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Hui-Neng-From
Illiterate Woodcutter to Sixth Patriarch
From the biography:
"Instructing students and disciples to seek equanimity and understanding of the true or essential nature, Hui-Neng cautioned against stagnation. He emphasized humility rather than self-aggrandizement, detachment from thoughts, and remaining true to one’s essential nature. Shaving one’s head and receiving ordination as monks and nuns was fruitless without eveness of mind and straightforwardness of action. The way to enlightenment or buddhahood, advised Hui-Neng, was through purification of the mind and recognition of the Pure Land within the body. Rebirth without enlightenment, he counseled, is a long road. Better, he taught, to realize the “birthless reality of immediacy."
From the enlightenment story:
"After having gotten my mother settled,
I left right away and reached Huang-mei within thirty-odd days. There I
paid respects to the Fifth Grand Master.
The Grand Master asked, "Where are you
from, and what do you want?"
I replied, "I am a peasant from Hsin Province
in Ling-nan. I have come from far away to pay my respects to you only because
I seek to be a buddha, nothing else."
The Grand Master said,
"You are a southerner, and an aborigine; how can you be a buddha?"
I said, "People may be southemers
or northemers, but the buddha-nature originally has no south or north.
As an aborigine, my social status is not the same as yours, but what difference
is there in our buddha-nature?"
The Grand Master wanted
to talk with me more, but he saw that his followers were all around, so
he had me do chores with the workers.
I said to him, "My own
mind always produces wisdom. Not being alienated from one's own essential
nature is itself a field of blessings. What work would you have me do?"
The Grand Master said,
"This aborigine is very sharp! Don't say any more. Go work in the mill."