Huineng
Dajian Huineng or Hui-neng, also commonly known as the Sixth Patriarch or Sixth Ancestor of Chan, is a semi-legendary but central figure in the early history of Chinese Chan Buddhism.
According to tradition Huineng was an uneducated layman who suddenly attained awakening upon hearing the Diamond Sutra. Despite his lack of formal training, he demonstrated his understanding to the fifth patriarch, Daman Hongren, who then supposedly chose Huineng as his true successor instead of his publicly known selection of Yuquan Shenxiu. Huineng is regarded as the founder of the "Sudden Enlightenment" Southern Chan school of Buddhism, which focuses on an immediate and direct attainment of Buddhist enlightenment. The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch, which is said to be a record of his teachings, is a highly influential text in the East Asian Buddhist tradition.
20th century scholarship revealed that the story of Huineng's Buddhist career was likely invented by the monk Shenhui, who claimed to be one of Huineng's disciples and was highly critical of Shenxiu's teaching.
Biography
The Platform Sutra
The Platform Sūtra of the Sixth Patriarch is attributed to a disciple of Huineng named Fahai, and purports to be a record of Huineng's life, lectures and interactions with disciples. However, the text shows signs of having been constructed over a longer period of time, and contains different layers of writing. According to John McRae, it isAccording to Wong, the Platform Sūtra cites and explains a wide range of Buddhist scriptures listed here in the order of appearance:
- Diamond Sutra
- Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra
- Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra
- Mahāprajñāpāramitā Sūtra
- Brahmajāla Sūtra
- Vimalakirti Sutra
- Lotus Sutra
- Śūraṅgama Sūtra
- ''Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana''
Early life and introduction to Buddhism
Meeting the Fifth Patriarch of Chan Buddhism
Huineng reached Huangmei thirty days later, and expressed to the Fifth Patriarch his specific request of attaining Buddhahood. Since Huineng came from Guangdong and was physically distinctive from the local Northern Chinese, the Fifth Patriarch Hongren questioned his origin as a "barbarian from the south", and doubted his ability to attain enlightenment. Huineng impressed Hongren with a clear understanding of the ubiquitous Buddha nature in everyone, and convinced Hongren to let him stay. The first chapter of the Ming canon version of the Platform Sutra describes the introduction of Huineng to Hongren as follows:Huineng was told to split firewood and pound rice in the backyard of the monastery and avoid going to the main hall.
Poem contest
Eight months later, the Fifth Patriarch summoned all his followers and proposed a poem contest for his followers to demonstrate the stage of their understanding of the essence of mind. He decided to pass down his robe and teachings to the winner of the contest, who would become the Sixth Patriarch. Shenxiu, the leading disciple of the Fifth Patriarch, composed a stanza, but did not have the courage to present it to the master. Instead, he wrote his stanza on the south corridor wall one day at midnight to remain anonymous. The other monks saw the stanza and commended it. Shenxiu's stanza is as follows:The Patriarch was not satisfied with Shenxiu's stanza, and pointed out that the poem did not show understanding of " own fundamental nature and essence of mind." He gave Shenxiu a chance to submit another poem to demonstrate that he had entered the "gate of enlightenment," so that he could transmit his robe and the Dharma to Shenxiu, but the student's mind was agitated and could not write one more stanza.
Two days later, the illiterate Huineng heard Shenxiu's stanza being chanted by a young attendant at the monastery and inquired about the context of the poem. The attendant explained to him the poem contest and the transmission of the robe and Dharma. Huineng asked to be led to the corridor, where he could also pay homage to the stanza. He asked a low-ranking official named Zhang Riyong from Jiangzhou to read the verse to him, and then immediately asked him to write down a stanza that he composed.
According to McRae, "the earliest version of the Platform Sutra contains two versions of Huineng's verse." Later versions, such as the Zongbao edition from the Yuan era, contain one version of Huineng's stanza, somewhat different from the two verses found in the c. 8th century Dunhuang edition:
The followers who were present were astonished by the work of a southern barbarian. Being cautious of Huineng's status, the Patriarch wiped away the stanza and claimed that the author of the stanza had not reached enlightenment.
Interpretation of the verses
According to the traditional interpretation, which is based on Guifeng Zongmi, the fifth-generation successor of Shenhui, the two verses represent respectively the gradual and the sudden approach. According to McRae, this is an incorrect understanding:Huineng's verse does not stand alone, but forms a pair with Shenxiu's verse:
McRae notes a similarity in reasoning with the Oxhead School, which used a threefold structure of "absolute, relative and middle", or "thesis-antithesis-synthesis". According to McRae, the Platform Sutra itself is the synthesis in this threefold structure, giving a balance between the need of constant practice and the insight into the absolute.
Succession of Hongren
However, on the next day, the Patriarch secretly went to Huineng's room and asked, "Should not a seeker after the Dharma risk his life this way?" Then he asked, "is the rice ready?" Huineng responded that the rice was ready and only waiting to be sieved. The Patriarch secretly explained the Diamond Sutra to Huineng, and when Huineng heard the phrase "one should activate one’s mind so it has no attachment," he was "suddenly and completely enlightened, and understood that all things exist in self-nature."The Dharma was passed to Huineng at night, when the Patriarch transmitted "the doctrine of sudden enlightenment" as well as his robe and bowl to Huineng. He told Huineng, “You are now the Sixth Patriarch. Take care of yourself, save as many sentient beings as you can, and spread the teachings so they will not be lost in the future.
