Shitou's Harmony of Difference and Equality--The Background

By: Bob Zeglovitch

This Friday at JSU we will begin a long and slow process of unpacking, at some level, the meaning of the Harmony of Difference and Equality (“Harmony”), a seminal Chan teaching poem that is recited regularly in Soto Zen temples around the world. The authorship of Harmony is attributed to Shitou Xigian (700-790). All existing branches of Zen throughout the world are said to descend either from Shitou or from his contemporary Mazu Daoyi. Shitou was a student of Dajian Huineng, the illiterate and legendary “Sixth Ancestor” in China. See the blog entry dated September 21, 2023 and titled “Fukanzazengi: No Dust, No Mirror” for a description of the famous but likely apocryphal poetry contest that is recounted in the Soto Zen tradition as the basis for Huineng’s dharma transmission. After Huineng’s death, Shitou became a student of Huineng’s successor, Qingyuan Xingsi.

The title of Harmony is the same as that of a 2nd-century Taoist text on alchemy by the poet Wei Po Yang. This text detailed esoteric practices that were supposed to enable one to gain immortality or to become a deity. It was obviously still a recognized text in Shitou’s time, and we can see his borrowing of the title as part of the process through which Indian Buddhism mingled with Taoist understandings to form a new and culturally responsive form. Chan Master Sheng Yen (1931-2009) notes that when Buddhism came to China, Sakyamuni Buddha was given a Taoist name—-The Perfectly Enlightened Highest Deity—in order to form a connection between Buddhist teaching and Taoist tradition. Shitou was therefore drawing a metaphoric connection between becoming a deity and becoming a Buddha. Sheng Yen also notes that there is an allusion within the title of Harmony to becoming a buddha through meditation, which bears some similarities to Taoist practices.

The title of this poem in Japanese is Sandokai. Harmony of Difference and Equality is only one of many English translations. Some others include: Merging of Difference and Unity; Harmony of Difference and Sameness; Identity of Relative and Absolute; Agreement of Difference and Unity; and Inquiry Into Matching Halves.

At the risk of enormous oversimplification, Harmony delves into the relationship between the ultimate empty, boundless and wondrously unfathomable nature of reality on the one hand, and the particular and relative form world that is familiar to us on the other.

Our effort to better understand the meaning of the Harmony will be undertaken with the utmost humility. In this connection, Chan master Sheng Yen, who was a renowned scholar and practitioner, noted in his commentary on Harmony that it is a difficult work, and that since he was not Shitou, he was sure that he had not fully and clearly explained the poem. We will be using helpful commentary by Shohaku Okumura, a highly regarded Soto Zen teacher and scholar, from the book Living By Vow. Other excellent resources on this poem are Sheng Yen’s The Infinite Mirror and Suzuki Roshi’s Branching Streams Flow In the Darkness.

Fukanzazengi: No dust, no mirror

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.