Huineng

Dajian Huineng 大鑒惠能
School	Chán
Personal
Born	638 Guangzhou, China
Died	713 (aged 75)
Senior posting
Title	Chán master 6th Chán Patriarch
Predecessor	Daman Hongren
Successor	Official Patriarchy ends
Religious career
Teacher	Daman Hongren

Dajian Huineng (大鑒惠能; Pinyin: Dàjiàn Huìnéng; Japanese: Daikan Enō; Korean: Hyeneung, 638–713) was a Chinese Chán (Zen) monastic who is one of the most important figures in the entire tradition, according to standard Zen hagiographies. Huineng has been traditionally viewed as the Sixth and Last Patriarch of Chán Buddhism.

Huineng is said to have advocated an immediate and direct approach to Buddhist practice and enlightenment, and in this regard, is considered the founder of the "Sudden Enlightenment" (頓教) southern Chán school of Buddhism. His foremost students were Nanyue Huairang, Qingyuan Xingsi, Nanyang Huizhong, Yongia Xuanjue and Heze Shenhui.

Some modern scholars have doubted the historicity of traditional biographies and works written about Huineng.

Biography

The two primary sources for Huineng's life are the preface to the Platform Sutra^[1] and the Transmission of the Lamp.^[2]

Huineng was born into the Lu family in 638 A.D. in Xinzhou (present-day Xinxing County) in Guangdong province. His father died when he was young and his family was poor. As a consequence, Huineng had no opportunity to learn to read or write and is said to have remained illiterate his entire life. He may have been a Hmong or a Miao.^[3] One day while delivering firewood to a store, he hears a customer reciting the Diamond Sutra and has an awakening. He immediately inquires about the sutra and decides to seek out the Fifth Patriarch Hongren at his monastery on Huang Mei Mountain. Some later versions of the story have the customer giving him 10 or 100 taels of silver to provide for his aged mother. Huineng then embarks on his journey, and after travelling for thirty days on foot, he arrives at Huang Mei Mountain where the Fifth Patriarch is presiding.

From the first chapter of the Ming canon version of the Platform Sutra:

The Patriarch asked me, "Who are you and what do you seek?" I replied, "Your disciple is a commoner from Xinzhou of Lingnan. I have travelled far to pay homage to you and seek nothing other than Buddhahood." "So you're from Lingnan, and a barbarian! How can you expect to become a Buddha?" asked the Patriarch. I replied, "Although people exist as northerners and southerners, in the Buddha-nature there is neither north nor south. A barbarian differs from Your Holiness physically, but what difference is there in our Buddha-nature?"

Hongren immediately asks him to do chores in the rice mill. Huineng chops wood and pounds rice at the monastery for the next eight months.

Becoming the Sixth Patriarch

The Sixth Patriarch Cutting a Bamboo by Liang Kai

One day, Hongren announced,

The question of incessant rebirth is a momentous one. Day after day, instead of trying to free yourselves from this bitter sea of life and death, you seem to go after tainted merits only (i.e. merits which will cause rebirth). Yet merits will be of no help if your Essence of Mind is obscured. Go and seek for Prajna (wisdom) in your own mind and then write me a stanza (gatha) about it. He who understands what the Essence of Mind is will be given the robe (the insignia of the Patriarchate) and the Dharma (the ultimate teaching of the Chán school), and I shall make him the Sixth Patriarch. Go away quickly.

Delay not in writing the stanza, as deliberation is quite unnecessary and of no use. The man who has realized the Essence of Mind can speak of it at once, as soon as he is spoken to about it; and he cannot lose sight of it, even when engaged in battle.

However, the disciples said to each other that they didn't need to write any gathas, and that surely their teacher and head monk, Venerable Shenxiu, would become the Sixth Patriarch. So only Shenxiu wrote a gatha for Hongren. As the head monk, Shenxiu was well respected and under great pressure to produce a gatha that would qualify him as the next patriarch. However, he was uncertain as to his own understanding, and eventually decided to write a poem anonymously on the wall in the middle of the night, announcing his authorship only if Hongren approved.^[4] It stated:^[5]

身是菩提樹，　The body is a Bodhi tree,

心如明鏡臺。　The mind a standing mirror bright.

