Chèyōng héshàng gǔ xiǎng jí 徹庸和尚谷響集
Valley-Echo Collection of Chèyōng héshàng
The collected Chán-sermons and writings of Chèyōng Zhōulǐ 徹庸周理 (1591–1647), the late-Míng Yúnnán Línjì-lineage master of Miàofēngsì 妙峰寺 at Jīzúshān 鷄足山. The title Gǔ xiǎng 谷響 (“valley-echo”) is a classical Buddhist figure for speech that arises from emptiness and returns to emptiness — the distinctive rhetorical self-positioning of the late-imperial Chán master’s yǔlù production. Compiled by Hóngrú 洪如 (hào Wúzhù 無住 “No-Abiding”), one of Zhōulǐ’s two principal dharma-heirs. Received Jiāxīng-Canon text (J25 B167) preserves juan 8 of a multi-juan original.
About the work
A multi-juan collection of Chán yǔlù preserving the teachings of the founder of the Yúnnán Miàofēngsì community, J25 B167. Non-commentary; commentedTextid omitted.
The received juan 8 contains:
- A xiǎo zhuàn 小傳 (“short biography”) of Zhōulǐ by one of his associates — this biographical preface is the principal source document for Zhōulǐ’s career.
- Shàng táng 上堂 sermons and other teaching-materials.
- Records of interchange with dharma-heirs including Wúzhù Hóngrú 無住弘如 and Fǎhǎi Hóngyī 法海弘一.
The biographical preface is unusually rich: it records Zhōulǐ’s renaming from original Chèróng 徹融 (“Thoroughly-Melting”) to the later Chèyōng 徹庸 (“Thoroughly-Ordinary”) after a reading of the Huáyán’s dharma-principles (Huáyán dà zhǐ 華嚴大指) against the Zhōng yōng 中庸 (Confucian classic) — the two texts revealed a resonance between Buddhist “penetrating-and-melting” and Confucian “ordinary-centrality” that made Chèyōng the more appropriate name. This doctrinal-etymological origin-story exemplifies Zhōulǐ’s sustained Buddhist-Confucian integrative position.
Abstract
See Chèyōng Zhōulǐ’s person note for full biographical details. The Gǔ xiǎng jí is his major collected-sermons work; combined with his editorial output (Cáoxī yī dī KR6q0195, Dàwēi chánshī zhúshì jí KR6q0196, Fúshān fǎ jù KR6q0197) and his other authored works (the Yúnshān mèng yǔ 雲山夢語), the corpus constitutes the principal textual monument of late-Míng Yúnnán Chán regionalism.
Compiler Hóngrú 洪如 (hào Wúzhù 無住, DILA likely unregistered): senior dharma-heir of Zhōulǐ; styled in the Zhōulǐ biography as dé fǎ dìzǐ 得法弟子 (dharma-inheriting disciple). Alongside his dharma-brother Fǎhǎi Hóngyī 法海弘一, Hóngrú was one of the two principal heirs of the Miàofēngsì community — “one got the marrow, one got the bone,” as the biography describes them. No independent biographical material preserved.
Dating: notBefore c. 1620 (Zhōulǐ’s Miàofēngsì abbacy period begins); notAfter 1647 (Zhōulǐ’s death, after which Hóngrú would have finalised the compilation). The text’s compilation and publication happened during or shortly after Zhōulǐ’s lifetime.
Translations and research
- Hou Chong 侯沖. Various studies on Yúnnán Buddhism.
- Ji Zhe. 2020. Buddhism after Mao. Context on the continuing Yúnnán Chán tradition.
- No substantial Western-language monographic study located specifically on J25 B167.
Other points of interest
The Gǔ xiǎng jí is the capstone text of the Yúnnán Chán textual-production programme of which Zhōulǐ was the principal architect: he compiled the regional anthology KR6q0195, preserved the works of his Yúnnán predecessors KR6q0196 and KR6q0197, and in turn produced his own teaching-corpus (KR6q0198). This four-part self-documenting textual programme effectively constructed late-Míng Yúnnán Chán as a legible tradition for Chinese-mainstream Buddhist audiences, enabling the regional tradition to be preserved into subsequent canonical collections.