In Chan and Zen Buddhism, dharma transmission is a custom in which a person is established as a "successor in an unbroken lineage of teachers and disciples, a spiritual 'bloodline' (kechimyaku) theoretically traced back to the Buddha himself." The dharma lineage reflects the importance of family-structures in ancient China, and forms a symbolic and ritual recreation of this system for the monastical "family".
In Rinzai-Zen, inka shōmei is ideally "the formal recognition of Zen's deepest realisation", but practically it is being used for the transmission of the "true lineage" of the masters (shike) of the training halls. There are only about fifty to eighty of such inka shōmei-bearers in Japan.
In Sōtō-Zen, dharma transmission is referred to as shiho, and further training is required to become an oshō.
History
The notion and practice of Dharma Transmission developed early in the history of Chan, as a means to gain credibility and to foster institutional ties among the members of the Chan community. Charts of dharma-lineages were developed, which represented the continuity of the Buddhist dharma. Originally these lineages only included the Chinese Patriarchs, but they were later extended to twenty-eight Indian Patriarchs and seven Buddhas.
Chan lineage
The Chan tradition developed from the established tradition of "Canonical Buddhism", which "remained normative for all later Chinese Buddhism". It was established by the end of the sixth century, as a result of the Chinese developing understanding of Buddhism in the previous centuries.
One of the inventions of this Canonical Buddhism were transmission lists, a literary device to establish a lineage. Both Tiantai and Chan took over this literary device, to lend authority to those developing traditions, and guarantee its authenticity:
The concept of dharma transmission took shape during the Tang period, when establishing the right teachings became important, to safeguard the authority of specific schools. The emerging Zen-tradition developed the Transmission of the Lamp-genre, in which lineages from Shakyamuni Buddha up to their own times were described.
Another literary device for establishing those traditions was given by the Kao-seng-chuan (Biographies of Eminent Monks), compiled around 530. The Chan-tradition developed its own corpus in this genre, with works such as Anthology of the Patriarchal Hall (952) and the Jingde Records of the Transmission of the Lamp (published 1004). McRae considers Dumoulin's A History of Zen to be a modern example of this genre, disguised as scientific history.
Chinese patriarchs
The Chan lineages picture the semi-legendary monk Bodhidharma as the patriarch who brought Chan to China. Only scarce historical information is available about him, but his hagiography developed when the Chan tradition grew stronger and gained prominence in the early 8th century.
Six Chinese patriarchs
By this time a lineage of the six ancestral founders of Chan in China was developed. In the late 8th century, under the influence of Huineng's student Shenhui, the traditional form of this lineage had been established: Bodhidharma () ca. 440 – ca. 528 Huike () 487–593 Sengcan () ?–606 Daoxin () 580–651 Hongren () 601–674 Huineng () 638–713
Shenhui and Huineng
According to tradition, the sixth and last ancestral founder, Huineng (惠能; 638–713), was one of the giants of Chan history, and all surviving schools regard him as their ancestor. The dramatic story of Huineng's life tells that there was a controversy over his claim to the title of patriarch. After being chosen by Hongren, the fifth ancestral founder, Huineng had to flee by night to Nanhua Temple in the south to avoid the wrath of Hongren's jealous senior disciples.
Modern scholarship, however, has questioned this narrative. Historic research reveals that this story was created around the middle of the 8th century, beginning in 731 by Shenhui, a successor to Huineng, to win influence at the Imperial Court. He claimed Huineng to be the successor of Hongren instead of the then publicly recognized successor Shenxiu. In 745 Shenhui was invited to take up residence in the Ho-tse temple in Luoyang. In 753 he fell out of grace, and had to leave the capital to go into exile. The most prominent of the successors of his lineage was Guifeng Zongmi According to Zongmi, Shenhui's approach was officially sanctioned in 796, when "an imperial commission determined that the Southern line of Chan represented the orthodox transmission and established Shen-hui as the seventh patriarch, placing an inscription to that effect in the Shen-lung temple".