Record of the Transmission of the Lamp: Volume

Records of the Transmission of the Lamp Up to the Era of Great Virtue [of the Song Dynasty CE 1004-7] (Jap: Keitoku Dentōroku) Compiled by Daoyuan of the Chan School, of the later Song Dynasty in 30 fascicules. The Hokun Trust is pleased to support the first volume of a complete translation of this classic of Chan (Zen) Buddhism by Randolph S. Whitfield. The Records of the Transmission of the Lamp is a religious classic of the first importance for the practice and study of Zen which it is hoped will appeal both to students of Buddhism and to a wider public interested in religion as a whole. Contents Preface Acknowledgements Introduction Abbreviations Book One Book Two Book Three Finding List Bibliography Index Preface The scale of the present translation is so big (more volumes are to follow) that I have taken the interests of the general reader as my main concern. A fully annotated translation of the Jingde Chuandeng Lu (Records of the Transmission of the Lamp, hereafter CDL) would necessarily comprise many more additional volumes, yet with Buddhism being so new in the West copious annotations to a work of this scale would only be a distraction from the main work itself, although such annotations certainly promise to be a fruitful voyage of discovery in the future. Neither is the introduction written in the style of an academic discourse. It is too early for such a presentation and too limiting for such a complex subject. This is the first complete translation of the primary canonical text of the Chinese Chan School1 and will surely benefit from a detailed exegesis one day: but first of all it needs to be appreciated in its entirety. With regard to the Chan Buddhist milieu we are on a very slow boat to China. Happily the literature on Song Dynasty Buddhism and its complex history is growing apace, so there are many fine books on the background to this most interesting subject.2 This Chinese work has never been completely translated into any language except modern Chinese. It is a collection of Buddhist biographies, teaching and transmission stories of Indian and Chinese Chan (Japanese ‘Zen’) masters from antiquity up to about the year 1008 CE. What makes this collection so remarkable is that it is the first mature fruit of an already thousand year-long spiritual marriage between two great world cultures with quite different ways of viewing the world. The fertilisation of Chinese spirituality by Indian Buddhism not only fructified the Chinese civilisation, but the whole Asian culture field, as well as extending far west to the Mediterranean basin even in early times. The message to which this work gives expression was made accessible by the political and literary skill of Chinese redactors in the retelling of records, old stories and legends culled from rich and various sources both oral and written. Randolph S. Whitfield 1 Discounting the Zutang Ji (The Anthology from the Patriarchal Hall) which might possibly be a product of Korean Chan, not Chinese. 2 Regarding the CDL, see Albert Welter, Monks, Rulers, and Literati: The Political Ascendancy of Chan Buddhism. Oxford, 2006 (MRL), and Wittern, Christian. Das Yulu des Chan-Buddhismus: Die Entwicklung vom 8.-11. Jahrhundert am Beispiel des 28. Kapitels des Jingde chuandeng lu (1004). Bern, 1998 (YCB), and Christian Wittern, Jingde chuandeng lu. Aufzeichnungen von der Übertragung der Leuchte aus der Ära Jingde (AUL). Insel Verlag, Suhrkamp, 2014 , which contains selections from the CDL. Acknowledgements In gratitude to the Venerable Myokyoni of London who pointed out the way of Master Linji (Rinzai) for many years. Thanks to the Hokun Trust of London for granting funds for this translation and its publication. Thanks to the Venerable Sohaku Ogata, whose work continues. Thanks to Carman Blacker for her far-sightedness. Thanks to the Ven. Myokun of The Hermitage of the True Dharma (Shobo-an) London, for real enthusiasm and practical help. Thanks to Michelle Bromley for much practical help and encouragement, without which this book would never have come into being. Last but not least, thanks go to my wife Mariana, who has supported me all along the Way. Introduction The Way to the Heart The knowledge of what we are as human beings and of where we have come from still resembles somewhat one of our medieval maps. The known territory that has been drawn out is very small, not accurately scaled down or projected, whilst physical experience still tells us that the world is flat. Likewise, the known part of our human nature is extremely small too, still being confined to a familiarity with mechanics or to that part of us which is cognisant. The ‘unused ninety percent’, as the common figure has it, is vast uncharted space into which few have ventured alive and most fear to tread. If we remain