Sakyamuni Buddha. They were officially

compiled in the Sung era 9 but were based on a tradition of claiming lineal descent that began

8
Schlütter, How Zen Became Zen, 22.
9
Ibid.
during the Tang dynasty and Chan’s early foundation. While very convenient for claiming

spiritual authority for its teachers and thereby gaining patronage, it is rooted in the idea that these

teachers could all claim to have the same understanding that the Buddha had through an

experience of sudden awakening. This understanding was verified by a master who was himself

a living equivalent of the Buddha.

For humility’s sake it was not usually expressed in terms of the word Buddha itself, but

the implication was clear. Pre-modern China was a very proud country, and having a foreign

religion with an ancient foreign spiritual figurehead as its source of authority was not an ideal

situation for an official state religion. With this transmission history as proof of living Chinese

Buddhas, it allowed people to view the religion as part of their own Chinese heritage. The fact

that The Platform Sutra is the only scripture to carry the title Sutra and not be accredited as the

words of the Buddha, along with the back story of its main character Huineng contained in the

text, are both telling of this desire on the part of the Chinese to make Buddhism their own.

Huineng was said to have had his awakening without any prior practice or work with a

teacher. It simply happened while he was out working in the woods after hearing a few chanted

words of a passing monk. The word sutra is allowed for his recorded discourse because he

attained awakening on his own the same as the Buddha had. It was only after his enlightenment

that he received transmission from the fifth patriarch Hongren. Having this self enlightened

figure as a spiritual forefather also be put into the context of the extended transmission history

that Chan had created was a perfect setup. The new Buddha figure is Chinese and not dependent

on foreign learning, yet he was verified by a history linked back to India and Sakyamuni Buddha

so holds the spiritual authority of the original Buddha himself. This literary construct can be read

as a Chinese takeover of Buddhism and an attempt to turn it into a native religion. During the
formation of the Sung when the new regime was in need of religion to give itself spiritual

legitimacy and rally the country to the new society it was trying to piece back together, Chan,

through its lineage histories and claim to a self enlightened Buddha, could be regarded as a

native religion. But unlike Confucianism and Taoism it could also claim to possess living

Buddha’s as well, lending it greater authority. The appeal of this to the regime is evident in that it

was with the help of the government that the Transmission of the Lamp histories were compiled.

But was it authentic or merely clever propaganda? It is now commonly considered that

both the Transmission of the Lamp and The Platform Sutra contain large amounts of fabrication,

especially with regard to the history stretching from Huineng back through India. While it is a

matter of debate exactly how much was fabricated, the more interesting question is the intent and

spirit guiding both the fabrication and the works themselves. It can never be said for certain the

sincerity of the compilers of the works. We do know that the transmission histories were put

together from historical accounts going back several centuries, so the officials who made them

may very well have regarded them as true. And if considering the idea of sudden awakening and

knowing contemporaneous teachers and masters who had been able to attain enlightenment, then

they had every reason to believe it could be true. Perhaps for the originators of the lineage

history, “might as well be true” was close enough. When considering the sincerity of the

accounts of passed down verified enlightenment or the Platform Sutra I find it is best to turn to

the words themselves and see if it holds up as authentic teaching or comes across as manipulative

propaganda. Assuming for the sake of argument that the whole back story of Huineng is a

fabrication we can examine the teachings contained in the text to look for sincerity and apparent

true understanding. Towards the end of the sutra Huineng recites a poem to his disciples which

begins,
Nothing that exists is true
don’t think what you see is true
if you think you see the true
what you see is surely false
if you want to find the true
the mind free of the false is true
unless your mind forsakes the false
nothing is true where true can’t be 10

Initially the verse does not seem to make sense. It alludes to a truth that is knowable

while saying also that nothing is true and if you have seen truth, that’s definitely not the truth.

