A Life of Hui Neng by John M Evans. In the Zen Masters Series.

After the transmission of the Dharma, Hui Neng fled to the south of China, taking with him the symbolic robe and bowl of the honour bestowed on him. It seems he was pursued by several hundred men, presumably jealous Northern monks who could not accept the transmission to such a lowly Southerner. However, the new patriarch confronted the most fierce of them, a former army general, Hui Ming, and enlightened him with the koan: “When you are thinking of neither good nor evil, what is your original face? (that is, real nature).” The monk asked for more esoteric information, to which Hui Neng replied, “If you turn your light inwardly, you will find what is esoteric within you.”

This was to be his method, a turning inward toward Self-being, or Buddha-mind, producing an awakening of prajna. Dih Ping Tsze, in a commentary on Hui Neng’s Platform Sutra, has said “Let it be noted that in China alone thousands of Buddhists have attained enlightenment by acting on this wise saying of the sixth Patriarch.”

The awakening of prajna, or higher wisdom, is the nub of all Hui Neng’s teaching. The gradualists of the North, adopted the Indian tradition of sitting in meditation tranquillising the thoughts and hoping that, at the appropriate moment, prajna awakens and enlightenment is attained. Here is the wiping of the mirror, or, as the Zen master said, the polishing of a brick.

Hui Neng did not accept the temporal division between meditation and the awakening of prajna. He taught that when one is present, so is the other; there is no distinction to be made between them, though I suspect his definition of meditation was more mindful than concentrative. Indian meditation (dhyana), he said, is not necessary as a prerequisite for the subsequent stirring of prajna, he thought. Dhyana is prajna, and prajna dhyana (I think the word “concentration” rather than dhyana makes more sense here).

Zen is more than just a name for meditation as is commonly thought. It contains within it the end and the means, the path and the goal, enlightenment itself. This point presumably reflects the long antipathy of Zen to Indian samatha techniques of concentration leading to samadhi (blissful stillness within meditation). A recent Zen master has termed this state, “the Devil’s cavern” because it can easily snare students into believing they have reached nirvana. In my own case, I was in this state for around a month, but my reading had told me that it was not enlightenment, however blissful the experience. It came spontaneously and it left spontaneously, and was a prelude to genuine insight, so perhaps it serves a purpose after all. It appears in Christian mysticism as the “prayer of quiet” which, St Theresa of Avila believed, is a supernatural harbinger of genuine insights to come. In Hinduism it appears as Brahmajhoti, or the touch of God.

Following Hui Neng, Zen took on a new significance, a complex of meanings that expressed the non-dual reality as Hui Neng saw it. To illustrate by going back to the haiku poem,

The old pond.
A frog jumps in,
Plop!

On first reading, there is a brief moment of recognition that goes beyond words. In that instant there is both concentration and prajna, that is, Zen. The non-verbal flash, when the word becomes a sound and ceases to have literal significance, opens up a meditative state in which prajna is present. They come together for, as the Patriarch said, they are not two.

For the observer of the scene, the poet himself, and perhaps for the susceptible reader, the distinction between observer and observed vanishes, if only momentarily before analysis comes charging back. The observer, the pond, the frog, and the “plop” merge into a seeing which has no seer or seen. There is only suchness on a plane above the normal dualities of the world.

When thought stops, there is something else there, prajna, enlightenment, behind our everyday consciousness. The goal of the doctrine of enlightenment is to prolong this token moment into a way of living in this very universe of dualities, as the Flower Garland Sutra says, “illuminated by the light of the concentration of the Buddha.” When we hear the plop, Bankei’s unborn Buddha-mind stands there fully revealed. Hui Neng developed his theme of prajna in his Platform Sutra:

Prajna does not vary with different persons; what makes
the difference is whether one’s mind is enlightened or
deluded. He who does not know his own Buddha-mind,
and is under the delusion that Buddhahood can be attained
by outward religious rites is called the slow-witted. He
who knows the teaching of the sudden school and
attaches no importance to rituals, and whose mind functions
always under right views, so that he is absolutely free
from defilements or contaminations, is said to have known
his Buddha-mind.

Go to Part 4.

A Life of Hui Neng by John M Evans. In the Zen Masters Series.

