Concentration and Wisdom, Not Two

I. Origins: Four Reconstructions, Gathered into One Meaning

By the point Part VII has reached, Chan's handling of "concentration" has been rewritten four times over. Bodhidharma named the wall-gazing pacification of the mind "concentration," yet already it was no longer the graded sequence of the four jhānas of the form realm (P22). Huineng rewrote "concentration-and-wisdom" as an equal study, two faces of a single substance, and cut through the ladder of "concentration first, then wisdom" (P23). Hongzhi sat this single-substance concentration into the posture of Silent Illumination present-at-once, letting silence and illumination arise together in one and the same moment (P24). And Dahui pressed it into watching the huatou, turning the light back with the sensation of doubt upon the very one that originates thought (P25). Each of the four stands at its own turn, and the four look like separate roads; but what they reconstruct is one and the same "concentration." This paper does not add a fifth lineage. It closes: it gathers the four into one meaning — Chan's concentration is not the laddered station of entering absorption, but the living concentration of non-abiding in signs, one substance with wisdom under two names, non-dual and held in equal balance.

This meaning finds its clearest scriptural ground in the "Sitting in Meditation" chapter (Zuòchán pǐn) of the Platform Sūtra. There Huineng defines the compound "meditative concentration" on the spot:

"Outwardly, amid all objects good and bad, when not a thought stirs — this is called sitting; inwardly, to see one's own nature unmoved — this is called Chan. Good friends, what is named meditative concentration? To be outwardly free of signs is Chan; to be inwardly unconfused is concentration. If outwardly one clings to signs, the inner mind is at once confused; if outwardly one is free of signs, the mind is then unconfused. The original nature is of itself pure, of itself concentrated; it is only through seeing objects, and thinking upon the objects seen, that confusion arises. If, seeing all objects, the mind is unconfused — that is true concentration. Good friends, outwardly free of signs — that is Chan; inwardly unconfused — that is concentration. Chan without, concentration within — this is what 'meditative concentration' means."¹

"Outwardly free of signs — that is Chan; inwardly unconfused — that is concentration." This turns "meditative concentration" from a question of "whether one can sit one's way up onto some rung" into a question of "whether, amid signs, one can go unbound by signs." Bodhidharma named it, Huineng rewrote it, Hongzhi sat it, Dahui doubted it; what the four reconstruct shows its root sense in this one line.

For a reader who has come in out of the contemporary climate of the mindfulness vogue, of "treating sitting as a stress-reduction tool," this reversal is especially worth holding onto. What people now take for granted is to picture "concentration" as some inner state that grows deeper the longer one sits, that can be measured, that can be "reached" — as though meditative concentration were a matter of tuning oneself to some quieter, emptier, less disturbable channel. The concentration Chan reconstructs is precisely not this. It is not a room one sits down inside, but a living capacity one carries along — a capacity in which, through all speaking and silence, moving and stillness, the mind does not follow objects into confusion. To mistake Chan's concentration for "some attainment of having sat one's way into great stillness" is exactly the thing Huineng, below, will denounce as the "gross error."

The case is laid out in three steps. First, concentration is given its new definition — it is the living concentration of non-abiding in signs, not the dead concentration of shutting out objects to seek stillness (§II). Then the non-duality of concentration and wisdom is shown — they are one substance under two names, with stillness and illumination held in equal balance across all four postures (§III). Then the four currents from Bodhidharma onward are brought to converge, so that the spine of Chan's reconstruction of concentration is seen to be completed here (§IV); the account is set in dialogue with contemporary Chan studies (§V); and it comes to rest on a single thread laid toward the volume's closing paper (§VI).