so unknown to ourselves, is there any hope of finding the happiness we are all looking for? If man’s treasure lies where his Heart is (the repeated message in these biographies), then the treasure must be right under our very noses. Perhaps it is like Father Christmas and his Tree, the focal point at Christmas where the ritual of faith is renewed and strengthened, the living proof of our natural capacity for joy. We want to be uplifted, as proved by being disappointed every year by religious holidays that fail to fulfil the longings for a deeper delight. Ritual might be a safe haven from all that dark space, but is a safe entrance to it as well; it is the container which confines, restrains and tempers the mighty flow of Nature’s raw impersonal passion which fills us all to the brim. Buddhism is based on a spiritual ‘practice of relativity’ applicable in any life situation. Quite simply the practice functions as if everything were related to everything else. Straightforward enough one might think, yet the practice seems to cause peculiar difficulties on our home-world. Relativity means that every thing, state, level, dimension or phenomenon whatever is related to every other such as to totally preclude even the idea that there could exist something that is a closed, self-sufficient system within itself, without relations to its surroundings. Superficially this seems simple enough but it is the far-reaching implications of such teachings that cause the most trouble, the foremost being the obvious deduction that if everything is related to everything else, then there cannot exist a self-subsisting essence of any kind that could be called an independent, nuclear, permanent Self. Only an entity that has no relationship with anything outside of itself could be said to be self-sufficient. If such a thing is radically inconceivable then the inevitable conclusion to draw from this truth is that an individual unchanging permanent essence does not exist. There is the deed, but no unchanging agent who does the doing. It is this which causes so much trouble, for although we feel ourselves to be nuclear entities within our own right, the plain fact of a sojourn in a particular life situation only too clearly shows that the feeling is entirely illusory. As shown, for example, by the inconvenient evidence of the very termination of a particular life situation, a termination over which there is usually no control and which is therefore feared more than anything else. Any truly self- sufficient, nuclear entity would have total control over all the processes of its closed systemic self-existence and over the circumstances of its own termination. An outside force would have absolutely no influence over it. Yet we can’t even choose not to have a headache! Life is the arena, the live theatre of action, executed in a particular mode conformable to environment and circumstances. The ‘game’ in this arena seems to be based on inter-action, for the mutual enrichment, benefit, joy and sorrow of all of us, the centre of the relativity truth. It is the whole environment that benefits from every member engaging wholeheartedly in it, that is, of being alive in this absolute relativity. The ancient Indians had a wonderfully sensitive word for ‘relativity’, applied in its deepest meaning. The term preserved its inviolability even on its later journey to the west, by virtue of being anyway untranslatable. Perhaps that is why the original word has gained a foothold even in our Western culture, with the prospect of becoming a universal term, understood by all yet fully explainable by none: ‘Dharma’. Temporarily bound together, all things are related with each other, as the spokes of a wheel are related to the hub and vice versa, all bound together by the rim.3 Dharma is an ancient word coined by the Indian religious genius, matured by uncommon powers of introversion and its spin-off, the development of complex memory systems, the route by which the Buddhist Suttas4 of Buddha Shakyamuni have come down to us. With the spiritual techniques acquired through meditation, the Indians mapped a way to the hierarchies of ‘the Gods and Goddesses’ working in man, earthbound in his case of flesh, with a precision not found in any other terrestrial culture. Arising from the urge to bring insight to consciousness there arose a technical vocabulary of great analytical acumen to serve as the vehicle for the data of this knowledge. The Ancient Chinese, on the other hand, were not given to religion in the Indian sense of the word. Confucius (551-476 BCE), a contemporary of Pythagoras (578-510 BCE) and Buddha (c.563-483 BCE), was not in the least interested in the question of whether Gods existed or not, of whether or not there was an afterlife (neither was Buddha for that matter).

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