Clouds Thick, Whereabouts Unknown by Charles Egan

Author:Charles Egan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literary Criticism/Asian/General
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2011-12-22T00:00:00+00:00

50. Dongshan Liangjie, Untitled105

*Dongshan Liangjie (807–869), who together with his disciple Caoshan Benji (840–901) was retroactively credited with establishing the Cao-Dong school of Chan (the Japanese Sōtō Zen), was from Zhuji in Kuaiji (Zhuji, Zhejiang); his secular surname was Yu. He entered the Buddhist life while still a child, studying Chan with Lingmo (747–818) at Mount Wuxie in Wuzhou (in Zhejiang); he was formally ordained a monk at the age of twenty at Mount Song (in Dengfeng, Henan). After a period of wandering, and lively meetings with Chan masters such as Nanquan Puyuan (748–845) and Guishan Lingyou (771–853), he began studies with Yunyan Tansheng (782–841) at Mount Yunyan in Tanzhou (in Hunan). One day, when Liangjie was taking leave of his teacher, Tansheng said, “You must be very careful, as you’ve taken on this thing.” Liangjie did not understand, but later, when he was crossing a stream, he saw his reflection in the water and was suddenly enlightened. He returned to the mountain and became Tansheng’s disciple. Liangjie’s career began in earnest after the Buddhist persecution of 845, when he became abbot of a temple at Mount Xinfeng in Ruizhou (in Gao’an, Jiangxi), but he passed most of the latter part of his life teaching at the nearby Puli Monastery on Mount Dong (in Xinchang, Jiangxi). He died in 869. The Tang court posthumously granted him the title Great Master of Original Enlightenment (Wuben Dashi). In 1985, on a hillside at Mount Dong, a small, eroded memorial stūpa was declared by Japanese Sōtō experts to be Liangjie’s original resting place.106

Liangjie wrote this poem to describe his enlightenment.

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