Tiānàn Shēng chánshī yǔlù 天岸昇禪師語錄
Recorded Sayings of Chán Master Tiān-àn Shēng by 昇 (說), 元玉 (等記錄)
About the work
Twenty-juan yǔlù of Tiānàn Běnshēng 昇 天岸本昇 (c. 1615–c. 1680?), lay-name and lifedates imprecisely recovered, zì Tiānàn 天岸 (“Heaven-Shore”). 32nd-generation Línjì (Yángqí sub-branch): dharma-heir of Mùchén Dàomǐn 木陳道忞 (1596–1674, hào Shānwēng 山翁, the Shùn-zhì-era imperial-audience master), whose 道 generation-character takes 本 at the next level (a parallel-track alternative to Mìyún’s 通 → 行 generational naming used by other Mìyún-line sub-branches like those of Mùyún Tōngmén 通門 and Línyě Tōngqí 通奇). Běnshēng served Mùchén for thirteen years as attendant (zhíshì xuányá yīshísān zǎi 執侍縣崖一十三載) before receiving transmission, i.e. c. 1642–1655. Compiled by Yuányù 元玉 元玉 (Běnshēng’s personal attendant-recorder, shìzhě jìlù 侍者元玉記錄). Non-commentary; commentedTextid omitted. Printed as Jiāxīng Canon J26 B187 — the largest single yǔlù in the Jiāxīng J26 Mìyún-line cluster. The front of juan 1 preserves a xù 序 title-page (“Qīngzhōu Tiānàn chánshī yǔlù xù 青州天岸禪師語錄序”) followed by two full-page preface-calligraphy plates (rendered as <img:> in the org-mode transcription), the prose-text of which was not transcribed. No xíngzhuàng, no tǎmíng, no hòubá — indicating the yǔlù was cut during Běnshēng’s lifetime.
Abstract
Author and the Mùchén Dàomǐn northern-mission context. Tiānàn Běnshēng is one of the most historically important Mìyún-line third-generation Chán masters whose activity was centered outside the Jiāngnán heartland. His primary abbacy seats — Qīngzhōu Dàjué Chányuàn 青州大覺禪院 (Shāndōng Qīngzhōu, from Shùnzhì 12 yǐwèi 4.1 = 2 May 1655) and his later Qīngzhōu Fǎqìng Chánsì 青州法慶禪寺 (formally renamed by imperial edict 順治庚子 = 1660; see below) — are both in Shāndōng, the only major Mìyún-line seat in the north outside the Jīngshī 京師 imperial capital (where Mùchén himself was summoned in 1659). The Shāndōng abbacy project was part of Mùchén Dàomǐn’s northward-expansion after Mùchén’s 1659 Shùnzhì imperial audience, in which Mùchén was given a substantial-scale court-patronage mandate to plant LínjìMìyún seats at strategic prefectural centers across the north. Běnshēng was Mùchén’s chief northern agent for the Shāndōng prefecture project. Běnshēng’s self-account in his opening sermon at Dàjué (j.1) — “Běnshēng zì chuāi yú méng, xué shū cái qiǎn … juézhì línquán, shānyá cángzhuō; bùyì běnshī lǎo héshàng fǎchuáng dōng zhǐ, huàrì nán yí 本昇自揣愚蒙學疏才淺決志林泉山崖藏拙不意本師老和尚法幢東指化日南移” — explicitly frames his northward departure as a mission-dispatch from Mùchén.
