Wúqù lǎorén yǔlù 無趣老人語錄
Recorded Sayings of the Old Man of No Interest by 如空 (說), 性沖 (編)
About the work
Single-juan recorded-sayings of the late-Míng Chán master Wúqù Rúkōng 如空 (1491–1580; also Jìngzhāi 靜齋 as a layman, Wúqù lǎorén 無趣老人 / Wúqù Rúkōng 無趣如空 after ordination), native of Jiāxìng Xiùshuǐ 嘉興秀水, Zhèjiāng, dharma-heir in the Línjì Yángqí 臨濟楊岐 lineage through Yěwēng Zhēnxiǎo 野翁真曉 (DILA A020555) and Yěwēng’s teacher Bǎofāng Jìn 寶芳進, reaching back in the 14-generations-later count to Hǔqiū Shàolóng 虎丘紹隆 (1077–1136). Compiled by his dharma-heir Wúhuàn Xìngchōng 性沖 (1540–1612, also Gǔzhàn Xìngchōng 古湛性沖) and framed by a preface by the late-Míng Yúnmén restorer Zhànrán Yuánchéng 湛然圓澄 (1561–1626) of Huìjī. The text closes with Rúkōng’s xíngzhuàng 行狀 written by his disciple Xìngxū 性虛. Preserved in the Jiāxīng zàng as J25 no. B155. Non-commentary; commentedTextid omitted.
Abstract
Author. Rúkōng, lay surname Shī 施, took the hào Jìngzhāi 靜齋 as a layman. He married and fathered one son and one daughter before turning decisively to monastic vocation. Together with the monk Jì Fǎzhōu 濟法舟 he studied Chán for eight years before returning home and intensifying his practice. He subsequently sought out Yěwēng Zhēnxiǎo (a fourteenth-generation descendant of Hǔqiū Shàolóng and a dharma-son of Bǎofāng Jìn) at Dōngtǎsì 東塔寺, where Yěwēng “swept clear” each of his tentative insights until — on the direct instruction “Bodhidharma came from the West pointing directly at the human mind; seeing one’s nature one becomes Buddha: it is only in direct appropriation that it is found. If you can trust in this, put down the ten thousand conditions and investigate “where does the one return to?"" (達磨西來直指人心見性成佛唯在直下體取子若信得及可放下萬緣參箇一歸何處) — he attained awakening after three years of intensive investigation, triggered by hearing a cock’s crow at dawn. Yěwēng yìnkě 印可’d him and transmitted the robe-and-bowl together with the verse “Not dharma nor non-dharma, not nature nor non-nature, not mind nor non-mind; I entrust mind-dharma to you” (非法非非法非性非非性非心非非心付汝心法). He then took the tonsure (tìrǎn 剃染) — only in the final decade of his life, his ordination period (là 臘) being ten years — and on the invitation of patrons took up residence at Jìngwèiān 敬畏庵. He transmitted the dharma to Xìngchōng in the mid-winter of Wànlì 7 jǐmǎo (1579), foretelling “Next year between the fifth and sixth of the eighth month I intend to go; you should come”; on Wànlì 8 gēngchén 8.6 (= 24 September 1580) he announced a slight illness, uttered his parting verse, and died, aged nominally 90 (lay-year 89 from his birth on Hóngzhì 4.10.18 = 28 November 1491).
Lineage note from Xìng-chōng’s preface. Xìng-chōng opens the second preface with an extended doctrinal preamble ascending from the mí chuán 密傳 of Mahā-kāśyapa to Bodhidharma and his Chinese transmission, through Yáng-qí Fāng-huì 楊岐方會, Bái-yún Shǒu-duān 白雲守端, Wú-zhǔn Shī-fàn 無準師範 (1178–1249), Duàn-qiáo Miào-lún 斷橋妙倫 (1201–1261), and thence “four generations transmitting through Bǎo, Bǎo to Dù, Dù to Shǔ, Shǔ to Jǐn — and in the fourth generation out comes Bǎo-fāng Jìn chánshī 寶芳進禪師” who from his perch on the sheer precipice of Tiān-mù shān 天目險崖 “secretly connected a single road” (qián tōng yī lù 潛通一路). From Bǎo-fāng to Yě-wēng Xiǎo 野翁曉, who wielded Gāo-fēng Yuán-miào’s 高峰原妙 signature probe “this one eye before your father and mother were born” (fù-mǔ wèi-shēng qián zhè yī-zhī yǎn 父母未生前這一隻眼), and from Yě-wēng to Rú-kōng, who at the gateless point threw himself in with full force and “in one shoulder-heave leaned against the iron wall and silver mountain and toppled them in an instant” (於無門處猛力一肩鐵壁銀山一時靠倒). The Xìng-chōng preface is the clearest statement of the Zhōng-fēng Míng-běn / Tiān-mù mountain-centred branch in which Rú-kōng worked.
