4-2.8 CH'ANISM: THE PHILOSOPHY OF SILENCE
the other Ch an Masters, meaning that only he who experiences the non-distinction of the experiencer and the experienced really knows what it is.
In this state the experiencer has discarded knowledge in the ordinary sense, because this kind of knowledge postulates a distinction between the knower and the known. Nevertheless, he is not without knowledge, because his state differs from that of blind unconsciousness, as Nan—ch iian calls it. This is what is called the knowledge that is not knowledge.
When the student has reached the verge of Sudden Enlightenment, that is the time when the Master can help him the most. When one is about to make the leap, a certain assistance, no matter how small, is a great help. The Ch'-an Masters at this stage used to practice what they called the method of stick or yell to help the leap to Enlightenment. Ch an literature reports many incidents in which a Master, having asked his student to consider some problem, suddenly gave him several blows with a stick or yelled at him. If these acts were done at the right moment, the result would be a Sudden En-lightenment for the student. The explanation would seem to be that the phys-ical act, thus performed, shocks the student into that psychological aware-ness of enlightenment for which he has long been preparing.
To describe Sudden Enlightenment, the Ch an Masters use the metaphor of "the bottom of a tub falling out." When this happens, all its contents are suddenly gone. In the same way, when one is suddenly enlightened, he finds all his problems suddenly solved. They are solved not in the sense that he gains some positive solution for them, but in the sense that all the problems have ceased any longer to be problems. That is why the Too is called "the indubitable Too."
The Attainment of Non-attainment
The attainment of Sudden Enlightenment does not entail the attainment of anything further. The Ch an Master Ch'ing-yuan, known as the Master of Shu-chou (died II2.O), said: "If you now comprehend it, where is that which you did not comprehend before? What you were deluded about before is what you are now enlightened about, and what you are now enlightened about is what you were deluded about before." (Recorded Sayings of Ancient Wor-thies,chiton 32.) As we have seen in the last chapter, the real is the phenom-enal, according to Seng—chao and Tao—sheng. In Ch anism there is the com-mon expression that "the mountain is the mountain, the river is the river." In one's state of delusion, one sees the mountain as the mountain and the river as the river. But after Enlightenment one still sees the mountain as the mountain and the river as the river.
The Ch an Masters also use another common expression: Riding an ass to search for the ass. By this they mean a search for reality outside of the phenomenal, in other words, to search for Nirvana outside of the Wheel of Birth and Death. Shu-chou said: "There are only two diseases: one is riding
43O CH' ANISM: THE PHILOSOPHY -OF SILENCE 1
an ass to search for the ass; the other is riding an ass and being unwilling to dismount. You say that riding an ass to search for the ass is silly and that he who does it should be punished. This is a very serious disease. But I tell you, do not search for the ass at all. The intelligent man, understanding my meaning, stops to search for the ass, and thus the deluded state of his mind ceases to exist.
"But if, having found the ass, one is unwilling to dismount, this disease is most difficult to cure. I say to you, do not ride the ass at all.You yourself are the ass. Everything is the ass. Why do you ride on it? If you ride, you cannot cure your disease. But if you do not ride, the universe is as a great expanse open to your view. With these two diseases expelled, nothing remains to af-fect your mind. This is spiritual cultivation. You need do nothing more. (Ibid.) If one insists that after attaining Enlightenment one will still attain something else, this is to ride an ass and be unwilling to dismount.
Huang—po said: "L If there be Enlightenment J, speech or silence, activity or inactivity, and every sight and sound, all pertain to Buddha. Where should you go to find the Buddha? Do not place a head on top of a head or a mouth beside a mouth." (Recorded Sayings of Ancient Worthies, chtian 3.) If there be Enlightenment, everything pertains to Buddha and everywhere there is Buddha. It is said that one Ch'an monk went into a temple and spat on the statue of the Buddha. When he was criticized, he said: "Please show me a place where there is no Buddha." (Record of the Transmission of the Light, chiian 1J-)
Thus the Ch an sage lives just as everyone else lives, and does what ev-eryone else does. In passing from delusion to Enlightenment, he has left his mortal humanity behind and has entered sagehood. But after that he still has to leave sagehood behind and to enter once more into mortal humanity. This is described by the Ch'an Masters as "rising yet another step over the top of the hundred-foot bamboo." The top of the bamboo symbolizes the climax of the achievement of Enlightenment. "Rising yet another step means that af-ter Enlightenment has come, the sage still has other things to do. What he has to do, however, is no more than the ordinary things of daily life. As Nan—ch uan said: After coming to understand the other side, you come back and live on this side.' (Recorded Sayings of Ancient Worthies, chtian 12.)
