THINKING ABOUT AN EMPTY MIRROR

One of the most fascinating writings from China is the autobiography of Hui Neng (pronounced as wee nung), who became the Sixth Patriarch--or the fifth individual entitled to say he followed in the line from Bodhidharma, the Indian monk who brough the meditation (dhyana) tradition of Buddhism to China. 

There are several points to understand here.  One is that lineage is very important in both the Hindu and Buddhist traditions.  An individual who claims to be a teacher should be able to trace his spiritual ancestry back through his own teacher to some main figure revered as especially enlightened.  In Zen monasteries in China the key figure, whose images are everywhere, is Bodhidharma, who was in China at the turn of the sixth century CE.  Hui Neng lived two hundred years later.

Another key point is that there is a very tight structure in which tradition is everything.  One example is the admission of the head of of certain Zen monastery in Japan to one of his Western students that the traditional diet based on brown rice was actually not particularly healthy but that he did not feel free to change it.  Things are done a certain way in the monastery because for centuries they have been done that way.  Enlightenment may be something personal, but the life by which one achieves it is something communal.

Still a third idea is that someone who has experienced enlightenment will be able to provide evidence of this--perhaps in a poem (the ultimate goal of the haiku tradition in Japan) or in a piece of art or, in the Rinzai tradition, by a spontaneous piece of behavior.

Hui Neng had come as an illiterate peasant from a different part of the country to this particular monastery where the Fifth Patriarch was the head.  He claimed to have had the experience of enlightenment already, which was why he now felt the need for a more formal teaching, but the old monk simply put him out in the kitchen to do menial labor.  Somewhat later the monk, anticipating that he would soon have to name his successor, posed a challenge that consisted of someone being considered worthy writing a poem to express what enlightenment meant.  The principal candidate came up with this:
The body is the wisdom-tree,
The mind is a bright mirror in a stand;
Take care to wipe it all the time,
And allow no dust to cling.
The Patriarch expressed his satisfaction and had the poem painted on a wall in the monastery.  Hui Neng asked someone to read it to him and knew immediately that its author in fact was not yet fully enlightened.  He then asked someone to inscribe his own poem.
Fundamentally no wisdom-tree exists,
Nor the stand of a mirror bright.
Since all is empty from the beginning,
Where can the dust alight?
The Patriarch now ordered this poem to be painted over, since obviously its author was not enlightened, but at the same time he had Hui Neng come to him in the middle of the night and passed on the insignia that would mark him as the rightful successor.  He explained that the other monks, who already could not accept Hui Neng because he was an uneducated foreigner, would never allow him to stay in that monastery as its new leader and so it was important that he leave before he was killed.
What should you be thinking about, apart from noting that murderous monks and their lying abbot might not be what you think you'd have found in a setting devoted to spiritual perfection?  I would ask you to think about the emphasis on what the Buddhists called shunyata--nothingness.   Now see if you get the meaning of Hui Neng's stanza.

Zen Buddhism contrasts with other Mahayana traditions by its emphasis on depending on one's own efforts (termed jiriki in Japan) rather than on devotional practices that draw on the merits of the Buddha (tariki).  In particular, it is by an emphasis on a distinctive style of meditation that stresses emptying the mind, and in the rinzai school this is meant to be accomplished by focusing on what may seem to be an insoluble riddle--a ko'an (such as "What is the sound of one hand clapping?").  How do you think this relates to Hui Neng's stanza?

The contrast between Zen and other traditions has been compared to the effort to climb directly up the side of a mountain (think of Half Dome in Yosemite Park) rather than take a winding road around to the top.  Do you think one way of getting to the top is better than the other, and, if so, why?

For more about Bodhidharma and Hui Neng, go to this site