Contents. Rúkōng’s teachings as preserved here are organised as a sequence of shàngtáng 上堂 / shìzhòng 示眾 / xiǎocān 小參 sermons and verses following the annual calendar (xīnzhèng 新正, yuánxiāo 元宵, làyuè bārì 臘月八日, chúyè 除夜, yuánrì 元日, etc.), interspersed with niāngǔ 拈古 on set cases (Xiāshān’s 夾山 grave-digging episode, Yántóu’s 巖頭 reading of the Yuánjué jīng 圓覺經, Gāofēng’s 高峰 heavy-burden-in-the-river parable, Dùshùn’s 杜順 Huáyán verse, etc.), and a final block of jìsòng 偈頌 (verses), zàn 讚 (encomia — the boatman Chuánzǐ Déchéng 船子德誠, the Gǔháng Wáng bàndiān 古杭王半顛), and the biographical xíngzhuàng. Dialogues with the key lay interlocutor Yúntái Lù jūshì 雲臺陸居士 (Táng of Yúntái, surnamed Lù) and with Xìngchōng himself punctuate the collection. Rúkōng’s voice is spare, direct, ironic — the self-given epithet Wúqù (“no interest / flavourless”) was by his own insistence a self-effacement before the Dharma. The rùguān shìzhòng 入關示眾 opening piece declares “thirty-odd years of gateway seclusion teaching” (rùguān shìzhòng sānshí yú nián 入關示眾三十餘年), fixing the lower bound of the teaching-period at ca. 1550.
Prefaces. Two prefaces open the text. The first, signed Huìjī wǎnxué Yuánchéng mùshǒu zhuàn 會稽晚學圓澄沐手撰, is by Zhànrán Yuánchéng 湛然圓澄 (1561–1626), the Yúnménsì 雲門寺 abbot in Huìjī who led the late-Míng Yúnmén revival; Yuánchéng laments that he was born too late to meet Rúkōng in person but celebrates seeing the yǔlù brought to him by his chányǒu 禪友 Nánmíng 南明. The second, signed sìfǎ bǐqiū Xìngchōng qǐshǒu zhuàn 嗣法比丘性沖稽首撰, is the compiler’s own editorial preface, laying out the LínjìTiānmù lineage by way of frame.
Dating. notBefore 1550 (rough start of Rúkōng’s thirty-plus-years seclusion teaching, reconstructed from the opening rùguān shìzhòng piece and his 1579 transmission to Xìngchōng). notAfter 1626 (death of Yuánchéng, terminus for the preface-framed received text; the printed Jiāxìng canon supplementary volume J25 was issued in the seventeenth century). No separately dated colophon pins the printing year more tightly.
Translations and research
No substantial Western-language secondary literature located. On the two principal framing figures: for Xìng-chōng’s own distinguished career see his Wú-huàn chán-shī yǔlù 無幻禪師語錄 (not in this collection; refer to DILA A007841 and the Jìng-shí dī-rǔ jí 徑石滴乳集); on Zhàn-rán Yuán-chéng, the late-Míng Yún-mén restorer, see Jiang Wu, Enlightenment in Dispute: The Reinvention of Chan Buddhism in Seventeenth-Century China (Oxford, 2008), esp. the chapters on Yún-mén-sì revival. On the Zhōng-fēng / Tiān-mù-shān line more broadly, see 忽滑谷快天 Chūgoku Zen-gaku shisō-shi 中国禅学思想史 and, for the Gāo-fēng / Zhōng-fēng branch, Natasha Heller, Illusory Abiding: The Cultural Construction of the Chan Monk Zhongfeng Mingben (Harvard, 2014). No dedicated modern study of Wú-qù Rú-kōng has been located.
Other points of interest
- Rúkōng’s rùguān 入關 (“sealed-gate seclusion”) pattern — entering a locked hermitage with only a small window for food, wearing the Guānyīn-image atop the head (dǐngdài Guānyīn 頂戴觀音), and devoting all hours to fūzuò 趺坐 — is a vivid example of the Míng bìguān 閉關 retreat practice that descends from Gāofēng Yuánmiào’s sealing himself into the Sǐguān 死關 (“death-gate”) at Tiānmùshān. Rúkōng’s own “thirty-odd years” inside the gate represent one of the longest documented bìguān tenures of the Míng.
- The 1580 death-year transmission sequence — Wànlì 7 mid-winter transmission to Xìngchōng; Rúkōng’s precise prediction of his own death between 8.5 and 8.6 of the following year; Xìngchōng’s arrival on 8.6 as foretold; Rúkōng’s slight illness and parting verse on the same day — is a textbook sheng-sǐ zìzài 生死自在 hagiographic sequence. Rúkōng’s parting-verse (“生來死去空華…白骨斷橋隨眾呵呵…明月清風吟弄”) would later be quoted in the Xùdēng zhèngtǒng 續燈正統 and Wǔdēng huìyuán xùlüè 五燈會元續略 entries on Rúkōng.
- Yuánchéng’s preface is a minor but nonetheless important testimony from the Yúnmén restorer positioning himself as a late-coming admirer of the Línjì Tiānmù line — evidence of the cross-house appreciation among late-Míng Chán restorationists.