Nanyue Huairang
Nanyue Huairang
677 – 744
Nanyue Huairang (南嶽懷讓, 677–744) is traditionally treated, alongside Qingyuan Xingsi, as the senior Dharma heir of the Sixth Patriarch Huineng and the ancestor of the Hongzhou stream — and through Mazu Daoyi of the Linji house and Guiyang school of Tang Chan[1]. Like Qingyuan, his individual record is thin in early sources and his lineage role was largely constructed retrospectively by the lamp records to give the Hongzhou and Shitou streams parallel claim to direct Sixth-Patriarch descent[2].
The most-cited episode in his record is the "polishing the tile" exchange with his student Mazu, preserved most fully in the *Jǐngdé Chuándēng Lù* and recycled by Dōgen in the *Zazenshin*: Mazu sat in long meditation; Nanyue picked up a tile outside his hut and rubbed it on a stone; asked what he was doing, Nanyue answered, "Polishing it to make a mirror"; Mazu asked how polishing a tile could make a mirror, and Nanyue answered, "How can sitting in meditation make a Buddha?"[3] The exchange became the canonical Hongzhou-line caution against the reification of *zazen* and was a key text for Dōgen's later working-out of the relation between sitting and awakening[4].
Names
Disciples of Nanyue Huairang
Teachers and lineage of Nanyue Huairang
Teacher / root master:
Teachings
- dialoguePolishing a Tile
Mazu was practicing sitting meditation. Nanyue asked him, "What are you doing?" Mazu said, "I am practicing sitting meditation to become a Buddha." Nanyue picked up a tile and began polishing it. Mazu asked, "What are you doing?" Nanyue said, "I am polishing this tile to make a mirror." Mazu said, "How can polishing a tile make a mirror?" Nanyue said, "How can sitting in meditation make a Buddha?"
- proverbPolishing a Tile
I polished a tile in front of him until he asked what I was doing. I said: making a mirror. He laughed: a tile cannot be polished into a mirror. I said: nor can sitting be polished into a Buddha — if you are sitting in order to become one.
- proverbCart or Ox?
If a cart is stuck, do you whip the cart or the ox? If you sit in order to make the body still and the mind goes on as before, you have whipped the cart and not the ox.
- proverbEight Years to Speak
Mazu studied with me for eight years before I asked him a single question. The answer that came was already an old answer when it came. The eight years had not been spent on a question — they had been spent on the mouth.
Other masters in Nanyue line
Master Record Sources
677-744
Nanyue Huairang
Linji
- datesZen Editorial Overlay - Originals Curation
677-744
- nameZen Editorial Overlay - Originals Curation
Nanyue Huairang
- teachersZen Editorial Overlay - Originals Curation
Dajian Huineng