Dongshan Liangjie

Dongshan Liangjie (807–869) (; ) was a Chan/Zen Buddhist monk of the Tang dynasty. He founded the Caodong school , which was transmitted to Japan in the thirteenth century (Song-Yuan era) by Dōgen and developed into the Sōtō school of Zen.

The Song of the Precious Mirror Samadhi has been attributed to him by the Chinese tradition. However, modern scholars now argue that there is no evidence for this and that this text first appears in the 12th century.

Biography

Start of Chan studies Dongshan was born during the Tang dynasty in Kuaiji (present-day Shaoxing, Zhejiang) to the south of Hangzhou Bay.

He started his private studies in Chan Buddhism at a young age, as was popular among educated elite families of the time. At the village cloister, Dongshan showed promise by questioning the fundamental Doctrine of the Six Roots during his tutor's recitation of the Heart Sutra.

Most of what is recorded regarding his journey and studies exists in the form of encounter dialogues 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 fifty-two, Dongshan established a mountain school at the mountain named Dongshan (in what is now the city of Gao'an in Jiangxi province). Here, according to tradition, he composed the Song of the Precious Mirror Samādhi.

This Caodong school became regarded as one of the Five Houses of Zen. At the time, they were just considered schools led by individualistic masters with distinct styles and personalities; in reality, the fact that they were all—with the exception of Linji—located in close geographic proximity to each other and that they all were at the height of their teaching around the same time, established a custom among students to routinely visit the other masters.

Death Dongshan died at the age of sixty-three, in the tenth year of the Xiantong era (869), having spent forty-two years as a monk. His shrine, built in keeping with Buddhist tradition, was named the Stūpa of Wisdom-awareness, and his posthumous name was Chan Master Wu-Pen. According to one of the kōans of his sect, Dongshan announced the end of his life several days before the event, and used the opportunity to teach his students one final time. In response to their grief over the news of his impending death, he told them to create a "delusion banquet." After a week of preparations, he took one bite of the meal and, telling the students not to "make a great commotion over nothing," went to his room and died.

Teaching Although Linji and Liangjie shared pupils, Liangjie had a particular style. Since his early life he had utilized gātha, or small poems, in order to try better to understand and to expound the meaning of Chan principles for himself and others.

Examples are

and

Further features of the school included particular interpretations of kōan, an emphasis on "silent illumination" Chan, and organization of students into the "three root types." He is still well known for his creation of the Five Ranks.

Use of kōan and silent illumination Some descendants of Dongshan much later in the Song dynasty, around the twelfth century, argued that the gong'an, which developed over centuries based on dialogues attributed to Dongshan and his contemporaries, should not have a specific goal, because that would naturally "[imply] a dualist distinction between ignorance and enlightenment." This view is based on Dongshan's perspective of not basing practice on stages of attainment. Instead, such Dongshan lineage descendants as Hongzhi encouraged the use of Silent Illumination Chan (默照禪 mozhao chan) as a way to take a self-fulfilling, rather than a competitive, path to enlightenment. These two differences contrasted especially with the style of Linji's descendants; "silent illumination Chan" was originally one of many pejorative terms created by successors of Linji regarding successors of Dongshan.

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 having attributed to him the 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 into 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 Dongshan's most renowned students were Caoshan Benji (W-G: T'sao-shan, 840–901) and Yunju Daoying (W-G: Yun-chu Taoying, 835–902).

Caoshan refined and finalized on Dongshan's works on Buddhist doctrine. The sect's name, Caodong, may possibly take after the names of these two teachers. (An alternate theory says the "Cao" refers to Caoxi Huineng [曹渓慧能 W-G: Ts'ao-hsi Hui-neng], the sixth ancestor of Chan; see Sōtō#Chinese origins.)

The lineage that Caoshan began did not last beyond his immediate disciples. Yunju Daoying started a branch of Dongshan's lineage which lasted in China until the seventeenth century. Thirteen generations later, the Japanese Buddhist monk Dōgen Kigen (1200–1253) was educated in the traditions of Dongshan's Caodong school of Chan. Following his education, he returned to his homeland and started the Sōtō school ("Sōtō" is the Japanese reading of "Caodong").

Modern scholarship Very little documentation remains about Dongshan's life. Information is usually limited to dates, names, and general locations.

The only primary sources available are two collections of doctrine and lineage, T'su-t'ang-chi (Records from the Halls of the Patriarchs) and Ching-tê chʻuan teng lu (Transmission of the Lamp). Both only indicate the name as having been generated from Tun-shan's connections to "T'sao," and they are equally ambiguous on most other facts.