Jiànzhōng jìngguó xùdēng lù 建中靖國續燈錄
Jiànzhōng-Jìngguó-Era Continued Record of the Lamp
compiled by 惟白 (Wéibái, fl. 1101), presented to Sòng 徽宗 Huīzōng in 1101 (建中靖國元年)
About the work
The third of the Sòng-era Chán lamp records, in 30 juan, compiled by the abbot Fóguó Wéibái 佛國惟白 of the Biézhīyuàn 別之院 (or Fǎyúnsì 法雲寺) in the capital. Completed and presented to the throne in the first year of the Jiànzhōng jìngguó 建中靖國 reign period (1101) — hence the title — the work supplements the Jǐngdé chuándēng lù (KR6q0003) and the Tiānshèng guǎngdēng lù (KR6q0004) with figures active from the mid-eleventh century up to 1101, including many masters of the Yángqí 楊岐 and Huánglóng 黃龍 branches of Línjì Chán whose importance became evident only in the course of the eleventh century.
Abstract
Wéibái — a Dharma heir in the Yúnmén 雲門 line, but personally well-connected with the Línjì masters of his generation — aimed in this work to bring the lamp-record tradition up to date and to document the new generation of Línjì masters (the Yángqí and Huánglóng branches) whose influence was now defining Chán practice. The compilation follows the standard lamp-record structure established by the Jǐngdé chuándēng lù: biographical headnote, lineage position, recorded dialogue, death-verse where applicable.
As the third of the five canonical Sòng lamp records, the Jiànzhōng jìngguó xùdēng lù was synthesised (together with the Jǐngdé, Tiānshèng guǎngdēng lù, Liándēng huìyào, and Jiātài pǔdēng lù) into the Wǔdēng huìyuán 五燈會元 in 1252. Its material for the eleventh-century Línjì — especially the Yángqí line from which later Chinese and Japanese Línjì transmissions descend — is frequently the earliest dated witness for the masters treated.
Translations and research
No English translation exists. Treated as one of the five standard Sòng lamp records in Chán-historiographical scholarship; discussed in Albert Welter, Monks, Rulers, and Literati (OUP, 2006), and in Morten Schlütter, How Zen Became Zen (UH Press, 2008), as a key document in the eleventh-century institutional consolidation of Línjì Chán. No dedicated monograph or critical edition has been located.
Other points of interest
The work’s dating to 1101 places it squarely in the Huīzōng-era state-Buddhist complex, and it is a useful witness to the continuing close relations between imperial patronage and Chán lineage-construction in the late Northern Sòng.