Ruìzhōu Dòngshān Liángjiè chánshī yǔlù 瑞州洞山良价禪師語錄
Recorded Sayings of Chán Master Liángjiè of Dòngshān in Ruìzhōu
compiled (biānjí 編集) by 圓信 Yǔfēng Yuánxìn 語風圓信 of Jìngshān and 郭凝之 Guō Níngzhī 無地地主人 (“Master of the No-Land Land”), late Míng
About the work
A one-juan late-Míng recension of the recorded sayings of 良价 Dòngshān Liángjiè 洞山良价 (807–869), compiled by the same editorial pair — Yǔfēng Yuánxìn as editorial head (his title 徑山沙門 identifying him with Jìngshān) and the layman Guō Níngzhī — responsible for the Chán biographical anthologies Xiānjué zōngshèng (KR6q0050) and Yōupóyí zhì (KR6q0051). Paired with the Edo-period Japanese recension of the same material (KR6q0066) as the Taishō’s two parallel witnesses for Dòngshān’s yǔlù.
Abstract
The text assembles the standard Dòngshān corpus in a single juan with minimal editorial scaffolding, opening directly on biographical narrative: Dòngshān’s boyhood reading of the Heart Sūtra under his first master, his probing question about the 無眼耳鼻舌身意 passage, and his teacher’s recognition that “I am not your master.” Subsequent sections cover his pilgrimage-study under Nánquán 普願 Pǔyuàn 南泉普願 and Guīshān 靈祐 Língyòu 溈山靈祐, the turning-point encounter with Yúnyán 曇晟 Tánshèng 雲巖曇晟 on “the preaching of the insentient” (wúqíng shuōfǎ 無情說法), the guòshuǐ jì 過水偈 composed on crossing a stream and seeing his own reflection, his abbacy at Dòngshān 洞山 in Ruìzhōu 瑞州 (after which he is styled), and the final “foolish feast” (yúchī zhāi 愚癡齋) by which Dòngshān orchestrated his own death in Xiántōng 10.3 (i.e. 3rd lunar month of 869), aged 63, xià 42; posthumous title Wùběn chánshī 悟本禪師, stupa Huìjué 慧覺.
The text also preserves standard later-Chán interpolated commentary — the interlinear “Cao Shan says…”, “Yun Ju says…”, “Shi Shuang says…”, “Qishou Chou says…” remarks that tag individual encounter-stories with brief judgements by later Chán masters. These interlinear notes mark the recension as post-Sòng: they belong to the mature gōng’àn commentarial idiom that coheres only from the late Northern Sòng onward.
Dating: the catalog meta places this compilation in the 明 dynasty, consistent with Yǔfēng Yuánxìn and Guō Níngzhī’s Chán-editorial activity in the 1630s and 1640s. For the other products of the same pair — Xiānjué zōngshèng 1640–1670, Yōupóyí zhì 1640–1670 — I use their late-Míng / early-Qīng windows; for this Dòngshān yǔlù, which the catalog assigns to the 明 rather than 清 dynasty, I narrow to notBefore 1630, notAfter 1650 on the working assumption that this was the earliest of their editorial projects (the Dòngshān material being canonical and well-suited to a first joint editorial act), finished before the MíngQīng transition of 1644.
This recension (T47 n1986B) and the Edo-period Japanese Genbun 4 (1739) recension (KR6q0066 / T47 n1986A) are the two canonical witnesses for the Dòngshān yǔlù. Powell’s 1986 English critical translation takes T47 n1986A as its primary base text but reads against T47 n1986B throughout; material readers of the Dòngshān lù in Chinese typically consult 1986B (this text) as the more conveniently organised witness.
Translations and research
- William F. Powell, The Record of Tung-shan (UH Press / Kuroda, 1986). Reads this recension against T47 n1986A.
- Taigen Dan Leighton, Just This Is It: Dongshan and the Practice of Suchness (Shambhala, 2015).
- Heinrich Dumoulin, Zen Buddhism: A History, Vol. 1 (World Wisdom, 2005).
- Sōtō-school Japanese scholarship: Kagamishima Genryū, Yokoi Kakuyū, et al.
- Mario Poceski, Ordinary Mind as the Way (Oxford, 2007), contextualises Dòngshān within the Hóngzhōu filiation.
Other points of interest
The pairing in this text of a monastic editor (Yuánxìn) and a lay editor (Guō Níngzhī) replicates the late-Míng / early-Qīng editorial collaboration visible in the Xiānjué zōngshèng group. The recurrence of Guō Níngzhī’s self-designation 無地地主人 “Master of the No-Land Land” across all these colophons identifies him as a single individual working steadily on the Chán-biographical-and-yǔlù corpus through the 1630s and 1640s — an example of the late-Míng layman’s role as a consequential Chán-editorial professional, comparable in kind (if not in later visibility) to the contemporaneous editorial work of 錢謙益 Qián Qiānyì on the Buddhist canon.