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TRUE LIKENESS AND THE SELF:

INTERPRETING THE VISUAL SIGN IN CHAN COMMENTARIES

According to the biography of Chan master Zhaozhou 趙 州 (778-897) in the

Transmission Record of the Jingde Era

There was a monk who drew the master’s true image and presented it to him. The master said: ‘Tell me, does this resemble me or not? If it resembles me, then strike this old monk dead. If it does not resemble me, then burn up the true image.’ The monk was at a loss for words.222

This excerpt shows that in the context of Chinese Buddhist portraiture, it is impossible to understand figural art without considering issues of true likeness and the self within the Buddhist tradition. The discussion in section two has pointed out that portraiture in both Western and Chinese art history tries to be an image of the self, even though it is often an image of an image. But what if portraits are created in a tradition that does not recognize a unique, individual self? Buddhist texts generally do not define a soul or self. What is identified as the individual self is in Buddhist theory, in fact, a collection of different awarenesses, including the senses and the mind.223 Moreover, this collection of awarenesses is, like all other phenomena, subject to causes and conditions, and constantly changing and transforming.

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Foulk and Sharf 1993-1994: 203.

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In Chinese art, terms for portraits and Buddhist portraiture (zhen真, xiang像,

dingxiang 頂相) seem to play with questions of likeness and presence, too. While

xiang ‘likeness’ can also be used for portraits of secular figures, zhen ‘true image’ and dingxiang, a term that originally referred to the invisible protrusion on the Buddha’s head, were the most commonly used terms for portraits in a Buddhist context.

Portraiture is a major topic in Chan literature, and this literature contains, in fact, the first and most important valuation of Chan paintings. Chan sources make clever use of the Chinese term for portrait, zhen, which can also be translated as “true” or “truth”. Early on, in the first unified Chan genealogical compendium, the

Patriarch’s Hall Collection, a Chan teacher and his students discuss the meaning of portraiture:

when the teacher was approaching the time of his death he addressed his congregation and said: ‘Is there anyone among you who can render my true image? If there is one here who can render my true image, then present it to this old monk to see.’ The congregation all proceeded to draw his true image and then presented them to the abbot. The teacher gave them all a beating. Then one disciple, Puhua, came forward and said: ‘I have rendered the teacher’s true image.’ The teacher said: ‘Give it to this old monk to see.’ Puhua did a somersault and left.224

Such comments on portrait images, on the surfaces of paintings as well as in collected discourse records, are puzzling and open to multiple interpretations. A fruitful way of understanding word-play in anecdotes is to read them in connection with the portrait image in its function as sign. While Chan abbots may seem, at first glance, to argue against art and portraiture, this is not the case. Commentators, in fact, rarely deliver pronounced judgments. Instead, the emphasis on most comments is on questioning.

By constantly questioning preconceived ideas of students, and viewers, about portraits, likenesses and art, abbots overrule the possibility of a single, unique and dominant interpretation of a particular image. Thus, they prevent blocking chains of signification that are the result of the portrait as sign. The interpretation of the paintings, then, is left to “unlimited semiosis”. The emphasis is on the existence of the painted image, which has itself been turned into an object of contemplation. Additionally, I would argue that the Chan questioning of preconceived ideas about art needs to be seen alongside Chan comments on the tradition of Buddhist texts. As

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discussed in Chapter One, scholars have often interpreted Chan comments on Buddhist texts and their use for Chan as a rejection of the textual tradition. These scholars have understood Chan as a tradition that moves away from texts. An alternative approach is to read comments on the function of texts within Chan not as judgments or definitions, but as questions that lead to a contemplation on the nature of texts, too. Further, these two strands of questioning can be said to come together in paintings of Chan monks reading and writing, mentioned briefly above. These paintings question ideas about art and texts, for instance when the monks “read” empty scrolls, or tear up scrolls.

Commentaries of Chan monks on paintings may be found at the end of their discourse records under the heading “Eulogies to Paintings of the Buddha and the Patriarchs” or “Portrait Eulogies”. The commentaries may be divided into several sections. The most important is that of commentaries of Chan abbots on their own portraits. Next, there are commentaries on paintings of Chan patriarchs, Buddhist deities such as the Bodhisattvas Maitreya and Guanyin, Luohan, paintings of the Buddha, of historical abbots and of legendary figures, including the eccentrics. The categories of paintings with commentaries in discourse records do not distinguish between levels of accurate likeness in the paintings, or the historicity of painted subjects. Instead, they subject all illustrations to similar considerations. Again, this is in line with what abbots’ comments propose: the categories reflect only minimal differentiation and avoid blocking the visual sign of the portrait image through interpretation. Chapter Three will study the commentaries in detail.

“CHAN ART”

Part of the Chan canon in both pictorial and textual form, portraits of Chan eccentrics are one of many aspects of Chan art. In contemporary scholarly discourse, the term “Chan art” is loaded. It is a much-encompassing, loose term that can function generically for a variety of art productions from the eleventh century onwards. Also, the term “Chan” in art is often used to describe influences of Chan concepts in Chinese art from the Song dynasty onwards, especially in the literati tradition of art. Chan concepts are assumed to have influenced the formalist view of art of the literati tradition, in particular such characteristics as the elimination of the polarities of subject and object, and the emphasis on brushstrokes. The conceptual influences that

such assumptions refer to are intricate, and further studies are needed to determine their exact nature. However, research is frequently dominated by a vague sense of what Chan in art means, and a various art forms are susceptible to essentializing such as that by Bryson. Traditional Chinese art historians, too, employ the idea of Chan in art in various ways. The famous Ming dynasty artist and art critic Dong Qichang 董其

昌 (1555-1636), for instance, developed a history of painting in China based on the Northern and Southern Schools of Chan.225 This history assumed that there was a tradition of coloured landscape painting which corresponded to a tradition of monochrome landscapes just as the Northern School of Chan corresponded to the Southern School. Notably, Dong did not imply a Chan aesthetic basis for either tradition, but only used the concept of the Northern and Southern schools of Chan as an analogy.

Interaction between Chan and literati traditions, with concomitant artistic results, is one of many aspects of Chan art. Another is an understanding of the term “art” for the Chan establishment. Art for the Chan establishment is a rich field of visual practices, in continuous communication with other worlds of art in China. Song Chan monasteries were centers of art production and art collection. Certain artworks are specific to the Chan tradition, but we should remember to study them as part of environments that include art forms that were not exclusive to Chan, but that Chan shared with other Buddhist and non-Buddhist groups in Song and Yuan China.

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