Listed here are the earliest texts of Ch’an, using quoted
material from Broughton, McRae, and Chappell (see color coding below).
Especially of note are the three Records of the Bodhidharma Anthology (1.),
“the beginnings of the recorded sayings genre of Ch'an literature,” as well as Essentials of Cultivating Mind (4.) and the Tao-hsin section (...Pacifying [or Calming] the Mind) of the Record of the Lanka Masters and
Disciples (8.) which contain the wisdom of East Mountain Ch’an (arguably the
actual beginnings of Zen) in later compilations of Hongren and Daoxin
teachings respectively (i.e. not written by Hongren and Daoxin, but compiled by students later).
Available English translations are underlined. Selections of the Daoxin (Tao-hsin) and Hongren (Hung-jen) texts are included at the end of the post (brief excerpts of the Records of the Bodhidharma Anthology are available from a previous post
here).
Blue = Broughton (Bodhidharma Anthology)
Brown = McRae (Seeing Through Zen)
Green = McRae (The Northern School and the Formation of Early Chan Buddhism)
Purple = Chappell (The Teachings of the Fourth Ch'an Patriarch Tao-hsin)
Black = minor aumdada notes
The discovery in the early part of this century of a small,
walled-up cave within the Mo-kao Grottoes located outside the oasis town of
Tun-huang in Northwest China has led to the retrieval of a lost early Ch’an
literature of T’ang Dynasty times (618—907)…
About three hundred Chinese manuscripts relating to Ch’an
have so far been discovered in the Tun-huang collections. Many are fragments of
scrolls, and we have a number of scrolls bearing the same works. The total
number of separate works included in these manuscripts is roughly one hundred,
and it is from these one hundred titles that a list of the earliest works must
be extracted…
Codicological work by a Japanese scholar outside the field
of Zen studies distributes Ch'an manuscripts into three chronological strata:
1. 750-780, a period during which Chinese cultural influence
still held sway at the remote oasis center
2. 780s to c. 860, the period of Tibetan occupation of
Tun-huang and its aftermath, during which Tun-huang's cultural fabric was
severed from that of China
3. the 900s, when Tun-huang was brought once again under
Chinese rule by a powerful local Chinese family; sometimes referred to as the
Return-to-Righteousness Army period in reference to the victorious local
Chinese army; in spite of Tunhuang's being in Chinese hands once again, the
cultural link to China proper was not fully restored.
Here is a list of texts that are found on manuscripts
classified as early stratum. With some confidence we can say that these are
among the oldest Ch'an books. For each of these texts, with the exception of the Records,
I will give a brief description of contents, an edition if available, and an
English translation if available.
1. The three Records of the Bodhidharma Anthology
Of the nine manuscripts containing material from the
Bodhidharma Anthology, Ueyama…classifies…portions of Record I and Record II
and…a small fragment of Record III as early stratum. He classifies all the
others with the exception of Stein Ch. 7159 as middle stratum. Thus, of the
seven texts in the anthology, only the Records are to be found on early-stratum
manuscripts. This reinforces any claim that the Records are among our earliest
Ch' an documents.
See Bodhidharma Anthology translated by Jeremy L. Broughton
Record I contains quite a few colloquial elements… These
colloquial forms should alert us. They are the beginnings of a tendency that
culminates in Sung Dynasty Ch'an literature, the most conspicuous
characteristic of which is the use of colloquial language. Of course, in that
literature the colloquial once again solidifies into a literary language…
Record I takes the first big step toward breaking into the colloquial range of
the recorded-sayings (yu-lu) genre of Ch'an literature; Record II is on the verge
of breaking into that range. The vibrancy, the resonance with the spoken word,
tells us more about original Ch'an than Tan-lin's elegant, balanced Two
Entrances. These texts tell us of the deepening Sinification of Buddhism, in
the sense of a move toward a spoken Chinese form of expression and away from
the venerable, but artificial, style of the translation and commentarial
traditions…”
Record II truly constitutes the beginnings of the
recordedsayings genre of Ch'an literature. There is a direct line from this
work to the vast literature of Ch'an recorded sayings, and neglect of Record II
has led us to place the beginnings of the recorded-sayings genre much too late
in the history of Ch'an literature-usually in the ninth century.
