3. DAZU HUIKE 大祖慧可 the True Dharma Heritage

  大祖慧可 Dazu Huike (487-593)

-na 那  Hui-man 滿

THE LANKAVATARA DHARMA HEIRS

 求那跋陀羅 Quina Batuoluo (Gunapabadrha) 394–468

  菩提達摩     Poti Damo  (Bodhidharma)

• Daofu

• Zong Chi  Dharan

• Daoyu

• HUIKE

  • Tanlin (506–574)

  • Hua-kung

  • Yen-kung

  • Dhyana Master Ho

    • • Zeng-na, 曾那, who carried on the Lankavatara tradition with his disciple Huiman 慧滿

  • In Fa-ch'ung's biography there is a clear mention of Sengcan as being a student of Huike. But can we add that name possibly to the Lanka tradition and follow on also with his disciples. That we will discover when we compare their teachings and manner of meditation.

大祖慧可 Dazu Huike (487-593)

If we think that Bodhidharma is something of a mystery, his disciple Huike is even more so.

As with most of the early Chán patriarchs, very little firm data is available about his life. The earliest extant biography of the Chán patriarchs is the Biographies of Eminent Monks (高僧傳, 519) and its sequel, Further Biographies of Eminent Monks (645) by  Daoxin.

The Hsu kao-seng chuan says that Huike was born in Hu-lao, Henan and his secular name was Shénguāng (神光). He was a student of both Buddhist scriptures and classical Chinese texts, including Taoism, and was considered  enlightened but criticised for not having a teacher.

He met  Bodhidharma at the Shaolin Monastery in 528 when he was about forty years old and studied with Bodhidharma for between four and nine years.

Legend, told in the Wu-men kuan, was compiled in the first year of the shao-ting era (1228) and is very much elaborated each time it is told, has it that Bodhidharma initially refused to teach Huike and Huike stood in the snow outside Bodhidharma’s cave all night until the snow reached his waist. In the morning Bodhidharma asked him why he was there and Huike replied that he wanted a teacher to "open the gate of the elixir or universal compassion to liberate all beings."

Bodhidharma refused, saying, “How can you hope for true religion with little virtue, little wisdom, a shallow heart, and an arrogant mind? It would just be a waste of effort.”

Finally, to prove his resolve, Huike cut off his left arm and presented it to the First Patriarch as a token of his sincerity at which point Bodhidharma accepted him as a student and changed his name from Shenguang to Huike (“Wisdom and Capacity”).

Dharma faced toward the wall. The Second Ancestor stood in the snow, cut off his arm, and said, “This disciple’s heart-mind has not yet been pacified. I beg teacher to pacify my heart-mind.”

Ma said, “Come here with your heart-mind, and I will pacify it for you.”

Ancestor said, “My searching for heart-mind is completed, and I’m not able to obtain it!”

Ma said, "I have finished pacifying your heart-mind for you.”

However, According to the Record of the Transmission of the Light (傳光録 Chuangunglu), his awakening occured later, when Huike and Bodhidharma were climbing up Few Houses Peak.

Bodhidharma asked, “Where are we going?”

Huike replied, “Please go right ahead."

"That’s it,” Bodhidharma retorted. “If you go right ahead, you cannot move a step.”

 Upon hearing these words, Huike was awakened.

Before Bodhidharma died, legend says he passed the Dharma succession to Huike with a copy of the Lankavatara Sutra. The succession element is clearly a theme of questionable expedient means.

It seems that Huike led the wandering lifestyle of the ascetic monk like Bodhidharma, neither settling down for long nor leaving clear explicit writings of his thought and teachings.

Huike went to Yedu in about 534 and, except for a period of political turmoil and Buddhist persecution in 574, lived there until his death.

He taught Dharma, drawing large numbers to listen to his teachings and arousing the hostility of other Buddhist teachers.

Comments from the Xu Biographies of High Saṃghins《續高僧傳》do indicate that he continued the transmission of the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra to his own students.

We can then conclude that the passing of the Lanka tradition was probably from Bodhidharma, as texts suggest, and the Lanka tradition was passed on to all his students and from Tseng-na it was continued to Huiman.

The Lanka teaching from the Xu Biography description requires being “specialized in the profound principle” (玄理). That means, as Yinshun suggests, that this was neither the tradition of Laozi and Zhuangzi (老莊玄學), but rather that teaching  from the sūtras were used  in practice and not just in scholarship.

This is consistent with Bodhidharma's position in which, “dependent on the teaching, one realizes the goal”.

In the Records of the Laṅkā Masters, it is known as the "Brief Teaching on the Essential Dharma for Cultivating the Path and Illumining the Mind"《略說修道明心要法》

However, there were other Buddhadharma ideas flourishing and many considered this approach of Huike to be based upon an incorrect view and thus not true meditation.

Daoxuan’s Xu Biography is not uncomplimentary to Huike, however, and though there is little of his teachings therein, we do have him making a forcast that “after four generations, this [Laṅkāvatāra] Sūtra, will become just a name – such a pity!”

This statement seems to suggest that Daoxin had already made a shift of enphasis from the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra to the Mañjuśrī Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra, or had developed his mixed idea from another source.

There is some evidence that both Huike and Bodhidharma based their teachings on the Lankavatara Sutra although this cannot be firmly established by modern scholars.

This sutra urges "self-enlightenment," the “unattachment to words and thoughts,” which is essential for correct Contemplations.

Daoxin listed Huike and his circle of disciples of the Lankavatara Sutra in his Further Biographies of Eminent Monks ( 高僧傳) but did not include himself as being connected in any way.

There is little doubt that Huike practiced and promoted meditation (as opposed to sutra commentary as their method to reach understanding, for Daoxin refered to Huike and his group as meditation masters. However nothing is mentioned of “wall gazing” or “wall contemplation”).

One text that was circulating at the time of Huike was the Treatise on the Two Entrances and Four Practices. This text was the purported teachings of Bodhidharma with a preface by Tanlin (506–574), Huike's student.

The two entrances refers to the entrance of principle and the entrance of practice. The entrance of principle is that one must have faith in the truth of the teachings and that everyone possesses the same “true nature” which is covered up by “false senses.”

The entrance of practice refers to the four practices of the title: be undisturbed by suffering, accept one’s circumstances and be unmoved by good or bad fortune, be without attachment or desire and, finally, govern one’s actions based on understanding the emptiness or non-substantiality of all things.

Huike wrote:

Originally deluded, one calls the mani-pearl a potsherd

Suddenly one is awakened---and it is [recognized] as a pearl

Ignorance and wisdom are identical, not different.

The suggestion is clear. One may conceptually look at the mind as stained when really it is pure. On awakening, presumably after the meditation, it is recognized as pure. This awakening allows one to realize that what we call ignorance has no individual characteristics that determine it as such and that the percption of Ignorance when it is removed allows the base state to be clearly understood as pure.

We must assume then that his contemplations were like those of Bodhidharma, "the Ultimate conceptualization of the Buddha Mind," in which one attends to the Buddha mind concept until the concept itself leads the contemplation beyond (or back) to the discerned yet cognitively unconscious experience of the state of Alaya.

The account of his enlightenment in 禅宗無門, shortened to Gateless barrier case 41 lays out a key method of meditation known as "turning the light around and looking back." While this concept is central to looking upon the nature of the Buddha mind, the koan evidence does not reflect this technique or give evidence of method.