Monks, Beasts & Dreams on Heavenly Terrace

By Alexander Goldstein

This book's pages form the record of events that, according to tradition, really happened in the Tang-period China in the 8th century at Guo-qing Temple nestled on Mount Tian-tai. For this no extra charge has been made with the exception of delightful insight into the background of the four figures: three eccentric persons and the forth—the unnamed tigress, a creature on the back of which Chan monk Feng Gan usually rode. All the four were not poetic ideals, but sentient beings of flesh and blood. At another level, Feng Gan, Han Shan, and Shi De are also prototypes of the crazy saints, wise men, sages, and itinerant hermits who contrast so markedly with the ordinary monastic brotherhood and worldly society lifestyles of the vast majority in any culture or civilization. However, we listen to their advices, methods, and teachings, and, sometimes, follow their poetic prescriptions. When one of his rivals snidely predicted that Han Shan’s poems would soon be relegated to the kitchen, where it would be used as scrap to cover soy sauce pots, he only smiled and said nothing. As successive generations of readers find many observations preserved in his poetry fresh and ever new, perhaps Han Shan has had the last laugh after all. The whole things read like a treatise from Han Shan’s hand-scroll written by Shi De’s brush or, rather, his crude broom, with which he could beat even the King of Mountain, the warrior-guardian with furious face, protruding eyes, and a long staff in his mighty hands. In moments of whimsy and frenzy we give all the three magical and marvellous powers—skills in taming wildlife and healing by means of incantations, ability to disappear and reappear at will, power to penetrate into cliffs and cross the stream on one single leaf. Even techniques for summoning up from the other dimensions the six spirits to be then able to call them forth to obey their commands whenever needed and continually defeating the “six internal thieves” (meaning six senses in Buddhism and their activities—seeing, smelling, tasting and so on), as well as methods for calming troubled souls and staying the natural process of decay and many other amazing things are at their disposal. In addition, such stories, if they are good, lead us into the solemn presence of some truth, which most of us enjoy indirectly, not having paid the heavy price out of our hearts, in their most secret gleanings, the precious and inconvertible treasures of our own dreams.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alexander Goldstein
• Release date: Nov 27, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465936448

Alexander Goldstein

Alexander Goldstein, a graduate of the Far-Eastern University in Sinology, lived and worked in mainland China for a period as a translator/interpreter, a manager, and a martial arts' practitioner. A certified instructor of ‘Chang-quan’ (external-style boxing) and ‘Taiji-quan’ (internal-style boxing), he is a lecturer of Chinese culture and traditions at the Open University in Tel-Aviv. He also is the author of Lao-zi's "Dao-De Jing," Chan (Zen) masters' paradoxes, "The Illustrated Canon of Chen Family Taiji-quan," a Chinese novel and some other editions, which are available in print and electronic publishing at most online retailers published in English, Spanish and Russian. What makes his books so appealing is profound analysis and authority with which various strains of the vigorous Chinese culture are woven into a clear and useful piece of guidance for a business person who conducts the affairs with far-eastern counterparties and for a counsellor who develops strategies that enable leaders to position their organisations effectively.

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Monks, Beasts & Dreams on Heavenly Terrace

Published by Alexander Goldstein

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2011 Alexander Goldstein

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Contents

Author's Note

PART ONE

Chapter 1: Tian-tai Mountains—the Cradle of Chan Buddhism

Chapter 2: Guo-qing Temple—the Reign of Purity and Self-realization

Chapter 3: Nine Pictures of Feng Gan's Impulse to Insight

Chapter 4: Shi De—a Way from a Foundling to a Novice-monk

Chapter 5: The Moon's Orb Samadhi

Chapter 6: Han Shan's Prophetic Dream

Chapter 7: Between Life, Dream and Death

Chapter 8: A Ritual of Healing by Incantation

PART TWO

Chapter 1: Behind the Monastery's Gates

Chapter 2: The Ocean of Samadhi

Chapter 3: Internal Practice (Nei-gong): Alchemy or Sex?

Chapter 4: A Test on Entering Samadhi

Chapter 5: The Red Dust in the Market and Not Only There

Chapter 6: Premeditated or Spontaneous Madness?

Chapter 7: Banishment or Absolution?

Chapter 8: The Raising of Shi De by Ascending on Huading

PART THREE

Chapter 1: Hope is Always beyond Death

Chapter 2: No-minded Mind Never Dies!