II. Concentration Redefined: The Living Concentration of Non-Abiding in Signs

The key to that definition in the "Sitting in Meditation" chapter lies not in the word "stillness," but in "free of signs" and "unconfused." The two clauses — "outwardly free of signs is Chan, inwardly unconfused is concentration" — must not be read as a two-stage sequence of "first sit still, then become free of signs." On their face they are two names for one and the same thing: spoken of outwardly, in its not clinging to signs, it is called Chan; spoken of inwardly, in its not scattering into confusion, it is called concentration. This single event of being unconfused amid signs is named Chan without and concentration within, not two moments and not two methods, still less a station in which "wisdom is emitted only once concentration has ripened."² What "non-dual" means is just this: not two things pinched together, but two mutually entailing faces of a single activity. One substance, two names — the names are two, but the matter is fundamentally one; to say "Chan," to say "concentration," is only to point, from the angle of outer conditions and of inner objects, at one and the same present moment of "amid signs, yet the mind unconfused." To read it as a doubled labour of "first outwardly leaving signs, then inwardly attaining concentration" would be to fall back into sequence — to splice back together the very ladder that Chan worked so hard to cut.

And those four characters, "non-abiding in signs" (being amid signs yet free of them), are the operating condition of this living concentration. In the "Concentration and Wisdom" chapter Huineng sets up the three "no's" — "no-sign for the substance, no-abiding for the root: no-sign means, amid signs, to be free of signs" — and in the "Conditions and Occasions" chapter he says, "if one can be free of signs amid signs, free of emptiness amid emptiness, that is to be unbewildered within and without."³ "Non-abiding in signs" is not a leaving of the world for stillness: "amid signs" means not departing from objects, not shutting the eyes and stopping the ears; "free of signs" means not being bound by objects, not being turned by them. The two characters look opposed, but they are two faces of a single motion — it is precisely because one is "amid" signs and does not flee them that there is any "freedom" from signs to speak of; one who shuts out objects and stops his hearing, who never contacts the realm of objects at all, is not free of signs but only in flight from them. The living point of concentration lies just here, in seeing objects with the mind unconfused, and not in screening off all objects to seek a dead silence. The chapter's own criterion states it most plainly — "if, seeing all objects, the mind is unconfused — that is true concentration": true concentration is tested in the seeing of objects, not preserved in a place where there are no objects. A mind that holds quite steady in a still room empty of persons and affairs is not necessarily concentrated; a mind that does not move along with praise and blame as they crowd in, with objects as they shift and stream, is the "true concentration" Huineng means.

It is for just this reason that, in the same chapter, Huineng next shuts with his own hand the door onto "withered concentration":

"There are also those who teach people to sit, fixing the mind and contemplating stillness, motionless and unarising, and from this they set their effort to work. The deluded do not understand, and grasping at it they fall into perversion. Such people are many; teaching one another in this way — know it for the gross error it is."⁴

"Fixing the mind and contemplating stillness, motionless and unarising" — pinning the mind down, pressing thought to death, sitting oneself into a stone that raises no ripple — Huineng denounces outright as the "gross error." This line is the negative definition of "outwardly free of signs is Chan": that "concentration" expressly excludes the dead sitting of withered stillness. It is worth noting that Huineng does not oppose sitting; he opposes making "sitting one's way to the motionless and unarising" the aim and terminus of one's effort ("from this they set their effort to work"). Once one sets the pressing-down of thought into stillness up as the thing sought, one has already clung to signs, already grown confused within, and fallen squarely onto the reverse of the concentration he has defined. Living concentration is the mind's not being dragged off amid the objects of motion and rest, not a stretch of blankness traded for by pressing thought into stillness.⁵ As for the verdicts on "constant motionless sitting" and on "there being no sudden or gradual," which the surrounding passage touches — these belong respectively to the home grounds of Vimalakīrti's seated meditation (as Śāriputra's forest sitting was rebuked by Vimalakīrti, a scene treated in the Vimalakīrti paper) and of the debate over sudden and gradual; here only the one line that breaks dead concentration is taken, and they are not unfolded.

III. Concentration and Wisdom Not Two: Living Concentration Across the Four Postures, Stillness and Insight Held in Equal Balance

If the "Sitting in Meditation" chapter gives the definition "concentration = living concentration," then the further question — "what, exactly, is the relation between this living concentration and wisdom?" — is put through most clearly only by Yongjia and by Dazhu. The core of this paper lies just here.

Living concentration across the four postures. A single line of the Song of Realizing the Way, attributed to Yongjia Xuanjue, spreads this living concentration across the whole of one's comings and goings:⁶

"Walking is Chan, sitting is Chan; speaking or silent, moving or still — the body at ease."

Concentration is no longer confined to a single cross-legged sitting. Walking is Chan, sitting upright is Chan; speaking, falling silent, stirring, coming to rest — there is not one of these in which that "body-at-ease" living concentration is not at work. This is the natural extension of the chapter's "non-abiding in signs": since concentration is "amid signs, unconfused" and not "shutting out objects to seek stillness," it has no reason to hold good only on the cushion — for were concentration to require sitting in order to be, and to be lost the moment one rose, it would still be a station dependent on a particular posture, and not the living concentration Huineng established as running through all objects. The line "walking is Chan, sitting is Chan" is just what frees concentration from the cushion and spreads it across the whole of one's activity. The same work also says, "concentration and wisdom, perfectly luminous, not stalled in emptiness" — concentration and wisdom fused and lucid, not stalled in a stubborn empty stillness — which is the most direct statement of the non-duality of concentration and wisdom.⁷ And the line "the idle man of the Way, who has done with study and is free of doing, neither roots out delusion nor seeks the real" draws once more the line between living and withered concentration: living concentration neither forcibly roots out delusion nor seeks some separate "real," because it is already, amid the arising and ceasing of delusion, a mind unconfused; to root out delusion by force would be to fall back into the dead concentration of "fixing the mind and contemplating stillness, motionless and unarising."

The mechanism of equal balance. "Living concentration across the four postures" is a description of the phenomenon; how, then, does it operate in the ground of the mind? The upekṣā verse of the Yongjia Collection gives the most mechanism-bearing passage of the whole paper:⁸

"By śamatha, still yet ever-illumining; by vipaśyanā, illumining yet ever-still; by upekṣā, neither illumining nor still."

Śamatha (stilling) makes the mind still, but within that stillness illumination is always contained; vipaśyanā (insight) makes the mind illumine, but within that illumination stillness is always contained; and upekṣā (equanimity-balance) makes it "neither illumining nor still" — leaning off onto neither side. Yongjia puts the principle more plainly still: "lean to concentration and you sink into torpor; lean to wisdom and the mind grows restless … make concentration and wisdom equal, letting go of both extremes."⁹ Lean toward concentration, and in time one sinks and dulls into torpor; lean toward wisdom, and as it multiplies the mind floats and scatters; the work of upekṣā is just to make concentration and wisdom equal, to let go of the bias toward either extreme. This is the most exact operating criterion of the non-duality of concentration and wisdom: non-duality is not a slogan but a state in which, upon one and the same mind, stillness and illumination lean neither into torpor nor into restlessness, held in equal balance. Here only the conclusion of "concentration and wisdom in equal balance" is taken; the foundation of what stilling-and-insight (śamatha-vipaśyanā) are in themselves was settled in an earlier volume and is not restated.

Independent corroboration from the Hongzhou line. The same doctrine finds further confirmation in Dazhu Huihai, of the Hongzhou line. What makes Dazhu valuable is that he is not a direct inheritor of Huineng or Yongjia, but an independent voice downstream in another lineage; for the same non-dual import to be spoken in distinct dharma-lines is precisely what shows it to be no private saying of one person at one time. The Essential Gate of Entering the Way through Sudden Awakening expounds concentration and wisdom by the simile of sunlight:¹⁰

"The illumining is wisdom; the unmoving is concentration. The bodhisattva, using this equal dharma of concentration and wisdom, attains the threefold enlightenment; hence it is said, the equal functioning of concentration and wisdom — that itself is liberation."

As the sun has its light and its body, what illumines is wisdom and what is unmoving is concentration; the two are fundamentally the two functions of one single "equal dharma of concentration and wisdom," not to be cleaved into a prior thing and a posterior. The bodhisattva, by just this equal functioning, realizes enlightenment; hence "the equal functioning of concentration and wisdom — that itself is liberation." This carries the non-duality all the way through to the fruit-ground: the non-dual concentration-and-wisdom is not only a state within practice but a mark of liberation — if concentration and wisdom are truly not two, then the place of their equal functioning is, then and there, liberation, with no need to seek some further liberation outside of concentration and wisdom. Dazhu also answers a question on meditative concentration with "no arising of deluded thought is sitting in meditation; seeing the original nature is concentration … facing objects with no-mind, unmoved by the eight winds";¹¹ "facing objects with no-mind, unmoved by the eight winds" is just another way of saying "non-abiding in signs": facing the realm of objects with the mind not dragged off by them, so that the eight winds — praise and blame, honour and disgrace, gain and loss, pleasure and pain — can none of them shake it. One sees that Dazhu, though in another dharma-line, keeps a criterion threaded through the same as the "Sitting in Meditation" chapter: concentration as concentration is tested in facing objects with the mind unconfused, not in leaving objects to sit in withered stillness.

