Guāngmíngzàng sānmèi 光明藏三昧
Samādhi of the Treasury of Light by 懷奘 Koun Ejō (撰)
About the work
A single-fascicle dharma-discourse (法語 fa-yǔ) by 懷奘 Koun Ejō (1198–1280), the principal dharma-heir of 道元 Dōgen (1200–1253) and second-generation patriarch of the Japanese Sōtō-Zen school. The Taishō recension is the Meiji 12 / 1879 re-issue prepared by Mitsu’un 密雲 (the 61st abbot of Eihei-ji 永平寺) on the occasion of Ejō’s 600-year memorial.
Abstract
The text presents Ejō’s exposition of the doctrine of the Kōmyō-zō zanmai 光明藏三昧 (“Samādhi of the Treasury of Light”) — a meditation-state in which the practitioner directly realises the brilliant intrinsic nature of mind through the prajñā-eye (hannya-genshō 般若觀照, “reflective contemplation by wisdom”). The doctrine derives from the Sūraṅgama-sūtra and the Lotus-sūtra, and was central to Ejō’s own teaching as he passed it down from Dōgen.
A second preface (光明藏三昧序) — by an unidentified preface-writer at Hōei 7 / 1710 — sets the doctrinal framing:
“The Buddha said: Wisdom-radiance is like the sun’s shining — that is, the prajñā-reflective-illumination. What is called contemplating-and-seeing the five-aggregates as empty is just this. The Zen-school calls it turning-the-light back-illuminating. Eihei [Dōgen]‘s lifetime instruction never went outside this. The Patriarch [Ejō] received it and elaborated it in this fascicle — one may say the son obeyed the father.”
The principal Meiji preface (1879) by Mitsu’un records the textual recovery:
“This single book of the Kōmyōzō zanmai — our patriarch Ejō — by a sliver of the bright-white-hair light, the patriarch used it to illuminate-and-shatter, and posterity uses it to return-illuminate. The World-Honoured One’s five-period transformation-teachings, the high-patriarch [Dōgen]‘s one-life hanging-instruction — could there be other than this? About a hundred years ago, in the half-thousand-year (500-year) memorial of the patriarch’s posterior memorial — autumn — [the previous abbot] commanded Fukuoka Menzan [面山瑞方 Menzan Zuihō, 1683–1769] and Eikei Genryō 永慶玄梁 to put their forces together to engrave it for blocks, to publish it to the world. From that point on, the eternal-darkness chambers were suddenly opened, the dharma-nature radiance was once again reflective. As stars-and-frosts passed through, the original blocks wore away, and the book existed in the world but rarely. … In Meiji bo-in / 1878, autumn, the 24th of the ninth month, exactly the patriarch’s 600-year memorial, my dharma-younger-brother the former Buttoku Kōan [前佛徳肯庵, of Butoku-ji] brought this book and ascended the peak. I cleaned the chamber, burned incense, and joyously received it — not only like obtaining the missing-half rings, but also like returning the pearl to He-pu (合浦) — but also a great fortune for the descendants and a great light for the corrupted-final-age.”
The text proper presents the Kōmyōzō zanmai doctrine in Ejō’s distinctive manner — modelled on Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō fascicle-style but more accessible, in mixed kanbun-and-Japanese. The work is one of the principal early-Sōtō zanmai-doctrine texts and remains in liturgical use.
The dating bracket: composition by Ejō (terminus ante quem 1280, his death) on the low side; the Meiji 12 / 1879 editio recusa on the high side. The Hōei 7 / 1710 first-printing by Menzan was the editio princeps.
Translations and research
For Ejō’s role in the early Sōtō-Zen tradition, see William Bodiford, Sōtō Zen in Medieval Japan (Univ. of Hawai’i Press, 1993), chs. 2–3. For the Kōmyō-zō zanmai doctrine and its sources, see Steven Heine, Existential and Ontological Dimensions of Time in Heidegger and Dōgen (SUNY Press, 1985), and Heine, Dōgen and the Kōan Tradition (SUNY Press, 1994). The work is included in Kazuaki Tanahashi (ed.), The Essential Dōgen (Shambhala, 2013), with an Ejō supplement.
Other points of interest
The Hōei 7 / 1710 first-printing by Menzan Zuihō (1683–1769) is one of the most important achievements of the late-17th and early-18th-century Sōtō fukko recovery campaign — the same Menzan who would compose the great Tōjō shitsu-naimon 洞上室内聞 and the foundational Edo-Sōtō scholastic corpus. The 600-year-memorial re-issue (1879) reflects the Meiji-era institutional consolidation of Sōtō scholarship.