Chapter 3: Pursuit of the Fate

Chapter 4: Predestination

Chapter 5: A Little Rift within the Lute

Chapter 6: Seeing Dreams within Dreams

Chapter 7: Chan Poetry—the Way of Self-realization

Chapter 8: Neither Host nor Guest

About the Author

Endnote

Author's Note

The principal feature and charm of this book lay not so much in its literary style and Chinese brush sketches as in its sincerity. In this respect, the acute reader will notice how the images here are themselves the speech, and the poetry, as a whole, is an ideographic construction of the book written, I would like to hope, in the style of a good prose. The following pages form the record of events that, according to tradition, really happened in the Tang-period China in the 8th century at Guo-qing temple secluded in the Tian-tai Mountains. All that has been done is to colouring them in black-and-white of monochromic style of Chinese ink painting, because the spectrum of visible light at the extremes would inevitably be black and white, Yin and Yang. This is the spectrum of the Dao itself usually translated as The Way, both physical and metaphysical, when the spectrum of light inevitably breaks into the identifiable ranges of the colours. Life itself breaks down into certain primal situations, equivalent to the colours of Dao, which recur time and again in the eternal vibration between the extremes of two opposite forms that continuously feed one another. And this occurs due to something else, the third power between the two, which keeps the ball rolling. For this no extra charge has been made with the exception of delightful insight into the background of the four images: three eccentric figures and the forth—the unnamed tigress, a creature on the back of which Chan monk Feng Gan usually rode. All the four were not poetic ideals, but sentient beings of flesh and blood, particularly the forth one, the beast, which weighed about five Chinese stones (about eight hundred English pounds).

Legends concerning the Tian-tai's Trio recorded in Buddhist biographical sources tell us next to nothing about the main events of their life. They focus instead on conversations Han Shan (Japanese Kanzan) had with Shi De (Jittoku) and their common old master Feng Gan (Bukan) who was understood as incarnation of the Buddha Amitabha. The historical Chan (Zen) iconoclasts are pictured all the three immersed in deep slumber, leaning fondly on the sleepy tigress. It is generally interpreted as symbolizing the absolute tranquillity of the universe for those who have attained complete enlightenment. In these accounts, they are invariably portrayed, in good Chan fashion, as poor but happy recluses, bordering on the crazy, who constantly do and say nonsensical things. A number of these stories read like gong-an (Japanese koan, also known as test on entering samadhi). Intoxicated by crazy wisdom, the bawdy, spontaneous behaviour of these unorthodox spiritual masters rarely conformed to the rigid strictures, materialistic values, and arid proprieties of respectable society. Irreverently flaunting their uncompromising freedom by subverting all forms of social convention and superficial value systems, these enlightened lunatics had a genius for shaking up the religious establishment and keeping alive the inner meaning of spiritual truth during the time of mainstream Buddhism's external decline, continuing to motivate and challenge those members of society open to such inspired spiritual influence while appearing mad from the banal, ordinary point of view. At another level, all the three are also prototypes of the crazy saints, wise men, sages, and itinerant hermits who contrast so markedly with the ordinary monastic brotherhood and worldly society lifestyles.

We sometimes look to these fellows, real and imaginary, asking them rhetorically: So, old pals, what have you learnt that can help us? We listen to their advices, methods, and teachings, and, sometimes, follow their poetic prescriptions. When one of his rivals snidely predicted that Han Shan’s poems would soon be relegated to the kitchen, where it would be used as scrap to cover soy sauce pots, he only smiled and said nothing. As successive generations of readers find many observations preserved in his poetry fresh and ever new, perhaps Han Shan has had the last laugh after all. Sometimes we laugh at him and the others, but in moments of whimsy and frenzy we give them magical and marvellous powers—skills in taming wildlife and healing by means of incantations, ability to disappear and reappear at will, power to penetrate into cliffs and cross the stream on one single leaf, techniques for summoning up from the other dimensions the six spirits to be then able to call them forth to obey their commands whenever needed, methods for calming troubled souls, staying the natural process of decay, and many other amazing things. In addition, such stories, if they are good, lead the reader into the solemn presence of some truth, which most of us enjoy indirectly, not having paid the heavy price out of our hearts, in their most secret gleanings, the precious and inconvertible treasures of our own dreams.

Han Shan and Shi De are two inseparable characters in the history of Chan (Zen) Buddhism, forming one of the most favourite subjects of the Ink painting conceptualized by the Far-eastern artists. Shi De is often pictured with a broom, and Han Shan with a scroll; these represent two of many paths to Enlightenment—honest labour and scriptural studies. This is why, most probably, Shi De, with his constant attribute, was always involved in sweeping out some dirties. He was able to use it like a sword continually defeating the six internal thieves in Buddhism, thereby curbing the six senses, their mundane activities—seeing, smelling, tasting the worldly things, etc.

Master Shi De (English Foundling) is also famous in Daoist annals as the companion of his intimate friend, vagabond-poet and hermit Han Shan. Once expelled and orphaned he was then given a home at Mount Hanshan where his elder buddy had resided for the last half of century. Musing on Han Shan's poems one day, while lounging in the hot sun and sitting on a huge stone in front of the hut, Shi De rolled off the top into the grass called by the master The Three Paths. He then hauled himself back onto the stone and began writing poems in Han Shan's voice with a bold and shameless humour worthy of his inspirer, deducing a formula that Man’s life is nothing but drift in the world. This is finely distilled Daoist thinking: the Dao embodies a belief that all our accomplishments, all our strivings and the things we hold dear are simply nothing; to follow the way of Dao is to calmly, even joyfully, let life have its way with us. What more important to consider is Han Shan's skill and his poetic gift to capture a world and a way of thinking as elusive and yet nourishing as the steam from a pot of bubbling rice, as cooking rice was his work and the source of his musings. And, of course, together with him we should never forget to follow the unwritten from of old instructions, which order us: Read. Stop. Listen. Eat. Wash the bowl. Contemplate its orbed purity. Breathe.

