The Sutra of Hui-neng and his commentary on the Diamond Sutra

Key things

• The truth of reality is beyond seeming opposites or divisions.
• Your original nature has no characteristics.
  • No shape, no colour, no appearance.
  • No self, no person, no being, no liver of life.
• Just notice, without craving or aversion, in the midst of everything.
  • Don’t be obsessed with any particular states, even transcendental ones.
  • Don’t fixate on forms, appearances, emptiness.
• Adapt to people’s capacities, faculties, and temperaments.
  • Be impartial, respectful, compassionate.

From Hui-neng’s sutra

• Freedom from thought is noticing without craving or aversion.
• The truth has no immediacy or gradualness but people’s temperaments and sharpness vary.
• Be detached from appearances while in the midst of appearances. Be detached from emptiness while in the midst of emptiness.
• It’s not that there is no cultivation and realization, but it won’t do to be obsessed.
• Enlightenment and ignorance are not-two.
• Being absorbed in oneness is:
  • not dwelling on appearances, not having craving or aversion, not thinking about success or failure;
  • being peaceful, serene, empty and fluid, tranquil and calm.
• Phenomena arise in a busy mind and pass away in a quiet mind.
• Your original nature has no motion no stillness, no birth or death, no going or coming, no yes or no, no staying or going.

From Hui-neng’s commentary on the Diamond Sutra

• A Bodhisattva always behaves respectfully and loves all creatures without disdain.
  • Develop an attitude of mercy and compassion toward all beings.
• The source is beyond true and false, the vehicle has no great or small; but teaching and liberation are carried out according to the differences in people’s faculties.
• Your true nature has no discrete shape, no colour, no appearance.
• Liberated Buddha-nature is clear, free, empty, and silent.
• Act with an impartial, kind, and compassionate mind.
• Be detached from forms even as you see forms, and activate your mind without dwelling on forms.
• Manifestation of truth is absence of images of: self, person, being, liver of life.
• When you look into the root basis, it is all due to fixating the mind on form.
• Bodhisattvas practice charity to inwardly destroy stinginess while outwardly benefiting all beings.
• It’s real, but no defining characteristics can be found. It’s unreal but it functions without interruption.
• Don’t be obsessed by anything, don’t be disturbed by objects, don’t be greedy for transcendental states. Always apply expedient means.
• Explain truths skilfully and expediently. Take people’s faculties into consideration, adapt to their capacities, adjust suitably in various ways.
• Master an empty, silent mind in accord with suchness, without any sense of gaining anything, without any sense of winning or losing, without any sense of hope or expectation, without excitement or oblivion.

Pairs of opposites

• In the external world of relative objects there are five pairs of opposites:
  • sky and earth;
  • sun and moon;
  • light and dark;
  • yin and yang;
  • water and fire.
• In characteristics of phenomena and language there are twelve pairs of opposites:
  • words and things
  • being and nonbeing;
  • physical and nonphysical;
  • perceptible and imperceptible;
  • contaminated and uncontaminated;
  • matter and emptiness;
  • motion and stillness;
  • purity and pollution;
  • ordinary and holy; clergy and lay;
  • old and young; great and small.
• Our essential nature produces functions in nineteen pairs of opposites:
  • strengths and weaknesses;
  • perversion and rectitude;
  • ignorance and insight;
  • folly and wisdom;
  • disorder and stability;
  • kindness and viciousness;
  • morality and wrongdoing;
  • honesty and crookedness;
  • truth and falsehood;
  • bias and fairness;
  • affliction and enlightenment;
  • permanence and impermanence;
  • compassion and malevolence;
  • delight and anger;
  • generosity and stinginess;
  • progress and regression;
  • origination and destruction;
  • the reality body and the physical body;
  • the projection body and the reward body.

1 Personal History Realization of the Teaching and Inheritance of the Robe

• At the time there was a wind blowing, and the pennants were flapping. One monk said, “The wind is moving.” Another said, “The pennants are moving.” They argued on and on, so I came forward and said, “It is not the wind moving, it is not the pennants moving; it is your minds moving.”

