Indian Zen was introduced to the central mainland China and had been guided by An Shigao’s Theravada-Buddhism；it had also been under the influence of the age of turbulence, passing through Han, Wei and the Western Jin Dynasties. It adopted the methods of breath-counting and mindfulness to attain meditative concentration and observance. With time passing by, while Master Dao An in Eastern Jin Dynasty proposed Doctrine of Prajna and Kumarajiva translated Mahayana sutras, Hui Yuan of Lu Mount just pushed the state in practicing Buddhism to Zen wisdom. In the promotion of the confluence of Buddhism and Taoist Buddhism in the Wei and Jin Dynasties, monks in the Eastern Jin Dynasty gradually employed the way of expressing the enlightened state or philosophies through Gāthās and songs. Despite Zhu Daosheng, the disciple of Kumara, introduced the philosophy of “attaining Buddhahood in the way of sudden enlightenment or epiphany” to the Southern Song Dynasty, the mainstream of practicing Buddhism, however, was still conducted via the conventional way of learning, thinking and debating, since there were no interactions between Bodhidharma and emperor the Liang Dynatsty. Master Zhi Yi in the Southern Chen Dynasty explained Gāthās’ main function was to offer as many interpretations as possible about the significance of dharma. Gāthā is four-line verse, and the original form of Gāthā was composed of 32 characters at most. Influenced by the verse forms of Dharmapqda, the Lotus Sutra, and other Buddhist works, many Buddhist masters, during the period of the northern and Southern Dynasties, propagated Buddhism through inscriptions, odes, mottos, and poems in Chinese literature to explicate dharma truth.
Corresponding to the simple style of Chinese practical philosophy, agriculture Zen became mature in the Tang Dynasty. Agriculture Zen, founded by Daoxin and Hongren, was then promulgated by the Sixth Patriarch of Zen Buddhism, a woodsman from Lin-nan, who carried forward the ethos and mainstream writing styles that monks of the Zen sects and lay Buddhists adopted, like poems and chants, to elucidate the enlightened mental state. From the perspective of Zen literature, it went beyond the traditional style of Indian scriptures using odes to advocate Buddhism. Zen Masters, according to the contextual occasions, wrote Gāthās to enlighten disciples, and similarly disciples wrote Gāthās to state their enlightened condition. Wring Gāthās therefore was not only a medium to reveal the enlightened state of mind but also a method of teaching between masters and disciples.
In the early period of Caoxi-Zen (an important sect of Zen Buddhism), Gāthās were usually written in the styles of mainstream poem in which sentences, quatrains, or verses consisting of four lines or eight lines with either five or seven words without paying attention to rhyme. In the later period of Caoxi-Zen, Zen master Yongjia wrote Song of Enlightenment, a poem of ancient style with two hundred and sixty-seven rhymed lines, which is the representative work of Zen literature in Tang Dynasty. Influenced by Yongjia, many Zen masters in the middle and late Tang Dynasty also followed his writing style.
Although long-line Gāthās seemed to be popular in the middle and late Tang Dynasty, there were some short ones less than four lines of the traditional verses. Among the short ones, some were in two lines or even one line. The variation shows that these masterss verses were not restricted by the rules of rhymes and metrics in Tang Dynasty; instead, they were more concerned with the contexts or circumstances that initiated the enlightened state or witnessed one’s innate Buddha nature.
Moreover, the flourishing of Zen in Tang dynasty also provided a good opportunity for those scholars exiled to the south to practice Zen. Given the condition, Gāthās were written to reflect the dialogic interactions between the masters who provoked an enlightening condition as a premise and the involved scholars who wrote verses as a correspondence echoing the master''s intimation. This type of correspondence Gāthās not only showed a mutual understanding and communication of the mind state between the masters and the scholars, but also created a positive impact to the dissemination of Zen for the later generations.
The Five Dynasties, succeeding after the downfall of the Tang Dynasty, lasted for fifty-two years before the establishment of Song Dynasty. Wuyue (one of the ten kingdoms) ended peacefully 18 years later after the establishment of Song Dynasty. The undisturbed condition gave Fa-yen Sect a stable environment to grow up. Despite Zu-shih Zen and Feng-deng Zen of the Five Dynasties did not last long, both Yun-men Sect and Fa-yen Sect, derived from the most popular Fujian Xuefeng Sect in late Tang Dynasty, were supported respectively by the emperors of the Southern Han Dynasty, the Southern Tang Dynasty, and the State of Wuyue. They were prevalent mainly in the southern part, and, instead of functioning as a transition, they were in fact the continuation and development of Zu-shih Zen of the Tang Dynasty.
Examining the Gāthās of Yunmen Sect and Fa-yen Sect, Yunmen sect rarely had works about enlightenment; both of them, however, had the tendency of making Gāthās concise by keeping as few words and lines as possible, especially Fa-yen Sect. Chu Hsi, the master of the Southern Song Dynasty, raised the banner of repelling Buddhism but still used the philosophy of “Li Yi Fen Shu” (the unitary and the divided principles), which is exactly the nucleus of Yongjia''s Song of Enlightenment. Besides, Chu Hsi’s inscription of The Realm of Metaphysics on the Tong Xuan Hall of Fengshan, Anxi, Quanzhou, was also an enlightened Gāthās drawn from the Fa-yen Sect. Indeed Chu Hsi was very much impressed by these two Gāthās.
This dissertation studies the Zen Buddhism Enlightenment Gāthās from the Tang Dynasty to the Five Dynasties. The Gāthās to be discussed are divided into four categories according to the interacted conditions between the enlightened subjects and their contexts: enlightenment without guidance, guided enlightenment via the masters, correspondence enlightenment, and enlightenment testimony. The first type is the enlightenment achieved independently by the individual. The second one is about the enlightenment guided via masters’ instruction or instructed by external objects from the context. The third type deals with the Gāthās written as a correspondence to the master’s teaching to reveal the realization of the enlightened state. The fourth one is about masters’ testament of verifying the disciple’s realization of sudden enlightenment.
Concerning the enlightened states of the Tang Zen, the study also found that in addition to ordinary agricultural practices or tea conversations, there are other types of enlightenment realized either in spiritual trances or via soul’s transformation. These two categories, interpersonal life Zen and epiphany Zen, were defined according to their respective enlightened moments and situations. Nevertheless, the development and popularity of these two types of Zen Buddhism showed a significant difference.
The main corpus of this research is based on the personal quotations of Zen masters and the records from various Zen sects. As for Tang Zen, the first lantern collection compiled in the Five Dynasties and the Southern Tang Dynasty is closest to the “Zu Tang Ji” (Anthology of Quotations from Zen Masters). On the whole of the Five Dynasties of Zen Buddhism, The Transmission of the Lamp in the Era of Jinde, recorded in the early years of the Northern Song Dynasty, is close to Zen Buddhism of the Five Dynasties and the Tang Zen. The Holy Lamp was compiled by Li Zunxu, a scholar of the Northern Song Dynasty, gave consideration to all kinds of enlightened people, and The Gataip Lamp belongs to the same type. In the Southern Song Dynasty, the Lamp Union Outlines and Five lamp Scrolls have the functions of proofreading, writing, and integration. Taisho Tripitaka is an all-inclusive collection and compilation of Zen Buddhism but The Continuation of the Tripitaka revised later is even more complete afterwards for the study of Zenology, Zen history, and quotations, and the remaining editions of Tripitaka are actually supplements to these two Tripitakas. According to the legacy and spread of Zen, enlightenment is the only way out of the world and carrying forward Buddhism for monks. And the important task of promoting Buddhism lies in guiding disciples to transcend the mundane life and publicize the wisdom of Zen. The Gāthās studied here are not all from the enlightened masters. At any rate, the opportunities of achieving enlightenment depend on all kinds of possibilities encountered in different times and spaces of ordinary life, and undeniably it is only the enlightened masters that can do the job of discerning the state of enlightenment.