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WorkYuanwu Keqin

The Blue Cliff Record

Yuanwu's lectures on Xuedou's hundred verses on old cases, the book whose printing blocks his own heir is said to have burned.

by Yuanwu Keqin541 passages held

  • Chinese, the original language
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Original title
碧巖錄
Original language
Chinese

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Overview

Monks at Jiashan, a monastery near Lizhou in Hunan, heard this book before anyone read it: between about 1111 and 1115 Yuanwu Keqin lectured to them on a hundred old cases chosen by Xuedou Chongxian (980–1052), each capped with a verse of Xuedou's. An old case is a remembered exchange between earlier Chan masters, what Chinese calls a gong'an, a "public case", and Japanese later called a kōan. The cases and verses are Xuedou's; everything around them is Yuanwu's. He gave most of the cases an introduction, set capping phrases of a few words into both case and verse, and added a prose commentary that explains the old exchange, the poem and its allusions, and then refuses to let the explanation stand in for the thing explained. The title comes from Jiashan itself: taking up the abbacy, Yuanwu recited a couplet about a bird carrying a flower past the blue cliff, and taking up the post at Daolin monastery he spoke of years hidden at Blue Cliff. The tradition says that his heir Dahui Zonggao (1089–1163), alarmed at monks who could talk fluently about cases they had never broken through, burned the printing blocks. The text read today goes back to a printing of about 1300, made in Sichuan from surviving copies, and scholars note how few variant versions it has. Japanese tradition holds that Dōgen copied the whole book in one night before sailing home from China; a manuscript older than the printed text survives at Daijō-ji. Japanese Zen called it the foremost book of the school, Rinzai training halls still lecture on it, and the Book of Serenity and the Gateless Barrier were made on its model. Thomas and J. C. Cleary's complete English translation appeared in 1977.

Key concepts

Who is speaking in each chapter of the Blue Cliff Record?

Three voices, and the book keeps them apart. The case is an old exchange between earlier Chan masters. The verse after it is Xuedou's, one of a hundred he wrote on cases he chose. Everything else is Yuanwu's: the introduction, the short asides inside case and verse, and the prose commentary. Xuedou sometimes interjects as well; in the Deshan case his remark 'Seen through' is quoted, and Yuanwu then caps Xuedou.

What are the short asides scattered through the case and verse?

Capping phrases: a few words Yuanwu sets after a line, like a heckle from the floor. When Nanquan's monks fail to answer him, the aside reads 'A bunch of lacquer buckets, what use are they?', lacquer buckets being minds as dark inside as a pail of black lacquer. The asides seldom explain. They judge, mock or take sides, so that no line of case or verse can be read past.

What is the introduction that opens most cases?

A short address to the assembly, chuishi in Chinese, 'pointing out', given before the case is quoted. It sets the problem without naming the answer. Before Zhaozhou's case on picking and choosing, Yuanwu says that heaven and earth grow narrow and sun, moon and stars go dark at once, and that even blows falling like rain and shouts like rolling thunder do not reach the matter he is about to raise.

Why does the commentary keep talking about 'tangled vines'?

Tangled vines, geteng, is Chan slang for explanation that winds round the matter until it chokes it. Yuanwu uses it of others and of himself. Of Dongshan's answer 'three pounds of flax' he says that Xuedou's verse on it is all tangled vines, written only because Xuedou's compassion is excessive. The word lets the book admit what it is: talk that helps only if it is finally cut through.

What is a 'turning word'?

One phrase that turns a situation round, freeing someone stuck in an exchange or cutting the ground from under the person pressing. When Nanquan points to a flower and the official Lu Gen has nothing to say, Yuanwu remarks that a real man would have given a turning word on the spot, cutting Nanquan off and letting every monk under heaven breathe out. A turning word is judged by what it does.

Themes of the book

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

Talking Chan the Long Way Round

Xuedou's verses already circle the old cases instead of explaining them, and Yuanwu then circles the verses. Whether that much speech can point past speech is what every chapter puts to the test.

Yuanwu says it plainly in the first case: verses on old cases only talk Chan the long way round. So he talks too, at three depths. An introduction sets the problem before the case is read, capping phrases of a few words jab at line after line of case and verse, and a prose commentary tells the background, unpacks Xuedou's allusions and lists the ways monks get the case wrong. Then he takes it back: whoever still reasons the case out, he warns, will see it burst into seven flowers and eight cracks.

  • language
  • interpretation
  • koan
  • conceptual thought
  • understanding
  • paradox
  • silence
  • zen buddhism

Enter a dialogue

Without Picking and Choosing

The supreme Way is not difficult, an old verse says, it only dislikes picking and choosing. How anyone can speak at all without choosing, and what is left of clarity once that too is let go, runs under case after case.

Zhaozhou quotes the line from the Faith-Mind Inscription of the third patriarch and adds his own twist: as soon as there are words, there is choosing or there is clarity, and he does not stay even in clarity. Yuanwu uses the twist to sort misreadings. Asked what Buddha is, Dongshan answers three pounds of flax, and Yuanwu mocks the monks who explain that he happened to be weighing flax in the storehouse at the time. Every such explanation, on his reading, is one more act of picking and choosing.

  • nonduality
  • direct experience
  • perception
  • direct realization
  • awakening
  • attachment
  • nonattachment
  • freedom
  • spontaneity

Enter a dialogue

Smoke Beyond the Hill

Smoke seen beyond a hill means fire, and a horn above a wall means an ox. The cases are meetings in which two people take each other's measure in a word, and the commentary judges who saw and who was seen through.

The image opens the book's first introduction, where knowing the whole from one sign is called the everyday food of a monk. Yuanwu reads every exchange as a test of that eye. Deshan crosses Guishan's hall twice with his travel bundle and walks out, and Guishan predicts he will one day scold the Buddhas from a hut on a lonely peak. Nanquan cuts a cat in two when no monk can answer him, and Yuanwu dismisses both later camps, those who place the point in the lifting and those who place it in the cutting.

  • teacher-student relationship
  • zen dialogue
  • skillful means
  • discernment
  • teaching methods
  • zen teaching
  • teaching
  • spiritual practice
  • zen practice
  • practice

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held
541
distinct concepts
288
by passages held, corpus-wide
#136

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 28 pairings. 76 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
languagezen buddhism114
koanzen buddhism50
nondualityzen buddhism47
direct experiencezen buddhism45
languagenonduality44
interpretationzen buddhism43
skillful meanszen buddhism39
interpretationlanguage34
direct experiencelanguage33
awakeningzen buddhism28
koanlanguage22
interpretationkoan20
languageskillful means18
awakeninglanguage16
awakeningdirect experience15
direct experiencenonduality15
direct experienceinterpretation12
awakeningnonduality11
direct experiencekoan11
interpretationnonduality10
interpretationskillful means10
nondualityskillful means10
koannonduality8
awakeningkoan7
direct experienceskillful means4
awakeninginterpretation3
awakeningskillful means1
koanskillful means1

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 Blue Cliff Record (碧巖錄) you are here ZH
  2. 佛果克勤禪師心要

    Letters, not lectures: the one book on his shelf in his own hand, written to named monks and laymen and gathered by his heir Ziwen.

     ZH
  3. 圓悟佛果禪師語錄

    Where the Blue Cliff Record gives one long course of lectures, this gives the rest of his teaching across twenty fascicles, gathered by his disciples.

     ZH
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