The King Tests the Third Patriarch

Text

King Trần Minh Tông, wishing to know whether Huyền Quang's meditative realization was genuine, arranged for a beautiful court woman to approach the master late at night and attempt to disturb his equanimity. She came, sang, and offered wine. Huyền Quang sat unmoved and composed a verse: 'The lotus grows from the muddy pond yet no mud clings to the flower. The monk dwells among the ten thousand affairs yet no affair enters the mind.' When the king received the verse and the report that the master had neither risen nor spoken beyond the verse, he came himself to prostrate before Huyền Quang and said: 'Forgive my test. I understand now that the third patriarch of Trúc Lâm is genuine.' Huyền Quang said: 'Every moment is a test, Your Majesty. I am grateful for yours — it gave me a verse.'

license: public_domain

Attribution

• Speaker
  Huyền Quang

Lineage: Trúc Lâm

By Huyền Quang

• The Autumn Pondverse

From Thiền Uyển Tập Anh (Anthology of the Garden of Vietnamese Zen)

• On the Impermanence of Dynasties
• The Illusory Nature of Power
• Verse Composed in Vietnamese (Chữ Nôm)
• The Duty of the National Preceptor
• On Receiving the Succession
• The Dharma Is Not Separate from Mind
• Silent Transmission

Sources

• contentCuong Tu Nguyen — medieval Vietnamese Buddhism scholarship

  Cuong Tu Nguyen

  Thiền Uyển Tập Anh, Huyền Quang section; Đại Việt sử ký toàn thư, Trần period; after Cuong Tu Nguyen (1997), pp. 156–175, on the famous test of Huyền Quang's realization

  Thiền Uyển Tập Anh (Anthology of the Garden of Vietnamese Zen): The King Tests the Third Patriarch