Jingde Record of the Transmission of the Lamp, Fascicle 3

南嶽懷讓禪師

Chan Master Huairang of Nanyue

溫州永嘉玄覺禪師

Chan Master Xuanjue of Yongjia in Wenzhou

司空山本淨禪師

Chan Master Benjing of Mount Sikong

婺州玄策禪師

Chan Master Xuance of Wuzhou

曹谿令韜禪師

Chan Master Lingtao of Caoxi

西京光宅寺慧忠禪師

Chan Master Huizhong of Guangzhai Monastery in the Western Capital

西京荷澤寺神會禪師(已上一十九人見錄)

Chan Master Shenhui of Heze Monastery in the Western Capital (the above nineteen are recorded)

韶州祇陀禪師

Chan Master Zhituo of Shaozhou

撫州淨安禪師

Chan Master Jing'an of Fuzhou

嵩山尋禪師

Chan Master Xun of Mount Song

羅浮山定真禪師

Chan Master Dingzhen of Mount Luofu

南嶽堅固禪師

Chan Master Jiangu of Nanyue

制空山道進禪師

Chan Master Daojin of Mount Zhikong

善快禪師

Chan Master Shankuai

韶山緣素禪師

Chan Master Yuansu of Shaoshan

宗一禪師

Chan Master Zongyi

會稽秦望山善現禪師

Chan Master Shanxian of Mount Qinwang in Kuaiji

南嶽梵行禪師

Chan Master Fanxing of Nanyue

幷州自在禪師

Chan Master Zizai of Bingzhou

西京鹹空禪師

Chan Master Xiankong of the Western Capital

峽山泰祥禪師

Chan Master Taixiang of Xiashan

光州法淨禪師

Chan Master Fajing of Guangzhou

清涼山辯才禪師

Chan Master Biancai of Mount Qingliang

廣州吳頭陀

The ascetic Wu of Guangzhou

道英禪師

Chan Master Daoying

智本禪師

Chan Master Zhiben

廣州清苑法真禪師

Chan Master Fazhen of Qingyuan in Guangzhou

玄楷禪師

Chan Master Xuankai

曇璀禪師

Chan Master Tancui

韶州刺史韋據

Wei Ju, prefect of Shaozhou

義興孫菩薩(已上二十四人無機緣語句不錄)

The Bodhisattva Sun of Yixing (the above twenty-four have no encounter dialogue and are not recorded)

第三十三祖慧能大師者。俗姓盧氏。其先範陽人。父行瑫武德中左宦於南海。之新州遂占籍焉。三歲喪父。其母守志鞠養。及長家尤貧窶。師樵採以給。一日負薪至市中。聞客讀金剛經。悚然問其客曰。此何法也。得於何人。客曰。此名金剛經。得於黃梅忍大師。師遽告其母以為法尋師之意。直抵韶州遇高行士劉志略結為交友。尼無盡藏者。即志略之姑也。常讀涅槃經。師暫聽之即為解說其義。尼遂執卷問字。師曰。字即不識。義即請問。尼曰。字尚不識曷能會義。師曰。諸佛妙理非關文字。尼驚異之。告鄉裡耆艾雲。能是有道之人宜請供養。於是居人競來瞻禮。近有寶林古寺舊地。眾議營緝俾師居之。四眾霧集俄成寶坊。師一日忽自唸曰。我求大法豈可中道而止。明日遂行至昌樂縣西山石室間。遇智遠禪師。師遂請益。遠曰。觀子神姿爽拔殆非常人。吾聞西域菩提達磨。傳心印於黃梅。汝當往彼參決。師辭去直造黃梅之東禪。即唐咸亨二年也。忍大師一見默而識之。後傳衣法令隱於懷集四會之間。至儀鳳元年丙子正月八日。屆南海遇印宗法師於法性寺講涅槃經。師寓止廊廡間。暮夜風颺剎幡。聞二僧對論。一雲幡動。一雲風動。往復酬答未曾契理。師曰。可容俗流輒預高論否。直以風幡非動動自心耳。印宗竊聆此語竦然異之。翌日邀師入室。徵風幡之義。師具以理告。印宗不覺起立雲。行者定非常人師為是誰。師更無所隱直敘得法因由。於是印宗執弟子之禮請受禪要。乃告四眾曰。印宗具足凡夫。今遇肉身菩薩即指坐下盧居士雲。即此是也。因請出所傳信衣悉令瞻禮。至正月十五日。會諸名德為之剃髮。二月八日就法性寺智光律師受滿分戒。其戒壇即宋朝求那跋陀三藏之所置也。三藏記雲。後當有肉身菩薩在此壇受戒。又梁末真諦三藏。於壇之側手植二菩提樹。謂眾曰。卻後一百二十年有大開士。

