Tao-hsin’s interview with Fa-jung, the founder of the Niu-t‘ou school of Zen, was significant, showing where their views differed and how the one came to be converted into the orthodox understanding of Zen. It was during the Chên-kuan era of the T‘ang dynasty that Tao-hsin, learning of the presence of an extraordinary saintly man in Niu-t’ou mountains, decided to see who he could be. When Tao-hsin came to a Buddhist temple in the mountains, he inquired after the man and was informed of a lonely anchorite who would never rise from his seat nor salute people even when they were approaching him. When Tao-hsin proceeded further into the mountains, he saw him as he was told sitting quietly and paying no attention to the presence of a stranger. He then asked the hermit what he was doing here. “I am contemplating on Mind,” was the reply. Tao-hsin then demanded, “What is he that is contemplating? What is Mind that is contemplated?” Fa-jung was not prepared to answer such questions. Thinking that the visitor was a man of deep understanding, he rose from the seat and saluting him asked who he was. When he found that the visitor was no other personage than Tao-hsin himself whose reputation he was not ignorant of, he thanked him for the visit. They were now about to enter a little hut near by where they might talk about religion, when Tao-hsin saw some wild animals such as tigers and wolves wandering about the place, and he threw up his hands as if he were greatly frightened. Fa-jung remarked, “I see this is still with you.” The fourth patriarch responded at once, “What do you see yet?” No answer came from the hermit. After a while the patriarch traced the character “Buddha” (fo) on the stone on which Fa-jung was in the habit of sitting in meditation. Seeing it, the latter looked as if shocked. Said the patriarch “I see this is still with you.” But Fa-jung failed to see the meaning of this remark and earnestly implored to be instructed in the ultimate teaching of Buddhism. This was done, and Fa-jung became the founder of the Niu-t‘ou school of Zen Buddhism.
Tao-hsin died at the age of seventy-two, A.D. 651.
Hung-jên, 605–675, the fifth patriarch, came from the same province as his predecessor, Ch‘i Chou, now in the district of Fu-pei. His temple was situated in Wang-mei Shan (Yellow Plum Mountain), where he preached and gave lessons in Zen to his five hundred pupils. He is claimed by some to have been the first Zen master who attempted to interpret the message of Zen according to the doctrine of the Vajracchedikā-sūtra. Though I cannot quite agree with this view for the reason already referred to elsewhere, we can consider the fifth patriarch the beginning of a turning in the history of Zen, which opened up to a full view under the sixth patriarch, Hui-nêng. Until now, the Zen followers had kept quiet, though working steadily, without arresting public attention; the masters had retired either into the mountains or in the hurly-burly of the world where nobody could tell anything about their doings. But the time had at last come for a full proclamation of Zen, and Hung-jên was the first who appeared in the field preparing the way for his successor, Hui-nêng.
Besides this orthodox line of patriarchs, there were some sporadic expositors of Zen throughout the sixth and the seventh century. Several of them are mentioned, but there must have been many more such who were either altogether forgotten or not at all known to the world. The two best known are Pao-chih (died 514)[4.46] and Fu-hsi (died 569)[4.47]; and their lives are recorded in the Records as “adepts in Zen but not appearing in the world though well-known at the time.” This is a strange phrasing, and it is hard to know definitely what “not appearing in the world” means. Usually it applies to one who does not occupy any recognised position in an officially registered monastery. But of those that are classed under this heading, there is one at least to whom the designation does not properly apply; for Chi-i was a great high priest occupying an influential ecclesiastical post in the Sui dynasty. Whatever this was, those recorded here did not belong to the orthodox Zen school. The Tendai (T‘ien-tai) followers object to see two of their Fathers Hui-szŭ and Chi-i mentioned as “adepts in Zen but not appearing in the world though well-known at the time.” They think that these two are great names in the history of their school and ought not to be so indifferently referred to in the records of the Zen masters. But from the Zen point of view this classification is justifiable for the reason that the Tendai, except its metaphysics, is another current of Zen started independently of the line of Bodhi-Dharma, and if this were allowed to take a more practical course of development, it should surely have resulted in Zen as we have it now. But its metaphysical side came to be emphasised at the expense of the practical, and for this reason the Tendai philosophers were ever at war with the Zen, especially with the ultra-left wing which was inflexible in denouncing an appeal to ratiocination and literary discoursing and Sutra-learning. In my view the Tendai is a variation of Zen and its first promulgators may justly be classed as Zen masters though not of the pedigree to which belong Shih-t‘ou, Yüeh-shan, Ma-tsu, Lin-chi, etc.
While there were thus in the sixth and the seventh century some other lines of Zen about to develop, the one started by Bodhi-Dharma was uninterruptedly carried on by Hui-k‘ê, Shêng-t‘san, Tao-hsin, and Hung-jên, who proved to be the most fruitful and successful. The differentiation of two schools under the fifth patriarch, by Hui-nêng and Shên-hsiu, helped the further progress of pure Zen by eliminating unessential or rather undigested elements. That the school of Hui-nêng survived the other proves that his Zen was in perfect accord with Chinese psychology and modes of thinking. The Indian elements that had been found attached to the Zen of Bodhi-Dharma and his successors down to Hui-nêng, were something grafted and not native to Chinese genius. And therefore when Zen came to be fully established under Hui-nêng and his followers, it had nothing further to obstruct its free development until it became almost the only ruling power in the Chinese world of Buddhism. We must carefully watch how Hui-nêng came to be Hung-jên’s successor and where he differed from his rival school under Shên-hsiu.
IV
Hui-nêng (637–713)[4.48] came from Hsin-chou in the southern parts of China. His father died when he was yet young. He supported his mother by selling wood in town. When one day he came out of a house where he sold some fuel, he heard a man reciting a Buddhist Sutra. The words deeply touched his heart. Finding what Sutra it was and where it was possible to get it, a longing came over him to study it with the master. The Sutra was the Diamond Sutra (Vajracchedikā-sūtra ) and the master was the fifth patriarch residing at Yellow Plum in Chin-chou. Hui-nêng somehow managed to get money enough for the support of his aged mother while he was gone.
It took him about a month to reach Yellow Plum where he at once proceeded to see Hung-jên at the head of five hundred monks (sometimes said to be seven or even ten hundred). At the first interview asked the patriarch,
“Where do you come from? and what do you want here?”