The emergence of the Hongzhou school goes back to Mazu's monasteries at Gonggong mountain and Hongzhou. Mazu's move to Kaiyuan monastery around 770 serves as a convenient turning point in his rise to preeminence as a Chan teacher. As we have seen, during the final decades of his life Mazu attracted a large number of students, many of whom became leading Chan teachers of their generation. These monks formed the nucleus of the Hongzhou school. At this early stage, for a brief period it was possible to characterize the nascent Hongzhou school as a local tradition, based in the capital of a southern province.
Although after Mazu's death in 788 some disciples stayed at the monasteries associated with him in Hongzhou, Gonggong mountain, and Shimen, most went their own ways. In fact, even before Mazu's death, some of his disciples went on to establish monastic communities in other parts of China. A large number, including Baizhang and Xitang, settled in Jiangxi and other southern provinces. If we were to look only at this information, it might be tempting to accept the conventional viewpoint of the Hongzhou school's identity as a regional movement whose geographical center was in Jiangxi, or more broadly the South.
However, the activities of monks in the South form only a part of a more complexstory about the Hongzhou school's early growth. If we stop there, we are leaving out some of the story's main protagonists and skipping key events in which they were involved. Fixation on the monastic centers in the South—notwithstanding the South's great importance in the subsequent history of Chan—obscures the true character of the Hongzhou school's development by failing to discern the scope of its success in becoming the main representative of the Chan tradition throughout the Tang empire.
As we saw in the preceding chapter, numerous disciples of Mazu settled in central China and the lower Yangtze area, especially Zhejiang, and a considerable number moved to the North. Many of these monks became leaders of monastic communities and prominent members of the local clergy. Among them, there were variations in the institutional settings in which they taught.2Some—including Baizhang and Dayi in Jiangxi, and Yanguan and Damei in
Zhejiang—became founders of new monasteries. Others—such as Guizong at Lushan and Wuye in Fenzhou—took over as abbots of established monasteries. These were the prevalent types of institutional arrangements among Mazu's leading disciples. In both cases, they had control over their monasteries,
although it is a mistake to assume that their establishments were “Chan monasteries” in the sense that this institutional designation was used during the Song period.
Other disciples did not establish new congregations, and their residence in different monasteries does not imply their control of those monasteries. Among this group, a few monks, such as Deng Yinfeng, assumed peripatetic lifestyles. Then there are the monks who took up residence in the large monasteries in the capitals. Although we have no clear picture of the exact status of Chan teachers such as Dayi and Weikuan when they resided in official monasteries in Chang'an, it is unlikely that they exerted control over those monastic establishments and congregations; rather, they probably enjoyed privileged status as prominent clerics, able to teach and have their own disciples and supporters, without necessarily exerting broad control over the running of the monasteries in which they resided.
Among Mazu's disciples active in the North, the monks who taught in the capitals were especially influential. Dayi, Weikuan, and Huaihui were prominent Chan teachers who introduced the Hongzhou school to key audiences in the cultural and political center of the Tang empire, which included three emperors and numerous high-ranking officials and noted literati. Their influence in Chang'an was crucial in the procurement of official recognition for the Hongzhou school and its rise to prominence, as is evident in the bestowal of a posthumous title on Mazu and the commissioning of Huairang's stūpa and memorial inscription.3
The Hongzhou school's move from the province to the capital invites comparison with the combined historical trajectory of the Northern school and its immediate predecessor, the East Mountain tradition. For a period of five decades—from Daoxin's move to Huangmei in 624 until Hongren's death in 674—the East Mountain tradition developed at a remote mountain monastery in Hubei. The provincial character of Daoxin's and Hongren's communities was replicated in the next phase of early Chan history, which corresponds to Shenxiu's stay at Yuquan monastery in Jingzhou (also in Hubei).4 The shift away from the Northern school's initial regional character and its
appearance on the national scene was marked by Shenxiu's move to Luoyang in 701.5 A court-oriented outlook is
evident among Shenxiu's leading disciples; Yifu (661–736) and Puji both served as imperial teachers, the first focusing on Chang'an and the second on the Luoyang area, although they each taught in both capitals.6
The main difference in the case of the Hongzhou school was that the move to the capitals did not come at the expense of its provincial base. Unlike Shenxiu, Mazu never made a trip to the capitals. Even as some of his disciples settled in Chang'an, many more remained at regional centers in Jiangxi and elsewhere. In that sense, unlike the Northern school, the move to Chang'an did not imply the adoption of a court-centered outlook by the Hongzhou school
as a whole. With its larger numbers, the Hongzhou school was able to simultaneously maintain strongholds in numerous locations, both at the imperial center in the capital and in the provinces.
Accordingly, the prevalent but dated notion that the Hongzhou school was a regional tradition, formed in part as a response to the court-oriented outlook of the elite segments of the Buddhist church (which included noted Chan teachers of the previous generations), is not tenable. Instead of normative views that underscore the Hongzhou school's Southern or regional character, it is more accurate to interpret its growth as the first emergence of a truly empire-wide Chan tradition. As Mazu's disciples established monastic communities or a teaching presence in various parts of China, they transformed the Hongzhou school into a broad movement with strongholds throughout the large empire. By the early ninth century, the Hongzhou school had become the main representative of the Chan movement, the end result of a process that unfolded over a short span of only a few decades and involved several related developments. The Hongzhou school's geographical expansion initially involved the creation of a strong regional base in Jiangxi and the nearby southern provinces. That was accompanied by the setting up of monastic centers in other parts of the empire. Before long, this was followed by the establishment of a solid presence in the two capitals. This pattern of the Hongzhou school's growth and its spread throughout the empire was not the result of a planned and coordinated strategy. Rather, its momentous growth was largely due to the efforts and religious activities of the individual monks recounted in the preceding chapter and was also helped by a confluence of exterior conditions that favored the Hongzhou school's rise to preeminence, including the demise of the earlier schools of Chan.
There are interesting parallels between the geographical spread of the Hongzhou school, on the one hand, and the changing relationship between the center and the provinces in the Tang political landscape on the other. The Hongzhou school's initial creation of a regional basis in and around Jiangxi coincided with Daizong's reign and the early part of Dezong's reign. During this period, following the end of the An Lushan rebellion, the weakened imperial government had only limited ability to assert central control. Because of the devolution of direct control from the capital, regional power centers formed, and the influence of local civil and military officials, like the ones who supported Mazu's community in Hongzhou, increased. The tension between the customary center denoted by the Tang imperium and the aristocratic elites, on the one hand, and the new centrifugal forces represented by the military and civil officials in the provinces, on the other, to some extent paralleled the contrast between the Buddhist establishment in the capitals and the emerging provincial Chan represented by Mazu's community in Hongzhou. Following its initial spread beyond the South during the latter part of Dezong's reign, the Hongzhou school's true emergence on the national scene as
a major Buddhist tradition took place during Xianzong's reign, a period of resurgence of the Tang state's power and restoration of the dynasty's prestige. As the institutions of the central government were renewed and the emperor was able to project his power to most of the independent-minded provinces, Chang'an and, to a smaller extent, Luoyang enjoyed an extended lease on life as cultural and political centers of a large and powerful empire. The entry of Mazu's disciples into the capital took place precisely during the period when the foundations for Xianzong's restoration of Tang rule were laid down, and their rise to prominence coincided with the rejuvenation of the imperial state. In that sense, the spread of the Hongzhou school was symbolic of the ongoing reconfiguration of the relationship between the center and the provinces. The Hongzhou school ended up encompassing the two, the capital-centered and the provincial, drawing on the advantages provided by both.