1999 Meeting Abstracts A103: Authority and Hierarchy in Ch'an/Zen Buddhism

In spite of claims to be aloof from the concerns of secular authority and beyond the reach of the political establishment, it is impossible to consider the success of the Ch'an movement in China apart from the official patronage it received and the close relations that developed: between Ch'an monks and government officials. The Ch'an struggle for official recognition often empted in partisan debates resulting in definitive principles that came to characterize Ch'an. The current presentation will review already well-known instances of the role played by Ch'an monks and government officials in the development of Ch'an in the Tang dynasty (618-906), but will focus on the struggle for official recognition in the early Sung dynasty (960-1279). The debate associated with this struggle was instrumental in defining the principles that came to characterize Ch'an, and served as the foundation for the acceptance of Ch'an as the leading school of Chinese Buddhism in the Sung.

This paper explains the formal literary structures and devices that serve to frame and lend authority to the voice of the master (patriarch) in Ch'an discourse records (yu-lu) edited and/or compiled during the Sung dynasty. Drawing on contemporaneous monastic rules (ch'ing-kuei), it also analyzes the role of the master in various rites such as "ascending the hall" (shang-t'ang) and "entering the room" (ju-shih). The main point of the paper is that certain conventions of legitimation found in the literature of Ch'an are replicated in ritual performances and that, conversely, the structure of the rites also informs that of the literature.

In any institution there is a close relationship between the understanding of titles and terminology and the operation of the hierarchical structures in that institution. In American Zen the understanding of terms such as "authentic Zen," "dharma transmission," "Zen master," "roshi," "monk" and "nun" has led to the widespread growth of unbalanced power relationships that are not a natural part of American life. The paper, therefore, will take advantage of a written survey of American Zen centers that explores the current understanding of these key terms in the Western context. Included in the paper will also be an examination of other means of empowering of Zen hierarchy, such as the establishment of lineages and the use of the Recorded Sayings literature (yu lu) and the related koan collections. It will be demonstrated that in the present North American Zen center environment, these materials are largely understood as fully historical documents containing the "pure" source of technical language, with little awareness of their actual origin- a specific form of pedagogical literature meant to be applied for specific purpose.

In Zen Studies, much consideration has been given to the topic of enlightenment, with a generally accepted understanding based on "sudden" versus "gradual' enlightenment. No such phraseology has been created for the experience of lineage transmission in Zen, however. Through developing a method for interpreting lineage transmission -- what I call the hermeneutics of transmission -- 1 suggest a paradigm for understanding Dharma transmission based on the difference between legitimate versus illegitimate transmission. Using issues important to Buddhist textual interpretation, I propose four important points for understanding lineage transmission in Zen: 1. The role of the Buddha; 2. The role of the student; 3. Authentication of transmission of the text or experience; and 4. The worship of texts or ancestors. Underlying all four of these points is a fundamental concern for the legitimacy of the act of Dharma transmission. As such, one paradigm for understanding lineage transmission could be called legitimate versus illegitimate transmission.