Yuèpō Chánshī yǔlù 月坡禪師語録
Recorded Sayings of the Moon-Slope Zen Master by 道印 Geppa Dōin (語)
About the work
A four-fascicle Recorded Sayings collection of 道印 Geppa Dōin (1635–1716), Edo-period Sōtō-Zen master and one of the principal figures of the late-17th-century Sōji-ji-line fukko (return-to-the-ancient) recovery campaign. The full title in the Taishō is Geppa Zenji jū Hitachi-shū Taisō-zan Tendō Zen-ji yǔlù 月坡禪師住常陸州岱宗山天徳禪寺語録 — “Recorded Sayings of Geppa Zenji while resident at Tendō Zen Temple at Mount Daizu-zan in Hitachi province” — fixing the principal abbacy as Tendō-ji 天徳禪寺 at Mount Daizu-zan in Hitachi (modern Ibaraki), founded under the patronage of the Mito daimyo Tokugawa Mitsukuni 徳川光圀 (1628–1700).
Abstract
The text opens with the unique seikei 請啓 (invitation-letter) sequence — the formal letter from the Mito-domain kaki-onna (chief steward) inviting Geppa to take up the new abbacy at Tendō-ji, followed by Geppa’s fukukei 復啓 (response-letter). The invitation-letter is one of the most stylistically elaborate institutional documents in any Edo Zen yulu:
“Reverently I prostrate. Two-hundred-some-year-old Shintō [新豐 — Cáodòng-school] tune. Only there is the No-Pattern Seal, the soil-people-children pull-out and play. Magnificent luan-glue! continuing the strings seventy-five rounds. The Old-Awl Zen greatly suffered the unable-character blind elder’s right-and-wrong; like a fox-cub looking-into a mirror. Without distinguishing them, the South-and-North lineage are one (此不勘破南北宗一). The whole-mountain-blazing-cliff-collapse machine — how can we bear to lament the antiquity-and-now Way-changes! Repairing the broken-old-skies. Reverently consider the great-knower Geppa Zenji — distant grandson of Daiyō [大陽 = the Caodong patriarch Da-yang Jingxuan 大陽警玄], the direct-heir of Eihei [永平正嫡]. From a thousand miles, casually I see the master, who has not changed the old face of eye-cross nose-straight. The various sects spontaneously call him patriarch — how can the lineage-fall lineage-confusion new-discussion be tolerated? … We humbly invite the great-knower [Geppa] to early turn-around the already-fallen Zen-wave, causing the ten-thousand Cao-water branches to surge; speedily revitalise the already-fallen lineage-style, causing the dharma-gate to be high for ten-thousand antiquities.”
Geppa’s response-letter is in the standard humble-modest register, declining the heroic role-framing while accepting the invitation:
“Reverently I prostrate. … I, the unworthy, with vision-and-knowledge biased and small, dare not arrogate myself to the company of the lineage-patriarchs. … The lion-cliff-up plays-with the lion: the roaring has not yet shaken the full majesty. Distinguishing dragon-from-snake in the dragon-snake battle-array: the bō-katsu (stick-and-shout) must still possess the proper eye. I have shamefully been so chosen — fill the mat. Yet I am ashamed of the lacking talent to respond-to-the-world. Fortunately I borrow strength from the chief-administrator-officer-body (saikan-shin — i.e. the Mito daimyō), causing the māra-and-heretical to surrender; I wish to divide the transformation with the bodhisattva-children, causing the patriarchal-sect-line to spread.”
The four-fascicle table of contents:
- Fasc. 1: Tendō-ji entry sermons, jōdō, shōsan.
- Fasc. 2: fushaku (普説), fa-yǔ.
- Fasc. 3: butsuji (佛事), jisàn (自賛), zàn (賛).
- Fasc. 4: jìsòng, appendices, the editorial colophon.
The dating bracket runs from Geppa’s earliest abbatial period (Kōryū-zan from 1670) through to his death (1716). The Taishō recension is the Edo-period printing.
The work is one of the principal late-17th-century Sōtō Mito-school yulu in the Taishō and is of particular interest for the Mito patronage documented in its prefatory matter — the rare confluence of Tokugawa Mitsukuni’s Confucian-historiographical patronage with Sōji-ji-line Sōtō recovery.
Translations and research
No book-length English translation located. For Geppa Dōin’s institutional and editorial work, see William Bodiford, Sōtō Zen in Medieval Japan (Univ. of Hawai’i Press, 1993), final chapter; and Tsuji Zennosuke 辻善之助, Nihon bukkyō-shi 日本仏教史 vol. 9 (Iwanami, 1955), §VI on the late-17th-century Sōtō revival.
Other points of interest
The Mito patronage of Geppa is one of the few Edo-period instances of Confucian-historiographical scholar-statesman + Sōtō-Zen patronage in close institutional alliance. Tokugawa Mitsukuni was the founder of the Mito school of Confucian historiography (the Mitogaku 水戸学), but he also supported the Sōji-ji-line fukko programme that Geppa represented — a combination that helped shape the late-Edo intellectual world’s reception of Caodong-school doctrine.
Links
- CBETA online
- Related: KR6t0298, KR6t0299 (Geppa’s yulu-recovery work)