Nanyue line
Chan
Nanyue line
Branch of Chan
The Nanyue line descends from Nanyue Huairang, a student of the Sixth Patriarch Huineng, and constitutes the second of the two great branches of Chan[1]. Through Nanyue's student Mazu Daoyi—one of the most influential Chan masters in history—this line gave rise to the Linji and Guiyang schools and profoundly shaped the character of Chinese Chan[2]. Mazu's Hongzhou school developed the use of shouts, blows, and spontaneous gestures as teaching methods, famously declaring 'This very mind is Buddha' and 'No mind, no Buddha.'[2] The Nanyue branch is broadly associated with dynamic, forceful, and unpredictable teaching styles. Nanyue is best remembered for his encounter with the young Mazu: seeing Mazu practicing intensive sitting meditation, Nanyue began polishing a tile nearby. When Mazu asked why, Nanyue said he was making a mirror. Mazu protested that polishing a tile cannot make a mirror, and Nanyue replied, 'How can sitting in meditation make a Buddha?'[1] This exchange shattered Mazu's attachment to the form of practice and became one of the foundational teaching stories of Chan[2].
Meditation practice
The Nanyue line, through Mazu Daoyi’s Hongzhou school, extended meditation beyond the hall into every activity of daily life[2]. Mazu’s radical teaching that ‘this very mind is Buddha’ collapsed the distinction between formal sitting and ordinary activity[2]. The line’s characteristic methods—shouts, blows, unexpected gestures, and paradoxical dialogue—were designed to shatter conceptual thought and trigger sudden awakening in the midst of engaged encounter.
Prominent masters
Key texts
- Record of Mazu Daoyi
The yulu of the master who is the single most influential figure in Chan after Huineng — 'this very mind is Buddha,' 'no mind, no Buddha,' the polishing-a-tile encounter with Nanyue. The template for all later encounter-dialogue literature.
- Record of Baizhang
The sayings of Mazu's principal heir who codified Chan monastic life — 'Pure Rules of Baizhang' and 'A day without work, a day without eating.' Source of the Chan monastic institution all subsequent schools inherit.
Key concepts
- This very mind is Buddha
Mazu's signature teaching: ordinary mind, right now, with nothing added or subtracted, is buddha-mind. The philosophical heart of the Nanyue branch and of all later 'sudden' schools.
- Hongzhou school
The name of Mazu's own teaching community at Hongzhou — used in later Chan historiography as a synonym for the 'everyday mind' style that the Nanyue branch made dominant after the mid-Tang.
In the words of the masters
- The Ten Thousand Things Return to the One
The ten thousand things return to the one. Where does the one return to?
- This Very Mind Is Buddha
This very mind is Buddha. When someone asks for the teaching outside this mind, he is like a man riding an ox looking for an ox.
- Polishing 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.
- Cart 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.
- Eight 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.
- Ordinary Mind Is the Way
What is the Way? Ordinary mind is the Way. What is ordinary mind? Hungry, eat. Tired, sleep. Foolishness arises only when we add anything else.
Masters in this branch
- Nanyue Huairang
- Xitang Zhizang
- Nanquan Puyuan
- Yanguan Qian
- Zhaozhou Congshen
- Jingqing Daofu
- Qinglin Shiqian
- Dongshan Shouchu
- Mazu Daoyi
- Luzu Baoyun
- Guizong Zhichang
- Yanyang Shanxin
- Dasui Fazhen
- Baizhang Huaihai
- Wufeng Changguan
- Mayu Baoche
- Baoen Xuanze
- Damei Fachang
- Wujiu Youxuan
- Zhongyi Hongen
- Zhangjing Huaiyun
- Panshan Baoji
- Guishan Daan
Sibling branches of Chan
Sources in use
- Chart of the Chan Ancestors
- Zen Editorial Overlay - Originals Curation