Hongyi's Long, Last Moment

I'm in my 70th year and focusing dharma study and practice on death. It isn't a new focus – any Zen practitioner worth their salt would tell you that life and death is the great matter. So I've been doing death remembrance for almost 50 years.

Even before Zen, death haunted me. I grew up in a rural area and I'd often ride my rickety bike through the nearby reservation to an old "Indian" cemetery a couple miles away. There I’d spend hours hanging out with the dead. And yet, at almost 70, death sure has a different quality to it than it did at 14 or 54.

Given that there are no tricky maneuvers to slip away in the long, last moment, death is the certain fate for us all. So I suspect some of you might be interested in the death topic too.

The present post is my first in a series in which I hope you'll find inspiration and methods for your own death. I'll start the series by sharing what I've found about the incredible Hongyi (see the above photo). Then in future posts, I'll turn to the issue of practice at the long, last moment from various dharma points of view. Although Zen teaching tends toward realizing "no-birth, no-death" while alive (or in the liminal space between life and death), to appreciate the context of Zen's emphasis, it is important to understand karma and rebirth, as well as the Buddhas' Pure Lands. With the Pure Land context in mind, I'll also dip into the dying-and-death instructions of several Zen masters, including Dahui, Dogen, Muso Soseki, and Hakuin.

In addition, I'll sprinkle in some other topics, so my plan is to have a few essays on death each month for the next several months. As usual, my orientation will be to look at death as directly as I can, while including the perspective of the wide and deep views of our ancestors in the buddhadharma.

Why begin with Hongyi?

I recently read Buddhist Masters of Modern China: The Lives and Legacies of Eight Eminent Teachers, edited by Benjamin Brose.

Buddhist Masters of Modern China: 9781645472230 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books
Through the life stories and translated writings of eight masters, modern Chinese Buddhism comes to life for English readers for the first time. Amidst the Chinese political revolutions and cultural upheavals…

In the section, "A Peripatetic Bodhisattva-Artist Hongyi," by Raoul Birnbaum, I turned the page and saw the above photo of Hongyi. My mouth dropped in admiration for a practitioner who could die in such peace. I encourage you to scroll back to the top and spend a few moments with Hongyi in his last moment.

Birnbaum writes:

"This photo has circulated widely. With death seen as the final test of a lifetime of cultivation, the deathbed image often is interpreted as visual testimony to the truth of Hongyi’s transformation from wealthy and privileged aesthete to profound and accomplished monk-practitioner. Some have seen the photo as witness to the genuine possibility that Buddhist practice, which many had dismissed as ancient and irrelevant, may truly have immediate practical bearing in the modern world."

Who was this guy?

In this post, I'll be summarizing the work of Raoul Birnbaum in the above mentioned text (highly recommended for more on Hongyi and seven other incredible masters). I'll also rely on Birnbaum's contribution to The Buddhist Dead: Practices, Discourses, Representations, "The Deathbed Image of Master Hongyi" (also highly recommended):

The Buddhist Dead: Practices, Discourses, Representations
In its teachings, practices, and institutions, Buddhism in its varied Asian forms has been—and continues to be—centrally concerned with death and the dead. Yet surprisingly “death in Buddhism…

Finally, for Hongyi's vinaya problem (more below), I rely on Birnbaum's "Vinaya Master Hongyi’s 弘一 Vinaya Problem" in Ester Bianchi and Daniela Campo's Take the Vinaya As Your Master: Monastic Discipline and Practices in Modern Chinese Buddhism.

Background on Dharma Master Hongyi

Hongyi had a riches-to-rags life story. He was born into an elite family in 1880, just as the old China was dying and a new China had yet to be reborn. Hongyi became a famous artist across mediums, including playing female roles in the theatre, and had two wives – not unusual for a man of his social status (his father had four wives).

Pressed by artistic success and a stressful family life, Birnbaum notes:

"In a letter to a friend during this time, he said somewhat ruefully, 'People say that I have a mental illness.'”

This crisis of health and heart came to a head at age 38. He resolved it by suddenly leaving home and becoming a Buddhist monastic. From what I've read about Hongyi, it isn't clear what happened to his wives and children, but they may have been taken care of by his older brother.

