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宗範

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Text ID
KR6q0170
Date
1835–1886
Dynasty
清

Zōng fàn 宗範

The Standard of the School

A two-juan late-Qīng Chán manual of practice compiled by the lay Buddhist Qián Yīān 錢伊庵 (zì Dōngfǔ 東甫, hào Yīān 伊庵 “Yi-Hermitage”; d. 1837) of Wǔlín 武林 (Hángzhōu). Published in its original form with a 1835 (Dàoguāng yǐwèi 道光乙未) preface by the monk Nuòān Pántán 諾庵槃談 of Dōngchuān 東川; reprinted in 1886 (Guāngxù bǐngxū 光緒丙戌) by Yáng Wénhuì 楊文會 (Yáng Rénshān 楊仁山, 1837–1911) of the Jīnlíng Kèjīng chù 金陵刻經處 in Nánjīng with a further preface by Lǐ Zōngyè 李宗鄴, the Wùzhēn jūshì 悟真居士 (“Layman of Awakened-Truth”), then serving as magistrate of Ānjí 安吉 county in Zhèjiāng. The text is a key nineteenth-century compilation of classical Chán practice material, one of the hallmarks of the late-Qīng Buddhist revival.

About the work

A two-juan Chán meditation-practice manual, X65 n1283. Non-commentary; commentedTextid omitted. The text is organised into ten chapters (shí zhāng 十章) structuring the entire path of Chán cultivation as Qián Yīān understood it:

  1. Chán yuán 禪源 (Source of Chán) — the historical origins of the “separate transmission outside the teachings” from Bodhidharma forward.
  2. Chè cān 徹參 (Penetrating Investigation) — huàtóu 話頭 meditation, especially the “master-in-dreamless-sleep” (wú mèng xiǎng shí zhǔrén gōng 無夢想時主人公) huàtóu inherited from Xuěyán Zǔqīn 雪巖祖欽 and Gāofēng Yuánmiào 高峰原妙.
  3. Tiáo xí 調習 (Taming Habits) — post-awakening refinement.
  4. Rù shèng 入聖 (Entering Sagehood) — consolidation of awakening.
  5. Lì rén 利人 (Benefiting Others) — outward-directed practice.
  6. Xiǎn yù 顯喻 (Manifest Analogies) — Chán as taught by linguistic-analogical means.
  7. Jī yòng 機用 (Opportunity and Usage) — Chán’s post-Sòng turn toward gōng’àn encounter-practice.
  8. Gāng zōng 綱宗 (Essential Doctrine) — the classical Five Houses’ essential teachings.
  9. Shì biàn 示辯 (Demonstrative Argument) — historical disputes within Chán.
  10. Guàn jiào 貫教 (Penetrating the Doctrinal Teaching) — Chán’s articulation with doctrinal Buddhism, especially Tiāntái 天台 and Pure Land 淨土 practice.

Qián’s Fán lì 凡例 (editorial principles) make explicit several distinctive positions:

  • His preferred huàtóu for beginners is the “master-in-dreamless-sleep” formula: practitioners should be tested not only with blows and shouts but with the rigorous enquiry “When you are asleep with no dreams, where is the master?” — a formula designed to bypass the easy verbal-mimicry of Chán that Qián sees as pervasive among his contemporaries.
  • On the Five Houses: he explicitly declines to add new doctrinal classifications — “the doctrinal meanings established by the Five Houses are sufficient to take up all cases of post-succession testing; no further names and signs need be added” — a position that places him closer to the moderate-syncretic line (KR6q0169) than to either the Wǔ zōng yuán assertive or the Pì wàng jiù lüè shuō rejectionist positions.
  • On Chán–Pure Land: he endorses the classical late-Míng position associated with Yúnqī Zhūhóng 雲棲袾宏 and Yǒngmíng Yánshòu 永明延壽 — that Chán adepts should “complete their practice” by dedicating their post-awakening life to niàn fó 念佛 (Amitābha-recollection) and Pure Land rebirth, as the surest safeguard against regression.

