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無文禪師語録

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Text ID
KR6t0265
Date
1390–1894
Dynasty
日本

Wúwén Chánshī yǔlù 無文禪師語録

Recorded Sayings of Reverend Mumon by 元選 Mumon Gensen (語)

About the work

A single-fascicle Recorded Sayings collection of 元選 Mumon Gensen (1323–1390), founder (開山) of Hōkō-ji 方廣寺 at Oku-yama 奧山 in Tōtōmi province (modern Shizuoka) and posthumous Shōkan Kokushi 聖鑑國師. The collection is unusually short — Mumon famously taught that “this school has no sayings, no single dharma to give people,” and the surviving text comprises a few dozen hōgo (dharma-talks), about a hundred verse-encomia (頌偈), and a single gyōroku (行錄) biographical fascicle. The Taishō recension is a Meiji-era recutting (1894) of an earlier Kyōhō (享保, 1716–36) printing.

Abstract

Mumon Gensen was the eleventh son of Emperor Go-Daigo 後醍醐天皇 (1288–1339), the Southern-Court emperor of the Nanbokuchō schism. Refusing court office, he took the tonsure as a youth, travelled to Yuan China (c. 1343–1350) where he received transmission in the Xuěyán Zǔqīn 雪巖祖欽 / Wúzhǔn Shīfàn 無準師範 line through Gumei Shōfu (Gǔméi Zhèngyǒu) 古梅正友, and on his return settled at Oku-yama in 1371 to found Hōkō-ji. He notably refused appointments to the Five-Mountain temples of Kyoto and Kamakura, electing instead the hermitage life — a model that aligns him with the contemporary “below-the-grove” (rinka 林下) Rinzai trend exemplified by 得勝 Bassui Tokushō.

The compilation history is layered:

  • The text reports that the original jōdō (上堂) and shōsan (小參) records “perished by fire in mid-antiquity” (蓋中古罹兵燹歸烏有). What survived is a small body of hōgo, geju (verse-encomia, jiāsòng), and one gyōroku fascicle.
  • The first wood-block printing was made in the Kyōhō era (1716–1736) at Hōkō-ji.
  • The Taishō recension is the Meiji 27 (1894) recutting initiated by Tōmyō 東明, then abbot of Hōkō-ji, on the occasion of the 500-year memorial. It carries five new prefaces, all dated 1894 (明治二十七年 / 甲申): one by Dokuon Jōshu 獨園承珠 (then gendō of Shōkoku-ji 相國寺), one by Keichū 敬冲 of Tōfuku-ji, one by Kōsen Sōon 洪川宗温 (1816–1892, abbot of Engaku-ji and Kōshō-ji) [the date of his preface — Meiji 17 = 1884 (甲申) — predates the recutting and was carried over from a planned earlier edition], and one verse by Shun’ō 舜應 of Zuiryō-san dated Meiji 28 (1895, 乙未).
  • The same year (1893) Emperor Meiji bestowed the posthumous title Shōkan Kokushi 聖鑑國師 on Mumon, recognising him as a “loyal subject of the Southern Court” — a politically charged Meiji-era act of imperial-restoration theatre.

Content of the surviving fascicle: a shinzan 眞讚 (portrait-encomium) by Tomokatsu 友勝 of the fourth dharma-generation; the prefaces enumerated above; a body of fa-yǔ (法語, dharma-instructions to lay disciples and monks); about a hundred jìsòng 偈頌 verses; and a closing xínglù 行錄 biographical fascicle. The omission of jōdō, shōsan, and kōan-discussion records gives the work a peculiar character: it preserves Mumon’s literary and pastoral voice but very little of his dialogical Chan teaching.

The dating bracket reflects the layered transmission: composition by Mumon (d. 1390) is the lower bound; the Meiji recutting (1894) is the upper.

Translations and research

No substantial secondary literature located in Western languages. For the Hōkō-ji branch and Mumon Gensen, see Tamamura Takeji 玉村竹二, Gozan zenrin shūha-zu 五山禅林宗派図 (Kyoto: Heirakuji shoten, 1985); Imaeda Aishin 今枝愛真, Chūsei Zenshū-shi no kenkyū 中世禅宗史の研究 (Tokyo: Tōkyō daigaku shuppankai, 1970), §V on the rinka / non-Gozan lineages.

Other points of interest

The Taishō text is one of the few cases in the Japanese-Buddhist division where the source recension is explicitly Meiji rather than Edo or pre-modern: the editorial chain is Meiji → Taishō, with the older Kyōhō print serving as the textual base. Readers who want the pre-Meiji form must consult the Hōkō-ji woodblock or the Zoku-Zenseki-shū 續禪籍叢 reprint.

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