The manner in which he became a monk became a difficult issue for him for other reasons (other than abandoning his family) – something that he wrestled with for years. Hongyi came to see his ordination as questionable for two reasons. First, he didn't do the training demanded of common people, but used his social status to skim the surface of the required training. Birnbaum writes:

During the training period at Lingyin [Monastery that prepared people for monastic vows], Master Huiming [a Chan-master and abbot of Lingyin] encountered Hongyi once when he was strolling about the monastery grounds. He severely chastised the younger man, pointing out that he was acting more like a prince than a monk. But Hongyi carried on as before. We do not know what he did through all those days, what sort of practices and studies he might have carried out. We do know that he rarely engaged in whatever the teachers responsible for the ordinees had established for them to do.

And secondly, because in the long history of Chinese Buddhism there were gaps in the precept lineage, he came be believe that among the several million monastics in China at the time, none had received an unbroken precept transmission as required by the vinaya texts. That is, there were no authentically ordained monks in all of China and there hadn't been for a long time (i.e., since the Song Dynasty, 960-1279). I'll return to how Hongyi resolved this issue in a moment.

Nevertheless, Hongyi did get serious about study and practice. What was his focus? Birnbaum summarizes one of Hongyi's friends summarizing his dharma orientation like this:

"One of Hongyi’s monastic friends, in thinking back across his life, characterized Hongyi’s Buddhist endeavors in this way: he took the [Flower Garland] Sutra as his conceptual realm, the Four-Part Vinaya as his practice, and birth in the Pure Land as the intended result."
"Refuge in Amitabha Buddha" by Hongyi

In addition, inspired by and borrowing from Buddhist and Confucian sources, Hongyi developed a method for self-examination. Birnbaum describes it like this:

"This mode of cultivation, in which one tries to become aware of faults (at increasingly subtle levels) and makes a best effort at sincere repentance, does not tend to lead to the 'enlightenment' (more properly, 'awakening') claims that are part of Chan traditions [...]. Combined with Pure Land approaches [...], this process of gradual purification aims to qualify the practitioner for rebirth in Amitabha’s Pure Land, where genuine teachings to achieve liberation are ever available, received directly from that buddha and his bodhisattva assistants."

This rigorous self-reflection seems to be what led him to question his monastic vows. Given his concerns about the legitimacy of his monastic status, Hongyi decided to self-administer the bodhisattva precepts (a subset of the traditional vinaya), and in accord with the teaching that allows for self-ordination in certain circumstance, wait for a sign that might confirm the authenticity of his self-ordination. And, indeed, Hongyi believed that he received such a sign in a dream.

I turn to Birnbaum again for a summary:

"In this dream, Hongyi saw himself as a youth, walking with a [teacher of the classics]. They heard the sound of chanting. Turning toward that sound he encountered an assembly of about a dozen persons, who were listening to a distinguished bearded elder as he chanted a series of verses. Hongyi marveled at the power of oral expression and recognized those verses (about the vows made by Bodhisattvas) as passages of the [Flower Garland Sutra]. Also, there was a placard before the elder upon which the title of the Sutra was inscribed in a line of large characters. The dream-youth (Hongyi) asked if he could join this assembly. When available seats within the boundaries of the assembly were pointed out to the two visitors, Hongyi removed his shoes, entered into that area, and took a seat among the listeners. It was at that moment that he awoke from his dream."

After this dream, Hongyi focused on teaching the vinaya to a small group of monastics and would give more general talks to monastics and householders as well. He did not do what most monks of his stature did – offer the precepts for people to become monastics, nor did he give a formal dharma talk on a sutra – probably because of his views of his own questionable status (completely from his own perspective) as a monk.

As for his legacy, Hongyi continues to be one of the most highly regarded masters of the 20th century. He wrote commentaries on the precepts for both monastics and householders that are still widely read today. His calligraphy (the only art practice he didn't abandon) is in high demand. And as an example of his continuing legacy, a student whose mother-in-law is Chinese, told me that she still receives a daily email with an inspirational quote from Hongyi.

But what about that haunting death photo? How does someone die so completely at peace?

The photo

Birnbaum describes the photo as follows:

"His death, at age sixty-two, became itself a final teaching and, it seems, his greatest public statement. All accounts spoke to his conscious awareness and dignity in this process, in which in the last hours with the help of his attendant Miaolian he chanted the name of Amitabha and also verses from the [Flower Garland Sutra] on the vows of bodhisattvas. A photo taken eight hours after his death, when the doors to his chamber—sealed after the last breath—finally were opened, showed him peacefully reclined on his right side in the standard position for both sleeping and dying."