Abstract

Qián Yīān 錢伊庵 (DILA A001833), zì Dōngfǔ 東甫, hào Yīān 伊庵. Native of Wǔlín (Hángzhōu). Lay Buddhist (non-monastic). Died Dàoguāng 17 (1837); birth year unrecorded. Studied Chán under Fùchūn Shàn Huázàng 富春單華藏 (a Zhèjiāng lay Buddhist teacher), and was widely read in both Chán and Pure Land traditions. In addition to the Zōng fàn, he wrote a preface to the 1820 (Jiāqìng èrshísì nián 嘉慶二十四年) reprint of the Chèwù dàshī yíjí 徹悟大師遺集 (Remaining Collection of Master Chèwù, a major Pure Land figure of the 18th century), evidencing his wider role in the late-Qīng Chán–Pure Land integrative movement.

The 1886 reprint by Yáng Wénhuì at the Jīnlíng Kèjīng chù — the major late-Qīng Buddhist publishing house founded by Yáng in 1866 in Nánjīng — is of particular historical significance: Yáng’s inclusion of the Zōng fàn in his ambitious publishing programme helped establish the text as one of the canonical Chán practice-manuals for the late-Qīng Buddhist revival, alongside works like Jièxiǎn 戒顯’s Chán mén duàn liàn shuō 禪門鍛煉說 (to which the DILA record explicitly compares it). Yáng Wénhuì himself, as the founder of the Jīnlíng Kèjīng chù and a pivotal figure in the late-Qīng / Republican-era Buddhist modernisation, would go on to establish the modern study of Buddhism in China and to teach or influence figures including Ouyáng Jìngwú 歐陽竟無, Tàixū 太虛, and many of the early twentieth century’s Buddhist scholars.

Dating: notBefore 1835 (Pántán’s first preface, Dàoguāng yǐwèi làyuè wàng 道光乙未臘月望 = the full moon of the twelfth month of Dàoguāng 15); notAfter 1886 (the reprint, Guāngxù bǐngxū suì yù yún mù 光緒丙戌歲聿云莫 = end of the year Guāngxù 12). The original compilation is a Qián Yīān product of his mature late years; the received form preserved in X65 n1283 is Yáng Wénhuì’s 1886 reissue.

Translations and research

  • Goldfuss, Gabriele. 2001. Vers un Bouddhisme du XXe siècle: Yang Wenhui (1837–1911), réformateur laïque et imprimeur. Paris: Collège de France. Standard biography of Yáng Wénhuì; discusses his reprinting programme including the Zōng fàn.
  • Welch, Holmes. 1968. The Buddhist Revival in China. Harvard University Press. Background on the late-Qīng / Republican Buddhist revival milieu within which the Zōng fàn was transmitted.
  • Shengyen Chan Master. 1993. Faith in Mind and various Chan manuals. Modern presentations of the huàtóu method that Qián advocates, though not drawing directly on the Zōng fàn.
  • No major monographic study located specifically on the Zōng fàn.

Other points of interest

The Zōng fàn is significant as evidence that sustained Chán literary-theological-practical composition continued in the late Qīng beyond the commonly-asserted eighteenth-century “decline of Chán.” Qián Yīān’s lay-Buddhist position, his integration of Chán with Pure Land and Tiāntái, and his systematic presentation of the practice-path in a single accessible manual exemplify a late-Qīng Buddhist lay-intellectual culture that would flourish under the Jīnlíng Kèjīng chù’s publishing programme and the Chinese Buddhist associations of the early Republic.

The text’s emphasis on Xuěyán / Gāofēng’s “master-in-dreamless-sleep” huàtóu is notable: this specific formula, while present in SòngYuán Chán, had come to occupy a more central position in the late-Qīng / Republican-era Chán revival under the influence of figures like Xū Yún 虛雲 and the lay revivalists, who drew on precisely the kind of systematisation Qián Yīān presents here.

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