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WorkJuefan Huihong

智證傳

(lit.: Commentary on Wisdom's Proofs)

A defrocked poet-monk, back from exile, sets scripture beside the Chan masters' sayings to show that words still matter.

by Juefan Huihong128 passages held

  • Chinese, the original language
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First published
(aged 51)
Original language
Chinese

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Overview

By the tenth century Chan had a slogan, credited to Bodhidharma in the Anthology of the Patriarchal Hall of about 952: the mind of the Buddha is handed on without relying on words and letters. Juefan Huihong, a monk of the Linji line and a celebrated poet, wrote this commentary to argue the other side. More than a hundred times it sets down a passage — from the Nirvana Sutra, the Lotus, the Śūraṃgama, a treatise, or a saying of Linji or Dongshan — and follows it with his own comment, headed zhuan, "commentary". His first comment states the case: the heart of Chan cannot be seen in words, and it cannot be seen apart from them either. Scripture and the masters' sayings therefore explain each other, and Huihong reads them together, correcting even Yongming Yanshou, the tenth-century master who had laboured to reconcile them, where he thinks Yongming misread a sutra. The book closes with his commentary on the Jewel Mirror Samādhi, a verse of the Caodong line. Huihong's friendships with conservative scholar-officials censured by Emperor Huizong cost him his robe, several spells in prison and exile to Hainan island, and in one comment he describes himself as a monk who disobeyed the Buddha, kept company with princes, was sentenced and banished, and came back alive to teach in a layman's cap. Strict readers of the slogan had no use for his wenzi Chan, the "lettered Chan" he openly professed. Five centuries later three of the leading Ming masters, Zhuhong, Hanshan Deqing and Zibo Zhenke, read his works as evidence that the scriptures and Chan belong together, and Zibo named him as an inspiration for printing a new Buddhist canon.

Key concepts

What does "not relying on words and letters" mean in Chan?

It is Chan's founding slogan: awakening passes from teacher to student mind to mind, not through scripture or doctrine. Strict readers took it to mean that study of sutras is useless or harmful. Huihong accepts that the heart of Chan is not contained in any text, but denies that it can be found without texts, and the whole book is written against the literal reading.

What is lettered Chan?

Lettered Chan, wenzi Chan, is the practice of reaching awakening through language: reading sutras, commenting on the masters' sayings, writing verse. Huihong professed it openly. For him a well-chosen phrase does not describe awakening from outside but can trigger it, as a single verse on a temple wall did for him in exile, so learning and poetry belong inside the practice rather than against it.

How is the Zhizheng zhuan built?

Each of its more than a hundred entries quotes a passage, from a sutra, a treatise or a Chan master, and then gives Huihong's own comment, headed zhuan, commentary. The passages are mixed on purpose: a line of scripture next to a master's saying, so that each explains the other. The book ends with a commentary on the Jewel Mirror Samādhi, a verse of the Caodong line.

What are Linji's three mysteries and three essentials?

Linji taught that every phrase a teacher raises must hold three mysteries, and each mystery three essentials: one utterance should carry the whole teaching at several depths at once. Huihong opens the book with this saying, because it shows a Chan master demanding more from words, not less. He calls such a phrase the sound of a poisoned drum, still striking down hearers two centuries after Linji.

What does Huihong mean when he says everything is mind?

He means that what we perceive and feel is shaped, often wholly, by the mind that perceives it, so liberation is a change in seeing rather than in the world. He argues it from cases: a child calmed by the names of strangers, a jealous consort cured by a painting, colours seen in a dream. Seeing through this is what both sutra and Chan saying point at.

What are karmic obstacles?

Karmic obstacles are the consequences of past actions that block a person's practice and shape their suffering. Huihong quotes Yongjia: once understood, they are empty from the start, and not yet understood, the old debts must be paid. He holds both halves together, insisting that seeing through karma does not cancel cause and effect, which the Buddha's teaching weighs before anything else.

Themes of the book

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

Not in Words, Not Without Them

Chan claimed to hand on the Buddha's mind without relying on words. Whether a teaching that cannot be said can still be reached only through what is said is what Huihong sets out to prove.

Huihong's first comment states his case: the heart of Chan cannot be seen in words, and it cannot be seen apart from them either. He sets more than a hundred passages from sutras and treatises beside sayings of Linji, Dongshan and Yunmen, and reads each through the other. Against teachers who took the slogan of independence from scripture literally, he calls Linji's phrase a drum smeared with poison, still killing those who hear it two centuries later: words, rightly struck, are the very thing that cuts through.

  • language
  • conceptual thought
  • nonconceptual knowledge
  • chan buddhism
  • chan
  • skillful means
  • wisdom
  • practice

Enter a dialogue

What the Mind Makes

A child stops crying at a name, a dreamer sees colours in the dark. How much of what we perceive is made by the mind itself, and what follows for the one who sees, runs through the commentary.

Huihong argues the teaching that everything is mind with homely cases rather than proofs. A small child who does not know the neighbours Zhang and Wang still stops crying when their names are called; a painted picture of a king with his favourite cures a lovesick consort at a stroke, because she sees him with another; in a dream the eye sees colour where there is none. Seeing and hearing are like an illusion, the Śūraṃgama says, and he sets that verse beside Huineng to show that sutra and Chan saying describe the same discovery.

  • perception
  • mind
  • mind-only
  • consciousness
  • emptiness
  • delusion
  • awareness
  • nonduality
  • meditation

Enter a dialogue

Old Debts and the Unborn

If karmic obstacles are empty once understood, must the awakened still pay for what they did? Huihong asks how cause and effect hold for a mind that has seen through them.

He takes up Yongjia's verse that once understood, karmic obstacles are empty from the start, and not yet understood, old debts must be repaid. Ordinary law punishes the killer, but no one blames wind and water when a wave capsizes a boat and all aboard drown; the Buddha's teaching weighs cause and effect first. Huihong writes as one who paid: banished overseas to Hainan in 1111, with no scriptures on the island, he found a single verse on a temple wall, studied it day and night and broke through.

  • karma
  • death
  • suffering
  • dependent origination
  • ignorance
  • awakening
  • buddhahood
  • spiritual practice
  • time

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held
128
distinct concepts
188
by passages held, corpus-wide
#456

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 “language”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 25 pairings. 79 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
chan buddhismlanguage7
emptinessperception7
languagenonduality6
awakeningemptiness5
awakeningmeditation5
languageperception5
awakeninglanguage4
emptinesslanguage4
attachmentawakening3
awakeningnonduality3
chan buddhismnonduality3
chan buddhismperception3
emptinessmeditation3
meditationnonduality3
attachmentchan buddhism2
attachmentemptiness2
attachmentlanguage2
attachmentnonduality2
attachmentperception2
awakeningperception2
chan buddhismemptiness2
emptinessnonduality2
nondualityperception2
awakeningchan buddhism1
meditationperception1

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. 1122 智證傳 you are here ZH
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