What is one to make of this kind of teaching? It is the kind of teaching that only makes sense

with true understanding. It is the kind of teaching that becomes clear when one has sat in

meditation past the point where conceptions of self, thought, true, and false have all fallen away

and one is viscerally aware of a greater understanding beyond such conceptions. I would argue

that a verse like this could only have been written by someone who had experience of such an

understanding. It could also be argued that it is intentionally obtuse to cloud the issue and make

the reader think the author had superior understanding, but there are enough people alive today

who understand these words viscerally to attest to their authenticity. For further evidence we can

look to the back story portion of the sutra when, after having received transmission from his

master Hongren, Huineng is being pursued by jealous monks who wanted to steal the artifacts of

transmission from him. When one monk caught up to Huineng he throws the artifacts on the

ground and tells the monk, “This robe emblemizes reliance [upon the patriarchs]. How can you

struggle for it?” 11 In stating clearly that the symbols and leaders of the religion have no bearing

on its true meaning, the sutra makes plain that it is not intended strictly for propaganda purposes

because it is undermining its own institution as being beside the point of its own existence. When

the monk is unable to even lift the robe he asks Huineng for teaching and Huineng says, “Do not
10
Pine, The Platform Sutra, 43.
11
McRae, The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch, 43.
think of good, and do not think of evil. At such a time, what is [Hongren’s] original face?” 12

Again we have a line that does not make sense outside the context of deep meditative

understanding, evidence of the author’s own understanding. Original face is a literary device

designed to force the students mind to become aware of its own non-existence. This is combined

with an appeal to not look to the institution or its leaders, specifically the fifth patriarch Hongren,

as the source of ultimate truth.

This is something we see repeated throughout Chan literature. As in the case of claiming

a native self enlightened Buddha, texts that in many respects appears to conveniently suit the

needs of the religion and the state’s purposes for it contain teachings that point to a sincere

intention and true understanding on the part of its authors. The transmission histories are also full

of stories with moments like the one between Huineng and the monk where lines embedded in

the biographical stories could only have been composed and understood by someone with a

sincere intention and understanding.

It is an often noted irony that Chan billed itself as being non-reliant on scriptures when it

composed so much literature of its own. I would consider this less of an irony and more of a

natural byproduct of the idea, and one of the primary causes for Chan’s appeal in the Sung and

how it served the purposes of literati government officials. It is first important to consider what

was meant by “outside the scriptures.” It is often taken to mean a non-reliance on the written

word in general. This is in line with an attempt to formulate a school grounded solely in ultimate

truth. In light of ultimate truth, where all words are suspect and can only have relative merit, the

written teachings by nature are not what actually contain the true teachings. In practice, what was

also meant by the slogan was that Chan was not dependent on Indian sutras and commentary as
12
Ibid.
had been the case for Buddhism in China since its original introduction. 13 For many reasons the

flow of new scriptures from India was beginning to dry up (partially because most had already

been translated, partially due to political unrest and the decline of Buddhism in India). Mostly

though, the desire for literati to have a tradition in which they could play a living part became of

paramount importance. The Sung dynasty was a bureaucratic government as opposed to the

militaristic state of the Tang dynasty, and so the literati class had taken on a new prominence,

composing and shaping the government and Chinese society by extension. These literati were the

elite social class of the Sung era and wanted a tradition that would cater to their self conception

as such. Chan was readily available and able to oblige. Having kept to its ideals of pure teaching

not dependent on anything but ultimate truth for its spiritual authority, it was flexible in what

literature it could use to propagate itself, and so was not as threatened by a turn away from

traditional sutra study as were schools dependent on specific Indian texts for their legitimacy.

With the doctrine of non-reliance on scripture in mind, it was easy to allow literati a place in

composing and disseminating new forms of literature such as the Transmission of the Lamp

texts. It was also easy for Chan monks to develop a new form of literature specifically geared for

the minds of the literati, the koans.

The koans are a very peculiar literary form. As opposed to the vast majority of religious

literature across time and cultures, their intent was not to teach specific doctrines. They are

usually understood as transformative devices where through contemplation of a critical phrase

contained in the text one can break free of the illusory mind and have a sudden awakening to

ultimate reality. But contrary to other mantras or meditation devices the texts in which these

phrases are embedded were dense with references to Buddhist and Chinese cultural history

which add layers and texture to the critical phrases. This literary context becomes necessary for a
13
Halperin, Out of the Cloister, 65.
full understanding of the koan as a whole and is inseparable from the device and the awakening

it is designed to bring about. (cite koan article)14 As a method for facilitating spirituality,

especially in a time and place where most of the people were not educated or highly literate, this

was an incredibly elitist form of practice. It required that one had a studied literary background

and was adept at working with text to the point where one could work all the way through a text

as a means of attaining enlightenment. In short, it was a form of practice and literature designed

specifically for learned monks and laymen of the literati class. As an overtly elitist form it suited

the minds of the literati who might not readily see the value in extended hours of non-goal

oriented undirected meditation, while also playing into the sense of superiority of the literati and