時時勤拂拭，　At all times polish it diligently,

勿使惹塵埃。　And let no dust alight.

When the disciples saw this gatha on the wall, there was a great stir. When Hongren saw it, he told them, "Practice according to this gatha, you will not fall into the evil realms, and you will receive great benefits. Light incense and pay respect to this gatha, recite it and you will see your essential nature." All the disciples praised and memorized the gatha.

However, privately, Hongren told Shenxiu, "You have arrived at the gate, but haven’t entered it. With this level of understanding, you still have no idea what the supreme Bodhi mind is. Upon hearing my words, you should immediately recognize the original mind, the essential nature, which is unborn and unceasing. At all times, see it clearly in every thought, with the mind free from all hindrances. In the One Reality, everything is real, and all phenomena are just as they are."

Hongren asked Shenxiu to compose another gatha that demonstrated true understanding. Shenxiu tried hard but couldn’t come up with another verse.

When a young novice passed the rice mill chanting Shenxiu's gatha, Huineng immediately knew this verse lacked true insight. He went to the wall, and asked a district officer there to write a poem of his own for him. The officer was surprised, "How extraordinary! You are illiterate, and you want to compose a poem?" Whereupon Huineng said, "If you seek supreme enlightenment, do not slight anyone. The lowest class may have great insights, and the highest class may commit foolish acts." In veneration, the officer wrote Huineng’s gatha on the wall for him, next to Shenxiu's, which stated:^[6]

菩提本無樹，　Bodhi is fundamentally without any tree;

明鏡亦非臺。　The bright mirror is also not a stand.

本來無一物，　Fundamentally there is not a single thing —

何處惹塵埃。　Where could any dust be attracted?

Nanhua Temple, where Huineng taught and lived.

Huineng then went back to rice pounding. However, this gatha created a bigger stir; everyone was saying, "Amazing! You can’t judge a person by his looks! Maybe he will become a living bodhisattva soon!" However, when the alarmed Hongren came out, he just casually said, "This hasn’t seen the essential nature either," and proceeded to wipe the gatha off with his shoe.

One night, Hongren received Huineng in his abode, and expounded the Diamond Sutra to him. When he came to the passage, "to use the mind yet be free from any attachment," Huineng came to great enlightenment—that all dharmas are inseparable from the self nature. He exclaimed, "How amazing that the self nature is originally pure! How amazing that the self nature is unborn and undying! How amazing that the self nature is inherently complete! How amazing that the self nature neither moves nor stays! How amazing that all dharmas come from this self nature!"

Hongren told Huineng, "If one recognizes the original mind and the original nature, he is called a great man, teacher of gods and humans, and a Buddha." He passed the robe and begging bowl as a symbol of the Dharma Seal of Sudden Enlightenment to Huineng.

Although this story is as clearly stated as it can be, it should also be noted that Huineng was not permitted to make himself known as the Sixth Patriarch until later on. This was due to the fear that his fellow monks might be angered that he had been made the Sixth Patriarch and not Shenxiu or one of the other monks who had seniority over him.

Academic views

According to John Jorgensen, Huineng was a marginal and obscure historical figure, and the hagiography around him that subsequently developed was an invention of Shen-hui (684-758)^[7] Jorgensen writes:

It was through the propaganda of Shen-hui (684-758) that Hui-neng (d. 710) became the also today still towering figure of sixth patriarch of Ch’an/Zen Buddhism, and accepted as the ancestor or founder of all subsequent Ch’an lineages . . using the life of Confucius as a template for its structure, Shen-hui invented a hagiography for the then highly obscure Hui-neng. At the same time, Shen-hui forged a lineage of patriarchs of Ch’an back to the Buddha using ideas from Indian Buddhism and Chinese ancestor worship.^[8]

Quotes

When alive, one keeps sitting without lying down.