2. Former Worthies Gather at the Mount Shuang-feng Stupa and
Each Talks of the Dark Principle (Hsien-te chi yu shuang-feng shan t'a ko t’an
hsuan-li)
The successor of these two Records is a rather strange,
small text…, a collection of sayings (each with the same introductory verb,
yiueh, as Record III) for twelve figures at an imaginary memorial gathering for
the “fifth patriarch” Hung-jen at his stupa on Mount Shuang-feng just north of
the Yangtze River in Hupeh. It is a very brief recorded-sayings text but lacks
any colloquial forms and is designed to provide a particular slant on the
genealogy of the embryonic tradition…
See Bodhidharma Anthology - Appendix B translated by Jeremy
L. Broughton
3. Treatise on Perfect Enlightenment (Yuan-ming lun)
NO· 3 was compiled by someone who relied on dhyana practice
grounded in the Ta-ch'eng ch'i-hsin lun to realize the perfect teaching
(yuan-chiao), as opposed to the gradual and sudden teachings. The perfect
teaching is a meditative concentration in which one realizes that everything is
equal to space. The opening reflects the opening of the Two Entrances. In place
of principle and practice we find the categories of the Ch'i-hsin lun, the two
gates of sentient-being mind: Thusness and arising-extinguishing.
For an edition and translation, see McRae, The Northern
School, 18-44 (from the back) and 149-71.
…probably taken from a lecture or lectures by Shen-hsiu or
another Northern School figure, perhaps given to introduce a written treatise
or commentary…this text is the most comprehensive statement of the teachings of
the Northern School.
4. Essentials of Cultivating Mind (Hsiu-hsin yao lun)
NO· 4 is a.recorded-sayings work for Hung-jen of East
Mountain. It is composed of two parts, the former consisting of the master's
answers to disciples' questions and the latter a collection of the master's
statements interspersed with occasional questions and answers. The main motifs
are: the metaphor of the sun obscured by clouds; guarding mind (shou-hsin); and
two types of meditation practice, one involving the visualization of the sun at
an appropriate distance and the other a slow and peaceful ripening of gazing
(shu-k'an) until the movements of consciousness disappear.
For an edition and translation, see McRae, The Northern
School, 1-16 (from the back) and 121-32.
When Hongren's students moved from the provincial community
at Huangmei to the imperial center, one of their first steps was to compile a
written record of their master's teachings. This was the Treatise on the
Essentials of Cultivating the Mind, which includes the straightforward
admission that it was compiled not by Hongren himself but by his students,
presumably after his demise. Actually, this is the earliest example within the
Chan tradition of the composition of texts representing a given master's
teachings, that is, of texts that were compiled and edited shortly after the
master's death. The Treatise on the Essentials of Cultivating the Mind may have
been prepared for use by Faru, who taught at Mount Song for a few years prior to
his death in 689; the text was almost certainly known to Shenxiu by about the
same time, and it was quoted in other texts during the second decade of the
eighth century.
Although Daoxin is treated in Chan hagiography as Hongren's
predecessor, the written teachings attributed to Daoxin only appeared after the
text attributed retrospectively to Hongren
5. On Examining Mind (Kuan-hsin lun)
NO· 5 is a work of Hung-jen's disciple Shen-hsiu. It came to
be attributed to Bodhidharma and presented as a dialogue between Bodhidharma
and Hui-k'o. It opens with a statement on examining mind (kuan-hsin) and the
twofold function of mind-pure mind and defiled mind. It gives many metaphorical
equivalents: the six bandits are the six consciousnesses; the three realms of
Buddhist cosmology are the three poisons of greed, hostility, and stupidity;
the three eons of the bodhisattva course are the mind of the three poisons, and
so forth. The thrust isthat mere external seeking without internal cultivation
is useless.