Although the sage continues living on this side, his understanding of the other side is not in vain. Although what he does is just what everyone else does, yet it has a different significance to him. As Hui-hai, known as the Master of Pai-ch'ang (died 814), said: "That which before Enlightenment is called lustful anger, is after Enlightenment called the Buddha Wisdom. The man is no different from what he was before; it is only that what he does is different." (Recorded Sayings of Ancient Worthies, chiian I.) It would seem that there must be some textual error in this last sentence. What Pai-ch'ang apparently intended to say was: "What the man does is no different from
432. CH' ANISM: THE PHILOSOPHY OF SILENCE
what he did before; it is only that the man himself is not the same as he was.
The man is not the same, because although what he does is what everyone else does, he has no attachment to anything. This is the meaning of the common Ch'an saying: "To eat all day and yet not swallow a single grain; to wear clothes all day and yet not touch a single thread. (Recorded Sayings of Ancient Worthies, chiton 3 and 16.)
There is yet another common saying: "In carrying water and chopping firewood: therein lies the wonderful Too." (Record of the Transmission of the Light, chilan 8.) One may ask: If this is so, does not the wonderful Too also lie in serving one's family and the state? If we were to draw the logical conclusion from the Ch'an doctrines that have been analyzed above, we should be forced to answer yes. The Ch an Masters themselves, however, did not give this logical answer. It was reserved for the Neo-Confucianists, who are the subject of our next several chapters, to do so.
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CHAPTER 23
NEO-CONFUCIANISM: THE COSMOLOGISTS
IN 5^9, after centuries of division, China was again unified by the Sui dy-nasty (589-617). The Sui, however, soon gave way to the powerful and highly centralized dynasty of T'ang (618-906). Both culturally and politically the T' ang was a golden age in China, which equalled and in some ways surpassed that of Han.
The examination system for the selection of officials, in which the Confu-cian Classics held a pre-eminent position, was reestablished in 61a. In 618 Emperor T'ai-tsung (62.7-649) ordered that a Confucian temple be estab-lished in the Imperial University, and in 630 he again ordered scholars to prepare an official edition of the Confucian Classics. As part of this work, standard commentaries on the Classics were selected from among the numer-ous commentaries that had been written before that time, and official sub-commentaries were written to elucidate these standard commentaries. The resulting Classical texts, with their official commentaries and subcommen-taries, were then commanded by the Emperor to be taught in the Imperial University. In this way Confucianism was reaffirmed as the official teaching of the state.
But Confucianism had by this time already lost the vitality which it had once manifested in the form of such men as Mencius, Hsiin Tzu, and Tung Chung—shu. The original texts were there, and their commentaries and sub-commentaries were even more numerous than before, yet they failed to meet the spiritual interest and needs of the age. After the revival of Taoism and the introduction of Buddhism, people had become more interested in meta-physical problems and in what I call super-moral values, or, as they were then phrased, the problems of the nature and Destiny (of man). As we have seen in chapters four, seven, and fifteen, discussions on such problems are not lacking in such Confucian works as the Confucian Analects, the Men— cius, the Doctrine of the Mean, and especially the Book of Changes. These, however, needed a genuinely new interpretation and elucidation in order to meet the problems of the new age, and this type of interpretation was as yet
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lacking despite the efforts of the Emperor s scholars. Han Yil and Li Ao
It was not until the latter part of the T ang dynasty that there arose two men, Han Yii (768-824) and Li Ao (died c. 844), who really tried to reinter-pret such works as the Ta Hsiieh or Great Learning and Chung Yung or Doctrine of the Mean, in such a way as would answer the problems of their time. In his essay titled Yiian Too or 'On the Origin and Nature of the Truth," Han YU wrote: "What I call the Too is not what has hitherto been called the Too by the Taoists and the Buddhists. Yao [a traditional sage-king of antiquity J transmitted the Too to Shun [ another traditional sage-king supposed to be the successor of Yao]. Shun transmitted it to Yii [successor of Shun and founder of the Hsia dynasty]. Yti transmitted it to [Kings] Wen and Wu and the Duke of Chou [the three founders of the Chou dynasty]. Wen and Wu and the Duke of Chou transmitted it to Confucius, and Confu-cius transmitted it to Mencius. After Mencius, it was no longer transmitted. Hsiin [Tzu] and Yang [Hsiung] selected from it, but without reaching the essential portion; they discussed it, but without sufficient clarity." (Ch'ang-li Hsien—sheng Chi, or Collected Works of Han Yil, chiian II.)