Escape from monastery
He also explained to Huineng that the Dharma was transmitted from mind to mind, whereas the robe was passed down physically from one patriarch to the next. Hongren instructed the Sixth Patriarch to leave the monastery before he could be harmed. "You can stop at Huai and then hide yourself at Hui." Hongren showed Huineng the route to leave the monastery, and rowed Huineng across the river to assist his escape. Huineng immediately responded with a clear understanding of Hongren's purpose in doing so, and demonstrated that he could ferry to "the other shore" with the Dharma that had been transmitted to him.The Sixth Patriarch reached the Tayu Mountains within two months, and realized that hundreds of men were following him, attempting to rob him of the robe and bowl. However, the robe and bowl could not be moved by Huiming, who then asked for the transmission of Dharma from Huineng. Huineng helped him reach enlightenment and continued on his journey.
Teachings
The earliest and most important source for the teachings of Huineng is the Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch. There are various editions of this text, the earliest of which are copies from Dunhuang which date to the 9th century. The original may have been composed in around 780 CE. According to modern scholars like Yanagida Seizan and John McRae, the early Platform Sutra was composed within the Oxhead school, not within the so called "Southern School" as was previously believed. The text continued to be edited and expanded until the Yuan dynasty, when Zongbao produced an edition that eventually became part of the standard Ming Dynasty Chinese Buddhist canon.Non-thought, non-attribute, and non-abiding
According to Peter Gregory, the most important ideas in the Platform Sutra, for which it is best known, form a set of three key interrelated doctrines: no-thought, nonform, also translated as nonattribute, and nonabiding.In the Platform Sutra, Huineng taught "no-thought," the "pure and unattached mind" which "comes and goes freely and functions fluently without any hindrance." It does not mean that one does not think at all, but is "a highly attentive yet unentangled way of being an open, non-conceptual state of mind that allows one to experience reality directly, as it truly is." Regarding non-thought, Huineng says:
Thoughtlessness is to see and to know all dharmas with a mind free from attachment. When in use it pervades everywhere, and yet it sticks nowhere. What we have to do is to purify our mind so that the six vijñānas , in passing through the six gates , will neither be defiled by nor attached to the six sense-objects. When our mind works freely without any hindrance, and is at liberty to come or to go, we attain samādhi of prajñā, or liberation. Such a state is called the function of thoughtlessness. But to refrain from thinking of anything, so that all thoughts are suppressed, is to be dharma-ridden, and this is an erroneous view.
As Gregory points out, for Huineng, no-thought does not refer to a blanking out of the mind. Rather, Huineng says, "Freedom from thought means having no thought in the midst of thoughts." He says that such things as "sitting without moving, getting rid of falsehood, and not giving rise to thoughts" just lead to insentiency. This is to obstruct the Way which should, on the contrary, be allowed to flow freely, without any obstruction. For Huineng, suchness and thought exist together in an essence-function relationship. He says, "Suchness is the essence of thought, thought is the function of suchness."
Related to the teaching of non-thought, Huineng also taught "non-attribute." Just as non-thought does not eradicate thoughts, non-attribute for Huineng likewise is not a world-denying negation of the attributes of sensory experience, the vast array of things and characteristics which make up the basic features of life in the world. Rather, for Huineng, non-attribute has a this-worldly orientation which affirms human experience and the world of characteristics. It does not mean literally to be without any attributes at all, but rather to be free of attributes while right in the midst of attributes. To differentiate and distinguish the various phenomena of the world, and yet to regard them all as the same, is to have equanimity. As Brook Ziporyn observes, for Huineng, our self-nature is free of attributes, not in the sense of excluding them, but in the sense of embracing them all without attaching to them. In this way, our self-nature can be compared to space, while particular attributes are like the things appearing in that space.
Huineng says:
Learned Audience, the illimitable void of the universe is capable of holding myriads of things of various shape and form, such as the sun, the moon, stars, mountains, rivers, men, dharmas pertaining to goodness or badness, deva planes, hells, great oceans, and all the mountains of the Mahāmeru. Space takes in all of these, and so does the voidness of our nature. We say that the essence of mind is great because it embraces all things, since all things are within our nature.
In addition to non-thought and non-attribute, Huineng also taught non-abiding. He says rather than attach to characteristics and obstruct the Way, one should not abide in things. Huineng discusses nonabiding in terms of not dwelling in any experience in the past, present, or future. He says:
Within each moment of experience, not to think of any previous state. For the past experience, the present experience and the subsequent experience to connect up in an unbroken continuity is called bondage. But in relating to all things, to go through each experience without dwelling in it, that is freedom from bondage. This is why nonabiding is the root.
Again, like non-thought and non-attribute, non-abiding for Huineng means all thoughts and phenomena are allowed but not clung to, similar to space. However, as Ziporyn points out, Huineng's teaching of non-abiding puts a spin on the motionlessness of the spacelike self-nature. That is, unlike the traditional Buddhist emphasis on stillness and quiescence, which are inactive and register no characteristics or attributes; for Huineng, non-abiding means that true motionlessness is "a kind of hyperintense motion" that never dwells or stays in a single place.
In this way, as Ziporyn observes, Huineng's teaching reflects indigenous Chinese ideas which give a positive value to change and transformation. According to Ziporyn, for Huineng, enlightenment is associated with flow, constant change and transformation. Huineng says, "Good friends, one’s enlightenment must flow freely. How could it be stagnated? When the mind does not reside in the dharmas, one’s enlightenment flows freely. For the mind to reside in the dharmas is called ‘fettering oneself.’ If you say that always sitting without moving is it, then you’re just like Śāriputra meditating in the forest, for which he was scolded by Vimalakīrti!" Similarly, the alleged Northern school's emphasis on quiet contemplation was criticized by Huineng thus: