Preface
THIS VERSION is based upon the English translation entitled: SUTRA SPOKEN BY THE SIXTH PATRIARCH, WEI LANG, ON THE HIGH SEAT OF THE GEM OF LAW made by Mr. Wong Mou-lam of Shanghai, and published by the Yu Ching Press. To Mr. Wong great praise and credit should be given for his most excellent reproduction of the meaning and spirit of the original. Mr. Wong has very graciously given the editor permission to make changes in its English dress, and to delete passages that a reasonable amount of literary and historical criticism appear to make necessary, or that are of slight interest to our times. As Mr. Wong is in far away Ceylon to better fit himself for further translation work, there has been no chance to talk over the changes with him and to secure his approval; the editor, therefore, holds himself wholly responsible for them. Mr. Wong's translation is technically more complete and accurate and for scholarly research is to be preferred to this Version, but there is great need for a simpler and more readable Version, for which need this was provided.
The Sixth Chinese Patriarch lived fifteen hundred years ago (637-713), but his kindly and straight-forward insistence on the one thing: "Self-realisation of your own mind-essence," places him among the world's great teachers, and marks him out as one still worthy of attention.