Zen scriptures
Though Zen is said to be based on a "special transmission outside scriptures" which "did not stand upon words", the Zen-tradition has a rich doctrinal and textual background. It has been influenced by sutras such as the Lankavatara Sutra, the Vimalakirti Sutra, the Avatamsaka Sutra, and the Lotus Sutra.
Subsequently, the Zen tradition produced a rich corpus of written literature which has become a part of its practice and teaching, including the Platform Sutra, lineage charts, collected sayings of Zen-masters, and the koan-literature.
The role of scripture in Zen
Contrary to the popular image, literature does play a role in the Zen-training. Unsui, Zen-monks, "are expected to become familiar with the classics of the Zen canon". A review of the early historical documents and literature of early Zen masters clearly reveals that they were well versed in numerous Mahāyāna Buddhist sūtras.Nevertheless, Zen is often pictured as anti-intellectual. This picture of Zen emerged during the Song dynasty, when Chan became the dominant form of Buddhism in China, and gained great popularity among the educated and literary classes of Chinese society. The use of koans, which are highly stylized literary texts, reflects this popularity among the higher classes.
In the tenth century, during the turmoil of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, regionally oriented schools with differing views on the Chan-identity developed. One view was that of jiaowai biechuan, "a special transmission outside the teaching". The opposing view was jiaochan yizhi, "the harmony between Chan and the teaching". The view of the harmony between Chan and the teachings was dominant in the lineage of Fa-ten Wen-i, and prevailed in the Southern Kingdoms in the tenth century. Thereafter the notion of a "special transmission outside the teachings" became dominant.
The famous saying "do not establish words and letters", attributed in this period to Bodhidharma,
The Chan of the Tang dynasty, especially that of Mazu and Linji with its emphasis on "shock techniques", in retrospect was seen as a golden age of Chan. This picture has gained great popularity in the west in the 20th century, especially due to the influence of D.T. Suzuki. This picture has been challenged, and changed, since the 1970s by "modern scientific research" on Zen.
The Zen tradition, especially Rinzai Zen, aims to give a direct transmission of insight, and stresses the impossibility of giving any positive statement of this insight. This is famously worded in a 12th-century stanza, attributed to Bodhidharma:
An example of this non-dependence on words and scripture in 9th century China is Teshan. He became famous for burning his commentaries on the Diamond sutra, when he realized that his attachment to these commentaries had become a stumbling block on his way to gaining insight.
Hisamatsu states it more bluntly:
Masao Abe points out that the role of the intellect in the understanding of Zen should not be misunderstood:
Arokiasamy warns against this
The importance given to Zen's non-reliance on written words is also often misunderstood as an opposition to the study of Buddhist texts. However, Zen is deeply rooted in the teachings and doctrines of Mahāyāna Buddhism and gradually developed its own literature. What the Zen tradition emphasizes is that enlightenment of the Buddha came not through conceptualization, but rather through direct insight:
But direct insight has to be supported by study and understanding (hori of the Buddhist teachings and texts. Hakuin goes as far as to state that the buddhist path even starts with study:
Intellectual understanding without practice is called yako-zen, "wild fox Zen", but "one who has only experience without intellectual understanding is a zen temma, "Zen devil"".
Grounding Chan in scripture
The early Buddhist schools in China were each based on a specific sutra. At the beginning of the Tang dynasty, by the time of the Fifth Patriarch Hongren, the Zen school became established as a separate school of Buddhism. It had to develop a doctrinal tradition of its own to ascertain its position, and to ground its teachings in a specific sutra. Various sutras were used for this, even before the time of Hongren: the Śrīmālādevī Sūtra, Awakening of Faith, the Lankavatara Sutra, the Diamond Sutra, the Platform Sutra. Subsequently, the Zen tradition produced a rich corpus of written literature which has become a part of its practice and teaching.Other influential sutras are the Vimalakirti Sutra, Avatamsaka Sutra, the Shurangama Sutra, and the Mahaparinirvana Sutra.
The growing Chan tradition also faced the challenge to put its teachings into words, to bolster its identity and to apply it in formal teaching settings, without losing the central insight into the "suchness" of reality. One solution to this was the shift of emphasis from the recorded sayings of the historical Buddha, to the sayings of living Buddhas, namely the Chan masters. In time, these sayings, from the so-called "encounter-dialogues" between masters and students, but also from sermons, became codified and formed the basis of typical Zen-genres, namely the "yü-lü" and the classic koan-collections. These too became formalised, and as such became a subject of disputes on the right way to teach Zen and the avoidance of dependence on words.