Dating. The text preserves at least four precise internal dates: (1) Shùn-zhì 12 yǐ-wèi 4.1 (2 May 1655), the opening sermon at Dà-jué; (2) Shùn-zhì 17 gēng-zǐ 5.9 and 7.29 (1660-06-16 and 1660-09-03), receiving and hanging the imperial-edict temple-renaming plaque for Fǎ-qìng-sì; (3) bǐng-shēn autumn 1656, a zàn 讚 for the portrait of the master’s old friend Chán Master Wén-wén 聞聞老師 brought north by Chán Master Bīng-xīn 冰心 from Wú-mén; (4) Kāng-xī 4 yǐ-sì 康熙乙巳 8.1 (10 September 1665), a bǐng-fú 秉拂 at the Hǎi-yán Jīn-sù-sì 海鹽金粟寺 Huá-zàng Bodhimaṇḍa — indicating that by 1665 Běn-shēng had at least temporarily returned from Shāndōng to the Mìyún-line’s Jiāng-nán home-seat at Jīn-sù to deliver a formal sermon. notBefore = 1655 (first abbacy); notAfter = 1670 conservatively (post-1665 latest-dated content with a cutting margin; the absence of any xíng-zhuàng or tǎ-míng indicates the cutting fell within Běn-shēng’s lifetime, and the cutting is most likely c. 1668–1675).
Contents by juan. (j.1–8) Qīngzhōu Dàjué Chányuàn yǔlù — eight juan of the first-abbacy shàngtáng corpus, the longest single-abbacy block in the Jiāxīng Mìyún-line cluster; (j.9–11) Zàizhù Qīngzhōu Fǎqìng Chánsì yǔlù 再住青州法慶禪寺 — three juan of the second-abbacy shàngtáng, starting Shùnzhì 17 / 1660; (j.12–13) Dàjué shǒuzuò liáo bǐngfú 大覺首座寮秉拂 — head-seat-hall bǐngfú 秉拂 sermons (including the 1665 Jīnsù bǐngfú of juan 13); (j.14) shìzhòng 示眾; (j.15) jīyuán 機緣; (j.16) sònggǔ 頌古; (j.17) Huáyán sònggǔ 華嚴頌古 — a Huáyán-specific sònggǔ set, an unusual devotional-doctrinal inclusion for a Línjì yǔlù (see Other points); (j.18) zàn 讚 (portrait-praises, including the 1656 Wénwén zàn); (j.19) jì 偈 (gathas); (j.20) fóshì 佛事 + fǎyǔ 法語 + zázhù 雜著 (including subscription-texts for temple-building and Huáyán jīng blood-copying). Closing line simply “Tiānàn Shēng chánshī yǔlù juàn dìèrshí zhōng 天岸昇禪師語錄卷第二十終” with no further closing-matter.
Tiyao
Not applicable — this is a Jiā-xīng-canon imprint (J26 B187), not a WYG text. The front-preface (calligraphed but not transcribed in the Kanripo source) would contain compositional documentation; the absent xíngzhuàng / tǎmíng is itself a textual-critical datum (master still alive at cutting).
Translations and research
- Jiang Wu, Enlightenment in Dispute: The Reinvention of Chan Buddhism in Seventeenth-Century China (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). Mù-chén Dào-mǐn’s imperial audience of 1659 and the resulting northward-expansion of the Mìyún line are treated in ch. 7; Běn-shēng’s Shāndōng seats are part of the expansion documented there.
- Jiang Wu, Leaving for the Rising Sun (2015). For the Mù-chén-line sub-branches parallel to the Fèi-yǐn / Yǐn-yuán wing.
- Thomas Wilson, Genealogy of the Way: The Construction and Uses of the Confucian Tradition in Late Imperial China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), ch. 5 indirectly. The Shùn-zhì-era imperial patronage of Chán — to which Mù-chén and (through him) Běn-shēng belonged — is an important sidelight.
- Hsuan-Li Wang (Ph.D. diss. Columbia 2014) and the Gǔ-shān-line scholarship. Běn-shēng’s Mù-chén-heir status places him in the same Qīng-court-patronized wing of the Mìyún line as the Gǔ-shān sub-branch in Fú-jiàn.
