Hui Neng 6th Patriarch of the Ch'an School

Master Hui Neng, known as the Sixth Patriarch was the founder of the School of Sudden Awakening - The enlightenment is what one awakes to, that which cannot be learned in an orthodox way or earned assimilating theory. It is the Way of direct insight and unmistakable experience.




 Hui Neng was poor and illiterate, with no special education. When Hui Neng overheard the verses of a sacred text - the Diamond Sutra- read in the village one day, he felt suddenly attracted by them and decided to go to study dharma (the way to enlightenment)  inTung Ch'an Abbey, Huang Mei county, where Hung Yen was the master of the order.


Upon hearing the words of the Sutra,

"One should produce that thought which dwells nowhere",

Hui Neng's mind immediately opened to enlightenment.

All people, regardless of their social, cultural or spiritual condition, possess the Buddhahood (Buddha-nature) or natural ability of potential Awakening. Buddha-nature is not the fruit of one's efforts. It cannot be earned by virtue - namely a moral, virtuous life - or by study. It represents the inborn quality of mind, given to all people with no exception. The awakening is not a mediate, but a sudden, instantaneous process.  This is the Way of Ch'an.  Beyond words and expression.  Beyond concepts.

Hui Neng's teachings are fact a non-doctrine, as it asserts nothing, imposes nothing, proposes nothing... yet an unmistakable 'pathless path' leading to supreme Buddhahood.

An educated monk asked Hui Neng, some insights concernig some holy scriptures:

Monk: Please explain to me these scriptures.

Hui Neng: Sorry, but I can't read the words. Read to me these scriptures and I will be able to understand them.

Monk: How can you understand the scriptures if you cannot read the words?

Hui Neng: The truth and the words are two different things. The words can be compared with a finger. We can show the moon with a finger, but the finger is not the moon. To look at the moon means to look over the finger. The words are like a finger pointing towards the truth. Generally speaking, we see only the finger. The truth is beyond the finger.


Hui Neng at the beginning led an anonymous life.  He was fatherless and had to work to support his mother. The living conditions were very hard. One day he noticed a man reading a Buddhist scripture and suddenly felt fascinated by the spiritual works and became interested in the source of the text. He met the Fifth Partriarch, Hung Jen, who found out that he was a common man, an illiterate, but who was endeavoring for Buddha-nature.

5th Patriarch Hung Jen says: "You are a barbarian, how could you hope for becoming a Buddha?"

Hui Neng's short answer vexes our faith that we must respect a spiritual personality: "A barbarian is only apparently different from you, but there is no distinction concerning our Buddha-nature".

Thus the Buddha-nature of this barbarian - Hui Neng - was not different from that of the monastery's Patriarch!

And so, advised by the Patriarch, Hui Neng kept away from the meditation rooms, not drawing attention to himself.  For a while, Hui Neng had to carry out the ordinary household chores of the monastery. Hui Neng's spiritual endowment, which was not a result of the monastery life would proabably draw the hostile reactions of the other monks, if it would have been openly acknowledged.

Soon however, the Patriarch decided he must transmit the spiritual power to a Sixth Patriarch, the next holder of the lineage symbolically referred to as 'passing on the robe and the bowl'.  For this purpose, he examined the monks, the exam consisting of composing a short poem (gatha), on the temple wall, which should certify their deep insight into Dharma, in the correct understanding about "what true nature means".

The most promising monk, Shen-Hsiu, and the one who was assumed to succeed the Patriarch, composed the following lines:

This body is Bodhi tree


And the spirit is like a clean mirror set on a support


Let us clean it untiringly


And allow no grain of dust to fall over it.

The poem was rejected by 5th Patriarch, Hung Jen because it wasn't expressing the genuine illumination. He suspected the monk did not yet possess the true eye to Dharma wisdom.
(Moreover, the metaphor had already been used by Chuang-tzu, one of the masterminds of the philosophical Taoism.)

Hui Neng asked a monk to show him and to read the gatha of the main candidate. After he carefully read Shen-Hsiu's poem, he dictated and composed the following verse:

Wisdom knows no (bodhi) tree to grow


And the mirror leans on nothing


There was nothing from the beginning,


So where could the dust fall over?

The following night Hui Neng was very secretly confirmed to be appointed and left  the Tung Ch'an Monastery in haste and went into hiding. His supporter, the former Patriarch, advised him not to make public his appointment for fear that he could be hunted and killed by the other monks.

So, Hui Neng, the Sixth Patriarch of the Ch'an meditation school had to wander about for 6 years, escaping  from all the dangers which were threatening his life.

Only at the age of 39, Hui Neng decided to go out to teach the dharma.

He settled until the end of his life at the Pao-Lin Monastery from Tsao-Hui region, laying the foundations of the Sudden School or the School of Spontaneous Illumination from the South, which seems to have had many deeply accomplished practioners.

After his death, his body did not decay; only the flesh dried out. It is being kept in Hua Nan Temple in Guangdong.