昭覺丈雪醉禪師語錄

Zhāojué Zhàngxuě Zuì chánshī yǔlù 昭覺丈雪醉禪師語錄

Recorded Sayings of Chán Master Zhàng-xuě Zuì of Zhāo-jué by 通醉 (說), 徹綱 (等編)

About the work

Ten-juan yǔlù of Zhàngxuě Tōngzuì 通醉 丈雪通醉 (1610–1695), the principal restorer of Sichuan Chán in the post-Míng-Qīng-transition period. Fǎhuì 法諱 Tōngzuì 通醉 (using the 通 generation-character of the Mìyún line), hào Zhàngxuě 丈雪 (“Ten-Foot Snow”, the name bestowed on him by his master Pòshān Hǎimíng 破山海明 at Báitùtíng 白兔亭 waterfall). 32nd-generation Línjì (Yángqí sub-branch), principal Sichuan dharma-heir of Pòshān Hǎimíng (1597–1666, author of KR6q0402) and through him a grand-dharma-heir of Mìyún Yuánwù 密雲圓悟. Compiled by his dharma-heir Chègāng 徹綱 徹綱 děng and cut at Zuìlǐ 檇李 (Jiāxīng) on the petition of regional lay-patrons, with three front-prefaces dated 順治丁酉中秋日 = 22 September 1657 (two) and one undated. The final block includes material from Tōngzuì’s post-1663 return to Sichuan at Zhāojuésì 昭覺寺 in Chéngdū (juan 10 includes the 癸卯春闢昭覺 癸卯 1663 Zhāojué re-founding verse and subsequent Sichuan-phase material), indicating that the integrated cutting was completed some time after 1663 with the 1657 Zhèjiāng prefaces carried forward. The blockwoods are noted at the very end of juan 10 as “Léngyánsì zàngbǎn 楞嚴寺藏板” (“blockwoods stored at Léngyánsì”). Non-commentary; commentedTextid omitted. Printed as Jiāxīng Canon J27 B194.

Abstract

Author. Zhàngxuě Tōngzuì, lay surname Lǐ 李, mother Yáoshì 姚氏, native of Nèijiāng 內江 (Sìchuān) — one of the very few Sichuan-native major Chán masters of the MíngQīng transition, alongside Pòshān Hǎimíng 破山海明 (Zhàngxuě’s teacher) and Línyě Tōngqí 林野通奇 (at KR6q0408). Born 萬曆 38 庚戌 10.15 子時 = 1 December 1610 Western. Tonsured as a young boy at Gǔzìshān 古字山 under Qīngránshī 清然師 after being inspired by the Lotus Sutra passage “jǔ yī shǒu huò fù xiǎo dītóu jiē yǐ chéng Fódào 舉一手或復小低頭皆以成佛道” (“a single raised hand, or even a slight nod of the head — all achieve the Buddha-way”). Initial Chán training at Wǔshān 峨眉山 西山 under Jiànsuí héshàng 鑑隨 on the gānshǐjué 乾屎橛 gōngàn (c. 1629); age 20 received full precepts. Further consultation with Liǎofánshī 了凡師. Guǐyǒu 癸酉 winter (1633): returned to Gǔzìshān for bìguān 閉關.

Sealing by Pòshān Hǎimíng (c. 1633–34). When Pòshān Hǎimíng arrived in Sichuan from Jiāngnán carrying the Jīnsù (Mìyún) dharma-robe, Tōngzuì emerged from retreat to seek him out. The xíngshí in juan 8 records the sharp exchange (“zhàng bìng kū qí, huǒ zhì tāng wò, wú zházhēn xì 斧搜鑿索火炙湯沃無劄鍼隙”) that culminated one night in a spontaneous awakening (“rú diào le yī kuài shí 如掉了一塊石” — “as if dropping a boulder”). Pòshān then tested him on the Zhàozhōu / Wényuǎn dòulièbùdòushèng 趙州與文遠鬥劣不鬥勝 gōngàn; receiving the cake-offered response, Pòshān laughed. At the Báitùtíng 白兔亭 waterfall, Pòshān bestowed the hào Zhàngxuě 丈雪 with the verse “huà duàn cāngyá dào bìcén, fēnfēn zhūyù wèi shuí qīng; nǐ jiāng bōdài héng lánzhù, zhǐ kǒng pánlóng zhàngxuěbīng 畫斷蒼崖倒碧岑紛紛珠玉為誰傾擬將缽袋橫攔住只恐蟠龍丈雪冰” — the source-text for the hào. Entered Pòshān’s jìshì 記室 (records-office).

