It's impossible to say with certainty how much of the account is true and how much is the exaggeration of admiring disciples. But the point worth noting is that Jingzang is said to have proselytized in the area around Mount Song and Luoyang. At that time Luoyang was the “Eastern Capital” of the Tang dynasty, and an immensely important center of imperial power.
To my knowledge there is no record of Jingzang having preached to the court in the Eastern Capital. Yet other important monks who lived at this same Huishan Temple at about the same time are clearly described in Luoyang court records, the dynastic histories of the times. So we find in Jingzang a situation similar to that of Bodhidharma's oldest disciple, Sengfu. Here is a monk of Bodhidharma's tradition who lived near the imperial capital in the same place as monks who taught at the imperial court. Yet Jingzang, like Sengfu before him, is not known to have ever taught his Bodhidharma Zen to the emperor and his officials. In contrast to Jingzang, two other monks from Huishan Temple, who lived there at the same time, are well-known in official histories. Their great fame is worth noting in more detail, because they highlight the strange fact that it was Jingzang and not they who seems to have commanded the biggest memorial.
One monk, named Yixing (683â727), whose name means “Single Practice,” was an early astrologist/astronomer whose observation of the heavens greatly advanced this Chinese science. Due to his prediction of an eclipse, the Emperor Xuan Zong of the Tang dynasty honored him highly.
The second important monk related to Huishan's history was named Yijing (as opposed to Yixing aboveâsorry that the names can be so confusing!). The history of this monk is quite remarkable indeed. Yijing was a monk of the Precepts school who was inspired by Xuanzang, the famous Chinese monk who traveled to India in search of Dharma. Yijing set off across the South Seas and traveled to India on roughly the same route that Bodhidharma used to come to China. After intermediate stops at what is now Indonesia and other places, he reached India and there learned to read Sanskrit, the language of the Buddhist
scriptures. Eventually he returned to China with many sacred writings that filled gaps in the library that Xuanzang had brought back from India more than fifty years earlier. The emperor himself met Yijing upon his return to the country. After bringing back new scriptures from India, this monk reformed the precepts being used in Buddhist ceremonies, and he enjoyed immense fame and reputation at the Tang imperial court.
So why, when such notable and imperially recognized worthies as Yixing and Yijing lived at Huishan Temple, is the largest memorial there dedicated to a monk unmentioned in official records of the time?
The intriguing possibility is that Huineng and his student Jingzang adhered to the teaching of not remaining in “places of imperial sway.” Jingzang, like Bodhidharma, Sengfu, Daoxin, Baizhang, and other Southern Zen masters, appears to have avoided the court so that his “observing mind” practice could remain untainted by Imperial-Way Buddhism and its doctrines. The huge stupa dedicated to the mysterious ancestor Jingzang may be another reflection of the split symbolized by Bodhidharma and Emperor Wu's legendary meeting. In the shadow play of Chinese politics, the grand size of the stupa for a monk unconnected to the emperor may have powerful, if hidden, political meaning, set up as a counterpoint to the spread of Imperial-Way Buddhism.
Traditionally, the main Zen tradition in China is described as having split into two factions. One, the Southern school, was represented by the Sixth Ancestor Huineng, and the other was the Northern school faction, led by Shenxiu, the teacher of three emperors. Usually, the difference between these two factions is described to be the difference between groups who believed in Gradual Enlightenment (symbolized by the Northern Shenxiu faction) and the Sudden Enlightenment faction of Huineng and his successors. The evidence so far suggests, however, that it was not simply different ideas about how quickly one experiences enlightenment that marked the difference between these two groups. Instead, a main difference between them seems to be that the Southern faction made a point of carrying on Bodhidharma and his immediate descendants' practice of avoiding the court. The Northern faction, on the other hand, was deeply intertwined with the imperial court of the Tang dynasty.
Jingzang's religious mission around Luoyang and Mount Song may have played a role in the doctrinal split between these two groups of
Zen, the reason for which was nominally the Sudden and Gradual differences described above. A real and essentially political reason for the underlying argument between the two factions was to remain unspoken. Around the time Jingzang died, another monk, named Shenhui, who lived in the vicinity and also is alleged to be a student of Huineng, attacked the Northern school of Zen that was then being promulgated by Shenxiu's disciples as illegitimate. The ostensible reason for Shenhui's attack on Shenxiu and his Dharma heirs was that they advanced the Gradual approach to enlightenment instead of the Sudden Enlightenment doctrine of Bodhidharma. Shenhui declared Huineng, the Sixth Ancestor, as the authentic heir of Bodhidharma's Zen, and he declared the Northern Gradual faction of Shenxiu to be a heresy.
