Yùn’ān Pǔyán chánshī yǔlù 運菴普巖禪師語錄
Sayings-Record of Chán Master Yùn’ān Pǔyán — a one-juan Southern-Sòng yǔlù of Yùn’ān Pǔyán 普巖 運菴普巖 (1156 – Bǎoqìng 2.8.4 / 4 September 1226), principal dharma-heir of 崇岳 Sōngyuán Chóngyuè (1132–1202) and teacher of Xūtáng Zhìyú 虛堂智愚 (1185–1269). Compiled by the attendants 元靖 Yuánjìng, 智能 Zhìnéng, and 惟衍 Shífān Wéiyán (Pǔyán’s own dharma-heir, later abbot of Tiāntóng).
About the work
One-juan yǔlù in Xuzangjing X70 n1379. The table of contents gives three abbacy records — Zhènjiāng fǔ Dàshèng Pǔzhào chánsì 鎮江府大聖普照禪寺, Zhēnzhōu Bàoēn Guāngxiào chánsì 真州報恩光孝禪寺, and Ānjí zhōu Dàochǎngshān Hùshèng Wànshòu chánsì 安吉州道場山護聖萬壽禪寺 — followed by fǎyǔ 法語, zàn on buddhas and patriarchs, sònggǔ 頌古, jìsòng 偈頌, and a xíngshí 行實 (“Record of Deeds”) that closes the volume. The text is followed by a Japanese Edo-period postface dated Genroku 7 jiǎxū at the xiǎozhì (winter-solstice-eve) of 1694, describing a philological re-collation by Jiāngyuè Wángōng 江月玩公 of an old but damaged Sòng printing of the “three-assembly record” (三會錄).
Abstract
The 行實 is an unusually detailed biographical register organised by reign period. Pǔyán (諱 Pǔyán, zì Shàozhān 少瞻) was born in Shàoxīng 26 bǐngzǐ (1156) into the Dù 杜 family of Sìmíng 四明. After tonsure he studied first with Shígǔ Yí 石鼓夷 and Wúyòng Quán 無用全. In Chúnxī 11 jiǎchén (1184), aged thirty, he joined the new abbot Sōngyuán Chóngyuè at Píngjiāng Chéngzhào 平江澄照 and from then on followed him through successive abbacies (Jiāngyīn Guāngxiào, Wúwéi Yěfù, Ráozhōu Jiànfú, Míngzhōu Xiāngshān, Sūzhōu Hǔqiū, Hángzhōu Língyǐn, Bàocí), serving as shíxiāng (incense-attendant) and yuèzhòng (discipline master) through eight assemblies over eighteen years. In Shàoxī 1 gēngxū (1190) Sōngyuán sent him off to Ráozhōu Jiànfú with a parting verse (“At Yěfù the gate is forlorn, on the East-Lake the waves are cruel; few indeed know my heart; a solitary eagle in the ten-thousand-lǐ autumn sky”). He returned to his mother’s side in Sìmíng, where Běijiàn Jūjiǎn 北磵居簡 composed a long poem marking his departure. In Jiātài 2 rénxū (1202), as Sōngyuán was near death, the master passed to Pǔyán the dharma-robe of Báiyún Shǒuduān 白雲守端 and his own portrait; Pǔyán “declined the robe but received the image,” requesting his dharma-uncle Pòān Zǔxiān 破菴祖先 to compose the portrait-encomium.
Pǔyán’s elder brother Qiáozhòng 喬仲 had earlier built a hermitage at Sìmíng called the Yùnān 運菴 (“Hermitage of the Wheeling [Clouds]”), and Pǔyán took up residence there — thus the style by which he is known. In Kāixǐ 2 bǐngyín (1206) he was invited from Bǎohuáshān in Sūtái to open the abbacy of Zhènjiāng Dàshèng Pǔzhào, where his incense was burned for his late teacher. He then moved to Zhēnzhōu Tiānníng and finally to Dàochǎngshān in Húzhōu — the site made famous by the late-Táng “Tiger-Taming Patriarch” Nà chánshī 訥禪師 (surname Xǔ, originally a disciple of Cuìwēi Xuéchánshī 翠微學禪師). Under Pǔyán’s abbacy the long-derelict site was revived so thoroughly that contemporaries said “the Tiger-Tamer has come again”; the layman Mèngān Zài 夢菴在 wrote on his portrait: “Direct heir of Sōngyuán, a reincarnation of the Tiger-Tamer; effective in engaging phenomena; his seeing-ground is not superficial.” Pǔyán died seated in meditation on Bǎoqìng 2.8.4 (4 September 1226), aged seventy-one. The small xiǎocān he delivered in response was composed by Língyǐn Shígǔ Yí 靈隱石鼓夷.
The editor’s Japanese postface, dated Genroku 7 (1694), explains that a “three-assembly record” (三會錄) of Pǔyán had long circulated in an old Chinese printing that was corrupt and incomplete, with lacunae comparable only in obscurity to the lost Kuíwēng Chénzǔ zhī yǔ 聵翁陳祖之語. The editor (Jiāngyuè Wángōng, or someone working with his collated text) re-collated the text and added Japanese reading-marks, issuing the Genroku re-cutting as the best available recension.
Pǔyán’s principal dharma-heirs were Xūtáng Zhìyú 虛堂智愚 (1185–1269) — through whom the 松源 line passed to Nānpo Jōmyō in Japan — and Shífān Wéiyán 石帆惟衍 (the 惟衍 named in the byline above), who became abbot of Tiāntóng. This yǔlù is accordingly the direct link between the two-generation summit of the 松源派 (Sōngyuán → Yùn’ān) and the subsequent Ōtōkan transmission to Kamakura-Muromachi Japan.
Translations and research
No complete English translation of the yǔlù located. Yùn’ān is discussed in passing in Western scholarship on Xūtáng and the Ōtōkan transmission (Dumoulin, Zen Buddhism: A History, vol. 2; Ishii Shūdō’s and Yanagida Seizan’s Japanese studies on the late-Sòng Yángqí line), but is not the subject of a standalone monograph. The Hùshèng-sì / Dàochǎng-shān gazetteer tradition is the main Chinese-language locus for further prosopographic detail.