Hongzhou school
The Hongzhou school was a Chinese school of Chan of the Tang period, which started with Mazu Daoyi and included key figures Dazhu Huihai, Baizhang Huaihai, his student Huangbo Xiyun, Nanquan Puyuan and his student Zhaozhou Congshen.
The name Hongzhou refers to the Tang dynasty province that was located in the northern part of present-day Jiangxi province. Mazu taught here during his last years and some of his disciples also taught in this region.
During the Song dynasty, many texts were written which constructed encounter dialogues that included Hongzhou school masters as the main characters. These texts present them as iconoclastic and antinomian figures. However, modern scholars do not consider these later Song sources as reliable depictions of these historical figures.
History
During the life of the founder Mazu, the An Lu-shan Rebellion led to a loss of control by the Tang dynasty, which changed the position of elite Chan Buddhism. Metropolitan Chan began to lose its status while other schools began to develop in outlying areas, led by various masters, many of whom traced themselves to Huineng.Mazu Daoyi
was a monk from Sifang county, Sichuan. His teachers are said to have included Reverend Tang of Zizhou, Reverend Jin, and Huairang. Traditionally, Mazu is depicted as a successor in the lineage of Huineng, through his teacher Nanyue Huairang. McRae argues that the connection between Huineng and Huairang is doubtful, being the product of later rewritings of Chan-history to place Mazu in the traditional lineages.In the latter half of his life, Mazu moved to Hongzhou, where he began taking students. First he resided on Gonggong mountain, and then he settled in Nanchang's state-sponsored Kaiyuan monastery in Hongzhou. During his two decade period at this monastery, Mazu's fame spread and he attracted many disciples from throughout the empire.
According to Poceski, "Mazu had the largest number of close disciples among Chan teachers from the Tang period." Some students of Mazu include: Nanquan, Fenzhou Wuye, Guizong Zhichang, Xingshan Weikuan, Zhangjing Huaihui, Danxia Tianran, Dongsi Ruhui, Tianhuang Daowu, and Furong Taiyu.
Poceski also notes that Mazu's disciples "come across as monks at home in their dealings with powerful officials. They appear conversant with Buddhist texts, doctrines, and practices, and proficient at preaching to monks and literati alike."
Students of Mazu
Xitang Zhizang
After Mazu's death in 788, Xitang Zhizang became the leader of Kaiyuan monastery. Despite his leading role, little information on him is found in Chan sources and there is no record of his sayings. None of his disciples were influential and perhaps this is why he was neglected in later sources. After the Tang, Baizhang and Nanquan supplanted Xitang as the leaders of the second generation of the school.Baizhang Huaihai
was a dharma heir of Mazu and a member of the aristocratic Wang clan of Taiyuan. Baizhang later came to be seen as Mazu's most important disciple, though early on, his name did not even appear in Mazu's stele inscription as part of Mazu's ten main disciples. Baizhang's main center was at the remote Baizhang mountain southwest of Shimen where he taught students, including Guishan Lingyou and Huangbo, for two decades.Later tradition attributes to Bhaizang the creation of a unique kind of Chan monasticism and the authorship of an early set of rules for Chan monastics, the Pure Rules of Baizhang, but there is no historical evidence for this. Indeed, according to Poceski "his traditional image as a patron saint of “Chan monasticism” is not in any meaningful way related to him as a historical person. Baizhang did not institute a novel system of Chan monastic rules that was institutionally disengaged from the mainstream tradition of Tang monasticism."
Later Song dynasty texts also attempt to make Baizhang the main "orthodox" recipient of Mazu's lineage. This is a later genealogical construct by Song authors, Mazu did not have one single "orthodox" disciple, but many different disciples who spread his teachings throughout China.
Other students of Mazu
Mazu's many students spread his teachings throughout China. As Poceski writes, the Hongzhou school heavily relied on imperial and aristocratic patronage which allowed it to quickly emerge as a major Chan tradition in the ninth century.A major center of the Hongzhou tradition was at Mount Lu, where the leading disciple Guizong Zhichang and Fazang built the first Chan communities on the mountain, like Guizong temple, which was visited by the poet Li Bo. Other disciples who formed communities of their own in Jiangxi include Shigong Huizang, Nanyuan Daoming, and Yangqi Zhenshu.
Huaihui and Weikuan are known for having established the Hongzhou school in the imperial capital of Chang'an. Weikuan was even invited by Emperor Xianzong to preach at the imperial court in 809 and he remained in the capital's Xingshan monastery until the end of his life, becoming a central figure of the imperial capital's religious life. He was also the teacher of the poet Bo Juyi.
Regarding the old capital of Luoyang, the best known disciple of Mazu who taught here was Foguang Ruman. He was also a teacher of the poet Bo Juyi.
