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Although there is no record of the date of Tang Hôi birth, it is likely that he was born sometime in the first decade of the third century. The date of his death has been recorded as 280 C.E. His father was of Sogdian descent. Sogdia was a province in central Asia to the northwest of the modern subcontinent of India, in what is now Uzbekistan.

His mother was a native of Jiaozhou (Vietnam). When Tang Hôi was only ten years old both his parents passed away, and he was accepted in a local temple as a young novice. We do not know the name of the monastery which Tang Hôi studied and practiced, but we do know that it was in Luy Lau, the capital of Jiaozhou, in the province of Bac Ninh in what is now northern Vietnam. In the temple he studied the Buddhist Sutras in Sanskrit and also learned Chinese.

By the time Tang Hôi had come of age and received bhikshu (monk) ordination[1], he was well acquainted not only with Buddhism but also with Confucian and Taoist thought, which Buddhist monks in Vietnam at that time also studied. He became proficient in the science of divination[2], astronomy, and geomancy, traditional skill taught by the Chinese system. He had studied and could quote long passage from Confucian works such as The Four Books and The Five Classics. Since many people would have been more familiar with these Chinese works than with Buddhist texts, teachers of Buddhism in those days typically drew from these books.

Tang Hôi not only lost his parents at the early age, he also lost three of his primary teachers in the monastery. In his preface to the Anapananusmriti Sutra he writes, “I, Tang Hôi, had hardly reached the age when I can carry wood, when my mother and father passed away. My three ordination teachers, one after the other, also passed away.” Though he was saddened by these losses, Tang Hôi was determined to practice and devote his life to helping others practice. He went on to establish a major practice center in Luy Lau, which may have been in Dharma Cloud Temple, where a large community of Vietnamese monks lived and practiced Buddhism under his guidance.

Under Han rule, it was forbidden for people to ordain as Buddhist monks. However, because Jiaozhou was such a remote part of the Han Empire—eighteen hundred miles from the capital at Luoyang—Buddhist were able to maintain a monastic Sangha comprised of local monks and Indian monks who had taken up residence in Luy Lau. In Tang Hôi’s center, Buddhist scriptures were translated from Sanskrit into Chinese. Laypeople who came to Jiaozhou from the Han capital also actively involved in translation work. Among them were Chen Hui and Pi Ye, lay disciples of Meditation Master An Shi Gao, who lived in Luoyang.

An Shi Gao was born a prince in Parthia, an ancient kingdom in present-day northeast Iran. Instead of succeeding his father to the throne, he chose to devote his life to Buddhist studies and practice, among the sutras he translated in Luoyang are a number concerning meditation practice, including Anapananusmriti Sutra and the Skandhadhatu-ayatana Sutra. Biographies of High Monks mention that An Shi Gao spent time in Jiaozhou. There is evidence that he arrived from Parthia by sea and arrived in Jiaozhou before he went north to Luoyang.

Though An Shi Gao did not have monastic disciples (due to the prohibition against Han people becoming monks), he did save several lay disciples who helped him with his translation work. An Shi Gao was well-versed in Sanskrit, but he relied on his Chinese lay disciples for the Chinese translation. Two of his lay disciples, Chen Hui and Pi Ye, went south as refugees to Jiaozhou, bringing with them a number of An Shi Gao’s translation, including Anapananusmriti Sutra. There they met Tang Hôi. He invited them to form a committee with him to translate and write commentaries on Buddhist sutras at Dharma Cloud Temple in Luy Lau. Lay man Chen Hui wrote a commentary on the Anapananusmriti Sutra and gave it to Tang Hôi to review. In his preface to the commentary, Tang Hôi writes, “The layman Chen Hui did the work of writing the commentary, and I just gave some assistance by polishing the text, adding a little here and taking away a little there.”

A passage in Biographies of High Monks states that An Shi Gao, who lived in Luoyang, knew of Tang Hôi. When An Shi Gao passed away he left behind these words, “The person who will develop the path I have taught is Layman Chen Hui, and the person who will transmit the teaching to meditation students is Bhikshu Tang Hôi.” This passage confirms that the two people to who An Shi Gao entrusted the transmission of his work were Chen Hui and Tang Hôi.

Tang Hôi also tell us in his preface to the Anapananusmriti Sutra, “There is bodhisattva who goes by the name of An Qing, whose title is Shi Gao. He was once heir to the throne of Parthia. After he abdicated in favor his uncle, he came to this country. He traveled to many places and finally he came to the capital.” This word established that Tang Hôi preface to the sutra was written before the fall of the Han dynasty in 229 C.E., because An Shi Gao went to Luoyang after the fall of Han Empire to the Wu Dynasty, China was divided into Three Kingdoms. Jiaozhou belongs to the kingdom called Dong Wu and the capital of Dong Wu was not Luoyang but Jianye. We know that Tang Hoi wrote the preface to this sutra in Vietnam, because he did not travel to southern China until 247 C.E.

In teaching Buddhist meditation, Tang Hôi drew from basic meditation sutras such as the Anapananusmriti, the Skandha-dhatu-ayatana[3], the Ugradatta-paripriccha, the Tree of the Bodhisattva Path[4], the Smrtyupasthana, and the Sutra of Forty-Two Chapters, as well as Mahayana Sutras such as the Prajñaparamita in Eight thousand Lines[5], and The Collection on the Six Paramitas, which he himself compiled.

[1] The full ordination of a Buddhist monk, in which he undertakes the practice of the 250 precepts
[2] Divination here means the ancient Chinese system of the I-Ching, which utilize an interpretation of the eight trigrams and the five elements (metal, wood, water, fire and earth) to gain insight into the possible good or bad fortune that may accrue to people. Divination was one of the traditional studies of a Confucian education in Han China
[3] Yin Tche Jou 603
[4] Tao Chou, Taisho 532
[5] Ba Qian Song Bore, Taisho 229

Excerpt from "Master Tang Hoi: First Zen Teacher in Vietnam and China - Parallax Press"