The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch

Philip Yampolsky

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780231501347
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Budismo

Dating back to the eighth century C.E., the Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch is a foundational text of Chan/Zen Buddhism that reveals much about the early evolution of Chinese Chan and the ideological origins of Japanese Zen and Korean Son. Purported to be the recorded words of the famed Huineng, who was understood to be the Sixth Patriarch of Chan and the father of all later Chan/Zen Buddhism, the Platform Sutra illuminates fundamental Chan Buddhist principles in an expressive sermon that describes how Huineng overcame great personal and ideological challenges to uphold the exalted lineage of the enlightened Chan patriarchs while realizing the ultimate Buddhist truth of the original, pure nature of all sentient beings.

Huineng seems to reject meditation, the value of good karma, and the worship of the buddhas, conferring instead a set of "formless precepts" on his audience, marked by embedded notes in the text. In his central message, an inherent, perfect buddha nature stands as the original true condition of all sentient beings, which people of all backgrounds can experience for themselves. Philip Yampolsky's masterful translation contains extensive explanatory notes and an edited, amended version of the Chinese text. His introduction critically considers the background and historical setting of the work and locates Huineng's place within the history and legends of Chan Buddhism. This new edition features a foreword by Morten Schlütter further situating the Platform Sutra within recent historical research and textual evidence, and an updated glossary that includes the modern pinyin system of transcription.

INTRODUCTION: Ch’an in the Eighth Century

I. The Formation of the Legend

BY THE TIME that the T’ang dynasty had gained control of a unified China in 618, Buddhism was already firmly entrenched on Chinese soil. From its modest beginnings as a religion introduced by traveling merchants and both Indian and Central Asian missionaries in the first and second centuries, it had spread throughout all levels of Chinese society. Vast temple complexes, awe-inspiring in their magnificence, stood in the cities and towns; great monastic communities graced the top of many a lofty mountain. Imposing works of sculpture and painting and an elaborate and ornate ritual stirred the hearts and minds of the populace. The enormous body of Buddhist literature was, over the centuries, translated into Chinese. Native priests of great genius emerged, to explain, to systematize, and to adapt Buddhist teaching to Chinese ways of thinking. Great centers of learning arose, specializing in specific branches of Buddhist thought.

Buddhism had spread in China, despite the attacks of its Confucian and Taoist opponents. It had weathered several persecutions and had emerged stronger each time. Gradually Buddhism had adapted itself to the Chinese milieu, and had acclimated itself to the extent that new, sinified forms were beginning to appear. Throughout Buddhism’s history, emperors of various dynasties had accepted its teachings and had, in many ways, used Buddhism to further their own causes. The T’ang was no exception. Although the founder of the T’ang was nominally a Taoist, he not only did not interfere with the continued rise of Buddhism; in fact he contributed much to it. Succeeding emperors, and especially the Empress Wu, were devout Buddhists. Buddhist ceremonies were adopted as an integral part of court ritual. China, by the eighth century, was virtually a Buddhist nation.

Some opposition did indeed exist: Confucianists continued to complain and memorialize against this religion that was so contrary to the traditional political and moral concepts they upheld; Taoists, shorn of their importance, resented the loss of power and respect for their beliefs. At times these voices of protest managed to gain a hearing. Occasionally during the T’ang dynasty, a particular emperor might favor the cause of the antagonists of Buddhism, but in most instances his successor soon restored whatever prerogatives the previous reign had seen fit to take away. But the imperial acceptance of Buddhism, while often blindly enthusiastic, was tempered by the realization that some restraints were necessary. There was, to a certain degree, a control maintained over the proliferation of temples; there were regulations concerning the number of monks and nuns who might join the monastic communities, as well as certain qualifications for entering the calling that had to be met; and the size of tax-free temple estates was regulated. However, as time and the T’ang dynasty wore on, these regulations came more and more to be ignored. Eventually, during the declining years of the T’ang dynasty, the disastrous persecutions of the Hui-ch’ang era (842–845) took place. Buddhism survived, but it was never to regain the dominant position it had once enjoyed.

In the early years of the T’ang the Chinese attitude toward the Buddhist religion was highly eclectic. A variety of schools, each centering on certain teachings or particular canonical works, flourished. Cults, addressing their faith to specific Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, gained wide popularity. The imperial court played no particular favorites—learned priests and teachers, advocating a variety of doctrines, were accorded equally the highest of honors. The high officials who patronized them, the literary figures who wrote their praises, did not necessarily confine themselves to one school or branch of Buddhism, but felt free to sample the great variety of teachings that Buddhism had to offer.

