Chán cè wèndá 禪策問答
Questions and Answers on Chán Strategies Anonymous Northern-school Chán Dūnhuáng manuscript; critical edition by 方廣錩 (整理)
About the work
A short Chán wèndá 問答 (catechism) in one fascicle, structured as thirty self-posed questions and answers between an unnamed disciple and a “Chán master” (chánshī 禪師). Topics range from the technique of sitting meditation, the methods of kànxīn 看心 (“watching the mind”) and ānxīn 安心 (“settling the mind”), through doctrinal questions on emptiness, awakening, and the relationship of chán to scriptural learning, to practical questions about the monk’s body, robes, dwelling, sickness, and treatment of insult. Each answer concludes with a citation from a sūtra — most often the Fǎhuá 法華, Wéimó 維摩, or Nièpán 涅槃 jīng.
Abstract
The work is unrecorded in any Chinese scriptural catalogue or canonical edition. Its sole witness is Beijing Library Běixīn 1254 — the same Dūnhuáng scroll that preserves KR6v0002 Tiānzhúguó Pútídámó chánshī lùn and KR6v0004 Xī zhēng lùn. The doctrinal orientation Fāng Guǎngchāng identifies — the heavy reliance on kànxīn and ānxīn as central practices, plus extensive proof-texting from sūtras — places the text squarely within Northern-school (běizōng 北宗) Chán of the late seventh through eighth century, despite the text’s frequent insistence that chán is “outside the teaching.” Composition is therefore Táng, almost certainly contemporary with the working life of the Lèngqié 楞伽 / Pǔjì 普寂 lineage. The 1995 critical edition by Fāng Guǎngchāng is based solely on the Beijing manuscript with no other witness; collation incorporates suggestions from Okimoto Katsumi 沖本克己 of the Hanazono Zen Cultural Institute.
Translations and research
- Tanaka Ryōshō 田中良昭, Tonkō Zenshū bunken no kenkyū 敦煌禪宗文獻の研究 (Tōkyō: Daitō shuppansha, 1983) — bibliographic survey of Dūnhuáng Chán manuscripts.
- John R. McRae, The Northern School and the Formation of Early Chʻan Buddhism (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1986) — methodological context for Northern-school Dūnhuáng Chán.
- Fāng Guǎngchāng 方廣錩, “Chán cè wèndá 整理本前言,” in Zàngwài fójiào wénxiàn vol. 1 (Beijing: Zōngjiào wénhuà, 1995).
Other points of interest
The companion-scroll structure (this text + KR6v0002 + KR6v0004) is one of the principal pieces of physical evidence for the lost Chánzàng 禪藏 anthology of Guīfēng Zōngmì 圭峯宗密.