Huineng and the Banner

Keizan's commentary

The teacher's family name was Lu. His ancestors came from Fanyang. During Wude his father, Xingtao, was demoted to Xizhou in the Southern Sea and settled there. His father died, and his mother remained faithful and raised him. When he grew, the household was extremely poor, and he supported them by cutting firewood. One day he carried firewood to the market and heard a customer reciting the Diamond Sūtra. At the words “Let heart arise without dwelling anywhere,” he was moved to awakening. He asked, “What scripture is this, and from whom did you receive it?” The customer said, “It is the Diamond Sūtra. I received it from Great Master Hongren at Huangmei.” The teacher immediately told his mother that he intended to seek the master for Dharma. Going first to Shaozhou, he met the eminent layman Liu Zhilüe and became his friend. Zhilüe's aunt, the nun Wujinzang, regularly recited the Nirvāṇa Sūtra. After listening briefly, Huineng explained its meaning. The nun held out the scroll and asked him about the characters. The teacher said, “I do not know the characters. Ask me about the meaning.” The nun said, “If you do not even know the characters, how can you understand the meaning?” The teacher said, “The wondrous principle of all buddhas does not depend upon written characters.”³ The nun was astonished and told the village elders that Huineng was a person of the way who should be invited and supported. Residents competed to visit and bow to him. They restored the nearby site of old Baolin Monastery for him, and the fourfold assembly gathered like clouds and mist. One day he thought, “I seek the great Dharma. How could I stop midway?” The next day he left. In a western rock chamber in Changle County he met Zen Master Zhiyuan and requested instruction. Zhiyuan said, “Your spiritual capacity is bright and outstanding, hardly that of an ordinary person. I have heard that Bodhidharma of the Western Regions transmitted the heart-seal at Huangmei. You should go there and decide the matter.” Huineng went directly to Huangmei and met the Fifth Ancestor, Great Master Daman. The ancestor asked, “Where do you come from?” The teacher said, “Lingnan.” The ancestor asked, “What do you seek?” The teacher said, “Only to become Buddha.” The ancestor said, “People from Lingnan have no buddha-nature. How could you become Buddha?” The teacher replied, “People have south and north. How could buddha-nature be so?”⁴ The ancestor knew he was extraordinary but scolded him: “Go work in the shed.” Huineng bowed at his feet, withdrew, and labored among pestle and mortar day and night for eight months. Knowing the time for entrustment had come, Hongren told the community, “The true Dharma is difficult to understand. Do not merely end by holding my words as your own responsibility. Each of you compose a verse according to your insight. If its words and meaning accord in darkness, I will entrust both robe and Dharma.” Among more than seven hundred monks, the senior Shenxiu was learned in inner and outer teachings and revered by the assembly. Everyone considered him the only possible heir. Hearing their praise, Shenxiu composed a verse but became confused and drenched in sweat whenever he approached the hall to present it. Over four days he tried thirteen times and failed. Finally he secretly wrote it by lamplight on the southern corridor wall, intending to claim it if praised and accept that his years in the mountain were wasted if rejected: The body is the awakening tree; Heart is like a bright mirror stand. Constantly and diligently polish it; Do not let it collect dust.⁵ Hongren saw the verse, knew it was Shenxiu's, and praised it: “People of later generations who practice according to this will also attain an excellent fruit.” He had everyone recite it. Huineng heard the recitation from the rice shed and asked what it was. A fellow student explained the succession contest and recited the verse. After a long pause Huineng said, “Beautiful indeed, but it has not yet reached completion.” The student scolded him: “What does a common laborer know? Do not speak wildly.” Huineng asked to answer it with a verse. That night he had a boy write beside Shenxiu's verse: Awakening originally is no tree; The bright mirror also has no stand. Originally there is not a single thing— Where could it collect dust?⁶ The whole mountain acclaimed it as the verse of a bodhisattva in the flesh. Hongren recognized Huineng's work but publicly said, “Who composed this? It is the work of someone who has not seen nature,” and erased it. The assembly ceased paying attention. That night Hongren secretly entered the rice shed and asked, “Is the rice white yet?” Huineng said, “It is white, but it has not yet been sifted.” Hongren struck the mortar three times with his staff. Huineng winnowed the rice three times and entered the master's room. Hongren instructed him that the buddhas appear for one great matter and guide beings according to capacity through the ten stages, three vehicles, sudden and gradual teachings. Yet the unsurpassed, subtle, secret, perfectly bright treasury of the true Dharma eye had been entrusted to Kāśyapa, passed through twenty-eight generations to Bodhidharma, then through Huike to Hongren. “Now I entrust to you the Dharma treasure and transmitted kāṣāya. Protect them well and do not let the succession be cut off.” Huineng knelt and received them. He asked, “I have received Dharma. To whom should the robe be entrusted?” Hongren said, “When Bodhidharma first arrived, people did not trust him, so the robe was transmitted to demonstrate attainment of Dharma. Now trust has ripened and the robe will become a cause of dispute. It will stop with you and not be transmitted further. Hide far away and await the time to teach. The life of the person who receives the robe hangs by a thread.”