Guanyin

Journal of Chinese Religions
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Guanyin/Avalokitesvara in Encounter Dialogues:

Creating a Place for Guanyin in Chinese Chan
Buddhism
Miriam Levering
To cite this article: Miriam Levering (2006) Guanyin/Avalokitesvara in Encounter Dialogues:

Creating a Place for Guanyin in Chinese Chan Buddhism, Journal of Chinese Religions, 34:1,
1-28
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Download by: [McMaster University] Date: 21 March 2016, At: 21:59

Guanyin/Avalokitesvara in Encounter
Dialogues: Creating a Place for Guanyin in
Chinese Chan Buddhism
MIRIAM LEVERING
University of Tennessee
Downloaded by [McMaster University] at 21:59 21 March 2016
Preamble
At the gift shop of the White Cloud Daoist temple in Beijing today, one can buy a lovely
small gold-washed Guanyin 觀音 to wear on a chain necklace, reminiscent of the image of
Guanyin in the temple itself. The presence of Guanyin at the headquarters of Chinese Daoism
is a sign of a widespread phenomenon: the presence of Guanyin in almost every place of
worship at every level of Chinese religion, whether it is Daoist, Buddhist, the temple of the
City God, or a shrine for prayer to local deities who protect fishermen on the sea.
One branch of Chinese religion, the Chan 禪 Buddhist school, seemed at first as if it
would have no place for Guanyin. But by the late Five Dynasties period, Guanyin appears,
not only in monasteries and temples famous for their Chan masters, which after all were
probably not exclusively Chan establishments, but also in Chan’s most sacred texts, its
genealogical histories and “records of sayings” (yulu 語錄) of Chan masters. What follows is
an account of the domestication of Guanyin even in the Chan school, as it was accomplished
in part through the increasing presence of Guanyin in Chan’s encounter dialogues and “public
cases” (gong’an 公案, in Japanese, kōan).
Others have noted the evidence that during the Song dynasty and afterward, both in China
and Japan, participants in the Chan and Zen schools loved Guanyin, particularly the White-
robed Guanyin who was often the subject of so-called Chan paintings.1 But Chan (and Zen)
are primarily systems of training. Beyond loving Guanyin lies the question, could Guanyin
be made a part of Chan and Zen training. In this essay, the focus is on how and to what extent
Guanyin became a part of Chan (and Zen) training.
1
Chün-fang Yü, Kuan-yin, 251. Jan Fontein and Money L. Hickman, Zen: Painting and
Calligraphy, xxvi and catalogue entries 19, 33, and 35.
Journal of Chinese Religions 34 (2006) 1

2 Journal of Chinese Religions
Introduction
The emergence of the Chan school was portrayed by early scholars such as Hu Shih 胡適
(1891-1962) and D.T. Suzuki as a radical departure from past Buddhist traditions; it was seen
as the creation of a distinctly Chinese form of Buddhism. According to Hu Shih, Mazu Daoyi
馬祖道一 (709-788) and his disciples did away with “the medieval ghosts, the gods, the
bodhisattvas and the Buddhas.”2 The Chan of the eighth century was “no Chan at all, but a
Chinese reformation or revolution within Buddhism.”3
Yanagida Seizan, a leading Japanese scholar of early Chan, likewise has suggested that in
the eighth century Chan rejected traditional models of religious practice, formed its identity
by wholesale repudiation of established beliefs, and created a new soteriological paradigm
that featured using unconventional pedagogical devices such as shouting, beating, and
engagement in oral “dialogues” (wenda 問答 ). In Yanagida’s view, four closely related
developments brought about this invention of a different kind of Buddhism: (1) constructing
lineages back to the Buddha to give legitimacy to the Chan movement and establish a
sectarian tradition; (2) establishing independent Chan monasteries; (3) rejecting all traditional
forms of Buddhist practice, including formal meditation, and creating a new style of religious
praxis centered on the “encounter dialogue” (jiyuan wenda 機緣問答) model; and (4) creating
a new type of literature, principally represented by the Chan “records of sayings” genre,
written in vernacular Chinese.4 Yanagida is wrong in thinking that all of this occurred in the
eighth century, and that the second and third items among these four can be traced to the
Hongzhou 洪州 school of that time. And I believe that early Chan communities of teachers
and students both rejected some traditional models of religious practice outright, and
reinterpreted some. For up until the time of the Hongzhou Chan school, early schools
practiced what Bernard Faure called “symbolic exegesis.” That is, early schools rejected an
2
Hu Shih, “Ch’an/Zen Buddhism in China: Its History and Method,” 17. See also D.T. Suzuki’s
rejoinder to Hu’s article, “Zen: A Reply to Hu Shih,” 25-46, and Bernard Faure’s critique of Suzuki’s and
Hu’s views in his Chan Insights and Oversights, 53-67, 94-99.
3
Hu, “Ch’an/Zen Buddhism in China: Its History and Method,” 17.
4
Yanagida Seizan, “The ‘Recorded Sayings’ Texts of Chinese Chan Buddhism,” 185-205. Also
Yanagida, “Basozen no sho mondai,” 33-41. Later in this essay when I write of “early Chan” and
“middle Chan,” I am using John McRae’s widely-known periodization of Chan history, which is
summarized in a simplified form in his Seeing Through Zen,11-15. In McRae’s periodization, “early
Chan” refers to the Chan of the “fifth patriarch” Hongren (601-74), Shenxiu (606?-706), Huineng (638-
713), and Shenhui (684-758), and the Northern, Southern and Oxhead factions. The Platform Sutra of
the Sixth Patriarch (c. 780) is one of its characteristic documents. The emergence of “lineage theory”
and the absence of “encounter dialogue” characterize this period. “Middle Chan” begins with Mazu
(709-88), and continues through the publication of the Anthology of the Patriarch’s Hall (Zutangji 祖堂
集) in 952. In this period encounter dialogues emerge and at the end of the period become prolific, and
lineage theories become very important. “Song dynasty Chan” begins with the Song dynasty in 960, and
continues till 1300. But in describing Prof. Yanagida here, I am using “early Chan” more loosely to refer
to what McRae would call “proto-Chan,” “early Chan,” and “middle Chan.”
Creating A Place for Guanyin 3
externalized version of traditional practices, but built a bridge between traditional, canonical
ideas of practice and Chan understandings of practice by advocating “formless” versions, as
with “formless precepts” and “formless repentance” as taught, for example, in The Platform
Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch.5 Nonetheless, if one accepts that making practices “formless”
and internalizing them involved a rejection of the way that others practiced them, we can say
that early Chan did form religious identity by rejecting traditional practices and creating new
ones.
To come to the somewhat later Hongzhou school of “middle Chan” that dominated
Chinese Chan during the ninth century, Mario Poceski points out that among the
characteristics of the extant Hongzhou school literature (prior to 952) is that “there is very
little reference to popular religious beliefs and practices that were integral to Tang Buddhism.
For instance, there is scarcely a mention of the salvific powers of the various Buddhas and
bodhisattvas …”6
With the exception of the establishment of independent Chan monasteries, the other three
developments Yanagida emphasizes did come to characterize the Chan tradition after the ninth
century. In the new Chan practice of encounter dialogue between master and student, there
was no room for the traditional emphasis on the efficacy of the vows and powers of
bodhisattvas. The invocation of bodhisattvas and the cultivation of spiritual connections with
them seem to have been set aside along with other “external” forms of Chinese Buddhist
practice. There is a sense in which Hu Shih is right to say that Chan did away with “the
medieval ghosts, the gods, the bodhisattvas and the Buddhas.”
On this account, one would not expect to find in Chan texts from before 952, that is, Chan
texts that do not incorporate “encounter dialogues” in significant numbers, as those in late
“middle Chan” did, any figures in authority who advocate the recitation of Guanyin’s name or
allude to his powers.7 With a single important exception, that is true. In fact, what we find in
the early texts when Guanyin is mentioned is advice to turn away from thinking about
Guanyin at all as a bodhisattva external to oneself in order to find the real Guanyin within
one’s mind.
What is more unexpected is that beginning in 952 with the first Chan text substantially to
include encounter dialogues, the Anthology of the Hall of the Patriarchs (Zutangji 祖堂集),
Guanyin and her powers enter Chan texts through the medium of encounter dialogues. These
encounter dialogues that feature Guanyin gain some of their power from the common Chinese
5
See Bernard Faure, The Will to Orthodoxy, 41. John McRae uses the term “contemplative
analysis” for this same phenomenon; see McRae, The Northern School, 201-02.
6
Mario Poceski, Ordinary Mind as the Way: The Hongzhou School and the Growth of Chan
Buddhism, 226-227. This and the preceding paragraph are indebted to Poceski’s summary of these
matters. For “middle Chan,” see fn. 4 above.
7
In the view of many scholars, encounter dialogues are not attested before the completion of the
Anthology of the Ancestral Hall (Zutangji) in 952. See John McRae, “The Antecedents of Encounter
Dialogue.” As noted in fn. 4, in this essay I am using John McRae’s periodization of Chan history. He
finds four periods: proto-Chan, early Chan, middle Chan, and Song dynasty Chan. See inter alia his
Seeing Through Zen, 13 and 18-19, and description in fn. 4 above.
Buddhist faith in the supramundane powers of the celestial Bodhisattva Guanyin. They
eventually culminate in an important “public case” (gong’an) in the collection of one hundred
“public cases” and “eulogies of the ancients” (songgu 頌古) written and compiled by Xuedou
Chongxian 雪竇重顯 (a.k.a. Xuedou Mingjue 明覺, 980-1052) in the Tianxi 天禧 era (1017-
1021) of the Song 宋 dynasty, and published in 1026.8 This public case becomes even more
central to the school as one of the one hundred cases (gong’an) in Yuanwu Keqin 圓悟克勤
(1063-1135)’s Blue Cliff Record (Biyanlu 碧巖錄), which incorporates Xuedou’s collection of
gong’an and songgu. In this “public case” Guanyin achieves a permanent place in the
literature of the Chan and Zen school, and the imagining of Guanyin is shaped by a new
hermeneutic, that of the indigenous Huayan 華嚴 school, the school in which the Huayan (or
Avatamsaka) Sutra and its teachings form the basis of cosmology and buddhology. Eihei
Dōgen 永平道元 (1200-1253), a Japanese Zen monk who studied Chan in China, opens his
chapter entitled “Kannon” (觀音), written in 1243 after his return from China and collected in
his work of extended gong’an commentary, the Shōbōgenzō 正法眼藏, by quoting the “public
case” found in the Biyanlu case 89, an exchange between the Tang dynasty Chan figures
Daowu 道悟 (769-835) and Yunyan 雲巖 (782-841) (see below).9 Dōgen then comments,
“There are many stories [in Chan] about this Guanyin who attained the Way, but none can be
compared to this one.”10 That Dōgen should know of many stories in Chan about Guanyin and
should devote a chapter to one of them shows that some kind of change had taken place in the
Chan school in its stance toward celestial bodhisattvas. In what follows we will attempt to
describe and evaluate that change.
Guanyin in Texts from Early and Early Middle Chan
Most texts from early and early middle Chan do not mention Guanyin at all. Two early
texts of the Southern school of Chan that scholars agree come from these periods, the
Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch from the early Chan period, and the Chuanxin fayao 傳
8
The format of Xuedou’s gong’an and songgu collection is one followed by later similar
collections, all called songgu. It consists of a retelling of the gong’an, followed by a short and enigmatic
poem in the free-form ci 詞 style that comments on the gong’an. Monks and literati in the Song both
prized songgu collections. There is one extant Song dynasty published edition (banben) and many Yuan
dynasty editions of Xuedou’s songgu circulating separately from the Blue Cliff Record, as well as a
listing of Xuedou’s songgu as a separate work in an extant Song dynasty book catalogue. On these, see
Shiina Kōyū 椎名宏雄, Sōgen ban zenseki no kenkyū 宋元版禪籍の研究, 424 and 573. Writers on
songgu in the Song dynasty all named Xuedou’s songgu as the first and the model, and described it as
widely circulated from the 1020’s. The Blue Cliff Record was published in the early Southern Song. See
Morten Schlütter, “The Record of Hongzhi,” 190-191, and Foulk, “The Form and Function of Kōan
Literature,” 28-33.
9
Dōgen Kigen, Shōbōgenzō (Terada), fascicle 18, “Kannon,” 231-236.
10
Dōgen (Terada), 237.
心法要 by Huangbo Xiyun 黃辟希運 from the Hongzhou school of the early middle Chan
period (ninth century), do refer to Guanyin. But in line with the tendency of the authors of
these early texts to make practices formless and internalize important Buddhist symbols, they
mention Guanyin only to point out forcefully that the internal (i.e., formless and mental)
Guanyin is the “real” Guanyin. In effect, they mention Guanyin only to discourage Chan
adherents from worshipping the bodhisattva in the manner of many adherents of his/her cult.
From the references to Guanyin in these two texts, we might conclude that the various early
Chan lineages were not only not interested in the cult of Guanyin as a supramundane being,
they were rather interested in discouraging people from making a connection with a
bodhisattva understood to be external to the practitioner.
Thus, in its only reference to Guanyin, The Platform Sutra puts in Huineng’s 慧能 mouth
the following statement: “The Buddha is the product of one’s own nature. Do not seek it
outside of your body. If the self-nature is deluded, even a Buddha becomes an ordinary
human being. If their self-nature is enlightened, all living beings are Buddhas. Compassion is
the same as Avalokitesvara [Guanyin]. Happiness in almsgiving is the same as Mahasthama.
The ability to be pure is the same as Sakyamuni. And not to make differentiation but to be
straightforward is the same as Maitreya.”11 Huangbo similarly is represented as saying:
[The bodhisattva] Manjusri represents fundamental law [principle] and Samantabhadra,

activity. By the former is meant the law [principle] that is empty and unobstructed, and
by the latter the activity that is inexhaustible and beyond the sphere of form.
Avalokitesvara represents boundless compassion, Mahasthama, great wisdom, and
Vimalakirti, spotless name. … All the qualities represented by the great Bodhisattvas are
inherent in persons and are not separated from the One Mind. Awake to it, and it is there.
Students of the Way today do not awake to this in their own minds, and are attached to
appearances and seek for something objective outside their own minds; they have all
turned their backs on the Way.12
Another text which very likely comes from the Hongzhou school in its early period,
perhaps authored by Mazu’s immediate disciples, is the “Song of Enlightenment” (Zhengdao
ge 證道歌) attributed, probably wrongly, to Yongjia Xuanjue 永嘉玄覺 (665-713). The
Zhengdao ge mentions “Guanzizai 觀自在 ,” another translation of the name
“Avalokitesvara.”13 Again, the message is not that there is a compassionate bodhisattva out
there to help the practitioner. It is that the awakened practitioner who sees not a single dharma
11
Liuzu tanjing 六祖壇經(Philip Yampolsky, The Platform Sutra), 95; Liuzu tanjing (Rokuso
dangyo, translated by Taka Nakagawa), 128.
12
Huangbo and Pei Xiu, Huangbo Duanji chanshi chuanxin fayao, T.2012a.48.380a22-27.
Huangbo and Pei Xiu, The Zen Teachings of Huang Po, translated by John Blofeld, 32-33. I have
modified Blofeld’s translation.
13
Or Avalokitasvara.
is worthy to be called “Guanzizai,” i.e., “Avalokitesvara,” or “the Lord who Observes.”14
The single important exception mentioned above is found in the “Transmission of the
Treasure Grove [Temple] (Baolin zhuan 寶林傳 ) of 801 C.E. This work contains a
conversation featuring the thaumaturge and alleged incarnation of Guanyin, Baozhi 寶誌
(425-514) in which he says that Bodhidharma is Guanyin’s transformation body (huashen 化
身). 15
In the Chan school, Baozhi, who comes to be understood by the eighth century to be a
transformation body of the eleven-headed Guanyin and is worshipped as such,16 first appears
in a story added to the account of Bodhidharma’s interview with Emperor Wu of the Liang
dynasty (hereafter Liang Wudi 梁武帝) (464-549). Liang Wudi, who established the Liang
kingdom in 502, was a devout Buddhist who called himself “Buddha Mind Son of Heaven.”17
In this story, sometime after Bodhidharma leaves the Liang court after his fruitless
interview with Liang Wudi, the famous wonder-working monk Baozhi, who was greatly
admired and trusted by the emperor, asks Liang Wudi whether he recognized the Indian monk
he just interviewed. When Liang Wudi says no, Baozhi says: “That was the transformation
body of the bodhisattva Guanyin come to transmit the Buddha’s mind seal.” This story
appears for the first time in Chan texts in the Baolin zhuan of 801.
Baozhi’s testimony to Liang Wudi associates Bodhidharma with the supernatural Guanyin,
thus giving him and the lineages that spring from him added authority. As Baozhi himself
came to be widely seen as a transformation body, and thus a manifestation, of Guanyin, the
authority Bodhidharma and the Chan lineages derived from this reported conversation could
only have doubled in the eyes of those for whom the supernatural powers of the celestial
bodhisattva were attractive.
14
Jia Jinhua 賈晉華 notes the frequent occurrence of Hongzhou school language in the Yongjia
zhengdao ge, and suggests that it was a creation of the Hongzhou school in the time of Mazu’s
immediate disciples. It was already popular by 830 C.E. See Jia Jinhua, The Hongzhou School, 89-95.
Of the translations of the Zhengdao ge into English, only those by D.T. Suzuki in Manual of Zen
Buddhism, and Nyogen Senzaki and Ruth Strout McCandless in Buddhism and Zen, preserve what many
Chinese readers doubtless read as a reference to Avalokitesvara, since “Guanzizai” was one of the ways
of translating the name of this Bodhisattva into Chinese, one that the famous translator Xuanzang 玄奘
(ca. 596-664) had employed. Suzuki’s otherwise somewhat problematic translation of the two relevant
lines reads: “The Tathagata is interviewed when one enters upon a realm of no-forms, Such is to be
really called a Kwanjizai (Avalokitesvara).” D.T. Suzuki, Manual of Zen Buddhism, 101. Other recent
translations by Lu K’uan-yu (Charles Luk) in his Ch’an and Zen Teachings, vol. 3 and Master Sheng-
yen in his The Sword of Wisdom translate the term as “Sovereign Regarder” and “Supreme Observer.”
15
Baolin zhuan. Hōrinden (Baolin zhuan) yaku chu (translated by Tanaka Ryōshō), juan 8, 493.
Yanagida Seizan 柳田聖山, Shoki Zenshūshisho no kenkyū 初期禪宗史書の研究, 408 and 416, note 4.
16
Makita Tairyō, Chugoku Bukkyōshi kenkyū 中國佛教史研究, 2, 56-84.
17
For recent articles on the Buddhist activities of Liang Wudi, see Andreas Janousch, “The
Emperor as Bodhisattva: The Bodhisattva Ordination and Ritual Assemblies of Emperor Wu of the
Liang Dynasty,” and Jinhua Chen, “Pancavarsika Assemblies in Liang Wudi’s Buddhist Palace Chapel.”
Guanyin in Late Middle Chan and Song Chan: Context
In early and early middle Chan texts the story of Baozhi and his reference to
Bodhidharma as an incarnation of Guanyin is an isolated instance. But beginning with the
Anthology of the Hall of the Patriarchs from late middle Chan, the picture changes. And in
the important early Song Chan compilation of encounter dialogues, The Transmission of the
Lamp from the Jingde Era (Jingde chuandeng lu 景德傳燈錄, 1004) we find an even greater
number of encounter dialogues in which Guanyin is the focus of attention. We find two
important groups of these encounter dialogues, those derived from the Surangama Sutra
(Shou lengyan jing 首楞嚴經), believed to have been translated by Paramiti in 705, but now
thought to have been composed in China, and those concerning the Tantric images of
Avalokitesvara with eleven heads, and a thousand hands and eyes. As we shall see, the records
containing encounter dialogues from late middle Chan and Song Chan preserve the attitude of
not encouraging the worship of Guanyin or looking to Guanyin for external aid. But they give
Guanyin a place in their discourse.
In this essay I will briefly introduce the anecdotes that reflect the Avalokitesvara of the
Surangama Sutra. I will particularly focus on the line of encounter dialogues that concern the
Tantric images and imaginings of Guanyin that are found in the Zutangji and the Jingde
chuandenglu. This line of stories culminates in the encounter dialogue made into a gong’an or
“case” in Case 89 of the Blue Cliff Record, the story to which Dōgen refers.
Scriptures
Before we look at the Chan encounter dialogues and gong’an that feature the esoteric
forms of Guanyin, we need to recall the context in which Chan teachers and practitioners
lived. Their monasteries were not isolated from other Buddhist schools or the larger culture,
where intense interest in Guanyin was found. Signs of this interest are found, inter alia, in the
availability of scriptures and the widespread creation of visual images of Guanyin. All of the
Buddhist schools created in the Tang dynasty chose as their central or highest scripture sutras
in which Avalokitesvara figured prominently.
Who was Guanyin in India and Central Asia, before he came to China? 18 He was a
bodhisattva who promised to rescue anyone who called on his name, or thought about him
with faith, from a variety of perils, as taught in the “Universal Gate” chapter of the Lotus
Sutra. He was a bodhisattva who promised to appear in any form from which a being needed
to hear the Dharma in order to take it in and be transformed by it, as also taught in the Lotus
Sutra and the Surangama Sutra. He was a helper to Amitabha Buddha, his teacher, in the Pure
Land texts. In the texts of the esoteric “Tantric” school, he was a universal savior who on his
18
Throughout this essay, until I reach the discussion of the Guanyin gong’an in the Blue Cliff
Record, I will refer to Guanyin as “he,” since the appearance of feminine forms of Guanyin does not
begin until the Song dynasty.
own authority promised to rescue beings from all sorts of dangers, including a bad death and a
bad rebirth.
We know something about the importation and spread of scriptures from India and
Central Asia in which a bodhisattva called Avalokitesvara (and sometimes Avalokatesvara)
figures.19 By the middle of the Tang dynasty the following scriptures important to the Chinese
cult of Guanyin had been translated and were widely circulated:
a) The Lotus Sutra (translated several times; the most popular translation is called the
Miaofa lianhuajing 妙法蓮華經), with its “Universal Gate” chapter devoted to Guanyin, was
the final and most complete teaching of the Buddha according to the Tiantai 天台 school.
b) The Sutra of Visualization of Amitayus Buddha was one of the three sutras canonized in
the Pure Land school.
c) The 60-fascicle Huayan Sutra (Flower Adornment Sutra, Avatamsaka Sutra) was
translated in 420. The 80-fascicle Huayan Sutra was translated in 695-699. This sutra was the
Buddha’s highest teaching according to the Huayan school.20
d) The Surangama Sutra (Sutra of the Heroic March Concentration), later associated with
the Chan school, was traditionally believed to have been translated by Paramiti in 705. This
has been called into question; many believe the sutra was composed in China around the same
time.21
e) Most important to our topic here is that various esoteric sutras that glorify
Avalokitesvara as the bodhisattva who teaches saving dharanis had been translated.
Esoteric Teachings
The distinguishing marks of esoteric teaching are the emphasis on everyone’s attaining
Buddhahood in one lifetime, and the use of mandala, mudra, mantra, dharani and
visualization to obtain both spiritual and worldly benefits. The deities worshipped in these
practices are supramundane saviors. This is emphasized in the way they are to be visualized,
with many eyes, arms and heads.22
Sutras emphasizing the keeping of dharanis taught by Avalokitesvara were translated
before the Tang dynasty (618-907), the first of them as early as the late 4th or early 5th
centuries. More were introduced during the Northern Zhou dynasty (556-681).
Sutras of the eleven-headed Guanyin were translated in China in the sixth century, the
seventh century, and the eighth century. Sutras of the thousand-handed and thousand-eyed
Avalokitesvara were translated during the Tang dynasty, beginning in the seventh century. In
650 C.E., Bhagavadharma translated what became the most widely known and popular
Avalokitesvara dharani sutra, the Qianshou qianyan Guanshiyin pusa guangda yuanman wuai
19
For a summary of the varying proposals for the origin and meaning of the puzzling variant names
“Avalokitesvara” and “Avalokatesvara” and their various Chinese translations, see Yü, Kuan-yin, 14, 37-
42.
20
Yü summarizes these well-known facts in Kuan-yin, 18.
21
Yü, Kuan-yin, 40. A more extensive description of the contents and appeal of this sutra to Tang
and Song readers is found in Beata Grant, Mount Lu Revisited, 26-30.
22
Yü, Kuan-yin, 48.
dabeixin tuoluonijing 千手千眼觀世音菩薩廣大圓滿無礙大悲心陀羅尼經, known as the
Qianshou jing for short. There were thirteen translations in all in the Tang, a sign of the
popularity of this form of Guanyin.23 (We will discuss the Qianshou jing further below.)
Common characteristics of these sutras include their emphasis on the chanting of
dharanis and their promises of both unfailing deliverance from all worldly disasters, and the
gaining of worldly benefits and transcendent wisdom. The sutras emphasize minute, detailed
and correct procedures: how to make a two- or three-dimensional image of the deity, how
many times one should chant the dharani, what ritual ingredients one should use in
performing the fire offering (homa) to the deity, what mudra and visualizations to carry out.
When the practices (sadhanas) are performed correctly, Avalokitesvara will appear to the
devotee in a vision either as a monk or in a form as imagined by the practitioner.
Images
The spread of the two esoteric images of Guanyin that are important in Chan materials
began rather late both in India and China. In India, the eleven-headed Avalokitesvara in Cave
41 at Kanheri, near Mumbai, which dates to the late fifth or early sixth century, was possibly
the first Tantric image of Guanyin to appear in India.24 In China, the eleven-headed Guanyin
was also the first esoteric form of Guanyin to appear in images. Two early Tang
representations were found at Dunhuang, and a number of bas-relief sculptures from the early
eighth century were found in Changan.25 According to Henrik Sorensen, there are more than a
hundred images of the eleven-headed Guanyin in banner-paintings and murals found at
Dunhuang.26
The appearance of the thousand-armed and thousand-eyed image in China is the result of
a later phase of influence from post-Gupta (from the seventh to the twelfth centuries) India
that traveled the southern sea-routes through Southeast Asia to China. No images are found in
India, though scholars believe there must have been such images. Images of the thousand-
armed Guanyin in China are found in caves along the tributaries of the Yangtze River in
Sichuan. In Cave 45 at Anyue, ascribed to the late eighth or early ninth century, is an image
that shows the lower arms dispensing objects to two tiny figures near the base. One of those
is a hungry ghost receiving nectar, showing an association of Guanyin with those suffering in
other non-human realms of rebirth.27
In the Northern Song dynasty, Tang dynasty types such as the esoteric forms of the
23
Yü, Kuan-yin, 59. Maria Dorothea Reis-Habito points out that Bhagavadharma’s version is the
only version that contains the sections on the ten great vows and the blessing of the fifteen kinds of good
deaths, as well as protection from fifteen kinds of bad deaths. Maria Dorothea Reis-Habito, Die Dharani
des grossen Erbarmens, 97-117. Yü also suggests that “the dharani’s concrete power over death and the
comprehensiveness of the bodhisattva’s vows could be the reason for this particular sutra’s greater
attraction.” Yü, Kuan-yin, 69.
24
Patricia Eichenbaum Karetzky, Guanyin, 11.
25
Karetzky, Guanyin, 24-25.
26
Henrik Sorensen, "Typology and Iconography,” 2: 285-349; 302-305.
27
eleven-headed and thousand-armed Guanyin continued to be popular in art, especially with
the upper levels of society. But in the Song dynasty esoteric images of Guanyin are most often
of the thousand-armed type, such as the unique colossal bronze that the Song emperor Taizu
ordered to be cast at Longxingsi near Shijiazhuang in Hebei province. It was finished in 971,
and is 21.3 meters high.28 In 1075 Su Dongpo 蘇東坡, a famous poet of the Northern Song
dynasty, wrote a wonderful poem on the occasion of the construction in Chengdu of the
Pavilion of the Compassionate One (the thousand-armed, thousand-eyed esoteric Guanyin);
the pavilion contained an image of the thousand-armed Guanyin made of red sandalwood.29
The National Palace Museum in Taibei has a large and beautiful Song dynasty painting of the
Great Compassion Guanyin with a thousand hands and eyes. 30 There is an eleven-headed
Guanyin in the Dule Temple in Tianjing municipality, made in 984 under the Liao. It is
polychrome, made of clay, and over 16 meters tall.31
Thus in the period in which Guanyin encounter dialogues and gong’an appear with some
regularity, the larger Chinese Buddhist world, and probably the monasteries at which Chan
monks practiced, were very familiar with and interested in all forms of an teachings about
Guanyin, but perhaps especially the Tantric forms and teachings.
Chan monastic ceremonial

