The title and the text in the library
«Pháp Bảo» means the jewel of the Dharma and «Đàn» the Dharma platform, the raised seat from which a teacher speaks. In the last chapter the Sixth Patriarch himself says that the words he had spoken from Dafan temple up to that day, copied down for circulation, are to be called the Dharma Jewel Platform Sūtra; his disciples are to keep it and hand it on to one another, and from then on only the Dharma is handed on, no longer the robe.
The library's copy carries the full title Lục Tổ Đại Sư Pháp Bảo Đàn Kinh (六祖大師法寶壇經) and runs to nearly 24,000 words, about 96 minutes of reading. The text exists in several versions from different periods: the oldest known is a manuscript found at Dunhuang (Đôn Hoàng), which is shorter; the ten-chapter version in the library is a later one and the most widely circulated. The library has no Vietnamese text of the Dunhuang version yet.
The ten chapters
Chapter 1, «Hành Do» (how he came to the Dharma), is the Patriarch's own story. Chapter 2, «Bát-nhã» (Prajñā), explains the great perfection of wisdom and the teaching of no-thought. Chapter 3, «Nghi Vấn» (Questions), answers the prefect Wei Qu: why Bodhidharma said that Emperor Wu of Liang gained no merit from building temples and ordaining monks; whether reciting the Buddha's name brings rebirth in the Western land; and how lay people should practise. Chapter 4, «Định Tuệ» (Concentration and Wisdom), teaches that concentration and wisdom are one body, like a lamp and its light. Chapter 5, «Tọa Thiền» (Sitting Meditation), explains that «sitting» means no thought arising towards any outer situation, and «meditation» means seeing within that one's own nature does not move.
Chapter 6, «Sám Hối» (Repentance), gives the assembly the fivefold incense of the Dharma body, formless repentance, the four great vows and refuge in the Three Jewels of one's own nature, and explains the three Buddha bodies within one's own nature. Chapter 7, «Cơ Duyên» (Encounters), gathers meetings between the Patriarch and seekers such as the nun Wujinzang (Vô Tận Tạng) and the monks Fahai (Pháp Hải), Fada (Pháp Đạt), Zhitong (Trí Thông), Xingsi (Hành Tư), Huairang (Hoài Nhượng) and Xuanjue (Huyền Giác). Chapter 8, «Đốn Tiệm» (Sudden and Gradual), speaks of the southern and northern schools, known as «Huineng in the south, Shenxiu in the north», with the stories of Zhicheng (Chí Thành), Zhiche (Chí Triệt) and the young Shenhui (Thần Hội). Chapter 9, «Tuyên Chiếu» (the Imperial Summons): in 705 the court invited the Patriarch to the capital, he asked to remain in the mountains and taught the envoy Xue Jian (Tiết Giản). Chapter 10, «Phó Chúc» (Entrustment), holds his last instructions: the thirty-six pairs of opposites, his farewell verses, the line of patriarchs, and his passing in 713.
The best-known passages
Best known of all is the verse contest in chapter 1: the Fifth Patriarch asked each disciple to write a verse; whoever grasped the great meaning would receive the robe and Dharma as the Sixth Patriarch. The senior monk Shenxiu (Thần Tú), then the community's instructor, wrote a verse on the corridor wall at midnight, likening the body to the bodhi tree and the mind to a bright mirror stand that must always be wiped free of dust. Huineng, who was pounding rice in the back quarters, had someone write down a verse in reply, beginning «Bồ-đề vốn không cây» (bodhi has no tree), saying that from the beginning there is not a single thing, so where could dust cling? The next day the Fifth Patriarch knocked three times on the rice mortar with his staff; at the third watch Huineng came to his room, heard him explain the Diamond Sūtra and, at the line «Ưng vô sở trụ nhi sanh kỳ tâm» (give rise to a mind that abides nowhere), awakened fully and received the robe and bowl.
Also often recalled: Huineng telling the Fifth Patriarch that people may come from the south or the north but Buddha-nature has no south or north; the question he put to Huiming (Huệ Minh) when the monk caught up with him — at the moment of thinking neither of good nor of evil, what is your «original face»?; and the two monks at Faxing (Pháp Tánh) temple arguing whether the wind or the banner was moving, to whom he replied that it was their own minds that moved. In the chapter of encounters, the monk Fada had recited the Lotus Sūtra three thousand times without understanding it; the Patriarch taught that the sūtra is not at fault, and that only when the mouth recites and the mind practises does one truly turn the sūtra.
Reading it in the library
The two pages listed under «Read» above carry the same translation, and either one has all ten chapters; the Linh Sơn page also gives the Chinese title. Both have an English tab with an English translation, likewise in ten chapters; choose «Cả 2» (both) to read the two side by side. The verses come with their Sino-Vietnamese reading in brackets, but the library has no Chinese text, PDF or recording yet.
To read aloud, press «Tụng» (Chant): the screen stays on and the text scrolls at the speed you choose. For more on the Patriarch's life, the library also holds scroll 5 of the Jingde Record of the Transmission of the Lamp (Cảnh Đức Truyền Đăng Lục), which tells his life with its dates and lists his forty-three Dharma heirs.
