Wújùn Shīfàn chánshī yǔlù 無準師範禪師語錄
Sayings-Record of Chán Master Wújùn Shīfàn — also circulating under the honorific title Fójiàn chánshī yǔlù 佛鑑禪師語錄, a five-juan yǔlù of Wújùn Shīfàn 師範 無準師範 (1178 – Chúnyòu 9.3.18 / 9 May 1249), principal dharma-heir of 祖先 Pòān Zǔxiān and the central figure of the Yángqí Línjì line in the mid-thirteenth century. Posthumous title Fójiàn chánshī 佛鑑禪師 (“Buddha-Mirror Chán Master”), conferred by Emperor Lǐzōng. Compiled by fifteen attendant-disciples whose names open each juan.
About the work
Five-juan yǔlù in Xuzangjing X70 n1382 (also in the Jiāxīng 嘉興 canon). The table of contents runs: juan 1 — four early abbacy records (Qìngyuánfǔ Qīngliáng 清涼, Zhènjiāngfǔ Jiāoshān Pǔjì 焦山普濟, Qìngyuánfǔ Xuědòushān Zīshèng 雪竇山資聖, Qìngyuánfǔ Āyùwángshān Guǎnglì 阿育王山廣利); juan 2 — the long Jìngshān record (Lín’ānfǔ Jìngshān Xīngshèng Wànshòu chánsì 徑山興聖萬壽禪寺), Wújùn’s principal and longest abbacy (eighteen years, including the 1242 rebuilding after the fire); juan 3 — xiǎocān 小參 and fǎyǔ 法語; juan 4 — pǔshuō 普說 and niāngǔ 拈古; juan 5 — sònggǔ 頌古, jìsòng 偈頌, zàn on buddhas and patriarchs, zìzàn 自讚, xiǎo fóshì 小佛事 (funeral addresses and consecrations), xùbá 序跋 (his own prefaces and postfaces to other works), and at the very end the jì Fójiàn chánshī wén 祭佛鑑禪師文 — an elegy by the Grand Councillor Yóu Lǚ 游侶 dated Chúnyòu 9.4 (April 1249), a month after Wújùn’s death. A separate volume, the Wújùn héshàng zòuduì yǔlù (KR6q0316), preserves the zòuduì 奏對 (court-interview) records and the xíngzhuàng 行狀.
The preface / prolegomenon, signed Cāngzhōu dàorén Chéng Gōngxǔ 程公許 (zì Xīyǐng 希穎, retired to the Xīzhān 西瞻 studio by Zhàxī 霅溪), is dated Chúnyòu xīnhài month-jiànchǒu day-rénzǐ (late 1251 / early 1252), frames Wújùn as the heir of Pòān and the dharma-brother of 法薰 Shítián Fǎxūn, and describes the yǔlù as gathered from the sessions of his five successive abbacies. The byline of juan 1 names the shìzhě 宗會 Zōnghuì and 智折 Zhìzhé as the recorders of the Qīngliáng yǔlù; successive juan bylines name the remaining attendants.
Abstract
Wújùn (諱 Shīfàn, hào Wújùn 無準, zì or pǐnhào Wūtóuzǐ 烏頭子, surname [per the companion xíngzhuàng in KR6q0316] unrecorded here) was a native of Zǐtóng 梓潼 in Shǔ (modern Sìchuān), born in Chúnxī 5 (1178). He studied under Yǎzhōu Lǎosù 雅州老宿, Wúyòng Jìngquán 無用淨全, Pòshān 破山, and Lǐngnán Chóng 嶺南崇 before joining Pòān Zǔxiān 破菴祖先 at the Língyǐn Dúfēngdǐng 靈隱獨峰頂 hermitage, where he received decisive dharma-transmission. He held five successive abbacies — Qīngliáng, Jiāoshān, Xuědòu, Āyùwáng, and Jìngshān — the last for eighteen years from Shàodìng 5 (1232) until his death in 1249. In Jiāxī 1 (1237) the great fire at Jìngshān consumed the entire monastery; Wújùn’s re-building project, recorded in the yǔlù and in the surviving portraits sent to his Japanese disciple 圓爾 Enni Ben’en 圓爾辨圓 (1202–1280) — who took the lineage back to Japan as the Shōichi-ha 聖一派 of Tōfuku-ji — was the largest monastic reconstruction of the Southern Sòng era. The famous ink-portrait of Wújùn preserved at Tōfukuji (1238, National Treasure) is the extant artefact of this connection.
