Zen – early Tibet

Tibetan Chan IV: The Great Debate

March 31, 2010April 22, 2010 by Sam van Schaik, posted in Buddhism, Chan, China and Tibet, Historiography, Manuscripts, Zen

Why does history get written? I think we’d all agree that the motives for creating history are mixed, and just as complex as the uses it gets put to after it’s written. Though most of Tibet’s histories are histories of religion, it would surely be naive to imagine that the motives of their authors were wholly religious. After all, the union of religion and politics (chösi zungdrel in Tibetan) was not just a fact of life in Tibet, it was an ideal, a dearly-held expression of the uniqueness of Tibet’s culture.

So how does this apply to the story of the great debate between Chinese and Indian Buddhism that is supposed to have taken place at Samyé monastery under the aegis of the emperor Tri Song Detsen? The debate is certainly presented in religious terms, as a battle between two interpretations of the Buddhist scriptures. On the Chinese side, the Chan approach of the single method: the realization of the nature of mind leading to instant enlightenment. On the Indian side, the gradual approach of the six perfections leading to a gradual awakening in ten stages.

The classic account of the debate and the source for all later Tibetan historians, is the Testament of Ba. And this, even in the earliest form available to us, is clearly not a disinterested account. It gives the proponent of the Chinese view a brief paragraph to defend his position, followed by pages and pages of the proponents of the Indian view. And most of the refutation of the Chinese approach is spoken by a Tibetan nobleman from the Ba clan. But hang on, isn’t the Testament of Ba all about the Ba clan? Well, it certainly seems to have been put together by people from that clan, and it certainly places the Ba clan in the middle of the action in the story of how Buddhism came to Tibet.

I don’t think it’s much of an exaggeration to say that the story of early Tibetan history is the story of the Tibetan clans. Before Tibetan history began to be recorded, the clans were contesting with each other. During the Tibetan empire, the clans were in theory united under the emperors, but in truth, they continued to contest with each other, and this was one of the major factors in the ultimate failure of the empire. And after the empire fell, the fighting between the clans created what the historians called “the age of fragmentation.”

As for the Ba clan, they were deeply involved in the imperial court and often in competition with the Bro clan for the top ministerial positions. They seem to have played some part in the conspiracy against the Buddhist emperor Ralpachen, leading to his assassination and the enthronement of the deeply unpopular Langdarma. Given that Langdarma came to be blamed for the collapse of monastic Buddhism in Tibet, and the inception of the age of fragmentation, it seems that the Ba clan had some PR work to do if they wanted to demonstrate their credentials as supporters of the revered Buddhist emperors. And that’s what the Testament of Ba does, quite successfully.

* * *

So where does the story of the debate fit into this? Obviously it puts the representatives of the Ba clan at the side of the greatest Buddhist emperor. It may also be a not-so-subtle attack on another major clan, the Dro, the clan that most frequently crops up in the Ba clan’s power struggles. And as the empire began to fall apart the first civil war was between the governor of Tibet’s northeastern territories (who was from the Dro clan) and a general who wanted to set himself up as a local warlord (from the Ba clan). The governor sided with the new Chinese power in the region, and the general was, after committing some appalling brutalities, eventually executed. For more about this see here and here.

So we shouldn’t be surprised if the old enmity between Ba and Dro finds expression somewhere in the Testament of Ba. Perhaps in the story of the debate? Consider the evidence:

1. There’s a Chinese manuscript from Dunhuang (Pelliot chinois 4646) that tells another debate story. As in Testament of Ba, the Chinese side is represented by the Chinese monk Moheyan, but the proponents of the other view are only mentioned as “Brahmin monks.” This manuscript also talks about “discussions” by letter over several months, rather than a staged debate. And the biggest difference is that it ends with the Tibetan emperor giving his seal of approval to the Chinese teaching:

The Chan doctrine taught by Mahayana is a fully-justified development based on the text of the sutras; it is without error. From now on the monks and laity are permitted to practise and train in it under this edict.