- Chén Yuǎn 陳垣, 《清初僧諍記》 (Beijing: Zhōng-huá Shū-jú, 1962; repr. 2008). The canonical Chinese-language treatment of the early-Qīng Chán polemics, in which Mù-chén’s northern court-patronized position is one pole.
- No Western-language translation of the yǔlù.
Other points of interest
- Imperial-edict temple renaming, 1660. The j.9 shàngtáng “Guàsìé 挂寺額” (hanging-the-temple-plaque) sermon dates the imperial renaming of Běnshēng’s second Qīngzhōu seat to Shùnzhì 17.5.9 (edict received) and 7.29 (plaque hung) = 1660. This is a small but precise datum for the Shùn-zhì-era Qīng court’s direct involvement in Mìyún-line seat-designations: after Mùchén’s 1659 audience, the court began issuing chìcì 敕賜 temple-name grants to the Mìyún-line’s satellite seats. The name Fǎqìng 法慶 (“Dharma-Celebration”) was almost certainly chosen by the Shùnzhì emperor or his immediate Buddhist-affairs advisor (likely Mùchén himself during the 1659 audience-interval).
- Huá-yán-sòng-gǔ 華嚴頌古 set (j.17) — a Huá-yán devotional inclusion. Standard Línjì yǔlù of this period include a sòng-gǔ 頌古 set (praise-verses on classical Chán gōng-àn) — j.16 here — but few include a separate Huá-yán sòng-gǔ treating the Huá-yán jīng 華嚴經 53-knowledge-stations / Gaṇḍavyūha pilgrimage as its structural spine. Běn-shēng’s inclusion of this block reflects the distinctive Huá-yán–Chán synthesis of the Mù-chén line (see the Kāng-xī 4 Jīn-sù bǐng-fú of j.13, which opens with Huá-yán Avataṃsaka cosmology — “wú-biān chà-jìng zì-tā bù gé yú háo-duān; shí-shì gǔ-jīn shǐ-zhōng bù-lí yú dāng-niàn 無邊剎境自它不隔於豪端十世古今始終不離於當念”). This Huá-yán orientation places the Mù-chén line in dialogue with the late-Míng Huá-yán revival of Yún-qī Zhū-hóng and Zǐ-bó Zhēn-kě 紫柏真可, and distinguishes the Mù-chén branch doctrinally from the pure-Chán Fèi-yǐn Tōng-róng branch.
- The “stuck at Qīngzhōu” trope. In the j.18 zàn for Wénwén (1656), Běnshēng describes himself as “bùxìng běishàng, yèduò Qīngzhōu 不幸北上業墮青州” — “unfortunately northward-bound, karmically dropped at Qīngzhōu”. The self-deprecatory framing (“yèduò 業墮” = “karmically fell into”) characterizes the Shāndōng mission as a kind of exile from the cultural Jiāngnán heartland — a rhetoric that would have resonated with Jiāngnán readers and their sense of northern “wilderness”. The 1665 Jīnsù bǐngfú (j.13, Kāngxī 乙巳) represents Běnshēng’s temporary return to that heartland, an event significant enough to warrant dated commemoration in the yǔlù.
- Seat-opening sermon’s Línjì-founding allusion. The opening Dàjué shàngtáng (j.1) is built around the Línjì lù 臨濟錄 pǔhuà kèfú 普化克符 “establishing the HuángbòLínjì tradition” gōngàn — Línjì on the Huátuōhé 滹沱河 bank with Pǔhuà and Kèfú as his first two cónglín 叢林 establishments. The allusion signals Běnshēng’s self-positioning at Qīngzhōu as a founder-figure re-establishing the northern Línjì (Zhènzhōu 鎮州 = northern) tradition — specifically, re-establishing the Línjì in Shāndōng, which had last hosted major Línjì institutional activity in the Jīn 金 dynasty (twelfth century). This is an ambitious self-positioning that squares with the Qīng-court-patronized mission-rhetoric of the Mùchén line at its 1655–1665 expansion-peak.