The Flower Sermon is a very well known teaching in Zen Buddhism, and acts as a foundation story for the lineage and the tradition. In a few short sentences it illustrates the direct passing on of the teaching, which is an essential feature of the Zen tradition.

The Flower Sermon is an incident in the life of the Buddha which appears in Mahayana Buddhist sources. In the Flower Sermon the Buddha directly passes on his teaching to his disciple Mahakashyapa, who the Chan tradition in China and the Zen tradition in Japan both look to as being the first ancestor in their lineage. As a result of this, the Flower Sermon is considered to be a symbolic origin story in Zen Buddhism, and the founder of Japanese Sōtō Zen Buddhism, Great Master Dōgen, writing in the 13th Century, quotes it time and time again in his great work the Shobogenzo.

This retelling of the Flower Sermon is from Dōgen’s chapter Menju (Face to Face-to-Face Transmission, chapter 57 in the translation of the Shobogenzo by Tanahashi et. al.).

Once, on Vulture Peak in India, in the midst of a vast assembly of beings, Shakyamuni Buddha held up an uḍumbara blossom and blinked. Mahakashyapa smiled. Then Shakyamuni Buddha said, “I have the treasury of the true dharma eye, the wondrous heart of nirvana. I entrust it to Mahakashyapa.”

The word Shobogenzo which Dōgen chose for the collection of his teachings actually translates as The Treasury of the True Dharma Eye; a direct reference to this story of the beginning of Zen Buddhism which shows the high regard in which Dōgen held it.

The monk Mahakashyapa who appears in the Flower Sermon was one of the Buddha’s ten great disciples, and in our tradition he appears in the lineage which we recite at morning service as Makakashyo, which is the Japanese version of his name. His name immediately follows the name of the Buddha, making him the first ancestor in our lineage.

This is how Dōgen describes the Flower Sermon immediately after his retelling of it:

This is the meaning of transmitting the treasury of the true dharma eye, face to face, from Buddha to Buddha, from ancestor to ancestor. It was authentically transmitted through the Seven Original Buddhas to Mahakashyapa. From Mahakashyapa there were twenty-eight transmissions up to and including Bodhidharma. Venerable Bodhidharma himself went to China and gave face-to-face transmission to Huike, Great Master Zhenzong Pujue. There were five transmission through to Huineng, Great Master Dajian of Mount Caoxi. Then there were seventeen transmissions through Rujing, my late master, Old Buddha Tiantong of the renowned Mount Taibai, Qingyuan Prefecture, Great Song.

In this commentary, Dōgen describes how ‘the treasury of the true dharma eye’ has been transmitted from generation to generation, from Shakyamuni Buddha down to his own master Rujing (or Tendō Nyojyo in Japanese), via the Indian and Chinese ancestors. Tendō Nyojyo then passed it on to Dōgen, and as a result Dōgen became part of the 51st generation after the Buddha. The transmission then carried on in Japan, and from there to many other countries, continuing down to the present day.

The Flower Sermon is a teaching about how this passing on of the truth from one person to another takes place. In Zen Buddhism, the direct seeing and passing on of the truth is at the heart of the tradition, but how should we understand what is being passed on, and how that passing on is happening? The Flower Sermon embodies this passing on, rather than trying to define it, and in doing so it shows us a practical example of what it is, and what it isn’t.

In trying to convey what is going on in the Flower Sermon, some commentaries describe it as, for example, a moment in which the Buddha ‘transmits direct prajñā (wisdom) to the disciple Mahakashyapa’. This can give the impression that the Buddha somehow puts something into Mahakashyapa, or passes over some tangible possession, but this isn’t how we should understand what is going on here.

The Flower Sermon is a moment of mutual recognition, when the Buddha and Mahakashyapa meet face to face and see each other, and equally share the Dharma seat. The Buddha’s holding up of the flower embodies his teaching and his understanding, and Mahakashyapa’s smile reveals that he too understands the Life of Buddha that we are each living, right here, right now. He has come to this, guided by the Buddha, through his own practice of meditation. The Buddha then confirms Mahakashyapa’s understanding by saying that he entrusts ‘the true dharma eye, the wondrous heart of nirvana’ to Mahakashyapa. Again, it is important to realise that no thing is being ‘transmitted’ here, in the sense that the Buddha is not putting something into Mahakashyapa, or passing something on to him.

The Buddha gives a similar teaching in the Lotus Sutra, starting in Chapter Six, where he predicts the future Buddhahood of his chief disciples (again starting with Mahakashyapa) and then of many others in the assembly. In predicting that they too will in the future become Buddha, the Buddha is recognising the true practice of each disciple. He is also recognising that each disciple is already Buddha from the beginning, as are we, and so there is no need to put anything into them; they are not lacking anything, just as we are not lacking anything, but we do need to live in harmony with this Life of Buddha which we already have, and which we already are.

