Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch (Liùzǔ Tánjīng)

Text

The only Chinese text outside the imported Indian canon to be called a sūtra. Framed as Huineng's autobiography and sermons at Dafan-si, surviving in a Dunhuang manuscript (~780 CE) and a longer Yuan-dynasty redaction. It establishes the Southern School's signature teachings — sudden awakening, the inseparability of meditation and wisdom, and the seeing of one's own nature — and is the single most influential Chan text after the canonical sūtras.

tr. Philip B. Yampolsky, The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch, Columbia University Press 1967

license: fair_use

Original language

Attribution

• Attributed To
  Dajian Huineng

Lineage: Early Chan

By Dajian Huineng

• A Beardless Foreignerkoan
• Do Not Think Good, Do Not Think Not-Goodkoan
• Not The Wind, Not The Flagkoan
• Your Original Faceproverb
• It Is Your Mind That Movesproverb

From Platform Sūtra

• The Bright Mirror Verse
• Your Original Face
• It Is Your Mind That Moves
• Platform Sutra: On Self-Nature
• Platform Sutra: No-Thought, No-Form, No-Abiding
• The Robe and Bowl Transmission to Huineng
• Think Neither Good Nor Evil
• Platform Sūtra (Goddard, A Buddhist Bible, 1932) — selected chapters
• Platform Sūtra (Wong Mou-Lam, 1930) — selected chapters
• platform-sutra-zongbao

Sources

• contentThe Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch — Philip Yampolsky translation, 1967

  Philip Yampolsky (trans.)

  Translator's introduction

  The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch is one of the most popular and influential of Zen texts. It purports to record sermons given by the great Chan master Huineng at the Dafan temple in Shaozhou.