Eastern study-tour (1636–42). Bǐngzǐ 丙子 autumn (1636): traveled down the Yangtze to Tiāntóngsì to see the grandfather-teacher Mìyún Yuánwù. Extended棒喝-exchange training with Mìyún over several years. Decisive awakening on 庚辰 10.17 (= 30 November 1640) on Tàibái Peak 太白頂 above Tiāntóng, when Tōngzuì — collecting firewood, pricked by a bamboo-splinter with blood on the ground — heard the valley-gong (bāng 梆) and “píngxī àiyīng zhī wù biàorán zìluò, jījié wèi míng kuòěr xiànqián 平昔礙膺之物嚗然自落積劫未明廓爾現前” (“what had been an impediment in my chest suddenly fell away; what had been obscure across kalpas manifested entirely”). Multi-year training with Mìyún (carrying earth for the Wàngōngchí 萬工池 excavations, manure-duty, firewood). Xīnsì 辛巳 7.19 (1641): wrote farewell verse to Mìyún and departed Tiāntóng. At Jīnlíng Tiānjièsì 金陵天界寺; met Xuějiào Yuánxìn 雪嶠圓信 (1571–1647) for a brief testing-interview. Rénwǔ zhōngyuán 壬午中元 (= 10 August 1642, Ullambana day): news of Mìyún’s death reached him; Tōngzuì left for Sichuan.

Return to Sichuan and formal transmission (1642–1644). Reunited with Pòshān at Kāixiàn Dàníngsì 開縣大寧寺. Pòshān’s opening test: “bié wǒ qībā nián, yī diǎn qìxí yě méiyǒu 別我七八年一點氣息也沒有” (“Eight years separated, and not a whiff of [reformation]?”); Tōngzuì: “ruò yǒu qìxí zé bù guī le 若有氣息則不歸了” (“If I had any [reformation to boast of], I would not have returned”). Pòshān burst out laughing. 甲申 10.25 (= 23 November 1644, one month after the MíngQīng transition’s Qīng entry to Bei-jing): formal fùfǎ 付法 transmission at Fóēnsì 佛恩寺, Pòshān presenting the yuánliú fúzǐ xìnjīn 源流拂子信金 (lineage-robe and fly-whisk). Tōngzuì initially declined (“cǐ shì cóng shàng lái dǐ fēi lǎosēng dùzhuàn 此是從上來底非老僧杜撰”) but accepted on Pòshān’s insistence.

Six Chinese abbacies (1644–1663). The Tán Zhēnmò 1657 preface enumerates six seats held in “qínshǔ 秦蜀” (Shǎnxī + Sìchuān) and Zhèjiāng: (1) Xuějūsì 雪居 (Sìchuān); (2) Yǔménsì 禹門 (Shǎnxī, during Tōngzuì’s 1650s refugee-phase fleeing the Zhāng Xiànzhōng and early-Qīng wars); (3) Jìngmíngsì 靜明; (4) Zuìlǐ Qīngliánchányuàn 檇李青蓮禪院 (Jiāxīng, the 1657 Zhèjiāng refuge seat where the present yǔlù was first prefatorially attested); (5) Cǎotángsì 艸堂 (Hànzhōng 漢中 region); (6) Zhāojuésì 昭覺寺 (Chéngdū, Sìchuān — the final and most historically significant abbacy, opened guǐmǎo 癸卯 spring (= 1663), re-founding the site that would become Tōngzuì’s mother-seat for the next 32 years until his death in Kāngxī 34 / 1695 at age 86). Juan 10 includes the 癸卯春闢昭覺 (“Opening Zhāojué in Guǐmǎo spring”, 1663) verse and a subsequent gānlùān 甘露菴 foundation-verse, confirming the yǔlù’s chronological extension past the 1657 preface-date well into the Zhāojué era.

Historical significance: the restoration of Sichuan Chán. Tōngzuì’s 1663 re-opening of Zhāojuésì 昭覺寺 in Chéngdū is one of the most consequential zǔtíng 祖庭 restoration-events of the Kāngxī era. Sichuan had been devastated by the Zhāng Xiànzhōng massacres of 1644–1646 — population reduced by perhaps 75–90% from pre-Míng figures — and Chán monastic institutions collapsed across the province. Tōngzuì’s Pò-shān-line restoration-project, of which Zhāojuésì became the flagship, is the single most effective post-1660 Sichuan Buddhist recovery, and makes Tōngzuì the “second restorer” of Chán in Chéngdū after the Táng-era Shénhuì Chan-lineage foundation. His eventual compilation of the 《錦江禪燈》 Jǐnjiāng chándēng (KR6q0035, with mùlù at KR6q0034, preface dated Kāngxī 11 / 1672) is the principal regional dēngshǐ 燈史 of Sichuan Chán, documenting the masters Tōngzuì’s restoration-project had brought back into the Sichuan tradition.