And Li Ao, in an essay titled "On the Restoration of the Nature," writes very similarly: "The ancient Sages transmitted this teaching to Yen Tzu Li.e., Yen Hui, the favored disciple of Confucius]. Tzu-ssu, the grandson of Con-fucius, received the teaching of his grandfather and composed the Doctrine of the Mean in forty-seven sections which he transmitted to Mencius....Alas, though writings dealing with the nature and Destiny are still preserved, none of the scholars understand them, and therefore they all plunge into Taoism and Buddhism. Ignorant people say that the followers of the Master [i.e., of Confucius] are incapable of investigating the theories on the nature and Destiny, and everybody believes them. When some one asked me about this, I transmitted to him what I knew....My hope is that this long obstructed and abandoned Truth may be transmitted in the world." (Li Wen-hung Chi or Collected Works of Li Ao, chiian 1.)
The theory of the transmission of the Truth from Yao and Shun downward, though already roughly suggested by Mencius (Mencius Vllb, 38), was evi-dently reinspired in Han Yii and Li Ao by the Ch an theory that the esoteric teaching of the Buddha had been transmitted through a line of Patriarchs to Hung—jen and Hui— neng. At a later time one of the Ch eng brothers (see chapter 2.4) even stated unequivocally that the Chung Yung or Doctrine of the Mean was the esoteric teaching of Confucius. (Quoted by Chu Hsi in his introduction to his Commentary on the Chung Yung.) It was widely believed that the transmission of the Truth had become interrupted after Mencius. Li Ao, however, apparently felt that he himself possessed a certain understand-ing of it, and that through his teaching he could thus act as a continuator of
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^
Mencius. To do this became the ambition of all Neo-Confucianists after Li Ao s time. All of them accepted Han Yii s theory of the orthodox line of transmission of the Tao or Truth, and maintained that they were themselves links in that transmission. Their claim is not without justification, because, as we shall see in this and the following chapters, Neo-Confucianism is in-deed the continuation of the idealistic wing of ancient Confucianism, and es-pecially of the mystic: tendency of Mencius. That is the reason why these men have been known as the Tao hsiieh chia and their philosophy as the Tao hsiieh, i.e., the Study of the Tao or Truth. The term Neo-Confucianism is a newly coined western equivalent for Tao hsiieh.
There are three lines of thought that can be traced as the main sources of Neo-Confucianism. The first, of course, is Confucianism itself. The second is Buddhism, together with Taoism via the medium of Ch anism, for of all the schools of Buddhism, Ch anism was the most influential at the time of the formation of Neo-Confucianism. To the Neo-Confucianists, Ch'anism and Buddhism are synonymous terms, and, as stated in the last chapter, in one sense Neo-Confucianism may be said to be the logical development of Ch' anism. Finally, the third is the Taoist religion, of which the cosmological views of the Yin-Yang School formed an important element. The cosmology of the Neo-Confucianists is chiefly connected with this line of thought.
These three lines of thought were heterogeneous and even in many re-spects contradictory. Hence it took time for philosophers to make a unity out of them, especially since this unity was not simply an eclecticism, but a gen-uine system forming a homogeneous whole. Therefore although the beginning of Neo—Confucianism may be traced back to Han Yii and Li Ao, its system of thought did not become clearly formed until the eleventh century. This was the time when the Sung dynasty (960-1279), which reunited China after a period of confusion following the collapse of the T ang, was at the height of its splendor and prosperity. The earliest of the Neo -Confucianists were chiefly interested in cosmology.
