Northern School vs Southern School
Written on March 5, 2019
A comparative table based on reading H. Dumoulin, “Zen Enlightenment”, pp 44-52.
| Northern School | Southern School | |
|---|---|---|
| Patriarch | Shen-Hsiu | Hui-Neng |
| Gradual Enlightenment | Sudden Enlightenment | |
| “The body is the Bodhi tree The mind is like a clear mirror standing Take care to wipe it all the time Allow no grain of dust to cling” |
“The body is not like a tree The clear mirror is nowhere standing Fundamentally not one thing exists, Where, then, is a grain of dust to cling?” |
|
| Mind-mirror analogy | passive, standing and continuously wiped clean | prajnaparamita at work here (not one thing exists) = true, free, dynamic mirror-play of the mind |
| View | mind is originally pure, but obscured by klesa, can be restored in its original purity by meditative effort, high stages of consciousness | ultimate reality lies beyond all categories and concepts, breaking through dualistic thinking leads to Enlightenment, ~objectlessness of the way |
| Meditation | kanjo (jp): “paying attention to purity”, klesa are passions, arousal, thoughts that hinder the mind | kensho (jp): “seeing into one’s true nature”, klesa arise from dualistic thinking, one can/must see through them |
| Enlightenment is “acquired” by way of practice, they are causally connected | Meditation reveals one’s Enlightenment, Enlightenment and practice are identical |