Chan is Zen

Mahayana Buddhism spread to central Asia, Himalaya areas including Tibet, and China, Mongolia, Korea, and Japan. Buddhism got many local accommodations or adaptations: The old tree has a stem with many branches.

Chinese Chan Buddhism is the "parent" and Japanese Zen Buddhism is the offshoot. Chan Buddhism developed in China from the 6th century CE onwards, with many variants, and became dominant during the Tang and Song dynasties. After the Yuan dynasty (in the thirteenth and fourteenth century CE), Chan more or less fused with Pure Land Buddhism, and it spread east to Japan as Zen in the thirteenth century. Chan also spread south to Vietnam as Thien and north to Korea as Seon.

Chinese Buddhism

The main part of this section rests on Dwight Goddard's introduction to A Buddhist Bible.

When Buddhism came to China, Taoism was the faith of the common people. Furthermore, deep psychological insight of the Mahayana Buddhist Scriptures came as an intellectual revelation to Chinese scholars. A Chinese type of Buddhism began to manifest, one which had much in common with Taoism. Wisdom doctrines of Tao and the Buddha could be harmonised without very much strain that we know of. Sanskrit terms of Indian Buddhism slowly gave way to Chinese, the term Tao was freely used for Buddhahood - yet also signifying dynamic activity. One of the early Chan (Zen) Masters said: "Buddha is Tao, Tao is dhyana."

To take things as they are and as they come is the teaching of Taoist wisdom. However, Buddhism is quite opposed to any lazy inertness in life. Buddhism teaches that good karma [good fortune] is to be attained by a series of well regulated approaches, and includes clear thinking, focused meditation, and attained wisdom.

Buddhist saints sought solitude so as to attain Self-realisation, of ultimate Truth. The result of the contact of Indian Buddhism with Taoism was a Buddhist variant discipline that "makes monks" that rather often are to be found in some solitary hermitage, busy and cheerful.

Here is something Hsuanchien is reported to have said to his disciples - he is usually reckoned as an extremist Chan Buddhist: "The Bodhisattvas are only dung-heap coolies. Nirvana and bodhi are dead stumps to tie your donkey to."

Words like these illustrate how the literature of Chan Buddhism abounds with extravagant, flippant-looking or seemingly foolish remarks.

For a century it was a question whether the result of the intermingling would be Taoism as modified by Buddhism, or Buddhism modified by Taoism. Even down to today Taoist temples and Taoist monks are often indistinguishable from Buddhist temples.

By the 300s CE most of the outstanding Mahayana scriptures had been translated into Chinese. The first name that emerges in this connection is the monk Tao-an (d 385), learned in both Confucian and Taoist lore. It is easy to see from his writings that he looked on the Buddhist practices as good working methods.

Tao-an left a disciple, Hui-yuan (333-416), who was also a great scholar and learned in Taoist mysticism. He is most remembered as the founder of the White Lotus Society, where people concentrated on the Divine Name. Hui-yuan is regarded as the founder of the Pure Land Sects of China and Japan. He was interested in the serious practise of dhyana and to him the repetition of the Divine Name was the best method for attaining concentration of mind. There was nothing new in the practice of dhyana; it had existed in India for a thousand years and was taken over by Buddha and given a new content of meaning as the Eighth Stage of his Noble Path.

After Hui-yuan, one of his disciples, Tao-seng ( -434) with his disciple, Tao-you, developed the doctrine of "Sudden Awakening", that thereafter entered into Chinese Buddhism. By this teaching the old conception of the gradual attainment of Buddhahood was challenged and in its place was offered, through the right concentration of dhyana, the possibility of sudden and perfect enlightenment.

Distinctive Chinese elements: A more strenuous dhyana, and the possibility of a sudden awakening and attainment of enlightenment, were mingled with the Indian philosophy of the Mahayana.

The next outstanding name of Chan Buddhism in China, is Bodhidharma. He arrived in South China about 470 AD and lived and travelled in China for decades.

An Imperial Meeting

Emperor Wu of Liang was very favorably inclined toward Buddhism; he founded temples, supported monks, and translated scriptures, but when he asked Bodhidharma during an interview what credit he himself had earned thereby, the old monk replied,

"None at all, your majesty."

To the question, "What is the first principle of the holy doctrine?" Bodhidharma replied, "There is nothing in it to be called 'holy,' Sire."

"Who is it, then, that confronts me?" asked the emperor.

"I don't know, Your Majesty."

Bodhidharma practised for nine years a kind of concentrative dhyana that came to be called wall-gazing by the single method of mind-concentration on Mind-essence. To Bodhidharma, books, logical ideas, study, ritual, worship were useless; only simple but "seeking" and tireless "wall-gazing" was enough. [Cf. A Zen study]

His teachings

Inasmuch as one's own inner conscience is Mind-essence, why seek for it elsewhere? This "treasure of the heart" is the only Buddha there ever was, or is, or ever will be. There is no Buddha but your own thoughts. Buddha is Tao. Tao is dhyana. Dhyana cannot be understood by the definitions of the wise. Dhyana is a man's successful seeing into his own fundamental nature."

Mind-essence in its undifferentiated, no-thought, state may be transmitted by a Buddha. I have no interest in monastic rules, nor merely sitting in meditation."

In Bodhidharma's distrust of scriptures and intellectual knowledge, he made an exception of the Lankavatara Sutra, because that sutra taught the doctrine of Self-realisation of the Oneness of all things in Mind-essence.

