In 2006 the late Master Shengyen Huikong 聖嚴慧空 (1930-2009) (hereafter, Sheng Yen) established a new Chan Buddhist school called the Dharma Drum Lineage (Fagu zong 法鼓宗), which unites the two lineages of Linji 臨濟 and Caodong 曹洞 that Sheng Yen was heir to. Sheng Yen’s creation of a new Chan school was a momentous historical development in Chinese Buddhism. This article aims to historicize the process of Sheng Yen’s formation of the Dharma Drum Lineage and how his own teachings have evolved over time in response to different conditions. It argues that Sheng Yen Chan teachings does not constitute a stagnant, premeditated set of doctrines, but was a product of his own life experiences, interpretations of early Buddhism, and appropriations of the Japanese Buddhist response to modernity. Sheng Yen’s Chan was unique in that he synthesized the early Buddhist ?gama teachings with the teachings embodied in the Platform Scripture. His formulation of Chan as a form of “Buddhist education” was uniquely modern, but at the same time not out of line with the adaptive nature of Chan in Chinese history. He took a critical stance against contemporary representations of Chan as antinomian and spontaneous, ungrounded in Buddhist doctrine, and appropriated, reinterpreted, and reinvigorated traditional teachings, especially in a time when these values and teachings had already lost much of their ideological vigor to meet the needs of modern times and revive Chinese Buddhism.
