Liándēng huìyào 聯燈會要
Gathered Essentials of the Linked Lamps
compiled by 悟明 (Wùmíng, sobriquet Huìwēng 晦翁), completed 1183 (Sòng Chúnxī 淳熙 10)
About the work
The fourth of the five canonical Sòng Chán lamp records, in 30 juan. Wùmíng, a Dharma heir in the Línjì — Yángqí — Dàhuì 大慧 line, compiled the Liándēng huìyào (“Gathering Essentials of the Linked Lamps”) as a synthesis of the three earlier lamp records and a supplement bringing the genealogy up to the late twelfth century.
Abstract
Structurally a condensation and updating of the Jǐngdé chuándēng lù (KR6q0003), Tiānshèng guǎngdēng lù (KR6q0004), and Jiànzhōng jìngguó xùdēng lù (KR6q0007), with additional figures down through the mid-twelfth century. Distinctive for its more compressed entries (several earlier masters are represented by only a single famous dialogue rather than by a full entry) and for its privileging of the Dàhuì line within the post-1100 Línjì expansion — 大慧宗杲 Dàhuì Zōnggǎo (1089–1163) receives one of the longer and more detailed individual entries.
The work was prepared under the patronage of the literatus 王渙 Wáng Huán and circulated widely in the late Southern Sòng; it was incorporated into the Korean Tripitaka 高麗藏 and into the Xuzangjing. It is the most historiographically modern of the pre-Wǔdēng huìyuán 五燈會元 lamp records, in the sense that its coverage of contemporary Línjì masters was the most up-to-date available at the time of compilation, and 普濟 Pǔjì drew heavily on it in compiling the Wǔdēng huìyuán in 1252.
Translations and research
No English translation exists. The standard reference discussion is in Yanagida Seizan’s surveys of Sòng Chán historiography; see also Morten Schlütter, How Zen Became Zen (UH Press, 2008), on the Dàhuì line’s increasing prominence, of which this text is evidence. No dedicated critical edition has been located; the work circulates via the Xuzangjing text and CBETA.
Other points of interest
One of the earlier Chán lamp records to treat Dàhuì Zōnggǎo’s kànhuà 看話 teaching as central to the Línjì line, and a useful witness to the consolidation of Dàhuì’s influence within two decades of his death.