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WorkLayman Pang

The Recorded Sayings of Layman P'ang

A householder who never became a monk trades slaps, jokes and verses with the Chan masters of eighth-century China.

by Layman Pang59 passages held

  • Chinese, the original language
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Original title
龐居士語錄
Original language
Chinese

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Overview

A lay Buddhist from Hengyang in southern China, Pang Yun kept his family and never shaved his head, and this book, a record of his encounters and verses gathered by others, shows what he did instead. Its opening pages tell how he went to Shitou Xiqian, one of the two leading Chan teachers of the late eighth century, and then to Mazu Daoyi, the other, and put the same question to each: who is it that keeps no company with the ten thousand things? Shitou covered Pang's mouth with his hand. Mazu said he would answer once Pang had drunk the West River in a single gulp. Asked whether he would take the robe, Pang chose to stay as he was, and the book's argument grows from that choice: awakening needs no monastery and no special act, and one of his verses puts the miraculous powers of a saint on a level with drawing water and carrying firewood. The argument is never stated as doctrine. It is carried by short contests with Danxia Tianran, Yaoshan and other masters, slaps included, and by his wife and his daughter Lingzhao, who more than once has the last word over her father. The tradition names Yu Di, the prefect who came to ask after him when he was dying in 808, as the compiler; the closing account says more than three hundred of his verses circulated, and a long sequence of them follows the dialogues. The English translation is the work of three people — Ruth Fuller Sasaki, an American Zen priest in Kyoto; the Japanese scholar Iriya Yoshitaka; and Dana R. Fraser — and appeared in 1971, four years after Sasaki's death.

Key concepts

What does "layman" mean in Layman Pang's name?

It translates jushi, a lay Buddhist who practises at home without taking monastic vows, shaving the head or wearing the black robe. In Chan records the title usually marks a patron; in Pang's it marks a challenger. Asked by Shitou whether he would become a monk, he chose to stay as he was, so every contest in the book is a householder meeting the masters on equal terms.

What are the "ten thousand things" Pang asks about?

The phrase means everything there is: every object, event and thought, all that can be named. Pang's opening question asks who it is that keeps no company with any of them, that is, what in a person is not one more thing among things. The question cannot be answered by naming something, which is why both Shitou and Mazu answer it with a gesture or an impossible task.

How does a Chan encounter dialogue work?

It is a short exchange in which one speaker tests another, and the answer is judged by its immediacy rather than its content. A reply can be a word, a gesture, silence or a slap; what fails is hesitation or a learned formula. In Pang's record, a master left without a word, as when the narrator notes simply that he was silent, has lost the round.

What is "the unborn" that Pang's family talks about?

The unborn, wusheng, is the Buddhist teaching that things do not truly come into being as solid, separate entities, so they do not truly perish either. Pang's verse pictures his family gathered round discussing it as other families discuss marriages. It is the ground of his last advice: what passes is like a shadow or an echo, and the mistake is to treat it as more.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Awakening at the Hearth

Offered the black robe, Pang chose to stay a householder. Whether awakening needs a monastery, or can be lived out over the daily chores, is what his record keeps testing.

Pang's best-known verse puts the saint's miraculous powers on a level with drawing water and carrying firewood. Asked whether he would take the robe or stay in lay white, he said he would follow what he loved, and never shaved his head. The point is not that chores are holy but that nothing has to be added to them: no special act, no retreat, no merit stored up. His record makes the claim against a Chan that was becoming an institution of monks, and lets a layman win.

  • nonattachment
  • liberation
  • attachment
  • desire
  • buddha-nature
  • practice
  • spiritual practice
  • spontaneity

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Contests Without Doctrine

Pang argues with gestures, jokes and slaps rather than statements. What can be shown between two people that cannot be said, and when silence wins or loses, is the stake.

Shitou answered Pang's first question by covering his mouth with his hand; Mazu answered it by asking him to drink the West River in a single gulp. From there the book is a series of short bouts with Danxia, Yaoshan and lesser masters, scored by who hesitates. A slap given to a monk who asks where the snow falls, a teacher left without a word, a daughter who sets down her basket and says nothing: each tests whether the other person answers from where they stand or from what they have learned.

  • language
  • direct experience
  • nonduality
  • silence
  • wisdom
  • zen buddhism
  • scripture

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Emptying What Exists

His last words told the prefect to empty what exists and never make real what does not. How a whole family can live, and die, on that instruction is the question.

Pang's household is the book's most unusual cast: a son who does not marry, a daughter who does not wed, all gathered round to talk of the unborn. Emptiness here is not a theory of matter but a habit of not adding solidity to what passes, so that the world is lived in like shadows and echoes. The death scene carries it: his daughter Lingzhao tricks him at noon, takes his seat and dies first, and he laughs at her quickness before following a week later.

  • emptiness
  • nonarising
  • impermanence
  • death
  • no-self
  • delusion

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held
59
distinct concepts
100
by passages held, corpus-wide
#628

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “language” and “zen buddhism”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 21 pairings. 62 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
languagezen buddhism12
emptinessnonattachment10
direct experiencezen buddhism9
liberationnonattachment9
nondualityzen buddhism9
direct experiencelanguage8
languagenonduality8
direct experiencenonduality6
emptinessliberation5
emptinessnonduality5
nonattachmentnonduality5
desireemptiness3
desireliberation3
desirenonattachment3
liberationnonduality3
desirenonduality2
direct experienceemptiness2
direct experiencenonattachment2
emptinesslanguage1
languageliberation1
languagenonattachment1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

  1. The Recorded Sayings of Layman P'ang (龐居士語錄) you are here ZH
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