Zen Teachings of Huang Po

Here are my notes from the book, “The Zen Teachings of Huang Po on the Transmission of the Mind”.

From Translator’s introduction:

It must be remembered that, in Chinese, ‘hsin’ means not only ’ mind’ , but ‘heart’ and, in some senses at least, “spi t* or ‘soul’-in short, the so-called real man, the inhabitant ofthe body-house.

Zen Masters hold that an individual ’ s full understanding of Zen is often precipitated by the hearing ofa single phrase exactly calculated to_ dcsirey_ his particular demon of ignorance; so they have always favoured the brief paradoxical dialogue as a means of instruction, inding u of great value in giving a sudden jolt to a pupil’s mind which may propel him towards or over the bink of Enlightenment.

P’EI HSIITS PREFACE

Mind is like the sun journeying through the sky and emitting gloious light uncontaminatcd by the inest particle ofdust. To those who have realized the nature of Reality, there is nothing old or new, and conceptions of shallowness and depth are meaningless. Those who speak of it do not attempt to explain it, establish no sects and open no doors or windows. That which is beore you is it. Begin to reason about it and you will at once fall into error. Only when you have understood this will you perceive your oneness with the oiginal Buddha-nature.

PART ONE THE CHON CHOU RECORD OF THE ZEN MASTER HUANG PO (TUAN CHI) A collection ofsermons and dialogues recorded by P’ei Hsiu while in the city ofChun Chm

1. It is that which you sec before you-begin to reason about it and yQM?»l_ once fall into error. It is like the boundless void which cannot be fathomed or measured. The One Mind alone is the Buddha, and there is no distinction between the Buddha and sentient things, but that sentient beings are attached to forms and so seek externally for Buddhahood. By their very seeking they lose it, for that is using the Buddha to seek for the Buddha and using mind to grasp Mind. … They do not know that, ifthey put a slop to conceptual thought and forget their anxiety, the Buddha will appear before them, for this Mind is the Buddha and the Buddha is all living beings. It is not the less for being manifested in ordinary beings, nor is it greater for being manifested in the Buddhas.

2. To practise the six parami tas and a myriad similar practices with the intention of becoming a Buddha thereby is to advance by stages, but the Ever-Existent Buddha is nol a Buddha of stages. Only awake to the One Mind, and there is nothing whatsoever to be attained.

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 comers of the world. For, when the sun ises 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. … If you look upon the Buddha as presenting a pure, bright or Enlighicncd appearance, or upon sentieni beings as presenting a foul, dark or mortal-seeming appearance, these conceptions resulting from attachment to form will keep you from supreme knowledge, even after the passing ofas many aeons as there are sands in the Ganges.

4. The substance of the Absolute is inwardly like wood or stone, in that it is motionless, and outwardly like the void, in that it is without bounds or obstructions. It is neither subjective nor objective, has no speciic location, is formless, and cannot vanish. Those who hasten towards it dare not enter, feaing to hurtle down through the void with nothing to cling to or to stay their fall. So they look to the brink and retreat. This refers to all those who seek such a goal through cognition.

5. Manjusri represents fundamental law and Samantabhadra, activity. By the former is meant the law ofthe real and unbounded void, and by the latter the inexhaustible activities beyond the sphere of form. Avalokitc£vara represents boundless compassion; Mahasthama, great wisdom, and Vimaiakirti, spotless name.2 Spotless refers to the real nature of things, while name means form; yet form is really one with real nature, hence the combined term ‘spotless name’.3 All the qualities typi ed by the great Bodhisattvas are inherent in men and are not to be separated from the One Mind. Awake to it, and it is there.

6. If you can only id yourselves of conceptual thought, you will have accomplished everything… That there is nothing which can be attainedis not idle talk; it is the truth. Moreover, whether you accomplish your aim in a single lash of thought or ater going through the Ten Stages of a Bodhisaltva’ s Progress, the achievement will be the same; or this state of being admits of no degrees, so the latter method merely entails aeons of unnecessary suffering and toil.

7. The building up of good and evil both involve attachment to form.* Those who, being attached to form, do evil have to undergo vaious incarnations unnecessarily; while those who, being attached to form, do good, subject themselves to toil and pivation equally to no purpose. In either case it is better to achieve sudden self-realization and lo grasp the fundamental Dharma. … Let there be a silent understanding and no more. Away with all thinking and explaining. Then we may say that the Way of Words has been cut of and movements of the mind eliminated. This Mind is the pure Buddha-Source inherent in all men. All wriggling beings possessed of sentient life and all the Buddhas and Bodhisaltvas arc of this one substance and do not difer. Diferences aise rom wrong-thinking only and lead to the creation of all kinds of karma.

