The Blue-Cliff Record

by Yuanwu Keqin, Setcho, Gentil Saraiva Junior

Book Overview

A once-in-a-generation translation of the definitive Ch'an (Zen) koan collection from preeminent translator David Hinton.

The Blue-Cliff Record, a collection of Ch'an (Zen) koans stemming from the eleventh century, is a remarkable masterwork of classical Chinese literature, a philosophical text of profound power, and an active practice guide in use by Ch'an and Zen Buddhists all over the world. Rendered with his trademark lyricism...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1645472701
• ISBN13: 9781645472704
• Release Date: June 2024
• Publisher: Shambhala
• Length: 264 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.9" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

My Favorite Book of Koans :-)

I first stumbled into this book many years ago, and have read it and scribbled margin notes uncountable times. I have tried many of Cleary's translations, and find a lot of them rather too academic and distant for my taste, but he (well, both authors) hits the spot with this. It cut right through and resonated very deeply. It has helped me profoundly in my practice, and I recommend it to anyone. (The smile in the title, by the way, is one to acknowledge an irony.)

The Mother of All Koan Anthologies

Thomas Cleary is a phenomenon. Just to translate the vast "Garland Sutra" or the "Blue Cliff Record" would be a lifetime's work for many scholars, yet he has managed to do both, and a shelf of Buddhist and Taoist works as well. D.T. Suzuki thought this book would only ever be accessible to a handful of scholarly Zen monks able to penetrate its unique and bizarre Chinese. About fifty years ago a translation was made that is charming but hopeless: it leaves out most of Yüan-wu's vital commentaries and adds "interpretations" that would have the ancient Masters rolling about with laughter in Nirvana. This version is incomparably better, although not perfect. The original Chinese is notoriously arcane and Gothic, full of Sung colloquialisms, technical terms and words of uncertain meaning. Matter-of-opinion interpretations abound. Cleary translates Ma-tsu's famous answer (when he was asked about his health in old age) as "Sun Face Buddha, Moon Face Buddha", while Lu K'uan Yu has him say: "Every day I face Buddha, every month I face Buddha." That gives some idea of the variety of English that can be drawn out of the Chinese. Cleary opts for a uniform, slightly artificial American patois that leads to odd-sounding catch-phrases and at times, frustrating vagueness. Besides, the text is dense with allusions, so you'd expect a forest of footnotes, yet few are given. Footnotes are annoying, but it's a choice between that and missing out on much of the background meaning. Still, this is the greatest of all koan anthologies, the Everest of Zen writing, as profound as the Great Void and as brain-bending as quantum physics. Having a readable, viable modern English translation is a marvel and a blessing. Thank you Thomas and J.C. Cleary.

