Gāofēng Yuánmiào chánshī yǔlù 高峰原妙禪師語錄
Two-juan Yuán-dynasty yǔlù of Gāofēng Yuánmiào 原妙 高峰原妙 (Jiāxī 2.3.23 / 16 April 1238 – Yuánzhēn 1.12.1 / 13 January 1296), Yángqí-branch Línjì master, dharma-heir of 祖欽 Xuěyán Zǔqīn and teacher of Zhōngfēng Míngběn 中峰明本. Xuzangjing X70 n1400. Compiled “by the participating disciples” (cānxué ménrén biān) — names not given in the extant text — and re-cut at Língyǐn by Hónglǐ 弘禮 in the Wànlì period. Preface by Yúnqī Zhūhóng 雲棲袾宏 (1535–1615) dated Wànlì 27.foshi-huanxi-ri (Wànlì 27 = 1599, monks’ “Buddha-rejoicing day”, the close of summer retreat) — Zhūhóng’s preface records that he had treasured Yuánmiào’s text for thirty years, wished the dàzàng had absorbed it earlier, and encountered criticism from Pure Land devotees in his Liánshè community (“How is it that having turned all streams to the direction of the Pure Land you are now so eagerly praising this collection?”). Juan 1 contains fǎyǔ from the hermitage at Shuāngjìān 雙髻庵 in Húzhōu (from Xiánchún jiǎxū spring / 1274), shēngzuò records, shìzhòng 示眾 talks. Juan 2 contains xiǎocān, jìsòng, and the xíngzhuàng with Yuánmiào’s precise birth and death dates.
Abstract
Per DILA A-entry for 原妙 and the xíngzhuàng: Yuánmiào (hào Gāofēng 高峰 “High-Peak”; posthumous title Pǔmíng Guǎngjì chánshī 普明廣濟禪師) was a native of Wújiāng 吳江 (Sūzhōu). He received dharma-transmission from Xuěyán Zǔqīn after an extended crisis-and-breakthrough training pattern that became celebrated in later Línjì pedagogy (the famous “great-doubt” instruction to focus on wànfǎ guī yī, yī guī hé chù “the ten-thousand dharmas return to one — to where does the one return?”). His most famous feature is the self-imposed seclusion at Shīguān 死關 (“Death-Barrier”) on Xīfēng 西峰 of Tiānmùshān from 1279, where he refused all callers and lived for the last eighteen years of his life; his teaching was conducted through letters and occasional hermitage shìzhòng. His dharma-heir Zhōngfēng Míngběn 中峰明本 (1263–1323) transmitted the line into the Yuán state-approved Chán of the early fourteenth century. The yǔlù was deeply prized in the Míng Chán revival (particularly by Zhūhóng) and in later Japanese Rinzai; the Língyǐn re-cutting sponsored by Hónglǐ was the basis of its wide Qīng-era circulation.
The companion text Gāofēng Yuánmiào chánshī chányào (KR6q0334) distils Yuánmiào’s teachings into a single-juan “essentials” manual, explicitly modelled by its compiler Qiáozǔ 喬祖 on the “gāng 綱 : mù 目 :: lǐng 領 : lǚ 縷” schema — “if the rope is thrown out but the net-cords are not gathered, the net will not spread; if the collar is lifted but the threads are not pulled, the robe will not shake clean.” The two texts together form the extant standard corpus.
Translations and research
Yuán-miào’s yǔlù and chán-yào are staples of Japanese Rinzai and Korean Sŏn training. English-language scholarship: Jeffrey Broughton, The Chan Whip Anthology: A Companion to Zen Practice (Oxford University Press, 2015) — a translation of Yún-qī Zhū-hóng’s Chán-guān cè-jìn 禪關策進 (compiled 1600), which cites Yuán-miào extensively. Morten Schlütter, How Zen Became Zen (Kuroda, 2008), discusses Yuán-miào in the context of the Yángqí-branch continuation of Dàhuì’s kàn-huà program. Korean work on Taego Bou (whose master Shí-wū Qīng-gǒng was a dharma-brother of Zhōng-fēng in the Xuě-yán line) regularly references Gāo-fēng.