At this point the single meaning, "concentration and wisdom not two," is encircled from four sides: the "Sitting in Meditation" chapter gives the definition (outwardly free of signs is Chan, inwardly unconfused is concentration); the Song of Realizing the Way gives the spread across the postures (speaking or silent, moving or still, the body at ease); the upekṣā verse gives the mechanism (stillness and illumination in equal balance, both extremes let go); and Dazhu gives the witness of the fruit-ground (the equal functioning of concentration and wisdom is itself liberation). The four witnesses come by different roads — Huineng establishing the root sense, Yongjia spreading the postures and the mechanism, Dazhu witnessing the fruit-ground — and their pointing is one. Huineng's verse approving the monk Zhihuang, in the "Conditions and Occasions" chapter, states the four characters more trenchantly still — "mind itself is named wisdom; buddha itself is concentration; concentration and wisdom held in equal balance"¹² — the bright point of the mind is wisdom, the settled point of the mind is concentration, and concentration and wisdom are held in equal balance with no defilement between. One meaning, several proofs: the non-dual import is established. Chan's concentration was never an independent stage set over against wisdom, awaiting wisdom in order to arise; it is the very living concentration that is one activity with wisdom, two mutually entailing names, stillness and illumination in equal balance.

IV. The Spine Completed: Four Currents Converge, Set Side by Side Without Ranking

Once this single meaning is established, looking back over the four reconstructions Part VII has passed through, one sees that they are not four roads with nothing to do with one another, but four vertebrae of one and the same spine. Bodhidharma named the wall-gazing pacification of the mind "concentration," so that Chan's concentration for the first time slipped free of the form-realm ladder and pointed elsewhere — this is the step of naming: taking the name "concentration" down off its station among the four jhānas and eight attainments and setting it onto the matter of "pacifying the mind" (P22). Huineng rewrote "concentration-and-wisdom" as an equal study, as two names of one substance, cutting head-on through the sequence of "wisdom issuing from concentration" — this is the step of establishing the meaning: abolishing the relation of before-and-after between concentration and wisdom altogether (P23). Hongzhi brought this single-substance concentration to ground in the seated posture of "Silent Illumination," letting silence and illumination arise together in one moment without prior or posterior — this is the step of the manner of sitting: bringing the non-dual import down onto an actual seated form (P24). Dahui drove it to the limit, raising the sensation of doubt by watching the huatou and turning the light back upon the one that originates thought — this is the step of the manner of investigation: pressing concentration into a living mechanism that reflects upon itself (P25). Naming, establishing the meaning, the manner of sitting, the manner of investigation — the four steps differ in form, yet the "concentration" they reconstruct returns alike to the one meaning this paper has established: the living concentration of non-abiding in signs, concentration and wisdom not two and held in equal balance. This paper is the completion of that spine — Chan's reconstruction of concentration comes, in this closing paper, to a resting point.

Here one discipline must be kept: among the four, they are set side by side and not appraised as higher or lower. This paper is a closing synthesis, not a sectarian classification of teachings. Whether Silent Illumination or the huatou is superior, whether sudden or gradual prevails, whether the Southern or the Northern school is the true line — none of these is what this paper means to adjudicate. Each house had, in history, its own occasion and its own corrective; this paper observes only their common return to the one meaning of living concentration, and does not reopen, at the point of closing, the old dispute of Silent Illumination and the huatou; the details of that debate were each given their account in the two preceding papers, and are not re-judged here.¹³ To range the four side by side as the four vertebrae of one spine is itself to mean that they are different moments of one reconstruction, not rivals contending with one another; to fall to ranking them at the point of closing would be to take the spine apart again into scattered bones.

It is worth remarking that this floodgate of "living, not withered, concentration" has been shut once by each of the four, each in its own way: Huineng denounced "fixing the mind and contemplating stillness, motionless and unarising" as the gross error (§II above), Hongzhi guarded himself against falling into stubborn emptiness with "vast yet never dull," and Dahui guarded himself against pressing thought down to seek stillness with "do not use the mind to dam up [thoughts]." Four houses guarding against one and the same misreading: mistaking Chan's concentration for the withered keeping of one who has sat himself into a stone. That the one who named concentration, the one who rewrote it, the one who sat it, and the one who investigated it should — without prior agreement — each first shut this door onto dead concentration, shows that the word "living" is no one house's preference but the shared bottom line of Chan's reconstruction of concentration. The living concentration this paper establishes is just the thing those four floodgates guarded out in common.

V. In Dialogue with Contemporary Scholars

Contemporary Chan studies have read the "Southern-school discourse of living concentration" with much acuity, and the meaning this paper establishes must be set in dialogue with that reading if its bearings are to be seen.

First, John McRae, in works such as Seeing Through Zen (2003), reads the Chan turn toward "encounter dialogue, living practice" as a meta-level rhetoric that constructs orthodoxy by way of genealogy. On the point that "the Southern-school discourse of living concentration does indeed carry a meta-constructed genealogical component," this paper concedes entirely — this is an insight the history of Chan studies can hardly evade. Yet McRae tends to bracket the truth-value of doctrine, treating the whole as retrospective narrative; this paper holds, rather, that the chapter's "outwardly free of signs is Chan, inwardly unconfused is concentration" is not only genealogical rhetoric but carries an operable criterion — "if, seeing all objects, the mind is unconfused, that is true concentration" — which is an actual reconstruction of samādhi, and not merely a story told after the fact.

Second, Bernard Faure, in The Rhetoric of Immediacy (1991), reads discourses of the sudden, of non-duality, of "mind itself is buddha," as a rhetoric of "immediacy" that occludes the mediation actually in place. The warning that "the non-duality of concentration and wisdom may indeed slump into a slogan that flattens difference" this paper receives with humility. But Faure's deconstruction, reducing all to power and rhetoric, can hardly exempt itself: if every establishing of meaning is rhetoric, then this verdict too falls within its own scope. More to the point, the chapter's "outwardly free of signs is Chan, inwardly unconfused is concentration" is an operable criterion of stilling (śamatha), not a vacant declaration of immediacy; and "non-duality = one substance, two names" is precisely not a flattening of difference but the identifying of two mutually entailing faces of one and the same activity — the very opposite of "flattening."

Third, Carl Bielefeldt, in Dōgen's Manuals of Zen Meditation (1988), holds that seated meditation is not a means toward some attainment, but the present enactment of "original realization." On the skeleton that "concentration is not a gettable attainment," this paper accepts in full — Chan's concentration is indeed not a thing to be "entered" or "attained" as the four jhānas are. Only, Bielefeldt's enactment-thesis, in its full form, is bound to Dōgen's "just sitting," a formulation that came later, after the Song, and was treated in an earlier paper; this paper takes only the general skeleton of "concentration is not an attainment," and runs it upstream into the Tang-period texts themselves — Huineng (the "Sitting in Meditation" chapter), Yongjia (the Song of Realizing the Way), Dazhu (the Essential Gate of Sudden Awakening) — rather than reading it back from Dōgen's post-Song reconstruction.

What the three jointly show is a research discipline worth facing squarely: Chan's discourse of living concentration is indeed steeped in the historical waters of genealogy, rhetoric, and enactment, and cannot be naively read as a transparent report of practice. This paper takes that discipline to heart, yet does not stop at it — the three either bracket truth-value (McRae), or reduce to power (Faure), or bind to the post-Song (Bielefeldt), whereas the chapter's "outwardly free of signs is Chan, inwardly unconfused is concentration," together with its criterion "if, seeing all objects, the mind is unconfused, that is true concentration," is an operable reconstruction of samādhi given by a Tang text in its own right: neither hanging in the void, nor purely rhetorical, nor awaiting Dōgen to be established. To acknowledge its historicity without dissolving its doctrinal substance is just where this paper parts from the three.