⁷ Asked where to hide, Hongren said, “Meeting Huai, stop; encountering Hui, conceal yourself.” Hongren personally escorted Huineng to the ferry below Huangmei. Huineng asked him to return, saying, “I have attained the way and should cross myself.” Hongren replied, “Though you have attained the way, I will still ferry you across.” Taking the pole, he brought him to the far shore and returned alone. Hongren no longer entered the hall. When questioned, he said, “My way has gone.” Asked who received robe and Dharma, he replied, “The capable one obtained them”—a play on Huineng's name. The assembly pursued Huineng. Huiming, a former fourth-rank general, reached him first at Dayu Ridge. Huineng set robe and bowl on a rock and hid in the grass, saying, “This robe represents trust. Can it be fought over by force?” Huiming could not lift it. Trembling, he called, “I came for Dharma, not for the robe.” Huineng sat on the rock. Huiming bowed and requested the essential teaching. Huineng said, “Without thinking good and without thinking evil, at just this moment, what is Senior Ming's original face?” At these words Huiming greatly awakened.⁸ Asked whether there were further secret words, Huineng said, “What I tell you is not secret. If you turn the light around, the secret is on your side.” Huiming compared it to knowing water's warmth or coolness by drinking it and acknowledged Huineng as teacher. Huineng returned them both to Hongren as common teacher. Huiming later changed his name to Daoming and directed all visitors to Huineng. After receiving robe and Dharma, Huineng hid among hunters in four counties for ten years. On the eighth day of the first month in 676 he reached the Southern Sea. At Faxing Monastery Dharma Master Yinzong was lecturing on the Nirvāṇa Sūtra. A violent wind raised the temple banner, and two monks argued whether banner or wind moved. Huineng said, “May a common wanderer enter your lofty discussion? Neither wind nor banner moves. Honored ones, your hearts move.” Yinzong heard and recognized something extraordinary. The next day he invited Huineng in, questioned him, then stood and asked his identity. Huineng disclosed the transmission. Yinzong bowed as disciple, requested the essentials of Zen, showed the fourfold assembly the robe, and proclaimed Huineng a bodhisattva in the flesh. On the fifteenth he arranged the shaving of Huineng's head; on the eighth day of the second month, Vinaya Master Zhiguang gave him the full precepts. The source attaches earlier prophecies by Guṇabhadra and Paramārtha to this platform and its two bodhi trees, predicting a bodhisattva in the flesh who would teach the unsurpassed vehicle.⁹ Huineng opened the East Mountain Dharma gate beneath those trees. The next year he returned to Baolin, escorted by more than a thousand monastics and laypeople. Prefect Wei Ju invited him to Dafan Monastery to turn the wondrous Dharma wheel and confer the formless precepts of the heart-ground. His disciples recorded the teaching as the Platform Sūtra, which circulated widely. Returning to Sōkei, he rained great Dharma-rain; the awakened numbered no fewer than a thousand. He lived seventy-six years, bathed, and died seated.¹⁰ Now, at the moment of pouring from one vessel into another, Hongren asked, “Is the rice white?” This grain of rice is the Dharma king's spiritual seed and the life-root of holy and ordinary. Though it lay in an untilled field and was never weeded, it grew naturally. Once hulled, it stood exposed and pure, accepting no defilement. Even so, it still had not been winnowed. Winnow it back and forth: it passes within and without, moves above and below. At three blows upon the mortar, the grains naturally align and heart's pivotal working suddenly appears. Winnow the rice three times, and the ancestral wind is transmitted. From then on, the night of striking the mortar had not yet dawned, and the day of entrustment had not yet darkened. The great master was a woodcutter from Lingnan, Hō Lu of the rice shed. Formerly he worked with an axe and wandered the mountains. Though he lacked book-learning that illumined heart beneath a bright window, hearing one scripture line gave rise to heart that dwells nowhere. Though he now labored with pestle and mortar, he had never sat at the edge of the assembly to question and decide the way. Yet through only eight months of exacting effort he illuminated the heart in which the bright mirror is no stand. Transmission took place at midnight, and the ancestors' lifeline continued. It does not necessarily depend on many years of practice; what is clear is that on one occasion he exhausted exactness. The buddhas' attainment cannot be measured by long or short time. How could ancestral transmission be distinguished by ancient and present? During these ninety days of summer, however, we have spoken horizontally and vertically, judged ancient and present, and used rough and gentle words to point to buddhas and ancestors. Descending into every detail, we have fallen into two and three, stained the ancestral wind, and exposed the family's disgrace. You may therefore think you have penetrated principle and gained power, yet it seems you still do not intimately accord with the ancestor's intent. Your conduct does not resemble the former sages. Through fortunate former affinity you have met this teaching, and with single resolve you should accomplish it; it is regrettable if you have not reached the shore or glimpsed the inner room. The sages are distant in time, the work of the way unfinished, and life difficult to preserve. How can you promise yourself a later day? At summer's end you will scatter east and west again. Do not recklessly memorize one phrase and call it our Dharma-way, or raise half an understanding and call it the carrying capacity of the Great Vehicle. Even one who fully attained would still expose the family's disgrace by proclaiming it outside—how much more wild speech based on false claims? If you truly wish to reach this place exactly, do not waste day or night and do not carry body and heart carelessly.