Oblivion, Part III

If you've already connected all of the dots in the koan of Hui-Neng's Think Neither Good Nor Evil, then I apologize for this unnecessary explanation.  If, like myself, you're still putting it all together, then please read on, and let me know if there's anything that I missed.

The Fifth Patriarch had acknowledged the deep understanding and awakened mind of the simple, illiterate Hui-Neng.  Hui-Neng's lack of education and lack of knowledge are, in all likelihood, no exaggeration -   apparently, he could not read or write even to the end of his life.  In his commentary on this koan, RH Blyth says that in Hui-Neng, "we see the ordinary Chinese at his best."  We can clearly see in Hui-Neng the meaning of the saying that an ordinary man is the Buddha.  He has little of that love of paradox for its own sake evident elsewhere in Zen; no shouting or beating; no attempt to pack the whole meaning of existence into a single syllable.  Therefore, he is able to stand up or sit down and address a crowd of people, rich and poor, educated or uneducated, and say in simple, modest language what Zen is and what it is not.  Kindness, simplicity, honesty, directness, politeness - these are what Hui-Neng has.  He lacks poetry.

To commemorate the recognition, the Fifth Patriarch transmits to Hui-Neng the bowl and robe once owned by the Buddha himself.  Now, there's no reason to suppose that such a sacred relic somehow came to leave India (if it still even existed) and came to reside a millennium later with the Fifth Patriarch in China.  But as Hui-Neng explains to his pursuer later in the story, the bowl and robe are but representations of the Buddha's teaching, symbols of the dharma.  Do not mistake them for the literal bowl and the literal robe once worn by the Buddha.  So when the story says that the Fifth Patriarch transmitted the bowl and robe to Hui-Neng, it is saying that that Fifth Patriarch recognized Hui-Neng's grasp of the Buddha's teaching and made him, in effect, the Sixth Patriarch. Ceremonial garments and trinkets may have been exchanged, but "the bowl and the robe" in this story refers to the Buddha-dharma, not the material things.

The other learned and quite accomplished monks, who had been studying with the Fifth Patriarch for many, mnay years, even decades in some cases, were naturally upset over this.  It was always assumed that one of these other monks would become the next in succession.  Discord in the sangha is apparently not a 21st Century, western innovation - it happened in China, too, as well as in Japan, and even, apparently, in the Buddha's own sangha back in India.  I know from sad experience that it has happened in the very sangha within which I practice now.

As I wrote the other day, though, do not mistake these angry monks for vainglorious little men jealous of the success of others.  There were, instead, struck by a very real sense that something was wrong - that there was a right way and a wrong way, and this had clearly gone the wrong way. Someone from outside of their learned and contemplative society had come in and taken what rightfully should have been given to one of them.  Their minds distinguished what should have been from what was, and discriminated between good and evil, justice and injustice, and honesty and deceit. If that simple, illiterate Hui-Neng had somehow managed to convince their teacher that he was the next successor, it must have been though some sort of treachery or deceit.  Full of self-righteous indignation, and convinced that they were defending the true dharma, doing what was right, they set off to capture Hui-Neng and take back those ceremonial garments and trinkets, mistaking the symbols of Hui-Neng's understanding for understanding itself.

In other words, they were not very different than you and I, if we are honest with ourselves.

So Ming, the former general of the fourth rank, pursued Hui-Neng relentlessly, and finally, using his superior military skills, managed to corner his prey.  Upon being cornered, Hui-Neng, the good bodhisattva, sets the robe and bowl down in front of him, giving his pursuer what he wanted, and said, "The robe and bowl merely represent the teachings; what is the point of fighting over this?  Go ahead and take them away."  But Ming was unable to lift them - they were as heavy as lead.

"Go ahead and take them away."  Hui-Neng allowed Ming to choose to do what he wanted with the objects - not in context of taking them away from some other but to act on his own accord without reference to self and other.  Hui-Neng had skillfully taken his self, Ming's "other," out of the equation, and left Ming by himself to act on his own.  But once the other side of the imaginary line disappears, so does the line itself and so does whatever was on the near side of the line.  What the story is saying here is not that he literally could not pick up a robe and a bowl - this isn't Camelot and a sword stuck in a stone - but that when Hui-Neng took himself out of the equation, the construct of self and other, right and wrong, good and evil, fell away, and it shattered Ming's rage.  And once the fire of rage was extinguished, Ming did not know what he was doing there, how to proceed, what to do next.

Trembling for shame, Ming admitted that it was the true teaching, not the symbolic robe and bowl, that he was really after all along.  Recognizing that which the Fifth Patriarch saw in Hui-Neng, he bowed down and asked to be taught the dharma, that is, he requested, not demanded, the true treasure.

Hui-Neng's lesson to him was as direct as it was brief - "Think neither good nor evil.  At such a moment, what is the true self?" 

Ming, like the other monks, had fallen into discriminating between what they believed to be good from what they believed to be bad.  These sure convictions, in turn, divided themselves from others - in this case, divided Hui-Neng as an outsider from what they considered to be the true followers of the Way.  But this sense of self righteousness arose from their discrimination between good and evil.  What, Hui-Neng challenged him - and challenges us today - is the true self beyond dualistic concepts like good and evil?

Ming immediately understood (See? He was a good monk after all!) and experienced realization at that moment.  He described his experience to Hui-Neng as being like one who drinks water and knows for oneself, without doubt, whether the water is warm or cold and asks Hui-Neng to be his teacher (practice does not end at enlightenment - practice and enlightenment are one).  Hui-Neng kindly acknowledges that Ming's understanding is like his, and says that they both have the same teacher.  They are peers.  They are both students together of the Fifth Patriarch.

To Hui-Neng, there was never any difference or separation, no lines drawn in his imagination, between himself and Ming.  To Hui-Neng, his pursuer and tormentor of but a few minutes earlier had always been his dharma brother, and he invites him to practice with him in accordance with this holistic view.

So right now, what is separating you from the rest of the world?  What is separating me?  This is the challenge of this koan.