Wèilín Dàopèi chánshī huánshān lù 為霖道霈禪師還山錄
Four-juan late-career yǔlù of Wèilín Dàopèi 道霈 為霖道霈 (1615–1702), titled Huánshān lù 還山錄 (“Record of Returning to the Mountain”) — marking Dàopèi’s late-life return to Gǔshān after itinerant teaching in Fújiàn. Xuzangjing X72 no. 1440. Recorded (lù 錄) by four of his attendants: 興燈 Xīngdēng, 心亮 Xīnliàng, 法雲 Fǎyún, and 性朗 Xìnglǎng — each marked as shìzhě 侍者 in the editorial byline.
Abstract
The text is bracketed by two prefaces and closed with a postface, which between them record its dual Chinese-Japanese publication history. The body carries a self-preface (fēijiāsǒu 非家叟 = Dàopèi) dated the dēngjié 燈節 of Kāngxī 27 / 1688; the four-juan core was thus finalised in early 1688 at Gǔshān. The Xuzangjing printing, however, preserves Japanese prefatorial material: an opening xù 序 by Dúān Xuánguāng 獨菴玄光 (Dokuan Genkō, 1630–1698; a Japanese Rinzai monk of Edo with Ōbaku connections), dated 元祿癸酉十月二日 (31 October 1693); and a closing hòuxù 後序 by Jūzān 壽山祝 (a Chinese-born Sōtō monk then resident at Sa-shū Gyokuryū-san Fuku-shō-sen-ji 薩州玉龍山福昌禪寺 in Kyūshū, formerly a personal disciple of Dàopèi’s in Fújiàn), dated 元祿癸酉九月廿八日 (27 October 1693). Dokuan’s preface narrates how Jūzān, en route through Kyoto on business to the Edo dàfǔ, brought the manuscript of the Huánshān lù to Kyoto for cutting, and how he himself (Dokuan) met Jūzān at Settsu-ga 攝津賀 lǚguǎn 旅館 and, in conversation, recognised the Chinese Sōtō monk as a Fújiàn acquaintance from forty years earlier — “his hair had gone white and his face wrinkled” — and was asked to write the preface. Jūzān’s closing postscript, dated three days earlier, is a substantial statement of Shòu-chāng-lineage orthodoxy against contemporary Japanese Chán rivals, positioning Dàopèi’s Gǔshān as the continuation of authentic zǔyìn 祖印.
The content, organised across four juan, includes a long retrospective self-memoir Lǚbó huànjī 旅泊幻蹟 (in juan 4) — the source for DILA’s biographical dates — tracing Dàopèi’s life from his 1615 birth at Jiànān Dōngbáiyún 東白雲 through his long Gǔshān residency. Further material ranges through shàngtáng, xiǎocān, stupa-management records, registry-book prescriptions (“chángzhù zhī yǒu jiāotóu bù 常住之有交頭簿” — the established custom of a hand-over register for monastic property succession, which Dàopèi reformed in Kāngxī Yǐchǒu 乙丑 / 1685 by launching a new register), and memorial prose. The sections dated to Shùnzhì Dīngyǒu 丁酉 (1657) preserve Dàopèi’s first-person record of his master 元賢’s death and the immediate administrative transition at Gǔshān.
Date bracket: 1657 (first-person testimony to Yuánxián’s death and the succession) through the 1693 Japanese reprinting. The Chinese nèishū 內書 is dated 1688 but covers material accumulated across Dàopèi’s thirty-year abbacy from 1660.
Translations and research
No book-length Western-language study located. Dokuan Genkō’s opening preface is of independent interest for Japanese Zen historiography (Dokuan was a leading voice in late-17th-century Japanese disputes over Ōbaku and Chinese Chán authenticity). The Jū-zān postscript gives rare documentation of Fújiàn-Kyūshū Sōtō transmission networks in the late 17th century.
Other points of interest
The Lǚbó huànjī 旅泊幻蹟 in juan 4 — Dàopèi’s first-person “dream-travel-vestiges” memoir — is one of the most detailed surviving late-Míng / early-Qīng Chán-abbatial autobiographies and the principal source for DILA’s biographical record. The Dokuan / Jūzān Japanese-publication frame documents the specific Fújiàn → Kyūshū Sōtō transmission corridor of the 1660s–1690s, parallel to and competing with the simultaneous Ōbaku-ji 黃檗寺 transmission from the same Fújiàn region.