Hui-neng’s Wisdom of Spiritual Liberation

Abstract

Hui-neng developed the Buddhist thought of liberation and constructed the theory of spiritual liberation with Chinese characteristics. Hui-neng’s theory of spiritual liberation is a kind of life wisdom, which aims to make people free from various afflictions and realize the freedom of the spir it. In order to achieve this goal, he explored the causes of afflictions, found the ways to liberate people from afflictions. According to his view, all afflictions (psychological problems) originate from evils and deviations, especially greed(贪：Tan), hatred(嗔：Chen), delusio n(痴：Chi) that are the three poison of consciousness called by Buddhism. Because the roots of evils and deviations are giving r ise to thoughts(动念：Dong-nian) and arising in one’s own mind(起心：Qi-xin), the best way to free from any afflictions is no-thought(无念：Wu-nian), no-dwelling(无住：Wu-zhu), no-mark(无相：Wu-xiang), which are able to make people’s mind have no impediment so that the spirit will be at easy or lightheartedness.