After nine years of "wall-gazing" he got one disciple who understood him, Hui-k'e (486-593). Bodhidharma gave him certain instruction that could only be transmitted from mind to mind, and gave him his own begging-bowl and robe and his copy of the Lankavatara Sutra, which afterward became the insignia of the Chan Patriarchate.

At first and for a long time the "Sudden Awakening" Chan school was a hard one to attend. From that hard school rose a succession of Chan Masters. About the Mind-essence Hui-k'e is reported to have said, 'I know it always in a most convincing manner but to express it in words—that is impossible.' On this Bodhidharma said, 'That is the Mind-essence itself."

After Hui-k'e had attained his deep experience, he made light of his great learning, and sought for perfect enlightenment. He withdrew to a hermitage in the mountains and lived with the lowest classes of society till he was finally murdered by an envious Master.

Very little is known about the Third Patriarch, Seng-ts'an ( -606). He is said to have handed over his bowl and the robe to Tao-hsin (580-651), who also was also a recluse.

The Fifth Patriarch was Hung-jen (605-675). He was a near neighbour or relative of Seng-ts'an and came to be with him when quite young. With Hung-jen, Chan Buddhism was made publicly known: Hung-jen headed a great establishment with hundreds of disciples and gained imperial favour. Among Hung-jen's disciples were two who afterwards came into great public notice; Hui-neng and Shen-hsui. When the time came for Hung-jen to appoint a successor, he passed by Shen-hsui and appointed Hui-neng, author of the Platform Sutra, an influential scripture.

The outstanding features of Hui-neng's Chan included:

1. Distrust of all dogmatic teachings.
2. An enquiring mind and earnest search into the depths of one's own nature.
3. Faith in the possibilities of such an enquiring mind, and in Self-Realisation of Enlightenment, Buddahood.
4. Adjusting to that self-realisation in life by "assonance" and congruence.

The conception of the active, wise Tao gave depth and substance to Hui-neng's convictions. He made little of the personal Buddha and very much of Prajna [Heavenly Wisdom] in which he saw the Ultimate Principle of Tao. The term he used for Ultimate Reality, and made so much of, was Mind-essence. Self-realisation of this was all the Buddha he cared about. It was Buddhahood and universal, undifferentiated and inscrutable enough. Thus, to Hui-neng, self-realisation of Mind-essence and Buddhahood were the same thing, and found within one's own mind from earnest dhyana (contemplation, deep meditation).

About Hui-neng's Platform Sutra

The Platform Sutra was created when issues of who held the true patriarchal succession and what were the true Chan teachings had come to the fore. At the core of the Platform Sutra is the dramatic story of how a poor and despised commoner by the name of Huineng becomes a Chan patriarch. The text has Huineng first tell his own story, then deliver teachings. Huineng confers a set of formless precepts [!] on the members of his audience.

Since the eighth century, versions of the Platform Sutra have been widely read and retold in East Asia, writes Morten Schkütter. The origins of this foundational Chan (Zen) text can be traced back to the beginnings of seventh-century China.

The text is purported to be the recorded words of Hui-neng, who was understood to be the Sixth Patriarch of Chan and the father of all later Chan/Zen Buddhism. And since there are different versions, most of them probably are not, not exactly. For example, Dr Philip Yampolsky's (1920-96) eminent translation of an early manuscript of the Platform Sutra contains extensive explanatory notes and an edited, amended version of an old Chinese text.

Dr Yampolsky critically considers the background and historical setting of the work and locates Huineng's place within the history and legends of Chan Buddhism.

The study of the Dunhuang version of the Platform Sutra brings us closer to the roots of Chan and Zen. Even though Zen studies have advanced considerably since the first publication of his Platform Sutra, Yampolsky's book is still highly valuable for its sources and its skilful and generally reliable translation of the Dunhuang manuscript. In the updated version of 2008, the original text and pagination is unaltered, but names are different, because pinyin transcription of Chinese is becoming the standard and Yampolsky's first edition of 1967 uses the older Wade-Giles system.

The early manuscript that Yampolsky used, was found in a hidden temple library at Dunhuang in western China. This text dates to ca. 780 CE. It is in many ways quite different from later manuscripts, and is thereby a good source for understanding the early development of Chan Buddhism. Philip Yampolsky studied and translated the Dunhuang manuscript and got it first published in 1967.

Another Dunhuang manuscript has surfaced since, and in better condition than the one Dr Yampolsky worked with. This manuscript allows Morten Schlütter to observe in his foreword to the reprint edition that the manuscript Yampolsky's used, is

full of scribal errors, missing words, and garbled passages. To make better sense of the text, Yampolsky partly relied on the emendations made earlier by Daisetz T. Suzuki with Koda Rentaro and by Ui Hakuju, but he also used a Japanese edition of a Chinese version of the Platform Sutra, likely from 1031 (known as the Koshoji edition) to make corrections. However, in recent years a second Dunhuang manuscript of the Platform Sutra has come to light (discovered in the Dunhuang County Museum). That manuscript is in much better condition than the manuscript Yampolsky had to work with, and we can now see that some of his corrections made unwarranted changes to the text. . . . The precepts of formlessness (or formless precepts) were clearly of central importance to the Dunhuang Platform Sutra, a point that Yampolsky acknowledged but did little to address.

There is a volume with a collection of up-to-date studies of the Platform Sutra. They go into different sides to the text and the background of Chan as well. (Schlütter and Teiser 2012)