The Thirty-third Patriarch, Great Master Huineng, was surnamed Lu in lay life. His ancestors were from Fanyang. His father Xingtao was demoted in the Wude era to Xinzhou in Nanhai, and so settled there. He lost his father at three, and his mother kept her resolve and raised him. When he grew up, the family was especially poor, and the master supplied it by gathering firewood. One day, carrying firewood to the market, he heard a customer reading the Diamond Sutra, and startled, asked the customer: "What teaching is this? From whom did you get it?" The customer said: "It is called the Diamond Sutra, obtained from Great Master Hongren of Huangmei." The master hurried to tell his mother, intending to seek a teacher for the Dharma. He went straight to Shaozhou and met the high-minded Liu Zhilue, becoming his friend. The nun Wujinzang, Zhilue's paternal aunt, often read the Nirvana Sutra. The master listened briefly and explained its meaning for her. The nun then took the scroll and asked about characters. The master said: "I do not know the characters, but ask me about the meaning." The nun said: "If you do not even know the characters, how can you understand the meaning?" The master said: "The wonderful principles of the Buddhas are not about writing." The nun was astonished and told the village elders: "He is a man with the Way; he should be invited and provided for." Residents then came vying to pay respects. Nearby was the old site of Baolin Old Monastery, and all agreed to rebuild it and have the master live there. The fourfold assembly gathered like mist, and before long it became a precious monastery. One day the master suddenly thought: "I seek the great Dharma; how can I stop halfway?" The next day he left, and at the stone cell on the western mountain of Changle county he met Chan Master Zhiyuan. The master then asked for further teaching. Yuan said: "I see your spirit and bearing are outstanding, hardly an ordinary person. I have heard that Bodhidharma from the Western Regions transmitted the mind seal at Huangmei; you should go there to study and settle it." The master took his leave and went straight to Dongchan at Huangmei, in the second year of Xianheng of the Tang. Great Master Hongren recognized him at a glance and silently knew him. Later he transmitted the robe and Dharma and had him hide between Huaiji and Sihui. On the eighth day of the first month of the bingzi year, the first year of Yifeng, he arrived at Nanhai and met Dharma Master Yinzong lecturing on the Nirvana Sutra at Faxing Monastery. The master took lodging in the corridor. In the evening the wind blew a temple banner, and he heard two monks debating. One said the banner was moving, the other said the wind was moving, going back and forth without reaching the principle. The master said: "May a layman also take part in this lofty discussion? It is neither wind nor banner that moves; it is your mind that moves." Yinzong overheard this in the dark and was startled and amazed. The next day he invited the master into his room and asked about the meaning of wind and banner. The master explained the principle fully. Yinzong rose without realizing it and said: "The practitioner is certainly no ordinary person. Who is the master?" The master concealed nothing further and directly told how he had obtained the Dharma. Yinzong then took the position of disciple and asked to receive the essentials of Chan. He told the fourfold assembly: "Yinzong is a complete ordinary man, and today I have met a flesh-body bodhisattva." He pointed to the layman Lu below his seat and said: "This is he." He then asked him to bring out the robe of faith he had been transmitted, and had everyone view and bow to it. On the fifteenth day of the first month, he gathered eminent virtuous monks and had his head shaved. On the eighth day of the second month, he received the full precepts from Vinaya Master Zhiguang at Faxing Monastery. That ordination platform had been established by the Tripitaka Master Gunabhadra of the Song dynasty. The Tripitaka Master recorded: "Later a flesh-body bodhisattva will receive ordination at this platform." Also the Tripitaka Master Paramartha at the end of the Liang dynasty personally planted two bodhi trees beside the platform and said to the assembly: "One hundred and twenty years from now, a great being,

