Mìyún chánshī yǔlù 密雲禪師語錄
Recorded Sayings of the Chán Master Mìyún by 圓悟 (說), 如瑩 (等編)
About the work
Twelve-juan collected yǔlù of Mìyún Yuánwù 圓悟 (1567–1642) of Tiāntóngsì, the dominant late-Míng LínjìYángqí master whose dharma-heirs came to populate most of the seventeenth-century Chinese Chán abbacies. Compiled by Yuánwù’s disciples under the lead of Rúyíng 如瑩. Jiāxīng zàng J10 no. A158. A separate Xuzangjing / Tiāntóngsì printing of Yuánwù’s yǔlù also circulates as JB150; the present A158 version is the fuller collected form.
Abstract
The yǔlù opens with a substantial preface by Qián Qiānyì 錢謙益 (the same editor who later collated Hānshān Déqīng’s Mèngyóu jí, KR6q0386), situating Mìyún’s line in the Línjì genealogy: from Línjì through 楊岐 Yángqí, thence through the Hǔqiū 虎丘 Shàolóng / Tiāntóng Huá / Pòān / Wúzhǔn / Xuěyán Zǔqīn / Gāofēng Yuánmiào / Zhōngfēng Míngběn / Qiānyán Yuáncháng / Wànfēng Shíwèi / Bǎozàng Chí / Dōngmíng Chǎn / Hǎizhōu Cí / Bǎofēng Xuān / Tiānqí Ruì / Juéxué Cōng / Yuèxīn Bǎo / Yǔmén Chuán (= 正傳 Huànyǒu Zhèngchuán) → Mìyún Yuánwù. Qián reckons Mìyún’s distance as “twenty generations from the earlier Yuánwù Kèqín, thirty from Línjì, forty from Bodhidharma.” He recalls encountering a copy of Mìyún’s yǔlù in the spring of gēngwǔ (= 1630) at a Hángzhōu lodge and thereupon writing to Mìyún to request formal preaching at Tiānbái shān 太白山 — i.e., Tiāntóng.
Contents. The 12 juan are organised by abbacy and by genre:
- Shàngtáng 上堂 sermons from each of Mìyún’s abbacies at Lóngchí 龍池, Tōngxuán 通玄, Jīnsù 金粟, Āyùwáng 阿育王, Tiāntóng 天童, and Xuédòu 雪竇 (in this order — the “liùzuò dàocháng 六坐道場” that established his seniority);
- Xiǎocān 小參 (evening informal instruction);
- jīyuán 機緣 (encounter-dialogue);
- niāngǔ 拈古, sònggǔ 頌古;
- fǎyǔ 法語 and correspondence — including Mìyún’s many letters on correct versus incorrect gōngàn method, which would become central to the seventeenth-century Chán controversies;
- zàn 讚 on Chán ancestors and on images;
- Annalistic materials: the niánpǔ 年譜 or “annual chart” of Mìyún’s life (juan 12), the primary source for his lifedates and abbacies.
Dating. Composed across Mìyún’s teaching career — 1611 (his first abbacy) to his death in 1642 — and printed in the Jiāxīng Canon posthumously in the 1640s–1660s. notBefore 1611 / notAfter 1642 brackets the original composition.
Other points of interest
The text is the direct background to the MìyúnHànyuè polemic (see KR6q0168 Pìwàng jiùlüè shuō): the positions Mìyún polemicises against Hànyuè Fǎzàng 法藏 draw on the fǎyǔ and jīyuán materials in the present yǔlù, especially Mìyún’s characteristic insistence that the Línjì “four-shouts / four-positions” be understood as direct experiential transmission rather than as schematic propositions to be analysed. Much of the seventeenth-century Chán controversy’s textual basis is in juan 4–7 of this work.
Translations and research
Extensively treated in Jiang Wu, Enlightenment in Dispute: The Reinvention of Chan Buddhism in Seventeenth-Century China (Oxford, 2008), chapters 2–4. See also Yang Zhaohua’s work on the Tiāntóng lineage and Beverley Foulks McGuire on late-Ming Línjì polemic.