Wèilín Dàopèi chánshī bǐngfú yǔlù 為霖道霈禪師秉拂語錄
Two-juan early-Qīng Cáodòng 曹洞 yǔlù of Wèilín Dàopèi 道霈 為霖道霈 (1615–1702), capturing the bǐngfú 秉拂 period of his career — the short transitional stretch, from the imperial-style “taking up the fly-whisk” at the dharma-transmission ceremony his master 元賢 Yǒngjué Yuánxián conferred on him at age 80 (Shùnzhì 14 / 1657, immediately before Yuánxián’s own death), through the early months of Dàopèi’s own abbacy at Fúzhōu Gǔshān Yǒngquán chánsì 鼓山湧泉禪寺. Xuzangjing X72 no. 1438. Recorded (lù 錄) by Dàopèi’s shūjì 書記 太靖 Tàijìng.
Abstract
The opening tí-cí 題辭 is by Chuán-shàn 傳善 (fǎ-dì 法弟, a dharma-brother of Dào-pèi in the Yǒng-jué line) and narrates the transmission event: “The old man [Yuán-xián], at the age of eighty, foreseeing the time of nirvāṇa, took up the great dharma and entrusted it to Lín-gōng chánshī; he then commanded him to take up the fú 拂 as shǒu-zhòng 首眾 (head of the community) and the community heard his expounding with great joy and submission; before long the old man passed, and the community compelled the master to succeed to the abbatial seat, turning the dharma-wheel so fully that it was as if the old man had never been ill.” Chuán-shàn further records that “brothers in the dharma-gate then met and decided to print first the bǐng-fú language and circulate it,” with Chuán-shàn himself asked to supply the preface.
The content per the TOC: bǐngfú (4 instances); cháhuà 茶話 (3 instances); jǔgǔ 舉古 (6 cases); fóshì 佛事 (12 instances); jì 偈 (28); sòng 頌 (17); zàn 贊 (22); and a closing Húlín āikǔn 鵠林哀悃 (“Mourning-Songs from the Swan Grove”) sequence of 7 elegiac pieces — the latter being Dàopèi’s lamentations on his master’s death. The book thus captures the specific emotional-institutional moment of Dàopèi’s succession at Gǔshān.
The opening passage of juan 1 is the transmission-day bǐngfú itself: “By the Duōzǐ stupa 多子塔 the seamless-robe; in the Huángméi chamber the tattered jiāshā. My master today transmits in person — the iron tree again blooms into five-leaved flower. Is there one who would confirm this along with me?”
The bǐngfú collection is also, implicitly, a record of the late-life pedagogy of 元賢 as read through his principal heir — Yuánxián’s dying decisions on the succession, the rituals of the transfer, the specific Chán-idiom his disciple was expected to deploy in his new role — and so pairs illuminatingly with the much larger posthumous Yǒngjué guǎnglù (KR6q0367) that Dàopèi spent the next three years compiling.
Date bracket: 1657 (transmission and succession) through the initial compilation period, certainly before 1660 (by which point Dàopèi was fully installed as abbot and had moved on to the guǎnglù work).
Translations and research
Treated as a unit with Dào-pèi’s 16-juan yǔlù proper and the other Dào-pèi short-form collections (X72 n1439 cān-xiāng lù 餐香錄, X72 n1440, X72 n1442 Lǚ-bó-ān gǎo 旅泊菴稿 — several of which appear in the subsequent KR6q catalogue entries) in Jiang Wu’s Enlightenment in Dispute and the related 17th-century Cáo-dòng scholarship.
Other points of interest
The short bǐngfú genre — focused on a single transitional role (the assistant holding the abbot’s fly-whisk) over a few weeks or months — is unusual to separate out at this length; the fact that Dàopèi’s two-juan collection was printed first, before the master’s own guǎnglù, reflects the Shòuchāng institutional priority of showcasing the succession-moment itself as the line’s legitimating event.