In its own practices the cult of esoteric forms of Guanyin entered into Chan monastic life
itself at least by the very late Song dynasty and the early Yuan dynasty. As indicated in rule
books and daily office recitation handbooks, it was a widespread Chan practice to recite
communally the Dabei zhou 大悲咒, the dharani of the Tantric Great Compassion Guanyin,
particularly as part of elaborate funeral ceremonies for abbesses and abbots, and simpler ones
for monks and nuns. In 1274 a ceremonial and procedural rulebook was circulated called the
Conglin jiaoding qinggui zongyao 叢林較定清規總要. In this text, reciting the Dabei zhou is
part of the prescribed funeral ceremonies for the death of the abbot, and of a monk, of
receiving the news of the death of an abbot of another monastery, as well as part of a
ceremony to remember all the Patriarchs. The Chanlin beiyong qinggui 禪林備用清規,
completed in 1317, prescribes reciting the Dabei zhou in the memorial ceremony for
Bodhidharma, as well as in a ceremony for all the patriarchs and for the lineage of Dharma
heirs. In addition, it prescribes reciting the Dabei zhou in seven different contexts that are all
parts of funeral ceremonies for abbots and abbesses or monks and nuns. The Chixiu baizhang
qinggui 敕修百丈清規 (compiled between 1336 and 1343) prescribes reciting the Dabei zhou
for the well-being of the dynasty and the emperor, as well as for the death of a master, the
28
Karetzky, Guanyin, 33; 35-36.
29
Tay, “Kuan-yin,” 100-101. Su’s poem is translated in full in Beata Grant, Mount Lu Revisited,
88-89, where important parts of the preface to the poem are also translated. Su and his brother also
wrote poems about another statue of the thousand-armed Guanyin in Bianliang, the Northern Song
capital, which was made of iron.
30
Yu-min Lee, Visions of Compassion, plate 8, 58-59.
31
32
death of an abbot, and for a sick monk. In these texts we can see reflected what appears to be
a growing use of, indeed a fundamental importance given to, the Great Compassion Dharani
of Guanyin of the thousand hands and thousand eyes.33
Although the earliest detailed Chan Code text we have, the Chanyuan qinggui 禪苑清規
[Rules of Purity for Chan Monasteries] of 1103, contains no reference to the recitation of the
dharani of the thousand-handed ‘Great Compassion” Guanyin in any ceremony, it does
include among the 120 questions with which a monk or a nun should test her or his spiritual
progress the following question: “Do you have a thousand hands and arms or not?”34
In daily lesson books, like the Chanmen risong 禪門日誦 or the Chanmen kesong 禪門課
誦, that give the order and content of gatha, sutra, mantra and dharani recitations that took
place daily in Chan and other Buddhist monasteries at least as early as the 17th century, the
Great Compassion Dharani was to be recited twice a day in the morning and evening
assemblies of all the monks and/or nuns in the monastery. As these books were ephemera, we
do not have daily lesson books going back to earlier periods. So we do not know when this
practice began.
Why was the Dabei zhou so popular in funeral or memorial contexts in Chan monasteries?
In the Dabei zhou jing (or Qianshou jing), Avalokitesvara promises that he will not achieve
complete, perfect enlightenment if anyone who recites the dharani should fall into an evil
realm of rebirth, or not be born into one of the buddha lands. Avalokitesvara specifies that the
keeping of the dharani will result in fifteen kinds of good rebirth. These include (1) always
being ruled by a virtuous king wherever one is born; (2) always to be born in a good country;
(3) always living in a peaceful time; (4) always meeting with good friends; (5) always born
without any physical defects; (6) always born with a pure and ripe heart for truth; (7) not
breaking any precepts; (8) having harmonious and virtuous family members; (9) fully
endowed with money and food; (10) always being respected and taken care of by others; (11)
never getting robbed; (12) always having one’s desire fulfilled; (13) always being protected
by nagas, devas and virtuous gods; (14) can see the Buddha and listen to the Dharma in the
place of rebirth; (15) can understand and penetrate the correct Dharma.35 Clearly, one would
be wise to ask dharma brothers and sisters to recite it after one’s death.
Encounter dialogues and “public cases” featuring Guanyin
As mentioned above, there are two broad streams of Guanyin-related encounter dialogues
32
References to the Dabei zhou in this text include T.2025.48.1114b; 11115a; 1116a; 1118c; 1127c;
1128c; 1129a; 1148a; 1148b; 1148c; 1149a.
33
Reis-Habito, Die Dharani des grossen Erbarmens, discusses these texts. I have verified her
findings.
34
Chanyuan qinggui, HTC 111.438a-471c. Edited and translated by Kagamishima et al. Yaku chu
Zen’en Shingi 訳註禪苑清規 (Tokyo: Sōtōshū Shūmuchō, 1972), 286.
35
Yü, Kuan-yin, 61.
and gong’an in Chan texts from the Tang through the Yuan dynasties. The two are those
derived from or alluding to the Avalokitesvara of the Surangama Sutra, and those concerning
the esoteric images of Avalokitesvara with eleven heads and a thousand hands and eyes.
Guanyin-related encounter dialogues alluding to the Avalokitesvara of the Lotus Sutra make
up a much smaller number. In this essay I will introduce both of the major streams, but give
more attention to the stream that features the esoteric images of Avalokitesvara. These
encounter dialogues and gong’an are found in the Anthology of the Hall of the Patriarchs and
the Record of the Transmission of the Lamp from the Jingde Era.
Encounter dialogues featuring the Guanyin of the Surangama Sutra

Quite a number of expository answers and puzzling dialogues in Chan texts connect
Guanyin and hearing in the way that the Surangama Sutra does. One of the most important
masters depicted as making this connection is Baizhang Huaihai 百丈懷海 (749-814). Two
masters whose records allude to the Surangama Sutra frequently and make the connection
between Guanyin and hearing more than once are Guizong Zhichang 歸宗知常 (active 806-
810), a dharma-heir of Mazu Daoyi, and Changsha Jingcen 長沙景岑 (d.868), who was a
disciple of Nanquan Puyuan 南泉普願 (748-834), one of Mazu Daoyi’s great dharma-heirs.
For example, in Changsha’s chapter of the Jingde chuandenglu of 1004, Avalokitesvara is
identified as the bodhisattva who attains liberation through hearing, as he is in the Surangama
Sutra. Again, as in the Platform Sutra and the Chuanxin fayao passages quoted above, the
question to which the master gives an answer is how to understand the celestial, mythical
bodhisattvas from within the Chan perspective:
The monk said, “The Buddhas are as many as the sands of the [Ganges] river. Why do
they all have various names although their essence is the same?”
The Master [Changsha] said, “One who returns to the origin by means of the organ of the
eye is called Manjusri; one who returns to the origin by means of the ear is called
Avalokitesvara; and one who returns to the origin by means of mind is called
Samantabhadra. Manjusri is the wonderful observation wisdom of the Buddha,
Avalokitesvara is the uncaused great compassion of the Buddha,36 and Samantabhadra is
the wonderful conduct of non-doing of the Buddha. The three holy ones are but the names
given to the wonderful functions of the Buddha, and the Buddha is the essence of the
three holy ones.”37
36
This term is found in the Guanwuliangshoujing 觀無量壽經, T. 12, 343c. The Keitoku dentōroku
Kenkyukai interprets it as referring to compassion that is equal, without distinction; see Keitoku
dentōroku Kenkyukai, under the supervision of Iriya Yoshitaka, Keitoku dentōroku vol. 4, 34. Hereafter
“Keitoku dentōroku.”
37
Jingde chuandenglu, fascicle 10, Changsha entry. T.51.275.18-23. Jingde chuandenglu (Sohaku
Ogata, The Transmission of the Lamp: Early Masters), 339-40. Keitoku dentōroku, IV, 33. I have
modified Ogata’s translation. I have translated “san sheng” 三聖 as “the three holy ones.” It could also
be translated as the “three sages.”
The locus classicus in Chinese Buddhism for the connection between Guanyin and
hearing in the sense of examining (guan 觀) with penetrating insight both sounds and the
sense organ and sense faculty of hearing until the void is perceived is the Surangama Sutra.
Because of its emphasis on the inner practice of meditation, among other reasons, this sutra
was very well known in the Chan school. The sutra was allegedly first translated in the early
eighth century; scholars now believe it was in fact written in China at that time. In the
Surangama Sutra the bodhisattva Avalokitesvara describes how he attained awakening and
universal compassion by meditating on the organ of hearing:
“At first by directing the organ of hearing into the stream of meditation, this organ was
detached from its object, and by wiping out (the concept of) both sound and stream-entry,
both disturbance and stillness became clearly non-existent. Thus advancing step by step,
both hearing and its object ceased completely, but I did not stop where they ended. When
the awareness of this state and this state itself were realized as non-existent, both subject
and object merged into the void, the awareness of which became all embracing. With
further elimination of the void and its object, both creation and annihilation vanished,
giving way to the state of Nirvana which then manifested.”38
In the Surangama Sutra Guanyin also says: “Since I myself do not meditate on sound but
on the meditator, I cause all suffering beings to look into the sound of their own voices to
attain liberation.” 39 In the sutra, this is one of fourteen kinds of fearless merit. 40 Luk
comments: “This is a very profound meditation which readers should not let pass without
careful study if they wish to know why Avalokitesvara is so popular in Far Eastern countries
where he is the merciful patron saint. By discarding the sound to look into the meditator
himself, that is, into the nature of hearing, he disengages himself from both organs and sense
data and thereby realizes his all-embracing Buddha nature which contains all living beings.”41
This practice method of turning the hearing inward is known as “the Gate through which
Avalokitesvara enters the Principle.”42 Various masters refer to this Dharma-gate. For example,
in the Ancestral Hall Collection and the Transmission of the Lamp compiled in the Jingde Era
(Jingde chuandenglu), the following story is told about the master Baizhang Huaihai and a
monk who appears to have awakened through hearing: “On one occasion the monks had all
38
Shou lengyanjing, juan 6, T.19.945.19.128b. The Surangama Sutra, translated by Charles Luk
135. This is Charles Luk’s translation.
39
T.945.19.129a.27-29, Luk, Surangama, 139. Guan-yin, or more fully, Guan-shi-yin, is usually
interpreted as meaning “the Perceiver (guan) of the Sounds (yin) of the World (shi). Here Guanyin
explains his name differently: I do not meditate on the sounds of the suffering beings of the world to
rescue them; I meditate on sound (guanyin), and cause suffering beings to look into (guan, avalokita) the
sound (yin) of their own voices to attain liberation.
40
Yü, Kuan-yin, 517, note 13.
41
Luk, Surangama, 139, note 1.
42
See Keitoku dentōroku, IV, 498.
been asked to dig the ground. When they heard the mealtime drum, one monk came back
carrying his mattock and laughing heartily. The Master remarked, “This is the gate whereby
Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara enters into the Principle.” When they returned to the temple, the
Master sent for the monk and asked him, “Why did you behave like that just now?” The monk
answered, “On hearing the sound of the drum I came back to have dinner.” Then the Master
laughed.”43
Insights into the sense organs and sense faculties and what lies behind them and unifies
them all that are found in the Surangama Sutra are important in Chan, and are at the heart of a
number of other encounter dialogues. Guanyin states in the Surangama Sutra: “When I first
realized the hearing mind which was most profound, the Essence of Mind (i.e., the Tathagata
Store) disengaged itself from hearing and could no longer be divided by seeing, hearing,
feeling and knowing, and so became one pure and clean all pervading Bodhi.”44
The Chan encounter dialogue that associates Guanyin and hearing that challenges a
student most profoundly to understand Guanyin’s teachings in the Surangama Sutra is the
following account of a conversation between a monk and the master Guizong Zhichang:
A monk asked: “What is the profound message?”

