Huineng - The Platform Sutra

The Platform Sutra

The Platform Sūtra of the Sixth Patriarch is attributed to Huineng. It was constructed over a longer period of time, and contains different layers of writing. It is...

...a wonderful melange of early Chan teachings, a virtual repository of the entire tradition up to the second half of the eight century. At the heart of the sermon is the same understanding of the Buddha-nature that we have seen in texts attributed to Bodhidharma and Hongren, including the idea that the fundamental Buddha-nature is only made invisble to ordinary humans by their illusions".