And our mind a mirror bright.
Carefully we wipe them hour by hour,
And let no dust alight.5
This verse certainly demonstrated the concept of the mind's nonattachment to phenomena, but perhaps it showed an attachment of the mind to itself. In any case, it did not satisfy the Fifth Patriarch, who recognized its author and advised Shen- hsiu privately to submit another verse in two days. Before he had a chance, however, the illiterate Hui-neng, between sessions of rice pounding, chanced along the hallway and asked that the verse be read to him. Upon hearing it, he dictated a stanza to be written next to it.
There is no Bodhi-tree,
Nor stand of a mirror bright.
Since all is void,
Where can the dust alight?6
The story says that all were amazed, and the Fifth Patriarch immediately rubbed away the stanza lest the other monks become jealous. He then summoned Hui-neng late at night, expounded the Diamond Sutra to him, and presented him with the robe and begging bowl of Bodhidharma—together with advice to flee south in the interest of safety.
Thus Hui-neng became the Sixth Patriarch, began the Southern school of Ch'an, which would later be transmitted to Japan, and established the Diamond Sutra as the faith's primary scripture. And so it was that the Lankavatara Sutra of Bodhidharma, a rich moral and spiritual treatise, was replaced by the more easily understood Diamond Sutra, a repetitive and self- praising document whose message is that nothing exists: