Chapter 3

Mind is like the void in which there is no confusion or evil, as when the sun wheels through it shining upon the four corners of the world. For, when the sun rises and illuminates the whole earth, the void gains not in brilliance; and, when the sun sets, the void does not darken. The phenomena of light and dark alternate with each other, but the nature of the void remains unchanged.

That is how this chapter opens. I put that passage into Bing’s AI image generator, and the image accompanying this post is what popped out. I just thought we could use a little color in this community.

Huang Po goes on to use this metaphor to compare our conceptions of enlightened beings and ordinary sentient beings, the former being viewed as light and the latter dark. This view is itself driven by attachment, as there is nothing else but the one mind, which I suppose is the void in this metaphor.

If you students of the Way do not awake to this Mind substance, you will overlay Mind with conceptual thought, you will seek the Buddha outside yourselves, and you will remain attached to forms, pious practices and so on, all of which are harmful and not at all the way to supreme knowledge.

My interpretation is that Huang Po’s one mind is the same as emptiness. I asked the Bing chatbot which seems to confirm my interpretation:

The void that Huang Po refers to is the concept of śūnyatā in Sanskrit, which means emptiness or voidness.

Granted, what does AI know? But it’s hard not to interpret void as emptiness, and then Huang Po goes on the equate this with the one mind.

Huang Po again warns against attachments to particular practices or teachings (going so far as to call them “harmful” this time), which again reminds me of the Heart Sutra:

There is neither ignorance nor Extinction of ignorance… neither old age and death, nor Extinction of old age and death； no suffering, no cause, no cessation, no path； no knowledge and no attainment. With nothing to attain, a bodhisattva relies on prajna parami ta, and thus the mind is without hindrance. Without hindrance, there is no fear. Far beyond all inverted views, one realizes nirvana.

My interpretation is that Huang Po would have his students focus on understanding emptiness. Maybe I’m biased in my interpretation as this has been the focus of my practice as of late.

Chapter 2

This chapter is pretty simple, and yet I spent longer than I anticipated chewing on it.

The opening line:

As to performing the six pāramitās and vast numbers of similar practices, or gaining merits as countless as the sands of the Ganges, since you are fundamentally complete in every respect, you should not try to supplement that perfection by such meaningless practices.

Simple enough, right? This is a fundamental zen thing, we all have Buddha nature, there is nothing to do its always just there.

That’s not to say that Huang Po’s message is to reject all the practices outright. Rather, the message is more not to get attached to the practices themselves.

When there is occasion for them, perform them; and, when the occasion is passed, remain quiescent. If you are not absolutely convinced that the Mind is the Buddha, and if you are attached to forms, practices and meritorious performances, your way of thinking is false and quite incompatible with the Way.

During and after high school, I played guitar with a buddy of mine who was entirely self-taught. But not self-taught in that he read books and learned on his own. No, when he was a young kid he got his hands on a guitar and just started making sounds with it, figuring out what worked and what didn’t. Basically, reinventing the wheel. He was obsessive and played constantly, but the time I was jamming with him he had been playing for probably a decade, couldn’t read music, knew a few chord names, but that was the extent of his knowledge. He was an incredible guitar player, technically proficient, but more importantly he always played with “soul” and could come up with fantastic riffs or solos or melodies like it was nothing. After jamming with him for a while, I went to college and decided to major in jazz guitar. My buddy and I often talked about whether a formalized music education was valuable, or whether the rigid structures you learn would take away the “soul” of your music.

In my jazz program, I met and played with some incredible guitar players who were the complete opposite of my buddy. They were steeped in music theory and constantly trying to push boundaries, playing off of medieval scales in solos and the like. While interesting and technically impressive, I never found what they played to be “enjoyable” to listen to. It had the flavor of someone trying to impress you with their vocabulary by throwing around a bunch of big words, with whatever message they were trying to convey being lost in the process.

I’d still go and jam with my self-taught buddy, and I’d give him little primers on theory, or show him different chord forms. He was able to take that stuff and use it in his own way. The knowledge he gained from him didn’t limit the “soul” of his playing, it just gave him new tools to play with.

