2. Suzuki, who recounts this last story in Essays in Zen Buddhism, First Series (p. 195), points out identical insights in the third chapter of the Vimalakirti Sutra.
3. Reportedly Hui-k'o also transmitted his copy of the Lankavatara to Seng-ts'an, declaring that after only four more generations the sutra would cease to have any significance (Yampolsky, Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch, p. 11). As things turned out, this was more or less what happened, as the Lankavatara was replaced in the Ch'an schools by the more easily understood Diamond Sutra. The Lankavatara school was destined to be short-lived and to provide nothing more than a sacred relic for the dynamic Ch'an teachers who would follow.
4. Suzuki points out (Essays in Zen Buddhism, First Series, p. 196) that the Chinese word hsin can mean mind, heart, soul, and spirit, beingall or any at a given time. He provides a full translation of the poem, as does R. H. Blyth in Zen and Zen Classics, Vol. 1 (Tokyo: Hokuseido Press, 1960).
5. Blyth, Zen and Zen Classics, Vol. 1, p. 100.
6. Ibid., p. 101.
7. Ibid., p. 103.
8. A detailed discussion of this era may be found in Woodbridge Bingham, The Founding of the T'ang Dynasty (New York: Octagon Books, 1970).
9. His biography may be found in C. P. Fitzgerald, Son of Heaven (New York: AMS Press Inc., 1971), reprint of 1933 Cambridge University Press edition.
10. See Dumoulin, History of Zen Buddhism, p. 78.
11. This story is translated in Cat's Yawn, p. 18.