Zen's Chinese Heritage: The Masters and Their Teachings (128 page)

YONGMING YANSHOU

YONGMING YANSHOU (904–75) was a disciple of Tiantai Deshao. He came from ancient Yuhang (located near Hangzhou City in Zhejiang Province). A brilliant and devoted practitioner of Buddhism, Yongming is honored as the third ancestor of the Fayan lineage of Zen, as well as the sixth ancestor of Chinese Pure Land Buddhism. He left home at the relatively late age of thirty to study under Zen master Cuiyan Lingcan at Longce Temple.
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Later, he undertook intensive Zen meditation practices under National Teacher Deshao on Mt. Tiantai, becoming his Dharma heir in the Fayan Zen lineage. The
Wudeng Huiyuan
relates that Yanshou remained so still during a ninety-day meditation session that a bird built a nest in the folds of his motionless clothing. Sometime later, Yanshou moved to nearby Guoqing Temple, where he undertook the Pure Land practice of chanting and other austerities.
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Yongming assumed his first position of abbot at Mt. Xuedou. Later, he moved to Hangzhou, where he restored Lingyin Monastery, a major temple that remains a national attraction in China. At the invitation of the ruler, Yanshou then moved to Yongming Monastery on the south shore of Hangzhou’s West Lake. He remained there for fifteen years, receiving the mountain name by which he is remembered.

Yongming, as the occasion required, taught using both Zen and Pure Land methods of instruction. Like the Fayan school’s founder, Fayan Wenyi, Yongming’s syncretic method of instruction presaged the wide dilution of Zen with other Buddhist schools that occurred as the Song dynasty proceeded. A huge congregation gathered around him, and in his own era he was called an incarnation of Maitreya Bodhisattva. He worked closely with leaders of the Faxiang, Huayan, and Tiantai Buddhist sects to assemble the records and writings of more than two hundred famous Indian and Chinese Buddhist teachers.
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The king of Korea paid tribute to these texts by sending Yongming various gifts. He also dispatched thirty-six monks to Hangzhou to study under this eminent teacher. Each of these foreign monks is said to have received Yanshou’s Dharma seal and then returned to Korea, extending the teachings of the Fayan school into that country.

Zen master Yongming Yanshou addressed the monks, saying, “This place, Xuedou, has erupted eight thousand feet into the air and the earth has turned into slippery grain, stacked in a freakish eighty-thousand-foot peak. You have absolutely nothing firm upon which to stand. In what direction will you step forward?”

A monk asked Yongming, “How can one walk upon the path of Xuedou?”

Yanshou said, “Step by step through the wondrous cold landscape; words entirely frozen.”

Yongming recited the following verse:

Amid the high peaks a forlorn ape cries down to the moon.
The recluse chants while half the night candle burns.
Who comprehends this place and time?
At a place deep within white clouds, a Zen monk sits.

A monk asked, “What is Yongming’s wondrous mystery?”

Yanshou said, “Add more incense.”

The monk said, “Thank you, Master, for your instruction.”

Yanshou said, “So you’re satisfied and don’t want to delve deeper?”

The monk bowed.

Yanshou said, “Listen to this verse:

If you desire to know Yongming’s mystery,
Before the gate is the lake’s surface.
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The sun illuminates all life.
The wind arises and waves come up.”

A monk asked, “This student has long been here at Yongming. Why can’t I understand the style of the Yongming House?”

Yongming said, “You can understand the place you don’t understand.”

The monk said, “How can I understand what I don’t understand?”

Yongming said, “An ox gives birth to an elephant. The blue sea gives rise to red dust.”

A monk asked, “Our tradition has the saying, ‘All the buddhas and their teachings come forth from this scripture.’ What is ‘this scripture’?”

Yongming said, “Without intention or sound it is endlessly recited.”

The monk asked, “How does one receive and uphold it?”

Yongming said, “Those who want to receive and uphold it must look and listen.”

A monk asked, “What is the great perfect mirror?”

Yongming said, “A broken dish of sand.”

During the twelfth month of [the year 975], Yongming became ill. Two days later he bade the monks farewell. Sitting cross-legged in an upright position, he passed away. His stupa was placed on Dazi [“Great Compassion”] Mountain.