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The Sandōkai () is a poem by the eighth Chinese Zen ancestor Shitou Xiqian (Sekito Kisen, 700–790) and a fundamental text of the
Sōtō Sōtō Zen or is the largest of the three traditional sects of Zen in Japanese Buddhism (the others being Rinzai and Ōbaku). It is the Japanese line of the Chinese Cáodòng school, which was founded during the Tang dynasty by Dòngsh� ...
school of
Zen Zen ( zh, t=禪, p=Chán; ja, text= 禅, translit=zen; ko, text=선, translit=Seon; vi, text=Thiền) is a school of Mahayana Buddhism that originated in China during the Tang dynasty, known as the Chan School (''Chánzong'' 禪宗), and ...
, chanted daily in temples throughout the world.


Title

The poem's title, "參同契", is pronounced ''Sandōkai'' in Japanese or ''Cāntóngqì'' in
Mandarin Chinese Mandarin (; ) is a group of Chinese (Sinitic) dialects that are natively spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of the phonology of Standard Chinese, the official language ...
. The characters, in particular the first, 參 (''san'' or ''cān''), can have several quite different meanings, and therefore the poem's title is susceptible to a variety of interpretations and translations. English translations of the title, some more and some less literal, include "Merging of Difference and Unity", "Merging of Difference and Equality", "Agreement of Difference and Unity", "Harmony of Difference and Sameness", "Harmonious Song of Difference and Sameness", "Identity of Relative and Absolute", "Harmony of Relative and Absolute", "Harmony of Difference and Equality", and "Ode on Identity". The title of the Sandōkai is the same as that of a 2nd-century
Taoist Taoism (, ) or Daoism () refers to either a school of philosophical thought (道家; ''daojia'') or to a religion (道教; ''daojiao''), both of which share ideas and concepts of Chinese origin and emphasize living in harmony with the '' Tao ...
text on
alchemy Alchemy (from Arabic: ''al-kīmiyā''; from Ancient Greek: χυμεία, ''khumeía'') is an ancient branch of natural philosophy, a philosophical and protoscientific tradition that was historically practiced in China, India, the Muslim wo ...
, which is also known as the
Cantong qi The ''Cantong qi'' is deemed to be the earliest book on Taoist alchemy in China. The title has been variously translated as ''Kinship of the Three'', ''Akinness of the Three'', ''Triplex Unity'', ''The Seal of the Unity of the Three'', and in s ...
; in reference to the Taoist work, "參同契" is often translated as "the Kinship of the Three".


Text

Another translation by Rev. Master Jiyu-Kennett:


Text commentary

Toward the end of his life Shunryu Suzuki Roshi gave a series of lectures on the Sandokai. These have been published as the book ''Branching Streams Flow in the Darkness''.
Sheng-yen Sheng Yen (), born Zhang Baokang (), (January 22, 1931 – February 3, 2009) was a Taiwanese Buddhist monk, religious scholar, and writer. He was one of the mainstream teachers of Chan Buddhism. He was a 57th generational dharma heir of Li ...
published a commentary in English on both "Sandokai" ("Inquiry Into Matching Halves") and " The Precious Mirror of Samadhi" under the title ''The Infinite Mirror'' ((1990), Dharma Drum Publications ).


See also

*
Five Ranks The ''Five Ranks'' (; ) is a poem consisting of five stanzas describing the stages of realization in the practice of Zen Buddhism. It expresses the interplay of absolute and relative truth and the fundamental non-dualism of Buddhist teaching. ...
* Song of the Precious Mirror Samadhi


References


External links


Sandokai
medieval Japanese and translated into English

* ttp://terebess.hu/zen/shitou-eng.html Various English and Hungarian translations of the Sandōkai and another work by Shitou Xiqian, the Sōan ka {{Authority control Zen texts Chinese poems Buddhist poetry Chinese Buddhist texts Tang dynasty poetry