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信心銘拈提

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Text ID
KR6t0293
Date
1300–1325
Dynasty
日本

Xìnxīnmíng niāntí 信心銘拈提

Investigative Comment on the Inscription on Trust in Mind by 瑩山 Keizan Jōkin (撰)

About the work

A single-fascicle line-by-line Zen commentary by 瑩山 Keizan Jōkin (1268–1325) on the Xìnxīnmíng 信心銘 (“Inscription on Trust in Mind”) attributed in the Chán tradition to the Third Chinese Patriarch Sēngcàn 僧璨 (d. 606). Composed at Yōkō-ji 永光寺 in Noto during the period of Keizan’s mature teaching (c. 1300–1325). The Chinese term niāntí 拈提 — take-up-and-raise — names the specific genre of Zen interlinear-and-paragraph commentary that Keizan applies here: each line of the source-text is raised and given a brief turning-comment, in the jakugo (capping-phrase) idiom but treated systematically across the whole text.

Abstract

The text opens with a jishū (示衆 — instruction-to-the-assembly) preamble:

“Even when [the Buddha] closed-the-room at Magadha, axes-and-rules still adhered. Even when [Vimalakīrti] shut-his-mouth at Vaiśālī, much-tongue could not be avoided. Even when the above-the-self person just begins to raise toward, strong makes a node-and-eye. Raising staves, planting whisks — all fall onto the path-rut. — How shall one investigate? — Staring eyes, gaping mouth: The Buddha-eye also doesn’t see it.”

Keizan then proceeds line-by-line through the Xìnxīnmíng. The text comprises about 146 four-character lines arranged in pairs (the Xìnxīnmíng is the principal short verse-text of mid-Tang Chán literature). Keizan’s procedure on each line is:

  1. Raise the line (拈) as the topic-phrase.
  2. Turn it ideologically with a brief paragraph-commentary in mixed kanbun-and-Japanese.
  3. Add a short capping-phrase (拈提 / 著語) often formulated as a question or as an exclamatory turning-pivot.

For instance, on the famous opening line “At the Ultimate Way there is no difficulty — only avoid choosing-and-discriminating” (至道無難唯嫌揀擇), Keizan comments: “What is being chosen? What is being avoided? — Throw it all away! This mind is empty. The Way is at-the-extreme. Without difficulty, without ease. The Way is wonderful. Without distance, without intimacy.”

On “Only avoid hatred and love, and brilliance is clear” (但莫憎愛洞然明白), he adds: “If ‘brilliance is clear’ — what to hate, what to love? From the beginning [the Way] is undefiled, the empty-bright is naturally clean. A single line of white silk — sewing the cracks brightly. The ten-thousand-mile spirit-light — the pattern fine and open. Even though one hundred flowers are red, of-itself the spring is one colour. From this land-of-this-quality speed — direct correspondence: cast off the ten-thousand conditions, cut off the hundred thoughts. Look — even blue-sky does not stand. The principle-ground also does not guard. Pure-empty round-bright and without-discrimination, self-illuminating and spirit-natural, without changeability. Clearly: a single sentence — difficult to communicate to another. Self-recite, self-chant, self-affirm.”

The dating bracket is the Yōkō-ji period of Keizan’s mature teaching (c. 1300–1325). The text is preserved in Edo-period printings and is the basis of the Taishō recension.

The work is one of the principal Sōtō-Zen kōan-commentaries on a non-Buddhist source-text — the Xìnxīnmíng having long been treated in the Chán tradition as a verse-of-the-mind that summarises the not-two doctrine. Keizan’s nentei is one of the Sōtō school’s principal entry-points to this text and is read in modern Sōtō training-monasteries.

Translations and research

The Xìn-xīn-míng itself has been many times translated into English. For a translation that includes Keizan’s commentary, see Thomas Cleary’s anthology of Keizan’s work, Timeless Spring: A Sōtō Zen Anthology (Weatherhill, 1980). For the Xìn-xīn-míng itself, see D.T. Suzuki, Manual of Zen Buddhism (Rider, 1950); and Paul Demiéville, “Sur l’authenticité du Ta tch’eng k’i sin louen,” Bulletin de la Maison Franco-Japonaise 2 (1929) — discussing the related Xìn-xīn-mí attributions.

For Keizan’s commentarial style and its relation to Dōgen’s exegesis, see William Bodiford, Sōtō Zen in Medieval Japan (Univ. of Hawai’i Press, 1993), ch. 6.

Other points of interest

The text is one of the few Xìnxīnmíng commentaries by a major Japanese Zen master. The Xìnxīnmíng itself is now generally considered by modern scholars to be a mid-Táng pseudepigraphic composition rather than a Sēngcàn (d. 606) original — but the medieval Zen tradition uniformly treated it as third-patriarch teaching, and Keizan’s commentary is no exception.

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