Thomas Cleary - Secrets of the Blue Cliff Record: Zen Comments by Hakuin and Tenkei

Authentic traditions of commentary have been hard to finduntil this fluidly translated work, which includes commentaries by two of the greatest Zen masters of early modern Japan... their words shine light on this deep and extraordinary work.

Tricycle

These commentaries make the challenges of the Zen masters available to the spiritually courageous among us.

Bodhi Tree Book Review

ABOUT THE BOOK

The Blue Cliff Record is a classic text of Zen Buddhism, designed to assist in the activation of dormant human potential. The core of this extraordinary work is a collection of one hundred traditional citations and stories, selected for their ability to bring about insight and enlightenment. These vignettes are known as gongan in Chinese and koan in Japanese.

Secrets of the Blue Cliff Record is a fresh translation featuring newly translated commentary from two of the greatest Zen masters of early modern Japan, Hakuin Ekaku (16851768) of the Rinzai sect of Zen and Tenkei Denson (16481735) of the Soto sect of Zen. This translation and commentary on the Blue Cliff Record sheds new light on the meaning of this central Zen text.

THOMAS CLEARY holds a PhD in East Asian Languages and Civilizations from Harvard University and a JD from the University of California, Berkeley, Boalt Hall School of Law. He is the translator of over fifty volumes of Buddhist, Taoist, Confucian, and Islamic texts from Sanskrit, Chinese, Japanese, Pali, and Arabic.

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S ECRETS OF THE B LUE C LIFF R ECORD

Zen Comments by Hakuin and Tenkei

Translated by Thomas Cleary

S HAMBHALA

Boston & London
2013

Shambhala Publications, Inc.

Horticultural Hall

300 Massachusetts Avenue

Boston, Massachusetts 02115

www.shambhala.com

2000 by Thomas Cleary

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

The Library of Congress catalogs the hardcover edition of this book as follows:

Secrets of the Blue cliff record: Zen comments by Hakuin and Tenkei/ translated by Thomas Cleary.

Selections of Hakuins and Tenkeis commentaries on Blue cliff record, compiled and translated by Thomas Cleary.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

eISBN 978-0-8348-2883-4

ISBN 1-57062-738-X (hardcover)

ISBN 1-57062-912-9 (pbk.)

1. Yan-wu, 10631135. Pi yen lu. 2. KoanEarly works to 1800.

I. Hakuin, 16861769. II. Denson, 16481735. III. Cleary, Thomas F., 1949 IV. Yan-wu, 10631135. Pi yen lu English Selections V. Title.

BQ9289.Y823 Z46 2001

294.344dc21 00-058329

C ONTENTS

The Blue Cliff Record is a classic text of Zen Buddhism, specially designed to assist in the activation of dormant human potential. The core of this extraordinary work is a collection of one hundred traditional citations and stories, selected by one of the greatest masters for their Zen impact on the mind. These vignettes, known as gongan in Chinese and koan in Japanese and English, are intended to foster specific perceptions and insights whose absorption in experience enable the mind to work in a more coherent and comprehensive manner than conventional education can produce.

Japanese Zen tradition speaks of seventeen hundred koans to represent the totality of Zen lore. In reality there are far more than seventeen hundred classical koans extant, as well as a cumulative body of commentary on more than one thousand of them. The reputation of the Blue Cliff Record as an unrivaled classic in its field was thus established in a most rigorous atmosphere of spiritual inquiry.

In its total spectrum of Zen teachings, the Blue Cliff Record contains some of the most popular koans as well as some of the most obscure, with pragmatic comments and explanations by two of the greatest expositors of Zen.

The Blue Cliff Record was so popular in China from the time of its first publication in the twelfth century that it was temporarily suppressed in the next generation because people memorized it and repeated its sayings as slogans instead of absorbing the living Zen meanings. Several versions continued to exist in manuscript nonetheless, and a new, emended edition was published in the fourteenth century.

In Japan, where it has been a tool of Zen study for more than seven hundred years, the Blue Cliff Record is traditionally called the foremost book of Zen. By far the greatest number of secondary commentaries on the Blue Cliff Record as a total text were composed in Japan over the last few centuries.

The complete text of the Blue Cliff Record, translated from the original Chinese, has now been available in English for nearly a quarter of a century. In spite of the difficulties inherent in a work like the Blue Cliff Record, and in spite of the ready availability of less disconcerting approaches to religion, psychology, and spirituality, the Western audience of this remarkable Zen classic continues to grow.

In the years since the Blue Cliff Record has been available in English, many other traditional Zen texts have also been translated. A considerable context for this classic has thus been established, but authentic commentarial traditions on the text of the Blue Cliff Record itself have hitherto been unavailable to the public, indeed unavailable even to the majority of specialists in the field.

The present volume addresses this gap in the East-West transmission of Zen lore with commentaries on the Blue Cliff Record by two of the greatest Zen masters of early modern Japan, Hakuin Ekaku of the Rinzai sect of Zen (16851768) and Tenkei Denson of the Soto sect of Zen (16481735).

Hakuin and Tenkei were two of the outstanding figures in the reformation of Zen in Japan during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Through their writing and teaching, both of them contributed to the revitalization of near-senile Zen, each one emitting a brilliant burst of energy with a residual force of uncommon power.

The koans forming the core of the Blue Cliff Record were originally selected by the great Chinese Zen master Hsueh-tou (9801052; pronounced Setcho in Japanese) and compiled into a collection with an illustrative verse for each example. This work was then taken up by another great Zen master, Yuan-wu (10631135; pronounced Engo in Japanese), who added his own introductions and commentaries to both the original koans and Hsueh-tous verses. The final product of these efforts was the Blue Cliff Record, which has remained a monumental classic of Zen even up to the present day.

In the Buddhist lands of eastern Asia, Zen has often been regarded as the most subtle and sophisticated of all schools of Buddhism, and the classics of Zen, intended to affect the mind at an uncommonly deep level, are among the most challenging literature ever produced by any culture. The mere language of the Zen classics, normally a mixture of classical, literary, technical, and colloquial Chinese, has always posed a truly formidable barrier, even to native speakers. The unconventional nature of Zen perceptions and perspectives, moreover, renders their descriptions intrinsically unpredictable to pedestrian thinking.

In view of the difficulties of understanding the guiding classics of Zen on every level, there is special value in the commentaries of Japanese masters, coming as they did from a milieu very different from that of the Chinese homeland of Zen. Because they were obliged to overcome significant linguistic and cultural barriers in addition to more general psychological and spiritual barriers in the process of unlocking the classic, the Japanese masters had to interpret the literal meaning of the text in light of Zen meaning. The products of this effort make it easier to absorb useful lessons and derive practical value from what might otherwise be an obscure mystery.