Book corner · Beginner
The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch
Liuzu tanjing (六祖壇經)
Attributed to Huineng (compiled by his disciple Fahai, with later revisions) · 8th century (earliest Dunhuang manuscript); expanded editions later · Short (under 150 pages)
Be the first to put it on your shelf.
What it is
Unusually for a text called a sutra, it records not the Buddha but a Chinese teacher, Huineng (638–713), honoured as the sixth patriarch of Chan. It opens with his autobiography: an illiterate seller of firewood hears the Diamond Sutra, travels to the fifth patriarch Hongren, and wins the succession with a verse answering the head monk Shenxiu. Shenxiu's verse compares the mind to a mirror that must be wiped clean of dust; Huineng's replies that there is originally no mirror-stand and nothing on which dust could settle. The sermons that follow teach sudden awakening to one's own nature, the unity of meditation and wisdom, compared to a lamp and its light, and 'no-thought' as non-attachment within thinking rather than its suppression. Modern scholarship treats the story as partly legend shaped by later sectarian disputes, and the text exists in several versions.
Why read it
It is the founding document of Chan and Zen self-understanding, and its contrast between sudden and gradual awakening raises a real question about whether practice produces insight or reveals it.
Where to start
Read the autobiography and the verse contest first, then the sermon on meditation and wisdom; Philip Yampolsky's translation of the Dunhuang text has a useful introduction.
Original text in the public domain