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Huang PoHuang Po

Huang Po

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“All the Buddhas and all sentient beings are nothing but the One Mind, beside which nothing exists.” — The Zen Teaching of Huang Po, trans. John Blofeld

Who Was Huang Po?

Huangbo Xiyun (d. c. 850 CE) was a Chan master of Tang-dynasty China, born in Fuzhou and ordained as a novice on Mount Huangbo in Fujian, whose name he carried for the rest of his life. The records describe him as immense — the Blue Cliff Record says seven feet tall, with a pearl-shaped lump on his forehead — and his teaching style matched: vast, abrupt, and impossible to grasp with the thinking mind.

Around 846 the scholar-official Pei Xiu built him a monastery in Jiangxi, which the master named Huangbo after the mountain of his youth. It is to Pei Xiu that we owe everything: he took notes on the master’s sermons and dialogues and compiled them as the Chuanxin Fayao (“Essentials of the Transmission of Mind”) and the Wanling Lu (“Record of Wan-ling”), with a preface dated 857. Through John Blofeld’s 1958 translation, The Zen Teaching of Huang Po, that voice still arrives undiminished.

Core Teaching

One Mind. Buddhas and ordinary beings are not two things; there is nothing to attain because nothing was ever missing. “When at last, in a single flash, you attain to full realization, you will only be realizing the Buddha-Nature which has been with you all the time.” Every practice aimed at getting enlightenment moves away from it; the seeking mind is the only obstacle. “That there is nothing which can be attained is not idle talk; it is the truth.”

Tradition & Lineage

He stands in the great Hongzhou line of Chan: Mazu Daoyi → Baizhang Huaihai → Huangbo → Linji Yixuan. His student Linji founded the school (Rinzai in Japan) that became the dominant lineage of Zen — the koan tradition descends directly through Huang Po. In this vault, Seung Sahn carries the same Zen current a millennium later, and readers of Ramana Maharshi will recognize the identical pointing: what you seek is what is seeking.

Where to Start

The Zen Teaching of Huang Po — Blofeld’s translation is short, complete, and the only book needed. The full text is freely available below.

Further Reading

Passages