8. Our original Buddha-Nature is, in highest truth, devoid of any atom of objectivity. It is void, omnipresent, silent, pure; it is glorious and mysterious peaceful joy-and that is all. Enter deeply into it by awaking to it yourself Thai which is before you is it, in all its fullness, utterly complete. There is naught beside. Even if you go through all the stages ofa Bodhisattva ’ s progress towards Buddhahood, one by one; when at last, in a single lash, you attain to full realization, you will only be realizing the Buddha-Nature which has been with you all the time; and by all the foregoing stages you will have added to it nothing at all.2 You will come to look upon those aeons of work and achievement as no better than unreal actions performed in a dream.

9. This pure Mind, the source ofeverything, shines forever and on all with the brilliance of its own perfection. But the people ofthe world do not awake to it, regarding only that which sees, hears, feck and knows as mind. Blinded by their own sight, heaing, feeling and knowing, they do not perceive the spiritual brilliance of the source-substance. If they would only eliminate all conceptual thought in a lash, that source-substance would manifest itself like the sun ascending through the void and illuminating the whole universe without hindrance or bounds. Therefore, if you students of the Way seek to progress through seeing, hearing, feeling and knowing, when you are deprived of your perceptions, your way to Mind will be cut off and you will ind nowhere to enter. Only realize that, though real Mind is expressed in these pcrccplions, it neither forms part of them nor is separate from them. You should not start reasoning from these perceptions, nor allow them to give rise to conceptual thought; yet nor should you seek the One Mind apart from them or abandon them in your pursuit of the Dharma. Do not keep them nor abandon them nor dwell in them nor cleave to them. Above, below and around you, all is spontaneously existing, for there is nowhere which is outside the Buddha-Mind.

10. It is by preventing the ise of conceptual thought that you will realize Bodhi; and, when you do, you will just be realizing the Buddha who has always existed in your own Mind! Aeons of striving will prove to be so much wasted efort; just as, when the warrior found his pearl, he merely discovered what had been hanging on his forehead all the time; and just as his finding of it had nothing to do with his eforts to discover it elsewhere.

11. …

12. Thus, there is sensual eating and wise eating. When the body composed of the four elements suffers the pangs of hunger and accordingly you provide it with food, but without greed, that is called wise eating. On the other hand, if you gluttonously delight in purity and lavour, you are permitting the distinctions which arise from wrong thinking. Merely seeking to gratify the organ of taste without realizing when you have taken enough is called sensual eating.

13. From thought-instant to thought-instant, no form; rom thought-instant to thoughtinstant, no activity-that is to be a Buddha! If you students of the Way wish to become Buddhas, you need study no doctines whatever, but leam only how to avoid sedcing for and attaching yourselves to anything.

14. Men arc afraid to forget their minds, fearing to fall through the Void with nothing to stay their fail. They do not know that the Void is not really void, but the realm of the real Dharma.

15. It is only in contradistinction to greed, anger and ignorance that abstinence, calm and wisdom exist. Without illusion, how could there be Enlightenment?

16. Nothing is bom, nothing is destroyed. Away with your dualism, your likes and dislikes. Every single thing is just the One Mind.

17. Ordinary people all indulge in conceptual thought based on environmental phenomena, hence they feel desire and hatred. To eliminate environmental phenomena, just put an end to your conceptual thinking. When this ceases, environmental phenomena are void; and when these are void, thought ceases. But if you try to eliminate environment without irst putting a stop to conceptual thought, you will not succeed, but merely increase its power to disturb you. Thus all things are naught but Mind-intangible Mind; so what can you hope to attain?

18. Ifan ordinary man, when he is about to die, could only see the ive elements of consciousness as void; the four physical elements as not constituting an T; the real Mind as formless and neither coming nor going; his nature as something neither commencing at his birth nor peishing at his death, but as whole and motionless in its very depths; his Mind and environmental objects as one-if he could really accomplish this, he would receive Enlightenment in a flash.

19. …

20. …

21. People arc often hindered by environmental phenomena from perceiving Mind, and by individual events from perceiving underlying principles; so they oten try to escape from environmental phenomena in order to still their minds, or lo obscure events in order to retain their grasp of principles. They do not realize that this is merely to obscure phenomena with Mind, events with pinciples. Just let your minds become void and environmental phenomena will void themselves; let principles cease to stir and events will cease stirring of themselves.1 Do not employ Mind in this perverted way. Many people are araid to empty their minds lest they may plunge into the Void. They do not know that their own Mind is the void. The ignorant eschew phenomena but not thought; the wise eschew thought but not phenomena.

22. The Bodhisattva’ s mind is like the void, for he relinquishes everything and docs not even desire to accumulate meits. There are three kinds of relinquishment. When everything inside and outside, bodily and menial, has been relinquished; when, as in the Void, no attachments arc let; when all action is dictated purely by place and circumstance; when subjectivity and objectivity are orgotten -that is the highest form ofrelinquishment.When, on the one hand, the Way is followed by the performance of virtuous acts; while, on the other, relinquishment of meit takes place and no hope of reward is entertained-that is the medium form of relinquishment. When all sorts of virtuous actions are performed in the hope of reward by those who, nevertheless, know of the Void by heaing the Dharma and who are therefore unattached-that is the lowest form of relinquishment. The first is like a blazing torch held to the ront which makes it impossible to mistake the path; the second is like a blazing torch held to one side, so that it is sometimes light and sometimes dark; the third is like a blazing torch held behind, so that pitfalls in front are not seen.

23. Thus, the mind ofthe Bodhisattva is like the Void and everything is relinquished by it. When thoughts ofthe past cannot be taken hold of, that is relinquishment of the past. When thoughts of the present cannot be taken hold of, that is relinquishment of the present. When thoughts ofthe future cannot be taken hold of, that is relinquishment of the future. This is called utter relinquishment of Triple Time. … A transmission of Void cannot be made through words. A transmission in concrete terms cannot be the Dharma. Thus Mind is transmitted with Mind and these Minds do not differ. Transmitting and receiving transmission are both a most difBcult kind of mysterious understanding, so that few indeed have been able lo receive it. In fact, however. Mind is not Mind and transmission is not really transmission.1

24. The term unity refers to a homogeneous spiitual brilliance which separates into six harmoniously blended ’ elements ’ .The homogeneous spiritual brilliance is the One Mind, while the su harmoniously blended ‘elemenls’ are the six sense organs. These six sense organs become severally united wilh objects that deile them-the eyes with form, the car wilh sound, the nose with smell, the tongue wilh taste, the body with touch, and the thinking mind with entities. Between these organs and their objects arise the six sensory perceptions, making eighteen sense-realms in all. Ifyou understand that these eighteen realms have no objective existence, you will bind the six harmoniously blended ‘elements* into a single spiritual brilliance-a single spiitual brilliance which is the One Mind. All students of the Way know this, but cannot avoid forming concepts of ’ a single spiritual billiance’ and ‘the six harmoniously blended elements*. Accordingly they arc choincd to entities and fail to achieve a tacit understanding of oiginal Mind.

25. ..

26. .

27. .

28. .

29. Study leads to the retention of concepts and so the Way is entirely misunderstood. … When body and mind achieve spontaneity, the Way is reached and Mind is understood.

30. Some of the ancients had sharp minds; they no sooner heard the Doctrine proclaimed than they hastened to discard all learning. So they were called ’ Sages who, abandoning learning, have come to rest in spontaneity’. (Thb pasuse contains anochcr famous Taoiu Icrm-wu wti, tome* times minranslalrd ‘non-action* . In fact, it means no calculated action, nothing but spontaneous actions required to meet the demands of the paninti moment.)

31. Ifyou would only rid yourselves of the concepts of ordinary and Enlightened, you would ind that there is no other Buddha than the Buddha in your own Mind. When Bodhidharma came from the West, he just pointed out that the substance of which all men are composed is the Buddha. You people go on misunderstanding; you hold to concepts such as ’ ordinary * and ‘Enlightened’, directing your thoughts outwards where they gallop about like horses! Alt this amounts to beclouding your own minds! So I tell you Mind is the Buddha. As soon as thought or sensation aises, you fall into dualism. Beginningless time and the present moment are the same. There is no this and no that. To understand this truth is called compete and unexcelled Enlightenment. … Why seek a doctine? As soon as you have a doctrine, you fall into dualistic thought.