I’m not sure there is a great point to this story, but I was reminded of it while chewing on this chapter. There are technical zen teachings which you can use to further your own understanding of Mind. You don’t necessarily need them, you can be self-taught like my friend. Indeed, that is what the Buddha himself did. But its reinventing the wheel, and needlessly forgoing available knowledge that can be beneficial. On the other hand, you don’t want to cling so tightly to teachings and practices, and end up missing the point. I always feel like this is a cop out response, but perhaps the “middle way” is the answer.

If we take Huang Po’s argument seriously, the only conclusion I can come to is that I should immediately put down this book and stop reading it. Because what do I have to learn from this at all, as my focus should just be on realizing the true nature of mind, not reading his sermons. Even knowledge of what I “should” be doing is probably too much. But realization is not something that is easy to come to naturally. I, like probably most people, need some kind of preparation for my mind to get to that place of realizing itself. Otherwise, I’d just go about my life concerned with the this and that of ordinary things, continuing with all the associated attachments. So, reading and thinking about and writing about this book is part of my practice, as listening to his speech here was part of his own student's practice. Perhaps I should not cling to Huang Po’s words, but that doesn’t mean I can’t use them and find value in them.

And I think that is important to keep in mind as well, that his students would have come to him having studied Buddhism in various traditions for years before seeking him out. They would have been very experienced practitioners. His message was to them, not to lay people reading his words over 1,000 years later. His audience would have been like the students I played with in college, obsessed with forms and technical knowledge. His message to them was to not lose the “soul” in their playing. But as lay people reading Hung Pao centuries later, its easy to take that message too far and think that Huang Po was saying that there is no value in practice at all, that we should avoid it at all costs.

I wanted to reflect on something that has been stuck in my head for a bit. It’s this story from Dogen’s Instructions to the Cook:

When this mountain monk [I, Dôgen] was at Tiantong Monastery, the position [of cook] was held by cook Yong, of the same province [as the monastery]. Once, after the midday meal I was passing through the east corridor on my way to the Chaoran room [where my teacher Myôzen was being nursed] when I saw the cook in front of the buddha hall airing mushrooms. He carried a bamboo staff in his hand, but had no hat on his head. The sun was hot, the ground tiles were hot, and sweat streamed over him as he worked diligently to dry the mushrooms. He was suffering a bit. With his backbone bent like a bow and his shaggy eyebrows, he resembled a crane.

I approached and asked the cook his dharma age. He said, “Sixty-eight years.” I said, “Why do you not employ postulants or laborers?” He said, “They are not me.” I said, “Venerable sir, your attitude is indeed proper, but the sun is so hot; why are you doing this [now]?” The cook said, “What time should I wait for?” I took my leave, but as I walked along the corridor, I began to realize how important an opportunity this position affords.

One thing that bothers me is that Yong is refusing to delegate, as if his practice of actually doing the work is more valuable than doing things efficiently to ensure the best and most efficient result for the monastery. Can’t Yong still practice as a manager? This work is often used as the go to when discussing how we should approach our own work from a zen point of view, and here we have a story of a guy who thinks only he can do it right, and apparently suggesting that management isn’t important work or a proper basis for practice. Maybe this is all just coming from something in my brain having been raised in a capitalist society that I haven’t let go yet. I’ll take a pass on this issues for now.

What really bothers me is Yong asks, “What time should I wait for” and Dogen apparently just walks away. It is not clear if Dogen thought this question was a sufficient answer to his initial question (it sure sounds like a Zen style of answer), or perhaps Dogen “took his leave” in adherence to societal norms so as not to further impose on an elder. I suspect the former because Dogen says “I began to realize how important an opportunity this position affords” suggesting that Yong’s response illuminated something for him.

My answer to Yong would have been, “maybe wait till the evening or early morning when the sun isn’t so hot. Or maybe put on a hat, or find some shade to do this under if there is some scheduling necessity for you to do it now.” I don’t know anything about drying mushrooms, but it seems like Yong is needlessly suffering. How would Yong have responded if Dogen had answered similar to what I suggest? Would we then have a discussion about whether Yong was properly managing his workflow as a cook? Or something else?

