Notes Beside the Bamboo Window — Third Collection, Part 4

Master Kongyin refuted Sengzhao's own "Treatise on the Immutability of Things" — I addressed this myself once before, and now reconsider the matter again: on what grounds did Kongyin mount this refutation? There are two reasons, I think: first, a failure to grasp the question's actual intent; second, an excessive attachment to conventional formulas.

As for failing to grasp the intent: suppose someone asks why things do not shift and change, and the answer given is simply "because of the emptiness of inherent nature." But the questioner is really asking about how a past thing fails to persist into the present — calling this "the shifting of things" — while the one answering responds only with the vague generality of "emptiness of nature." Emptiness of nature is certainly a sagely teaching, but applied here it becomes only a broad, imprecise remark, not an answer that truly meets the actual question. Is this not exactly like a piece of writing whose phrasing is elegant but entirely misses its own stated topic?

As for excessive attachment to conventional formulas: consider when a monk asked Master Dazhu Huihai, "What is great nirvana?" Dazhu answered: "Not creating the karma of birth and death." This is the conventional formula. The monk asked further: "What, then, is the karma of birth and death?" Dazhu answered: "Seeking great nirvana is itself the karma of birth and death." By the conventional formula, one would expect the answer to be "following delusion is the karma of birth and death" — and yet here Dazhu instead answers with "seeking great nirvana is itself the karma of birth and death," which is exactly the same logic as Sengzhao's own claim that "a past thing failing to reach the present is precisely immutability." There is no need at all, then, to refute it.

Kongyin further holds that Guifeng was wrong to classify Bodhidharma's own direct-pointing Chan as merely one among the six perfections — but where did Guifeng ever actually say any such thing? In his own Prolegomenon to the Collected Writings on the Source of Chan, he wrote: "Before Bodhidharma's arrival, every school's understanding amounted only to the meditation of the four dhyānas and eight absorptions. Though Nanyue's and Tiantai's own teachings on the three truths are supremely subtle, the order in which one enters their practice still follows this same earlier form of meditation. Only what Bodhidharma himself transmitted is suddenly identical to the Buddha's own essence, utterly distinct from every other school." Guifeng's own statement here is entirely clear — how, then, could Kongyin accuse him of treating direct-pointing Chan as merely one of the six perfections? This I simply cannot understand.

And yet, while Kongyin's refutation of Sengzhao's "immutability" argument, and his rebuke of Guifeng's own treatment of the First Patriarch, were both genuinely excessive, his further claims — that Guifeng was wrong to treat Heze as the sole true heir of Caoxi, and that many views attributed to Tiantai's own followers did not, in fact, originate from the Great Master's own mouth — are, in fact, correct and well-argued positions.

Someone asked: "I have already heard your view on the Treatises of Sengzhao — now what about a certain layman who fiercely attacks Qingliang?" I answered: "That layman reveres only Li Tongxuan's own Combined Treatise, and his attack on Qingliang concerns Qingliang's use of the fourfold scheme of faith, understanding, practice, and realization to divide up the whole sutra — which, he claims, badly betrays the sutra's own unified purpose. But has he never considered that the sutra itself already sets out the stages of faith, abiding, practice, dedication, and ground? Is that division not even more extensive still? Would this mean the Buddha himself was mistaken?

In truth, the sutra's own 'sequential' and 'perfectly interfused' approaches are one and the same thing seen two ways — remove the sequential structure entirely, and what, then, would 'perfect interfusion' even consist of? As it is said: 'the cause already contains the ocean of the fruit; the fruit traces back to the very source of the cause' — the beginning and end are unified, seamless and unbroken throughout. Where, then, could any real fragmentation possibly be found?

And besides, a treatise has its own proper form, and a commentary has its own proper form as well. In bringing out the sutra's overall meaning, nothing surpasses the Combined Treatise; but in painstakingly elaborating every detail, plumbing the deepest and most minute points of doctrine, the achievement of the Commentary is truly inconceivable. Both great masters served as devoted guardians of the Flower Ornament Sutra — there is simply no basis for ranking one above the other." I once wrote a letter to this same layman on the matter, but he never replied — I do not know whether he ultimately accepted my reasoning, and so I record it here.

Having already set out my own views on the Treatises of Sengzhao and the Flower Ornament commentaries, someone asked: "Are the worthies of the past really beyond criticism?" I answered: not at all. It has long been said that "people today are not necessarily inferior to the ancients." And yet, reflecting further, I would note: the three hundred poems of the Book of Odes largely arose from the songs of ordinary villagers and country folk, and yet later writers celebrated for their own literary brilliance could never match them; and the Six Group monks, whom the sacred assembly itself held in contempt, still ranked, in a sense, above Aśvaghoṣa and Nāgārjuna, who appeared only after the Buddha's own passing — so how, then, could the ancients possibly be dismissed lightly?

As for Kongyin's own criticisms, their real excess lies only in two places — the treatise on "immutability," and his treatment of Guifeng's discussion of Bodhidharma — and these are nothing like the outright denigration of Qingliang I have seen elsewhere. I have witnessed people cursing and insulting Wenling, hurling abuse at Changshui; and others who so revere Tiantai that they demolish every other school entirely, finding nothing whatsoever to their liking anywhere else. Some dismiss Miaoxi as still unawakened, belittle Zhongfeng as a mere scholar of texts, and even go so far as to claim that the Sixth Patriarch himself falls short of Yongjia — and when such people meet with real setbacks of their own, how can this go unaddressed?

Alas! The ancients have already passed away, while people of today still remain among us — why should I trouble myself, quarreling idly on behalf of the departed, only to earn the displeasure of the living? And yet, where genuine principle demands to be spoken, I cannot remain silent to the end — as for anything beyond that, it is simply not my concern.