It must be stated honestly: there is no Western monograph that takes as its central thesis "Chan reconstructed concentration into the living concentration of non-abiding in signs = the non-duality of concentration and wisdom, completing a Bodhidharma → Huineng → Hongzhi → Dahui spine." This synthesis is the paper's own contribution; its components — living practice, immediacy, enactment — lie scattered across McRae, Faure, Bielefeldt, and across the primary texts of the Platform Sūtra, Yongjia, and Dazhu, and the gathering of them into one spine, established as one meaning, is what this paper has done.

VI. Conclusion: "Speaking or Silent, Moving or Still — the Body at Ease"

Chan's reconstruction of "concentration" can, by this point, be put in a single sentence: concentration is not the laddered station of the four jhānas and eight attainments, but the living concentration of non-abiding in signs, one substance with wisdom under two names, non-dual and held in equal balance. The "Sitting in Meditation" chapter of the Platform Sūtra establishes its definition (outwardly free of signs is Chan, inwardly unconfused is concentration), the Song of Realizing the Way spreads it across the postures (speaking or silent, moving or still, the body at ease), the upekṣā verse makes plain its mechanism (stillness and illumination in equal balance, both extremes let go), and Dazhu witnesses its fruit-ground (the equal functioning of concentration and wisdom is itself liberation). Bodhidharma named it, Huineng rewrote it, Hongzhi sat it, Dahui doubted it; the concentration the four reconstruct shows here its common return to one meaning, and the spine of Part VII's Chan line is thereby completed.

And yet — once "the living concentration of non-abiding in signs" has carried concentration to "amid signs unconfused, concentration and wisdom not two," it has already, by implication, pressed concentration back to the gate of prajñā: a concentration that, in the seeing of objects, goes unconfused, and that, between stillness and illumination, leans to neither side — its ultimate aspect can hardly halt at the single pole of stilling. This already presses concentration back toward the threshold of prajñā; how it returns is reserved for the volume's final paper, and this paper lays only a single thread, without unfolding it.

Four reconstructions, ten thousand words — and none beyond Yongjia's seven characters:

Walking is Chan, sitting is Chan; speaking or silent, moving or still — the body at ease.

Chan's concentration is not a matter of turning oneself into a stone, but the living ease in which the mind, through all speaking and silence, moving and stillness, walking and standing and sitting and lying, does not follow objects into confusion.

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Primary Source Index

This series embeds its primary-source locators in the footnotes and the CBETA-collation footer rather than in a separate index table; the four canonical texts drawn on are the Platform Sūtra of the Sixth Patriarch (Zongbao recension, T2008《六祖大師法寶壇經》T48, No. 2008Compiled by Fahai et al. (early Song redaction; original ca. 8th c. CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗), the Song of Realizing the Way attributed to Yongjia Xuanjue (T2014), the Chan Collection of Yongjia (T2013), and Dazhu Huihai's Essential Gate of Entering the Way through Sudden Awakening (X1223), as set out in the notes and footer below.

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Cross-Reference

• From the preceding papers: SAMADHI-P22 Bodhidharma's Wall-Gazing named the Chan concentration a "pacifying of the mind," already off the form-realm ladder; SAMADHI-P23 Sudden and Gradual rewrote concentration and wisdom as equal study, two names of one substance (the substance-and-function formula is its province, cited here by reference only); SAMADHI-P24 Silent Illumination brought concentration and wisdom down into Hongzhi's wordless simultaneous posture (its "vast yet never dull" self-guard cited here by reference); SAMADHI-P25 Watching the Head of Speech pressed concentration into Dahui's reflexive huatou (its "do not dam up the mind" self-guard cited here by reference). The present paper carries all four forward by synthesis and does not re-expound them.
• This Part's spine, completed: the departure spine runs Bodhidharma named concentration (P22) → Huineng rewrote the concentration–wisdom relation (P23) → Hongzhi enacted it as a wordless simultaneous posture (P24) → Dahui pressed it into the reflexive huatou (P25) → the present paper completes it, gathering the four reconstructions into the one meaning of "the living concentration of non-abiding in signs, concentration and wisdom not two."
• Side by side, unranked: Silent Illumination (P24) and the huatou (P25) are set side by side as the four vertebrae of one spine and are not ranked; their dispute is cited by reference to P24/P25, neither reopened nor adjudicated.
• Basis cited by reference: P03 (the yoked-pair of calming-and-contemplation, śamatha-vipaśyanā) — only the equal-balance conclusion is taken in §III, the foundation not restated. P18 (Vimalakīrti's rebuke of seated meditation) — one clause in §II only. Cross-axis: NIAN P19 (the single-practice samādhi) and NIAN P21 ("ordinary mind is the Way") are the mindfulness axis's own and are not drawn in here.
• Distant: the volume's sealing paper SAMADHI-P31 (concentration's return to prajñā, the great closing arc) is marked here by a single line only and not unfolded.

