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Yunmen Wenyan

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The Zen Master Ummon.
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The Zen Master Ummon.

Yúnmén Wényǎn (862 or 864-949 CE), (雲門文偃; Japanese: Ummon Bun'en; he is also variously known in English as "Unmon", "Ummon Daishi", "Ummon Zenji"), was a Chinese Zen Master in Tang-era China. He founded one of the five major schools of Chan (Chinese Zen), the "Yunmen School", after succeeding his master, Xuefeng Yicun (Japanese: Seppo) (822-908), for whom he had served as a head monk. When founding his school, he taught at one particular monastery in particular, the Yunmen monastery of Shaozhou, from which he received his name.

Contents

Biography

Yunmen was born in the town of Jiaxing near Suzhou to the Zhang family (but later as a monk he would take the name Wenyan; to avoid confusion he will be referred to by his later name of "Yunmen"), apparently in 864 CE. His birth-year is uncertain; the two memorial stele at the Yunmen monastery mention he was 86 years old when he died in 949 CE, which when adjusted yields 864 as his birth year.

But while still a boy, Yunmen became a monk under a "commandment master" named Zhi Cheng (as Miura and Sasaki describe it[#endnote_1] which probably refers to a specialist in monastic rules and discipline; Sørensen mentions that some sources say that Chih-Ch'eng/Zhi Cheng was actually a Ch'an master) in Jiaxing. He studied there for several years, taking his monastic vows at age 20, in 883 CE. The teachings there did not satisfy him, and he went to Daozong's (also known as Reverend Chen, Muzhou Daozong, Muzhou Daoming etc.) to gain enlightenment and legendarily had his leg broken for his trouble. It first is said that Yunmen was crippled in the leg around 1100 CE:

Ummon [Yunmen] went to Bokushu's temple to seek Zen. The first time he went, he was not admitted. The second time he went, he was not admitted. The third time he went the gate was opened slightly by Bokushu, and thus Ummon stuck his leg in attempting to gain entrance. Bokushu urged him to "Speak! Speak!"; as Ummon opened his mounth, Bokushu pushed him out and slammed shut the large gate so swiftly that Ummon's leg was caught and was broken.
Zunsu told Yunmen to visit a certain Xuefeng Yicun of the Mt. Hsiang-ku, in Fuzhou (Fukushū) in modern-day Fujian, and become his disciple, as Zunsu was too old (~100 years old) to teach Yunmen himself. After a few years studying with him, Yunmen did so, and received after several years, enlightenment. While Yunmen had received his teacher's seal and approval, he nevertheless did not become abbot, probably because his stay was on the order of 4 or 5 years. When Yicun died, Yunmen began travelling and visited quite a number of monasteries, cementing his reputation as a Ch'an master.

During a subsequent visit to the tomb of the Sixth Patriarch in Guangdong, Yunmen ended up joining (911 CE) in the monastery of Rumin Chanshi/Ling-shu Ju-min, who died in 918 CE; the two of them became great friends. With his death, Yunmen became head priest of the Lingshu monastery on Mt. Lingshu (Reiju-in). At this time, the T'ang dynasty was greatly weakened, and entire sections of the Empire split away. The area of Southern China where Yunmen lived broke free during the rebellion of . Eventually, the Liu family became the rulers of the Southern Han (918-978) kingdom during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period. The ruler, Liu Yan, visited the monastery for Rumin's cremation (as Liu often sought Rumin's advice), and met Yunmen. Impressed, Liu Yan extended him his patronage, confirming his appointment as abbot of Lingshu monastery. But Yunmen's fame drew a great flow of visitors from all over China and even from Korea. All these visitors proved too distracting for Yunmen's taste, and in 923, he asked the king to enable him to build his own monastery on Mount Yunmen. The king acquiesced, and five years later, at the age of 64, Yunmen began living in and teaching in the monastery on the mountain from which he took his name. While the king and some of Yunmen's disciples continued to try to give Yunmen more responsibilities and honors, Yunmen refused, and returned to his monastery. This proved to be a wise decision, as his influence diminished considerably in succeeding years in the palace intrigues and invasions.

The front of the modern day Yunmen monastery.
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The front of the modern day Yunmen monastery.

