Chapter 3

Mind is like the void in which there is no confusion or evil, as when the sun wheels through it shining upon the four corners of the world. For, when the sun rises and illuminates the whole earth, the void gains not in brilliance; and, when the sun sets, the void does not darken. The phenomena of light and dark alternate with each other, but the nature of the void remains unchanged.

That is how this chapter opens. I put that passage into Bing’s AI image generator, and the image accompanying this post is what popped out. I just thought we could use a little color in this community.

Huang Po goes on to use this metaphor to compare our conceptions of enlightened beings and ordinary sentient beings, the former being viewed as light and the latter dark. This view is itself driven by attachment, as there is nothing else but the one mind, which I suppose is the void in this metaphor.

If you students of the Way do not awake to this Mind substance, you will ov

Chapter 2

This chapter is pretty simple, and yet I spent longer than I anticipated chewing on it.

The opening line:

As to performing the six pāramitās and vast numbers of similar practices, or gaining merits as countless as the sands of the Ganges, since you are fundamentally complete in every respect, you should not try to supplement that perfection by such meaningless practices.

Simple enough, right? This is a fundamental zen thing, we all have Buddha nature, there is nothing to do its always just there.

That’s not to say that Huang Po’s message is to reject all the practices outright. Rather, the message is more not to get attached to the practices themselves.

When there is occasion for them, perform them; and, when the occasion is passed, remain quiescent. If you are not absolutely convinced that the Mind is the Buddha, and if you are attached to forms, practices and meritorious performances, your way of thinking is false and quite incompatible wi

I wanted to reflect on something that has been stuck in my head for a bit. It’s this story from Dogen’s Instructions to the Cook:

When this mountain monk [I, Dôgen] was at Tiantong Monastery, the position [of cook] was held by cook Yong, of the same province [as the monastery]. Once, after the midday meal I was passing through the east corridor on my way to the Chaoran room [where my teacher Myôzen was being nursed] when I saw the cook in front of the buddha hall airing mushrooms. He carried a bamboo staff in his hand, but had no hat on his head. The sun was hot, the ground tiles were hot, and sweat streamed over him as he worked diligently to dry the mushrooms. He was suffering a bit. With his backbone bent like a bow and his shaggy eyebrows, he resembled a crane.

I approached and asked the cook his dharma age. He said, “Sixty-eight years.” I said, “Why do you not employ postulants or laborers?” He said, “They are not me.” I said, “Venerable sir, your attitude is indeed

1.

Now we get into the meat of things. The first line:

The Master said to me: All the Buddhas and all sentient beings are nothing but the One Mind, beside which nothing exists. This Mind, which is without beginning, is unborn and indestructible.

This chapter (surmon? I’m just going to call sections chapters for simplicity) is essentially definitional of the term “one mind.” What struck me as I was reading it was how it mirrored the Heart Sutra’s description of emptiness.

It is not green nor yellow, and has neither form nor appearance. It does not belong to the categories of things which exist or do not exist, nor can it be thought of in terms of new or old. It is neither long nor short, big nor small, for it transcends all limits, measures, names, traces and comparisons.

Being similar to the Heart Sutra’s “all darhmas are marked by emptiness, they neither arise nor cease, are neither defiled nor pure, neither increase nor decrease.”

This chapter also war

**P'ei Hsiu’s Preface **

The work itself starts with a preface from the author, P’ei Hsiu. I think it is worth looking a little in P’ei Hsiu’s background as the Huang Po’s teachings come to us as captured and interpreted by P’ei Hsiu. I consulted Bing Chat to get a little background.

P’ei Hsiu was born in the year 787 or 797 CE in the Tang dynasty. He came from a prominent family of officials and scholars, and he was well-educated in the classics, history, and poetry. He passed the imperial examination at a young age and began his career as a civil servant. He rose through the ranks and held various positions, such as minister of rites, minister of state, and governor of several provinces. He was loyal to the Tang dynasty and tried to reform the corrupt and decadent government. He also supported the suppression of rebellions and foreign invasions. P’ei Hsiu was a devout practitioner of Zen, and he praised Huang Po’s teachings for being direct, profound, and free from conceptual

I began reading “The Zen Teaching of Huang Po: On the Transmission of Mind” translated by John Blofeld and published in 2007. I made it about half way through a different translation a few years ago, but thought I’d give it another go for the sake of content for discussion. My intention is to post summaries, selections, and thoughts as I go. You can find PDF’s of this book fairly easily online, but I won’t point to them directly for fear of angering the copyright gods. I am using an ebook copy I obtained through my local library.

We’ll start at the beginning, with the translator’s introduction. He gives a good summary of Zen’s history and his own understanding of Zen. If you reading this are a true begginer, the whole introduction is worth reading for historical context. Here is how the translator describes Huang Po’s place in the Zen tradition:

The most important of the Sixth Patriarch's successors was Ma Tsu (Tao I) who died in A.D. 788. Huang Po, variously regarded as one or t

I found an interesting book, Zen's Chinese Heritage, The Masters and their Teachings by Andy Ferguson. It goes through the 1st twenty-five generations of Chan masters, beginning with Bodhidharma and ending with Foyan.

The main source material for this book is the Wudeng Huiyuan (Compendium of Five Lamps), dating from the mid-1200s. This excerpt is about Shenhui, the student of Huineng, also the one believed to have written the Platform Sutra.

HEZE SHENHUI (670–762) was an eminent disciple of the Sixth Ancestor. He strongly supported and promoted Huineng’s place in Chinese Zen history. Shenhui championed the Southern school of Zen, and vociferously attacked what became widely known as the Northern school, the school associated with Yuquan Shenxiu.

Shenhui put forward two reasons for his attack on the Northern school. The first was, “The (ancestral) succession is spurious.” Attacking Shenxiu’s legitimacy as the Dharma heir of Hongren was an extension of Shenhui’s proposi

I found some interesting articles from the Journal of Chan Buddhism. This is volume 1, there is a volume 2, but it's behind a paywall, or you can possibly get them if you have an institutional login...

I've only read the Repositioning Xinxing 信行 (540–594) in the Chinese Meditation Tradition. It was interesting, but I've yet to find any more information on Xinxing, but it seems he was pretty early in the Chinese Chan record.

Also I've been wanting to find more peer-reviewed journal articles on Chan, if anyone has any suggestions on where to look!

The peer-reviewed Journal of Chan Buddhism: East Asian and Global Perspectives is the first of its kind in English to specifically present academic research about Chinese Chan, Korean Sŏn, Vietnamese Thìên, and Japanese Zen Buddhism. The Journal of Chan Buddhism is an interdisciplinary or cross-disciplinary journal and will accept submissions from all academic disciplines related to the study of Chan/Sŏn/Zen Buddhism, including, but

Instant Zen #49: Sitting Meditation

Foyan, Cleary translation

The light of mind is reflected in emptiness;

its substance is void of relative or absolute.

Golden waves all around,

Zen is constant, in action or stillness.

Thoughts arise, thoughts disappear;

don't try to shut them off.

Let them flow spontaneously—

what has ever arisen and vanished?

When arising and vanishing quiet down,

there appears the great Zen master;

sitting, reclining, walking around,

there's never an interruption.

When meditating, why not sit?

When sitting, why not meditate?

Only when you have understood this way.

is it called sitting meditation.

Who is it that sits? What is meditation?

To try to seat it

is using Buddha to look for Buddha.

Buddha need not be sought,

seeking takes you further away.

In sitting, you do not look at yourself;

meditation is not an external art.

*At first, the mi