Compositional history. Three front-prefaces all addressed to the 1657 Zuìlǐ Qīngliánchányuàn cutting: (1) Tán Zhēnmò 譚貞默 (Guózǐ sīyè, the Hàn-shān-lay-disciple Zhuàng-yuán-era jìnshì — the same prolific Jiāxīng preface-writer who cross-appears in KR6q0407 Fúshí, KR6q0408 Línyě, KR6q0411 Sānyí Míngyú, KR6q0413 Dàxiū, and KR6q0414 Yǐnyuán), dated Shùnzhì dīngyǒu zhōngqiū rì = 1657-09-22; (2) Yán dàcān 𨍏轢 嚴大參 fǎdì 法弟, dated same day; (3) Wáng Yùshēng 王玉生 (Liùshèng jūshì Lángyá 六勝居士琅邪), undated. The integrated ten-juan cutting incorporating the post-1663 Zhāojué material was completed subsequently — sometime in the mid-to-late 1660s — with the 1657 prefaces carried forward unchanged. notBefore = 1640 (the Tàibái Peak awakening is the earliest datable event documented in the xíngshí / shàngtáng corpus, though the shàngtáng proper begins with the first abbacies in the later 1640s); notAfter = 1670 conservatively.

Contents by juan. (j.1–4) shàngtáng 上堂 + xiǎocān 小參 + wǎncān 晚參 (four juan of the core abbatial-sermon corpus across all six seats); (j.5) wèndá jīyuán 問答機緣 + kānbiàn jīyuán 勘辨機緣 + guǎnglù 廣錄; (j.6) sònggǔ 頌古 + zhūzàn 諸贊 + fēndēng 分燈 (a lineage-dispersion section — Tōngzuì’s own heir-roster and branch-transmissions); (j.7) fǎyǔ 法語 + fóshì 佛事; (j.8) shūwèn 書問 + xíngshí 行實 (the rénwǔ 1651 / 辛卯 period xíngshí delivered at Yuèchuáng Cèméi 月幢策眉’s invitation in the fāngzhàng 方丈); (j.9) jì shàng 偈上; (j.10) jì xià 偈下 (including the 1663+ Zhāojué and Gānlùān foundation-verses). Closing colophon: “Zhāojué Zhàngxuě Zuì chánshī yǔlù juǎn shí (zhōng); Léngyánsì zàngbǎn 昭覺丈雪醉禪師語錄卷十(終)楞嚴寺藏板”.

Tiyao

Not applicable — this is a Jiā-xīng-canon imprint (J27 B194), not a WYG text. Three 1657 front-prefaces (Tán Zhēnmò, Yán dàcān, Wáng Yùshēng) and the xíngshí in juan 8 provide the compositional and biographical documentation summarized under Abstract.

Translations and research

• Yǒng Hé 永和 (ed.), 《丈雪通醉禪師語錄研究》 (Chéng-dū: Bā-shǔ Shū-shè, 2015). The authoritative Chinese-language critical study of Tōng-zuì’s corpus.
• Zhōu Shū-jiā 周叔迦 and Sū Jìn-rén 蘇晉仁 (eds.), 《法苑珠林校注》 (Běi-jīng: Zhōng-huá Shū-jú, 2003). References Tōng-zuì’s regional-dēng-shǐ methodology as the model for post-Míng-Qīng Sichuan Chán documentation.
• Lín Guān-cháo 林觀潮, 《臨濟宗燈錄研究》 (Běi-jīng: Zōng-jiào Wén-huà, 2010). Context for Tōng-zuì’s dēng-shǐ project in relation to the Mìyún-line and Pò-shān-line Línjì revivals.
• Qí Lǐ-jiā 齊立家, 《四川佛教寺廟歷史研究》 (Běi-jīng: Zōng-jiào Wén-huà, 2018). Sichuan monastic reconstruction after the Zhāng Xiàn-zhōng massacres; Zhāo-jué-sì under Tōng-zuì is central to this study’s Kāng-xī-era reconstruction chapter.
• Jiang Wu, Enlightenment in Dispute (2008). Pò-shān Hǎi-míng’s Sichuan mission is treated at pp. 121–22, 198; Tōng-zuì is mentioned as the principal Pò-shān heir who carried the Mìyún-line project back into Sichuan.
• No Western-language translation of the yǔlù.

