Leading Buddhist scholar Sam van Schaik explores the history and essence of Zen, based on a new translation of one of the earliest surviving collections of teachings by Zen masters. These teachings, titled The Masters and Students of the Lanka, were discovered in a sealed cave on the old Silk Road, in modern Gansu, China, in the early twentieth century. All more than a thousand years old, the manuscripts have sometimes been called the Buddhist Dead Sea Scrolls, and their translation has opened a new window onto the history of Buddhism.

Contents

Preface viii

PART I Introducing Zen 1

1 The Practice of Zen 3

2 Zen and the West 19

3 The History of Zen 31

4 The Lost Texts of Zen 47

5 Early Zen Meditation 63

PART II The Masters of the Lanka 83

6 Manuscripts and Translation 85

7 Jingjue: Student of Emptiness 88

8 Gunabhadra: Introducing the Lankāvatāra 102

9 Bodhidharma: Sudden and Gradual 114

10 Huike: The Buddha Within 129

11 Sengcan: Heaven in a Grain of Sand 141

12 Daoxin I: How to Sit 150

13 Daoxin II: Teachings for Beginners 168

14 Hongren: The Buddha in Everything 181

15 Shenxiu: Zen in the World 194

Notes 209

References 244

Index 000

Huike

Little is said about actual practice in the chapter on Huike. But, more than Bodhidharma, he emphasizes the role of sitting meditation above any other kind of practice. In Huike's teaching here, sitting meditation is a way of recognizing the buddha nature which has always been present in oneself. The only difference between ordinary people and buddhas is that the latter have recognized their own nature in meditation. The other main thrust of Huike's teachings here is a negative one: not to get distracted by books and ideas. A picture of food, he says, will not assuage your hunger, and always talking about food leaves no time for eating. The main thing is to realize that the enlightened state is already present in one's own body and mind.

CHAPTER TEN

HUIKE

The Buddha Within



In Zen, Bodhidharma's student Huike is the great example of the devotion of a student to a teacher, and the determination required to follow the path. This is expressed in an extreme form in the story of Huike cutting off his own arm to show Bodhidharma his determination. In the Masters of the Lanka, this is reported in Huike's own words:

When I first generated the aspiration for enlightenment, I cut off one of my arms, and stood up straight in the snow from dusk till the third watch of the night, not noticing as the snow piled up around my knees. 1

The ‘aspiration for enlightenment' is bodhicitta, an important concept in Mahayana Buddhism, meaning aspiring not just towards one's own enlightenment, but for the enlightenment of all sentient beings. Thus bodhicitta is the firmly held wish to enter the path of the bodhisattva. Huike's act of cutting off his arm is not intended as an example to be followed, but its extreme nature conveys the extreme seriousness of the bodhisattva vow: to personally undertake to liberate all living beings from samsara.

For a reader familiar with the world of Buddhism, Huike's sacrifice recalls the many self-sacrificing actions of the bodhisattva who eventually was born as Prince Gautama and became the Buddha Śākyamuni. In the stories known as jātaka , the previous lives of the Buddha include many accounts of sacrifice, some of them extreme, such as that of the Prince Sudana, who gave away everything, including his wife and children, or the unnamed bodhisattva who gave his body to a starving tigress and her cubs.

In Buddhist traditions around the world, these stories have elicited debates about the limits of self-sacrifice. Though rare, the cutting off of an extremity (usually fingers or toes) and self-immolation have been practised by Buddhist monks and nuns, yet these are not the way jātaka stories, or Huike's sacrifice, are usually understood. Rather than encouraging imitation, they are taken as the strongest possible way of communicating the seriousness of the bodhisattva's vow.

Much of the teaching contained in this chapter of the Masters of the Lanka is about the buddha nature (tathāgatagarbha in Sanskrit, fóxìng in Chinese). The common English translation ‘buddha nature', which I am using here, is a direct translation of the Chinese. The Sanskrit ‘tathāgatagarbha' is a little more difficult to translate: a ‘tathāgata' is a buddha, which is straightforward enough, but ‘garbha' means literally ‘womb' and as an extension, anything interior. Thus it might equally be translated as ‘the buddha within'. This is exactly how the buddha nature is often presented; a quotation from a sutra in this chapter states that, ‘In the body of every sentient being there is a vajra buddha.'

