The way The "goal" Background Chinese texts Classical Post-classical Contemporary Zen in Japan Seon in Korea Thiền in Vietnam Western Zen Mazu Daoyi (709–788) (Chinese: 馬祖道一; pinyin: Mǎzǔ Dàoyī; Wade–Giles: Ma-tsu Tao-yi, Japanese: Baso Dōitsu) was an influential abbot of Chan Buddhism during the Tang dynasty.
Master [Huairang] said, "If I can't make a mirror by rubbing a tile, how can you achieve buddhahood by sitting in meditation?
Eventually Mazu settled at Kung-kung Mountain[clarification needed] by Nankang, southern Jiangxi province,[11] where he founded a monastery and gathered scores of disciples.
This connection between Huineng and Nanyue Huairang is doubtful, being the product of later rewritings of Chan history to place Mazu Daoyi in the traditional lineages.
"[16] This school developed "shock techniques such as shouting, beating, and using irrational retorts to startle their students into realization".
[17][18] These shock techniques became part of the traditional and still popular image of Chan masters displaying irrational and strange behaviour to aid their students.
In Chinese "katsu" means "to shout", which has traditionally been translated as "yelled 'katsu'" – which should mean "yelled a yell"[web 1] During 845-846 staunchly Taoist Emperor Wuzong of Tang persecuted Buddhist schools in China along with other dissidents, such as Christians: It was a desperate attempt on the part of the hard-pressed central government, which had been in disarray since the An Lu-shan rebellion of 756, to gain some measure of political, economic, and military relief by preying on the Buddhist temples with their immense wealth and extensive lands.
[22] As Jinhua Jia points out, in this he seems to have been directly influenced by the Huayan doctrine of nature-origination in which all phenomena are manifestations of the Tathāgata.
[23] The doctrine of nature-origination is closely associated with the related Huayan teaching of the unobstructed interpenetration of principle and phenomena (li-shih wu-ai).
"[28] However, according to Jia, while Mazu's theory that Buddha-nature manifests in function is similar to the Huayan doctrine of nature-origination, there is nonetheless a difference.
Jia says: "...while their theoretical frameworks are the same, the target and content of the Huayan nature-origination and Mazu’s idea that function is identical with Buddha-nature are nevertheless different.
In the Huayan theory, the pure Buddha-nature remains forever untainted, even though it gives rise to defiled phenomena and originates the realization of all sentient beings’ enlightenment.
In Mazu’s doctrine, the spontaneous, ordinary state of human mind and life, which is a mix of purity and defilement, is identical with Buddha-nature.
[31]Jia states that "identifying absolute buddha-nature with the ordinary human mind, Mazu confirmed that the entirety of daily life was of ultimate truth and value.
"[32] Similarly, according to Peter Gregory, Mazu's Hongzhou school collapses essence (buddha-nature) into function ("all activities—whether good or bad, enlightened or deluded").
"[50] What's more, Luis Gómez observes that a number of texts exist in the literature which "suggest that some schools of early Ch’an rejected outright the practice of sitting in meditation.
[55] Whatever the case, seated dhyāna continued to remain an important part of Southern School Chan due to the influence of Guifeng Zongmi who sought to balance concentration and wisdom.
[55] Mazu Daoyi is depicted as having employed novel and unconventional teaching methods in order to shake his students out of routine consciousness.
[62] Utilizing a variety of sudden shocks, he sought to enable his students to experience enlightenment through the collapse of habitual feeling and thinking.
[14] According to Bielefeldt, such methods reflect a shift in emphasis within Zen from essence, or substance (t'i), to function (yung).
[63] John McRae points out that such things as calling to a person by name just as they are leaving bring the attention of the student to the perfection of their automatic response, "yes?"
Guifeng Zongmi (圭峰 宗密) (780–841), an influential teacher-scholar and patriarch of both the Chán and the Huayan school claimed that the Hung-chou tradition believed "everything as altogether true".
[80] According to Zongmi, the Hung-chou school teaching led to a radical nondualism that believed that all actions, good or bad, are expressions of the essential Buddha-nature and therefore denied the need for spiritual cultivation and moral discipline.
To avoid the dualism he saw in the Northern Line and the radical nondualism and antinomianism of the Hung-chou school, Zongmi's paradigm preserved "an ethically critical duality within a larger ontological unity.