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永源寂室和尚語録

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Text ID
KR6t0270
Date
1326–1367
Dynasty
日本

Yǒngyuán Jìshì Héshàng yǔlù 永源寂室和尚語録

Recorded Sayings of Reverend Jakushitsu of Eigen[-ji] by 元光 Jakushitsu Genkō (語)

About the work

A two-fascicle Recorded Sayings collection of 元光 Jakushitsu Genkō (1290–1367), founder (開山) of Eigen-ji 永源寺 at Mount Zuiseki-zan 瑞石山 in Ōmi 近江 province (modern Higashi-Ōmi, Shiga), the head temple of the present-day Eigen-ji-ha 永源寺派 sub-school of Rinzai-Zen. Posthumous title Eno Daichi Zenji 圓應禪師 / Nikkō Bukkō 日光佛光 — multiple imperial titles were bestowed posthumously, the most famous being Engai Hōzan Kokushi 圓鑑大師.

Abstract

Jakushitsu was the most resolute Japanese Rinzai-Zen recluse of the fourteenth century. He travelled to Yuán China in Genkō 1 / 1320 with his older dharma-brother Mukyoku Shigen 無極志玄, studied at Tiānmùshān 天目山 under Zhōngfēng Míngběn 明本 (1263–1323) of the Mid-Phoenix line — receiving the celebrated Yánshì jiābǎo 巖室家寶 inscription which became Jakushitsu’s identifying go 號 — and returned to Japan in Karyaku 1 / 1326, the lower date-bound. For the next forty years he refused all major appointments. Patrons in Iyo, Bingo, and finally Ōmi successively built him hermitages; only in Bunna 1 / 1352, at age 63, did he accept a stable foundation when Sasaki Ujiyori 佐々木氏頼, shugo of Ōmi, established Eigen-ji for him. He died there in Jōji 6 (Shōhei 22) / 1367-09-03 (Western 1367-10-04), age 78.

The two fascicles are dominated by verse rather than by jōdō sermons — a clear marker of the yamabushi / hermitage character of Jakushitsu’s teaching as opposed to the lecture-hall idiom of Gozan abbots. Fascicle 1 (上) opens with verses identified by occasion: a gūsaku 偶作 (“written casually”), a “Two verses written on the wall of Mount Kanzō” 書金藏山壁二首, a poem dated Bōshin / Jōwa 4 / 1348-09-13 (“on a journey to Tahara village”) in which Jakushitsu reflects on having seen “more than fifty frosty moons” at age 59 — fixing the date precisely. Many verses are dedicated to specific monk-disciples (-jisha 侍者) who came from elsewhere to study with him: 諲禪者 of Chōshō, 龍侍者 of Kansei, 密叟侍者 from Kennin-ji in the capital. The collection thus also doubles as a partial prosopography of the mid-fourteenth-century Rinzai network across Honshū.

The dating bracket reflects composition window — return from China (1326) to death (1367); the printed editions used by the Taishō are Edo-period block-prints from Eigen-ji.

Significance: Jakushitsu represents the pre-Gozan / non-Gozan alternative within the Yuán-Chan-derived Japanese Rinzai-Zen of the early fourteenth century — a contemporary of the Musō-line but committed to mountain seclusion rather than to the metropolitan Five-Mountain establishment. The Eigen-ji-ha lineage that descends from him (one of fourteen present-day Rinzai sub-schools) became a major channel for Zhōngfēng Míngběn’s austere Mid-Phoenix style of practice into Japanese Rinzai-Zen.

Translations and research

A complete English translation has appeared: Arthur Braverman, A Quiet Room: The Poetry of Zen Master Jakushitsu (Tuttle, 2000). Earlier partial translation in Wind in the Pines: Classic Writings of the Way of Tea as a Buddhist Path, ed. Dennis Hirota (Asian Humanities Press, 1995). For Jakushitsu’s life and Eigen-ji, see Imaeda Aishin 今枝愛真, Chūsei zenshū-shi no kenkyū 中世禅宗史の研究 (Tōkyō daigaku shuppankai, 1970), §V; Tamamura Takeji 玉村竹二, Gozan zenrin shūha-zu 五山禅林宗派図 (Heirakuji shoten, 1985); Ishii Shūdō 石井修道, “Jakushitsu Genkō to sono shūhen” IBK 26.2 (1978).

Other points of interest

The verse-heavy character of the collection makes it one of the most-translated Japanese Zen yulu into Western languages, second perhaps only to KR6t0288 Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō. Braverman’s English translation in particular has had wide circulation among lay practitioners. The mid-1348 bōshin poem is one of the rare instances in any pre-modern Japanese Zen yulu where a verse can be dated to the day by an internal reference, and is regularly cited as evidence in Japanese Zen literary biography.

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