Unfathomable Depths by Sekkei Harada

Author:Sekkei Harada
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-02-28T16:00:00+00:00

Empty Hall Anthology, vol. 4 (1295)

The last dialogue translated here is furthest removed from Master Changcha’s lifetime, but it became the most popular of the dialogues and was repeatedly quoted in subsequent records. The passage reads as follows:

CASE 64

A monk asked Master Tong’an Changcha: “How is the teacher of gods and men?” 30

Changcha replied, “His head is bald, and his body is hairless.” 31 (16)

We may note a few things about the dialogues presented here. First of all, those that appear in records that are historically closest in proximity to Master Changcha himself are quite terse. These, namely the Collection from the Ancestors’ Hall, likely compiled during his own lifetime, and the Jingde Era Record, compiled a few decades after his death, we may consider most likely to reflect actual biographical facts. We may also note that the further removed records become from his lifetime, the lengthier and more detailed they become. It is also of interest that the most famous Chan dialogue that involves Master Changcha was recorded more than three hundred years after his death. This pattern is not terribly surprising, as we see very similar patterns surrounding other well-known figures in Chan history as well—most famously with Bodhidharma and the sixth ancestor, Huineng. We know practically nothing for sure regarding the historicity of these two figures, but a vast body of stories and lore has grown up around them over time.

For critically minded scholars, such patterns of increasing elaboration of records in subsequent generations are almost certainly evidence of the nonhistorical nature of such records. However, defenders of the Chan records as historically valuable argue that there are valid reasons that historical material might only have appeared decades or centuries after the fact. First, ancient societies relied on oral transmission much more than have modern societies, where the capacity for printing is cheap and widespread. Second, we know that sects in China and Japan have historically kept important material secret, only choosing to record such material when it becomes threatened with loss or becomes otherwise obscure. Third, records that may have been written down earlier might simply have been lost.

In the end, however, the question of historicity is of little relevance for the tradition itself when compared to the question of whether a story or dialogue truthfully conveys the mind of Chan and effectively transmits its Dharma message. For the Chan tradition, the biographical information preserved in records establishes claims of lineage, and stories and dialogue raise problem consciousness in students and communicate points of practice—that is, they function as kōans. In fact, we do find later masters taking up such dialogues as teaching points in their own lectures.

The twelfth-century master Mi’an Xianjie, for example, comments on two of the above presented dialogues. With regard to the sequence that begins, “Changcha asked a monk, ‘Where have you come from? ’” Mi’an comments:

Punch for punch, kick for kick, punching and kicking by turns. Who loses, who wins? Nodding his head and wagging his tail, the monk passes the prison gate.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.