A Book Club Book Report on Burning Books (and Other Relevant Topics)
Zen study is a controversial subject in modern Zen circles. Time and again, students and authority figures claim that the writings and cases passed down by the Zen Masters not only fail to provide a means of attainment, but actively ensnare Zen students away from enlightenment. They call it "mistaking the finger for the moon," bringing up case upon case to prop up their argument that reading Zen literature impedes a person's quest to become enlightened.
The burning of the woodblocks used to print the the biyan lu (Yuanwu's Blue Cliff Record) by Yuanwu's student, Dahui Zonggao, is a legend that has been passed around for centuries. To the people who study Zen and the biyan lu, it is offered as evidence that there is no value to reading the old cases and their commentary, and that it would be better for students seeking enlightenment that they be lost, or destroyed, and forgotten. It is the purpose of this essay to trace the available genealogy of this legend and discuss the possibility that it is complete fabrication.
The story of Dahui's destruction of the woodblocks is often mentioned in Zen literature published in the last handful of decades; D.T. Suzuki in An Introduction to Zen Buddhism (p.116), Sasaki in their translation of Linji's Record (p.368), in the introduction to volume 1 of the Korean Gong'An Collection (p.20), in Kabanoff's essay "Ikkyu and Koans" in The Koan: Texts and Contexts in Zen Buddhism. None of these offer a citation. The English and Chinese Wikipedia cite a secondary source.
In Morten Schlütter's book, How Zen Became Zen, he cites two sources we can use (p.216n46);
1.The Chanlin baoxun. T48.1036b28.
2.Miriam Levering's discussion of Ogisu's essay, “Daie zenji no Hekiganshū shōki ni tsuite” in her dissertation.
The Chanlin baoxun, or Treasured Instructions of the Chan Grove, is said to have been largely compiled by Dahui and Foyan's student, Zhuan, and editted and enlarged by Jingshan after they died. Levering's early scholarship places its publication between 1174 and 1189CE., though by 1989, Thomas Cleary said 1279 in Japan. As of now, The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism says 1378; over 200 years after Dahui died. This disparity in time means that, while claiming to have been compiled by Dahui and Zhuan, it wasn't published for another two to three hundred years.
Koyu Shina, in his essay "A Bibliographical Geneology of the Chanlin-baoxun," suggests that the total number of cases was enlarged numerous times over the centuries, finally arriving at 290 cases (the Thomas Cleary translation, Zen Lessons: The Art of Leadership, has 216). This, along with the distance in time, may also be an explanation for why the cases are very different from Dahui's Treasury of the Eye of True Teaching case collection; the Chanlin baoxun is comprised mostly of snippets from diaries, letters, and collections of sayings on how to lead and teach Chan communities, and various lessons in moral cultivation, rather than the usual encounter dialogues of the Song Dynasty era.
Going to the source Schlütter cites, the line we are looking at is 即碎其板闢其說 ("Forthwith smashed to fragments those wood planks to reclaim those teachings.") From this, we can be certain that the story of the destruction of the woodblocks of the biyan lu is old, but given the convoluted publication history of the Chanlin baoxun, when it started still remains a mystery.
Miriam Levering, discussing Ogisu's essay and the case from the Chanlin baoxun (p.32n2), says that when Dahui saw that students were being harmed by their attention to the biyan lu, he destroyed the original woodblocks, but no burning is mentioned. She also notes it's "puzzling" that none of this is mentioned in any of his letters or sermons. It is accepted evidence that during the 13th century the biyan lu, which was compiled in 1125, was out of circulation for about one hundred years—until about 1302. Levering includes a translation of an afterword included in reprint of the biyan lu at the time, written by Hsü-ku Hsi-ling:
Later Ta-hui Ch'an-shih found that when students came into his room [to present their realization], their replies [to his questions] were slightly off. When he doubted [their realization] and questioned them further just a bit, their false 'sharpness' crumbled. When he cross-examined further, they capitulated, and confessed, 'I memorized [that answer] from the Blue Cliff Collection. I really haven't experienced enlightenment.' Because he feared that later students would not see clearly the fundamental truth, but pay attention only to words in order to gain verbal victories, [Ta-hui] burned [the Blue Cliff Records] in order to save [students from] this grave mistake. The intention which originally compiled this book and that which burned it were one. How could they be different?
From all of this, we can establish a few facts:
1.The biyan lu was published around 1125, but was out of print for the entirety of the 13th century.
2.In the 14th century, we have two mentions of the destruction of the woodblocks; an afterword to a new publication of the biyan lu, and in a case of the Chanlin baoxun.
3.The publication history of the Chanlin baoxun makes it a dubious source for any information on what was said to have occurred 200 years before it's publication.
All of this leads to a lot of unanswered questions; Why doesn't Dahui ever mention the biyan lu or its destruction in his letters and sermons? Why don't any of the Zen Masters who published works in the centuries afterwards mention it?
Dahui died in 1163, so the burning had to have happened before that date. The Book of Serenity, written by Wansong and published in 1224, doesn't mention it. Linquan, the author of The Empty Valley Collection, and Wansong's student, doesn't mention it either. Neither is it mentioned in Wumen's Gateless Gate, assumed to have been published in 1228, nor in Xutang's work.
What about all the other koan collections at the time? Why did Dahui leave those, but burn the biyan lu? Why would he expect that destroying those printing blocks would be effective? Why did Linji school monks who came after Dahui, such as Wumen, have no issues with the koan and commentary format? If Dahui thought the format was so injurious, why did he publish the largest case collection since the Transmission of the Lamp himself?
What about treatises like the Linji lu or Huangbo's chuanxinfayao, or the hundreds of other writings? One must assume people would not have any difficulty memorizing those and playing pretend-Zen Master. It follows that the destruction of the biyan lu ought to have been a futile action when measured against the avalanche of literature available at the time.
Most importantly, why is it only mentioned several hundred years after the event was supposed to have taken place, in books printed in another country? We had to wait until the 14th century before anyone thought to mention that the most popular Zen book in circulation had been destroyed?
All of these questions are unable to either prove or disprove that the burning of the biyan lu by Dahui took place. We can establish that the record disappeared for over a hundred years. We can also establish that by the 14th century, people were talking about Dahui's destruction of the printing blocks, but until at least a few of these many questions are answered, we don't have enough evidence to say the the event ever occurred. We do know, given the evidence of Dahui's actual actions beyond the gossip, that writing was central to his teaching.
Submitted September 09, 2021 at 03:02PM by OneoftheUnfettered https://ift.tt/3BV5iTY
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