Zen Master Lieu Quan

In a Vietnamese pagoda, a young novice has just been given his Dharma name by his teacher. The name is not chosen at random. Its first word comes from an old verse, and it matches the generation of the line he belongs to. Each teacher hands it down to the next, one word at a time, like a stream of water that never runs dry. Follow that stream all the way back to its source, and one person is waiting there. A motherless boy from Phú Yên.

That boy was later revered as the Patriarch Thiệt Diệu Liễu Quán.

He was born in 1667, in a small village in the prefecture of Phú Yên. He lost his mother when he was only six. In a home that had lost its warmth, his father quietly raised the boy alone.

Then, when the boy was twelve, his father took him up to Hội Tôn Pagoda in Phú Yên. Amid the sound of the pagoda bell and the scent of incense, the boy asked to stay on as a novice and learn the Way from a venerable monk. From then on, the pagoda became his home, and the chanting of the sutras became his lullaby.

The motherless boy studied very hard. When his first teacher passed away, he did not stop. He made the long trip to Thuận Hóa, the land around Hue, to find a fine teacher and seek the Way. For years he went from one pagoda to another. He took his vows, studied the sutras, sat in meditation, carried water and swept up leaves. In this way a novice from Phú Yên grew into a monk full of resolve.

In 1702, he sought out a great teacher in Hue. This was the Patriarch Minh Hoằng Tử Dung, of the Lâm Tế line of Zen. The teacher gave him a question to contemplate, the kind of question that Zen calls a koan. It went like this: all things return to the one, so where does the one return to?

It is a question with no answer to learn by heart. The harder the everyday mind works at it, the more stuck it gets.

He carried that question for many long years. Year after year he sat in meditation, ate, slept, walked and stood, and all that time one great doubt stayed in his heart, still unresolved. Some people give up after only a few days. He kept going, patiently and quietly, like a small drop of water falling again and again onto a slab of stone.

Then the breakthrough came at a very ordinary moment. One day he was reading an old Zen book called Truyền Đăng Lục. His eyes stopped on a simple line about pointing straight at the mind, something people usually fail to see. In the instant he read it, all those years of doubt burst open and became clear. This is called sudden awakening, an understanding that flashes up in the blink of an eye.

In the spring of 1708, he went back to his teacher to present what he had seen. The teacher nodded and confirmed his awakening. The motherless boy from Phú Yên had truly reached the heart of the Way.

But the most beautiful part of the story is what he did next. He did not keep the Way for himself. The boy who had once been welcomed through a pagoda gate now opened that gate for generation after generation of students. He built pagodas, taught those who came after him, and founded a whole new line of Zen.

What made his line special is that it was deeply Vietnamese. Before then, many Zen lines in the country still carried a strong imprint from China. Later generations say the Patriarch made all of it Vietnamese, from culture and architecture to ritual. He turned the Lâm Tế line into a school of Zen close to a great many Vietnamese Buddhists. It was a line of Zen begun by a Vietnamese monk and suited to the Vietnamese soul. It bears his own name: the Liễu Quán school of Zen.

Before he passed away, he left later generations a short verse. It opens with solemn words about a great road and a still, clear sea of the mind. Here is the remarkable part. That very verse later became the frame for giving Dharma names to the generations of monks and nuns who carried on his line. Each generation takes one word, and so the names pass on and on.

He passed away in Hue in 1742, at the age of 76.

Nearly 300 years have gone by since that day. The line of Zen founded by the motherless monk from Phú Yên has not faded. It has spread across central and southern Vietnam and grown through many generations. A great many pagodas, and a great many Vietnamese monks and nuns today, are his spiritual descendants.

Somewhere in a Vietnamese pagoda today, another young novice bows his head to receive his Dharma name. The first word of his name is drawn from the old verse of the Patriarch, and it places him in one exact generation of that long stream. He does not know it yet, but his name has just joined him to a boy who lost his mother at six. That boy came to a pagoda to shelter in the sound of its bell. He carried one question for years, and then awakened through one old line of writing. The stream from its source in Phú Yên still flows quietly on, deep in the Vietnamese earth.