Xuánshā Shībèi chánshī guǎnglù 玄沙師備禪師廣錄
Three-juan guǎnglù of Xuánshā Shībèi 師備 玄沙師備 (835 – 28 December 908, shìshòu 74), Táng / Five-Dynasties Chán master, hào Zōngyī dàshī 宗一大師 (also Bèi tóutuó 備頭陀 for his strict dhūta practice; lay name Xiè Sānláng 謝三郎, reflecting his youth as a fisherman on the Mǐn 閩 river). Principal dharma-heir of Xuěfēng Yìcún 雪峰義存 (822–908) and, through his own heir Dìzàng Guìchēn 地藏桂琛 (867–928), the grandfather of Fǎyǎn Wényì 法眼文益 and thus the lineal ancestor of the Fǎyǎnzōng 法眼宗. Xuzangjing X73 no. 1445. Compiled (jí 集) originally by Shībèi’s cānxué 參學 disciple 智嚴 Zhìyán; subsequently transmitted in complex textual circumstances.
Abstract
The present text carries an unusually informative transmission-history in its prefaces and colophons.
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The Northern-Sòng recension is framed by a preface of Sūn Jué 孫覺 (1028–1090), Yòusījiàn Zhíjíxiányuàn zhī Fúzhōu jūnzhōu shì 右司諫直集賢院知福州軍州事, written during his Fúzhōu tenure c. 1076–1082. Sūn records that in his two years at Fúzhōu he “sought the complete edition but could not obtain it; only late, having obtained five or six broken and incomplete copies, I entrusted a monk with their collation and had them merged into a single book — though not yet complete, I had recovered seven or eight [tenths] of it.” He then commissioned Xuánshā sēng 玄沙僧 to cut woodblocks for circulation. Sūn’s preface gives the cleanest extant outline of Shībèi’s life: native of Mǐnxiàn 閩縣, Fúzhōu; lay surname Xiè 謝; as a young man a fisherman of the Mǐn; at the beginning of Xiántōng 咸通 (860) renounced secular life and took ordination under Fúróngshān Língxùn 芙蓉山靈訓; in Xiántōng 7 (866) went to meet Xuěfēng Yìcún, under whom he attained dharma-transmission.
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The Sòng recension originally included a supplementary chóngshān 重刪 by Qiānguāngwángsì shāmén Yìchéng 千光王寺沙門義澄 of the “three-lines four-devices” 三句四機 material. This interpolation was criticised, notably by Jìyīn zūnsù 寂音尊者 (the Sòng Chán-scholar-monk Juéfàn Huìhóng 覺範惠洪, 1071–1128), on the grounds that Yìchéng’s own understanding was faulty and his interpolation “pointed out five colours without himself seeing them.”
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The Japanese 1690 reprint, preserved in the Xuzangjing, is by Dúān Xuánguāng 獨菴玄光 (Dokuan Genkō, 1630–1698) at Lóngguāngsì Wòyúnshì 龍光精舍臥雲室 in Kyōto, dated the 21st of the 11th month of Genroku 3 (21 December 1690). Dokuan deliberately omitted Yìchéng’s supplementary passage, heeding Juéfàn’s Sòng-era protest, “to relieve Jìyīn’s lingering regret and to block off the cross-road for later students, transmitting only the master’s own běnsè 本色.” The opening preface by Dōnggāo Yuèdùduō 東臯越杜多 (a Japanese monk signing with the Sanskrit dhūta term), written at the time of Dokuan’s reprint, explains that the text had been “lost from China through the passage of time” and preserved in “Fúsāng 搏桑” (= Japan).
Date bracket: 866 (Shībèi’s first dharma-brother installation period under Xuěfēng) through the Japanese 1690 reprinting — with the Sòng recension of c. 1082 as the documentary crux in between.
Translations and research
Shī-bèi is a classic Chán master with extensive treatment in Western-language scholarship on Táng-Five-Dynasties Chán: see e.g. works by Peter Gregory, John McRae, Wendi Adamek. Passages of his yǔlù appear across multiple Táng-era Chán anthologies, not just the present guǎng-lù (see also the parallel Xuán-shā Shī-bèi chánshī guǎng-lù in the Gǔ-zūn-sù yǔ-lù 古尊宿語錄 and the Zǔ-tang jí 祖堂集). The Dokuan Genkō reprint is of independent interest in Japanese Rinzai textual-history.
Other points of interest
Shībèi is the source of two of the most-cited Chán aphorisms — “the whole of the great earth is one bright jewel” 盡大地是一顆明珠 and “the whole world in the ten directions is the shining chán pearl” 盡十方世界是箇光明藏 — and his dharma-heir Fǎyǎn Wényì’s engagement with these in the Jǐngdé chuándēnglù 景德傳燈錄 gave the Fǎyǎnzōng its characteristic doctrinal signature.