Working on this book, I frequently felt myself strangely pleased, as though an honour had been conferred on me. Enveloped as I was in the familiar, reassuring ambience of the monastery halls, cells, grounds, and cellars where I had spent so many hours with the characters of this novel, as a kid playing around with such simple toys as fruit stones, the yarrow stalks, fly whisks, hand-scrolls, cookware, the monkish dreams and old fables; with all their unsettling implications receded to a distance and took on a kind of unreality, as though completely unconnected with my own self. The whole things read like a treatise from Han Shan’s hand-scroll written by Shi De’s brush or, rather, his crude broom, with that special feeling that mysteriously refreshes and makes me glad again, because it is not my way of suffering—I’m just called upon to witness. And indeed, having escaped the fate of the vagabond-poets and hermits, I have some reason to be thankful for my own. I should be truly thankful for help to my spiritual guides in Greater China, to a number of friends for various assistances: locating valued reference material, commenting on and correcting my manuscript. Above all I am thankful to my wife for constant encouragement and support of every kind, though, ultimately, I must take responsibility for all that appears here.

-- A.G.

Written on the twelfth day of the tenth lunar month of the cyclical year Wu-tzu

The whole world is but one long dream.

-- Su Shi (1037-1101)

. . .Now put this book down and go to sleep!

-- AG

PART ONE

Chapter 1: Tian-tai Mountains—the Cradle of Chan Buddhism

Known from time immemorial as Tian-tai, Heaven Stand, better known as Heavenly Terrace, this name applies to a range of mountains seventy miles southeast of Hangzhou Bay along the eastern coast of the Central Kingdom better known as China. Our journey up Tian-tai's peaks and ravines begins by understanding the classical symbols of long life and bringers of life, mountains inspired religious awe as parents of the myriad things. According to one legend, Tian-tai used to be carried by a giant marine tortoise Ao, swimming in the South China Sea. When during the time of formation of the world progenitress Nüwa had to cut off the tortoise's legs in order to use them to support the falling sky, she moved the mountains to the dry land so that it would not sink in the ocean.

In the mid Tang-period (8th century CE) it became one of the biggest Buddhist and Daoist centres in all under heaven, the homeland of Tian-tai Sect of Chinese Buddhism and Nan-zong (Southern) School of Daoism. A good many Buddhist monks and Daoist priests who wandered from temple to temple were also called 'brothers of clouds and rivers.' It always was the place of mists and cliffs piled up near the sky. Legends grow in that gripping land, where rocks beetle over abysses so deep a poor traveller can fall, they say, for almost a watch (a double-hour) straight without hitting bottom. Ranging to left and right beneath the seven stars of the Dipper, wanderers and pilgrims hold their breath treading on a path called Stone Bridge, which is like a dashing wave hanging in the mountains as 'qi' configurations of the Great Void (also known as 'Breath of Heaven and Earth'), which melts to form vale streams and brooks, congeals to form summits and slopes. A stone beam spans two steep cliffs known as Shiliang Waterfall, the path of Stone Bridge, ranges from seven inches wide at the narrowest and to about nineteen inches at the widest point. The waterfall plummets a full one hundred feet into a deep pool with a thundering roar. The sight is magnificent, but considerable composure and surefootedness are required to walk across the beam. This path is not several tens of paces long associated with the name of Feng Gan who, at the critical crossing of Stone Bridge, took off from human paths and soared into the hyperspace of intellectual transcendence of Chan Buddhism. Straddling heaven-vaulting suspended stone-stair and overlooking the myriad-fathom cut-off dark-abyss—every step is extremely slippery, while below it looks down on the fathomless and rocky Tian-lao Gorge, we trace Feng Gan's free-spirited roving through the Great Void, ultimately merging with the hidden attributes of Dao to find the final enlightenment. It is the dark outgrowth on steep shelves, the spirit-giving herb in the thickets, the purple fungus fluorescent light in the secluded caves, the whitish jade high on their peaks, sliced cliffs studded throughout with gems. The huge pines wriggle like mythical green-blue dragons send down by Heaven, and imaginary flame-red phoenixes brought up in the bowels of earth; lines of tigers guard their slopes; gods and spirits stand at their sides; sages and deities of their boundless realms. At night they sit in state accepting the homage of the other beasts and strange creatures which come to drink there in the gorge devoutly pillowing their heads to lap up the cold, transparent water of the mountain sources gushed out from the Yellow Spring, blinking their fluorescent eyes.

