{"collection":"Sacred Texts: Buddhism","full_text_available":false,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/sacred_texts_v1_bud_bb_bb32_htm/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/sacred_texts_v1_bud_bb_bb32_htm","id":"sacred_texts_v1_bud_bb_bb32_htm","license":"unknown_pending_legal_review","rights_basis":"sacred_texts_v1_preview_gate_primary_text_only; acquisition-method/ToS and compilation-copyright questions still open, not resolved by this gate","source":"sacred_texts_v1","source_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/bud/bb/bb32.htm","summary":"This is an excerpt from a classical Chan (Zen) Buddhist text, likely a translation of the Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch, recounting episodes from the life of Hui-neng, the founder of the Southern School of Chan. The central content contrasts two competing approaches to Buddhist practice: the \"Gradual\" method of Shin-shau's Northern School \u2014 emphasizing disciplinary rules, seated meditation, and incremental purification \u2014 against Hui-neng's \"Sudden Enlightenment\" teaching, which holds that awakening arises spontaneously from direct recognition of one's own Mind-essence rather than through prescribed techniques. The text dramatizes this difference through the encounter with Chi-shing, a spy sent by Shin-shau who is converted on the spot: Hui-neng argues that imposing fixed postures, rituals of purity, or systematic dhyana frameworks are obstacles rather than aids for the most advanced practitioners. A distinctive claim is that truly realized persons need no system at all \u2014 Sila, Dhyana, and Prajna are reframed not as practices but as intrinsic qualities of Mind-essence itself, already complete and requiring no cultivation. The text also includes a dramatic assassination-attempt subplot, in which Hui-neng disarms a hired attacker through psychic foreknowledge and forgiveness, converting him into a devoted monk. Taken together, the passages argue for the superiority of immediate, non-conceptual awakening over scholastic or ritualistic gradual paths, while framing Hui-neng's authority as both spiritually self-evident and legitimized by the Fifth Patriarch's transmission.","tags":["Dwight Goddard","Taoism and Zen","Zen Buddhism"],"text":null,"title":"A Buddhist Bible: Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch: Chapter V...","tradition":"Sacred Texts: Buddhism","translated_text":null,"word_count":2114}