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Over the centuries, diverse Chan/Zen traditions throughout East Asia have venerated Baizhang Huaihai (J. Hyakujō Ekai, 749–814) as one of the greatest Chan teachers of the Tang era (618–907). Celebrated as the leading disciple of the renowned Mazu Daoyi (709–788), the “founder” of the Hongzhou school that came to dominate Chan during the mid-Tang period, Baizhang is still evoked as a source of religious inspiration and authority, and he remains one of the most recognized Chan teachers of all time. This chapter is a brief study of those changing perceptions and images, spanning most of the history of Chan in East Asia, down to the present. The shifting images of Baizhang mirror the multifaceted and far-reaching changes that marked Chan’s historical trajectory as a major tradition of East Asian Buddhism, with significant ramifications for its complex evolution that still shape its intricate present-day predicaments.

This chapter examines literature influences on the compilation of records of Chan Buddhism, particularly the Jingde Transmission of the Lamp and the Tiansheng Expanded Lamp Record. It describes the Jingde Transmission of the Lamp as reflecting a compromise between rhetorical definitions of Chan as independent, subitist, antinomian, and so forth, as opposed to interpretations of Chan as harmonious with the rituals and traditions of conventional Buddhism. It suggests that the purpose of the Tiansheng Expanded Lamp Record was to affirm an interpretation of Chan associated with members of the Linji faction who had become increasingly influential among officials at the Song court and it functioned as a vehicle promoting the Linji faction and its interpretation of Chan.

This chapter examines the geographical and historical context of the official acceptance of Chan Buddhism in China. It examines the role rulers and officials played in recognizing Chan and the role of literati in sanctioning the interpretation of Chan that became a hallmark of its public persona as a special transmission outside the teaching. It also investigates that functions that regional Chan movements played in forging a collective Chan identity while reserving the privilege of supreme orthodoxy for their own lineages.

This chapter examines the history of Chan Buddhism in relation to transmission records and factional motives contained in the Jingde Transmission of the Lamp or the Jingde Chuandeng lu. It suggests that the Jingde Chuandeng lu was a major landmark for the Chan movement because prior to it Chan transmission records were primarily regional documents compiled under the auspices of local authorities. It contends that the inspiration for its text began in the revival of Buddhism in the Wuyue region mounted under the Chan banner and its real story concerns how the Wuyue-based Chan movement became integrated with the larger aims of the Song and developing Song policy toward Chan.

Chapter 2 studies the devotional aspect of the canon and suggests a cult of the canon took form in history and greatly shaped Chinese Buddhism. The author argues that the cult of the canon is an extension from the cult of the book and constitutes an important aspect of religious life in Chinese Buddhism.

This chapter examines the history of the official recognition of Chan Buddhism in China during the Tang Dynasty, or the period from 618 to 906. It reviews two partisan debates related to the Chan struggle for recognition in order to show the role played by government officials and secular literati in the development of Chan. It suggests that the debate associated with the struggle between rival Chan factions in the early Song Dynasty was instrumental in defining the principles that came to characterize Chan, and served as the foundation for the acceptance of Chan as a leading school of Chinese Buddhism in the Song.

This chapter sums up the key findings of this study on the geographical and historical contexts of the official acceptance of Chan Buddhism in China. The evidence suggests that the presence of Chan monks in Buddhist institutions expanded greatly during the Five Dynasties and early Song Dynasty. This was followed by the organization of various Chan factions and the recognition of the need to understand this in relation to established Buddhist doctrines, practices, and precedents.

This chapter examines the factional motives in the Chan Buddhism in China during the Tang Dynasty using transmission records. It reviews early Chan transmission records that exposes the rise of factionalism in Chan just as these factions are beginning to forge a successful identity in Chinese Buddhism. It analyzes the factional nature of the claims of the three full-blown multilineal transmission records compiled around the beginning of the Song Dynasty including the Patriarch's Hall Anthology, Jingde Record Lamp, and the Tiansheng Extended Transmission of the Lamp.

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 chapter explores the art of fundraising as practiced within the Chan tradition. It explains how the encounter model of Chan religious praxis worked as a public ideology, how Chan responded to the persecution of Buddhism and the economic tribulations of ninth-century China, and how the mythology of Chan monastic labor served an important function, even though most of the productive labor in Buddhist monasteries—including supposedly Chan temples—was performed by lay workers and tenant farmers. In contrast to the conventional viewpoint that the fundraising efforts of Chan abbots during the Song dynasty indicate the degeneration of both Chan and the Buddhist tradition as a whole, the chapter suggests precisely the opposite: that the institutional success of Chan Buddhism was made possible by—and in fact represents proof of—its vitality as a spiritual discipline. It also discusses Shenhui's rhetoric for Chan fundraising, expansion of Mazu Daoyi's Hongzhou school, the impact of the Huichang persecution and Huang Chao rebellion on Chan, the Anthology of the Patriarchal Hall, and the institutional function of the Chan lineage system.