[a dialogue follows in which he fails to understand the exchange and is dismissed …]
The monk pleaded, “Why, is there not some skillful means I might follow?”
The Master [Guizong] answered [quoting the Universal Gate chapter of the Lotus Sutra]:
“The wonderful wisdom of Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara can help the sufferings of the
world.”45
The monk asked, “What is the wonderful wisdom of Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara?”
The master tapped the lid of the tripod [kettle] three times and said, “Did you hear the
sound or not?” The monk replied, “Yes, I did.” The master asked, “Why do I not hear
it?” The monk could make no reply.46
This encounter dialogue could be read as simply about whether “I exist or not”; in that
reading, it has perhaps no connection with the Surangama Sutra other than the association of
Avalokitesvara and hearing. But one can also read it as asking the monk to understand the
statement by Avalokitesvara in the Surangama Sutra that by turning hearing inward he ceased
43
Jingde chuandenglu, fascicle 6; T.2076.51.250a.4-8; Ogata, The Transmission of the Lamp, 212-
213. Also in Baizhang’s entry in the Zutangji. See Yanagida, Zen goroku, 522.
44
T.945.19.129c.5-7; Luk, Surangama,141. In the Surangama Sutra the Buddha demonstrates to
his disciple Ananda how false are his ordinary perceptions of reality, and how true seeing has nothing to
do with the eyes at all (Grant, Mount Lu, 28).
45
This is a quotation from the verse at the end of Chapter 25, the Universal Gate chapter of the
Lotus Sutra, Kumarajiva’s translation of 406 C.E. See Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Law
(Miaofa lianhuajing), T.262.9. In the translation of Kumarajiva’s version by Bunno Kato, revised by W.
E. Soothill, Wilhelm Schiffer and Yoshiro Tamura, in The Threefold Lotus Sutra, 325, the line is
translated: “The Cry Regarder with his mystic wisdom Can save [such] a suffering world.”
46
Jingde chuandenglu, fascicle 7, T51.255c28-256a6.
to hear external sounds in the mind.
In the Zutangji and the Jingde chuandenglu there are other encounter dialogues that
associate Guanyin and hearing along the same lines. The ones given above are, however, a
representative sample of the significant stream of encounter dialogues that feature the
relevance of Guanyin’s practice regarding hearing to that of the student.
Encounter dialogues and “public cases” featuring esoteric forms of Guanyin (especially
the Great Compassion [Dabei] Guanyin)
In Chan texts a number of masters raise the puzzling phenomenon of Dabei Guanyin’s
thousand hands and eyes with their students. Perhaps the earliest teacher to whom such an
encounter dialogue is attributed is National Teacher Nanyang Huizhong 南陽慧忠 (d.775),
allegedly a direct disciple of the Sixth Chinese Chan patriarch Huineng. In his record in the
Zutangji we find:
A monk asked: “What is the great meaning of the Buddha’s Dharma?”
The Master said: “In Manjusri’s Hall, ten thousand bodhisattvas.”
The monk said: “I do not understand.”
The Master said: “Great Compassion [Bodhisattva] thousand hands thousand eyes.”47
In another brief reference in the Zutangji, Jiufeng Heshang 九峰和尚 replies to a monk’s
question:
“If you don’t fall into ‘ordinary person’ or ‘sage (sheng 聖),’ what is that like?”
“A thousand eyes don’t reach it.”48
Broadly, encounter dialogues that focus on the esoteric forms of Guanyin are of three
kinds. The first kind asks, “Is the eleven-headed or thousand-armed Guanyin ordinary or
holy?” Here are two examples:
a) In Mi 米 Heshang’s entry in the Zutangji the following story appears:
Linji Yixuan 臨濟義玄 asked Mi Heshang, “As for the 12-faced Guanyin, is it holy or
not?” Mi answered: “It is. What is its original face?”49
b) In the Jingde chuandenglu, Danyuan Zhenying (or Yingzhen) 耽源真應 (應真) asked
Magu Baoche 麻谷寶徹 , “Is the 12-faced Guanyin ordinary or holy? “[Magu]
answered: “Holy.” Danyuan then hit [Magu] one blow. (Because he hasn't let go of the notion
of “Holy”?) [Magu] said: “I know that you have not arrived at the stage [of comprehension]
(perhaps, the stage of transcending holy and ordinary).” 50
47
Zutangji (Zenbunka kenkyūjo), juan 9, 113-114. Also in Jingde chuandenglu, T.51.244c29-245a1.
48
Zutangji (Zenbunka kenkyūjo), 360.1. This story is not found in the Jingde chuandenglu.
49
Zutangji (Zenbunka kenkyūjo), 755.14-756.1. This story is not in this form in the Jingde
chuandenglu.
50
Jingde chuandenglu, juan 7, Magu chapter, T.2076.51.254a.1-2. Keitoku dentōroku, III,
48. Ogata, 235. Ogata translates the word ‘sheng’ as ‘sage.’ Magu Baoche had his career on Mt. Mayu
or Magu in present-day Shanxi province. The name of the mountain is written both as Ma gu (hemp
valley) and Ma yu (hemp, bath, to bathe). The Japanese tradition reads the name of the mountain, and
thus Magu’s name, as Mayu (in Japanese mayōku). Danyuan Zhenying was a dharma heir of Nanyang
A second kind of dialogue concerning the esoteric forms of Guanyin focuses on the fact
that, as a Bodhisattva, Guanyin stands for the universal compassionate activity of
Buddhahood. Here the question usually is, “Why does he need so many hands and eyes?”51
This question becomes a popular formula in Chan encounter dialogues. If a student asks
it, it enables the master easily to point back to the student. For example, allegedly the famous
minister and thinker Li Ao 李翱 once asked master Shinzhou Ehu Dayi 信州鵝湖大義 (746-
818), a direct student of Mazu Daoyi, “What does Great Compassion [Bodhisattva] need a
thousand hands and eyes for?” Ehu Dayi replied, “What does the Emperor need you for?”52
A similar story is told of the important master Nanquan Puyuan. Governor Lu 陸 asked,
“What is the purpose of the many hands and eyes of the Bodhisattva of Great Compassion,
Guanyin?” Nanquan answered: “Just as our nation employs you.”53
The third kind of dialogue that focuses on the esoteric forms of Guanyin asks, “Which is
Dabei Guanyin’s true face or true eye?” A good example of this question and the response to it
by a master is found in the Record of Linji. It goes as follows:
One day Linji [i.e., Linji Yixuan (d. 866)] went to Hefu. Counselor Wang the Prefectural
Governor requested the Master to take the high seat [from which masters lectured]. At
that time Magu came forward and asked,
“The Great Compassionate One has a thousand hands and a thousand eyes. Which is the
true eye?”
The Master said, “The Great Compassionate One has a thousand hands and a thousand
eyes. Which is the true eye? Speak, speak!” Magu pulled the Master down off the high
seat and sat upon it himself. The Master went up close to him and said, “How do you
do?” Magu hesitated. The Master, in his turn, pulled Magu off the high seat and sat upon
it himself. Magu went out. The Master stepped down.54
As a contemporary Chan teacher, Master Sheng-yen, comments, this dialogue is about the
“treasure of the correct Dharma eye” transmitted, according to Chan legend, from the Buddha
Sakyamuni to his disciple Mahakasyapa at an assembly at Vulture Peak. The question in this
and all similar dialogues then becomes, “What is the true Dharma-eye?”55
Huizhong. He also studied with Ancestor Ma. See Jingde chuandenglu entry in juan 13. The
substantially identical story with the roles reversed occurs in Danyuan’s entry in the Jingde chuandenglu,
juan 13. T.51.305b.14-15. Danyuan’s entry is 305b.1-17.
51
Huizhong’s answer in the dialogue above also points to the marvelous activity of the enlightened
person as the “great meaning of the Buddha’s Dharma.”
52
Jingde chuandenglu, juan 7. T.2076.51.253a2-3. Ogata, 228-29. Keitoku dentōroku, III, 28.
53
Jingde chuandenglu, juan 8; T.51.258c29-259a1. Chang Chung-yuan, Original Teachings, 161;
See also Ogata, 266, and Keitoku dentōroku, 3, 143.
54
T.1985.47.496c4-9. I have taken this translation from that by Ruth Fuller Sasaki et al. in The
Record of Lin-chi, 2. See similar story in Jingde chuandenglu, T. 51.291a.2-5.
55
Sheng-yen, “The Recorded Sayings of Master Linji with commentary by Master Sheng-yen,” 24-
28.
Master Sheng-yen comments: “There are two kinds of meaning in the Dharma: the
Dharma of secondary meaning, and the Dharma of ultimate meaning. Whatever can be
spoken, heard, understood, or learned refers to the Dharma of secondary meaning. The
Dharma of ultimate meaning is beyond words and language, phrases and names. To directly
understand the Dharma of ultimate meaning is to be enlightened.”56 Thus the answer to the
question about Great Compassion Bodhisattva’s thousand eyes that asks “Which is the true
eye,” cannot be expressed in words. But the Dharma of ultimate meaning is expressed in the
story—a prepared listener could realize it from hearing the story.
We come now to the story of Daowu and Yunyan’s exchange as presented in the Blue
Cliff Record. Of all the encounter dialogues that present the Tantric Guanyin of eleven heads
or a thousand hands and eyes, this is the one whose transformation into a “public case” during
the Song dynasty made sure that Guanyin had a lasting place in Chan discourse.
The story goes (in the Biyanlu version):
“Yunyan asked Daowu, ‘What does the Bodhisattva of Great Compassion use so many