Beyond just the kind of absurdity of the story that bugs me, I’m more interested in what this story says about what we should be doing. Zen has plenty to say about how we do things, but much less to say about what we should do, and when, and apparently whether we should be using available protective clothing to shield ourselves from the elements. Perhaps this was not as much of an issue in ancient China, especially for monks living in monasteries. Basic survival seemed to be the primary order of the day – grow and prepare food, carry water for drinking, chop wood for heat and cooking. Monks also relied on donations from benefactors and the community. Our lives today are far more complex, if we want food or heat, we generally need to find some type of employment to obtain money which we then use to pay for it. Our work is typically not for the direct benefit of ourselves, but it is nevertheless necessary for us to engage in given the realities of our society. So what, then, should we do.

And not just professionally. While I have a fairly consistent morning routine, a few days ago circumstances resulted in me having about a half hour period with nothing I “needed” to do, so I was left with choice. I could play with my dog in the yard, which would be stimulating for the dog and tire him out to the benefit of my WFH partner. I could log into my computer and get a jump on work for the day. Or I could do some cleaning around the house. These were just the “good” options I considered, but I also could have just scrolled on my phone, played a video game, or even start drinking alcohol at 7am. I can do whatever I want, so what should I choose? In order to make a decision, I have to engage in the world of attachments and start dividing the world by my preferences.

As I am going through Huang Po’s Transmission of Mind, I mentioned the other translation by Subul Sunim. The translator’s introduction describes Sunim as emphasizing “case studies” practice, known as Ganhwa Seon, which is meant to lead to sudden enlightenment. I may discuss this in more depth later. To summarize, Sunim sets up an intensive one-week Ganhwa Seon retreat for lay people so that “great doubt” can arise and they can have a breakthrough “experience” within the confines of their busy schedules. I can’t help but be skeptical of this approach as sounding like any other new age mysticism, but that is my own bias. The following passage describes his answer to student’s at the end of such retreats:

Still, after finishing their retreats, his retreatants are often eager for instruction on what to do next. What about starting another practice like insight meditation, or mindfulness training, or visualization? Subul Sunim chides them for wanting to sample this or that technique, comparing this desire to a kid in a candy store eager to try this and that morsel. The pursuit of more practice and spiritual experiences is just another sort of attachment, which can become a hindrance in its own right. So what, his students then ask, should we do after having this “experience” in ganhwa Seon? Master Subul Sunim’s answer is cryptic: “Live well.” The usual reaction: what do you mean by “living well”? This is where Master Subul turns to Huangbo’s Essentials of Transmitting the Mind-Dharma. As Huangbo reiterates time and again throughout his text, we are already enlightened. We don’t need to do anything in order to develop our enlightenment, whether that is making merit, mastering the six perfections of the bodhisattva, or practicing different styles of meditation. There is, Huangbo says in his opening section, “not the slightest dharma that you need to attain, for this mind is in fact a genuine buddha

I raise this just to illustrate the lack of zen guidance on what to do. We are humans afterall, and we live in this society, we have relationships, and jobs, and goals, dreams, preferences, etc. How can we at once be free of attachment and still be able to move through the world? I readily admit this is most likely something I am missing. Maybe it doesn’t matter what we do. At any rate, this is one of those fundamental things with Zen I struggle with.

Now we get into the meat of things. The first line:

The Master said to me: All the Buddhas and all sentient beings are nothing but the One Mind, beside which nothing exists. This Mind, which is without beginning, is unborn and indestructible.

This chapter (surmon? I’m just going to call sections chapters for simplicity) is essentially definitional of the term “one mind.” What struck me as I was reading it was how it mirrored the Heart Sutra’s description of emptiness.

It is not green nor yellow, and has neither form nor appearance. It does not belong to the categories of things which exist or do not exist, nor can it be thought of in terms of new or old. It is neither long nor short, big nor small, for it transcends all limits, measures, names, traces and comparisons.

Being similar to the Heart Sutra’s “all darhmas are marked by emptiness, they neither arise nor cease, are neither defiled nor pure, neither increase nor decrease.”

This chapter also warns not to reason about it or else “you fall at once into error.” The classic Zen emphasis on understanding without conceptual thought. We also get the lines about the one mind being Buddha, that the only difference between this and all sentient beings is that the latter “are attached to forms and so seek externally for Buddhahood” which is of course error as it’s the Buddha “using mind to grasp mind.”

The chapter ends with this, which Kindle helpfully let me know is a frequently highlighted passage:

They do not know that, if they put a stop to conceptual thought and forget their anxiety, the Buddha will appear before them, for this Mind is the Buddha and the Buddha is all living beings. It is not the less for being manifested in ordinary beings, nor is it greater for being manifested in the Buddhas.

