The story in which the Buddha Śākyamuni “held up a flower” to give a wordless sermon first appears in the Tiansheng Era Record of the Spread of the Flame天聖廣燈録
, compiled in 1036:
When the Tathāgata was preaching the dharma on Vulture Peak, the devas made offerings of flowers to him. When the World-Honored One held up a flower to instruct the assembly, Kāśyapa smiled faintly. The World-Honored One announced to the assembly, “I have the treasury of the true dharma-eye, the inconceivable mind of nirvāṇa, which I bequeath to Mahākāśyapa. He should spread it and not allow it to be cut off in the future.”
如來在靈山説法。諸天献華。世尊持華示衆。迦葉微笑。世尊告衆曰。吾有正法眼藏。涅槃妙心。付囑摩訶迦葉。流布將來。勿令斷絶。
Mahākāśyapa, according to this tale, was thereby established as the first in a line of twenty-eight ancestors of the Zen lineage in India, the last of whom, Bodhidharma, transmitted it to China. Bodhidharma is said to have selected his disciple Huike慧可
as his main spiritual heir, saying:
Long ago the Buddha took the true dharma eye and bequeathed it to Kāśyapa the Great One. It was subsequently transmitted many times until it came to me. I now entrust it to you. You must protect it.
昔如來以正法眼付迦葉大士。展轉囑累而至於我。我今付汝。汝當護持。并授汝袈裟以為法信。
Bodhidharma also made a prediction that, “two hundred years after my death, the dharma will spread throughout myriads of realms,” and he spoke the following verse for Huike:
|
|
The “single flower” mentioned here is the flower held up by the Buddha Śākyamuni when he founded the Zen lineage. The “five petals” are an allusion to the “five houses”五家
of Zen: the five main branches of the lineage that are said to have emerged in the generations following the sixth ancestor Huineng慧能
: Weiyang潙仰
, Linji臨濟
, Caodong曹洞
, Yunmen雲門
, and Fayan法眼
.
