The Zen Teachings of Huang Po: On the Transmission of Mind pt 1

I began reading “The Zen Teaching of Huang Po: On the Transmission of Mind” translated by John Blofeld and published in 2007. I made it about half way through a different translation a few years ago, but thought I’d give it another go for the sake of content for discussion. My intention is to post summaries, selections, and thoughts as I go. You can find PDF’s of this book fairly easily online, but I won’t point to them directly for fear of angering the copyright gods. I am using an ebook copy I obtained through my local library.

We’ll start at the beginning, with the translator’s introduction. He gives a good summary of Zen’s history and his own understanding of Zen. If you reading this are a true begginer, the whole introduction is worth reading for historical context. Here is how the translator describes Huang Po’s place in the Zen tradition:

The most important of the Sixth Patriarch's successors was Ma Tsu (Tao I) who died in A.D. 788. Huang Po, variously regarded as one or two generations junior to him, seems to have died as late as 850, after transmitting the Wordless Doctrine to I Hsuan the founder of the great Lin Chi (Rinzai) Sect which still continues in China and flourishes widely in Japan. So Huang Po is in some sense regarded as the founder of this great Branch. Like all Chinese monks, he had several names, being known in his lifetime as Master Hsi Yun and as Master T'uan Chi; his posthumous name is taken from that of Mount Huang Po where he resided for many years. In Japan he is generally known as Obaku, which is the Japanese way of pronouncing the Chinese characters for Huang Po.

Throughout the work, Huang Po uses the term “Mind.” Here is the translator’s take on Huang Po’s use of that specific work. I think this is worth including given how central “mind” is to the writing.

The text indicates that Huang Po was not entirely satisfied with his choice of the word 'Mind' to symbolize the inexpressible Reality beyond the reach of conceptual thought, for he more than once explains that the One Mind is not really MIND at all. But he had to use some term or other and 'Mind' had often been used by his predecessors. As Mind conveys intangibility, it no doubt seemed to him a good choice, especially as the use of this term helps to make it clear that the part of a man usually regarded as an individual entity inhabiting his body is, in fact, not his property at all but common to him and to everybody and everything else. (It must be remembered that, in Chinese, 'hsin' means not only 'mind', but 'heart' and, in some senses at least 'spirit' or 'soul'--in short, the so-called REAL man, the inhabitant of the body-house.) If we prefer to substitute the word 'Absolute', which Huang Po occasionally uses himself, we must take care not to read into the text any preconceived notions as to the nature of the Absolute. And, of course 'the One Mind' is no less misleading, unless we abandon all preconceived ideas, as Huang Po intended.

In an earlier translation of the first part of this book, I ventured to substitute 'Universal Mind' for 'the One Mind', hoping that the meaning would be clearer. However, various critics objected to this, and I have come to see that my term is liable to a different sort of misunderstanding; it is therefore no improvement on 'the One Mind , which at least has the merit of being a literal translation

Next, the translator discusses what Huang Po had to say about meditation, which wasn’t much in terms of instruction. The translator states that Huang Po would have assumed his audience would be “keen Buddhists” and not have much need for more than the tips Huang Po offers throughout. The translator also has a nice metaphor for enlightenment, which is boiling water. You heat the water and it gets hotter and hotter, that is practice, then in an instant it boils. No matter how hot the water gets, it’s not boiling until it boils.

Our translator then spends some time apologizing for Huang Po, insisting that he likely did not actually dislike other Buddhist secta, but just was convinced that his way was the best and most efficient. Interestingly, the author calls out, by using Huang Po, secta that emphasize good works and karmic merit for living otherwise selfish lives. The translator also insists that Huang Po understood the necessity of the teachings and scriptures to get to the place where one is ready for the most important teaching of mind-control. Again, his audience on his mountain would have been well versed in the teachings before even thinking it was worth coming to learn from him. For good measure, our translator defends Pure Land Buddhism and Lamaism.

The rest of the introduction address some translation and organizational concepts, and there are a few words on the author, P’ei Hsiu being a great scholar of the day and so forth.