I don’t want to just cut and paste the book in here, or just summarize things. I hope to add some thoughts along the way to provide some more value. Even if my thoughts are wrong or I miss the point, my misunderstanding I think can still be helpful if for nothing else as a place to start discussion.

I don’t have much to say about this chapter apart from its similarities to the concept of emptiness. I do think that is interesting, as emptiness is a foundation of zen (platform sutra) and here we’re starting the book with essentially the concept of emptiness, but expressed as one mind. Of course, if Huang Pao meant emptiness, he could have just said that.

Seon (Korean zen) master Subul Sunim has a more recent translation of this book with his own commentary, called “A bird in flight leaves no trace.” According to that book he is somewhat an expert on this book. I skimmed his commentary after writing all of this, and for what its worth I didn’t see him call out the concept of emptiness specifically at all. So that’s probably just my invention, and likely incorrect at that. Perhaps I’ll draw on Sunim’s commentary in future posts on this work. I’ll have to think on that.

The often-quoted passage is interesting itself as it’s the closest thing to instruction in this chapter. I suppose that is what draws people to highlight it. Subul Sunim’s translation of the same passage is markedly different (as is kind of a theme between the translations):

Say one observes buddhas as having the characteristics of purity, radiance, and liberation or observes sentient beings as having the characteristics of foulness, darkness, and birth and death. One who generates such an understanding will not be able to attain bodhi [enlightenment] even after kalpas [eons] as numerous as the sands of the Ganges, because one is attached to characteristics. There is only this onemind; there is not another dharma, even as small as a mote of dust, to be attained. The mind is the buddha. Those who train in the Way these days do not awaken to the essence of this mind. They then give rise to mental states overlaying this mind, seek the buddha externally, and practice while being attached to characteristics. All these are harmful techniques, not the path to bodhi.

The message seems similar, but gone are the references to “putting a stop to conceptual thought” and letting go of “anxiety.” For what it’s worth, and to give you a taste of Subul Sunim’s writing, here is his commentary on that passage:

The difference between buddhas and sentient beings is that those who attain awakening for themselves are buddhas while those who do not are sentient beings. The difference between the two is that simple. If people know that they are originally buddhas, they will act like buddhas. But because they presume they are ignorant, they become sentient beings, who suffer and discriminate. People should be able to realize that “this is it” by turning one thought around and letting go of all discriminative thoughts, without any lingering attachment. Not knowing this, they become greedy, looking left and right. How could they not but lose their original mind?

So, that’s the first chapter. Apologies if this is kind of all over the place. Hopefully I’ll improve how I put these together as I go.

**P'ei Hsiu’s Preface **

The work itself starts with a preface from the author, P’ei Hsiu. I think it is worth looking a little in P’ei Hsiu’s background as the Huang Po’s teachings come to us as captured and interpreted by P’ei Hsiu. I consulted Bing Chat to get a little background.

P’ei Hsiu was born in the year 787 or 797 CE in the Tang dynasty. He came from a prominent family of officials and scholars, and he was well-educated in the classics, history, and poetry. He passed the imperial examination at a young age and began his career as a civil servant. He rose through the ranks and held various positions, such as minister of rites, minister of state, and governor of several provinces. He was loyal to the Tang dynasty and tried to reform the corrupt and decadent government. He also supported the suppression of rebellions and foreign invasions. P’ei Hsiu was a devout practitioner of Zen, and he praised Huang Po’s teachings for being direct, profound, and free from conceptual thought. He also described his own experience of enlightenment under Huang Po’s guidance. He is most famous for this work and the preface he wrote for it.

He was also a friend and admirer of Han Shan, a legendary poet who lived in seclusion on Cold Mountain. P’ei Hsiu visited Han Shan several times and collected his poems, which are now regarded as classics of Chinese literature. P’EI HSIU also wrote poems himself, expressing his insights on Zen and his feelings for his friends. P’ei Hsiu died in the year 860 CE at the age of 73 or 83. He was buried in his hometown of Fuzhou with a simple tombstone that bore his name and his Buddhist name, Chih-yuan. He left behind a legacy of writings that influenced the development of Zen Buddhism and Chinese culture.

