Xuánshā Shībèi chánshī yǔlù 玄沙師備禪師語錄
Three-juan Míng-era recension of the sayings of Xuánshā Shībèi 師備 玄沙師備 (835–908), distinct from the Northern-Sòng guǎnglù recension at KR6q0375. Xuzangjing X73 no. 1446. Compiled (biāncì 編次) by the layman 林弘衍 Lín Hóngyǎn — a MíngFújiàn literatus styled Lín Déshān 林得山居士 — who, in the late-Wàn-lì / Tiānqǐ era, undertook the restoration of the derelict Xuánshā temple-site in Fúzhōu and the gathering of surviving fǎyán 法言 material attributed to the late-Táng master.
Abstract
The preface is by 圓澄 Zhàn-rán Yuán-chéng 湛然圓澄 (1561–1627), zì Sàn-mù 散木, at that time zhù-chí 住持 of Yún-mén-sì in his role as transmitter of Cáo-dòng orthodoxy (chuán Cáo-dòng zhèng-zōng Dōng-yuè Yún-mén-sì zhù-chí 傳曹洞正宗東越雲門寺住持), dated the late-spring of Tiān-qǐ Bǐng-yín 丙寅 (spring 1626). Yuán-chéng’s preface — one of his last surviving dated writings before his own death in early 1627 — is a polemical statement against what Yuán-chéng saw as the mid-Wàn-lì rot of Chán practice (“Today’s preachers talk without authority, today’s chū-shì teachers declare their own awakening unverified, falsely speaking for the dharma”); he positions Shī-bèi as the authentically-transmitted Táng master whose teaching — “the true grandson of Shí-tóu, the true son of Xuě-fēng, he whose mind-seal joined the succession of patriarchs and whose teaching runs through to the Śūraṃgama” — will restore genuine Chán orientation. He reports that the Tang-era temple site still had its sū-pō 窣坡 (stupa-mound) and stone columns, which Lín Hóng-yǎn had taken on as a personal restoration project; he praises Lín’s compilation as “gathering the dharma-words” from the ruins and reaching out to Korea and Japan (where, as we know from KR6q0375, the fuller Sòng guǎng-lù had been preserved).
The 3-juan Míng compilation is thus a parallel, shorter, Fú-jiàn-local recension of Shībèi’s sayings, produced independently of the Japanese line of transmission that would produce the Dokuan 1690 reprint of KR6q0375. Date bracket for the contents: 866 (Shībèi’s dharma-transmission under Xuěfēng) through 1626 (Yuánchéng’s preface, dating Lín’s recension).
Translations and research
No substantial Western-language study specifically of the Míng recension; scholarship on Shī-bèi is concentrated on KR6q0375 and the parallel yǔlù passages in Zǔ-tang jí 祖堂集 (X64 n1261), Jǐng-dé chuándēng-lù 景德傳燈錄, and Gǔ-zūn-sù yǔ-lù 古尊宿語錄.
Other points of interest
The Míng and Sòng recensions of Shībèi’s yǔlù — KR6q0375 (Sòng, Japan-preserved) and KR6q0376 (Míng, Fú-jiàn-preserved) — together give an unusually clear picture of the parallel survival of a Táng-master’s teaching through two independent East-Asian channels (the Song-Japanese continental network and the late-Míng Fújiàn reformist network), each preserving slightly different textual strata.