Huike uses a series of metaphors to further illustrate the idea of the buddha nature. It is like a lamp placed in a vase – its light is undiminished, but cannot be seen in this state. Equally, the buddha nature can be compared to the sun temporarily obscured by clouds:

The sun's light has not been diminished; it is just obscured by the hazy clouds and not seen by sentient beings. When the clouds part and are cleared away, the sunlight shines everywhere, its radiance pure and unobscured.

These metaphors for the buddha nature are drawn from the sutras, but Huike uses one further metaphor said to come from ‘a secular book' – meaning a non-Buddhist source. He quotes two brief sayings: ‘Though ice appears in water, it is able to stop water', and ‘When ice melts, water flows.' Though I have not found these exact words in Chinese literary sources, some very similar sayings are found in the Anthology of Literary Texts , a compendium of Chinese literary quotations taken from earlier works, which was compiled in the early seventh century. 2

The analogy of ice and water continued through the centuries in both Buddhist and Daoist traditions. 3 It is central to the thinking of the neo-Confucian Zhang Zai (1020–77), who argued that the basis of all existence, called qì , is formless, but manifests as everything in the world through a transformation akin to water freezing into ice. 4 An eighteenth-century Daoist writer used the same analogy, with even more Buddhist leanings:

Water freezes into ice when it is cold, ice melts into water when it is warm. What I realize as I observe this is the Tao of becoming either a sage or an ordinary person. At first, human nature is basically good. There is originally no distinction between the sage and the ordinary person. It is because of the energy of accumulated habits that there comes to be a difference between sages and ordinary people. 5

Back in the Buddhist tradition, the influential Japanese Zen reformer Hakuin Ekaku (1686–1768) began one of his most popular poems with the same analogy:

Sentient beings are in essence buddhas.

It is like water and ice.

There is no ice without water;

There are no buddhas outside of sentient beings. 6

Here, the difference between ice and water is the difference between the ordinary person and the Buddha, much as in Huike's teaching. The analogy has also carried through to the present in Zen; in one of her talks the American Zen teacher Charlotte Joko Beck compared the nature of ordinary human beings to ice cubes, giving the metaphor a psychological reading:

To protect ourselves we freeze as hard as we can and hope that when we collide with others, they will shatter before we do. We freeze because we're afraid. Our fear makes us rigid, fixed, and hard, and we create mayhem as we bump into others. Any obstacle or unexpected difficulty is likely to shatter us.

The positive side of this is that ice can melt, through the practice of meditation.

Eventually what we are as ice cubes is destroyed. But if the ice cube has become a puddle, is it truly destroyed? We could say that it's no longer an ice cube, but its essential self is realized. 7

The metaphor has continued outside Buddhism, in the way Bruce Lee described his system of martial arts, Jeet Kune Do. Here, while the aim might be different, the sense of the metaphor is very much akin to the way Charlotte Joko Beck uses it in her talk:

When one has reached maturity in the art, one will have a formless form. It is like the dissolving or thawing of ice into water that can shape itself into any structure. When one has no form, one can be all forms; when one has no style, one can fit in with any style. 8

Returning to Huike, we can see why the Daoist metaphor of ice and water is brought into dialogue with the idea of the buddha nature. It makes it clear that the buddha nature is not something separate from ourselves, or contained within ourselves, but something that is inseparable; it is what we are. 9

* * *

In Huike's teachings, the idea that we are all buddhas as part of our very nature leads on to his insistence that we do not need to rely on other people's accounts of the path. Everything we need is here in our very nature. Huike presents his own experience as an example to follow: ‘Once I had verified for myself the benefits of sitting meditation, I dispensed with the attitude of looking for the principle in books of written dharma, and strove to accomplish buddhahood.'

If we have the buddha nature – if we are ice that simply needs to melt – then reading about this will not get us very far. Huike advises his students to stay away from books, or at least not to spend too much time with them: ‘those who read books should look into them for a while, then promptly set them aside'. And he quotes a verse from a sutra that stands as a sharp rebuke to those who spend most of their time reading or writing books:

There is a story of a very poor person

Who spent day and night counting the wealth of others

Without a penny of his own.

Scholarship is very much like this.