Hui Neng’s path to enlightenment and the sixth patriarchate began while he was selling firewood in the market at Kwang Chou as a young man. As he was completing a transaction he heard a man reciting a sutra in the street. The words immediately struck a chord within his mind and he experienced a kensho, or “seeing into his own nature”. The text he had heard was the famous Diamond Sutra and the reciter was from the Tung Ch’an monastery, where the Abbot was none other than Hung Yen, the fifth Patriarch of Chinese Zen.

Hui Neng must have questioned this man closely, because he learned that the Abbot encouraged not only the monks but also the laity in the reading of this scripture. He believed that by doing so they could realise their own Buddha-mind and achieve Buddhahood directly. The notion that he was not doomed to a life of poverty or excluded from enlightenment, must have fired his mind at this moment, for he soon abandoned his way of life and set off for the monastery.

There has been much discussion over the years about Hui Neng’s alleged illiteracy. Suzuki has questioned it because of the Patriarch’s apparent knowledge of other scriptures apart from The Diamond Sutra, which was so important to him. It is also true that his father held an official post before being dismissed “to be a commoner”. Although poor, such parentage would surely have had an influence on an exceptionally talented “Buddha-to-be”. The illiteracy charge may have been a subsequent fabrication by Hui Neng’s disciples to underpin Zen’s claim to be a wordless doctrine. We shall never know for certain.

Later, as the old Patriarch handed over the apostolic transmission to this Southern “barbarian” kitchen-hand he instructed Hui Neng on its future.

“From time immemorial it has been the practice for one Buddha to pass to his successor the quintessence of the Dharma, and for one patriarch to transmit to another the esoteric teaching from heart to heart (or mind to mind — the words are represented by the same character). As the robe may give you cause for dispute, you are the last one to inherit it.”

Despite the unprepossessing qualifications of the new patriarch, Zen, as we know it, began with the enlightening being, Hui Neng.

The starting point of his Zen is the Diamond Cutter (or simply, Diamond) Sutra. It is part of the mighty Perfection of Wisdom scriptures (Prajnaparamita) of the Mahayana and is thought to have been composed in the 4th Century in India — it was translated into Chinese around 400AD, and is associated with, though probably not written by, the great Indian Buddhist sage, Nagarjuna.

Opinions vary about this seminal work. There is a view that it is lightweight compared to, say, The Lankavatara Sutra. Thus an author of an otherwise excellent book on Zen culture: “…the more easily understood Diamond Sutra, a repetitive and self-praising document whose message is that nothing exists.” But in the view of A. F. Price, a translator of the scripture: “…those who have many times carefully read and thoroughly meditated upon the (sutra) have found that the mind is re-oriented in a striking way. In the light of this re-orientation the problems of life assume different proportions, and a new and clearer perspective gradually takes the place of the old.”

This was certainly true of Hui Neng, who placed the work firmly at the heart-centre of his school of Zen. His own Platform Sutra has the words: “…if you wish to penetrate the deepest mystery…of prajna, you should practise prajna by reciting and studying the (Diamond) Sutra, which will enable you to realise Buddha-mind…This sutra belongs to the highest school of Buddhism, and the Lord Buddha delivered it specially for the very wise and quick-witted.”

The Diamond Sutra is a discourse by the Buddha himself on non-duality and skylike mind. It sets out the highest Mahayana viewpoint on the dependency of individuality and phenomena, and the futility of attachment to names and concepts. At first glance, and to the materialistic mind, it can indeed seem nihilistic and self-congratulatory. However, the approach to it must be made at a deeper level than intellectual analysis. Only insight reveals its true meaning, which is to awaken the born to the unborn, the transient to the eternal. An enlightened being, says the sutra: “is free from the idea of an ego-entity, free from the idea of a personality, free from the idea of a being, and free from the idea of a separated individuality.”

Being free from ideas about these things is the understanding here, not the things themselves, which exist at least on their own terms at their normal level of functioning. In the time-honoured Buddhist phrase, they are what they are. With the ceasing of notions, all becomes clear, and, since ideas have gone, there is no room for description of any sort. Even the terms of scripture, the six paramitas, the Buddha himself, are all names, and therefore lacking in self-supporting substance.

