Miyun Yuanwu 密雲圓悟 (1567–1642) and His Impact on 17th-Century Buddhism

Abstract

This paper relies on the dataset “Historical Social Network of Chinese Buddhism” (Ver. 2021-06). The focus is on the period between c. 1570 and 1700 CE. We argue that the actor who was most influential for institutional Buddhism in the 17th century was not one of the “four great monks of the late Ming” but rather Miyun Yuanwu 密雲圓悟 (1566–1642). The network illustrates how Miyun’s Tiantong branch 天童派 of the Linji School became the dominant Chan lineage in China and beyond. The main results of this study are: (1) the data corroborate the assumption that (at least) monastic Buddhism declined between c. 1420 and 1570. (2) The network view de-emphasizes the importance of the ‘four famous late Ming eminent monks’ for the development of 17th-century Buddhist monasticism. (3) The data align well with a suggestion by Jiang Wu to distinguish two different stages in the development of late Ming Buddhism. The first is characterized by the “late Ming revival,” led by figures such as Yunqi Zhuhong, Zibo Zhenke, and Hanshan Deqing; the second phase is the organization of orthopraxy around the Chan lineage discourse dominated by Miyun Yuanwu and his students. (4) For the 17th century, the network data clearly shows the centrality of Miyun Yuanwu and his network.

1. Historical Background

This paper relies on the dataset “Historical Social Network of Chinese Buddhism”.1 A network view of Chinese Buddhism shows that, in spite of the occasional persecution, the social transmission represented by the main component of the network remained more or less constant. It was only in the early Ming dynasty that Buddhism truly fell on hard times. In the first decades of the Ming, both the Hongwu and the Yongle emperor instituted a rigorous legal framework that strongly impeded the development of monastic Buddhism for more than a century. By restricting ordination and temple construction (and actually enforcing the restrictions), the state subdued institutional Buddhism for several generations. On the cultural level, the Confucian-educated elite lost interest, and officialdom and (to a lesser degree) the court turned away from Chinese Buddhism.2 Whereas in the Song and Yuan, scholar-officials often engaged in dialogue with learned Buddhist monks, between c. 1420 and 1550 CE, this equilibrium of mutual respect was often replaced with contempt. With few exceptions, Neo-Confucian scholar-officials in those years were not inclined to see Buddhism in a favorable light.3 This situation started to change when the teachings of Wang Yangming (1472–1529) and his students entered the mainstream of Confucian learning about a generation after his death.4 After the death of the Jiajing emperor (r. 1521–1567), whom Dewei Zhang has called a “four decade persecutor” [of Buddhism],5 a fragile detente between the court, scholar-officials and Buddhists re-emerged, ushering in the “late Ming revival” of Chinese Buddhism.6 The network view strongly suggests that the late Ming revival consists of two distinct stages. First, the Longqing (r. 1667–1672) and Wanli (r. 1572–1620) reigns saw a renewal of literati patronage in Buddhism, the rise of highly educated monks, as well as a widespread restoration and expansion of Buddhist institutions.7 Partially overlapping with this development, but with concerns quite different from those of the Wanli revival, the rise of Miyun Yuanwu and his lineage should be understood as a second phase in this process of revitalization.

In our dataset, the almost 150 years of decline between Yongle and Longqing are clearly visible in Figure 1 as a long, thinned-out network region between the Yuan-Ming transition and the late Ming.8 It corresponds roughly to the time between 1420 and 1550 CE.9

In the study of late Ming Buddhism, four monks, sometimes grouped as the “Four Great Masters of the Late Ming” 明末四大高僧, have attracted a lot of attention.10 Over the decades, the field of Buddhist studies has produced a number of monographs concerning Yunqi Zhuhong 雲棲祩宏 (1535–1615), Zibo Zhenke 紫柏真可 (1543–1603), Hanshan Deqing 憨山德清 (1546–1623), and Ouyi Zhixu 蕅益智旭 (1599–1655).11 As Figure 2 shows, Ouyi is something of an outlier in this group. Almost two generations separate him from Zhuhong, Zibo, and Hanshan, and, as the network shows, his degree of centrality is much lower than that of his better-connected predecessors.12