This is an uncomfortable message for scholars, both ancient and modern, but it is also addressed to anyone for whom the collecting and reading of texts takes the place of practice. Huike's chapter ends with a long quotation from the Avataṃsaka sūtra , with the message that realization about any aspect of reality is equivalent to total realization. This is because even the distinction between ‘one' and ‘many' is false, a theme that is continued in the next chapter, in the teachings of Sengcan.



TRANSLATION

Chapter Three



The monk Huike became the successor of the meditation master Bodhidharma in Ye, during the Qi dynasty. 10 The meditation master Huike's family name was Ji, and he came from Wulao. 11 He met Bodhidharma at the age of fourteen, when the master was travelling and teaching in Songshan and Luoyang. Huike served him for six years, mastering all aspects of the single vehicle while adhering to the profound principle. 12 He composed some brief teachings on the path of cultivation, the key dharma points regarding the luminous mind and completing the ascent to buddhahood. 13

The Laṅkāvatāra sūtra says:

Observe the Sage in peace,

Beyond birth and death.

This is called ‘not clinging'

Pure now and ever after. 14

If there is a single one of all the buddhas of the ten directions who did not achieve this through sitting meditation, then there is no such thing as complete buddhahood. 15

The Daśabhūmika sūtra says:

In the body of every sentient being

There is the vajra buddha.

This is just like the sun,

Luminous, perfect and complete.

It is vast and unlimited,

Yet covered by the dark clouds of the five aggregates,

So sentient beings cannot see it. 16

When they meet with the winds of wisdom, the dark clouds of the five aggregates are blown away. Once they are gone, the buddha nature shines out, bright, luminous and pure.

The Avataṃsaka sūtra says:

Vast as the reality itself,

Endless as space. 17

It is also like the light of a lamp inside a vase that cannot shine out. Or like when hazy clouds come across the land all at once from all directions, plunging the land into darkness. How can the sunlight be pure and clear? The sun's light has not been diminished; it is just obscured by the hazy clouds and not seen by sentient beings. When the clouds part and are cleared away, the sunlight shines everywhere, its radiance pure and unobscured. 18

The pure nature of all sentient beings is like this; it is just that grasping, deluded thought, wrong views and dark clouds of the afflictions obscure the noble path so that it is unable to fully manifest. 19 On the other hand, if deluded thoughts do not arise, and you sit in pure stillness, then the pure luminosity of the sun of great nirvana arises spontaneously. 20

A secular book says: ‘Though ice comes from water, it is able to stop water', and ‘When ice melts, water can flow again.' 21 Similarly, though delusion arises from reality, reality can get lost in delusion. But when delusion comes to an end, reality is revealed. The ocean of the mind becomes instantly and perfectly clear; this is the dharmakaya, empty and pure. 22

Thus a student who takes written words and spoken teachings as the path is like a candle in the wind, unable to dispel the darkness when its flame blows out. 23 If they sit in purity, doing nothing, this is like a lamp kept inside a sealed house, which can thus dispel the darkness and illuminate objects so that they can be clearly seen. If they understand that the source of the mind is pure, then all desires will be satisfied, all activities accomplished. With absolutely everything achieved, they will not have to go through further rebirths. 24

Among sentient beings as numerous as the sands on the banks of the Ganges, barely a single person exists who will attain this dharmakaya. In a billion aeons there may be no more than a single person who fulfils these criteria. If true sincerity has not arisen within you, then not even all the buddhas of the three times, who are as numerous as the sands on the banks of the Ganges, can help you. 25

Know this: sentient beings who recognize the nature of mind liberate themselves. It is not buddhas who liberate sentient beings. If buddhas were able to liberate sentient beings, then since we have already met buddhas countless as the sand on the banks of the Ganges, why have we not accomplished buddhahood yet? 26 It is only because genuine sincerity has not arisen within us. We say we get it, but our minds do not get it.

As the dharma scriptures say, those who teach emptiness while keeping to worldly practices are imitating the ultimate path, and in the end they will not avoid being reborn in accord with their past actions. 27 Thus the buddha nature is like the sun and moon in the world or the potential for fire within wood. 28

This buddha nature, which exists in everyone, is also known as ‘the lamp of the buddha nature' and ‘the mirror of nirvana'. This mirror of vast nirvana is brighter than the sun and moon, completely pure inside and out, unbound and unlimited. It is also like smelting gold: after the gold has taken shape and the fire has gone out, the nature of the gold remains unspoilt. Just so, after the succession of lives and deaths of sentient beings has come to an end, the dharmakaya remains unspoilt.

