Fǎchāng Yǐyù chánshī yǔlù 法昌倚遇禪師語錄
Single-juan Northern-Sòng yǔlù of Fǎchāng Yǐyù 倚遇 法昌倚遇 (1005 – 1081, shìshòu 77), Yúnménzōng 雲門宗 master, dharma-heir of Běichán Zhìxián 北禪智賢 and abbot of Hóngzhōu Fēnníng Fǎchāng chányuàn 洪州分寧法昌禪院. Xuzangjing X73 no. 1448. Recorded (lù 錄) by his xiǎoshī 小師 宗密 Zōngmì (a disciple of Yǐyù — distinct from the famous Táng-era Guīfēng Zōngmì 圭峰宗密).
Abstract
The preface is by Xú Fǔ 徐俯, nánzhōu 南州, dated the 22nd of the 1st month of Chóngníng 4 (28 February 1105). Xú’s preface is a substantial statement of the yǔlù genre’s late-Northern-Sòng condition: “Today’s abbot-elders who gather students and call themselves chūshì masters — who knows how many there are? Every word and response is recorded by their disciples as yǔlù; yǔlù now fill the world, but the Buddha-dharma grows steadily more obscure — for the more words, the further from the Way; a painted cake will not fill an empty stomach.” Xú credits his own father (the Sòng official Xú Xǐ 徐禧, killed at the frontier in 1082) with having been the young Yǐyù’s first prominent lay supporter (“when my father was still unknown, the master alone recognised his quality”). Xú recalls that Yǐyù had lived roughly — “in coarse clothing, on rough food, clear as ice and pure as jade, ploughing and hoeing to provide for the roving yúnshuǐ monks who came his way” — and so severe was his community’s regime that “students could not keep pace with the labour and, further oppressed by the bare-bones dryness, drifted away; at times the hall had no one left at all.”
The body of the text follows the classic formulae: opening installation shàngtáng with triple incense-raising, wèndá, xiǎocān, jǔgǔ, jìsòng. Per DILA: Yǐyù was a native of Zhāngzhōu 漳州 (Fújiàn), lay surname Lín 林; ordained young at Chóngfúsì of his home prefecture, received full precepts and went wandering; consulted Fúshān Fǎyuǎn 浮山法遠, Bājiāo Ānzhǔ 芭蕉庵主, Yuántōng 圓通, and others; spent his longest early period at Běichán, where he received dharma-transmission from Zhìxián; after a three-year retreat at Xīshān 西山 Shuānglǐng 雙嶺, accepted the Fǎchāng installation, where he lived “in a few old-roofed rooms, at dāogēng huǒzhòng 刀耕火種 subsistence farming, at peace in the Way.” Died in Yuánfēng 4 (1081).
Date bracket: late 1060s (Fǎchāng installation) through 1105 (Xú Fǔ’s preface and Zōngmì’s compilation).
Translations and research
Yǐ-yù is a minor but interesting Northern-Sòng Yún-mén-zōng figure, documented in Xù-chuándēng-lù juan 5, Jiā-tài pǔ-dēng-lù juan 2, Zōng-tǒng biān-nián juan 21. No book-length Western-language study; partial mentions in studies of Sòng-era austere-practice traditions.
Other points of interest
Xú Fǔ’s father Xú Xǐ 徐禧 (1035–1082) was a prominent Wànlǐlù 萬里路 campaigner killed at the Yǒnglèchéng 永樂城 defeat of 1082; the preface thus reads as also a personal memorial — “thirty years have passed since my father’s voice and face left this world, and that master’s kind of fēngwèi 風味 is nowhere to be seen; if I yearn for him in memory but cannot see him, how could his teachings be allowed to perish? — therefore I have cut blocks and transmit them.”