A special tradition outside the scriptures;
No dependence upon words and letters;
Direct pointing at the human soul;
Seeing into one's own nature and attaining Buddhahood.(1)

Because of its esoteric nature, there would be no necessity for Ch'an to exist as a separate sect. Virtually all Buddhist sects of which I am aware, including all the major sects of Chinese Buddhism, have esoteric elements within them, and all sects teach and encourage the practice of seated meditation, the focus of Ch'an traditions. Furthermore, the formation of a separate and distinct sect is contrary to the esoteric impulse, since it brings into the open the intimate relationship between master and disciple, and to some extent compromises that relationship by publicity. Because the major sects of Chinese Buddhism were formed around a master's interpretation of a specific scriptural text, the reference to "a special tradition outside the scriptures" would seem to weigh against the emergence of Ch'an as a distinct sect in its own right. Therefore, it is appropriate to ask what explains this emergence.

The received tradition is that the Ch'an sect was brought to China by a saint, Bodhidharma, who "came from the West" in the mid-sixth century to establish the sect in China. Reliable information about Bodhidharma is tenuous. Dumoulin insists: " that he existed and was a native of India can be regarded as definitely established. " (2)

According to tradition, he was a dhyana master who enjoyed great esteem and won many disciples. There is textual evidence to suggest that he resided for a time at the Yung-ning monastery on Mt. Sung, near Lo-yang, during the early sixth century, and another monastery nearby, Shao-lin, is also associated with his name.

Hui-k'o, Bodhidharma's successor, cannot be separated from the legendary accretions surrounding the career of his master, as is shown by the story that he attained his patriarchate by cutting off his arm and presenting it to Bodhidharma.(4) The facts about Seng-ts'an, the third patriarch, are so spare that even Tao-hsuan, the official historian of the Ch'an patriarchate, does not accord him separate treatment. (5) During the tenure of the fourth patriarch, Tao-hsin,(6) a schism occurred when one of his disciples, Fa-jung, founded a movement which (according to Masunaga, and cited by Dumoulin) was carried to Japan by Dengyo Daishi (the monk, Saicho, who founded Tendai Buddhism in Japan ). As we shall see, the idea that Ch'an practice could exist within another sect (T'ien-t'ai in China , Tendai in Japan ) is suggestive concerning the origins of Ch'an as a separate sect.

Then, after the fifth patriarch, Hung-jen, came the dramatic schism brought about by the controversy over who would be the sixth patriarch. Shen-hsiu, the foremost disciple of Hung-jen, appears to have been accepted by the majority as deserving the succession; however, an independent tradition grew up that the master had secretly designated Hui-neng as the sixth patriarch. This tradition became entrenched in the South, and the collapse of the northern traditions, apparently as a result of the death of Shen-hsius's disciples during the T'ang persecutions, left the southern tradition in possession of the field.

Thus, in the normative tradition, Hui-neng, the Sixth patriarch in the Chinese succession, is regarded as the "second" and actual founder of Ch'an, hallowed by many generations of disciples. Modern scholars who have examined the sources of bio-graphical information about him, the earliest of which come from the late T'ang and Sung periods, do not find that these sources inspire confidence.(7) At the core of the traditions concerning Hui-neng stands the dramatic episode of his nocturnal, and therefore secret, succession, and his "flight to the south" to escape the vengeance of his opponents. Even Dumoulin, who gives credence to much of the historical information about Hui-neng, sees the core of this tradition as a "tendentious invention" aimed at the enemies of the southern Ch'an schools, which are represented in this tradition as the legitimate successor to Bodhidharma. It appears that we do not possess any historically reliable sources for either the life or the teachings of Hui-neng.

The period from the death of Hui-neng (c.713) until the persecution of Buddhism under the Emperor Wu-tsung (842~45) is the Golden Age of Ch'an, about which chronicles, sayings, and kung-an (koan) collections, preserved mostly in Japan, furnish us with virtually unlimited information. Only the southern Ch'an schools survived and flourished after the great persecution, and these traditions were preserved and given their normative shape in the so-called "Five Houses" of Ch'an Buddhism. Let us now consider some of the factors which may have influenced the preservation and shaping of the Ch'an traditions in the aftermath of the great persecution of Buddhism in the later T'ang Dynasty.

