Xī zhēng lùn 息諍論
Treatise on Stilling Disputation falsely attributed to 菩提達摩; critical edition by 方廣錩 (整理)
About the work
A short Chán treatise in one fascicle, presenting itself as a work of “Chán Master Dharma” (達摩禪師作) but in fact a Táng Northern-school composition. The argument is that zhēn-rú 真如 and fó-xìng 佛性 are wholly internal to the practitioner’s body and mind; that scholastic dispute over the meaning of scripture — zhū lùn jiǎng shuō 諸論講說 — is therefore not merely useless but actively obstructive to awakening. The work polemicises against monks who “carry the lamp behind them in search of dawn” (bèi rì-yuè ér qiú míng), insisting that Buddha, Dharma and Saṅgha are “one body in this very body” (yī tǐ sān bǎo zài shēn).
Abstract
The treatise survives in a single Dūnhuáng witness, Beijing Library Běixīn 1254 + 1255, originally one scroll that split at the join — the same scroll that preserves KR6v0002 and KR6v0003. Two brief appendices follow the main text on the same scroll: a Chán question-and-answer fragment on the relation between mind and seeing, and a series of Chán poems by one Wáng Zhì 王質 (the latter mostly fragmentary). The work is unrecorded in any traditional Buddhist catalogue and unknown to canonical editions. Its anti-textualist polemic, ironically clothed in extensive scriptural quotation (Fǎhuá, Wéimó, Nièpán jīng), and its insistence on huí xīn fǎn zhào 迴心返照 (“turning the mind back to illumine the self”) place it within the Táng Northern-school tradition; the Bodhidharma attribution is a hagiographical convention common in eighth-century Chán literature. Fāng’s critical edition incorporates suggestions from Nakajima Shirō 中島志郎 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).
- John R. McRae, The Northern School and the Formation of Early Chʻan Buddhism (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1986).
- Fāng Guǎngchāng 方廣錩, “Xī zhēng lùn 整理本前言,” in Zàngwài fójiào wénxiàn vol. 1 (Beijing: Zōngjiào wénhuà, 1995).
Other points of interest
The Wáng Zhì 王質 nèi shī 內詩 (interior poems) appended to the scroll constitute one of the few examples of secular-style Chán verse from Dūnhuáng; the text is too damaged for confident identification of the poet, but he is unrelated to the better-known Northern Sòng official Wáng Zhì (1135–1189).