Xuanzang

Biography

Xuanzang came from the prominent Chen clan of Yingchuan. His great-grandfather Chen Qin had served as administrator of Shangdang under Eastern Wei; his grandfather Chen Kang was an Erudite of the Imperial University under Northern Qi; and his father Chen Hui served as magistrate of Jiangling early in the Sui before resigning near the end of the Daye era to live in retirement and study the Confucian classics. Xuanzang lost his mother at five and his father at nine. As the family's circumstances declined, he went to live with his second elder brother Chen Su, the monk Changjie, at Jingtu Monastery in Luoyang.

Xuanzang was intelligent from childhood. By age eleven, in 613, he had become familiar with the Lotus Sutra and Vimalakirti Sutra. In 615, when the court ordained monks at Luoyang, the thirteen-year-old Xuanzang told Zheng Shanguo, Minister of the Court of Judicial Review, that his purpose in becoming a monk was “to continue the Tathagata's teaching from afar and to illuminate the bequeathed Dharma nearby.” Zheng admitted him as an exceptional candidate. After ordination, Xuanzang saw novice monks gathering in idleness and engaging in frivolous talk. He admonished them: “Does the scripture not say that those who leave the household do so to seek realization of the unconditioned Dharma? How can you continue playing like ignorant children and vainly waste an entire life?” He listened to Master Jing lecture on the Nirvana Sutra and read it so intensely that he forgot sleep and food. Under Master Yan he studied the Mahayanasamgraha, retaining its contents after a single reading.

During the wars and famines of the Sui–Tang transition, Xuanzang and Master Changjie went to Chang'an to study. Learning that many eminent monks were then in Sichuan, they continued to Chengdu. There Xuanzang heard Baoxian lecture on the Mahayanasamgraha, Daoji on the Samyuktabhidharmahrdaya, and Huizhen on the Astaskandhaka. Within three to five years he mastered the doctrines of several schools and became widely known. In 622, the fifth year of Wude, he received full monastic ordination in Chengdu and studied the divisions of monastic discipline.

In 624, the seventh year of Wude, Xuanzang traveled east along the Yangtze in the company of merchants. He first went to Tianhuang Monastery in Jing Prefecture, where he lectured on the Mahayanasamgraha and Samyuktabhidharmahrdaya. Eminent monks from the Huai and coastal regions came to hear him, and even the sixty-year-old senior monk Zhiyan treated him with great respect. After the lectures, Xuanzang again traveled north seeking established masters. In Xiang Prefecture he questioned Master Xiu on difficult points, then went to Zhao Prefecture to study the Satyasiddhi under Daoshen, and later to Yang Prefecture to hear Huixiu lecture on the Samyuktabhidharmahrdaya and Mahayanasamgraha.

In 627, the first year of Zhenguan, Xuanzang returned to Chang'an to study foreign languages and Buddhist learning. Under Daoyue, Fachang, Sengbian, Xuanhui, and other masters he studied the Mahayanasamgraha, Abhidharmakosa, Nirvana Treatise, and related works. He rapidly mastered the different doctrinal positions and won high praise in both capitals. The vice director Xiao Yu petitioned that he be allowed to reside at Zhuangyan Monastery.

Xuanzang found that Buddhist doctrines were explained differently in different regions, particularly that the interpretations of the Mahayanasamgraha and Dilun schools concerning the characteristics of dharmas often conflicted. He therefore wished to obtain the Yogacarabhumi, which he believed could encompass the teachings of the three vehicles and resolve his doubts. He decided to petition the court for permission to travel to India in search of the Dharma. Because he repeatedly failed to obtain an official travel permit, he ultimately left Chang'an on his own in 629, the third year of Zhenguan, and headed for India.

In 629 Xuanzang left Chang'an, passed through Guzang, present-day Wuwei in Gansu, and the Dunhuang region, and crossed the roughly 800-li Moheyan Desert. After enduring severe hardship, he reached the kingdom of Gaochang, where King Qu Wentai received and supported him with great respect. Qu wanted to compel Xuanzang to remain as teacher of the kingdom. Xuanzang fasted for three days to demonstrate his resolve. Ashamed and frightened, Qu bowed in apology, became Xuanzang's sworn brother, and made him promise that on returning from India he would stay in Gaochang for three years under royal support to lecture on the Dharma.

After leaving Gaochang, Xuanzang traveled through states of the Western Regions and crossed the Pamirs. His route passed through ancient states including Karasahr, Kucha, and Shule, then across Central Asia along extremely dangerous roads before he finally reached India. At Rajagrha in Magadha, he entered Nalanda, then the leading center of Buddhist learning in India, and studied under its abbot Silabhadra. Silabhadra had been a disciple of Dharmapala and belonged to the scholastic lineage descending from Vasubandhu. Over five years Xuanzang heard the Yogacarabhumi three times, the Nyayanusara once, the Prakaranaryavaca and Abhidharmasamuccaya once each, and works on logic, grammar, and epistemology twice each; he studied the Madhyamaka and Satakasastra three times. He had already heard lectures on the Abhidharmakosa, Mahavibhasa, the Six Padas, and related Abhidharma texts in Kashmir and other regions along his route.

Xuanzang later traveled through dozens of kingdoms across eastern, southern, western, and northern India, visiting Buddhist sacred sites and studying with many eminent monks. He also studied under the lay scholar Jayasena, who lived in seclusion at Staff Grove Mountain, learning works on Consciousness-Only, meaning and doctrine, fearlessness, non-abiding nirvana, the twelve links of dependent origination, and the Mahayanasutralamkara, while consulting him about difficult points in Yogacara and Buddhist logic.

