CHAPTER 2 ZEN BUDDHISM
2.1 Huineng and His Zen Inheritance
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CHAPTER 2: ZEN BUDDISM
2.1. Huineng and His Zen Inheritance
Huineng (638-713 AD) came to be regarded nearly a century after his death as the Sixth Patriarch (Liuzu 六祖) of Zen Buddhism The biographical data concerning his life in the Platform Sūtra of the Sixth Patriarch (Liuzu tanjing 六祖壇經) is mostly regarded as fiction by contemporary scholars, though the earliest version which has Huineng doing a very un-Confucian thing in suddenly leaving behind his poor, widowed mother to study under the Fifth Patriarch Hongren (弘忍).84 The fact that the other versions attempt to tidy this story might suggest that it actually occurred. In any case, Huineng is listed as one of Fifth Patriarch Hongren ten disciples in a historical work entitled Record of the Laṅkāvatāra Masters (Lengqiejing ziji ) 楞伽 師資記. Huineng appears seventh on the list, along with the location at which he taught (which seems to indicate that he was a teacher of only regional significance during his own lifetime). The Platform Sūtra states that Huineng was born in Fanyang (范陽) and spent his childhood in Xinzhou (新州, modern-day Xinxing, Guangdong Province).85
According to the Platform Sūtra, Huineng (age unspecified) went to pay obeisance to the Fifth Patriarch Hongren after hearing a verse from the Diamond Sūtra recited, and stayed there for just over eight months.86 Near the end of his stint at the monastery,
84 PS 2. Other versions of the story have the customer providing money for the care of Huineng’s mother. In Vol. II of the Patriarch’s Hall Anthology (Zutang ji 祖堂集), the customer, who also has a name, gives Huineng’s mother 100 taels of silver. In other versions of the Platform Sūtra, the nameless customer only gives 10 taels.
85 PS 2.
86 PS 3.
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Huineng unexpectedly won a verse-writing contest against the monastery’s Head Abbot Shenxiu (神秀), who was also coincidentally claimed at one time to be the Sixth Patriarch by a rival tradition known somewhat anachronistically as the
“Northern School.” And as a result of winning the verse contest, Huineng was secretly passed the robe of the Patriarchate. This became the official story, and through the vigorous efforts of one his most famous disciples, Shenhui (神會), by the end of the eighth century Huineng was recognized as the undisputed Sixth Patriarch of Chinese Zen. At present it is impossible to say how much of the Platform Sūtra originates from Huineng himself. Fortunately, however, for our purposes, the historicity of the text is of little concern as we will concentrate on the thought of the text, using Huineng’s name a symbol for the teachings found in the Platform Sūtra. In the section that follows I give a fuller account of the specific teachings of Huineng, but here it will be helpful I think to highlight a few of main features of the Zen teachings that Huineng inherited from his predecessors in order to better inform out later discussion.
As is well-known, Buddhism originated in India with the teachings of a prince named Gautama. Gautama renounced his comfortable lifestyle in order to find the way to escape the cycle of birth, old age, sickness, and death. Therefore, early Buddhism might be said to have adopted a pessimistic view of human existence which it saw as nothing but suffering, and looked for a means of escape from the dusty world. The Buddha’s followers withdrew from their homes and society to devote themselves to teaching of the Buddha (“Awakened One”) and practiced meditation in the hope of attaining freedom from suffering. The formula for salvation developed by the Buddha was the Four Noble Truths. These are (1) suffering, which essentially includes all
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human feeling and sensation, (2) the origin of suffering as craving, (3) the cessation of suffering, and (4) the path to ending suffering, which is called the Eight-fold Path.
