Sengcan

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Jianzhi Sengcan (僧璨) (?-606) (Wade-Giles, Chien-chih Seng-ts'an; Japanese, Kanchi Sosan) is known as the Third Chinese Patriarch of Chan (Zen) after Bodhidharma and thirtieth Patriarch after Siddhārtha Gautama Buddha. He is considered the Dharma successor of the second Chinese Patriarch, Dazu Huike (神光慧可) (Wade-Giles, Ta-tsu Hui-k’o, Japanese, Taiso Eka). Sengcan is best known as the putative author of the famous Zen poem, Xinxin Ming Hsin Hsin Ming (Verses on Faith-Mind) (信心銘).

The historical record of Sengcan is extremely limited. Of all the Chan patriarchs, Sengcan is the most ambiguous, the least known and most of what is known about his life comes from the Wudeng Huiyuan (Compendium of Five Lamps), compiled in the early thirteenth century by the monk Puji at Lingyin Temple in Hangzhou. The first of the five records in the compendium is the a text commonly referred to as the Transmission of the Lamp ^[1] and it is from this text that most of the information about Sengcan is garnered. However, it should be kept in mind that most modern scholars have some doubts about the historical accuracy of the Lamp records. ^[2] Of Sengcan, Dumoulin says, “…we have no certain information regarding Seng-ts’an. The course of his life lies in darkness.” ^[3] The earliest recorded note naming Sengcan is in Further Biographies of Eminent Monks (645) (Japanese, Zoku kosoden; Pin-yin, Hsu kao-seng chuan) by Tao-hsuan (?- 667) where Sengcan is named, immediately after Huike’s name, as one of seven disciples of Huike in a biographical entry of the Lankavatara sutra master, Fa-ch’ung (587-665) No further information is given. (Dumoulin, pp 96-97) It was not until the Records of the Transmission of the Dharma-treasure (Sh’uan fa-pao chi), compiled about 710 and drawing on the stories in the Further Biographies of Eminent Monks that a teaching “lineage” for Chan was created. Some have speculated that it was merely the fact that Sengcan’s name immediately followed Huike’s name in the latter work that led to him being named as the Third Patriarch of Chan. ^[4] Therefore, the biography that follows is garnered largely from traditional biographies of Sengcan, mainly the Transmission of the Lamp.

1 Biography
2 References
3 Further Readings
4 External links
5 (Non-English) Translations

[edit] Biography

The year and place of Sengcan’s birth is unknown, as is his family name. The Transmission of the Lamp entry on Sengcan begins with a koan-like encounter with Huike:

Sengcan: I am riddled with sickness.^[5] Please absolve me of my sin.

Huike: Bring your sin here and I will absolve you.

Sengcan (after a long pause): When I look for my sin, I cannot find it.

Huike: I have absolved you. You should live by the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. ^[6] ^[7]^[8]

It is said that Sengcan was over forty years old when he first met Huike in 536 ^[9]and that he stayed with his teacher for six years. (Dumoulin, p 97) It was Huike who gave him the name Sengcan (“Gem Monk”). (Ferguson, p 22) There are discrepancies about how long Sengcan stayed with Huike. The Transmission of the Lamp records that he “attended Huike for two years” (Cleary, p 129) after which Huike passed on the robe of Bodhidharma and Bodhidharma’s Dharma (generally considered to be the Lankavatara Sutra), making him the Third Patriarch of Chan. According to Dumoulin (p 97), in 574 the accounts say that he fled with Huike to the mountains due to the Buddhist persecution underway at that time. However, the Lamp records claim that after giving Sengcan Dharma transmission, Huike warned Sengcan to live in the mountains and “Wait for the time when you can transmit the Dharma to someone else.” (Ferguson, p 22) as a prediction made to Bodhidharma (Huike’s teacher) by Prajnadhara, the twenty-seventh Chan ancestor in India, foretold of a coming calamity (the Buddhist persecution of 574-577).

