SIXTH PATRIARCH

The Intuitive Sects of Mahayana Buddhism are Ch'an in China and, later, Zen in Japan.  In their view, scholarly research, the reading of books, the doing of good works, the performance of rituals, and so on, are not only of little merit, but often a hindrance to true insight.  To illustrate this, there is the story of Hui-neng, an illiterate country boy, who went on to become the Sixth Patriarch of Ch'an Buddhism.

Hui-neng's first "conversion" took place while he was still a youth.  One day while he was selling firewood in the market, he heard a man reading a Sutra (Buddhist lesson).  No sooner had he heard the text of the Sutra than his mind, all of a sudden, became enlightened.  Traveling to the Tung-tsen monastery, he was received by the Fifth Patriarch who asked him where he came from and what he expected to get from him.  Hui-neng replied that he was a commoner from Sun-chow and said that he asked for nothing but Buddhahood.

The boy was then sent to the granary of the monastery, where for many months he worked as a laborer, hulling rice.  One day the Patriarch assembled his monks and, after reminding them of the uselessness of merit as compared to liberation, told them to go and "seek the transcendental wisdom within your minds and write me a stanza about it.  He who gets the clearest idea of what Mind-Essence is, will receive the insignia and become the Sixth Patriarch."

Shin-shau, the most learned of the monks and the man who everyone expected to become the Sixth Patriarch, was the only one to do as the Abbot commanded.  "Our body may be compared to a Bodhi tree," he composed, "while our mind is a mirror bright.  Carefully we cleanse and watch them hour by hour, and suffer no dust to collect upon them."

But the Fifth Patriarch told him to go back and try again.  Two days later Hui-neng heard someone recite the stanza, knew immediately that its author had not achieved enlightenment and himself dictated to someone who knew how to write, the following:  "By no means is Bodhi (from the root "budh,"meaning to awaken) a kind of tree, nor is the bright reflecting mind a case of mirrors.  Since mind is Emptiness, where can the dust collect?"

That night the Patriarch summoned the youth to his cell and secretly invested him with the insignia.  Naturally, Hui-neng's fellow monks were jealous, and many years passed before he was widely recognized as the Sixth Patriarch.  He became renowned.