Han-shan
Each of the better-known disciples of Ma-tsu exemplified some particular aspect of Ch'an: Whereas Po-chang Huai-hai advanced Ch'an's organizational and analytical side, Nan-ch'uan embodied the illogical, psychologically jolting approach to the teaching. But what about the Ch'an outside the monasteries? Did Ma-tsu's influence extend to the lay community? Although little has been preserved to help answer these questions, we do have the stories of two Ch'an poets who operated outside the monastic system: Layman P'ang (740?-811) and Han-shan (760?-840?). They were part of a movement called chu-shih, lay believers who were drawn to Buddhism but rejected the formal practices, preferring to remain outside the establishment and seek enlightenment on their own.1 However, P'ang studied under Ma-tsu himself, and Han-shan sometimes echoed the master's teachings in his verse.
Layman P’ang
The man known to history as Layman P'ang was born in the mid-eighth century.2 He grew to manhood in the city of Heng-yang, where his Confucianist father served as a middle-level official. Although he was educated in all the classics, he became a practicing Buddhist early and never faltered in his devotion. Sometime after marrying he became so obsessed with the classic Chinese ideal of a spiritual-poetic hermitage that he actually had a thatched cottage built adjacent to his house. Here he spent time with his wife—and now a daughter and son—meditating, composing poetry, and engaging in characteristically Chinese musings. A story relates that he was sitting in his thatched cottage one day when he became exasperated with the difficulties of his path and declared, "How difficult it is! How difficult it is! My studies are like drying the fibers of ten thousand pounds of flax by hanging them in the sun." His wife overheard this outburst and contradicted him, "Easy, easy, easy. It's like touching your feet to the ground when you get out of bed. I have found the teaching right in the tops of flowering plants." His daughter, Ling-chao, heard both outbursts and showed them the truth with her assertion, "My study is neither difficult nor easy. When I am hungry I eat. When I am tired I rest."3
Then one day, thought to have been sometime between the years 785 and 790, P'ang decided to go the final step and sever his ties with the materialism that weighed him down. After donating his house for a temple, he loaded his remaining possessions into a boat—which he proceeded to maneuver into the middle of a river and sink.
We do not know if his wife and son welcomed this final freedom from material enslavement, but his daughter seems to have approved, for she helped him wend his now-penurious way through the world by assisting him in making and selling bamboo household articles. Free at last, P'ang traveled about from place to place with no fixed abode, living, so the legends say, "like a leaf." The image of P'ang and his daughter as itinerant peddlers, wandering from place to place, made a searing impression on the Chinese mind, and for centuries he has been admired in China—admired, but not necessarily emulated.
Whom did P'ang go to visit? He seems to have known personally every major Ch'an figure in China. The first master visited was the famous Shih-t'ou (700-790), sometime rival of Ma-tsu. (It will be recalled that the Sixth Patriarch, Hui-neng, had among his disciples a master called Huai-jang (677-744), teacher of Ma-tsu and head of the lineage of now Japanese Rinzai. Another of the Sixth Patriarch's legendary followers was Hsing-ssu [d. 740], whose pupil Shih-t'ou is connected to the line that became Japanese Soto. Ma-tsu and Shih-t'ou headed the two major movements of Southern Ch'an in the eighth century.)4 In 786 P'ang appeared at the retreat of Shih-t'ou on the mountain called Nan-yueh. He greeted Shih-t'ou by asking him one of the standard Ch'an questions, which Shih-t'ou answered by quietly placing a hand over P'ang's mouth—causing the Layman's first enlightenment experience. P'ang studied under Shih-t'ou—although probably in a nonmonastic capacity—for some time, until one day Shih-t'ou decided to test him.
"Tell me," began Shih-t'ou, "how have you practiced Ch'an after coming here to this mountain?"
P'ang shot back in a characteristic manner, saying, "There is really nothing words can reveal about my daily life."