22 Facts About Dahui Zonggao

Dahui Zonggao was a 12th-century Chinese Chan master.

Dahui Zonggao was the dominant figure of the Linji school during the Song dynasty.

Dahui Zonggao introduced the practice of kan huatou, or "inspecting the critical phrase," of a koan story.

Dahui Zonggao was a vigorous critic of what he called the "heretical Chan of silent illumination" of the Caodong school.

Dahui Zonggao was born in Xuancheng, Anhui, to the Xi family.

Dahui Zonggao left home at sixteen and became a Buddhist monk at seventeen.

Dahui Zonggao studied under a Caodong master and mastered the essentials of the Five Ranks in two years.

Dahui Zonggao sought out instruction on the sayings of the old masters collected and commented on by Xuedou Chongxian which became the basis for the koan collection, the Blue Cliff Record.

On his way to Tianning Wanshou, a monastery in the old imperial city of Bian, Dahui Zonggao vowed to work with Yuanwu for nine years and if he did not achieve enlightenment, or, if Yuanwu turned out to be a false teacher, giving approval too easily, Dahui Zonggao would give up and turn to writing scriptures or treatises.

Yuanwu gave Dahui Zonggao Yunmen's saying, "East Mountain walks on the water" as a koan to work through.

Dahui Zonggao threw himself into the koan and struggled with it day and night, giving forty-nine answers to the koan, but all were rejected by his teacher.

Dahui Zonggao became a great favorite of the educated and literate classes as well as Chan monks and in 1137, at the age of forty-nine, Chancellor Zhang Jun, a student of Dahui, appointed him abbot of Jingshan monastery in the new capital Lin-an.

Dahui Zonggao became the acknowledged leader of Buddhism of the Southern Song dynasty.

Some fifty of Dahui Zonggao's monks died there in a plague.

Dahui Zonggao saw this practice of commenting on gongans in his time as becoming a superficial literary study.

Dahui Zonggao introduced the use of k'an-hua, the concentration on the hua tou of a gong-an to attain insight.

Dahui Zonggao warned his students that they must 'doubt' words to not be fooled by them.

Dahui Zonggao extorted a strong influence on the Japanese Rinzai teacher Hakuin Ekaku, who taught great doubt as necessary to awaken.

Dahui Zonggao's teachings contain relentless attacks on the practice of silent illumination, sitting in meditation in tranquility and quietness.

Dahui Zonggao labeled teachers of this type of meditation practice as "heretical" and complained,.

Dahui Zonggao compiled the Chanlin Bao Xun, instructions of former Chan abbots about the virtues and ideals of monastic life, in collaboration with another monk, Dagui.

The Zhiyue lu, compiled by Qu Ruji, contains information on Dahui's teachings and is the basis of the J C Cleary translation Swampland Flowers, of which the majority is a collection of letters Dahui wrote to his students.