Wúmíng Huìjīng chánshī yǔlù 無明慧經禪師語錄
Four-juan late-Míng Cáodòng 曹洞 yǔlù of Wúmíng Huìjīng 慧經 無明慧經 (hào Wúmíng 無明, also known as 壽昌無明, 壽昌古佛; 20 February 1548 – 11 February 1618; lay surname Péi 裴), dharma-heir of Yùnkōng Chángzhōng 蘊空常忠 and the leading figure of the late-Míng Cáodòng revival — the restorer of a lineage that had, by the mid-Míng, almost entirely disappeared from the Chinese Chán landscape. Xuzangjing X72 no. 1432. Re-edited (chóngbiān 重編) by his most consequential dharma-heir, 元賢 Yǒngjué Yuánxián 永覺元賢 (1578–1657), several decades after the master’s death — the received recension thus bears Yǒngjué’s mid-17th-century editorial stamp. Juan 1 opens with a 1616 preface, juan 1–3 cover the three abbacies (Éfēng 峨峯, Bǎofāng 寶方, Shòuchāng 壽昌), and juan 4 closes with the master’s tǎmíng 塔銘.
Abstract
The principal surviving preface is by Liú Chóngqìng 劉崇慶 of Xìnzhōu 信州, a lay disciple, dated the fóchéngdào rì 佛成道日 (8th day of 12th lunar month) of Bǐngchén 丙辰 (16 January 1617, by the Míng Wànlì 44 cycle) — one year before the master’s death. Liú’s preface is a substantial piece of late-Míng Chán apologetics, mourning that “the patriarchal ground is in ruins, the dharma way has collapsed; this [Jīngāngwáng] sword has long been buried, and who is left to pluck the flower?” — and identifying Huìjīng as the one remaining master capable of wielding “Jīngāngwáng bǎojiàn 金剛王寶劍” in the end-of-dharma age. Liú invokes the biographical parallel to Dámóshān 大梅山 Mǎzǔ Dàoyī 馬祖道一’s student Dámó Fǎcháng 大梅法常 (“alone in the hills for fifty years, the plum ripens though there is no Mǎzǔ to know it”); the parallel is more than rhetorical, because Huìjīng famously remained in retreat at Shòuchāngshān 壽昌山 for over two decades without setting foot in any city.
Huìjīng was a native of Chóngrén 崇仁 (Fǔzhōu, Jiāngxī), lay surname Péi 裴. Career per DILA: at seventeen he formed a “resolution to seek the way”; at twenty-one, reading the Diamond Sūtra, he “received it as if recovering something long-familiar,” immediately swore off meat and wine, and went to Lǐnshān Zhōng chánshī 廩山忠禪師 (= Yùnkōng Chángzhōng 蘊空常忠) whom he served for three years “receiving all teachings without question, as if a fool.” Reading the Jǐngdé chuándēnglù 景德傳燈錄 aroused an intense yíqíng 疑情 doubt-mass, through which he “forgot food and sleep”; one day, trying and failing to lift a heavy stone while on a work detail, he forced it with all his strength and “was suddenly greatly awakened.” Zhōnggōng recognised him as “a vessel for the dharma,” ordained him, and gave him the full precepts. He spent twenty-four years of uninterrupted mountain seclusion, his “shadow never leaving the mountain.”
In Wànlì 26 (1598) he took the abbacy of Bǎofāng 寶方 in his home prefecture; later he travelled to visit Dáguān Zhēnkě 達觀真可, Ruìfēng 瑞峰, and Shàolín 少林, before returning to Bǎofāng and beginning formal shàngtáng preaching. Three abbacies in sequence: Bǎofāng, Éfēng 峨峯, and Shòuchāng 壽昌 (the Shòuchāng seat, formerly Xīzhú chánshī Dàochǎng 西竺禪師道場; a local prophecy “Shòuchāng will love a shepherd-boy, and Xīzhú will come again” 壽昌好牧牛西竺再來遊 was retrospectively fulfilled). He founded twenty-plus subsidiary hermitages in his later years. Died on the 17th of the 1st month of Wànlì 46 (11 February 1618), shìshòu 71, seated in formal posture. Named dharma-heirs — four principal figures — include Wúyì Yuánlái 無異元來 (1575–1630, A000114), Huìtái Yuánjìng 晦臺元鏡 (A015910), Yuánbì 元謐 (A015916), and 元賢 Yǒngjué Yuánxián — through whom the Shòuchāng revival entered MíngQīng Cáodòng.
Date bracket: Huìjīng’s first recorded abbacy at Bǎofāng in 1598 through his death in 1618; the Yǒngjué Yuánxián chóngbiān recension preserved in the Xuzangjing was executed some decades after that, in the Shùnzhì era (1644–1661).
Translations and research
Huì-jīng is a central subject of Jiang Wu’s Enlightenment in Dispute: The Reinvention of Chan Buddhism in Seventeenth-Century China (Oxford, 2008) and of the subsequent Sino-American scholarship on Míng-Qīng Chán — which treats the Shòu-chāng revival as a crucial context for understanding the later Yuán-wù / Mì-yún / Hàn-yuè 圓悟 / 密雲 / 漢月 disputes within Línjì, by showing what a parallel Cáo-dòng revival looked like. Principal Chinese biographical sources: the tǎ-míng in juan 4; Bǔ-xù gāo-sēng zhuàn juan 16 (X77); Nán-Sòng Yuán-Míng chán-lín sēng-bǎo zhuàn (X79); Wǔ-dēng huì-yuán xù-lüè (X80); Wǔ-dēng yán-tǒng (X81); Wǔ-dēng quán-shū (X82).
Other points of interest
Huìjīng’s famous labour-awakening — breakthrough while trying to lift an immovable stone during a work detail at Lǐnshān — is one of the most direct Chán-literary instances of the Cáodòng emphasis on zuòwù 作務 (daily manual work) as spiritual-practice, and contrasts sharply with the late-Míng Línjì emphasis on kànhuà 看話 breakthroughs through encounter-dialogue. The episode is foundational for the Shòuchāng school’s self-understanding and is cited repeatedly in Yǒngjué’s own writings.