Dongshan Liangjie

This article is about Tung-shan Liang-chieh the 9th century Zen teacher. For information on Tung-shan Shou-ch'u (Tozan Shoshu), see Dongshan Shouchu. For information on the hill in Hong Kong, see Tung Shan (mountain).

Dongshan Liangjie
Religion	Zen
School	Caodong/Sōtō
Personal
Nationality	Chinese
Born	807 China
Died	869
Senior posting
Title	Ch'an master
Predecessor	Yunyan Tansheng
Successor	Yunju Daoying
Religious career
Teacher	Yunyan Tansheng
Students	Yunju Daoying Caoshan Benji Longya Judun Jiufeng Puman Qinshan Wensui Yuezhou Qianfeng Qinglin Shiqian Shushan Kuangren

Dongshan Liangjie (Chinese: 洞山良价; Wade–Giles: Tung-shan Liang-chieh; Japanese: Tōzan Ryōkan; Korean: Tongsan Lianggye; Vietnamese: Động Sơn Lương Giới) was a Zen Buddhist monk of 9th century China. Along with his pupil Caoshan Benji, he is best known for founding the Caodong/Sōtō, school of Zen. He is well known for the poetic Verses of the Five Ranks.

Biography

Start of Ch'an studies

Dongshan was born during the Tang dynasty in the town of Kuei-chi, in the southeast of the present day Zhejiang Province. He started his private studies in Chan Buddhism at a young age, as was popular among educated elite families of the time. Reputedly, it was during a tutor's recitation of the Heart Sutra of Buddhism that Dongshan voiced his disagreement with the fundamental doctrine. As a result, at the age of ten he left his home and traveled to the nearby Wu-hsieh Mountain, one of many mountaintop monasteries, where he joined the students of Chan Master Ling-mo . He also had his head shaved and took on the yellow robes which represented the first steps in his path to becoming a monk. At the age of twenty one he went to Mt. Sung, the location of the Shao-lin-ssu Temple ordination platform, and took the Complete Precepts.

Wandering life

In a manner similar to that of his contemporary Linji, the founder of another Chan sect, he spent a large portion of his early life wandering between Ch'an masters and hermits in the Hung-chou region. Notable among these was Master Yunyan Tansheng, of whom Dongshan became the dharma heir. Most of what is recorded regarding his journey and studies exists in the form of philosophical dialogues, or koan, between him and his various teachers. These provide very little insight into his personality or experiences beyond his daily rituals, style of spiritual education, and a few specific events. During the later years of his pilgrimage Emperor Wuzong's Great Anti-Buddhist Persecution (843–845) reached its height, but it had little effect on Dongshan or his newfound followers. A little over a decade later in 859, Dongshan felt he had completed his role as an assistant instructor at Hsin-feng Mountain, so with the blessing of his last masters he took some students and left to establish his own school.

Establishing the Caodong school of Chan

At the age of 52, in the tradition of his previous Zen masters, Dongshan established a mountain school at Dongshan in Kao-an of the Yu-chang hsien province. This Caodong school became regarded as one of the Five Houses of Zen. Yet it should be recognized that they have only historically become understood as being "sects", and at the time were just considered schools led by individualistic masters with distinct styles and personality. In reality, the fact that they were all located in close geographic proximity to each other, with the exception of Linji, and that they all were at the height of their teaching around the same time sparked a custom among students to routinely visit the other masters.

Death

Dongshan died at the age of 63, in the tenth year of the Xiantong era (869), having spent 42 years as a monk. His shrine, built in keeping with Buddhist tradition, was named the Stupa of Wisdom-awareness, and his posthumous name was Zen Master Wu-Pen. According to one of the koan of his sect, Dongshan announced the end of his life several days ahead of time, and used the opportunity to teach his students one final time. In response to their grief over the news of his coming death, he told them to create a "delusion banquet". After a week of preparations he took one bite, and told them not to "make a great commotion over nothing", then went to his room and died^{[citation needed]}.

Teaching

Although Lin-chi and Liang-chieh shared pupils, Liang-chieh had a particular style. Since his early life he had utilized gatcha, or small poems, in order to try to better understand and expound the meaning of Ch'an principles for himself and others. Further features of the school also included a particular interpretation of koan, an emphasis on "silent illumination Ch'an", and organization of students into the "three root types". He is still well-known for his re-evaluation of the Five Ranks.

Use of koans and silent illumination

The newly renamed Master Dongshan argued that the koan should not have a specific goal, because that would naturally "[imply] an artificial distinction between ignorance and enlightenment". Instead, he encouraged the use of silent illumination Ch'an (mo-chao Ch'an) as a way to "sit just to sit", and take a self-fulfilling, rather than a competitive, path to enlightenment. These two differences contrasted especially with Linji's new Zen sect, which was his main competition for students' attention at the time. "Silent illumination Ch'an" was originally one of many pejorative terms created by Linji regarding Dongshan's style, which demonstrated the threat he felt as several of his students left to join Dongshan's school.

