Rén tiān yǎnmù 人天眼目
Eyes of Humans and Gods
the canonical Southern-Sòng doctrinal compendium of the wǔ jiā gāngyào 五家綱要 (“essentials of the Five Houses”) of classical Chán; compiled (jí 集) by Huìyán Zhìzhāo 晦巖智昭 of Yuèshān 越山 at the Tiāntái Wànniánshān sì 天台萬年山寺 over roughly twenty years and concluded in Chúnxī 15 (1188)
About the work
The definitive Southern-Sòng reference text on the doctrinal formulas of the Five Houses of Chán. Six juan, Taishō T48 n2006. Not a commentary; commentedTextid omitted. Zhìzhāo’s compilation collates into categorically-ordered sections the formulas, gathas, and interpretive verses identifying each school’s signature teaching apparatus — Línjì’s sì liào jiǎn 四料揀 (“four discriminating selections”), sì bīn zhǔ 四賓主 (“four host-and-guest”), sān xuán sān yào 三玄三要 (“three profundities and three essentials”), sì zhào yòng 四照用; Cáodòng’s wǔ wèi 五位 (“five positions”) in piānzhèng 偏正 and jūnchén 君臣 and gōngxūn 功勳 arrangements; Wéiyǎng’s yuán xiāng 圓相 round-image system; Yúnmén’s sān jù 三句; and Fǎyǎn’s liù xiāng 六相 and Huáyán-influenced lǐshì 理事 scheme — together with the lineage gathas that map each house’s patriarchal descent.
The juan-by-juan structure: juan 1 covers Línjì 臨濟宗 (with biographical preamble on 義玄 Yìxuán, the sì liào jiǎn etc.); juan 2 continues the Línjì section; juan 3 Cáodòng 曹洞宗 (with the full Dòngshān wǔ wèi and Cáoshān elaborations); juan 4 Wéiyǎng 溈仰宗 and Fǎyǎn 法眼宗; juan 5 Yúnmén 雲門宗 plus a miscellaneous Zōngmén zá lù 宗門雜錄; juan 6 a concluding miscellany including wǔ zōng wèn dá 五宗問答, 楊無為 Yáng Wúwéi’s wǔ zōng sòng 五宗頌, and a wǔ jiā yàokuò 五家要括 genealogical-gatha section organising the Five Houses’ lineage descents.
Tiyao
Not a WYG text; no 四庫 tíyào exists. In place of a tíyào the work carries Zhìzhāo’s own concise compositional preface, dated Chúnxī wùshēn jìdōng 宋淳熙戊申季冬 (1188 late winter), signed Yuèshān Huìyán Zhìzhāo 越山晦巖智昭:
“In my itinerant years, wherever I went I petitioned the zūnsù 尊宿 with all my sincerity, inquiring into the gāngyào 綱要 (“essential principles”) of the Five Houses. There were occasions where I, having once been installed on the master’s seat, found I could not name the gāngzōng 綱宗 phrases at all — how could I then guide the later generations, dispel their confused films? I accordingly set out nearly twenty years ago on the project of collecting their essentials. Some I found in received books, some on broken steles; some I heard the zūnsù raise in teaching, some I got as chuísòng 垂頌 gathas from old monks. Whatever touched on the wǔ zōng gāngyào I wrote down and stored; though the collection grew bulky, I lacked leisure for final editing. Late in life, reaching the Tiāntái Wànniánshān sì, I at last fulfilled my vow: I arranged the material by categories, divided it into Five Schools, and named the work Rén tiān yǎnmù. The wording is everywhere kept identical to what the predecessors wrote; I did not dare to add or subtract. This compilation of the great old masters’ benevolent expedients is not my own chest’s opinion; in letting it circulate in the world, where would the criticism be? For those who grasp the fly-whisk and occupy the master’s seat, without it there would be no means of testing orthodox and heterodox. The insightful and broadly-learned will surely confirm it.”
Abstract
The work’s function in the tradition is that of a manual de référence — a ready-access compendium of the Five Houses’ specialised formulas for monks preparing to preach, sit in the teacher’s role, or compose their own commentarial verses. Its authority derives from two features: (a) Zhìzhāo’s stated editorial principle of bù gǎn zēng sǔn 不敢增損 (“not daring to add or subtract”), preserving the source-texts in their original wording; (b) the breadth of its sourcing — received books, temple steles, oral teaching, handed-down gathas — which makes it the richest single survival of twelfth-century Chán doctrinal-formula material. By the late Sòng the Rén tiān yǎnmù had become the standard textbook reference for the wǔ jiā gāngyào; subsequent Chán lineage compilations — the Wǔ dēng huì yuán 五燈會元 (1252), the Jiātài pǔdēng lù 嘉泰普燈錄 (1204), the Míng-Qīng Sōngyǐn lù 送隱錄 — routinely draw on Zhìzhāo’s arrangement.