For a translated edition, see Zen Dawn by J.C. Cleary
6. Three short treatises attributed to the fifth- to
sixth-century figure Seng-ch'ou: Dhyana Master Ch'ou's Idea (Ch'ou ch'an-shih
I); Dhyana Master Ch'ou's Medicinal Prescription for Curing the Outflows (Ch'ou
ch'an-shih yao-fang liao yu-lou); and Treatise on the Mahayana Mind-Range
(Ta-ch'eng hsin-hsing lun)
The first of no. 6 discusses quieting mind (an-hsin) in
dialogue format. It seems to echo much in the Records. The second discusses
eight medicines, such as one-third ounce of faithfully receiving the Dharma,
two-thirds ounce of pure zeal, and so forth. One is to "grind up the above
eight flavors with the kindness cutter and pulverize them in the samadhi mortar
before processing them with a nonduality silk strainer." The third sets up
two types of exertion-the gate of entering principle and the gate of producing
function, clearly echoing the Two Entrances. In the functional mode the
practitioner behaves and speaks in a manner that does not contravene the ways
of the world. This approximates the first two of the four practices. This piece
also contains the same sort of Records vocabulary.
It appears no English translations are available as of yet.
7. Record of the Transmission of the Dharma Treasure
(Ch'uanfa-pao chi; datable to sometime after 713)
NO. 7 was compiled by the layman Tu Fei, who had a close
relationship with disciples of Shen-hsiu. It records the transmission of Dharma
down from Bodhidharma, providing biographical entries for Bodhidharma, Hui-k'o,
Seng-ts'an, Tao-hsin, Hung-jen, Fa-ju, and Shen-hsiu. Thus it accords Fa-ju the
preeminent position as Hung-jen's successor and makes Shen-hsiu the successor
of Fa-ju. It criticizes wall-examining and the four practices as
"provisional, one-comer formulations."
For a…translation, see McRae, The Northern School, 255-69.
written around the year 712 on behalf of the members of the
Northern School. As the earliest extant “transmission of the lamp” text…
8. Record of the Lanka Masters and Disciples (Leng-chia
shih-tzu chi; datable to 719-20)
No. 8 was compiled by Ching-chueh, whose main master was
Hsuan-tse. It records the transmission of the "lamp of dhyana," which
illumines in silence, providing entries for Gunabhadra, Bodhidharma, Hui-k'o,
Seng-ts' an, Tao-hsin, Hung-jen, and Shen-hsiu. At the eighth generation it
gives the names of four of Shen-hsiu's disciples. Fa-ju is deleted. The most
striking innovation here is the inclusion of Gunabhadra, the translator of
the four-roll Lankavatara Sutra, as the first patriarch, with Bodhidharma as
his successor. It is not just a string of biographical entries, but a virtual
compendium of proto-Ch'an lore. It contains sayings for certain patriarchs,
quotes the whole of the Biography and Two Entrances, provides the earliest
extant exposition of cross-legged sitting, and so forth. It emphasizes the
concrete practice of "pure sitting" (ching-tso).
For an edition see Zen Dawn translated by J.C. Cleary
Also see The Teachings of the Fourth Ch'an Patriarch Tao-hsin
by David Chappell in Early Chan in China and Tibet
That is, the genealogical presentation of the Chan
transmission was first recorded on paper in the early years of metropolitan
Chan activity. The earliest recorded instance of this was in the epitaph for a
certain Faru, a student of Hongren's who died in 689 (see p. 35), and by the
second decade of the eighth century, the later followers of Hongren had
produced two separate texts describing the transmission from Bodhidharma to
Shenxiu. These two texts, which I do not discuss individually here, are known
to contemporary scholarship as early “transmission of the lamp” histories after
the title of the defining text in the genre written several centuries later,
the Record of the Transmission of the Lamp [compiled in] the Jingde [period],
or Jingde chuandeng lu.8 There are differences of content and emphasis between
the two “Northern school” texts, but they both express essentially the same
doctrine: that the central teaching of Buddhism was transmitted through a
sequence of patriarchs reaching Shenxiu and his disciples.