When dead, one lies without sitting up.
In both cases, a set of stinking bones!

What has it do with the great lesson of life?^[9]

With those who are sympathetic

Let us have discussion on Buddhism.
As for those whose point of view differs from ours
Let us treat them politely and thus make them happy.
(But) disputes are alien to our School,
For they are incompatible with its doctrine.

Within, keep the mind in perfect harmony with the self-nature; without, respect all other men.^[10]

After death

The mummified body of Huineng is kept in Nanhua Temple in Shaoguan Prefecture (northern Guangdong).^[11]

Huineng's body was seen by the Jesuit Matteo Ricci who visited Nanhua Temple in 1589. Ricci told the European readers the story of Huineng (in a somewhat garbled form), describing him as somewhat akin to a Christian ascetic. Ricci names him Lusu (i.e. 六祖, "The Sixth Patriarch").^[12]

Notes

1. ^ Pine 2006
2. ^ 释道原, ed (宋·景德). "卷五·慧能". 景德传灯录. Beijing, China: 北京国学时代文化传播有限公司. http://www.guoxue.com/fxyj/jdcdl/jdcd_005.htm. Retrieved 25 March 2009. 
3. ^ Stirling 2006, pg. ix
4. ^ Watts 1962, pp.111-113
5. ^ McRae, John. The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch. 2000. p. 31
6. ^ McRae, John. The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch. 2000. p. 33
7. ^ Inventing Hui-neng, the Sixth Patriarch Hagiography and Biography in Early Ch'an by John Jorgensen [1]
8. ^ Inventing Hui-neng, the Sixth Patriarch Hagiography and Biography in Early Ch'an by John Jorgensen [2]
9. ^ John C. H. Wu (2004). The Golden Age of Zen: Zen Masters of the T'ang Dynasty. World Wisdom. p. 73. ISBN 0941532445. http://books.google.com/books?id=v5kw2nHQIYoC&pg=PA73&lpg=PA73&dq=%22When+alive,+one+keeps+sitting+without+lying+down%22#v=onepage&q=%22When%20alive%2C%20one%20keeps%20sitting%20without%20lying%20down%22&f=false. 
10. ^ The Lohan Light
11. ^ Images of Huineng's temple and Mummy
12. ^ De Christiana expeditione apud Sinas, Book Three, Chapter 1. Pages 222-224 in the English translation: Louis J. Gallagher (1953). "China in the Sixteenth Century: The Journals of Matthew Ricci", Random House, New York, 1953. The Latin original text, De Christiana expeditione apud Sinas suscepta ab Societate Jesu can be found on Google Books.

See also

• Hong Yi
• List of buddhist poems
• Platform Sutra

References

• Pine, Red. The Platform Sutra: The Zen Teaching of Hui-Neng. (2006) Counterpoint. ISBN 1-59376-177-5.
• Stirling, Isabel. Zen Pioneer: The Life & Works of Ruth Fuller Sasaki (2006) Shoemaker & Hoard. ISBN 978-1-59376-110-3
• Watts, Alan W. The Way of Zen (1962) Great Britain: Pelican books. ISBN 0140205470

External links

• more images of Huineng's mummy
• Legends in Chan:the Northern/Southern Split, Hui-neng and the Platform Sutra
• Platform Sutra of Hui Neng translated by John R. McRae
• Platform Sutra of Hui Neng translated by C. Humphreys and Wong Mou-Lam
• Hui Neng Page

Buddhist titles
Preceded by Daman Hongren	Zen patriarch (Shénhuì lineage)	Succeeded by Heze Shenhui
	Sōtō Zen patriarch	Succeeded by Qingyuan Xingsi
	Rinzai Zen patriarch	Succeeded by Nanyue Huairang

Persondata
Name	Huineng, Dajian
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	638
Place of birth	Canton, China
Date of death	713
Place of death