於此樹下演無上乘度無量眾。師具戒已。於此樹下開東山法門宛如宿契。明年二月八日忽謂眾曰。吾不願此居要歸舊隱。時印宗與緇白千餘人。送師歸寶林寺。韶州刺史韋據請於大梵寺轉妙法輪。並受無相心地戒。門人紀錄目為壇經盛行於世。然返曹谿雨大法雨。學者不下千數。中宗神龍元年降詔雲。朕請安秀二師宮中供養。萬機之暇每究一乘。二師並推讓雲。南方有能禪師。密受忍大師衣法。可就彼問。今遣內侍薛簡馳詔迎請。願師慈念速赴上京。師上表辭疾。願終林麓。薛簡曰。京城禪德皆雲。欲得會道必須坐禪習定。若不因禪定而得解脫者未之有也。未審師所說法如何。師曰。道由心悟。豈在坐也。經云。若見如來若坐若臥是行邪道。何故無所從來亦無所去。若無生滅是如來清淨禪。諸法空寂是如來清淨坐。究竟無證豈況坐耶。簡曰。弟子之迴主上必問願和尚慈悲指示心要。師曰。道無明暗。明暗是代謝之義。明明無盡亦是有盡。簡曰。明喻智慧。暗況煩惱。修道之人儻不以智慧照破煩惱。無始生死憑何出離。師曰。若以智慧照煩惱者。此是二乘小兒羊鹿等機。上智大根悉不如是。簡曰。如何是大乘見解。師曰。明與無明其性無二。無二之性即是實性。實性者處凡愚而不減。在賢聖而不增。住煩惱而不亂。居禪定而不寂。不斷不常不來不去。不在中間及其內外。不生不滅性相如如。常住不遷名之曰道。簡曰。師說不生不滅何異外道。師曰。外道所說不生不滅者。將滅止生以生顯滅。滅猶不滅生說無生。我說不生不滅者。本自無生今亦無滅。所以不同外道。汝若欲知心要。但一切善惡都莫思量。自然得入清淨心體。湛然常寂妙用恆沙。簡蒙指教豁然大悟。禮辭歸闕表奏師語。有詔謝師。並賜磨衲袈裟絹五百匹寶缽一口。十二月十九日。勅改古寶林為中興寺。三年十一月十八日。又勅韶州刺史。

(Paramartha continued:) "Beneath this tree you will expound the unsurpassed vehicle and ferry across countless beings." After the Master received the full precepts, beneath this tree he opened the Dharma gate of the East Mountain, as though fulfilling an old agreement. In the second month of the following year, on the eighth day, he suddenly said to the assembly, "I do not wish to stay here; I want to return to my old retreat." At that time Yinzong, with more than a thousand monks and laypeople, escorted the Master back to Baolin Temple. Wei Ju, Prefect of Shaozhou, invited him to turn the wondrous Dharma wheel at Dafan Temple and to receive the precepts of the formless mind-ground. His disciples recorded this, and it is called the Platform Sutra, which is widely current in the world. He then returned to Caoxi, where he rained the great Dharma rain, with no fewer than a thousand students. In the first year of Shenlong under Emperor Zhongzong, an edict was issued saying, "We have invited the two masters An and Xiu to be supported in the palace. In the leisure of the myriad affairs, We study the One Vehicle each day. The two masters both yielded, saying: In the south there is Chan Master Neng, who secretly received the robe and Dharma from Great Master Ren; you may go and ask him. Now We send the palace attendant Xue Jian in haste with this edict to invite you. We hope the Master, in compassion, will quickly come to the capital." The Master submitted a memorial declining on grounds of illness and hoping to end his days in the forest and mountains. Xue Jian said, "The Chan worthies of the capital all say: to master the Way one must sit in meditation and practice concentration. That anyone should attain liberation without meditative concentration has never been. May I ask how the Master teaches the Dharma?" The Master said, "The Way is awakened through the mind; how could it lie in sitting? The sutra says: if one sees the Tathagata as sitting or lying, one is practicing a false way. Why? He comes from nowhere and goes nowhere. Without arising or ceasing, this is the Tathagata's pure Chan. All dharmas are empty and still; this is the Tathagata's pure sitting. In the end there is nothing to realize; how much less is there in sitting?" Jian said, "When your disciple returns, the Emperor will certainly ask. I hope the Venerable, in compassion, will point out the essentials of the mind." The Master said, "The Way has neither brightness nor darkness. Brightness and darkness are the meaning of alternation. Brightness that is without end is also with end." Jian said, "Brightness is a metaphor for wisdom, darkness for afflictions. If a practitioner of the Way does not use wisdom to illuminate and break through afflictions, by what means can he escape birth and death from beginningless time?" The Master said, "To use wisdom to illuminate afflictions is the capacity of the Two Vehicles, of little children, of the sheep and deer carts. The great wisdom of superior roots is not like that." Jian said, "What is the Mahayana view?" The Master said, "Brightness and non-brightness are by nature not two. The nature that is not two is the real nature. The real nature is not diminished in the ignorant, not increased in the worthy and sage, not disturbed in the midst of afflictions, not still in dwelling in meditative concentration. It is neither cut off nor constant, neither coming nor going, not in the middle nor inside nor outside, neither arising nor ceasing; nature and characteristic are thus, abiding forever without moving; this is called the Way." Jian said, "The Master speaks of non-arising and non-ceasing; how does this differ from the non-Buddhists?" The Master said, "What the non-Buddhists call non-arising and non-ceasing is using cessation to stop arising and using arising to show cessation; cessation is still not cessation, and they speak of non-arising within arising. What I call non-arising and non-ceasing is that from the beginning there is no arising, and now too there is no ceasing, and so it is not the same as the non-Buddhists. If you wish to know the essentials of the mind, simply do not think of any good or evil, and you will naturally enter the pure mind-substance, serene and ever still, with wondrous function as numerous as the sands of the Ganges." Jian, having received instruction, was suddenly greatly awakened, bowed and took leave, returned to the palace, and reported the Master's words in a memorial. An edict thanked the Master, and bestowed a patched kasaya, five hundred bolts of silk, and a precious bowl. On the nineteenth day of the twelfth month, an imperial order renamed the old Baolin as Zhongxing Temple. On the eighteenth day of the eleventh month of the third year, an imperial order again directed the Prefect of Shaozhou,

