Talk:Yunmen Wenyan

First master

I was reading in Zen Dust that "He became a monk under a commandment master in his native place, and studied the Vinaya diligently." Does anyone know what a commandment master is? --Maru (talk) 21:06, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

In medieval China, there were apparently monks who specialized in studying the rather complex monastic codes, rather than on studying scriptures or doctrines, or on meditation, so I figure that's what this is referring to. "Commandment" is a very bad translation. "Precept" is much better, although I think this sort of monk is more commonly translated as "vinaya master". - Nat Krause 12:08, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

That does indeed seem to make sense- studying vinaya under a vinaya master. --Maru (talk) 16:35, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

Followup: Urs App's Master Yunmen says the same thing as you, Nat. --Maru (talk) 21:46, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Clarifications

Maru, thanks for your work on this article. I went through and tried to harmonise names to Chinese, except in koans section. I hope you don't mind me converting Wade-Giles spelling into Hanyu Pinyin; I'm not completely sure this was the right move, but it seemed better to use consistent spellings throughout the article. I was hoping you could check a few things in your source, because I had trouble finding more information on them:

1. The article mentions a Zen master Suhotsu, but I couldn't find any mention of that name on the web, so I don't know what the Chinese equivalent is.
2. A recent version mentioned, "the Yunmen monastery of Shao-cou", but "Shao-cou" doesn't look correct in Chinese or Japanese. I changed it to "Shaochou", but I don't know if that's right. I'm also not sure what "of Shao-cou" means here, because it the text below implies that Yunmen himself built the monastery at Mt. Yunmen.

I think a better rendition would be "Shaozhou", which is a city nearby Mt. Yunmen. --Maru (talk) 22:03, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

1. This Bokushu/Chen Zunsu person's name seems confusing. At first, I had no idea they were they same person, but, after looking at the characters in the Vietnamese version, it appears that there is one guy called Mu Zhou Chen Zun Su (a.k.a. Mu-chou-ch'en-tsun-su) and that Muzhou = Bokushu. That seems like an awfully long name even for a Zen master. Can you double check the way these names are used together or separately in your book?

Urs App has him as Muzhou, mentioning that this was another Zen master who took the name of his locality as his teaching name:

"Unfortunately, not much is known about this man; according to the Transmission of Treasures of Monks of the Ch'an Tradition of 1122, he had been (together with Linji/Rinzai) a disciple of the famous Master Huangbo (Jap. Ōbaku). Having left the Mishan monastery at Gaoan in what is now Jiangsi province, Reverend Chen returned home to Muzhou to take care of his aging mother. After a stay at the local Longxing monastery, he left monastic life altogether and supported himself and his mother by making sandals."

--Maru (talk) 22:03, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

1. A recent version mentions that Xuedou wrote a "Po-tsê sung-ku", which I pinyinified as "Boze songgu". However, I noticed that the Wikipedia article on Blue Cliff Record mentions a 頌古百則 by Xuedou; this would be written "Sung-ku pai-tsê" (WG) or "Songgu baize" (pinyin); this is presumably the same thing. It maybe could be "Sung-ku po-tsê", but this is a very unusual pronunciation of a very common character. Can you double-check for word order and pronunciation? --Nat Krause 13:22, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

To the best of my knowledge, they are on and the same. I cannot doublecheck this however. Sorry. --Maru (talk) 22:03, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

I wish you had asked these questions yesterday- I just returned to the library Zen Dust, and it would take at least 4 days to get back. :( I'll answer what I can remember.

Suhotsu I know nothing about: Original Teachings of Ch'an Buddhism listed him as the second successor to Ummon, and the last master of the Ummon-school. I later found out that this was incorrect, but the lineage still seems to be correct, so I kept it.

"Shao-chou" is right; that was a typo. Good catch. And it was used in the texts as a place-name. As for the monastery, that is far from clear; Zen Dust asserts that he received patronage, and built the monastery, and since he was the abbot and teacher, he was named after it, previously going by Wenyan and some personal name I forgot to include. But other texts don't give that.

As far as Bokushu/Chen Zunsu- I included both names because I was unsure which was correct. They both definitely refer to the same person though (the Chen comes from Dust; the Bokushu/Muh-chou from Original Teachings).

re: Xuedou. Sorry, I can't. I gave the latinized form exactly as it appeared though, since I had no way of copying the Chinese characters that were given as what the Latinization was from; this was from my no longer possessed copy of Zen Dust as well. --Maru (talk) 17:23, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

Suhotsu: Can't say but I recommend against "Yunmen was succeeded by..." in favor of something like "notable teachers in his lineage traditionally include..." e.g. Xuedou (J. Setcho). Otherwise, way too many dharma heirs. See Andy Fergusson Zen's Chinese Heritage, Wisdom Publications, 2000 (detachable lineage chart poster, back matter)

Umm. Well, for non-direct heirs that would make sense, but I think Suhotsu was his direct sucessor which is worth mentioning.

