72 Facts About Guifeng Zongmi

Guifeng Zongmi was a Tang dynasty Chinese Buddhist monk and scholar who is considered a patriarch of both the Huayan school and Chan Buddhism.

Guifeng Zongmi's works are a major source for studying the various Chan schools of the Tang.

Guifeng Zongmi was deeply interested in both the practical and doctrinal aspects of Mahayana Buddhism, especially the teachings of the Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment and the Mahayana Awakening of Faith.

Guifeng Zongmi's work is concerned with harmonizing the various Chan teachings with other Chinese Buddhist traditions, especially Huayan, though he drew on the work of Tiantai Zhiyi in his ritual works.

Guifeng Zongmi was born in 780 into the powerful and influential He family in what is central Sichuan.

When he was seventeen or eighteen, Guifeng Zongmi lost his father and took up Buddhist studies.

Guifeng Zongmi eventually converted to Buddhism, but Zongmi's Confucian moral values never left him and he spent much of his career attempting to integrate Confucian ethics with Buddhism.

At the age of twenty-four, Guifeng Zongmi met the Chan master Suizhou Daoyuan and trained in Chan for two or three years.

Guifeng Zongmi received Daoyuan's seal in 807, the year he was fully ordained as a Buddhist monk.

Guifeng Zongmi's sudden awakening during this period had a profound impact upon his subsequent scholarly career.

Guifeng Zongmi spent the next several years studying the Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment and its commentaries extensively.

Guifeng Zongmi propounded the necessity of scriptural studies in Chan, and was highly critical of what he saw as the antinomianism of the Hongzhou lineage derived from Mazu Daoyi, which practiced "entrusting oneself to act freely according to the nature of one's feelings".

In 810, at the age of thirty, Guifeng Zongmi met Lingfeng, a disciple of the preeminent Buddhist scholar and Huayan exegete Chengguan.

In 816, Guifeng Zongmi withdrew to the Zhongnan Mountains southwest of Chang'an and began his writing career, composing an annotated outline of the Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment, and a compilation of passages from four commentaries on the sutra.

Guifeng Zongmi returned Chang'an in 819 and continued his studies utilizing the extensive libraries of various monasteries in the capital city.

Guifeng Zongmi was now a nationally honored Buddhist master with extensive contacts among the literati of the day, such as the devout Buddhist layman and scholar-official Pei Xiu and the famed poet Bai Juyi.

Li Xun was quickly captured and executed and Guifeng Zongmi was arrested and tried for treason.

Guifeng Zongmi's work continued to be studied by later Chinese Buddhists.

Guifeng Zongmi's work was very influential on the "Huayan-Chan" traditions of the Khitan Liao Empire and the Tangut kingdom of the Western Xia.

Guifeng Zongmi's ideas remained influential during the later Song and Ming dynasties.

Guifeng Zongmi's work was very influential on the Song era Tiantai school.

Guifeng Zongmi's thought continues to be influential on modern Korean Seon, and his ideas remain a major topic of discussion today.

Guifeng Zongmi organized all teachings into a hierarchical schema that integrates and validates all traditions and teachings, seeing each lower category as partially true.

In Guifeng Zongmi's teaching, the "nature" of each person is identical with Buddha-nature, which is emphasised in Chan.

Guifeng Zongmi's thought instead focuses on the nature of the mind and on how all phenomena arise from that ultimate nature and are deeply interconnected with it.

Guifeng Zongmi identifies this ultimate nature, the one true dharmadhatu, with the "one mind" taught in the Awakening of Faith and with buddha-nature.

Guifeng Zongmi's defense of affirmative religious discourse, against those who held that only a negative apophatic discourse, is an important element of his Chan Preface.

Guifeng Zongmi held that the tradition which "takes the nature as its cardinal principle" made use of both types of discourse in order to reveal the true nature of reality.

The central doctrine of the highest teaching which is at the core of Guifeng Zongmi's thought is the idea that all beings are endowed with a "perfectly enlightened mind," which is none other than the buddha-nature, the Dharmadhatu and the "one mind" of the Awakening of Faith.

Guifeng Zongmi further revealed that the purity of the numinous enlightened true mind is wholly identical with that of all Buddhas.

Guifeng Zongmi saw the term "empty tranquil awareness" as expressing the positive and negative aspects of the ultimate reality:.

Guifeng Zongmi follows the Srimaladevi sutra and the Awakening of Faith in seeing this ultimate mind ground as being both empty and not-empty in the sense that it is empty of defilement and discrimination, but not empty of positive qualities like the four perfect qualities, as well as all the buddha qualities.

Guifeng Zongmi's metaphysics follows the "one mind two gates" model of the Awakening of Faith which sees the mind as having an unchanging absolute aspect and a phenomenal appearing aspect.

Guifeng Zongmi cites the Avatamsaka sutra which states that "there is not a single sentient being that is not fully endowed with the wisdom of the Tathagata" as a major source for this teaching.

