Sublime

The division of the text into thirty-two chapters was the work of Prince Chao-ming (501-531), who was the eldest son of Emperor Wu of the Liang dynasty. This was the same Emperor Wu who asked a visiting Indian monk named Bodhidharma what merit he acquired as a result of all his religious philanthropy. The Zen patriarch told him, “None.” Ironically,

The importance of this, which is repeated over and over in these and similar words, was not lost on Suzuki, who noted, “The Lankavatara has come to see that the whole of the Buddhist life is not merely in seeing into the truth, but in living it, experiencing it.” (Studies in the Lankavatara Sutra, pg. 105)

Chögyam Trungpa emphasized a different aspect of the mahayana.26 Instead of using logical argument, he stressed compassion as an experience that arises when the struggle to maintain the fiction of ego ceases. It is an acceptance and a feeling of trust that spreads and radiates naturally toward others: “In the mahayana tradition we experience a sens

the Lankavatara sees this as the long way around and simply denies that anything arises in the first place. Arising is a delusion. Nothing arises. The relevance of the Buddha’s discussion of dharmas and non-dharmas at the end of Chapter One becomes clearer now.

Ma-tsu had another notable disciple in Po-chang (720–814), who is said to have organized the first purely Zen community of monks and to have laid down its regulations on the principle that “a day of no working is a day of no eating.” Since his time a strong emphasis on manual work and some degree of self-support has been characteristic of Zen commu

Here is one of the main links between Taoism and Zen, for the style and terminology of the Book of Chao is Taoist throughout though the subject matter is Buddhist. The sayings of the early Zen masters, such as Hui-neng, Shen-hui, and Huang-po, are full of these very ideas-that truly to know is not to know, that the awakened mind responds immediatel

too, a favorite theme of Zen artists. But the main importance of this sutra for China and for Zen was the point that perfect awakening was consistent with the affairs of everyday life, and that, indeed, the highest attainment was to “enter into awakening without exterminating the defilements [klesa].” There was an appeal here to both the Confucian