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Paper: SAMADHI-P26 · Concentration and Wisdom, Not Two · SAMĀDHI · Part VII · Chan Author: 釋慧鏡 (Shi Huijing) · Project: 指月 / Pointing-at-the-Moon · Series: The Six Practice Gates (六行門) License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 CBETA collation: Citations from the Platform Sūtra of the Sixth Patriarch (Zongbao recension, T2008《六祖大師法寶壇經》T48, No. 2008Compiled by Fahai et al. (early Song redaction; original ca. 8th c. CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗ — the "Sitting in Meditation," "Concentration and Wisdom," and "Conditions and Occasions" chapters), the Song of Realizing the Way attributed to Yongjia Xuanjue (T2014), the Chan Collection of Yongjia (T2013 — the upekṣā verse), and Dazhu Huihai's Essential Gate of Entering the Way through Sudden Awakening (X1223 — the sunlight simile) are verified against the CBETA Electronic Tripiṭaka; volume and page follow the Taishō and the Zokuzōkyō. The Song of Realizing the Way is referred to throughout as "attributed to" Yongjia Xuanjue, scholarship having reached no settled view on its single authorship. The Essential Gate of Sudden Awakening is X1223 (Zokuzōkyō) alone, not to be confused with the Taishō T1223, a tantric text of the same number in a different canon. The four reconstructions are presented side by side and are not ranked; the Silent Illumination–huatou dispute is cited by reference to P24 and P25 only. McRae, Faure, and Bielefeldt are cited by paraphrase only, for dialogue and contrast, not doctrinal equation. Repository: https://github.com/pointing-at-the-moon/six-practice-gates

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The names are two, but the matter is one: amid signs yet free of them, still yet illumining — that living ease in which the mind, seeing all objects, is not confused.

Footnotes

1. Platform Sūtra of the Sixth Patriarch (Zongbao recension), "Sitting in Meditation" chapter (fifth), Taishō vol. 48, no. T2008《六祖大師法寶壇經》T48, No. 2008Compiled by Fahai et al. (early Song redaction; original ca. 8th c. CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗, pp. 0353b19–b25. The selected lines are "outwardly free of signs — that is Chan; inwardly unconfused — that is concentration" (0353b24) and "if, seeing all objects, the mind is unconfused — that is true concentration" (0353b23). All citations of the Platform Sūtra in this paper follow the Zongbao recension; the Dunhuang recension (T2007《南宗頓教最上大乘摩訶般若波羅蜜經六祖惠能大師於韶州大梵寺施法壇經》T48, No. 2007View on CBETA online reader ↗) has a parallel but textually variant definition of sitting-and-concentration, and the recension question was treated in an earlier paper and is not reopened here. ↩

2. This is to be kept apart from the substance-and-function formula of the "Concentration and Wisdom" chapter — "concentration is the substance of wisdom, wisdom the function of concentration / at the very moment of wisdom, concentration is present within wisdom." That substance-function relation, established in the "Concentration and Wisdom" chapter, was the home ground of an earlier paper (on sudden-and-gradual / equal study) and is treated there; this paper takes the definitional layer of the "Sitting in Meditation" chapter ("outwardly free of signs is Chan") and does not re-litigate the substance-function formula. (Cross-ref P23.) Note also that Yongjia's Collection has, separately, a gradualist context of "concentration long held, wisdom grown bright" (0388a03), which must be kept distinct from the "one substance, two names" import of the "Sitting in Meditation" chapter and not run together with it. ↩