After receiving transmission, Sengcan lived in hiding on Wangong Mountain in Yixian and then on Sikong Mountain in southwestern Anhui. Thereafter, for 10 years he wandered with no fixed abode. (Ferguson, p 23) He met Daoxin, (580-651) (Pin-yin, Tao-hsin 道信 Japanese, Daii Doshin) a novice monk of just fourteen, in 592. (^[10]) Daoxin attended Sengcan for nine years and received Dharma transmission when he was still in his early twenties. Subsequently, Sengcan spent two years at Mount Luofu (Lo-fu shan, northeast of Kung-tung (Canton)) before returning to Wangong Mountain. He died sitting under a tree before a Dharma assembly in 606. Dumoulin (pp 104-105, n.54) notes that a Chinese official, Li Ch’ang found Sengcan’s grave in Shu-chou in 745 or 746. Sengcan received the honorary title Jianzhi (“Mirror Wisdom”) (Wade-Giles, Chien-chih; Japanese, Kanchi) from the Tang dynasty emperor Xuan Zong.

Although Sengcan has traditionally been honored as the author of the Xinxinming Hsin Hsin Ming, most modern scholars dismiss this as unlikely and improbable. (^[11]) Sengcan, like Bodhidharma and Huike before him, was reputed to be a devotee and specialist in the study of the Lankavatara Sutra (“Sutra on the Descent to Sri Lanka”), which taught the elimination of all duality and the “forgetting of words and thoughts”, (Dumoulin p 95) stressing the contemplation of wisdom. However, McRae describes the link between Bodhidharma (and therefore Sengcan) and the Lankavatara Sutra as “superficial”. (McRae (1986) p 29) The link between this sutra and the “Bodhidharma school” is provided in Tao-hsuan’s Further Biographies of Eminent Monks where, in the biography of Fa-ch’ung he “stresses that Hui-k’o was the first to grasp the essence of the Lankavatara Sutra” (Dumoulin p 95) and includes Sengcan as one who “discoursed on but did not write about the profound message of the Lankavatara Sutra. (ibid p 97) Due to the lack of authentic evidence, comments on Sengcan's teachings are speculative.

[edit] References

^ Ferguson, Andy (2000) Zen’s Chinese heritage: the masters and their teachings, ISBN 0 86171 163 7 pp 10-11
^ : “…what counts in the Chan transmissions scheme are not the “facts” of what happened…but rather how these figures were perceived in terms of Chan mythology. …what the texts say happened almost certainly did not occur” (original emphasis) (McRae,John R (2003) Seeing Through Zen: Encounter, Transformation, and Genealogy in Chinese Chan Buddhism, University of California Press ISBN0-520-23798-6 p 5)
^ Dumoulin, Heinrich (1994, 1998) Zen Buddhism: A History, Volume I, India and China, Simon & Schuster and Prentice Hall International ISBN 0 02 897109 4 p 97
^ McRae, John R (1986) The Northern School and the Formation of Early Ch'an Buddhism, University of Hawaii Press, ISBN 0-8248-1056-2 pp280-281 n.40
^ said to be leprosy
^ Cleary, Thomas (1990) Transmission of Light: Zen in the Art of Enlightenment by Zen Master Keizan, North Point Press ISBN 0-86547-433-8 p 129
^ compare with Huike’s meeting with his teacher, Bodhidharma:

Huike: My mind is not at ease---please pacify it for me!

Bodhidharma: Bring me your mind, and I will.

Huike: But no matter how I might look, the mind is not a ‘thing’ I can find.

Bodhidharma: There, I’ve pacified your mind for you!” (McRae, p 23)
^ see also Three Language-Related Methods In Early Chinese Chan Buddhism by Desheng Zong
^ Ferguson, Andy (2000) Zen’s Chinese heritage: the masters and their teachings, ISBN 0 86171 163 7 p 21
^ the discrepancy is noted. The 592 date comes from Ferguson, p 24
^ “The poem Faith in Mind (Xin Xin Ming) is believed by many scholars to have been written after Sengcan’s lifetime, perhaps by an individual in the Oxhead Zen School.” (Ferguson, p 492 n.18) see also Dumoulin p 97

[edit] Further Readings

Yampolsky, Philip (1999) Ch'an-A Historical Sketch in Buddhist Spirituality: Later China, Korea, Japan and the Modern World, Takeuchi Yoshinor ed., SCM Press, ISBN 0-334-02779-9
Yampolsky, Philip (1967) The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch: the text of the Tun-Huang manscript, translated with notes by, Columbia University Press, ISBN 0-231-08361-0 (introduction available online)
Foster, Nelson; Shoemaker, Jack (eds)(1996) The Roaring Stream: A New Zen Reader, The Ecco Press, ISBN 0-88001-344-3