And although the Buddha made counter-arguments against the dominant view at the time of the existence of atman, or eternal Self, he was also careful not to fully endorse the view of no-Self either (anatman) either. He referred to his teaching like a “raft,”
that was to be used for “crossing over and not for taking hold of.”87
Through the course of its development, Buddhism would, as it happened, make a metaphysical turn leading to the creation of the self-titled Mahāyāna (“Higher Vehicle”) system of thought. Two Mahāyāna sūtras in particular, the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra (Niepanjing 涅槃經) or Nirvana Sūtra for short, and the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra (Lengqiejing 楞伽經) teach, respectively, the existence of a
“Buddha-nature” (fo xing 佛性) and “self-nature” (zi xing 自性) inherent in all humans. Thus, according to one recent Zen anthology of Zen literature,
In substance Zen Buddhism advocates that the nature of the self is the nature of the Buddha, and that the heart of the self is the heart of the Buddha, that Buddha nature is there in everyone, and everyone can attain Buddhahood.88
Thus, it turns out that the eternal atman, the very concept which much of early Buddhism so vehemently rejected, made a comeback in Mahāyāna Buddhism in the form of an unchanging Buddha-nature. Moreover, the fifth-century monk Daosheng
87 Rahula, Walpola. What the Buddha Taught. (New York: Grove Press, 1974), 11.
88 Jiang Lansheng., ed., 100 Excerpts from Zen Buddhist Texts.(Taipei: Taiwan, 2001), vii.
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(道生) was the first to synthesize the teachings of the Buddha nature and sudden enlightenment, and is a figure to whom Huineng’s thought appears much indebted.
Huineng makes such extensive use of the doctrine of the Buddha-nature in the Platform Sūtra that it becomes one the central pillars of his teaching. In addition, the First Patriarch of Chinese Zen, the Bodhidharma (Puti Damo 菩提達摩), according to tradition, used the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra as his primary text.89 The text, developed by the Consciousness-Only School (Weishi zong 唯識i宗), teaches that there exists a substratum of consciousness, a “storehouse consciousness” (Skrt: alaya-vijnana, Ch:
a lai ye shi 阿賴耶識) along with seven types of self-natures.90 Huineng also combines the Buddha/self-nature teaching, alternately known as the tathāgatagarbha, with the prajñāpāramitā (“Perfection of Wisdom”) teaching of “emptiness” (Skrt:
śūnyatā, Ch: kong 空) to produce a very unique system of thought and practice.91 One other important development of note within Mahāyāna Buddhism was its non-separation of religious practice and everyday life. This line of thought is developed most fully in the Vimalakīrti Sūtra (Weimojiejing 維摩維詰經, a text which Huineng also mines heavily throughout the Platform Sūtra.92 In the
89 There is little reliable historical information on the first three patriarchs of Chinese Zen, the Bodhidharma, Huike (慧可), and Sengcan (僧璨) respectively. The link between the Fourth Patriarch Daoxin (道信) and the Fifth Patriarch (弘忍), however, is well-attested for in the literature.
90 Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra V: “Again, Mahamati, there are seven kinds of self-nature [自性]: collection (samudaya), being (bhava), characteristic marks (lakshana), elements (mahabhuta), causality (hetu), conditionality (pratyaya), and perfection (nishpatti)” (Suzuki’s translation). The ambiguity of the self-nature is highlighted by D.T. Suzuki in a footnote in reference to the above verse: “What is exactly meant by these concepts regarded as self-nature (svabhava) is difficult to define as far as the Laṅkāvatāra is concerned.” Thus, it seems that Huineng may simply have equated the Buddha-nature with the self-nature. He uses the terms interchangeably in his sermons and discussions.
See PS 3, 8, 12, 34, 38.
91See PS 24-25. In contrast, Sheng-yen says, “In point of fact, Platform suutra uses wisdom as the method and regards tathaagatagarbha as its goal. It employs the perfection of wisdom's view of emptiness to destroy the attachments caused by passions in order to achieve the goal of "realizing one's clear mind and seeing one's true nature" (ming-hsin chien-hsing).” Though this is a fairly common interpretation of Huineng’s thought, but Huineng rarely if ever uses the teaching of “emptiness” in this sense.
92 Whereas many hold Chinese Zen is a Sinofication of Indian Buddhism, I see it more as an application of the practical spiritual life as already envisioned by the Vimalakīrti Sūtra. One telling point I find is Huineng’s rejection of traditional Confucian mourning rituals (PS 53).
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Vimalakīrti Sūtra the lines between monastic and lay life are blurred and it is affirmed that even lay practitioners may achieve awakening.93 This represents perhaps one of the most important transitions from early Buddhism. We now turn to teachings attributed to Huineng in the Platform Sūtra.
93 Vimalakīrti himself was said to a highly attained lay disciple and revered as one of the greatest disciples of the Buddha (Vimalakīrti Sūtra Ch. 2).