Nenge-mishō Jap., lit. “smiling and twirling a flower [between the fingers]” ; a Zen expression that refers to the wordless transmission of the buddha-dharma from Shākyamuni Buddha to his student Kāshyapa, later called Mahākāshyapa. The transmission from heart-mind to heart-mind (ishin-denshin) is the beginninf of the “special transmission outside the [orthodox] teaching” (kyōge-betsuden), as Zen calls itself.
The story begins with a sutra, the Ta-fan-t’ien wang-wen-fo-chueh-i-ching (Jap., Daibontennō-mombutsu-ketsugi-kyō). In it it is told that once Brahmā, the highest deity in the Hinduist as sembly of gods, visited a gathering of the disciples of Buddha on Mount Gridhrakūta (Vulture Peak Mountain). He presented the Buddha with a garland of flowers and requested him respect fully to expound the dharma. However, instead of giving a discourse, the Buddha only took a flower and twirled it, while smiling silently, between the fingers of his raised hand. None of the gathering understood except for Kāshyapa, who responded with a smile. According to the somewhat shortened version of this episode given in the Wu-men-kuan (example 6), the Buddha then said, “I have the treasure of the eye of true dharma, the wonderful mind of nirvāna, 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 Mahākāshyapa.”
The student of the Buddha who after this event was called Mahākāshyapa thus became the first patriarch of the Indian transmission lineage of Ch’an (Zen) (see the Ch’an/Zen Lineage Chart).
Source: The Encyclopedia of Eastern Philosophy and Religion: Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Zen. Shambhala Publications, Inc.
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