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CHEN-Vo眞可(T.達觀，H.紫柏)，July 2, 1544-January 18, 1604, Buddhist monk and poet, was a native of Wu-chiang 吳江, south of Soochow, where he was born into the Shen 沈 family. It is said that even at the age of four Chemk'o could not speak. One day a strange monk came to the Shen family, laid his hand upon the child's head, and told the father that the boy would become a teacher of both mundane and heavenly things if he would enter the monastery. Then the monk disappeared, and Chen-k'o began to speak. During his boyhood he showed an unusual strength of will and character; he did not enjoy playing with other children and when he grew older he took a dislike to the sight of women. He never allowed a female to enter the bath before him and when one day his elder sister inadvertently came there, he made such a scene that afterwards no female member of the house dared to come near him at this time.<break>At the age of sixteen (1560) he took his sword, left the house, and wandered north to the Great Wall. On his way back<break>he was stopped by rain at Soochow, where he met a monk, Ming-chiieh 明覺，who gave him shelter at Hu-ch'iu (Tiger Hill), ssu 虎丘寺.During the night he listened to Ming-chiieh reciting the 88 names of the Buddha; this impressed him so much that the next morning he asked to have his head shaven and be admitted as the latter's disciple. After some time Chen-k'o locked himself up in his cell, studied for six months, and was at last formally ordained at the age of nineteen (1563). The next few years he spent traveling from monastery to monastery and studying the doctrine with famous monks. He forced himself to walk until his calloused feet could take him sixty miles a day. He spent some time on Mt. Lu 廬山(Kiangsi) where he tried to explore the hidden meaning of the dharmalaksana (fa-hsiang 法相).When he went to Peking, his teacher was for a while the monk Pien-yung 徧融.Chen-k'o wanted above all, however, to become acquainted with Te-ch'ing (q. v.), who, he thought, would be able to resolve all his doubts and scruples. After a visit to Mt. Wu-t'ai he returned to the Soochow region, having been away eight years. There he succeeded in establishing friendly relations with the influential official Lu Kuang-tsu (see Lu Nan), a devout Buddhist, whose protection became important for Chen-k'o's further activities. The Lu family helped him with financial contributions to restore the Leng-yen 楞嚴 ssu in Chia-hsing 嘉興， Chekiang, which had been appropriated by a rich family of the neighborhood and converted into a private garden. When the building was finished, Chen-k'o wrote a parallel verse with his own blood. These religious eccentricities and his successful missionary work among the gentry of the region earned him a more than local reputation, and pupils began to gather. One of these, whose religious name was Tao-k'ai 道開，became his faithful assistant for many years. Tao-k'ai was also his companion on his next journey to north China in 1586. This time Chen-k'o succeed-<break>[141]<break>CHENMo<break>ed in meeting Te-ch'ing, who in the meantime had become a favorite of the empress dowager Li-shih (q. v.), a fervent patron of Buddhism. Chen-Vo met Te ch'・ ing in the latter's hermitage on Lao 勞 shan in Shantung. It was the seventh month of the year and the autumn floods made travel difficult but Chen-k^ overcame all hardships bravely, and the two renowned Buddhists were able to spend ten days together and establish a spiritual friendship. Te-ch'ing also was to become eventually his slightly older friend's biographer. It seems too that Te・ch'ing was instrumental in introducing Chen-k'o to the court in Peking, although the chronology of Chen・k'o's extended travels cannot be established beyond doubt because of the scarcity of dates in the sources.<break>After his meeting with Te-ch*ing in 1586, Chen-k'o seems to have visited famous Buddhist centers throughout the whole empire. His itinerary included Mt. O-mei in Szechwan, the Ch'U-t'ang Gorge 瞿唐峽 in the same province, Wu-tang 武 當 shan in Hukuang, and again Lu shan in Kiangsi. It may have been about 1586 that Chen-k'o also spent some time on Shih-ching 石經 Mountain in Fang 房~ shan-hsien near Peking. During his visit he noticed that the early T'ang monk, Ching-wan (d. 639), had deposited a relic of the Buddha in one of the caves; he then organized the transfer of the relic to the imperial palace for three days. For this the empress dowager presented him with a purple cassock. Ching-wan had also engraved the text of sutras on stone, which gave Chen-k'o the idea of a similar enterprise in order to achieve religious merit. He decided to start the printing of a new version of the Buddhist canon, that