Hongyi had fallen gravely ill several years before he died and gave his attendant these instructions: 

"Before my death, please assist me from outside the bed curtain by chanting the Buddha’s name. There is no need to chant continually. After I die, do not move my body, and keep the door locked for a period of eight hours. After the eight hours have passed, you absolutely must not clean my body nor wash my face. Roll a ruined bed quilt around my body over whatever clothes I happen to be wearing, and then see it off to a mountain hollow behind this building. Let it remain there for a period of three days. If the tigers have eaten it, good. If not, then after the three days, cremate it at that site."

Several of the above details go against the Chinese cultural or dharmic conventions. For example, not chanting Buddha's name (Chinese, Nánwú Emítuó Fó; Japanese, Namo Amida Butsu) continuously, not washing the body right after death, and leaving the body for eight hours.

These details are Hongyi's preferences based on his deep study of the buddhadharma, for example, for the body to be left for eight hours. The teaching is that consciousness can remain in the body for 48 hours or more after the apparent death. During this time, the body is extremely sensitive to pain. Even closing the eyes of a dead person is thought to cause them considerable distress. For a practitioner intent on impacting their rebirth through their dying process, this post-death period is crucial, and part of the long, last moment. Their post-mortem destiny might be determined during that post-death period, so to leave them to concentrate on the Buddha, without the distraction caused by pain, is crucial for their birth in the Pure Land – or for any of the powerful potential of the long, last moment to be optimized (e.g., to realize the Buddha mind and to be reborn in the human realm).

Birnbaum elaborates:

"In the traditions that Hongyi followed, it was understood that birth in the Pure Land could take place on two levels. The capable practitioner with properly focused mind can see the universe as entirely pure. This is a type of 'birth in the Pure Land' in this very body. But also, if at the point of death the mind remains unmoved from this state of profound concentration, then it is held that after death, one will be born into Amitabha Buddha’s realm. The moment of death, then, is crucial, but one cannot negotiate that moment properly without thoroughly grounded preparation. Adherence to precepts is essential, since this regulation of body acts creates a basis for stabilizing and purifying the mind, and without a cultivation of secure habits to stabilize and purify the mind, birth in the Pure Land is impossible. If this practice has not yet become a firmly established habit, then in the pain and delirium that often form part of the dying process, it will be difficult to maintain pure and singular focus on mindfulness of the Buddha. Although the Buddha and various bodhisattvas have pledged to assist the dying, if one’s mind wavers from concentration on them, then one remains trapped in the Triple World, suffering rebirth again and again."

So the point of death is crucial. There's much to say about this, so I'll be returning to this topic in the next post. For now, I'd like to emphasize that Hongyi's relaxed, fearless, peaceful pose at his last moment was not by chance. He had deeply integrated the body practice of the Chinese monastic system, such that he could die just as the Buddha had, reclining on his right side, his right hand tucked under his head, his left arm at his side, and his legs and feet just so.

To put this practice in context, I'll turn to Birnbaum one last time:

"Buddhist practice traditions in China thoroughly engage the body in specific ways. These particular types of engagement are central to the Buddhist monastic enterprise. There is an “ordinary body” created by all monks and nuns, who share certain highly visible characteristics in common. They establish a uniform body surface by regulated garments, scarification through burning on the fore-section of the scalp at the time of full ordination, and twice-monthly head shaving. Thus, an outsider can tell at a glance that this person is a monastic. In addition, many of the basic ways of using the body in daily life are transformed. Gestures, postures, facial expressions; modes of standing, walking, sitting, sleeping, bowing, and prostration: all these are learned and maintained through various disciplinary forces, and many of them are charged with specific meaning that is transmitted through both texts and oral teachings."

Hongyi, through his determined, long-term study and practice, clearly had integrated the vinaya and awareness of Buddha, such that he could – during his long, last moment – die in peace.

Why is that moment so important and what does that say to practitioners today? These questions will be taken up in my next post.

"Did an angel whisper in your ear/hold you close/take away your fear/in that long, last moment"

This week on Substack

"Bodhidharma’s 'Just Clarity': Record of Going Easy, Case 2, in Full" will be posted Wednesday, July 16, 2025. My interview with Meido Moore Roshi, is here:

The Shockingly Direct Path of Zen: A Conversation with Meido Moore Roshi
Case 2: Just Clarity, No Holiness

Next week here on the Vine of Obstacles Zen for subscribers

"Why is the Long, Last Moment So Important?"

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