Shen-hsiu (605-706) was the faithful successor to
the Ch'an lineage of Tao-hsin and Hung-jen. The
Platform Sutra can hardly do him justice, but even
so, its treatment of Shen-hsiu is not totally
groundless. The straw man has his say, and in a
manner not uncharacteristic of the Northern Ch'an
tradition. There, it is said, Hung-jen solicited
responses for a successor and a humble Shen-hsiu was
pressed by his brethren to compose this poem:
The body is the Bodhi Tree
The mind a bright mirror stand
Cleanse it with daily diligence
See to it that no dust adheres
The mirror metaphor was hardly new nor unique to the
Buddhist tradition.(1) Here it affirms the original
purity and brightness (Enlightened nature) of the
mind. The term for dust, ch'en(s), is the term for
Kle`sa (defilements), and the elimination of
defilements has long been accepted as a prerequisite
to any meditation. The mirror reflects reality as it
is, and without superimpositions. What might distort
the image of suchness upon the mind is the dust of
defiled thoughts. Daily vigilance would keep the
latter away and preserve the clear apperception.
For an indepth exploration into the translation, meaning, and possible misinterpretation of Shen-Hsui's stanza as it has come down to us today, please go to Translation Notes.
Hui-neng (638-713) entered the Ch'an circle up
north after a previous encounter with the Diamond
Sutra. The Diamond Sutra espouses the Emptiness
philosophy that would not put trust in any
attribution of 'self' to reality or 'traits' that
might evoke dualities:
Bodhisattva, great beings have no notion of a dharma (reality), Subhuti, nor a notion of non-dharma. They have no notion nor non-notion at all.... (If they do,) they would (erroneously) seize on a self, a being.(2)
Compared with the verbose discussion on mind and
consciousness in the Lankavatara Sutra and even
the Awakening of Faith, the Diamond Sutra cuts
directly at the knots of all discourses. That spirit
of simplicity can be seen in one version of
Hui-neng's rejoinder to Shen-hsiu:
Bodhi originally is no tree
Nor the mirror a stand
Buddha-nature is always pure and clear
Whence can the dust come?(3)
The assumption of 'self' in bodhi and mirror (mind)
is negated. If indeed there is a Buddha-nature,
bright and clear, like the Mani Pearl spoken of by
Hui-k'o, should not the person see through even the
distinction between ignorance and enlightenment,
defilements and purity? Chuang-tzu himself had
said, "If the mirror is indeed bright, dust cannot
on it adhere. If dust can adhere to it, can it be
said to be bright? "(4) The daily cleansing of the
mirror suggests gradualism; Hui-neng's cutting reply
suggests Sudden Enlightenment. To the Southern Ch'an
tradition, Hui-neng's genius was so attested to.
If we look through the writings now thought to
be Shen-hsiu's, we would find there the Emptiness
philosophy also. Where then is the real difference
between North and South? Or was it just polemics and
politics? Perhaps here the message alone cannot be
the criterion; the media, the ways in which the same
truth is expressed, count as much. Compared with
most Northern treatises, the Platform Sutra is
almost unsystematic in its free use of aphorisms.
That might be its contribution, for in the Southern
opposition to verbose analysis, there was offered a
new standard of truth--the subtle interaction
between mind and mind and the glorification of the
individual personality as the carrier of
Enlightenment. Hui-neng's real life remains little
known, but the legend preserved in the Platform
Sutra stands out as a perfect paradigm. The South
would in time produce many more such personalities,
each unique and inimitable. The rather sudden
flowering of such spiritual individuality remains
forever a mystery, but it may be related to a new
metaphor, the Lamp, expressed in this Chinese
sutra, as a symbol for self-enlightenment.(5)
THE LAMP AND ITS LIGHT: CH'AN AS WISDOM IN THE PLATFORM SUTRA
According to the Southern Ch'an tradition, the line
that awoke the boy Hui-neng when he heard the
Diamond Sutra was from the Kumarajiiva (344-414) translation.
The line is "Responding to the Nonabiding/Arouse the
Mind."(6) This is taken by Shen-hui to mean the
indissociable link between meditation and wisdom.
"Responding to the Nonabiding" pertains to
meditation, Ch'an, while "Arouse the Mind" means
wisdom, hui. Together, they spell out the unity
of Ch'an and Enlightenment. Ch'an is Enlightenment,
ting chi hui. The word "Ch'an" henceforth means
the truth itself. (When a student asks "What is
Ch'an?" he is asking, in fact, what is Truth.
