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傳光録

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Text ID
KR6t0291
Date
1300–1325
Dynasty
日本

Chuánguāng lù 傳光録

Record of the Transmission of the Light by 瑩山 Keizan Jōkin (語)

About the work

A two-fascicle transmission-of-the-lamp record by 瑩山 Keizan Jōkin (1268–1325), the second great patriarch (Sōji-ji-line) of the Japanese Sōtō-Zen school after 道元 Dōgen (1200–1253). Composed in kana-majiri (mixed Chinese-Japanese script) at Yōkō-ji 永光寺 in Noto, c. 1300–1325, the Denkō-roku presents the dharma-transmission as a series of fifty-three biographical-and-doctrinal sketches, beginning with the Buddha’s transmission to Mahākāśyapa and proceeding through the twenty-eight Indian patriarchs, the Six Chinese Patriarchs, the Cáodòng-school masters down to Tiāntóng Rújìng 如淨 (Dōgen’s master), and finally Dōgen and Dōgen’s heir Koun Ejō 懷奘 (Keizan’s grandfather-in-dharma).

Abstract

The principal preface (序) by Mu’in 無隱 (a “tudāra” — undocumented elder), which prefaces the Edo-period editio princeps, identifies the work and its author:

“Since [the Buddha] raised the gold-flower and overturned the kshatra-pole — between West-India and East-Cathay — the dharma was passed down with its robe and the lamps did not break for thirty-three persons; these are called patriarchs. Below the patriarchs the robe stayed [in China] and was not transmitted [to Japan separately]; the dharma spread throughout the sand-realms. From this, the Five-House masters — each holding the spirit-snake’s pearl and each embracing the Jingshan jewel — what is called the Treasury of the True Dharma Eye, also named the Great Light-Treasure. Vast! Great indeed! Our Sōji-ji founder Bùtsu-ji Zenji Keizan, the great-Reverend, once carried the no-character seal and brought down the no-tongue talk; turning to the unseen-crown-mark of the patriarchs from above, he gave each of them the eye-dot. He named it the Record of the Transmission of the Light. This is the interior secret-text of the Mahāyāna [Buddhist] room.”

The text proper is structured as fifty-three chapters, each devoted to one patriarch. Each chapter opens with a brief biographical sketch (in kana), then the kōan-encounter (機縁 kien) of that patriarch’s awakening, then Keizan’s explanatory commentary (in kanbun) on the dharma-content of that encounter, and closes with a concluding jìsòng (偈頌) verse summarising the matter. The structure is modelled on the Sòng transmission-of-the-lamp tradition (Jǐngdé chuándēnglù, Jiātài pǔdēnglù, etc.) but is far more pedagogically organised: each chapter is essentially a stand-alone teaching-text that can be used in a single training session.

The biographical preface from the Edo editio princeps records Keizan’s life-history: born Bun’ei 5 (1268) in Tane-gun, Echizen province 越前州多禰郡 (modern Echizen-shi, Fukui), lay surname Fujiwara 藤. His mother dreamt of swallowing sunlight before conceiving him. Tonsured at age 8 under Tettsū Gikai 徹通 徹通義介, ordained at age 13 under Koun Ejō 懷奘. After awakening at age 22 under Tettsū Gikai on the Heijōshin-kore-dō (“ordinary mind is the Way”) kōan of Zhàozhōu, he became abbot of Jōman-ji 城滿寺 in Awa, then succeeded Tettsū at Daijō-ji 大乘寺 in Kaga. Founded Yōkō-ji 永光寺 in Noto and Sōji-ji 總持寺, both in Noto (modern Ishikawa). Died 1325. Posthumous title Bùtsu-ji Zenji 佛慈禪師 with later additions Sōji Enmei Kokushi 總持圓明國師.

The dating bracket reflects: the work was composed in the period of Keizan’s mature teaching at Yōkō-ji (c. 1300–1325). The Taishō recension is the Edo-period printing.

The work has been canonical for the Sōji-ji line of Japanese Sōtō-Zen — institutionally complementary to Dōgen’s KR6t0288 Shōbōgenzō. As Mu’in’s preface observes: “It is in mutual surface-and-back with the Eihei kōso shōbōgenzō.” Where Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō lays out the doctrinal philosophy of Sōtō-Zen, the Denkō-roku lays out the dharma-lineage as a sequence of teaching-encounters.

Translations and research

The principal English translation is Francis Dōjun Cook, The Record of Transmitting the Light: Zen Master Keizan’s Denkōroku (Wisdom Publications, 1991, repr. 2003) — complete, with extensive scholarly apparatus. Earlier partial translations include Thomas Cleary, Transmission of Light (Weatherhill, 1990).

For Keizan’s biography and the Sōji-ji-line context, see William M. Bodiford, Sōtō Zen in Medieval Japan (Univ. of Hawai’i Press, 1993), chs. 5–6; Bodiford, “Sōtō Zen in a Japanese Town: Field Notes on a Once-Every-Thirty-Three-Years Kannon Festival,” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 21 (1994). Recent monograph: Steven Heine, Like Cats and Dogs: Contesting the Mu Kōan in Zen Buddhism (Oxford UP, 2014), discussing Keizan’s kōan-pedagogy.

Other points of interest

The Denkō-roku is the principal source for the traditional Sōtō-Zen dharma-line as reconstructed in medieval Japan — the line that the Sōji-ji Sōtō clergy still recite at funerals and ceremonies. The fact that Dōgen and Ejō appear as the closing two patriarchs of the line emphasises the successorship of Keizan: the Denkō-roku is in part Keizan’s claim to be the next transmission after them. Modern Sōtō historiography treats Keizan as the institutional founder of Sōtō as a mass-Buddhist school in Japan (Dōgen having confined his teaching to a small monastic elite).

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