hands and eyes for?’
Daowu said, ‘It’s like someone reaching back groping for a pillow in the middle of the
night.’ Yunyan said, ‘I understand.’
Daowu said, ‘How do you understand?’
Yunyan said, ‘All over the body (bianshen 遍身) are hands and eyes.’
Daowu said, ‘You have said quite a bit there, but you’ve only said eighty per cent of it.’
Yunyan said, ‘What do you say, Elder Brother?’
Daowu said, ‘Throughout the body (tongshen 通身) are hands and eyes.’”57
The story comes from “middle Chan,” the period from the mid-eighth to mid-tenth centuries,
in which the Hongzhou school doctrine of “ordinary mind is enlightenment” came to
dominate the Chan movement, and the practice and construction of encounter dialogues
formally emerged and matured.58 The kind of story it is, one involving an invented “encounter
dialogue” between two persons, could not have originated prior to the late Tang dynasty. A
version of the story appeared in the Anthology of the Hall of the Patriarchs, and yet another
version in the Transmission of the Lamp compiled in the Jingde Era (Jingde chuandenglu).
The Zutangji’s version is closer in content to the Blue Cliff Record version than that of
the Jingde chuandenglu, but introduces a third speaker. The Jingde chuandenglu version in
fascicle 14 goes as follows:
Daowu asked: the Great Compassion [Bodhisattva’s] thousand hands and eyes—which
56
Sheng-yen, “The Recorded Sayings,” 27.
57
Yuanwu Keqin, Biyanlu, T.48.2003.213c19-26. Cleary and Cleary, Blue Cliff, 571. The story that
Yunyan and Daowu were brothers that appears in the Zutangji is not factual; it has been disproved by Ui
Hakuju. See Ui Hakuju, Daisan zenshūshi kenkyū 2, 23-26. See also Jia Jinhua, The Hongzhou School,
110.
58
John McRae, Seeing Through Zen, 13, 18-19. Jia Jinhua, The Hongzhou School, 47-52.
is the true eye?
Yunyan replied: it is like grasping your pillow when there is no lamp—what is that like?
Daowu said: I understand! I understand!
Yunyan said: How do you understand?
Daowu said: Every inch of the body (tongshen) is eyes.59
Here, compared to the Blue Cliff Record version, the speakers are reversed, and we find
missing the challenge to the hearer to determine whether bianshen and tongshen have
different meanings. Not only that, the initial question is different!
These differences in earlier versions raise the question of where Xuedou obtained his
version, or whether he himself crafted it out of earlier versions. At the very least we can say
that by the eleventh century in the early Song dynasty the story had not reached a settled form.
This gong’an relies on bringing together the idea of the celestial bodhisattva Guanyin in
his thousand-hand and thousand-eyed form with the idea that an ordinary human being
reaching out to grasp a pillow in the middle of the night is also Guanyin. It relies therefore on
the point made in the Platform Sutra and Essentials of the Transmission of Mind Dharma that
one should look for Guanyin within, not without. As with most good gong’an, a question
asked about Guanyin and not oneself becomes pointed at oneself. At the same time, the
gong’an would lose its force if the idea of the celestial Avalokitesvara, who unlike the
questioner has realized the essence and functioning of awakened being, had been completely
forgotten in the Chan school and the Buddhist culture surrounding it. For the gong’an to work,
there must be a tension between the lofty ideal represented by the celestial Bodhisattva and
the recognition that the person who reaches out for his pillow and is challenged by the
master’s question is a person of ordinary, not ideal, functioning.60
Further, the gong’an draws on Guanyin’s popularity. As we saw above, the available
gong’an and the references in other Chan sources suggest that the Tantric Great Compassion
(Dabei) Guanyin of a thousand hands and eyes, with all his/her explicitly enumerated powers
and activities, was popular in the Chan school, so much so that reciting the Great Compassion
Dharani became an important ritual activity in Chan monasteries.
This gong’an sums up the whole line of encounter dialogues concerning the Tantric
Guanyin, while providing a twist that makes it even more challenging than the others. The
other types of dialogues featuring Guanyin with a thousand hands and eyes mentioned above
are different from the gong’an in Case 89, but not irrelevant to it. The beginning of the
encounter dialogue featuring Nanyang Huizhong points to the identity of the one and the
many, the universal and the particular, in Dabei Guanyin:
“A monk asked: ‘What is the Great meaning of the Buddha’s Dharma?’
The Master said: ‘In Manjusri’s Hall, ten thousand bodhisattvas.’”
And it also points to the marvelous inconceivable activity of awakened mind. Both of
these points are relevant to the gong’an in case 89. As for all of the encounter dialogues in
59
T.2076.51.281.
60
I am indebted to Luis O. Gomez for clarifying this point. See his “From the Extraordinary to the
Ordinary,” 141-191, 159, 164.
which the question is, “Which is Guanyin’s true eye?”, they seem to be asking a different
question. They seem to have substituted a question about Guanyin’s essence for one about
Guanyin’s functioning. Not, “What is it that great compassion does? How does it function in
this world and in the Dharmadhatu,” but rather, “What is Avalokitesvara’s essence, what is
her/his core truth?” But in fact, as Huayan thought reminds us, Guanyin’s essence, his/her
reality, is precisely her functioning, her regarding with many eyes or one eye the suffering of
beings and her responding with one hand or many hands. The answer given by masters
Shinzhou Ehu Dayi and Nanquan, is “How does the Emperor employ you? Why does the
Emperor need you?” This brings together again the mythical, supramundane activity of
Guanyin on behalf of wisdom and compassion with the realm of the ordinary person in the
mundane world, just as the gong’an of Case 89 does with an even more intimate, concrete,
mundane image.
Xuedou’s poetic commentary in his eulogy (song 頌), and Yuanwu’s prose commentary
on Case 89, both bring up categories and teachings of the indigenous Huayan school to hint at
the meaning of the exchange between Yunyan and Daowu. Xuedou brings up the metaphor of
the Jewel Net of Indra put forward by the Huayan school patriarch Fazang 法藏 (643-720).
Yuanwu brings up and expounds the fourfold Dharmadhatu of another Huayan school
patriarch, Chengguan 澄觀 (738-839). So apparently we are to understand the thousand-
armed Guanyin and our own arm reaching for a pillow with the aid of insights expressed in
the Huayan school’s depiction of harmoniously interpenetrating reality.
The strong interest in the Huayan Sutra and the ideas of the Huayan school displayed by
many Chan masters from the Tang through the Song is an extraordinary phenomenon. Jia
Jinhua argues that Mazu Daoyi’s teaching that the ordinary mind is the Buddha, and that
essence and function are totally identified, was inspired by the Huayan theory of nature
origination from the Tathagata, which was an interpretation of the essence/function paradigm
of the two aspects of one mind in the Awakening of Mahayana Faith (Dasheng qixinlun 大乘
起信論 ). 61 On this basis, Mazu proposed that the ultimate reality of enlightenment was
manifested in function, and consequently affirmed that the entirety of daily life was of
ultimate truth and value.62
Both the “Five Ranks of Particularity and Universality” of Dongshan Liangjie 洞山良价
(807-869) and the “Four Processes of Liberation from Subjectivity and Objectivity” of Linji
Yixuan (d. 867) are closely related to Fazang’s doctrine of the identification of ultimate reality
(li 理 Principle) and phenomenal appearance (shi 事, events or happenings), and to the idea of
the fourfold Dharma realm (Dharmadhatu) offered by Chengguan.
Huayan concepts are reflected throughout the Biyanlu or Biyanji (Blue Cliff Record), the
61
This text is usually called “The Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana.” The outline of ontology,
anthropology, psychology and soteriology presented in this text, attributed to Asvaghosa but now
believed to have been composed in China, is fundamental to the thinking of the Huayan school and the
Chan school. The classic English translation is by Hakeda. On the fundamental intellectual structure of
this text, see Peter N. Gregory, "The Problem of Theodicy.”
62
Jia Jinhua, The Hongzhou School, 78.
Linji school text by Yuanwu Keqin (1063-1135), but are brought to the fore particularly in
Case 89. They are also reflected in the writings of the rival Caodong 曹洞 school’s eminent
teacher Hongzhi Zhengjue 宏智正覺 (1091-1157), and in the Caodong school’s answer to the
Biyanlu, the collection of gong’an, songgu (eulogies of the ancients) and commentary by
Wansong Xingxiu 萬松行秀 called the Congrong lu 從容錄. To date this important emphasis
within the Song and Yuan Chan school has not been systematically studied. 63
Let us look briefly at some key concepts of the Huayan Sutra and the Huayan school that
come to the fore in Chan discourse. Luis Gomez points to the message of the Huayan Sutra:
“[T]his world embodies enlightenment. It is the sphere in which Buddhas and

