Reading Seiran Ouchi's "Lectures on the Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch" (Part 1: Lineage-07 Preaching to Huiming)
[Text of the Platform Sutra Lectures]
The disciples of the Fifth Patriarch, realizing that the Master had entrusted his robe and Dharma to Huineng, the rice-pounder, pursued him to take back the robe and bowl. Among them was a monk named Huiming, who ran ahead of the others and was about to catch up with the Sixth Patriarch. Seeing this, the Sixth Patriarch placed the robe and bowl on a rock and said, 'This robe is merely a symbol of faith; if you want to take it, take it.' He then went and hid in the thicket to watch secretly. According to the Transmission of the Lamp, this section says,
When Huiming tried to take the kasaya from the rock, it would not move. He then called out, 'I came seeking the Dharma, not the kasaya.' Upon this, the Sixth Patriarch emerged and sat on the rock. Huiming bowed and asked for instruction. The Sixth Patriarch preached, saying first, 'You must put an end to all conditions and not give rise to a single thought.' 'All conditions' refers to everything we see, hear, stand, or sit; all conditions arise from discrimination. To leave discrimination behind, to let things be according to conditions, to follow the environment without using one's own discrimination, and to have no place of attachment is what is called 'putting an end to conditions.' It does not mean to separately exclude or extinguish all conditions. If you go one step too far, you will fall into the small-minded view of 'extinguishing the body and destroying the intellect.' 'When practicing zazen, look at the people coming and going on the bridge of four or five spans as if they were mountain trees,' and you must have no attachment. Then, if you take one step further, you can practice zazen while seeing 'people coming and going as people coming and going,' and you can attain a state where all phenomena are clear and distinct. 'A long silence' sometimes refers to keeping one's mouth shut, and sometimes it refers to something like Vimalakirti's silence. Here, it refers to Huiming being stunned and losing himself. The Sixth Patriarch then described the state of putting an end to all conditions and not giving rise to a single thought, saying, 'Do not think of good, do not think of evil.' Because we discriminate between good and evil, right and wrong, and self and others, we give rise to thoughts of love and hate, liking and disliking, and our true nature becomes obscured. Therefore, if you do not think of good and do not think of evil, and when you have left discrimination behind, your true nature—that is, your original face—will be revealed. In other words, when your original face is revealed, there is nothing to think of as good and nothing to think of as evil; it is beyond good and evil, with neither this nor that.
Hearing the Sixth Patriarch's sermon, Huiming was suddenly enlightened. However, when he asked again if there was any other secret teaching inherited from the Fifth Patriarch beyond what he had just heard, the Sixth Patriarch said, 'What I have just stated is not a secret at all. If you reflect and look within, the secret is within you. You should know that it is not something that can be transmitted from another person.' 'Reflecting' is a vital term, and it has the same meaning as 'turning back' or 'taking a step back.' It means 'going backward,' and the 'return to the source' in Shin Buddhism is also this matter. Dogen Zenji often used the term 'taking a step back,' saying, 'One should learn the learning of taking a step back.' Saying 'take one step forward from the top of a hundred-foot pole' also has this meaning of turning back.
Huiming, having received the instruction, could not contain his joy. 'I have been at the Fifth Patriarch's assembly at Huangmei for years, studying and searching, but I have not yet attained peace of mind. I only sought the Way from others and did not notice my own original face in the slightest. Now, having received your guidance, I have realized my own nature, just as one who drinks water knows for himself whether it is cold or warm.' (To know for oneself whether it is cold or warm means to know it through actual experience. No matter how much you explain heat to someone who does not know it, they will not understand. If you want to make them realize it, touch them with a burning fire poker; then they will know the actual experience of its heat.) 'I wish to revere you as my teacher,' he said. The Sixth Patriarch replied, 'If you think so, then you and I shall both take the Fifth Patriarch as our teacher. Protect and maintain this well.' 'Protect and maintain' is something we Buddhists must observe together. The ancients also said, 'Succession is a great difficulty,' and the most important and difficult task lies in protecting and maintaining this True Dharma. Exert yourself, exert yourself.
The passage 'If you meet Yuan, stop; if you meet Meng, stay,' which mimics the Fifth Patriarch's tone, is undoubtedly a later fabrication.
It is said that when the Sixth Patriarch arrived at Caoxi, he was again chased by evil people, avoided danger in Si-hui, and joined a group of hunters, working as a net-watcher for fifteen years. As Master Tenkei says, the forty-one characters starting from 'At that time, the hunters...' should not be trusted. If he were preaching to hunters, it would be no surprise that people would be suspicious. Furthermore, there would be no hunter who would let someone who sees life and releases it all (the original text says 'all') work as a net-watcher. This is a clumsy fabrication by later ignorant people; like trying to draw a tiger and ending up with a dog, it is an attempt that turns into a blunder and should be struck out.