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This chapter discusses the role in the Chan tradition of Dongshan Liangjie (807–869, J. Tōzan Ryōkai), considered the founder of the Caodong lineage, one of the “five houses” of Chan, which became Sōtō Zen after being transmitted to Japan by Eihei Dōgen (1200–1253). In the crucial story of Dongshan’s parting with his teacher Yunyan Tansheng (781–841), Yunyan’s emblematic Dharma utterance, “Just this is it,” triggers Dongshan’s ensuing awakening while wading across a stream. This event and the verses by Dongshan provoked by it, present central themes for Dongshan’s career: the teaching of suchness, the praxis of mindful presence that engages it, and the subtlety of the dynamic relationship between student and teacher in this praxis. These themes remain pivotal in the Caodong/Sōtō lineage even to its modern expressions.

Chan/Zen Buddhism is a tradition known for the transmission of lineages whereby a current master at once pays obeisance to and severely criticizes the patriarchs. East Asian training traditions generally emphasize that a disciple needs to be able to surpass his teacher, who must be magnanimous enough to encourage and acknowledge the value of the comeuppance. The literary works of Dōgen (1200–1253) epitomize this process. This chapter examines the various ways Dōgen’s image and sense of self-identity is formed by his twofold approach to his predecessors. First, it surveys the full extent of Chan masters cited by Dōgen and what this indicates about his view of sectarian transmission; for example, who he cites and why he praises or refutes their teachings. Next, it focuses on the ways that Chinese Caodong school masters Hongzhi (1091–1157) and Rujing (1163–1228) influenced Dōgen’s philosophy and literary style and helped shape his view of monastic institutional administration and practice.

This chapter describes the rise of Chan Buddhism by focusing on the Linji and Caodong schools and their leaders such as Miyun Yuanwu, Hanyue Fazang, Muchen Daomin, Feiyin Tongrong, Zhanran Yuancheng, Wuming Huijing, Yinyuan Longgi, Shilian Dashan, and Fang Yizhi. It shows that these prominent figures first rose under the patronage of the literati, and later their lineage spread all over China in the late Ming and early Qing. During the Ming‐Qing transition, many literati became monks.

This chapter explores the relationship between Dōgen's thought and that of leading Song Chan thinkers of the Caodong (Sōtō) and Linji (Rinzai) lineages, particularly the intense rivalry between the approaches of “silent illumination” and “introspecting the kōan.”. When considering the concept of silent illumination, Chan refers to the Chan style of Hongzhi, a fellow disciple with Zhenxie of Danxia and a member of the same Caodong order as Dōgen's teacher, Rujing. Although not necessarily aligning himself with this view, it is clear that the style Dōgen disagreed with most strongly was introspecting the kōan Zen, represented by the illustrious Linji master Dahui (1089–1163), whom Dōgen both praised and excoriated in various writings. The chapter addresses the following questions that are critical to Dōgen studies: What kind of attributes characterized the paths of silent illumination and introspecting-the-kōan during the Song Dynasty? What connection does Dōgen Zen, which resulted from his importation of Song Chan to Kamakura Japan, have with the various Song schools and approaches? In short, it considers the characteristics of Dōgen Zen against the currents of Chinese Chan history and ideology in order to understand and explicates the influences Dōgen received, as well as the unique features of religious practice he formulated and promulgated.

This conclusion discusses the sectarianism seen in Dahui and other Linji masters. The apex of the rise of the new Caodong tradition coincided with a time when the Chan school as a whole had begun to feel itself under pressure and had become more dependent on support from the literati. This helps to explain why the reinvented Caodong tradition may not have been regarded as a welcome addition by the other Chan traditions and why it may have seen an early need to differentiate itself from the dominant Linji tradition by shifting to a more sectarian mode and developing a distinctive teaching that could appeal to literati. It also suggests that the Linji tradition's attacks on the Caodong teachings were mainly directed toward members of the literati rather than toward monastics.

In the Song dynasty (960–1279), Chinese Chan Buddhism reached something of a climax paradigm (conceptual configuration by which Chan was described in written texts, practiced by its adherents, and, by extension, understood as a religious entity by the Chinese population as a whole). The individual images of Bodhidharma, Huineng, and other early Chan figures no doubt continued to change as time went on, but the overall framework in which their examples were used was based on the conceptual paradigm that matured in the Song. Recent scholarship on both Chan and Chinese Buddhism is unanimous in holding that the overall activity level of Buddhism in China actually rose to a peak during the Song. This chapter explores the exemplary career of Dahui Zonggao and his “viewing the phrase” Chan, “silent illumination” and the teachings of twelfth-century Caodong Chan, trends in Song-dynasty Neo-Confucianism, intersubjectivity in Song-dynasty Tiantai practice, and the role of Chan Buddhism within the Chinese social order of the Tang through the Song dynasties.

This introductory chapter provides a background of the Buddhism that developed in the Song dynasty. Two developments in Song Buddhism are especially well known. The first is the growth of Chan Buddhism, which became the dominant form of elite monastic Buddhism in the Song. The other is the sectarian dispute that took place between the Linji and Caodong traditions of Chan in the twelfth century, involving competing approaches to enlightenment and practice known as “silent illumination” (mozhao) and kanhua Chan (literally, Chan of observing the word). Silent illumination is associated with a quiet meditation in which the inherent Buddha-nature that all sentient beings possess naturally shines forth, while kanhua Chan is associated with an intense focus on the punch line of a gongan that is meant to lead to a dramatic breakthrough experience of original enlightenment.

This chapter discusses the revival of the Caodong tradition. Having almost died out, its lineage was resurrected at the end of the eleventh century, and within decades it became one of the most powerful groups of elite monastic Buddhism in Song China. As part of its revival process, the tradition reexamined its own past. Adjustments were made in the transmission line, and the virtue and importance of the last two past masters, Touzi Yiqing and Dayang Jingxuan, were promoted through new biographies and, eventually, through collections of their recorded sayings. In this way, the new Caodong tradition shaped and redefined its lineage, enhanced its prestige, and strengthened its claim to legitimacy.

This chapter analyzes Dahui Zonggao's (1089–1163) attacks on Caodong tradition's silent illumination, and discusses the kanhua Chan that he developed to counter it. The success of the Caodong tradition was clearly perceived as a threat by the dominant Linji tradition, whose members attacked the Caodong tradition in various ways—most notably targeting its teachings of “heretical silent illumination Chan.” Indeed, Dahui associated silent illumination with a kind of meditation that uses the mind to control the mind, which suppresses thought and which induces a state of unreflective calm devoid of wisdom. This kind of practice, he argued, is a soteriological dead end and can never lead to enlightenment.

This chapter examines how the Linji tradition targeted the entire new Caodong tradition with their criticism of silent illumination. Available sources suggest that other members of the Linji lineage began attacking the silent illumination teachings of the new Caodong tradition even prior to the time of Dahui Zonggao. However, Dahui's attacks ushered in a whole new era in the relations between the different Chan traditions. With his fierce attacks on the Caodong tradition, Dahui was the first to break the code of harmony that the Chan school had been able to maintain throughout the earlier part of the Song. This surely was noted across Song-dynasty elite society, and many literati and officials may have felt uncomfortable with it.

This chapter shows that the revived Caodong tradition did indeed teach an approach to enlightenment and practice that reasonably can be called “silent illumination,” but that the attacks by Dahui and others distorted it in many ways. Silent illumination was developed by Furong Daokai (1043–1118) and his descendants, partly as a teaching that could appeal to educated laypeople. Although Dahui succeed in discrediting the term “silent illumination” the Caodong silent illumination was in itself not especially controversial. Indeed, standard meditation in the Chan school prior to Dahui's kanhua Chan was very much like that advocated by the masters in the revived Caodong tradition.

This paper discusses the kànhuà technique developed by the Chinese Línjì (Jpn.: Rinzai) master Dàhuì Zōnggǎo (1089-1163) that became a widespread form of meditation in East Asian Zen. Kànhuà meditation focuses on the keyword or “punch line” (Ch.: huàtóu, Jpn.: watō, Kor.: hwadu) of puzzling Chán “encounter dialogues” (or kōan stories) associated with past Chán (Zen) masters. Dàhuì insisted on a sudden breakthrough enlightenment and considered kànhuà meditation an alternative to a dead-end, no-enlightenment, seated meditation that he associated with the rival Cáodòng (Jpn.: Sōtō) tradition of Chán. The paper further explores four innovations in kànhuà meditation during the centuries after Dàhuì: the use of kànhuà meditation to calm the mind; a greater emphasis on doubt; the integration of Pure Land practice into the kànhuà technique; and the notion that the huàtóu could be called out aloud. However, in spite of such changes kànhuà Chán stayed close to Dàhuì’s vision.

Chapter 4 discusses how the descendants of Yicun and Shibei rose to become the preeminent clerics of the Southern Tang. As clerics from Min assumed control of well-established monastic institutions with large resident populations, rather than transform the character of the region’s normative Buddhist cultures, they embraced and embodied it. The activities of these monks in the capital of the Southern Tang, particularly those gathered around the eminent cleric Fayan Wenyi, suggest that they were able to differentiate themselves from other monks by means of both their distinguished pedigree and their ecumenical approach to teaching and practice. As abbots of major monasteries and advisors to the ruler and his court, these monks promoted a range of regional Buddhist traditions while fulfilling the responsibilities of court clerics. Their teachings thus took on a catholic, literary, and conservative quality that was well suited to the urbane audiences of the capital.

An overall assessment of the extensive aftermath of the apparent discrepancy between Yuanwu and Xuedou as well as ostensible conflict with Dahui regarding gongan interpretation and practice by investigating the legacy of the Blue Cliff Record in two main directions. One direction situates the text in relation to other writings of the period, including the full range of recorded sayings and writings produced by Xuedou, Yuanwu, and Dahui. The second shows that the discourse of the Blue Cliff Record by no means died out in that the thirteenth-century Record of Evaluative Remarks of Four-Houses contains four pingchang texts. Following this, many commentators have followed Yuanwu’s path, including the Korean monk Gag’un and Japanese masters Dōgen and Daitō in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, a variety of medieval Zen preachers, Edo era masters Hakuin and Tenkei, and modern interpreter Yamada Mumon.