Notes Beside the Bamboo Window — Third Collection, Part 19

The Buddhist canon contains a single scroll titled Chan Master Nanyue's Vow Text, whose closing verse says that the author wishes to attain the alchemical elixir first and enlightenment only afterward — meaning he wished to preserve his physical body and remain in the world, achieving long life without death, so as to reach spiritual fulfillment within this very life rather than waiting for a future one. Nanyue Huisi was a sage manifesting in the world for the sake of others; if this line genuinely came from his own mouth, it must have had some deeper purpose of its own, not something an ordinary, shallow reader could fathom. But if it was instead added by someone later, then it cannot be trusted at all — for a reader of lesser capacity, encountering this passage, might well be led into some mistaken view, and it would be the vow text itself that misled him.

Tanluan burned his own immortality scriptures in order to practice the Contemplation Sutra, while Nanyue, according to this text, practiced alchemy in order to seek the Buddhist Way — how could two great masters diverge so completely on this point? Consider, too, that in Nanyue's own Great Vehicle Cessation-and-Contemplation, a single word — "evil" — has been inserted into a quotation from the Awakening of Faith, so that it now reads "fully endowed with every good and evil," when this could not possibly have been Nanyue's own intended meaning, and must be a later addition. If even a single character can be inserted into the Cessation-and-Contemplation like this, how can the passage about seeking alchemy before the Way, in the vow text we have today, be trusted without question? This too, I suspect, belongs to the same category as the spurious Chan Instructions discussed earlier.

The canon also contains a single scroll attributed to Tiantai Zhiyi titled Transmission of the Buddha-Mind-Seal. To say that the Buddha's mind-seal was transmitted through Tiantai is entirely acceptable; to say that Tiantai alone transmitted it, and that Bodhidharma and the other Chan masters had no share in it at all, is not acceptable; and to claim that the transmission actually stopped when the patriarch Siṃha was killed, so that the well-known six generations of robe-transmission in China never really happened, is likewise not acceptable. Siṃha's physical body could be killed, but the Way itself cannot be killed; his own teaching of the Dharma came to an end, but the transmission of the Dharma did not end with him. All of these claims are the work of later followers wishing to honor Tiantai, without understanding what genuine honor actually requires.

Later followers also say: "The Lotus Sutra is the root; the Avataṃsaka Sutra is merely branch and leaf." When did Tiantai himself ever say such a thing? They also say: "The teaching of inherent nature belongs to our school alone, and no other school can match it." But if it is truly just one school's private teaching, does that not itself reveal how narrow it has become? The principle of inherent nature appears throughout the sutras and has been expounded by patriarchs beyond counting — for one school to claim exclusive possession of it is not something Tiantai himself would ever have wished to hear. Tiantai was a true sage, one who gazed toward the Way yet, in his own humility, never claimed to have fully seen it. In his own words describing his own attainment, he said only: "Because I sacrificed my own benefit for the sake of others, I reached no higher than the fifth of the outer stages." Yet later followers praise him far beyond this, losing entirely the very spirit by which Tiantai himself refused to claim sagehood. Taking this together with the previous entry, one recalls the ancient saying: "Better to have no book at all than to believe everything in it."

The Water-and-Land liturgy is, by popular tradition, said to have originated with Emperor Wu of Liang. Long before, the general Bai Qi had buried alive some four hundred thousand surrendered soldiers after the battle of Changping — a crime so grave that he remained sunk in hell for ages without any way of escape, and so he appeared in a dream to Emperor Wu. The emperor, consulting with Master Baozhi and other monks about how to bring about his deliverance, learned that the Buddhist canon contained a Water-and-Land liturgy text; when he prayed using it, radiant light filled the entire hall. From this the rite began to be performed, and it has been handed down ever since.

Yet the canon as it exists today contains no such text at all. The version currently used at Jinshan Temple is itself a jumble, its passages out of order, with no clear thread from beginning to end. The monks who perform it today simply improvise as they see fit, so that no two performances are quite alike; and the upper- and lower-hall images painted in the southern capital follow whatever convention individual painters happened to pass down, taken as fixed rule though hardly appropriate. To hold such a ceremony at all requires soliciting funds for months or even years before it can be carried out, and its elaborate arrangements draw crowds of men and women, old and young, streaming in continuously, exactly as at some worldly festival with its banners and springtime crowds — people packed shoulder to shoulder, men and women mixed in disorder, numbering in the thousands each day — inevitably treating sacred images with disrespect and giving offense to the very spirits the rite is meant to honor. The faults incurred are many, the transgressions grave; there is misfortune in it and no merit, and many such ceremonies, left unfinished, have brought down real misfortune upon those who held them. This is truly something to fear!

Only the liturgy compiled by Master Zhipan of Siming is at once thoroughly precise and admirably simple — precise without becoming needlessly long-winded, simple without lapsing into omission. But his text survives only at Siming, and has never been seen elsewhere. I have taken it upon myself to correct and edit it, and had it newly carved and printed for wider circulation. Even so, this rite must not be undertaken lightly or held too often — for ease of performance inevitably leads to frequent performance, and frequent performance in turn breeds carelessness, until sincerity and reverence grow thin and transgressions multiply, so that what was sought as a blessing turns instead into misfortune! I earnestly hope we may together approach this with due caution.