Zhìzhāo himself (DILA A001266) survives only through this work: no lifedates, no native place, no lineage affiliation. The preface style-name Huìyán 晦巖 (“obscure cliff”) and the geographical specifier Yuèshān 越山 (indicating northern Zhèjiāng / the Yuè region) are all we have. The late-Southern-Sòng Tiāntái Wànnián sì, where the final compilation was completed, was a major Linji-side centre of the twelfth century (seat of 智愚 Xūtáng Zhìyú 虛堂智愚’s later lineage), and Zhìzhāo’s access to that library evidently enabled the final editorial stage.
The juan-6 closing note — wǔ zōng yì shī shīchéng cìdì, jīn gǎizhèng zhī, chū liè LínjìWéiyǎng 五宗亦失師承次第，今改正之，初列臨濟溈仰 — records that the shīchéng cìdì 師承次第 (master-succession sequence) of the Five Houses had itself become corrupt in circulating sources, and that Zhìzhāo has imposed a corrected genealogical order with Línjì and Wéiyǎng leading. This is editorial intervention beyond the bù zēng sǔn principle and reflects Zhìzhāo’s clear sense of genealogical priority.
Dating: Zhìzhāo’s preface is dated 1188 late winter. The compilation itself took nearly two decades per his own account, so the material-gathering phase spans roughly 1168–1187; the final assembled text is of 1188. Tight bracket: notBefore 1188, notAfter 1188, reflecting the received edited text rather than the earlier gathering phase.
Translations and research
- 方銘 (trans.). 1997. 《人天眼目》. 高雄縣: 佛光文化事業. Modern Chinese paraphrase with apparatus.
- 椎名宏雄 1986. 〈高麗版《人天眼目》とその資料〉, 《駒沢大学仏教学部研究紀要》 44: 325–359. Textual-history study of the Koryŏ edition and its sources.
- 小早川浩大 2006. 〈覚範慧洪に対する評価:《人天眼目》への引用を中心として〉, 《印度学仏教学研究》 108: 709–712. Study of Zhìzhāo’s use of 慧洪 Juéfàn Huìhóng 覺範慧洪 (1071–1128).
- Foulk, T. Griffith. 1999. “Sung Controversies Concerning the ‘Separate Transmission’ of Ch’an.” In Buddhism in the Sung, ed. Peter N. Gregory & Daniel A. Getz Jr., 220–294. Hawai’i. Uses the Rén tiān yǎnmù as a principal source for late-Sòng Chán doctrinal formulations.
- Schlütter, Morten. 2008. How Zen Became Zen. Hawai’i. Extensive citation.
- Welter, Albert. 2000. “Mahākāśyapa’s Smile: Silent Transmission and the Kung-an (Kōan) Tradition.” In The Kōan, ed. Steven Heine & Dale S. Wright, 75–109. Oxford. Uses the Rén tiān yǎnmù on the niān huā 拈花 precedent.
- 石井修道 1987. 《宋代禪宗史の研究》. Daitō Shuppansha. Places the Rén tiān yǎnmù in the broader late-Sòng editorial context.
Other points of interest
The Koryŏ edition of the Rén tiān yǎnmù (preserved in the Tripitaka Koreana supplement) is editorially earlier than the Chinese received edition and preserves readings that the subsequent Chinese tradition reformulated; it is the principal witness for Shīna’s 1986 textual-critical study. The Taishō T48 n2006 uses the Chinese recension rather than the Koryŏ one, and the two diverge in several respects, particularly in the wǔ jiā yàokuò gatha sections.
Zhìzhāo’s two-decade wǔ jiā gāngyào project is the twelfth-century counterpart to 慧洪 Juéfàn Huìhóng’s Línjiān lù 林間錄 and Shíméntíng lù 石門提錄 in establishing the scholarly-lexicographical paradigm for Chán doctrinal study. Unlike Huìhóng, who was himself a prolific Chán author-master, Zhìzhāo presents as a disciplined compiler-redactor; the scholarly-editorial persona of the Rén tiān yǎnmù is distinct from the author-preacher persona of the yǔlù genre.