It is characteristic of religious movements under persecution that they preserve their histories in forms that justify both the occurrence of persecution and the survival of a "remnant." A common theme of such histories is that of repristination, i.e; that the surviving remnant preserves the original, pure form of the religious ideal which is embodied in their tradition, and that the survival of the pure remnant is thus a mandate for the radical reform of the community. The represtination motif thus functions both as an explanation of why the persecution came upon the community (it has corrupted the purity of its tradition), and as a justification of the remnant's survival.

The normative Ch'an tradition shows this tendency. Ch'an preserves a "secret" tradition which goes back to Shakyamuni himself, and which contains the "essence ” of his own experience of enlightenment, to be transmitted to future generations. This secret is transmitted directly from Master to disciple through non-verbal communication, based on the practice of seated meditation. The clear implication is that those sects which were destroyed had either lost or corrupted the original, pure tradition, and were thus purged in order to allow the original dharma to emerge from the purifying fires of persecution. This view not only validates the survivors' tradition (now in possession of the field by default, as it were), but also provides a way to deal with the well-attested phenomenon of "survival guilt" associated with those who do survive such a holocaust.(8) Thus Bodhidharma, the Founder, is portrayed as wandering from place to place, eventually reaching the center of Imperial power, fearlessly preaching the fruitlessness of building temples and reciting sutras... preaching those activities whose " fruitlessness " was revealed by the terrible persecution.  

The practice of seated meditation is basic to any form of monastic Buddhism whatsoever. Likewise, any monastic establishment would include persons responsible for teaching and overseeing this practice. Such people would be dhyana "masters" (i.e; teachers of meditation practice), in both name and function. In such a monastery, the dharma master might or might not be the same person responsible for dhyana instruction. It seems plausible that a person known to be a dhyana instructor in a given monastery would not necessarily be the preserver and transmitter of a distinctive sectarian tradition (although he would, of course, be the preserver and transmitter of a tradition about the practice of seated meditation). This would explain a succession of teachers (dhyana masters, in Chinese, Ch'an masters) who need not be representatives of a separate, sectarian tradition.  

The strong apologetic motif of the "flight to the south," to avoid the wrath of those disappointed by the secret succession of Hui-neng (Shen-hsiu and his followers), is also understandable in this frame of reference. Shen-hsiu represents the "mainstream" of Chinese Buddhism, precisely those elements which would be wiped out by the persecution (as indeed the northern tradition was). In the relatively isolated monasteries of the south, those who fled would have naturally looked back on their experience as containing a message for future generations. This message was eventually understood: they preserved the pure, original insights upon which the tradition rested for its liberating spiritual power. They had survived---fleeing to the south as had the legendary Hui-neng---in order to bear witness to future generations concerning the "essence" of the tradition, embodied in the direct, immediate experience of enlightenment out of which the dharma originated. Scriptures, temples, icons might be destroyed (as they were); masters of doctrinal subtlety might by martyred or disappear into the safety of anonymity; but the liberating power of the tradition could be preserved within the framework of meditation practice, in a word, ch'an. Thus the purity of the tradition was restored, to be handed down to future generations.        

One final comment: It may be that there was an esoteric practice within early Chinese Buddhism which centered on meditation. The evidence is suggestive. The rapid success of the Buddhist mission in China points to a superiority over Taoist folk religion, and this could well lie in the superiority of meditation practice over the ancient folk-Taoist "internal hygiene" (nei-tan). Among the earliest Buddhist writings to be translated were sutras which dealt with meditation and described the stages of consciousness along the way to liberating wisdom. We know that the earliest forms of meditation practiced in China were the Amida vision and the Prajna-paramita-samadhi, which sees through the emptiness of all things. None of this is reflected in the Mahayana philosophy which characterizes the major sects prior to the emergence of the Ch'an schools. The evidence indicates that all the schools which were carried from China to Japan prior to the great persecution contained an esoteric element (including Tenda i, the source of all the "popular" Buddhist movements in Japan ).  

NOTES