Bodhisattvas exercise their wisdom and compassion. It is the source for the truth of the
Buddha’s Dharma. In every single human being live a thousand Buddhas, all incessantly
praising the Bodhisattva’s compassionate career. In every single human being shines a
Buddha, and each of these Buddhas reflects clearly the Buddhas in all other beings.”64
The Huayan school found explicitly Chinese ways to explain the nature and import of the
vision captured in the Huayan Sutra. In the Huayan school doctrines, the sutra’s vision was
largely reformulated in terms of essence and function. The Huayan school combined an
essence/function (ti/yong 體/用) metaphysics and hermeneutical principle with the Indian
Buddhist notions of emptiness (kong 空 ) and form (se 色 ), as well as emptiness and
pratityasamutpada, or codependent co-arising. Huayan thinkers gave more positive, more
Chinese terms for these fundamental realities. For emptiness, they substituted Principle, li,
and for form they substituted Phenomena, events or happenings, shi.65
The fundamental idea of the Huayan Sutra and the Huayan school is the unimpeded
mutual solution of all particularities; mutual interpenetration. 66 Each particularity, besides
being itself, penetrates all other particularities and is in turn penetrated by them. Huayan
scholars pointed out that this is possible because the essence, the fundamental nature, of all
particularities is empty. “Empty” here does not connote an unoccupied space. Rather, it is the
63
Among those who have helped to open up the topic, Chang Chung-yuan provides a valuable
chapter on this topic in his Original Teachings of Ch’an Buddhism. Yoshizu Yoshihide 吉津宜英 in
Kegonzen no shisōshiteki kenkyū 華嚴禪の思想史的研究 and Peter N. Gregory in Tsung-mi and the
Sinification of Buddhism have provided important studies of how Guifeng Zongmi (780-841),
recognized as a Dharma-heir in the Chan lineage of Shenhui (670-762) and a “patriarch” of the Huayan
school, created a form of Huayan philosophy that was compatible with Chan. Zongmi’s version of
“Huayan Chan” no doubt influenced many masters after the Tang; the influence is most obvious in the
case of Dahui Zonggao (1089-1163). In my Ph.D. dissertation, “Ch’an Enlightenment for Laymen,” I
devoted a chapter to Dahui, Huayan teachings, and the Huayan school.
64
Gomez, “Extraordinary,” 143-144.
65
See A. Charles Muller, “East Asia’s Unexplored Pivot of Metaphysics and Hermeneutics:
Essence-Function/Interpenetration,”
http://www.hm.tyg.jp/~acmuller/articles/indigenoushermeneutics.htm.
66
Chang Chung-yuan, Original Teachings, 42.
absolute reality, free from the dichotomy of form and formlessness, being and non-being. To
avoid the negative connotation of the word “empty,” Huayan school scholars chose to
substitute the term “li” or principle. It is li that is the universal that inheres in, is expressed in,
and is coterminous with each particular and all particulars.67
For Huayan thinkers, the harmonious interplay among particularities and also among each
particularity (shi) and universality (li) creates a luminous universe, absolutely free from
spatial and temporal limitations, and at the same time itself the world of daily affairs. This
universe is called the Dharmadhatu, or “Dharma realm.” Chengguan used the idea of four
Dharmadhatu, Dharma realms, to explain the structure of reality. In the words of Yuanwu
Keqin’s commentary on Xuedou’s gong’an and songgu in Case 89 in the Blue Cliff Record,
the first Dharmadhatu is the Dharma realm of principle, to explain one-flavor equality. The
second Dharmadhatu is the Dharma realm of phenomena, to explain that principle in its
entirety becomes phenomena. The third Dharmadhatu is the Dharma realm of principle and
phenomena unobstructed, to explain how principle and phenomena merge without hindrance.
The fourth Dharmadhatu is the Dharma realm of no obstruction among phenomena, to
explain that every phenomenon everywhere enters all phenomena, that all things everywhere
embrace all things, all intermingling simultaneously without obstruction.68 These of course are
four ways of looking at a single Dharmadhatu. The implication of Huayan thought is that
complete enlightenment is a full realization of the reality that is described by the third and
fourth Dharmadhatu. Awakening is characterized not simply as a realization of the reality of
emptiness, but as a realization of the mutual interpenetration of all particularities.
In the light of the Huayan thought and concepts to which Yuanwu points in his
commentary on Case 89, we are not surprised that the fundamental realization about
Avalokitesvara and oneself to which this “public case” points lies in the realization that the li
of Guanyin is fully present in the shi of oneself, that the functioning of one’s arm groping for
the pillow at night in a dark room is the functioning of Guanyin. No thought is required and
the pillow is found, as shi and shi interpenetrate harmoniously in the marvelous activity of
Guanyin.
In sum, case 89 and the preceding encounter dialogues featuring the esoteric Great
Compassion Guanyin and the Guanyin of the Surangama Sutra are Chan’s contribution to
what Chun-fang Yu has called the “domestication” of Guanyin. This is particularly true of
case 89, which as interpreted by Xuedou and Yuanwu in the Song dynasty brings Guanyin and
his/her activity into the Dharmadhatu of all-pervasive, perfectly mutually non-obstructing li
and shi and shi and shi, the core vision of one of the main indigenous Chinese schools of
Buddhist philosophy, the Huayan school.
Conclusion
67
Chang Chung-yuan, Original Teachings, 43.
68
From Yuanwu’s commentary to the verse in case 89. Yuanwu Keqin, Biyanlu, T.48.2003.213c19-
26. Translated in Cleary and Cleary, Blue Cliff, 575, translation somewhat modified.
Case 89 in the Blue Cliff Record is the culmination of a process in which Chan masters
admitted Guanyin into Chan discourse, and came to interpret both the mundane individual and
the nature and activities of the celestial Bodhisattva through the categories of Huayan
Buddhism. Although the Huayan Sutra includes Avalokitesvara, and in the Gandavyuha
section of the sutra the pilgrim Sudhana visits Avalokitesvara to ask for teachings, the Huayan
school in China had focused on the bodhisattvas Manjusri and Samantabhadra, not on
Guanyin. Not only did Chan give a place to Guanyin, but also, by expounding a deep
understanding of the nature of awakened, compassionate activity through concepts developed
in the indigenous Huayan School, the late middle Chan school and the Song Chan school
contributed a new appreciation of and relationship to Guanyin to the already existing array of
interpretations and imaginings of Guanyin in China. This new appreciation and interpretation
of Guanyin is at once “internalized,” “formless,” and cosmological, true to the origins of the
Chan school yet expressing a newer vision of universal interrelatedness and universally active
compassion at the heart of everything and throughout the universe of particulars. In this way,
Chan contributed a profound new dimension to the “transformation” or “domestication” of
Guanyin in China. Such an outcome reflects a considerable change from its early period in
Chan’s stance toward “the medieval ghosts, the gods, the bodhisattvas and the Buddhas.”
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Guanyin/Avalokitesvara in Encounter Dialogues:

