China & East Asia · 638–713
Huineng
Sixth Patriarch of Chan, emblem of sudden awakening
Taught that everyone’s original nature is pure and that seeing it directly is enlightenment, not the result of gradually polishing the mind. Much of his traditional story comes from the later Platform Sutra and the polemics of his follower Shenhui.
Life and thought
In the traditional story, recorded in the Platform Sutra and later lineage histories, Huineng was an illiterate woodcutter from the far south who heard the Diamond Sutra recited in the market and set off to study with the Fifth Patriarch Hongren. Put to work pounding rice, he answered the senior monk Shenxiu’s verse about keeping the mind like a polished mirror with a verse of his own, and Hongren secretly passed him the robe of succession. He later taught at Caoxi in Guangdong. Historians note that the earliest Platform Sutra dates from about 780 and that the story grew out of Shenhui’s campaign against Shenxiu’s line.
The teaching attributed to him is that every person’s original nature is already pure and complete, and that seeing it directly is buddhahood. Awakening is therefore sudden: it is not the end of a long process of wiping dust from a mirror, because in the end there is no separate mirror to wipe. Meditation and wisdom are one, and practice belongs in ordinary life. All later Chan and Zen lines trace themselves to him, and the Platform Sutra is the only Chinese work honoured with the title of sutra.
Works
Shaped by
c. 150–250NāgārjunaChan lineage lists count Nāgārjuna among its Indian patriarchs; the link is doctrinal, through emptiness, not historical teaching.Shaped
1200–1253DōgenJapanese monk who founded Sōtō ZenMeanwhile, in other traditions
c. 600–650CandrakīrtiMadhyamaka commentator whose reading became orthodox in Tibetc. 600–660 (some scholars: mid-6th century)DharmakīrtiBuddhist logician whose theory of knowledge dominated Indian debatefl. c. 660Kumārila BhaṭṭaMīmāṃsā champion of Vedic authority against the Buddhistsc. 700–750 (older scholarship: 788–820)ŚaṅkaraAdvaita master whose commentaries defined non-dual VedāntaOn the record
The Platform Sutra is dated c. 780 and described as attributed to Huineng but compiled by followers.
The earliest known version, preserved at Dunhuang, dates from about 780, almost seventy years after Huineng’s death, and later editions are more than twice as long. Its story is demonstrably unhistorical in places and only makes sense after Shenhui’s campaign to have Huineng recognised as the Sixth Patriarch; its editor may have belonged to the Oxhead school.
Sources: Encyclopedia of Religion, “Huineng” (on Encyclopedia.com)