Fǔzhōu Cáoshān Běnjì chánshī yǔlù 撫州曹山本寂禪師語錄
Recorded Sayings of Chán Master Běnjì of Cáoshān in Fǔzhōu
recorded sayings of 本寂 Cáoshān Běnjì 曹山本寂 (840–901); compiled (biān 編) by 玄契 Gimoku Genkei; preface dated Kanpō 1 (1741) spring; published at the Shirahana-bayashi 白華林 press, sponsored by the layman 菅禪海 Kan Zenkai (Jitan 慈湛)
About the work
A two-juan Edo-period Japanese recension of the recorded sayings of Cáoshān Běnjì 曹山本寂 (840–901), the junior patriarch of the Cáodòng 曹洞 school. Taishō T47 n1987B, distinct from the one-juan T47 n1987A (KR6q0068) collated by 慧印 Shigetsu Ein. The two Japanese recensions were produced by adjacent but separate editorial projects in the late 1730s and early 1740s.
Abstract
The text as received in T47 n1987B is the fuller of the two Japanese Cáoshān recensions. It preserves the standard Cáodòng doctrinal apparatus in a somewhat different arrangement from the one-juan Ein text (KR6q0068):
- Biographical preamble covering Cáoshān’s meeting with Dòngshān, transmission, and abbacy at Cáoshān 曹山 in Fǔzhōu 撫州. Lifedates: 840 – Tiānfù 1 (901); shì 62.
- Upper-hall sermons and encounter-dialogues from the Cáoshān abbacy.
- The sānduò 三墮 (“three falls”) and Cáoshān’s elaborations on Dòngshān’s original doctrine.
- The extended wǔwèi 五位 (“five positions”) exposition, including the verses zhèng zhōng piān 正中偏, piān zhōng zhèng 偏中正, zhèng zhōng lái 正中來, piān zhōng zhì 偏中至, and jiān zhōng dào 兼中到 — here with the paired wǔwèi jiāngōng 五位功勳 (“five positions of achievement”) adding a second-layer pastoral application of the system.
- Correspondence and miscellaneous verses.
Dating: Kanpō 1 spring = 1741 spring; the printing can be taken as bracketing one year. Dynasty 日本 per the catalog meta.
Translations and research
- No complete English translation. William Powell’s The Record of Tung-shan (Hawai’i / Kuroda, 1986) draws on this Cáoshān material in apparatus.
- Heinrich Dumoulin, Zen Buddhism: A History, Vol. 1 (World Wisdom, 2005).
- For the wǔwèi system’s later reception see Hakuin’s Rinzai-side commentaries (e.g. Sankyō itchi no ben 三教一致之辨) and the modern Sōtō-school doctrinal literature. Taigen Leighton and Shohaku Okumura’s Dōgen’s Extensive Record (Wisdom, 2004) provides parallel treatment of the Cáodòng materials as received in the Japanese Sōtō tradition.
Other points of interest
Gimoku Genkei’s preface, with its classical-literary invocation of the Biàn Hé / Jīng shān pǔ figure, registers the Edo-period Japanese Zen editor’s self-conception as rescuer and authenticator of a canonical Chinese corpus. The two-layered framing — the Japanese monk as Biàn Hé, the Cáoshān text as the uncut jade — asserts both the foreignness and the canonicity of the Chinese material, and the necessity of a present Japanese reader to recognise it for what it is. This stance is typical of the broader Edo-period scholarly retrieval of Sòng and pre-Sòng Chán literature.