[T]he discovery by Hu Shih in 1926 of two Tun-huang
manuscripts (one in Paris and the other in London) of the Leng chia shih tz'u
chi ["Record of the Masters and Disciples of the Lankavatara," cited
hereafter as LCSTC] gave us a reasonably authentic version of Tao-hsin's Ju-tao
an-hsin yao fang pien fa men…(cited hereafter as JTFM)…However, the best source for our study of Tao-hsin appears
in…the LCSTC complied by Ching-chüeh (683-750?) that Tao-hsin achieves his
highest position. Although this text is generally placed in the K'ai-yüan
period (712_741), Yanagida and Hu Shih feel it was written by 716 whereas
Yin-shun dates it about 720…
The -LCSTC lists two works written by Tao-hsin: the P'u sa
chieh fa and the Ju-tao an-hsin yao fang pien fa men ("The Fundamental
Expedient Teachings for Calming the Mind Which Attains Enlightenment,"
cited as JTFM). Although the P'u sa chieh fa no longer survives, it is the
consensus of modern scholars that the lengthy description of Tao-hsin's ideas
in the LCSTC is, in fact, the text of Tao-hsin's JTFM.
Selections:
from Hongren's ...Cultivating Mind
Throughout the canon, the Tathagata preaches extensively
about all types of transgression and good fortune, causes and conditions, and
rewards and retributions. He also draws upon all the various things of this
world, mountains, rivers, the earth, plants, trees, etc. to make innumerable
metaphors. He also manifests innumerable supernormal powers and various kinds
of transformations. All these are just the Buddha’s way of teaching foolish
sentient beings. Since they have various kinds of desires and a myriad of
psychological differences, the Tathagata draws them into permanent bliss
according to their mental tendencies.
Understand clearly that the Buddha Nature embodied within
sentient beings is inherently pure, like a sun underlaid by clouds. By just
distinctly maintaining awareness of the True Mind, the clouds of false thoughts
will go away, and the sun of wisdom will appear. Why make any further study of
knowledge based on the senses, which only leads to the suffering of samsara?
All concepts, as well as affairs of the three periods of
time, should be understood according to the metaphor of polishing a mirror:
When the dust is gone the Nature naturally becomes manifest. That which is
learned by the ignorant mind is completely useless. True learning is that which
is learned by the inactive or unconditioned, wu wei mind, which never ceases
correct mindfulness. Although this is called “true learning,” ultimately there
is nothing to be learned. Why is this?
Because the self and nirvana are both nonsubstantial, they
are neither different nor the same. Therefore, the essential principle of the
words “nothing to be learned” is true.
One must maintain clear awareness of the True Mind without
generating false thoughts or the illusion of personal possession. Therefore,
the Nirvana Sutra says: “To understand that the Buddha does not actually preach
the Dharma is called having sufficiently listened to the Buddha’s preaching.” Therefore,
maintaining awareness of the True Mind is the basic principle of the entire
canon…
All the Buddhas of the past, present, and future are
generated within one’s own consciousness. When you do not generate false
thoughts, the Buddhas are generated within your consciousness. When your
illusions of personal possession have been extinguished, the Buddhas are
generated within your consciousness. You will only achieve buddhahood by
maintaining awareness of the True Mind. Therefore, maintaining awarenss of the
mind is the patriarch of the all the Buddhas of past, present, and future.
If one were to expand upon the four previous topics, how
could one ever explain them completely? My only desire is that you discern the
fundamental mind for yourselves. Therefore, I sincerely tell you: Make effort!
Make effort!
I base my teaching on the Lotus Sutra in which the Buddha
says: “I have presented you with a great cart and a treasure of valuables,
including bright jewels and wondrous medicines. Even so, you do not take them.
What extreme suffering! Alas, alas!” If you can cease generating false thoughts
and the illusion of personal possessions, then all the various types of merit
will become perfect and complete. Do not try to search outside yourself, which
only leads to the suffering of samsara.
Maintain the same state of mind in every moment of thought,
in every phase of mental activity. Do not enjoy the present while planting
seeds of future suffering; by doing so you only deceive yourself and others and
cannot escape from the realm of birth and death.