As P’ei Hsiu’s preface is fairly short, and it is what he is most famous for (at least according to the AI bots), I include it here in its entirety:

The great Zen Master Hsi Yun lived below the Vulture Peak on Mount Huang Po, [From which he takes his posthumous name] in the district of Kao An which forms part of the prefecture of Hung Chou [In the modern province of Kiangsi]. He was third in the direct line of descent from Hui Neng, [Wei Lang] the Sixth Patriarch, and the pupil of a fellow-disciple of Hui Hai. Holding in esteem only the intuitive method of the Highest Vehicle, which cannot be communicated in words, he taught nothing but the doctrine of the One Mind; holding that there is nothing else to teach, in that both mind and substance are void and that the chain of causation is motionless. Mind is like the sun journeying through the sky and emitting glorious light uncontaminated by the finest particle of dust. To those who have realized the nature of Reality, there is nothing old or new, and conceptions of shallowness and depth are meaningless. Those who speak of it do not attempt to explain it, establish no sects and open no doors or windows. That which is before you is it. Begin to reason about it and you will at once fall into error. Only when you have understood this will you perceive your oneness with the original Buddha-nature. Therefore his words were simple, his reasoning direct, his way of life exalted and his habits unlike the habits of other men.

Disciples hastened to him from all quarters, looking up to him as to a lofty mountain, and through their contact with him awoke to Reality. Of the crowds which flocked to see him, there were always more than a thousand with him at a time.

In the second year of Hui Ch'ang (A.D. 843), when I was in charge of the district of Chung Lin, I welcomed him on his coming to that city from the mountain where he resided. We stayed together in the Lung Hsing Monastery where, day and night, I questioned him about the Way. Moreover, in the second year of T'ai Chung (A.D. 849), while governing the district of Wan Ling, I again had occasion to welcome him ceremoniously to the place where I was stationed. This time we stayed quietly at the K'ai Yuan Monastery, where also I studied under him day and night. After leaving him, I recorded what I had learnt and, though able to set down only about a fifth of it, I esteem it as a direct transmission of the Doctrine. At first I was diffident about publishing what I had written; but now, fearing that these vital and penetrating teachings will be lost to future generations, I have done so. Moreover, I gave the manuscript to the monks T'ai Chou and Fa Chien, requesting them to return to the Kuang T'ang Monastery on the old mountainland to ask the elder monks there how far it agrees with what they themselves used frequently to hear in the past.

Written on the eighth day of the tenth moon of the eleventh year of T'ai Chung (A.D. 858) of the T'ang Dynasty

A couple of thoughts I had while reading that. First, it is a nice description of Huang Po’s teachings, but we’ll get to that in more depth in the text itself. Second, the existence of this work is interesting in and of itself. Huang Po was apparently not above politics, as P’ei Hsiu describes various ceremonial visits he had with him, as if it was in his official capacity as a government representative that he came into contact with Huang Po. I doubt this is in anyway unusual, but a lot of people have this image of the old masters as cantankerous adepts living alone in the woods, where in fact Huang Po understood there was some value or necessity in playing along in the game of politics at the time. Even going so far as to take P’ei Hsiu in for direct teaching (P’ei Hsiu saying at least on two occasions he studied with or questioned Huang Po “day and night”). Huang Po likely understood his teaching were being recorded as part of this and at least tacitly consented to that fact. Similarly, the final thought I had was the description of Huang Po as a teacher. Again, in contrast to the common perception of masters isolated on some mountain, P’ei Hsiu describes Huang Po as surrounded by “crowds” of “always more than a thousand” at a time. Huang Po was a man running a large and successful monastery, he had contacts with government officials and new how to play that game, so he was not some otherwordly figure who isolated himself and pursued his own practice single-mindedly. Not to say that any of this is bad or wrong, but I think there is a tendency to lionize these old masters to make them mythical figures who are “above it all.” The reality, at least from P’ei Hsiu who actually knew Huang Po, is a bit more nuanced.

I began reading “The Zen Teaching of Huang Po: On the Transmission of Mind” translated by John Blofeld and published in 2007. I made it about half way through a different translation a few years ago, but thought I’d give it another go for the sake of content for discussion. My intention is to post summaries, selections, and thoughts as I go. You can find PDF’s of this book fairly easily online, but I won’t point to them directly for fear of angering the copyright gods. I am using an ebook copy I obtained through my local library.

