By: Bob Zeglovitch
At our session last Friday on the Fukanzazengi, we touched briefly on the following reference from the text: “Indeed, the whole body is far beyond the world’s dust. Who could believe in a means to brush it clean?” This is a reference to the legend of Huineng, the Sixth Ancestor in the Ch’an/Zen tradition. I say “legend” intentionally, as historical scholarship has called into question much about the veracity of this story. It is best to take it lightly as a statement of fact. Instead, it highlights different approaches to practice, or ways of expressing the dharma.
According to the legend: Huineng was an illiterate wood cutter in 7th-8th century China who had an awakening experience upon hearing lines from the Diamond Sutra chanted in the marketplace. He joined a monastery lead by Daman Hongren (the Fifth Ancestor in a lineage descending from Bodhidharma—another legendary figure with shadowy historical origins who is taken as the figure who brought Ch’an/Zen practice from India to China). Given his lowly status, Huineng was assigned to kitchen work in the monastery.
Hongren announced a contest to determine his successor, which called for poems to be written to express an understanding of the dharma. Everyone expected his senior student, Shenxiu, to be chosen as the successor. Shenxiu wrote the following poem anonymously on the monastery wall, supposedly lacking the courage to present it to Hongren:
The body is the bodhi tree
The mind is like a bright mirror’s stand
At all times we must strive to polish it
And must not let dust collect.
Hongren was not satisfied with the poem and gave Shenxiu another chance, but Shenxiu was unable to compose another verse. Huineng heard Shenxiu’s verse, learned of the contest, and then spoke his verse to another monk who wrote it down:
Bodhi originally has no tree
The bright mirror has no stand
Fundamentally there is not a single thing
Where could dust arise?
Another version of this poem is:
Bodhi originally has no tree
The mirror has no stand
The Buddha-nature is always clear and pure
Where is there room for dust?
As the legend goes, Hongren recognized Huineng as his successor (after wiping away his poem) and gave him his robe and bowl in secret. He told Huineng to leave the monastery because the other monks would not accept that a “southern barbarian” had the deeper realization.
In the Ch’an tradition, the two poems became illustrative, respectively, of the so-called “gradual” and “sudden” approaches to enlightenment, or the “Northern” and “Southern” schools. You can see Dogen pointing to the latter approach and the legend of Huineng in his brief reference in Fukanzazengi. Shitou, the author of the Harmony of Difference and Equality, is commenting on this from another viewpoint when he states, “The Way has no Northern or Southern ancestors.” There is much more to say about this legend, its genesis, and its implications, but I’ll leave it at this for now.