“Words cannot explain the real nature of a cosmos. Only common people fettered to desire make use of this arbitrary method (that is, description).” This scripture does not give much comfort to the professional writer, except, of course, that without the words, we would never get the chance to read the message of the inestimable Diamond Sutra.

It follows from this, as the sutra reasons, that the Buddha himself has nothing to teach. Why? Because truth is “uncontainable and inexpressible. It neither is nor is it not.” The Diamond Sutra ends with the thought:

Thus shall ye think of all this fleeting world,
A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream;
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
A flickering lamp, a phantom and a dream.

This is the typical sentiment of the Prajnaparamita scriptures, which require a high spirituality for full understanding. The words themselves can be easily misconstrued by the unwary, and the prevailing mood of emptiness taken for nihilism. Huang Po’s “deathless” reality is a much more comforting version of the same truth.

On its own terms, and at the appropriate level of awareness, The Diamond Sutra is a supremely profound work. Its structure, which is largely recitative, is composed to carry a message deep beyond the nature of conditioned description, undermining the shaky foundations of the ego-entity, and revealing the clear light of truth: the “diamond in the heart of the Buddha lotus”.

Go to Part 3.

A Life of Hui Neng by John M Evans. In the Zen Masters Series.

In The Flower Garland Sutra there is a description of the masters of enlightenment, or Bodhisattvas, who come into the world to bring others to spiritual knowledge. Described in this version as “enlightening beings”, they are often not what they seem :

Some appear in the form of mendicants, some in the
form of priests, some in bodies adorned head to foot
with particular emblematic signs, some in the form of
scholars, scientists, doctors; some in the form of
merchants, some in the form of ascetics, some in the
form of entertainers, some in the form of pietists, some
in the form of bearers of all kinds of arts and crafts
— they are seen to have come, in their various guises, to
all villages, cities, towns, communities, districts, and
nations … (They) are lamps shedding light
on the knowledge of all beings … for the purpose of
leading people to perfection.

Hui Neng (638-713 CE), the sixth Patriarch of Ch’an Buddhism was clearly an enlightening being. Apparently illiterate, born into poverty because of the exile and death of his father, rising to be patriarch from the lowly position of rice pounder in a monastery kitchen, he founded the Zen that we know today.

Zen Buddhism is a poet’s path. Although its objectives are beyond words and concepts, yet words are among the skilful means it uses to take the voyager to the other shore, despite its hard-won reputation as a “scripture without words”. It is perhaps no coincidence that Zen is steeped in the evocative poetry of China and Japan, and that many of the scriptures are expressed in verse or canticle. No doubt this made memorizing simpler, but it also adds an additional dimension to the meaning of the texts. For example, a Zen poem is regarded as successful if it awakens in us a direct perception of a timeless moment.

The old pond.
A frog jumps in.
Plop!

The onomatopoeic “plop” gives us a shock of recognition. Indeed, the English translation here is probably better than the Japanese original (Mizu-no oto! — “watersound”) As a poem, in English terms, it is a bit deficient because it doesn’t seem to say anything. But for just an instant we are at the pondside and our discursive tendency retreats before the truth of a real Zen experience. It is a moment of “mindfulness”, the central method of zazen and Buddhist insight meditation. Fittingly, the story of Hui Neng’s rise to prominence begins with two poems :

Our body is the Bodhi-tree,
Our mind a mirror bright.
We wipe and polish them every day,
To let no dust alight.

This was written secretly at dead of night on the wall of Tung Ch’an monastery by Shen Hsui, the leading candidate for the mantle of the fifth Patriarch who was approaching death.

The master, sensing who had written it, summoned the author and told him, “Your stanza shows that you have not yet realised the essence of mind (Buddha-mind). So far you have reached the “door of enlightenment”, but you have not yet entered it … To attain supreme enlightenment, one must be able to know spontaneously one’s own nature, or Buddha-mind, which is neither created nor can it be annihilated.”

The layman, Hui Neng, who worked in the granary and kitchens, felt he could do better. He persuaded a visiting official to write his stanza on the corridor wall :

Since there is no Bodhi-tree,
Nor sign of a mirror bright,
And because no object ever was,
Where can the dust alight?

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