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Garma C.C. Chang Biography
Zhang Chengji (Garma C.C. Chang), 1984. Photo: Eva Chang (CC BY-SA 3.0)Chen-chi Chang was born on August 20th, 1920, in Shanghai, China. His father was Chang Dulun, a senior army officer and later Hubei provincial governor.
Chang often visited Buddhist temples with his mother and regularly recited Buddhist sutras.
Chang found school to be meaningless and boring, and he instead filled his time by reading philosophy and books on spirituality. At the age of 15, he left school and entered a Chan monastery in the Lushan Mountains of Jiangxi Province.
He concluded that nothing is more meaningful than the study and practice of Dharma and wanted to travel to Tibet in order to deepen his realization of the Dharma. His father felt that Tibet was too remote, undeveloped and unreliable and declined to let him go.
But in the end, he made arrangements for his son to visit Minyak Gangkar Monastery, located in Kham. Chang’s Tibetan master was the 9th Gangkar Rinpoche Karma Chokyi Senge. Gangkar Rinpoche was also Chang’s mother’s teacher and the abbot of the monastery.
Chang spent 9 years there and adopted a Tibetan name, Garma, a derivative of the word Dharma. In Pinyin (Romanization of the Chinese characters based on their pronunciation), his name is spelt Zhang Chengji.
The 9th Gangkar Rinpoche Karma Chokyi Senge, from the Karma Kagyu tradition. In 1945 he left Gangkar Rinpoche Monastery and returned to Nanjing with his family. In 1948 he married Nian Yu (Helena) in Hankou and in 1949 he emigrated with his wife via India, Taiwan and Hong Kong to the USA, where he arrived in 1950.
Thanks to his language skills in Chinese, Tibetan, Sanskrit, Pali and English and his extensive knowledge of Buddhist philosophy, Chang became research fellow at the Bollingen Foundation in New York in 1955. In 1966, he obtained a permanent position as a professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Pennsylvania State University.
During this time, Chang translated and explained Chinese and Tibetan texts: The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa, the practice of Zen1, the practice of Mahāmudrā 2, the philosophy of Hwa Yen, 3 and Teachings and Practice of Tibetan Tantra.
His books were aimed less at an academic audience and more at Western practitioners of Vajrayana and Zen and were widely distributed in the USA and Europe. His Austrian student Ernst Schönwiese (Garma Döndrub Tashi) translated some of these books into German.
Another important student of Chang was his Chinese friend C. T. Shen, whom he met in India in 1950 and who later became a successful entrepreneur in the USA.
Shen has been extremely generous in providing financial support to Buddhist teachers, Buddhist meditation centers, and the development of Buddhism in America. He was a co-founder of the Buddhist Association of the United States (BAUS).
Increasing heart problems with two heart operations (1974, 1984) and declining eyesight made life and work difficult for Chang in old age. He died in Marietta in 1988, leaving behind his wife Helena Chang.
In the translation of a poem by Zen master Hongzhi Zhengjue (1091–1157), Chang writes:
“All words are forgotten in silence and serenity;
It appears brightly clear and full of life before you."
Works of Garma C. C. Chang
• The hundred thousand songs of Milarepa – the life-story and teaching of the greatest poet-saint ever to appear in the history of
• Buddhism. University Books, New York, 1962.
• Teachings of Tibetan Yoga, 1963.
• The Buddhist Teaching of Totality: The Philosophy of Hwa Yen Buddhism, 1971.
• The Practice of Zen, 1978.
• Treasury of Mahayana Sutras: Selections from the Maharatnakuta Sutra, 1983.
• The Six Yogas of Naropa & Teachings on Mahamudra, 1986.
• Teachings and Practice of Tibetan Tantra, 2004.
Sources
• https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhang_Chengji
• https://archive.org/details/teachingsoftibetanyogagarmachangc.c._56_G/page/n3/mode/2up
Footnotes
1. Zen is a school of Mahayana Buddhism that originated in China during the Tang dynasty, there known as the Chan School. The term Zen is derived from the Japanese pronunciation of the Middle Chinese word chán, an abbreviation of chánnà, which is a Chinese transliteration of the Sanskrit word of dhyāna ("meditation").
2. Mahāmudrā (lit. the Great Symbol) – a teaching that leads to the realization of the Primordial Mind, or the Dharmakāya; the practical instructions on how to meditate on Śunyatā (Voidness).
3. The Hwa Yen School, or Hwa Yen Tsung, was established in the Tang period, roughly in the 7th and 8th centuries A.D., by outstanding thinkers such as Tu Shun (557-640) and Fa Tsang (643-712). The Chinese word Hwa Yen means "the flower decoration" or "garland," which is originally the name of a voluminous Mahayana text: The Flower Garland Sūtra (sk. Avataṃsaka Sūtra). Therefore, the teaching of this School is based mainly upon this text and draws inspiration from it.
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