3. Platform Sūtra, "Concentration and Wisdom" chapter (fourth), T2008《六祖大師法寶壇經》T48, No. 2008Compiled by Fahai et al. (early Song redaction; original ca. 8th c. CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗, p. 0353a12 (no-sign for the substance, no-abiding for the root; no-sign means, amid signs, to be free of signs); "Conditions and Occasions" chapter (seventh), p. 0355c04 (if one can be free of signs amid signs and free of emptiness amid emptiness, that is to be unbewildered within and without); cf. the "Entrustment" chapter, p. 0360b22 (outwardly, amid signs, free of signs; inwardly, amid emptiness, free of emptiness). ↩

4. Platform Sūtra, "Concentration and Wisdom" chapter (fourth), T2008《六祖大師法寶壇經》T48, No. 2008Compiled by Fahai et al. (early Song redaction; original ca. 8th c. CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗, pp. 0353a04–a07. ↩

5. The prajñā (wisdom) face of "non-abiding in signs," insofar as it touches the prajñā system, is here held to the single pole of samādhi (stilling); the prajñā content is not unfolded, and the related matters are reserved for separate treatment in the Prajñā series. ↩

6. Song of Realizing the Way, T2014, pp. 0396a10–a11 (walking is Chan, sitting is Chan; speaking or silent, moving or still, the body at ease). The Song of Realizing the Way is traditionally attributed to Yongjia Xuanjue, though scholarship has reached no settled view on its single authorship (some hold it a later compilation); this paper therefore refers to it throughout as "attributed to Yongjia Xuanjue," and does not assert Xuanjue's own hand. ↩

7. Song of Realizing the Way, T2014, p. 0396a06 (… concentration and wisdom, perfectly luminous, not stalled in emptiness); and p. 0395c09 (the idle man of the Way, who has done with study and is free of doing, neither roots out delusion nor seeks the real). ↩

8. Chan Collection of Yongjia, upekṣā verse (sixth), T2013, pp. 0391b07–b08. ↩

9. Chan Collection of Yongjia, chapter headings, T2013, pp. 0388a04–a08 (lean to concentration and you sink into torpor; lean to wisdom and the mind grows restless … make concentration and wisdom equal, letting go of both extremes … concentration and wisdom once equal, then still yet ever-illumining). ↩

10. Dazhu Huihai, Essential Gate of Entering the Way through Sudden Awakening, Zokuzōkyō vol. 63, no. X1223, pp. 0020c12–c13 (the sunlight simile). ⚠ This treatise is numbered X1223 (Zokuzōkyō), not T1223 (a tantric text of the same number in a different canon), and the two must be distinguished in citation. Note also that the line "at the very moment of wisdom, concentration is present within wisdom" is in fact a saying of the Platform Sūtra's "Concentration and Wisdom" chapter, not a saying of Dazhu, and is not to be misascribed to Dazhu; Dazhu's own formula is "the equal functioning of concentration and wisdom" (the sunlight simile). ↩

11. Essential Gate of Entering the Way through Sudden Awakening, X1223, pp. 0018a23–a24. The CBETA text punctuates this as "no arising of deluded thought is sitting in meditation; seeing the original nature is concentration"; a second reading on doctrinal grounds parses it as "no arising of deluded thought is Chan; sitting and seeing the original nature is concentration" (a Chan/concentration call-and-response). This paper cites by the CBETA punctuation, not altering the received text, and lets the two readings stand together pending resolution. ↩

12. Platform Sūtra, "Conditions and Occasions" chapter (seventh), the Zhihuang section, T2008《六祖大師法寶壇經》T48, No. 2008Compiled by Fahai et al. (early Song redaction; original ca. 8th c. CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗, p. 0355b02. This passage is present in the Zongbao recension but absent from the Dunhuang recension (T2007《南宗頓教最上大乘摩訶般若波羅蜜經六祖惠能大師於韶州大梵寺施法壇經》T48, No. 2007View on CBETA online reader ↗), being an addition of the later recension; the methodology of its punctuation and ascription was treated in an earlier paper. ↩

13. The dispute of Silent Illumination and the huatou was each given its account in the two preceding papers (the Silent Illumination paper and the huatou paper); this closing paper does not reopen a verdict on it. ↩