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.
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:
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):
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:
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:
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:
In addition, inspired by and borrowing from Buddhist and Confucian sources, Hongyi developed a method for self-examination. Birnbaum describes it like this:
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:
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:
Hongyi had fallen gravely ill several years before he died and gave his attendant these instructions:
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:
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:
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:
Next week here on the Vine of Obstacles Zen for subscribers
"Why is the Long, Last Moment So Important?"