Zen Buddhist wisdom poem 偈
Original: 菩提本无树，明镜亦非台。 本来无一物，何处惹尘埃？ Translation： There is no Buddha tree, and the mirror is not the place for worship。There is nothing in the first place, so where (why) could it get dusty?
The story, which is legendary and very well known among Zen Buddhists: Hui Neng and Shen Xiu (another monk) both were disciples under one teacher. Shen Xiu was intelligent and was treated as a leader among fellow disciples. Hui Neng, on the other hand, was an illiterate mainly engaging in physical chores.
To impress his teacher Shen Xiu made a wisdom poem about what he understood for Buddhism:
身是菩提樹，心如明鏡台，時時勤拂拭，勿使惹塵埃。
Basically the poem is saying “My body is the Buddha tree, my heart is clear like a mirror sitting on the table. I always clean them so that they don’t catch dust. (Meaning I always work hard towards Buddhism)”
Hui Neng heard this and asked a fellow monk to read it to him. Then he paused for a while and came up with another wisdom poem that sounds very close to Shen Xiu’s poem but is critically different from it and contains much deeper understanding and very profound insights towards Buddhism:
菩提本無樹，明鏡亦非台。本來無一物，何處惹塵埃。
There is no Buddha tree, and the mirror is not the place for worship。There is nothing in the first place, so where (why) could it get dusty?
Hui Neng was much much closer to the true understanding of Buddhism, for the concept of Emptiness and Meaninglessness.
The teacher was surprised by this poem and was deeply impressed by it. He later passed the headmaster (patriarch) title to Hui Neng, and Hui Neng went on to develop and spread Zen Buddhism, becoming one of its major figures.
Source: reddit