Reality or Absolute.) It is not that Ch'an leads to
wisdom, as it was in the classic scheme taught by
the Buddha: Sila, Samadhi, and Prajna (precepts
-- meditation -- wisdom). Ch'an is a proper title to
a school because Ch'an is now both means and
end.(7)
In the Platform Sutra, this relationship
between Ch'an and wisdom is explained in terms of
the "lamp-and-light" metaphor:
(It is) comparable to the lamp and the light that it
gives forth. If there is lamp. there is light. If
there is light. there is lamp. The lamp is the
substance, t'i, of the light. The light is the
function, yung, of the lamp. Although in name two,
in substance they are not two.(8)
The substance-function, t'i-yung , logic was
present already in the "water-and-wave" metaphor in
the Awakening of Faith. The nonduality of the rays
of the sun from the sun has been spoken of by the
Lankavatara Sutra. Here, however, the
"lamp-and-light" imagery is used to show Ch'an as
both the means and the end. The mind is luminous and
all illuminating. Enlightenment is only the mind
(lamp) allowed to shine forth by itself (light). The
mind is none other than its own Enlightenment.(9)
The mirror and the lamp tell of correspondingly
an objective and a subjective approach. The mind as
mirror is passive, a receptacle of external data. It
is vulnerable to the distortion by defilements
(dust) . The mirroring mind describes best the
philosophy of Vijnaptimatrata or
Representations-Only.
Rather than pointing toward an idealistic system,
the theory of the store-consciousness is used for
totally different purposes.... It is the recognition
that one's normal mental and psychic impressions are
constructed, that is, altered and seemingly
statisized by our consciousness-complexes, that
forms the actual main point...(10)
The mind as lamp is active, the source of light that
reveals external realities. As fire, it is also
self-and other-purifying, burning off any dust or
defilements and chasing away the gloom of ignorance,
wu-ming (the absence of light, illumination). The
mirror recognizes implicitly the existence of
objects "out there"; it is not so much an idealist
metaphor as a metaphor describing the
re-presentation of reality by the mind and the
dangers of our mental constructs used in this very
representation. The mind as lamp affirms the Chinese
preference for a strict Idealism, based on a liberal
reading of the line in the Avata.msaka Sutra: The
Three Realms are created by the Mind.(11) "As the
Mind is pure, the realm is pure."(12) As the mind is
a lamp, its every activity is Enlightenment.
Substance and function are one. Permanence (of
Buddha-nature) and the dynamics of daily work are
like lamp and light,(13) never the one without the
other. Southern Ch'an indeed realized this
activistic Ch'an. It went beyond the still relatively
passive style of the Northern scholars. In southern
Ch'an, every day became a holy (literally, good) day.
As Ma-tsu said, the everyday mind itself is none other
than the Tao.
CONCLUSION
The relative emphasis on one metaphor over another
or one aspect of a metaphor over another tells of
subtle changes in the understanding of the mind. The
mind is ultimately the same Buddha-nature at the
heart of the Ch'an tradition. Shades of waves,
water, mirror, and lamp can be found in all the
individual treatises or representative
spokesmen.(14) Some of these metaphors
are as ancient as the traditions themselves. All
these qualifications notwith-standing, metaphors can
and do show differences in nuance otherwise
inexpressible by concepts. The analysis of such
metaphors is neither self-defeating nor
hairsplitting.(15) It is only an attempt to relive
the historical changes and controversies.
ADDENDUM:
In THE MEETING: An Untold Story of Sri Ramana the venerated Indian holy man and a devotee are meditating together one night in a dimly lit room, the only source of light emanating from a old lantern. The two are stumbled upon by a follower who, in his youth, had studied under the Maharshi. When the follower entered the room the wind coming in from outside blew out the light. Inturn, in an attempt to relight the lamp, the following, replicating an incident with Ramana years before, ensues:
"The 'spark that ignited my spiritual fire' is mirrored in the spark of the match held to the light-generating properties innate to reasons of the lantern. I was holding the lantern high above my head, the lantern emitting a dim light --- or more accurately the room was so big and filled with darkness relative to that first small flame that the darkness simply absorbed the light --- giving the impression of a dimly lit room. The dimly lit room was me, the lantern and the light were one, the light intended to illuminate the room (me). With a turning sweep of dim light, at the top of the arc the light flickered and went out. I clearly saw the dark-skinned man standing in the open doorway and then, in that waffer-thin edge-on membrane of darkness he was gone. That membrane of darkness was when I entered the blackout period, and the man, Ramana, was gone --- gone from any memory. The light rekindled itself. That is, Ramana returned through the use of Siddhis to the stage stop to rekindle the lost light. Next to him was the man who was to become my mentor, there to ensure Ramana's efforts were not lost."
(source)
Fundamentally, our experience as experienced is not different from the Zen master's. Where
we differ is that we place a fog, a particular kind of conceptual overlay onto that experience
and then make an emotional investment in that overlay, taking it to be "real" in and of itself.
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ENLIGHTENMENT
ON THE RAZOR'S
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RAZOR'S EDGE
RING
1. See Paul Demieville's early essay, "Le
miroir spirituel" (1947), pp. 131-156, now collected
within his Choix d'etudes sinologiques (Leiden: E.
