Huineng Rustic patriarch
3 min readAccording to legend，an illiterate woodsman Huineng founded the“Sudden Enlightenment”Southern Chan School ofBuddhism and propounded the idea that everyone possesses “the Buddha nature.”
Huineng became the Sixth（and last）Patriarch of Chan（Zen）Buddhism.His Chan School ideas became the orthodox Buddhism in China.
Huineng was born into a Lu family in 638 AD.His father，once a minor official，died when he was three and his mother took him to southern China where they lived in extreme poverty.At an early age he helped eke out a living by cutting and selling firewood.He never learned to read or write.
One day, on the way home with firewood, Huineng over-heard someone reading the sacred text from the Diamond Su-tra. He felt a sudden awakening. With his mother’s blessing and a small donation from a stranger, he traveled to Huangmeiin today’s Hubei Province in central China to visit Hongren, the Fifth Patriarch.
The master asked the young woodsman:”Who are you and why are you here?”
“I’m from Lingnan in the south and I’m here to become a Buddha,”Huineng said.
“How could a southern barbarian become a Buddha?”the master asked.
Huineng replied:”People may be divided into northerners and southerners, but there’s no difference in the Buddha nature that we all share.”
Realizing the woodsman had an intuitive grasp of Bud-dhism, the master accepted Huineng as a disciple at his monastery. Since he was a newcomer and illiterate, he was assigned chores such as chopping wood, fetching water and sweeping the grounds.
Since the master was elderly and seeking a successor, one day he summoned all his disciples to sit for a test in writing Buddhist hymns.
One of his top disciples wrote:”The body is a Bodhi tree, The mind a bright standing mirror.
Polish the mirror from time to time, Don’t let it collect any dust.”After listening to the hymn, Huineng immediately was inspired with his own hymn and asked a disciple to write it for him and present it to the master. Huineng’s hymn read:”Bodhi originally has no tree, The bright mirror no support.
Fundamentally nothing exists there,Where could the dust come from?”The master was amazed by Huineng’s hymn and at night, he summoned the young man and personally expounded the Diamond Sutra to him. He secretly passed his robe to the young man and urged him to flee to the south to avoid persecu-tion from jealous disciples. The master knew that selecting an uncouth woodsman as his successor would upset the monastic hierarchy.
Huineng stayed in hiding for nearly 16 years and then went to a monastery in Nanhai presided over by Master Yin-zong.
After listening to a lecture by the master, two monks began to argue over a monastery banner that was fluttering in the breeze. One monk said it was the wind that was moving, the other argued that the banner was moving. Then Huineng interrupted and said,”No, No. it’s neither the wind nor the banner. It’s your mind that is moving.”This master too was impressed by Huineng’s interpreta-tion of Buddhist doctrine and then spoke with him privately.
Huineng told the master his story and Yinzong then arranged a ceremony for Huineng to be given the monastic tonsure.
Then, Huineng(also known as Caoxi) recruited disciples at his Caoxi Baolin Monastery and initiated his own Chan School of Buddhism emphasizing sudden enlightenment and intuition.
His two key ideas became the essence of orthodox Bud-dhism, namely that “all people, regardless their social, cultural or spiritual condition, possess the Buddha nature”and that”awakening is not a meditation but a sudden, instantaneous process.”
