Wèilín Dàopèi chánshī cānxiāng lù 為霖道霈禪師餐香錄
Two-juan early-Qīng Cáodòng 曹洞 yǔlù of Wèilín Dàopèi 道霈 為霖道霈 (1615–1702), titled Cānxiāng lù 餐香錄 (“Record of Dining on Incense”) — a self-deprecatory title the master explains in his own preface as expressing his reluctance to publish further at a time when “the faults of the dharma-gate” had become “unbearable to hear or see.” Xuzangjing X72 no. 1439. Recorded (lù 錄) by his shūjì 書記 太泉 Tàiquán (DILA A000150).
Abstract
The collection comes with two self-prefaces by Dàopèi — the longer one dated the 10th of the 12th month of Kāngxī 6 (23 January 1668, by the Gregorian calendar — 1667 lunar), written “tí yú Shèngjiàntáng 題于聖箭堂” at Gǔshān — explaining that the book was compiled under external pressure when he had been trying to step back from public preaching. He had, after three years at the abbatial seat (1657–1660), retired from shàngtáng 上堂 work, seeking to “return to planting fields and eating rice, in simple fashion, not mixing with the herd”; but the lay donors kept carrying incense up the mountain and insisting on further ascent-sessions, so the “dyke burst” and the discourse resumed. The shūjì Tàiquán continued recording; the jiānyuàn 監院 Yuángōng 源公 then pressed for publication. Dàopèi resisted — “this is just the idle chatter of someone eating rice” — but Yuángōng countered that “this is just what will make the nàsēng 衲僧 of all-under-heaven catch a whiff of the rice-smell, split their foreheads open, emptied of mind and full of belly, and go their way — and so, perhaps, the faults of the dharma-gate may be shaken.” Dàopèi assented, “bent with the wind” — yǐngfēng dǎotuó 隨風倒柁 — and named the collection Cānxiāng lù, with the reflective self-critical prefatorial line “Shìjiā yǎnshì 釋迦掩室 (Śākyamuni shut his door) already involves triviality; Jìngmíng dùcí 淨名杜辭 (‘Pure-Name closed his mouth’) is already géténg 葛藤 overgrowing the ground. I, the mountain monk, today set up stakes in the empty sky, raise waves on dry land, set out wooden-chip soup and iron-nail rice — which may be called ‘true diligence,’ named ‘true dharma-offering’; if anyone can chew these down, I have wronged neither myself nor you.”
The TOC: juan 1 — self-preface, shàngtáng 上堂, xiǎocān 小參. Juan 2 — jìxián zhuàn 紀賢傳 (“biographies of the virtuous,” presumably of Dàopèi’s immediate circle at Gǔshān), jì 記 (“records”), and further miscellanea.
Date bracket: the three years of retirement (Kāngxī 3–6 = 1664–1667) through the 1667 self-preface — a narrow and precisely-datable production-window.
Translations and research
Covered with Dào-pèi’s other short-form collections in Jiang Wu’s Enlightenment in Dispute and related 17th-century Cáo-dòng scholarship. The self-preface is cited specifically as a witness to late-Míng / early-Qīng Chán-abbots’ ambivalence about public preaching in the context of the late-Míng Línjì disputes.
Other points of interest
The self-preface is a substantial document in the history of Chinese Buddhist self-criticism: a sitting Chán abbot publicly declining to teach out of revulsion at “fǎmén liúbì 法門流獘” (“the spreading defects of the dharma-gate”) and being reluctantly compelled by his own community to resume. The trope — Shìjiā yǎnshì / Jìngmíng dùcí — positions Dàopèi’s reticence as both inheritable Buddhist precedent and critique of contemporary Chán.