Yuquan Shenxiu
Yuquan Shenxiu
c. 606 – c. 706
Yuquan Shenxiu (玉泉神秀, c. 606–706) was the senior disciple of the Fifth Patriarch Daman Hongren and the most prominent Chan teacher of his generation. Patronised by Empress Wu Zetian and her successors, he served as a *guóshī* (National Teacher) at the Tang court in Chang'an and Luoyang and received imperial honours on a scale unmatched by any other Chan teacher of his era[1]. The verse attributed to him in the *Platform Sūtra* — "The body is the Bodhi-tree, the mind is a bright mirror; constantly polish it, let no dust alight" — is read in that text as the gradual-cultivation foil for Huineng's sudden-awakening response[2].
Modern scholarship since John McRae's *The Northern School and the Formation of Early Ch'an Buddhism* has substantially complicated the standard later-tradition portrait of Shenxiu as the loser in the Sudden / Gradual debate: his surviving teachings, recovered in part from the Dunhuang manuscripts, articulate a sophisticated doctrine of "viewing the mind" (*guānxīn*) that is not reducible to mere gradual cultivation, and his northern school was the dominant institutional form of Chan throughout the early eighth century until it was eclipsed by Heze Shenhui's polemic[3].
Names
Disciples of Yuquan Shenxiu
Teachers and lineage of Yuquan Shenxiu
Teacher / root master:
Teachings
The body is the bodhi tree, the mind is like a bright mirror stand. At all times we must strive to polish it, and must not let dust alight.
- sermonOn Gradual Cultivation
Shenxiu instructed his students: "All deluded thoughts are dust. When dust does not arise, that is the original radiance. You must not allow the dust of deluded thinking to cover the mirror of mind. Therefore I say: at all times, keep polishing. Do not think this effort is in opposition to the sudden teaching. The sudden and the gradual do not fight each other—the sudden is the destination, the gradual is the road. Who reaches the destination without walking the road?"
- sayingWatch the Mind
Shenxiu's essential teaching was summarized in four characters: "Watch the mind" (kanxin). He taught: "Watching the mind does not mean looking at something. It means recognizing the one who looks. Rest in that recognition. This is the gate of liberation."
Other masters in Early Chan
Master Record Sources
c. 606-706
Yuquan Shenxiu
Qingyuan line
- datesZen Editorial Overlay - Originals Curation
c. 606-706
- nameZen Editorial Overlay - Originals Curation
Yuquan Shenxiu
- teachersZen Editorial Overlay - Originals Curation
Daman Hongren