六祖大師法寶壇經 1.11

1.11

A eulogy is an announcement; opening the sūtra, it announces it universally. The Platform Sūtra is that by which the utmost person proclaims his mind (the 'utmost person' refers to the Sixth Patriarch; the same applies below in this piece). What mind is it? It is the wondrous mind transmitted by the Buddha. How great is this mind! It provides the beginning of transformations, yet remains ever pure as it is. Whether mundane or holy, hidden or manifest, there is nowhere it abides where it is not self-possessed. For the holy, one speaks of clarity; for the mundane, one speaks of delusion. Delusion is transformation; clarity is restoration. Although transformation and restoration are different, the wondrous mind is one. In the beginning, Śākyamuni Buddha transmitted this to the Great Turtle Clan (Mahākāśyapa); thirty-three generations transmitting it within the Turtle Clan, it was transmitted to Dajian (the Sixth Patriarch's posthumous title is Chan Master Dajian), and Dajian transmitted it so that it was transmitted ever further. Those who speak of it do so from many angles: there are indeed those where the name is identical but the reality is different; and there are indeed those where the aspects are many but the mind is one. When one speaks of the mind of blood and flesh, the mind of sensory thought, the mind of accumulating and arising, and the mind of solidity, or the minds of mental factors which are even more numerous—these are what is called the name being identical but the reality different. When one speaks of the tathatā mind, the mind of arising and ceasing, the defiled mind, and the bodhi mind—the instances of this in the various sūtras can scarcely be numbered; these are what is called the aspects being many but the mind being one. In aspect there is the aspect of awakening and the aspect of non-awakening; in mind there is the true mind and the deluded mind—all of these are used to distinguish the correct mind. As for what the Platform Sūtra calls 'mind', it is also the awakened aspect of aspects, the real mind of minds.