4. Since this translation from the Transmission of the Lamp, two Tun-huang MSS. containing the text have come to light. The one is in the Masters and Disciples of the Lanka (Leng-chia Shihtzu Chi), already published, and the other still in MS., which however the present author intends to have reproduced in facsimile before long. They differ in minor points with the translation here given.
1. By Seng-t'san (Sosan in Japanese). Died 606 C.E. Mind = hsin . Hsin is one of those Chinese words which defy translation. When the Indian scholars were trying to translate the Buddhist Sanskrit works into Chinese, they discovered that there were five classes of Sanskrit terms which could not be satisfactorily rendered into Chinese. We thus find in the Chinese Tripitaka such words as prajna, bodhi, buddha, nirvana, dhyana, bodhisattva, etc., almost always untranslated; and they now appear in their original Sanskrit form among the technical Buddhist terminology. If we could leave hsin with all its nuance of meaning in this translation, it would save us from the many difficulties that face us in its English rendering. For hsin means “mind”, “heart”, “soul”, “spirit”—each singly as well as all inclusively. In the present composition by the third patriarch of Zen, it has sometimes an intellectual connotation but at other times it can properly be given as “heart”. But as the predominant note of Zen Buddhism is more intellectual than anything else, though not in the sense of being logical or philosophical, I decided here to translate hsin by “mind” rather than by “heart”, and by this mind I do not mean our psychological mind, but what may be called absolute mind, or Mind.
2. This means: When the absolute oneness of things is not properly understood, negation as well as affirmation tends to be a one-sided view of reality. When Buddhists deny the reality of an objective world, they do not mean that they believe in the unconditioned emptiness of things; they know that there is something real which cannot be done away with. When they uphold the doctrine of emptiness this does not mean that all is nothing but an empty hollow, which leads to a self-contradiction. The philosophy of Zen avoids the error of one-sidedness involved in realism as well as in nihilism.
3. The Mind = the Way = the One = Emptiness.
4. The Masters and Disciples of the Lanka also quotes a poetical composition of So- san on “The Mysterious” in which we find the following echoing the idea given expression here:
“One Reality only— How deep and far-reaching! The ten thousand things— How confusingly multifarious! The true and the conventional are indeed intermingling, But essentially of the same substance they are. The wise and the unenlightened are indeed distinguishable, But in the Way they are united as one. Desirest thou to find its limits? How broadly expanding! It is limitless! How vaguely it vanishes away! Its ends are never reached! It originates in beginningless time, it terminates in endless time.” 1. The Tun-huang copy, edited by D. T. Suzuki, 1934. Hui-neng = Yeno, 637–712.
2. The text has “the Prajnaparamita Sutra” here. But I take it to mean Prajna itself instead of the sutra.
3. The text has the “body”, while the Koshoji edition and the current one have “mind”.
4. The title literally reads: “the true-false moving-quiet”. “True” stands against “false” and “moving” against “quiet” and as long as there is an opposition of any kind, no true spiritual insight is possible. And this insight does not grow from a quietistic exercise of meditation.
5. That is, the Absolute refuses to divide itself into two: that which sees and that which is seen.
6. “Moving” means “dividing” or “limiting”. When the absolute moves, a dualistic interpretation of it takes place, which is consciousness.
7. Chih, jnana in Sanskrit, is used in contradistinction to Prajna which is the highest form of knowledge, directly seeing into the Immovable or the Absolute.
1. Yoka Daishi (died 713, Yung-chia Ta-shih, in Chinese), otherwise known as Gengaku (Hsuan-chiao), was one of the chief disciples of Hui-neng, the sixth patriarch of Zen Buddhism. Before he was converted to Zen he was a student of the T'ien-tai. His interview with Hui-neng is recorded in the Tan-ching. He died in 713 leaving a number of short works on Zen philosophy, and of them the present composition in verse is the most popular one. The Original title reads: Cheng-tao Ke, “realization-way-song”.
2. The fivefold eye-sight (cakshus): (1) Physical, (2) Heavenly, (3) Prajna-, (4) Dharma-, and (5) Buddha-eye.
3. The fivefold power (bala): (1) Faith, (2) Energy, (3) Memory, (4) Meditation, and (5) Prajna.
4. (1) The Dharma-body, (2) the Body of Enjoyment, and (3) the Body of Transformation.
