Yuánzhōu Yǎngshān Huìjì chánshī yǔlù 袁州仰山慧寂禪師語錄
Recorded Sayings of Chán Master Huìjì of Yǎngshān in Yuánzhōu
recorded sayings of the Táng master Yǎngshān Huìjì 仰山慧寂 (807–883), dharma-heir of Wéishān Língyòu 溈山靈祐 (771–853) and co-namesake of the Wéiyǎngzōng 溈仰宗; compiled (biānjí 編集) in the late Míng by 圓信 Yǔfēng Yuánxìn 語風圓信 of Jìngshān and the layman 郭凝之 Guō Níngzhī (Wúdì dìzhǔrén 無地地主人) as part of the Wǔjiā yǔlù 五家語錄 editorial project
About the work
The companion volume to KR6q0075 Tánzhōu Wéishān Língyòu chánshī yǔlù: a one-juan late-Míng recension of the recorded sayings of Yǎngshān Huìjì, the disciple who completes the Wéiyǎng pair and whose yuán xiāng 圓相 round-image teaching is the school’s doctrinal signature. Taishō T47 n1990. Not a commentary; commentedTextid omitted.
Tiyao
Not a WYG text; no 四庫 tíyào exists. The opening credit line is identical in form to that of KR6q0075: Jìngshān shāmén Yǔfēng Yuánxìn / Wúdì dìzhǔrén Guō Níngzhī biānjí 徑山沙門語風圓信 無地地主人郭凝之編集. No separate editorial preface.
Abstract
The text opens with a condensed biographical preamble: Yǎngshān Huìjì was a native of Huáihuà 懷化 in Sháozhōu 韶州 (the DILA entry A009491 records his native place as Zhēnchāng 湞昌), lay surname Yè 葉. He left home at nine at the Guǎngzhōu Hé’ān sì 廣州和安寺 under the master 不語通 Tōng 通禪師 (here glossed as Bùyǔ Tōng 不語通 — “silent Tōng” — distinguishing him from other monks of that name). At fourteen he was recalled home for a marriage alliance; refusing, he cut off two fingers as a vow before his parents and obtained their permission to return to Tōng for tonsure. Before full ordination he began itinerant study: first at Dānyuán Yìngzhēn 耽源應真 (DILA A008874, yícháng bùquē chief disciple of the National Master Nányáng Huìzhōng 南陽慧忠), then under Wéishān Língyòu.
The Dānyuán episode preserves the origin-story for the yuán xiāng 圓相 system — the ninety-seven round-image symbols that the National Master Huìzhōng had transmitted through six patriarchal generations and that Dānyuán passed to the young Yǎngshān with the prophecy “thirty years after my death a shāmí will come to the south who will greatly revive this teaching.” Yǎngshān examined the scroll once and burned it. When Dānyuán demanded an explanation, Yǎngshān said “I have seized the meaning at one glance; what use is clinging to the scroll?” — and, when pressed that later students would not take him at his word, offered to reconstruct the whole set from memory, which he did without omission. The yuán xiāng teaching became the signature didactic method of the Wéiyǎng school.
The Wéishān period follows: fifteen years of close attendance, including the chénfēi sǎo dé / kōng bù zì shēng 塵非掃得 / 空不自生 sweeping-ground dialogue, the zhēn fó zhù chù 真佛住處 exchange on “the abode of the true Buddha” which provoked Yǎngshān’s deep awakening, and the celebrated cycles of teacher-and-student yuán xiāng exchanges that the text preserves densely. A subsequent section gives Yǎngshān’s independent abbacies — first at Dàyǎng 大仰 in Yuánzhōu 袁州, then at Dōngpíng 東平 — the second of which was the locus of his death. The valedictory gatha — “the disc of the sun stands at high noon; with both hands I clasp the knees that bend” — is delivered and followed by Yǎngshān’s sitting-down death at noon, aged 77 (DILA: born 807.6.21 = 2 August 807; died 883.2.13 = 29 March 883). The stupa was returned to the Yǎngshān main-mountain the following year by 南塔涌 Nántǎ Yǒng chánshī 南塔涌禪師; posthumous title Zhìtōng chánshī 智通禪師 (DILA notes the parallel form Tōngzhì dàshī 通智大師), stupa Miàoguāng 妙光. Recorded Chán epithets include Yǎngshān XiǎoShìjiā 仰山小釋迦 (“Little Śākyamuni of Yǎngshān”) and Bǒjiǎo qū wū 跛脚驅烏 (“the lame crow-chaser”), both retained in DILA as alternate persNames.
The core of the yǔlù is the post-biographical cycle of dialogue exchanges: Yǎngshān / Wéishān direct teacher-student interactions; Yǎngshān’s comments on cases from Huángbò 黃檗, Línjì 臨濟, Shíshuāng 石霜, Yúnyán 雲巖, and the other major ninth-century masters (an in-line editorial note — WéiYǎng shīzī gǔchàng niānpíng, jīyǔ jǐn duō, rú jù 《臨濟錄》 zhōng zhě, zī bù chóng zài 溈仰師資鼓唱拈評，機語儘多，如具《臨濟錄》中者，茲不重載 — tells us that cases already preserved in the Línjì lù are intentionally not duplicated here); and the late-career dàiyǔ 代語 / biéyǔ 別語 commentator strata identical in character to those in KR6q0075. The yǔlù closes on the death-scene.
Dating: following the Wǔjiā yǔlù bracket, notBefore 1630, notAfter 1650. Dynasty 明 per catalog meta.
Translations and research
- Yanagida Seizan 柳田聖山 1969. 《禪の語錄》 9 《潙山．仰山》. Chikuma Shobō (paired treatment with KR6q0075).
- Jia, Jinhua. 2006. The Hongzhou School of Chan Buddhism in Eighth- through Tenth-Century China. SUNY. Places the Yǎngshān lineage in the ninth-century Hóngzhōu descent.
- Poceski, Mario. 2007. Ordinary Mind as the Way: The Hongzhou School and the Growth of Chan Buddhism. Oxford.
- Welter, Albert. 2008. The Linji Lu and the Creation of Chan Orthodoxy. Oxford. Discussion of the relationship between the Wǔjiā yǔlù volumes and the parallel Línjì lù recensions.
- Bodiford, William M. 1993. Sōtō Zen in Medieval Japan. Hawai’i. Background on the later Japanese reception of the Wéiyǎng yuán xiāng in the Sōtō tradition via the Jūzū keiki literature.
Other points of interest
The yuán xiāng 圓相 teaching system, with Dānyuán Yìngzhēn as its earliest Chinese transmitter and Yǎngshān as its principal exponent, represents one of the earliest systematic pictorial-symbolic teaching apparatus in Chinese Chán, and has continuing doctrinal importance in later Japanese Zen via the Sōtō school’s ensō 圓相 meditation-painting tradition. The ninety-seven-image scheme itself does not survive; what is preserved is the dialogic occasion of its oral teaching, as captured in the Yǎngshān / Dānyuán and Yǎngshān / Wéishān exchanges reproduced here.
Yǎngshān’s epithet “Little Śākyamuni of Yǎngshān” (仰山小釋迦) is first attested in the Zǔtáng jí 祖堂集 (KR6q0002) and is subsequently fossilised into the standard Chán hagiographic apparatus. Its use here in the yǔlù is an indicator of the text’s post-Zǔtáng jí editorial period — that is, not a direct Táng recension but a mediated later compilation, ultimately reaching the form preserved here in the late-Míng Wǔjiā yǔlù.