What is being conveyed in the Flower Sermon is that both the Buddha and Mahakashyapa have seen deeply into the nature of reality, and recognise that in each other. The “transmission” in this sense is the public or private confirmation that it is so, and this is what the Buddha expresses when he says, “I have the treasury of the true dharma eye, the wondrous heart of nirvana. I entrust it to Mahakashyapa.”

When the Buddha carries out the very simple of act of holding up the flower, it is embodying something real and true, which Mahakashyapa recognises and responds to. He smiles because there is a connection there, something that the Buddha and Mahakashyapa hold in common. It is a mutual recognition of the Life of Buddha, which is in itself a confirmation of Mahakashyapa’s practice. The most important thing here is not an external confirmation, the most important thing is that we do the practice, in particular our meditation practice, which leads us to recognise Buddha in ourselves. In that sense the transmission, the direct passing on, happens when Mahakashyapa’s practice broadens and deepens to the extent that he himself sees directly the nature of Buddha, and lives his daily life based on that direct seeing and knowing. An external confirmation of this may or may not follow, but the direct seeing is always needed.

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The Flower Sermon itself doesn’t appear in the Pali Canon, which is the oldest written record of the Buddha’s teachings. It is thought to have originated in China, which raises the question of why anyone would want to invent an incident in the life of the Buddha which didn’t actually happen.

The reason that the Chinese sources who first came up with the Flower Sermon would have attributed it to the Buddha was to give it a sense of authority and legitimacy, so that it appears to be rooted in the teachings of the historical Buddha. On one level this is clearly a false legitimacy, since it is a made-up story. However, there is a truth to the Flower Sermon as well, in that the teaching has in fact been passed on since the time of the Buddha, right down to the present day, whether or not it happened in exactly the way described, and whether or not all the names are correct. At least one person in each generation must have passed on the teaching, and not just as a library or a series of teachings, but as a living tradition. The Life of the Buddha always has to be lived, and attributing this story to the Buddha himself is a skilful means that helps people to take this teaching seriously, and to engage with it sincerely.

There are many scriptures which were written long after the Buddha’s death, but which are attributed to the Buddha in just this same way, including the Lotus Sutra and the Diamond Sutra. Those who wrote these scriptures would have had no doubt that the teachings contained in them were absolutely the authentic teachings of the Buddha.

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The Flower Sermon is so simple that it can seem like nothing happens in it. The Buddha holds up a flower and Mahakashyapa smiles. We have to infer what is going on here, as Dōgen and other teachers clearly do, based on their own practice and their own understanding. The Buddha also gives us an indication of what is happening when he says, “I have the treasury of the true dharma eye, the wondrous heart of nirvana. I entrust it to Mahakashyapa.” On this day the Buddha was just being straightforward and holding up a flower. Mahakashyapa saw the Buddha directly, and smiled.

This direct seeing of the nature of Buddha is considered in Zen Buddhism to be the authentic way of practice, and is often contrasted with trying to understand Buddhism by just studying the scriptures. The Buddhist scriptures are very helpful, of course, in supporting our practice, but we can’t come to know Buddha through scriptural study alone. That would be like a hungry person trying to feed themselves by reading a book of recipes; reading about food doesn’t fill an empty stomach, and reading about Buddhism doesn’t bring us to the end of suffering. We ourselves need to practise, which we do primarily through practising meditation and living by the Buddhist Precepts. This leads us to a direct seeing into the true nature of existence, the nature of Buddha, and an actualisation of it in our own lives, although probably not in quite the way that we may have imagined it beforehand.

This direct seeing is emphasised in Bodhidharma’s teaching, which he describes as a ‘direct transmission outside the scriptures’, as well as in the teaching of the subsequent Chinese ancestors. It is the solid foundation of what became known as Chan or Zen Buddhism. We come to see the nature of the world embodied in the holding up of a flower, and we have the smile in the heart that responds to that.

The Buddha’s role in the Flower Sermon is not to put anything into Mahakashyapa, but to be the example that people can learn from and follow. All of us who practice can fulfil that role for others. If we try to do it deliberately we just trip up, but in just doing our own practice there is the expression of something which others can and do notice. This is how the teaching is passed on from generation to generation; we each just get on with our own practice, and other people then notice that and respond to it.

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The Flower Sermon points to the importance of seeing things for ourselves, of practising ourselves, and that is why it has been quoted for at least a thousand years as being an important touchstone in Zen Buddhism. It emphasises and embodies the direct transmission, the direct seeing into the nature of things which we can’t get just from reading the scriptures. The point of the scriptures is to get us to do our own practice, but it always comes back to our own personal practice, and our own realisation of the Life of Buddha. It is this realisation that Mahakashyapa shows us when he responds with a smile.

Sources:
The quotations from Dōgen’s chapter Menju are from:

Tanahashi K. Treasury of the True Dharma Eye : Zen Master Dogen’s Shobo Genzo. Shambhala Publications Incorporated; 2013. ISBN: 9781590309353

The quote, ‘transmits direct prajñā (wisdom) to the disciple Mahakashyapa’ is from the Wikipedia page on the Flower Sermon:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flower_Sermon