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The Record of Linji
Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2008. xxxii+487 pages. $56 cloth; $30 paper |
The Linji lu (Record of Linji) has been an essential text of Chinese and Japanese Zen Buddhism for nearly a thousand years. A compilation of sermons, statements, and acts attributed to the great Chinese Zen master Linji Yixuan (d. 866), it serves as both an authoritative statement of Zen’s basic standpoint and a central source of material for Zen koan practice. Scholars study the text for its importance in understanding both Zen thought and East Asian Mahayana doctrine, while Zen practitioners cherish it for its unusual simplicity, directness, and ability to inspire..
| "In the late 50s, when I was a student in Chinese studies in Kyoto, I worked part-time for Mrs. Sasaki's First Zen Institute. We were working on her translation of The Record of Linji, and every time we went over it with her we hoped it was at last in publishable form. But "Needs more work!" was always her dour comment, and back it would go into her files.
In 1961 Mrs. Sasaki and I parted company, and not long afterward she died. In 1975 a version of the translation came out, but without the elaborate annotation she had envisioned.
And now, thanks to the efforts of the meticulous and indefatigable Mr. Kirchner and his supporters, we have a new version of that earlier translation. With Mrs. Sasaki's old notes put into finished form, along with the ones she never got around to writing, here is this important Zen classic with all the annotation one could desire, in what will doubtless be the definitive edition for many years to come.
Burton Watson
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— Burton Watson |
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| "f grammatical constructions. Translators of classical Chinese will immediately recognize the Kirchner edition constitutes a small handbook of classical and colloquial Chinese grammar. It sets a new standard in scholarly translation of Buddhist primary texts." |
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— Victor Sōgen Hori |
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"… Sasaki would definitely approve. It if needs "more work," I cannot imagine in what way. This complete Linji-lu is more than half composed of notes and commentaries. Editor Kirchner is apparently as fond of them as Sasaki ever was… This is probably the definitive book on "The Record of Linji,"
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| — Donald Ritchie, The Japan Times |
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"The long-awaited publication of this book is the belated culmination of an epoch-making research program. Beginning in 1954 and extending for over a dozen years until her death in October 1967, Ruth Fuller Sasaki (1892–1967) engaged a small group of exceptionally gifted scholars in the detailed study and annotated English translation of the recorded sayings of Linji Yixuan 臨済義玄 (d. 866), arguably the single most important--and certainly the single most captivating--text of the Chinese Chan (Zen) tradition. The English translation appeared, but with only minimal annotation, in 1975; the current volume contains an updated version of the translation, with the historical introduction and in-depth annotation planned for but not included in the original volume.…
"That we have this book in our hands at all is to the infinite credit of Thomas Yūhō 釈雄峯 Kirchner, who with this contribution shows himself to be a significant authority in the academic study of Chinese Chan. Kirchner’s résumé does not follow the standard academic pattern of university study and professional appointments, but rather began with religious practice that has matured into a combination of deep empathy with and broad understanding of East Asian Buddhism. (This is a pattern much more commonly found among western participants in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition than those involved in East Asian Buddhism, I have recently realized--an intriguing difference that deserves further consideration by scholars of Buddhism in the contemporary world.) A long-time copyeditor at the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture, Kirchner has produced a volume that is impeccably well crafted, which reads smoothly and with elegance in every turn of phrase, and which provides the English reader with access to a foundational generation of scholarship on Chinese Chan."
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| — Johbn McRae, H-Net |
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"Zen specialists should be most grateful to Thomas Kirchner for his
painstaking distillation of the volumes of loose-leaf notes, corrections to Dōchū bibliographic information and grammatical analyses, as well as his careful checking of
notes that were incomplete or undecided with the results of the latest scholarship.… Indispensable." |
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| — John Jorgensen, Japan Studies |
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Ruth Fuller
SASAKI (1892–1967) combined an early interest in Th eravada Buddhism and Indian languages with the practice of yoga and Zen. Aft er moving to Kyoto in 1949 she devoted herself to helping Westerners interested in Zen and to producing a highly regarded series of books, including Zen Dust (1966), The Recorded Sayings of Layman P’ang (1970), and The Record of Lin-chi (1975).
Thomas Yūkō KIRCHNER is an associate researcher at the International Research Institute for Zen Buddhism at Hanazono University in Kyoto, Japan. A graduate of Ōtani University, he spent ten years in Japanese Rinzai Zen monasteries before taking positions at the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture and, later, Hanazono University. His other books include Entangling Vines: Zen Koans of the Shūmon Kattōshū (2004) and 『禅僧になったアメリカ人』(2006). |
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VOL.9
NANZAN LIBRARY
OF ASIAN RELIGION
AND CULTURE
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