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大通禪師語録

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Text ID
KR6t0269
Date
1351–1793
Dynasty
日本

Dàtōng Chánshī yǔlù 大通禪師語録

Recorded Sayings of the Great-Penetration Zen Master by 周及 Guchū Shūkyū (語)

About the work

A six-fascicle Recorded Sayings collection of 周及 Guchū Shūkyū (1323–1409), founder (開山) of Bucchū-ji 佛通寺 in Aki 安藝 province (modern Hiroshima), the head temple of the present-day Bucchū-ji-ha 佛通寺派 sub-school of Rinzai-Zen. Posthumous title Buttoku Daitsū Zenji 佛德大通禪師, conferred by Emperor Go-Komatsu 後小松天皇 in 1409 — hence the work’s title. The Edo-period redaction is titled in full Bucchū-ji yuken Daitsū Zenji Guchū Oshō goroku 佛通禪師愚中和尚語録 and circulates also as the Kanyo-shū 丱餘集 (the editor’s antiquarian title — kan 丱 being a rare graph for “ore-stones tossed aside” after refining).

Abstract

Guchū’s biography is laid out at length in the principal preface by Keishū Dōrin 桂洲道倫 of Tenryū-ji, dated Kansei 5 / 4 (寛政五年癸丑夏四月 = May 1793). At thirteen Guchū entered the household of 夢窓疎石 Musō Soseki (the Shōgaku Kokushi 正覺國師 of the preface) at Tenryū-ji; tonsured at fourteen; received full ordination at seventeen. After failing to settle his great doubt under Musō, he travelled to Yuán China in 1341, studying first with Yuèjiāng Zhèngyìn 月江正印 at Cao-yuan and then becoming dharma-heir of Jíxiū Qìliǎo 契了 at Jīnshān 金山. The famous awakening-incident is the zhúbìbèichù 竹箆背觸 (bamboo-staff “if you call it space, you touch — if you don’t call it space, you turn your back”) kōan from Dàhuì’s exchange with Gushan; on hearing the story Guchū “turned a somersault and rolled out” — Jíxiū certified him with a self-portrait inscription beginning “On the peak of Miàogāo I take ship; in mid Yangzi I race horses” (妙高峯頂行舟 / 楊子江心走馬).

Returning to Japan in 1351 (the lower date-bound), Guchū kept his teacher’s injunction “do not enter the world” (= do not accept abbacies of major public temples), spending decades in mountain seclusion before finally founding Bucchū-ji in Aki. The recorded sayings record this trajectory: the principal sermons are from his Bucchū-ji and (later) Kyō-ji 許山 abbacies. He died at 87 in Ōei 16 / 1409 — the same year the imperial title was conferred.

The text was never block-printed during the Edo period until 1793, when Ittsū Zagen 一宙座元 of Kōshin-in 肯心院 received the assembly’s commission, travelled to Kyoto, and engaged Shigen Zagen 此源座元 of Fukurin-ji 福林寺 in Tanba 丹波 as collator. The resulting editio princeps is the basis for the Taishō text. Keishū Dōrin’s preface is the primary source for Guchū’s biography and explicitly notes the chain of transmission of an associated Bonmei-shō 禀明抄 and a nenpyō 年譜 (chronological biography) which had been printed earlier separately. The dating bracket therefore brackets composition from Guchū’s return to Japan (1351) through the late-Kansei printing (1793).

The recorded sayings are notable for: (i) explicit Sino-Japanese provenance — the dharma-transmission certificate from Jíxiū at Jinshan is preserved verbatim; (ii) the parallel attribution of Musō Soseki and Jíxiū as joint roots of Guchū’s lineage, an unusual double-line claim; (iii) the strict fudasshō (不立世) seclusion-policy that shaped the Bucchū-ji branch’s later character as a rinka (non-Gozan) lineage despite Guchū’s own training at the Musō-line Five-Mountain centre.

Translations and research

For Guchū and the Bucchū-ji lineage, see Tamamura Takeji 玉村竹二, Gozan zenrin shūha-zu 五山禅林宗派図 (Heirakuji shoten, 1985); Imaeda Aishin 今枝愛真, Chūsei zenshū-shi no kenkyū 中世禅宗史の研究 (Tōkyō daigaku shuppankai, 1970), §V on the rinka lines. The associated Jīnshān corpus collected by Guchū and brought back to Japan circulates as Jíxiū-sì shíyí jí KR6q0341 Sokkyū-shi shūi-shū — see that entry for cross-reference.

Other points of interest

The Kanyo-shū 丱餘集 alternate title is unusually metaphorical: kan 丱 in Tiāngōng kāiwù 天工開物 (Sòng Yìngxīng, 1637) names the slag-stones tossed aside after refining ore, “stones the size of a dou-measure or a fist, useless and discarded” — the editorial conceit being that these recorded sayings are the “discarded stones” out of which the gold of Guchū’s enlightenment was once smelted. The Keishū preface explains the title-graph at length, including a quotation from the Tiāngōng kāiwù; this is one of very few Japanese Buddhist texts to cite the great Ming technological encyclopaedia by name.

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