We’ll start at the beginning, with the translator’s introduction. He gives a good summary of Zen’s history and his own understanding of Zen. If you reading this are a true begginer, the whole introduction is worth reading for historical context. Here is how the translator describes Huang Po’s place in the Zen tradition:

The most important of the Sixth Patriarch's successors was Ma Tsu (Tao I) who died in A.D. 788. Huang Po, variously regarded as one or two generations junior to him, seems to have died as late as 850, after transmitting the Wordless Doctrine to I Hsuan the founder of the great Lin Chi (Rinzai) Sect which still continues in China and flourishes widely in Japan. So Huang Po is in some sense regarded as the founder of this great Branch. Like all Chinese monks, he had several names, being known in his lifetime as Master Hsi Yun and as Master T'uan Chi; his posthumous name is taken from that of Mount Huang Po where he resided for many years. In Japan he is generally known as Obaku, which is the Japanese way of pronouncing the Chinese characters for Huang Po.

Throughout the work, Huang Po uses the term “Mind.” Here is the translator’s take on Huang Po’s use of that specific work. I think this is worth including given how central “mind” is to the writing.

The text indicates that Huang Po was not entirely satisfied with his choice of the word 'Mind' to symbolize the inexpressible Reality beyond the reach of conceptual thought, for he more than once explains that the One Mind is not really MIND at all. But he had to use some term or other and 'Mind' had often been used by his predecessors. As Mind conveys intangibility, it no doubt seemed to him a good choice, especially as the use of this term helps to make it clear that the part of a man usually regarded as an individual entity inhabiting his body is, in fact, not his property at all but common to him and to everybody and everything else. (It must be remembered that, in Chinese, 'hsin' means not only 'mind', but 'heart' and, in some senses at least 'spirit' or 'soul'--in short, the so-called REAL man, the inhabitant of the body-house.) If we prefer to substitute the word 'Absolute', which Huang Po occasionally uses himself, we must take care not to read into the text any preconceived notions as to the nature of the Absolute. And, of course 'the One Mind' is no less misleading, unless we abandon all preconceived ideas, as Huang Po intended.

In an earlier translation of the first part of this book, I ventured to substitute 'Universal Mind' for 'the One Mind', hoping that the meaning would be clearer. However, various critics objected to this, and I have come to see that my term is liable to a different sort of misunderstanding; it is therefore no improvement on 'the One Mind , which at least has the merit of being a literal translation

Next, the translator discusses what Huang Po had to say about meditation, which wasn’t much in terms of instruction. The translator states that Huang Po would have assumed his audience would be “keen Buddhists” and not have much need for more than the tips Huang Po offers throughout. The translator also has a nice metaphor for enlightenment, which is boiling water. You heat the water and it gets hotter and hotter, that is practice, then in an instant it boils. No matter how hot the water gets, it’s not boiling until it boils.

Our translator then spends some time apologizing for Huang Po, insisting that he likely did not actually dislike other Buddhist secta, but just was convinced that his way was the best and most efficient. Interestingly, the author calls out, by using Huang Po, secta that emphasize good works and karmic merit for living otherwise selfish lives. The translator also insists that Huang Po understood the necessity of the teachings and scriptures to get to the place where one is ready for the most important teaching of mind-control. Again, his audience on his mountain would have been well versed in the teachings before even thinking it was worth coming to learn from him. For good measure, our translator defends Pure Land Buddhism and Lamaism.

The rest of the introduction address some translation and organizational concepts, and there are a few words on the author, P’ei Hsiu being a great scholar of the day and so forth.

I do it daily. If you want to talk about it.

It's a big thing in my life.

I do just the Shikantaza. Not the anapanasati. The Buddhists call that "dry".

I found an interesting book, Zen's Chinese Heritage, The Masters and their Teachings by Andy Ferguson. It goes through the 1st twenty-five generations of Chan masters, beginning with Bodhidharma and ending with Foyan.

The main source material for this book is the Wudeng Huiyuan (Compendium of Five Lamps), dating from the mid-1200s. This excerpt is about Shenhui, the student of Huineng, also the one believed to have written the Platform Sutra.

HEZE SHENHUI (670–762) was an eminent disciple of the Sixth Ancestor. He strongly supported and promoted Huineng’s place in Chinese Zen history. Shenhui championed the Southern school of Zen, and vociferously attacked what became widely known as the Northern school, the school associated with Yuquan Shenxiu.