Whoever grouped these four together did, of course, not measure their “greatness” by degree centrality. There are other reasons why Ouyi might be interesting or influential. However, this paper is about the application of network analysis, and the point may be allowed that Ouyi’s relevance for the network as such is relatively small, especially when compared to the degree centrality of monks such as Miaofeng Fudeng 妙峰褔登 (1540–1613) or Kongyin Zhencheng 空印鎮澄 (1547–1617), which, in our dataset, are much more densely connected than Ouyi Zhixu.13 Both by degree and position in the network, Miaofeng and Kongyin are comparable to the three “stars”—Zhuhong, Zibo, and Hanshan, but their work and influence have not attracted nearly as much attention as Ouyi.

Another prominent figure was Xuelang Hong’en 雪浪洪恩 (1545–1608). Indeed, in one of the earliest attempts to group late Ming Buddhists by their (literary) importance, the famous poet and critic Qian Qianyi 銭謙益 (1582–1664) counted not Ouyi but Xuelang among his four “eminent monks” 高僧 of the Wanli period.14 Qian did so mainly on account of Xuelang’s poetry and school affiliation, but in Figure 2, we do find Xuelang nestled between Zhuhong and Hanshan, which indicates that he moved in similar circles, thus corroborating Qian’s observation.15

The focus on Zhuhong, Zibo, and Hanshan as representatives of the late Ming revival is understandable, but it somewhat obscures an important development within institutional Buddhism. For all their relevance in the networks of their day, the influence of these three masters on the development of monastic Buddhism in the 17th century was limited.

Instead, as Figure 3 illustrates, what stands out in the network is the prominent position of Miyun Yuanwu 密雲圓悟 (1567–1642) and his network of students for the history of Buddhism in the 17th century. Miyun’s “stick and shout” (banghe 棒喝) approach to Chan teaching embodied a very different sensibility than the Buddhism of the learned “great masters” of the Wanli period.17 Zhuhong, Zibo, and Hanshan stood for a relatively open, inclusivist Buddhism.18 Their teachings were approachable for lay people, and their syncretism extended to different forms of Buddhist practice (Pure Land, Chan, scholastic practice etc.). They respected and engaged with Confucianism and, to a lesser degree, Daoism.19 On the other hand, Miyun’s Tiantong lineage within Linji Chan, was relatively “conservative” in its insistence on lineage, doctrinal orthodoxy, and monastic practice. It was, by and large, much less interested in the wider cultural environment than the Wanli masters had been a generation earlier. Miyun’s style was of a certain combativeness. Next to the famous split with his dharma heir Hanyue Fazang, he exchanged polemic essays with other Chan monks on various doctrinal and historical questions. Even in the late-Ming polemics against Christianity, there is a difference in tone between the more cautious approach of Zhuhong and his followers and the vehement defense of Buddhism by Miyun and his disciples.20

Aspects of Miyun’s importance have been recognized before by scholars such as Ishii Shudō, Noguchi Yoshitaka, Xu Yizhi, and Jiang Wu.21 The network perspective corroborates these intuitions by demonstrating Miyun’s pivotal role in 17th-century East Asian Buddhism. Especially relevant in this context is Wu’s suggestion that we ought to distinguish different stages in late Ming Buddhism and that “after the three masters (Zhuhong, Zibo, and Hanshan) died, the Buddhist revival entered a new phase in which Chan masters, such as Miyun Yuanwu, rose to prominence and dominated the Buddhist world” (Wu 2008, pp. 4–5).22 This is exactly what this view of the network illustrates:

In Figure 3, we see on the left the “great monks” of the Wanli period forming a relatively tightly knit cluster. In this visualization, a somewhat thinned-out region, almost similar to a synaptic gap, separates them from the next stage, in which Miyun and his students are central. This disconnect visualizes an important historical development within late Ming Buddhism: the transition from the syncretic and inclusivist Buddhism of the Wanli masters to the lineage-discourse-oriented, monastic Chan of Miyun’s school.