2 Prajna

• All things are in your essential nature. If you see everyone’s bad and good but do not grasp or reject any of it, and do not become affected by it, your mind is like space—this is called greatness.
• If you fixate on objects, birth and death occur, as when water has waves—this is called “this shore.” When you detach from objects, there is no birth or death, as when water flows smoothly—this is called “the other shore,” so it is referred to as paramita.
• why don’t they awaken on their own when they hear the teaching? It is because the barriers of their false views are heavy and the roots of their passions are deep. They are like huge clouds covering the sun; if the wind doesn’t blow, the sunshine won’t appear.
• If there were no people in the world, myriad teachings would not originally exist of themselves. So we know that myriad teachings originate from people; all scriptures and books exist because of what people have said.
• If you see all things without the mind being affected or attached, this is freedom from thought.

3 Questions

Saying it is far away is for people of lesser faculties. Saying it is near is for people of better faculties. People may be of these two kinds, but the truth is not.

4 Stabilization and Insight

• Good friends, what are stabilization and insight like? They are like a lamp and its light. If there is a lamp, there is light; without a lamp, there is darkness. The lamp is the body of the light, the light is the function of the lamp.
• The names may be two, but in essence they are basically one and the same. The phenomena of stabilization and insight are also like this.
• Good friends, the true teaching originally is neither sudden nor gradual; it is human temperaments that may be quick or slow.

6 Repentance

… your own essential nature. It is like the sky, which is always clear, and the sun, which is always shining: when they are covered by drifting clouds, there is light above but darkness below. Suddenly a wind blows away the clouds, so above and below are both light; then myriad forms are visible.

7 Key Events

• “The subtle principles of the buddhas have nothing to do with written letters.”
• Bowing is originally to break the banner of pride: Why should one’s head not reach the ground?
• If you can be detached from appearances while in the midst of appearances, and be detached from emptiness while in the midst of emptiness, then you will not be lost inwardly or outwardly.
• “It’s not that there is no cultivation and realization, but it won’t do to be obsessed.”

8 Immediate and Gradual

“What are called immediate and gradual? The truth has no immediacy or gradualness, but people may be sharp or dull; hence the terms immediate and gradual.”

9 The Imperial Summons

• “Enlightenment and ignorance are seen by ordinary people as two, while the wise realize their essential nature has no duality.
• “In the external world of relative objects there are five pairs of opposites: sky and earth, sun and moon, light and dark, yin and yang, water and fire. These are the five pairs of opposites.
• “In characteristics of phenomena and language there are twelve pairs of opposites: words and things, being and nonbeing, physical and nonphysical, perceptible and imperceptible, contaminated and uncontaminated, matter and emptiness, motion and stillness, purity and pollution, ordinary and holy, clergy and lay, old and young, great and small. These are the twelve pair of opposites.
• “Our essential nature produces functions in nineteen pairs of opposites: strengths and weaknesses, perversion and rectitude, ignorance and insight, folly and wisdom, disorder and stability, kindness and viciousness, morality and wrongdoing, honesty and crookedness, truth and falsehood, bias and fairness, affliction and enlightenment, permanence and impermanence, compassion and malevolence, delight and anger, generosity and stinginess, progress and regression, origination and destruction, the reality body and the physical body, the projection body and the reward body. These are the nineteen pairs of opposites.”
• Just truthfully practice the giving of teaching without fixation on appearances.
• The nature of reality has no birth or death, no coming or going.
• If you do not dwell on appearances wherever you are, and you do not conceive aversion or attraction to those appearances, and neither grasp nor reject, and do not think of things like gain, success, or failure, but are peaceful, serene, empty and fluid, tranquil and calm, this is called absorption in oneness.
• ‘When the mind is aroused, all sorts of phenomena arise; when the mind is quiescent, all sorts of phenomena pass away.’
• know your own original mind and see your own original nature; there is neither motion nor stillness, neither birth nor death, neither going nor coming, neither yes nor no, neither staying nor going.

Hui-neng’s Commentary on the Diamond Sutra

Preface by HUI-NENG Sixth Grand Master of Zen

It was just because people of the world do not see their own essential nature that the teaching of seeing essential nature was established.

2 Subhuti Initiates Questioning

The spirit of the Way means always behaving respectfully, universally respecting and loving all creatures, without disdain—this is the reason by which someone is called a bodhisattva.

