Huineng lived between the mid-seventh century and early eighth century
CE. He is the author of the Platform Sutra and is the principle
proponent of the doctrine of sudden enlightenment.
He was a Chinese Buddhist of the Southern Chan school, which became known
as Zen Buddhism when it moved across the waters to Japan.
Huineng was a lay person, according to the legends which pertain to him, upon
reading the Diamond Sutra he attained a state of perfect enlightenment
and was able to expostulate his understanding of the teachings of the Buddha to
Hongren, the Fifth Ancestor of Zen. Even though Huineng was considered
to be an uneducated barbarian Hongren chose him as his successor over the monk
who had been groomed to fulfil that role.
Huineng’s Platform Sutra recapitulates all the major teachings of
Chan Buddhism including the Diamond Sutra, the Lotus Sutra and
the Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana.
Huineng taught "no-thought" and the purity of the “unattached
mind" which comes and goes freely, functioning fluently without any
hindrance.
Be mindful!
The principle of “no-thought” does not mean that a person is not thinking,
but that in the state of “no-though” the mind is a highly attentive to its
immediate experience, unentangled by the exigencies of the past or the
expectations of the future.
The state of ‘no-thought” is understood as a way of being, wherein the
mind is open, non-conceptual, allowing the individual to experience reality
directly, as it truly is.
Huineng criticized the formal understanding of Buddhism which suggests
that the individual must devote themselves to a life of quiet contemplation,
likening it to the same trap that the Gautama Siddhartha the Buddha sought to
free people from when he taught them that they did not have to endure innumerable
lifetimes and countless rebirths before they can be free from the wheel of life.
Huineng’s teaching on sudden enlightenment is a doctrine of liberation
such as that taught by the Buddha when he instructed the people that they could
experience immediate release by following the five-fold path.
The Buddha was a liberator and Huineng cast himself in the same mode.
Huineng taught this: When alive one keeps sitting without lying down. When
dead, one lies without sitting up.
Observing that: In both cases, one is a set of stinking bones!
Asking the most important question: What has any of it to do with the
great lesson of life?
When I was given my first Koan to meditate on, my teacher offered me the
old cliché:
What is the sound of one hand clapping?
In the spirit of Huineng I understood the Koan to be meaningless and I replied:
There is no sound.
He insisted that I answered to quickly, suggesting that I must meditate
on the Koan further, which was unnecessary because in speaking from the
immediacy of our experience we are able to understand that one hand does not
clap.
Given First - 2020.08.28
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