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WorkHongzhi Zhengjue

宏智禪師廣錄

(lit.: Extensive Record of Chan Master Hongzhi)

The collected sermons, verses and meditation instructions of the abbot who taught silent illumination at Mount Tiantong for nearly thirty years.

by Hongzhi Zhengjue628 passages held

  • Chinese, the original language
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First published
(published posthumously)
Original language
Chinese

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Overview

In 1129 Hongzhi Zhengjue, a teacher of the Caodong line of Chan, took charge of the Jingde monastery on Mount Tiantong in eastern China, and most of this record, which his disciples gathered from what he said and wrote, comes from the years he spent there. The monastery was small and in disrepair; under him it was rebuilt to hold twelve hundred monks, and he refused every invitation to leave until his death in 1157. The record runs to nine volumes and covers his earlier monasteries too: sermons from the abbot's high seat, informal talks, instructions to individual students, poems, a hundred old teaching stories each crowned with his verse, and another hundred with his prose comments. The teaching running through all of it is what he called mozhao, silent illumination: sit with no object and no goal, let thinking fall quiet, and the mind's own clarity shows itself, because awakening is already present and needs to be lived out rather than acquired. His short "Inscription on Silent Illumination" puts the method in verse. His contemporary Dahui Zonggao, the most famous teacher of the rival Linji line, attacked silent illumination as a slide into quietism and urged students to concentrate instead on a single phrase from an old story. Later partisans made the dispute into a feud, but the two men were colleagues, and when Hongzhi was dying he wrote to Dahui asking him to take charge of the monastery's affairs. The verse cases became the core of the Book of Serenity, a kōan collection compiled with a commentary by Wansong Xingxiu and first printed in 1224. Three years later the Japanese monk Dōgen received his transmission at the same Tiantong monastery, and Hongzhi's account of meditation has mattered to the Japanese Sōtō school ever since.

Key concepts

What is silent illumination?

Silent illumination, mozhao, is Hongzhi's name for meditation without an object: no phrase to hold, no image, no goal. The silence is the letting go of grasping; the illumination is the mind's own clarity, which then shows itself. The two are not cause and effect but one state seen from two sides, which is why his inscription calls the mind bright within the silence.

What is the "original light" Hongzhi talks about?

It is the mind's own awareness, present before any effort, which Hongzhi says shines by itself. Practice does not make it brighter; it stops covering it. One sermon puts it in four words: vast and spiritual, the original light illumines itself. The phrase is the reason he can say awakening is uncovered rather than acquired.

What does Hongzhi mean by the "empty eon"?

In Buddhist cosmology the empty eon is the age of nothingness before a world forms. Hongzhi uses it as an image for the mind before any thought or distinction arises, the state a meditator returns to. His sermons speak of the spring before the empty eon and of a clay ox ploughing it open: an origin that is not in the past but available now.

What are "illumination and function"?

Illumination is the still clarity of the mind; function is its activity in the world, responding to people and events. Hongzhi insists the two must never come apart: a clarity that cannot act is dead, an activity cut off from clarity is lost. He tells monks not to be confused about illumination and function, and to keep both while splitting themselves among the noise.

What is an old case, and what is a verse on one?

An old case is a short story of an earlier master's exchange, set before students as a test; the Japanese word kōan comes from the Chinese for such cases. A verse on an old case answers the story with a poem instead of an explanation. Hongzhi wrote a hundred such verses and a hundred prose comments, both kept in this record.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Silent and Bright

Sit with no object and no goal, and the mind's own clarity appears. Whether such stillness is awakening lived out or only a pleasant blankness is what Hongzhi's sermons keep answering.

Hongzhi's inscription opens with two lines that hold the whole method: silent and serene, words forgotten; bright and clear, it appears before you. The silence is not the goal and the brightness is not produced by it; both belong to a mind that has stopped grasping. Sitting still can look like becoming a dead tree, and he turns the image round: in winter, he preaches, word of the warmth passes secretly into the withered tree. Awakening is not acquired by sitting but uncovered in it.

  • awareness
  • meditation
  • nonconceptuality
  • silence
  • realization
  • direct experience
  • conceptual thought
  • chan practice

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Responding Without Leaving

A still mind still has to meet people, work and the noise of the market. How stillness answers the world without being dragged out of itself is the second half of Hongzhi's teaching.

Silent illumination, for Hongzhi, is not withdrawal. A clean mirror does not object to the different images that cross it; an empty valley answers every sound with its echo. The awakened mind moves like an empty boat riding the waves, neither avoiding nor seeking anything, and must show itself at the crossroads as well as on the cliff edge. His comment on Zhaozhou's advice to a new monk, eat your gruel and wash your bowl, is that the whole teaching is already complete in that.

  • responsiveness
  • spontaneity
  • skillful means
  • freedom
  • ordinary life
  • perception
  • discernment
  • nonduality

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A Hundred Old Cases

A teacher who says words cannot reach the truth wrote a hundred verses on old teaching stories. What a poem can do with a koan that an explanation cannot is the question his verses pose.

Hongzhi raised the stories of earlier masters, called old cases, and capped each with a short verse rather than a commentary. The Buddha mounts the seat, Mañjuśrī strikes the gavel, the Buddha steps down without a word; Juzhi answers every question by raising one finger; Zhaozhou, asked whether a dog has Buddha-nature, here answers yes. The verses do not decode the stories; they answer them with images of moon, water and autumn, so that the reader has to make the leap the original monk had to make.

  • language
  • chan dialogue
  • teaching
  • transmission
  • chan buddhism
  • wisdom

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Within this work

passages held
628
distinct concepts
367
by passages held, corpus-wide
#110

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “chan buddhism” and “nonduality”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 28 pairings. 74 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
chan buddhismnonduality89
awarenessnonduality83
emptinessnonduality60
meditationnonduality49
awakeningnonduality38
chan buddhismmeditation38
awarenessnonattachment37
awarenessemptiness36
nonattachmentnonduality34
chan buddhismnonattachment33
languagenonduality33
chan buddhismemptiness32
awarenessmeditation28
emptinessnonattachment28
awarenesschan buddhism27
meditationnonattachment25
awakeningchan buddhism24
emptinessmeditation19
awakeninglanguage16
awakeningnonattachment14
languagenonattachment13
awarenesslanguage12
awakeningemptiness11
chan buddhismlanguage11
awakeningmeditation10
emptinesslanguage8
awakeningawareness6
languagemeditation6

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

  1. 1166 宏智禪師廣錄 you are here ZH
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