Mingjue chanshi yulu

The sermons and verdicts on old cases of a Chan master better known for the verses inside the *Blue Cliff Record*.

Chinese, the original language

Original title: 明覺禪師語錄
Original language: Chinese

Overview

Writing in 1223, Wansong Xingxiu, a master of the Caodong line, reported that the world credited Xuedou Chongxian with the literary gifts of an imperial academician, and he paired Xuedou with Hongzhi Zhengjue as the Li Bai and Du Fu of Chan verse. This book shows the teacher behind that reputation. It is a recorded-sayings collection, compiled by Xuedou's disciples from what he said at two monasteries: Cuifeng, in the Dongting hills on Lake Tai near Suzhou, and the Zisheng monastery on Mount Xuedou near Mingzhou, today's Ningbo, where he taught for thirty-one years. Born in Sichuan in 980, he was the heir of Zhimen Guangzuo and stood fourth in the line of Yunmen Wenyan, whose house he is credited with reviving. Much of the record is his sermons from the high seat. Much of the rest is his work on old cases, the remembered exchanges of earlier masters: he raises one, often one of Yunmen's, and then judges it, or says what the monk should have answered, or supplies a different answer of his own. The practice treats the ancients' words as moves still open to challenge rather than as scripture to be explained. Collecting his words began while he was alive; his stupa inscription counts seven collections, and an official named Zeng Hui wrote a preface for one in 1026. The most famous of them, his hundred verses on old cases, became the text that Yuanwu Keqin lectured on to make the Blue Cliff Record, and the Ming edition of the recorded sayings, the one the modern Taishō canon reprints, left those verses out. The court gave him the title Mingjue, "bright awakening", and the record still bears it. In fourteenth-century Japan, Shūhō Myōchō, the founder of Daitoku-ji in Kyoto, took up passages of this record one by one and added his own remarks.

Key concepts

What does it mean to "raise" an old case and comment on it?

It means quoting a remembered exchange between earlier masters to the assembly and then adding one's own verdict, a short remark that judges, corrects or caps it. Much of Xuedou's record works this way: the case is cited, then "the master commented", sometimes in a single line. The comment is not an explanation of what the ancients meant. It is a fresh move, and a listener has to see what the comment sees.

What are the blow and the shout?

They are the two most famous teaching gestures of earlier Chan: the master Deshan struck monks with his staff, and Linji shouted at them, to cut a question off before it turned into an idea. By Xuedou's time every monk knew them. A monk asks him how he receives people now that the blows and shouts are well known, and in one sermon he says they can no longer be used on his listeners.

What do "killing" and "giving life" mean in a Chan teacher's hands?

They name the two things a teacher does to a student's understanding. Killing takes away whatever the student is holding on to, a view, a phrase, a sense of having arrived; giving life hands something back, an opening, a word that lets them move. Xuedou speaks of the teacher holding the handle of power and killing or giving life as the moment requires: the same answer can do either, depending on who receives it.

What is "letting go" and "gathering in"?

They are two teaching stances. Letting go means leaving the student free, allowing every answer, letting things spread out in all directions; gathering in means closing everything into one point and allowing nothing. Xuedou uses the pair to judge the ancients: two famous masters, he says, knew only how to let go and not how to gather in. A good teacher, on his account, has to be able to do both.

What does "a clear-eyed person has no nest" mean?

It means that someone who really sees has no fixed place to settle into, no favourite method, formula or posture of awakening. Xuedou quotes the old saying in a sermon and then turns it on his monks: the blow and the shout cannot be used on them and words do not reach them, he says, and if that is true of him it must be true of them, so how will they show what they have?

Themes of the book

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

A Second Opinion on the Ancients

He raises an exchange between famous masters of the past and then says where it went wrong. If the ancients' words can be corrected, the question is what makes any answer in Chan right.

Xuedou does not explain the old cases; he rules on them. Linji and Cuiwei, he says, knew how to let go but not how to gather in, and had he been their pupil Longya he would have thrown the cushion back at the master's chest. He grants his own ancestor Yunmen that a saying is right and adds that it still has no way out. Everyone repeats that Baizhang awoke under Mazu's shout, he complains, and few look at where it came from. A past master's word is treated as a move in a game still being played.

interpretation
koan
koan practice
discernment
authority
spiritual authority
understanding
conceptual thought

Enter a dialogue

From the High Seat

On the high seat at two monasteries he faced monks who knew all the famous moves already. How a teacher reaches someone whom neither a blow nor a shout nor a word will touch is what his sermons try out.

His monks came after Deshan's blows and Linji's shouts had become a repertoire. When one of them shouts at him, Xuedou strikes, and when the monk is left speechless he says, "You're mocking me." He tells them that the blow and the shout cannot be used on them and that words do not reach them either, and asks how, then, they will show what they have. His own manner swings between the two halves of an old Chan formula: the staff that holds every old master on its tip, and the teacher who kills or gives life as the moment requires.

teaching
pedagogy
teacher-student relationship
skillful means
chan dialogue
zen dialogue
spontaneity
direct experience
nonconceptuality
nonconceptual understanding
language
language and meaning
awakening

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 159
distinct concepts: 142
by passages held, corpus-wide: #400

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 27 pairings. 77 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
language	zen buddhism	17
koan	language	14
koan	zen buddhism	12
language	teaching	12
spontaneity	zen buddhism	12
awakening	koan	11
awakening	zen buddhism	11
language	spontaneity	10
chan buddhism	spiritual practice	9
teaching	zen buddhism	9
awakening	spiritual practice	8
chan buddhism	language	8
chan buddhism	spontaneity	8
koan	spiritual practice	7
koan	teaching	7
awakening	chan buddhism	6
awakening	language	6
chan buddhism	teaching	6
spiritual practice	zen buddhism	6
chan buddhism	koan	4
language	spiritual practice	4
spontaneity	teaching	4
awakening	teaching	3
spiritual practice	spontaneity	2
spiritual practice	teaching	2
awakening	spontaneity	1
koan	spontaneity	1

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.

Mingjue chanshi yulu (明覺禪師語錄) you are here ZH

— or open another of their works