is, the early Ming version augmented by forty-one additional texts. This too was promoted by the empress dowager. It was Chen-k'o's original idea, however, to have this version printed not in the traditional pothi format but in square volumes (fang・ts'e 方册)like ordinary Chinese books. The carving of the<break>printing blocks was started on Wu-fai shan in 1589, supervised in part by Chen-k'o himself. After 1592 the work was continued in the Ching 徑 shan monastery west of Hangchow, which remained a center for many years to come. In the Soochow-Hangchow region too blocks were carved. All of them were transported, however, to the Leng-yen monastery in Chia-hsing for printing. The whole enterprise was not finished until long after Chen-k'o's death. [Editors5 note: The Buddhist texts from this edition, stored in the National Central Library in Taipei, constitute apparently the largest surviving collection known.]<break>After Chen-k'o had resided for a while on Mt. Wu-fai he went south again, took up his former residence on Lu shan and also traveled extensively in the Yangtze region. In 1591 (1592, according to one source) we find him again in the capital. In 1592 he met Te-ch'ing for the second time; they spent forty days together on Shih-ching shan where they agreed to compile a continuation of the history of Ch'an Buddhism, Ch'uan-teng lu 傳燈錄，bringing it down to their own time. They also planned to make a pilgrimage to Ts'aoch'i 曹溪，Kwangtung, where Hui-neng (638-713), the famous Sixth Patriarch of the Ch'an schQol, had lived. This trip had to be made by Chen-k'o alone, however, because Te・ch'ing had in the meantime been thrown into jail and later banished to Lei-chou, Kwangtung. Chen-k'o did, however, manage to meet him when be was on his way to his place of banishment. The two monks had a brief encounter in Nanking in November of 1595. Chen・k'o also recited the Lotus Sutra in order to obtain supernatural protection for Te・ch'ing, who was facing an uncertain fate. But whereas Te-ch'ing's banishment was for five years only, Chen-k'o himself a few years later became entangled in the web of court politics, and died as a victim of the judiciary system of his time.<break>The story is quite involved. In 1601 Chen-k'o decided to go to Peking for, if<break>CHEN-k'o<break>[142]<break>we are to believe his biographer Te・ch'ing, purely humanitarian reasons. He is said to have stated his purpose in the foilowing way: “If Te-ch'ing does not return, I shall have greatly failed in religion; if the mining taxes are not canceled, I shall have greatly failed in helping the world; and if the CWuan-teng lu is not continued, I shall have greatly failed in my personal endeavors.” This would show that his plan to go to Peking was occasioned by Te-ch'ing's exile and that he wanted to use his influence in court circles, especially with the empress dowager, to obtain his release. Chen-k'o's protest against the mining taxes goes back to the widespread discontent that had followed the introduction (ca. 1600) of new mining taxes, when the notoriously extravagant emperor needed additional money for his building enterprises. The palace eunuchs were largely in charge of this new taxation and exercised pressure on the local bureaucracy (see Wang Ying-chiao). Chen-k'o seems to have become active in this case on behalf of the prefect of Nan・k'ang 南康 (Kiangsi), Wu Pao-hsiu 吳寶秀(T.派彥, cs 1589), a native of P'ing-yang 平陽 (Chekiang), and probably an earlier acquaintance of his. Wu Pao-hsiu was imprisoned and his wife, nee Ch'en 陳， committed suicide when she was forbidden to accompany her husband. Wu was later released, possibly through Chen-k'o's intervention.<break>All this, though leading to hostility in the circle of eunuchs, was not necessarily fatal. What brought about Chen-k'o's ruin was the weird pamphlet case (see Lii K'un and Kuo Cheng-yii). When the emperor, Chu I-chiin (q・ v.), learned about the pamphlet, he flew into a rage and ordered a thorough investigation. A wave of arrests and raids followed, and Chen-k'o, who had been in and out of many of the suspected officials* houses, was detained as a potential accomplice. One source relates that the reason for his arrest, however, was not connected directly with the pamphlet case. During the investigation the house<break>of the physician, Shen Ling-yii 沈令譽，was raided. (He was also a native of Wu-chiang and perhaps a clansman of Chen-k,o.) In Shen's house the police found letters written by several individuals implicated in the case and also a letter from Chen-k'o in which a passage read:“The empress dowager had wanted to build a monastery but the emperor would not assist her. How can this be called filial piety?"" The discovery of this letter may after all have been the actual reason for his arrest. The emperor was angry, but it does not seem that he wished Chen-k'o executed, particularly because Chen-k'o had on an earlier-occasion gratified the emperor by writing a complimentary poem on the ruler's Buddhist activities. Chen-k'o, however, was thrown into prison and received thirty blows with the bamboo cane, a torture which the monk, then in his sixtieth year, did not survive. His remains were taken away and buried temporarily. The final funeral, to which some high-ranking officials donated money, took place several years after his death; his body was cremated in December, 1616.