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Journal of Chinese Religions 34 (2006) 1

Guanyin in Texts from Early and Early Middle Chan

[The bodhisattva] Manjusri represents fundamental law [principle] and Samantabhadra,

Guanyin in Late Middle Chan and Song Chan: Context

Chan monastic ceremonial

Encounter dialogues and “public cases” featuring Guanyin

Encounter dialogues featuring the Guanyin of the Surangama Sutra

A monk asked: “What is the profound message?”

The story goes (in the Biyanlu version):

“[T]his world embodies enlightenment. It is the sphere in which Buddhas and

HTC Xinbian wanzi xuzangjing 新編卍字續藏經 (Newly Compiled Continuation of the

T Taishō shinshū daizōkyō 大正新修大藏經 (The Buddhist Canon Newly Compiled

(Works in Buddhist collections cited by canon and volume number.)

CHEN Jinhua. “Pancavarsika Assemblies in Liang Wudi’s Buddhist Palace Chapel.”

Daoyuan 道原, Jingde chuandenglu 景德傳燈錄. T.51.2076.

DŌGEN Kigen 道元希玄. Shōbōgenzō 正法眼藏. In Dōgen. 2 vols. Translated by Terada

Guanwuliangshoujing 觀無量壽經, Sutra of Visualization of Amitayus Buddha. T. 12.365.

HAKEDA Yoshito S. The Awakening of Faith: Attributed to Asvaghosha, with a new

HUANGBO Xiyun 黃辟希運. Huangboshan Duanji chanshi chuanxin fayao 黃辟山斷際禪

師傳心法要, edited by Pei Xiu 裴休 (ca. 787-860). T.48.2012a.

———. Liuzu tanjing. Translated by Nakagawa Taka 中 川 孝 , Rokuso dangyō. Tokyo:

Jingde chuandenglu 景德傳燈錄. T.51.2076. (See “Daoyuan” above.)

KAGAMISHIMA Genryū 鏡島元隆, et al. Yakuchu Zen’en shingi 訳 註禪苑清規. Tokyo:

Keitoku dentōroku kenkyūkai 景德傳燈錄研究會, under the supervision of Iriya Yoshitaka

LINJI Yixuan 臨濟義玄, Zhenzhou Linji Huizhao chanshi yulu 鎮州臨濟慧照禪師語錄.

MAKITA Tairyō 牧田諦亮. Chūgoku Bukkyōshi kenkyū 中國佛教史研究, vol. 2. Tokyo:

MCRAE, John. “The Antecedents of Encounter Dialogue in Chinese Ch’an Buddhism.” In

Shou lengyanjing 首楞嚴經 (The Surangama Sutra). T.19.945.

UI Hakuju 宇井伯壽. Daisan zenshūshi kenkyū 第三禪宗史研究. 1942. Reprint: Tokyo:

WANSONG Xingxiu 萬松行秀. Congronglu 從容錄. T.48.2004.

XUEDOU Chongxian 雪 竇重 顯 (a.k.a. Xuedou Mingjue 明 覺 ). Xuedou heshang baize

YANAGIDA Seizan 柳田聖山. Shoki Zenshūshisho no kenkyū 初期禪宗史書の 研究 (Study

YOSHIZU Yoshihide 吉津宜英. Kegonzen no shisōshiteki kenkyū. 華嚴禪の 思想史的研究

YÜ Chün-fang. Kuan-yin: The Chinese Transformation of Avalokitesvara. New York:

YUANWU Keqin 圓悟克勤. Biyanlu 碧巖錄. T.48.2003.

Zhengdao ge 證道歌. HTC vol. 111.

Zutangji. See Yanagida Seizan, Zen goroku above.

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———. Liuzu tanjing. Translated by Nakagawa Taka 中川孝 , Rokuso dangyō. Tokyo:

KAGAMISHIMA Genryū 鏡島元隆, et al. Yakuchu Zen’en shingi 訳註禪苑清規. Tokyo:

XUEDOU Chongxian 雪竇重顯 (a.k.a. Xuedou Mingjue 明覺 ). Xuedou heshang baize

YANAGIDA Seizan 柳田聖山. Shoki Zenshūshisho no kenkyū 初期禪宗史書の研究 (Study

YOSHIZU Yoshihide 吉津宜英. Kegonzen no shisōshiteki kenkyū. 華嚴禪の思想史的研究