Yuèzhōu Héshàng yílù 月舟和尚遺録
Posthumous Record of Reverend Gesshū by 宗胡 Gesshū Sōko (語), 曹源 Sōgen (編), 道白 Manzan Dōhaku (序)
About the work
A two-fascicle posthumous Recorded Sayings (i-roku 遺録 — “remaining record”) of 宗胡 Gesshū Sōko (1618–1696), Edo-period Sōtō-Zen master and the principal teacher of 道白 Manzan Dōhaku (1636–1715). Edited by his attendant Sōgen 曹源 (the Zen-jō-gen-chō-rō 禪定源長老 named in Manzan’s preface) from his accumulated transcripts of Gesshū’s language-samādhi preserved over many years; printed posthumously in Genroku 12 / 5 / 10 (元祿歳次己卯五月十日 = 1699-06-07 NS) with an introductory preface by Manzan as Gesshū’s principal heir.
Abstract
Manzan’s preface frames the textual character of the work distinctively:
“My late-master old-Reverend’s everyday language-samādhi — what was turned into the wheel of writing — were all responses to the conditions of a single moment, and he did not allow the manuscripts to be retained. However, those of his attendants who privately recorded what they heard — some have one fascicle, some have several. Recently the elder Zen-jō-gen [禪定源長老 = Sōgen of Zenjō-ji] brought out two fascicles of what he had once recorded, intending to put them to the printer to lengthen the wisdom-life [of the master]. The yellow-faced old-master’s [the Buddha’s] not-speaking-a-character, the blue-eye Hu-monk’s [Bodhidharma’s] nine-years facing the wall — like a boiling-cauldron with no cool place, like an iron-wall with no seam. This is my late master, singly holding this Way, not crossing into other paths. But responding-to-things and making the rule, he also had this spitting-elaboration. Yet he did not fall into literary embellishment; he did not belong to defilement. … Now this circulation is truly the realisation-now of this Way — the late-master is still here. The not-speaking lineage-essence and the facing-the-wall solitary style — could it be necessary to ask the Śākyamuni or the Bodhidharma about it elsewhere? — Hence this preface.”
The two-fascicle text begins with Gesshū’s kessei (結制 — entry-into-summer-retreat) sermon at his late abbacy, opening with a kōan-encounter with a monk who quotes the Caodong-school’s “Ginran-no-ryū jū sai-yū / dai-jō hō-kutsu shū dōryū” (The pine-stork-Way grove dwells the rare-phoenix; the great-vehicle dharma-cave gathers the harsh-dragons) — to which Gesshū responds with his own elaboration of the Cáodòng-school Five Ranks (曹山五位旨訣):
*“This is Cao-shan’s Five Ranks essence-essential. The Mahayana today single-stranded-strings the Five Ranks through with one penetrating, causing all of you to know the essence-essential. — Great assembly! Want to know the Tōjōshū (Caodong-school)? — Only avoid choosing-and-discriminating; that is the family style. Existence and non-existence both shed-off, accord with equality. Backward-and-frontal both wrong, cut off difference-and-sameness. Properly entrusted to the anchored-residence the constructional rules; directly forming the true-mark the abbatial-meritorious-functions. Where event-existence and principle-correspondence, the root-and-branch fully come and finally fuse. — How does the great assembly understand? Long pause: — one-two-three-four-five-six-seven; flintspark-lightning-flash, not easily penetrated.”
Subsequent fascicles preserve Gesshū’s jōdō sermons, his commentaries on Dōgen’s jōdō, his exchanges with Manzan and other senior disciples, and his fa-yǔ on the Caodong-school Five Ranks and Three Marks doctrine.
The dating bracket: composition through Gesshū’s death (1696); editorial recovery and editio princeps in 1699.
The work is the principal late-17th-century Sōtō yulu in the Taishō documenting the master-line that produced the Manzan reform — Gesshū → Manzan → Menzan and Tenkei. As Manzan’s preface explicitly notes, the i-roku establishes the textual basis for the Manzan-ha doctrine of menju (face-to-face transmission): Gesshū’s words preserved by Sōgen are presented as the very face-to-face moment that the reform was intended to protect.
Translations and research
No book-length English translation located. For Gesshū’s place in the formation of the Manzan-ha and the fukko movement, see William Bodiford, Sōtō Zen in Medieval Japan (Univ. of Hawai’i Press, 1993), final chapter; Hiraishi Naoaki 平石直昭, Manzan Dōhaku no shisō 卍山道白の思想 (Hōzōkan, 2002).
Other points of interest
The text is one of the principal source-witnesses to Gesshū’s Five Ranks teaching as it descended to the Manzan reform. The Caodong-school Five Ranks (正偏五位 shōhen-go-i) had been a contested doctrine in Edo-period Sōtō, with debate about whether Dōgen had taught it or had repudiated it; Gesshū’s preserved teaching here, with its formal go-i shi-ketsu (五位旨訣), is one of the principal for-the-doctrine witnesses on the question.
Links
- CBETA online
- Related: KR6t0304 (Manzan’s Tōrin goroku); KR6t0292 (Keizan’s Zazen yōjin-ki, edited by Manzan)