The Platform Sūtra (hereafter PS) is a classic of Buddhist and Chinese religious literature.Footnote 1 Its protagonist, the illiterate laborer, religious genius Huineng, was portrayed as a living Buddha in Tang China and remains a figure of interest in China today.Footnote 2
Readings of the Platform Sūtra is a companion to The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch, a 2012 reissuing of Philip Yampolsky's translation and study of the PS, first printed 1967. Readings of the Platform Sūtra consists of seven expert essays and is a crucial resource for students of the PS. It is unusual for a volume of essays to be so uniformly excellent; the individual essays were well integrated by the editors, cross-reference one another, and refer to Yampolsky's pagination. A thorough bibliography, with useful annotations, encourages further reading. These essays can be relied upon by non-specialists to represent current scholarly consensus. In addition, teachers can structure courses using this volume to close read Yampolsky's PS.
Yampolsky's volume is a milestone in studies of Chan in the West; however, he worked under the constraints of an imperfect manuscript. In the preface to the 2012 edition, Morten Schlütter says, “we can now see that some of [Yampolsky's] corrections made unwarranted changes to the text.”Footnote 3 The collection of essays under review is not only indebted to Yampolsky's ground-breaking work, as Schlütter points out, it also fills in gaps to make Yampolsky's contribution all the more valuable. A classic, in-depth review by Bielefeldt and Lancaster sets Yampolsky's translation in the vein of twentieth- century Japanese scholarship and against other English translations.Footnote 4 The new 2006 translation by Red Pine (from a better-preserved manuscript) is worth considering, though it cannot be said to make uniformly positive contributions. John McRae's excellent translation of the much-expanded Yuan Dynasty edition of the PS, published 2000, rewards consultation.Footnote 5
Schlütter's essay in Chapter 1 is the best general introduction to the PS now available. Schlütter's introduction to Chinese Buddhism and Chinese religions is succinct, accessible and refreshingly up-to-date. His essay also recounts the history, discovery and importance of the PS manuscripts, thereby introducing the text and the other essays.
Chapters 2 and 3 focus on the Chan patriarchs, beginning with the Sixth Patriarch Huineng. In Chapter 2, John Jorgensen analyzes the narrative structure of the PS and the figure of Huineng as portrayed in the auto/biography (§2–12; narrative markers at §1 and §38). He makes the startling and compelling case for viewing the Sima Qian biography of Confucius in Shiji 史記 as the central model for Huineng. Jorgensen describes symbolic resonances between the PS's imagery and Confucian cultural types. There is a deft discussion of how multiple versions of Huineng's biography were emphasized to benefit different local and national Buddhist political concerns. In a classroom, one could easily add Bernard Faure's 1986 article evaluating the historicity and hagiography of Bodhidharma to make a unit about narrative and genre in religious literature.Footnote 6
Henrik Sørensen's essay in Chapter 3, “The History and Practice of Early Chan,” covers the history and historicity of the putative first five Chinese Patriarchs and culminates in the sectarian strife over the sixth patriarch among various groups claiming the mantle for their own master. Sørensen occasionally departs from the dominant scholarly narrative descending from Yanagida Seizan, notably on the actual teachings of the so-called Northern School – the putative rivals in the PS accused of gradual, dualistic teachings.Footnote 7 Other studies on the PS's “practice of oneness” yixingsanmei 一行三昧 (§14) include Bielefeldt's adroit account of one-practice samādhi and the rhetoric of sudden-gradual,Footnote 8 Stevenson's account of the original Tiantai practice by the same name,Footnote 9 and Faure's look at the various meditation practices associated with one-practice samādhi.Footnote 10
Chapters 4 and 7 focus on the religious philosophy of the PS. In Chapter 4, Peter Gregory focuses on Buddhist ideas in Huineng's core sermon (§13–19), the most famous teaching of the text. He reads the Vimalakīrti Sūtra as the intellectual foundation of the PS in contrast to the PS's symbolic associations with the Diamond Sūtra. Gregory offers the reader a dynamic vision of the famous poetry contest, and interprets “no-thought” as prajñāpāramitā (i.e. formless emptiness) grafted onto tathāgatagarbha (i.e. self-nature cum Buddha-nature).
In this study of the central teachings of the PS, Gregory dispels the English term “Sudden Enlightenment” as misleading. He gives a clear explanation for the preferential reading of wu 悟 as a verb, rendering it in Japanese as satoru 悟る rather than the noun satori 悟り. Accordingly, dun 頓 is read as an adverb “suddenly” and not the adjective “sudden.” The result is, “suddenly sees,” “suddenly understands,” “suddenly awakes,” which are preferable to the misleading noun phrase, “sudden enlightenment,” and the very unfortunate “to have a sudden enlightenment.”
Gregory's essay is closely tied to Chapter 7 by Brook Ziporyn. Ziporyn engages with the philosophical underpinnings of the PS, and elucidates its continuities and ruptures with earlier Chinese and Buddhist intellectual traditions. For example, Ziporyn shows the non-abiding of the PS to be a radical conclusion of the “this-worldliness” of the Analects (Lunyu, 6:22; 7:21; 11:12). Next, he uses the ethics of human nature of Mencius (Mengzi, 2a2, 2a4, 6a1–15) to cast light on self-nature in the PS. Ziporyn continues with a concise intellectual history of the ti/yong 體用 “essence/function” dyad, dwelling on the Book of Changes and Laozi (Daode jing 11, 38, 52) through their Six Dynasties interpreters. He concludes with an explanation of ti/yong in the PS as the concurrence of wisdom and meditation (§13 and §15; cf. §17). Throughout, Ziporyn reveals the simultaneity of Buddhist and Chinese philosophic concepts in the PS, presenting the PS as “as a classic and indispensable work in both the Buddhist and Chinese traditions” (p. 186).
Paul Groner and Wendi Adamek's chapters of Readings of the Platform Sūtra address precepts and transmission. In the early hand-copied PS manuscripts, the bestowal of “formless precepts” (or “precepts of formlessness”) was of central importance.Footnote 11 These early versions can be read as descriptive instructions for performing precept ordination (§1, §20–23, §24–33), and unlike later woodblock editions, the handwritten manuscripts assert that possession of a copy is proof of transmission (§55–57).
In Chapter 6, Paul Groner asks probing questions about ritual ordination in China, drawing out the historical tension between full monastic ordinations and lay rituals. He expertly explains the relevant history of precepts in China, distinguishing vinaya (Buddhist monastic law and regulations) and evolving conceptions of “bodhisattva precepts,” as well as the imperial courts’ shifting attitudes towards organized Buddhist religions. Groner concludes with the significance of offering simplified advanced precepts to both monks and lay beginners alike.
In Chapter 5, Wendi Adamek focuses on the many layers of meaning in “transmission” (§1, §9–10, §23, §31, §48–53, §55–57), offering the most theoretically sophisticated and fun essay in the volume. According to Adamek, in both the broad and narrow contexts of the PS, transmission may refer to: transmission of a particular teaching; transmission of text as token; and transmission as ideology. Adamek addresses transmission and its rituals as potent mechanisms for investing specific people with religio-political power, and juxtaposes the PS against other Tang Dynasty tellings of transmission. In the end, she finds that such objects of study simultaneously are soteriological, ritual-magical, and political.
Readings of the Platform Sūtra is an instant classic. It can be recommended for the shelves of specialists, non-specialists, teachers, students, and practitioners.
