One of the most well-known and cherished legends in Chan is the verse writing contest involving Shenxiu and Huineng at Hongren's monastery. The story can be found in the Platform Sutra of Huineng, but it was almost certainly not an historical event. The account given in the Platform Sutra is as follows: Hongren, realizing he was coming to the end of his years, instructed his monks to compose a "mind-verse" to demonstrate their level of attainment. The winner of the contest would be named Sixth Patriarch and receive the robe of Bodhidharma. None of the monks dared to write anything, deferring to Shenxiu who they believed would be the rightful Dharma heir. Shenxiu, full of doubts about his own motivations and with the weight of expectation upon him, chose to write a verse anonymously on a corridor wall in the night. Shenxiu's verse read:
The body is the bodhi tree
The mind is like a bright mirror's stand.
At all times we must strive to polish it
and must not let dust collect.
Publicly, Hongren praised this verse and instructed all his monks to recite it. Privately, Hongren asked Shenxiu to compose another verse as Hongren believed that Shenxiu's verse did not display true understanding of the Dharma. Shenxiu was unable to compose another verse. Meanwhile, the illiterate Huineng heard the monks chanting this verse and asked about it. When told the story of Hongren's contest, Huineng asked a monk to take him to the wall where Shenxiu's verse was written. There he asked someone to write his own verse. According to a later version of the Platform Sutra (two significant variants exist in older versions), Huineng's verse read
Bodhi originally has no tree.
The bright mirror also has no stand.
Fundamentally there is not a single thing.
Where could dust arise?
The account says that publicly Hongren denigrated this verse but that later, in private, he taught Huineng the true meaning of the Diamond Sutra, thereby awakening Huineng to the sutra's profound teaching. Hongren gave Huineng the robe of transmission and told him to flee the monastery in secret at night. According to the legend, Huineng thereby became the Sixth and last Patriarch of Chan.
Shenhui, a successor of Huineng, publicly criticized Shenxiu and associated him with the "Northern School", a term which Shenhui is thought to have invented. He claimed this "school" taught a "gradualist" (jian jiao 漸教) idea of enlightenment as opposed to Huineng's supposedly superior "sudden" (dun jiao 頓教) teaching. However, although a substantial amount of Shenhui's polemics survive, he is never recorded as mentioning this verse contest, which he presumably would have done in order to bolster the case for his descent from the superior Huineng. For this reason, in part, scholars doubt the historicity of the verse contest. Instead, it is thought that the Platform Sutra was composed by the Oxhead school in an attempt to reconcile the artificial split between the so-called Northern and Southern Schools. According to the Buddhologist John McRae, the two verses were likely intended to complement one another and speak of two sides of one practice. Further, Shenxiu's verse does not explicitly suggest gradualism, but rather alludes to a need for constant, unending practice. Whatever the case may be, historically speaking it is clear that Shenxiu was a far more respected and prominent teacher than the virtually unknown Huineng, who only became famous through later hagiography, including the Platform Sutra.