Sealing the Mark on our forehead

Sealing the Mark on our forehead is actually Dharma Transmission.

Next day the Patriarch came secretly to the room where the rice was pounded. Seeing that I was working there with a stone pestle, he said to me, "A seeker of the Path risks his life for the Dharma. Should he not do so?" Then he asked, "Is the rice ready?" "Ready long ago," I replied, "only waiting for the sieve." He knocked the mortar thrice with his stick and left.

Knowing what his message meant, in the third watch of the night I went to his room. Using the robe as a screen so that none could see us, he expounded the Diamond Sutra to me. When he came to the sentence, "One should use one's mind in such a way that it will be free from any attachment," I at once became thoroughly enlightened, and realized that all things in the universe are the Essence of Mind itself. (Tao is in everything.)

"Who would have thought," I said to the Patriarch, "that the Essence of Mind is intrinsic pure! Who would have thought that the Essence of Mind is intrinsically free from becoming or annihilation! (eternal) Who would have thought that the Essence of Mind is intrinsic self-sufficient! Who would have thought that the Essence of Mind is intrinsic free from change! Who would have thought that all things are the manifestation of the Essence of Mind!" (Bodhi is translated here into Essence of Mind. It is actually our soul or spirit and named Tao in Taoism.)

Knowing that I had realized the Essence of Mind, the Patriarch said, "For him who does not know his own mind, there is no use learning Buddhism. On the other hand, if he knows his own mind and see intuitively his own nature, he is a Hero, a 'Teacher of gods and men,' 'Buddha'." (Hui Neng was a lay man and had no Buddhist teaching from any one and he cannot read or write. A person who is fated to be an enlightened person will achieve his goal no matter how. Gautama Buddha was predicted to be a holy man when he was just born as a baby and some wrote that he pointed one index to the sky and the other index to the earth. Also Jesus when still a baby wealthy merchants visited him. This is a PLAN by the mysterious One. We are only actors and actresses. Once you are handed a role of a beggar, you have to act a beggar, a king, act as a king and an enlightened man as a Buddha, Saint, prophet etc. act as one of them.)

Thus, to the knowledge of no one, the Dharma was transmitted to me at midnight (sealing the mark on the forehead), and consequently I became the inheritor of the teaching of the 'Sudden' School as well as of the robe and the begging bowl.

"You are now the Sixth Patriarch," said he. "Take good care of yourself, and deliver as many sentient beings as possible. Spread and preserve the teaching, and don't let it come to an end. Take note of my stanza:-- 'Sentient beings who sow the seeds of enlightenment, in the field of Causation will reap the fruit of Buddha-hood. Inanimate objects void of Buddha-nature, sow not and reap not.'

He further said, "When the Patriarch Bodhidharma first came to China, most Chinese had no confidence in him, and so this robe was handed down as a testimony from one Patriarch to another. As to the Dharma, this is transmitted from heart to heart, and the recipient must realize it by his own efforts. From time immemorial it has been the practice for one Buddha to pass to his successor the quintessence of the Dharma, and for one Patriarch to transmit to another the esoteric teaching from heart to heart. As the robe may give cause for dispute, you are the last one to inherit it. Should you hand it down to your successor, your life would be in imminent danger. (a change of order to transmit Dharma to many) Now leave this place as quickly as you can, lest some one should do you harm."