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.