Dānxiá Zǐchún chánshī yǔlù 丹霞子淳禪師語錄
Two-juan yǔlù of Dānxiá Zǐchún 子淳 丹霞子淳 (1066 – spring of Xuānhé 1 / 1119, shìshòu 54), Northern-Sòng Cáodòng 曹洞 master — the hinge figure between 道楷 Fúróng Dàokǎi and the twinned Southern-Sòng Cáodòng apex of Hóngzhì Zhèngjué 宏智正覺 (1091–1157) and 清了 Zhēnxiē Qīngliǎo 真歇清了 (1089–1151). Xuzangjing X71 no. 1425. Collated (jiàokān 校勘) by his dharma-heir 慶預 Huìzhào Qìngyù 慧照慶預 (1078–1140), named at the head of the text as “sìfǎ xiǎoshī 嗣法小師,” then abbot of Suízhōu Dàhóngshān Língfēngsì 大洪山靈峰寺 — the seat from which Zǐchún himself had taught. Juan 1 carries Dàhóngshān shàngtáng fǎyǔ 大洪山上堂法語, zhēnzàn 真贊, and jìsòng 偈頌; juan 2 (marked zēngjí 增輯 — “supplementary”) adds further shàngtáng fǎyǔ plus jǔgǔ 舉古 and sònggǔ 頌古.
Abstract
Zǐchún was a native of Zǐtóng 梓潼 (Jiànzhōu, in Shǔ), lay surname Jiǎ 賈; entered religion as a child at Dàānsì 大安寺, but only at twenty-seven formally took the precepts under Dàoníng 道凝. Breadth of canonical study led him to Dàyángshān to consult Dàokǎi on the “great matter,” and he attained awakening “at a single word.” He served Dàokǎi for some years; Dàokǎi is said to have recognised him as the one to whom “the solitary Cáodòng line could be entrusted.” In the Chóngníng era (1102–1106) Wáng Gōng Xìnyù 王信玉, the Xíngbù 刑部 commissioner, installed him at Nányáng Dānxiáshān 南陽丹霞山 (whence his definitive hào Dānxiá 丹霞). Later, owing to illness, he retired to Tángzhōu Dàchéngshān Xīān 唐州大乘山西菴, from which the Suízhōu prefect Xiànggōng 向公 forcibly recalled him to Suízhōu Dàhóngshān Bǎoshòu 洪山保壽 — the Dàhóng installation dated by the text to the 25th of the 9th month of Zhènghé 5 (17 October 1115). He died at Dàhóng in the spring of Xuānhé 1 (1119), aged 54; stupa on the south slope of Dàhóngshān. His seven named dharma-heirs — Hóngzhì Zhèngjué, Zhēnxiē Qīngliǎo, the editor Huìzhào Qìngyù, Zhìpíng Yú 治平湡, and others — cover the Cáodòng establishment of the generation reaching into the Southern Sòng.
The present text’s Xuzangjing form derives from a late-Japanese-Edo re-cutting. The opening preface is by the Japanese Sōtō monk Banzan Soen 萬山祖緣, dated the mèngzōu xiàhuàn 孟陬下澣 of Bǎoyǒng 7 (寶永庚寅 = early 1710 Japanese era); Banzan identifies himself as a “distant descendant of the master” (遠裔) and explains that he “feared the yǔlù would disappear as the years passed” and therefore “revised and corrected against the old manuscript for permanent transmission.” The opening head-title DānxiáChún chánshī yǔlù xù 丹霞淳禪師語錄序 and the juan-head title Suízhōu Dàhóngshān Chún chánshī yǔlù 隨州大洪山淳禪師語錄 represent the Edo Sōtō editorial conventions. Zǐchún also composed a separately-transmitted 100-case sònggǔ collection, the Xūtáng jí 虛堂集 (X67 no. 1304), which, read with the present yǔlù, completes the documentary record of his teaching.
Date bracket: first recorded abbacy at Dānxiá c. 1105 (the fǎyǔ of juan 1 is dated at Dàhóng from 1115) through Qìngyù’s death in Shàoxīng 10 / 1140 (the latest plausible date by which the Qìngyù collation could have been completed).
Translations and research
No substantial Western-language secondary literature located on the yǔlù proper; Zǐ-chún’s Xū-táng jí 虛堂集 (X67 n1304) has been partially treated in Chinese-language Cáo-dòng studies and in studies of the sòng-gǔ genre. Biographical apparatus: Bǔ-xù gāo-sēng zhuàn juan 9 (X77); Jiā-tài pǔ-dēng-lù juan 5 (X79); Chán-dēng shì-pǔ juan 9.
Other points of interest
The Banzan Soen 1710 re-cutting is one of a series of Japanese Sōtō Edo-era recoveries of Northern-Sòng Cáodòng primary texts (parallel to the 1724 Kuòmén Guànchè re-cutting of Yìqīng’s yǔlù at KR6q0356), undertaken explicitly to furnish the Sōtō school with its ancestral documentary record — a case of the textual continuity of the Cáodòng / Sōtō line being in substantial part Japanese-made in the 18th century.