Guifeng Zongmi sees this teaching as exemplified by numerous sources, like the Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment, the Surangama Sutra, Ghanavyuha, Srimaladevi, Tathagatagarbha sutra, Nirvana sutra, Awakening of Faith, Buddha-nature treatise and Ratnagotravibhaga.

Guifeng Zongmi makes use of the East Asian discourse of essence and function to explain the ultimate nature.

Guifeng Zongmi compares the primal delusion to the act of a wealthy and well respected man falling asleep and forgetting who they are.

Guifeng Zongmi correlated these five stages to the various teachings in his doctrinal classification system, seeing different teachings as focusing on overcoming different stages of phenomenal development in a process that reverses the course of phenomenal evolution.

Guifeng Zongmi tried to harmonize the different views on the nature of awakening.

Guifeng Zongmi advocated the view of sudden awakening, accompanied by gradual cultivation.

Guifeng Zongmi drew on various similes to explain the process of sudden awakening - gradual cultivation:.

Guifeng Zongmi used the metaphor of water and waves found in the Awakening of Faith to explain this teaching.

Guifeng Zongmi held that those who believed that Chan was separate from doctrinal study were deeply confused.

Guifeng Zongmi thus promotes an approach to spiritual cultivation that relies on a harmonious development of both meditation and doctrinal study.

Guifeng Zongmi gave critiques on seven Chan schools in his Prolegomenon to the Collection of Expressions of the Zen Source and although he promoted his own Heze school as exemplifying the highest practice, his accounts of the other schools are mostly balanced.

Guifeng Zongmi categorized all Chan lineages or houses as belonging to one of three main types of doctrinal systems :.

Guifeng Zongmi associated this teaching with the Chinese Yogacara school and saw the practice as a gradual method that was not authentic Chan.

Guifeng Zongmi criticized this on the basis that the Northern school was under the misconception that impurities were inherently different or separate from the pure mind, making this a dualistic view that fails to understand the natural working of intrinsic enlightenment.

Guifeng Zongmi held that the impurities of the mind were merely adventitious, empty and ultimatelly non-dual with the pure mind, since they are nothing but the empty manifestations of the ultimate nature.

Guifeng Zongmi was critical of certain Chan sects that seemed to ignore the moral order of traditional Buddhism and Confucianism and that failed to understand the conventional truths of Buddhism in general.

Guifeng Zongmi saw this as ethically dangerous, and as denying the need for ethics and spiritual cultivation.

Guifeng Zongmi described their teaching as "entrusting oneself to act freely according to the nature of one's feelings".

For Guifeng Zongmi, this was a dangerously antinomian view as it eliminated all moral distinctions and validated any actions as expressions of the essence of Buddha-nature.

Furthermore, Guifeng Zongmi held that this view failed to understand that while the essence and its functions are two aspects of a non-dual reality, they are still different in an important way, because the essence is more fundamental, being the basis for enlightenment.

Indeed, for Guifeng Zongmi, they are ultimately "neither one nor different".

Gregory writes that to avoid the dualism he saw in the Northern Line and the radical antinomianism of the Hongzhou school, Guifeng Zongmi's paradigm preserved "an ethically critical duality within a larger ontological unity".

Indeed, Guifeng Zongmi thinks that the Hongzhou school mistakes the mirror's reflections for its capacity to reflect.

Furthermore, Guifeng Zongmi argues that the true nature can only be truly seen in the state of no-thought, which is like a reflective jewel that is not reflecting any colors and so can be seen just as it is.

Guifeng Zongmi cites the Awakening of Faith and Chengguan in support of this view.

Guifeng Zongmi argues the Hongzhou school lacks this knowledge, and that their teaching of spontaneous action can even become a rationalization for deluded activity.

Guifeng Zongmi was concerned with providing an inclusive view of the three main religions of China: Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism.

Guifeng Zongmi saw all three as expedient means, functioning within a particular historical context.

Guifeng Zongmi saw them as "consummate sages, who, in accord with the times and in response to beings, made different paths in setting up their teachings".

Guifeng Zongmi valued Confucian teachings greatly and did not reject its moral vision.

Guifeng Zongmi merely held that only Buddhism could provide the metaphysical foundation for it.

Guifeng Zongmi added Confucianism into his doctrinal classification scheme in an inclusive manner that validated them, something that previous Huayan scholars had not done.

Guifeng Zongmi considered this to be the harmonious consummation of other views.

That being said, Guifeng Zongmi presented several criticisms of Confucianism as well as Daoism, such as in the first part of Inquiry into the Origin of Humanity, which critiques such concepts as the Way, spontaneity, primal qi, and the mandate of heaven.

Guifeng Zongmi wrote commentaries, ritual manuals, and popular essays for literati audiences.

Guifeng Zongmi's epitaph, written by his student Pei Xiu, listed over ninety fascicles.

Unfortunately, many of Guifeng Zongmi's works are lost, including his Collected Writings on the Source of Ch'an which would provide modern scholars with an invaluable source to reconstruct Tang dynasty Chan.

Guifeng Zongmi wrote a major work in eighteen fascicles called A Manual of Procedures for the Cultivation and Realization of Ritual Practice according to the Scripture of Perfect Enlightenment.