The Oxhead school (''Niu-t'ou zong'') was a short lived tradition of Chinese

Chan Buddhism Chan (; of ), from Sanskrit ''dhyāna in Buddhism, dhyāna'' (meaning "meditation" or "meditative state"), is a Chinese school of Mahayana, Mahāyāna Buddhism. It developed in China from the 6th century Common Era, CE onwards, becoming e ...

founded by Fa-jung (Niutou Farong, 牛頭法融, 594–657), who was a Dharma heir of the Fourth Patriarch Tao-hsin (580-651). Their main temple was located at Oxhead Mountain (Niu-t'ou shan) in Chiang-su, near modern

Nanjing Nanjing (; , Mandarin pronunciation: ), Postal Map Romanization, alternately romanized as Nanking, is the capital of Jiangsu Provinces of China, province of the China, People's Republic of China. It is a sub-provincial city, a megacity, and t ...

, hence the name. The school thrived throughout the

Tang Tang or TANG most often refers to: * Tang dynasty * Tang (drink mix) Tang or TANG may also refer to: Chinese states and dynasties * Jin (Chinese state) (11th century – 376 BC), a state during the Spring and Autumn period, called Tang (唐) ...

and the early years of the Song dynasty (10th century). According to John R. McRae, the original text of an influential Zen work called the

Platform Sutra The ''Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch'' ( or simply: ''Tánjīng'') is a Chan Buddhist scripture that was composed in China during the 8th to 13th century. The "platform" (施法壇) refers to the podium on which a Buddhist teacher spe ...

may have originated within the Oxhead school. Another text associated with this school is the ''Treatise on the Transcendence of Cognition'' (''Chüeh-kuan lun'' 絶觀論). This text is a dialogue between two hypothetical characters, Professor Enlightenment and the student Conditionality. Regarding their teachings, according to McRae, they were

"fundamentally in agreement with those of the
Northern School East Mountain Teaching () denotes the teachings of the Fourth Ancestor Dayi Daoxin, his student and heir the Fifth Ancestor Daman Hongren, and their students and lineage of Chan Buddhism. ''East Mountain Teaching'' gets its name from the East ...
on the subjects of mental contemplation and the necessity of constant practice, and both schools were known for their use of contemplative analysis. The major difference between the two schools lay in the Ox-head’s use of a certain logical pattern that included, at one stage, the extensive use of negation. (This distinctive proclivity to negation appears prominently in the mind- verses of the Platform Sutra.)"McRae, John R. (1987) ''The Northern School and the Formation of Early Ch'an Buddhism'' (Kuroda Studies in East Asian Buddhism), pp. 241-242.

Their lineage is said to have been transmitted to Japan by Saicho, founder of the

Tendai , also known as the Tendai Lotus School (天台法華宗 ''Tendai hokke shū,'' sometimes just "''hokke shū''") is a Mahāyāna Buddhist tradition (with significant esoteric elements) officially established in Japan in 806 by the Japanese m ...

sect.

References

Sources

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Oxhead School Chan schools