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?

Mirror, Mirror …
The question of the mirror and the alighting of dust was a major point of contention between the Northern and Southern Chinese schools of Ch’an — not to be confused with the Indian Mahayana/Hinayana division. They were known respectively as the gradual and the abrupt tendencies. The Zen story of a pupil approaching his master, who is intently rubbing a brick, illustrates the two sides of the question:

Pupil: What are you doing, Master?
Master: I am polishing this brick, as you see.
Pupil: But why, Master?
Master: To make a perfect mirror.
Pupil: But you’ll never succeed. It’s impossible!
Master: The same is true of the mind. No matter how
much you polish it, it will never be other than it is.

Here the master is making the point that the mind is already enlightened, and that the state of liberation is not other than this state here and now. The state is the same, the seeing is all.

Hui Neng would later assert that to practise meditation by simply sitting quietly without ideas rising in the mind, ranks the meditator with inanimate objects. The only right way, he claimed, is to free the mind of attachment to objects and form. All other methods put oneself “under restraint.” He castigates those teachers of meditation who instruct their pupils to attempt to slow down the activity of the mind. This way can lead, in rare cases, to insanity.

The modern master, D. T. Suzuki, made much of this argument, seeing in it the turning point from which Zen developed in its modern form. If the Buddha-mind is originally pure and undefiled, he asked, why is it necessary to clean it by wiping off non-existent dust? Moreover, he continued: “If from the mind arises this world, why not let the latter rise as it pleases?…The most natural thing to do in relation to the mind would be to let it go on with its creating and illuminating.”

The so-called Northern school, he implies, is just creating a Buddha-mind, which stands against the everyday mind, thus ordaining a dualism which does not exist.

Hui Neng also cautioned against this creeping dualism. “As long as there is a dualistic way of looking at things there is no emancipation. Light stands against darkness, the passions stand against enlightenment. Unless the opposites are illuminated by prajna (insight, transcendental wisdom), so that the gap between the two is bridged, there is no understanding…The main point is not to think of things as good and bad and thereby be restricted, but to let the mind move on as it is in itself and perform its inexhaustible functions. This is the way to be in accord with the mind-essence.”

The monks were astonished by Hui Neng’s stanza which exhibited such deep insight into the nature of things.

“How wonderful.” they said, “Obviously we should not judge by appearances alone. How can it be that for so long we have made a Bodhisattva Incarnate work for us?”

The old master was equally impressed. He came secretly to the kitchen aware that Hui Neng might be in some danger.

“A seeker of the Path risks his life for the Dharma,” said the master. “Is the rice ready?”

Hui Neng replied to this cryptic message: “Ready long ago, only waiting for the sieve.” Then, knocking the rice mortar three times to signify the third watch of the night, the Patriarch left. Later, at the appropriate hour, Hui Neng made his way to his master’s room.

Hung Yen, the old patriarch, knew that his candidate was ready. He was in the same condition as the rice, ready to be beaten into cakes. Immediately, he began to expound the Diamond Sutra. At the sentence, “One should use one’s mind in such a way that it will be free of attachment,” Hui Neng became thoroughly enlightened.

“Who would have thought,” he said, “that the Buddha-mind is intrinsically pure … and that all things are the manifestation of (it).”

Go to Part 2.