Was the size and grandeur of Jingzang's stupa an indication that his Southern and Sudden teaching was highly popular outside the royal Buddhist establishment among monks who despised Imperial-Way Buddhism? The text from the stupa does not hint of any criticism of a Gradual Buddhist school, yet it explicitly claims that Jingzang was a Dharma heir of Huineng and that he expounded the Sudden Enlightenment teaching.
How Huineng's Southern and Sudden teachings, as taught in the Platform Sutra, spread through China is a serious bone of contention amongst scholars. Some Japanese and Western scholars think the Platform Sutra itself was not written by Huineng or even his immediate disciples but was compiled by later generations of Zen monks to advance their sect's interests. Yet a possible role for Jingzang in this argument has been missing. Could he have been the first to bring Huineng's Platform Sutra to the Luoyang area? Or could he have even been the one who wrote that text, based on lectures he heard Huineng deliver? In any case, the size of his stupa indicates that he had important and even wealthy supporters as he spread the Sudden doctrine in the precincts of China's emperor.
I have to admit that what I've suggested remains conjecture. There is no clear evidence for an important early role for Jingzang in Zen's development aside from a stupa text that appears on a very large and strange memorial. I'm hopeful more evidence will someday come to light about this unknown “Seventh Ancestor.” That evidence may indeed portray Bodhidharma and his spiritual heirs in a new historical light.
43. Ordination Platforms: The Battle Ground between Imperial and Bodhidharma Zen?
THE MOST HOTLY disputed turf that lay between Bodhidharma's Zen and Imperial-Way Zen may have been the ordination platforms where monks took their vows. On reflection, the reason why these places caused controversy is obvious. Emperors wanted to maintain control of the Buddhist clergy by controlling the “gate” to becoming a monk or nun. As I mentioned earlier, the Buddhist clergy were not individually subject to taxation (though temples came to be taxed as institutions), and monks were not subject to military service or conscription to work in corvée labor gangs. From the emperor's viewpoint, keeping control of the “gate” through which young men could avoid government service and taxation was vital. Would-be home-leavers had to pass a tough examination system to qualify for ordination. The emperor was partial to doctrinal interpretations of Buddhism not simply because of his personal interest in such subjects but also because keeping the religion “mysterious” and understood by a select few provided the rationale for exclusion. If anyone could freely take vows and then bail out of the tasks of soldiering and guarding a section of the desolate and miserable Great Wall for decades on end, who wouldn't be tempted to become, at least nominally, a monk?
The ordination platform, where individuals underwent the ceremony to become home-leavers, thus was a key battleground in the clash between Bodhidharma Zen and Imperial-Way Buddhism. What a monk must know to be a “legitimate” Buddhist, along with the vows he took on the ordination platform, affected the interests of the state.
The ordination platform itself was much like the platforms where emperors performed state ceremonies and were also politically symbolic
of the unity of church and state. We've already seen how Emperor Wu ascended the platform of political rule by infusing religion into the ceremony. The religious platforms where monks took their vows had political overtones as well. The actual structure of the platform where Emperor Wu declared his imperial rule was little different from the ordination platforms used by home-leaving monks. Indeed, Emperor Wu pointedly blurred distinctions between the two different ceremonies.
In this light, where did the ordinations of Huineng's Southern school and his famous Signless Precepts take place? Did monks wanting to take those precepts submit to imperial demands that all ordinations must take place on Imperial-Way-sanctioned platforms?
The records of many famous Zen monks indicate that they were compelled to take public vows on an ordination platform on Mount Song, a central platform that was imperially sanctioned. Among such monks was the famous monk Mazu, as well as Mazu's spiritual “grandson” Zen Master Zhaozhou, both of them solidly in the Bodhidharma Southern Zen faction. Yet, if these and other Zen monks were required to memorize sutras and take the officially recognized precepts, where did the Signless Precepts of Huineng or how exactly did the Bodhisattva Precepts come into play after Emperor Wu modified them? The political struggle between Imperial-Way Buddhism and Zen was a factor in what vows were recited in the home-leaving ceremony. Imperial-Way Buddhism prescribed certain types of precepts, while the Bodhidharma Zen tradition, at least, had other ideas.
