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Samurai

Zen Is Iconoclastic
For the followers of Bodhidharma, however, this conception of...

The Examination Of The Notion Of Self
The belief in immortality is based on the strong instinct of ...

The Progress And Hope Of Life
How many myriads of years have passed since the germs of life...

The Great Person And Small Person
For these reasons Zen proposes to call man Buddha-natured or ...

Idealistic Scepticism Concerning Religion And Morality
Similarly, it is the case with religion and morality. If we ...

Great Men And Nature
All great men, whether they be poets or scientists or religio...

The World Is In The Making
Our assertion is far from assuming that life is now complete,...

Zen And Idealism
Next Zen makes use of Idealism as explained by the Dharmalaks...

The Four Alternatives And The Five Categories
There are, according to Zen, the four classes of religious an...

The Bad Are The Good In The Egg
This is not only the case with a robber or a murderer, but al...

Idealism Is A Potent Medicine For Self-created Mental Disease
In so far as Buddhist idealism refers to the world of sense, ...

Life And Change
Transformation and change are the essential features of life;...

The Fourth Patriarch And The Emperor Tai Tsung (tai-so)
The Third[FN#40] Patriarch was succeeded by Tao Sin (Do-shin)...

Wang Yang Ming (o-yo-mei) And A Thief
One evening when Wang was giving a lecture to a number of stu...

Zen And The Regent Generals Of The Ho-jo Period
No wonder, then, that the representatives of the Samurai clas...

Zen And Nirvana
The beatitude of Zen is Nirvana, not in the Hinayanistic sens...

Man Is Bad-natured According To Siun Tsz
The weaknesses of Mencius's theory are fully exposed by anot...

The Manliness Of The Zen Monk And Of The Samurai
Thirdly, both the Zen monk and the Samurai were distinguished...

The Creative Force Of Nature And Humanity
The innate tendency of self-preservation, which manifests its...

Man Is Neither Good-natured Nor Bad-natured According To Su Shih
The difficulty may be avoided by a theory given by Su Shih ...

Missionary Activity Of The Sixth Patriarch

As we have seen above, the Sixth Patriarch was a great genius, and
may be justly called a born Zen teacher. He was a man of no
erudition, being a poor farmer, who had served under the Fifth
Patriarch as a rice-pounder only for eight months, but he could find
a new meaning in Buddhist terms, and show how to apply it to
practical life. On one occasion, for instance, Fah Tah (Ho-tatsu), a
monk who had read over the Saddharma-pundarika-sutra[FN#46] three
thousand times, visited him to be instructed in Zen. Even if you
read the sutra ten thousand times, said the Sixth Patriarch, who
could never read the text, it will do you no good, if you cannot
grasp the spirit of the sutra. I have simply recited the book,
confessed the monk, as it is written in characters. How could such
a dull fellow as I grasp its spirit? Then recite it once,
responded the master; I shall explain its spirit. Hereupon Fah Tah
began to recite the sutra, and when he read it until the end of the
second chapter the teacher stopped him, saying: You may stop there.
Now I know that this sutra was preached to show the so-called
greatest object of Shakya Muni's appearing on earth. That greatest
object was to have all sentient beings Enlightened just as He
Himself. In this way the Sixth Patriarch grasped the essentials of
the Mahayana sutras, and freely made use of them as the explanation
of the practical questions about Zen.

[FN#46] One of the most noted Mahayana sutras, translated by
Dharmaraksa (A.D. 286) and by Kumarajiva (A.D. 406). The reader has
to note that the author states the essential doctrine in the second
chapter. See Sacred Books of the East, vol. xxi., pp. 30-59.

Next: The Disciples Under The Sixth Patriarch
Previous: The Development Of The Southern And Of The Northern School Of Zen

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