If the student reading this is able to really penetrate the importance of what is related here, then the inherent error in each of the other six contemplations will be avoided.
Huineng's contemplation was a direct approach to the right hemisphere operation which we call FUNCTION. Yet his contemplation was really no contemplation at all, and that was the great secret of his direct access to Awakening.
Now how was that possible?
In order to understand that we must examine what information we have with respect to his life.
The two primary sources for Huineng's life are the preface to the Platform Sutra] and the Transmission of the Lamp.
When various texts are collated we discover that Huineng was born into the Lu family in 638 A.D. in Xinzhou (Xinxing County) in Guangdong province.
His father had been a minor official who was banished to the provinces, where he died when his son was only three. His mother took him to southern China and raised him in poverty. Although he may not have been educated and was in modern terms considered illiterate, he was raised until three without problems. This was an important age for the development of true sensitivity.
Huineng worked throughout his childhood to support his family by cutting wood.
One day when he was a young man, he overheard a man reciting just a phrase from the Diamond Sutra and at once he experienced an initial flash of understanding, which most texts like to garnish with the word "awakening".
With his mother’s permission he left home and devoted himself to religious life. He was twenty-four at this time.
Huineng spent his next years wandering, ending up with a Buddhist nun who was devoted to the Nirvana Sutra. After reciting passages from it one day she asked him to take a turn reading it aloud, only to find that he was unable to read. She asked how he intended to learn Buddha’s truth if he could not read the sutras.
He had already learned that Buddhahood did not depend on words. Amazed at his basic understanding, it was she who suggested that he take up monastic life. At this point he declined.
After three years of meditating in a mountain cave under the instruction of a master of meditation he decided to go and see Hongren. He was about thirty at that time.
So it is clear that he did not go to Hongren as a normal Dharma Novice might, which is the tale which tradition likes to relate.
We now read in the first chapter of the of the Ming canon version of the Platform Sutra, which is of doubtful authenticity:
The Patriarch asked me, "Who are you and what do you seek?" I replied, "Your disciple is a commoner from Xinzhou of Lingnan. I have travelled far to pay homage to you and seek nothing other than Buddhahood."
"So you're from Lingnan, and a barbarian! How can you expect to become a Buddha?" said the Patriarch.
I replied, "Although people exist as northerners and southerners, the Buddha-Nature knows neither North nor South. A barbarian differs from Your Holiness physically, but what difference is there in our Buddha-Nature?"
If we assume a germ of truth to be in this rendering then we would have to say that Huineng BEFORE he arrived at the monastery was clear that there was no difference between individuals. Furthermore, this is unlikely to have been developed from reading the Diamond Sutra, which is not directed at the Buddha Nature but at Vacuity, but rather from his teachings with the Meditation master and the nun.
Huineng's life, then, in a state of illiteracy before his legendary hearing of the Diamond Sutra but not lacking in spiritual knowledge, was that of someone with a balanced view of social justice which must accompany such an idea such as the universality of the Buddha Nature.
We cannot know whether that idea was put into practice or was only an intellectual appreciation.
Assuming some truth in the reports we must also say that his mind was alert and quick, for he was able to recognize the value and subtlety of a single phrase of the Diamond Sutra.
What occurred relative to the legend of the two poems in the monastery has little value even if we were to allow some kernel of truth.
What we require is more information of what happened after his leaving, for that is where the development of his Awakening occurred.
Jorgensen declares in his Inventing Hui-neng, the Sixth Patriarch: Hagiography and Biography in Early Ch’an: "Using the life of Confucius as a template for its structure, Shen-hui invented a hagiography for the then highly obscure Hui-neng. At the same time, Shen-hui forged a lineage of patriarchs of Chan back to the Buddha using ideas from Indian Buddhism and Chinese ancestor worship."
What we can say is that Huineng lived a reclusive life in Sihui and Huaiji for 15 years, aimed at escaping from rival infliction.
In 683, Huineng sent his disciples to build the State Grace Temple. It was in 712 when Huineng passed away in his own home in Xinzhou County at the age of 76. His home town Jicheng Town in Xinxing County was renamed after him as Liuzu (Sixth Patriarch) Town in 2004.