Chinese scholars have for decades tried to find archeological remains of the official ordination platform that was on Mount Song. Logically it should have been around Shaolin Temple. But while Shaolin is famous as the home of Zen, during its history it was primarily a temple of Imperial-Way Buddhism, a Buddhism that emphasized not Zen but the practices of the Buddhist Precepts sect. This remained the case for many centuries after Bodhidharma and Emperor Wu lived. Zen, though famously associated with Shaolin, was second in importance to the Precepts school for most of the temple's history. Zen abbots predominated there only after the religion was compromised and absorbed into the imperial ideology of the state.
This is not to say that Zen didn't figure in the propaganda of the temple from early on. The temple's founder, Fotuo, was regarded as a
Zen master, as was the third abbot of the temple, Seng Chou. Despite this, most subsequent abbots, under imperial control, adhered not to Zen but to Precepts school rites and beliefs. One exception to this trend occurred around the year 680, when one of the Zen monks of the Northern school, named Faru, was briefly the abbot of Shaolin Temple. Faru (like his Dharma brother Shenxiu) thereafter taught East Mountain Zen on Mount Song and at the nearby court of Luoyang. While the East Mountain school of Daoxin is known to have used the Bodhisattva Precepts, what were the vows taken by monks on Mount Song during the time of Faru or Lao An? In fact, there is evidence of a struggle between Bodhidharma's Zen and Imperial-Way Buddhism over the ordination platforms themselves during that time.
Historical documents indicate that in the year 704, an ordination platform was constructed on Mount Song under imperial command. Yet Chinese archeologists, searching around Shaolin Temple for many decades, haven't found any trace of such a platform. The archeologists have naturally assumed that because Shaolin was the most famous of Mount Song's temples and arguably the main symbol of the imperial-religious establishment, then naturally it would have been the home of the country's central ordination platform.
A reason to think that the new ordination platform of 704 was at Shaolin Temple is that we have the text of a memorial set up to commemorate the occasion of the platform's inauguration, its “blessing.” That text's contents explain that the platform was set up to replace one previously used at Shaolin Temple, although it doesn't say the new platform was actually located at Shaolin Temple as well.
Recently a Chinese scholar named Zhang Jianwei, researching this question, published a paper that examines the text of the memorial stele made to commemorate the setting up of the ordination platform. Although the stele itself is lost, its contents were preserved in old Tang dynasty documents that have survived to modern times.
According to those Tang documents, the stele's text was composed by the monk Yijing. I described Yijing earlier. He was the famous Precepts school monk who lived for a time at Huishan Temple and traveled to India to later return with Buddhist scriptures. He composed the contents of this stele in 504, long after his triumphant return to China from India.
A rough translation of the stele is as follows:
On today's date [seventh day of the fourth lunar month of the year 704], the director of this temple, Yijiang, along with its head monk, Zhibao, Zen Master Faji of the Imperial Religious Directorate and the mass of disciples, in order to reestablish the Shaolin Temple ordination platform, now have rebuilt this ordination platform, so that it can serve as a place of religious atonement and be honored by everyone. [This is done so that] everyone beneath the [leadership] of the [imperial] capital may come to this mountain gate. Here today, besides myself, are Precepts Master Hu, Zen Master [unintelligible], Zen Master Si, Zen Master Xun, Precepts Master Hui, Precepts Master Ke, Precepts Master Wei, and others who have all come to this temple. By common agreement this [ordination platform] will be known as a permanent symbol of the
small vehicle
[Hinayana],
and this is not to be doubted
[emphasis added]. Many worthy protectors of the precepts have come here today without being summoned. You heroes prepared the ground for this event, with more than a hundred of you taking time from your schedules to assemble here, walking for a month to come here, then appearing like a string of pearls in the practice of meditation and walking together. Among you are abbots who practice the Four Reliances [four traditional virtuous behaviors], who traverse emptiness and take refuge in the real, and who unceasingly transmit the great teaching. In this world of change we here set up a long-lasting stone foundation. In the myriad transformations this is a golden place where the fearsome world is transformed into the spacious blue void of the sky, a transforming place where delusion is left behind. This monument declares that where the karmic world is, the Dharma is not lost. The gray brick [of the platform] is transformed to gold. Here we abide and pay honor. The eye sees the [truth of] the western lands [India], but the staff strikes the ground of the East [the teaching is set up in China]. From this glorious work happiness will follow. And so we record this short text.