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A Brief History Of The First Six Buddhist Patriarchs In China |
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The
Third Patriarch Great Master Sengcan "Brilliant
Sanghan" The Third
Patriarch, Sengcan of the Sui Dynasty, was of unknown family and origin. When
he first came to visit the Second Patriarch, his body was covered with
repulsive sores like those of a leper. As a rule, lepers were isolated in
those days, for fear of contagion. But he came in that
condition to see the Second Patriarch. "Where are you from?" asked
the Second Patriarch. "What are you doing here?" The leper answered,
"I have come here to take refuge with the High Master and to study and
cultivate the Buddhadharma." The Second Patriarch
was clever, but Dhyana Master Sengcan was even more clever. "I am a sick
man and you are a high master," he said, "but in our true minds
where is the difference?" Hearing his reply,
the Second Patriarch knew that he was no ordinary person. He quickly
answered, "Don't say any more! Don't talk! I know!" and immediately
transmitted the Dharma to him. After the transmission he said, "You
should protect this Dharma well. You also must go into hiding, because Bodhiruchi,
who is an Indian monk, is very jealous of Indian monks, and the Dharma that I
have received is from Patriarch Bodhidharma. Bodhiruchi's disciples want to
kill Bodhidharma's disciples. Be very careful and let no one know that you
have received this transmission from me. Hide away!" After that, the
Third Patriarch used the same technique as his teacher. He feigned insanity
and went about quietly teaching and transforming beings. During the
persecution of Buddhism by the Emperor Wu of the Northern Zhou dynasty
(reigned from 561-577 A.D.), the Third Patriarch fled into the mountains for
more than a decade. While he hid there, the tigers, wolves, leopards, and
other fierce animals all left the area. When he encountered
Dharma Master Daoxin, he transmitted the Dharma to him, making him the Fourth
Patriarch. After the transmission, Master Sengcan invited a thousand Bhikshus
to a great vegetarian feast and a vast number of his disciples also attended
the banquet. After they had eaten, what do you suppose he did? He said,
"You think that to sit in a full lotus is the best way to die. Watch!
I'll show you something different to demonstrate my independence over birth
and death!" The Master walked to
the base of a large tree, leaped up, grabbed a strong branch, and right then
and there, in front of the thousand Bhikshus, he entered Nirvana. It's not
that he was hanged, mind you. He passed away peacefully swinging from the
tree by one hand! No one knew how old he was. No one knew where he came from.
No one knew his name. That's a general description of the Third Patriarch. Someone is afraid and
thinks, "The First Patriarch was poisoned, the Second Patriarch was
beheaded, the Third Patriarch died hanging from a tree. It's totally
meaningless to be a Patriarch. It's much too dangerous. No matter what, I
don't want to be a Patriarch." With this attitude, even if you wanted to
be a Patriarch you could not. Patriarchs do not fear death. For them, there
is no distinction between life and death. "Afflictions are Bodhi; birth
and death are Nirvana. They roam in the human realm teaching and transforming
living beings." Someone like that can be a Patriarch. As long as you are
a coward, as long as you fear anything, not to mention being a Patriarch, you
cannot even be a Patriarch's disciple. Patriarchs are not
afraid of suffering, not afraid of difficulty, not afraid of death, and not
afraid of life. Like Fotuo and Yeshe, those two disciples of Patriarch
Bodhidharma, said, "The hand makes a fist; the fist makes a hand. Is
that fast or not?" The Venerable Yuan said "Fast!" They said,
"Afflictions and Bodhi, birth and death and Nirvana, are just that fast!"
And so don't fear death and then you can be a Patriarch. Right now, if there
is anyone who doesn't fear death, I will make him a Patriarch. Above has been
a discussion of the Third Patriarch. The
Fourth Patriarch Great
Master Daoxin "Faith in the Way" The
Fourth Patriarch was also a strange character. While very young, he left home
under Master Sengcan and for sixty years he sat in Dhyana concentration,
without lying down to rest. Although he seldom opened his eyes, he wasn't
asleep. He was working at cultivation. When he did open his eyes, everyone
shook with terror. People would shudder and tremble as if enduring an
earthquake when they saw his eyes. Why? No one knew. Such was the magnitude
of his awesome virtue. Hearing of the Master's great virtue,
in the seventeenth year of the Zhenguan Reign of the Tang dynasty (643 A.D.),
the emperor sent a messenger to invite him to the palace to receive the
offerings of the emperor, who wanted to bow to the Patriarch as his teacher.