Outside of Jiangxi, Yaoshan, Ruhui, Tanzang, Deng Yinfeng, and Zhaoti Huilang all formed communities in Hunan, while Yanguan, Dazhu Huihai, and Damei Fachang formed communities in Zhejiang. Regarding the northern provinces, Shaanxi and Shanxi received disciples such as Wuye, Zhixian, and Magu Baoche.
Relationship with Oxhead-school
There are links between Mazu's school and the Oxhead school. Some of Mazu's students were known to have come from the Oxhead school and others were sent to study at Oxhead monasteries by Mazu himself. An inscription for Dayi, one of Mazu's students, condemns sectarianism and according to Poceski "rejects the sharp distinctions between the Northern and Southern schools propounded by Shenhui and his followers and instead argues for a rapprochement between the two." Poceski also notes that "the inscription implies that Mazu's disciples adopted a tolerant attitude toward other Chan schools/lineages and eschewed the pursuit of narrow sectarian agendas."Growth to dominance
During the mid-Tang, most other major Chan schools all died out, being unable to attract enough students and support. This allowed Mazu's school to become the dominant Chan tradition in China. The only other school which survived this period was Shitou's school, though it remained a marginal one.The Hongzhou school superseded the older Chan schools and established themselves as their official successor, the inclusive defender of Tang Chan orthodoxy which avoided the antinomianism of Baotang and the sectarianism of Shenhui's Southern school. While individual teachers like Shitou Xiqian and Guifeng Zongmi did present alternative traditions, they never rivaled the Hongzhou tradition, which remained the normative form of Chan for the rest of the Tang and beyond.
Mazu's students were also influential during the spread of Chan to Korea during the pivotal period of the first half of the ninth century. During this period, almost all Korean Seon monks who participated in the transmission of Chan to Korea were students of Mazu's disciples. These figures founded seven out of the Korean “nine mountain schools of Sŏn”.
Next generations and replacement by regional traditions
A key figure of the third generation is Huangbo Xiyun, who was a dharma heir of Baizhang Huaihai. He started his monastic career at Mount Huangbo. In 842 he took up residence at Lung-hsing Monastery at the invitation of Pei Xiu, who was also a lay-student of Guifeng Zongmi of Shenhui's Heze school. Huangbo's student, Linji Yìxuán, was later seen as the founder of his own school, the Linji school, based in Hebei's Linji temple, which remains a tradition today after having become the dominant form of Chan during the Song dynasty.As Poceski writes,
By the latter Tang dynasty, the Hongzhou school's was supplanted by various distinct regional traditions that arose during the instability of the late Tang and the Five Dynasties eras. The first of these was the Guiyang school of Guishan and his disciple Yangshan, but this tradition did not survive the fall of the Tang.
Teachings
Background
According to Jinhua Jia, "the doctrinal foundation of the Hongzhou school was mainly a mixture of the tathagata-garbha thought and prajñaparamita theory, with a salient emphasis on the kataphasis of the former."Poceski also highlights the importance of buddha-nature for the Hongzhou school, though he also writes that "overall there is a disposition to avoid imputing explicit ontological status to the Buddha-nature...this is accompanied by a Madhyamaka-like stress on nonattachment and elimination of one-sided views—especially evident in Baizhang's record—that are based on the notion that ultimate reality cannot be predicated."
He also argues that the Hongzhou school's doctrinal approach was an eclectic approach that drew on diverse sources, including Madhyamaka, Yogacara, the Huayan school's philosophy as well as Daoist works.
Furthermore, their use of sources was "accompanied by an aversion to dogmatic assertions of indelible truths and an awareness of the provisional nature of conceptual constructs." Thus, while the Hongzhou school made use of various teachings, they were not to be seen as a fixed theory, since ultimate truth is indescribable and beyond words.
Mazu's citation of various sutras indicate that his teaching drew from Mahayana sources like the Laṅkāvatāra sutra's mind-only teaching. Other teachings of Mazu and Baizhang also quote or paraphrase other Mahayana sutras, like the Vimalakirti sutra and Prajñāpāramitā scriptures. According to Poceski, "rather than repudiating the scriptures or rejecting their authority, the records of Mazu and his disciples are full of quotations and allusions to a range of canonical texts." Poceski also notes that in Baizhang's record one can find numerous scriptural citations, including "obscure references and the use of a technical vocabulary that point to a mastery of canonical texts and doctrines." However, even while they retained the use of scripture and demonstrated a mastery of the canon, the Hongzhou sources also demonstrate that these Chan teachers had the ability to express the insights of Mahayana in a new way.
Regarding the reading of scriptures and studying doctrines, Baizhang says: