Zǔtíng zhǐnán 祖庭指南
A Guide to the Patriarchs’ Courtyard
compiled (biānshù 編述) by 徐昌治 Xú Chāngzhì, late Míng / early Qīng
About the work
A two-juan late-Míng / early-Qīng Chán reference work by the lay practitioner Xú Chāngzhì — title “A Guide to the Patriarchs’ Courtyard” — arranged as a practical handbook of essential Chán transmission facts, principal gōng’àn 公案 cases, and key doctrinal formulations.
Abstract
Xú Chāngzhì (1582–after 1672) was a substantial late-Míng / early-Qīng layman with extensive Buddhist literary output, including the Gāosēng zhāiyào 高僧摘要 (selected biographies of eminent monks) and the Pò xié jí 闢邪集 (an anti-Christian polemical compendium of 1639 that became an important primary source for late-Míng Buddhist responses to the Jesuit mission). The Zǔtíng zhǐnán belongs to his broader project of making Chán reference material accessible to lay readers; it condenses what a Chán-interested layman needed to know about lineage, key cases, and doctrinal formulations into a compact practitioner’s guide.
Translations and research
No English translation. Xú Chāngzhì’s Pò xié jí has received substantially more Western attention than the Zǔtíng zhǐnán — see Douglas Lancashire’s translations in the Pò xié jí tradition, and Iso Kern’s Buddhistische Kritik am Christentum im China des 17. Jahrhunderts (Peter Lang, 1992).
Other points of interest
The work’s handbook character — assembling standard Chán reference material for lay use — makes it representative of the seventeenth-century lay Chán reading culture of which the Zhǐyuè lù tradition is the more famous monument.