重加崇飾賜額為法泉寺。師新州舊居為國恩寺。一日師謂眾曰。諸善知識。汝等各各淨心聽吾說法。汝等諸人自心是佛。更莫狐疑。外無一物而能建立。皆是本心生萬種法。故經云。心生種種法生。心滅種種法滅。若欲成就種智。須達一相三昧一行三昧。若於一切處而不住相。彼相中不生憎愛亦無取捨。不念利益成壞等事。安閑恬靜虛融澹泊。此名一相三昧。若於一切處行住坐臥。純一直心不動道場真成淨土。名一行三昧。若人具二三昧。如地有種能含藏長養成就其實。一相一行亦復如是。我今說法。猶如時雨溥潤大地。汝等佛性譬諸種子。遇茲霑洽悉得發生。承吾旨者決獲菩提。依吾行者定證妙果。先天元年告諸徒眾曰。吾忝受忍大師衣法。今為汝等說法不付其衣。蓋汝等信根淳熟決定不疑堪任大事。聽吾偈曰。

(The edict continued:) "to further honor and adorn it, and bestow a plaque naming it Faquan Temple." The Master's old residence in Xinzhou became Guo'en Temple. One day the Master said to the assembly, "Good friends, each of you purify your mind and listen to my Dharma. The mind of each of you is Buddha; harbor no further doubt. There is not a single thing outside that can be established; all of it is the original mind giving rise to the myriad dharmas. Therefore the sutra says: when the mind arises, various dharmas arise; when the mind ceases, various dharmas cease. If you wish to accomplish the knowledge of all kinds, you must penetrate the samadhi of one characteristic and the samadhi of one practice. If in all places you do not abide in characteristics, and within them give rise to neither hatred nor love, neither grasping nor rejecting, and do not think of benefit, success, or failure, being at ease, tranquil, empty and blended, mild and detached, this is called the samadhi of one characteristic. If in all places, in walking, standing, sitting, and lying, you have a pure, single, straight mind, and without moving from the place of the Way, truly make a Pure Land, this is called the samadhi of one practice. If a person has these two samadhis, he is like a ground with seeds, which can contain, store, and nourish them and bring their fruit to completion. The one characteristic and one practice are likewise. My teaching of the Dharma now is like seasonal rain that universally moistens the great earth. Your Buddha-nature is like the seeds; meeting this moisture, all will sprout. Those who receive my teaching will surely obtain bodhi; those who act by it will surely realize the wondrous fruit." In the first year of Xiantian, he told his disciples, "I unworthily received the robe and Dharma from Great Master Ren; now I teach the Dharma for you but do not transmit the robe. It is because your roots of faith are fully ripened and you are free of doubt and able to bear the great matter. Listen to my verse:

心地含諸種普雨悉皆生

The mind-ground contains all seeds; universal rain makes them all sprout.

頓悟華情已菩提果自成

When the blossoming sentiment is suddenly awakened, the fruit of bodhi will be accomplished of itself.