Ru-Yi Meditation Center

The Record of Linji — Translation Notes

These notes record recurring translation decisions for the Ru-Yi English translation of the Record of Linji — Zhenzhou Linji Huizhao Chanshi Yulu (鎮州臨濟慧照禪師語錄, “The Recorded Sayings of Chan Master Linji Huizhao of Zhenzhou”), commonly Linji Lu (臨濟錄), Taishō T1985 — recorded by Linji Yixuan’s disciple Huiran. They exist so that vocabulary stays consistent across all seven parts, and so decisions specific to this text’s genre are recorded for any later “recorded sayings” (語錄) text on this site to inherit rather than re-decide from scratch.

The text, and why it matters

Linji Yixuan (臨濟義玄, d. 866 CE) was a Tang-dynasty Chan master whose teaching, preserved in this text, became the founding document of the Linji school of Chan — known in Japan as Rinzai, one of the two major schools of Zen still practiced today (the other being Sōtō, descended from the Caodong house). This text is the first example on this site of the Chan genre of yülu (語錄, “recorded sayings”) that is also a recorded-sayings collection of a single named master’s own teaching, as distinct from this site’s existing Chan holdings: the Xinxin Ming and Song of Enlightenment are both verse compositions attributed to individual patriarchs, and the Platform Sūtra, while also a yülu in form, is centered on one continuous narrative of Huineng’s life and was granted the unique title “sūtra” by the tradition. The Record of Linji makes no such claim for itself: it is dialogue, sermon, and biographical record, compiled after Linji’s death by his disciple Huiran and later editors, never presenting itself as scripture.

The text’s basic structure follows the traditional fourfold division of a Chan master’s recorded sayings: 上堂 (“ascending the hall”), formal sermons delivered from the teaching seat; 示眾 (“instructions to the assembly”), a long, less formal evening teaching interspersed with questions; 勘辨 (“testing and discernment”), short encounters testing or being tested by fellow masters and students; and 行錄 (“the record of conduct/travels”), a biographical account of the master’s own training and journeys, typically appended at the end. This collection follows that same division exactly, splitting the very long 示眾 section into three parts and the 行錄 into two, for seven parts in total.

Four prefaces, composed centuries after Linji’s death (the earliest dated 1120 CE, the latest 1298 CE) by later editors and admirers, precede the text proper in the Taishō edition; a closing colophon and the editing credit of Cunjiang of Xinghua Monastery follow the epitaph. This collection translates the recorded teaching and biographical record in full — everything from the opening line of Part 1 through the epitaph at the close of Part 7 — but does not translate the prefatory or colophon material, which belongs to the text’s later transmission history rather than to Linji’s own recorded teaching.

The base text runs to roughly 18,200 Chinese characters, translated across seven parts.

Reading-note sourcing

Unlike most of this site’s other Chan and sūtra collections, this text does have a genuine premodern commentary that engages several of its most technical formulas directly: Zhizhao’s (智昭) Song-dynasty compilation Rentian Yanmu (人天眼目, “The Eye of Humans and Gods,” T2006, compiled 1188 CE), an anthology organizing the teaching devices of the Five Houses of Chan by school. Its opening section on the Linji house preserves, with verse glosses by generations of later masters — Fengxue Yanzhao, Shoushan Shengnian, Ciming Chuyuan, Fenyang Shanzhao, Juefan Huihong, and others — extended commentary specifically on five formulas: the fourfold scheme of taking away (四料揀), the three statements (三句), the three mysteries and three essentials (三玄三要), the four kinds of shout (四喝), and the fourfold guest and host (四賓主). Where this collection’s reading notes annotate one of these five formulas, they draw on and cite Rentian Yanmu by name; the reading notes are Ru-Yi’s own synthesis of points made there, not a translation of the commentary in full. Every other reading note in this collection — the great majority of them, covering the text’s short testing encounters, its biographical narrative, and its extended doctrinal sermons outside these five named formulas — is Ru-Yi Meditation Center’s own, offered honestly as such, in keeping with this site’s standing commitment never to present original commentary as if it were ancient.

A note on genre and method

This text’s rhetoric is blunt, colloquial Tang-dynasty vernacular mixed with sharp Chan idiom, and it resists translation into smooth philosophical English by design. This translation follows three governing rules throughout:

