Monthly Archives: April 2014

Religiosity

Posted on April 29, 2014 by Vajragoni

Oftentimes we encounter writers who are on the quest for a new Spiritual-Religion. Chuang-Tzu himself transcended the ordinary categories of just what constitutes common notions of such a quest.  One of my resources in this series is a book by Ge Ling Shang entitled Liberation as affirmation: the religiosity of Zhuangzi and Nietzsche. This author has provided a key term that best expresses the aforementioned quest: Religiosity. He has chosen unlikely bedfellows whose dissimilar philosophies broached the subject, yet they did share one common characteristic. As the author writes, “both Zhuangzi’s and Nietzsche’s attack on traditional values was not so much an attempt to present another system of human values as an attempt to overcome and transcend all traditional values to reach a state of liberation and freedom. For, according to Zhuangzi and Nietzsche, liberation itself is not a value in a customary sense, but the transcending of all previous values.” Nietzsche would call this a Transvaluation of all Values. He broke through all traditional notions that had become metastasized in normative structures like a pounding hammer, whereas Zhuangzi did so in the gentle flight of a butterfly, or the ethereal breath of the Tao itself. They both succeeded in transcending all mundane conventionalities in that spirit of Religiosity. Religiosity empowers the spirit to soar beyond the narrow confines of the composed into the boundless-freedom of the Unborn. read more

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Tree of Heaven

Posted on April 27, 2014 by Vajragoni

Master Hui said to Master Chuang, “I have a big tree people call Tree of Heaven. Its great trunk is so gnarled and knotted that it cannot be measured with an inked line; its branches are so twisted that squats and compasses can hardly be applied to them. It stands by the road, but no carpenter would even consider giving it a glance. Now your words are just like my tree—so big and useless that no one ever cares to listen to you. read more

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And Butterflies are Free to Fly…

Posted on April 24, 2014 by Vajragoni


I Dreamed I Was A Butterfly by Alice McMahon White

Chuang Tzu’s Taoism is perhaps the most profound in the Taoist Treasury; although he would be the first to state that his positionless-teaching was no form of “ism”, but rather simply that which radiated a “boundless vitality” that is the very heart of the imageless-Tao. From the onset of this series one needs to be aware that the Unborn is synonymous with the Tao and henceforth will be used to convey That which is Imageless and Unbound. As a man of the Unborn he lived unabatedly in the Dharmadhatu—the Pure Light Realm of Deathless Suchness, As It Is, with no obstructions of the born and created, or as the Chuang Tzuian spirit would say, “Or is not Is, when Is is-not”, just to provide a pliable-variable bearing no-fixed position. In all that he was about it was not “he” that acted, but rather the spontaneous breath of the Unborn Spirit. As the late sinologist Angus Graham wrote, “Zhuang Zhou distrusted official rules, standardized categories, established opposites, and the dictates of language, instead inspiring people to see things from different perspectives, illuminating the flow of cosmic spontaneity, and allowing heaven to work through him in all his thoughts and actions (Graham 1989, 191).” How, then, is a man of the Unborn to act in the world? Not through any pre-ordained impetus, but through the actionless (Wu-Wei) spontaneity that is never independent of the Unborn Itself. Perhaps a good way of illustrating this is through one of the most familiar anecdotes in the Zhuangzi (this italicization will be used when the “text” is indicated, as opposed to the person), Chuang Tzu and the Butterfly: read more

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Parallelism

Posted on April 22, 2014 by Vajragoni

The grand-finale of Tsung-mi’s Chan Prolegomenon is a testament to his analysis and paraxial methodology of laying side by side the modes of delusion and awakening within Mind’s Dynamic-Nature. Although there’s an apparent contradiction within Mind’s bifurcation between denizens of the six-realms of karmic-existence and the Noble One’s of the Blessed three-vehicles, in actuality both are part and parcel of the One Luminously-Pure Sphere of the Dharmakaya. Peter N. Gregory expounds: read more

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Dark Ch’an

Posted on April 20, 2014 by Vajragoni

As a further sign that Tsung-mi was not totally entrenched in the evaluation of letters and words and their import for the Buddhadharma, Chapt. 8 of the Chan Prolegomenon assures the assiduous Mind-adept that the Total assessment of the Buddhadharma—the great “wordless teaching”—rests in what Broughton identifies as Tsung-mi’s “dark understanding”. The one who is adroit in Unborn Mind Zen recognizes this as Dark Ch’an, which entails forgetting about the exclusive reliance on words by “turning-about” from all images (forms, sensations, thought-material, analyzations, all Eight-Layers of the Body Consciousness) and remaining prior to the created-order of thingness and intuitively resting in Suchness THAT innately and spontaneously acts under all circumstances. In Essence it’s all about resting in the Tao (Unborn) and no-thing else—thus it’s darkness to ordinary modes of perception and a Luminous Actuosity for the awakened Spirit-Mind.  Scholars like Jeffrey Broughton know that in this sense Tsung-mi is speaking in “Chuang-Tzu” mode, or the Tao of the Unborn Mind. read more

