Dogen's Manuals of Zen Meditation by Carl Bielefeldt

Author:Carl Bielefeldt
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: University of California Press

In one sense, then, the style of classical Ch'an can be seen as the culmination of the efforts of the early movement to liberate Buddhism from its monastic confines and to open the religion to those unequal to, or unattracted by, the rigors of the traditional course of yogic discipline; in another rarely recognized sense classical Ch'an represented the termination of such efforts. In the search for ever simpler, quicker, more direct means to enlightenment, the movement had been led to a radically "protestant" soteriology that denied the efficacy of traditional works and left only the sudden leap of insight into the inherently enlightened nature of the mind. On the face of it such a doctrine would seem to offer equal spiritual opportunity to all, regardless of station or lifestyle; and, in fact, the teachings of the Southern school (and the closely related Oxhead and Pao-t'ang schools) often appear to hold out such an opportunity. Yet the classical Ch'an style of the later T'ang seems to have moved in the opposite direction—toward an elitist, "gnostic" religion.

There are undoubtedly various reasons for this development. As I have already suggested, one reason may be the rapid and considerable success of the school in finding a place among T'ang Buddhist institutions. Other causes may lie in the nature of the sudden doctrine itself. For example, we have already seen the continuing tension between inclusive and exclusive interpretation: if the sudden doctrine was associated with the one great vehicle that proclaimed the universality of enlightenment, it was also the supreme vehicle, the highest understanding and final practice of the religion. As such, in the traditional Buddhist classification of such matters, the practice was reserved for the highest types—for those, as the Sixth Patriarch said, of keen spiritual faculties (li ken). From this perspective, we can better understand why the Van ching, which begins with the story of an illiterate, barbarian woodcutter's sudden accession to the Patriarchate of the supreme vehicle, should close with a warning to transmit his teaching only to those of the highest abilities and purest training.38

The association of the sudden practice with a spiritual elite is closely related to the doctrine of the ineffability of the highest vehicle. The ultimate teaching cannot be understood by the ordinary mind; it can be communicated only, as the Lotus Sutra said, "from one Buddha to another." Similarly, the true practice, says Shen-hui, is beyond the ordinary teachings of Buddhism; it has been transmitted outside written texts directly from the mind of one Patriarch to another.39 If the theoretical notion of ineffability tended, as I have been at pains to argue, to discourage the public discussion of the techniques of the true practice, the attendant historical claim here of an esoteric tradition outside the public record no doubt tended to encourage the assumption that access to this practice was limited to a select circle of the cognoscenti in direct contact with a living representative of the Patriarchate. The historical claim of a mind-to-mind transmission, of

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