Investigators have shown that "he has been worshiped at South China Abbey for many centuries as if he were still there. Historical records of this worship include evidence from both native and Western sources that it involved for some years processions during which a life-size statue, allegedly a mummy, was carried around."
It is most probable that a strategy developed at some point to dissociate Huineng the holy man
from his local context and assimilate him into a larger discourse of ideological controversy which included false lineage associations.
For this to occur, the reputation of Huineng must have spread far and wide.
Oldberg declared that "he is a luminous instance of the practical outlook of his people on daily problems and even metaphysical questions."
Let us review for a moment Huineng's stay as a recluse in the Nanhua temple, which was founded in 502.
There he taught taught his verses of “Formless Repentance” and offered his own version of the Bodhisattva’s Four Vows:
"The sentient beings of our own minds are numberless, and we vow to save them all. The afflictions of our own minds are limitless, and we vow to eradicate them all. The teachings of our own minds are inexhaustible, and we vow to learn them all. The enlightenment of buddhahood of our own minds is unsurpassable, and we vow to achieve it."
Central to his version was the clear idea that sentient beings are illusions of our own minds, the first truth of illusion... Nevertheless he recommended the vow to save them. That was a central tenet of his own life.
Did this arise from his "Enlightenment" on hearing the one phrase of the Diamond Sutra? He may indeed have been illiterate but this could have been partially true for later he did master the Diamond Sutra and frequently discoursed to his disciples about the other great Sutras of the Mahayana. It was his study of the Diamond Sutra that certainly convinced him of the second of the two truths, that of "Emptiness" or "Vacuity" and prepared his mind for the later truth of "Self-realisation of Mind-essence", which the Lankavatara taught.
The Nanhua Temple History tells us that Huineng meditated here for 36 years before attaining his awakening.
How did he spend those 36 years?
That becomes the central question.
His daily activity was to be immersed in the Benevolent Affect that generated the cult among ordinary people at his death and we find in the temple's Mahayana Hall an eight meter-high lacquered statue of Avalokiteshvara.
Putting the pieces together, we can see that his life was dedicated to true Compassion and Benevolent Affect every day and this was accompanied by his meditations, which could not have been divorced from this.
Let us move now to another area of interest.
Zongmi is recognized as the Master who considered the Awakening of Faith Sūtra as the supreme Buddhist teaching, displacing the Huayan (or Avatamsaka) Sutra.
If we add to this the fact that Zongmi placed himself in the lineage of Huineng through Shenhui -although his practice was not the same as Huineng's and he did not accomplish that particular line of Awakening-, we can conclude that the Awakening of Faith Sutra exemplified Huineng's teachings and way of being. We may also learn the nature of his contemplations.
What do we know after an examination of that Sutra?
Huineng probably quite naturally had adopted the perfection of FAITH, certainly not either through KNOWLEDGE AND PRACTICE or through INTELLECTUAL INTUITION mentioned as alternatives.
Three faculties of the kernel are awakened by the perfection of faith:
(1) rightness of comprehension [lit., right, straight mind], for it truthfully and intuitively contemplates suchness (bhûtatathatâ);
(2) profundity of virtue [lit., deep, heavy mind], for it rejoices in accumulating all good deeds;
(3) greatness of compassion (mahâkarunâ), for it desires to uproot the miseries (duhkha) of all beings.
That was his root of his daily path and is confirmed by the fact that he was revered by ordinary people even after his death.
According to the Awakening of Faith sastra, his path would have been perfected by practising the following five deeds:
(1) charity (dâna);
(2) morality (sîla),
(3) patience (kshânti);
(4) energy (vîrya);
(5) cessation [or tranquilisation, samatha] and intellectual insight (vidarsana orvipasyana).
The first four are natural enough, for they are the Avaivartika points of development, but what about this practice of Samatha and Vipassana?
Like Buddha, he may have practiced the first four Samatha Jhanas as a preparation discipline, but what could his profound practice of Vipassana have been? It was certainly not the Vipassana that we know well. It was the Supramundane Vipassana of Buddha.
In terms of Chan, we can reveal that it was a Contemplation upon Magga (the path) and Phala (the fruit), in other words, the Two Truths.
But it required the perfection of generosity, virtue, patience and energy, with which Huineng was gifted.