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槐安國語

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Text ID
KR6t0280
Date
1749–1885
Dynasty
日本

Huáiānguó yǔ 槐安國語

Words of the Country of Locust-Tree Peace by 慧鶴 Hakuin Ekaku (註), 妙超 Shūhō Myōchō (原語)

About the work

A seven-fascicle commentary on KR6t0272 Daitō Kokushi yǔlù (the recorded sayings of 妙超 Shūhō Myōchō, Daitō Kokushi, 1282–1337), composed by 慧鶴 Hakuin Ekaku (1686–1769) in Kan’en 2 / 1749 (寛延第二己已暦) and re-issued at Kyoto in Meiji 18 / 1885 at the patronage of Shigetsu Koji 指月居士. The title Huáiānguó yǔ — “Words from the Country of Locust-Tree Peace” — alludes to the Táng Nánkētàishǒu zhuàn 南柯太守傳 of Lǐ Gōngzuǒ 李公佐 (the story of an official who dreamt under a locust tree of having ruled a fairy kingdom called Huáiān); Hakuin uses it ironically: his commentary is fairy-kingdom dreaming — a self-deprecating Zen demurral on adding jakugo “capping-phrases” to Daitō’s pristine yulu.

Abstract

The text is one of the most influential commentaries in the Edo-period Rinzai-Zen curriculum. Hakuin’s procedure is the classical Hakuin jakugo method: each line or phrase of Daitō’s yulu is given a brief capping-phrase (短評) by Hakuin, occasionally expanded into a paragraph-length hyōshō 評唱 commentary. The whole work models the kōan-pedagogy that Hakuin had institutionalised at Shōin-ji and that Tōrei 圓慈 would systematise in KR6t0281.

The 1749 preface (hyōshōryūhō kaisan kokushi-yǔlù setsugo 評唱龍寶開山國師語錄拙語), by Hakuin himself as 鵠林 (Kakurin), describes the textual origin: “It was Kan’en 2 / arabic 1749 / spring. The first day of the kaisei (assembly opening). My West-and-East assembled hermit-students bowed and addressed me, saying: As for Daitoku-ji’s founder [Daitō Kokushi], he was the pioneer of the East Sea, the dharma-grandfather of the Kazami National Master [義天玄詔], wielding the great banner with merciless hand — his temple-gate stood perilously, undeferring to Nanquan or Changsha — his response to circumstance had the bearing of Huángbò and Címing. His record is exceedingly lofty, the verses carrying the cadence of [Xuědòu] Míngjué. Yet they have long been sequestered in the Daitoku-ji archives, beyond the reach of others. We beg you to compose a commentary.”

The Meiji 18 (1885) preface by Kōsen Sōon 洪川宗温 (1816–1892, the seventy-year-old senior of Engaku-ji), with calligraphy by the imperial-style statesman Yamaoka Tesshū 山岡鐵太郎 (1836–1888) and a second preface by Bokushū 牧宗 of Daitoku-ji, locates the re-issue at Shigetsu Koji 指月居士’s initiative — driven, the prefaces say, by the loss of the earlier blocks to fire and the recognition that “the Kaiankoku-go is the indispensable treasure-canon of the Zen-gate” (槐安國語者爲禪門必須之寶典).

The dating bracket runs from Hakuin’s composition (1749) to the Meiji editio re-cusa (1885) which is reproduced in the Taishō.

The work is among the principal teaching-texts of the Hakuin curriculum and is studied as a fundamental work in every Rinzai monastic senmondōjō 専門道場 (training-hall) — together with Hakuin’s Sokkō-roku kaien fusetsu commentary on the Xū-tang-roku and Yasen kanwa.

Translations and research

The most extensive English-language treatment is Norman Waddell, Hakuin’s Precious Mirror Cave: A Zen Miscellany (Counterpoint, 2009), which contains substantial extracts in translation; and Waddell, Wild Ivy: The Spiritual Autobiography of Zen Master Hakuin (Shambhala, 1999), for biographical context. The full Kaiankoku-go has not been translated into English; selective Japanese annotations include Yamada Mumon 山田無文, Kaiankoku-go teishō 槐安国語提唱 (Shunjūsha, 1979), 4 vols. For Hakuin’s jakugo method and its theoretical underpinning, see Michel Mohr, Traité sur l’inépuisable lampe du Zen: Tōrei (1721–1792) et sa vision de l’éveil (Brussels: Institut belge des hautes études chinoises, 1997), introduction.

Other points of interest

The title’s Nánkētàishǒu allusion is deliberately destabilising: Hakuin opens his great commentary with a self-positioning as the dreamer-official who governed an illusory kingdom. The 1885 preface by Kōsen Sōon repeats this gesture: “This record is our founder’s kattō [thicket-of-vines] that he laid down to instruct the novice monks. Later, the Old-Man-of-Kakurin [Hakuin] in his grandmotherly kindness added his own capping-words and titled it the Kaiankoku-go. Although this is the manner of pre-chewing rice and feeding it to an infant, it is also the adamantine ring, the chestnut-burr of our founder’s kattō — students who touch it mistakenly will not merely hurt their hand and foot, but rarely escape with their life and body intact.”

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