Could the disconnect between Miyun’s lineage and the Wanli revival be geographic? Is it possible that the two network regions represent actors from different geographic regions? This does not seem to be the case. Although Zibo and Miaofeng, while their life dates overlapped with those of Miyun, were mainly active in the north, Zhuhong and Xuelang stayed in the south, and in general, most of the Wanli monks traveled widely, especially Hanshan and Miaofeng. Miyun, apart from a short stay in Beijing at the beginning of his career, spent most of his life in the south, in Zhejiang, Jiangxi, and Fujian. There was thus ample opportunity for Miyun to seek out the famous Hanshan or Zhuhong. While the absence of a link does not imply they never met at all, such a meeting would have likely been recorded in Miyun’s chronicles. Thus, the disconnect between the network regions, rather than representing a geographic divide, indicates distinct communities that had little contact in person.

In spite of Miyun’s importance for the “reinvention of Chan Buddhism” (Wu 2008), it is hard to find an account of his life in English that is longer than a short dictionary entry.23 This is in part due to the complex landscape of sources surrounding Miyun’s life, which do not lend themselves to easy analysis. His “Collected Sayings” (yulu 語錄) have been compiled twice, once by Muchen Daomin 木陳道忞 (1596–1674) and a second time by a larger team of his students under the leadership of Feiyin Tongrong 費隱通容 (1593–1661), whose relationship with Muchen was fraught.24 Research on Miyun is usually concerned with his role in the various controversies that arose within the Chan school regarding its history and doctrine and usually provides only minimal biographic information.25 As our dataset asserts his central position for the development of 17th-century monastic Buddhism, the next section will provide a short biographic outline.26

2. Biographical Sketch

Miyun was born in Yixing, a mid-sized town on the shores of Lake Taihu. He was the youngest son of a man called Jiang Xi 蔣曦and his wife née Pan. His parents gave him up for adoption in the following year to a different surname clan (Zhang 張). Contrary to most standard accounts of eminent monks, but in line with the, at times, anti-intellectual attitude of his school, the sources do not claim Miyun was a bright student. On the contrary, he does not seem to have enjoyed school and dropped out after only two years. The Zhangs had him herd cattle in the marshes around Taihu, and he learned to read and write with little formal instruction. At fifteen, he was married to the daughter of a merchant from close-by Xin’an. Three years later, his foster father Zhang had a natural son, and Miyun returned (or had to return) to his original family. At twenty-five, Miyun read the Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch and was first inspired to become a monk. A few years later, in 1595, at around twenty-eight, Miyun left his wife (and perhaps children) and became a disciple of Huanyou Zhengchuan 幻有正傳 (1549–1614), who, by all accounts, played a crucial role in Miyun’s formation and understanding of Buddhism.27 He was fully ordained under Huanyou three years later in 1598, and in the following year, entered a three-year meditation retreat at the Yumen Chanyuan 禹門禪院, near his birthplace Yixing.

Earlier accounts usually include only minimal information about the life of an eminent monk before his ordination, but for the Ming and Qing, more biographic detail is often available. In this case, we learn that Miyun entered monkhood relatively late; he had experienced two families, was married, and perhaps had children. A late ordination was not unusual for the 16th century; the famous Zhuhong, too, was ordained only in his early thirties. Miyun’s annals and other sources also reveal that he was literate but not educated and probably of modest means—if his family had had money, they would not have given him away, and he could have afforded better schooling. This is in contrast to, for example, his contemporaries Zhuhong and Zhenqing, who received an excellent education, and even attained the first ranks in the imperial examination system, but also to Hanshan and Zibo, who were ordained relatively early and were well educated within the monastic system.28