Ancient Gong-An Practice

I've dicovered that a LOT of people get downright angry when you start to elucidate Zen to be anything beyond "do-your-own-thing". I hope you're not going to be one of those people... I've owned this book for something like 10 years now and it is still enigmatic and at times unfriendly to me, but that is the nature of kung-an practice. There is a stubbornness to the Ancient kung-an that does not change readily, but does yield with time, though I think there is no real way to "rush" their clarification, and it is probably unwise to try to. The gong-an themselves are ample proof that intellect alone falls short when confronted with the patriarchs of the Ch'an path. Chinese Ch'an Master Sheng Yen says that to have good practice, realization and heart must go hand-in-hand. Having just the realization-hold-the-compassion won't produce the highest realization. If you think Zen is atheistic intellectualism, you're dead wrong. You're supposed to feel your heart when you have a Zen realization. Case: "A monk asked Yun Men, "What is every atom samadhi?" Men said, "Food in the bowl, water in the bucket." Poetry succeeds where explanation fails. This is an appeal to the physical poetry of the immediate, while intimating that there is way more to the everyday immediate than was previously assumed in what Heidegger calls the "Average Everydayness" or mind-numbed, over-conditioned state of how we ordinarily tend to relate to the world. This is the key--the 20-ton key--to Ch'an that the intellect alone is too weak to wield. Case: "Yun Men showed his staff to the assembly and said, "The staff has changed into a dragon and swallowed the universe. Mountains, rivers, the great earth--where are they to be found?" This gong-an actually pertains to the 4th of 5 levels of Samadhi in Ch'an, as explained by contemporary Ch'an Master Sheng Yen. This level is the all-wisdom phase where the world passes away from the mind as no longer real whatsoever. But there is still another level left to be explored, that of seeing the delusion of the world as enlightenment-waiting-to-be-transformed, and for this reason, one might suspect that these kung-an tend to be targeting different levels of Samadhi, since they obviously do not tend to address every level at once, except in the case that some of them address the last, arguably. Different gong-an are simply meant for different folks at different levels, some are keys for many levels at once. If you can accept this premise, there is a sudden cohesion in the collection and it's a worthwhile practice tool in this sense. If you expect every gong-an to make sense in terms of where you happen to be right now, then you are lost very quickly. "Take what works for you" is, roughly speaking, the essence of Zen and the essence of gong-an practice.

sparks off the blue cliff: a dharma classic

The Blue Cliff Record tr. Thomas and J.C. Cleary Shambala, Boston and London 1992 I first encountered the classic of Ch'an literature known as The Blue Cliff Record nearly 20 years ago, in a review by my teacher Sangharakshita. He described it as 'a world in which Buddhism matters, is the only thing that matters, and in which people are prepared to go to any lengths in order to attain - and transmit - "the profound anti mysterious principle of Enlightenment".' I suggested, with naive enthusiasm, that he lead a seminar on The Blue Cliff Record. His response was a mischievous smile: `You would have to be ready for anything!' The book looks harmless enough. In its English translation it has a nice, shiny. deep blue dust jacket with a bit of calligraphy - a classical design, nothing flashy. But if you begin to read it seriously and consistently, in the right kind of conditions, it shakes you to the very core. It looms up out of the mist like a mile-high cliff face. There are no handholds. It is cold, silent, and steep. Very steep. It consists of 100 kung-an (koan) or 'public cases', originally compiled by a master named Hsueh Tou Ch'ung Hsien (980-1052), who wrote a verse on each case - a cryptic verse pointing the way for his disciples to contemplate. About 60 years after Hsueh Tou's death, another master, Yuan Wu, gave a series of talks elucidating each case and Hsueh Tou's verses. The cases, the verses, and the elucidations together comprise The Blue Cliff Record. so called after the Blue Cliff monastery on Mt. Chia in Hunan where Yuan Wu delivered his talks. That sounds tidy - a book in which we can read stories about Enlightened masters and then read edifying poems and talks by other masters explaining them. But this is no trendy book about Zen, full of consoling platitudes about our being Buddhas already. If we are tempted to waffle about 'the light within', here is Master Yun Men's challenge: `"Everyone has a light: when you look at it, you don't see it and it's dark and dim. What is everybody's light?" Silence! He answers the question himself. "The kitchen pantry and the main gate".' The Blue Cliff Record is full of challenges. Last summer I read the entire book on a long retreat, on a mountain in Spain. After a day of meditation, ritual, and study, before sleeping, with cicadas for background music, I read until my eyes grew heavy, and then sank into dreams that shook me. Sometimes I woke with a phrase echoing through the cave of the mind. One morning it was: `Mahasattva Fu expounds the scripture.' This was the title of the kung-an and commentary I had read the night before. Mahasattva Fu, an old mountain-dwelling hermit, came to town selling fish to support himself, and Emperor Wu, a great patron of Buddhism, summoned him to the court to expound the Diamond Sutra I see Mahasattva Fu in a patched robe and the court in their finery waiting for an edifying exposition of Buddhist philosophy. The old hermit slowly made his way t