禪宗指掌

Chán zōng zhǐ zhǎng 禪宗指掌

A Palm-Pointing Guide to the Chán School

A brief one-juan mid-Qīng Chán catechism in eight numbered sections by the Chán monk Xínghǎi 行海 (dates unrecorded; self-styled hòu xué shāmén 後學沙門 “junior-disciple śramaṇa”). First printed on the full moon of the fourth month of Qiánlóng 52 = 1787/4/15 at the Tiānníng-sì chán-táng 天寧寺禪堂 in Chángzhōu-fǔ 常州府 (Jiāngsū). Reprinted on the eighth day of the fourth month (Buddha’s birthday) of Guāngxù 19 = 1893/5/23 at Tài-bái-fēng 太白峯 in Yín-xiàn 鄞縣 (near Níngbō), and subsequently held at the Bōrě-táng 般若堂 of Tiāntóng Hóngfǎ chán-sì 天童弘法禪寺.

About the work

A one-juan Chán catechetical text, X65 n1289. Non-commentary; commentedTextid omitted. The text consists of eight short sections (piān 篇), each treating a distinct Chán-doctrinal puzzle through a brief dialogical or expository exposition:

1. 第一篇 — exposition of the Middle Way (zhōng dào 中道) as the unity of shì 俗 (worldly cultivation via the Confucian Middle Way) and chén 塵 / chū chén 出塵 (transcendent cultivation via prajñā), with sustained quotation and discussion of Śūraṅgama Sūtra, Diamond Sūtra, and Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra passages on non-duality and non-attainment. Ends with the definition of the True Mind as non-empty-yet-non-obtainable.

2. 第二篇 — how the wondrous illumined true-mind can be known: through the analogy of the eye that cannot see itself (hence neither “empty” nor “full-of-sight”).

3. 第三篇 — meditation’s use of mind (yòng xīn 用心). Contrasts the false practices of attaching to “there-is” and “there-is-not” (the two classical extremes: taking the conscious mind as real self; or taking “no-thought” as real) with the correct shàn qiǎo 善巧 (“skilful-tactful”) practice of interrogating one’s own arising-thought: “who is it that raises this thought?”

4. 第四篇 — dialogue on whether the běn lái miàn mù 本來面目 (original face) is existent or non-existent; uses the reflexive-paradox argument (if the seen-of-seeing is the self, then there are two selves).

5. 第五篇 — further exploration of the same paradox: the original face is neither existent nor non-existent, per the eye-that-cannot-see-itself analogy.

6. 第六篇 — dialogue with a visiting layman “Wùkōng” 悟空 on how to know-emptiness without falling into the nihilistic extreme.

7. 第七篇 — on whether the original face can be seen: no, because the seer of the seer is already the self.

8. 第八篇 — on the correct meditative use of mind: neither attaching to the six dusts, six organs, nor six consciousnesses; using-mind in a “no-place” way.

Abstract

Xínghǎi 行海 (DILA A000413). Qīng-dynasty Chán monk; lifedates, native place, and monastic lineage all unrecorded. The DILA authority record attributes no other work to him. Identification as distinct from the earlier MíngQīng transitional monk 大方行海 Dàfāng Xínghǎi (DILA A012051, 1604–c.1680) is secure, given the 1787 first-printing date.

The text’s brief scale, eight-part pedagogical structure, and dialogical expository style suggest it was written as a practical introductory manual for novice practitioners — a role the NíngbōTiāntóng reprint-lineage, preserved at one of the most important Chán-teaching centres of early-Republican China, appears to confirm.

Dating: notBefore / notAfter both 1787 (Qiánlóng 52 / 4 / 15, the first-printing colophon-date at Chángzhōu Tiānníngsì; Qiánlóng wǔshí’èr nián sì yuè wàng rì xīn kān 乾隆五十二年四月望日新刊). The 1893 Níngbō reprint is a later re-issue. No earlier composition-date than the first printing is recorded; the catalog’s Qīng attribution is consistent.

Translations and research

• No substantial secondary literature located on the Chán zōng zhǐ zhǎng.
• The text’s place within late-Qīng Chán catechism-compendia (alongside KR6q0170 Zōng fàn and similar materials) makes it useful comparative reading for late-Qīng / Republican-era Chán pedagogical traditions.
• Welch, Holmes. 1968. The Buddhist Revival in China. Includes discussion of Tiāntóng Hóngfǎ-sì as a central Chán teaching-centre where this text was preserved.

Other points of interest

The Chán zōng zhǐ zhǎng’s characteristic argumentative strategy — the reflexive-paradox argument about the unfindable self (cf. the eye that cannot see itself, the finger that cannot point at itself) — is a classical Chán pedagogical device with roots in Indian Buddhist prasaṅga argumentation but developed in distinctive Chinese-Buddhist form. The text’s sustained use of this single argument across seven of its eight sections gives it a tight doctrinal focus uncommon in more discursive Chán compendia.

The printing-transmission history (Qiánlóng-era Chángzhōu → Guāngxù-era Níngbō → early-Republican Tiāntóng Bōrětáng) is itself of interest: it documents the eighteenth-to-twentieth-century Chán publishing-transmission network centred on the Jiāngnán and Zhèjiāng Chán monasteries, a network that preserved many late-imperial Chán pedagogical texts into the modern canonical recovery movement of the early twentieth century. The printed colophon’s explicit apology for transmissional errors — “this hand-copied text contains many errors; we reverently beg clear-eyed enlightened ones of great compassion to correct and amend it for circulation” — exemplifies the textual-critical self-consciousness of the Buddhist publishing tradition of the late Qīng and early Republic.

Links

• CBETA
• Chángzhōu Tiānníngsì 常州府天寧寺 (first-printing site): one of the major nineteenth-century Chán-teaching centres of the Jiāngsū region.
• Tiāntóng Hóngfǎsì 天童弘法禪寺 Bōrětáng 般若堂 (preservation site): the Mìyún Yuánwù foundation in Míngzhōu, preserving the text into the canonical-compilation era.
• 行海 DILA
• Kanseki DB