After Miyun emerged from his three-year retreat of 1599–1601, he was first entrusted with positions in the monastery of his master. After another retreat from 1604 to 1605, he followed Huanyou to the capital, Beijing. He arrived there in the winter of 1605, only about two years after Zibo Zhenke had died in prison.29 It seems that during his stay in Beijing, he was introduced to lay patrons and learned how to interact with them. After his return south in 1607, Miyun cultivated relationships with influential lay Buddhists such as Zhou Rudeng 周汝登 (1547–1629) and Zhou’s disciples Tao Wangling 陶望齡 (1562–1609) and Tao Shiling 陶奭齡 (1571–1640). Zhou and the Tao brothers played a central role in the Zhejiang literary as well as Buddhist circles. They were deeply involved with both the first generation of Wanli masters, as well as Chan leaders such as Miyun and the Caodong master Zhanran Yuancheng 湛然圓澄 (1561–1626), who came to dominate the post-Wanli Buddhist discourse.30 Miyun’s many interactions with lay followers are well attested in his nianpu 年譜 annals.31

In 1611, Miyun took on his first leadership position at the Yumen Chanyuan, where he himself had spent his long retreat. He seems to have been truly close to Huanyou, who did not grant his dharma seal lightly. When Huanyou in 1613 decided to confirm Miyun as his dharma heir, Miyun at first declined, saying that he would accept the duty of a lineage holder only after serving Huanyou’s stupa for three years. The following year Huanyou died, and Miyun was able to keep his promise.

After he emerged from his three-year wake in the spring of 1617, Miyun, now fifty-three and the abbot of Yumen Chanyuan, started his first building project. Building new and renovating old temples was an important mark of distinction for abbots in the late Ming. It proved their talent for organization and fund-raising and seemed to have attracted monastic and lay disciples alike.

For 1618 his nianpu mentions that he went to see his dying father. The Yumen Chanyuan was close to Yixing. This was not a long trip, but it shows that he was in communication with his birth family.32

In 1623, Miyun became abbot of the Tongxuan Temple and, from there on, served as abbot at various temples in Zhejiang and Fujian.33 Most of his tenures were rather short, but wherever he went, he seemed to have gathered an ever larger number of new students. In 1625, the number of his followers surpassed 500; only three years later, there were more than 1000.34

At the height of his success, in 1631, he accepted the abbotship at the famous Tiantong Temple, which had been destroyed by a major flood earlier that year. Miyun’s reputation enabled him to organize the rebuilding of this major temple, which for the next decade served as his base and training ground. The time at Tiantong was extremely successful overall, and after his death, Miyun’s school became known as the Tiantong branch of the Linji School.35 Miyun died in August 1642, one year after receiving the purple robe, one of the highest distinctions the court gave to monastics.

3. The Dominance of Miyun’s Lineage

Figure 4 illustrates how central Miyun’s lineage was in the network of seventeenth-century Buddhism. Miyun and all nodes directly connected to him, i.e., his first-degree ego network (numbers identify some of the more prominent actors in the list of Miyun’s dharma heirs below), are shown in red. Note how Miyun’s first-degree ego network is largely disconnected from the protagonists of the Wanli revival. Hanshan and Miyun are connected only in their second-degree ego networks (not visualized). In our dataset, Hanshan’s second-degree ego network (Nodes: 463, Edges: 897) is considerably smaller than Miyun’s (Nodes: 935, Edges: 1373), another indicator of Miyun’s reach.

Miyun confirmed twelve monks as dharma heirs, a relatively large number.36 However, this must be seen in the context of the size of the communities he led, which were at times several thousand strong.37 By becoming part of Miyun’s lineage, a student gained considerable prestige in the monastic world and was immediately considered eligible for an abbotship at a larger monastery. The following overview table is sorted by date of birth.

As Figure 4 and

Table 1. Miyun’s twelve dharma heirs (marked with a * are the four branches the Tiantong Temple website considers most successful38).