Shenhui put forward two reasons for his attack on the Northern school. The first was, “The (ancestral) succession is spurious.” Attacking Shenxiu’s legitimacy as the Dharma heir of Hongren was an extension of Shenhui’s proposition that that honor belonged exclusively to Huineng. Obviously, the argument was self-serving as well, since Shenhui could thus make a claim to be the true Seventh Ancestor of the Bodhidharma line.

The second reason for attacking Shenxiu was, “(His) Dharma gate is gradual.” By this, Shenhui meant that the various “gradual” spiritual practices employed by Shenxiu, as well as other disciples of Hongren, were fundamentally at odds with what Shenhui regarded as the genuine Zen of his teacher, Huineng.

Shenhui’s life and teaching are at the center of the most hotly debated questions of Zen history and thought. He is a controversial figure who set a standard of teaching that emphasized sudden, unmediated enlightenment. This characteristic of Chinese Zen distinguishes it from other Buddhist schools. The idea of nonmediated, sudden enlightenment clearly took solid root as a centerpiece of Chinese Zen during Shenhui’s era and suffused the teachings of subsequent generations of the Southern school.

Shenhui’s Zen, expounded in the name of the Sixth Ancestor, castigated the idea of “gradual” enlightenment achieved through meditation and religious practices that were meant to realize and maintain “pure original mind.” Shenhui’s proposition, in effect, attacked not only the Northern school, but many of the practices that were part and parcel of Daoxin and Hongren’s East Mountain Zen tradition as well, including their basic outlook on meditation practice.

Scholars have documented that Daoxin, Hongren, and Hongren’s disciples variously used “gradualist” practices, practices that set religious life distinctly apart from secular life, in their practice centers. One example was Hongren’s disciple Zishou Zhishen, the founder of the Sichuan Zen school, who is believed to have heavily emphasized chanting Buddha’s name over all other practices.

Yet Shenhui has been shown to have tampered with, not to say subverted, the historical facts surrounding Huineng’s life to gain ascendancy for his “sudden” Zen ideology. Shenhui’s account of Huineng’s life contains self-serving inconsistencies. Moreover, his writings about earlier Zen development, particularly the succession of Zen ancestors beginning with Shakyamuni Buddha, contain blatant errors and contradictions.

The “Northern” school was the name applied by Shenhui to the most politically dominant and powerful stream of Zen of his era. This stream was a continuation of the East Mountain school of Hongren, as taught by his disciple Shenxiu, and by Shenxiu’s own many disciples who were spread through northern areas of the country. Shenxiu obtained unprecedented influence at the imperial court during the late seventh and early eighth centuries. Shenxiu’s disciples Puji and Yifu then carried on this influence until events overcame the school around the year 755.

Shenhui’s main attack on the Northern school occurred at a conference he staged at Great Cloud Temple in Huatai in the year 734. In that meeting, Shenhui put forth the “Exposition on Determining Right and Wrong [with respect to] Bodhidharma’s Southern school.” The conference staged a debate between Shenhui and a certain “Dharma master Chongyuan,” who defended the Northern school. Although the influence of this conference on the imperial court and public opinion is disputed, the meeting clearly laid out lines of battle between the doctrines of the southern and northern currents of Zen.

After the conference at Huatai, Shenhui proceeded to live in the northern capital city of Luoyang, where he directly confronted the Northern school by inciting opinion in public gatherings. Eventually, Shenhui was banned from Luoyang as a rabble-rouser. During the period of his banishment, historical events transpired that helped his cause. The An Lushan uprising, a catastrophically destructive rebellion against the Tang dynasty, led to the destruction of the twin capital cities of Luoyang and Changan. The areas suffering devastation were important regions of Northern school predominance. This direct destruction of the Northern school led to a vacuum of court influence that Shenhui’s followers managed to fill. Thus, the Southern school gained social and political ascendancy not simply due to a preferred religious doctrine, but as the unforeseen result of a civil war that wracked northern China during that era.

Shenhui thus founded what became known as the Heze (in Japanese, Kataku) school of Zen. The branch largely died out during the early ninth century and is not remembered as a major school. Nevertheless, the doctrine of sudden enlightenment remained a central characteristic that defined the teaching styles and cultural flavor of later Chinese Zen. In the next Zen generation, Mazu Daoyi’s Hongzhou school vigorously adopted a teaching style that expressed the “sudden” Zen outlook. That school displaced Heze’s school in influence during the ninth century, but the doctrine espoused by Shenhui had lasting influence on all subsequent generations of Zen teachers.

I've read elsewhere about more modern scholarship casting some doubt on Huineng, and the division of Northern/Southern schools. I think John McRae has written about it, but I'm going to have to search for some of his articles.

I found some interesting articles from the Journal of Chan Buddhism. This is volume 1, there is a volume 2, but it's behind a paywall, or you can possibly get them if you have an institutional login...

I've only read the Repositioning Xinxing 信行 (540–594) in the Chinese Meditation Tradition. It was interesting, but I've yet to find any more information on Xinxing, but it seems he was pretty early in the Chinese Chan record.

Also I've been wanting to find more peer-reviewed journal articles on Chan, if anyone has any suggestions on where to look!

The peer-reviewed Journal of Chan Buddhism: East Asian and Global Perspectives is the first of its kind in English to specifically present academic research about Chinese Chan, Korean Sŏn, Vietnamese Thìên, and Japanese Zen Buddhism. The Journal of Chan Buddhism is an interdisciplinary or cross-disciplinary journal and will accept submissions from all academic disciplines related to the study of Chan/Sŏn/Zen Buddhism, including, but not limited to: the history of religions, literary studies, Dunhuang Chan studies, Tibetan and Tangut language Chan studies, doctrinal studies, art historical perspectives, institutional history, anthropological research, and comparative, philosophical studies. The journal also offers book reviews and translations into English of innovative research articles by eminent scholars in East Asia. The Journal of Chan Buddhism has separate area editors (e.g., Chan, Sŏn, Zen) to facilitate broad but still multifaceted coverage of Chinese Chan Studies, Korean Sŏn Studies, Vietnamese Thìên Studies, and Japanese Zen Studies.

The journal is hosted by the Buddhist Studies Forum at the University of British Columbia (UBC), funded by the Tianzhu Charitable Foundation of Guangdong Province, China, and facilitated by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) project on Buddhism and East Asian Religions (frogbear.org) at the University of British Columbia (UBC).

Instant Zen #49: Sitting Meditation

Foyan, Cleary translation

The light of mind is reflected in emptiness;

its substance is void of relative or absolute.

Golden waves all around,

Zen is constant, in action or stillness.

Thoughts arise, thoughts disappear;

don't try to shut them off.

Let them flow spontaneously—

what has ever arisen and vanished?

When arising and vanishing quiet down,

there appears the great Zen master;

sitting, reclining, walking around,

there's never an interruption.

When meditating, why not sit?

When sitting, why not meditate?

Only when you have understood this way.

is it called sitting meditation.

Who is it that sits? What is meditation?

To try to seat it

is using Buddha to look for Buddha.

Buddha need not be sought,

seeking takes you further away.

In sitting, you do not look at yourself;

meditation is not an external art.

At first, the mind is noisy and unruly;

there is still no choice but to shift it back.

That is why there are many methods

to teach it quiet observation.

When you sit up and gather your spirit,

at first it scatters helter-skelter;

over a period of time, eventually it calms down,

opening and freeing the six senses.

When the six senses rest a bit,

discrimination occurs therein.

As soon as discrimination occurs,

it seems to produce arising and vanishing.

The transformations of arising and vanishing

come from manifestations of one's own mind.

Put your own mind to use to look back once:

once you've returned, no need to do it again;

you wear a halo of light on your head.

The spiritual flames leap and shine,

unobstructed in any state of mind,

all-inclusive, all-pervasive;

birth and death forever cease.

A single grain of restorative elixir

turns gold into liquid;

acquired pollution of body and mind

have no way to get through.

Confusion and enlightenment are temporarily explained;

stop discussing opposition and accord.

When I think carefully of olden days

when I sat coolly seeking,

though it's nothing different,

it was quite a mess.

You can turn from ordinary mortal to sage

in an instant, but no one believes.

All over the earth is unclarity;

best be very careful.

If it happens you do not know,

then sit up straight and think;

one day you'll bump into it.

This I humbly hope.