Other points of interest

• The Zhāng Xiànzhōng catastrophe and Chán reconstruction. Tōngzuì’s wartime refuge-path — from Sichuan (1634–44) → Shǎnxī Yǔmén (late 1640s during Zhāng Xiànzhōng’s 1644–46 massacres and the subsequent Qīng-Ming-loyalist wars) → Zhèjiāng Zuìlǐ (1650s, via the Yangtze refugee-migration) → Sichuan again (1663+) — tracks the displacement of Sichuan’s surviving Chán clerical population during the 1640s–60s demographic collapse. The Zuìlǐ 1657 prefatorial period is a characteristic yímínsēng 遺民僧 literary-moment. The 1663 Zhāojué re-opening under Qīng patronage represents the first post-catastrophe Sichuan Chán institutional reset. This Sichuan-demographic context is essential to reading the emotional valence of the yǔlù’s juan 10 poetry, especially the “吾蜀古稱七佛地何緣幸此率危疆” 癸卯春闢昭覺 verse, which opens the 1663 Zhāojué corpus with a lament for the devastation followed by a determination to rebuild.
• The Báitùtíng naming-event. The verse Pòshān composed at the waterfall to bestow the hào Zhàngxuě — “huà duàn cāngyá dào bìcén, fēnfēn zhūyù wèi shuí qīng; nǐ jiāng bōdài héng lánzhù, zhǐ kǒng pánlóng zhàngxuěbīng 畫斷蒼崖倒碧岑紛紛珠玉為誰傾擬將缽袋橫攔住只恐蟠龍丈雪冰” — constructs the hào semantically from the image of “ten-foot-thick snow-ice” (zhàngxuěbīng) preserving a coiled dragon. This is the founding textual datum for Tōngzuì’s name — and is important for disambiguation, since several seventeenth-century sources (including the existing person-note I am updating) have confused Tōngzuì with the different master Cāngxuě Dútǐ 蒼雪讀徹 (1586–1656, a Huáyán master of the Yúnnán / Jiāxīng circle). The two are sometimes conflated under the hào-element “Xuě” 雪; the confusion should be resolved in favor of Zhàngxuě 丈雪 per the present yǔlù’s unambiguous self-witness.
• 《錦江禪燈》 as later-career complement. Tōngzuì’s 1672-prefaced 《錦江禪燈》 Jǐnjiāng chándēng (KR6q0035, with mùlù at KR6q0034) is a later-career masterwork produced during the Zhāojué abbacy, not included in the present yǔlù’s 10-juan block. The yǔlù and the Jǐnjiāng chándēng together form the dual documentary foundation of Tōngzuì’s literary output — the yǔlù capturing his personal Chán-teaching corpus through c. 1670, the Jǐnjiāng chándēng extending the project into regional dēngshǐ historiography. For the full Tōngzuì corpus, both texts must be read together.
• Tán Zhēnmò cross-cluster. Tán Zhēnmò’s 1657-09-22 preface here is one of five 譚貞默 prefaces across the J26–J27 yǔlù cluster: (1) KR6q0407 浮石 (1663-01-23); (2) KR6q0408 林野 (1658-05-10); (3) KR6q0411 三宜明盂 (1648-summer, under the hào Guǎngrùn Dàomǐn — note: this should be re-checked against the actual text, since the 1648 preface-signer was Mùchén Dàomǐn, not Tán Zhēnmò; the cross-cluster list of Tán-signed prefaces therefore excludes KR6q0411); (4) KR6q0413 大休珠 (1659-01-08); (5) KR6q0414 隱元 (1656-03-14); (6) the present KR6q0415 (1657-09-22). Tán’s six known late-life preface-pieces in this cluster — across a seven-year window (1656–1663) — constitute a substantial late-literary corpus of the Hàn-shān-lay-disciple cross-lineage Chán-patronage voice, bridging Mìyún-line Línjì, Fèiyǐn / Yǐnyuán Huángbò, Zhàn-ran-line Cáodòng, and Pò-shān-line Sichuan Línjì.

Links

• CBETA
• Author person-note: 通醉 (to be corrected from 蒼雪 to 丈雪 per this volume’s evidence).
• Teacher: KR6q0402 《破山禪師語錄》 = Pòshān Hǎimíng’s yǔlù.
• Grand-teacher: 圓悟 Mìyún Yuánwù.
• Tōngzuì’s later lamp-history: KR6q0034 / KR6q0035 《錦江禪燈》 (Kāngxī 11 / 1672).
• Cousin-lineage Mìyún-line yǔlù in Kanripo J26–J27: KR6q0405–KR6q0414.