No. in Figure 4	Name[fn39] (ID)	Dates	No. of Notable Students40
1	Hanyue Fazang 漢月法藏 (A003668)	1573–1635	49 *
	Wufeng Ruxue 五峰如學 (A003855)	1585–1633	1
	Shiche Tongsheng 石車通乘 (A016036)	1593–1638	3
4	Feiyin Tongrong 費隱通容 (A001150)	1593–1661	65 *
5	Fushi Tongxian 浮石通賢 (A012052)	1593–1667	59
6	Wanru Tongwei 萬如通微 (A012040)	1594–1657	54
	Shiji Tongyun 石奇通雲 (A014742)	1594–1663	15
8	Linye Tongji 林野通奇 (A012053)	1596–1652	43
9	Muchen Daomin 木陳道忞 (A001513)	1596–1674	86 *
10	Poshan Haiming 破山海明 (A009652)	1597–1666	90 *
11	Muyun Tongmen 牧雲通門 (A001148)	1599–1671	49
	Chaozong Tongren 朝宗通忍 (A016164)	1604–1648	2

show, not all dharma heirs were equally successful, but quite a few attracted a large number of students themselves. In total, just based on the above table of dharma heirs, Miyun had 519 second-generation students, an impressive number. Moreover, Miyun’s circle of students, of course, extended beyond his dharma heirs.

The number and success of Miyun’s students were considerable compared to the other Chan masters of his generation, who defined themselves in terms of a lineage system. The Caodong master Zhanran Yuancheng had six dharma heirs, only three of which, in turn, had more than ten “notable students” (as defined above).41 According to this measure, Zhanran had 93 second-generation students against Miyun’s 519.

One question network data alone cannot answer is why the Chan lineage system—first conceived during the late Tang and matured during the Song—was revived and became so successfully pervasive in late Ming Buddhism at all. What were the advantages? Here, I again agree with Wu’s (2008, pp. 275–76) suggestion that at least one motivation for the rise or “re-invention” of the Chan lineage system in the late Ming should be seen in the need to manage trans-regional institutional structures, most of which had been destroyed in the early Ming and had been only partially rebuilt during the Wanli revival. Although monasteries are local institutions that, at first glance, have little reason to connect to larger networks, Chinese temples are known to have formed associations and networks on a local, regional, national, and transnational scale (Dean and Zheng 2010, vol. 1, p. 229 ff). This could happen for internal, self-directed reasons or under outside pressure. Sometimes institutional networks were even sponsored and/or proscribed by the state, such as the Kaiyuan 開元 era national temples or the “five mountains and ten monasteries” (wushan shisha 五山十剎) system of the Southern Song.42 However, the temples and national monastic offices instituted by the central government that existed in various forms since the fifth century were neither strong nor independent enough to serve as a trans-regional communication network for the monastic community. Support from the gentry was not reliable, based as it was on personal relationships, and local or, at best, regional. Thus, although the lineage network at first glance appears mainly as a legitimization strategy to assign influence within the monastic community, the networks of legitimization also enabled Buddhists to maintain lines of communication that were independent of both local and state patronage. The lineage system was government-proof in the sense that the state could not (or at least did not) interfere with the selection of dharma heirs by any single Chan master. It was thus able to form hierarchies that were independent of both the state and the local level of secular government and that could organize the establishment, maintenance and administration of monastic sites throughout the empire. At the same time, lineage facilitated another important element in the training of Chan monks: long-distance pilgrimage. Monks related by lineage could generally count on being welcomed to stay longer in temples led by abbots from the same lineage. Thus the (re-)development of lineage networks as an organizational principle made sense at the time and had a lasting influence on Chinese Buddhist monasticism.

The large house of Miyun was not exactly one big happy family. Different readings of lineage history or doctrinal questions often led to vehement exchanges, e.g., between Feiyin Tongrong and Chaozong Tongren (Wu 2008, p. 130). After Miyun’s death, there was significant competition about who the future leader was to be, especially between Muchen Daomin and Feiyin Tongrong.43

However, it was especially the split between Miyun and the Hanyue Fazang that created a major rift within Miyun’s school.44 Hanyue’s confirmation as Miyun’s dharma heir had always been somewhat of a compromise. For institutional reasons, Hanyue needed to become part of a Chan lineage, while Miyun was impressed with the well-educated Hanyue, who already had a following of his own. After their first meeting, it took three years to formalize their relationship and Hanyue accepted Miyun’s offer to enter the Linji lineage as Miyun’s student. When later, however, Hanyue published his own ideas about Chan history and practice, a battle of words ensued that did not abate even after the passing of Hanyue and Miyun.45 Their first- and second-generation students continued the argument. The bickering ended only a hundred years later when the Yongzheng emperor (r. 1722–1735) felt compelled to adjudicate the matter in favor of Miyun’s position.

