Zen Teaching of Instantaneous Awakening: being the teaching of the Zen Master Hui Hai, known as the Great Pearl - Softcover

Hui Hai

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0946672032 ISBN 13: 9780946672035

Publisher: Buddhist Publishing Group, 2015

Synopsis

Zen teaching of instantaneous awakening: A complete translation of the teaching of the Chinese Ch'an Master Hui Hai by John Blofeld, with a foreword by Charles Luk

This eighth-century classic is a complete translation of Hui Hai’s teachings.

Hui Hai, was one of the great Ch'an (Zen) Masters. He was a contemporary of both Ma Tsu and Huang Po, those early masters who established Ch'an after the death of Hui Neng, the sixth Patriarch.

Hui Hai's direct teachings point immediately to this moment of truth and awakening, and the message of this classic eighth-century text is universal and timeless.

About this title

About the Authors

Hui Hai, was one of the great Ch'an (Zen) Masters. He was a contemporary of both Ma Tsu and Huang Po, those early masters who established Ch'an after the death of Hui Neng, the Sixth Patriarch. Hui Hai's direct teachings point immediately to this moment of truth and awakening, and the message of this classic eighth-century text is universal and timeless.

John Blofeld, a noted Buddhist author and translator was one of the very few Englishmen to experience life in Chinese Buddhist temples and monasteries at first hand before the Communist revolution. His love of China and knowledge of Buddhism enabled him to translate the texts with feeling and insight.

From the Back Cover

Zen teaching of instantaneous awakening

A complete translation of the teaching of the Chinese Ch'an Master Hui Hai by John Blofeld, with a foreword by Charles Luk Hui Hai, was one of the great Ch'an (Zen) Masters. He was a contemporary of both Ma Tsu and Huang Po, those early masters who established Ch'an after the death of Hui Neng, the Sixth Patriarch. Hui Hai's direct teachings point immediately to this moment of truth and awakening, and the message of this classic eighth-century text is universal and timeless.

When things happen, make no response: keep your minds from dwelling on anything whatsoever: keep them for ever still as the void and utterly pure (without stain): and thereby spontaneously attain de­liverance.

John Blofeld, a noted Buddhist author and translator was one of the very few Englishmen to experience life in Chinese Buddhist temples and monasteries at first hand before the Communist revolution. His love of China and knowledge of Buddhism enabled him to translate the texts with feeling and insight.

This supremely important Zen work has been an inspiration throughout the ages and continues to be so up to the present day.

From the Inside Flap

The ancients had their unexcelled ways of teaching which seem strange to the people of this modern age of materialism, not only in the West but also in the East. For the human mind is now more concerned with material than with spiritual values; it seeks only the satisfaction of its ever-increasing desires -- though these are the very cause of our sufferings -- and it casts away `its own treasure house', which is its paradise of eternal bliss. So long as we allow our minds to discriminate and to grasp at illusions, the ancient teaching will seem strange, even stupid and silly, to us. However, if we succeed in disengaging our minds from externals -- that is if we stop all our discrimi­nating and discerning -- the profundity of that teaching will become apparent to us, for it inculcates not only theory but also that practice which will give immediate results in the sphere of reality; for a teaching cannot be regarded as complete unless it gives the practical method of reaching the ultimate goal. When the Great Pearl preached his Dharma of Instan­taneous Awakening, he taught its doctrine, its aim, its substance and its function; thus his teaching consists not only of the right interpretation and correct under­standing of theory but also of the practical realization of substance and function, which are the two essentials of complete enlightenment. In other words, he taught the right Dharma which is immanent in everyone and which does not come from outside.

The Master's numerous quotations from Mahayana sutras, together with his unsurpassed interpretations and comments, show that all great masters read the whole Tripi­taka before or after their enlightenment, and refutes the unjustifiable contention that sutras can be dispensed with in the Transmission of Mind introduced into China by the Twenty-Eighth Patriarch, Bodhidharma.

The Great Pearl urged his listeners not to let their minds abide anywhere and at the same time to keep from illusory non­abiding, so that a state of all-pervading purity and clean­ness would appear of itself. And even this pure state should not be clung to, in order to release the mind from all remaining relativities and thereby attain realization of the `patient endurance of the uncreate' (anutpattikadharma­kshanti) which is an essential condition of complete enlight­en­ment. Thus, his instruction followed exactly the same pattern of the Dharma as laid down by the Buddha who said in the Sutra of Complete Enlightenment that his disciples should keep themselves again and again from all illusions, including the illusory idea of keeping from them, so as to wipe out all traces of subject and object until nothing further remained to be avoided--for only then could bodhi appear in full.

Therefore, Part One of this book gives the Maha­yana instruction for self-realization of mind, for perception of self-nature and consequent attainment of Buddhahood. And Part Two contains the dialogues between the Great Pearl and those who came to him for instruction. If we seriously follow this teaching and practise self-cultivation, beginning with the mind as the starting point, there is every possibility that we shall succeed in reaching the same mental states as those described by the Great Pearl in his twenty-eight-line gatha.

Charles Luk
(Upasaka Lu K'uan Yü)
Hong Kong

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Excerpt from the first chapter: The Essential Gateway to Truth by Means of Instantaneous Awakening

Q:What method must we practise in order to attain deliverance?

A:It can be attained only through a sudden illumination.

Q:What is a sudden illumination?

A:`Sudden' means ridding yourselves of deluded thoughts instantaneously. `Illumination' means the realiz­ation that illumination is not something to be attained.

Q:From where do we start this practice?

A:You must start from the very root.

Q:And what is that?

A:Mind is the root.

Q:Please describe dhyana and samadhi.

A:When wrong thinking ceases, that is dhyana; when you sit contemplating your original nature, that is samadhi, for indeed that original nature is your eternal mind. By samadhi, you withdraw your minds from their surround­ings, thereby making them impervious to the eight winds, that is to say, impervious to gain and loss, calumny and eulogy, praise and blame, sorrow and joy. By concentrating in this way, even ordinary people may enter the state of Buddhahood. How can that be so? The Sutra of the Bodhisattva-Precepts says: `All beings who observe the Buddha-precept thereby enter Buddhahood.' Other names for this are `deliverance', `gaining the further shore', `transcending the six states of mortal being', `o'erleaping the three worlds', or `becoming a mighty Bodhisattva, an omnipotent sage, a conqueror'!

Edition details

• Publisher: Buddhist Publishing Group
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0946672032
• ISBN 13: 9780946672035
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 188