J. Brill, 1973), and Etienne Lamotte's collection of
references to the pure mind in his L'enseignment de
Vimalakiirti (Louvain, 1962), pp. 52f.
2. Vajracchedika 6 (Diamond Sutra).
3. This poem forcibly breaks the compound
Bodhi Tree and probably misunderstands the
so-called mirror stand also. The latter phrase
should go back to the term ling-t'ai, spirited
platform, altar, sanctuary in Chuang-tzu, chapters
19 and 23. The ling-t'ai-hsin, the inner
spiritual sanctuary of a mind, becomes here the
(mind) that is bright, pure (like a mirror) and
elevated (like an altar), ming-ching(ar)-tai.
4. Chuang-tzu, chapter 5, the source of key
motifs in the Platform Sutra, including Hung-jen's
opening words when he solicited the poems, "Life and
death are matters of great concern," the mirror
paradox here, and the doctrine of "Teaching without
words," pu-yen chih chiao.
5. The lamp is an ancient symbol, going back to
the parting words of the Buddha, "Be a lamp unto
thyself." the basis for the Ch'an idea of the
"transmission of the lamp."
6. The phrase, yin wu-so-chu/sheng ch'i
hsin, was often used by Shen-hui. It is not
found in the Tun-huang manuscript translated by
Yampolsky, but frequently it is attributed to
Hui-neng's Enlightenment by later Ch'an traditions.
The original Sanskrit sentence cannot be so cut up
to support Shen-hui's thesis.
7. One of the ideological bases for making
"meditation" a school by itself without reliance on
"theory."
8. See Yampolsky, Platform
Sutra, p. 137.
9. Perhaps this is comparable to Sankara and his
discovery of the ataman as both the reality and the
consciousness of that sole reality, that is, as the
"lumen intellectuale." Chinese Taoism had long used a
similar term, shen-ming, a luminous psyche
(mind, spirit, soul, even Buddha-nature).
10. Description borrowed and taken from a
different context: Stefan Anacker on "Vasubandhu's
Karmasiddhiprakara.na and the Problem of the Higher
Meditation," Philosophy East and West 22, no. 3
(1972):257. Since Anacker intends to disprove the
oft-made characterization of Yogaacara as
philosophical Idealism and redefine the Yogaacara's
purpose as "representation only," these lines are used to illustrate otherwise.
11. See "The Meaning of Mind-Only
(Wei-shin," ibid., 27, no. 1, (January, 1977):
65-83.
12. A line from the Vimalakiirti nirde'sa, oft
quoted and loved by Ch'an.
13. One reason Pa-chang's Ch'an monastic
rules insist upon daily work.
14. One good example is the Awakening of Faith.
There the mind as mirror is said to have four modes:
1. the empty, pure mirror reflecting nothing
2. the not-empty, pure mirror with images undefiled
3. the same mirror generating purifying forces
4. the same mirror shining forth to help men in their cultivation
Already here the mirror has the attributes of the
shining lamp. See Hakeda, Awakening of Faith,
pp.42-43.
15. The use of metaphorical ideal-types here
actually draws on Yanagida Seizan's short history
of Ch'an in Mu no tank yu Chugoku Ch'an in
the Bukkyo no shiso Series. Ed. Tsukamoto Zenryu,
Umehara Takeshi, et al. (Tokyo: Kadokawa, 1969). The
Many shades of grey between types are acknowledged. A
footnote to the "'Mirror-and-Lamp' Transition: A
Classic in Literary Critieism," Meyer II, Abrams.
Mirror and the Lamp -Oxford, 1953- happens to touch
upon these two representative metaphors for the
Classical and the Romantic. In Classicism, the artist
"holds up a mirror to the world." ("...hold as 'twere
the mirror up to nature, to show virtue her own
features, scorn here own image, and the very age and
body of the time his form and pressure." Hamlet.) In
Romanticism, the artist perceives himself as the
creator, the fountainhend of inspired visions, no
longer the passive reflector (mirror) but the source
of all light (lamp). Romanticism thus departed from the classical ideal of
objective, rational norms and began to explore the
subjective, the individualistic, the tensioned
emotions. It fostered artistic independence and
expressions. Ch'an curiously also nurtured a series
of grand masters from the eighth century onward.
Maybe the coincidence of "Mirror and Lamp" tells
something. Finally, it should be added that Southern
Ch'an represented "bringing mysticism out from the
cloisters to the market place" (Scholem's
characterization of Hasidism). Hui-neng mingled with
the city folks, and Ma-tsu oversaw a prosperous
mercantile center. These are other factors that
cannot be taken into consideration in this short,
philosophical analysis. See my "Innerworldly
Mysticism: East and West," in Harold Heifetz, ed.,
Zen and Hasidism (Wheaton, Illinois: Quest Books,
1978), pp. 186-207.
NOTES