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Platform Sūtra: the Dunhuang version — Huineng

Manuscript · Essential works

Platform Sūtra: the Dunhuang version

南宗頓教最上大乘摩訶般若波羅蜜經六祖惠能大師於韶州大梵寺施法壇經一卷 (copia Stein 5475 y otras de Dunhuang)

Daikan Zenji (Huineng), templo Shōfukuji
byHuineng

Some twelve thousand characters in a single fascicle, without chapters (Suzuki and Yampolsky divided it into 57 sections). Huineng answers Shenxiu with two stanzas, not with the famous “from the beginning there is not a single thing”; the episodes of the hunters, the banner and the original face are missing. Its language is full of copying errors that scholars have had to correct.

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Editions and translations · 3

English

Authorship note

The oldest surviving version. The British Library copy (Or.8210/S.5475), from around 830–860, was edited by Yampolsky in 1967; there are also copies in the Dunhuang Museum and the Lüshun Museum, and fragments in Beijing. It contains the prophecy that twenty years after the master's death someone would defend his doctrine, which Hu Shi read as an allusion to Shenhui.

Editions and translations

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English

  • The Platform Sutra: The Zen Teaching of Hui-neng

    Shoemaker & Hoard, 2006

    Translation: Red Pine

    ISBN 9781593760861

  • The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch: The Text of the Tun-huang Manuscript — Huineng

    The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch: The Text of the Tun-huang Manuscript

    Columbia University Press, 1967

    Translation: Philip B. Yampolsky

    ISBN 0231083610

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  • The Platform Scripture

    St. John's University Press, 1963

    Translation: Wing-tsit Chan

Other works by Huineng

Sources

  • Yampolsky, Philip B. (ed. y trad.). The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch: The Text of the Tun-huang Manuscript. Nueva York: Columbia University Press, 1967; reed. 2012 (ISBN 9780231159562).

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