Whenever we pretend to explain Chan in terms of lineal successions from one great master to another, we run the risk of committing the “string of pearls” fallacy, in which the evolution of Chan Buddhism is described in terms of a sequence of individual masters like pearls on a string. In terms of Zen studies, this tendency is starkly apparent in the way Dunhuang manuscripts have been used to supplement rather than radically transform the appreciation of Chan in many writings. A trove of cultural treasures similar to the Dead Sea scrolls, the Dunhuang manuscripts provided a cross-section of Chan documents from the eighth to the tenth centuries, just before the great editorial homogenization of the Song dynasty took place. Scholars have used Dunhuang manuscripts in conjunction with other evidence to devise more vivid portraits of Bodhidharma, Huineng, and others as individual figures. The picture of Song-dynasty Chan is not complete without looking closely at the style of meditative introspection advocated by Hongzhi Zhengjue (1091–1157) and other members of the Caodong lineage.

In the first half of the eighth century, the cities of Chang'an and Luoyang in northern China were the greatest urban centers in the world. The Chang'an walls formed a nearly square rectangle enclosing a neatly ordered set of government centers, market areas, and neighborhoods. For students of Chan Buddhism, Luoyang is also known as the city just north of Mount Song, with which Bodhidharma had been associated since at least 645. This chapter discusses imperial patronage and the Chan style during the metropolitan Chan, Shenhui's campaign against the “Northern School” and his attack on Shenxiu's students, the Oxhead school and the crisis between the Northern and Southern schools, the Platform Sūtra as the climax text of early Chan, Huineng and the evolution of Chan, and three major events in the eighth century that significantly altered the evolution of Chan.

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.

Classical Chan refers to a particular style of behavior displayed by Chan masters in the course of their interactions with students and other masters. Rather than explaining the Dharma in straightforward expository language, such masters are depicted as being more inclined to demonstrate it by means of paradoxical replies and inexplicable counterquestions, gestures and physical demonstrations, and even the shocking and painful tactics of shouts and blows. Precisely when this classical style of religious practice emerged is not clear. Curiously, no clearly stated definition of encounter dialogue appears in the scholarship on Chinese Chan. The encounter-dialogue style of religious behavior is well known in the literature on Chan Buddhism and Zen in every language. This chapter shows how Chan encounter dialogue implies a paradigm of spiritual cultivation that is profoundly different from earlier Chinese Buddhist practice. It also discusses the story of Mazu Daoyi's enlightenment, the eightfold path to the emergence of transcribed encounter dialogue, “questions about things” in the Northern School, and the use of ritualized dialogue between Chan teachers and students.

This chapter examines the aesthetic influence of Chan Buddhism. More specifically, it considers how the Chan notion of subtle awakening leads to the enduring importance of transcendent states of mind and “lingering flavor” in Chinese aesthetics. It also discusses another major legacy of Chan: the widespread and long-standing preference for the aesthetic characteristic summed up in the word “blandness,” or “something that is without taste, but at the same time full of flavor.” Finally, the chapter compares transcendence in Chan Buddhism, neo-Confucianism, and Zhuangzi and explores the influence of Chan Buddhism on neo-Confucianism—which sought to establish a philosophical system that was more than a moralistic metaphysics. It argues that Chan Buddhism raises the transcendent aspects of Confucianism and Daoism to a new level of relevance, even as it remains firmly within Chinese aesthetic tradition.

According to traditional accounts, Bodhidharma was the third son of a great Brahman king of southern India, who left home to undertake the life of a Buddhist monk. He crossed the Yangzi River by floating across on a reed and went to Mount Song, just south of the great city of Luoyang. There Bodhidharma took up residence at Shaolin Temple (Shaolinsi), but instead of joining the regular activities of the congregation of monks, he spent nine years in a cave, sitting in meditation while facing a wall. His extraordinary discipline eventually attracted the attention of a student named Huike, who was to become his successor and thus the second patriarch of Chan Buddhism. Huike went on to transmit the teachings to Sengcan, from whom they were passed on to Daoxin, Hongren, and then to the sixth patriarch Huineng. This chapter focuses on the evolving hagiography of Bodhidharma, Hongren and the “East Mountain Teaching,” and two treatises (Treatise on the Two Entrances and Four Practices and Treatise on the Essentials of Cultivating the Mind).