Three categories of students

Dongshan was distinguished by his ability to instruct all three categories of students, which he defined as

• "Those who see but do not yet comprehend the Dharma"
• "Those in the process of understanding"
• "Those who have already understood"

Five Ranks

A large portion of Master Dongshan's fame came from his complete re-evaluation of the longstanding Verses of the Five Ranks. The Five Ranks were a doctrine which mapped out five stages of comprehension of the relationship between the absolute and relative realities. The Five Ranks are:

• The Absolute within the Relative (Cheng chung p'ien)
• The Relative within the Absolute (P'ien chung cheng)
• The Coming from Within the Absolute (Cheng chung lai)
• The Contrasted Relative Alone (Pien chung chih)
• Unity Attained (Chien chung tao), when the two previously opposite states become one

For each of these ranks, Dongshan wrote a verse trying to bring such abstract ideals in the realm of real experience. He used metaphors of day to day occurrences that his students could understand. His student Ts'ao-shan Pen-chi later went on to relate the Five Ranks to the classic Chinese text, the I Ching.

Lineage

According to his students, Dongshan had a "profound understanding of the ultimate goal", and was a spiritual leader whose "subtle influence spread beneath heaven"^{[citation needed]}. Dongshan had many pupils who provided lineage pathways to carry on his teachings, but his most renowned students were T'sao-shan (840–901) and Yun-chu (835–902).

T'sao-shan refined and finalized on Dongshan's works on Buddhist doctrine, which is why his name was – possibly – included in the name of the sect. (Another possibility is that the 'Cao' of the Caodong school name refers to Ts'ao-his Hui-neng, the 6th Ancestor of Ch'an.) The lineage that T'sao-shan began, ironically, did not last beyond his immediate disciples, but because he was personally entrusted with Dongshan's teaching, including the doctrine of the Five Ranks and the Jewel Mirror Samadhi, he is held in esteem by a variety of Buddhists.

Yun-chu on the other hand, started a branch of Dongshan's lineage which lasted in China until the 17th century. Thirteen generations later Dogen Kigen (1200–1253) was educated in the traditions of Dongshan's Chan Buddhism. Following his education, he returned to his homeland of Japan and started the Soto school.

Legacy

Liang-chieh's chief contributions were his systemization of the teaching of the Five Ranks, and his lineage. By clarifying several Buddhist doctrines, he maintained interest in Buddhism among all levels of intellectual capacity. He, along with his contemporaries, also preserved both the teachings and the popularity of the religion at the same time that its followers were being repressed by the government. As it was, even after amnesty was granted by Emperor Wuzong's successor to all foreign religions, Buddhism never reclaimed its former significance in Chinese culture. But he established a tradition that lives on till the present day.

Modern scholarship

Regardless of whether it was because their religion discouraged biographical records, or because the information was destroyed in the Buddhist persecution, we are left with very little documentation about his life. Like many masters of the middle period of Ch'an history, information is usually limited to dates, names and general locations. One example of this would be the controversy over whether the Caodong sect is named for Dongshan and his student, which some argue would be strange since his lineage died out^{[citation needed]}, or Dongshan and the temple of the sixth patriarch of Ch'an, T'sao-his.

Almost the only primary sources we have for such information are two collections of doctrine and lineage, T'su-t'ang-chi (Records from the Halls of the Patriarchs) and Chling-te-chum-teng-lu (Transmission of the Lamp). In this case, they both only list the name as having been generated from Tun-shan's connections to "T'sao", and they are equally ambiguous on most other facts. One historian commented that

"... it is as though Dongshan were a drop of water that, on striking a pond, was totally swallowed up, leaving only a set of concentric ripples ... to examine".^{[citation needed]}

External link

• The Five Ranks of Tozan

Sources

• Demiéville, Paul. Choix d'etudes sinologiques. Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill. 1970
• Dumoulin, Heinrich. Zen Buddhism: A History. Trans. James W. Heisig and Paul F. Knitter. Vol. 2. New York: Macmillan, 1988.
• Keown, Damien. A Dictionary of Buddhism. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2003.
• Ku, Y. H. History of Zen. Privately published by Y. H. Ku, Emeritus Professor, Univ. of Pennsylvania, 1979.
• Lai, Whalen, and Lewis R. Lancaster, eds. Early Ch'an in China and Tibet. Berkeley, CA: Asian Humanities P, 1983.
• Liangje. The Record of Tung-Shan. Trans. William F. Powell. Honolulu: University of Hawaii P, 1986.

Buddhist titles
Preceded by Yunyan Tansheng	Sōtō Zen patriarch	Succeeded by Yunju Daoying