The Zen Teachings of Huang Po: On the Transmission of Mind pt 2

**P'ei Hsiu’s Preface **

The work itself starts with a preface from the author, P’ei Hsiu. I think it is worth looking a little in P’ei Hsiu’s background as the Huang Po’s teachings come to us as captured and interpreted by P’ei Hsiu. I consulted Bing Chat to get a little background.

P’ei Hsiu was born in the year 787 or 797 CE in the Tang dynasty. He came from a prominent family of officials and scholars, and he was well-educated in the classics, history, and poetry. He passed the imperial examination at a young age and began his career as a civil servant. He rose through the ranks and held various positions, such as minister of rites, minister of state, and governor of several provinces. He was loyal to the Tang dynasty and tried to reform the corrupt and decadent government. He also supported the suppression of rebellions and foreign invasions. P’ei Hsiu was a devout practitioner of Zen, and he praised Huang Po’s teachings for being direct, profound, and free from conceptual thought. He also described his own experience of enlightenment under Huang Po’s guidance. He is most famous for this work and the preface he wrote for it.

He was also a friend and admirer of Han Shan, a legendary poet who lived in seclusion on Cold Mountain. P’ei Hsiu visited Han Shan several times and collected his poems, which are now regarded as classics of Chinese literature. P’EI HSIU also wrote poems himself, expressing his insights on Zen and his feelings for his friends. P’ei Hsiu died in the year 860 CE at the age of 73 or 83. He was buried in his hometown of Fuzhou with a simple tombstone that bore his name and his Buddhist name, Chih-yuan. He left behind a legacy of writings that influenced the development of Zen Buddhism and Chinese culture.

As P’ei Hsiu’s preface is fairly short, and it is what he is most famous for (at least according to the AI bots), I include it here in its entirety:

The great Zen Master Hsi Yun lived below the Vulture Peak on Mount Huang Po, [From which he takes his posthumous name] in the district of Kao An which forms part of the prefecture of Hung Chou [In the modern province of Kiangsi]. He was third in the direct line of descent from Hui Neng, [Wei Lang] the Sixth Patriarch, and the pupil of a fellow-disciple of Hui Hai. Holding in esteem only the intuitive method of the Highest Vehicle, which cannot be communicated in words, he taught nothing but the doctrine of the One Mind; holding that there is nothing else to teach, in that both mind and substance are void and that the chain of causation is motionless. Mind is like the sun journeying through the sky and emitting glorious light uncontaminated by the finest particle of dust. To those who have realized the nature of Reality, there is nothing old or new, and conceptions of shallowness and depth are meaningless. Those who speak of it do not attempt to explain it, establish no sects and open no doors or windows. That which is before you is it. Begin to reason about it and you will at once fall into error. Only when you have understood this will you perceive your oneness with the original Buddha-nature. Therefore his words were simple, his reasoning direct, his way of life exalted and his habits unlike the habits of other men.

Disciples hastened to him from all quarters, looking up to him as to a lofty mountain, and through their contact with him awoke to Reality. Of the crowds which flocked to see him, there were always more than a thousand with him at a time.

In the second year of Hui Ch'ang (A.D. 843), when I was in charge of the district of Chung Lin, I welcomed him on his coming to that city from the mountain where he resided. We stayed together in the Lung Hsing Monastery where, day and night, I questioned him about the Way. Moreover, in the second year of T'ai Chung (A.D. 849), while governing the district of Wan Ling, I again had occasion to welcome him ceremoniously to the place where I was stationed. This time we stayed quietly at the K'ai Yuan Monastery, where also I studied under him day and night. After leaving him, I recorded what I had learnt and, though able to set down only about a fifth of it, I esteem it as a direct transmission of the Doctrine. At first I was diffident about publishing what I had written; but now, fearing that these vital and penetrating teachings will be lost to future generations, I have done so. Moreover, I gave the manuscript to the monks T'ai Chou and Fa Chien, requesting them to return to the Kuang T'ang Monastery on the old mountainland to ask the elder monks there how far it agrees with what they themselves used frequently to hear in the past.

Written on the eighth day of the tenth moon of the eleventh year of T'ai Chung (A.D. 858) of the T'ang Dynasty

A couple of thoughts I had while reading that. First, it is a nice description of Huang Po’s teachings, but we’ll get to that in more depth in the text itself. Second, the existence of this work is interesting in and of itself. Huang Po was apparently not above politics, as P’ei Hsiu describes various ceremonial visits he had with him, as if it was in his official capacity as a government representative that he came into contact with Huang Po. I doubt this is in anyway unusual, but a lot of people have this image of the old masters as cantankerous adepts living alone in the woods, where in fact Huang Po understood there was some value or necessity in playing along in the game of politics at the time. Even going so far as to take P’ei Hsiu in for direct teaching (P’ei Hsiu saying at least on two occasions he studied with or questioned Huang Po “day and night”). Huang Po likely understood his teaching were being recorded as part of this and at least tacitly consented to that fact. Similarly, the final thought I had was the description of Huang Po as a teacher. Again, in contrast to the common perception of masters isolated on some mountain, P’ei Hsiu describes Huang Po as surrounded by “crowds” of “always more than a thousand” at a time. Huang Po was a man running a large and successful monastery, he had contacts with government officials and new how to play that game, so he was not some otherwordly figure who isolated himself and pursued his own practice single-mindedly. Not to say that any of this is bad or wrong, but I think there is a tendency to lionize these old masters to make them mythical figures who are “above it all.” The reality, at least from P’ei Hsiu who actually knew Huang Po, is a bit more nuanced.