Standing in a ‘meta’ position, this book tries to take the Ch’an Buddhist teachings which the Sixth Patriarch Hui-neng partakes in the Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch to the background of the two traditions of Prajba Buddhism and Buddha-dhatu Buddhism. The purpose is to discuss the meaning of the ‘integration’ that contains in the Hui-neng’s teachings about Ch’an Buddhism, and also to describe its main purport and other characteristics at the same time. In this book, the author also has made clear argumentation about the views of Hui-neng’s Ch’an Buddhism and explained its basic practice method as much as possible, for example: ‘to enlighten the mind and to behold the Buddha-dhatu within oneself’, ‘the one-act samādhi’, and ‘absence of false thinking’, ‘formlessness’, ‘not abiding’, and even ‘meditation and wisdom are not two things’, ‘immediately to apprehend and instantly to practice’, etc.. Besides, facing the question whether Hui-neng’s teachings is closer to the thought of Prajba Buddhism or the teaching of Buddha-dhatu Buddhism, this book has made a quite clear and detailed comment to the issue. By reading this book, the readers not only can grasp the main characteristics of the Prajba Buddhist system and the Buddha-dhatu school system, and also will understand the main point of the tradition of ‘trims the heart’ in more early Chinese Ch’an Buddhist period. At the same time, people also will understand how Hui-neng made the existential meaning more obvious out of Ch’an Buddhist teachings by taking it into the practical process of ‘beholding the Buddha-nature within oneself and becoming a Buddha’, and launched the unrestrained statement about them, so that at last he proclaimed the model of ‘Existential Mind-Nature Theory’of Ch’an Buddhist teachings of sudden enlightenment which advocates the doctrine that ‘whoever is deluded is to be a sentient being, if he is enlightened then a Buddha’ by the book.
