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WorkWansong Xingxiu

Book of Serenity

A commentary on a hundred verses about old Chan cases, finished at the request of a statesman serving Genghis Khan.

by Wansong Xingxiu431 passages held

  • Chinese, the original language
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Original title
從容錄
Original language
Chinese

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Overview

This is a commentary on another man's poems. Wansong Xingxiu, a master of the Caodong line of Chan, composed it on a hundred verses by Hongzhi Zhengjue (1091–1157), each written on an old case: a remembered exchange between earlier masters, what Chinese calls a gong'an and Japanese a kōan. Its occasion was a pupil. Yelü Chucai, a Khitan official of the Jin dynasty, lived through the Mongol siege of the Jin capital, today's Beijing, and from 1215 studied Chan with Wansong for three years; in 1218 Genghis Khan summoned him into his service. Wansong had once lectured on Hongzhi's verses, but the work had lapsed in the wars. At the end of 1222 a letter from Yelü reached him insisting that he finish it, and in 1223 Wansong sent the result, with a covering letter, to Almaliq in Central Asia, where Yelü was then travelling in Genghis Khan's service; Yelü's preface is dated the following year. Wansong says in that letter that his eyes were failing, that he mostly dictated while his disciples wrote, and that he followed Yuanwu Keqin's Blue Cliff Record, the commentary on Xuedou's verses, in giving every case an introduction. So each of the hundred chapters runs in four voices: Wansong's opening words to the assembly, the case, Hongzhi's verse, and Wansong's commentary, with his capping phrases, short comments of a few words, set into the case and the verse. The commentary ranges well beyond Buddhism, explaining one verse by the Tang essayist Han Yu's mock biography of a writing brush and another by the Daoist book Liezi's story of a sheep lost where the road forks. The text read today is a Ming reprint of 1607, issued as one of four classic commentaries on old cases. Thomas Cleary's complete English translation appeared in 1990. In Japan the Sōtō school of Zen, heir to the Caodong line, came to hold it in the place the Rinzai school gives the Blue Cliff Record.

Key concepts

What is a gong'an, or kōan?

It is an old case: a remembered exchange between earlier Chan masters, kept and handed on because it does something to the person who meets it. The Chinese word gong'an means a public case, a precedent on the record. Each of the hundred chapters rests on one. A case is not a riddle with a solution; it is a test of whether the reader sees what the people in it saw.

What are the capping phrases set into the text?

They are Wansong's short asides, a few words each, slipped in after a line of the case or the verse, like a listener's quick retort. In Zhaozhou's dog case, after the monk asks why a being with Buddha-nature crawled into a dog's skin, Wansong's phrase reads: one confession, and he hands himself in. Capping phrases rarely explain; they judge, tease or take sides, and they keep the reader from coasting over a line.

What is the introduction that opens each case?

It is a short address Wansong gives the assembly before the case is quoted, a few lines that set the problem without naming the answer. Before Zhaozhou's dog, for instance, he speaks of a gourd on water that turns whenever it is pressed down, and of something that cannot be reached by having no mind or known by having one. Wansong says in his covering letter that he took the practice from Yuanwu's Blue Cliff Record.

What does "using effort to show the position" mean?

It is the Caodong school's name for one of two ways into awakening. In the first, practice leads to awakening, as a commoner rises to become a minister. In the other, awakening comes first and practice follows, like a family noble for generations that keeps its bearing in poverty. Wansong sets them out to read a case about crossing a stream: does the one who crosses keep his feet dry, or are his feet simply not wet?

What is Buddha-nature?

It is the capacity for awakening, which the Mahāyāna scriptures say every living being has. The cases test it at its edges, where the doctrine stops helping. If every being has it, why is anyone deluded, and why is a being born a dog at all? Wansong treats such questions as the place where the teaching has to be seen rather than repeated.

Themes of the book

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

Four Voices on One Case

Every chapter sets an old exchange, a poem on it and a commentary on both side by side. How far a commentary can go on talking about a teaching that warns against words is the question the book keeps answering in practice.

Wansong opens each case with a few words to the assembly, quotes the exchange, gives Hongzhi's verse, and then talks: he cuts into case and verse with short asides, tells the background, and reaches for whatever helps, the Daoist Zhuangzi and Liezi, Confucius, a carpenter whose axe can take plaster off a man's nose without touching it. He says himself that his eyes were failing and he dictated. The result is no system. It is a teacher reading a poem aloud to monks and refusing to let either the case or the poem settle into a doctrine.

  • interpretation
  • koan
  • teaching
  • teaching methods
  • language
  • lineage
  • conceptual thought
  • silence

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Yes in One Telling, No in Another

Zhaozhou is asked whether a dog has Buddha-nature and says yes, and in another telling no. Whether one of the answers must be wrong, or both are the same answer, is what this theme turns on.

Wansong refuses to take sides. If the dog's Buddha-nature were simply there, he says, why did Zhaozhou later deny it, and if it were simply absent, why did he first affirm it; each answer met the monk who asked. The same refusal runs through his reading of Baizhang's fox, a former abbot reborn as a fox for five hundred lives because he said a great practitioner does not fall under cause and effect, and freed when Baizhang says such a person is not blind to it.

  • nonduality
  • buddha-nature
  • emptiness
  • delusion
  • enlightenment
  • awakening
  • attachment
  • nonattachment
  • ordinary life

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Medicine for This Student

A teacher's answer is a remedy, and a remedy fits one patient. Whether a harsh word or a gentle one is right depends on who is asking, and the commentary keeps judging the masters by that measure.

Wansong holds the old masters to a doctor's standard. Some say Bodhidharma, telling the emperor there is nothing holy, lacked a little tact; Wansong answers with an old proverb, that a medicine which does not make the patient reel does not cure. He also sets out the two routes of his Caodong school: awakening through practice, like a commoner raised to high office, or practice after awakening, like an old noble family fallen on hard times whose bearing still shows. A teacher has to know which of the two is standing in front of him.

  • skillful means
  • teacher-student relationship
  • spontaneity
  • meditation
  • zen practice
  • practice
  • spiritual practice
  • understanding
  • direct experience

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Within this work

passages held
431
distinct concepts
326
by passages held, corpus-wide
#173

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: “nonduality” and “zen buddhism”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 27 pairings. 77 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
nondualityzen buddhism40
languagezen buddhism26
languagenonduality24
skillful meanszen buddhism21
nonattachmentzen buddhism20
teachingzen buddhism19
awakeningzen buddhism18
awakeningnonduality17
chan buddhismskillful means16
chan buddhismteaching15
skillful meansteaching14
nondualityskillful means12
languageteaching11
awakeningchan buddhism9
chan buddhismnonduality9
nonattachmentnonduality9
chan buddhismnonattachment8
awakeningnonattachment7
awakeningteaching7
languageskillful means7
awakeningskillful means6
chan buddhismlanguage6
nonattachmentskillful means6
languagenonattachment3
nondualityteaching3
awakeninglanguage2
nonattachmentteaching2

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. Book of Serenity (從容錄) you are here ZH
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