Think about it, the way things are now, not to speak of being invited by the
emperor, people would attempt to wedge themselves into the court unasked! How
much the more would they go if invited! But the Great Master, the Fourth
Patriarch, refused the invitation saying, "My age is advanced. I don't
walk well, and I have no appetite. I'm old and sick. I cannot travel to the
capitol." When the messenger
delivered the Patriarch's reply, the emperor said, "Go back and tell him
that the emperor says that no matter how old he is or how difficult the
journey, I have ordered him to come to the palace." The messenger
returned to the Patriarch and said, "Master, regardless of your health,
you must come to the emperor's court. We will carry you back in a sedan chair
if necessary!" At that time, since there were no airplanes, travel was
difficult. "No,
I cannot go," replied the Patriarch. "I am too old and ill. Take my
head if you must, but my heart will not go." "Very well, go
get his head," replied the emperor. He put a knife in a box and gave it
to the messenger saying, "Slice off his head." "Fine." the
messenger replied. Then, when the messenger was about to set out, the emperor
told him, "Under no circumstances should you harm this Bhikshu. You must
not kill this monk." Ah, with that, the messenger understood. He
returned to the Fourth Patriarch and said, "Venerable Master, ultimately
are you going or not? The emperor has given me this knife with the orders
that if you refuse to come, I am to cut off your head and take it back to the
emperor." Meanwhile, Patriarch
Daoxin closed his eyes and waited calmly for his head to be cut off. He waited
for about ten minutes. Maybe it was ten minutes, maybe it was nine or eleven.
Don't become attached. It's not for sure precisely how long he waited. But
nothing happened. Finally Master Daoxin got angry, just like the Second
Patriarch, and shouted, "Hey! Why don't you slice off my head!" "The emperor had
no intention of harming you," the messenger quickly replied. "He
was just bluffing." The Patriarch heard
this and laughed aloud. Then he said, "Now you know there is still such
a person in the world!" meaning, a person who does not fear death. The family name of
the Fourth Patriarch Daoxin was Si-Ma. His personal name was Xin
"Faith," and when he left-home, that name became part of his
ordained name "Faith in the Way." Si-Ma was an honorable ancestral
name. Both Emperor Si-Ma of the Jin dynasty and the historian and skilled
writer Si-Ma Qian of the Han dynasty had this name. The Fourth Patriarch, who
had such famous ancestors, left the home-life to cultivate when he was very
young. He lived seventy-two years, sixty of which were spent without lying
down even once to sleep. The Fourth Patriarch's realm of accomplishment was
inconceivable. While Master Daoxin
was cultivating in the mountains in Hubei, a nearby city was besieged by
bandits for more than a hundred days. Master Daoxin saw that there was no
water in the city--the wells were dry and there was no more flow from the
source. Water, fire and food and drink are vital to life. Deprived of water,
the inhabitants of that city would not be able to go on living. And so,
Master Daoxin left his mountain retreat to teach and transform the people. He
taught the officials and populace all to recite
"Mahaprajna-paramita." After they recited for a time, the bandits
scattered and fled and water reappeared in the wells. That was a response
based on the Way which Master Daoxin had. When the Fourth
Patriarch decided to build a temple, he looked with his Buddha eye and saw
Broken Head Mountain in Hubei. The name is not a good one, but the area
itself was surrounded by a purple cloud of energy. Observing this auspicious
sign, the Master went there to dwell, changing its inauspicious name to
"Double Peak" Mountain, after its shape. The Master used
expedient dharmas to teach living beings how to discard their bad habits.
These stubborn living beings, however, often discarded what was good and
continued doing evil, refusing to listen to instructions. But the Master
persisted and by using all kinds of skill-in-means caused these stubborn
living beings to realize their mistakes and change. He propagated the Dharma
for more than forty years, transforming living beings greater in number than
seedlings of rice, stalks of hemp, shoots of bamboo, or blades of grass. One day the Fourth
Patriarch said to his disciple, Dharma Master Yuanyi, "You should build
me a stupa. I am going to leave." Later he asked, "Is the stupa
ready?" to which Master Yuanyi replied "yes." In the second
year of Yonghui, of the Tang dynasty (651 A.D.), on the twenty-fourth day of
the ninth lunar month, Patriarch Daoxin, who had never been ill, sat down and
peacefully entered Nirvana. Very few people knew of his passing, since he had
not announced it to the assembly. He didn't say good-bye. His disciples locked
his flesh body securely in the stone stupa. A year later the iron locks fell
away and the stupa opened by itself. Looking in, everyone saw the Fourth
Patriarch still sitting in full lotus, appearing the same as he had when
alive. At that time the Fifth Patriarch Hongren was delighted when he saw his
teacher's appearance. The Master's body had not decayed, but the flesh had
dried out. The Fifth Patriarch wrapped the body with lacquered cloth and
gilded it to protect this "true body." To this day the Fourth
Patriarch's body still exists. He taught and transformed a vast number of
disciples; his "room-entering" disciple, that is, the disciple who
received the Dharma transmission, was the Fifth Patriarch, Great Master
Hongren. |
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