Huineng, the Sixth Patriarch

In the main hall of a pagoda, among paintings of the patriarchs in solemn robes and hats, there was one unusual picture. It showed a thin man carrying a bundle of firewood on a shoulder pole, barefoot, in a worn cloth shirt. A small child, there with a grandmother, looked up and asked why a pagoda would hang a picture of a woodcutter. Surely the great teachers were all men of wide learning who had read many books. The old woman smiled, stroked the child's head, and told the child to sit down and listen to a story.

The woodcutter in that painting was Huineng. In Vietnam his name is Huệ Năng. Later, people called him the Sixth Patriarch, the sixth great master in the line of Zen Buddhism.

By tradition, Huineng was born in 638 in Xinzhou, in the land of Lingnan. That area is now part of Guangdong Province in China. His family was very poor. His father died early, leaving mother and son to lean on each other. He never had the chance to learn to read. Every day he went into the forest to cut wood, then carried it to the market and sold it for rice to feed his mother.

One day he was delivering firewood to a household. Standing outside the door, he heard someone inside chanting a sutra. The words seemed to touch something very deep in his heart. He asked about it and learned that it was the Diamond Sutra. He also learned that Hongren, the Fifth Patriarch, was teaching at Huangmei. A longing rose up in him. After asking his mother's leave, he walked for more than a month to reach the Fifth Patriarch.

But when he arrived, he was not admitted to the lecture hall. He was poor and could not read. The Fifth Patriarch sent him down to the kitchen to pound rice. He was slight, and his weight was not enough to work the foot pestle. So he tied stones to his back to make himself heavier. Day after day he pounded rice in silence, without a word of complaint.

Then one day, the Fifth Patriarch set a great test. He told his students that whoever understood the Buddha's teaching most deeply would receive the robe and bowl. These were the robe and the bowl handed down from one patriarch to the next. Anyone who had truly seen should write a verse and present it to him.

Of more than 700 students, only Shenxiu, the head monk, dared to write. That night he wrote a verse of four lines on the wall, and this is how it went. The body is the Bodhi tree. The mind is like a bright mirror on its stand. Wipe it with care at all times. Do not let the dust of the world cling. His meaning was that the human heart is like a mirror. It must be wiped clean of dust every day if it is to shine. Everyone who read the verse praised it.

That verse was not wrong at all. It describes practice little by little, which is called gradual cultivation. Each day a person strives a bit more to make the heart purer.

The news traveled all the way down to the kitchen. Huineng could not read, so he asked someone to read the verse on the wall to him. When he had heard it, he fell silent for a while. Then he asked the same person to write four lines of his own right beside it, and this is how they went. Bodhi has never been a tree. The bright mirror has no stand. From the beginning, there is not a single thing. Where could the dust of the world cling?

Shenxiu said that the heart is like a mirror that must be wiped clean of dust. Huineng said that from the very start there was no mirror, and nothing at all for dust to settle on. It sounds strange at first. That line about not a single thing is truly hard to grasp. But it does not mean that nothing exists, or that everything is an empty void. He was pointing to something deeper. The clear, bright mind of every person is there from the beginning. It does not have to be sought far away, and no one needs to grant it.

The Fifth Patriarch came out and read the new verse. He knew at once that the rice pounder in the kitchen truly understood. But he said nothing. He feared the others would be jealous, because a poor woodcutter was being chosen over the head monk.

The next day, the Fifth Patriarch went quietly down to the kitchen. He asked Huineng an idle question about pounding rice. Then he tapped the mortar three times with his staff, turned and left without another word. Huineng understood the hidden signal. At the third watch of the night, when the whole temple was fast asleep, he quietly made his way to his teacher's room. By the light of a late lamp, the Fifth Patriarch explained the Diamond Sutra to him. Then he gave him the robe and the bowl, formally passing on the role of patriarch. Afterward, the teacher told him to leave at once for the south and stay hidden for a while, until things were calm.

One thing is worth keeping in mind. The verse contest and the midnight handing over of the robe and bowl are recorded in the Platform Sutra. That is a scripture of the Zen school, not an ordinary history book. People have kept the story because it is beautiful, and because it teaches something great.

From then on, Huineng was the Sixth Patriarch. Later he taught in the Guangdong region, and his students recorded his teachings as the Platform Sutra. People of old valued this book so highly that they called it a sutra. That was rare, because these were the words of a teacher in China, not a text brought over from India. What he left to later generations is simple and deep. Everyone carries a bright heart within. The learned have it, and a woodcutter who cannot read has it too.

He passed away in 713. But the stream of Zen that he opened kept on flowing. Most of the Zen schools that came after, including many Zen lines in Vietnam, trace back to his line.

When the grandmother finished, the child looked at the painting again. Here was a man who could not read a single word, yet a millennium later he still reminds people of something clear and simple. The most precious thing is already carried in the heart, waiting only for the day the heart grows still enough to notice it. Among the solemn patriarchs, the barefoot woodcutter stood with his load of firewood, and this time the child saw him with different eyes.