#hui neng

[mountain-sage]

In the birth of Zen, two poems play a particularly important role. Shenhsiu, the great Ch’an master of the Northern school, wrote a verse:

This body is the Bodhi tree.

The mind is like a bright mirror.

Polish it and keep it clean,

let no dust mote settle there.

Hui Neng wrote a verse in reply:

There is no Bodhi tree.

No bright mirror exists.

Since all is emptiness,

where could a dust mote settle?

[elaina-mayfield]

'Q: if there is no Buddhahood to be attained, has your Reverence the Buddha-function?

A: Where the mind itself is not, whence is its functioning?

Q: One is then lost in outer-no-ness (wu); may this not be an absolutely nihilistic view?

A: From the first there is (no viewer and) no viewing; and who says this to be nihilist?

Q: To sat that from the first nothing is, is this not falling into emptiness?

A: Even emptiness is not, and where is the falling?'

- dialogue between Ling-chao ('Q') and his master Hui-neng ('A'), as quoted and translated by D.T. Suzuki in The Zen Doctrine of No-Mind

[terracemuse]

everyone is a Buddha.

[jamabushi]

Enlightenment is not a tree, 
The bright mirror has no stand; 
Originally there is not one thing— 
What place could there be for dust?

[wisdom-and-such]

“Do not sit with a mind fixed on emptiness. If you do you will fall into a neutral kind of emptiness. Emptiness includes the, sun, moon, stars and planets, the great earth, mountains and rivers, all trees and grasses, bad men and good men, bad things and good things, heaven and hell; they are all in the midst of emptiness. “ 

 - Hui-neng 

[kamala-laxman]

Confused by thoughts, we experience duality in life. Unencumbered by ideas, the enlightened see the one Reality.” – Hui – Neng

[astranemus]

This interchange was important for Merton's subsequent expression of emptiness. Under the influence of Suzuki's equation of emptiness with fullness he began to use this motif more paradoxically. At times he wrote of the simultaneous presence of emptiness and fullness; on other occasions he identified the two. "From moment to moment," he wrote in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, "I remember with astonishment that I am at the same time empty and full, and satisfied because I am empty. I lack nothing." "We accept our emptying," he noted in another piece, "because we realize that our very emptiness is fulfillment and plenitude."' Later writings on Zen Buddhism also reflected the dialogue with Suzuki. Merton described sunyata as an emptiness which, because it lacks limitation, is also a perfect fullness. He drew correspondences between the Zen teaching about emptiness and Nicholas of Cusa on infinity and Saint John of the Cross on the dark night, even devoting parts of a major essay to defending Hui Neng's understanding of the void. The sixth Ch'an patriarch, argued Merton, neither regarded sunyata as possession nor as absolute negation. On the contrary, Merton felt justified in claiming that for Hui Neng "the infinite emptiness is then infinite totality and fullness." Merton was impressed by the idea that emptiness should not be conceived in absolute opposition to fullness. One should strive to move from the emptiness of interior poverty and despair to the fullness of union with God. Nonetheless, during mystical union one is both "totally empty (of separateness and material individuation) and totally full, realizing himself in unity not only with all being(s) but with the very source and finality of Being." Merton even identified contemplation itself as "the fullness experienced as truly full when it offers itself freely to us in the shape of emptiness."

John F. Teahan, A Dark and Empty Way: Thomas Merton and the Apophatic Tradition

[cobotis]

By amending our mistakes, we get wisdom... By defending our faults, we betray an unsound mind...

The Sutra of Hui Neng