A Life of Huang Po by John M Evans. In the Zen Masters Series.

The question of the void and man’s relationship with it appears again and again in Huang Po’s doctrine. The following story involves his biographer P’ei Hsui.

P’ei Hsui: (recognizing a picture of a famous monk on
the wall) I see his likeness, but where is he himself?
The monk with him remained silent.
P’ei Hsui: But there are Zen monks here, are there not?
Monk: Yes, there is One.
Later P’ei Hsui related this conversation to Huang Po.
Huang Po: P’ei Hsui! Where are you?
P’ei Hsui (realizing that no reply was possible): Please
enter the hall and continue with your teaching.

To suggest that there are two of anything was anathema in this particular training establishment. Also, that points in space could be distinguished from the whole was equally so. Where are we, then? Yes, we are here, but we are also the All. Therefore no coherent reply is possible without fracturing the truth. It should be remembered that an enlightened master always spoke from the Absolute realm, even if he was not permanently there. He was not dismissing the world of particulars in which we find ourselves, merely trying to wrest the pupil’s consciousness into an equally Absolute way of seeing things.

Our original mind, viewed from the highest level, is “devoid of any atom of objectivity”. Huang Po describes it as “void, omnipresent, silent, pure; it is glorious and mysterious peaceful joy — and that is all”. This “skylike mind” is the ground on which is built consciousness, the world, the universe, individuality. It is the underpinning of everything we know and are. We should “Enter deeply into it by awakening to it…That which is before you is it, in all its fullness, utterly complete.”

This pure mind, the source of everything, shines
forever and on all with the brilliance of its own
perfection. But the people of the world do not awake
to it, regarding only that which sees, hears, feels
and knows as mind. Blinded by their own sight, hearing,
feeling and knowing, they do not perceive the
spiritual brilliance of the source-substance.

To discriminate between good and evil is to show attachment to form. Rather than spending aeons trying to obtain merits, or good karma, it is better to achieve sudden realization of the original mind. But to think that this mind is either mind or no-mind is to express the inexpressible in conceptual terms, something that Huang Po always severely reproached. He asked for a silent understanding only. Buddhas and “wriggling creatures,” (for example, worms) “are of one substance and do not differ.” If concepts could be annihilated in a moment of insight, the source-substance “would manifest itself like the sun ascending through the void and illuminating the whole universe without hindrance or bounds.” This is the supreme way to Buddhahood: to awaken suddenly to a realisation that one’s own mind is the Buddha-mind. To be a Buddha is to manifest “from thought-instant to thought-instant, NO FORM; from thought-instant to thought-instant, NO ACTIVITY.” And this does not represent death, but deathlessness, which is a positive living reality.

Huang Po was also dismissive of scientists and their practices. He castigated them for trying to measure everything in the void, yard by yard, inch by inch, when all phenomena are “devoid of distinctions of form”. Phenomena, he stressed, belong to the ever-peaceful ground which lies beyond the world of the transformations of form. They are, he said, “coexistent with space and one with reality”. In this regard one could say, with Hui Neng, that “there has never been a single thing.” His advice to scientists and those who seek truth by painstaking measurement and analysis, is that they must enter it “with the suddenness of a knife-thrust”. His school could only teach them to understand their original mind.

An Indian Vedantist said: “One cannot hope to measure the universe and study the phenomena. It is impossible. For the objects are mental creations; it is like trying to stamp with one’s foot on the head of one’s shadow; the farther one moves the farther goes the shadow’s head.”

Moreover, said Huang Po, when the moment of enlightenment comes, “do not think in terms of understanding, not understanding or not not-understanding.…” For these cannot be grasped. Enlightenment when grasped is indeed grasped, “but he who grasps it is no more conscious of having done so than someone ignorant of it is conscious of his failure.” Here he means that, during the nirvanic experience, consciousness is separated from bodily awareness completely, so the moment remains ungraspable by the sequential mind, even though the process trickles down into the available memory after the event.

Those who seek to grasp it by special means, techniques, environments (retreats &c), texts, or doctrines, or even through their own sensory apparatus, are no better than wooden dolls, says the master. One must not attempt to seek Buddhahood, for this is to use the Buddha (which you already are) to search for the Buddha. This would never end after thousands of rebirths or ten thousand aeons. The answer lies in, “No listening, no knowing, no sound, no track, no trace — make yourselves thus,” says Huang Po, “and you will be scarcely less than neighbours of Bodhidharma!”

The document of P’ei Hsui records that the master passed away on the Huang Po mountain during the T’ai Chung Reign (847-859 AD) of the T’ang Dynasty. “The Emperor bestowed upon him the posthumous title of The Zen Master Who Destroys All Limitations.” His memorial pagoda was known as The Tower of Spacious Karma.

Huang Po summed up his doctrine in a poem written for P’ei Hsui, who had served him so well during his lifetime. The verse emphasises again the need for the insight of prajna in the transmission of the truth and that he has no time for “idlers” — intellectuals and academics:

Mind is a mighty ocean, a sea which knows no bounds.
Words are but a scarlet lotus to cure the lesser ills.
Though there be times of leisure when my hands both lie at rest,
‘Tis not to welcome idlers that I raise them to my breast.

Next: The Life of Rinzai (Lin Chi) founder of Rinzai Zen.