The Profound Yogācāra Meaning of the Diamond Sutra (11)

Once, just as the World-Honored One had taken his seat on the Dharma throne, Mañjuśrī Bodhisattva came forward, struck the table with a wooden clapper, and said: "The World-Honored One has finished expounding the sutra." At that, the World-Honored One rose from his seat and left. And truly, the teaching was finished—the great Dharma of the tathāgatagarbha had been transmitted in full. In fact, the Dharma was completely expounded the very instant the World-Honored One entered the lecture hall and pushed open the door; he could well have turned around and walked out, leaving his disciples dumbfounded. Layman Fu of the time of Emperor Wu of Liang, as well as the Chan masters of the Tang dynasty, all performed similar tricks; it is just that ordinary people cannot see through the mechanism here—only bodhisattvas with deep roots of goodness can comprehend it.

The second patriarch of the Chan school was Ānanda. After the World-Honored One entered parinirvāṇa, Ānanda asked Mahākāśyapa: "Besides transmitting the golden-threaded saṅghāṭī robe to you, what else did the World-Honored One transmit to you?" He was asking about the tathāgatagarbha. Kāśyapa simply called out: "Ānanda!"—this is exactly what was transmitted! But Ānanda did not understand, and casually replied: "Yes?" Having replied, he should have understood, yet he still did not. Kāśyapa, having no alternative, continued: "Go and lay down the flagpole in front of the gate." Upon hearing this, Ānanda thought: I ask about the hidden meaning, and you tell me to lay down the flagpole? His mind turned, and he understood—so that is how it is! Thereupon he attained great awakening and became the second patriarch of the Chan school. From then on, the twenty-eight patriarchs of India passed it down from generation to generation, all the way to the Sixth Patriarch of the great Tang dynasty, and on until the end of the Ming dynasty; after that, those who awakened and entered were extremely few and exceptional. But even now there still are some, for the Buddha would never abandon the sentient beings of this world.

This first chapter of the Diamond Sutra is itself a Chan kōan: the World-Honored One transmitted the Dharma without opening his mouth to speak a single word. It is only that it is far too difficult to grasp—only a person of the very highest faculties could understand it. The object of all Chan investigation is the tathāgatagarbha. In whichever Buddha-land throughout the ten directions, it is this mind that is awakened to: where He is, how He operates, how He gives rise to the myriad dharmas, how He gives birth to the five aggregates and the eighteen realms—apart from this, one has strayed from the direction. And one who only understands a bit of the theory, who does not know the nature of the tathāgatagarbha and cannot observe the principles of His operation, does not belong to realized awakening; at most it is intellectual understanding, which cannot withstand birth and death.