One day, when Yunmen was 85 (or 86), he composed a farewell letter to his patron, the new king of the Southern Han, and gave a final lecture to his monks, finishing with the statement: "Coming and going is continuous. I must be on my way!" Then he (reputedly, in great pain because of his crippled leg) sat in a full lotus posture and died. He would be buried with great honours (but not as great as the state would have liked, as befitted a great master and spiritual minister of the state), and his surprisingly well-preserved corpse was exhumed several years later, and given a procession. In honor of this, his monastery was given a new name, and two stele erected, which recorded his biograpy. Yunmen was succeeded as abbot by Dongshan Shouchu (Japanese: Tōzan Shusho), who would be succeeded by Suhotsu in 990 CE; although at the time, his foremost disciple was accounted Pai-yün Shih-hsing, who had founded his own temple on the nearby Mt. Pai-yün. His corpse be venerated until the 20th-century, when it would disappear during the chaos of the Cultural Revolution.

Teachings

How steep is Yün-mên's mountain!
How low the white clouds hang!
The mountain stream rushes so swiftly
That fish cannot venture to stay.
One's coming is well-understood
From the moment one steps in the door.
Why should I speak of the dust
On the track that is worn by the wheel?
— Yun-men, from the Jingde Chuandeng Lu
 《景德傳燈錄》

"Ummon's school is deep and difficult to understand since its mode of expression is indirect; while it talks about the south, it is looking at the north." — Gyomay Kubose
Yunmen was renowned for his forceful and direct yet subtle teaching and for his wisdom and skill at oratory; fittingly, Yunmen is one of the greatest pioneers of "live words", "old cases", and paradoxical statements that would later evolve into the koan tradition, along with Zhaozhou (Japanese: Jōshū Jūshin). He also famously specialized in apparently meaningless single word answers, like "Guan!" (literally, "barrier" or "frontier pass") —these were called "Yunmen's One Word Barriers". Most were collected in the Yúnmén kuāngzhēn chánshī guǎnglù (雲門匡眞禪師廣錄). But not all were—18 were later discovered when a subsequent master of the Yunmen school, one Xuetou Chongxian (Setchō Jūken, 980-1052 CE) published his Boze songgu, which contained one hundred "old cases" (as koans were sometimes called) popular in his teaching line, in which the 18 Yunmen koans were included. Of the 100 koans in Blue Cliff Records, Yunmen contributed 14; eight of Yunmen's sayings are included in Records of Serenity, and five in The Gateless Gate. He was also considerably more mystical than certain other teachers who tended to concrete description; an apocryphal anecdote that began circulating around the beginning of the 1100s has Yunmen going so far as to forbid any of his sayings or teachings from being recorded by his many pupils ("What is the good of recording my words and tying up your tongues?" was one of his sayings):

The entrance to the Yunmen temple's zendo
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The entrance to the Yunmen temple's zendo

"Ch'an Master Yunju of Foyin had said:
:When Master Yunmen expunded the Dharma he was like a cloud. He decidedly did not like people to note down his words. Whenever he saw someone doing this he scolded him and chased him out of the hall with the words, "Because your own mouth is not good for anything you come to note down my words. It is certain that some day you'll sell me!"
:As to the records of "Corresponding to the Occasion" (the first chapter of The Record of Yunmen) and "Inside the Master's Room" (the first section of the second chapter of The Record of Yunmen): Xianglin and Mingjiao had fashioned robes out of paper and wrote down immediately whenever they heard them."''
His disciples reputedly numbered 790, an unusual number of whom became enlightened. These successors would spread the Yunmen school widely; it flourished as one of the Five Schools for about 300 years, after which it was absorbed into the Linji School towards the end of the Southern Song dynasty (~1127 CE).

Yunmen mountain.
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Yunmen mountain.

Mention in later media

Yunmen's Japanese name, Ummon, was the namesake for a character which was featured prominently in Dan Simmons' acclaimed Hyperion Cantos sci-fi series; Simmon's Ummon was a vastly advanced, intelligent AI from the "TechnoCore", who reveals key plot elements to the main characters, through koans and mondo (dialogue).

See also

References

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Miura, Isshuu, and Ruth Fuller Sasaki, Zen Dust: The History of the Koan and Koan Study in Rinsai (Lin-Chi) Zen

General

External links

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