There are mountain ranges rising and falling, plains crisscrossing, rivers flowing long distance and boulders scattering all over valleys like stars and constellations on the Milky Way, among which Cinnabar Mound, the ancient site of immortals located thirty miles south of Ninghai (the former Shifeng County), on which an adherent of the Dao, searching for immortality’s delightful halls, can meet the feathered and winged figures; the Five Peaks (Wudingshan), Flourishing Peak (Huadingshan), the site of Guo-qing temple on the top of Mount Tian-tai, which lies about fifteen miles southwest of Huading and which stands in such a remote and out-of-the-way place that the roads there are still so long and hard to trace. The Red Fort Alp (Chichengshan), a rocky cliff rising perpendicularly several hundred feet, locates just a few miles south of Tian-tai County and is known as one of the 'Two Wonders' (the other is Shiliang Waterfall that thunders in the south-western part of the range, drifting in flight marks out its path). The Red Fort Alp is marked with horizontal strata, eroded in some cases into low caves, giving the appearance from a distance of layered cliff.

To enter the Tian-tai Mountains proper, most pass through its southern portal, with Red Fort on their left. Right away it hits you what a red alp this seems. You have just come through dusty Chichengshan town, lanes of red clay where they have not yet paved, and at least two cuts through red sandstone hills. Then, you behold the Fort's dull-red face, with red walled cloisters and caves layered like Mawangdui's cells. Geologically, Mount Red Fort differs from the other Tian-tai Mountains; only when you proceed north do you hit good solid granite. But all throughout Tian-tai you will observe more or less reddish dirt, more ochre, where the local habitants have cultivated mountain terraces, brighter red swatches from the iron oxides in eroded, exposed patches. To stay at Red Fort meant to remain on this side of the transcendents' world, in two senses. First, the physical alp, southern boundary of the Tian-tai range, lay well south of the Stone Bridge that, to Zhi Yi and his heirs, symbolized a passage to transcendence. Second, symbolically, from of old Red Fort was always surrounded with the Daoist Arbiter of Destiny's rampart, so, in that sense, living at Red Fort meant remaining just on the border of celestial enceintes.

In a way, Tian-tai reads as a very 'red place,' from its peach-blossoms to its Red Fort, from the rose clouds on its misty peaks to the red-capped cranes conveying its immortal denizens from Grotto Heaven to Celestial Palace (Tian-gong). And though on a pilgrim's visit one can see more pink azaleas and lavender wisterias than peach-blossoms—and the pink rhododendrons on Flourishing Peak (Huading) lie in bud, just waiting for a few more warm days to burst open,—everyone will concur.

The mountains, rivers, lakes, forests, caves and springs compose beautiful sceneries which are magnificent and extraordinarily precipitous now quiet like a virgin and now moved like a dragon, now higher than the ninth sky and then deeper than the sea-pit, or like mountains and rivers in a painting scroll, or like ten thousand horses galloping all together. These extraordinary mountains and rivers have fostered generations of outstanding figures and always attracted guests from all sides and corners of under heaven, leaving historic and religious sites all over Tian-tai. We may follow this sacred alpine trail and the Tian-tai Mountain by tracing Master Han Shan 's appreciation of the majestic scenery. This is how, tarrying once on Mount Hanshan, he depicts the Tian-tai Range in one of his verses:

" Cinnabar Mound is lofty and afar,

Standing equal with the solemn clouds;

There's in the air Five Peaks Mountain—

Seen from afar it seems quite settled.

Wild Goose Pagoda towers up,

Exceeding the green and shield-like summit;

The Buddhist temple with its age-old buildings—

All merging with the colours of rainbow.

Wind shakes up the twigs on the pines—

Red Fort Alp is perfectly elegant;

Smoke spews out at the mid-cliff—

The path of immortals is indistinct and stray.

Green jade sky falls on a thousand peaks—

Each of them is ten thousand feet in height.

Wistaria vines intertwine all and everything,

One by one chaining down the ravines and vales."

This upland has always supplied the whole the world if not with outstanding thinkers and poets (from of old there was no distinction between these two categories of men), then certainly with exquisite dreamers, or both poets and dreamers, supplied them and been their refuge when the entire world turned the face of displeasure and even hatred. Here, in far away and secluded scenes, if you are very still and listen in the proper spirit, you may hear the weird solo of an hermitical flute played by some recluse or sage whose skin is as ice and snow and whose loveliness is like that of a maiden, and who eats not some sort of the five grains but lives only on air and dew; mounted on a flying dragon he rides above the clouds and wanders beyond the 'four seas' (another old name for China). His spirit is such that by concentrating its power he can stay the natural process of decay and insure abundant harvests. As it is said in the Lao-zi (Verse 50):

"He who knows well how to live,

For a time of travelling the countryside,

Comes across no tigers or rhinoceroses on his way;

Upon entering a battle, he remains untouched by arms of war."

And then,

"Do you know the reason why this is so?

Because, in him, there is no room for death to enter."

