Buddhist Masters of Modern China

Benjamin Brose: I would say not in spite of what’s happening but because of what’s happening to a certain extent, the leaders of monastic communities realize we better do something. If some decisive action is not taken, we’re in danger of losing this 2,000-year-old tradition that has thrived in different periods throughout Chinese history. And so for that reason, because of the pressure that they’re under, because of the challenges they’re facing, people have to get creative. They have to try new things. They have to really put their nose to the grindstone and get to work. And the goal for almost everybody is to demonstrate the real value in the Buddhist tradition. They’re being critiqued for having nothing to offer, and so the leaders of the monastic community are basically saying, “Let us show you that we’ve got all sorts of things to offer.”

James Shaheen: Hello, and welcome to Tricycle Talks. I’m James Shaheen, and you just heard Benjamin Brose. Ben is a professor of Buddhist and Chinese studies and chair of the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Michigan. His new book, Buddhist Masters of Modern China: The Lives and Legacies of Eight Eminent Teachers, explores the histories and teachings of eight masters who brought about a Buddhist revival during the political turmoil of the 20th century. In my conversation with Ben, we talk about the persecution that Chinese Buddhists faced at the turn of the 20th century, the creativity and innovation with which many Buddhist monks and nuns responded to these challenges, the variety of approaches taken to revitalize the Buddhist tradition, and the remarkable life of the Chan master Laiguo. So here’s my conversation with Ben Brose.

James Shaheen: So I’m here with scholar Benjamin Brose. Hi Ben. It’s great to be with you.

Benjamin Brose: Hi. Nice to be here. Thanks for having me.

James Shaheen: So Ben, we’re here to talk about your new book, Buddhist Masters of Modern China: The Lives and Legacies of Eight Eminent Teachers. So to start, can you tell us a bit about the book and what inspired you to write it?

Benjamin Brose: Sure. Yeah. So the book is designed as an introduction to modern Chinese Buddhism running from roughly the late 19th century through the middle of the 20th century, and the reason I was inspired to write it was really two things. The first is coming out of my own experience. When I first got introduced to Buddhism as a teenager growing up in California, I was introduced to the American Zen community, which draws its traditions from Japan, and I kind of absorbed a narrative about China that while Zen developed there and flourished there after it was transmitted to Japan, it lost its vigor in China and was preserved in Japan and, from Japan, came to the United States. I didn’t really question that. And when I first started traveling to China in the late nineties, I was looking for historic sites, like Zen temples where such-and-such a master once lived, where this event had occurred, and so I was treating Chinese Buddhism like a museum, basically. But what I found when I went to these monasteries were these vibrant communities of monks and nuns who were incredibly sharp, many of them very accomplished, and I found them so engaging to talk with. I didn’t realize that there was such a vibrant tradition still existing. I think a lot of people in the US, if they’re familiar with Buddhism, if they know anything about Chinese Buddhism, they probably could have similar impressions. I think that’s kind of a common narrative. And so as I went on in my life and in my career, I studied premodern China because that was the trend in that day and age. But in the last twenty to twenty-five years, there has been this blossoming of incredible work that’s been done on modern Chinese Buddhism by a number of scholars, and many of them are featured in the book. Each scholar contributed a profile of a different monk or nun, and so really the other inspiration was wanting to showcase this amazing work that’s come out over the last couple decades and to create the kind of book that I wish I had when I was trying to understand this stuff in my younger years.

James Shaheen: So you say that while many Chinese monks have come to the West to offer instruction and establish places of practice, they’ve mainly addressed their teachings to Chinese-speaking disciples, not to Westerners. Why would that be?

Benjamin Brose: It’s an interesting question. I don’t have a definitive answer. I think there’s a few different things we could point to about why Chinese Buddhism has not really entered the mainstream like so many other Buddhist traditions have in this country. On the one hand, there is a current of anti-Chinese discrimination that goes back to the really late 19th century and occasionally flares up here like it did during the pandemic. I think there’s some suspicion around certain aspects of Chinese culture in certain sections of our society. There’s also an inheritance of Japanese narratives about the way Chinese Buddhism has developed over the centuries, and we’ve inherited those narratives through scholarship and through teachers that have come here. And it has usually portrayed later stages of Chinese Buddhism in a not very flattering light. And third, I think when Buddhism was initially getting established in this country, so the 1960s and ’70s into the ’80s, this was the time of the Cultural Revolution in China where it’s fair to say that Chinese Buddhism was in really bad shape, and so not many people were paying too close of attention to what was going on there because it was so embattled at that time. And so while Zen was getting established, Tibetan Buddhism, Vipassana, there really wasn’t much happening in China at that particular moment. That’s changed since then. But that may be a historical reason why it hasn’t really gotten off the ground in the same way that other traditions have in this country.

James Shaheen: You point out that people in China did not necessarily disagree with this critique that Buddhism in China was not vibrant or was in decline, and many saw Buddhism as a root cause of the political problems the nation was facing in the middle of the 20th century rather than a source for solutions. So can you give some context on the social and political climate of China in the 20th century? Why was this the case, and what were some of the challenges it was up against?

Benjamin Brose: Yeah, the challenges come from really every direction. The whole country was quite embattled during this. In the middle of the 19th century, you have what’s known as the Taiping Rebellion, where you have this man who has visions that he’s the younger brother of Jesus Christ setting up his own independent kingdom and essentially launching a Christian-inspired rebellion that that resulted in the death of tens of millions of people, so tremendous suffering that’s generated across the board, but the particular targets were Buddhist monks, nuns, and monasteries, because they were seen as idolaters. Temples were destroyed; monastics were killed or fled to other places. And so after this rebellion ended in the 1860s, it’s just kind of a wasteland in the heartland of Chinese Buddhism, southeastern China. Monasteries are destroyed, texts are destroyed, traditions are disrupted, and so people are trying to rebuild. But at the same time, you have the encroachment of Western powers. You have these Opium Wars, these humiliating defeats at the hands of Britain and Japan. The whole society is really teetering at that moment. They’re incredibly vulnerable. This is when the imperial system finally collapses after more than 2,000 years. So you have an entire political system and a social system that it supported just collapse, and there’s nothing yet to replace it. And so all these things are happening. Western missionaries are coming into China, Western militaries are coming into China, as well as businesses and so forth. People in China are aware of what’s happening in other places. Korea’s been occupied, Taiwan’s been occupied, Hong Kong’s been occupied. They’re basically getting surrounded by colonial powers, and they realize if they don’t do something, they’re going to be at the mercy of Western powers and Japan. And so when they are reassessing their situation, one of the things that comes under attack is Buddhism. All these old traditional ways of thinking, practicing, cultivating oneself begin to appear to certain people, not everybody, as kind of backwards, not suited to the modern world. You have hundreds of thousands of monastics who don’t contribute to the economy. They don’t pay taxes, they don’t serve in the military. Many people accuse them of being social parasites. One famous writer even describes them as being essentially a virus on the body of China that’s just weakening it and making it more vulnerable to attack. And so in this situation, there is a movement to just get rid of them, right? Let’s send these monks and nuns back to lay life. Let’s make them productive members of society. Let’s take the temples and turn them into schools or factories or government offices. A whole rethinking of the place of religion, especially Buddhism, other forms of religion as well in Chinese society. So at this particular moment, when the Buddhist community is already weakened, it gets attacked from all sorts of different angles as well. So it’s a really challenging time for monks, nuns, and laypeople in China.

James Shaheen: You know, despite all of this, it was also a time, you say, of great creativity and innovation for Chinese Buddhism. In fact, you go so far as to describe it as a time of rebirth. So can you tell us about this period of revival of Chinese Buddhism, perhaps in response to these conditions?

Benjamin Brose: Yeah. Yeah, I would say not in spite of what’s happening, but because of what’s happening to a certain extent, the leaders of monastic communities realize, “We better do something. If some decisive action is not taken, we’re in danger of losing this 2,000-year-old tradition that has thrived in different periods throughout Chinese history. “ And so for that reason, because of the pressure that they’re under, because of the challenges they’re facing, people have to get creative. They have to try new things. They have to really put their nose to the grindstone and get to work. And the goal for almost everybody is to demonstrate the real value in the Buddhist tradition. They’re being critiqued for having nothing to offer, and so the leaders of the monastic community are basically saying, “Let us show you that we’ve got all sorts of things to offer. We haven’t done enough of a job to make that visible to people in society. So it’s up to us now to show people what we have to offer.” And so they get all these very impressive, creative, determined people who are doing very interesting things, and those are some of the people that I wanted to profile in the book.

James Shaheen: So I know there were plenty of differences in how to respond, but what were some of the commonalities in how Buddhist leaders responded to these critiques?

Benjamin Brose: Some of the commonalities in a sense was just to admit counterintuitively that you’re right. There are issues that need to be resolved. Monks are not as well educated as they should be. They do not do a good enough job of contributing to society. And they have not disciplined themselves to the level that would be expected of a monastic in China who has made vows. They saw a need for reform as well, and they took it upon themselves to start to create and implement different types of reforms, and they did that in different ways, but there’s a commonality in that they all felt the need to really do something at this critical juncture.

James Shaheen: They differed in exactly what to do. So let’s start with those monastics who sought a return to fundamentals, emphasizing the importance of rigor in order to counter what they saw as moral decline.

Benjamin Brose: Yeah, so this is probably the most influential group of monastics who felt as though the Buddhist tradition, obviously an ancient tradition, had been functioning quite well in China for a very long time, and many of them felt firmly that the system was not problematic. This is a system for practice and realization, and if done properly, it leads to awakening, insight, freedom from the cycle of birth and death and samsara and suffering, all the things that Buddhists aim for. So it wasn’t that the system had any flaws in it; it was that people weren’t implementing it correctly. They weren’t taking it seriously enough. They weren’t living up to the expectations of the tradition in terms of their own discipline, their own understanding, their own practice. And so for these fundamentalists, we could call them, it was literally get back to fundamentals. Do the practice, take it seriously. Get some results, and then when people see those results, there will be more respect for members of the monastic community and there’ll be more respect for the tradition.

James Shaheen: So many in that group focused on a single relatively simple practice like investigating a critical phrase, the huatou, reciting the Buddha’s name, or studying a single sutra. Can you say more about this back-to-basics approach?

Benjamin Brose: Sure. It’s a single practice often, and it’s simple on the one hand but incredibly complicated on the other because as anyone who’s tried to do, say, koan practice or huatou practice knows, it’s not complicated, but it’s not easy to do. And so the idea was you choose one practice, and for many monks and nuns, it was whatever practice suits you best. That’s fine. One is not necessarily superior to another. There were people who disagreed with that, but that was the common understanding. But you choose something, you do that completely, and you do it with every ounce of your energy and every ounce of your being, whether that is reciting the Buddha’s name, whether that is investigating a huatou, or critical phrase, whether that is becoming fully immersed in the world of the Lotus Sutra or some other Buddhist text. You do that until you become a complete master of that, and that becomes a vehicle for generating insight and realization.

James Shaheen: You know, while some monks and nuns focused on strengthening the foundations of traditional Buddhist practice, others shifted toward a new vision of practice better suited to the current reality. Can you tell us about this new vision of practice?

Benjamin Brose: Yeah, there were a number of people who thought that going back to basics wasn’t going to cut it, that the world had changed so dramatically in the modern era, the area of colonial powers and globalization, that it wasn’t enough just to go back to models that had been created hundreds of years ago. What was needed was a new approach that was adapted to the new situation, and so for them, fundamentally changing aspects of the tradition, not rejecting the accomplishments of past masters, but rethinking things. So for example, studying at monastic schools where you’re not just studying Buddhist texts, but you’re studying biology and physics and linguistics and math, new modern skills so that monks and nuns could be educated like Christians were being educated. There’s a sort of competition going on with Christians who are gaining more and more influence in China at that time.

Another thing that they proposed was a much stronger engagement with society demonstrating their worth through actually getting out there and doing things like running orphanages, creating hospitals, becoming politically engaged, for some people, serving in the military, really becoming fully meshed with society in a way that monastics in the past had kept a certain amount of distance. There’s always been, of course, interaction between the state or the empire and monks and nuns in society. But this was at a new level, and it was a new vision for Buddhism taking a different kind of role within Chinese society.

James Shaheen: So can you tell us, then, about Taixu’s vision of building a pure land on earth for the emancipation of all people, as he put it?

Benjamin Brose: Yeah, so Taixu is a fascinating figure. He is profiled in one of the chapters of the book. And his vision is quite literally to have a revolution within Buddhism in parallel with the kind of political social revolutions that are taking place in China at that time. And so some of the things that he wanted to do were to shrink the size of the sangha, the monastic community, so you would have a very small group of highly educated highly accomplished monks and nuns rather than large numbers of people of varying different degrees. He also wanted to change or redirect the focus of major aspects of Buddhist practice away from what we might call otherworldly orientations: rebirth in the pure land, changing your fate after death, as a lot of Buddhists aim to do and say this idea that your goal is to get to a pure land after death. There’s nothing wrong with that. But what about this very world? We can’t neglect this world. And if we are going to talk about pure lands, how about making this very clearly impure, clearly problematic world, why don’t we direct our energy to transforming that into something that reflects our values and reflects the kind of society we would like to see? And so he tried very hard, not without controversy, to try to fundamentally change the structure and the nature of Buddhist traditions in China to that kind of new orientation.

James Shaheen: Just curious, how did he propose to shrink the size of monastics?

Benjamin Brose: Most monastics would just be returned to lay life, and only those who met certain qualifications had certain levels of training would be permitted to remain as monks and nuns. This was never implemented. It was widely rejected by the majority of the monastic population, but it just gives a sense of how he was envisioning how things could be changed.

James Shaheen: So this new vision also extended to finding new texts and practices, which led monks to travel to Japan and Tibet to search for texts that had been forgotten or lost.

Benjamin Brose: Yeah. It’s an absolutely fascinating period because for hundreds of years, Buddhism in China was pretty self-contained, just like Buddhism in other places as well. In large part through Taixu’s urging, he wasn’t alone in this, but the idea was, let’s see what we can learn from Japan if we send monks there to study and see what sort of texts they’re using. Are there things about Japanese Buddhism that we can use to reinvigorate Chinese Buddhism? He sent monks to live for extended periods to learn Tibetan, to live in Tibetan monasteries, translate Tibetan texts into Chinese Tantric Buddhism to try to infuse aspects of Chinese Buddhism with elements of Tibetan Buddhism. He sent monks to Sri Lanka, monks to India. They went to Europe. They studied classic Buddhism with European scholars. So the idea was, let’s gather any useful information we can and let’s make Chinese Buddhism comprehensive so that it reflects the broader Buddhist world. He introduced vipassana style meditation practices. People affiliated with him and his group studied those techniques and reintroduced them to China. So it was this new infusion of all these different techniques that hadn’t been part of mainstream Chinese Buddhism in prior times.

James Shaheen: So all these revitalization efforts came to an abrupt stop with the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. Can you tell us about the persecution of Buddhists under the Chinese Communist Party and how this shaped the trajectory of Chinese Buddhism?

Benjamin Brose: You know, when the communists come to power in 1949, there’s a brief period as they’re becoming established where it’s a little unclear which direction they’re going to move in, but over time it becomes quite clear that they’re hostile toward religious traditions, which, in classic Marxist fashion, they view as the opiate of the people, a hindrance to progress, a backward, feudalistic way of thinking. And so many of the leaders of monastic communities, many of the figures profiled in this book, are arrested, are sent to reeducation camps, where they are required to reform their thoughts to be more aligned with a Marxist communist ideology and to disavow certain aspects of Buddhist thought. Some of them were beaten. Some of them were jailed. It was an incredibly dark and difficult time for Buddhists in China, which only got worse, as most people will know, during the Cultural Revolution, which started in 1966. Basically Buddhism, along with other religious traditions, was outlawed. So there were no longer any truly functioning monasteries or temples. Monks were all returned to lay life, as were nuns. It was not possible to engage in Buddhist practices openly. Some people still tried to maintain their practice privately, but it was incredibly dangerous. So you have what is basically a twenty-year period where there is just a hole in the tradition where nothing was allowed to happen, and in a tradition like Buddhism that relies on one generation training, teaching, passing on their knowledge to the next generation, when this period ended, which was really early eighties, late seventies, and people tried to pick up the pieces, there was a big gap to fill because there was a lack of continuity between the generations. So some older monks returned to their robes and tried to teach younger monks. Younger people were ordaining, but in a very different environment than they would’ve been ordaining in a century earlier. So it created huge issues, I think, many of which have been overcome, but some of which are still lingering in China.

James Shaheen: So Ben, as you’ve mentioned, this book focuses specifically on the period between the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1911 and the establishment of the PRC in 1949, and it includes profiles of eight eminent monks and nuns. So your chapter focuses on Laiguo, a formidable Chan master who reinvigorated the Chan tradition. So to start off, could you tell us a bit about his early life? Who was he, and what were some of the pivotal moments that set him on the path of practice?

Benjamin Brose: Yeah, Laiguo is a fascinating figure. I’ll try to be brief because he lives this very long and complicated, interesting life. As a young man, he feels like, and this is common to the life stories of many monks who become prominent later on. He feels a special affinity with Buddhism. As a child he said he heard the Heart Sutra, and he understood it immediately and realized that it was his destiny to become a monk. But nonetheless, he goes on and lives a lay life, receives a very good education, eventually becomes married, and has a pretty good career as a government official. And then one day he literally walks away from it all. He leaves his job, he leaves his family, he walks quite a long way traveling to an island in the South China Sea named Putuo, which is a sacred place that’s understood to be the abode of the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara. While he’s there, he basically self-ordains. He cuts off his own hair. He discards all of his lay clothes, takes off his shoes, puts on a tattered robe, and for the next several years, he wanders around China trying to gain entrance into monasteries, trying to learn the proper procedure of a monastic. For a long time he has a really difficult time. He can’t get food. He’s trying to beg for food. No one will give him food. He’s often on the verge of starvation. He’s often suicidal by his own account because he feels like it’s just too difficult for him to do what he wants to do. But eventually he does gain entry into one of the most prominent places of Chan training in China, a place called Jinshan, and there he begins more formal training. He learns the etiquette of a monastic. He learns the monastic rules and fulfills his vows. And he really immerses himself 100 percent in his chosen practice, which is the investigation of the phrase, “Who is it that recites the Buddha’s name,” a kind of huatou or critical phrase that’s used as an object of meditation in the Chan tradition.

James Shaheen: So you describe a particularly powerful moment of awakening that was a turning point for him. So can you tell us about that experience?

Benjamin Brose: Sure. He’s living at this monastery, Jinshan, and he is, according to his own account (he wrote an autobiography), he’s so immersed in this question, “Who is it that recites the Buddha’s name,” that he is almost operating in a kind of fugue state where he gets confused. He doesn’t know where he is. He doesn’t know what he is supposed to be doing in the monastic schedule. He is in the dining hall and he forgets to eat. So he is just in this totally absorbed state. And he progresses like this, I think it’s two years, spending long periods in meditation in the meditation hall until one evening, as the one of the periods of meditation is ending, they strike the wooden board to signal the end of the period, and it’s at that moment that, as he describes it, he dropped his thousand-pound burden and felt like everything became clear to him. And he goes to some of the senior teachers and they question him, “Who is it that recites the Buddha’s name? Who is it that’s dragging this body around?” and other questions that are common in the Chan tradition. And according to his own account, he said he could answer all of them effortlessly, and his understanding was essentially complete at that point. And so that was a major turning point for him in the beginning of a new phase of his life where he’s eventually going to become a very prominent leader of the Chan tradition in China.

James Shaheen: Right. He eventually becomes abbot of Gaomin Monastery. So can you tell us about that monastery and its history and significance within the Chan tradition?

Benjamin Brose: Yeah, at the time, we’re talking early 20th century, there were a handful of monasteries that had a reputation in China for being very, very serious and very, very strict places of Chan or Zen training, and Gaomin was one of them. Some very, very famous monks went through their meditation hall and had their awakening experiences there. If people are familiar with probably the most famous Chan monk in China, Empty Cloud, Xu Yun is his Chinese name, it was in Gaomin’s meditation hall that he had his awakening experience. And so it had a reputation as one of the best places to practice Chan in China, but it was also run-down and dilapidated. Because of the persecutions I was describing earlier, it had lost a lot of its sources of revenue. And so when he eventually was tapped to take up the abbacy, which is a huge honor, the state of the monastery he describes is basically decrepit. Things are falling apart. There are weeds growing everywhere. They don’t have enough money even to feed the monks. And in typical Laiguo fashion, he says, “Some people would say this is a terrible situation, but this is the perfect situation. What better environment to practice in? Nobody’s going to bother us here. We can really get down to work.” And so he sets about transforming that monastery, bringing it back up to its former glory.

James Shaheen: Well, also in typical Laiguo fashion, he took the rigor at that monastery to the next level. In fact, if monks did so much as talk in a low voice in a corner or missed out on a single chore or meal, they would be immediately expelled or at least harshly disciplined. Could you say more about his role as uncompromising leader?

Benjamin Brose: Yeah. I mean, I think part of this maybe comes from his personality. He is a very intense figure. You get a sense of that reading some of his talks. But it also gets back to what we were talking about before. In an environment where monks and nuns are being critiqued for drinking alcohol, smoking opium, basically living like laypeople, being in relationships, he would tolerate none of that. And so in his monastery, he drew a very stark line saying, “These are the rules. If you so much as break even a minor rule, you’re finished here. So if you’re going to come train at my monastery, you’re committing to absolutely flawless behavior, and anyone who wants to screw around, you can go somewhere else.” But, as you can see in his opening talk for a meditation retreat, he doesn’t tolerate any nonsense in his monastery.

James Shaheen: Yeah. His determination is apparent early on when he runs away from his family to go to a monastery, and they drag him back. That seems to be a recurring theme among several people who ran off to the monastery. But his determination was pretty remarkable. There was a kind of a purity about the way he went about things that is stunning. But his rigor extended, not surprisingly, to his approach to practice as well. During periods of intensive retreat monks and nuns would meditate from 3:00 a.m. until 1:00 a.m. the next day, contemplating the huatuo, or critical phrase, “Who recites the Buddha’s name?” So this would go on for twenty-two hours on end, if my math is right. So can you tell us about huatou practice? Why did Laiguo view this as the most expedient path to awakening?

Benjamin Brose: Yeah, so Laiguo was not completely unique, but he was unusual in his commitment to this single form of practice, which he saw as the most effective, most powerful form of practice available. At that time, other monks and nuns were a little bit more relaxed about this. As I said earlier, there’s different dharma gates, and some people are going to be suited for one approach. Some people are good at studying text, some people are good at visualization practices, and you just find what works for you. For Laiguo, he says that the goal of this is awakening, and there’s only one thing that can bring you to awakening in this very life and this very body, and that’s Chan practice. The way Chan practice works for him and many others is that you investigate a critical phrase. There were different ones to choose from, but the most common one was, “Who is it that recites the Buddha’s name?” And so what’s going on here is that the most common Buddhist practice in China at this time is reciting the Buddha’s name, Amitabha Buddha’s name, over and over again with the hopes of being reborn in Amitabha’s pure land. And so Chan monks turn this around and say, this is fine. There’s nothing wrong with that necessarily. But the real question is, who’s doing this? Like, who are you really? Where do you come from? What are you? What constitutes you as an individual, and how do you relate to things around you? So a really fundamental existential question. So that was the technique:  to investigate this, to ask yourself, who are you? And the idea is, the progression is that when you ask most people that, Laiguo himself included, he said when he was first asked that in his younger years by a teacher, he said it was like drinking a gulp of ice water, that he was just shocked because he realized, “I don’t actually know, I don’t know the answer to that question. Why? Why don’t I know that?” And for him, the idea is that this question ideally becomes so consuming. There’s a famous case in the Gateless Barrier, the commentary where it’s talking about working with huatou says it’s like swallowing a red hot iron ball. You try to try to spit it up, but you can’t. That kind of sense of urgency that becomes all-consuming, which is described as a feeling of doubt. It’s very different, I think, than a lot of people who engage in Buddhist practice in the United States think about how practice is supposed to feel. In traditional Chan contexts, at least, still in Japan, it’s supposed to make you a little bit uncomfortable. There’s this sense of doubt that is supposed to fuel your practice and make it so that you’re always thinking about this question. You know, whether you’re sitting in meditation, whether you’re having breakfast, whether you’re lying down to sleep, brushing your teeth, this question is in your mind, and you can’t stop thinking about it. And so that’s why he got into that state I was describing of nothing else, whenever someone would speak to him, his response would be, “Who is it that recites the Buddha’s name?” He wouldn’t ever respond to people. It was really annoying. When people were trying to get him to do things, he wouldn’t respond. And so that’s the idea. And so then ideally as this gnaws at someone and as they gnaw on it, there should be a resolution, right? And this is him dropping his burden, feeling like he’s resolved that question. He understands it now. And so in his monastery, he’s pushing his monks and nuns, and it was co-ed, women and men sat together in the meditation hall, he’s pushing them to go through the same process he went through, and he is really relentless. But I’m sure from his perspective, it was out of a sense of compassion. He wanted people to have that same experience, which, for him, was an ultimate kind of liberation, and the only way to get there for him is to go through this path that he took.

James Shaheen: Right, he says that it’s the only practice that can resolve life and death. What did he mean by that?

Benjamin Brose: Yeah, he’s saying there’s all sorts of different practices. Of course, you can recite dharani. That’s fine. There’s some benefits to that. Maybe you get some powers from that. You can study the sutras. That’s good. You can get some benefit from that, some understanding. You can recite the Buddha’s name. Maybe that’s good for your prospects of rebirth. But if you want to resolve birth and death, if you want to attain awakening, if you want to exit the cycle of samsara, this is the method, right? If you want to attain the pinnacle of Buddhist practice for him, this is the path, but if you don’t want to do that, then there’s all these other options for you as well. But that’s what he focused on.

James Shaheen: He went so far as to reject and ban all other forms of practice, as during his tenure as abbot, sutra study, recitation of Amitabha Buddha’s name, and funerary rites were strictly forbidden. So can you tell us about the strict sectarianism and dedication to one practice at the exclusion of all others?

Benjamin Brose: Yeah, I think from his perspective, if you are going to do huatou practice or really any kind of practice, as we were saying before, you do it 100 percent right? And so it’s not that you do huatou practice for two hours and then you go read and relax or then you go perform a ritual for some donor. You do that 24/7. That’s the only way it really works. And so he was unusual in the sense that in most monasteries in his day and still to this day in China, there’s places where you can go recite the Buddha’s name; there’s places you can go meditate; there’s places you can go do sutra study. It’s almost like a university where there are different departments, and people might specialize in different areas. But Laiguo’s monastery, Gaomin, is just Chan. And so if you’re going to be there, that’s all you’re going to do. You don’t write. You don’t recite poetry. You don’t do anything except the practice. And his goal, at least, was to keep the tension up and to keep the focus strong so that people could hopefully achieve the kind of results that he was hoping they would achieve.

James Shaheen: So I really want to mention this because I found it so entertaining. I guess it appealed to me, and I don’t know if I’m to understand this hyperbolically or not, but in one of the talks you translate, he even says that if you break the rules of retreat, you’ll be beaten to death and thrown beneath the sitting platform. So how do we understand statements like these?

Benjamin Brose: Yeah, I think there may be a little bit of hyperbole there, but not much, because when he describes his own experience as a monk in training, he describes some really brutal beatings to the point where he loses consciousness sometimes where he can’t get up after he’s been beaten. I’ve never seen this in China in modern times, and I’ve spent some time in various different monasteries, Gaomin included, actually none of this type of punishment or discipline, put it that way. I haven’t seen it. But it does still exist in Japan in some Tinzai monasteries. This is a formidable and venerated tradition within Buddhism and other traditional arts. I think of it similar to in the United States, the whole philosophy of “Spare the rod, spoil the child, right?” It’s only recently that people have gotten away from that. But if you really want to teach somebody values, some kind of corporal punishment needs to be involved. It doesn’t work for us in this society anymore. And it’s quite shocking to see the level of discipline and the aggression that is imposed at a place like Gaomin and other monasteries. But I think what he would say, and what I’ve heard other masters say, is that this is the best way to really instill a sense of understanding and discipline in people. You could talk to them until you’re blue in the face: “You should be doing it this way, you’re doing it wrong. Actually, it should have been like this rather than like that,” where one hit with the stick and you don’t forget. And so we would maybe call that trauma, but in more traditional settings, and Gaomin was a very traditional setting. He took his own experiences, which, I should add, when he’s describing the beatings that he received as a monk in training, his response is really interesting. He says, “I’m so grateful those people really had my best interests in mind. If they hadn’t done that, I never would’ve been able to accomplish what I’ve been able to accomplish.” And so I think it’s with that intention that he is warning people, “If you’re going to come and sit in this retreat, don’t screw around. These are the rules, and we’re going to enforce them.” I don’t think he was actually murdering people in his meditation hall, but I do imagine that anyone who broke the rules more than once would’ve been ejected or dealt with pretty severely.

James Shaheen: Yeah. Being sick was also not an excuse for not sitting.

Benjamin Brose: Yeah, so alive, you sit, dead, you sit, if you’re sick, you sit. You’re sitting. It doesn’t matter what your state is. Good, bad, you’re going to sit.

James Shaheen: So Laiguo was abbot of Gaomin Monastery for three decades, and I wonder how the political and social chaos of the era affected Gaomin.

Benjamin Brose: Yeah. So the period that he served as abbot, the world around him was going through so many changes, all of them incredibly challenging. There was a civil war between the Communist party and the Republicans. In the midst of that civil war, there was a Japanese invasion and occupation that lasted about eight years, and the area where his monastery was was in the occupied zone. As we know, that was an incredibly brutal occupation. And then after the end of the war and the surrender of Japan and the evacuation, the Civil War continued between the communists and the Republicans, and the front lines were often right around the area where the monastery is situated. So all of these things are going on around this monastic community, and one of the things that was quite striking to me is reading through his autobiography, reading through his talks, these talks that I translate in the book, they’re given right in the middle of the occupation. So they’re surrounded by the Japanese military, basically. There’s no mention of it. There’s absolutely no discussion of it. And in a way, it could be that his disciples, when this was published, it probably wasn’t a very good idea to be expressing political views one way or the other. But I also think it was his sense that it doesn’t matter what’s going on out there; it matters what’s going on inside the meditation hall. Things are going well, things are not going well. Are you focused on your practice? That’s kind of his style, I think. But it’s remarkable that they persevered through that, and I think part of the reason they at Gaomin in particular were not as affected as other monasteries was probably because of the level of discipline and that would’ve most likely been respected by occupying forces who themselves were coming from a background where they appreciated a strong monastic institution and really disciplined teachers.

James Shaheen: So it could be that the reputation of Gaomin monastery spared them because the Japanese respected that level of discipline and practice.

Benjamin Brose: Yeah, I think when I was there, that was one of their explanations for why they didn’t suffer that much: Because they were a Chan monastery, Japanese Buddhists, some of whom were in the military, of course, recognized that and saw that what was going on there was not threatening to them, of course, and was also something that they maybe they didn’t necessarily want to support it, but they didn’t see a need to disrupt it. But that’s just speculation.

James Shaheen: So the Japanese withdrew from China in 1945 at the end of the war, but this wasn’t the end of the chaos. Following the rise of the Communist party, Laiguo was denounced as a futile landlord and sentenced to execution. Can you tell us about this denouement and how he managed to escape?

Benjamin Brose: Yeah, when the communists come to power, many leaders of especially large, prominent monasteries like Gaomin were denounced as landlords. This is a time when the goal is to create equality throughout society. So the idea that you would have a hierarchical system with certain people like abbots of monasteries who are indeed landlords. They control the states. One of the ways they supported themselves was by renting out fields and collecting rents from tenant farmers. And so he was a landlord, as all abbots of major monasteries basically were. And so that was essentially a crime once the Communists came to power, and many landlords were executed or jailed. Fortunately, again, I think his reputation saved him. There’s a very powerful lay person named Zhao Puchu, who found out what was going on and came and stopped any kind of execution that might’ve been planned. He had the power to do that, so Laiguo was spared. But he was in his sixties at that point. Whether it was because of all the difficulties he had to endure or whether it was just the natural course of his life, that was kind of the beginning of the end for him. He became ill. He had to leave the monastery and move to Shanghai where he was being looked after in a smaller temple by his disciples.

James Shaheen: You know, I was surprised when I read that. How is it that a layperson could push back against what was going on and get his life spared? How is that possible?

Benjamin Brose: Yeah, I mean,I don’t know the details of who was involved in this particular case, but often when these persecutions are happening, struggle sessions, as they’re called, they are sometimes being instigated by people who are no more than teenagers, young people, farmers, people who may be angry or may be caught up in sort of the fervor of the times, and there are politically powerful people, and Zhao Puchu was politically well connected, who had the authority to come in and say, “You guys, this one’s off limits. You can’t do that to this particular person.” Certain monasteries were saved that way. Certain people were spared that way. If you had those kinds of connections, and Laiguo’s reputation was such that I think people in positions of power realize that what he was doing was purely focused on practice and was not intended to be exploitative, was not a threat necessarily to the success of the Communist party, and so he was able to be spared, but a lot of other people weren’t.

James Shaheen: You know, even up to his final moments, he continued to express the same rigor and exactingness that he’d shown through his life. Would you be able to read that final quote and tell us a bit about its sentiment? It’s on page 66, I think.

Benjamin Brose: Sure. Yeah. So this is one of the talks he gave toward the end of his life. So again, the context is an intensive Chan meditation retreat where people are sitting for very long periods, and he is still sitting right along with them, it seems, even though he’s in poor and frail health. And so I think it’s a nice way to think about him and his approach. For anyone else, or many other people, at least in that situation, it’s probably time to rest and to take it easy and to take care of yourself. But he was in the meditation hall. He was still giving talks. And this is one of his last talks. He says, “I see that everyone is working diligently to navigate this muddy road. Every step forward is an accomplishment,” and so it’s very encouraging. “To create a life of farming and Chan, we have to first find stability. Be that as it may today, I’ve ascended this seat to say a few words. Why?” Then he leans on his staff and he says, “Quick! Hang up your cloth bags. We’ve got much to do before the end. No one can waste any time. There’s not a moment to spare.” And then he throws down his staff and descends his seat. So my read on that is even at the end, you don’t let your guard down, right? You do this 100 percent. You don’t rest, you don’t relax. This is urgent. It’s important, and he is goading on his disciples to the very end.

James Shaheen: So what was Laiguo’s legacy after his death, and how is he remembered today in China?

Benjamin Brose: He’s remembered today as one of the greatest Chan masters of his generation. There were others, but he’s right up there with them. His monastery, Gaomin monastery, is still considered a preeminent place of Chan training in China. I was able to spend some time there a few years ago. Their meditation hall is thriving. They still maintain the same traditions that Laiguo instituted. They follow the same rules. And when I was there, his disciple was serving as the abbot, and he had very much the same demeanor. He had inherited Laiguo’s style, very no-nonsense but very, for me at least, imposing but impressive monk. He’s since passed away, and the new generation has taken over, but the legacy is still strong, I would say, in that people are studying the teachings and doing their best to maintain the standards that he set out for people.

James Shaheen: So how old was his disciple when you met him? This is his direct disciple, right?

Benjamin Brose: This direct disciple, his name was Master Lin. He was in his, I want to say, early nineties when I met him.

James Shaheen: I asked because you mentioned the generational gap after the Cultural Revolution. There seems to be more continuity or a very fortunate continuity there.

Benjamin Brose: Yeah, the people who are portrayed in the book, many of them are gone before the Cultural Revolution and this major disruption. But their disciples, if they were ordained in their early twenties, say, by the time the Cultural Revolution had ended and things started to open up again, they might have been in their late forties or fifties, and some of those people came back and still had the knowledge to train the next generation. But it was a loss. There were a number of challenges, but they seem to have overcome them. There are different challenges now, but it’s been now, gosh, maybe forty years, I suppose, of a more or less functioning monastic establishment in mainland China.

James Shaheen: I imagine that some lineages were simply lost during that period. Is that correct? Or did they manage to survive?

Benjamin Brose: I’m sure that’s the case. Many of them survived, so a lot of them have been revived. But inevitably not all of them.

James Shaheen: Right. Ben, anything else before we close?

Benjamin Brose: Nope, that’s it. I mean, I really appreciated the questions and the conversation, so thanks.

James Shaheen: Yeah. Well, thank you, and I hope this rekindles an interest in Chinese masters of the 20th century that we’ve otherwise ignored.

Benjamin Brose: Thanks. Yeah, I hope so too.

James Shaheen:  ​​You’ve been listening to Tricycle Talks with Benjamin Brose. Tricycle is a nonprofit educational organization dedicated to making Buddhist teachings and practices broadly available. We are pleased to offer our podcasts freely. If you would like to support the podcast, please consider subscribing to Tricycle or making a donation at tricycle.org/donate. We’d love to hear your thoughts about the podcast, so write us at feedback@tricycle.org to let us know what you think. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts. To keep up with the show, you can follow Tricycle Talks wherever you listen to podcasts. Tricycle Talks is produced by Sarah Fleming and the Podglomerate. I’m James Shaheen, editor-in-chief of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. Thanks for listening!