The Buddhist schools themselves, however, were not so unworldly as to neglect to champion the advantages of their own teachings. By the middle of the eighth century we find that internecine quarrels among various Buddhist groups had greatly intensified. Works attacking rival doctrines began to appear, contributing much to the development of sectarian Buddhism. The great T’ien-t’ai school of early T’ang lost its vitality; the Chen-yen teaching of the esoteric doctrines failed to fulfill the promise of its great T’ang masters. Ch’an, and to a lesser extent the Pure Land teachings, came to hold a dominant position. The persecution of the Hui-ch’ang era served as a death blow to many of the T’ang schools. Partly out of historical circumstance and partly because of the nature of its teachings, Ch’an emerged as the primary school of Chinese Buddhism.

In the following pages I concern myself with the history of Ch’an Buddhism. Although they do not enter into the discussion, other schools and teachings, particularly in early T’ang, were of considerable importance. Long before Ch’an made its mark on Japanese soil, other T’ang schools had been imported into that island nation. There some of these teachings developed into major sects, far outdistancing the importance that they had held in T’ang China.

THE LAṄKĀVATĀRA SCHOOL

When Buddhism was first introduced to China, many Indian works on meditation techniques were translated and gained fairly wide circulation. Meditation had always been an essential part of Indian Buddhism and it was no less important in China. As the new religion spread and gained adherents, meditation techniques were adopted and put to use by the various schools of Buddhism; but the emphasis which was accorded them differed with each school. Eventually there came to be practitioners who devoted themselves almost exclusively to meditation. Contemporary records of them are scant¹ and little is known of what they taught. Probably originally wandering ascetics, some of them began to gain a following, and eventually communities of monks were established, where the practitioners meditated and worked together. Toward the end of the seventh century one such community, that of the priest Hung-jen,² of the East Mountain,³ had gained considerable prominence. Hung-jen, or the Fifth Patriarch, as he later came to be known, had a great number of disciples who left their Master at the completion of their training, moved to various areas of the nation, and established schools of their own. It is with these men that the story of Ch’an as a sect begins.

Once Ch’an began to be organized into an independent sect, it required a history and a tradition which would provide it with the respectability already possessed by the longer-established Buddhist schools. In the manufacture of this history, accuracy was not a consideration; a tradition traceable to the Indian Patriarchs was the objective. At the same time that Ch’an was providing itself with a past which accommodated itself to Buddhism as a whole, various competing Ch’an Masters, each with his own disciples and methods of teaching, strove to establish themselves. Throughout the eighth century a twofold movement took place: the attempt to establish Ch’an as a sect within the Buddhist teaching in general, and the attempt to gain acceptance for a particular school of Ch’an within the Chinese society in which it existed. Obviously, the first step to be taken was for each group within Ch’an to establish a history for itself. To this end, they not only perpetuated some of the old legends, but also devised new ones, which were repeated continuously until they were accepted as fact. Indeed, in the eyes of later viewers the two are virtually indistinguishable. These legends were, in most instances, not the invention of any one person, but rather the general property of the society as a whole. Various priests used various legends; some were abandoned, some adopted, but for the most part they were refined and adjusted until a relatively palatable whole emerged. To achieve the aura of legitimacy so urgently needed, histories were compiled, tracing the Ch’an sect back to the historical Buddha, and at the same time stories of the Patriarchs in China were composed, their teachings outlined, their histories written, and their legends collected. Treatises were manufactured to which the names of the Patriarchs, the heroes of Ch’an, were attached, so as to lend such works the dignity and the authority of the Patriarch’s name.

Owing to the fragmentary condition of the literary remains of the period, to serious doubts about the authenticity of much of what is left, and to the absence of supporting historical evidence, it is virtually impossible to determine the actual process whereby Ch’an developed. Thus the story is a negative one; one can come to no definite conclusions. The legend, as it has come down to us in the Ch’an histories, is a pretty one; it makes a nice tale, but it is almost certainly untrue. The few facts that are known can, perhaps, also be molded into a nice story, but it is one surrounded by doubts, lacunae, and inconsistencies. Alleged occurrences may be denied because there is no evidence to support them, but at the same time there is little to prove that these events did not happen. This is so of the history of Ch’an in the eighth century; it is so of the story of Hui-neng, the Sixth Patriarch; and it is true as well of the book that purports to give his history and his teachings: the Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch.

Yet, by examining the growth of the legends in the light of the histories of the time, by considering them in relation to the facts that are known, we may be able ...