The recluses who busied themselves in the Tian-tai Mountains with these things were interested in the problem of discovering a remedy, which could release vital energy in such a way as to make men immune against sickness and death. From ancient times they lived on dewdrops and pinecones; they fed on the wind and vapour, and their minds were as clear and still as a surface of the mountain lake. They were open and very friendly. It seemed there were no fear, no anger, no tension, and no dissatisfaction between them; no one was superior or inferior to anyone else. Everything was bountiful and everyone enjoyed the providence predefined by interaction of the heavens and lands. The sun and the moon sent gentle light, the seasons were never harsh, the soil in the vales and on the terraces was rich and the inhabitants were truly kind. The deities blessed the land, and the hungry ghosts never went near it. From time out of mind this was the land Huang-di, the Yellow Emperor, once visited in his dream. Hundreds of poets of Tang and the other dynasties left their traces and inscriptions in Tian-tai, famous for fathomless scenic spots, picturesque landscapes, and misty views sprung up from breath of heaven and earth. These men wandered around beyond the material things. They considered themselves as companions of the Creator, and wandered around within the One Spirit of the universe. They looked upon life as a huge excrescence and upon death as the breaking of a tumour. How could such people be concerned about the coming of life and death or their sequence? They borrowed their forms from the different elements, and took temporary abode in the common forms, unconscious of their internal organs and oblivious of their senses of hearing and vision. They went through life backwards and forwards as in a circle without beginning or end, strolling forgetfully beyond the dust and dirt of mortality, and wandering around with the affairs of 'wu-wei' (precise acting without further ado or repentance). How should such men bustle about the conventionalities of this world for ordinary people to look at? Living as hermits on the peaks and in the secluded forests they were brought into close contact with nature, obtaining an intimate knowledge of plants and minerals, and their thinking and view of life were coloured creatively by impressions of beauty gained from nature at the sight of its mighty waterfalls, fast-flowing streams, pure fountains and spring waters, fleeting rosy racks and white clouds, variegated birds and striped beasts, thin air and changing scenery. None had a more intimate knowledge of the properties of various herbs, plants, and fruits, and none was more proficient in distinguishing nutritious and healing plants from poisonous ones. Some of the most venerable and celebrated masters lived entirely on herbs and vegetable food. As for plants, you might suspect the rare Udumbara (Ficus racemosa) blossom, symbol of Buddhist enlightenment; monks built an Udumbara Terrace near Stone Bridge; or, perhaps, the prized Lohan Tribute tea. But far and away the most prominent plant in Tian-tai lore was the peach blossom, symbol of Daoist transcendence. With a variety of ginseng called golden essence they could taste golden rice, the sweetness of monkish cuisine, made with 'golden essence'; fresh 'huang-jing,' or earth-spirit root tasted like sweet ginger, which used to be found and collected in the beautiful valleys of Tian-tai, and which the hermits served in place of tea, as it was a very effective tonic. There also were 'ling-zhi cao,' or spirit-giving herb, and the 'he-sou' herb, which shape was strikingly reminiscent of the human body and, therefore, was called 'he-sou-ren,' or manlike madder. The well-known 'dufulin' (Smilax Chinensis) was there too, which grew from two to three feet beneath the earth; and, of course, two or three sorts of fern and pteridophyte plants cropped there up as well. However, the practicing monks and hermits did not confine themselves to the study of herbs, fruits, and plants. From of old they had also included the mineral kingdom in their investigations. They claimed to have found that the decoction of certain minerals’ combination was especially effective as pills, or as an elixir of immortality. To live on a vegetarian diet, on 'pills of immortality' was considered as a proper fast and those who observed it were given great honour and dignity. It could even be noticed how those lean and ethereal-looking men gradually faded away. The recipe for such a concoction was certainly very startling, and it wasn’t surprising that history mentioned several men who succumbed soon after they had tried the cure. For instance, these were the following ingredients: 'zhu-sha' (cinnabar), 'xiong-fan' (arsenic), 'bie-fan' (alum), 'sun-yin' (copper oxide), 'su-xi' (pulverized porcelain), and some others. Great care and strict sequence had to be taken in the preparation: the pot had to be of special shape and size; the mixture had to be constantly stirred for nine months, and must be given nine different boilings.

