Bodhi has no tree and the mirror is not a stand. What does it mean?

Bodhi Verses

Bodhi has no tree,

a mirror is not a stand,

originally there is nothing,

Original explanation:

This is a four-line gatha written by the Sixth Patriarch Huineng

This is derived from the two gathas Shenxiu and Huineng. .

Shenxiu said: "The body is a bodhi tree, and the mind is like a mirror. I must brush it diligently at all times to prevent it from causing dust."

Huineng said: "The bodhi tree has no tree, and the mirror is also like a mirror." If it is not a platform, there is nothing in the first place, so how can it cause dust? "

Indeed, it is indeed difficult to understand these two gathas, and even the correct interpretation of the Bodhi tree is not easy.

·The body is like a Bodhi tree, and the mind is like a mirror stand, which should be wiped diligently at all times to prevent dust.

Disciples are like a Bodhi tree. Lower Enlightenment)

The mind of a disciple is like a bright mirror. (Twisted Flower Smile, the first koan (allusion) of heart-to-heart communication in Zen Buddhism)

Constantly observe yourself,

Don’t let dust and dirt obscure your bright nature.

(This is why it takes ten years to grow trees and a hundred years to cultivate people)

·Bodhi has no trees, and the mirror is not a stand. There is nothing in the first place, so how can it cause dust

Bodhi is originally a metaphor for wisdom,

A bright mirror is a metaphor for a quiet mind.

It is originally quiet, but what kind of dust will be caught there?

Hui Neng (638-713) was an eminent monk in the Tang Dynasty. The common surname is Lu. His father died when he was three years old. His family was poor. When he was older, he made a living by cutting fuel and selling firewood to support his mother. At the age of twenty-four, he resigned from his mother and became a monk, and went to Huangmei Dongshan in Qizhou to pay homage to Master Hongren, the Fifth Patriarch. When I first started to travel, I worked with the crowd, stepping on the hammer and pounding rice. Later, he was highly appreciated by Hong Ren for his poems on how to achieve the Dharma, and he was entrusted with the Dharma and became the Sixth Patriarch of Zen Buddhism. Because the competition within Buddhism for the status of ancestor was very fierce at that time, Huineng was in danger many times, and finally hid himself among the hunters and lived in seclusion for fifteen years. After Hongren passed away, Huineng began to teach the Dharma and receive precepts. After that, he evolved Buddhism for more than 30 years, spreading the Dharma and saving countless people. Wu Zetian and Tang Zhongzong heard of his reputation and issued many imperial edicts to recruit him to Beijing. However, he refused to obey the imperial edict because he was old and sick. At the age of seventy-six, he went to Xinzhou to perish. There are two core ideas in it, one is the theory of self-inherited Buddha nature, and the other is the theory of sudden enlightenment and becoming a Buddha. In the history of world Buddhism, he is a thinker who integrated Chinese and Western Buddhist thoughts.

The Sixth Patriarch passed away in the summer of 713 AD, during the hot and humid weather in the south. His body has been preserved without any embalming treatment and has not decayed for nearly 1,300 years. During the Anti-Japanese War, Japanese soldiers stationed at Nanhua Temple. They did not believe in his miraculous powers, so they cut open the body of the Sixth Patriarch from the back and found that all the internal organs were intact. Only then did they believe that the Buddha's teachings were boundless, put the body back together, paid homage and left. The physical body of the Sixth Patriarch is now kept intact in the Nanhua Temple in Shaoguan, Guangdong.