The network view illustrates the competition within Miyun’s school extremely well. The two camps of Hanyue and Miyun are situated in different regions of the network (Figure 5).

It is somewhat surprising how well, in Figure 5, the layout algorithm reflects the historical situation of the debate without manual intervention. Miyun and Hanyue faced off, just as their main students did. Tanji Hongren 潭吉弘忍 (1599–1638) played an important role in the early phases of the Hanyue-Miyun polemics and bore the brunt of Miyun’s anger. His node is small because he died before he was able to attract students. Both Muchen Daomin and Muyun Tongmen exchanged polemics with Jiqi Hongchu 繼起弘儲 (1605–1672)46 and, to a lesser extent, Lingyin Hongli 靈隱弘禮 (1600–1667).

The Yongzheng emperor is positioned right between the camps further “down in time” (the timeline here is moving towards the upper right), which fits his role as arbiter in the debate. Yongzheng, both as a Buddhist and a politician, had a number of reasons to decide the smoldering debate between the two strands of the lineage and took a firm stance against Hanyue’s Sanfeng 三峰 school. The main reason for his intervention was perhaps that Hanyue’s lineage came to include a number of Ming loyalists.47 From the network, however, one could hypothesize how the connection between Muchen and the Shunzhi emperor (r. 1643–1661) had already tilted the network towards “team Miyun” by aligning them with the Manchu emperors.48 Figure 5 also shows again how Hanyue’s team was outnumbered. Only two of his students, Lingyin Hongli and Jiqi Hongchu, had more than a few students of their own, whereas, on Miyun’s side, there were many other successful successors. Moreover, these dharma heirs felt they were Hanyue’s equal because, technically, they belonged to the same generation in the Linji tradition. Therefore, although Yongzheng was very much his own man and acted in his own interest by siding with Miyun, he merely certified the reigning orthodoxy within the Linji school, which, as the network shows, had aligned itself with his great-grandfather the Shunzhi emperor two generations earlier.

4. Beyond China

Miyun’s lineage not only became a dominant influence in monastic Buddhism but also spread to Japan and Vietnam. Indeed, Miyun first came to the attention of Japanese Buddhist scholarship as the first patriarch of the Ōbaku School, which was introduced to Japan by Yinyuan Longqi 隱元隆琦 (1592–1673), a student of Miyun’s dharma heir Feiyin Tongrong 費隠通容 (1593–1661). Yinyuan’s story is well studied, and his memory is preserved beyond scholarship by the institution he founded—the Ōbaku School still exists in Japan as an independent institution with several hundred temples.49

Much less well-known is that Miyun’s school was also transmitted to Vietnam. Muchen Daomin’s student Kuangyuan Benguo 曠圓本果 (d.u.) was based in the Longshan Temple in Guangdong.50 Sometime before 1677, he ordained Yuanshao 元韶 (1648–1728), who in that year went to Vietnam and became a prominent Buddhist leader there. Yuanshao first settled in Ninh Bình 寧平in the Red River delta. Later he moved to Huế, where he enjoyed the patronage of the Nguyễn Lord Nguyễn Phúc Chu 阮福淍 (r. 1691–1725), who ruled over central and southern Vietnam. With his help, Yuanshao founded the Quốc Ân temple 國恩寺 in the 1680s, where he served as abbot until his death (Tan 2007). The Quốc Ân temple still exists today, a reminder of the far reach of Miyun’s network. The Nguyên-Thiêu lineage that began with Yuanshao was successful and is still one of the largest in Vietnamese Chan (Thich 1975, Ch. 6, Table 2).

There is plenty of space for more research on Yuanshao. In Figure 6, Yuanshao’s node (sized for degree) is tiny; however, this is not mainly because of the lack of research, but because his students in Vietnam are not part of the dataset, which is currently focused on Chinese Buddhists.

One of the advantages of network analysis is that its patterns can help in perceiving what is not there. In this case, the fall of the Ming might have been a factor in the movement of Chinese monks to Japan and Vietnam, but why did no Chinese monks emigrate to Korea? In Joseon-Dynasty Korea, Buddhism suffered an extended period of oppression in spite of the active role played by Buddhists in the fight against the Japanese invasion (1592–1598). As a result, Chinese and Korean Buddhism developed largely isolated from each other from c. 1500 to the 1870s, when Korea reopened its borders (Jorgensen 2007). This exceeds the dataset under discussion, but my experiments with larger datasets that include Korean actors confirm that after the Yuan, there are virtually no connections that connect the Korean lineages to those of China. Korea, different from Japan, appears isolated in the network because its Buddhism was indeed isolated from China in those centuries.

5. Conclusions

The two stages of the late Ming revival of Buddhism differ in many aspects, but especially with regard to the importance they give to the lineage narrative. The Wanli masters were not overly invested in lineage, at least in part because many of them were themselves not attached to a particular Chan lineage. Miyun and his students, however, were deeply concerned with lineage and the legitimization it bestowed. This concern with lineage has, in turn, manifested itself in Buddhist historiography and is therefore visible in the network as a dispersion of different lines of transmission radiating out from Miyun. The characteristic shape of this network region, as compared with network regions that model earlier periods, is, in part, a consequence of the reliance on lineage narratives. Lineage accounts are tree structures, much like the family trees on which they are modeled. The only horizontal relation in lineage accounts are between “dharma siblings,” but these links are not realized in our network data, i.e., we do not assume that all dharma siblings knew each other by default. As a result, “lateral” links that connect different transmission lines are underrepresented. In the data collection, we have tried to counteract this by including data from the Xinxu gaoseng zhuan, which offers information that connects actors from different lineages. Although we were able to improve the density for this network region significantly, the Qing network still does not cohere together in the same elongated form as the network regions representing previous dynasties (Bingenheimer 2021).

How should we understand the overall impact of Miyun’s success? Chao-heng Liao (2014, pp. 83–84), who compares Miyun’s network to an “army,” remarks that without him and his lineage, late Ming Buddhism would have been “much quieter,” presumably because the lively debates emanating from Miyun’s circle would not have taken place. Would the development of the non-sectarian, inclusivist Buddhism of Zhuhong and Hanshan have resulted in a more diverse and intellectually interesting Buddhist landscape during the Qing? It seems that, in spite of intense internal debates about lineage and doctrine, Miyun’s school was not able to innovate itself out of the confines of the traditionalism that Miyun (and his teacher Huanyou) had laid down and was unable to reclaim Buddhism’s earlier vitality.51

Such questions are, of course, out of scope for historians, and neither network analysis nor close reading can answer them. Still, one wonders about the roads not taken by late Ming Buddhists. Miyun’s Buddhism constitutes a retrenchment into an argumentative but, at the same time, curiously anti-intellectual discourse. Authority became invested in tradition qua lineage rather than in keeping the Vinaya, engaging in scholarship, or skill in performing esoteric rituals, to mention only a few alternatives which prevailed in other parts of the Buddhist world. Besides the occasional writing of poetry, Miyun’s lineage offered few resources to connect with the Confucian elite. Its lack of a historical consciousness beyond the Chan lineage discourse and its lack of interest in textual criticism must be counted among the reasons for the intellectual irrelevance of Chan Buddhism during the Qing, when the best minds among the literati were excited by kaozhengxue 考證學 scholarship, which emphasized historical and textual evidence. Miyun’s lineage tradition of “shouts and beatings” had little to contribute to this, but as the network illustrates so clearly, its success dominated monastic Buddhism in the 17th century.52