It is also like when a ball or lump of dirt is broken up – the individual particles are not destroyed. 29 When rough waves cease, the nature of the water is not affected; just so, after the succession of lives and deaths of sentient beings has come to an end, the dharmakaya remains unspoilt. 30

Once I had verified for myself the benefits of sitting meditation, I dispensed with the attitude of looking for the principle in books of written dharma, and strove to accomplish buddhahood. There is not one person in ten thousand who does this. 31 As an old book says, drawing food does not make a meal. 32 If you just talk about food with people, how will you eat? When you try to remove a stopper, paradoxically, you often push it in more tightly. 33

The Avataṃsaka sūtra says:

There is a story of a very poor person

Who spent day and night counting the wealth of others

Without a penny of his own.

Scholarship is very much like this. 34

So those who read books should look into them briefly, then promptly set them aside. If they do not put them away again, how is this study of words different from looking for ice in hot water? Or boiling water but hoping to find snow? Thus the buddhas may teach the teachings, or teach the teachings by not teaching. In the true nature of things, there is neither teaching nor not teaching. 35 If you realize this, everything else follows. 36

The Lotus Sutra says:

Not true, not false,

Not the same, not different. 37

* * *

The great master said –

In this teaching of the real dharma, everything is in accord with the truth,

And is ultimately no different from the profound principle itself.

At first, deluded people see the precious stone and call it a rock;

Then they suddenly realize that it is a genuine jewel.

There is no difference between ignorance and wisdom;

Just know that all phenomena are like this.

Out of compassion for those who spend their lives seeing them as different,

I speak these words, and write them down with my brush.

When you see yourself as no different from the Buddha,

Why would you continue to search elsewhere?

* * *

He also said – When I first generated the aspiration for enlightenment, I cut off one of my arms, and stood up straight in the snow from dusk till the third watch of the night, not noticing as the snow piled up around my knees, in order to seek the unsurpassable path.

As it is taught in the seventh volume of the Avataṃsaka sūtra :

When you enter a state of absorption in the east,

Samadhi arises in the west. 38

When you enter a state of absorption in the west,

Samadhi arises in the east.

When you enter a state of absorption based on the eyes,

Samadhi arises in forms. 39

Showing that the manifestation of forms is non-conceptual,

Something that gods and humans are unable to comprehend.

When you enter a state of absorption in forms,

Concentration arises in the eyes, and you are freed from confusion. 40

The eye that sees is not produced, nor does it have an intrinsic nature;

I teach that emptiness is stillness which abides nowhere.

The ear, nose, tongue, body and intellect,

Are also like this.

When you enter the state of absorption in the body of a child,

Samadhi arises in the body of an adult.

When you enter the state of absorption in the body of an adult,

Samadhi arises in the body of an aged person.

When you enter samadhi in the body of an aged person,

Samadhi arises in the body of a virtuous woman.

When you enter the state of absorption in the body of a virtuous woman,

Samadhi appears in the body of a virtuous man.

When you enter the state of absorption in the body of a virtuous man,

Samadhi appears in the body of a nun.

When you enter the state of absorption in the body of a nun,

Samadhi appears in the body of a monk.

When you enter the state of absorption in the body of a monk,

Samadhi appears in the body of a hearer. 41

When you enter the state of absorption in the body of a hearer,

Samadhi appears in the body of a solitary budda. 42

When you enter the state of absorption in the body of a solitary buddha,

Samadhi appears in the body of a tathāgata.

When you enter the state of absorption in a single pore,

Samadhi appears in all of your pores.

When you enter the state of absorption in all of your pores,

Samadhi arises on the tip of a single hair.

When you enter the state of absorption on the tip of a single hair,

Samadhi arises in all of your hairs.

When you enter the state of absorption in all of your hairs,

Samadhi arises in a single mote of dust.

When you enter the state of absorption in a single mote of dust,

Samadhi arises in all motes of dust.

When you enter the state of absorption in a vast ocean of water,

Samadhi arises in a great blaze of fire.

One body can give rise to countless bodies,

And countless bodies can be one body. 43

If you attain realization of this one thing, everything else follows. Everything is just this – the dharmakaya, the guiding principle. 44