by Youngbear Roth

Created on: May 16, 2010   Last Updated: May 18, 2010

'Nenge-misho' is Japanese for "smiling and twirling a flower [between the fingers].[i]" 'Nenge-misho' is popularly known in English as 'The Flower Sermon' or 'The Flower Sutra'.

In respects to the direct transmission of Buddha's enlightenment or awakening, this fourteenth century sutra is arguably the most important event in the teaching life of Sakymuni Buddha and the advancement of the Mahayana

[ii]school of Zen Buddhism. The argument is simply that like Jesus, Buddha's followers did not record his teachings until after his death, so, it is often contended that The Flower Sutra is mythic and metaphoric rather than historic and fundamental.

Theoretically, it is my literary responsibility to offer this information of myth versus history as a context by which to judge the veracity of statements contained within the recorded event.  However, myth, history, pearls before swine, or a lotus flower – in Buddha-speak all are one and the same.  Buddhism has made it clear on numerous occasions "If you see the Buddha coming down the road, kill him!"  Why?  Because when a man's moment in time is gone, the teaching vehicle is mortal dust – it is the teachings themselves that inform eternity.

I have snuck past you the main point of 'Nenji-misho', Buddha's having held or twirled a flower before a group of sincere, well-meaning students, most unaware that this action was calculated to plumb for its broader, deeper meaning, and would have been just as important if Buddha scooped up a palm full of bull feces. However, a single student, Kashyapa – later, Mahakashyapa - simply smiled, and it is said that while his enigmatic smile did not stop any ships, start any wars, or stop any clocks, it did mark the moment that Zen or Cha'an was transmitted in its full awakened state to the world.

Only then, did the aging teacher, Sakyamuni Buddha, speak. "I have the treasure of the eye of true dharma, the wonderful mind of nirvana, the true form of no form, the mysterious gate of dharma. It cannot be expressed through words and letters and is a special transmission outside of all doctrine. This I entrust  to Mahakashyapa."

Another version of Buddha's remarks is shorter yet more telling:

"What can be said I have said, and what cannot be said, I have given to Mahakashyapa."

What did Buddha mean?

In Zen, we feel that words create two main issues. The first issue is that a word is not a direct experience of existence and that it either gets

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