Zōngmén shí guī lùn 宗門十規論
Ten Regulations for the Chán School
The doctrinal-polemical treatise of Fǎyǎn Wényì 法眼文益 (885–958), founder of the Fǎyǎnzōng 法眼宗, identifying ten principal errors afflicting the Chán practice of his time; the earliest surviving intra-Chán critical treatise of this kind
About the work
A one-juan short polemical treatise by Fǎyǎn Wényì, X63 n1226. Non-commentary; commentedTextid omitted. Structurally a self-prefaced list of ten errors, each presented as a short topical essay.
The ten errors (as listed in the table of contents):
- Zìjǐ xīndì wèi míng wàng wéi rén shī 自己心地未明妄為人師 (“one’s own mind-ground not yet clear, yet taking up the teacher’s role recklessly”)
- Dǎng hù mén fēng bù tōng yì lùn 黨護門風不通議論 (“faction-protecting the school-wind, refusing to discuss [across lineages]”)
- Jǔ lìng tí gāng bù zhī xuè mài 舉令提綱不知血脉 (“raising orders and upholding the essentials without knowing the blood-lineage”)
- Duì dá bù guān shí jié jiān wú zōng yǎn 對答不觀時節兼無宗眼 (“responding without observing the occasion, and moreover without the school’s eye”)
(and six more — complete list in the text).
Tiyao
Not a WYG text; no 四庫 tíyào exists. Two prefaces frame the received text:
A Japanese Edo-period reprint preface signed by the layman Yìn-zhǐyuè 印指月 at the Zhāntán-lín xià Wànshàn-táng 栴檀林下萬善堂, dated Bǎolì 11 xīnsì Fó bān-nièpán huì 寶曆十一年辛巳佛般涅槃會 (1761, Buddha Mahāparinirvāṇa festival day). The preface identifies this as an Edo recovery and reprinting of the text.
Wényì’s own autobiographical preface Zōngmén shí guī lùn zì xù 宗門十規論自敘: “Wényì in youth escaped from the crowded tangle, and in maturity heard the essentials of the dharma, roaming and consulting the shànzhīshí 善知識 for well over thirty years. Moreover, the lineage-branches are broad and the Southern region is most flourishing, but attainers are rarely to be found among them… The lineage-gate points out the disease; I offer ten articles to analyse and distinguish, in order to expose the various spurious expressions, to rescue the vices of the present time. I reverently write this preface.”
Abstract
Wényì’s composition of the Zōngmén shí guī lùn is traditionally dated to the late Southern Táng period of his abbacy (c. 935–958), when he held the Jīnlíng 金陵 abbacies and had comprehensive view of the state of Chán practice in the post-Táng / Five-Dynasties period. The ten errors Wényì identifies collectively reflect his diagnosis that contemporary Chán teachers were operating without proper grounding: mechanical repetition of master-lineage formulas (zōng yǎn 宗眼), factional protection of one’s own house against the others, teacher-claims without genuine realisation, responses that ignored the specific occasion and need of the student, and so on. The treatise’s pastoral-regulatory function foreshadows the later Sòng-period qīngguī 清規 tradition (KR6q0102) and the post-Sòng Chán-admonition genre (KR6q0099 Chánlín bǎoxùn, KR6q0100 Zī mén jǐng xùn).
Wényì’s unique credentials for the critique — as a direct dharma-heir of the Xuánshā 玄沙 / Dìzàng Guìchēn 地藏桂琛 lineage, founder of his own Fǎyǎn school, and patron of the late Southern-Táng imperial court — make the treatise the authoritative intra-Chán polemical document of its period.
Dating bracket: notBefore 935 (Wényì’s peak teaching period in Jīnlíng), notAfter 958 (his death). Catalog dynasty 唐 reflects the traditional dynastic classification; the actual composition is Five-Dynasties-Nán-Táng.
Translations and research
- 柳田聖山 Yanagida Seizan 1970. 〈法眼文益の問題: 宗門十規論を中心として〉, in Hanazono University papers.
- Welter, Albert. 2006. Monks, Rulers, and Literati. Oxford. Chapter on Wényì and the Southern-Táng court-patronage context.
- Welter, Albert. 2011. Yongming Yanshou’s Conception of Chan. Oxford. Background on the Fǎyǎn-school legacy.
- 椎名宏雄 1993. 《宋元版禅籍の研究》. Daitō Shuppansha.
- Foulk, T. Griffith. 1999. “Sung Controversies Concerning the ‘Separate Transmission’ of Ch’an.” In Buddhism in the Sung, ed. P. N. Gregory & D. A. Getz Jr. Hawai’i.
Other points of interest
Wényì’s Zōngmén shí guī lùn is the earliest surviving intra-Chán critical treatise in the explicit polemical-regulatory genre; while the Chánlín bǎoxùn (KR6q0099) and similar later texts develop the pastoral-ethical admonition-literature, Wényì’s text is specifically aimed at doctrinal-practical errors in the teaching of Chán rather than at general monastic ethics. This makes the Shí guī lùn a unique early specimen of Chán intellectual self-policing, distinct from both the earlier Northern-Southern-School polemical literature (Shénhuì etc.) and the later generic pastoral-regulatory texts.
The text’s rediscovery and Edo-Japanese re-cutting in 1761 is characteristic of the Edo Japanese Zen textual-recovery project that retrieved numerous lost or obscured Chinese Chán texts.