An inquiry into the Zen koan of "The Storehouse of the Eye of the Right Dharma" — the spirit of Hsi Lai (Coming from the west)

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Author

Hsiung, Won See all items with this value

Journal

Hsi Lai Journal of Humanistic Buddhism

Date

2004

Volume

Pages

295-300

ISSN

1530-4108 See all items with this value

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the koan about Buddha Shakyamuni holding a flower, to which Maha-Kashapa smiled, thereby obtaining the Eye of the Right Dharma and receiving the transmission of the Buddha mind. Much recent scholarship has attempted to prove through existing documents that this koan never occurred. In this paper, while arguing that the existing documents cannot provide any definitive proof one way or the other, I try to make inferences in another direction, relying on such scriptures as the Agamas and the Mahaparinirvana Sutra and judging by the Mahayana guiding principle of “ One Reality" and the principle of "relying on the spirit, not the letter" in the "Four Reliances": My argument can be boiled down to the statement that ample scriptural evidence can indeed be unearthed concerning the World-Honored One's direct transmission of the Dharma from mind to mind, ( so that it does not really matter even if “the flower sermon” incident had not happened historically).