Buddhism traces its origins back to India, but it is generally considered to have arrived in China around the year 100, having attracted a sizeable following of religious and spiritual adherents just 200 years later (Wills, 1994). Like all religions, the history of Buddhism can be approached by understanding its different movements and schools rather than approaching it as a topic that is purely one-dimensional.

When Buddhism took root in China, differences in spiritual emphasis and practice emerged between northern China and southern China. Both schools strived toward the achievement of enlightenment, which is defined as the process of becoming “fully conscious of the Buddha Mind of compassion and undivided wisdom that has always been present in the individual’s own mind but has been obscured by the illusions and clingings of ordinary life” (Wills, 1994, p. 117). Nonetheless, each school of Buddhism conceptualized the approaches leading to enlightenment in different ways. The northern school of Buddhism favored a view of enlightenment that was gradual; enlightenment could only be attained through a devoted meditation practice sustained over time (Gregory, 1987). The southern school of Buddhism, in contrast, fully believed that the attainment of “sudden enlightenment” was entirely possible (McRae, 2003, p. 57). In fact, one of the southern school’s most important figures, Hui-neng, was himself enlightened unexpectedly. In short, however, despite the fact that these two subsets developed into and remained part of one religion, these fundamental differences between them are key to a complex understanding of this multifarious religion.

Almost everything about Hui-neng and his precepts, it seems, was distinct from the traditional practice of Buddhism that supported the paradigm of “progressive development toward complete understanding” (McRae, 2003, p. 57). In a way, Hui-neng was a religious radical, though not so much by his intent as by his experience, much of which was seemingly beyond his own control. Hui-neng was born to a family that experienced a fair share of trials and tribulations (Wills, 1994). Hui-neng’s father had been a government official, but was relieved of his position in the north and sent into exile in the south (Wills, 1994). Once there, Hui-neng’s father died almost immediately, leaving his wife to raise Hui-neng (Wills, 1994). The mother and son lived in abject poverty and tried to make a living by selling firewood. It is unclear whether Hui-neng was formally educated; various scholars indicate that he was, at the very least, functionally illiterate (Wills, 1994). One day, when Hui-neng was making a delivery of firewood to an official residence, he happened upon a man who was chanting the Diamond Sutra, and listening to the sutra, Hui-neng described the experience of becoming enlightened immediately (Wills, 1994).

After this occurred, Hui-neng was brought before Hong Ren, the Fifth Patriarch of Chan, the line of Chinese Buddhist patriarchs, to describe his experience. As is often the case in the beginning phases of a master-student relationship, Hong Ren asked Hui-neng a question that seemed intended to test Hui-neng’s grace and temper, and that was “how a ‘barbarian’ from the far south could expect to become enlightened” (Wills, 1994, p. 121). Hong Ren was suitably impressed with Hui-neng’s response, which was that while their bodies differed, their Buddha nature was the same. Quietly and unobtrusively, Hong Ren began grooming Hui-neng to become the next Patriarch, though he did not indicate as much either to Hui-neng nor to his other students and followers, who he feared would be jealous and would seek to undermine Hui-neng’s succession. Instead, Hong Ren sent Hui-neng to “work in the monastery’s threshing room for the next eight months” (Wills, 1994, p. 121), and held poem writing and declaration contests to study the wisdom and comprehension of the other young monks. Although Hui-neng could not write, he was able to have a colleague pen his poetic wisdom, which was conveyed to Hong Ren. In secret, Hong Ren conferred the transmission of the “Teaching and Bodhidharma’s robe,” the symbol of the Chan patriarch, (Heine, 2000; Wills, 1994, p. 122) upon Hui-neng, who was not even ordained as a monk. This act made him the Sixth Patriarch (Heine, 2000; Heine & Wright, 2004; Wills, 1994). In fact, as Wills (1994) points out, it would be many more years before he would be formally ordained, and when this did occur, it too was almost by accident, or at least, without intention. This fact underscores Hui-neng’s unusual ascension and enlightenment processes, which only foreshadowed the ways in which he would transform Chan Buddhism.

As many scholars have noted, Hui-neng was hardly the paragon of spiritual enlightenment. He has been described as “the brilliant but uneducated sixth patriarch” (Heine & Wright, 2004, p. 118), and as “total[ly] lack[ing] the conventional accoutrements of [a] spiritually gifted person” (Heine, 2000, p. 68). Nonetheless, Heine (2000) also suggests that Hui-neng had a certain “intuitive genius” (p. 68) that led both to his enlightenment and to his designation as the sixth patriarch. This intuitive genius also shaped his teachings, which were presented and summarized in the Platform Sutra, and because they were delivered by an unusual messenger, their impact may have been greater than would have been the case with a more traditional Buddhist master and teacher. The teachings of the Platform Sutra were significant for a number of reasons. First, they served to assertively distinguish the mode of enlightenment viewed by the southern school as an equally likely and legitimate path as that espoused by the northern school. In fact, Wills (1994) contends that Hui-neng’s most significant contribution to Chan Buddhism was the insistence that sudden enlightenment was possible and valid. Yet Hui-neng went a step farther and suggested something even more radical, changing the very notion of enlightenment altogether. Wills (1994) explains that Hui-neng taught that contrary to traditional views of enlightenment, which purported that enlightenment was a “state of complete blankness, of annihilation of thought and personality,” he believed in a breakthrough in consciousness that resulted in greater self-awareness and control, “a state in which one no longer was swept along helplessly and automatically from one thought to another, clinging to thoughts and the illusory objects of desires” (p. 122).