My fascination with the Platform Sutra is: what it isn’t. It is not a single complete one time writing rather in many ways students’ homage to their teacher.
Further it was a Chan manifesto of sudden awakening that has in turn influenced the evolving Japanese Zen of Dogen Zenji and Keizen Zenji.
According to Red Pine, whose translation of the Platform Sutra is the most popular among today’s Zen practitioners, this eight-century text “has been the most studied, the most quoted, the most influential of all the texts that teach that branch of Mahayana Buddhism known as Zen.”
On December 9, 2025 we will explore the reach of the teachings around the only sutra by a Chinese ancestor.
I look forward to hearing from you on the 9th. Please take the different Dharma Notes I’ve sent you and come prepared to share your understanding and being open to new possibilities
Sangaku