Name and place name: Urs App in Master Yunmen (subtitle) From the Record of the Chan Teacher "Gate of the Clouds", Kodansha International, 1994, gives Yunmen's family name as Zhang (p17); implies his given name was Wenyan (same page). Yunmen is the name of the mountain "at whose foot he built his monastery" and means "cloud gate". (Same "men" as Wumen, I imagine.) According to stone inscriptions found at at the site (p. xiv), imperial permission to build the monastery came in 923, and was complete five years later (p26). Prior to that he taught at the Lingshu monastery in Shaoguan. Could that be guan as in you-know-what?

Dust has the family name as "Chang". Close enough. And that monastery he taught at would seem to be identical.

More on Xuedou...at least 17 of the 18 cases (Miura and Sasaki call them "tse" [p433] not kung-an) that include sayings/doings of Yunmen, and which Xuedou collected, are indeed part of the Yunmen guanglu; see App (p243-245); the single discrepancy (Turtle Nosed Snake, I think) might be a typo in App, as noted on discussion page of Blue Cliff Record. All the Yunmen-related kung-an in Wumenguan and Tsung-jung lu (=Congronglu in Pinyin?) are derived from tse that are found in the Yunmen guanglu. I imagine the same is true of the Yunmen-related cases in Dogen's 300 koans? I suggest adding "In the three koan collections that are best known in the west, Yunmen figures in more koans than any other Zen teacher (18 in Blue Cliff Record, 5 in Gateless Barrier, and 9 in Book of Serenity)." I also suggest saying "Many of his sayings and doings later became the critical phrases of koans." rather than the phrase "invented koans". --Munge 08:01, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Those phrase changes seem good. Feel free to add them in. --Maru (talk) 13:19, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

The 18 cases in the Blue Cliff Record; two more in Serenity

I counted them and have a very slight correction to what I said above and elsewhere. Yunmen appears in Blue Cliff Record case numbers 6, 8, 14, 15, 22, 27, 34, 39, 47, 50, 54, 60, 62, 77, 83, 86, 87, and 88.

Two of them, 22 (turtle nosed snake) and 62 ("there is a jewel"), are not listed in the back matter of App's book. So if two are missing from the 18, why does App list 17 cases instead of 16? The answer is because he lists 16 plus one more, "moon in the water", which is not a main case selected by Xuedou, but part of Yuanwu's commentary to #39 (the "hedge").

I cannot verify that the 18 listed above are only in the Record of Yunmen and not in the Jingde Record. But that is what Miura and Sasaki assert on p12, and again in somewhat more detail on p362 of Zen Dust. (With the list above, you can verify for yourself that the figure is not 14, as stated on p267 of Original Teachings of Chan Buddhism.)

My count for Book of Serenity is 11 koans with Yunmen in the main case. They're numbers 11, 19, 21, 24, 31, 40, 54, 78, 82, 92, 99. (Again, App doesn't list turtle nosed snake and "there is a jewel" in the table at the back of the book. He lists nine of them; adding those two makes eleven.)

My count for the Gateless Barrier is 5 koans with Yunmen in the main case, namely 15, 16, 21, 39, and 48. In addition, according to Shibayama (p180), Wumen's verse commentary to 24 is an exact four-line quotation from Yunmen, made without attribution. --Munge 07:03, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Yunmen school and lineage

• I see no mention of Sohotsu or any similar name in the index of Original Teachings of Chan Buddhism, nor in Zen Dust, nor in the lineage chart of Zen's Chinese Heritage. Help for the blind, anyone? Any guesses as to his real (Chinese) name?

• I'm guessing that Dongshan Shouchou was Yunmen's "successor" in the sense that Dongshan/Tozan became the head of the Cloud-Gate monastery. What is the source on Dongshan/Tozan as "head of the Yunmen school", as the article states later? --Munge 07:46, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

That came from Original Teachings, I think. --Maru (talk) 22:09, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Yunmen dates

If the dates for Yunmen are 862 or 864-949, how could he be crippled "around 1100"? --Thinman10 06:18, 15 January 2007 (UTC)thinman10

Unclear grammar. The story about the leg dates to ~1100, not the actual crippling. --Gwern (contribs) 06:27 15 January 2007 (GMT)

Biography assessment rating comment

The article may be improved by following the WikiProject Biography 11 easy steps to producing at least a B article. -- Jreferee 23:10, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

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