<break>Te-ch'ing collected the essays and poetry by Chen-k'o and printed them together with his necrology under the title of Tzu-po ts""""-Me c〃子a""-c友紫柏尊者全集， 30 ch. Ch'ien Ch'ien・i (ECCP), a leading lay Buddhist who had never met Chen-k'o but revered him, compiled a pieh-chi^^, 4 c〃.，and a fu-lu 附錄，1 M・ Some of Chen-k'o's religious conversations (yu-lu 語錄)were also edited separately under the title of Ch'ang sung ju-fui 長松茹退,〉2 ch. (a work listed by the Ssu-k'u editors, but not copied into the Imperial Library), and incorporated into the continuation of Pao-yen-fang pi-chi 寶顏堂祕笈.The Zoku Zdkyd 續藏經 contains several works by Chen-kl, all of them shorter treatises on the exegesis of Pan-jo hsin-ching 般若心經 (the Heart Sutra), taken from chiian 6 of his collected works. Volume 39 of the same collection has an equally short treatise on Chin-kang ching 金剛經(Dia-mond Sutra) and Volume 98, an explana-<break>[143]<break>CHEN・k'o<break>tion of the pa-shih 八識(Eight Modes of Perception).<break>Chen-k'o must be regarded as one of the spiritual leaders in late Ming Buddhism. In contrast to the more pietistic attitudes of Chu-hung (q. v. ) and his insistence on enlightenment by meditation, he stressed the way of salvation through intellectual reasoning. At the same time he was a paragon of the syncretism fashionable in his day, in that he tried to combine a neo-Confucianism tainted by the ideas of Wang Shou-jen (q. v.) with Buddhistic scholastic philosophy. It is not easy to pin him down to any of the established schools of Buddhist thought. He is sometimes described as trying to combine Pure Land doctrine with Ch'an Buddhism; in the eyes of Te ch'ing, he was a follower of the Lin-chi 臨濟 school of Ch'an and going back to the teachings of I-hsing (683-727). Chen-k'o was also a student of the Book of Changes and one of his pupils Kuan Chih-tao (see Ku Hsien-ch'eng), even tried to achieve a synthesis of that Classic with the Avatarnsaka-sutra. On the other hand Chen-k'o may be regarded as a follower of the Invocation of Buddha school (nien-Fo 念佛)，at least during his earlier years. One thing, however, is certain: he must have impressed his contemporaries with his personality. All sources, whether those influenced by Buddhist hagiography or “secular” ones, agree that he was highly respected among the literati and the officials, among them Tung Ch'i-ch'ang (ECCP) and Li Chih (q.v.)・ One of his closer friends was the poet, T'ang Hsien-tsu (ECCP), whom, it seems, he converted to Buddhism. TEng gives him the epithet hsiung 雄 (heroic), and after his death wrote three poems to commemorate him. The two met several times, first in 1590 in Nanking and again in 1598 in Lin-ch'uan 臨川(Kiangsi), T'ang's native place. In the beginning of the next year they traveled together to Nanchang by boat, a voyage documented by several poems.<break>Chen-k'o is described as a man of<break>stern appearance, with bushy eyebrows and a royal bearing. He was uncompromising in all matters concerning monastic discipline and once even said: “A monk who eats meat and drinks wine ought to be killed.” And when he learned that his first teacher, Ming-chiieh, had left the clergy and become a physician with a flourishing practice, he feigned illness and surprised him with a visit. It is said that Chen-k'o was able to persuade Ming-chiieh to resume monastic life. Another feature of his personality was a marked asceticism. For many years he never stretched out on a mat but spent the night sleeping seated in an upright position. He used to meditate in the open air regardless of wind and frost. In prison and under torture he was able to keep his serenity and even preached to his co-prisoner Ts'ao Hsiieh-ch'eng (see Ch'en Chii) who was a victim too of court intrigue but, unlike Chen-k'o, was later released. There are a number of stories on Chen-k'o's ability to foretell future events, and after his death he appeared to several of his former acquaintances in their dreams. All this points to the impression he made on his contemporaries, which was strengthened by the fact that he could, in a way, be regarded as a martyr.