聞分館君 Ask BunKanKun

禪戒鈔

5 min read

Text ID
KR6t0307
Date
1720–1750
Dynasty
日本

Chánjiè chāo 禪戒鈔

Notes on the Zen Precepts by 瑞方 Menzan Zuihō (撰)

About the work

A single-fascicle Sōtō-school precepts manual — full title Bus-so shō-den zen-kai shō 佛祖正傳禪戒鈔 (“Notes on the Zen Precepts Properly Transmitted by the Buddha-and-Patriarchs”) — by 瑞方 Menzan Zuihō (1683–1769), the principal Edo-period Sōtō scholar-monk and senior heir of the Manzan-school scholastic tradition. Composed in the 1720s–1740s as part of Menzan’s larger commentarial project. The text is a continuation and expansion of KR6t0305 Zenkai-ketsu by Menzan’s lineage-grandfather 道白 Manzan Dōhaku.

Abstract

The text opens with a long historical-doctrinal reconstruction of the Sōtō zenkai tradition, framing Menzan’s reform as a fukko (return-to-the-ancient) project picking up where Manzan left off:

“Before the western-heaven (India) had finally compiled the sūtras and the eastern-land (China) had translated them — from the moment the Tathāgata’s true dharma was passed by Mahākāśyapa onward — the twenty-eight generations were sequentially handed down, until they reached Shaolin Great Master [Bodhidharma]. Using the dharma he had received, he gave it the temporary names: True-Dharma-Eye-Treasury Wonderful-Mind of Nirvāṇa, One Great-Matter Cause-and-Condition, Awesome-Sound One’s Other-Side Greatest Matter — that is, named Zen and titled Precept. So the Zen-precept designation was thereby established. Therefore the teaching-school’s so-called precept and meditation (kai-jō 戒定) — the names are the same, the directions are different; the source is one, the streams are separate. … Among them: separating from the sūtra by a single character, then identical with Māra’s preaching. — Could the sūtra alone? Within the qián and kūn, outside the cosmos — the dense myriad-images, feathered-furred-scaled-shelled — none is not the realisation-now of this Zen-precept. … Only the Buddhas with Buddhas thoroughly exhaust it; only the patriarchs with patriarchs personally confer-and-receive it.

Eihei high-patriarch [Dōgen] entered Sòng, received it in Tiāntóng’s chamber. Returning, he illuminated-and-rescued the fusō (Japan) for twenty-some years. In the meantime, crosswise speech, vertical speech. The disciple Ejō 懷奘 Zenji recorded the title ‘Teaching-and-Conferring Precept Text’ (Kyō-ju kai-mon 教授戒文); the Kyō’gō Zenji [經豪禪師, 1196–1271/2, the Tendai-Sōtō dual-school scholar] composed the with-Bonmō combined-notes (Bonmōshō 與梵網合鈔), wishing to make the descendants understand easily — labour was extreme. From then on, the Tōjō lineage flourished — the dharma-banners established under the Eihei-line have been about twenty-five-thousand-some halls. In each cell, this precept-text and the precept-blood-vein are singly transmitted, the master-disciple confer-and-receive — and they are also conferred on the disciple-children-and-patrons coming-from. — Long has it been so. However, three hundred years on, the dharma-form has loosened-and-overflowed. Although fortunately we obtained the Genroku return-to-ancient public-mandate [the 1693 shogunal edict on Manzan’s menju reform], it is not without remaining inadequacies. More — they have lost the precept-text and only transmit-and-receive the precept-blood-vein, openly calling this ‘obtaining the precepts’. Therefore even when this Zenkai-shō exists between [other Sōtō works], the various people see it as a roadside ore-stone; merely treat it as of-equal-leisure looking — finally to make of it a forever-overstayed lineage-store-goods. Four-hundred-sixty years now, vainly providing food for moths! — Pity! Sad! — How is this not a great deficiency?”

Menzan then describes the textual history: Manzan Dōhaku and Gesshū Sōko began to revive the Sōtō kai-mon but did not complete the project. Menzan himself, while hidden in the deep mountains of Bishū [參之深山, possibly Mikawa 三河], visited an old temple in a deep valley one night, and the elder handed me a single fascicle of the so-called Kyō’gō Bonmōshō (the Tendai monk Kyō’gō’s commentary on the Brahma-Net precepts, the principal source for Dōgen’s own precept-doctrine). After reading it 100 times, Menzan composed his own Kyō-ju kai-mon shō (precept-text notes), adding the teaching-meaning and the holding-violating dual-illuminations — i.e. a comprehensive precept-commentary integrating doctrinal context with practical observance.

The text proper covers:

  • The transmission-history of the Sōtō zenkai from Bodhidharma through Dōgen and Ejō.
  • The text of the Sōtō Kyō-ju kai-mon itself, with line-by-line annotations.
  • The practical procedure for the zenkai-dan (precepts-altar) ordination.
  • Doctrinal discussion of the relationship between blood-vein and precept-text, integrating Manzan’s reform-doctrine with the broader Sōtō tradition.
  • Critique of contemporary practice that confers only the blood-vein certificate without the proper precept-text recitation and explanation.

The dating bracket: composition during Menzan’s mature scholastic career (c. 1720–1750). The Taishō recension is the late-Edo printing.

The work is the principal post-Manzan Sōtō precepts manual in the Taishō and forms part of the foundational scholastic apparatus of modern Sōtō ordination practice — used in tandem with Manzan’s KR6t0305 Zenkai-ketsu.

Translations and research

No book-length English translation located. For Menzan’s broader scholarship and the Sōtō zenkai tradition, see William Bodiford, Sōtō Zen in Medieval Japan (Univ. of Hawai’i Press, 1993), final chapter; Bodiford, “Dharma Transmission in Theory and Practice,” in Heine and Wright (eds.), Zen Ritual: Studies of Zen Buddhist Theory in Practice (Oxford UP, 2008).

Other points of interest

The text is a principal Manzan-school continuation-text: where Manzan’s KR6t0305 Zenkai-ketsu established the menju-sōho doctrine, Menzan’s Zenkai-shō operationalises it as a working manual of ordination. The complaint about “forever-overstayed lineage-store-goods” (永成宗門之滯貨) — the Sōtō school’s failure to read its own precepts manuals — is one of the most striking expressions of Menzan’s reform-rhetoric.

Graph View

Backlinks