Still, another method of longevity or, rather, immortality was the astrological one. According to the Daoist teachings, every person has access to and capacity for intimate relationship with the divine worthies to whom Heaven has entrusted the responsibility of being patrons for the beings living on earth. These worthies control the five phase elements, which are to constitute parts of every living being and depict symbolically by the images of Wood, Metal, Fire, Water, and Earth. Their exalted excellent features to run differently with various energies are thought to have residence on the planets, but they may also be projected down to the respective places and individuals on earth who belong to their particular domain. They also represent the five basic colours, seasons, tastes, senses, sounds, smells, and the four directions of the compass, plus the ultimate centre. By analogy, if it helps the reader visualise their distinctive attributes, I have somewhat fancifully assigned each site of the Tian-tai mountain range its own symbolic animal and colour with the following set of correspondences: North, black, water, Divine Vulture Mountain (Lingyinshan) so that Vulture's black spine points towards the West Lake; West white, metal, White Crane Town; Centre, yellow, earth, mound, Mount Tian-tai; East, blue-green, wood, Flourishing Peak (Huadingshan), mist, 'qi,' rose cloud aura, dragon, ocean, sea beasts; South, red, fire-bird, Red Fort Alp (Chichengshan). These correspondences do not perfectly match traditional ones—the west conventionally harbours a white tiger, while azure dragons belong in the east; the north houses a black tortoise entwined with a snake, but heraldic animal of the south is a red bird. Besides, we should take into consideration the fact that south is always placed at the top of Chinese maps and diagrams related to the cardinal points. If not taken as another example of the Chinese doing things backwards, this is usually explained by simply saying that the ancients considered south as the most important direction. Since the earth revolves around the sun, it doesn’t matter whether the cardinal points of north and south point at up or down; what is really important is the fact that the north—south and east—west directions are cardinally connected. Once the north point interchanges with the south, the east should be interchanged with the west as well to make correct orientation in general. Anyway, even slightly skewed correspondences may prove mnemonically helpful when we recall salient features of each sacred site. While our account singled out one symbolic animal per site, in truth, we simplified by selecting what seemed the most distinctive critter. Chan monk Feng Gan's bosom buddies, Han Shan and Shi De, usually gets painted leaning fondly on a sleepy tigress. Zhi Yi, the founder of Guo-qing temple, also got credited with taming a tiger, and you can still find a Tame-tiger Ridge west of Tian-tai. But for Tian-tai's most appropriate zoological emblem you would have to choose the image of 'crane,' or, more broadly, the range of cranes, wild geese, phoenixes, and swans, which serves as a steed for a wandering transcendent. We have already seen many examples. Tian-tai still boasts a White Crane Town northwest of Tong-bai; the main street east of town bears the name Flying Crane; one can see signs for Flying Crane Paints on the way up to Guo-qing temple.

Actually, we find numinous creatures mentioned at all the sites. The founding myths of any sacred mountain will inevitably include tales of subduing dragons, tigers, serpents, and the like (for a good account of the symbolic meanings pregnant in such tales); an extensive catalogue of verse couplets featuring all the above-named animals for each temple could easily be provided. By now the reader may excuse me for such a tedious demonstration. However, he or she will want to keep in mind the distinctive complex of plants, animals, and cultural features that have helped each site to create its own unique numinous magic.

But let's assume you have got this far. You have now found out a way to Guo-qing temple up in the mountains; you arrival later in the day proving tactically astute if you don't know whether you can expect a welcome. As a matter of fact, it's always harder to turn away a supplicant when the sun's sinking low. So, try to find a sympathetic-looking monk, introduce yourself as a Buddhist lay believer, and ask if you might spend a couple of nights. Lucky beggar you are if you find a cell, hopefully, get a pot of boiled water, and next day acquaint yourself with the temple as diligently as you can.

* * * * *

When Feng Gan was a child, he was quite slow-witted. In fact, he didn’t begin to talk until he was about six years old. Subsequently, when he left home to become a monk, he had great difficulty in reading sutras. He couldn’t memorise anything. His first master told him, You really are too clumsy and stupid. He also said that his karmic obstructions were heavy and that only by prostrating five hundred times a day to Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva (Guanshiyin in Chinese whose name means Bodhisattva Who Hears the Sounds of the World or, simpler, Great Compassion Bodhisattva) could he succeed in removing them. Feng Gan did as his master said for seven or eight months until one day his head felt calm and cool. It seemed to have opened up and everything that had weighed him down for so long had been lifted. From that time on he had no trouble memorising or reciting verses from sutras. His master said that this was the bodhisattva responding to him. What was more important, Feng Gan strongly believed himself that this was the case and, therefore, this function was purely mental in that the bodhisattva had intervened and helped him.

The county where Feng Gan lived south of the Yellow River was once prosperous, but it underwent a slow decline at the end of the Southern Chen dynasty (386-588). By the time he was born, the region was impoverished. He was born at night of the full moon in the seventh lunar month, when the later summer was in its final blaze. The window of his mother’s room had been thrown open to catch that fresh breath of coming fall. The old midwife grumbled at this, but the healer who had been brought from the neighbouring village said it could do no harm. It was a relatively uncomplicated delivery. Toward the end though something peculiar happened. As the woman in childbirth lay in bed, propped up pillows struggling to breathe, in the midst of a powerful contraction she called her husband’s name. As she did, the light blinked and a fluttering shadow crossed the bed—a huge bat which had flown in through the open window was circling silently throughout the room. The sight sent a chill through her whole body. In an instant a rare fragrance filled the room. A white rainbow linked with the earth, and the trees in the nearest forest turned white. The birds chirped out noisily in joy.

