Talk:Blue Cliff Record

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[edit] Translations

I assume that 《頌古百則》 is the Chinese rendering for Xuedou's Po-tse sung-ku (I don't know the Pinyin for that), and that the translation of that is 100 Verses on Old Cases. But I could be wrong, as I don't really read Chinese and I'm inferring by comparing this article to note 14 of Zen Dust. --munge 25 September 2004

《頌古百則》 is song ku bai ze (my pinyin is terrible, don't bet on it). So it matches with the Wale-Gales Po Tse Sung Ku except for the word ordering. From my Chinese reading, I learned that Xuedou selected 100 out of the 1700 koans in the Ching-Te book. (I am not saying there were only 1700 koans, but the Ching-Te contained 1700 of them.) Yuanwu then based his own book on Xuedou's selection. Yuanwu made an extra copy for Dahui as soon as the book was done, but Dahui burnt the copy because he disagreed koans should be explained and interpreted. --Kowloonese 09:47, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Kowloonese, I am very grateful for your contributions. I hope you will continue to add good stuff and fix problems in this article, koan, etc. Also, I strongly support using native text and also Pinyin, as you say on your user:Kowloonese page.

Now, on Dahui's destruction of the Biyan Lu, there can be some difference of opinion because the story is not told in Song-era documents. "According to traditional accounts, which are only first mentioned in a Yuan-era edition of his goroku text, Ta-hui destroyed the xylographs of the text so that it could not be distributed in China for nearly two hundred years." from p145-6 of Dogen and the Koan Tradition by Steven Heine. (Xylograph means engraved wood printing block.) On page 357 of Zen Dust, the story about making the Biyan Lu unavailable for 200 years is reported as a fact, not a legend. In Swampland Flowers, Cleary says only that Dahui "stopped circulation" of Yuanwu's work. But it seems impossible. I don't see how Dahui could stop circulation of his teacher's work while his teacher was alive. Heine goes on to say "The Ta-Hui legend is no doubt at least greatly exaggerated." I think the legend does not explain how the Biyan Lu reached Japan around Dogen's time. So maybe, like your source says, he just destroyed one copy. But we will never know. But also, I believe there are Song-dynasty editions of Dahui's writings that omit the story completely. According to Heine, the legend "does have a mythical significance in indicating his...emphasis on direct, personal experience of reality." Again, similar to what you say.

As for the idea about 1700 koans, according to Zen Dust page 153, "The round figure 1700 was arrived at in early days by attributing one koan to each of the 1701 Zen masters whose names appear...in the Chinge-te ch'uan-teng lu....but as a matter of fact actual biographies are given for only about 960 masters. The remaining 700-odd masters are mentioned by name only" in the Jingde record. There is additional information on page 352, if you can find a copy. (I want to buy a used copy. If anyone has one, leave a message on my Talk page.) Some teachers still teach the legend of 1700 koans but I hope you don't mind if I took it out of the article. Chan works to destroy delusion.

Finally, page 362 of Zen Dust points out that of the 100 old cases of Hsueh-tou, 82 were from the Jingde Chuandeng Lu . The other 18 are from the life of Yunmen Wenyan, and are taken from the Yunmen Kwang Lu. I plan to make some change to the article to include this. --munge 4 October 2004

Thanks for the clarification. I have no doubt that your source is more accurate because I am no Zen follower myself. I gathered my info from various Chinese webpages and most of them didn't even quote the source. So they could just be legends or even misinformation. --Kowloonese 16:53, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Yunmen in the Blue Cliff Record

Urs App lists only 17 cases in the Blue Cliff Record on pp243-245 of my copy of Master Yunmen. But there seems to be a typo on p245, and in any event case #22, Yunmen's turtle-nosed snake is missing from the table. So that makes 18.

If you go to page http://www.guoxue.com/fxyj/dic/zrhy/texts.htm and do an Edit>Find Yunmen, it shows the title of Yunmen's biography as 雲門匡眞禪師廣録, or Yunmen Kuangzhen Chanshi Guanglu, which I translate as Extensive Record of Chan Master Yunmen Kuangzhen. Click on the link and scroll up one entry and it should be clear that Yunmen Kuangzhen is the same person as Yunmen Wenyan, his "popular name".

Anyhow, it's somewhat remarkable for a koan collection to include as many as 18 cases that mention the same person. ---user:munge 27 November 2004