other elites.15 It still technically fit into Chan rubric of a sudden enlightenment available to any

and all people by hinging this experience to a single word or phrase that anyone could

contemplate to its ultimate conclusion. But by raising the bar of entry to the well educated class

and then giving the validation of having a master verify your understanding by means of a

practitioner’s answer to the koan, it allowed the student a pride of exclusivity and the instant

gratification of having their awakening verified by a living Buddha. The literature itself again

appears to have been composed with sincere intention. The koan collections were mostly derived

from the biographies contained in the Transmission of the Lamp texts, which were were drawn

from already existent stories of how previous masters had attained their own awakenings. Many

of these stories appear to have been initially spread within just a few years of the lifetime of the

masters they depicted and so it is a hard case to make that they are all entirely fabrications. But

the way they were used as practice devices was specifically geared to attract patronage from the

literati, and in turn the literati encouraged further development of the practice. 16
14
Schlütter, How Zen Became Zen, 107.
15
Halperin, Out of the Cloister, 66.
16
Schlütter, How Zen Became Zen, 109.
 Even though the diverging practice methods of koan study and non-directed seated

meditation at times vied for patronage and ideological supremacy during Chan’s heyday, in

essence they served much the same function and had many of the same appealing aspects for

adherents and those in power. Non-directed meditation, as is described in methods such as silent

illumination and earlier texts as simply viewing the mind, is the purest form of practice for a

sudden enlightenment school. The meditation itself is ineffable and in its purest form there is no

meditation instruction that can actually be given. As Dogen Zenji put it in his own instructions

for meditation, “The zazen I speak of is not a meditation technique. It is simply the Dharma gate

of joyful ease.” 17 The act of sitting in meditation is itself the practice of meditation. There is

nothing else to be done because enlightenment is the inherent fundamental state of nature. So to

do anything but just sit on the cushion and be aware of yourself doing so is the only practice

possible. When Dogen tries to give more clarification he becomes even more obtuse, “learn to

take the backward step that turns the light and shine it inward. Your body and mind will drop

away of themselves, and your original face will manifest.” 18 None of these instructions say

anything besides the fact that enlightenment is nothing more than what already is. So true

practice can only be to stop trying to do anything at all. This is the practice of sudden awareness

of ultimate truth in its purest form and it is a hallmark of Chan Buddhism that it consistently

stuck to the principles of not compromising on this more than any other school of Buddhism. It

can be argued that koan study was a compromise towards skillful means, but many argue in

return that it too is a pure embodiment of sudden enlightenment because one isn’t exactly

contemplating a phrase. 19 It is said that to successfully answer a koan one must drop all

awareness of self separate from the phrase and allow oneself to be embodied by it and sudden
17
Nishijima and Cross, Master Dogen’s Shobogenzo, Book 1, 241.
18
Ibid.
19
Schlütter, How Zen Became Zen, 120.
awakening will occur, much in the same way Dogen is suggesting with his call to “take the

backward step.” And yet by sticking to principle and preserving the purest forms of practice,

Chan made itself a practice of elitism. A practice that has no lower rungs to climb and no levels

of attainment save one equivalent to the Buddha’s implies that those who practice in this manner,

and those who attain awakening through this practice, are Buddha’s in training or Buddha’s

already. To a literati elite this was an aspiration that would have been exactly what they wanted

to hear from their religion. 20 Furthermore, as a means of implying spiritual authority this practice

did the same thing the Transmission of the Lamp texts did in implying that the religious leaders

of Sung era Chan were equivalents of a Buddha, a perfect ideal for a government to present itself

within. Mark Halperin suggests that it was not necessarily intended for commoners to see

themselves in practice as becoming Buddhas themselves, but rather to hear the Chan teachers’

dharma talks on morality and self cultivation and accept them as the words of a Buddha as a

means of maintaining order in society.21 One sees from the examples of Tibet and Santideva that

cultures concerned with making the teachings available to a broader swath of people chose a path

more geared to the compromise of gradual cultivation.

Finally, the innovation that was most controversial and also served as some of the best

publicity for the Chan school was the iconoclastic stories and antics of some of its most

celebrated masters in the koan and Transmission of the Lamp texts, and later as part of ritualized

Chan services. In the texts they are presented as the spontaneous actions of enlightened masters

intended to induce awakening in the student who encounters him. These could take the form of

odd non-sequitur questions or answers and irrational seeming physical gestures including

20
Halperin, Out of the Cloister, 10.
21
Ibid., 66.
violence such as the famous case of Nansen cutting a cat in half, or the many accounts of masters

hitting and slapping students either in approval or disapproval. 22 This seeming odd behavior for

religious leaders is another example of the expression of trying to fit something as inexpressible

as ultimate truth into active institutional form. Despite its reputation for unruliness and anarchic

behavior, Chan as it was practiced in monasteries was as highly structured and formalized as the

society which it existed in. The problem with fitting an embodiment of sudden enlightenment

into such a formalized setting it is that it does not appear congruous with the realization that all

forms are ultimately empty. In glorifying the antics of these enlightened masters it lent further

credibility to the notion that these masters were truly liberated beings, especially in context of the

repressed and rigid society and culture that surrounded them. It cannot be proven from the

written record I have found, but I would apply simple psychology and say that this freedom

provided an outlet, even if only as spectators, for the literati whose own lives were so formalized

and structured. While the stories from the Tang era were said to be spontaneous actions, by the

Sung these types of behaviors had been confined to the ritualized setting of the dharma hall and

dramatic exchanges or performances were an expected part of the masters’ stories during his

regular lecture. Accounts of literati criticizing certain performances as dull, uninspired, or

contrived show that such performances were an expected and desired part of the experience. This

criticism actually serves to prove the authentically inspired nature of these types of talks and

performances. The fact that there was criticism of some masters as appearing contrived means it

was expected that such performance normally were and should be authentically inspired.

The irony is that while having this iconoclasm be a part of the lore and ritual of the

religion makes it seem as if this behavior is being promoted, what actually happens instead is just

the opposite. By preserving anarchic seeming behavior as spontaneous action in stories, and then
22
Poceski, “Chan Rituals of the Abbots Ascending the Dharma Hall to Preach,” 95.
only facilitating its continued existence within a ritualized performative context thereafter, what

Sung era Chan had actually done is contain and in effect neuter this type of behavior. As has

been pointed out in this class, Chan groups that attempted to actualize this ideal into their own

regular practice were quickly criticized and marginalized. This was the case with Mazu’s

disciples who, despite their popularity and success in their own day, were later attributed as

disciples of other masters when Mazu’s own iconoclasm was called into question by orderly

minded literati and critics of later generations.23 Chan in the Sung era was caught in a bind. It had

to preserve this type of behavior in some form in order to affirm its own credibility in being a

container of the pure ultimate truth of the emptiness of forms, and yet to actually promote it was

potentially destabilizing to the order it was being used to help establish. By ritualizing and

mythologizing it, this type of behavior was both preserved and perfectly contained as if under

glass. Further by relegating it to the bizarre antics only of enlightened masters, the point was

made that for everyone else normative behavior was the expected custom unless one had been

verified as a Buddha.

In this paper I have overlooked many circumstantial issues which also contributed to the

rise of Chan going into the Sung era. Most notably these include geographical issues coming out

of the Five Dynasties period following the Tang Dynasty and the granting of imperial

designation plaques to Chan monasteries before and during the Sung era which allowed it to

escape the persecutions that diminished the roles of other once prominent Buddhist schools.

These issues were not overlooked in an effort to downplay their importance, but rather in the

space allowed I was more interested in investigating the peculiarities of Chan as a distinct school

of Buddhism that allowed it to flourish once given these circumstantial advantages.

23
Jia, The Hongzhou School of Chan Buddhism in Eighth- through Tenth-Century China, 111.
 I have been arguing that Chan Buddhism in the Sung managed to do something

seemingly impossible. It maintained its purity and heart while at the same time flourishing under

a rigid imperial regime and helping to serve the aims of that state. Even more unexpected is that

it appears that the purity of its practice and teachings are precisely what made it so able to serve

in that capacity. Above all, Chan’s strict adherence to a doctrine of the emptiness of form

allowed it to adapt to the needs of Sung era society more easily than other schools of Buddhism

of the time, and this purity of practice gave its leaders a spiritual authority that put it above

native Chinese religions of the time as well. These developments, while hastened by the onset of

the Sung Dynasty, were the culmination of several hundred years of slow adaptation of

Buddhism into Chinese culture. As a modern Zen practitioner in a country where Buddhism has

existed for not much more than 50 years in solid form, I look to this as inspiration. Identifying

with 11th century literati who looked at Indian Buddhism and wondered how its true heart could

fit into their society, I look to Zen now and become excited to be a part and witness to the

inevitable evolution of the same empty forms.

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