Do you believe we have spent a lot of time on the Platform Sutra? Yes or no. Let’s select yes; and has this been too much? What about selecting no? What does that answer mean? How much is needed? I will explore this question as a key to what Harada, Shodo summarizes below in the six short paragraphs.
Please, carefully read his comments outloud, jot down your thoughts and read them outloud also. Then on December 16, 2025 we will explore the experience of it all.
When Enō heard the words “abiding nowhere, awakened mind arises,” he understood this directly. While he had little education, he saw this truth of the Dharma and of human mind. There are few geniuses of this quality. Although we might not be so blessed, by letting go of our attachments we can know this truth ourselves. The Zen of the Sixth Patriarch is pure and very simple. While it is Rinzai and Tokusan who represent the formal ancestral Zen and even defined it, it was the Sixth Patriarch who gave life to the teaching of Bodhidharma in a simple and direct way. In asking the question, “What is our face before our parents were born?” the Sixth Patriarch gave us the kōan that is now widely used. When he said, “From the origin, there is not one single thing,” he put this true essence into words in an original way. There is nothing to have, nothing to hold on to; no previous experience, no previous knowing.
The Zen of the earlier patriarchs had pulled along a concept of a void; it took someone with the clarity and the deep experience of the Sixth Patriarch to be able to put it in this way. The Sixth Patriarch also gave us a lasting definition of the word zazen. The za- of zazen is to not give rise to thoughts about anything we see or hear externally. This does not mean we should shut down our senses and close our eyes to seeing and our ears to hearing; rather, we sit wide open, even though our bodies hurt and even though we are tired and face constant challenges. We can’t sit in a deep, dark cave and avoid life’s difficulties; rather, we encounter everything that comes our way. At the same time, we give no attention to anything that comes up from within.
Not becoming lost in our thoughts and feelings is the -zen of zazen. All of those thoughts are external to that which gives birth to them. Don’t get pulled down by things, but realize that they all arise from emptiness. Will that source be in pain? Will that source be happy or sad? We are fooled by our feelings and emotions. We have to let them all go. Regardless of how precious the teaching, regardless of how useful the truth, if we allow ourselves to become attached to it, confusion will result. When the teachings and truths drag us around, we lose sight of our inner truth. When we’re utterly free of all fixations and attachments, nothing can bind us. If we are clearly aware of our open, unfettered mind, then all teachings and truths are simply tools, devices for our living mind to utilize. If we are deceived and caught, then even the most precious of words become a source of delusion. The Sixth Patriarch, even as he left his own words to teach us, constantly warned against the dangers of attachment. We must not burden ourselves even with his teachings. All that the Platform Sūtra says is useless if we don’t experience for ourselves the spirit of the Sixth Patriarch.
The Sixth Patriarch’s teaching is not arbitrary in any way. If one studies the five thousand sūtras and the eighty-four thousand gates of the Dharma and thoroughly masters their content, one will find nothing to contradict what the Sixth Patriarch says. Indeed, one will clearly see that his words reflect the core of all these teachings. It is from Śākyamuni’s experience of truth that the entire body of sūtras was born. These words are not the Sixth Patriarch’s personal, private view; he is speaking from his deep experience, which differs not in the slightest from the experience of the Buddha. He teaches this carefully and clearly.
Harada, Shodo. Not One Single Thing: A Commentary on the Platform Sutra (pp. 26-27). (Function). Kindle Edition.
Sangaku