3 The True Source of the Great Vehicle

• The source is beyond true and false, the vehicle has no great or small; but teaching and liberation are carried out according to the differences in people’s faculties.
• When you excite the mind about cultivating the mind, with arbitrary views of right and wrong, inwardly you do not realize the formless truth.

4 Subtle Practice without Dwelling

Bodhisattvas should not dwell on anything as they practice charity. That means practicing charity without dwelling on forms, practicing charity without dwelling on sounds, scents, flavors, feelings, or phenomena.

5 Real Seeing in Accord with Truth

The physical body has form, the reality body is formless. The physical body is composed of gross elements, born of a father and a mother, visible to the physical eye. The reality body has no discrete shape, no color, no appearance whatsoever.

6 The Rarity of True Faith

• To develop an attitude of mercy and compassion toward all beings suffering because of craving, not conceiving disdain for them, giving them what they need according to one’s ability—this is called planting roots of goodness.
• To be gentle and tolerant with all bad types, treating them affably and not provoking them, causing them to develop a sense of joy, and stop being stubbornly perverse—this is called planting roots of goodness.
• Not killing or harming living beings, not cheating and not despising them, not defaming and not disgracing them, not riding or beating them, not eating their flesh, always acting to their benefit—this is called planting roots of goodness.

7 No Attainment and No Preaching

Clear, free, empty, and silent, perception and action equally enlightened, mirrorlike awareness unobstructed— this is truly the liberated buddha-nature.

8 Emergence into Life through the Truth

• All verbal and literary expressions are like labels, like pointing fingers. Labels and pointers mean shadows and echoes.
• Just get the teaching by way of the sutra—the sutra is not the teaching. The sutra literature is visible to the physical eye, but the teaching is visible to the eye of insight.

9 Oneness without Forms

If you understand formless truth, you have no sense of attaining fruition. If there is the slightest consciousness of attaining fruition, then it is not called stream-entering.

10 Adorning a Pure Land

• When your intrinsic nature always produces insightful wisdom, you act with an impartial, kind, and compassionate mind, and respect all people, this is the pure mind of a practitioner.
• If you fixate on forms when you see forms, and activate your mind dwelling on form, then you are a deluded person. If you are detached from forms even as you see forms, and activate mind without dwelling on forms, then you are an enlightened person.

13 Accepting and Holding the Teaching Accurately

• The ultimate Way has no name, but is named as an expedient; practitioners accept and hold it by this name.
• If there is any sense of attainment, one does not reach the Other Shore. When there is nothing in mind to attain, this is the Other Shore.

14 Absolute Peace beyond Forms

• No images of self, person, being, or liver of life. Absence of these four images is called manifestation of truth;
• People give rise to feelings of hatred and love for these objects of the six senses, and because of this subjectivity they accumulate countless knots of habits that cover up their buddha-nature.
• When you look into the root basis, it is all due to fixating the mind on form.
• Bodhisattvas do not practice charity in hopes of personal pleasure. They only practice charity to inwardly destroy stinginess while outwardly benefiting all beings.
• You may want to say it is real, yet no defining characteristics can be found; you may want to say it is unreal, yet it functions without interruption.

16 The Capacity to Clear Away Karmic Obstructions

Fulfilling the teaching without any sense of attainment, constantly practicing kindness, compassion, joyfulness, and equanimity, humble and gentle, they will ultimately fulfill unexcelled enlightenment.

23 Purifying the Mind and Doing Good

If you practice all good ways without the four images, then liberation is possible. Practicing all good ways means not being obsessed by anything, not being disturbed by objects, not being greedy for transcendental states, always applying expedient means in all situations, adapting to people.

25 Teaching without Teaching Anyone

Even though all beings have buddha-nature, if not for the teaching of the buddhas, they would have no way to realize it.

32 The Reward and the Emanation Are Not the Real

• “How does one expound it for others? Not grasping forms, not budging from thusness as such.”
• Explaining truths skillfully and expediently, taking people’s faculties into consideration and adapting to their capacities, adjusting suitably in various ways—this is called expounding for others.
• Just master an empty, silent mind in accord with suchness, without any sense of gaining anything, without any sense of winning or losing, without any sense of hope or expectation, without excitement or oblivion—this is called not budging from thusness as such.

Added 2024-04-07.