Feng Gan was the youngest of six children. His mother was already thirty-three years old when he was born. She had no milk to nurse him with, and domestic animals’ milk was rare there. Even female dogs were unable to produce milk to feed their young. Animals were all emaciated. People also were malnourished. It was not until Feng Gan was four that he learned to walk, and it was not until he was six that he could speak with any facility. Growing up, he then started to help his father with his land work. A few years later a local master was looking for two novices to live at his temple. He was in some quandary as to how to find his young monks. He prayed to the Buddha for guidance and it was indicated to him that he should look in a village south of his temple. The monastery was north of the Yellow River, so the master crossed to the side where Feng Gan’s family lived. Once passing through the village he saw Feng Gan and asked his mother if she was willing to let her son leave home.

She answered, If he wants to become a monk, it is up to him. Our family is very poor. I’m afraid that if he stays with us, he won’t have enough money to find himself a wife.

The master turned to the boy and asked, How would you like to become a monk, good boy?

The kid didn’t have the foggiest idea what a monk was or what a monk did. But somehow the idea appealed to him and he said, Yes, I would like that.

The master wrote the name and birthday in his book and soon left.

About three months later one layman appeared and said to the woman, I am going to take your son now. I will take him north of the river to become a monk.

During those last months the master on the north side of the river had taken the date of Feng Gan’s birth and put it before Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva, entreating the image to reveal whether the boy would be suitable for monkhood or not. He asked three times; and all three times the answer was affirmative. When the layman came to take Feng Gan to the monastery, the boy had no quite positive feeling about going or not going. At last, he was ready to go.

This took his mother by surprise: I thought you were kidding about becoming a monk, she said.

But the next day he left with the layman for the monastery.

As it has been mentioned previously, from the very beginning Feng Gan (actually, this was his monastic name, meaning High Shield) had a problem with the recitation of sutras, especially mantras. His master informed him that his karmic obstructions were heavy, and said that if he wanted to remedy the situation he had better do five hundred prostrations to Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva each day. At first the novice found this practice exhausting, but after a short while he found that he could even do six hundred prostrations in a few hours. In a few months he also found that his ability to memorise sutras, as well as his ability to learn in general, had vastly improved. Soon he felt that reciting was not enough. Now he wanted to understand the sutras. By unexpected good fortune he was soon able to hear one wandering sutra-exponent quoted from the Mahaparinirvana Sutra, which assimilated to the principle teachings of the Lotus Sutra, explaining a version of the trisvabhava doctrine known as the threefold truth, the perfection of the Three Contemplations of One Mind, the practice of meditation that enabled one to perceive clearly the emptiness of self and all phenomena. That quotation illuminated Feng Gan’s mind and set his soul afire. Asking where he could learn more, he was referred to Guo-qing temple, six hundred miles southeast of his monastery. As he could find out some time later, that temple was founded by Venerable Zhi Yi (538-598), the fourth Tian-tai patriarch, on his second visit to Tian-tai in 591, and was located nearby Tian-tai County seat (the central area of present-day Zhejiang Province that faces the East Sea on the east and borders Wenzhou County in the south) on the south side of the southern peak of Tian-tai mountain range, one hundred and twenty miles south of Hangzhou. The novice-monk also found out that the temple offered preaches on the sutras, and he requested his master’s permission to attend. That other monastery in Tian-tai required a kind of entrance examination for those who wished to attend the sutra lectures. His master helped him write a petition—that was what he thought they wanted. As it turned out, a petition was not what they wanted at all—a completely different topic was required, but they liked his short essay, and they thought that his literary skills were quite good, so they accepted him anyway.

