After Bodhidharma’s death, Huike
retired the mountains. While there, he was approach by a layman with leprosy. The layman hoped that Huike could free him of
the sins which he believed were the cause of his condition. Echoing his own teacher, Huike told the man,
“Bring your sins here, and I’ll rid you of them.”
“When I reflect on my sins,” the
man admitted, “I’m not sure what they are.”
“Then you’re cleansed,” Huike
told him. “Now all that remains is for
you to take refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha.”
“What are the Buddha, the Dharma,
and the Sangha?”
“Mind is Buddha. Mind is Dharma. Dharma and Buddha are not two. So it is with the Sangha.”
The leper then made one of those
intuitive leaps of understanding only possible when one has been considering a
problem, as he had been considering the problem of sin, for a long time: “Now I
understand that sins are neither within nor without,” he exclaimed. “Just as the Mind is, so is Buddha, so is
Dharma. They aren’t two.”
Huike recognized that here was
the man who would be his successor, and the Third Patriarch of Chinese Zen, and
he gave him the name Sengcan, which means “jewel monk.”
[Jianzhi
Sengcan – Zen Masters of China: 51-53; The Story of Zen: 134-36]
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