Sixth Patriarch Huineng

He was selling firewood in the market at Nanhai in Guangdong (廣東南海) one day, Huineng began. A customer ordered some firewood to be sent to his shop. He continued: “Upon delivery and payment for the same, I went outside and found a man reciting a sutra. No sooner had I heard the text of this sutra that my mind became at once enlightened.

“I asked the man the name of the book he was reciting and was told it was the Diamond Sutra (金剛經). I asked where he came from and why he recited this particular sutra. He replied he came from the Dongchan Monastery (東禪寺) in Wongmui (Huangmei黃海): that the Abbot in charge was Hwang-yan (Hongren弘忍) who is the Fifth Patriarch and had about a thousand disciples under him.

It must be due to my good karma accumulated from past lives that I hear about this and that later on I was given ten taels for the maintenance of my mother by a man who advised me to go to Wongmui to see the Fifth patriarch. After arrangements had been made for my mother’s support, I left for Wongmui, which took me about thirty days to reach.

“I paid homage to the Patriarch and was asked where I came from and what I expected to get from him. I replied that I was a commoner from Xinzhou in Lingnan (嶺南新州) and said ‘I ask for nothing but Buddhahood.’”

“The Patriarch replied: So you are a native of Lingnan and a Keliao (獦獠aborigine). How can you become a Buddha?”

“I replied: ‘Although there are Northern men and Southern men, North or South makes no difference in their Buddha-nature. An aborigine is different from your Eminence physically but there is no difference in our Buddha nature.’”

This reply of the untrained country lad revealed his high capacity for understanding and insight to the Fifth Patriarch, who subsequently expounded the Diamond Sutra to him. Though the younger man originally could neither read nor write, he was so thoroughly enlightened that he became the Sixth Patriarch.

But before he was taught the Diamond Sutra, Huineng had to pass a quit-wit test. The Fifth Patriarch asked him and another disciple Shenxiu (神秀) to compose an epigrammatic poem. Shenxiu, a well-read monk, wrote: “The body is a Bo-tree./The heart’s like a mirror/That must be wiped often/Lest it attracts dust.” Huineng, who was illiterate, had to dictate his poem, which reads: “Bodhi isn’t a tree./The mirror stands not./There’s Nothing at all./Where does dust come from?” The Fifth Patriarch knew Huineng must be his successor.

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