Search Results

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 chapter discusses how the history of the Bodhidharma family developed in several directions in the wake of Du Fei's Record of the Transmission of the Dharma-Jewel. On one front, at least two masters—Puji and Yifu—came to be officially recognized as Shenxiu's descendants. When exactly this happened remains unclear. It is usually assumed that they both actually were Shenxiu's disciples and in that capacity received his sanction before he died. Besides this uncertainty regarding the timing of Puji's and Yifu's official inclusion in the Bodhidharma family, a number of sources name other masters as Shenxiu's descendants. Looked at this way, the birth of Chan is found in two other historical realities: an increasingly widespread desire—among elite Buddhist—to be included in the Bodhidharma family; and, the multiplication of techniques—literary, artistic, ritualistic and architectural—that made such claims to this legacy appear plausible.

This chapter focuses on the Platform Sūtra. Composed sometime in the late eighth century, Platform Sūtra picks up and works over a number of claims regarding the Bodhidharma clan that had been put forth in earlier Chan works. The text opens with an unusually creative “autobiography” of Huineng, one that circles around an involved conspiracy supposedly orchestrated by master Hongren. As the details of the conspiracy come into focus, the reader learns that Hongren's chosen heir was not Shenxiu, but rather Huineng. With that startling “history” newly revealed roughly one hundred years after the events supposedly took place, the narrative turns to show Huineng giving a formal dharma teaching that, in places, appears to negate many of the building blocks of the Buddhist tradition, while also emphasizing the innate presence of perfect tradition within each person in the form of the buddha-nature.