The Zen Experience Part 5

This "question," if such it is, sounds suspiciously like a sermon and stands, in fact, as an eloquent statement of Zen concerns. Hui-k'o reportedly answered as follows, in a fragment of a letter that is his only known extant work.

_You have truly comprehended the Dharma as it is; the deepest truth lies in the principle of ident.i.ty. It is due to one's ignorance that the mani-jewel is taken for a piece of brick, but lo! when one is suddenly awakened to self-enlightenment it is realized that one is in possession of the real jewel. The ignorant and the enlightened are of one essence, they are not really to be separated. We should know that all things are such as they are. Those who entertain a dualistic view of the world are to be pitied, and I write this letter for them. When we know that between this body and the Buddha, there is nothing to separate one from the other, what is the use of seeking after Nirvana [as something external to ourselves]?13

_

Hui-k'o insists that all things spring from the one Mind, and consequently the ideas of duality, of attachment to this or that phenomenon, or even the possibility of choice, are equally absurd.

Although he knew all too well that enlightenment could not be obtained from teaching, he still did not advocate a radical break with the traditional methods of the Buddhist _dhyana_ masters. His style was unorthodox, but his teaching methods were still confined to lectures and meditation. This low-key approach was still closer to the tradition of the Buddha than to the jarring techniques of "sudden enlightenment"

destined to erupt out of Chinese Ch'an.

Toward the end of his life, Hui-k'o was back in Ch'ang-an, living and teaching in the same una.s.suming manner. His free-lance style seems to have continued to outrage the more conventional teachers, and a later story records a martyr's death for him.14 One day, while a learned master was preaching inside the K'uang-chou Temple, Hui-k'o chanced by and started to chat with the pa.s.sersby outside. Gradually a crowd started to collect, until eventually the lecture hall of the revered priest was emptied. This famous priest, remembered as Pien-ho, accused the ragged Hui-k'o to the magistrate Che Ch'ung-j'an as a teacher of false doctrine. As a result he was arrested and subsequently executed, an impious 106-year-old revolutionary.

Chapter Three

SENG-TS'AN, TAO-HSIN, FA-JUNG, AND HUNG-JEN:

FOUR EARLY MASTERS

_The Fifth Patriarch,Hung-jen (left)_

The master succeeding Hui-k'o was Seng-ts'an (d. 606), who then taught Fa-jung (594-657) and Tao-hsin (580-651), the latter in turn pa.s.sing the robe of the patriarchy to Hung-jen (601-74). The masters Seng- ts'an, Tao-hsin, and Hung-jen are honored today as the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Patriarchs, respectively, and revered as the torchbearers of Ch'an's formative years. Yet when we look for information about their lives, we find the sources thin and diffuse. One reason probably is that before 700 n.o.body realized that these men would one day be elevated to founding fathers, and consequently no one bothered recording details of their lives.

During the seventh century the scattered teachers of _dhyana _seem to have gradually coalesced into a sort of ad hoc movement--with sizable followings growing up around the better-known figures. A certain amount of respectability also emerged, if we can believe the references to imperial notice that start appearing in the chronicles. It would seem that the _dhyana_ or Ch'an movement became a more or less coherent sect, a recognizable if loosely defined school of Buddhism. However, what the movement apparently was striving to become was not so much a branch of Buddhism in China as a Chinese version of Buddhism. The men later remembered as the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Patriarchs have in common a struggle to bend Buddhist thought to Chinese intellectual requirements, to sinicize Buddhism. Whereas they succeeded only in setting the stage for this transformation (whose realization would await other hands), they did establish a personality pattern that would set apart all later masters: a blithe irreverence that owed as much to Chuang Tzu as to Bodhidharma.

When reading the biographies that follow, it is useful to keep in mind that the explicit details may well have been cooked up in later years to satisfy a natural Chinese yearning for anecdotes, with or without supporting information. Yet the fact that the _dhyana _pract.i.tioners eventually became a movement in need of a history is itself proof that these men and their stories were not complete inventions. In any case, they were remembered, honored, and quoted in later years as the legendary founders of Ch'an.

SENG-TSAN, THE THIRD PATRIARCH (d. 606)

The question of the Second Patriarch Hui-k'o's successor was troublesome even for the ancient Ch'an historians. The earliest version of his biography (written in 645, before the sect of Ch'an and its need for a history existed) declares, "Before [Hui-k'o] had established a lineage he died, leaving no worthy heirs." When it later became necessary for Ch'an to have an uninterrupted patriarchy, a revised history was prepared which supplied him an heir named Seng-ts'an, to whom he is said to have transmitted the doctrine.1 The story of their meeting recalls Hui-k'o's first exchange with Bodhidharma, save that the roles are reversed. The text implies that Seng-ts'an was suffering from leprosy when he first encountered Hui-k'o, and that he implored the Master for relief in a most un-Zenlike way, saying: "I am in great suffering from this disease; please take away my sins."

Hui-k'o responded with, "Bring me your sins, and I will take them away."

After a long silence, Seng-ts'an confessed, "I've looked, but I cannot find them."

To which Hui-k'o replied, echoing Bodhidharma's cla.s.sic rejoinder, "Behold, you have just been cleansed."

Another version of the story says Hui-k'o greeted Seng-ts'an with the words, "You are suffering from leprosy; why should you want to see me?"

To this Seng-ts'an responded, "Although my body is sick, the mind of a sick man and your own mind are no different."

Whatever actually happened, it was enough to convince Hui-k'o that he had found an enlightened being, one who perceived the unity of all things, and he forthwith transmitted to Seng-ts'an the symbols of the patriarchy--the robe and begging bowl of Bodhidharma--telling him that he should take refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma (the universal truth proclaimed by Buddha), and the Sangha (the Buddhist organization or priesthood). Seng-ts'an replied that he knew of the Sangha, but what was meant by the Buddha and the Dharma? The answer was that all three were expressions of Mind.2

This exchange seems to have taken place while Hui-k'o was in the northern Wei capital of Yeh-tu.3 In later years Seng-ts'an found it necessary to feign madness (to escape persecution during the anti- Buddhist movement of 574), and finally he went to hide on Huan-kung mountain for ten years, where his mere presence reportedly was enough to tame the wild tigers who had terrorized the people there. The only surviving work that purportedly relays his teaching is a poem, said to be one of the earliest Ch'an treatises, which is called the _Hsin-hsin- ming_, or "On the Believing Mind."4 It starts off in a lyrical, almost Taoist, voice worthy of Chuang Tzu, as it celebrates man's original nature and the folly of striving.

_There is nothing difficult about the Great Way

But, avoid choosing!

Only when you neither love nor hate,

Does it appear in all clarity.

Do not be anti- or pro- anything.

The conflict of longing and loathing,

This is the disease of the mind.

Not knowing the profound meaning of things,

We disturb our (original) peace of mind to no purpose.5

_Next, the poem turns to an acknowledgment of the Mahayanist concept of the all-encompa.s.sing Mind, the greatest single truth of the universe, and of Nagarjuna's Void, the cosmic emptiness of _sunyata_.

_Things are things because of the Mind.

The Mind is the Mind because of things.

If you wish to know what these two are,

They are originally one Emptiness.

In this Void both (Mind and things) are one,

All the myriad phenomena contained in both.6

_

The poem closes with an affirmation of the Ch'an credo of unity and the absence of duality as a sign of enlightenment.