After returning to Nalanda, Silabhadra asked Xuanzang to lecture on the Mahayanasamgraha and a treatise on the definitive interpretation of Consciousness-Only. Xuanzang composed the Hui zong lun in 3,000 verses, seeking to reconcile the schools of emptiness and existence and rebutting Simhaprabha's objections to the Yogacarabhumi. Silabhadra praised the work. Xuanzang also defeated a proponent of the Lokayata school in debate and, at Silabhadra's request, debated a Hinayana scholar alone and prevailed.

In 643, the seventeenth year of Zhenguan, King Harsha convened a great unrestricted assembly for Xuanzang at Kanyakubja. Xuanzang expounded Mahayana doctrine and presented his thesis of “true Consciousness-Only inference.” For eighteen days no one challenged him. His reputation then spread throughout the five regions of India. Mahayana practitioners honored him as “Mahayanadeva,” meaning “Deva of the Great Vehicle,” while non-Mahayana Buddhists called him “Moksadeva,” meaning “Deva of Liberation.”

In the first month of 645, the nineteenth year of Zhenguan, Xuanzang returned to Chang'an carrying 657 Buddhist works and was warmly received by Emperor Taizong of Tang. In the second month he met the emperor in the Yiluan Hall of the Luoyang palace and received an exceptionally cordial welcome. Xuanzang immediately expressed a wish to translate at Shaolin Monastery on Mount Song, but he was assigned instead to Hongfu Monastery in Chang'an. With strong imperial support, he began translation work in the sixth month. In 648, the twenty-second year of Zhenguan, at the request of the crown prince, later Emperor Gaozong, Great Ci'en Monastery was established within Chang'an with a translation institute, and Xuanzang became its senior monk. In 652, the third year of Yonghui, he built a five-story pagoda in the western court of Ci'en Monastery to store scriptures and images brought from India; it was the predecessor of the present Giant Wild Goose Pagoda.

While in the capital, Xuanzang received constant visits and offerings from court officials and powerful families, leaving him physically and mentally exhausted. In the fifth month of 657, the second year of Xianqing, Emperor Gaozong ordered that works not yet translated should take priority over works for which translations already existed, but Xuanzang did not follow the order. In the ninth month, while accompanying the emperor to Luoyang, he asked to reside at Shaolin Monastery, saying that he wished to “receive leave from official obligations and end my life in the mountains and forests, practicing worship, recitation, scripture reading, and walking meditation in repayment for the support I have received.” Gaozong refused. Only in 659, the fourth year of Xianqing, did the emperor permit Xuanzang to move to Yuhua Palace in Tongchuan, later converted into Yuhua Monastery, to continue translating.

In the tenth month of 663, the third year of Longshuo, Xuanzang completed his last major translation, the Mahaprajnaparamita Sutra, and remarked: “I came to Yuhua because of the Prajna. Now the work on the scripture is complete, and my life's course is also ending...” At the repeated urging of senior translators and disciples, on the first day of the first month of the following year, 664, he began translating the Maharatnakuta Sutra. After only the first section he found himself physically unable to continue and said: “This scripture is of a scale comparable to the Mahaprajnaparamita. Measuring my own strength, I can no longer undertake it. My death is near and cannot be far away...” He laid down his brush.

On the ninth day of the first month of 664, Xuanzang fell into a ditch behind his residence. His condition then deteriorated rapidly, and he died around midnight on the fifth day of the second month at the age of sixty-two. He was initially buried at Bailuyuan. In 669, the second year of Zongzhang, he was reburied at Shaolingyuan, also called Fengqiyuan, where a relic pagoda and Xingjiao Monastery were built.

Major Activities

Xuanzang's westward search for the Dharma lasted seventeen years and covered some 50,000 li through what the source describes as “138 countries.” He left Chang'an without authorization, crossed the Moheyan Desert and the Pamirs, and reached Nalanda in India, where he studied Buddhist texts for more than a decade under Silabhadra and other teachers. The journey not only addressed his own doctrinal questions but also made a major contribution to cultural exchange between China and India.

Beginning in 645, the nineteenth year of Zhenguan, Xuanzang directed translation work for about twenty years, producing seventy-five Mahayana and non-Mahayana sutras and treatises in 1,335 fascicles. Major works included the Mahaprajnaparamita Sutra, Samdhinirmocana Sutra, Mahabodhisattva-pitaka Sutra, Yogacarabhumi, Mahavibhasa, and Cheng weishi lun. He also translated the Laozi and the Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana into Sanskrit for transmission to India.

Xuanzang's observations from his route to and through India were compiled into the twelve-juan Great Tang Records on the Western Regions, dictated by Xuanzang and written down by his disciple Bianji. The work is a classic Chinese travel record and, because of the relative scarcity of surviving Indian historical records for many of the regions it describes, became an indispensable source for the geography and history of ancient India. Modern archaeological investigations guided by descriptions in the work have confirmed many of Xuanzang's observations.

Through his translations and interpretations of Buddhist texts, Xuanzang established the Chinese Faxiang or Consciousness-Only school. Its teachings had a deep influence on other Buddhist traditions. His disciples Kuiji, Woncheuk, and others continued his learning, making the school one of the important Buddhist traditions of the Tang.

During his years in India, Xuanzang won a number of doctrinal debates. He composed the 3,000-verse Hui zong lun to reconcile the schools of emptiness and existence and rebut Simhaprabha, defeated a Lokayata proponent, defeated a Hinayana scholar in a debate undertaken at Silabhadra's request, and stood unchallenged for eighteen days at the unrestricted assembly at Kanyakubja. After returning to China he lectured on Buddhist scriptures and doctrine in Chang'an, Luoyang, and elsewhere, gaining wide renown.