11. This story is translated in Cat's Yawn, p. 18.
12. Dumoulin, History of Zen Buddhism, pp. 78-79.
13. Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism, Third Series, p. 28.
14. A lucid account of Fa-jung may be found in Chang Chung-yuan, trans.,
Original Teachings of Ch'an Buddhism (New York: Random House, 1969;
paperback edition, Vintage, 1971), which is a beautiful translation of
portions of The Transmission of the Lamp (Ching-te ch'uan-teng-lu), the
text from 1004. This text was a major source for the abbreviated
biography given here.
15. Chang Chung-yuan, Original Teachings of Ch'an Buddhism, p. 19.
16. Ibid., p. 5.
17. A version of this exchange is given in Suzuki, Essays in Zen
Buddhism, First Series, p. 202.
18. See Yampolsky, Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch, p. 16.
4. SHEN-HSIU AND SHEN-HUI: GRADUAL" AND "SUDDEN" MASTERS
1. For an excellent biography see C. P. Fitzgerald, The Empress Wu
(Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 1968). Curiously, nowhere
in this biography is there mention of her lionizing of the Ch'an master
Shen-hsiu, something that figures largely in all Ch'an histories.
2. A biography of Shen-hsiu from Ch'an sources may be found in
Yampolsky, Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch. Further details may
be found in Hu Shih, "Ch'an (Zen) Buddhism in China: Its History and
Method," Philosophy East and West, 3, 1 (April 1953), pp. 3-24. See
also Kenneth Ch'en, Buddhism in China (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1964).
3. Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism, First Series, p. 214.
4. Two books that give something of the intellectual atmosphere of T'ang
China are biographies of its two leading poets: Arthur Waley, The
Poetry and Career of Li Po (London: George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., 1950);
and A. R. Davis, Tu Fu (New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1971).
5. For a detailed biography of Shen-hui, see Yampolsky, Platform Sutra
of the Sixth Patriarch.
6. The scholar who brought the significance of Shen-hui to the attention
of the world was Hu Shih, whose landmark English-language papers on Zen
are "Ch'an (Zen) Buddhism in China: Its History and Method" and "The
Development of Zen Buddhism in China." These works draw upon the
manuscripts discovered this century in the Tun-huang caves in the
mountains of far northwest China. These manuscripts clarified many of
the mysteries surrounding the early history of Ch'an, enabling scholars
for the first time to distinguish between real and manufactured
history--since some of the works were written before Ch'an historians
began to embroider upon the known facts. A brief but useful account of
the finding of these caves and the subsequent removal of many of the
manuscripts to the British Museum in London and the Bibliotheque
Nationale in Paris may be found in Cat's Yawn. The best discussion of
the significance of these finds and of Hu Shih's lifelong interpretive
work is provided by Yampolsky, Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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