To understand Tian-tai and its spirit we should resort to the knowing of patriarch Zhi Yi and his part in the centuries-old history of Chan Buddhism. Lore about Zhi Yi constantly reverberates through the traditions and literature that have grown up around Tian-tai. Flashes of mysterious divine light accompanied Zhi Yi's birth; he had all the back-shoulder and eye-earmarks of the four sage kings. It is said he slept with his hands folded 'mudra,' always sat facing the Western Paradise, always bowed on seeing a Buddhist image, and always gestured ritually on seeing a monk. At 15 he dreamed the Buddha rubbed his head and vowed to become a monk, officially doing so at 18. He made the difficult journey north to study in Henan for seven years with Hui Si (515-576), a worshipper of Maitreya and specialist in the Lotus Sutra. Zhi Yi then returned south and taught at the Chen capital for 8 years. In 575 he retired to Tian-tai for ten years of purification and advanced study. Obviously, he chose Heavenly Terrace because it already had won fame as the 'Magic Mountains.' Zhi Yi got credited with (at least a hand in) founding twelve Buddhist temples on Tian-tai (Guo-qing was found in 598 and Fang-guang above Stone Bridge, the heraldic portal into a transcendental realm at Tian-tai, which Zhi Yi naturally crossed on first reaching Heavenly Terrace--the temple got built later). Then, Zhi Yi also underwent an extraordinary spiritual trial on Mount Huading (Flourishing Peak) when, during a storm as he meditated in ascetic trance, monsters and demons assailed him—Zhi Yi used all his piety and meditative resources to quell the autochthonous demons and make Heavenly Terrace safe for Buddhists. Zhi Yi lamented all the fishing in the rivers and coastline near Tian-tai and reportedly sold his own robes to buy fish and set them free—even established Set-free ponds for the fish. In response the Chen dynasty supposedly issued a proclamation banning fishing for 60 leagues around the temple and gave the locals reparations. In 585 Zhi Yi went back to court. When the Chen fell in 588 Zhi Yi—a relative of the ruling family—went home and visited Lushan, still a Buddhist mecca at the time. He quickly attracted the patronage of Sui Prince Yang (soon to become the second Sui emperor). After years of shuttling between Lushan, Jiangling, and Yangzhou, Zhi Yi returned to Tian-tai in 595. He, like many eminent monks, had ridden a seesaw of teaching and patronage in Nanjing and then Yangzhou, purifying retreats and pilgrimages to sacred mountains, Lushan and then Tian-tai. His death, naturally, occasioned a great number of miracles. The Sui Emperor later worshipped Zhi Yi's perfected mummy—discreetly ensconced behind a stone door. His most important literary works are Exposition of the Lotus Sutra's Import, Textual Commentary on the Lotus, and Great Stilling and Insight (A Manual for Meditation and Religious Cultivation)—all got written at Tian-tai. The Heavenly Terrace sect of Buddhism, Zhi Yi founded, a syncretic Mahayana sort of Buddhism, could perhaps be best described as a marriage of Northern Buddhist meditative and devotional practices with Southern Buddhist scholasticism and study. In the Chinese phrase most associated with Tian-tai, Zhi Yi sought to make teaching and contemplation unified and consistent (jiao chan yi zhi). He developed and refined systems of exegesis and scripture classification that ascribed the most Perfectly Rounded Teaching (yuan-jiao) to the Lotus Sutra (and the late Parinirvana Sutra); he also refined a system of threefold stilling and insight (san-zhong zhi-guan), testifying to his deep concern with balancing meditation and scholarship. Zhi Yi's thought reached its pinnacle with his idea that man could directly apprehend the simultaneous emptiness and fullness of the world and accomplish a mystic identification with Buddhist Truth; he called this All the Three Realms in One Thought (yi-nian san-qian). Sometimes this gets glossed as the middle way is identical to the true state of existence, which is none other than Thusness. Zhi Yi did not lack for talented disciples and heirs. Among Tian-tai patriarchs, Guan Ding, Zhan Ran, and Zhi Li have won particular fame.

As the reader can imagine, on both counts Guo-qing temple (Reign of Purity) was well named. It was hidden in a rocky nest of cliffs carved out of Tian-tai by the flows of several streams, which raced down from the fathomless source high somewhere up in the heavenly roof and for long ages past the mountain. It was a retreat for those priests and monks who came there leaving behind their attachments in the marketplaces of the mundane world to embark on the course of arduous route back to the Dao or Dharma—a trip which traditionally is called Return to the Yellow Spring.

Tian-tai Buddhists displayed a notably syncretic spirit, even for China. Tian-tai itself, from the very beginning a syncretic teaching, had particularly close ties to Pure Land salvationist devotion. The Tian-tai line of the Buddha teachings’ transmission started with patriarch Hui Wen of the Northern Qi (550 - 577) and followed with Hui Su. In 560, when monk Zhi Yi went to Mount Ta-si to pay his respects to Venerable Hui Su, the second Tian-tai patriarch, under whose guidance he diligently practiced the way of Dao and finally attained the Dharma Lotus Samadhi.

First the patriarch said to him, Oh, you have come! We listened to the Dharma Flower Sutra together on Vulture Peak at the time of Shakyamuni Buddha, do you remember?

As soon as Zhi Yi heard that, he reflected, Yes, that’s right. We did investigate the Dharma Flower Sutra together at the time of Shakyamuni Buddha.

Afterwards Master Zhi Yi had a state. One day he was reading the Dharma Flower Sutra and reached the section in which Medicine-King Bodhisattva burnt his body as an offering to the Buddha. The passage read like this: This is true vigour. This is called a True Offering of Dharma. Zhi Yi suddenly entered samadhi, right while reading the text, and was able to see the Dharma Flower Assembly on Vulture Peak with Shakyamuni Buddha still speaking the Dharma and multitudes of bodhisattvas, Sound Hearers, and those of the Eightfold Division listening to the Dharma Flower Sutra. Later he went to Tian-tai where he built a temple by the name of Xiu Chan-si (New Practice of Contemplation). However, by imperial order he very soon went to Jinling to give a series of lectures on the Lotus Sutra, the Benevolent-King Prajnaparamita Sutra, and the Perfection of Wisdom Discourse. His lectures on the Lotus Sutra and his discourse on Mahayana meditation delivered at the Yü-quan (Jade Spring) temple were later edited by his disciples and became the fundamental texts of the Tian-tai