Sublime

The first to appear was the sutra. It arrived in the baggage of a monk from central India named Dharmakshema. He arrived in the Silk Road oasis of Tunhuang in 414, if not a year or two earlier, and he either learned Chinese quickly, or he did so earlier at one of the other oases where he stayed on his way to China.

HUANG YUAN-CHI says, “Those who cultivate the Way should act with humility and harmony. The slightest carelessness, any action at all, can destroy everything. Those who cultivate Virtue look to themselves for the truth, not to the words of others. For those who understand that what moves them is also the source of their lives, the pill of immortali

WU CH’ENG says, “All of these things are useful. But without an empty place for an axle, a cart can’t move. Without a hollow place in the middle, a pot can’t hold things. Without spaces for doors and windows, a room can’t admit people or light. But these three examples are only metaphors. What keeps our body alive is the existence of breath within

“Following unnamed rivers, lost upon the interpenetrating paths of distant mountains, My strength failing and my vitality exhausted, I cannot find the ox . . . Far from home, I see many cross-roads, but which way is the right one I know not. Greed and fear, good and bad, entangle me.” —First Oxherding Picture

Although we don’t know if he lectured on the Lankavatara or if he was conversant with Zen, two hundred years later, the Northern School of Zen credited Gunabhadra with bringing Zen to China, such was the importance of the sutra he translated.

Hui-neng says, “If people can hear this sutra and realize its truth, both self and other suddenly vanish, and they at once become buddhas. Renouncing the body has limited merit and cannot compare with the unlimited wisdom of upholding this sutra.”

Inspired by the Confucian philosophy of the original nature of goodness and the Zen techniques of stilling the mind, a synthesis of the three philosophies—Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism—was reached. This form of Taoism is found in the teachings of two major Taoist sects today: the Complete Reality School (Ch’üan-chen) and the Earlier Heaven Way