Wújùn’s court presence is the other principal thread. Emperor Lǐzōng 理宗 repeatedly summoned him to the palace from Jìngshān; the interviews, recorded in the zòuduì yǔlù KR6q0316, give Wújùn the style Fójiàn 佛鑑 (“Buddha-Mirror”). He was granted the purple robe and the honorific seat; the elegy by the Grand Councillor Yóu Lǚ that closes juan 5 is an official state lament, addressing him as Gù Jìngshān Fójiàn Fàngōng Wújùn Yuánzhào Dà chánshī 故徑山佛鑑範公無準圓照大禪師 and recalling his “eighteen years at the twin Jìng peaks” and his role in “continuing the Buddha-wisdom-lifeline”.
Principal dharma-heirs include (abbreviated from DILA A004697 and the standard histories): 妙倫 Duànqiáo Miàolún (1201–1261), 惟一 Huánxī Wéiyī (1202–1281), 紹曇 Xīsǒu Shàotán (d. 1279 —KR6q0005 / KR6q0287 / KR6q0288), Xuěyán Zǔqīn 雪巖祖欽 (d. 1287), Xūzhōu Pǔdù 虗舟普度, Wēngshān Tóngān 甕山同菴, and — most consequentially for Japanese Zen — Enni Ben’en 圓爾辨圓, Wúxiàng Jìngzhào 無象靜照, and Wúguān Pǔmén 無關普門, who collectively seeded five of the Gozan lineages in Japan. The Shōichi-ha (Tōfuku-ji) survives as one of the principal current Rinzai lineages. On the continent, the line descending through Xuěyán Zǔqīn → Gāofēng Yuánmiào 高峰原妙 → Zhōngfēng Míngběn 中峰明本 is the direct ancestor of the Yuán and early-Míng Línjì mainstream.
Translations and research
No complete English translation of the yǔlù located. The large body of Wújùn-related Western-language scholarship concentrates on three themes: (1) the Jìng-shān rebuilding and its economic-institutional context (T. Griffith Foulk’s Chán-monasticism work; Albert Welter, Yongming Yanshou’s Conception of Chan in the Zongjing lu, tangentially); (2) Wújùn’s relationship with Enni Ben’en and the transmission of Chán to Kamakura Japan (Martin Collcutt, Five Mountains: The Rinzai Zen Monastic Institution in Medieval Japan, 1981; the Tōfuku-ji-centric Japanese-language literature around Ichikawa Hakugen and Yanagida Seizan); (3) the Wújùn portrait tradition and its role in chinsō 頂相 practice (Helmut Brinker, Zen in the Art of Painting, 1987). In Chinese, the bibliographic scholarship around the Song printings of the yǔlù has been advanced by Abe Chōichi 阿部肇一’s Chūgoku zenshū shi no kenkyū.
Other points of interest
Among the scholarly paratexts in juan 5, Wújùn’s own xùbá include a bá for the recorded sayings of his senior brother-in-dharma Dàxiē 大歇 (crediting Sōngyuán Chóngyuè with “the true pulse of Yángqí”); a bá for a letter by Dàhuì Zōnggǎo 大慧宗杲; a bá for Pòān’s fǎyǔ 法語; colophons on manuscripts by Chījué Dàochōng 癡絕道冲 and Shítián Fǎxūn; and the Kūchán xù 枯禪序 given to the monk Chéng 成 — a locus classicus for the “dry-Chán” (kūchán 枯禪) polemic on over-elaborated monastic practice.