六祖大師法寶壇經 1.150

1.150

「已上七佛，今以釋迦文佛首傳。

Buddha of the present auspicious eon: these are the seven buddhas.

“Taking Śākyamuni Buddha as the first of these seven buddhas, the

transmission [is as follows]: number one, the Honored One Mahākāśyapa;

number two, the Honored One Ānanda; number three, the Honored One

Śaṇavāsa; number four, the Honored One Upagupta; number five, the Hon-

ored One Dhītika; number six, the Honored One Miśraka; number seven,

the Honored One Vasumitra; number eight, the Honored One Buddhanandi; number nine, the Honored One Buddhamitra; number ten, the Honored One Pārśva; number eleven, the Honored One Puṇyayaśas; number twelve, the Honored One Aśvaghoṣa; number thirteen, the Honored One Kapimala; number fourteen, the Honored One Nāgārjuna; number fifteen, the Honored One Kāṇadeva; number sixteen, the Honored One Rāhulata; number seventeen, the Honored One Saṃghanandi; number eighteen, the Honored One Gayaśata; number nineteen, the Honored One Kumāralāta; number twenty, the Honored One Jayata; number twenty-one, the Honored One Vasubandhu; number twenty-two, the Honored One Manorahita; number twenty-three, the Honored One Halenayaśas; number twenty-four, the Honored One Siṃha Bhikṣu; number twenty-five, the Honored One Vasiṣṭa; number twenty-six, the Honored One Puṇyamitra; number twenty-seven, the Honored One Prajñātāra; number twenty-eight, the Honored One Venerable Bodhidharma (the initial patriarch in this land); number twenty-nine, Great Master Huike; number thirty, Great Master Sengcan; number thirty-one, Great Master Daoxin; and number thirty-two, Great Master Hongren.

“[I,] Huineng, am the thirty-third patriarch. From the beginning, the patriarchs have each had successors. In the future, when it comes to letting the transmission be carried onward, you must not make mistakes!”

Great Master [Huineng], after a vegetarian feast at Guoensi [in Xinzhou] on the initial third day of the eighth month of the fiftieth hexagenary year, the second year of the Xiantian [period, or 713] (In the twelfth month of this year, [the year period] was changed to Kaiyuan.), addressed his followers, “All of you, sit according to your stations. I am going to part from you.”

Fahai addressed him, “Your Reverence, what teaching is it you leave so that the deluded people of later times will be able to see the buddha-nature?”

The master said, “All of you, listen well. If the deluded people of some later time recognize sentient beings, [they will recognize them] as the buddhanature. If they do not recognize sentient beings, they could seek the Buddha for ten thousand eons without ever meeting him. I teach you now: to recognize the sentient being in one’s own mind is to see the buddha-nature in one’s own mind. If you wish to see the Buddha, just recognize the sentient being [in your mind]. It is only sentient beings who are deluded as to the Buddha; the buddhas are not deluded about sentient beings. If you are enlightened to

your self-nature, then the sentient being is the Buddha; if you are deluded as

to the self-nature, then [what might be] a ‘buddha’ is [only] a sentient being.

If the self-nature is universally ‘same’ (i.e., level), the sentient being is a