Structure

Part Base text covers Chinese source range Chinese length
1 上堂 — eight formal sermons: the first shout, Magu and the thousand hands, the true person of no rank, the beating freely given, the opening of the three statements Opening through the eighth sermon ~1,340 characters
2 示眾（一）— the fourfold scheme of taking away, the three bodies as light in your own house, what truly hears the Dharma, buddha and Māra as two states, the person who rides the circumstance First third of the evening instruction ~3,580 characters
3 示眾（二）— the three eye-lands, not daring to judge a good teacher, the living patriarch, the Buddha’s true six powers, “kill the Buddha, kill the patriarch,” the three realms as furniture in your own house, the fourfold guest and host Second third of the evening instruction ~3,270 characters
4 示眾（三）— the fish hidden in a spring, Linji’s own teaching lineage, changing robes, true buddha/dharma/way, the five deeds of unbroken retribution reinterpreted, Mañjuśrī’s sword, Linji’s closing testimony Final third of the evening instruction ~3,560 characters
5 勘辨 — roughly twenty short testing encounters: the rice-steward, Puhua overturning meal tables, the four kinds of shout, Deshan’s thirty blows, Wang Changshi, Puhua’s death The complete testing-and-discernment section ~2,620 characters
6 行錄（一）— three questions and three beatings, awakening under Dayu, planting pines, the hoe that would not lift, the letter to Guishan First half of the biographical record ~1,860 characters
7 行錄（二）— a broken retreat, journeys across nine further monasteries, Linji’s death, the closing epitaph by Yanzhao Second half of the biographical record, to the epitaph’s close ~1,970 characters

Total: roughly 18,200 characters, split along the text’s own traditional fourfold genre division (上堂 / 示眾 / 勘辨 / 行錄) rather than at even intervals — the long 示眾 section is divided into three roughly equal parts at natural paragraph boundaries, and the 行錄 into two at the narrative break between Linji’s settling in Zhenzhou and a later flashback to an earlier, unrelated episode.

Core terminology

Chinese English Notes
喝 shout(ed) Always rendered as a plain narrated verb, never paraphrased or softened.
棒 / 打 staff / struck Rendered plainly as physical blows; no euphemism for the violence of the gesture.
無位真人 the true person of no rank Coined by Linji himself in Part 1; “no rank” places this person entirely outside the fifty-two staged bodhisattva levels of scholastic Buddhism, not above them.
道流 followers of the Way Linji’s most frequent term of direct address; kept literal rather than generalized to “monks” or “friends,” since it addresses anyone following the Way regardless of ordination status.
山僧 this mountain monk Linji’s own self-reference throughout, kept as a fixed third-person phrase matching the Chinese register.
大德 Worthies A formal term of address to the assembled listeners, distinct from the more intimate 道流.
乾屎橛 dry shit-stick Kept at full coarseness rather than softened; the text’s own vulgarity is part of its refusal to let any concept, however exalted, become a polite abstraction.
三句 the three statements Ranked levels of grasping Linji’s teaching, from “teacher to buddhas and patriarchs” down to “cannot save yourself.” Annotated after Rentian Yanmu (T2006) in Part 1.
三玄三要 the three mysteries and three essentials A nested formula (each of three “mysteries” containing three “essentials”) for the structure of a single teaching utterance. Annotated after Rentian Yanmu (T2006) in Part 1.
四料揀 the fourfold scheme of taking away Taking away the person, the circumstance, both, or neither — a diagnostic matched to the listener rather than a fixed teaching. Annotated after Rentian Yanmu (T2006) in Part 2.
四賓主 the fourfold guest and host Four ways an encounter between “guest” and “host” can go wrong, none of them offered as the correct outcome. Annotated after Rentian Yanmu (T2006) in Part 3.
四喝 the four kinds of shout The vajra sword, the crouching lion, the grass-tipped lure, and a shout that “does not function as a shout.” Annotated after Rentian Yanmu (T2006) in Part 5.
逢佛殺佛 if you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha This text’s single most quoted line, glossed by Linji himself in the same passage as freedom from every external dependency, not literal violence; kept exactly as blunt as the source, with the qualification left on the same page rather than separated into a footnote.
行錄 the record of his life The biographical/travel record appended at the end (Parts 6–7 of this collection), narrating Linji’s training and journeys rather than his teaching.
常侍 Changshi (kept as part of the name) A Tang-dynasty court title (roughly “Palace Attendant”); kept attached to Wang’s name throughout as “Wang Changshi,” following the convention of treating it as part of how he is addressed rather than translating the title independently at each occurrence.

What this text contributes to the site’s Chan corpus

This is the first yülu on this site centered on a single named master’s own teaching career rather than a founding patriarch’s verse composition or a single continuous life-narrative granted the title “sūtra.” Where the Xinxin Ming and Song of Enlightenment compress their teaching into sustained verse, and the Platform Sūtra narrates one life’s arc from illiterate woodcutter to Sixth Patriarch, the Record of Linji is closer to a working record of an active teaching career: sermons, an extended evening lecture, brief tests of skill against other working masters, and a biography appended almost as an afterthought. Its “true person of no rank,” its refusal to let any Buddhist technical term escape being folded back into “the person right now listening to this Dharma,” and its formula “if you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha” all descend from the same non-dual insistence this site’s Xinxin Ming opens with — that any preference, even a doctrinally sanctioned one, already splits a single undivided mind — but arrived at here through blunt confrontation and shock rather than sustained argument or verse.