Influential sutras
Lankavatara Sutra
In its beginnings in China, Zen primarily referred to the Mahāyāna sūtras and especially to the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra. As a result, early masters of the Zen tradition were referred to as "Laṅkāvatāra masters". As the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra teaches the doctrine of the "One Vehicle", the early Zen school was sometimes referred to as the "One Vehicle School". In other early texts, the school that would later become known as Zen is sometimes even referred to as simply the "Laṅkāvatāra school". Accounts recording the history of this early period are to be found in Records of the Laṅkāvatāra Masters.Diamond Sutra
During the Tang dynasty, the Zen school's central text shifted to the Diamond Sūtra. Thereafter, the essential texts of the Zen school were often considered to be the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra and the Diamond Sūtra.The reasons for this shift are not clear. Whalen Lai writes:
Kalupahana does see a struggle to give clues to students about ultimate reality, without going back to scripture. According to him, the use of kung-an's served this role. The prajnaparamita-sutras are a reaction against the early Buddhist philosophical schools, especially the realistic approach of the Sarvastivadins, and a return to the notion of non-substantiality. According to Kalupahana, also in Chan the use of...
Vimalakirti Sutra
The Vimalakirti Sutra is an early Mahayana Sutra dating from the second century CE. The sutra centers on the person of the householder Vimalakirti, who's being visited by various bodhisattvas while he's ill.The Vimalakirti Sutra stresses that...
The sutra is grounded on the prajnaparamita-teachings on emptiness. This is the central theme in "the dialogue between the bodhisattvas and Vimalakirti on the subject of nonduality". While discussing this subject, the bodhisattvas give a variety of answers. Manjusri is the last bodhisattva to answer, who says that "by giving an explanation they have already fallen into dualism". Vimalakirti, in his turn, answers with silence.
This silence became paradigmatic for the Chan-tradition:
Avatamsaka Sutra
The Avatamsaka Sutra is a compilation of sutras of various length. The earliest of these texts, the Daśabhūmika Sūtra, maybe dates from the first century CE. The Daśabhūmika Sūtra describes the ten stages on the Bodhisattva-path. The various sutras were probably joined shortly before its translation into Chinese, at the beginning of the 5th century CE.The Avatamsaka sutra integrates the teachings on sunyata and vijnaptimatra. The Huayan school, that originated in the same period as Chan, and influenced the Chan-school, was based on the Avatamsaka Sutra.
The basic idea of the Avatamsaka Sutra is the unity of the absolute and the relative:
Each part of the world reflects the totality of the cosmos:
All levels of reality are related and interpenetrated. This is depicted in the image of Indra's net. This "unity in totality allows every individual entity of the phenomenal world its uniqueness without attributing an inherent nature to anything".
The Hua-yen school persistently influenced Chan. Tsung-mi, the Fifth Patriarch of the Hua-yen school, also occupies a prominent position in the history of Chan. During the Song, the Hua-yen metaphysics were completely assimilated by the Chan-school.
The Avatamsaka Sutra is being referred to, directly or indirectly, in Chan-writings. Xinxin Ming's Faith in mind is "in many passages akin to the Avatamsaka sutra, especially the closing stanzas". Tsung-mi's writings reflect his Hua-yen influences.
Zen literature
The Zen-tradition developed a rich textual tradition, based on the interpretation of the Buddhist teachings and the recorded sayings of Zen-masters.Chinese texts
Introduction
Chan literature is a genre of Chinese buddhism literature popularized by the school of Zen in Tang dynasty. The three most studied Chinese texts, according to a comprehensive survey of 477 papers in 2017, are the Anthology of the Patriarchal Hall, the Compendium of Five Lamps and the Transmission of the Lamp.Hui-neng's Platform Sutra
Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch is an early Chan text, dating back to at least the 8th century, attributed to Huineng. It is...The Platform Sūtra cites and explains a wide range of Buddhist scriptures: the Diamond Sūtra, the Lotus Sūtra, the Vimalakīrti Nirdeśa Sūtra, the Śūraṅgama Sūtra, the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra, the Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana-sutra, and the Mahaparinirvana Sutra.