Yunmen Wenyan

Yúnmén Wényǎn , , was a major Zen master in -era China. He founded one of the five major schools of , the "Yunmen School", after succeeding his famous master, Xuefeng Yicun , for whom he had served as a head monk. When founding his school, he taught at the ''Yunmen'' monastery of , from which he received his name. The Yunmen school flourished into the early Song Dynasty, with particular influence on the upper classes, and eventually culminating in the compilation and writing of the ''Hekiganroku''. The school would eventually be absorbed by the Rinzai school later in the Song.

Biography

Yunmen was born in the town of Jiaxing near Suzhou and southwest of Shanghai, which usually refers to a specialist in vinaya: monastic rules and discipline; S?rensen mentions that some sources say that Chih-Ch'eng/Zhi Cheng was actually a ''Ch'an'' master) in Jiaxing. He studied there for several years, taking his monastic vows at age 20, in 883 CE. The teachings there did not satisfy him, and he went to Daozong's school . Suhotsu became abbot in 990 CE; although at the time, his foremost disciple was accounted Pai-yün Shih-hsing, who had founded his own temple on the nearby Mt. Pai-yün. His corpse would be venerated until the 20th-century, when it would disappear during the chaos of the Cultural Revolution.

Teachings

:''"Ummon's school is deep and difficult to understand since its mode of expression is indirect; while it talks about the south, it is looking at the north."'' — Gyomay Kubose

Yunmen was renowned for his forceful and direct yet subtle teaching, often expressed through sudden shouts and blows with a staff, and for his wisdom and skill at oratory: he was "the most eloquent of the Ch'an masters." Fittingly, Yunmen is one of the greatest pioneers of "live words", "old cases", and paradoxical statements that would later evolve into the koan tradition, along with Zhaozhou . He also famously specialized in apparently meaningless short sharp single word answers, like ''"Guan!"'' — these were called "Yunmen's One Word Barriers". These one-word barriers "...were meant to aid practice, to spur insight, and thus to promote realization. Not only his punchy one-syllable retorts, but also his more extended conversation and stories came to be used as koan." While his short ones were popular, some of his longer ones were iconic and among the most famous koans:
:''Yun-men addressed the assembly and said: "I am not asking you about the days before the fifteenth of the month. But what about after the fifteenth? Come and give me a word about those days."''
:''And he himself gave the answer for them: "Every day is a good day."''

Most were collected in the ''Yúnmén kuāngzhēn chánshī guǎnglù'' . But not all were — 18 were later discovered when a subsequent master of the Yunmen school, one Xuetou Chongxian published his ''Boze songgu'', which contained one hundred "old cases" popular in his teaching line, in which the 18 Yunmen koans were included. Of the many stories and koans in ''Blue Cliff Records'', 18 involve Yunmen; eight of Yunmen's sayings are included in ''Records of Serenity'', and five in The Gateless Gate; further examples could be found in the ''Ninden gammoku'', and the ''Ummonroku''. He was also considerably more mystical than certain other teachers who tended to concrete description; an apocryphal anecdote that began circulating around the beginning of the 1100s has Yunmen going so far as to forbid any of his sayings or teachings from being recorded by his many pupils :



:"''Ch'an Master Yunju of Foyin had said:''
::''When Master Yunmen expounded the Dharma he was like a cloud. He decidedly did not like people to note down his words. Whenever he saw someone doing this he scolded him and chased him out of the hall with the words, "Because your own mouth is not good for anything you come to note down my words. It is certain that some day you'll sell me!"''
::''As to the records of "Corresponding to the Occasion" and "Inside the Master's Room" : Xianglin and Mingjiao had fashioned robes out of paper and wrote down immediately whenever they heard them."''''

His disciples reputedly numbered 790, an unusual number of whom became . These successors would spread the Yunmen school widely; it flourished as one of the ''Five Schools'' for about 300 years, after which it was absorbed into the towards the end of the Southern Song dynasty .

Mention in later media

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

=General

* ''Jingde Chuandeng Lu'' 《景德傳燈錄》
* The Gateless Gate
*
* ''Records of Serenity''
*
*
*
* S?rensen, Henrik Hjort. "The Life and Times of the Ch'an Master Yūn-men Wen-yan", pp. 105-131, Vol. 49 of ''Acta orientalia'', ISSN 0001-6438
*