Zen Masters Of China. Richard Bryan McDaniel
body is not a tree,
nor the mind a mirror bright.
Since from the beginning not a thing exists,
where can dirt and dust alight?
There is a significant difference between Huineng’s and Shenxiu’s gathas. Shenxiu’s remains dualistic. He compares the mind to a mirror reflecting a world external to it. For Huineng there is no separation, no mirror distinct from what it reflects and no world distinct from its reflection in mind. The reason for this difference is that Shenxiu’s understanding, as Hongren pointed, was theoretical, while Huineng’s was grounded in his awakened mind.
Later that day, Hongren found a group of monks gathered before the two verses, discussing who the author of the second could be. The patriarch read the new verse, then slipped off his shoe and used it to erase the new lines from the wall. The monks supposed this to mean that he disapproved of them. But when no one was observing him, Hongren went to the granary. There he told Huineng, “Those who seek the Way must be prepared to risk their lives for it.” Huineng had nothing to say in reply. Then, the patriarch asked, “Is the rice ready?”
“Ready long ago,” Huineng said.
Hongren told the young man to come to his quarters later that night. Huineng visited the Fifth Patriarch at midnight. When he did so, Hongren acknowledged Huineng as his successor and passed over Bodhidharma’s bowl and robe to his keeping. “But you need to understand that there will be those who will object to you having these. So you must leave East Mountain and conceal yourself until the time is ready for you.” The patriarch also told him that it would no longer be necessary to continue the practice of transmitting the robe and bowl. “The real transmission,” he explained, “is from mind to mind. It’s because of that transmission, and not because of these relics, that you’ll be known as the Sixth Patriarch of our school.”
Hongren accompanied Huineng to a landing on the river where they found a boat. The Fifth Patriarch seated himself in the boat and took up the oars. When Huineng offered to take the oars himself, the older man said, “It’s appropriate that I be the one to ferry you across.”
“When I was in illusion, then I needed the guidance of another,” Huineng replied. “But now that my mind’s eye is open, it’s appropriate for me to cross the waters of birth and death by my own efforts.”
So Hongren turned the oars over to Huineng and got out of the boat, and the younger man set out on his own.
Three days later, a rumor went through the monastery that an illiterate layman had stolen the sacred relics of the First Patriarch and fled south with them. Outraged at this sacrilege, a group of monks went in pursuit of the thief. They were led by a monk named Ming, who, before entering the sangha, had been a general of the fourth rank. In spite of his time at the monastery, Ming still had a soldier’s manner and temperament. For two months the group followed Huineng. As the chase went on, the other pursuers, one after another, gave up until Ming alone continued undaunted.
Eventually Ming caught up with Huineng at a pass in the mountains. When the new patriarch saw the former soldier approaching, he placed the robe and bowl on a rock and waited for his pursuer to come nearer.
“You’ve come for these,” he called when Ming was within hearing distance. “These are merely symbols of our tradition. They have no other value. If you want them, take them.”
But when Ming tried to pick up the items, he was unable to lift them. Shaken by this inability, Ming paused a moment, then said: “If that’s so, I have no use for them. What I’ve come for is the dharma. So if you are indeed the successor of Hongren, please dispel my ignorance.”
“If you’ve come for the dharma, then please compose yourself in meditation and refrain from thinking about anything. When your mind is still and receptive, I’ll teach you.”
Ming did as he was told, and when Huineng saw that the monk was in a state of concentration, he commanded him: “Without thinking about good or bad, show me your face before your parents were born.”
As soon as he heard these words, Ming also attained awakening. He bowed before the younger man, saying, “Besides this, is there anything else? Are there other secret doctrines?”
“Nothing I’ve said is secret. If you look within, you’ll find all the secrets within your own mind.”
“I spent many years on the East Mountain,” Ming said, “but was unable to realize my self-nature. Now, thanks to your guidance, I realize it in the same way that one who drinks water knows whether it is hot or cold. You’re now my master, and I your disciple.”
“Let’s, rather, say that both of us are disciples of Master Hongren,” Huineng suggested.
Four years after acknowledging Huineng as his successor, Hongren died in 675. He was seventy-four years old. The Sixth Patriarch was still residing in seclusion in the mountains. He lived for a while with a group of hunters, secretly freeing the animals the hunters trapped in their nets.
When he was thirty-nine years old, he decided it was time to assume his responsibilities, and he made his way to Fat Shin Temple. As he approached it, he saw a group of monks observing and discussing a flapping pennant. The first monk said, “It’s the pennant that moves.” Another objected, “The pennant is an inanimate object and has no power to move; it is the wind that moves.” Then a third said, “The flapping of the pennant is due to the combination of flag and wind.”
Huineng interrupted the discussion, telling the monks, “It’s neither wind nor pennant that moves; rather it’s your own minds that move.”
When the temple master, Yin Zong, overheard this encounter, he was impressed by Huineng’s authoritative manner and invited him to describe the teachings he brought from the Master of the East Mountain.
“My master had no special teaching,” Huineng said. “He stressed only the need to see into one’s true nature through one’s own efforts.”
After this, Huineng established himself at the Baolin Monastery in the mountains of the South, and here it is said thousands of people came seeking to become his disciples. His fame spread as far as the capital, where the emperor invited him to move, but Huineng declined the invitation as his master, Hongren, had done before him.
Meanwhile, in the north, Hongren’s chief monk, Shenxiu was gathering his own following.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE RISE OF THE SOUTHERN SCHOOL
SHENXIU
Today Huineng is the last of the Chinese Zen teachers to be referred to as a patriarch, but this was not an uncontested title. In Shenxiu’s epitaph, he also is identified as Hongren’s successor and Sixth Patriarch.
In contrast to Huineng, who was portrayed as an illiterate wood-cutter, Shenxiu was a scholar before being drawn to the Zen tradition. Although he was ordained a monk at the age of twenty, he was fifty by the time he came to study with Hongren. He distinguished himself by his knowledge of the Confucian and Daoist texts as well as by the breadth of his understanding of Buddhism, and he quickly rose to the rank of chief monk. He stayed with Hongren for six years.
After leaving Hongren, Shenxiu lived as a hermit for a long while, then settled at a temple on Mount Dangyang. When Hongren died in 674, many of his disciples sought out Shenxiu and accepted him as their master’s legitimate heir. His school came to be known as the Northern School to distinguish