But what is most relevant to us is that it mentions that Moheyan was invited by one of Tri Song Detsen’s queens, the one from the Dro clan. The Chinese author of the text makes this quite clear.

2. A Tibetan manuscript from Dunhuang (Pelliot tibétain 996) gives us an account of a lineage of Chan masters. It begins with an Indian master who travelled to the Silk Road city of Anxi.* Here’s a translation of the beginning, which gives an idea of the tone of the work:

The master Artenhwer, an instructor who knew the path of the sameness of all phenomena travelled to Anxi from India, for the sake of sentient beings. There he gathered three hundred students, and taught them how to enter the Mahāyāna. He received divine food offerings from the sky, which satiated his three hundred students. At over a hundred years old he passed away in the posture of nirvana. Then the king of Anxi struck the body and said “If the master came to explain the dharma to multitudes of sentient beings, why did he only teach a few words?” And, having died, the master rose again for three days and taught the dharma to the king of Anxi and the Chinese prince of Gazhou.

The lineage of this Artenhwer gets passed down to a Chinese monk called Man Heshang. And he is supported by Trisumjé, the delön (the minister responsible for the northeastern marches of the Tibetan empire) — this is almost certainly a famous Tibetan minister from the Dro clan who lead the negotations for to the 823 Sino-Tibetan peace treaty. Later in this Chan lineage there’s a Tibetan master called Puk Yeshé Yang, who is supported by a monk from, once again, the Dro clan.

So, is it reasonable to suggest that the Chan teachers like Moheyan were known to have the patronage of the Dro clan? That would certainly make the story of the debate in the Testament of Ba very useful in their struggle with the Dro. Not only does it place them at the centre of the narrative of the transmission of Buddhism to Tibet, it’s also one in the eye for the Dro clan and their favourite Chan teacher.

* * *

This rivalry might answer a question posed by Matthew Kapstein: why is Testament of Ba generally well disposed towards Chinese Buddhism, except in the story of the debate? Earlier in the Testament of Ba we hear about a member of the Ba clan travelling to China receiving teachings from the Korean Chan teacher known as the Reverend Kim. While later Tibetan historians tended to present the debate as a rejection of Chinese Buddhism per se, the Testament of Ba, especially in its earliest known forms, suggests more specifically a rejection of Moheyan’s brand of meditation practice.

That’s enough for now. I won’t go into the question of whether the debate actually happened, although the very different version in the Chinese text certainly suggests that we might be better off thinking of a series of discussions, mostly by exchanges of letters, rather than a debate. And the author of 10th century Lamp for the Eyes of Meditation, which is all about how to rank the simultaneous and gradual methods, fails to mention any debate. And many, if not all, of the Tibetan Chan manuscripts from Dunhuang date from after the Tibetan empire, and thus well after when the debate was supposed to have happened, suggesting that the decline of Chan in Tibet happened slowly, and for other reasons.

* * *

A note on places and people…

So where is Anxi (An se in the Tibetan text)? Most people, following Lalou, have identified it with the great northern Silk Route city of Kucha. But this might not be right. Anxi was the name of the Chinese command centre for its western territories. This was in Kucha until the late 680s, when that city was taken by the Tibetan army, and the Chinese moved the Anxi commandery to Qocho (Ch. Gaochang). By my calculations, separating each member of the lineage by 25 years, Artenhwer should have been around in the first half of the 8th century, by which time Anxi may have referred to Qocho.

As for Artenhwer (A rtan hwer), this looks like a Tibetan transliteration of a Chinese transliteration of a foreign name, so finding the original may be a hopeless task. Flemming Faber identified it as the popular Persian name Ardasir, but as far as we know, there was no Buddhism in Persia by this time. It certainly doesn’t sound particularly Indian. Turkic perhaps? Any informed answers or wild guesses great appreciated…

And Dro Trisumjé? Hugh Richardson considers the identification of Pelliot tibétain 996’s Trisumjé with the army commander Dro Trisumjé doubtful. But it doesn’t seem at all unlikely to me that bde blon Trisumjé mentioned in Pelliot tibétain 996 might have later held the role of army commander (dmag gi mchog). His involvement in the Sino-Tibetan treaty involves the same region that fell under the rule of the bde blon. A letter written by a Chinese officer to a Zhang Khri sum rje (Pelliot tibétain 1070 — see Demiéville’s Concile de Lhasa, pp.280-290) says that he chose Dunhuang as his residence and founded a temple there. Roberto Vitali has argued that this is Dro Trisumjé, and that he must have lived in Dunhuang before 810, when, due to a promotion to the rank of minister and general of the northeast army, he would have moved to a major prefecture like Guazhou. Though Vitali didn’t consider Pelliot tibétain 996, the fact that Trisumjé held the post of bde blon only strengthens his case.

* * *

And some Tibetan…

From the beginning of Pelliot tibétain 996 (f.1r):

$//mkhan po nam ka’I snying po’i dge ba’i bshes nyen gyI rgyud mdor bshad pa// dge ba’I bshes nyen yang/ chos mnaym pa nyId kyI lam rIg pa’/ mkhanpo a rtan hwer/ sems can gyI don du rgya gar yul nas/ yul an ser gshegs te/ slob ma sum brgya bsdus nas/ theg pa chen po’i don la cI ltar ‘jug pa’I sgo bshad/ lha’I zhal zas nam ka las blangs te/ slobs sum brgya tshIm bar byas so/ lo brgya lon nas/ ner ban thabs su dus las ‘das so/ de nas an se’I rgyal pos lus brda+bs te/ mkhan pos sems can de snyed la chos bshad na/ bdag la tshIg ‘ga’ yang ma bstan par gshegs sam zhes smras pa dang/ tshe ‘das te zhag gsum lon ba slar bzhengs te/ an se’I rgyal po kwa c[u’]I wang chos bshad nas dus la ‘das so/

* * *

References

Hugh Richardson wrote about the rivalry between Dro and Ba as a background to the debate in:
1. Hugh Richardson. 1998. “Political Rivalry and the Great Debate at Bsam-yas.” In High Peaks, Pure Earth. London: Serindia: 203-206. (Unlike most articles in this collection, this one had not previosly been published.)

This is the earliest extant version of the Testament of Ba is the Dba’ bzhed:
2. Pasang Wangdu and Hildegard Diemberger. 2000. The Royal Narrative Concerning the Bringing of Buddha’s Doctrine to Tibet. Wien: Verlag der Osterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.

That is, apart from a manuscript fragment from the 9th or 10th century:
3. Sam van Schaik and Kazushi Iwao. “Fragments of the Testament of Ba from Dunhuang”. Journal of the American Oriental Society 128.3 (2008 [2009]): 477–487.

The classic work on the Chinese text on the debate (or discussions), the Dunwu dacheng zhenglie jue 頓悟大乘政理決 is:
4. Paul Demiéville. 1958 (republished in 2006). Le Concile de Lhasa. Paris: Institute des hautes études chinoises.

Later Demiéville found another version of the text in the Stein collection, Or.8210/S.2647. As for the Tibetan Chan lineage in Pelliot tibétain 996, this was studied and published even earlier, in 1939, by Marcelle Lalou (surely the first person to discover the existence of Tibetan Chan among the Dunhuang manuscripts):
5. Marcelle Lalou. 1939. “Document tibétain sur l’expansion du Dhyāna chinois.” In Journal Asiatique October-December 1939: 505-523.

On the involvement of the Ba clan with the assassination of Ralpachen (or, if you follow his ingenious argument, actually of Langdarma) see:
6. Zuiho Yamaguchi. 1996. “The Fiction of King Dar-ma’s Persecution of Buddhism”. In De Dunhuang au Japon. Geneva: Librairie Droz. 231-258.

On the battle between two members of Dro and Ba in Amdo/Hexi, see:
7. Luciano Petech. 1994. “The Disintegration of the Tibetan Kingdom”. In Tibetan Studies, edited by Per Kværne. Oslo: The Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture.

On Dro Trisumjé, and other aspects of clan rivalry during the Tibetan empire, see pages 18, 21-22 of:
8. Roberto Vitali. 1990. Early Temples of Central Tibet. London: Serindia Publications

and this too:
9. Roberto Vitali. 2004. “The role of clan power in the establishment of religion (from the kheng log of the 9-10 century to the instances of the dByil of La stod and gNyos of Kha rag).” In The Relationship between Religion and State : (chos srid zung ‘brel), in Traditional Tibet, edited by Christoph Cuppers. Nepal, Lumbini International Research Institute.

And finally, Matthew Kapstein’s discussion of the attitude towards Chinese Buddhists in the Testament of Ba is on pages 34-35 of:
10. Matthew Kapstein. 2000. The Tibetan Assimilation of Buddhism. Oxford University Press, 2000.

Tibetan Chan III: more teachings of Heshang Moheyan

June 10, 2008September 9, 2008 by Sam van Schaik, posted in Buddhism, Chan, China and Tibet, Dzogchen, Uncategorized, Zen

In the last post we were looking at Heshang Moheyan, the Chinese teacher of Chan (better known in the West as Zen) who became for Tibetans a lesson in how to go wrong in meditation. He taught, they said, a method of suppressing thoughts leading to a blank state of mind that could be mistaken for enlightenment, but was really just a dead end. Not only that, but his teachings were dangerous too, scorning the traditional division between virtue and vice, because both were just thoughts and therefore obstacles to enlightenment. As an old saying attributed to Moheyan goes, it doesn’t matter whether the cloud is white or black–it still blocks the sun.

Well, as I mentioned last time, the Dunhuang manuscripts contain the teachings of Heshang Moheyan, and they were much less simplistic, and more reasonable, than the later cartoonish version of him might suggest. For one thing, he didn’t advocate the suppression of thoughts (with a blank mind “like an egg” as one version of the Samyé debate nicely puts it). He says this quite clearly:

Therefore you should not suppress concepts. Whenever they arise, if you do not fabricate anything but instead let them go, then they will stay as they are and come to rest by themselves; thus you will not pursue them.

So I think we can say with some confidence that the ‘real’ Heshang Moheyan (insofar as we can claim to know him) was quite aware of the dangers of approaching meditation as the mere suppression of thoughts. He also didn’t think that the simple approach set out in the quotation above was right for everybody. In fact it was only intended for “those of the sharpest faculties.” For the rest of us he taught a series of five techniques of increasing subtlety. All are misguided in some way apart from the fifth and ultimate method.

1. A direct awareness of the arising of deluded thoughts.
2. An examination of that awareness.
3. The prevention of the arising of thoughts.
4. The perception that thoughts have no intrinsic nature (that is, they are empty).
5. Awareness of the arising of deluded thoughts without analysing or pursuing this awareness, so that thoughts are freed the instant they arise.

So it would clearly be an oversimplification to characterize Moheyan as teaching a single method for every student. It seems here that he is well aware of the need for different methods depending on the ability of the student. Likewise, he didn’t reject the bodhisattva’s classic path of six ‘perfections’: generosity, morality, patience, energy, meditation and wisdom. In the Dunhuang manuscripts Moheyan answers a question on this very topic with subtlety. The question is, “is it necessary to practice the other dharma methods, like the six perfections?” Moheyan answers:

“According to conventional truth, the six perfections are said to be the means for teaching the ultimate truth; it is not that they are unnecessary. According to the scriptures that speak of the ultimate truth beyond the ordinary mind, there is no knowing or saying whether the other dharma methods like the six perfections are necessary. This is explained more extensively in the sutras.”

Isn’t this the move that the Perfection of Wisdom sutras make over and over again? From the conventional point of view, ethical practice and meditation are necessary to progress toward the goal. But from the point of view of the goal, ultimate truth itself, these practices are all empty of any real existence. So, as Moheyan says, one can’t speculate from the position of ultimate truth about the need for methods which don’t truly exist. What one cannot say, according to Moheyan, is that the six perfections are unnecessary. That possibility is the only one that he is excluding here.

* * *

Perhaps the disagreement between the two sides in the Samyé debate really comes down to this question: who are these people with sharp faculties who can access ultimate truth directly through their own awareness? Because for everybody else, Moheyan’s teachings are not that different from the Indian and Tibetan masters he is supposed to have faced in the debate. If a significant proportion of students may be considered to have sharp faculties, then the difference between the two sides is a significant one; but as that proportion shrinks, so does the difference between the two sides.

I’m not sure we can ever say what Moheyan’s position was here. It might be argued that if he spent so much time teaching the direct approach to ultimate truth, he must have thought that there were plenty of students able to practise it. Perhaps. If we look at a similar (though not identical!) tradition, that of Dzogchen, the Great Perfection, we find that the same issue comes up again and again. The greatest exponent of Dzogchen, the fourteenth-century scholar and meditator Longchenpa, wrote this:

“The great yogins who arrived at that [ultimate] state–such as Padmasambhava, Vimalamitra and Tilopa–taught it directly, without cause and effect, virtue or sin. Even if we can understand this intellectually, we have not reached it through becoming truly accustomed to it. Therefore we are taught it only when we are no longer afraid of that state and can be careful about the subtleties of cause and effect.”

For Longchenpa then, the class of those who can approach ultimate truth directly without a gradual build-up is very small, and perhaps no longer exists at all, consisting only of famous masters from the distant past. As we know from his many other works, Longchenpa was very serious about teaching the direct approach to the ultimate. Yet as this passage makes clear, for everyone but the very greatest of meditators this did not mean rejecting the Buddha’s teachings on causation, or ethics.

If the Dunhuang fragments really do present Moheyan’s teachings, then there is every reason to believe that he held much the same view. He may have had a more optimistic idea of the number of students able to approach the nature of mind directly with no previous training, but he was careful to emphasise the need and value of the rest of the Buddha’s teachings.

* * *

References and Tibetan texts

This post, like the last, is indebted to Luis Gomez’s excellent article which gathers the Tibetan sources for Moheyan’s teachings (see the reference in the previous post). The first quote in this post comes from The Lamp for the Eyes of Contemplation (p.165). The five approaches are found in Pelliot tibétain 117 and The Lamp for the Eyes of Contemplation (p.165). The quotation on the six perfections appears in Pelliot tibétain 823 (f.2.4 to 3.3) and is also found the Chinese version of the Samye debate in Pelliot chinois 4646 (136b.2-5). Finally, the Longchenpa quote is found in Jigmé Lingpa’s Yeshé Lama (p.332; I haven’t found the location of this passage in Longchenpa’s work yet). I also discussed the issue of the different types of student in the context of Dzochen in my book Approaching the Great Perfection (pp.115-124).

Bsam gtan mig sgron p.165: de bas na ‘du shes dgag par yang mi bya / ‘byung bzhin ci la yang mi bcos par gyi na ye gtang ji bzhin du bzhag dang rang zhi ste rjes su mi ‘brang ngo //

Pelliot tibétain 823: f.2.4-3.3: pha rol tu phyin pa drug la stsogs pa’i chos kyi sgo gzhan dgos saM myI dgos/ smras pa/ kun rdzob ltar pha rol tu phyin pa drug kyang/ don dam par bstan pa’i phyIr thabs su bshad de/ myI dgos pa yang ma yin// don dam par smra bsam las ‘das pa’i gzhung ltar na/ pha rol tu phyin las stsogs pa chos kyI sgo gzhan dgos saM myI dgos shes smos su yang myed de/ mdo sde las kyang rgyas par bshad do/

Ye she bla ma p.332: gshis der phebs pa’i rnal ’byor pa chen po rnams la rgyu ’bras dge sdig med pa thad drang du bshad de padma dang/ bi ma la dang/ te lo pa la sogs pa bzhin no/ rang cag rnams la blos de ltar rtogs kyang goms pas thog du ma ’phebs pas/ gshis la mi skrag cing las ’bras cha ’phra ba la ’dzem pa dang sbyar nas bshad do/

Also in this series:
Tibetan Chan I: The Emperor’s Chan
Tibetan Chan II: the teachings of Heshang Moheyan

Tibetan Chan I: The Emperor’s Chan

November 13, 2007April 21, 2009 by Sam van Schaik, posted in Buddhism, China and Tibet, Zen

Once upon a time, in the old days of Imperial Tibet, foreign Buddhist teachers flocked to Samyé monastery, the centre of the newly emerging Tibetan Buddhism. Indian, Nepalese, Chinese and Central Asian teachers all came to offer their religious wares to the Tibetans. This pleasantly nonpartisan period couldn’t last. By the late 8th century tension developed between the different groups of foreign teachers and their Tibetan disciples, particularly between the Indians and the Chinese. While the Indian teachers taught a graduated path in which the tantric and sutric teachings were carefully laid out as steps to enlightenment, the Chinese taught a method they called Chan (their pronunciation of the Sanskrit dhyāna, meaning “contemplation”). Chan, the forerunner of Japanese Zen, emphasized the result rather than the path, and a straightforward concept-free meditation rather than the multitude of methods offered by the Indian teachers.

When the tension between the Indian and Chinese camps threatened to erupt into violence (in fact, some of the Chan disciples actually wounded themselves in protest and threatened suicide), the Tibetan emperor Trisong Detsen called for the situation to be resolved in a formal debate. The debate would decide which nationality, and which teaching method, would henceforth be supported by the monarchy, and which would be banned from Tibet. The Indian side chose Kamalaśīla, a leading light in scholastic Indian Buddhism and the graduated path. The Chinese side chose a monk known as Moheyan, an influential Chan master from Dunhuang. The debate resulted in a decisive win by the Indian side. The Chan teachers were sent back the China, and Chan was never seen again in Tibet.

That, at least, is the traditional Tibetan story. As is so often the case, the manuscript evidence tells another story. Tibetan Chan is represented in dozens of manuscripts, some of them translations from Chinese Chan, others apparently composed in the Tibetan language. The handwriting and formats of many of these manuscripts suggests that Tibetan Chan continued through to the 10th-century at least. Some manuscripts, like the huge concertina manuscript Pelliot tibétain 116, have been quite thoroughly studied by modern scholars. Others, like the one I want to introduce here, have not.

The manuscript IOL Tib J 709 is a collection of nine Chan texts, starting off with the teachings of Moheyan himself, and continuing with the words of other Chan masters, including one with the Tibetan name Jangchub Luwang (byang chub klu dbang). Most interesting of all is the very last text in the collection, called The Chan Document (bsam gtan gi yi ge). The first line of this text says that “it appeared under the neck seal of the Divine Emperor Trisong Detsen.” Considering that Chan is supposed to have been banned by this very emperor, what are we to think of this?

Well, we know a little bit about the “neck seal”. Another Dunhuang manuscript (IOL Tib J 506) describes “the neck seal of the Divine Son”, the Divine Son (lha sras) being another title for the emperor. Unlike ordinary seals, which featured a single image, the neck seal contained several images: a mountain, the sun and moon, the ocean, a banner and a swastika (g.yung drung). The name “neck-seal” may indicate that the seal hung round the neck of the emperor, and was therefore only used by the emperor himself. Therefore the suggestion is that The Chan Document (and the very name is suggestive of a royal edict) was written under the personal authority of the king.

So, what can we say about the nature of these Chan teachings that had the approval of the Tibetan emperor?

Like several other Tibetan Chan texts, The Chan Document calls its teachings “the great yoga” or Mahāyoga, which just happens to be the name of a class of tantric scripture and practice that was very popular at Dunhuang. This is really quite strange, and could mean several things. Ken Eastman wrote that these texts must have been written by “members of a Chan lineage who were attempting to disguise their teachings with the name of Mahāyoga.” But this seems unlikely, as there is no other attempt to disguise that these are Chan teachings from China. This particular collection of Chan texts even includes a Tibetan-Chinese glossary of Chan terminology. I have argued, in an article written with Jacob Dalton, that some practitioners in Sino-Tibetan areas like Dunhuang actually combined the techniques of tantric Mahāyoga and Chan. There is evidence for that in certain manuscripts, though not in the one we’re looking at here. Here Mahāyoga, “the great yoga”, really does just seem to be another name for Chan.

One striking thing about the kind of Chan that appears under the king’s approval is that it is not the radical Chan that advocates only one method: non-conceptualization. As it says in the last line, “simultaneously blocking [concepts] with a single antidote will not be helpful.” There seems to have been a debate within Tibetan Chan between those who advocated the single antidote of non-conceptualization and those who employed a variety of practices. Another text in the same collection (IOL Tib J 709/4) states argues that Chan can include many different methods: “While doctors may use various methods depending on the illness, the science [of medicine] remains the same.” This debate reflects the situation within Chinese Chan in the eighth century, when the master Shenhui was attacking the notions of many methods and gradual realization. Over the following centuries the single method and sudden realization became Chan orthodoxy in China and Japan.

So, if The Chan Document really was personally authorised by Trisong Detsen, we can say that he supported the version of Chan that allowed for a variety of methods. This authorized Tibetan Chan would of course be much more open to accepting the Buddhist practices taught by other schools, including the teachers of Indian scholastic Buddhism. It is not the kind of Chan presented by Moheyan in the stories of the Samyé debate, but it is much closer to the Chan taught by the real Moheyan (this we can see from other manuscripts containing Moheyan’s teachings, which have been discussed in the articles by Katsumi and Gomez referenced below).

Even if we accept if that The Chan Document really was personally authorised by Trisong Detsen, some important questions remain. Did Trisong Detsen authorise The Chan Document before or after the Samyé Debate? Or was there really no debate as such, just a series of royal consultations and edicts on what was acceptable or otherwise in the Chan teachings? In any case, The Chan Document may be our most important piece of evidence for the Tibetan emperor’s interest and involvement with the teachings of Chan.

References
1. Eastman, Kenneth M. 1983. “Mahāyoga Texts at Tun-huang” in Bulletin of Institute of Buddhist Cultural Studies (Ryukoku University) 22: 42–60.
1. Gomez, Luis O. 1983.”The Direct and Gradual Approaches of Zen Master Mahāyāna: Fragments of the Teachings of Moheyan” in Gimello, Robert M. and Peter N. Gregory (eds), Studies in Chan and Hua-yen. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press: 393–434.
2. Katsumi, Okimoto. 1977. “bSam yas no shūron (3), nishu no makaen ibun [The Religious Debate of bSam yas (3), Two Writings by Moheyan]” in Nihon chibetto gakkai kaihō 23: 5–8.
3. Kimura, Ryūtoku. 1976. “Tonkō shutsudo chibetto bun shahon Stein 709 [The Dunhuang Tibetan Manuscript Stein 709]” in Nihon chibetto gakkai kaihō 22: 11-13.
4. Ueyama, Daishun. 1983 “The Study of Tibetan Ch’an Manuscripts Recovered From Tun-huang: A Review of the Field and its Prospects” in Lai, Whalen and Lancaster, Lewis (eds), Early Ch’an in China and Tibet. Berkeley: Berkeley Buddhist Studies Series. 327–349.
5. van Schaik, Sam and Jacob Dalton. 2004. “Where Chan and Tantra Meet: Buddhist Syncretism in Dunhuang” in Susan Whitfield (ed), The Silk Road: Trade, Travel, War and Faith. London: British Library Press. 61–71.

Tibetan sources
Anonymous. Dba bzhed [Accounts of Ba]. In Wangdu, Pasang & Hildegarde Deimberger. Dba’ bzhed: The Royal Narrative concerning the bringing of Buddha’s Doctrine to Tibet. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.

Also in this series:
Tibetan Chan II: the teachings of Heshang Moheyan
Tibetan Chan III: more teachings of Heshang Moheyan