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.