Note f93 — HISTORY OF ZEN BUDDHISM FROM BODHI-DHARMA TO HUI-NENG (YENO) (520 A.D.–713 A.D.)

According to Hsieh-sung, the author of the Right Transmission of the Law, Bodhi-Dharma has here followed Nāgārjuna in the anatomy of Zen-understanding. For Nāgārjuna says in his famous commentary on the Prajñāpāramitā-sūtra, “Moral conduct is the skin, meditation is the flesh, the higher understanding is the bone, and the mind subtle and good is the marrow.” “This subtle mind,” says Hsieh-sung, is what is secretly transmitted from the Buddha to his successors in the faith. He then refers to Chih-I of the Sui dynasty who regards this mind as the abode of all the Buddhas and as the middle way in which there is neither unity nor multiplicity and which can never be adequately expressed in words.