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Conjoined Realities

Posted on April 17, 2014 by Vajragoni

To this very day there is little consensus as to the precise-relationship between tathagatā-garbha and alaya-vijñāna. Seong-Uk Kin, in his excellent extract, “Understanding Tsung-mi’s View on Buddha Nature”, nicely extrapolates on its evolving traits. The concept of alaya-vijñāna first appeared in the Samdhinirmocana-sūtra, circa early 4th century C.E. in India. This Sutra asserts that the alaya-vijñāna is a form of consciousness that exhibits particular modes of perception. It is here that it also takes on the familiar metaphorical-shape as a receptacle that house seeds of karma as well as the propensity for all future karma. It is essentially based on this understanding that Yogācāra Buddhists determine how all phenomenal-diversity develops; indeed, for them alaya-vijñāna is the hallmark for all conventional realities, and it is how subjective-agents interact in their environment. For Chinese Buddhists, their main concern was how tathagatāgarbha and alaya-vijñāna differed, especially pertaining as to whether alaya-vijñāna was pure or impure. The great Translator in China, Paramartha, asserted that it was defiled-garbha. As time progressed the Chinese developed their own unique Yogācāra schools that particularly focused on this concern. Fa-shang (495-580) represented one of these schools and expounded that tathagatāgarbha and alaya-vijñāna were exclusively separate from one another: alaya-vijñāna was totally impure and existed solely to house all karmic and phenomenal-based associations; whereas the tathagatāgarbha was solely “pure” and the ultimate source for all there is. This stood in stark contrast to other Yogācāra schools that asserted that alaya-vijñāna in-itself was pure and the sustainer of all phenomena—it was completely synonymous with the tathagatāgarbha . In a masterstroke of providing the middle-ground for all these opposing schools, the Awakening of Faith integrated both concepts: alaya-vijñāna was bifurcated as epistemologically a combination of both pure and impure aspects of consciousness, while ontologically it was not distinct from tathagatāgarbha. When in awakened-mode the alaya was pure; when in delusion, it was impure. The following diagram (from Seong-Uk Kin’s extract), depicts how the Awakening of Faith harmonized tathagatāgarbha and alaya-vijñāna as the “One Mind in Two Aspects”: read more

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The Old Man in the Nāga Samadhi

Posted on April 15, 2014 by Vajragoni

Zekkai Chūshin (1336-1405), considered to be the dominant poet of all the Five Mountains Zen Poet-monks, once referred to Tsung-mi as “the old man in the nāga [mythological serpent = the Buddha] samadhi.” (Broughton, ZOC) The origin of this can be traced back to the Platform Sutra of Huineng: read more

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Bodhidharma Dhyana

Posted on April 13, 2014 by Vajragoni

Some might suspect from reading this series that Tsung-mi was someone who only emphasized the scholastic-side of Ch’an Buddhism. They would be wrong. Tsung-mi’s spirituality was a healthily balanced one—one that took Sūtra Study very seriously, yet at the same time being willing to cultivate the full-import of Ch’an—which essentially refers to faithfully practicing Dhyana. In fact, his subtitle to the Ch’an Prolegomenon is, “COLLECTION OF EXPRESSIONS OF THE PRINCIPLE AND PRACTICE OF DHYANA” (Broughton). Here’s his wonderful definition for the Absolute make-up of Dhyana/Ch’an: read more

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The Chan Prolegomenon: Introductory Remarks

Posted on April 10, 2014 by Vajragoni

Tsung-mi’s Chan Prolegomenon (also known as the Ch’an Preface) is a vast-work considered to be his most crowning-achievement. In it he proves himself to be a great synthetic-agent as he weaves together all the major petulant Ch’an schools of his day and age, like the Northern, Ox-Head and Hongzhou—seeking to find that one common denominator that would surmount their irreconcilable differences.  Tsung-mi was the Noble-Lamp bearer who attempted to lead them all out of the dark tunnel of fractious-divide into the Luminous Light and Union of the Dharmadhātu. The work is like a colossal Chinese puzzle, with each piece fitting under what Jeffrey Broughton refers to as certain axioms, that attempt to correlate essential Ch’an teachings of the contentious traditions—all vying for primacy. In this respect it’s unfortunate that contemporary zennists haven’t even referred to a work of such stature, since it could help to allay all the vying-factions that attempt to discredit each other; what Tsung-mi has to say is very relevant today: read more

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Eunuch Power and the Two Entrances

Posted on April 8, 2014 by Vajragoni

The Sweet-Dew Incident

It may sound hard to hear for modern ears that the great Tsung-mi’s downfall was at the hands of Eunuchs. However, these were no namby-pamby fellows that appear in some Mel Brook’s comedy, but rather fierce-warriors that were actually bred for maintaining power and control over the Emperor’s Court.  The year was 835 and Tsung-mi became implicated in what is known as the Sweet-Dew Incident. This involved a failed coup attempt to oust the Eunuch stronghold over the Emperor Wenzong. The main conspirator,  Li Xun, sought refuge in Tsung-mi’s monastery. Apparently, Tsung-mi favored Li Xun’s politics and after shaving his head to resemble one of the monks, granted him sanctuary.  For his action, Tsung-mi was later arrested and even faced possible execution. But once again Tsung-mi’s own powerful presence and powers of persuasion made an impact and his execution was stayed. Peter N. Gregory writes: read more

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