Notes Beside the Bamboo Window — Third Collection, Part 45
Continuing the Third Collection (三筆). Zhuhong works through three conflicting monastic sources on whether a disciple should formally mourn a deceased teacher, settling on a practical middle path — and then argues, on internal evidence, that the elaborate mourning rites attributed to Baizhang's own Pure Rules could not actually have come from Baizhang himself.
122. 弟子為師服 — Disciples Wearing Mourning Dress for a Teacher
Zhuhong works through three conflicting monastic sources on whether a disciple should formally mourn a deceased teacher — the Platform Sutra's explicit prohibition, a compendium citing scattered precedent for muted mourning dress, and the Pure Rules' full elaborate mourning ritual — and settles on a practical middle path that honors both restraint and genuine grief.
其說有三：一《六祖壇經》，一《釋氏要覽》，一《百丈清規》，三各差殊。今辯如左：㈠《壇經》云：「吾滅度後，莫作世情悲泣雨淚，受人弔問，身著孝服，非我弟子，亦非正法。」㈡《要覽》云：「考《涅槃》諸經，並無服制，惟《增輝記》，引禮三服，其三降服，《白虎通》云：『師恩同父母，宜降服。』《釋氏喪儀》云：『師恩同父母，宜三年服。』《五杉》云：『師服皆從法服，但布稍麤，純染黃褐。』《增輝》云：『但染蒼皴色，稍異於常耳。』」㈢《清規》云：「小師麻布掇，兩序苧掇，主喪等生絹掇，眾舉哀三聲，小師幙下哀泣。」如上所說，據《壇經》，則無服無泣；據《增輝》等，則有服無泣，而服不用麻，但用色黃蒼而已；據《清規》，則服泣雙行，宛同世俗。夫為僧者，雖應宗法六祖，但今弟子不忍師亡，多為之服，乃上欽祖訓，下順人情，委曲酌中，依《增輝》作青黃色服之可也。古云：「禮可以義起」，更俟高明正焉。
There are three distinct accounts of this matter: one in the Platform Sutra, one in the Essentials of the Śākya Tradition, and one in Baizhang's Pure Rules, each differing from the others. Let me clarify them here in turn.
First, the Platform Sutra states: "After my own passing, you must not indulge in ordinary worldly grief, weeping and shedding tears, receiving visitors' condolences, or wearing mourning dress upon your body — anyone who does so is neither my true disciple nor a follower of the true Dharma."
Second, the Essentials of the Śākya Tradition states: "Examining the Nirvāṇa Sutra and its related texts, one finds no established mourning-dress regulation at all. Only the Zenghui Commentary, citing classical ritual propriety, mentions three types of mourning dress, the third being 'reduced mourning dress.' The Comprehensive Discussions of the White Tiger Hall states: 'A teacher's kindness is equal to that of one's own parents, and so reduced mourning dress is appropriate.' The Śākya Tradition's Funeral Rites states: 'A teacher's kindness is equal to that of one's own parents, and a full three years of mourning dress is appropriate.' The Wushan Collection states: 'Mourning dress for a teacher should simply follow the ordinary monastic robe, only using somewhat coarser cloth, dyed a plain yellowish-brown.' The Zenghui Commentary states: 'One need only dye it a bluish-grey color, only slightly different from one's ordinary robe.'"
Third, the Pure Rules states: "Junior disciples wear hemp-cloth robes; the two ranks of senior officers wear ramie-cloth robes; the chief mourner and others wear plain raw-silk robes. The assembly cries out in grief three times together, and the junior disciples weep beneath the mourning canopy."
Taken together, then: according to the Platform Sutra, there should be neither mourning dress nor weeping at all; according to the Zenghui Commentary and related sources, there should be mourning dress but no weeping, and the dress itself should not even be made of hemp, only dyed a muted yellowish or bluish color; according to the Pure Rules, both mourning dress and weeping should proceed together, exactly as in ordinary secular custom.
Now, monks ought properly to follow the Sixth Patriarch's own teaching on this matter. And yet disciples today, unable to bear the loss of their own teacher, very often do wear mourning dress for him regardless — which may be understood as honoring the patriarch's own instruction above while also according with basic human feeling below, striking a reasonable middle course between the two. Following the Zenghui Commentary's suggestion of a bluish-yellow robe would seem an entirely reasonable compromise. As the ancients said: "Ritual propriety may be established anew according to what is right" — though I still await correction from those of greater insight than my own on this matter.
All three sources Zhuhong cites are genuine and independently documented: the Platform Sutra's prohibition on formal mourning is drawn from Huineng's own final instructions to his disciples before his death; the Essentials of the Śākya Tradition is a genuine Song-dynasty Buddhist reference compendium; and the Pure Rules attributed to Baizhang Huaihai, discussed at greater length in the very next entry, represents the fullest and most elaborate of the three positions. Zhuhong's own proposed compromise — a muted, undyed-looking robe that acknowledges grief without adopting full secular mourning ritual — exemplifies the same "ritual propriety established anew according to what is right" principle, drawn directly from the Book of Rites, that runs through several of this collection's discussions of custom versus principle, including its earlier treatment of proper monastic robes for laypeople in entry 79 above.
123. 百丈清規 — Baizhang's Pure Rules
Building directly on the previous entry's textual comparison, Zhuhong argues on internal evidence that the elaborate mourning rites attributed to Baizhang's own Pure Rules could not actually have come from Baizhang himself, since Baizhang was a direct spiritual descendant of Huineng, who explicitly forbade exactly this kind of ritual mourning.
因上喪制，知《清規》一書後人增廣，非百丈所作也。百丈為曹溪四世嫡孫，其喪制何繇不率乃祖攸行，而變其成法乎？蓋建立叢林，使一眾有所約束，則自百丈始耳。至於制度之冗繁，節文之細瑣，使人僕僕爾、碌碌爾，日不暇給，更何從得省緣省事，而悉心窮究此道也。故曰後人好事者為之，非百丈意也。
Based on the discussion of mourning ritual in the previous entry, one can recognize that the Pure Rules as it exists today must have been substantially expanded by later hands, and could not be entirely the work of Baizhang himself. Baizhang was a direct spiritual descendant, four generations removed, from Caoxi — that is, from Huineng himself. Why, then, would his own mourning ritual fail to follow the conduct of his own spiritual ancestor, and instead depart so completely from the established teaching passed down to him?
It is certainly true that the establishment of organized monastic communities, giving the assembly a proper structure to abide by, did indeed begin with Baizhang himself. But as for the excessive complexity of its institutional regulations, and the minute, fussy detail of its ceremonial procedures — these leave people exhausted and endlessly occupied, with no free time in an entire day, and how, under such conditions, could anyone ever find the leisure and simplicity of circumstance needed to devote one's whole heart to the thorough investigation of the Way itself? For this reason, I conclude that these elaborations were the work of later, overzealous hands, and were never Baizhang's own original intention.
Baizhang Huaihai (720–814) is the genuine Tang-dynasty Chan master traditionally credited with establishing the first independent Chan monastic institutions and their governing regulations, and his lineage — Huineng to Nanyue Huairang to Mazu Daoyi to Baizhang himself — is accurately traced here across four generations; the version of the Pure Rules that survived into Zhuhong's own time was, as modern scholarship on the text's transmission history confirms, indeed substantially reconstructed during the Yuan dynasty rather than preserved intact from Baizhang's own era, a fact Zhuhong here deduces purely from internal doctrinal inconsistency rather than from any documented textual history available to him, making his argument a genuinely independent piece of textual criticism arrived at through reasoning about lineage and consistency alone.