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雪江和尚語録

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Text ID
KR6t0274
Date
1486–1786
Dynasty
日本

Xuějiāng Héshàng yǔlù 雪江和尚語録

Recorded Sayings of Reverend Sekkō by 宗深 Sekkō Sōshin (語), 禪悅 Zen’etsu (編)

About the work

A single-fascicle (with appendix) Recorded Sayings collection of 宗深 Sekkō Sōshin (1408–1486), Mid-Muromachi Myōshin-ji-line Rinzai-Zen master and “regenerator” of the Myōshin-ji lineage. Posthumous title Butsunichi Shinshō Zenji 佛日眞照禪師, conferred by Emperor Go-Kashiwabara 後柏原天皇 in Eishō 2 / 8 / 2 (1505-08-31 NS), nineteen years after Sekkō’s death. The opening imperial edict 勅 carries this title and reads in part: “His pagoda is called Heibai [-in 衡梅院]; he stores away the spring-colours of myriad years. The temple leans on tall bamboos; he renews the seven-generations-old ancient causal-condition. The Reverend Sōshin, mystic-descendant of 妙超 Daitō, true heir of 義天詔 Gitten.”

Abstract

The text is an extraordinary case of near-total textual loss. The editor’s preface (xù 叙) by Zen’etsu 禪悅 — Sekkō’s pagoda-keeper at Heibai-in for nearly fifty years — explicitly notes:

“Sekkō Sōshin originally had several recorded-sayings collections from his various abbacies, already mentioned in the Hōzan Roku-so den 法山六祖傳 (Six-Patriarch Biography of Myōshin-ji), and yet today none survives. Why? Because they were repeatedly burnt by the wars [of the Ōnin period and after] and reduced to nothing. I have been guardian of the Heibai pagoda for almost fifty years and have always lamented not seeing his words. One day, rummaging through old papers, I happened upon some sheets of Jishū tachi-dochi geju-no-zan 示衆立地偈賛 (Hortatory verses delivered standing) — a few dozen sheets in all. … I had at first seen them with astonishment and delight, no different from finding the cintā-maṇi jewel. After that I sought the complete record, but searched all my powers to no avail. From then on, whenever a manuscript-fragment in [Sekkō’s] hand came to my attention, I would copy it and add it to the pile. Together with what I had first gathered, I made it into one fascicle.”

He thus presents the text as a “one-fascicle reconstruction” gleaned from Heibai-in’s surviving papers — “a partial-pearl of the original full collection, though preserving one part in a hundred or thousand, still enough to glimpse its likeness”. The line “the venerable patriarch [Sekkō] passed on nearly three hundred years ago” (老祖委化垂三百年) dates Zen’etsu’s preface to approximately An’ei or Tenmei era (mid-1780s NS), giving the upper date-bound for the present text.

The appended materials (furoku 附録) preserve a remarkable thread of internal Heibai-in memorial-history, including:

  • jaki-rite (jakishuku 自己讚) self-portrait inscriptions written by Tōyō Eichō 東陽英朝 (Sekkō’s senior heir) on the master’s anniversary, including the famous “Pretending spear-thrust with the meditation-cushion, faking lion-leap with the great Wei staff…” anniversary-tribute verse to Sekkō;
  • correspondence with Gokei Sōton 悟溪和尚 宗頓 (another of Sekkō’s four heirs) about the construction of the Heibai-in kyōdō 饗堂 (offering-hall) under his abbacy at Myōshin-ji;
  • an inscription recording the Meiō 7 / 1498 / 4 / 16 (明應七年戊午四月十六日) erection of the Heibai-in hōjō 方丈 (founder-cell) by Gokei Sōton (Sekkō’s seventh-generation pagoda-guard), thirteen years after Sekkō’s death;
  • a Tenzaku Tōnin 天澤東胤録 record of the Keichō 9 / 1604 (慶長九年甲辰) zenrei 遷靈 (pagoda-translation) at Heibai-in by the chūkō 中興 abbot Tenshū 天秀, in which Sekkō’s corpse was found “whole and undecayed, seated in formal posture in the urn, only the nails and hair grown long” — recorded by Zen’etsu with the gloss “distance from the master’s parinirvāṇa: 119 years” (i.e. 1486 + 119 = 1605, approximately matching 1604).

The dating bracket reflects: composition from Sekkō’s lifetime (low side = death year 1486); compilation by Zen’etsu c. 1786 (high side).

Translations and research

No book-length Western-language treatment located. For Sekkō and the post-Ōnin Myōshin-ji reconstitution, see Tamamura Takeji 玉村竹二, Gozan zenrin shūha-zu 五山禅林宗派図 (Heirakuji shoten, 1985); Ogisu Jundō 荻須純道, Myōshinji-shi 妙心寺史 (Myōshinji honjo, 1975); and Funaoka Makoto 船岡誠, Nihon zenshū no seiritsu 日本禅宗の成立 (Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1987). The Shihatsu (Four Branches) typology of Sekkō’s lineage is discussed in nearly every modern Rinzai institutional history.

Other points of interest

The text is one of the most explicit cases in the Taishō Japanese-Buddhist canon of secondary reconstruction: rather than being a record of a master’s words preserved by an attendant, it is an editorial salvage two-and-a-half centuries later by a long-tenured pagoda-keeper from surviving papers. Zen’etsu’s preface is therefore one of our principal source-witnesses for the textual losses of the Ōnin war within Myōshin-ji and is regularly cited in studies of medieval Japanese monastic libraries.

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