Make effort! Make effort! Although it may seem futile now,
your present efforts constitute the causes for your future enlightenment. Do
not let time pass in vain while only wasting energy. The sutra says: “Foolish
sentient beings will reside forever in hell as if pleasantly relaxing in a
garden. There are no modes of existence worse than their present state.” We
sentient beings fit this description. Having no idea how horribly terrifying
this world really is, we never have the least intention of leaving! How awful!
translated by John R. McRae in The Northern
School and the Formation of Early Ch’an Buddhism
.
from Daoxin's ...Pacifying the Mind
The fundamental teachings of mine are [1] the mind of all
the Buddhas is the First Principle, based on the Lankavatara Sutra; and [2]
hsing san mei means that the mind which is aware of the Buddha is the Buddha,
whereas [the mind which] does false thinking is the ordinary person, based on
the Wen shu shuo po jo ching…
Every aspect of the mind and body, [even] lifting your foot
and putting it down, always is the place of enlightenment. All of your behavior
and actions are enlightenment.
The P'u hsien kuan ching says: "The sea of all karmic
hindrances totally arises from false thinking (wang hsiang). Those who desire
to repent should sit upright and contemplate true reality (shih- hsiang)."
This is called Repentence according to the First Principle, which eradicates
the mind of the three poisons, the grasping mind, and the conceptualizing mind.
If one continuously meditates on Buddha thought after thought, suddenly there
will be clarity and serenity, and still further not even an object of thought.
The Ta p'in ching says: "No object of thought (wu-suo-nien ) means to be
thinking on Buddha (nienfo).
Why is it called wu-suo-nien? It means the mind which is
"thinking on Buddha" is called thinking on no object (wu-suo-nien).
Apart from mind there is no Buddha at all. Apart from Buddha there is no mind
at all. Thinking on Buddha is identical to the thinking mind. To seek the mind
means to seek for the Buddha.
Why is this? Consciousness is without form. The Buddha lacks
any outer appearance. When you understand this truth, it is identical to
calming the mind (an-hsin). If you always are thinking on Buddha, grasping
[onto externals] does not arise, [and everything] disappears and is without
form, and thinking is impartial without [false] discrimination. To enter into
this state, the mind which is thinking on Buddha disappears, and further it is
not even necessary to indicate [the mind as Buddha]. When you see this, your
mind is none other than the body of the real and true nature of the Tathägata.
It is also called the True Dharma; it is also called Buddha Nature; it is also
called the Real Nature or Real Ultimate of the various dharmas; it is also
called the Pure Land; it is also called enlightenment, the Diamond Samadhi, and
original enlightenment; it is also called the realm of nirväna and widsom
(prajña). Although the names are innumerable they are all the same One Essence,
and do not mean a subject of contemplation nor an object of contemplation.
When the mind is impartial like this, without fail it is
made clear and pure and always appears in front of you so that the various
conditions are not able to become obstructive. Why is this? Because all these
phenomena are the body of the One Dharma of the Tathägata. When one stays in
this unified mind, all bondage and illusion spontaneously disappear. Within a
single speck of dust are all innumerable realms. Innumerable realms are
collected on the tip of a single hair.
Because their original nature is suchness (emptiness), there
is not any mutual interference. The Hua yen ching says: "There is one
volume of scripture [explaining that] in a single speck of dust one can see the
phenomena of 3000 chiliocosms'. As briefly pointed out, it is impossible to
exhaust everything when it comes to [describing the methods for] calming the
mind (an-hsin). In this, skillfulness comes from the heart…
Neither by [trying to] meditate on the Buddha, nor by
[trying to] grab hold of the mind, nor by seeing the mind, nor by analyzing the
mind, nor by reflections, nor by discernment, nor by dispersing confusion, but
by thorough identification with the natural rhythms of things. Don’t force
anything to do. Don’t force anything to stay. Finally abiding in the one sole
purity, the mind spontaneously becomes lucid and pure.
translated by David Chappell in The Teachings of
the Fourth Ch'an Patriarch Tao-hsin
